A Writer's Words - Scotty

One Writer’s Journey: The Book Tour 

Jill Culiner 

Episode Seventeen: Scotty 

I give a talk in a community center in Memphis which goes well — an attentive older audience — but they haven’t come to buy my books, even prettily signed ones. After the talk is finished, they want to tell me about themselves, their ancestors, and their family histories. So I listen. Then, catch a bus south, to Mobile, Alabama.

A man sits beside me in the station, one of those tall, slender, livewires with a full black handlebar mustache and wild grin. He’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, but the comments and one-liners come with such speed, I don’t have time to remember a word. He’s a magic person, the sort you meet rarely in life: no ready-made jokes for him, no reworked stories, just another way of seeing things, seeing them quickly, and knowing how to manipulate irony. What does he do for a living? He’s a coal miner.

I must have stared with astonishment as the old mining images race through my head, mining communities described as “open cesspits” where, “after the covering of trees was ripped out, mud slid down the hills in torrents, covered tents, and smothered the men inside.” In those places, there was no good water to be had; lice were combed away with bowie knives; to fight rats, wild cats and snakes were kept in the tents during the day. Some mineworkers were uneducated slum dwellers from the east, people who had only known deprivation and filth. Unwilling to adopt sanitary measures, preparing food in the open but refusing to use privies, they contaminated their water supplies and created the perfect environment for cholera. People died like flies, and unburied bodies were left in the open air for scavengers to eat.

Of course, this clever man’s life is far from my horror tales — a century’s difference. In the mining town where he lives, he, his buddies, and their wives have a great time. Every Friday and Saturday night they get together, create floorshows and theatrical performances, eat, drink, and are merry. Those wretched old stories are just… wretched old stories. With a jaunty step and cheery goodbye wave, he travels on homeward.

Heading south, the bus is crowded. A few seats away, a vast woman sits with two children, a baby who never stops crying, and a boy who plays endlessly with an obnoxious bleeping game: as Sartre said, “hell is other people.” Ignoring both tots, mom reads, Low Carb Success: How to lose weight and keep it off. She remains seated at every stop: calorie burning is not part of the plan.

There is beautiful countryside in this part of the world, but a bus isn’t going to leave the main road and go exploring, so we pass the usual: lots for sale, cookie-cutter suburban sprawl with enticing names — Magnolia Homes, Forest Green Parkway, Woodland Terrace — but hardly a tree in sight much less a copse. There’s other housing out there, too: shanties. Many aren’t connected to the public sewage system, nor are there septic tanks. Instead, PVC piping carries waste several yards away, dumps it into ditches or onto waste ground. No surprise that outbreaks of E. Coli are common, and that many people are still hookworm infested.

Much of this poverty is due to “heirs’ property” the land purchased or deeded after the American Civil War. Informally inherited without a title or will, after several generations, it is difficult to determine who the legal owners are, who has paid their share of taxes, who has helped maintain the land. Sometimes, the heirs don’t even know each other. Without clear titles, there is no possibility of obtaining grants, improvement loans, or disaster relief funding. Heirs’ property is the leading cause of substandard living conditions among African Americans, Native Americans, and the Mexican American colonias in the states of Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, and Louisiana.

Surrounded by a lot for sale, a modern consumer palace, and a fast-food emporium is a large tent with a big sign: With God All Things Are Possible. That’s certainly good news for some, and particularly for Mary Scott.

I met Scotty many years ago when she lived around the corner from me in a small California town. The mother of too many grubby but well-behaved children, she had been widowed once, and a more recent ex was serving endless time for first-degree murder (“it wasn’t his fault, really”). She was a small, lean woman with long, chewed-looking naturally white-blond hair and very pale blue eyes. She wasn’t beautiful — she looked a little too backwoods and bony for that — but her smile was warm, and she was kindly.

Scotty passed her days sitting out on the front steps of her slapped-together shack (similar to the dump I was then living in) making lovely necklaces from the glass pearls of old rosaries she found in charity shops. She wasn’t committing any sort of heresy by using sacred material in this way, she said. On the contrary: the beads had a magic power and would bring protection and happiness to those who bought and wore them.

Several times a day, a big motorcycle passed, a Harley. On it, sat a black leather-clad handsome rider with a thick black beard and long black hair tied by a bandana (people didn’t fool around with sissy stuff like helmets back then.) He would smile, and wave; she would wave, smile in a certain secret way, and just keep on stringing those pretty glass pearls. She was weaving a spell, she said. Those beads would eventually net her Don, the delicious motorcycle man: at the moment, he had an “old lady” tucked away somewhere, keeping the home fires burning and the fat hot in the pan.

After a while, Don began slowing slightly as he passed. Then, he took to stopping at the weedy curb. Scotty would sashay down the cracked walkway, go talk to him, her hips arched sweetly, her eyes knowing. And, when he drove off again, she’d come back to the front steps, sit, smile in that secret way, and string those magic beads.

I moved away and lost contact with Scotty. But one day, as I was walking along a street in a nearby town, a tall dark, handsome well-groomed man in an expensive dark suit approached me. Didn’t I recognize him? It was Don, the former motorcycle man. He and Scotty were married, now. Why not come back home with him, say hello to her. They were just about to go off traveling.

I followed him to a vast new house, gaudy and pretentious, in an excellent neighborhood — a world away from that former shack of hers. The greatest shock was seeing Scotty. She was dressed in a long flowing white robe and had transformed herself into a radiant beauty with flowing golden hair and a beatific smile. So beatific, I swear I could see a halo hanging prettily over her head. Surrounding her were the angelic-looking offspring.

Yes, she and Don had done well, Scotty said. The Virgin Mary had come to her in a vision, had told her she had a “calling”. Now, with Don as her manager, she was constantly on the road, preaching the word to thousands who packed into huge prayer tents all across the country. Not only was she a blazing success, Don assured me, they were also pulling in an enormous amount of money. Well done, Scotty, wherever you may be.

In Mobile, the bus station is quite a distance from downtown. Which direction should I take to get there? Once again, the three young ladies behind the counter come up trumps: “Oh, you can’t walk there. It’s at least a couple of hours away.”
    “Really?” I try not to feel discouraged. “Is it a nice city?”
    They look at each other and shrug. I could be talking about the center of Vladivostok, as far as they’re concerned.
    “What’s of particular interest in Mobile?”
    More shrugs.
    “But there’s a nice mall a little further out,” calls a woman from the back. “Tell her how she can walk there.”

Since I’ve already had this same conversation back in Thunder Bay, I now know the world is divided up into two sorts of people: Mall People, and Other People.

In the end, I set out anyway, and discover it’s only a twenty-minute walk. One that takes me past once-glorious mansions, formerly set in verdant countryside, and now falling to bits between used car lots, fried chicken outlets, and watery suburbia with reassuring names: Casa Marina, Cool Waters. And in town, overshadowed by tall skyscrapers and the usual tedious high glass office blocks, is the usual preserved-for-tourism-historic-center. But there are also so many remarkable Victorian houses that my imagination reels with story possibilities. Can I just climb in a window, please? Take a peek? Pretty please? Come live with you for a while?

Back at the bus station, I think about going to Tallahassee. “What’s it like?” I ask. All around, there are only shrugs. No one seems to have been there. 

Then one man pipes up: “Long time since I seen it. Lots of beaches, just beaches, that’s all you can see. Must have changed since then, though. Bet it has.”

Since Tallahassee is inland, I’m sure his conclusion must be right. I decide to head for Panama City instead.

©2020 Jill Culiner All Rights Reserved
Long ago, J. Arlene Culiner set out to have a life of adventure, not one of security and comfort. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, traveled, by bus, train, car, or truck throughout North and Central America, Europe, and the Sahara, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, on a Dutch canal, in a haunted stone house on the English moors, and presently in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village. Her experiences in out-of-the-way communities with their strange characters and very odd conversations are incorporated into all her stories. 

http://www.j-arleneculiner.com

A Writer's Words - On to Oklahoma

One Writer’s Journey: The Book Tour 

Jill Culiner 

Episode Sixteen: On to Oklahoma 

    “You were over in Dateland?” asks the bus driver whose name is John. “You like the place?”
    “Everyone was lovely.”
    “Oh yeah? Anyone talk to you about those lights?”
    “What lights?”
    “The red and white lights up in the sky, at night. Folks in Dateland are all obsessed because they all think UFOs are watching them. They even claim that a light specialist from NASA is out there, setting up machines and trying to find out where they come from.” John sneers. “You find a lot of cranks in places like that, but you want to know what those lights really are? They’re bombs on parachutes from the nearby military training center. They just send them out to hover in the air.”

