On Tuesday nights, at 6:30 pm, featured entertainment at Crazy Canuck’s is crab races. The races are a fundraiser for local schools and charitable groups and give locals and visitors another reason to drink, dance, socialize, relax.
Number 57 is halfway across the obstacle course on a prison break before Kevin, our master of ceremonies, wearing a red crab hat and holding a microphone, catches him and carefully slips him back under an upside down champagne bucket in the center of the ring.
The first race begins late, after announcements, when Kevin lifts the upside down champagne bucket again and the crabs move, from being under the bucket, towards a rope perimeter that forms a circle around them on a big plywood game board resting on the sand.
The crowd is excited and some gamblers rush the platform to support their pick.
It is illegal to touch or step on the board but you can yell, flash lights, move hands and arms up and down to influence the race outcome. The winning crab is the one who crosses the rope at any point in the rope circle around them.
At the end of this first race, Daryl provides live music while losers come up with a different strategy for the next race and try to handicap the crabs that will be running next.
It is all in good fun and none of the crabs, tonight, end up on anyone’s plate.
Number 57, my pick for the first race, never crosses the rope line, and, as far as I’m concerned, can go into tomorrow’s soup.
If I were really lucky, Stephanie Kennedy, the ” Belizian Temptress ” would come through the door and try her temptation on me.
My defenses have been pretty weak the last few days.
Every Anthony has his Cleopatra.
nnnnnn.
Ak’Bol was built into a business by a couple who came to Belize twenty years ago with a dream of nature, health, spirit, and capitalism. The entrance is not well announced and if you are driving you will zip right past in your sprint for bigger resorts on the north tip of Ambergris Caye. Along the new paved road north, Ak’Bol just has a simple sign, is a clearing in the jungle down a winding shady path to the Yoga Retreat.
Sitting at the breakfast bar is a mix of young and old, long hair and no hair, hippie chicks and old men with pony tails who never let the sixties loose.
I talk with a young woman who stands as she eats eggs benedict and tells me about her inner child and achieving adult battles and her boyfriend who is from Taos, likes to fish, and is on the pier in the moment.
A couple to my right are checking e mails, Facebook, Google and nursing health drinks.
The Ak’Bol menu has a section for drinks with alcohol, if you want them, and the coffee is Guatemalan. It is a natural setting and, checking their website, affordable. Visitors seem friendly to talk with like minded souls. Food is moderately priced, and judging from empty plates- good.
On my American Airlines flight from Dallas to Belize City I overheard a local telling visitors about places they might like to check out on the island.
” Ak’Bol is very good, ” he said. ” The food is wonderful and the people are nice and the pier is a good place to snorkel the reef. ”
I can see, on this visit, that reconciling your inner child and achieving adult is a herculean task for which yoga and eggs benedict is the best answer.
It turns out to be a good hike.
There are less than 10 walkers this morning but numbers will grow to over twenty five as tourist season picks up.
One of the most difficult tasks is learning names of the group so I make myself crutches. Dean has a goatee, Dale has a pony tail, Charlie has sand flea bites, Eric smokes a cigar, John has big glasses and likes to tell jokes, Scotty brought his dog and is sometimes called Eric, Dino walks with a limp and has to ride a golf cart, Larry has a blue baseball cap, Rabbit looks like he just came out of Alice in Wonderland. Alan is a quiet guy with a mustache.
This expedition the pace is slow, you drink at your own speed, people talk about who is on the island, who is coming to the island, who left the island. There is discussion about a man who got himself stabbed to death but it was ruled an accident, officially. Unofficially, he slept with the wrong someone. There is talk about how cold it is in Canada, appointments to get wi fi, prices paid to rent on the beach so you get a good breeze and don’t need air conditioning. Sports is covered, politics is quickly dismissed as a fool’s game, and your personal issues remain fair game even if you don’t bring them up.
We leave at eleven in the morning and don’t get back till five in the afternoon. We walk more than two miles, visit four bars, have lunch at one, and all hands are safely accounted for.
I’m going next Wednesday and will wear my official T shirt.
I don’t have to read newspapers to learn news that counts in San Pedro Town.
When local rancher Mack Brazell found extraterrestrial debris on his ranch and reported it to the local Sheriff a Pandora’s box was opened.
The local Sheriff called the local Air Force Base and a whirlwind of misinformation, disinformation, cover up was begun.
The Roswell Incident is known around the world, and, at its epicenter, Roswell has a museum dedicated to UFO’s and alien visits from that summer of 1947.
