Last Laugh CLX

LAST LAUGH CLX

Hey Bill, Thanks for the LL. Very interesting. I like Madrea's letters.
I used to see that Ann Bright woman up at the Sea Horse Inn. Interesting woman, late 60's, friend of Michael Roberts.
I sent Leigh Vega 5 $ so I'll check her out.
Hi to Lyla. How was the wedding? I'm done with Bix's books if you can make it over here. Still, S.

9-10-02 Lyla desired vegetables, and I drove B.E.'s old pickup to a little vegetable place couple of miles into Aransas Pass which sells produce right from the Valley very cheap. On return I was stopped by DPS patrolman Robert B. Brown, being the inspection sticker and registration sticker in the lower left corner of the windshield were not correctly aligned, a thing I had not known about. I should not have stepped right from the truck, in a tank shirt, showing I had not needed to unfasten the seatbelt. I found out about the sticker silly shit, and the guy was stalling and demonstrating interest in me, running down my fake record in U.S. cop fake work, "strong arm robbery and assault and battery of police" coming off his loud radio without it was my audio-hallucination - however this is done technologically by now, male voice blaring my wonderful record - and I asked him what was he looking for. He kept peering at me. I peered at him a lanky fortyish nerd. We were leaning to categorize one another,though, naturally, I was faster than he. He could not accept my age. This he projected onto the rusty truck, remarking he would have thought the GMC truck older than 1985. I did not bring up all the salty beach it had been down, in as I like being able to say this is my late father's truck, easier than attempting to tell a dumb cop I am not one to know anything about proper alignment of stickers in the windshield left corner.

I would be finding later Brown is bothering plenty of regular folks who drive, and they take it to court and after their time and their money they are outraged. Patriots violated, happens all the time. But with Blackolive, Brown just went to peering. How much have you had to drink, he said. Unthinking, impatient, thus honest, which, really, unnerves these poor bastards, I answered I had had three beers (Guinness, heh) before I ate, few hours back. What medicines are you on? said he. Always I have had these jaundiced whites of eyes, and my muscles got him, and my age. I told him I would take any breathalizer test. Were I a serial killer who had pumped out in prison and now had taken a poor old fisherman's truck, I could just be on speed, say. LSD, heroin. Yet he had this little plastic apparatus thing for me to blow in. But I could not blow hard enough for him. You are not putting out, he said. Well, maybe I just don't have very strong lungs, I said. He called in backup, an Aransas Pass young cop, who was clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed. Brown called in a wrecker to get my truck, and he arrested me for being drunk. None of his sequence in doing these things had order, and I can't recall but the truck was gone and the backup guy was there when I was still doing the toe to toe and follow the pencil and this idiot shit, these little tests I would do at minimum twice, before being handcuffed. He was fearful of/hoping for my temper, telling me to quit resisting as I was handcuffed. Poor jerk, got beat up in high school, but now he is a policeman. You know I am not drunk, I said, Give me any test. You know, what you are doing is not legal. You are not protecting anybody, you are not helping anybody. What do you want me to do, give me any test, I'm not drunk, and you know it.

Patrolman Brown and the other cop shook hands and the other drove away to continue driving around in Aransas Pass employed as a policeman. Brown of the DPS fucked around more, using his radio, messing around in his car or what, tacking another quarter hour onto the half hour or three quarters hour already, now while I stood handcuffed in the sun. We each studied the other. He did not know my patience was greater than his. Nor did I know this. I hate this shit, my pulse goes up. But truly he could not fit me into his sense of reality. My old mother awaiting her vegetables and I am not drunk but the driver's licence says date of birth to be 9-17-40. I neither fear nor respect him. I look like I am on LSD or heroin. I am muscular. I sound educated. In his world something is wrong. Every now and then, he spoke of wanting to give me a blood test.

Eventually he drove me to the Aransas Pass station. I tried to get my lawyer but his line was busy. Then Brown heard me call my mother and tell her I am arrested for drunk. You know I am not drunk, some policemen just don't have enough to do. I'll get on through this and we'll deal with it as we can, yes I've tried to call Richard but his line is busy.

Brown next was compelled to give in to my assiduous request to use the breathalizer machine. We did this two times. He would tell me to put out more and I would tell him I was hyperventilating. I have a condition, of course you are not wanting to hear any of that.