    Outside, the hills and dunes resemble nothing more than the flank of a hairless dog covered in ticks, there are so many four-wheel drives, dirt bikes, and ATVs roaring over them, depositing pollutants, compacting the soil, destroying flora, wildlife habitats, and driving as many species as possible into extinction. Lending a helping hand, are those heeding the many roadside signs advertising gun shows. And, all along the way, the only sustenance available is junk food served in those wonderful Styrofoam cups and clamshell packets that will be here, tumbling across the earth’s surface, long after we humans have managed to kill ourselves off.

    People inside the bus seem stranger than usual. One man wearing a pirate patch mumbles on angrily about Tennessee, Los Angeles, and Orlando. A woman who has chosen to wear a pair of pink underpants on her head, huddles together with her two well-behaved children.
    “Nice kids,” I say.
    She stares at me with suspicion and hatred. Pulls the children closer and mutters, “my babies,” as if certain I’m about to devour them whole.
    Somewhere along the road, a lumbering creature boards. “I’m from Georgia,” she announces to us all. “They threw me off the last bus, claimed I was drinking. I’m gonna sue, that’s just what I’m gonna do. I got metal pins in my spine and I’m on my way to get electrolysis to stop the pain.” Which should be interesting, I think: unless she has a lot of hair to remove, she’ll be in for a surprise.
    “I also got liver cancer that I’ve been fighting for years, but they say it’s benign. At least I got rid of the husband. He wasn’t doing nothing but drinking.” She then curls up on the floor of the bus and, mercifully, goes to sleep.

    “Plenty of cranks around everywhere,” says John. “Once, a woman started beating me with her cane because she said I wasn’t driving fast enough. Thank God they got metal detectors in the bus stations these days, and drunks aren’t allowed on board. My first wife was killed by a drunken driver. It was bad for me for quite a while. Got to the point where just one sentence would send me off again into a depression, and I couldn’t fall asleep unless I had the radio on. Then, I got married again, to a woman twenty years younger than me. She takes even better care of me than the first wife did. She’s a beauty. You’ll meet her. She’ll be waiting for me at the bus station when we arrive. She always does.
    And she is there, too, a naturally lovely woman, warm-faced and shy.
    “Isn’t she a beauty?” John asks.
    “Oh yes, she certainly is.”

    I’ve always found Oklahoma remarkably beautiful, but the state’s history makes me wary. Back in 1838, after being evicted from Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee to make room for profitable cotton fields worked by slave labor, the Cherokee were one of sixty-seven banished tribes who struggled to survive here, adapt to Oklahoma’s grasslands, so different from the woodland terrain they had once known.

    They were settled on “unassigned land”, but shortly after, white settlers of the “Boomer Movement” decided these lands were public property, thus open for settlement. In 1889, further political pressure and an amendment to the Indian Appropriations Act officially opened all unassigned land for settlement. Ten thousand homesteaders known as “Sooners” flooded into the area in an event known as “the Land Run”. Oklahoma City was founded; the town grew quickly, boasted a broad ethnic diversity with Indigenous Peoples, European settlers from Germany, Italy, Russia, Scandinavia, Mexican-Americans, Anglo-Americans, African-Americans, and Jews. Thus, became a happy hunting ground for the Ku Klux Klan and other bigots.

    Formed in 1865 as a purification movement, the KKK was opposed to immigration into America, especially of Catholics and Jews. In the 1920s, hidden under Oklahoma’s cloak of prosperity, there was tension between agricultural laborers, tenants, and their landlords; between town merchants and rural customers; between native whites and immigrants; between oil field workers and oil company managers; miners and mine owners. Social injustice, poverty, inequality, and dangerous working conditions resulted in demands for reform and increased salaries — ideas viewed as radical, foreign-influenced, and anti-American.

    To keep America strong and white, to quell radicalism, stop the decline of morals threatened by the alien influence, increased mobility, relaxed dress codes, and a decline in church attendance, the politically conservative Sooners and their descendants were more than willing to band together with their neighbors under the KKK’s fiery cross. Membership soared, and the Knights of the Klan became the most powerful influence in the state. The Knights were often businessmen, and ousting a governor, pressuring rural residents to support them and vote them into office, Klan sheriffs in Oklahoma City and Tulsa ensured the strict enforcement of Prohibition laws, laws against prostitution, dancing, joyriding, and the use of tobacco. Justices of the peace, court judges, jury commissioners, and district attorneys — all Klan members — made certain petty offenders and “parasites” received swift arraignments, and that conviction rates were high. Allying itself with the American Nazi Party, the Klan also used lynching, murder, shootings, and bombings to kill off politically active blacks and their allies. Only after the scandal surrounding the 1925 rape and murder trial of Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson did the image of the KKK as an organization upholding law and order decline.

    The number of active members of the KKK in Oklahoma City is much smaller these days. However, just to show that local guys have a “fun” sense of humor (and of history) in 2015, Cary Sharp, the mayor of Lahoma’s husband, and a few of his cronies dressed themselves up as Klan members on Halloween and placed a cross beside a fire. There were calls for the mayor’s resignation, but she assured the press that the men had meant no harm: “It’s four good ol’ boys sitting around drinking, and things got out of control.”

    After arriving in Oklahoma City, I decide to clean up and have a good breakfast before calling the people who have invited me here for my book talk. I’m still feeling somewhat suspicious and sulky — not being gifted with an ability to see into the future, how could I know I’d be wined, dined, treated like royalty, and urged to stay on for a few days? I go into a very appealing old-fashioned, un-renovated coffee house with no video clips, no television, and no pumped in music beside the bus station. The women working there and the customers are all friendly and chatty, so I order a hearty breakfast, read for a while, and thoroughly enjoy myself. When I finally get up to pay the bill, the smiling waitress informs me that everything has already been paid for. By whom?
    “By the man who was sitting in a booth near yours. He left right after.”

    And so, for the price of a breakfast, I’m reconciled to the city. And, wherever you are, dear sir, thank you for the lovely meal.

©2020 Jill Culiner All Rights Reserved
Long ago, J. Arlene Culiner set out to have a life of adventure, not one of security and comfort. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, traveled, by bus, train, car, or truck throughout North and Central America, Europe, and the Sahara, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, on a Dutch canal, in a haunted stone house on the English moors, and presently in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village. Her experiences in out-of-the-way communities with their strange characters and very odd conversations are incorporated into all her stories. http://www.j-arleneculiner.com

A Writer's Words - Along the Road

One Writer’s Journey: The Book Tour 

Jill Culiner 

Episode Fifteen: Along the Road

“You see all these cars and trucks?” says the bus driver. “Every single view is a book you have to read. Pass a vehicle, it’s like turning a page.”

There are also yellow signs showing running figures in black. “That’s because all the illegals come through here. The Mexican border’s not far, but it’s hard going — terrible heat, no water. They put water out for them, but the cops are already there, waiting. It’s like those lakes where hunters wait for deer to come drink. I met one man, he crossed over with a bicycle, three days pushing that thing over rocks and through sand, but at least he could lug cans of water and a sack of food with him, so he survived. But you know what? Some people over in L.A. are complaining because they say those signs with black silhouettes aren’t politically correct.” He shakes his head. “Some folks got nothing better to do in life.

He’s the one who recommends I leave the bus at Dateland. “Pretty original place. You’ll enjoy yourself. Just take the dirt road north.” Caught by his enthusiasm, I don’t ask normal questions such as, “is there anywhere to stay in the area?” or “when does the next bus come through?” I simply disembark.

As far as the eye can see there’s nothing but one small restaurant and a gas station-cum-travel center. I enter the latter — a place filled with souvenir schnick-schnack, but no informative literature, and no literature of any kind. The woman working there is surprised to see someone minus car who isn’t an illegal.

“The bus driver told me this was an interesting place.”
“Oh.” She looks confused.
“What is there to see?”
“I dunno. Guess you can walk around, take a look at the date palms behind the station.”
“How about a motel where I can stay?”
“Nothing like that around here.”
“No boarding house, no hostel, nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. I have a sleeping bag.”
“No tent?”
“No tent.”
“Get’s really cold out here at night. And, you better make sure you can be seen in the dark by people arriving in trailers.”

No way. The last thing I want, aside from being squashed in my sleep, is to be found out here alone in the middle of no place. “Do you live in the area?” 

“Sure do. Twenty miles away.” She stops for a minute before adding, “I always keep coming back.” 

Which sounds as though she’s tried, possibly with desperation, to get away.

I cross over a patch of dust to the restaurant because I haven’t eaten since early this morning. 