On Sunday, when people should be in church, inquisitive souls browse this museum, watch a Hollywood movie on ” Roswell “, snap pictures to post to their Facebook page.
The story, as told, is one of an alien crash and dead alien bodies. Mack reported strange metal scraps strewn over the desert with strange inscriptions that were impervious to destruction and, when squeezed, returned to their original shape. A mortician reported small bodies with four fingers and large eyes. There were sworn deathbed statements that documented unearthly events.
Official reports promoted weather balloons.
It is a question of faith in the absence of facts. Participants in the event have died, committed suicide, or told survivors what they saw, or did, or knew.
I wrestle with thinking versus intuition.
The explosion of technology, after 1947, is significant. The automobile was still a youngster on the block.. Television was barely into living rooms of the most wealthy. Then, after 1947, you get exponential scientific breakthroughs.
What our government is working on, in secret, is beyond this planet.
Did Einstein sit up nights discussing the universe with green men?
There used to be a small stream here that meandered down the hill and went over the edge of the canyon and fell into a deep dark hole below us.
The land’s owner built himself an observation platform, erected a light pole, and built a water wheel that generated electricity to power the light. The chances were good that no one would be out at night and walk over the cliff and fall into the chasm, but it was a place he could bring guests and have a beer as they watched the water wheel turn, throw rocks into the dark and listen to them splash at the bottom on hot summer nights.
There is no water coming down the hill now so the water wheel is stopped, its blades providing climbing opportunities for vines and weeds. Insect webs reach across the gap between blades and the generator is rusting. The water wheel was built with welded iron arms, bolted wood planks, and pieces cut from old tractor tires. The hub of the wheel is a rim off a car.
On a ranch, people get used to making stuff. It keeps them interested and uses junk that accumulates.
This wheel is a John Currie creation. He and Uncle Hugh always tinkered with junk piled in the corner of a barn or discarded in a pasture filled with weeds, dead brush, and cow chips.
Water wheels are old technology.
They will be resurrected at the next big reset in human history.
Popsicle’s have been with us as long as I have been on this planet.
Back when my shoes were size five, we neighborhood kids would hear music marching down our street and see a big white ice cream truck with black speakers mounted on its roof. It was playing happy music on a dreadfully hot summer afternoon.
The truck stopped in front of our house as we stood out front with coins in our little fingers. It wasn’t a glamorous job for the drivers, but, then, people worked to pay their bills.
Grown men with two day beards were paid one to two bucks an hour to drive the truck and sell us treats. They smoked Marlboros or Lucky Strikes and had anchors tattooed on their right forearms. They took our money with a smile and always gave us back the correct change. A radio hanging from the truck’s rear view mirror played Patsy Cline or Hank Williams.Some of the men had fought on the battlefields in Europe and the Pacific.Others were just drifters.
The Popsicle’s were all flavors. You could get cherry, lime, orange, banana, pineapple, and half a dozen more tastes..The ice cream in the freezers was vanilla, chocolate, chocolate chip plus lime or orange sherbet for those who didn’t like ice cream. There were also ice cream concoctions covered with chocolate that were popular – Eskimo Pies, Dilly Bars, Ice Cream Sandwiches.
When you finished your Popsicle you were left with a stick and a joke.
” What is the most musical part of a turkey? (The Drumsticks)
” What did the horse say to the angry cow? (What’s your beef?)
” What is the mouse’s least favorite weather? ( When it rains cats and dogs)
” What do you call a girl in the middle of a tennis court? ( Annette)
Popsicle’s are still sticking around though I never see the trucks in neighborhoods anymore.
What is touching is the generation of kids that bought them from a white truck in front of their home during summer vacation now have gray hair, walk with a cane, or need oxygen to keep them going.
The popsicle jokes are still funny to me even if my gray hair isn’t.
Golden Pride in Albuquerque sells fried chicken, Bar- B- Que, burritos, red and green enchiladas, and, of course, a world famous cinnamon roll drowning on a plate in butter and icing.
This black vehicle is parked in front of the East Central Route 66 location and comes equipped with literature, philosophy, and Biblical principles.
On the hood, the trunk, door panels, and bumpers is wisdom from the past. Good ideas are good regardless of the century and continent they were penned.
Mark Twain has his own special way with words and ideas. The Bible is clear on its central points – Men are Sinners, Mankind has fallen, Temptation is Satan’s favorite game, Redemption is possible, Death can be conquered, Jesus is the Savior.
