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.

Mosquitoes

                                     

              Long ago when motorcycles had spoked wheels 

I was driving my XS-650 across swampy coastland in the 

middle of the night in western North Florida near Perry 

when my rear wheel got wobbly and holding the bike on 

the pavement  became  difficult. The tire had been 

punctured and gone flat. I gingerly maneuvered the 

stricken machine to the side of the road, keeping it barely 

on the pavement to avoid sinking into the muck, set it on 

its center stand and dug my flashlight and my tools out of 

the saddlebag and, needing both hands for tools and the 

rim, I stuck the light in my mouth and directed the beam 

with my jaws.

            The light, unfortunately,  attracted mosquitoes. I 

am accustomed to skeeters being a long time Florida 

resident but these were an unfamiliar and extreme form of 

the pest. They were many times larger than the ones I knew, 

large enough that I could clearly see the yellow and black 

stripes on their legs.  They got in the way, not because they 

were sucking me dry, they weren't, because bugs, dogs, 

and small children don't bite me but they were blocking my 

sight.

           They were so thick in the light of my flashlight that I 

couldn't see to fix the tube. I  turned off the light and did the 

job mostly by feel, only turning the light back on very briefly 

to use the half second between "light on" and the return of 

the mob of skeeters to see where my tube patch had to go. I 

got the tube patched and the wheel mounted and was back 

on the road once more.

Ánh Tuyết

            July 18, 2007
             
                 
 She was born while I was away in the war
and I gave her a name for someone I knew and
 respected there, in Việt Nam.
She had no connection with that land except
that her father was there and loved the place
where he was and the people who live there.

Of four children she was my first
and she was my winner.

Latin, history, and math in high school, she chose a tiny
Catholic college in New Hampshire
and paid for  it on her own as a nanny for the dean's
nine then ten then eleven children.
She remains the school's all-time valedictorian.

After a year's hiatus to take a full time job and build her savings
she went to graduate school down south where she worked
in the  credit union and earned her MBA.
I had envisioned her  an archaeologist or literateur.
She had those talents, too, but she knew where
her talents and interests converged.

With that degree in hand she meant to travel
for a year
before getting serious about  the serious wơrld.
She drove back to New Hampshire to visit the old school .
The dean said, "There is someone I want you to meet..."
When her year was up she went to work
for that someone in a small management firm that was about
to get a lot larger.
She met her husband there and birthed a  prodigy that is
my grandson, now five years old.
               

After a time she left that firm
in the care of her man and joined a dotcom that survived
the millennial Great Extinction  and  made  it thrive.
Her man applied his hand to his work  and became a regional
vice president in a company that  before had
had no use for the designation "regional" anything.

They came this year to Florida for 
a vacation on the lake

 
and she drowned in that lake.
                           She was 37.
.................

Near Death

      A writer of posts on Xanga asked for people to write about any "near death experiences" they might have had. I remembered this incident that happened a few years ago.
In the summer of '72 I set out on my Honda Humpback 450, that I had brought back from the war, on a 360 mile trip to NW Florida. At Cross City an oncoming fellow with a load of whiskey in him turned left immediately in front of me. I have no recollection of the meeting but the fellow who saw it said I went straight up in the air and came down (helmeted) head first on the pavement. He said I was going pretty fast and the fellow in the car didn't seem to slow down much when he turned. The EMT fellows (did they have EMTs then?) carried me to Shands  in Gainesville, a university connected teaching hospital.

Well, Shands had just received multiple severe injuries from a couple of auto wrecks and whoever  was on duty judged that I was Dead-On-Arrival and a colored card attesting to that judgment was placed on my chest. Others who could be saved needed the scarce resources so the gurney on which I was a passenger was pushed over against the wall in the hall and lifesaving attentions were focused on the other broken bodies that had a chance to live.

A couple of Medical students were walking in the hallway and saw the stiff unattended. One of them said, "Let's practice some lifesaving techniques."

They did that and in the process the body commenced to breathe, so I wound up in the emergency room, anyway.