“Kitchen’s closed,” says the waitress when I enter. “We closed at 2:45. It’s now 5:30.”
“Don’t tell me that.”
“Well, I just did.” She smirks with sadistic satisfaction.
“Okay, then. Where can I get something to eat?”
“There’s a dairy around eighteen miles down the road and a diner twenty miles in the other direction.”
“Nothing else?”
“Microwave food in the gas station.”
Sounds too grim for me. “The bus driver mentioned a whole community not far away. Somewhere to the north.”
She harrumphed. “It’s a pretty big walk.”
“How big?”
“Hours.”
“What’s out there?”
“Dunno really. Maybe a sort of tavern. Never been out there myself.”
“Ah.” I chew over the information for a few minutes, then optimism — and curiosity — both desert me. Outside, the sun is disappearing with the speed of lead in a lake. “When does the next bus come through?”
“Tomorrow. Four-thirty in the afternoon.”

Outside, I wander around, then find a little hollow under the palms. I curl into it, pull all my clothes out of my knapsack, and cover myself with them. They’ll serve as a blanket. Then I lie there, think of hungry cougars, wolves, giant killer ants, and zombies, all waiting for a victim; of armed, two-legged cranks who roam through the night, teeth grinding, saliva dripping. I hear strange noises, see shadows move. How can I possibly sleep? 

When I next open my eyes, it’s early morning. Amazing! Evil has passed me by. I head north, taking the dirt road over the perfectly empty desert landscape … a very lonely dirt road. Still, I keep walking: whatever’s going to get me, will get me coming or going in a place like this. Where could I hide? Still, bleak as it is, there are wildflowers everywhere, and they are utterly beautiful.

The community that does, finally, hove into view is one of far-flung shacks, and shabby trailers. But the tavern is open. It’s a huge place with mismatched tables and chairs, a low ceiling, and a long bar that winds its way around the room, curving, straightening, indenting, curving again. Photos of laughing people cover every inch of wall not taken up by bar signs: “Jesus loves you, everyone else thinks you’re an asshole”; “If assholes could fly, this place would be an airport”; “I may be a cruel and heartless bitch, but I’m good at it.”

Behind the bar are two ageless wild women, who can cuss better than any male I’ve ever heard, and there is even the traditional Old Timer with long white beard and drooping white mustache seated at the counter.

“Make yourself at home,” says he. “Everyone’s welcome. We were all from someplace else in the beginning.”
“Back at the gas station, no one mentioned there was a place like this out here.”
“Tourist traps, those places. We don’t have nothing to do with them.”

“They don’t know nothing about us,” adds a man in a straw hat. “But this is one great community, and this tavern is the center of everything. Me? I’m from Oregon. Was in heavy construction up there. One day my car broke down on the main road. I ended up here, took a look around, and liked what I saw. Got a job in a hardware store, and stayed. No red lights, no traffic signs, no traffic, no noise. Not even Oregon is as empty as this.”

“City folks always in a hurry,” says Old Timer. “Here, no one’s like that. See that bookshelf over there? We all do a lot of reading. Just take a book, bring another one back. That’s how things work.”

“That list with dates and names up there on the post?” adds another man who has come over to examine me. “Those are the birthdays of everyone who lives here. We celebrate every single one of them with a barbecue. We sure get up to some wild things.”

“Everyone talks to everyone,” says Old Timer. “There’s a lot of solidarity.”

“Especially when the monsoon comes in August — that’s what we call it. Winds up to a hundred miles an hour, and everything floods out. Suddenly it’s 120 degrees with no electricity, no air conditioning, and no water pump. What do we do? Take our sleeping bags to the school where there’s a generator, and we all sleep there. The Red Cross brings in water and ice.” 

“When it’s 120 degrees, the ground gets up to 200. If you don’t find a bush to lie under, you get cooked alive. Found seventeen dead illegals out there, recently, just kids of around fourteen. They’re told to head for the cell phone antennas — one’s 35 miles away from the border, the other is 80. Head for the wrong one, you die.”

“People are out there right now, trying to get here,” says straw hat. “Coyotes tell them to wait in one spot, they’ll bring water. But since they’ve already been paid, they just leave them.” 

“Plenty of farms in this area, and all the workers are illegals. They work seven days a week, twelve to fifteen hours a day for low wages. That’s half what Americans get, so no one hires us anymore, and sometimes the foremen take a cut from their wages, too. They’re just exploited. 

“Hell, no,” booms one man in the far corner. “You can’t call it exploitation ‘cause they’re illegal and don’t have no rights.”

Everyone ignores him.

“Do any ever come in here?”
“A few, but they have their own bar down the road.”
“Who cares if they do? They’re people, too.”
“Now, if they was Ay-rabs coming in here, that’d be different.”

A younger woman who has been quiet up until now looks me over. “You thinking of staying? This is a great place. I was a single mother living back east, but I met my future husband out here. More men than women here, but there’s no harassment. I’m just treated like one of the boys.” 

“How do you make a living?”

“I gather seeds for replanting burnt-out areas where weeds have taken over, killed all the natural vegetation. Or, in areas destroyed by real estate brokers who think they’ll subdivide, then belly flop. Why do they burn and destroy everything first? Who knows?”

“Some people come out, think they’ll grow grass, plant apple, and pear trees. Everything dies. There are wells, but the water’s either too salty, or poisonous. Used to be a river, too, but it was dammed up for golf courses in Phoenix — they created seventeen new ones in ten years. These days, if you want to fish, you have to go as far as the Colorado River. Sure, there are some canals around, but who wants to sit on a cement canal?”

Suddenly, a band strikes up the national anthem on the overhead television. Almost all rise to their feet, stand to attention. A few salute.

“Had a brother in a POW camp in Europe back in WWII,” says Old Timer. “He survived. Tell me, has the place changed a lot since then?”

Okay, the mentality might drive me crazy after a while, and the heat is certainly obnoxious. Aside from those blooming wildflowers — and they’re only temporary — it doesn’t look like much, but this is the place I’ve been looking for, the one I want to live in.

“Is there anything to rent out this way?”
“No problem,” says one of the women behind the bar. “Don’t worry about rent. Plenty of empty places. You can take your pick.”
“You coming back, then?”
“For sure. Next year.”
“We’ll be waiting for you.”

I set out, taking the dirt road back toward the highway and arrive just in time to catch the bus heading east.

I haven’t made it back there. Not yet, anyway. But who knows?

©2020 Jill Culiner All Rights Reserved
Long ago, J. Arlene Culiner set out to have a life of adventure, not one of security and comfort. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, traveled, by bus, train, car, or truck throughout North and Central America, Europe, and the Sahara, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, on a Dutch canal, in a haunted stone house on the English moors, and presently in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village. Her experiences in out-of-the-way communities with their strange characters and very odd conversations are incorporated into all her stories.

http://www.j-arleneculiner.com

A Writ's Words - Blake’s Folly, Nevada

One Writer’s Journey: The Book Tour

Jill Culiner

Episode Fourteen: Blake’s Folly, Nevada

      In the bus station café, the sign pinned to the wall behind the counter says: There’s Always a Reason to Smile, and an overhead television gives us the latest cheery news: four people shot at a post office, a few missing wives, a kidnapping. I remember the soldier back in Livingstone, the one who insisted that: “Aggression’s not part of the American way of life.” He’s clearly a man who can’t differentiate TV entertainment from reality.

      A lumpy woman plays a screeching computer game at the far end of the station. Even though she’s way over there, she makes life hell for all of us. “She should be arrested for disturbance of the peace,” I say loudly. Fellow travelers send me martyred looks of commiseration, but on and on she plays, with zombie concentration.

      To escape the noise, I take refuge outside where a fat man is chain-smoking.
      “They’re gonna see their mistake letting that happen in California,” he rasps, just as if we’ve been having a long conversation. “I hope the whole state will drop into the sea. I used to repair washing machines, but the taxes and the paperwork made making a living impossible. Now, I won’t even go there to visit an old buddy of mine. Last time I went to Bakersfield, I was so disgusted, I turned around and came back. A bunch of health freaks over there, all jogging. You can’t smoke in restaurants, okay, I can accept that. But you can’t even smoke on the street, or in your car in some places. In others, you have to keep the car windows closed so the smoke doesn’t get out. Soon they’ll forbid smoking in cars because when you open the door, the smoke escapes. They’re all nuts there. I hate everyone in the state.” His angry rose-colored jowls tremble.

      Even though it means going out of my way, I’ve decided to travel via Nevada. Why? Because it’s the setting for the contemporary romance I’m working on, All About Charming Alice. I want to see Alice’s yellow house, I want to find the community of Blake’s Folly that I invented: This place was a rusty trailer, scrapyard, abandoned car, clapboard shack, sagging old house community: a dead end if there ever was one. This was nowhere. This was the end of the line, socially speaking. This was a has-been. This was home.

