It's Like the Military Without Honor
Monday, June 26, 2006
It's Like the Military Without Honor
Today I sat in the front, by myself. No one really bothered me. The little pad fell off my headphones. Otis sounded funny, like I was listening from across the street. We got to Paris and that is where the fun began. I won't even go into it.
During the whole ordeal, I just went to another place. Tried to keep my mind off the stress of travel.
I remember once, when we moved in the middle of the night (one of my new "uncles" got a little slappy with my mother. Not a new thing, but not the kind of thing you get used to when you are six). We were in the camaro, the gold one. It smelled like menthol cigarettes and drive through food. I recall falling asleep in the back seat, with my head wedged into that little triangle shaped window. The sun came up sometime and my eyes burned open. The car was slowing down and moving right. We were at a rest stop. My mother was up front, muttering something. Usually 6 to 8 hours after these conflicts, my mom would get super Helen Reddy and go on this long tangent. Basically, we were going to make a new start of it, go to a new place. She was gonna get a job and make her OWN money. I was going to go to a good school and get nice friends. (At these times, I just wanted to interject something about dinner every night and clean clothes, but I shut up and watched her convince herself of these goals.) This resolve usually lasted until she ran out of cigarettes and invariably had to go to honky tonk for more (because the 5 7-11's in the hood couldn't possible be peddling cigs!)--where I would get a new "uncle". He usually came with the following accessories, like one of those GI Joe's with kung fu grip;
1) facial hair, something from either a porn or off of a most wanted poster
2) a belt buckle where he kept pot
3) boots or no shoes at all
4) no id, but an out of town 3rd party personal check that my mom could cash for him, since he had no bank
5) a good right hook
6) the ability to get my mother to think that a huge drugged out biker party was a good idea on a school night
If you mix the above with just the right amount of beer, pills and domestic violence, you have the makings of many evictions and skipping out on rent after rent in the middle of the night. And this isn't a woe is me litany. Its just a retelling of a particular time. Let me get back to where I was, the rest area. I think it was somewhere in the middle of Kentucky.
This rest area, at dawn, was like a waiting room for the Island of Dr. Moreau. There were bikers, some hippies (remember its the 70s) and truckers. I got out, stretching in my pajamas. The air was sticky and tiresome. My mom, lit cigarette in hand, grabbed me and jerked me towards the toilets. There were a couple of little kids playing in a puddle outside the brick bathroom building. On picnic tables to the right of the toilet, these bikers were having a hoedown. Keep in mind it was around 8am. On a weekday. And it wasn't even a major holiday, just another day. Someone's truck blurbled a butt rock anthem out of its open doors and women with names like Tonya were taffy dancing on the grass. Hairy dudes, there were 3 of them, with fat biker guts, were watching the old ladies and grilling some sort of meat on one of those stationary public bbq's. It was something out of Easy Rider. I just marveled on the way into the pooper at these people and their fete. Here it was 8 am and I hadn't peed for 350 miles/2 packs and these guys were tailgating a make believe Skynyrd concert. My mom, of course, said hi to one of the bearded refrigerators. And swoop, I was in the pisser.
I could do it alone by then. It was hard to navigate the inch and a half of water, which was mixed in with spit, soda, beer and god knows what other fluids.
Leaving the bathroom, I beat my mother out of the building and back to the car. I waited by the door, staring at the truckers on the sidewalk. I wondered where we were going.
Sometime later, at a truck stop. I got to eat. I seem to forget what I had, something wrapped in cellophane with dextrose or something like that. A few days later, we surfaced in Mississippi. I know its not a really good story, but I just remembered riding in the car and how much I hated using the bathrooms at rest stops. And I needed to think of something else while these two idiots from Air France forced me to spend the night in Paris, out by the highway.
Today I sat in the front, by myself. No one really bothered me. The little pad fell off my headphones. Otis sounded funny, like I was listening from across the street. We got to Paris and that is where the fun began. I won't even go into it.
During the whole ordeal, I just went to another place. Tried to keep my mind off the stress of travel.
