Beatnik

In the 80's I was obsessed with Jack Kerouac and The Beat Generation. By luck and circumstance, while living in Paris, I got to know several of the original, still-living beatniks, especially the great jazz poet Ted Joans, who I met at Shakespeare Book Co. I somewhat adopted him and him me. He then "Teducated" me into the world of Beatniks. Through him, I got to meet Ferlinghetti, Peter Orlovsky, Ginsberg, Corso, Schnabel... and though most have all recently passed on, I will never forget when I moved to NY, and Ted was staying with me. I would be in awe to come home and find my answering machine full with these guys voices leaving messages for Ted. Although all the talk ever revolved around was eating food and where to get food...nothing literary, artistic, or Beat, or even interesting...just burgers or chicken... that's the extent of depth I ever got out of any encounters. But Ted was a truly great friend, and I recently came across a eulogy and poem of mine dedicated to his passing...(reminded by my friend Wolfgang)...so here is my beat-style dedication to his death in 2003...

Ted Joans outside the strand 1995 

from "Ted Joans Lives"


The Beat Beat Beat...! Listen! Can you hear it? I hear him now that old Ted Joans. I hear the beat, beat, beat,.. the beat of the heart. I hear the sound of all them hep-cats and hipsters hanging out under the big drunk sky, following that one-way celestial highway, swaying to the dharma, the bum, the tenor sax and trumpet blowin blues with those big beautiful black lips, the bird flappin ol Charlie Parker on a cloud calling you home, the click click of the mimic and mockery of a generation. And there he goes leaving us his dreams, now revisited through the eyes of fallen angels and saints, now leaving us sad angels in search of our own eternal freedom and love. now leaving us lookin for home in the sweat stained cities on old earth, now "teducated" from NYC to Timbuktu. and there he goes that old Ted Joans, leaving this old earth and karma riding on the back of the great Rhino. there he goes 'on the road" down that Beat road...can you hear it, that beat beat beat???
                                                                   Jimmy Bruch

Me and Ted 12th st apt

last days of August

  It seemed there hadn’t been anything new to do for several days now, and summer was almost over. Just the thought of the end of summer was hard to accept in itself. That thought was more than enough to make you agitated with a dreaded panic of time running out. There was no way to ignore the reality that it was now August, and not only did that mean the end of summer, but it was the hottest time of year, and Lord knows, around here, you can’t just beat the devil out of this heat with a stick. It will win every time.

            We were by no means lazy, and it’s not like we didn’t already spend hours on end thinking long and hard about things to do, but by the day's end, we still came up with next to nothing. Even the creeks had become too murky and dried up to swim in. And with little money, we were, for the most part, stuck inside.

              Most Summers, we could usually find an odd job here and there for pocket money, maybe a few quarters banging out tire rims at Crumley’s store, but we knew the situation was nearing a dreadful dire state when even crazy old man Wayne, who every summer would pay us a lousy fifty cents a bail, split four ways when bailing his lousy hay for him, even though it was too damn hot to be outside, and God knows that old ‘coot’ would work a mule to death on any Sunday and Christmas even if lightning was striking down.

               I pretty much grew up with this heat and have as much respect for it as the next person, but for some people, it affects us a lot worse than others, and that’s when this ruckus started that finally gave us the final jolt, causing us to get up and out of the house. It was clear that our leaving for sure had less to do with our anxious boredom, but more likely, it was the unforeseen mad commotion when Billy’s big sister took a loaded rifle and shot at her own relentless barking dog right through the heart of the front screen door. Luckily she was half blind and missed the damn dog, but the bullet left a perfect hole in the screen that Billy poked and twisted his finger in as we left nervously, laughing and tripping over each other.            

            “Damn Janette, you are crazy, girl!” chuckles Billy as he ducks while pushing me off the front porch spilling an entire full cup of Kool-Aid. I was clenched and tensed all the way down the gravel drive, weaving and giggling nervously until I was sure I was far enough away not to get shot in the ass. She would never actually shoot at us (I don’t think), but my body still got all goosed up and jittery in anticipation, anyway.

Menchaca Bar

      ...We strolled back outside, sat down against the gas pumps, and leaned back enough to get a little shade from the overhang. I took a big swig of my cold Pepsi to make some room to fill it with my peanuts. The fizz burned nice and cold all the way down the back of my throat, and I could have drunk ten more of them.