      Outside the bus window is a beautiful but desolate countryside. I picture myself out there, strutting over dirt trails, making my way between the low lying beige hills like some quaint explorer, miraculously finding a desert Shangri La. Do I really think it’s possible? Perhaps, like soldier-boy, I’m also having a hard time differentiating fiction from reality, for not so many miles away is the area formerly called the Nevada Proving Grounds. There, on 1,360 square miles of desert and mountain terrain, 1,021 nuclear bombs were detonated between 1951 and 1992. The first one hundred atmospheric tests created mushroom-shaped clouds and bursts of light that could be seen in Las Vegas, 65 miles away, and they became a favored tourist attraction. Delighted guests partook of the lively sight from hotel windows, and sipped atomic themed cocktails. No one even thought about fallout, but it reached as far as southern Utah where there was an increase in birth defects, leukemia, lymphoma, thyroid cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, bone cancer, brain tumors, and gastrointestinal tract cancers.

      The weather has changed quite abruptly. Rain has become sleet, and the wind has picked up. Back to winter again. I’ve picked out a town on the map, and I plan to leave the bus there, go exploring. I’m certain I’ll find an old hotel, something left over from the nineteen hundreds, a bit rickety, but original, and inviting. I imagine a bar where country music whines, where old-timers share their secrets, and a square upstairs bedroom is very different from the usual sterile roadside accommodation.

      “Gonna find yerself a cowboy?” the bus driver jokes.
      A red-faced flirtatious craps dealer sitting across the aisle from me, stares. “You just gonna get off the bus in the middle of nowhere? Go someplace where you don’t know anyone? Well, why not. Except it’s a weekday, so places will be quiet. It’s on weekends when all the people come crawling out of the woodwork and flock into the casinos to lose their money.”
      “We’ve already lost a few passengers to the machines,’ says the driver. “Soon as they saw the first casino along the road, they couldn’t resist.”
      Does he enjoy driving a bus?
      “Oh sure. You see some funny things and some things that aren’t too funny. Like that driver that had his throat cut by a man sitting in the front seat. That’s why no one’s allowed to sit in the front seats anymore. Too many crazy people around.”
      “You’ve been in dangerous situations like that?”
      “Me? Nah. I’m the one in charge here. I keep my eye out, watching everyone. I go up and down the aisles from time to time, see what everyone’s getting up to. I went down to the back a little while ago, and one man had his shoes off. You could smell his feet all over the bus, but no one said anything. I told him to put the shoes back on. He said his feet were swelling, but I didn’t care. With me, everyone gets one chance. After that, I throw them out. If they don’t want to go, I call the cops. Another time, this woman with a ticket to Los Angeles gets off the bus at a stop somewhere along the road and says to me, ‘You stay right here until I come back.’ I told her, ‘lady, this is a short stop only. We’re leaving in five minutes,’ but she just stared at me and said: ‘You don’t go anywhere, you hear me?’ When she didn’t come back, I took her bags off the bus and drove on. The next time I came by there, the ticket agent told me she’d shown up an hour later with bags full of shopping. When she saw the bus was gone she began shouting, “Where’s he gone? I told him to wait.’”

      We’re already pulling into town, the place I’ve been imagining, and it’s not at all as I pictured it: there’s no scrap and trailer desolation; there are no wooden houses. Just streets of ugly modern bungalows, miles of cheap motels, fast-food emporiums, and neon-lit casinos.
      I grab my backpack, stare at all the un-loveliness, and my determination evaporates. I climb back onto the bus.
      The driver chuckles. “What about that cowboy you’re looking for?”
      “Well, maybe he’s looking for me, but I’m not looking for him.”

      As usual, as soon as I make the decision, I regret it deeply. Outside the town, the countryside is beckoning again, but it’s too late.
      “Vegas is more fun anyway,’ says the craps dealer. “Besides, it’s getting dark out there. Where you gonna walk at night?”

      Maybe Vegas is more fun for some, but these flashing lights, funfair façades, are not my style. What am I doing here? I’ll have to walk miles before I find a cheap motel and quiet. Lurking restlessly on the street outside the bus station are doubtful-looking pseudo-humanoids, but an old toughie at the ticket counter gives me an address of a big hotel just four blocks away: “It’s nicer than any motel, and you get cheap rates during the week.”

      And so, like any package tourist, I do end up in an impersonal bedroom on the eleventh floor. And, like a package tourist, I find myself standing in front of the restaurant buffet where vast quantities of rubber slices float in a glue sauce, and vegetables look synthetic.

      The slot machines whirr, beep, roar, and burp all around me, and I go to the bar, order a beer. A stocky man who is drinking heavily looks me over. Is it worth making an effort? He decides it is. “Me, I’ve seen a lot, I can tell you that. Flown planes, lived in the Yukon, driven all over the country, had businesses of my own. I could tell you things you wouldn’t believe. You married?"
      “No.”
      “You want another beer?”
      “No thanks, I’m fine.”
      “No thanks, I’m fine? What’s that supposed to mean? You staying in this hotel or what?”
      “Yes, I am.”
      “So why not accept another beer? You’re not going nowhere. You know what your problem is? You got attitude. And grey hair. Why doancha go and dye it?”

      In the morning, I’m back in the cafeteria and at a loss. What do I want to eat here? The overhead television is spreading the good word: a burnt body found in a shopping cart, ten dead in a gang shoot out, three kidnapped children. Betty, the waitress comes over to me (yes, that’s her real name). She’s one of those string bean tall women with a good collection of wrinkles, a lot of lipstick, eye makeup, a whiskey voice, and an easy-going way of joking with everyone.
      “You writing a journal? She jabs her chin in the direction of my notebook.
      “Sort of.”
      “Well, a girlfriend and me decided to write a book about restaurant etiquette, you know. It’s so funny what people say to you, like one guy asked for these yokeless cholesterol-free eggs, you know — they only come scrambled. And he said he wanted them over.” She bursts into a phlegmy peal of laughter. “Then another guy says he wants coffee with cream, and sugar, like I’m going to prepare it for him.” Again, she laughs and waits for my reaction — what sort of reaction? Sympathetic chortles or an indignant “tut-tut?” I do my best while trying to work it all out.

      In a pawn shop, I look over an old camera, decide to buy it. Take photos of those hills I’m heading for when I finally leave this city behind. In comes a desperate-looking woman. She hands over a gold watch. “Just to tide me over a little.”
      “Sure,” says the broker, all understanding.
      But those hills are so far away, and there is the sprawl to negotiate in a rattling bus before I can reach them. I’ll get there, eventually.

      And, finally, here I am, taking a track over a low rise. Scrub shivers in the bitter wind, and the only noise is that of dust scraping the stony surface. Plastic sacks, tin cans, a smashed barbecue, a television set, torn clothes, wrecked plastic toys, twisted metal decorate the scene, and all are studded with bullet holes. Over there, on the left, are a few bleached bones.
      Is this really the place for an afternoon stroll? I think of serial killers and casual murderers, know I have no intention of being tonight’s news flash. And admit, finally, that a fictional town is exactly that.

©2020 Jill Culiner All Rights Reserved
Long ago, J. Arlene Culiner set out to have a life of adventure, not one of security and comfort. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, traveled, by bus, train, car, or truck throughout North and Central America, Europe, and the Sahara, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, on a Dutch canal, in a haunted stone house on the English moors, and presently in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village. Her experiences in out-of-the-way communities with their strange characters and very odd conversations are incorporated into all her stories.
http://www.j-arleneculiner.com

A Writer's Words - The Ex-Husband

One Writer’s Journey: The Book Tour

Jill Culiner

Episode Thirteen: The Ex-Husband

      “I ast my granddaughter out t’ dinner. She’s only three,” says the dumpy woman in the coffee shop.
      “That din cost you a lot,” scoffs her equally dumpy friend.
      “Did. I bought her 30 dollars worth of toys. Have to do something for the poor kid. You know, my daughter, she jus’ reads all day. Yesterday she did 250 pages. I tell her, can’t you do something? Like, clean the place up. Wash the floor or somethin’. She’ll lay there and jus kina…” The woman raises her hands in defeat. Her friend shakes her head with commiseration.
      Me? I’m rooting for the unknown daughter. I wish her many wonderful books.

***

I’ve given book talks in Sausalito, San Bruno, and Santa Rosa, and now, with free time before the next talk in Oklahoma City, I can go where I please. And since this is Episode Thirteen, why not head down the California coast to LA, for a meeting with an ex-husband, DT.

DT and I had been married in our poor student days, when we’d stolen Brussels sprouts from the surrounding fields, but couldn’t afford the butter to put on them. Now, over forty years later, he had become a Hollywood big shot. I hadn’t seen DT since 1981, when I’d been in LA visiting my friend Nancy. DT had invited us out to dinner — he wanted to show me he could now afford the best, and that, in a restaurant frequented only by the rich and famous, everyone knew who he was. He also liked being seen with a woman on each arm, and Nancy, half Mexican, half Swedish, was gorgeous.

