Monthly Archives: June 2020

 

Jack wrote this in June, 2006:

In 1961, I joined the US Army for three years with the intention of killing young Russian men to keep this from happening in the US:

Saturday, I joined the throngs of US senior citizens crossing the International Boundary to trek a couple of blocks into Mexico to buy prescription medications.  The reason we were all braving the hot, the skyrocketing gas prices, the long drive and the short walk?

A block south of the border, prescription meds cost a tiny fraction of their cost a block north of the International Boundary.

But that’s another issue for another time.

Coming back waiting on the US side behind a line of oldsters in the US Border patrol station, the fun begins.

Guy with a gun, a uniform and a Hitler mustache:  “Do you have anything to declare?”

Elderly lady pushes through the turnstile to stand in front of his table.  “I have this.”  She holds up a bulging plastic bag.

Guy with a gun, a uniform and a Hitler mustache:  “I didn’t tell you you could come through the turnstile.  Go back to the other side.”

She goes back to wherever a person is when on the other side of the turnstile.

Guy with a gun, a uniform and a Hitler mustache:  “OK.  Now you can come through.”

She goes back through the turnstile, stands in front of him.  “Do you have anything to declare?  Medications, anything?”

She holds up the bag again, but before she can speak, elderly hubby, the other side of the turnstile, holds up a bag.  “I’ve got the medications here.”  Pushes part way through the turnstile holding up the bag.

“DO NOT COME THROUGH THAT TURNSTILE UNTIL I SAY YOU CAN!”

Old man, startled, backs into never-never-land, turnstile clicking.

Hitler mustache to woman:  “Do you have anything to declare?  Medications?  Anything?”

Hubby across the turnstile to wife:  “God Damn it!  I told him I have the medications over here.”

And so, ad infinitum.

Mr. Uniformed Mustache with a gun never came out and said,

“I am one stupid son of a bitch here to give elderly US citizens a hard time when after they have to walk into another country to get their medications at a reasonable price.”

He didn’t need to.

Jack

Jack wrote this in October, 2006: 

One of the the ways youngsters in Portales, New Mexico, used to entertain themselves summer days was hopping a freight train for a ride to Clovis, twenty miles away.  We’d hang around a while doing nothing, then hop another back to Portales.

Bums hanging around the Clovis yard would tell us which trains not to catch.  A kid wouldn’t want to be on a mile-a-minute diesel locomotive as it went through Portales and end up in Roswell, 90 miles west, wondering how to get home without the war department discovering what he’d been doing.

It wasn’t quite a decade later, summer, 1964, I was in NYC hanging around Greenwich Village thinking I was a beatnik.  I decided to head back to the desert Southwest.  The easiest way of getting out of the city appeared to be to hop a freight.  Seemed logical that any train I caught ought to be going South, or West, or Southwest.

Sometime after dark the train stopped at and and two cops had their pistols pointed at me.  Handcuffs, fingerprints, paperwork, and off to the slammer.  Rochester, New York, awaiting an arraignment so’s they could decide whether to charge me with the NY felony of riding freight trains and send me off to the pen two-to-five years.

That Rochester jail was the first place I ever heard the phrase, ‘riding the rap’.  Prisoners used it to describe what happens when you’re caught (the rap) and sentenced (serving your time – riding it).

Considering how frequently we humans are wrong about almost everything, and how seldom we’re right, it’s a mystery.  We go to SOOOO much trouble convincing ourselves we’re right.  Once we adopt an opinion about how things are, we hang onto it with hair teeth and toenails and ride it.

At the beginning of the 20th Century a consortium of top-scientists announced to that all the major discoveries science would ever make had already been made.  Human beings all over the world believed them.  They’ve continued patting themselves on the back from then until now.  The airplane, the atomic bombs, moon landings, plastic, computers, tubeless tires, television  and quantum physics were just tying up loose ends.

In our personal lives this brave new century is a time to pick something safe, something that will stay on the rails.  Something that won’t provide us with any growth experiences.  Safety nets.  Insurance policies.  Spectator sports.  World news.

We might be bored to tears, but by-damn we know who the Bulgarians ought to elect for their president, and by-damn, we know who killed John Kennedy and what’s the best ball team.

The only rap we have to ride is knowing our lives are slipping away without our having done anything but a little flag-waving.  Whoopteedoo, watched the Super Bowl.  Whoopteedoo went to a concert.  Whoopteedoo got a car.  Whoopteedoo died of cancer.

But by God, I was right.  Knew, by-damn, who the Bulgarians should have elected for their prez.  Knew which ball club was best, win or lose.

Life flashing before the eyes during the last minute of life, I wonder if a person gets to thrill again the 1999 Super Bowl.

Or whether he might wish he’d chosen some other rap to ride.  Chosen a life with more risk, more flair, so they wouldn’t write his epitaph, “He knew everything already and played it safe.  Sixty times around the sun and he never fixed a flat tire.”

Jack

Jack wrote this in October, 2006:

Maybe this is all bull, but it’s the most painless way I’ve ever found to view reality and my human co-conspirators here in this lifetime.  Riding the mudball around the star and watching the two-legged critters wade around the muck beside me hasn’t caused me to admire us as a species.

As for knowing other humans, we mostly don’t allow ourselves to ‘know’ anyone. Instead, we construct them as we wish them to be, assign a set of behaviors required of them.  Often the people we’re trying to hammer into our mold haven’t  agreed to try to satisfy these requirements.  Still, we count it a violation of ‘trust’ if they don’t perform according to the rules we created.