My first memory is of being flat on my back and unable to move anything and there was a doctor in a chair far away across the room who was talking somberly to my wife. There were two med students standing near. The doctor was saying something about my jaw. Presently all three med types approached me and the doctor grasped my upper front teeth and pulled. My maxilla (I learned that word right then) came forward a full 2 inches. I felt nothing and was too groggy to render an opinion on the procedure right at that moment. The doc was demonstrating to the students that my upper jaw was in pieces and not well connected. Then I got my voice back and said,"HEYwhatthef**kleemealone!!!!"

The doc said "well he seems conscious," and a med student reached out his hand and repeated the trick with the maxilla.

 I complained weakly, "Dammitol! Can't you take his word for it?" 

The other med student did it all over again and I said, "What is with you guys? He wasn't lying! can't you believe him!?"

My wife said, "I think he's going to be okay."

This is likely not the sort of near death experience the Xanga poster meant but I was near dead and it was quite an experience. I was not then a Christian but, in retrospect, I think I was protected. I thank the Lord now for medical students.

Swordplay

             
                  In 1972 in our house in Southside St. Petersburg, my wife shook me awake and said SHHHH!  and pointed to the window. There was someone trying to prize the Florida louver window open right  there over our heads. I got up quietly and retrieved the circa 1500s Arabian Damascus sword off the wall that my Dad had got during his tour as a Truce Observer in Palestine in the early 60s. The blade is just under a meter long, narrow, and curved. I slipped into unlaced jungle sneakers and  put my Việt Nam boonie hat on my head.

 I silently exited the  house through the back door (unlocked) and went around to the affected side of the house where I saw a fellow working away at the window. He had got the louvers przied up and was
removing a slat. I raised the sword over my head and waved my other hand where he could see the motion from the corner of my  eye. He turned his head and froze for a second then moved faster than I thought possible and was gone somewhere  across the street where I lost sight of him because the street lights were out.

 I went back inside and told my wife, "He coulda just opened  the door but I guess you just get used to doing things a certain way."

Little Rock

          