After dinner, we all went back to his house for a nightcap — his present lady friend was away, in Las Vegas, on business, but she’d left messages on the answering machine (this was in the days before cell phones). The first was cutsie-wootsie: ‘Hi Honey, Why can’t I reach you? Call me when you get home from work.” The fourth was edgy. The eighth was hysterical. “Where the hell are you, you shit!”
      “She’s a bit possessive,” said DT with a meek grin.
      The last, frankly menacing: “I’ll kill you, you lousy bastard. I know what you’re up to.

DT looked slightly embarrassed as he poured out wine for the three of us…wine that we never did get to taste. For, no sooner had we all settled, glass in hand, than we heard a wild shriek, frightening, unworldly. And before our astonished eyes, a fury hurtled into the room brandishing a large butcher knife.
      Fortunately, DT was stronger than she, or we’d all have ended up as luncheon kebab.

*** 

Their romance hadn’t survived, and DT had been living in a trendy residential hotel in Hollywood for the last thirty years. Since he’d still be at work when I arrived, he’d told the doorman to let me in.

But as soon as that venerable gatekeeper catches sight of me, he’s immediately suspicious: how could a big shot like DT have been married to this creature with long grey hair, wearing a shabby winter jacket and lugging an unwieldy old backpack? Come on! He won’t even let me wait in the public area just past the front door, a nirvana-like area of palm trees and tropical plants around a swimming pool.
      I don’t mind — I’m just amused and not in the mood to argue. I ask if I can leave my jacket and backpack with him while I go walk around the city. Begrudgingly, he accepts. But at just that moment, DT arrives. So I end up sitting in the courtyard, after all, sipping something unidentifiable, delicious, and head-turning, while the hotel staff comes to inspect me — goodness knows what DT has told them.
      “He said you were the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen,” announces the maid, a tiny delightful Mexican woman named Maria.
      “And now look at her,” say Maria and DT in unison. “She’s still beautiful.”
      The doorman (obviously he can’t believe what he’s hearing) is looking only slightly less suspicious: I’m not a respectable ex-wife. He wants Yves Saint Laurent, a facelift, and diamonds, not walking boots, rumpled stretch jeans, and no make-up.

      We all sit around chewing the fat for a while — it makes the reunion easier. The maid and maître d’ keep saying that they haven’t seen DT this happy in months, and we get on so well, why did we ever split up?
      I could give them a few reasons, but don’t, and when the curious crowd finally departs, DT begins bragging about his life.

      Once, many years ago, he’d been an investigative journalist who’d won prizes for his work, but that was before becoming a television CEO, then a writer: “I’m the best writer out here in Hollywood, and the best-paid one, too.” He names shows I’ve never heard of.
      “I live in Europe, you know.”
      “Sure, but you get American programs over there.”
      “I don’t own a television. Never have.”
      This makes him angry. “You always were a snob. Elitist. I always said that, and you haven’t changed.”
      “Some things never do.”
      “Anyway, I’m thinking of retiring, going down to live in Mexico or Costa Rica, spend the rest of my life fishing.”
      What I’m seeing is a time-worn guy, diabetic, stiff, with a big belly. It’s clear that, despite the bragging, when he comes home from sitcom writing, he’s pretty depressed. How does he spend his evenings? Watching TV. “Shows, sometimes a few films like…” He names a few.
      They mean nothing to me, but to keep the peace, I don’t mention I haven’t seen a movie in a quarter of a century.

      During dinner, his talk is of wild parties long over, bad behavior in public places, being thrown out of bars with his raucous, wealthy, and famous friends, all people I’ve never heard of.
      “You live down in some dark hole or something?”
      No, just in a parallel world, but he shows no interest in me. I’m the one who’s supposed to be impressed; I’m the listener, the only wife he ever had, perhaps the woman he felt closest to in his life.
      “I’m an old man now,” he repeats often, for having set his intellectual goals too low, he’s gone bankrupt. And he’s frightened. Suspects, perhaps, his “name is writ in water.” At least, with me listening, he is validated: I put him back in the picture.

      “Enjoy the city,” says the doorman as I set out on foot the next morning, determined to see what the real world looks like. And…well…there must be people who love what’s out here, the commercial tat, the chance of seeing a star, the movie-based kitsch, but for me, it’s only roaring traffic, noise, loud music, squat buildings, and un-loveliness. I try to imagine what this area looked like long before humans arrived with their warfare, temporary alliances, rites, and destruction. When this was a marshy plain, and the many sheltered lagoons were home to birds and unfamiliar water creatures; or when wolves, mastodons, bison, mammoths, short-faced bears, horses, and camels nibbled vast grasslands. But it’s a hopeless struggle.

      Everywhere is cement, rubbish, and an abysmal sky, thanks to cars, and nitrogen oxide emissions pumped out by oil refineries. Rising sea levels threaten coastal areas with flooding and erosion; the millions of people littering, spraying pesticides on their lawns, hosing off driveways, and cars are all contaminating run-off water; and the ocean, nearby creeks and rivers are bacteria-infested. Much of the plastic I see around me is completely unrecyclable — clamshell food packaging, black plastic trays, take-out containers, cold drink cups — and, these days, we can no longer ship it off to some faraway out-of-sight-out-of-mind exotic locale. Instead, in 2018, Los Angeles county alone sent more than half a million tons of plastic to four different landfills; another 20,000 tons of plastic went into its waste-to-energy incinerator.

      “You could come back here to live,” says Maria a little sadly. “Take up where you left off. DT would be so happy if you did.”
      But my bag is packed, and it’s with the springy and hasty steps of an escapee that I head for the bus station. I’m traveling east, on the lookout for the perfect place, the ideal community, the little paradise, the setting for a good story, although I know perfectly well such a place probably doesn’t exist.

      On the bus, the Mexican on the seat beside mine is a dishwasher. “I’m perfecting my English,” he says in perfect English. What’s the book in his hand? Orestes?
      I stare at him. “The play by Euripides?”
      He laughs at my surprise. “All you need is to want to learn.”

©2020 Jill Culiner All Rights Reserved
Long ago, J. Arlene Culiner set out to have a life of adventure, not one of security and comfort. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, traveled, by bus, train, car, or truck throughout North and Central America, Europe, and the Sahara, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, on a Dutch canal, in a haunted stone house on the English moors, and presently in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village. Her experiences in out-of-the-way communities with their strange characters and very odd conversations are incorporated into all her stories.
http://www.j-arleneculiner.com

A Writer's Words - Traveling with Mr. Bleaney

One Writer’s Journey: The Book Tour 

By Jill Culiner 

Episode Twelve: Traveling with Mr. Bleaney 

      I travel west with a sort of Mr. Bleaney — that’s not his real name, but it does pop into my head when I hear his story. I listen with some sympathy, too, for don’t we all sometimes fear we are Mr. Bleaney? The original Mr. Bleaney was a boarding house tenant in Philip Larkin’s 1955 poem, and he has nothing to show for his life than his presence in a shabby rented room:

But if he stood and watched the frigid wind

Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed

Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,

And shivered, without shaking off the dread

That how we live measures our own nature

      My own Mr. Bleaney, the one sitting beside me on the bus, was a former bricklayer, but he has just been fired from a caretaking job in an old folk’s residence because: “I was drunk on the job.” His grin is rueful. “Doesn’t matter because I hated the place anyway. Now I’m on my way to Washington for a cure paid for by my veteran’s pension. It’s not a bad place: I’ve been there a couple of times already.”
      He has been married four times, once for one day only. His next marriage lasted a month: “She was beautiful, a German, but on the first night, she tells me she already has a boyfriend. I tell her I’ll kill both of them if I ever see them together, so what does she do? She calls the police, and I go to jail. Later on, I met a few of her ex-boyfriends, and they all told me she was nuts.”
      Everything he owns in the world is in four shapeless bags. He’s sixty years old, but still hopeful, and disarmingly cheerful: “Life can only get better.”

***

      In Berkley, California where I’m to give my talk, the room is packed with people but the atmosphere is miserable.
      “The woman who was in charge of book talks just died yesterday,” her replacement informs me. “Everyone loved her, and they’re all here, seeking comfort.”
      Definitely not a book talk. But I soldier on — what else can I do? — then, go recuperate in a café across the road where a bird struts around the room as if his presence is perfectly normal.
      “Free Range,” says one local wit sitting in a corner.
      At a table beside mine, a man orders a full meal — hash browns, ham, three eggs, toast. He eats one egg, one piece of bread, throws his used napkin on the plate, pushes it away. The waste shocks me, reminds me of one early morning in the train station restaurant of Kosice, Slovakia, when five skinny gypsy children swarmed in, began shoving all the leftover food on plates and in rubbish bins into their mouths… until the waitress and cashier began screaming, threatening to call the police.

