So Long, It’s Been Good To Know You!

Tomorrow, Siobhan and I pack up all our cares and woes, here we goes singing low, bye-bye blackbird!  We’re leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when we’ll be back again because there are 3800 miles of open ocean between here and Paris and no convenient little islands with airports, just in case.  And shit has been alleged to happen.  Why just recently on June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 took the big dive with 228 disappointed passengers and crew aboard.  Did we mention we have to cross the Atlantic twice?

I figure my bride and I have been lucky all our lives, and luck has a way of catching up with you at the worst times, like the afternoon I fell off a roof and sprained my ankle just before our neighborhood baseball team played John Kelly’s east side boys.  It’s the Cosmic Arbiter’s way of tapping you on the shoulder and telling you to stop doing silly stuff, like walking into gunfire or flying in a fragile bubble over a major ocean at 30,000 feet for eight hours.  Why, oh why, did we eschew the sensible ocean liner? True, the Andrea Doria went down off Nantucket in thick fog in 1956, but 1660 passengers and crew were rescued and only 46 met King Neptune.  I’ll take those numbers anytime.

Too late now, I guess.  Anyway, we’re as ready as possible with our compression socks and airline seats which lay back into beds.  We’re wearing our “JFK IN ‘60” campaign pins, hoping the Jackie-loving French will take pity and not throw lighted matches at us.  Kathleen Ellison, our hostess, has gone out and bought air conditioners to fight off the European heat wave and Gilbert Shelton has been warned we’re on the way.  But just in case we die grisly deaths at the bottom of the sea, we wanted to say it’s been fun knowing you (in most cases) and tell you to forever keep your freak flags flying in spite of it all.  And somebody make sure to go over and tuck Chuck LeMasters in at night.  See you in the next life.

When First We Came Unto This Town…

“It’s a long and dusty road, it’s a hot and a heavy load, and the folks you meet ain’t always kind.”---Tom Paxton

Gainesville, if I never see you again, you’ve been berry berry good to me.  I originally came to town in 1963 with my first wife, Marilyn Todd.  We found a decrepit old apartment in Old Gainesville near the Thomas hotel and started doing a little work for Jack Horan and Bob Dixon, who were publishing the off-campus Old Orange Peel in competition with UF’s New Orange Peel, captained by the famed cartoonist Don Addis.  The magazine was doing well enough but Jack and Bob had delusions of grandeur and decided to print 10,000 copies of a Spring break issue and have us haul them to Daytona in our refurbished but aging 1950 Cadillac hearse.  We got a little cash and a free room for three days at the Beach, so what the hell.

Being young and inexperienced in weights and measures, however, all of us failed to consider that 10,000 magazines weighed approximately 7000 pounds, or roughly as much as 50 full-grown men, which is a lot of bodies to pile in a 13-year-old hearse with senior issues.  For one thing, the brakes were adequate but not of award-winning quality, and when we went rattling over a bridge heading into Daytona Beach, they gave up the ghost.  We had to circle a used-car lot about 25 times before we came to a stop.  Nonetheless, task accomplished, General Horan.

Sad to say, the Old Orange Peel did not sell as well to strangers as it did to UF students and the boys had 7000 left over, which we were not eager or obligated to take back.  Jack agreed to stuff 2000 in his car and pay us a huge bonus to haul the rest back to Hogtown.  This unexpected good fortune allowed Marilyn and I to enlarge upon our daily diet of pancakes, potatoes, and ground beef cooked in 1000 exotic ways.  Poor as churchmice, we shed a tear of regret and emigrated to the city of seven hills, Tallahassee.  If there was to be a college humor magazine in our future, it could not start up in a town which already had two of them.

Tallahassee Lassitude

After living in hotspots like Austin and Gainesville, a relatively inexperienced youngster might assume all college towns are interesting, exciting, intellectually-oriented and fun.  Then there’s Tallahassee, capital of the Florida panhandle, moribund to a fault, filled to the brim with criminally ignorant conservatives, a frat-rat fantasyland where the word “stimulating” is kept in a hidden box in a locked room.  Marilyn and I found a cheap cellar apartment near Leon High School owned by a besotted couple who lived above us and restaged the Battle of Thermopylae in their living room every evening.  Nonetheless, I started working on the Charlatan and Marilyn took on the chore of selling ads to a magazine that didn’t exist.  She was good at it, too, because not many women as stunning wandered into Mr. Biffburger’s place, smiled and sat down.  Also, our prices were cheap.

Of course, not a printer in town had any interest in taking on such a venture.  More than one of them rubbed his chin and opined, “Well, I’d like to help you but we have a lot of church customers…”  I wound up hitching to Albany, Georgia, where a tough old guy named Wilson Smith was managing a worthy print shop after moving there from Maine.  Smitty had church customers, too, but take my word for it, Maine breeds independent children who take no blather from anybody.  We printed in Albany for a couple of years until we finally moved to Gainesville and Smitty was just too far away…but I’ll never forget his benevolence or those hitchhiking odysseys through the pecan groves of Georgia in pig trucks and sleeping inside the print shop across from a strip joint.  I have stories even Kerouac couldn’t tell.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Charlatan was selling like crazy at tables outside student haunts like the Sweet Shop and Bob’s Book Store.  Bob, actually, was eventually hassled by FSU, so we had to move down a few feet.  The Tallahassee Catholic Women’s Club kept complaining about us until the cops finally came by, picked me up on vague charges and confiscated the magazines.  Helpful students ran over to Marilyn’s table at the Sweet Shop and warned her to pack up.  “Are you kidding?” she said.  “Now we’re going to sell out over here.”  And she did.  The cops never paid her a whit of attention.  An ACLU lawyer quickly got me released and the magazines returned and the police never bothered us again.  Now the college kids thought we were really hot stuff.  We fought the law and the magazine won.

Take Me Right Back To The Track, Jack!

“We’re going back to where we both belong.  Back to sing our favorite song.”

It wasn’t long before we were selling more magazines and advertising in Gainesville than we were in Tallahassee.  We tipped our hats politely and sang along with Big Brother Bob Emery: “So long, small fry, it’s time to say goodbye…”

We found an affordable apartment somewhere near the northwest city limits of Hogtown owned by a character named Marcel Marty and set up shop, almost immediately running across a needed asset, photographer Gerald Jones.  GJ did amazing work, had a sophisticated lab in his little house just north of where the Gainesville Mall would locate and would have been the answer to an editor’s dreams but for one thing.  Gerry was a narcoleptic, capable of falling soundly asleep in an instant without warning.  You can imagine the problems driving or with one’s sex life.  Forget the snooze alarms, Jones was immune to clanging clocks, insistent phone calls and rap-rap-rapping on his chamber door.  We hired him anyway and he persevered through apnea and bad dreams to eventually become the photographer of the famous Pamme Brewer brouhaha, gaining great fame.  Alas, he fell asleep and missed his Walter Cronkite interview, but c'est la vie.

