"Tumber Land"
Bobby Hayes and I were on a road-trip to see 'ole Paul, stashed in the country outback like "The Old Man of the Mountain". Our guru, our sage, our hard-bitten spiritual advisor "who kept us on the level" as an old ex-soldier/bitter hippie who had seen a lot of things in his day and did not quite discount everything as he leaned over the railing in only the bottom half of his camouflage pajamas and gave you an agog expression.
But once again, the ole' muskrat got distracted in the blather of things and overshot the exit by 60 miles and we found ourselves whipping through the cornfields of central Missouri like "The Beltway" detectives from "The X-Files". Which just goes to show. . . . . never count on "a Fed".
"I fucked up", Bobby slurred with manic, chatter-box speed-- on one of "his toots" that could last up to 20 hours-- pulling into a gas station to fill-up and ask for directions. Think of ritualistic drumming that could last for the days, the thumping growing more frenzied as an antelope was ritually dismembered. Such was the mystery of this cosmic vale of spirit, shamanism, pharmocology, and manic-depression. A cow chewed cud and flecked its tail down here in "Level-Land", turning away to graze off in more conventional pastures as all the noise moved toward the double glass doors with the bright blue sky pressing down overhead.
We pulled in to Paul's trailer up on stilts to see him in his usual uniform, leaning majestically on the railing like a grizzled fire-plug not trying to hide nary a little hint of amusement as he looked at these two clowns of the dusky trail riding in with evening's purple shadows.
"It figures", as Paul lumbered back into the house, welcoming us into his abode.
Country &
western bric-a-brac still decorated the living room, and CNN played on the
television, the stock ticker running along the bottom of the screen like a
"low-down war room". Not that he particularly gave "a flyin'
fuck" about the drag show that passed for American discourse, but it
kept him bemused. And the stock figures? He was figuratively stroking his jaw,
like a wolf oggling a sheep farm walled off with cinder block. Who knows, man.
What he took stock in was the inventory of a dry goods store where you counted
the bullets, sacks of flour, and sides of bacon and bit into a coin to verify
that it wasn't counterfeit.
He can tell you all sorts of stories about living out in California, working as a driver at an auto rental firm in Los Angeles. "That red wind" which blew past the palm trees of extravagant wealth and hard-bitten scraping. Where dreams were many, and ambition low-slung. . . . . . the plastic asshole of the world until you quit being "an airhead" and got real. He ate ice cream with an aged Fred Astaire at a little diner and was friends with some country & western stars. It simply "wasn't a big deal". once you stopped being "glitter-eyed".
In its own strange way, the whole course of the conversation got me thinkin' about the time when my Mom, my brother, and myself were picked up at the airport by a friendly driver holding up a sign that read our names because grandpa was becoming too old and unreliable "to get around much". He carried our luggage, a big "Goombah" talking all the way like the greatest emissary the city could have sent-- this cosmopolitan "city of the world" where anything could happen.
Down at Yankee stadium, Kevin Costner along with two other stars just happened to be filming crowd shots for a movie. Anything can be yours with the right initiative, the streams of pedestrians walking by the Statue of Liberty and Yankee stadium. You had the black peanut sellers playing their natural charisma, walking up and down the steps in yellow shirts hawking their wares with big grins, nodding happily with the largess of your tip and pointing to say "thank you". Then there were the South Americans mopping the floors who barely spoke English, looking for their own version of "The American Dream" whether or not the arrangement was "strictly Kosher".
In the collective memory was when "those Dodger bums" moved to Los Angeles, but what is not generally appreciated is the sleepy-eyed movement of the political machine that had already made promises "to other big names", and glad-handed out cigars as "runner-up prizes". Well, simple economics and the necessity of a ball-club took over and the franchise picked up and moved. It's like a beloved diner that closes because they can't get the zoning board to grant them permission to expand. Oh, well. Don't hate the game, but the players. And not necessarily the boys in uniform who just shrug and keep doin' what they do best.
That would be the attitude of ole "Slash" at the Guns n' Roses tribute concert, a jarringly convincing imitator of the icon scowling around with his head around his shoulder, a "It's 10:30 Somewhere" expression on his face before he belted into a solo for we heavy metal rodents to die for at this local concert venue on the tawny, ruined flood plains of East St. Louis.
Paul just shrugged at the fates, the absurdity of it. He'd take a long drive down from Chicago on business and call us sometimes, the excitement of the open road as his shiny Les Paul sat cradled up in a guitar stand. Burger joints and truck stops, junkyard wrestling and prostitutes, "Turn the Page". He took it for granted that he could slide his fingers up and down the guitar neck, one foot mounted up on the table, with effortless will.
He can tell you about "The Vasquez Rocks" in southern California that have shown up in countless movies and t.v. shows, which you can visit yourself. Once, "Children of the Corn" was being filmed down the road from where he lived like a mysterious cult. It was another one of those "awful Stephen King adaptions", but you win some and lose some. Those stories were made from the fevered madness of sweat-soaked writer's nights, manic with cocaine, translated into old, moldy paperback books from the 1970's but endlessly reissued by the New York publishing houses.
Who knew what made a man a lone prodigy?
It was like Charles Bronson getting off the train in "Hard Times", a freelance fighter with a derby cocked over his eye and carrying a bag down in a rail-yard in New Orleans. He just was, like a monolith of iron. Another one of our favorite movies was "Tombstone" about the honor of Wyatt Earp and his brothers, and there was this one beautiful woman in there of such old Western charm that we couldn't express ourselves in any other way but in guns and shooting and dicks, afraid of "looking like sissies" in front of each other. It was like "Miss Elizabeth" in one of those many "Wrestlemania" promotions, being saved by a lionly Hulk Hogan from a loathsome heel.
Whatever you want to say about commercialism in society, and the efforts to manipulate people with advertising and VNR's (-- Video News Releases), ultimately we're so so immersed in it that the whole schmeer becomes ineffective. There was the classic case of a live television spot of dogs having Alpo food laid out before them and the animals "not going for it". The pitch-man starts to pull at his collar and begins stuttering. Then in the ultimate act of desperation, he commenced eating the dog food while the canines nodded on without direction, and panting at the nice man's enthusiasm-- backing up but not cooperating.
"Rolf!"
Who was the trained animal? This, as our white elites fall to "holy moral politically-correct rectitude" and gets whipped, saying "he likes it".
Whatever.
Bobby, Paul, myself, and a neighbor sat around the kitchen table eating deer meat. And for dessert, orange Jello in little goblets. The neighbor is a bald, grizzled man who Paul met through "Alcoholics Anonymous" years back and has a voice like the leader of a wagon train. He has a woman at home, a matron named "Winona" that gets us all snickering.
Paul will tell you about the time when he went off to a weekend spiritual retreat sponsored by the organization that was loosely affiliated with the Catholic Church. Now, Paul was not particularly Catholic but another friend told him, "trust me". There was an experience where there chanting and singing around the altar and it was Paul's turn to approach. He felt a rising power as he drew closer and took of the water, and tears were streaming down his cheeks uncontrollably through he wasn't upset. He looked up at his friend off to the side through blurred eyes, and his buddy nodded,
"That's right".
You have to wait a lifetime to get this stuff, and some people never feel this at all because they have never lived. Paul Tumber is an honest-to-God Missourian you don't want to dismiss. They call this "The Show-Me State", and what I see is a real friend.
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"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'
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(Rheeee of Crickets)
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("I heard that, Missy!")
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