Seeing Is Seeing. Believing, That’s Something Different

This report from the bowels of Amerika originally appeared in the premier issue of Wild Dog, the acclaimed literary magazine in the early 1990s.  Halcyon memories.  Ha! – JDW

When I was a kid I often wondered if life was just one big practical joke being played on me.

How did I know I was seven years old?  I had only my parents’ word for this.  Maybe – like a dog – I was really forty-nine.

How did I know I was even a kid? I only had everybody else’s word for it.  Maybe I was forty-nine and I was a dog.  A wild dog who should be running free.

When was the last time I ran free?  When was the last time I saw the United States of America with my own eyes?  I left Portland because I wanted to see for myself what I had only heard about on television and read about in newspapers.

I left Portland when Clarence Thomas was on trial and arrived in Florida when William Kennedy Smith was exonerated.  I was in San Diego in Wahrenbrock’s Book House when I learned Magic Johnson had tested positive for the HIV virus.  We arrived in Florida about the time Bill Parcells couldn’t get a date with Teddy Kennedy.

I left Portland asking myself more than a couple of hard questions.  Questions like, what proof did I have there was no recession?

Personally, it felt like a recession, looked like a recession and stunk up my life like a recession. Each time I lost a steadily-paying writing gig, they said it was because of the recession.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration & Governmental Control Group keeps trying to convince me there’s nothing amiss.

By the time I got to Florida the malls and department stores and chambers of commerce were blaming the media for creating the impression of a recession, thus depressing (Don’t ever ever use that word!) consumer morale. Causing the recession which we might as well admit we’re in the middle of.

Even as I write, just a couple of weeks after the worst Christmas Retail Season since 1 B.C., I read somewhere the recession is over.

I left Portland asking myself, How is David Duke different from Dan Quayle? And why should I believe CNN about either one of them? (In LoUiSiAna the local media were blaming the national media for creating the Duke phenomenon.)

I left Portland like a boy leaves home. He knows where home is; nobody has to tell him. Outside those familiar confines, what lies there?

I didn’t have a clue when I left Portland.

Leaving the Beaver State, heading into California, one’s first image of the outside world is uniformed armed guards stopping every car searching for foreign fruits.

We drove through the Donner Pass to Reno, “The Smokingest Little City In The World.” At Circus Circus, we emptied our lucky found-money fund into video poker machines: we lost every penny of nearly ten bucks in small change. Nevada tops the nation with 23.2 suicides per 100,000 people. Gambling the kids’ milk money on the Ace of Spades can do that to a guy.

In California they shop for fun. People in leather (under)clothes still park $100,000 sports cars along the curbs of La Jolla. The Chevy dealer in San Diego charges $48 an hour for service work.

Arizona could use more shade.

I drove through New Mexico as fast as I could. New Mexicans are the country’s most dangerous drivers. It’s a fact.

Across much of Texas, entire towns are boarded up. New shopping centers are closed. Corpus Christi was empty. Some places looked like the TWILIGHT ZONE, where every living creature – except seagulls – simply vanishes.

In some neighborhoods there are more FOR SALE signs than mailboxes.

I went to the gun show in San Antonio. GUN CONTROL MEANS USING BOTH HANDS. Looked like a convention of Serial Killers Anonymous. If you’ve got a Texas driver’s license, you can walk out of here with a pistol. Out-of-staters are limited to rifles, shotguns and automatic weapons. I bought a pocket knife about the length of your sleeve.

Now this. More Texans were killed by guns last year than in automobile accidents. Between 1985 and 1990, 19,184 Texans died from gunshot wounds.

Rest stops in Texas provide warning signs with pictures of poisonous reptiles and insects.

I came down with the flu. 105 degree fever. It’s one thing to read about those epidemics in the paper, it’s quite another to survive the disease. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to the weak among us. I coulda died, I felt so hot.

DANGER. OVERNIGHT CAMPING PERMITTED.  That’s pretty much your Western literary metaphor for this trip right there.

People think they have problems.  Look up someday to find yourself on a Louisiana roadside surrounded by four extras from NIGHT OF THE LIVING SCROTUM SCRATCHERS and suddenly you don’t give a damn about what’s in the Metro section of the daily paper.

In Slidell, Louisiana, at 5 p.m. the day after Thanksgiving, it took fourteen (14) police officers to direct traffic outside WAL-MART.