     I was on the road again, in the summer of 1973 heading from Seattle to Florida riding my thumb. Rides were okay but I stood a lot and walked a lot, too. I stayed off the Interstates as much as practical. The on ramps in the west coast states were clogged with crowds of hippies and bums hitching rides and the police would arrest folks who tried to hitch on the highway itself. There was a certain social life among the hippies on the entrance ramps but I was not interested in that.          I wanted to get on down the road and one could easily spend several days on a ramp waiting one's turn. So I stayed on the two lanes.
     In those days hitchhiking was fairly easy and not so dangerous as it is now so long as you kept your wits about you and paid attention. Drivers on long rides would usually offer or could be cajoled to part with food or even buy meals in truck stops and cafes.  I always carried some surplus C-rations for when there were long stretches with no rides or less generous drivers.
     At some point I joined with a young fellow, 19 I think, who said he was going to Texas to rejoin his wife but had a loopy sense of direction and didn’t know which way to hold a map. He was not carrying drugs so I encouraged him to stay with me and I would get him a big part of the way okay. Rides were slow in coming and short so it took four days to get over to Colorado. We slept under a couple of highway bridges and on the edge of a KOA commercial campground.   Benny talked a lot and it became apparent that he was not entirely compos mentis, was probably delusional at least a little. His wife had apparently left him and did not want to see him again. He seemed to think she had been taken from him and was waiting longingly for him in Austin. But he also said some things that indicated the situation might be otherwise. 
     I asked Benny questions sometimes while he was rambling about his troubles and determined that he had family in Pennsylvania and got him talking about them from time to time. There were his father and a couple of sisters and he described them in a way that made them seem affluent, big house, a European vacation once and I suggested a couple of times that he needed maybe to go to Pennsylvania. Somewhere in Utah or Colorado he changed his mind and destination and decided to go to Pennsylvania. I could get him perhaps into Missouri before our paths needed to diverge and encouraged him to call his father or sister by then.
    Well, we didn't get into Missouri. We got a long ride in Pueblo from a fellow that offered to take us all the way to Oklahoma City if we could share the driving. I said sure and that I would drive when he got tired. I did not want Benny to drive. He was too flaky for me to trust him at the wheel. It turned out that I didn't drive at all. The fellow stayed awake and competent all the way over to Oklahoma City.
    Benny and I got out on the East side of Oklahoma City and walked a couple of hours due to sparse and indifferent traffic. We camped in some woods by Shawnee. I slept for ten hours or so and woke up to Benny whining that we were lost because there was no big road nearby. Benny had slept while we rode. I never could do that. It is just not safe and one does not know where a driver will decide to go when one is asleep.
     In Oklahoma there is not a horde of hippies trying to hitchhike so I made a sign that said I-40 East and we stood on the little two lane there heading north to that Interstate. Presently a car stopped for us and we were moving again. Four hours later we were in Fort Smith and got off the Interstate there. It is not good to tempt fate in Arkansas. It is always illegall to hitchhike on the Interstate. We got a series of short hops over to a two lane that would take us most of the way to Little Rock.
     Several rides and five hours later we found ourselves stuck on another two lane at night with no traffic. I studied the map and decided that even daytime would not improve it much but I noted that there was a Skelly truck stop almost exactly ten miles up I-40 close to Little Rock and the big road was only a couple of miles north of us so we walked up to it. There was no access so we walked up the embankment and went through a break in the fence and Benny turned to face oncoming and put his thumb out. I told him hell no, we had to walk and if he could keep up with me it would take two and a half hours walking but it was much too dangerous to hitch on the Interstate. He complained but followed my lead over to the path farthest from the pavement and we started double time. I yelled at Benny like a drill sergeant and he got in step with me and stretched his pace and pretty soon we were moving along quickly. The army calls it a forced march at four miles an hour and if you do it with a consistent rhythm you can keep it up for many hours.
     After forty five minutes or so I saw a reflection of flashing blue and turned my head to see a police car light coming up fast in the dark. There was another car in front of it that pulled off the road right beside me and Benny. The cop pulled in behind him. Benny cried out, "We're saved!" and started to run toward the police car I yelled at him to keep walking but Benny was out of his head at the moment. I put my head down and lengthened my stride beyond what I might have thought possible, and kept walking. I did not think we were "saved."
      An authoritative voice called for me to stop. I kept walking. Then, "Stop or I will shoot your ass!" I stopped. The officer ordered Benny and me to sit about 10 feet from where he was writing a ticket for the driver he had pulled. When that business was done he turned to us and demanded identification. I dug my Florida driver's license out of my pocket but Benny was bereft of ID. The cop asked questions and Benny tried to pour out what he imagined was his whole life story. The cop's questions were transparently  aimed at finding out how much money Benny was worth. He had given up on me because I was more reticent.
     Benny said his father  would help him so the officer wrote us tickets with none of the infraction boxes checked. Instead he wrote out "walking on the right-of-way of a public thoroughfare" and put us in the back of his patrol car. I didn't think that sounded like a legitimate charge and putting us in the car after giving us tickets didn't seem normal it but it didn't seem wise to challenge it there and then. At least there were no handcuffs, The tickets indicated $65 fines (think $500 or so in 2010).
   So we got a ride after all, but it was to a substation in an affluent neighborhood in northern Little Rock. There were no police there, just a couple of middle aged ladies and two desks and two holding cells down a narrow hall. The arresting officer told the ladies that Benny needed to make a phone call and waited while Benny did that. He called his father who instantly said he would send the $65 plus bus fare to Pittsburgh. I wondered why I had saddled myself with this loser when all he ever had to do was pick up a phone.
     Officer Friendly then escorted Benny and me to one of the holding cells and one of the ladies locked us in. There were two bunks in there. Benny sat morosely on one and I immediately dropped on the other and went to sleep. When I woke up Benny was gone and a delivery guy was bringing in a big bagful of McDonald's hamburgers for me and the 4 youths in the other cell. During the day I determined that those boys were in there because someone's daddy had called the police and said he thought the kids were smoking marijuana and they needed to throw a scare into them. Benny had been paid out by his father and was presumably on a bus going east if he was able to find his way to the bus station.
     The boys and I stayed in those cells for two days eating out of McDonald's and me catching up on the very minimal sleep of the previous week. Then another police officer came back with one of the ladies and unlocked our cells. They led us out into the main office area and he told the boys to line up to go see the judge. I started to get in line, too, but the other lady motioned me back and then came over and said it's okay, there are no charges and I just needed to sign a paper and I could leave and that she would get my backpack for me. I said, "No way! I want a judge to see the charges I was charged with or explain why I am in jail with no charges!" The lady looked anxious and said I should just be thankful there would be no record and to walk on away from there. The boys were marched out to a police van and I was left inside with the two ladies. They insisted I should just leave. I did not persist in demanding justice because of it being Arkansas. Then I told the lady if I just walked out then I would have to hitchhike in her town and would surely be arrested again and brought right back to her office.
     The ladies finally got the gardener to drive me to the Skelly stop that Benny and I had been aimed at in the first place. So it all worked out. I got fed for free and I caught up on all my missed sleep and got a ride on a semi. The rest of the trip would be easy and fast because I was in the Southland now where people are much more likely to help you out.