The appearance of Pamme Brewer on the scene led to the eventual flight back to Texas of Marilyn Todd, who deserved a better husband and got one in Austin, where she lived happily ever after.***  Pamme became a presence at the infamous NW 6th Street house, where I lived with Dick North, Newt Simmons and tagalong Gerry Jones.  When one of the (as the newspapers like to describe them) “scantily-clad” UF girls featured in the Charlatan was hauled in and threatened with expulsion by the UF administration, we went to war with the university, arguing for the abolition of the en loco parentis rule which allowed schools to enforce codes of conduct for students outside of class time.  Obviously, we needed a test case but finding a subject would be near impossible with suspension or expulsion pending.  That’s when Pamme stepped in and offered to be the glamorous guinea pig.  Bill said no at first, but she was adamant.  “Right…it’s okay for somebody else to risk it, but not your girlfriend.  Don’t be a hypocrite!”

Okay, then.  The rest is legend.  UF attacks, thousands of students pound the walls of the hearing room to jelly, the trial is moved to the Law School Auditorium, Pamme wins and Walter Cronkite has another good story, even without Gerald Jones, who finds a nice job in Atlanta.  As a major result, the University of Florida discontinues en loco parentis and before long so does every other public college in the country.  All us smug rascals celebrate.  Then, almost before you know it, it’s September of 1967 and time to get down to business.  Does anybody here know how to open a head shop?

Those Daring Young Men And Their flying Trapeze

After all was said and done with the Brewer fandango, reprints of the Pamme issue had netted us a whopping $1200.  Snicker if you will, but for a barely-scraping-by Garfield Street lad of 27 years and nary a bank account, that pile of cash looked like the contents of Scrooge McDuck’s money bin.  Summer had always been a cash flow nightmare since UF was devoid of students and no magazines were published between May and September, so the brain trust of the Charlatan house gathered to develop a plan.  I had seen a couple of  head shops pop up in San Francisco so the first thought was a headshop/counterculture book store.  “We also need to sell pot pipes,” said roomie Dick North.  Okay, but where do we get them?  “I can make them with lamp parts and plumbing screens,” said Dick.  Our other housemates were less enthusiastic.  Newt Simmons said “Those head shops work in California but we don’t have any hippies here.”  “We will,” I told him.  It often takes a while, but the West Coast inevitably comes east.

We put ads in underground publications searching for merchandise to sell but there were no wholesalers yet.  I decided to head to Greenwich Village, where retail poster and paraphernalia stores like The Infinite Poster and the Psychedelicatessen were thriving.  Maybe some of them would think about selling bulk to us.  Turned out they would.

We opened the Subterranean Circus on a weekday in September of 1967 in an 80x30 converted fertilizer warehouse just off University Avenue on SW 7th Street.  Critically, it was a building with six parking spaces out front.  We weren’t ready, but people kept knocking.  We made $27 the first afternoon.  Next day, it was $54.  The third day, the Gainesville Sun ran a photo of Pamme out front with a rose in her teeth, and we made over $100.  Twelve months later we were averaging just under $1000 a day.  We didn’t even have a cash register and we never got one because business was brisk and registers just slowed down transactions.  A side benefit of our open till was that it gave the impression we had a tiny gross, and we never were robbed.  Any bill over a ten went in an envelope on the shelf under counterman Bob Sturm’s .45.

The early success of the Circus led other young entrepreneurs to open small businesses, something that had been reserved for older folk previously.  Miamian Ira Vernon started a jeans shop called Tuesday Morning with Florida Gator defensive back Steve Tannen, and Doug Bonebrake opened a health food emporium called Mother Earth.  Eateries like Snuffy’s and the Morning Glory Juice Bar seemed to be popping up daily.  After we bought the entire corner, we leased a building to ex-Gator offensive lineman Dan Iannarelli, which became the notorious Dan’s Beverages, open til 2 a.m., where anything could happen and usually did.  Youth business became a runaway train with the advent of hippie clothing manufacturers, the dawn of waterbeds and the wealth of wholesalers of paraphernalia of every description arriving on the scene daily, selling everything from bongs to suspect bananas.  It was, indeed, the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and we just happened to find ourselves in the middle of the maelstrom.  Some guy name Donald Luskin once said, “I’d always rather be lucky than smart.” 

Whenever it’s goodbye to Gainesville, we leave with gratitude and wonder, thankful for the opportunity to partake of her largesse.  Tom Paxton once told us it’s a long and dusty road, a hot and a heavy load, and the folks you meet ain’t always kind.  Maybe he never made it to Our Town.

Post Script:    

Okay, I just found out about the Azores, God bless them.  They’re in the mid-Atlantic, have adequate runways and are “routinely used for major diversions.”  I feel better now.  Of course, it’s still a long way to the Azores.

That’s all, folks….except for one thing below.

***For anyone interested in more details on Marilyn Todd, there is a grand column about her called The Girls of Summer in the blog archive of January 31, 2013.  The archive is available via the box just under the PIE logo.  Get your Kleenex, it’s a tear-jerker.

Stayin’ Alive!

Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 86?”---Billy the K.

The other day, Siobhan asked me what I wanted for my eighty-sixth birthday in November.  I thought about it for a minute and said, “How about 20 more years of good health?”

“It has to be something I can get from Amazon,” she advised.  Oh.  “Do they still have the original Fudgsicles?” 

She says they actually do, but I’ve heard that one before.  Try to find an original Members Only jacket like the one Betsy Harper bought me forty years ago or a fine Toker II, or a car—any car-- with a cassette player that will utilize the 150 tapes I still have in my garage.  They tried to repay us with the iPod, then they killed that and gave us nothing.  And they say old people are grumpy.  Just give us our stuff back and we’ll go quietly.

I’m hoping Captain Trumpy of the Horse Marines sends a delegation to Cuba with a peace offer--you get your oil shipments, we get our 1950s cars back.  There are people in Havana who are actually in possession of 1955 Ford Thunderbirds, if you can believe it, and the poor automobiles are not being treated properly at all.  A friend of mine just back from there said he saw a T-Bird on the Malecon which was painted a vile aquamarine, a grave infraction of the Marquis of Queensbury rules.  I’m not here to cause no trouble, I’m just here to do the Octogenarian Shuffle, but I don’t believe we can let outrages like this stand, so I have volunteered to be among the first flight of fake Jehovah’s Witnesses to land on the Cuban beaches and terrorize the motley defenders.  I wouldn’t mind part of my booty being one of those cute little ‘55 Chevy Bel Airs in baby blue for my sweetie-pie, either.

Pondering Oblivion

They say that age is just a number, which is fine if it’s 62 or even 75.  When you become 86, it’s like the Japanese Air Force screaming into Pearl Harbor.  Bombs to the left of me, strafing to the right, stuck in the middle with few.