In “Nawlins,” that’s spelled New Orleans, I found this message from the streets scratched on the wall of a public restroom: “A dollar busride is all that separates uptown from downtown.”

On Bourbon Street, in the French Quarter near BIG DADDY’S BOTTOMLESS MUD WRESTLING, sidewalk vendors are selling nitrous oxide, laughing gas.  “$2 a hit.”

Along the interstate, there were ten (10) Duke signs for every one for his opponent, the gambler & ladies’ man, Whosit Edwards.

There’s an empty room in every motel across America.  Plenty of folks live in tarpaper shacks.

In Mississippi, even the dirt looks worn out.  Here, the state bird is chicken-fried steak.

It’s as dark in Alabama as it is in any other state you drive through at night.  And just as beautiful.

Tourism is down in Florida. In the height of THE SEASON there’s vacancies everywhere you turn.  Last year it was jamming.

Nobody’s building.

If the interest rate was zero, 35 million people still wouldn’t have health insurance.

In Venice, Florida, the local paper lists only thirteen (13) positions in the PROFESSIONAL column of the classified unemployment ads.  Six of those are for Hair Stylists.

Experienced preferred.  But they don’t want to pay for it.

You see fifty-year-old white men walking around in grey suits and white shirts muttering, “I can’t be laid off from IBM, because Big Blue never lays off employees. My boss said I wasn’t being laid off, I was being retired.”  Right about then, they realize they are retired.

Next thing you know, his boss is prematurely enjoying those sunset years.

This is about the same time they decide to keep the shiny black shoes, but to wear them with red-plaid bermuda shorts.

They’re the lucky ones.  They can afford shorts.

Times are tough.

Not even our Senior Citizens are happy. As interest rates decline, those living on fixed incomes feel the squeeze. Health costs continue to rise, while the government continually reduces health services and financial assistance.

Make a note.  We might be able to solve two problems simultaneously if we renamed cockroaches and prepared them as a nutritional source. Might help the taste of grits.

I hadn’t been home for the holidays in twenty years.  Frankly, I expected a warmer greeting.  There was one rational explanation.  Only one scenario made any sense at all.

My parents’ bodies had been taken over by aliens from another planet.  Yes, creatures from a world where they eat their young.

It was either that, or there’s a recession.

When I finally convinced my father I wasn’t moving back home, we got along much better. Mom wanted a grand daughter and I brought her a German Shepherd.

Do not expect a consumer-led recovery.  Most people don’t have any money.  Those who do have money have exhausted their wish list.  Perhaps the rich should hold a national garage sale.  The poor could have whatever they can haul away.

Alligators live in ponds of trailer parks.  Inevitably, that’s where I’m supposed to walk my dog.

My landlord Ray became the owner of one of the town’s five body shops when he started his business in Venice some thirty years ago. Today there are thirty-eight (38) body shops, many affiliated with the large national franchises. With low, low prices.  And the big, big ad budgets. Ray is talking a lot about customer satisfaction and survival.

Trust me on this.  PHILOSOPHERS ARE THE CANARIES, THE INDICATOR SPECIES, FOR THIS CULTURE.

THE STORY OF HOW IT ALL BEGAN OR MOSTLY, I BLAME HIAWATHA.

It was a dark and stormy night, my birthday last year.  My first date with Hiawatha.  Her first ride in my pride, a low-mileage fire-engine red, cherry turbo-charged 1985 Dodge Omni GLH. Goes Like Hell.

My last ride in the car.

After fifty-nine (59) automatic monthly withdrawals, on a sheet of glaze ice, driving prudently I might add, we slid around a corner and continued sliding into an unnecessarily high curb.

Dead man’s curb.

We trudged through the snow and exhaled white breath to Hiawatha’s riverside home, where we built a fire and listened to Chris Issak tapes until she gave my birthday surprise.  Wicked game.

This year, she gave me the same thing, but she wore a different ribbon.

I stole that joke from my Uncle Tom.

Imagine my chagrin when a certain insurance company – which should rot in hell for all eternity – informed me the automobile, which had only 32,000 miles on it, was a total loss. And worth half what I thought. One payment short of finally-paid-off.

Find me an insurance man and I’ll show you a crook.

I’m not bitter.

Hiawatha and I started “dating.” She had a car. I didn’t. We maintained separate domiciles. I spent most of my time at her place.