He gave in that I was not drunk. He had to drive me home. This is where he answered me that he does not drink. Said this is why he had his window down, so he should not smell my alcohol so much. I rejoined I would not have thought anybody could smell my alcohol since hours ago I drank 3 beers before eating, but I don't know how much anybody can smell who does not drink. I check out the individual cop, do these things in a friendly way. Jabbering, I picked on him. As I had heard this blaring off his radio, I brought up my pocketing Actifed in Austin and these guys jumping on me and my breaking free and getting this assault and battery of cops on my record. I said, I look like somebody on TV and get hassled and this is why I am just down here hanging with my old mother. I fear the fear, I am just trying to get away from the fear. So you look like somebody famous on TV, Brown offered. Yeah, man, I look like a biker or a gangster on TV. What I fear is the fear. I left Austin because I thought maybe I could get away from the fear. Thought maybe I could be left alone. I camp out a lot, I have dogs. But I get into this stupid shit because I just can't get with the program. Hell, man, I'm just an old hippie.

Well, hell, it is funny, jerking a cop's schizoprenia. I knew he was impressed my mother has a house above poverty line and I told him I hope he can find some real gangsters and thanks for nothing.

Mebbe so, but it cost me. It was fortunate Medicine is not much for riding in automobiles. In the pickup he will not ride in back like all other dogs I have had. If I drag him along, he must start out by standing in the seat and leaning his ass against me, whether I do think to be trying to get hold of the rusty seat belt and make it work. Living at Lyla's, Medicine prefers to not come on a grocery run. He practices ruckus at my return, nips and jumps at me. Simplest I present him with a beef neck bone HEB has been selling a dollar and half a pound.

But no kennel fee for the odd bulldog but right back here I called the wrecker's outfit while riled. The guy told me to calm down and I told him if this were done to him he would be pissed off and he said that since 9-11 security is tighter. I said THAT IS INSANE. He conceded maybe it is but that I ought to calm down anyway. I continued about my old mother had this day had a cataract removed and could not drive me to get my deceased father's truck. True, she had the cataract removed that morning at the Aransas Pass hospital and could not remove her eye patch to drive till next morning. And I had only been out to get her vegetables and so on, the guy went into reverence for motherhood and gave me 48 hours before he should add to the bill. Lyla was taking all this better than I could have predicted, but all my life never can I predict her somehow. Next morning we removed her patch and got the truck out for $119. My ticket for being unrestrained inside inside city limits where a maniac could have rammed me from behind at eighty miles per was $1O5.

The U.L.A. reading September 26 in Detroit I nearly did not make, for Lyla is having more knee trouble, is going to have to have her right kneecap replaced like her left one. But I called King Wenclas and he had me a flight out of Corpus Christi, instead of previous idea a Houston one, he by paying another hundred saved me a couple days. Here I could do it in two nights. Lyla accepted this and drove me to the Corpus Christi airport, 20 or so miles, At my return her knee had slipped too much but Kelly was down and he got me.

The mission had been accomplished with wear. Let me stop here for a sixpack. I thought you'd need beer, said he. Hell, my nerves, I was never used to civilization but now the technology and paranoia and minimum wage hirelings are worse.

Kelly Olive: Your trouble is always the commoners.

Well, fuck, by now this is inclusive of all U.S. law enforcement clear to U.S. Presidents.

Neither King Wenclas and friends nor I had known nobody without a flight ticket since 9-11 is let through security to be meeting airport passengers at the gate of their flight.

Old ladies in wheel chairs get frisked for nail clippers. Lyla and Bonnie going to Geoffrey's and Akido's wedding being held in Hawaii were two times in same flight frisked. Lyla, old lady with walking stick, had been lent a wheelchair to ease her in all the walking about. They and everybody boarded, and because of something irregular everybody had to unboard and get frisked again. In this second frisking, Bonnie was pulled apart from her mother, seperated and frisked well apart. Bless Bonnie for her own humor, she thought it funny she and Mother could be so suspicious. Lyla was perplexed but enjoyed Bonnie's mirth. Am sorry to say in like circumstance I would have missed the laughs. Ah, it has to be kind of amusing, our government of business guts the minerals which is pollutes the rivers and installing military in scores of lands, permitting our own commoners to live in fantasy, though a single kamakazi attack inside the U.S. bubble heads have gone to paranoid babble that even green eyed old ladies in wheelchairs may kill them. Land where forefathers wrote great words and kept slaves. I do not believe they really believed darkies were less human if one could rape the children or horse whip the men. Washington and Jefferson were focked in the forehead. In my trip to Detroit, I observed an Anglo old lady in a wheelchair take the "random search" which they are also doing now at the gate. Please, Great Spirit Of All Things, let me desist my being revolted at all the sissie schizoprenia, but let me take humor, as my sister, my mother. Yea, let us watch, how knotted the creativity, of pus bellied wimps who got beat up in high school, theirs to claw, their country is moral, theirs is toughest. Yeah, where would I have been, without such a sister, without such a mother.