Just for fun, try calling the Rick Steves tour arrangers in Edmond, Washington and asking about a brisk jaunt through Paris.  They have the thankless job of getting a couple dozen folks together who won’t bog one another down.  When agent Mirabel heard my age, she began heavily emphasizing there would be lots of walking.  “Up and down, frontwards and backwards, all around the town. And hills will be involved.  How do you feel about hills, Mr. Bill?”

“I eat hills for lunch, Mirabel.  Did you ever hear of San Francisco?  They got hills to die for.  I run up and down ‘em and then I cross the Golden Gate Bridge for a chaser.  What else y’got?”   Mirabel put me on the list but I have a sneaking suspicion she added an asterisk.

Good thing I’m not involved in the dating scenario.  Imagine filling out one of those profiles and writing in “Age 86.”  The ladies would toss you straight onto the burn pile.  “This guy will be in the hospital before lunch, Mabel.  And that photo he put in there looks suspiciously like Pierce Brosnan.”

People automatically assume 86-year-olds are incapable of sex, which isn’t necessarily so, although they might have to take precautions.  No, not those precautions.  Things like having enough gas in the car to get to the emergency room.  This, of course, necessitates “appointment sex,” so spontaneity is out the window.  “Don’t be getting frisky, George, I wrote it right down here in my appointment book—Tuesday at 6 p.m., and not a minute sooner.”

All of which is remindful of the old college humor magazine joke about Henry and Henrietta.  The regulars in the poolroom were discussing how often they got it on with their wives and girlfriends and one of them noticed that Henry, whose wife was a notorious iceberg, was smiling.  “What have you got to smile about, Henry, you said your wife only gives it to you one night a year?”  “That’s right,” said Henry, “but tonight’s the night!”

Paint It Black

Thankfully, the old fashioned funeral is on the decline.  Nothing is more uncomfortable than to hear some anonymous priest or minister bloviate over the fine qualities of that rascal Uncle Joe, who had six wives, voted the straight Republican ticket and shot a few bullets into his neighbor’s kitchen whenever he got into the Mountain Dew.

There are few things on Earth as much fun as standing over an open grave at the cemetery in subzero temperatures as the tears freeze on the poor widow’s cheekbones and some cretin with a bagpipe plays A Whiter Shade of Pale.  Then everyone retires to the fancy reception hall for prosciutto and burrata cheese, checking their watches to make sure they don’t miss the start of the ballgame.

Some people have delusions of grandeur about their post-death ceremonies, leaving detailed request lists.  Aretha Franklin asked for a fleet of 100 pink Cadillacs to parade the route, and four glamorous outfit changes for her open-casket viewings.  Imagine being part of that pit crew?  Hunter Thompson, always a showoff, demanded his ashes be blasted from a cannon atop a 150-foot tower.  Tupac Shakur had his ashes mixed with marijuana, the better to smoke him with, my dear.

My sweet little sister Kathy asked me once what song I wanted played at my ceremony.  “Take Me Out To The Ballgame,” I told her.  “What would you like?”  If my first choice isn’t available, I suppose I could live with Another One Bites The Dust.  If they have a little extra money, however, I’d really like somebody to hire the Fralinger String (Mummers) Band to march around the crematorium playing Happy Days Are Here Again on their banjos and saxophones.  Nobody has a bad day when the Fralingers are in town, even the dead guy.  If we’re being honest here, I’ve always had a hidden desire to captain one of these groups, sauntering from side to side of the street in my outrageous costume hyping up the onlookers.  I think it might be like that in Heaven.  No matter what the nuns say.

Heroes Of The Breed

1. Okay, he wasn’t an octogenarian, but Duke “The Hammer” Davis 78, of Alta, Iowa gets an excuse slip from the office since he was blind when he bowled a perfect 300 game.  “I wasn’t nervous,” Davis told CBS News.  “I just thought, ‘Good Lord, let me throw three more good balls,” so I guess I got some help.”

2. Sister Madonna Buder, aka “the Iron Nun,” owns the current world record for oldest woman to finish an Ironman Triathlon, which she obtained at age 86 by finishing the Subaru Ironman Canada test of endurance.  The Ironman competition involves completing in one day a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride and a 26.2 mile run.  Buder has competed in 45 of these contests.

3. Dorothy Custer, 104, is a bit of an adrenaline junkie.  After several years of base jumping off 500-foot bridges and the like, Dot took to the skies with the goal of becoming the world’s oldest skydiver ever.  She tandem-somersaulted head-first out of the plane and performed a fearless forward roll before free-falling back to the ground.  “Couldn’t have gone better,” she said.  “Now get me a stiff drink.”

4. George Corones only resumed swimming at age 80 after a long career in medicine.  Corones competed at the 2012 World championships in Italy, with top-three performances in various 90-94 age group events and in 2013 smashed two world records in 95-99 freestyle events in Australia.  But George was just getting warmed up.  In Queensland on February 28, 2018, Corones swam 50 meters in 56.12 seconds, breaking the previous record for 100-104-year-olds by 35 seconds.  Three days later, he set the world record 100 meter mark at 2:24.21 at the same meet.  Asked what he would do next, the amazing Mr. Corones said, “Only one thing is left.  I’m going to Disneyland!”

The Old Philosopher Rambles….

So here comes that big lug in the clown suit and flappy shoes, walking straight toward me with a giant smile on his face.  It’s Mr. 86, and he has big plans for me.  “Thought I’d come and pick you up,” he says, “the assisted living place is too far to walk.  Besides, you’re already a few years late.”

I look at the poor bastard with sympathy.  “You’re still working on commission, right?  Too old for Walmart, too young for dominoes in the park.  I hate to give you the bad news but I’m going to Paris next week to sashay down the Champs Elysees and dance at the Moulin Rouge.”

Mr. 86 falls back in horror, his hands over his face.  “WHAT??  But consider the awful possibilities!  You’ll be thousands of miles from your doctors.  The food is too rich.  Do you know how much it costs to ship a body back home?”

I see the future with rose-colored glasses.  If the plane goes down in the middle of the Atlantic, well, it’s not like I tossed away the best years of my life.  If the hills in Montmartre are too steep, there’s always the funicular.  If I become ill, I have a $384 insurance police that guarantees everything but replacement parts.  If I fall in love with a young Frenchwoman, well, Siobhan will whip out her two-shot Derringer and send me off to oblivion, no fuss, no muss.  What’s the downside?  Okay, the plane could be hijacked and taken to Memphis, but outside of that?

Polish up the Arc de Triomphe!  Throw some glitter on that Eiffel Tower!  Ring the bells at Notre Dame!  Billy’s flying your way and he won’t take non for an answer!

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

           

Rocky Mountain High

“I’d love to be there watching early in the morning
The sun comes up and crowns the mountain king.
If by chance you dare to be high up on a mountain
I swear that you can hear the angels sing.”---Merle Haggard

It’s not true that nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning, even though Gina Hawkins has set up her Daybreak Bar & Grill just outside Asheville.  Three weeks ago, Captain Travel took you out west to blindingly beautiful Utah and Arizona, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day.  This time we move just a snippet east to busy Colorado and enchanting New Mexico, where the elk and the mariachi bands play.

