Cowboys and Indians

                    Cowboys and Indians

    In '94 I drove out to New Mexico with my 10 year old son to visit my sister who lives outside of a small town, Hurley, in the southwest corner of the state. Sis is kind of a family outcast and I am the only relative who has maintained contact, phoning her a couple of times a year and swapping occasional email in recent years. She lives on a green acre with the only real trees around and has gardens and lawn. Everything around her is desert. Her neighbors think she is a witch and she encourages that. Actually it is all because, unknown to the neighbors and to the authorities, she has water on her acre.

              Ginny is not, strictly speaking, a witch. She is an astrologer and an ardent political activist though her activism is limited to mailings back when and the internet now. She writes very well when she is not being strident and has got some things published for free. She cannot imagine taking money for it.

The day I arrived at Ginny's place with Bo, she announced that she was going up to the San Francisco River for the hot springs there and that we should come along. I had brought ten year old Bo to New Mexico with me to see a little bit of the world so that sounded good and that night we started off with her gentleman friend, they in his Chevy Van and we in our Plymouth mini pick-up truck, northwards to the San Francisco River.

What it was, was a Gathering of old hippies that congregate in the canyon every summer to commune with Nature in the hot springs there and to celebrate a faux tribalism. There are several bathing holes dug out along the river at points where the hot springs gush or dribble forth into the main stream. Farther upstream there is a large swimming hole where the little river  that is mostly no more than mid-shin deep fills a hollow at the base of a  large rock. Kids dive from the rock fifteen feet into the pool.

                        Bo and I put up our pup tent and went exploring up the river. We had arrived before ten o'clock and spent the day walking along the river with side trips up the sides of the canyon where it isn't sheer.

      

   When we came back to the campsite there were many more campers and a dozen tents were pitched among the trees away from the river and others were camping in their vans. As it got dark several campfires were started and guitars and mouth harps appeared. By midnight everyone had migrated to one more-or less centrally located site and there was plenty of food. They were mostly vegetarians, alas.

Then it all folded up and all retired to their own tents and vans to sleep. Bo was worn out and was dreaming away in a couple of minutes. I read by the light of a candle powered lantern.

As I closed up the book to put it away I became conscious of a motor running and it was moving. I rose out of the tent to look and saw three automobiles descending the track that came from the paved road down into the canyon. Curious, I watched. Some others had come out to watch, also.  The cars drove rapidly to a spot in the middle of the flat area and the lead vehicle's doors were flung open and the radio was on loud playing western juke joint music. The other two cars followed suit and woke everyone up except for Bo. Nothing would wake him until he was ready to rise.

After a few minutes of loud music and cowboy swearing and beer drinking one of the hippies, Burkenstok, went down to the intruders and explained to them that children were trying to sleep all around them and would they please reduce the volume. The response was probably predictable. The driver of the lead car loudly refused and announced in a louder voice that they had  come down there to "kill hippies" and "yall better get outa here 'fore I do you first!" 

The loudmouthed one had apparently been talking big in the saloon and others had challenged him to show he was more than tall talk. So he led the procession out to the canyon.

Burkenstok backed off and for a little while the cowboys had the field. Then another figure walked down to them. At that distance I could see that there was a long skirt so it was a woman and probably a very small woman. She reached the first car and angrily ordered "you damned cowboys" to get in their cars and get the hell out of there. When I heard the voice I recognized the speaker. It was Ginny. The saloon hero's voice got high-pitched in rage as he screamed in n unnaturally high voice that he was not going to leave and in fact he was there to, of course, "kill hippies." He advanced on her but she held her ground and, in the tones of an angry mother, told him that he better not touch her if he knew what was good for him.

At this I became alarmed and went to the pick-up to retrieve a scoped Enfield .303 that normally cooled it behind the seat.  I loaded it with two rounds and went to a spot near another campsite back of a screen of shrubs and trees. I aimed the rifle and held it there, resting my arm on a log. The mistress of that site had also roused and came over to me with shock in her eyes. She asked me if I was going to shoot someone. I said, "If he hits her I will shoot him." The woman, who was called Trolley, was horrified for a minute or two, then calmed down and said quietly, "well, I hope you don't have to shoot him. He shouldn't be so stupid and act so crazy."