Hi Bill!

Karl asked me to send you a printout of "The Preacher" from Texas Gang. I'll make it big-font so it's easy on your eyes.

Say, here's a story you might get a kick out of. When I went up north into the boonies with a construction crew a few weeks ago, a bunch of the workers slept in a big cabin. Before bed each night they had me read a chapter of Texas Gang to them out loud, including "The Preacher." Like they were kids. They hadn't read any of the book themselves, but knew I'd brought it on the trip, so it just kind of happened the first night that they asked me to read as everyone was getting snuggled up for the night. I tried to set up the situation of the book a bit first, but in the end it kind of blew them away. Yet they liked it. These are far-out, educated, hippy carpenter people, but it was beyond them. Yet they could still relate to it and they got into it. It was just a nutty scene. Can you picture it?! Each night after drinking whiskey and such, everyone would get into their sleeping bags and we'd be chatting then they'd say "OK, now read us another chapter." I could hardly believe that they kept asking for more every night for the several days we were with them. It was hilarious doing bedtime reading like that. A variation on 'reading around the campfire,' I guess. But it's funnier than that, because a couple hours earlier, I was reading to my own little kids before I put them to sleep in the trailer outside the cabin... .But the reading material was a bit different. :) How many other living writers are part of bedtime stories for construction workers nowadays? :) Actually, it's not that unusual. It's just not something probably done much, that our culture knows of anyway. But really the best stories probably still are shared like this. How else can they really get passed on? It's good humor, too, because it's a good life. Take care and see you soon!-- Jeff Potter

Thus it is, ours a world where 9-11 changes nothing but that U.S citizens have had their chains jerked that they think so. Not alone the slobs in the top one percent of the wealth, but the working class as well, the janitors, the policemen, biologically regular human critters with uncoordinated gob of gray matter induces paranoia. They are enough jerked they cannot hold still for racial profiling.

Wenclas and home town old buddy Bob could not meet meet me at the gate of my airplane arrival, they found out, and their attempt to page me did not work, for some reason. I was near two hours up in that part of the monster airport trying to pull my mind in. I could not get change for long distance telephoning. One either has correct cards for a machine or buys many cups of coffee. Probably this has nothing to do with 9-11, technology creating further madness in schizoid nation no matter what. In deflation coffee shops need all their quarters, and a man has got to make his own breaks like everybody else, I bet. Wenclas's number in Philadelphia does not take collect calls, or said the voices. I understand it is to pay less help but my mother regards the voices as idiotic. Hell, she does not hear well. What did you say, excuse me? she has to say to hucksters, and voices without body hang up on. I got Lyla to call Wenclass, then in technical maladjustment she was not let call me back at airport phone where I drank coffee in wait. I called her on back, having already told her not to get in a dither. Hell, Mother, if I have to spend two nights here, no big deal, then I'll fly back. Mother, look, I think Wenclas is in Detroit anyway, from this postmark on his letter, maybe I can get hold of my publisher, who I think is in a small town in this state. I'll be alright, I'll be alright. I got food, coffee, magazines, nothing to worry about. I've been through worse, hell!

I did not have to go through two dates of that shit. I enabled to bring to recall Jeff Potter's town in Michigan is Williamston, reached Jeff through information. Already he had been coming to the reading, now he was up to coming from hour or two away in Williamston to get me at the airport. While we did not know they would not have allowed him legally to come up to my gate to see me, heh. But, I firstly let him have this number of U.L.A. writer Michael Jackman in Detroit, which from Wenclass I had luckily been given. Twice, I had already tried to ring the Detroit number of Jackman, each time was told the number is no longer in service. Something to do with the airport, I bet, because as Potter said call him back in thirty minutes, and I did, the number was in service, for Potter in Williamston. Meantime I found out from a couple of black guys, janitors or something, guys with wine breaths willing to communicate human to human, how nobody is allowed past security to meet anybody. Right, earlier I had tried talking to people in their booths, them what got a slightly better wage, I think three different booths where a couple slaves sat going over numbers, or something, very occupied and they could not look up at this guy in big moustache and backpack hardly, would not speak, so what he is evidently lost, uninformed nobody can there meet him. The wretches imagining they were getting ahead were useless, yay for the two gentlemen from those generations never educated or positioned since the Civil War, the wine drinkers, life and death their way of life and always they are easier for me to talk with than say rednecks, who in bizarro class are slower to listen to me. But not to get into that - suffice the U.S. is strange - when I called back Potter he too had learned the latest, and told me Wenclass and Bob back enroute, had been worried about me. I had to but get outside, a bit of a walk, escalators and so forth, on down. Outside, I paced several minutes and heard Blackolive being paged and looked inside and saw Wenclas looking for me.