“There are more things in Colorado, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”  William Shakespeare said that, or he would have if he’d ever been there.  Just outside Grand Junction lies the splendiferous Colorado National Monument, one of the most stunning sheer-walled red rock landscapes in America.  Near tiny Montrose is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, famous for its plunging vertical drops, craggy spires and dark, shadowed walls.  In the southwestern part of the state is Mesa Verde National Park, a breathtaking high-desert plateau famous for preserving thousands of Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites, including over 600 spectacular cliff dwellings.  And right smack in the middle of bustling Colorado Springs is the spectacular Garden of the Gods, famous for its towering 300-million-year-old (but who’s counting?) red sandstone formations set against the backdrop of snow-capped Pike’s Peak.  And it’s free!  But if we have but one short visit to the Centennial State, a mere few days to inspect and be dazzled, we’re first heading straight for this guy: 

Rocky Mountain National Park

Located a mere 55 miles from booming Denver, Rocky Mountain N.P. is 415 square miles of sheer glory, filled with 60 mountain peaks over 12,000 feet high, small permanent glaciers, glistening lakes, sprightly waterfalls and assorted wildlife.  Unlike other national parks, it even has a trail patrolled by a phantom fisherman named Larry, who appears out of nowhere for brief chats and then disappears into the ethers.

The primary artery through RMNP is the venerable 48-mile Trail Ridge Road (secret identity: U.S. Highway 34), the highest continuously paved highway in the United States, connecting the towns of Estes Park and Grand Lake.  Eleven miles of this highway is above the treeline, the elevation near 11,500 feet where the evergreen forests finally tap out.  Trail Ridge Road offers thrilling views, plenty of wildlife sightings and spectacular alpine wildflower displays on your way to the Continental Divide,

First time hikers adjusting to the altitude can try the 3.2-mile Emerald Lake via Bear Lake trail with stunning views of Nymph, Dream and Emerald lakes, which offers a lot of bang for your buck.  Curiosity seekers looking for Larry can start at the Ouzel Falls Trailhead in the southeast corner of the park.  The hike, itself, is a reasonable 5.4 miles out and back, but you’re liable to run into Larry anywhere.  A conversational sort, he told us he was from “west of Chicago” and came to Rocky Mountain each year to fish, but he carried no backpack or gear, just a simple fishing rod.  In the middle of a chat, Larry is prone to rush off to fish, but then will appear two miles down the road ahead as if by magic, smiling “Howdy, strangers!”   All of which might have some rational explanation, even if we can’t figure it out.  The kill shot however, is our photographs, which were taken by actual cameras back in the day.  When the film was developed, Larry was missing from the prints.  The backgrounds were there, and we were there clear as bells, but no Larry.  We asked an amiable park ranger about this phenomenon, but he just smiled nervously and said, “There are no answers, only mysteries.”

RMNP’s bedroom community, Estes Park, is as cute a little town as you’re likely to find and home to the infamous Stanley Hotel, world-renowned for its paranormal activity and supposedly Stephen King’s inspiration for his book, The Shining.  Visitors frequently report disembodied voices, phantom piano music and doors that open and close of their own volition.  Dollars to donuts, Larry has a room on the second floor.

2. Maroon Bells.  Seems like every time we picked up one of those outdoorsy magazines featuring The Ten Places You Have To See Before You Vaporize, Maroon Bells was always high on the list, even though we didn’t know a soul who had ever been there.  Once, twice, three times a mention is one thing, but it never stopped, so we decided to go take a look.

Maroon Bells is a piddling 10 miles from Aspen, home of the rich and famous, but if you’re poor and unknown there’s always the inexpensive town of Basalt, just 28 miles away.  The Bells consist of two iconic adjacent peaks upwards of 14,000 feet, which get their color from iron-rich hematite in the mudstone.  The mountains overlook a pristine glacial lake which on a calm morning creates a flawless, mirror-like reflection of the peaks.  In Summer, the surrounding valley fills up with lush green meadows, spruce forests and bright bursts of wildflowers.  It’s one of those rare places where you can remain in the moment, tear up the afternoon agenda and keep finding more reasons to stay.  There is an easy one-mile trail which wraps around the lake and a more challenging 3.6 mile round-trip trail to Crater Lake, which gets you nearer to the rugged twin peaks.  Sorry, no phantoms.

Got another day or two?  Slide over to Great Sand Dunes National Park, a geological wonderland near Alamosa, famous for the tallest sand dunes in North America, spanning over 30 square miles.  The massive, wind-carved dunes soar up to 750 feet against the rugged 14,000-foot peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  You can climb the dunes or rent a specialized sled or board from nearby outfitters and roar down the massive ridges.  Siobhan, having neglected to pack her board wax, said she’d rather not.

The basket ride to Sandia Peak.  "May I please be excused?" asks nervous passenger.

Do You Know The Way To Santa Fe?

Maybe you’d like to start in Albuquerque and head north, especially if you can make it for The Big A's annual Mariachi Spectacular in July or the International Balloon Festival in October.  For the former, every mariachi that ever there was will gather there for certain because that’s the day the Mexicans have their picnic.  It’s worth it just to see the hundreds of mariachi bands in brilliant full regalia playing El Rancho Grande or Cielito Lindo fifty or sixty times.  Besides, you can buy Michoacan Brown in the parking lot.

There is also an exciting tramway at the edge of town that will carry you to the top of 10,678-foot Sandia Peak if you are not Siobhan.  “I eschew the tramway on the grounds that it is very high and scary,” said she.  “And what if the cars bump into one another?”  We talked her into it by telling her to close her eyes til the ride was over.  At the top, we bought our first oxygen canister ever so we could breathe easy.

Santa Fe, which oozes history, charm and big money is a gem set in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains at an elevation of 7000 feet.  “The City Different” is globally renowned for its distinctive Pueblo-style adobe architecture, vibrant arts culture and rich Native American and Hispanic heritage.  The state capital boasts over 250 art galleries and major institutions like the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts and the terrific Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.  You might want to visit in early July for the annual International Folk Art Market, a three-day festival which celebrates folk artists and heritage art from around the world.  This year’s fandango features 153 master folk artists from 53 countries, so you don’t have to skip over trinket booths, grandma’s jam emporium and all those ladies with the $20 bars of homemade soap.

Georgia's place.

If Georgia’s on your mind, her Ghost Ranch, where she lived for many years is a mere hour’s drive from Santa Fe in Abiquiu, which translates to “wild chokeberry place.”  Arthur Peck, one-time editor of Nature magazine, told O’Keeffe in no uncertain terms the setting for the ranch was “the best place in the world” and he’d seen plenty.

