Bum Wines and the Peyote Coyote by Mike Marino (ebook pc reader .TXT) 📕

and chrome.
A lot of the merchants folded up long ago, to seek new fields of retail riches. The town, once numbering 365, now was somewhere around 62. Two lane tumbleweed riding the asphalt that remained, heading out to nowhere in particular towards the endless horizon. Some of the remaining townies had been here since birth and would remain until their death, cluthing the past in their hands.
Sadie, who used to ranch with her husband Earl, for long hard hours until he died in '72 was now "the crazy lady" who lived in a broken down trailer with no running water but plenty of warm booze to numb her and give her comfort. The property they owned had long ago gone into forclosure, and what little money they had saved up went to pay for his burial and her seemingly endless supply of soul burning Vodka.
In the good years, she hauled bales of hay to the far reaches of the spreading fields. Hungry livestock came at a quick pace when she was spotted bumping along the field. Ernest Tubbs' new record was out and it played on the lonely country gospel station, KPSD. Earl heard that song for first time on the Opry driving that old truck at night, that magical analogue time of the evening when WSM in Nashville would fade in and out on the radio half a continent away.
The farm was filled with supplies most of the time brought in from town. Food, grains, feed, fertilizer, gingham and always, a little present for Sadie. Earl always hid it under a sack, and when he pulled up in the truck she would smile because she knew it was there. On the stove, Earl's favorite meal was cooking, her present to him. They both worked hard not only at the farming and small ranching but at making each other happy. He's long dead now, and she sold the land and moved to town. Earl still lives in her heart, and together, they're never far from that farm, a piece of them still remains on that land and will be there for a long time to come....until Crazy Sadie finally drinks herself to death.
The meat markets gone too. You could always get more than just the freshest meats in town. You also kept up on the latest gossip in the neighborhood. Turns out that "nice" boy the Carson girl's been dating is AWOL from the Army and been arrested. Did you know Sally Hellstom is pregnant again? Also heard that one of them new fancy supermarkets is coming to town, at the edge of the road out by the Meyers property.
Sure, some folks will go there at first, check it out, buy a few things, but in the end they'll come back here. Why, I have the freshest meats in the entire county. They'll be back, you'll see. Say did you hear about the Peterson boys? They got in trouble again.
Stan stared at the heat outside through the dusty windows, A Johnny Lee song on the jukebox. Thought about selling the place for years, and finally did, to one of those large interstate truck stop chains. Been home for years, but now, nothing left, but home is where the heart is afterall. Some of the oldtimers still stop by to chew the fat and the food, truckers mostly who still lament the passing of the old days too. Jake brakes and exhaust mingling with the jukebox and the grease from the grill. He smiled and wondered what they would do with that old neon sign that didn't work, hadn't worked in years.
The town that was so full of life once, was now just an Exit number on a roadmap. An old decrepit joint in the middle of the nowhere desert soon to feel the crash of the wrecking ball. Memories and road ghosts of the past, mixing with the dust, diesel, and dirt, and a few dead flies on the window sill...order up!
Crazy Sadie summed it to Stan one day, not too long ago, when he debated on fixing the place up for one last hurrah. Even having the neon recharged in the old "EATS" sign.
She just looked at him incredulously, cackled her cracked laugh and said "Boy, they aint no need for no neon no more".