***

      In small-town northern California, things do get better. Here are sleepy streets and wooden houses. Squirrels leap from tree to tree, and huge self-confident birds peck like chickens. Even the coffee shop where I breakfast is right out of a 1950s movie: local cops sit at the counter chewing the fat with a chubby warm-hearted waitress, and plus-size cook. On the menu is the message: “Thank you so much for making our dreams come true. We love it here.”
      Ukiah, Willits, Petaluma, and Eureka: people show up for my talks. I’m wined and dined, driven to the coast for sightseeing, and I’m even asked to give another talk in a long-abandoned synagogue tucked into an empty, misty valley. This is what a book tour should be: exchanging ideas, meeting new people, seeing another way of life, and finding beauty.
      The area, the welcome, both make me want to pull up stakes, come live here immediately, wander each day along these tree-lined streets, eat good food, inhabit a frame house. However, in my life, this is just a stop along the way.

***  

      On the long journey up to Washington, I travel along roads I knew half-a-century ago. Where I once saw fields, there are ugly strip malls, chain stores, fast food joints, and the traffic is bumper-to-bumper. Look what we’ve done to the world.
      The woman responsible for book talks in the cultural center in Mercer Island is hostile. Clearly, she hates her job.
      “We don’t have much of a turnout for these things. Fifteen came to one last week, and that was a big crowd. Anyway, I’m on my way home.”
      Thank you, ma’am.
      The auditorium is huge… and empty: half-an-hour to go. A nice man comes in with fresh coffee for the crowds that will soon be pounding down aisles, but he’s looking at me with pity, as if he already knows this will be a dud. He leaves.
      The room is still empty when, at ten minutes after eight o’clock, an elderly couple shuffles in; they’re followed by a younger man in glasses, wearing a heavy overcoat. An audience, at last. The talk should have started ten minutes ago.
      “Good evening,” I say. The faces in that big space out there are unreceptive. Well, to quote Herodotus, neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night can stay me: the show must go on. So I give my very best to these three impassive people who never laugh, never smile, and never nod. At least there’s the possibility of selling two books, isn’t there?
      Half an hour later, I conclude, mention that a signed copy of my book is available for purchase. The man in the overcoat gets up and quickly exits. The old folks stand.
      “We didn’t come for this,” says the sour coot. “We came for a film about Brazil. We must be in the wrong room.”
      And the two of them shuffle up the aisle and disappear.
      Leaving me, and my suitcase of books in the empty auditorium. And, once again, I think of Mr. Bleaney.

©2020 Jill Culiner All Rights Reserved
Long ago, J. Arlene Culiner set out to have a life of adventure, not one of security and comfort. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, traveled, by bus, train, car, or truck throughout North and Central America, Europe, and the Sahara, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, on a Dutch canal, in a haunted stone house on the English moors, and presently in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village. Her experiences in out-of-the-way communities with their strange characters and very odd conversations are incorporated into all her stories.
http://www.j-arleneculiner.com

A Writer's Words - A Love Story (Of Sorts)

One Writer’s Journey: The Book Tour

By Jill Culiner

Episode Eleven: A Love Story (Of Sorts)

On the eventless road to Boise and my next book talk, a greasy-haired man runs the show. He’s seated up at the front, and the bus isn’t crowded, so we all get to hear his story… many times. Loquacious, he fondly adds detail as we travel along.

“My wife, she meets this guy on the internet, claims she’s in love. What happens next? The guy shows up at the house with a bow-kay of flowers. So what do I do? I chuck her out, that’s what I do. After eighteen years of marriage. A bow-kay of flowers, just think of that. Flowers, he shows up with, and she tells me it’s true love this time.”

Perhaps that man with the bow-kay looks a sight better than he does. Under a grubby baseball cap, his stringy hair is long, oily, and grey. He’s lanky, but his loose belly droops, and his mouth contains only one uneven cluster of teeth.

“Eighteen years of marriage and she goes for someone on the internet, just think of that. So what do I do? Chuck her out, that’s what I did. Then, what do I do next? Throwed my wedding ring out on the highway, throwed it all the way across.” He shakes his head dramatically. “Friend of mine, he says to me, ‘don’t feel sad, buddy. Come up to the country. Do some hunting and fishing,’ but I done somethin’ better.”

He pauses for dramatic effect, and even though we’ve heard the story several times over, we’re on tenterhooks, leaning forward in our seats, waiting for the punch line. Is he a great storyteller? Perhaps he is, in his sad loser way. He’s certainly got us all hooked, and that’s talent, isn’t it? Even the bus driver nods enthusiastically at each retelling.

“What I done was, met a woman on a telephone chat line. Fell in love on the phone, talked about everything, too, her and me, and the service only cost me $5.95. We’re gonna do plenty of things together. Buy a trailer, have animals, a cow, chickens, gonna travel. That’s what we both want. Travel all over. How’s that for only $5.95!”

Rather like a traveling circus, I think, but it’s his next sentence that keeps us riveted: “That’s where I’m goin’ now. On the way to meet her for the first time. We’re gonna start from here. Got everything I need with me, not goin’ back home no more, no way. She’s coming to meet the bus. Be inneresting. She don’t got no idea what I look like. Never seen a picture of her neither. Things like that don’t matter. What we talk about on the phone, that’s what counts.”

Shouldn’t he have washed his hair and his clothes for this momentous encounter? But, by now he has every single person on the bus rooting for him. We’re all full of good wishes and camaraderie. We want him to win this round…although, frankly, a positive outcome does seem unlikely.

The trip through the sunny afternoon’s bland landscape seems quite endless because we’re as impatient as he, waiting for the denouement. And then, finally, we arrive at a nowhere stop an hour or so outside of Boise. There isn’t a bus station of any kind, just parked cars, trucks, and a scrabble of scruffy vegetation. The bus slows. Our man stands, shrugs himself into his dirty leather jacket, slings his canvass hold-all over his shoulder, and peers out of the window.

“There she is. That’s her all right. I know it is.”

How? How does he know? There are a few stragglers out there, but standing still, watching the bus with what can only be described as fascinated intensity, is a big-boned, blond woman in polished cowboy boots and a snazzy fringed jacket. She has dolled herself up properly for the occasion, full makeup, beauty parlor hair. My heart sinks. What chance does this guy have? None. Standing beside her is a tall young man, probably her son: clever of her not to go this alone.

All of us on the bus have our noses pressed against the windows; you could hear a flea jump. We’re hold our breath, wait…

He gets out of the bus, saunters toward her, a stoop-shouldered, sloppy man. She’s staring at him, her face expressionless. Taking in the bad hair, the shabby clothes, the scruffiness, the hangdog expression. He stops when he’s right in front of her. Do they say anything? We can’t tell. They just stare at each other for a long minute.

Then, slowly, almost with resignation, but also an amused smile, the woman raises her arms, slings them around his neck and gives him a most gratifying hug.

We all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Some of us chuckle with pure satisfaction. The driver starts the bus, pulls out towards the highway and heads for the city. Love has won the day.

©2020 Jill Culiner All Rights Reserved
Long ago, J. Arlene Culiner set out to have a life of adventure, not one of security and comfort. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, traveled, by bus, train, car, or truck throughout North and Central America, Europe, and the Sahara, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, on a Dutch canal, in a haunted stone house on the English moors, and presently in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village. Her experiences in out-of-the-way communities with their strange characters and very odd conversations are incorporated into all her stories.
http://www.j-arleneculiner.com

A Writer's Words - Along the Road

One Writer’s Journey: The Book Tour

By Jill Culiner

Episode Ten: Along the Road

The bus is crowded, and the driver is a mean bitter man of biting humor and short temper: at the first stop, I notice he buys a book on handguns.

I have to share a seat with a blond woman: chewed-looking hair, a scarred nose, a slightly soiled, fringed leather jacket. She ignores me for a long while, perhaps irritated by this forced promiscuity, but at one of the many stops during the chilly night, we find ourselves standing together — I’m stretching my legs; she’s chain-smoking, stocking up on nicotine — and suddenly she’s chatty.

“I’m a nervous wreck because I’m angry.” Her name is Sherry, she’s forty-seven years old. Hers is a deep whiskey voice, warm, charming.