The ranch is now a retreat and education center owned by the Presbyterian Church and open to the public for a small fee.  Georgia O’Keeffe’s little cottage exists intact, along with her tiny farm and a garden that is still tended.  A camera in the garden maintains a 24-hour vigil and the live feed is relayed back to the museum in Santa Fe, so watch the canoodling.

Muddying The Waters

“Are you sure this is the right road.  We’re in the middle of nowhere?”---S. Ellison, who asked three times.

A few miles south of Vallecitos, New Mexico, you have a choice.  You can head straight for Taos or meander on south to the famed springs of faraway Ojo Caliente, where you’ll never be again.  Only a fool wouldn’t turn.  As always, the best of hot springs pop up in the most unlikely places and often the hardest to reach.  The Hot Eye, which calls itself “this secluded oasis,” is no exception.

Ojo’s legendary waters have been soothing and replenishing body, mind and spirit for thousands of years, the place being one of the oldest health resorts in the United States and the only one with four different sulfur-free healing mineral waters.  The accompanying hotel and full-service spa offer a barrage of restorative treatments, daily yoga classes and 11 acres of hiking and biking trails to tickle your fancy.  They’ve also got mud.  That’s right, mud, but this stuff has “healing properties” and absorbs impurities, exfoliating dead skin cells as it dries.  The mud is immersed in Ojo’s magic waters, which are uniquely rich in Arsenic, Lithia, Soda and Iron.

Siobhan deigned to try the mud, which the management called “a special pore-purifying mineral-rich clay.”  Bathers slathered the clay to their bodies and often their faces, then sat or lay on rocks and benches until the mud began to crack in the desert sun, before rinsing off in the warm mud pool or an outdoor shower.  Fellow bathers told us tales of remarkable, life-changing skin replenishment and occasional religious conversion.  One enthusiastic Filipino lady spoke of a ritual in Nueva Ecija where the believers gather before dawn, completely coat their bodies in mud from local rice fields and make masks out of dried banana leaves, which sounds suspiciously like a Georgia Bulldog pep rally to us,

A few males, all non-partakers, cruised the basking benches, eyeballing their muddy prey.  One grandpa, overwhelmed by clay fumes, told a grandma she looked hot.  Siobhan raised an eyebrow and looked at me.  I assured her she looked hot, too, but all things considered I could wait until she hit the mud relief pool.  Sometimes I look back and regret my hasty decision.

The Place Of Red Willows

….or so the Tewa people called Taos.  Their descendants are still there, many of them living in one of six northeastern New Mexico pueblos, including the most famous one about a mile north of Taos which is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the oldest inhabited communities in the United States.  Taos Pueblo offers a fascinating, uncommercialized glimpse into Native American heritage.  Residents still live there without running water or electricity in order to preserve their ancient traditions.  Visitors who are enured to theme parks should understand they are walking through an active residential neighborhood, not an amusement village, and taking photographs of people or approaching private homes might earn a flaming arrow through your hat, or at least a frown.  Guided tours are not only available but highly recommended. Tip: Don’t ask about Tonto.  He was a Potawatomi, anyway.

Taos is a legendary arts colony and mountain town with a youthful vibe.  Skiers congregate there in Winter and the city is a thriving hub for artists, galleries and museums, while being more affordable than Santa Fe.  Just outside Taos to the west sits the famous Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, the fifth-highest suspension bridge in the country, spanning 650 feet over the Rio Grande Rift.  The gorge below is an 800 foot deep canyon cut through ancient basalt lava flows and rift sediments.  There is a convenient direct-dial phone to the Suicide Hotline on the walkway in the center of the bridge in case you get any ideas.

West of the bridge further out on the mesa is the largest off-grid neighborhood in the world, Earthship Taos, featuring self-sustaining homes designed to completely disconnect from municipal infrastructure.  The homes there come in all shapes and sizes, built with recycled materials like dirt-packed tires, cans and glass bottles.  Thick earthen walls provide natural heating and cooling, maintaining a steady, comfortable temperature year-round.  Energy is exclusively generated via independent solar and wind power.  All household water is harvested from rain and snowmelt, filtered and reused in indoor botanical gardens before being treated and utilized in outdoor landscaping.

Again, this is a neighborhood the residents of which are not particularly thrilled to see gawkers marching through their begonias.  You can, however, book an overnight stay in an eco-friendly Earthship or arrange a guided tour through the Earthship Biotecture Visitor Center in Taos.  It’s definitely worth a visit and fascinating to see a number of homes in the process of being built.  If you ever wondered where old tires go to die and be reincarnated, this is definitely the place.

Earthship Taos currently spans 630 acres of high-desert mesa.  Over half the land is communal, including a 347-acre greenbelt that will never be built upon.  Platted for 130 homes, it currently contains about 90, with a population of roughly 150 residents.  Standard family homes commonly range from 1200 to 1500 square feet, but there are luxury models that exceed 5000 square feet.  Anyone building there must adhere to strict covenants, zoning and architectural guidelines, but you’d never know it from the riot of shapes, sizes and colors.  Many of the buildings look like they were created by ten-year-olds set loose with new-age erector sets.

Tired of sky-high electric bills?  Eyes glazing over from passing the same chainstores and urban blight every day?  Always wanted a place in the high desert of New Mexico with pristine air and interesting neighbors?  Have we got a deal for you!

Earthship model home.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com 

     

  

The Hat Trick

Blase sports fan that she is, Siobhan has nonetheless picked up a few terms that she seems to like.  ”Hat Trick” is one of them we hockey fans learn early, credited to a skater or soccer player who achieves three goals in a single game.  It has its origins, however, in English cricket in 1858 when a bowler retired three batsmen with three consecutive balls.  Flabbergasted at the miracle, the crowd took up a collection for the fellow in the stands and the money was used to buy the bowler a new hat, ergo the Hat Trick.  Now when anything presents itself in threes, she asks me, “Is that a hat trick?”  I guess we’ll need some rules.

Having been married three times, do I get credit for a hat trick?  I don’t see why not, although some might argue that a failed goal doesn’t count.  Still, a marriage is a marriage if the license is legit, the minister asks the questions and the loving couple answer in the affirmative, even if the prelate is a ship’s captain, an Elvis impersonator or an ordained representative of the Universal Life Church.  Speak now or forever hold your peace.

My first marriage was to the brilliant Marilyn Todd of Austin, Texas at age 22, a very hasty and informal affair stimulated by her father’s unending efforts to bring her back home, legally or not.  I asked her if she would be more comfortable if we got married  and she nodded in the affirmative.  We only had enough money for one bus ticket, so I hitched from Gainesville to Folkston, Georgia and she left the driving to Greyhound.  We arrived in the early evening, thinking they had round-the-clock weddings there, but their advertising was in error.  The local firemen let us sleep in the front seat of their giant engine and we got married next day at what served for City Hall.