Down below, Ginny was goading the bad boy but just to the point at which his rage was maximized and just before he had to actually do something about it. The other cowboys were calling out things like, "whatcha gonna do, Roy? Gonna let that bitch talk to you like you're a damned old mangy dog?"

There is another group of people who gather in that canyon for the pow-wow. They are mountain men of a sort that I thought had all died out or moved into the city generations ago. They are lone survivalist types who  grow marijuana back in the mountains to bring down to sell to the hippies. One of them at this gathering was called Rock'n'Roll and had a mule he called Killer. He had long tangled curly hair and a wild bushy beard and  wore just shorts and a headband.

He liked to play his harmonica and sing.

Just as Roy had worked himself up to taking a swipe at Ginny, Rock'n'Roll appeared out of the woods. He was stripped down to a ragged loincloth and had twigs and feathers sticking out of his hair and war paint on his face.  He carried an exaggerated stage-play spear, a large diamond-shaped point hafted to the six foot pole.

He bounded out of the woods shrieking war whoops and waving his spear.

The cowboys all got into their cars and closed windows and locked doors except for Roy. Roy had his back to them and didn't notice their discretion. His voice stumbled as he yelled threats to this new apparition. Rock'n'Roll stopped a few yards in front of Roy and started dancing like he was an Indian in a 1955 formula Western movie. Roy shouted, "hell he don't scare me none, I'll just scalp him!" and turned for reassurance from his buddies. He saw that they were all in their cars and the last car was creeping backwards. A profound understanding came upon Roy and he turned and ran to his car and got in and slammed and locked the door and put his window up.

He stalled it out trying to start the engine with the gas pedal mashed to the floor..

Rock'n'Roll ceased his dancing and bounded up on to the hood of the car. He drew back the spear as if to thrust it through the windshield. I could hear Roy scream. He got the engine fired up and the horrifying apparition jumped off the hood as Roy dumped the clutch and burned up all the tread on his rear tires, spinning the car around to follow his friends back up out of the canyon.

Most of the hippies gathered at Ginny's campsite to talk over events. I had put the Enfield back in the pick-up but three other fellows, two of the mountain men and one of the hippies, came up to the site carrying rifles of their own. Trolley, shocked all over again, asked in a squeak why everybody had guns at a Peace Gathering. One particularly scroungy fellow, the hippie, said quietly, "I was gonna shoot him if he hit her."

"Yeah," said another, as he unloaded his 30-30.

Then Rock'n'Roll came in leading Killer and carrying his fearsome spear. The point was a foot long diamond shaped piece of not-very-hard black plastic duct-taped to a length of grey PVC pipe.

The other kids told Bo about the night's activities in the morning and, at first he thought they were making up stories. Then he said he had dreamed about Cowboys and Indians.

It was as if I had taken him to see the very greatest Western movie and he  slept through it.

                                 -6-

Bridgework

       


  In 1985  I was commuting weekly 260 miles to Jacksonville where I worked. I went to Jacksonville every Sunday evening and returned home after work on Friday. It was a long ride on my Virago motorcycle.

On every trip I crossed the long bridge that spans the Apalachicola River between Blountstown and Bristol. Trammell Bridge stretches a mile and a half  mostly over dense swamp flood plains that spread out from the river.  It is an old narrow cantilever two lane bridge with no shoulder space. On a motorcycle it is easy. In a car it can be nerve wracking, especially in fog or heavy rain. At night most people stay on the line between the lanes.

There had been big cranes on barges in the flooded river doing some dredging and clearing of the channel for months when one Sunday, still in daylight, I approached the bridge and could see from some distance it didn't look right. It seemed to be at a slight tilt.

As I got closer I could see that the bridge was, in fact, leaning just a little and there was the very long boom of a crane up against.  I slowed down and crept up to the bridge but could see no breaks in the pavement, just some cracking that I barely felt when I ran over it, and decided I needed to get across so I proceeded on over. It was only a few degrees out of plumb and not particularly harrowing so I sped up when I passed the top of the rise and continued on toward Jacksonville

At work the next morning I had the radio on and the news mentioned that that crane had hit the bridge and pushed it over half an hour before I got there. Now Florida has not bedrock under it so things like bridges are not really locked in place. 

 The pilings were not  anchored very well. They are designed to sort of float on the underlying soft limestone or  in the sand. Piles are driven until they are judged deep enough to hold but the bridges are not  designed to resist being pushed sideways.