Dollar Store

                  

                                                      Dollar $tore                                   



                   I discovered I needed a pocket-sized notebook and noticed a dollar store so I stopped there and went in. I found the notebook and a pack of stick pens and walked up to the register. There was a line of half a dozen customers waiting their turn at the counter. At the front was a woman with a cart full of items who was disputing the price and condition of every item one by one and it was 

taking a long time. I didn't want to drive to another store to get the notebook so I waited patiently at the back of that line.

        Two more customers extended the line behind me while I stood there. The  woman finally reached the bottom of her cart and everything was on the counter properly rung up and in bags. Instead of presenting cash or writing a check the
woman said, "My boyfriend  be here soon. He got the money."
                 

      I sighed and expected the clerk to push the stuff aside, clear the register an continue with the next customer but that did not happen. Things just stopped.

        The clerk got out her cell phone and called her boyfriend for a chat. Worse, the other folks in line seemed to accept the situation as normal. Everyone just stopped moving. No one complained. They looked as if they weren't even breathing except for one customer who got out her cell phone and called her mother to chat about operations and diseases.

      I waited for a minute until I realized that nothing further would happen in that store until the boyfriend arrived with the money and I didn't see any cars driving up out front. I put the notebook and pens down and left thinking I had seen this show once a long time ago on Twilight Zone. Rod Serling should walk into the scene and wind up the show followed by final credits.