My second marriage, at age 30, was to Harolyn Locklair, a Miami model, in 1970 in a homey field near the Gainesville airport.  Harolyn had a five-year-old son almost ready to enter school, so marrying seemed the right thing to do.  It was a hippie extravaganza, with liberated doves, clouds of marijuana and ULC minister Daniel Levine presiding.  Much of the crowd retired to our house next to the Subterranean Circus for alcoholic refreshments, several falling unconscious on the front steps til the next morning.  Calendars are marked from such events.

Both wives were lovely people who had a hand in the success of either my Charlatan magazine or the Circus.  Suffice to say they had an imperfect husband unready to be married.  After going 0 for 2, I thought I’d pass on future nuptials and meander through life with temporary partners.  Every day, there were tempting candidates walking through the door of the store, plums just ready to be picked.  People criticized musicians for their abundant stage-door Johnnies, but I got it.

Enter The Salty Vet

Siobhan Ellison was born in Ipswich, England in 1952 and moved to the U.S.A. five years later, a member of a military family which made temporary stops all over the country before settling down in Rockledge, Florida.  She was an animal lover whose family took in dogs and cats and monkeys and the occasional horse.  From age 7, Siobhan knew she wanted to be a veterinarian and she was not deterred in this pursuit.  She eventually earned four degrees from the University of Florida in the hippie era, avoided all drugs and was barely aware the Subterranean Circus existed.  Shortly, she built a house and barn in Marion County and went to work for an Ocala veterinary partnership.  One of the partners was Ted Specht, my vet, who brought her with him on a visit to my Orange Lake farm in 1984.  It was not love at first sight.

At the time, I had a mare named Fast Janice, who was three-legged-lame after running through a paddock fence as a two-year-old and getting a sliver in her knee joint.  Janice had one baby on the ground and was pregnant with a second.  She moved around well for her condition but was taxed when near foaling.  Siobhan looked at me and gave an unsolicited opinion: “You should put this mare down after her next foal, she’s really struggling.”

Who asked you?  Ted and I knew her limitations, but Janice got on well enough.  Her first foal, a two-year-old, was blazing fast and she seemed to enjoy being a mother.  “Who does she think she is?” I asked Ted of his new mentee.  He assured me Ms. Ellison was unusually competent and knowledgeable for a rookie, but that was the last time he brought her to my place.  Some people! 

Why Do Fools Fall In Love?

Eventually, Ted Specht returned to school with the intention of becoming an equine surgeon.  One of the other members of his practice was assigned to us, a thoroughly unsatisfactory character who was always late.  Being in northernmost Marion County at Orange Lake, we were always among the last to get attention, typically very late in the day when none of us were at our sharpest.  I called Ted and begged for succor.  “Well, we could get you Siobhan Ellison,” he said.  “What she lacks in experience she makes up for in competence and dependability.”  Groan.  Not her, I thought, the grouch of thoroughbred country.

“She’ll get your mares in foal,” said Ted.  “Her track record is amazing for a new vet.”  More grumbling.  “Okay, send her out,” I finally agreed, less than thrilled.  But he was right.  The average number for in-foal mares was 65%.  The first year, Siobhan got all of them.  The second, 14 of 15.  And she started bringing popsicles.  Moreover, she had a nice face, long legs and a tiny waist.  One day, going down the path to check mares, she let down her hair, which was always in a bun or a braid,  It fell down her back to the bottom of her ass.  I think I might have been smitten.  I am a hopelessly shallow boy, I admit it.

Still, nobody falls in love with mere hair. So what is it that attracts one person to another?  We’re talking everyone here, not merely Marion County horse farmers (they’re all in on blonde barrel-racers carrying big American flags).  Physical attraction, of course starts the ball rolling.  Not to infer looks are everything but if you look like Ratso Rizzo, Taylor Swift is not going to be your prom date.  Second for many is Sexiness, which is ticklish to describe but you know it when you see it.  Speaking just for myself, Competence is sexy…the ability to manage an undertaking smoothly and with aplomb as if it were second nature to you.  Confidence is sexy, but not egotism.  A modest breast size is sexy, especially when it comes on an athletic body that can throw a ball like Derek Jeter and run like Courtney Dauwalter.  One day in front of the Circus a girl named Patty Bert ran over to a thrown ball, picked it up and tossed it back like a shortstop and I thought, “Well, lookee here…” 

Different strokes for different folks.  And yes, of course, honesty, loyalty, reliability, a spirit of cooperation…all are critical to a relationship, but we’re talking allure here, some mysterious magnetism that draws people in.  Intelligence can be sexy.  No, not Mary Martha McGonnigle and her recitation of the multiplication tables in third grade sexy, more like Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in Alien, who never panicked and thought three steps ahead.  Intelligence needs to be kept neatly folded in one’s pocket where it can be pulled out handily when needed.  People who flaunt intelligence are not sexy.  Nobody likes a showoff.  My wife is sexy for many of the reasons above, though she’ll certainly dispute it with you.  That said, she throws a ball like rapper 50 Cent, who once tossed an opening pitch at PNC Park so far to the right it nearly hit a pair of photographers on the third-base line.  You get legendary status for stuff like that.

Playing It Safe---The 30-Year Tryout

After a conscientious man has had two failed marriages in the space of 15 years, he might consider himself to have 4F husband potential.  This is not a problem for some habitual offenders like American minister Glynn “Scotty” Wolfe who holds the world’s record for monogamous marriages with an eye-popping 29, or 8-time experimenters Larry King and Mickey Rooney.  I am not, alas, a play-the-field kind of guy, despite the opportunities.  I once had two very nice girlfriends at the same time and it was a little…well…nervewracking with all the loud complaining and throwing of keys.  I prefer picking one off the tree, bringing it home and settling down happily forever after.  But as my good friend Martin brought up, “What if later you find another one you like better?”

In any case, Siobhan soon insisted on more togetherness, she ensconced in Marion County, I in Gainesville.  Whereas I had what previous girlfriend Betsy Harper called “dark days” (racetrack palaver for any days at a given track that racing was not held) when I was busy at work or otherwise, Dr. Ellison advised that dark days did not work into her life plan, and she was more of a family girl.  The Subterranean Circus was fading, suffering the weight of the local paraphernalia laws which put me on a year’s probation and threatened my thoroughbred owner’s racing license, so it was not a bad time to make a move.  I emigrated to the lovely village of Fairfield, a rural patch equidistant from Gainesville and Ocala and motored the 25 minutes back and forth from Hogtown in an attempt to be a reasonable partner.  Must have been a good idea.  I am there still.  And I can promise you the number of juicy female temptresses out here is reduced considerably, though I suspect that old Chris Powell may be giving me the occasional eye when I drive near the property line like a bold knight on my shiny Kubota.  I think I’ll mind my own business, though, she has rattlesnakes over there.

Here Comes the Bride, Courtesy Of the Glam Squad

It was long a tradition of ours, or at least a habit, to truck on out to the Island Hotel in romantic Cedar Key for dinner on Valentine’s Day.  By the year 2015, Siobhan had amassed 30 solid years of fealty and good companionship, so her tryout period was almost over.  At dinner that night, I decided to dazzle her by popping the question.  Obviously delirious with glee, she said “Sure.”  There is no need for an exclamation point.  The Big Day would take place in June of the following year in Las Vegas, which we knew well from vacation travels.  A few months later, Siobhan had a conference there so I went with her to scout the raft of wedding arenas.