She’s on her way back to Arizona where she once lived, to get her son out of jail. “He was arrested along with my ex-boyfriend — he’s less than a year older than my son. They were both caught manufacturing and selling speed. The police went into the house and took away all the furniture, everything single thing because they claimed it was all bought with the proceeds of drug money, but that’s not true. It all belonged to me, and I want it back. The only things they didn’t get, is my collection of knives and my jewelry. I left those at a friend’s house, and I sent her money to ship it all back to me, but she never did. So now I have to check that out, too.”

“I’ll be giving that son of mine a piece of my mind,” she says once we’re back on the bus. She wants to sound stern, but her eyes express pure maternal adoration. “Believe me, when I get through with him, he’ll never do that again. Right now they’re keeping him in the county jail, not in prison, but there are fourteen people in a cell for six, and he was beaten up so badly by some Mexicans, his hand was broken in two places. But you know what? He probably asked for it: he has a big mouth.”

Yes, of course she knew they were selling drugs, that’s why she left. “My ex-boyfriend? He’ll get at least ten years.”

She doesn’t seem to consider that her son might not fare any better, even after adding (as though it’s an afterthought) that the two of them were also making bombs: the ex worked in a mine and had access to “materials.”

Neither shocked nor condemning, perhaps she is even proud of them. “I’ve led a pretty wild life, but what I’m gonna do now, is put that son of mine on a bus, and ship him to my ex-husband. He’s already raising my youngest son.”

There are, obviously, important details missing in this narrative.

Sherry has traveled all over Montana, and enjoys sharing the bits of information she’s picked up along the way: not surprisingly, all of it is pretty grim. She tells me about the Unabomber, Theodore John Kaczynski, responsible for sixteen mail bombs that killed three people and injured 23 before being denounced by his brother. A brilliant mathematician, a radical environmentalist opposed to modern technology, Kaczynski tried to get his academic essays published. But when they were rejected by two universities, he manufactured and delivered his first mail bomb. His victims were professors, the owner of a computer store, an advertising executive, airline company employees, and any other person he considered responsible for the wrongs of the industrial complex.

As we pass Butte, Sherry mentions the Berkeley Pit, a former open-pit copper mine now filled with more than 40 billion gallons of acidic water, heavy metals, and toxic chemicals that include copper, iron, arsenic, cadmium, zinc, and sulfuric acid. She laughs: “The Pit is now one of the only places in the world where you can go and pay to see toxic waste.” One mile long by half a mile wide, over 1,780 feet deep, in aerial photos, it is a huge black splotch.

“My present boyfriend told me all about it. He works twelve hours a day as a mine mechanic, so he knows.”
“Twelve hours?” Something like that is impossible in Europe these days.
“Sure, twelve hours a day is a lot, but many people work more. Folks out here are resigned to working all their lives.”

She had been married, “to a man who beat me up every time he was drunk. I was with him for twenty-eight years — ever since I was fifteen-years-old. Sure, I kept on dreaming about leaving, but dreaming about it is easier than actually doing it. Everyone around us knew what was going on, but no one helped, and anyway I always lied about everything. What else could I do? I was shit scared. Besides, beatings were all I’d ever known. But that isn’t the real reason I finally left: It was because I worked as a waitress for over twenty years, but my husband never worked at all. When I finally did leave him, he held a gun on me in the middle of town while the police tried to talk him out of killing me. I had to get a restraining order on him. Now he’s fine, though. He’s living in Seattle and doing a great job of raising our sixteen-year-old. I sent the kid up there when I went off with the ex-boyfriend, the guy who just got busted.

“But you know what? I’ve heard worse stories than mine. A couple of months ago, I was on a bus where there was a woman of around 18 with three kids. She’d just gotten out of the hospital and was too weak to carry the two babies, so I did it for her. Her husband had stabbed her sixteen times and she survived. Now she was on the run and terrified. The police hadn’t found her husband — he was still on the loose. And on TV, there was a woman who was shot by her husband. When I hear stories like that, I think about how easy my own life has been.”

In her own way, she is a good storyteller, and she certainly has charm. “These days, I buy antique china in garage sales and sell it on eBay. I do well, make good money, and my new boyfriend is really good to me. Things are great. Now it’s my turn to be taken care of. I’m not madly in love with him. It’s hard to learn to trust again, but he’s the one who forked out the money for this trip to Arizona.”

People are starting to look strange in this part of the world. There are cowboy hats galore, and crazy eyes, staring fatties with Mr. Clean looks and sneers, doubtful muttering characters with greasy long hair and knit caps. Sherry is getting twitchy, too. “I could do with a Tequila. What I like, is hanging around bars.” I notice her hands are trembling.

Of course, drinking is strictly forbidden on Greyhound buses: if a driver catches a whiff of alcohol, you are not allowed to continue on. But Sherry knows how to get around people, and our next driver is an easy man with a twinkle in his eye. During a one-hour layover, Sherry actually manages to convince him to drive us over to a nearby bar and restaurant where he’s planning to have dinner.

“Okay. I’ll take you with me. But you’ll have one drink, that’s it.” Sherry nods gratefully. And once we are seated in the noisy crowded dining space where smells are tempting, Sherry gulps down her drink as though it were water.

“I’ll be retiring in six years,” the driver tells us. “I know exactly what I’m going to do, too. My family came over from Prussia back in 1910. They took a train to Dakota and built themselves a house of stone, straw, and mud, right out there on the prairie. It’s a historic building, and it’s still standing today. Now it belongs to me because I just inherited it. And, out there on that prairie, that’s where you’ll find me.”

“I know what I want, too,” says Sherry. Her smile is dreamy, optimistic. “Once I get my son straightened out, I’ll start living. Maybe my new boyfriend and me will buy a trailer, start traveling around. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. My boyfriend does too. My ex-husband hated that idea.”

“Do you think you’ll miss driving a bus and being on the road?” I ask the driver.
“Might. You meet some odd people. Some good ones, too. And you sure see some pretty strange things.”
“Such as?”
“Well, once there was a couple having sex right there, on the back seat of the bus.”
“Really? What did you do?”
“What did I do? Hell! I watched them in the mirror. I had a great time, and I didn’t even have to pay a quarter.”

©2020 Jill Culiner All Rights Reserved
Long ago, J. Arlene Culiner set out to have a life of adventure, not one of security and comfort. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, traveled, by bus, train, car, or truck throughout North and Central America, Europe, and the Sahara, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, on a Dutch canal, in a haunted stone house on the English moors, and presently in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village. Her experiences in out-of-the-way communities with their strange characters and very odd conversations are incorporated into all her stories.
http://www.j-arleneculiner.com

A Writer's Words - Livingstone, Montana

One Writer’s Journey: The Book Tour

By Jill Culiner

Episode Nine: Livingstone, Montana

I decide to spend a few days in Livingstone, Montana, once a mining and railroading town. Tourism has now replaced those activities — not always happily, as one local informs me: “You can’t make the same money cleaning rooms that you could on the railway.” Trains still roll through, whistles blowing, making buildings tremble.

Livingston is a chic venue. Over the years, the famous, and well-heeled have dropped by, spent time, or taken up residence. It’s also a friendly place; complete strangers say hello to me on the streets, in bars, at restaurant counters. Perhaps I’m the only one who thinks this is unusual; in France, where I live, such easy camaraderie doesn’t exist.

The red brick buildings in the town center have been beautifully restored, but even back in 1883 Livingston drew the admiration of one enthusiastic traveler:
     “The town site is as flat as a billiard table, the streets are wide and straight. Concrete walks cover the entire city, and most of the streets are paved… it’s one of the finest looking towns in the northwest.”

But all that perfection was destroyed by fires in May, August, and November of 1885. When arson was suspected, vigilantes took matters into their own hands, warning the town’s worst elements to leave. Some did. Those who didn’t, were confronted by a posse of armed men dangling a rope: Livingston had no patience with bad boys. Further fires in 1886, and 1903 were caused by faulty electric street wiring.

I trudge through knee-deep snow, take back streets lined by bare trees, where wooden frame houses have lovely glass doors, and verandas with welcoming sofas and benches hint at summer nights, crickets, warmth — although such balmy days are hard to imagine at the moment.
     “Nice architecture,” I say to one man who is out here walking his fat brown dog.
     He nods. “They knew how to build in the old days. Back then, things were different. When rich folks moved in, they lived like everyone else. Nowadays, new folks with money build big pretentious places, vast ugly castles. They’ll only look better as ruins.”
     I laugh. He looks more closely at me. “Where you from?”
     “I live in France, at the moment.”
     He nods, moves off.

On South B Street although there’s nothing particular to see, just the usual parking lots, warehouses, businesses, and, further along, some modest houses. From 1890 until the 1920s, this was the town’s red-light district, where prostitutes, lap dogs on their knees, sat in windows backlit by that famous red.