Galveston

                                                        On To Galveston



     Robert and I had just got off a fishing boat in Pensacola,  a little forty eight footer called the Wayward Wind.  We shared up less than thirty dollars for a fifteen day trip and were not enthusiastic about finding another trip right then.  Neither of us had families to support and we had no obligations. As we walked along a drizzly South Palafox Street we discussed the immediate future. I thought I would go back to Panama City and Robert didn't know what he was going to do. I at least I had relatives to go to. Robert only had his mother out west somewhere and he did not get on well with her. We wound up in Pappy's Reef, a waterfront beer and wine bar, drinking coffee. We were underage and the bartender knew it so beer wasn't an option. After a while he told us we would have to leave because the police made regular rounds and would drop in soon. We were not illegal because there was no beer in front of us or in us but the cops would give him and us a hard time if they saw us in there.
    After we got out the door Robert said, "You know,  I oughta go see Edie." Edie was his mother.  I didn't expect that because the last time he had seen her was when she threw his clothes out her front door and told him he didn't live there anymore. But that was when he was a rebellious kid of fifteen. He was grown up now at nineteen and thought things would surely be different.
    "Where you gonna go? Where's Edie?"  I said I guessed I would go back to Panama but I really didn't want to.   Then he said Edie lived in  Galveston and maybe I should go out there with him.  I thought that over for a minute. "Okay."
     It was already dark when we started out but we didn't have any place indoors to sleep and the wet weather discouraged us from sleeping outside so we washed up in a gas station and changed into the one set of clean clothes each of us carried in our bags, mine in a backpack, his in a canvas sack. Then we walked four blocks over to Garden Street and stuck our thumbs out heading west on Highway 98 toward Mobile.
     A truck stopped for us and we were on our way but it only went a few blocks. Then an old man in a Ford took us out west of town where we stood until late in the night. At least the rain had stopped. We were damp but not getting any wetter. An old Chevy station wagon with a sloppy repaint almost hit us pulling over to offer us a ride and the three people in it looked a little drunk. We said sure we would like a ride.
    When you are hitchhiking you take whatever ride comes your way and trust to God it will get you on down the road okay and the driver isn't too weird.
     In the car were two young men and a woman. She looked and sounded Mexican. The guys were rough looking skinny fellows who hadn't shaved in a while. The one driving asked if one of us could spell him at the wheel. I had a license so I said I could do that. He replied that was great because he was having a hard time with it and Bubba here couldn't even stand up much less drive.  The three squished over to the right in the front seat, the guys with the woman on their laps, because there was no sitting room in the back. The car was full of what looked like a crib and other furniture and boxes of stuff behind the front seat. Robert was tired and crawled on top of the junk in the back and went immediately to sleep. I got behind the wheel and drove.
     A few miles down the road our benefactors started getting rowdy. The two men were all over the senorita and each other and it was making me nervous but I wasn't going to give up a ride and besides, Robert was asleep and when Robert slept there was no waking him up until he was ready to wake up. So I just drove. After a while Bubba pulled a little .25 Raven out of his pocket and shot a hole in a speed limit sign. That made me a little more nervous and I really wanted to tell them, "Well here's where we get off, thanks for the ride," but Robert was asleep.
     At some point it occurred to me that these folks did not go together with the household stuff in the back of the car, especially the baby crib and I figured they must have stolen it. So here I am with my buddy unwakably in the back, driving a stolen car across the Alabama line and these car thieves were not trying to be discreet, shooting their little pistol out the window and all.
    Bubba popped his gun at another sign and I suggested gently that maybe he oughtn't to do that. He seemed to take offense and demanded, "You got a problem with that, hah?"
    I said no offense but the sound was startling and made it hard to drive. He said in that case he wouldn't do it any more.  We rode on through the night  and I was wishing Robert would wake up so we could get out of this car.  I  was  worrying seriously about our  immediate prospects when Mike said hey, he hoped we wouldn't think we had to tell anyone about our little ride. Then I really started to fret.
    We were coming up on the Bankhead Tunnel under Mobile Bay and I got a thought. I asked Mike (Bubba and Maria were asleep) if he wanted me to be slow and careful or was he in a hurry? Mike said they were in a helluva hurry and I should get on down the road real fast. I thought maybe I could attract a police car and end this thing with some protection. I sped up to over eighty miles an hour. I thought to go a hundred but that old Chevy wasn't up to it.
    In those days there was a "flimsy" at each end of the of the old two lane tunnel, a drop down gate that was just a one-by board painted with diagonal red and white stripes. The flimsy was down as we approached and the speed limit was thirty five. There was no other traffic so I wasn't being too rash and I wanted to attract attention. I broke off the flimsy at seventy and kept my foot to the floor all the way through. Surely I had got someone's attention and a cop would pick up on me at the west end of the tunnel.
     It didn't happen. I drove through the streets of Mobile as fast as I could make the Chevy go, running some red lights and sliding around a couple of turns. The nighttime streets were mostly empty and wet from the light rain that was falling. We passed a couple of cars and I saw three or four pedestrians but saw no flashing red or blue lights, heard no sirens.
     Out west of Mobile Robert stirred in the back. I called to him to make sure he was, indeed, awake. He was. Bubba and Maria were now awake in the front and Mike was asleep. I took a deep breath and said, "Well Bubba, me and Bob are going down to Bayou La Batre and we get off up here at Theodore.  Are you okay to drive now?" I hoped I was signaling to Robert that something was abnormal and he shouldn’t speak up, by calling him “Bob.” He normally did not permit anyone to call him Bob without a fight or at least a poisonous look .    
     Bubba said he just needed a cup of coffee and got a thermos out from under the seat and drank what I assume was coffee from it. He offered it to me but I said I didn't drink the stuff. Then he said he would prefer for Bob and me to stay with them into Mississippi. I tensed up a bit but decided we had to get loose from this adventure as soon as possible and if there were to be a problem getting away from this crew we might as well have it early rather than later. A few minutes after that we came to Theodore and I slowed to a stop at the intersection of the road going south. I hoped Robert wouldn't question getting out here rather than further up the road. He didn't. I stepped out of the car with my bag and Robert's bag and Robert crawled out of the back. We thanked our benefactors and wished them well and I hoped Bubba wouldn't decide to shoot us or something.