There are approximately 50 wedding chapels in Sin City, big ones, small ones, some as big as your head.   Cutesy standalone chapels, in-resort annexes, cheesy drive-thrus and oops, there’s another pop-up venue.  You can get married at any hour of the day or night by anybody from Elvis Presley to a tired-looking Charles DeGaulle to the Marquis of Queensbury in any attire including nothing and you can even be drunk.  Being a serious man with a deep respect for the sacrament, I chose the impeccable Little Chapel of the Flowers in Old Las Vegas.  It has three chapels of varying sizes and each has one wedding every half hour on Saturdays, so you don’t want to be late.  The Little Chapel would make your reception arrangements, bring the flowers, take the wedding photos, send the limo, starch your shirts and call in the venerable Glam Squad.  You want the Glam Squad.  When they finish with the bride, everyone at the wedding thinks there’s been some mistake because Cleopatra just entered the room.  Oh, and one other thing.  The Little Chapel can stream your ceremony to the universe so all the kids back home can watch.  Who ya gonna call?  Right!

At first, we were semi-eloping, no need for guests.  I did ask my best friend from childhood Jack Gordon to motor over from Laguna Hills with his wife Barbara because it’s just not right to lack a Best Man.  Siobhan called in her niece Ashleigh Ellison to be “Best Girl.”  Apparently, nobody really wants to be called a “maid of honor” these days.

Then my sister Kathy found out and insisted on coming, which roused my other sister Alice into awareness.  Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Florida, a plot was conceived by Siobhan’s brother Stuart and aviator Richard Helms (aka “Captain Noonan”) to fly in and out of Vegas on the wedding day, bringing with them Stuart’s wife Mary and a Fairfield friend, Greg Poe.  This motley crew called themselves the Wedding Crashers, and they may have felt like they’d actually crashed by the time their endless extravaganza had wrapped up.

Last Dash Heroics

“Pull out the stopper!  Let’s have a whopper!  But get me to the church on time!” 

The distance from the new Palazzo Hotel to the Little Chapel is a mere 2.3 miles, perhaps a mere 12 minute drive on the Las Vegas Strip with cooperative traffic signals.  But as we all know, there are sleepy traffic lights on every corner, very slow ones, which makes a bored driver grateful for all the dependable roadside wackiness available day and night in these environs.  Siobhan and Ashleigh had been taken to the wedding site by limo but I was bringing the rental car, the better to dash off to the Valley of Fire for wedding photos before the reception dinner.  The valets are inevitably quick in Vegas, but we were at a new hotel and their crew was hopelessly befuddled.  When the car finally came, I charged out onto the road and went the wrong way in my haste, making it virtually impossible to get me to the church on time.  I called my bride-to-be and gave her the bad news, which I expect would  bring out invectives galore from even the most reasonable of women.  It was then I had no doubt I’d found the right girl to marry.  Sounding unconcerned as could be, she merely said, Listen, you did your best…if you don’t make it we can just go to one of those drive-thru places.”

Once turned around, I set the land speed record for the distance on Las Vegas Boulevard, speeding like crazy, anticipating red lights far ahead so I would not have to stop, scattering would-be crosswalk creepers like stricken bowling balls.  When I turned into the parking lot, Ashleigh’s husband-to-be Florian was waiting to park the car, which I handed off like a relay racer and ran to the chapel only two minutes late and three minutes before they cancelled the wedding.  I mean, it was Saturday and there was another one scheduled in 30 minutes, right?  I handed the frowning chapel personnel Elvis’ “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You” CD and assumed my position.

The ceremony itself went off like clockwork.  The music played, the wedding party marched in, the amiable minister pronounced, the loving couple kissed, the Wedding Crashers applauded and quickly hurried back to their plane for five more hours of fun flying.  The rest of the day was a whirl of driving to and from the Valley of Fire, stomping around this steamy (104 degrees) paradise, zipping back for the reception dinner with the Gordons and my sisters at Canaletto’s restaurant in the Venetian Hotel.

At the cake-cutting, the headwaiter came up with a final surprise.  Reading from aged parchment, he advised in a properly stuffy manner that “Having achieved the vaunted marital Hat Trick with at least one ceremony in Las Vegas, and having broken the longstanding speed limit for the Vegas Strip and having spent beaucoup dollars in the past three days, which includes our hefty tip, William Thomas Killeen is hereby officially installed in the Las Vegas Wedding Hall of Fame forevermore.  You may stand and kiss the waiter,”

Everybody likes to be famous for something.  Happy tenth, Siobhan!  It’s been memorable.

That’s not all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com         

Rednecks Cryin’ In The Rain

“Trump is like a dying ember

And when just memories remain,
We’ll remember through the ages
Rednecks cryin’ in the rain.”

It was inevitable, of course.  The Universe (aka “Jim”) always strikes back.   And when a madman pushes his luck to the middle of the table, Whoomp! There it is, a downpour of biblical proportions rains frogs on his parade.  You might tug on Superman’s cape, spit in the wind or even try to pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, but you don’t mess around with Jim.

The madman is having a bad spell.  Amused by moving his toy soldiers into puny Venezuela to steal its oil, he thought he’d double his pleasure, double his fun by bombing miserable Iran to kingdom come.  Alas, a funny thing happened on the way to the surrender ceremony---as with the Hydra, when you cut off the head of the serpent, two heads grow back.  The new government of Iran said, Go fish.  “Stick and stones may break our bones but see what happens when we close the Straight of Hormuz, Cracker!”

Oopsy!  Now what.  Okay, war’s over, we were just funnin’ you!  Had you goin’ there for a minute, right?  We’ll just bring all our ships and planes home now and everything will go back to normal.  What?  Oh, you’re going to get petulant on me now?  Bad Sport!  Some people just can’t take a joke.  Hello, Pentagon---is this General Pete?  Listen, genius, the mullahs are pissed!  Maybe we could send a nice card?  Yeah, I’m in the Hallmark section right now, but I can’t find the right category.  “Have a nice after-war doesn’t seem appropriate.”

The footing is like quicksand out there for Captain Trumpy of the Horse Marines.  Every breath he takes, every step he makes, he’s deeper in the soup.  He’s out of options, all he can do is emulate the whiny kid in the neighborhood who takes his ball and goes home.  Now all the other presidents start to laugh and call him names.  They’ll never let poor Trumpy play in any diplomat games.  And Santa won’t be baling him out.  He has GPS now.

“So they gather at the graveyard
Filled with animus and pain,
And they send him off to Jesus,
Rednecks cryin’ in the rain.
There won’t be any bagpipes
On the hills of Dunsinane,
Just the whimpers of the sheepflock,
Rednecks cryin’ in the rain.”