            I poured the peanuts too fast into the bottle, causing it to foam and shoot up like a volcano, spilling most of it on the ground. I moaned watching it soak into the chalky dirt.

            I looked around again, mostly to confirm that it was Billy’s daddy’s truck that I saw when we first walked up. I could see it was still there, parked at the local dive bar across the way.

   We sat a while longer and watched a stream of dusty beat-up trucks slowly roll in, one after another. It was getting to that time of day.  There were very few cars on the road, mostly trucks and nothing new except a big dually pickup that must belong to one of the Reiner boys, whose family raised most of the rodeo stock around here. Before it even came to a full stop, a couple of local alley whores appeared out of nowhere and made their way over to the passenger window like hungry scavengers and beggars.

             Time was of its own essence, so it felt. It seemed not so much slowed or stopped but rather more warped in a strange and odd way as if this place revolved in its own universe where life moved too fast and the days too slow. I felt I was no part of it at all on most days and once again found myself sitting here feeling like I was watching a movie.

            Billy’s daddy had probably been here from just past noon for the sole reason that they won’t sell you liqueur until past then anyway on Sunday to keep anyone from showing up at church drunk.

            Nevertheless, looking across the street at the busted neon, I was thinking, It could be any damn time of day and I still wouldn’t understand why anyone ever wanted to go in that poor excuse for a bar, especially in the daylight.

            This was a far cry from the Broken Spoke. It was less sturdy than a trailer house and was pretty much just four plywood walls on a concrete slab. There were clearly no windows except a cutout hole with a dripping noisy air conditioner sticking its rusty ass out of it. The ceilings were so low inside that you had to take your hat off to keep from knocking into the neon beer signs hanging everywhere. Most of the beat-down vinyl tile floor was covered by a pool table that was tattered, torn, and full of beer stains and cigarette burns. I can’t believe the place had never burned down, with the walls covered from floor to ceiling with these beer posters from the distributors. They piled up over the years in layers on the walls, sufficiently used as cheap insulation and a way to cover the mildew and brown asbestos water stains that were everywhere. It was dangerously one big fire hazard like being in a paper mache box with that yellow bug zapper in the back acting as a match almost torching the place every few seconds a bug flew at it....

Broken Spoke

FM 1626

....With no clouds anywhere in sight, our skin was now starting to bake and pulse under the glaring overhead sun. I was hoping for more cars to drive past. Cars, and especially trucks, would always fly by fast and so close to the shoulder, in a jolting blur, to stir up just enough of a breeze to give some relief to the sweltering heat radiating off the black asphalt on this lonely curving turn. I found myself constantly listening for the oncoming engines in the distant, most of which faded as they continued north or south on Interstate-35,  just a mile east from here.
Adapting to the heat by waiting and hoping for cars to pass for relief, was no more than a kind of evolution of survival in itself, but also made it easy to ignore the apposing paradox and the danger that came with this stretch of road and speeding vehicles, which became ever more present and clear all around us, especially when within every fifty yards or so, we would come upon a road kill on one side of road or the other on the gravel shoulder. We would know beforehand by the familiar stench that would intensify the closer we got, and with the sighting of one or more lazy turkey buzzards sitting up high on a telephone pole. Sure enough, when the smell couldn’t get any more ripe, we would look in the distance or ditches to see a portion of some hairy carcass, usually an opossum or bloated raccoon. The squirrels and frogs were always flattened right in the center lane like pieces of cardboard that we sometimes would fling in the air like a Frisbee. We actually saw one dead dog today with its collar still on. I didn’t recognize him, and couldn’t bring myself to go down through the long buggy weeds to read the tags. It’s sad seeing someone’s pet like that, but all too common. Nothing ever stood much of a chance crossing this soulless road. Cars raced as fast as they could along these stretches. Often at around midnight, on any given Friday, you could always see two or more fools drag racing this exact quarter mile of FM 1626, that went from the baseball ball fields, and down to the first turn in the road which was measured exactly to the sign that read, ‘San LeAnna, population 210’.

This day felt like it was not ending no time soon enough for any living thing, but you have to do what you gotta do to get to anywhere around here. It was becoming more still and silent along the road the further up we got except for the mesmerizing familiar sound of the summers end, echoing in the distant from the rarely seen cicadas that seemed to buzz and shrill from all directions in a synchronized harmony that, at times, escalated to a piercing level that eerily seemed to surround and follow us every step of the way. I found it amusing that I could momentarily silence them all at once for miles around with a single hollering yelp and loud clap. It was almost like magic, and I did this several times to be sure and convince myself I was the one controlling it....