In her signature style, Hiawatha had planned her travels for quite some time. “I am leaving Portland,” I recall her saying, “And I am leaving soon.” There was no stopping her.

I had no particular reason to stay. No one even tried to stop me from going.

I talked her out of Northern Italy; I’d already been there.  It’s much like Portland, only the pizza’s not as tasty.  I painted a romantic illustration of a Kerouacian cross-country voyage of discovery and spiritual renewal.  Palm trees, I whispered.  Warm Gulf Stream breezes.  Surf.  White powder beaches, like walking on confectioner’s sugar.  Every day, sun, I promised.  Winter sun.  Warmth.

“Yes, oh yes,” she said. “Yes.”

We will be eternally grateful (and worn out) to Alan Oratz, swarthy professional hedonist. It was Alan who taught me to: NAME THE DAY. GIVE YOURSELF A DEADLINE. NOTHING STOPS YOU.

October 1.  We pulled onto Northwest 23rd Street at Glisan in Merry Miler and slowly wended our way north. North to Florida. We had plenty of time.  I promised my mother we’d arrive in the Sunshine State in time for her forty-sixth wedding anniversary on December 23, my birthday on the 24th, and Christmas with my family. Home for the holidays. First time in twenty years.

That was the timetable. Our route? The top left corner of the USA TODAY weather map to the bottom right corner. Friday Harbor to Key West.  HEADING FOR THE ORANGE ZONE.

Friends don’t let friends sleep out in the cold.

Our first day on the road featured a mineral bath, massage, bowel movement and breakfast at Carson Hot Springs in the Columbia Gorge.  A good beginning is the best way to start.

Visiting the back side of the impressively distressed Mt. St. Helen’s volcano reminded us to expect the surprising from Mother Nature. Our new landlord.

Buffeted by cold gusts atop Outlaw Ridge, we hugged one another. Tightly. We were alone together. Free at last. Far from the choking air of the city, far from the critics and meter maids and telemarketers and malls and boom boxes and car alarms and panhandlers and billboards and junk mail. There was just the two of us.

A growl. Sudden as a pink slip, a stranger in Desert Storm khakis shared our space. Camouflage paint smeared all over his face. A single bandolier hung from his shoulders. Bullets you could see from a distance. He looked like Belushi doing a scene from Samurai Deer Killer. The only thing bigger than his beer gut was his rifle.

And Hiawatha’s eyes.

I moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, toward my brand-new Mossberg Maverick 12-gauge shotgun. Chameleon-like, the stranger disappeared back into the forest.

This time I hugged the dog.

TIM MCGARRY. Seattle, Washington.

In the category of Foods Needing New Names: A store in a black neighborhood of The Emerald City is selling PIG’s FEET, EARS, SNOOTS, TAILS. Also, CHITTERLINGS AND HOG MAWS.

Probably selling them cheap, too.

Looking for a place to park Merry Miler, so I can alert the local authorities of my arrival, I couldn’t help but think Seattle asks a lot of its citizens.

How well would the sign NO PARKING WEST OF HERE work in your neighborhood?  There’s more than a couple of folks, I’ll bet, who’d have to wait for sunset before leaving the car.

I count on Tim McGarry.  For many many years he’s been like a brother to me.  I had a brother once, so I don’t care to use that expression.

More forgiving than my mother, Tim has been one on my most consistent and enthusiastic supporters.  Frankly, I trust his judgement.

I don’t think it’s coincidence that Tim’s home was the first place I headed when we pulled out of Portland.  Hiawatha came out of that grove of old growth timber behind Spirit Lake and she was shrieking – quietly, of course, as only she can do – “WHY AM I IN THE MIDDLE OF EIGHTEEN LANES OF FUCKING RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC ON THE SECOND DAY OF MY ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME!!!!”

I didn’t know it at the time, but I think I needed Tim’s permission to leave.  My first friend in Oregon.  Law school another story.

I wanted to look into that earnest Irish potato face and hear him say, “Oh, wow, great, I can’t believe it.  It’s like a dream come true.  Oh, I wish I could go.  You’ll have so much fun.  This could be the best thing that ever happened to the both of you.  The dog, too.  I love that dog.”

Then we would go for a run which seems to get slower every time and we would tell each other the most secret things we wouldn’t share with any other man.

“And, if it doesn’t work out, hey, big deal.  You know what I mean?”

Suitably emboldened, I headed north.