The bridge was closed for several months while they pushed it back upright and determined that it was safe and I had to detour way down the coast every week for a while.

A couple of years later Florida commenced to put in a modern bridge beside the old Trammell. and construction took a year and a half, I think. Then it was done. The wide new bridge is the eastbound lanes and the old bridge is westbound. I thought they would then replace the old bridge so that both spans would be modern and wide. They didn't do that.

In 2001 I had acquired a carnival ride, a big green frog children's slide that I towed behind a 1978 Jeep Grand Wagoneer  to state and regional fairs in the Midwest and southeast. One fair was in Tallahassee Florida. It was the last fair of our season on a loop that had taken me and my son to Nashville and Du Quoin, Illinois and Tulsa, and back to Tallahassee in the Southeast. We were returning home on Highway 20 and Bo was driving. He was 17 but an excellent driver and I was quite content to let him drive much of the way.  As we approached that narrow Trammell bridge I got a bit concerned about how narrow the span we were approaching is and suggested that Bo should let me drive across it. He didn't like that idea and thought I was questioning his ability so I let him continue. It was after dark when we came near the bridge and I suggested again that we stop and trade places. He said no, he could do it. So we continued to the start of the bridge and he suddenly howled, "OH S#$%^!" and yanked the Jeep over to the middle to straddle the line between the lanes.

He did not even slow down and we got across just fine.





 






   

Shanghai

            

     Panama City, Florida was a tourist town and a fishing town and not much else in 1963  except for the big paper mill. Most of the men who had steady year round jobs worked  in the paper mill.

    As a teenager I hung around the fishing docks at Anderson's Marina to make some money deadheading on the  party boats, boats that took up to a hundred people  out deep sea fishing for red snapper. Those boats had regular  deckhands but if there were many people going out to fish the boats would take some of the wharf rats, that's  me and the other urchins that lurked around the marina, to help with the passengers and  we were allowed to fish. We could then sell or keep the fish we caught when we got back to the dock.

     There were commercial boats at the marina, too. They went out farther, sometimes to  Campeche down by Yucatan to catch tons of snapper and grouper and whatever else  had a market price. The tourist boats went out for half a day or a day, or for two days  with the more adventurous tourists. The commercial boats went out for a few days up to several weeks.

     So long as I was frequenting the waterfront I wanted to go out there, way out there. I suppose every boy on the coast dreams about going out on the ocean sometimes. I surely did. One of the party captains told me that the Peggy G needed some hands and was at the downtown marina. I went  to find it the next morning and there it was. It was a 76 foot old Mobile schooner that had its bowsprit removed and its topmasts out but the stubs were still there. They were "stubs" but they stood up forty feet from the deck. It was powered by a 671 diesel engine now, not enough to push that hull very fast through the water.

     I signed on and went below to see where my bunk would be. The Peggy G had a proper foc's'le with ten pipe frame bunks and a huge diesel cooking range.  Then I went back and collected clothes and gear for two weeks at sea. I had only a few dollars in my pocket so I couldn't buy the tackle I needed from the outfitter but the captain had a good supply which he would sell to the crew at exorbitant prices so I was okay.

     My ship was supposed to sail in two days but had not yet enough crew so I stowed my gear and the captain put me and three others who had signed on to work cleaning the deck and the rails. Captain Ralph said that we had almost enough crew now but the rest would only show up when it was time to leave the dock. I understood the reason. Those of us not yet experienced in such things that came aboard early got to clean up the boat.  At last we had ten men but Captain Ralph was still reluctant to sail because we did not have a cook. Cooks are very important on a fishing boat going out for more than a couple of days. Finally he told another young fellow and me, we being the two youngest crewmen and, at that point, the  ones who were both sober and unhung over, to take his truck and go up to the Bay Shore bar and bring back a man named Sam who was a well known (to everyone else) cook. I was unsure about going into a bar underage but Anchena,  my partner in the venture and a Muscogee  from Alabama, told me it was not a problem.

     We found Sam sitting at a table with several other waterfront types, all of whom were pretty drunk.  I asked Anchena,, "Well, do we just go over and invite him?" 

     Anchena  said ,"No. We gotta get him drunk so he pass out. Then we take him back to the boat."