        All along the way, I helped pass the time by swatting the flower tops off weeds with a long willow branch i picked up. I was so good at it, I could swing the stick with a precision slicing motion, lopping off just the tops, exploding apart their dusty yellow, and white balls of pollen, like bursting fireworks. Each time I did this, a dozen or more grasshoppers would always zip up in the air like little rockets flying in a zooming blur, with the buzz of their wings rapidly clicking and whistling in all directions. Meanwhile, Billy would momentarily stop and search for perfect rocks that he would throw half-heartily, trying to hit telephone poles or the butt of the unassuming, silent, cows, standing motionless just beyond the fences. After several lame misses, he would laugh hysterically when he finally hit anything, especially a cow. We both had reckoned that if Johnny would have been here with us, he would have hit everything he threw at, dead on, bulls eye, first throw, every time. I once saw Johnny hit a flying swallow out of the air, which is next to impossible to do, even with a shotgun. A gifted talent, that had more than one scout coming to our baseball games to see Johnny pitch with his crazy left handed side arm, that was the closest thing to being an underarm pitch that i had ever seen. You couldn't teach a pitch like that, and you damn sure couldn't fix it. Even crazier, is that Johnny also never had a right hand glove. He couldn't afford a new glove and no one had one to borrow, so he used a lefty with just his thumb and two fingers holding it on. Strange as it looked, it never once got in the way of stopping a hard hit ball. It really was a little sad and comical to watch, but also pretty amazing thing to witness.

 
We were heading over to see Johnny, if we ever get there. It seemed to be taking forever. it didn't take long before we had barely gotten out the door that we were already wishing we had ridden our bikes instead of walking in this heat, and we would have most likely been there by now, but of course they all had flats that no one took the time to fix for weeks now. We sometimes would ride our horses between houses, but it was way too hot to try and chase down any of Billy’s old stubborn ass horses, that were shading somewhere deep in the backfields, and besides, they were way too smart to come running to us for the old 'gravel in a bucket' trick, which left us in a situation that annoyed me now enough to try his patience by telling him,” I told you once before Billy, if we were at my house I could have simply whistled for my horse,  and she would come running and wagging, like I was calling my dog. We should send that old mare of yours to the glue factory."

  
About that same moment, before i could say anymore, from far across the field, i actually caught a glimpse of a lone figure on a horse, unlike either of ours. "Check it out Billy" Even at a distance, all I had to see was that beautiful dark wavy hair that flowed with the smooth timely gallop of her impressive pristine perfect horse to know it was one of the Carter sisters.
There was a freedom in their synchronized movement which begged not to be disturbed or halted.We were too far away to do either anyway. It didn't actually matter. She could have been just across the road and wouldn't have noticed us.
The Carter girls were not only a little older but way out of our league and from a world of a different class, or so they seemed. Perhaps they were not that at all but I envied them as if they were. For now they remained a mystery
     Even their Colonial country style house with towering eaves and hedged white picket fences, like those on polo fields, seemed remotely out of place although i think theirs was the oldest house around here.
      My family, though well enough off, were cut from such a broad liberal cloth bordering on being hippie civil rights activists and reformist intellectuals that demonized anyone believing in social ranking that instilled an insecurity that intimidated me in such a pesence.
The truth is I, or anyone else that I knew, had really no idea at all what the Carter family were about. To me, their untouchable nature seemed more alluring than arrogant, maybe even shy. They had a beautiful refined elegance about them, especially Sherry, who I could tell was riding now. I had seen her several times in the same way at a distance along these same roads on one of her quarterhorse thoroubreds. Once, by chance she had , most likely by accidental curiosity, ended up riding through our property where she passed me close enough on our road to relinquish only a simple apologetic smile and then road off in a hurry but her smile lingered long after she was gone. For now, they were still a mystery as I watched her again ride away, in the same way, disappearing in the tree line leaving me with overwhelmed curiosity...