King Karl Wenclas is from Detroit and he and old partner Bob had been in the import business, and Bob told me 9-11 has made the business "too ugly." In our regathering in Bob's car before we got to a Wendy's for me to eat, that is all I learned of that then. The Wendy's was near the motel and I got two triple-deckers and was placed in the motel Wenclas had selected. Beer I had desired but here it was late, and hungry it was kind of fun to settle on into a television motel room, slowly eating this and looking at a local show that copies Springer. It does not have Springer's touch, his sensibility, kindness and humor, naturally. But it has copied that overt culture of Springer's show, flagrant guests and jeering mob audience. Here was a chubby white girl declaring her addiction to drugs and sex in public places, thus the audience goes into chopping cadence: Ho! Ho! Ho! This, Dear Reader, is for "whore," American Negro Street Jargon. Why is every bit of American Negro Street Jargon taken up by white commoners. What a funny place, the U.S. of A. The chubby white girl opens her arms telling the chanting audience via American Negro Street Jargon they don't know nothing about her. Then to be drifting off I had a big pamplet from Wenclas of writeups on the U.L.A. Early I woke in habit, went out and found coffee and more food, hungry while fat but had been behind.

King Wenclas is doing very much, attacking the "literary establishment," pulling the media like the media half a century ago fluttered to the Beats. It is grass roots, slow and piece meal, but a same thing. This trip I caught on, he is doing it. One fine photo has drunk at a table giving each for the camera the finger, Jeff Potter, King Wenclas, Michael Jackman, and a black cartoonist/writer whose name I have mislaid in my awful clutter, here in Aransas mostly in my bedroom, which is getting so I can not always locate something when I need it. Yet a classical photograph, 4 Undergrounders giving the finger, what can it mean. And Wenclas and Jackman will even interrupt readings from "accepted" writers, pop balloons, challange the bouncers to fight, what great Americana. Of a consequence they are really getting written up. Like in the fifties and early sixties the media fed on the Beats without having comprehension of the Beats. Yes, my Dear Reader, Bill Blackolive getsa mention hither thither too. One piece, Wild Bill is a biker who wrote TALES FROM THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. An- other has him living in a shack eating rabbits.

Perhaps more important, these U.L.A. writers are good. I am glad, in my distractions of the Detroit read, Michael Jackman put into my hands the two issues of SLUDGE PILE, containing himself and several U.L.A. writers who are very good, captivating, distinctly individual. And this they say is real, today most U.S. published writers are not captivating, or singular. find each U.L.A. writer in SLUDGE PILE intriguing. One is a dumpster diving dyke - or this youngster hip in her generation and I forget her name because I have lent the SLUDGE PILES to Steve Vaughn right now. She is effective and unto herself. After reading SLUDGEPILE I went inspired and sent Wenclas the addresses of two zinesters I exchange with, Cindy Ovenrack and Leigh Vega, who are plenty good, my favorites. Hoping they are alive, I have not heard from either in months. Cindy is my favorite, and Steve Vaughn's I expect, who had turned me onto her, and she is Madrea's and she turned Wadrea onto Leigh Vega, who is younger and less experienced than Cindy (perhaps Cindy Ovenrack is in her thirties), but Vega is in there. The SLUDGE PILE writers are all in there, each his/her certain craziness and talent.

Will (am uncertain of his last name by now) of the zine RAT BLOOD SOUP drove in during earlier day, from Philadelphia. I told King I can sleep anywhere for a night or two if it is warm enough, why rent two rooms. He got us placed a couple of doors down where were two beds. Will is a 37 year old malcontent who does a darker humor zine, and writes skillfully. King showed us some of his old neighborhood, somewhat rough area, and on this walk he put up some U.L.A. coming read posters on a university campus. He showed Will and me a couple of interesting bars in the neighborhood, loose, not smoky, bohemianish. Or to put it, anyone could go on through and not notice anything out of place, but there was flavor. In one I heard blue collars complaining of W's fantasy. After just a few beers Will and I returned to motel to nap. After the repose Will drove us to Bob's to get Wenclas and get to the best bar yet where was the reading, Bob to later follow.