But, even if they told us they agreed to be what we wished them to be, (and they might have meant it when they did it) obeying contracts of that sort just aren’t part of the usual human machinery. The flesh is weak and time and circumstance erode the best of intentions.

Trusting human beings based on unrealistic contracts probably leads to more heartache than simply abandoning the concept of ‘trust’ and the demands that go with it, and adopting a consistent readiness to forgive and continue loving them. (With no joint checking accounts or shared credit cards)

Jack

Old man and young man

Sit, gaze at far reaches

Of valley and desert

Spanning to horizon

 

“How’d I get to be this old?”

 

Old man smiles, serene .

“I wonder sometimes myself.”

 

Young man: “I’m serious.”

 

Old man sighs and leans

Against a rock.

“You’ve already

Heard the parts about

Cheating, lying, and stealing all

Your life.

Those can shorten things

Considerable.

Could have mine.

Those are things you need to

Keep in moderation.”

 

Young man frowns.

“You’re joking..”

 

”No. Just being

Completely honest

For once.

But those are more

Likely just to ruin

Your life than

To end it.”

 

Tosses a flat rock

Into the void

Eyes follow

The long descent

“I never killed myself

When I wanted to.

 

Never threw myself

On my sword over defeats

I can’t recall now.

Never flang myself

Off a cliff

Over scores of women

I no longer remember.”

 

Old man digs his pocket

Pats his other pockets

Looking for his pipe.

“I never gloated sufficiently

On my amazing successes

Over the efforts of others

(Those escape my mind

These days)

To make anyone want

To kill me enough to

Actually do it.”

 

Tamps the pipe

Frets with a match

“I was astute enough

To recognize early

When you bed

Another man’s woman

She’ll eventually tell him.

She mightn’t say who,

But she’ll always say what

And if he’s smart

He’ll puzzle out the who.

That’s a worthy thing

To keep in mind.”

 

Pipe bowl sparked

Glowed, smoke

Curled around him

“I’ve always lived hard

Pushed the envelope

Hung it out over the edge.

I’d rather have died early

Than not done that

.

But I always kept good tires

On whatever mechanical

Critter I was depending on

To get me back

Always kept the brakes

In good shape.  And

I was damned lucky.”

 

They sit silent

Watch the shadows

Crawl into arroyos

Far below

 

 

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright 2002©Jack Purcell

For several months after Jack moved back to town after y2k, he had a night job as a hotel clerk at a Travelodge where modern country music was constantly piped in and couldn’t be turned off. I recently found some papers that came from that time and found something he had written during his shift. I’m copying it exactly as I found it scribbled:

In the last 45 years baby boomers have been the driving force behind music sales. They brought us bop, then rock and roll, R&B, the Beatles, folk, folk rock, acid rock, and outlaw country. Then they began to drop the ball and the younger crowd began to take over– ended up with endless rap, and Country fell to wailing love ballads.

Baby boomers tuned out in a tragic replay of the 70’s, but this time they did it in the musical manifestation: they turned down their hearing aids.

The result has been the drivel incessant caterwauling that dominates the airways today– effeminate men and hairy-chested women proclaiming endless love. No more cheating, getting drunk, hopping trains, going to prison, missing hound dogs, dying in car wrecks, remembering mama.  No more low sentiments and lower experiences. All whining through orthodontics.

If we don’t want to spend our golden years listening to this trash we’ve got to get back into the driver’s seat. We’ve got to get some music baby boomers can identify with. Pull those teeth out of the water glass and tune back in.
So I wrote this song- seed corn for the next wave in C&W. I call it “Bypass on the Great Divide.” Cock your head so you can see through those bifocals and hum along:

Westbound on the interstate
Out on the Great Divide
Our Winnie overheated
So we pulled off to the side.

The sagebrush and the redrock
invoked our reverie
While the engine cooled I thought about
My bypass surgery.

Refrain:
You can have your diabetes
and your special brand of “C”
But when heat-waves blur the mesas
I’ll take bypass surgery.

We’ll be turning off at Flagstaff
for the fairways to the south:
My third ex-wife will meet us
with my grandkids and her mouth

Those two eggs up on whisky toast
and home fries on the side
she always made for breakfast
were my downfall and her pride.

You can have your diabetes
and your special brand of “C”
But when heat-waves blur the mesas
I’ll take bypass surgery.

So we’ll take the brats along with us
and camp somewhere below
the International Boundary
buying meds in Mexico.

Cause it’s not the margaritas
nor the senoritas sweet
It’s the discount pharmaceuticals
that tug these flattened feet.

Now the engine’s finished cooling
and the wheels begin to roll
and there ain’t no bloody stool
in the RV commode bowl.

You can have your diabetes
and your special brand of “C”
But when heat-waves blur the mesas
I’ll take bypass surgery.

Now. Let’s get busy and hear some songs about ’49 Fords, Joe Stalin, moon disks and fender skirts, the Korean War, the Berlin Crisis. 6 volt car batteries and flathed V-8s. Skirts with hoops. Saddle loafers. Cushman eagles. Red Ryder BB guns. Let’s argue whether Roy Rogers or Gene Autry was the king of the cowboys. Scandalize the grand kids with Roy and Dale, travelling salesmen, and Johnny Fuckerfaster jokes.