     Mike said thanks for driving and the senorita got sick in the car. It was  a good time to get out. Robert and I walked a few steps southward along the crossroad as if we were indeed going down to Bayou La Batre. Bubba put the Chevy in gear and drove on west.  I told Robert he didn't know what he had missed. When the car was out of sight we walked back across the intersection and stood there waiting for another ride.

A Waffle House Down Home

                                 A Waffle House Down Home
  


     In 2001 my son accompanied me with my Frog, a children's carnival ride, on my circuit of the state fairs in the Midwest. Bud was born in Florida and grew up entirely in the South  but somehow had developed a disdain for southern speech, thinking of it as indicative of ignorance and what he thought of as a redneck outlook. He said the accents in Illinois were so much more "educated" sounding. I thought that a bit ironic as the northern folks experienced at the fair in DuQuoin, Illinois, the only truly Northern show we did, had seemed to me to be inbred and generally lower on the IQ scale than in other places, not stupid, mind you, just not particularly smart and no standouts. And Bo had picked up attitudes toward Negroes that were typical of the South a generation ago.
        After the season's last fair in Tulsa we headed home to Florida and did not stop at any motel and had to minimize the time spent out of sight of the Frog. It was what the Law calls an attractive nuisance.  It drew children to play on it and teenagers to vandalize it.
        In southern Mississippi I felt I really had to stop for breakfast and coffee but we drove a long ways without seeing a place that was open at 3:30 AM  and had parking space for my rig. Bo saw the Waffle House first and told me to stop. It was a standard Waffle House, that descendant of and replacement for the classic roadside diners of yore, and it sat next to the large empty parking lot of a shopping mall so I pulled in  and we parked it.
        We were the only customers in the place  and the waitress brought us coffee  as we sat down. Then she went back to the counter for menus. Both of us were tired and Bud was just a tad irritable but at least we were off the road for a few minutes.

        Tonya was black, perhaps 20 years old and quite pretty. She set the menus down in front of us and then, with pencil poised above her ticket pad, said in the finest honeyed
Mississippi tone, "Are yall ready for breakfast, sugar?" in the soft and utterly alluring tones of  the rural deep south.
        The effect on Bud was immediate. He slumped down a little with a half smile on his face.
        We ordered and Tonya went back to see to the preparation of breakfast. Bud, still smiling, said, "Daddy, I think we're home." The irritability had all washed away with the soft comfort of Tonya's
voice.
        Bud never again had anything contrary to say about southern accents and never disparaged black folks again either..
       
       My own view is that there are certain accents in English  that do for the language what is natural to Vietnamese, Northern or Southern and in between (I have been there  in that war).  Vietnamese is a language that was surely created by God for women's voices and men's ears. For English that effect seems to come with the voices heard in a portion of Mississippi, part of Alabama, and in Ireland.