This home on wheels was originally owned by a couple from Louisiana who traveled from town to town with a carnival. They sold kewpie dolls and prizes, and, as far as we know, lived as happy as the Old Lady who lived in a Shoe.
Inside, it is roomy enough for a couple that gets along.
For a couple that doesn’t get along, there is no house big enough.
These crowns are made from paper with printed jewels on the side. They adjust to fit all heads and there are plenty to go around. Customers can take them for free and kids are not the only ones that wear them.
Kings used to be in short supply, one to a country. In this age of mass merchandising, mass consumption, collective thought and identity politics, kings are no longer protected or worshiped. Now,with social justice warriors on the warpath, we must all be kings.
If you were King for a Day, what edict would you have your scribes put on a scroll and tack to telephone poles around town? Would you start a new holiday? Would you erase everyone’s debts? Would you let everyone out of prison? Would you throw a party? Would you ride the streets in a carriage and wave at your adoring subjects? Would you open your palace doors to the common folk?
Even with our lofty rhetoric, America is still run by royalty.
Congress will never take their crowns off and our President will never be allowed to put his on.
These days the only reality and royalty we follow lives in Beverly Hills.
Halloween has crawled out of the grave for another year.
At a local Starbucks, Freddie doesn’t have to bone up on store policy, customer relations, or how to work the register. He hands out coffee and keeps his mouth shut because he rattles when he talks. This morning his fellow employees have a close hold on him and their cell phones, and, right now, are as dead to their employer as he is.
Mostly, these days, people are hooked up with their cell phones, deader to the world than even Freddie,and you can’t communicate with them unless you call them.
The boneyard, I glean from this morning’s Starbuck’s experience, is closer than I’d like to be and Halloween is definitely here.
Rubbing elbows with skeletons is not my usual cup of tea, but, in here, we don’t get to choose who we have drinks with.
What I really want to know is whether Freddy drinks Starbuck’s coffee, who is he dating in here, and what kind of golfer he is?
The odds for shooting a hole in one,for the average golfer,on par 3;s, are 12500 to 1. For professional golfers, the odds drop to 2500 to one
In a tournament at the Tanoan Country Club, Scott beat the odds on the Acoma nine, #3, a 154 yard par 3 and shot his first hole in one after years of playing.
Using a seven iron, my iron shot was high, straight, hit the frog hair in front of the green, bounced, rolled towards the pin, and fell into the cup.
At first, none of our foursome realized what had happened but confirmed it on the green.
Now, when I hit an iron into any green, I expect my shot to fall into the cup.
Once you see you can do something, the odds of doing it again, increase.
The odds against me getting another hole in one seem suddenly bigger than they used to be.
Does shooting a hole in one make you a professional?
When you see clouds turn this color, the sun obscured, visibility shrunk, the odds of it being the ” End of the World ” increase. I expect to witness armed Angels riding down out of the smoke on horses breathing fire, drawn swords ready to take off unrighteous heads and cut out un-repenting hearts.
On my way to California to see Chris in a trauma center,whisked close to death in a car accident, these clouds are brewing in the desert north of Phoenix. They are the color of burning rubbish and are caused by forest fires to the north of Flagstaff.
Ancient man must have seen these same clouds.
They would have said the Gods were angry.
We say a camper was careless with his matches.
Pulled off the road, taking pictures, I preview the end of our world.
We don’t all get out of this life the same way, but where we go next is a true travel mystery.
Crazy glued to the dashboard, these critters listen to talk radio.
They are also familiar with Top Fifty tunes, political lies, opinions, advertisements, trivia, propaganda, ” Fake News” and World News. Some of these critters seem like animals we should have as friends, others look like aliens come to take over Earth and send us to salt mines worse than the ones we are already working.
Hollywood cranks out critters each year, as fast as screenwriters and makeup crews can design them. Our television and movie oeuvre is full of ” out of this world ” characters invading Earth, demons terrorizing children from dark places, galactic battles, romantic meetings between vampires and humans.
These guys and gals seem approachable. They have little tails, pointed ears ,protruding snouts, cute penetrating eyes. They have red and white stripes and dots, camouflage that is useless in our drab urban world.
Glued in place, they have their best conversations when their driver has locked his car and and gone to pick up a pack of cigarettes , a six pack of beer, and lucky condoms.
They have a point of view that heats up as the temperature inside the car reaches 120 degrees F.