     I looked at Sam sitting at that table. Sam was a big man. I weighed 125  pounds at the time. Anchena was muscular but probably only 170 pounds himself. Sam looked to be a lot more than 300 pounds and probably a few inches beyond six feet tall. "We gonna carry him outta here?"

     Anchena answered, "they'll help," nodding his head at some of the patrons at the bar.

     We pulled up chairs to the table when one of the men there left and Anchena started talking about big fish and bad boats with Sam and buying him more whiskey with money Captain Ralph had given him for the purpose. Presently  Sam's head sagged to the table. I prodded his shoulder and he didn't react. Anchena got up and went over and spoke to two men standing at the bar.

     The three came back and we four half carried half dragged Sam's deadweight bulk out to the truck. We got Sam positioned in the bed of the truck and hauled him back to the Peggy G. It took 6 men to get Sam below and stowed in a bunk. Then Willy, the first mate, tied him securely to the pipeframe leaving one arm free.

     Before dawn we cast off and moved around to the other side of the marina to take ice and bait and spent several hours blowing ice into the holds with a four inch hose while skipjack and minnows were brought on.  The ice blower made a tremendous wail blowing ice in and Sam slept  right through it. We finished loading the ice and bait and headed out the pass. When just out of sight of land Captain Ralph turned the Peggy G  east and angled out a bit farther. Then we dropped anchor. I asked Pappy why we were doing that. I thought we were going to Campeche. Pappy said we had to heave to until Sam got done with the DTs.  
     "He's dangerous when he start' seeing snakes".

      We had to be out of sight of land because if Sam got loose and came out on deck where he could see land he would step off the boat to go back to the Bay Shore Bar And we had to stay close until Sam was alert in case he died or something. When he got over the shakes and the snakes and realized he was at sea he would settle into being a cook and  a fisherman.

     I had heard of DTs- Delerium Tremens- but I had never seen it.  It comes over a serious drunk when he is cut off from his alcohol. I had heard about "seeing snakes" but just thought it was people being scornful or something.

     Sam woke up and started yelling. That man had a louder voice than I would have thought there was and he was in agony. And he "saw snakes" or rather felt them. Coming off the alcohol made him feel like ropy things were slithering all over his body and squeezing him so he feared he couldn't breathe and he screamed for someone to untie him so he could go home and get a drink.  I thought we should get him to a doctor but kept my mouth shut because the rest of the crew seemed to know what was happening and were not terribly concerned except to make jokes about snakes and bugs. Yeah, bugs, too.  But the bugs were real. I had already learned why I had heard Peggy G referred to as a roach boat.  There were lots of bugs and Sam's DTs magnified them  in his own perception.

     Sam wailed and demanded water if we wouldn't get him a proper drink. I started to go over to the water tap but Pappy said,"Don't give im no water. You'll drownd 'im."

     Sam broke one of the ropes that bound him and tried to lever himself out of the bunk with his now free leg. Then the experienced guys went into action and got the leg tied back to the bunk frame, sustaining some bruises and a bloody nose in the proceedings.

     The Peggy G stayed at anchor all day and all night. The next morning Sam was awake but didn't move much. Willy let him have some water. After an hour Sam, now untied, sat up and asked for food. Pappy had cooked eggs and pancakes and served him a pile of it. After eating some, Sam got off the bunk and went out on deck. He was a mess. He had fouled himself  and smelled like whiskey and rotten meat. He stripped down and drenched himself at length with the salt water hose. 

     Sam was a fine cook for a roach boat. A roach boat is a roach boat because the men who ship in her tended to be the less stable characters on the waterfront, mostly winos who would go fishing when their drinking money ran out and they couldn't get anyone to buy them a bottle or when they were hungry and the wine wouldn't calm their stomachs anymore. The captain of such a boat was usually sane and not a drunk but he had an old boat and drunks were easy to cheat when you came home and shared up. And drunks  didn't clean the boat very well on the trip back and would leave essence of fish in every corner, thus the roaches.

      I learned some things on that trip about DTs and about cooks. I heard a sailor say once that you should never ship with a skinny cook. Sam was surely not skinny and he cooked plain food from  the basics and we got as much as we wanted to eat. Sam said a hungry man doesn't catch as much fish. Sometimes he added fish when we brought up some non salable but very edible ones. Years later I learned first hand about shipping with a skinny cook 
but that's another story.