I remember once, when we moved in the middle of the night (one of my new "uncles" got a little slappy with my mother. Not a new thing, but not the kind of thing you get used to when you are six). We were in the camaro, the gold one. It smelled like menthol cigarettes and drive through food. I recall falling asleep in the back seat, with my head wedged into that little triangle shaped window. The sun came up sometime and my eyes burned open. The car was slowing down and moving right. We were at a rest stop. My mother was up front, muttering something. Usually 6 to 8 hours after these conflicts, my mom would get super Helen Reddy and go on this long tangent. Basically, we were going to make a new start of it, go to a new place. She was gonna get a job and make her OWN money. I was going to go to a good school and get nice friends. (At these times, I just wanted to interject something about dinner every night and clean clothes, but I shut up and watched her convince herself of these goals.) This resolve usually lasted until she ran out of cigarettes and invariably had to go to honky tonk for more (because the 5 7-11's in the hood couldn't possible be peddling cigs!)--where I would get a new "uncle". He usually came with the following accessories, like one of those GI Joe's with kung fu grip;
1) facial hair, something from either a porn or off of a most wanted poster
2) a belt buckle where he kept pot
3) boots or no shoes at all
4) no id, but an out of town 3rd party personal check that my mom could cash for him, since he had no bank
5) a good right hook
6) the ability to get my mother to think that a huge drugged out biker party was a good idea on a school night
If you mix the above with just the right amount of beer, pills and domestic violence, you have the makings of many evictions and skipping out on rent after rent in the middle of the night. And this isn't a woe is me litany. Its just a retelling of a particular time. Let me get back to where I was, the rest area. I think it was somewhere in the middle of Kentucky.
This rest area, at dawn, was like a waiting room for the Island of Dr. Moreau. There were bikers, some hippies (remember its the 70s) and truckers. I got out, stretching in my pajamas. The air was sticky and tiresome. My mom, lit cigarette in hand, grabbed me and jerked me towards the toilets. There were a couple of little kids playing in a puddle outside the brick bathroom building. On picnic tables to the right of the toilet, these bikers were having a hoedown. Keep in mind it was around 8am. On a weekday. And it wasn't even a major holiday, just another day. Someone's truck blurbled a butt rock anthem out of its open doors and women with names like Tonya were taffy dancing on the grass. Hairy dudes, there were 3 of them, with fat biker guts, were watching the old ladies and grilling some sort of meat on one of those stationary public bbq's. It was something out of Easy Rider. I just marveled on the way into the pooper at these people and their fete. Here it was 8 am and I hadn't peed for 350 miles/2 packs and these guys were tailgating a make believe Skynyrd concert. My mom, of course, said hi to one of the bearded refrigerators. And swoop, I was in the pisser.
I could do it alone by then. It was hard to navigate the inch and a half of water, which was mixed in with spit, soda, beer and god knows what other fluids.
Leaving the bathroom, I beat my mother out of the building and back to the car. I waited by the door, staring at the truckers on the sidewalk. I wondered where we were going.
Sometime later, at a truck stop. I got to eat. I seem to forget what I had, something wrapped in cellophane with dextrose or something like that. A few days later, we surfaced in Mississippi. I know its not a really good story, but I just remembered riding in the car and how much I hated using the bathrooms at rest stops. And I needed to think of something else while these two idiots from Air France forced me to spend the night in Paris, out by the highway.
Comments:
Hey Gus,
I was in Paris about a year ago. My GF and I were walking to the Orsay and we found two french license plates in the garbage. We took them and, in what seemed like a good idea at the time, my GF stuffed them down the back of her pants and covered them with her shirt. Little did we know that you had to pass through a metal detector to get into the Orsay. Man, was that guy surprised when he patted her down...
Chip Chism
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I was in Paris about a year ago. My GF and I were walking to the Orsay and we found two french license plates in the garbage. We took them and, in what seemed like a good idea at the time, my GF stuffed them down the back of her pants and covered them with her shirt. Little did we know that you had to pass through a metal detector to get into the Orsay. Man, was that guy surprised when he patted her down...
Chip Chism
# posted by 
: 6:42 AM
: 6:42 AM