The thing interesting me the most is the mental stability of the human who glued them to his dash.
If sticking plastic critters on your dash was a sane idea you would see it more often.
In the 1960’s, a most favored slogan was ” Make Love, Not War. ”
Their were lots of babies conceived in hippie vans as the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane fanned anti war sentiment, wore flowers in their hair and had meetings with Indian gurus. Flower children blew bubbles in parks and gave roses to hardened cops wearing helmets and sunglasses.
It wasn’t hard to be against a war that sent home young men in caskets.Communism wasn’t likely to swim across the ocean and take over our cities but Washington D.C. wasn’t taking any chances. North Vietnam, backed by still Communist China, was trying to consume South Vietnam and our American military machine was going to plug the hole in their border.
50,000 American dead later, the war ended with a whimper.
The 1960’s have returned without tie die T shirts, beards and hippie glasses. At the Punkin Chunkin Festival we have cowboy boots, pickups with tow hitches,levi’s and Copenhagen snuff secured in back pockets.
Shooting pumpkins is about as peaceful as it gets.
” Make love, not babies, ” is our newest generational slogan.
I guess some have finally found a war they think they can win.
Not loving babies is a hard pill to swallow.
Doctor Who has the most unique phone booth in the Universe. but on our way back to Creede, Colorado, Richard’s idea is to stop and pay respects to one of the last pay phones in America.
On site, Richard and I both pick up the phone and listen to the dial tone to confirm the antiquated technology is working, and take our obligatory pictures. I wish Columbus had had a camera to document his first landing and native Indians had been able to shoot videos of foreigners sticking a strange flag in their hallowed ground. Seeing a You tube video of the universe created, in real time, would also be inspirational.
Dr. Who would know if there are payphones or push mowers on Mars.
He would know if there was a Denny’s hidden in the rings of Saturn.
He would know what the Gates of Heaven are made of.
I can’t call Dr. Who though because this last of its kind pay phone doesn’t take credit cards, phone cards don’t let us call outside Earth’s atmosphere, I don’t have a truckload of quarters, and the Operator is on break.
Watching a piece of human history disappear has sadness wrapped inside its wrapper.
Back in the day, we didn’t use our phones much.
We had mostly the same complaints as we do today. We just shouldered them better.
The bathroom is the most private room in our house.
We don’t invite people over to have a beer in our bathroom and it isn’t the first part of the house we show guests.
On the walls of Freeman’s restaurant bathroom ,between Hermit’s Lake and Creede, Colorado is a collage of wisdom.
Thoughts, like roses, have allure, and thorns.
I am careful with thoughts.
I tend to support ideas that support how I think and how I think is not always good for me.
In one of our most private rooms, we often have some of our most private epiphanies.
This wind sock, inflated early this morning, has flailing arms and an ambiguous smile on its face.
Creede hasn’t awoken yet, but June, the lady who lives in her parked Tiny House and sells food from her trailer cafe, is cooking already, at eight in the morning.
” I like your house….. ”
” It has everything I need, ” June says as she sips her morning cup of hot chocolate, turning on burners and slicing onions, looking at me like a suspicious pirate.
She has a big pickup for pulling her home away in a month when the first snow hits Creed, Colorado. Her truck plates are Texas but she volunteers to me that she will pull her rig to Florida and sell smoothies to tourists in swimsuits and bikinis, wearing hippie bracelets around their wrists and ankles.
You can see this blue sock from blocks away and it has big black eyes and long Ichibod Crane fingers snapping the air.
Big multinational corporations sell using Madison Avenue advertising agencies packed with employee’s with MBA’s and degrees in Psychology, Sales, Marketing and Sociology. Once they turn us into cookie cutter people and make their products our choices,their job becomes easier and more profitable. In Creede, and most of Main Street, where we live,this wind sock is more than enough advertising to get the point across.
Inside June’s Tiny House, there is room to stretch out, fix dinner, watch her big screen television, read a book, have special people over, clean up, curl up on the couch, let sunlight crawl through the window blinds.
A home base doesn’t have to be anchored to be a home.
A chalkboard street sign on Creede’s Main Street reminds us all to, ” Follow your soul! It knows where to go.”
June follows her soul, and the wind sock, this morning, says her soul is open for business but heading to Florida as the first snowflakes fall on the windshield of her big Chevy truck.
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