Inside Golden Pride, I try to pinpoint the owner of this moving book but it could be most anyone in the restaurant.
New Mexico is odd that way. You can have a millionaire and a bum sitting at the same table and you can’t tell, from outward appearances, which one has the money.
Diving into my cinnamon roll, it is certain that Mark Twain, as much as the Holy Bible, comes up with ideas I wish I had thought of.
Thinking about the kind of person who would write on a car makes my lunch go better than normal.
This cinnamon roll has just the right amount of butter and icing, ordering two would just not be right, so I concentrate on the poetry of ideas..
One thing I wouldn’t write on my car, for sure, is my phone number.
Anonymity has great advantages.
Driving back roads through flat dry West Texas prairie, one comes upon mule deer grazing among mesquite trees.
They look at you as you pass with dark intense eyes. They are always aware, can turn quick and be gone even quicker, leap over barbed wire fences like child’s play. Deer are handsome animals with deep set eyes, black noses, and ears that are their security. They move freely between Palo Duro Canyon and the ranch and farmland on top where it is windy and exposed and people live.
Turkeys are harder to call handsome.
This afternoon a group of gobblers appear in the back yard and Alan feeds them lunch. When he reaches into his bucket, grabs a handful of corn and pitches it onto their prairie table, they don’t scatter.
He has been feeding them for months and now they come up to his house, onto the back porch, and peer into his living room.
He calls them his “Peeping Tom’s”.
Animals and people now have relationships. Wild animals have become less wild, less something we eat, more something we befriend.
Still, animal’s are wise to be cautious. Human’s easily do inhuman things in a heartbeat.
Nature in the canyon is never far away, and neither are humans.
In Canyon, Texas there is a relic from the fifties that overlooks the freeway that plows through town.
This giant statue of a cowboy is known as “Big Tex”. He has been here as long as townspeople can remember and civic leaders have started a fundraising effort to save him from the dust bin.
The story goes that he used to be associated with a western clothes store that has since been torn down. The owner let Big Tex stay on the property because it would have cost too much to remove him.
Big Tex used to have all his fingers and real levi’s specially made for his twenty foot legs. He used to have a shiny hat and you could see a twinkle in his eyes. Tethered down with pipe, like a Gulliver, the elements and time have taken their toll and he needs a new wardrobe and a new lease on life.
The most recent notch on his gun came when Sports Illustrated dropped by for a visit and had one of their models pose with him for their famous “Swimsuit Issue”. What sports and swimsuits have in common is selling magazines and generating interest. Lots of Texans like their sports and lots of Texans like their swimsuit models. Put them together and you have a rising revenue line.
I think I see one of his fingers move when I am taking his photo, but, on a second glance, decide it is just my imagination.
Life, often, gets a whole lot bigger than imagination.
Before you reach Amarillo, following I-40, you look to the right and see a series of Cadillac’s stuck in Texas dirt in the middle of an unplowed field.
In the old days the Cadillac’s used to be natural, like they came from the factory. They had huge fins, power windows, custom paint jobs, real rubber tires, chrome that would make any car buff salivate. You looked out in the field and the vehicles looked like they had come back down to Earth, like errant arrows, and buried themselves into the soil as far as their momentum would carry them.
On most days you see tourist cars clustered by a little turnstile and see tourists themselves following a wide path out to the cars where they pose for pictures, touch the cars to see how they feel, kick where real tires used to be. The Cadillac’s have been covered with so much graffiti that they are now hardly recognizable.
At the entrance to this entertainment is a little sign that informs you that ” This is not a National Park, Pick up your own Trash.”
This diversion is a brainstorm of an eccentric Texas oil man, Stanley Marsh. There have been not so nice rumors about his sex habits but he was a patron of the arts and how often does anyone create a Texas Landmark that has ended up in coffee table books all over the U.S.? It is unknown exactly what snapped in this man’s mind when he was having barbecue ribs on his back porch shooting Lone Star beer cans with a 45 pistol, but now we have a lasting spectacle that wasn’t here before his epiphany.
Men do all kinds of crazy things and, for the most part, they don’t need a reason. In Texas, the Lone Star State, you are still free to speak your piece and act out your fantasy’s.
If everyone buried a Cadillac halfway into their backyards, we wouldn’t be standing here taking pictures, shaking our heads, getting mud on our shoes.
It’s people who do things no one else would, that we remember the most.
Recent Comments