There Was An Emperor Caligula

It all started well enough for Caligula as the third Roman emperor.  Unlike his predecessor, the paranoid and secluded Tiberius, Cal was young and charismatic, came from a famous family and began his reign by ending Rome’s despised treason trials.  He organized lavish gladiatorial games and chariot races, much to the delight of the populace.  The new emperor completed construction of several buildings started under Tiberius, rebuilt temples and began construction of new aqueducts to ensure water supply to the rapidly growing city.  He built a new amphitheater in Pompeii and improved the port infrastructure of the capital, allowing for increased grain imports from Europe.  But then, like some other emperors we know, he cast an eye toward lavish personal projects.  He expanded the imperial palace and constructed two massive floating pleasure barges for his personal use at Lake Nemi.  He had affairs with married women, male prostitutes and even his sisters.  Then he fell seriously ill, was bedridden with delirium and drifted into madness.

Caligula brought back treason trials, a convenient means of getting rid of enemies.  He executed many senators and New York Times reporters.  Tales of Caligula’s naming his beloved racehorse Incitatus a government consul, however, seem to have been invented by the Roman Democratic Party.  After a failed invasion of Britain due to mutinous troops refusing to fight (“We ain’t got no quarrel with them Limeys”), Caligula declared war on Neptune, god of the sea, and even had the waves whipped.  He also ordered legionnaires to collect seashells as the booty of war.  Eventually, as always seems to happen with these deranged  emperors, he declared himself a god.  As the centuries passed, Republican traditions faded away, replaced by autocratic rulers, eventually establishing the Dominate, where the emperor was a godlike king and the Senate had only a ceremonial rule.  Sound familiar?

Lost In Space

Much as history will malign its crazy emperors, the supporting casts should not be forgotten.  Herewith, our Political Hall of Blathery:

1. Representative Ted Yoho (R.-Fla.)  Ted was actually in Siobhan’s class in veterinary school, though nowhere near the top of it.  He called when he first ran for office, soliciting contributions.  We passed, so don’t blame us.  Yoho got elected anyway.  One of his early statements was “One side of our government, or two-thirds of it, is running one hundred miles an hour toward socialism.  Conservatives like me are like Fred and Barney in the Flintstone-mobile trying to stop that.”

And later, on opposing tanning-bed spas: “I had an Indian doctor in our office the other day, very dark skin and two non-dark-skinned people, and I asked, ‘Have you ever been to a tanning booth?’  And he goes, ‘No, no need.’  So therefore the tax is a racist tax, and I thought I might need to go get to a sun-tanning booth twice so that I can come out and say I got taxed because of the color of my skin.”

Oh, shut up, Ted.

2. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County, Ariz.  Joe forced inmates to wear pink underwear, served them rotting food and housed them in a tent city which he proudly described as a “concentration camp,” where temperatures once reached a toasty 145 degrees, which isn’t easy.  Arpaio denied Latina inmates sanitary products and forced them to sleep on sheets soiled with menstrual blood.  He once created an armed posse which included brain-dead Steven Seagal, alleged movie star.

A quote: “I needed a place to put the dogs.  The prisoners ruined the jail, so I put the prisoners in the tents and I had a nice jail to put the dogs.  We treat the cats nice, too.  And the horses.  If a nation is only as strong as its weakest link, then America may be in trouble.  Hawaii may be our weakest link.”

We knew it.  There’s something in the pineapples.

3. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.)  Claimed the Obama administration went after BP because the giant Gulf oil spill was “part of this sort of blame game society, in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault when a catastrophe occurs, instead of just, you know…accidents happen.”  Paul also warned that unchecked illegal immigration would lead to a “borderless mass continent” that used a conspiracy theorist currency called “the amero.”

A quote: “With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies.  It’s not an abstraction.  I’m a physician.  That means that you have a right to come to my house and conscript me.  It means you’re going to enslave not only me but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.”

We asked the janitor, Rand, and he was okay with it.

4. State Representative Gordon Klingenschmitt )R.-Colo.)  Representative K. bragged about performing a gay exorcism to relieve a woman of “the foul spirit of lesbianism.”  He was once a Navy chaplain, so he could do that.  He also tried his best to perform a long-distance exorcism on President Obama because of some issue with the NSA.  Gordon swears that Obamacare “causes cancer” and that Obama’s former FCC chairman was driven by the Devil to “molest and visually rape children.”  Disturbingly, however, he calls himself “Dr. Chaps.”

5. Marjorie Taylor Greene.  “They’re changing our kids’ genders and they’re also, I think, putting chemicals in the water that are turning the frogs gay.”

Attention Sheriff Thacker—please get this information to Froggy the Gremlin ASAP.  The ramifications are unimaginable.

Always Leave ‘Em Laughing!

Good advice to any would-be dictator.  A little pudding with the bread and water humanizes a despot, makes him look like one of the guys.  But a little advice to all you tyrants out there---make sure they’re laughing with you, not at you.

It was one thing when Ugandan overlord Idi Amin titled himself “Conquerer of the British Empire” and “King of Scotland.”  It was those love letters he wrote to Queen Elizabeth II that got him hooted out of town.

Jean-Bedel Bokassa declared himself emperor of the Central African Republic in 1977 and threw a coronation which cost one-third of the country’s GDP.  He had a solid gold throne shaped like an eagle that cost a mere $2.5 million, and 100 white horses pulled his carriage.  The 2000 guests at the party dined on peacock and elephant meat.  Alas, he pissed off the French, who overthrew him in 1979.  They gave the throne to Jerry Lewis.

Francisco Macias Nguema, of Equatorial Guinea, who had the pleasant nickname “The Madman of Africa,” didn’t like smart people.  He banned the word “intellectual” and anyone with glasses was suspect.  Frankie had his personal portrait on every banknote, even one-peso bills.  In 1978, he cancelled Christmas because he didn’t particularly like it, but relented two days later when the Pope scolded him. 

Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan, however, was in a league of his own.  They laughed when he sat down to rule, but not for long.  First off, he decided to rename January “Turkmenbashi” after himself and April became “Gurbansoltan,” after his mother.  You can imagine the trouble singers had with April Showers.

Sappy also banned beards, opera, lip-syncing and all cars that weren’t white, also gold teeth (he had his own extracted to set a good example).

As dictators are wont to do, Saparmurat also built a 12-meter gold statue of himself which rotated 360 degrees so it was always facing the sun.  He also wrote a book, Ruhnama, or “Book of the Soul,” which every student, driver and government worker was required to read because there was an exam coming.  He said reading it three times would get you to heaven.  Hopefully, he followed his own instructions because he bit the bag in 2006 with a heart attack attributed to his heavy smoking, which, of course, he had banned for everyone else.

Anybody looking for a cheap rotating statue?  It’s gold, you know.  We’ll throw in a dog-eared copy of the Ruhnama for those dreary nights when you just can’t sleep.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com