Pure as Gold

...On what was arguably the slowest, most sweltering day of Summer, a few of us stood around watching amusingly as Billy Joe staggered back with a half-spin on his heels, arms like a windmill, nearly going end over end, miraculously catching himself before face-planting. Now, it wasn't all solely on account of the square punch he just took to the jaw, although Frank had landed it clean- but I figured this was more because of being drunk off some cheap Mexican wine we'd swiped out of Pop's truck. None of us rushed to steady him. We all knew Billy could take a hit like a bull and easily whip any one of us at any time,  even all of us at the same time if he wanted to. 

 

Billy, though, didn't even pretend to try and fight back, he just tilted his face up to the sun, blood tricking from his lip, he closed his eyes and laughed so hard it shook his whole body. Billy wobbled and teetered, the crimson red against his dark skin, but kept from toppling by grabbing his knees, that belly laugh of his echoing like church bells and raining glass in a ghost town. We all couldn't help but laugh by now. Whatever madness or joy he felt at that moment, be it the wine, the sunshine, or just Billy being Billy, it was downright contagious. I grinned ear to ear-figured it was some kind of fun, if you could call it that. 

Frank and Billy were just horsing around, same as always, although Frank was obviously pulling no punches. Frank would watch boxing and wrestling all day on TV and then try to show us the moves he picked up. He got pretty dang good over time, and he always got mad when I told him wrestling was fake. I couldn't even tell ya how this particular scrap got started. Fights broke out every time we managed to sneak some booze. We always had boxing matches, but it was all good fun, or so we told it. I  didn't care too much for fighting and didn't ever find fun in getting punched for no good reason. But today, I kind of enjoyed seeing Billy feeling no pain, or whatever you want to call this horse sense of delightful madness he was dancing in, and be it because he was drunk or not, I just leaned back on a fender. I watched both perplexed and amused as a dog chasing its tail, pure slapstick and nonsense, and no one gets hurt.

Just as I decided it was time to break the show up, I took a glance through the trees, hoping to see Frank's sister Katrina out on the porch where they had the washing machine. Instead of beautiful Katrina in her denim cutoffs, I saw that dang rodent of a boy, Junebug, and his stupid self, come out of nowhere, sliding up beside me, clutching a damn rooster that looked as miserable as he did. I stretched my neck to see around my view he was blocking. He limped up all fidgety and annoyed and stood there shuffling and pouting while stroking this ugly bird he had half buried under his arm. He started mumbling and whining, stompin' left and right, "Y'all come on now! Y'all all said we were gonna fight roosters today! Y'all just left without telling me!" his derelict voice was as grating as his buckteeth on a chalkboard. To be fair, we had left him back at the house and told him to catch his rooster, though we had no intention of waiting around for him.

It wasn't uncommon around here to have cock fights. You would hear of them, but mostly on the weekend, late afternoon on Sundays.

June bug toted that rooster wherever he went, and for the life of me, it seems we could never shake this dumb kid, he always shows up out of nowhere, buzzing around like an ugly mosquito. I thought my cousin Mike was about to swat him and, instead, thumped his cigarette at him.

 I gave him a sideways glance and instantly regretted it. He was standing so close I could smell the sourness of him. I winced at how pathetic he was, and the fact that he was standing way too close to me almost got my temper to flair. I bit back my words, I didn't even answer and just shook my head.

That scrawny bones and feathers of a rooster he was carrying were not even worth boiling. It was missing half its feathers and its leathery red chopped-off comb, probably done with a rusty blade or lid to a tin can. One of its eyes was clearly infected and tearing up and oozing.  Junebug himself was just as pitifully unsightly. I was close enough to see lice in his matted hair, snot dried and smeared across his face, spittle and skoal juice dripping from the corner of his mouth, and his own crusty pinkeye, which I would bet a dollar he got from that damn bird. Didn't even ask why he was wearing a corduroy jacket in a hundred degrees. If you didn't know better, you could be sure he was dropped on his head or something. I might have slapped him upside his head myself, except for the crusty scab and yellow wax in plain sight on his ear.

At that exact moment, I heard a loud smack that cracked through the air as Frank delivered a solid blow to Billy's right cheek. I turned just in time to see him fall in slow motion, dropping to his knees while still gazing at the sun and smiling ear to ear as wide as a watermelon slice. It was as golden as the hint of his shiny,  gold tooth glistening in the bright sun. The last words he must have heard were, "Come on now, y'all! Quit foolin' around, let's fight these roosters!"...