I’m unable to report on Hawaii because it’s very expensive to go there, especially if you’re driving. The reason it’s so expensive is the only people who know the directions to get there are employed by airlines, who claim that it takes ten hours to get there and charge you an enormous amount of money for a ticket.
There is, however, considerable evidence that the islands are much closer to the mainland than we’re led to believe. My best friend, whose real name is Hastings but who we all call Spock because he had his ears surgically shaped to a point and epoxied a plastic flower to the barrel of his phaser, smuggled along a sextant when he went there. He determined that all but two of the islands are actually located in the Gulf of Mexico. The others are sixty-five miles due east of Las Vegas.
He believes that after the plane takes off the passengers are all rendered unconscious by eating drugged complimentary peanuts, and that they spend the next nine hours sleeping on the tarmac of a secret airport just outside Nuevo Laredo before completing the last leg of the journey. It’s only fair to point out that Spock didn’t enjoy his stay in the islands because he hates karaoke bars and because the only lay he got while he was there had a bee in it.
In the plus column, Hawaii reportedly has no snakes. On the other hand, neither does Ireland, but that didn’t stop most of the people there from leaving. For these reasons, and because I neither surf nor eat mangoes, I cannot recommend Hawaii as a destination.
Rating ?
CAMPFIRE NOTES #5
THE CHICKEN CALLED OLD BLUE
According to the homemade highway sign, I’d just entered the independent nation of New Uvada. Geography having been one of my better subjects, I was immediately concerned as to why I hadn’t been informed about the old Uvada. Fearing that I might’ve taken a wrong turn back at the last cactus, I decided to check the map before proceeding further. Before I could brake to a halt, however, a second sign advised me that I’d already passed through the independent nation of New Uvada. The local authorities were obviously very lax about checking passports. On the other hand, there appeared to be little in the way of damage that itinerant terrorists could do in this forsaken area. If the independent nation of New Uvada had been born of warfare, it was a war it had clearly lost. In an attempt to satisfy my curiosity, I turned the van around and headed back toward the main, and apparently only, residence in the miniature country.
I pulled off the road and parked in front of the small, weathered wooden structure. If the building had ever been introduced to paint, it’d been a casual and fleeting relationship. Most of the floor space was devoted to the large porch, the roof of which provided the only shade visible anywhere on the horizon. An old but seemingly serviceable rocking chair was the only furniture. I hailed the house, then waited expectantly for a reply. Instead, there was a silence so pervasive that, “Houston, we have landed.” seemed far more appropriate than, “Anybody home?”. I crept –make that “creaked” — cautiously up the splintered steps and even more carefully across the warped planks to an ancient picture frame that hung beside the door to the house. It contained a handwritten message on lined yellow paper that was almost protected by a chipped and scratched plate of glass.
“I, the person of New Uvada, in order to farm a more perfect section, reestablish justice, self-insure domestic tranquility, provide defense for the common, demote the generals’ welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to myself and my posterior, do ordain and establish this Constitution of New Uvada.”
“Ain’t got around to the rest of it yet.”
The sudden interruption startled me back to reality, or rather back to what — under the circumstances — would have to serve in its stead. The speaker ambled out of the house and hung up yet another rustic sign:
Court Is Now In Session
King John Presiding
This done, he shuffled over to the rocker and settled into it. He cleared his throat, paused thoughtfully, then sent the discharge in the general direction of a splotchy grey spittoon several feet from his chair. He squinted momentarily in that direction before speaking.
“Short, to the left?”
“Long, to the right,” I replied.
“Dang.” He sighed wearily, gazing off into the distance, or perhaps, into the past when both his aim and his eyes were more reliable. He was tall and thin, and the insignificant portion of his face that wasn’t covered by a full, white beard and battered straw hat was even more weathered than his house. He wore torn and faded jeans, a flowered shirt of south seas inspiration, and moccasins.
“You from the State Department?” he finally asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Been expecting to hear from them. You know, send an ambassador or something”. He spoke slowly and clipped his word ends. I couldn’t decide whether it was actually a drawl or whether he just found speaking to be an effort. “Been near four months since I wrote them.”
I explained that I was just a tourist, curious to know the lowdown on a whole nation that didn’t appear on my map. He studied me for a while before replying.
“Injuns.”
I waited expectantly for him to continue, but he was apparently the type who fretted about boring people with unnecessary details. “Engines?” I prompted. “Do you need a mechanic?”
“In — juns,” he repeated, as if addressing a slow learner. “People. This tribe, me and them are neighbors. Only ones I got. And we got on just fine, too.” He paused and frowned deeply. “‘Till that day.”