Santa Fe Rails

Mike's hiking and thumbing across the desert southwest, catching rides by rez injuns in pickup trucks, and sleeping off the side of the road on Route 66 with a can o' beans and churchkey cuisine was to have the sky as a roof and no walls from horizon to horizon to pen you in and up and beat you down. The Road of Joad was a mighty fine road, some of the time but, at others, hot days, no ride days, it was Route Sixty Sucks. Lizards scattered and skittered, snakes shaked, rattled and rolled and the orange fireball engines of the Santa Fe line screamed with whistles blowin' at the top of diesel lungs across the ghost paths of pioneers.
Ruts, rails and trails, swallowed up across vast landscape waves of Houdini praries, where Hunter S. buffalo roam and the dear antelope pray as they witness the approach of the iron horse of the Santa Fe….so fey…heavy metal machismo and cast iron balls highballing and sparking as the rip across the boxcar void, prominently laid out in precise chinee opium lines with pure asian precision...precisely.
Meandering rivers with frothy mouthed foam and hidden obstructions, towering lego-like mountains of lincoln logs and paper mache stand bare, baring stoic granite witness in mute testimony to the philosopher Testicles of the coming of age of the rail age and second coming of the blaze orange Christ fireball fireboxing into the decades of diesel to come across the canvas of sand of blank chihuahua and the savvy mojave and into and across the badwaters of the valley of death with panamint hues framing the mirage of photograph like likenesses of Ansel Adams himself, self portraits really. Look, black and white ansels with the innocence of adam in the early eve.
Lesbian lizards, salamander sissies and transexual tarantula’s watch the brush strokes of Santa Fe engines blur the desert scene, past painted deserts and scared stiff petrified woods in Bogartian movies shown Martian theaters along with the haints who hang out in Harvey House on Haunted Hill. Reminding me of wild west ghosts of a smoke stack past. The pinto stands with rider astride, with reservation on the rez, as the iron beast steely dans it’s way through Indian nations and smashes the pueblos into dust and smithereens leaving only shards of acoma pottery and memories of sweet peyote dreams….
The transcon trains first transfixed, then transformed the traverse across the american-con into a transcon magical biblical tour of mystical proportions…whizzing by a passing parade of far west histoire and a peek through the curtains of a horseless future propelled by petroleum dreams and eastern schemes by schemers and dreamers with deep back east pockets.
The railroads saw rushes for gold, races to madness for land in Oklahoma, the sooner the better the sooner. “Thars gold in them thar hills. Black gold, yellow gold, one to be hoarded the other to be sold.” The infernal injuns of combustion rolling off of Detroits assemblylines proved that Hank had a hankerin’ for a’tinkerin’ with plugs, sparks and driveshafts…later day land and rail barons would follow in the two rail footsteps of the mighty Santa Fe. Two rails, two steps, two tokes, the course was now set for the auto to lay lanes down next and parallel to the rails of old Santa Fe. The House of Harvey would also follow along with Phillips 66 and reservation tricks..
The broken shards were glued back together by the tribes who rallied to the rails and now the two lanes of Route 66. Culture for sale on the cheap from the side of the road. The trains roar by but the autos stop for that special Kodak moment of a snapshot of a real live savage in a rather feminine yet, heathen headress dancing like a chicken in a pen for pennies on the dollar. Rubber tomahawks and cheap whiskey have replaced shamans with she-mans.
The trains have ejected their passenger freight from St. Loo to LA. Cattle now, freight and goods, but it was also the hobo highway for the guthries and the dustbowl tribes of the freight yards, Kerouacs brakemen and Dylans railroad men who drink your blood like wine…three legged cows and one legged men share the legacy. The car is king these days, and railroad an interesting museum piece. The indian now hides on the rez and in the Walmart.
The Petrified Forest still waits for Bogart to bestow a blessing that will never come and the old towns and old alignments vanish in a 75 m.p.h. blur. The ruts of the old Santa Fe trail are rare and few and far between, Dodge City in old rectangular Kansas is one reminder of them..but if you look out across the desert, away from the grey of the steel grey-hound you’ll see the fireball blazé of orange racing across the rails, sparking and clacking, cutting a path and slicing a swath across the land, the desert, the praries, history and against all odds..painting the desert a portrait of it’s nostalgic self…an O'Keefe relief.

Greyhounds From Hell

Hipster Hibbing and it’s Minnesotans and the hounds of grey, terminal passengers about to board. Abort! Abort! Abort the boarding, and run like hell from the hounds of hell!
Leave the driving to us, natty dressed, hemeroid infested drivers with pulp fiction ralph kramden hats…Luggage with stickers that say, things like, Kansas City..San Francisco…others from Mobile load up into the beasts belly as unwitting travelers step up into the steel and aluminum volcano heading east, west, south and yes, magnetic north..north to places like Fuckin’ Fargo, Bullshit Butte and Woosed Out Washington where Spokane is spoken in hushed northwestern tones, in complete nez perce secrecy..a totem of their esteem.
Leg room, head room, no room, scenic cruiser view of wide open Wyoming and claustrophobic Connecticut, cities whip by in the wind as you view them through hair gel stained plastic windows that could blind a seeing eye dog…you have landed in the eye of the hurricane, past the forties, past the fifties and collide now head on into the groovy sixties…’cept now, your trapped in Downtown Denver…down and out..further down..alone! Bums who talk to them selves about religion and spare change wash their holy feet in the drinking fountain mumbling a blessing as your are now deployed, annoyed the Church of the Diesel Depot.
You head east, but change buses like underwear at a junkie needle exchange program in Switzerland that exists in Barstow, the Mojave, the California Mojave. Backpack heavy, legs stiff and down to three crumpled cigarettes and not one fucking match. It’s 1:45 am, three hours to kill for layover, to kill or be killed in Denver, a mile high in a lunatic lunar bowl of smog, smoke and skid row streets…
Transfer on the bluesline to St. Louie, Louie, transfer again in old Capone Chicago and switch to Trailways for the I-94 leg of the trip to downtown motown, Now cramped and stubble faced and smelling of three maybe four days on the road from Oakland, fried chicken, sweat, same socks and the stench of the bus toilet won’t leave you, like the smell of death on the field in Vietnam…piss stopped and cig stopped until your head spins like Linda Blair, and nothing but stores with magazines about rodeo’s…
Cig break over..butt’m and board, re-board, as you make way for the girl from Oregon, why, I don’t know,