Shopkeepers loved these “fallen angels” who spent their cash on furs, fans, and fancy clothes; but they were the bane of “good” townswomen who watched with jaded eyes, made sure they sat in the last rows in the theatre, and church. But perfumed, decked out in jewels and silks, the “angels” were very well behaved — their madams made sure of that. “Real ladies,” said one admiring (probably male) witness. Some married local boys and became respectable housewives.

The last houses of prostitution were closed at the end of WWII, after protests that they were too close to the local school. Many sadly said: “The town lost its color when the red lights went out.”

Human occupation of this area dates back to at least 11,000 years ago. When white explorers arrived with the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1805, the Nez Perce, Crow and Shoshone tribes were in residence, but European American settlement brought disease — almost half the population of the Crow died from smallpox and cholera — and disaster. The shameful Indian Removal Act of 1830, treaty violations, Supreme Court rulings that facilitated the spread of settlers, the encroachment of agriculture, the mass killing of bison by travelers, settlers, government agents — one hundred thousand were killed each year, and they were on the verge of extinction — pushed native peoples onto the hunting grounds of others, and resulted in warfare, and intertribal combat.

When silver was discovered on local Sioux land, prospectors paid no attention to treaties forbidding encroachment on tribal territory. Certainly, it would have been easy enough to get permission to access the mining area, but no negotiations were undertaken. Resentful Sioux finally attacked, destroying smelters, bridges, and stealing horses. The Montana Militia proposed a war on the “murdering savages,” both the Sioux and the Crow, although these last weren’t hostile. As one fur company clerk said in 1831, “The Crow, said to be thieves, rob but would never kill. If they killed us, we would never come back, and they would lose the chance of stealing from us.”

In 1867, a fighting force of six hundred men was organized, but the volunteers were mere renegades, outlaws, and horse thieves. Undisciplined and disloyal, in the first summer, a detachment of one hundred deserted at once, raiding the commissary, carrying off what they could. In winter, when provisions were scarce, and food vouchers useless, the men killed each other in quarrels, until more were murdered by each other than by Natives; their graves can still be found in Livingston.

In 1868, the survivors escaped, and they were replaced by regiments of the United States Army. However, instead of enforcing treaty regulations, the army provided ammunition to hunters who entered Native land and continued to slaughter buffalo.

In 1923, James H. Cook wrote in his book, Fifty Years on the Frontier as a Cowboy, Hunter, Guide, Scout, and Ranchman:
     “The American Indians of today who ever lived as their fathers before them, wild and free, are few and fast tottering into the long shadows of the sunset. Most of them are gentle enough now. They will eat almost anything, which the white man cares to give them. Some of them may still be called wild or hostile; but the most they ever do is to plead with the Great White Father at Washington for the little portion of their former land which is left to them — a residue which they see gradually being taken possession of by every means that white men of big and little interests can devise.”

Two and a half hours away is Yellowstone National Park, created by the geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden in 1871 who warned that “vandals who are now waiting to enter into this wonder-land, will in a single season despoil, beyond recovery, these remarkable curiosities, which have required all the cunning skill of nature thousands of years to prepare.”

One year later, the national park was created, but a swarm of poachers, squatters, tourists, and petty criminals came rampaging in. Army engineer William Ludlow reconnoitered the region in 1875, and reported: “The visitors prowled about with shovel and axe, chopping, and hacking, and prying up great pieces of the most ornamental geyser they could find; women and men alike joining in the barbarous pastime.”

Over the next fourteen years, game herds were slaughtered, trees were felled, homesteads were erected, and hot spring formations destroyed. Finally, the U.S. Army took charge of the park for the next thirty-two years.

Modern tourism — in 2018, over 4 million people visited Yellowstone — is still taking its toll on the park. According to the Idaho News, in the winter of 2000, 76,271 people entered Yellowstone National Park on snowmobiles, outnumbering the 40,727 visitors who came in cars, 10,779 in snow coaches, and 512 on skis. Snowmobile noise could be heard 70% of the time at 11 of 13 sample sites, and 90% of the time at 8 sites. At the Old Faithful geyser, snowmobiles could be heard 100% of the time during the daytime period, and the noise drowned out the sound of the geyser erupting.

Michael V. Finley, former superintendent of Yellowstone, protested against trout illegally dumped into Yellowstone Lake, poachers, and hostile ranchers who continue to slaughter bison for fear they might transmit disease to domestic livestock, and warned that the Crown Butte Mines Inc., two and a half miles from Yellowstone’s northeast boundary, would produce acidic waste rock that, when exposed to air and water, generates sulfuric acid and leaches heavy metals such as lead and cadmium into waterways and kills all life.

“Where you from?” asks the man with the long beard standing next to me in the bar.
     “Well, I live in France at the moment.”
     “France, huh. That’s the place where you’ve got all those Muslims blackmailing people. Why don’t you get rid of them all, throw them out of the country?”
     “That’s not exactly how democracy works…” I begin, but he’s not waiting for the rest of the sentence.
     “I’ll tell you what the problem is over here in the USA. They never tell us anything. We never find out what’s going on in other countries.”
     “Yeah,” says another man, short, grizzled, standing beside him. “Ain’t that the truth, too. My friend Bill? He told me he met an Iraqi, a well-educated man, a perfectly normal person. You don’t imagine that kind of thing.”
     “You know,” says long beard, “we Americans, we only go to war to help people out.”
     “Like in Viet Nam? Laos? Cambodia? Cuba? Grenada? Iraq?”
     He chews that over for a minute or two. “Well, we just have our pride, I guess.”

Another man, handsome, charming, runs a local bookshop. He asks where I’m from.
     “I live in France, at the moment.”
     He nods, not really all that interested. He used to be a high roller in New York, but he threw up the pressure and the success for life out here. “I have my horses and my bookshop. Life is good.”

He specializes in local history, although none have been written by Native Americans. “The ones who leave the reservations and go to university? They get into the intellectual sphere and don’t come back.”
     “What’s life like on the reservations now?”
     “The Crow reservation is rich, large, and the Crow are well-traveled people. Some have been all over the world, but then they come back here. That’s the negative side of close-knit family ties and tribal connections; they make it difficult to stay away, even when life could be better elsewhere.

“On the reservation, everyone is caught up in petty jealousies and fights — one extended family against another, everyone hating another’s success — so nothing progresses the way it should, and nothing functions. The nearby Cheyenne reservation is much poorer, but there’s none of the in-fighting, and the reservation works very well. Over there, they call the Crows apples — red outside, white inside — because of their cow-towing and demands upon Washington in the past and the present, too.”

I notice that, although everyone is extremely friendly and willing to confide, chat, share their opinions, buy me drinks, and give me the feeling I’m welcome, absolutely no one has asked me a question, other than the one about where I live. No one is in the least bit curious about my life, my interests, my work, my destination, my background, or my pet dog and his fleas. Not that it matters: I’m not here to stay.

A soldier is standing behind me in the line in the bus station where we’re waiting to pass through the metal detector, just in case someone has an itchy trigger finger or is particularly fond of knives.
     “Where d’you come from?” asks the soldier.
     “I live in France at the moment.”
     “Oh, yeah? Me, I’m proud to be an American. Life’s different here. Aggression’s not part of the American way of life. I don’t even lock my door at night. Sure, crime’s just the result of people not getting work, but the criminals all come from other countries. You know, places like South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East. They’re not Americans. There’s very little violence in the USA.”
     I stare at him in pure astonishment. “The gun-related murder rate is twenty-five times higher in the United States than any other developed nation.”
     “Where do you get crap information like that? There are far more murders in Germany and Japan than there are here.”
    “Of course there aren’t.” Although I have no statistics available, I know that Germany is far safer than the USA, and Japan has one of the lowest murder rates in the world.
     “I know what I’m talking about,” he insists. “Japan is ripped apart by gun wars. I’ve been around, I know a lot. I’m a history buff; I eat the local food in all the other counties; I make an effort. I even learn how to speak other languages. For example, I can speak real good Japanese.”
     “Can you? Say something to me in Japanese.”
     “Like what?”
     “For example, how do you say ‘hello’ in Japanese?”
     He stares at me. Wheels turn in his head, but they go slowly. “Well, I can’t remember exactly. You sort of forget when you’re not there.”

When I finally take a seat on the bus, I make sure I’m very far away from him.

©2020 Jill Culiner All Rights Reserved
Long ago, J. Arlene Culiner set out to have a life of adventure, not one of security and comfort. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, traveled, by bus, train, car, or truck throughout North and Central America, Europe, and the Sahara, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, on a Dutch canal, in a haunted stone house on the English moors, and presently in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village. Her experiences in out-of-the-way communities with their strange characters and very odd conversations are incorporated into all her stories.
http://www.j-arleneculiner.com