“What happened?”
“They come to me to rent a piece of land. For crops. It’s got about the only irrigation water anywhere around. Only I had to tell them I’d had all my land in the government loan program since I’d got too old to farm.” He paused, hawked up another round and fired.
“Short, to the left,” I apologized.
“There was a time,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “There was a time.”
The time in question was apparently quite long ago, based on the length of his trip. A little guiltily I called him back from his journey. “You were explaining about the Indians and something called a loan program.”
“I was?” John’s expression started at skeptical before finding its uncertain way to limited recognition. “It’s when the government pays you not to grow stuff,” he said.
“Yeah. I’ve heard of that.”
“Well, the Injuns hadn’t. They looked at me like my brain had went south, so I explained as best I could about subsidies and allotments and set aside land and such. They allowed as how that made about as much sense as what we did to the buffalo and made to leave, them with their heads low enough to slip under a snake’s belly. Broke my heart. I told ’em to go ahead and plant and I’d work out something with the government to give back the money I took.”
“Let me guess, it wasn’t that simple.”
“They told me in no uncertain terms that the government didn’t have a form for taking spent money back, and if they didn’t make a form for it it couldn’t be done. Dry as the year was shaping up to be, I couldn’t tell the Indians to unplant the land, so the government hit me with everything but the kitchen sink. That’s when I quit the Union. I don’t figure it to stick, but with a little luck I’ll be dead before they sort things out.”
I smiled. “To die a king. I guess that would be about everyone’s dream.”
Instead of returning the smile he frowned. “It ain’t what you think. The king business goes against my grain. But the more I thought about it, the more I saw how this democracy thing got way off track.”
“How?”
“The Constitution, it don’t say nothing about the rights of anything but the people, like we was the know all and end all. You live out here, you learn real quick man’s got nothing that the land don’t let him have.”
“I guess that’s true, but how do you give the land a vote?”
“It already votes.” He nodded toward the horizon. “When was the last water you saw?”
“I don’t remember.”
“That’s how it votes. People can argue till they turn blue over who has rights to how much water, but when there’s more of you than there is of it, you’ll hear people talk like they can’t even find justice in the dictionary.”
“How does being a king get more water?”
“Doesn’t; gets less people. People don’t go where they don’t get a vote.” A quizzical expression came over John, followed by a short burst of a laugh. “Funny, people don’t think they’re free if they don’t get a vote, then they’re having to vote every time they turn around to try to keep other people from voting them out of their freedom! People, we’re an unsightly mess, aren’t we?”
“I guess we are.”
“It’d be funny if freedom was like water, wouldn’t it? You know, there’s only so much of it and the more people there are, the less freedom there is for each.”
As I pondered that thought, a chicken jerked nervously into sight from around the corner of the porch. It wasn’t much of a chicken — more the fashion-model thin variety — and it seemed more anxious than determined as it scratched the parched earth in search of, presumably, anything to eat it could get down and keep there.
“Do you keep chickens?”
“Not on purpose.” John fired a round of the brown stuff. It landed close enough to the scrawny bird to evoke a startled leap, followed quickly by a hopeful examination of the mysterious missile. Chapter One, page one, from A Chicken’s Guide to Survival, by C. Little: If the sky is falling, check to see if it’s edible. “You believe in reincarnation?”
I shrugged. “Who’s to say?”
“I had a dog. Nine, ten years. Every year I kept thinking, ‘He’s gonna get smarter or tireder and stop chasing cars.’ But all he got was slower, ’till one day a car hit him. The day after I buried him, that peckerhead there showed up.”
“That’s tough.”
“That’s life; you lose a dog, you gain a chicken. Anyway, some would say that chicken is Old Blue. He wasn’t smart enough to be a dog, so he had to come back as something dumber and learn how to be that first. . . . Well, old as I am, ain’t none of it gonna be my problem much longer.”
“What about New Uvada?”
“After I’m gone? I’ve been thinking I might just give it back to the Injuns. Mind you, owning the land sort of goes against their grain, but. . . . This here might not seem like much to some, but I remember what it used to be like, what it all used to be before . . .”
“Before?”
John pushed himself to his feet — the chair, the porch and John all creaking ominously in the process — moved the spittoon closer and to the left, then returned to his chair.
“Injuns got a saying. It’s about passing over the land and not leaving a mark on it; about leaving things the way you find them. Dumb as Old Blue was, I’ve got an idea he’s gonna be coming back this way in a whole lot of different hides. Wouldn’t want him to some time find a parking lot here and get confused.” With that he sent another volley in the direction of the can, then looked expectantly at me.
“Dead center.”
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