This is a small and hip bar tended by a couple of young black guys, one I got to talking with, an artist/writer. There were several paintings on the walls by an artist extraordinaire, female, black, who was seated at the end of bar down from the end I had chosen, Before being told this is her, I was moved by a painting, impressionistic sketch of a young woman, the personality. Inquiring of the bartender, I was told there she is, the artist, his favorite in the whole world.

Having taken generic actifed I drank bottles of a good ale they had and went to pissing. Maybe as many as 30 people built on up in the little place, though most did not smoke cigarettes. An attractive woman journalist who had done the article accompanying the photograph of the four fellows giving the world the finger was there. She was smoking organic cigarettes, rolling them there in fact, was very friendly. Her article had not been zealous of the U.L.A., but sceptical. This newspaper is I think more alternative. During the day, Wenclas had picked up copies, giving Will and me copies, though I never did get to reading it slowly, only had skimmed it and leaving it on the bar there, out of a pillow case from the motel which held the TG excerpt Potter and Wenclas had for me to read, plus I had a copy of the TG novel should the audience be alert and ask for more. Heh. No, all they could coordinate was to clap, and one or two flashbulbs. The journalist lady had her husband with her, nice fellow, intelligent. She smoked the tobacco cigarettes till she ran out and began bumming the chemical shit from Michael Jackman. I was breezing through city, drinking and pissing and talking and dodging the chemical cigarettes enough I never did get to the table with the U.L.A. zines. But SLUDGE PILE is $5, cheap. The website is www.literaryrevolution.com. Potter having located another beat up TG book on the web put it on the table priced at $20. A guy wanted it but would not part with $20. Potter and I were talking more on TG publishing. He has liked this Vaughn painting of Texasgangers standing at a campfire by a cave. Steve did it in the early seventies. Potter would like to use it for the cover this time, because the famous photograph, which is good, too, is lost. I informed him we had originally thought to use the painting, but used the photo (more commercial, Charmaine convinced me, and I think she was correct, then, in 1978 when the climate changed). Then Jeff Potter was saying he thinks when next I read I should follow some TG with some EMERYVILLE WAR. He has read THE EMERYVILLE WAR at TexasGang.com, one of the few Black- olive pieces therein checked for spelling and typos somewhat, after Jackson Jones's exaustive labor. Next time I read is Austin. One U.L.A. reading before Austin is Athens, Georgia, which I will not make, but will headline Jack Saunders. But Austin should be in 2003.

This I read in Detroit, from the ninth chapter in the first part, was of stuff Jeff Potter had been reading his whisky supping carpenter friends in Michigan, up country somewhere. Which I like much, reading carpenters Texas Gang beddybye. The brothers, Kelly and Bill, encounter a wagontrain in Comanche territory, when Bill lived with his Comanche woman. The wagontrain is headed by a frothing fundamentalist preacher, and the pilgrims "are in Comanche territory and likely to get killed." In this noisy quarrel, a large bunch of Comanches do get drawn in. The wagontrain getting wiped out, the theme of the story is "all babies are the same." Jeff likes how the brothers conferring with the Comanches now must help in the killing of the invaders, chuckle that "the argument is infallible." When I had written the chapter, at the New Mexico farmhouse, around 1970, I was altogether cognizant. I had Sue, my first bulldog, took her on the long walk. I would show the chapter to friends. "Well, I almost hate to tell this one, all them innocent white folks, ho ho. Cept they was born in sin. All babies are the same. Cept maybe it's better to be born dead than in sin, ho ho." Potter told me at the bar he thinks he is figuring how to cut out the large, greedy distributors, by use of the web.

The U.L.A. readings are part theater, have become event unto itself. Will. read first, had no experience reading, but I saw he crafts his English well. The next act was not literary. Writer Wred Fright did a rock'n roll spoof. He whanged a guitar with the amps turned up that his voice was drowned. That was it, his whole act, though his partner, in the audience, Crazy Carl, made some noise, yelled for him to take his pants off. Crazy Carl, the Dear Reader may remember, is the fat comic who in the N.Y. reading was in the audience disrupting Wred Fright's time, till Fright challenged he come on up there, which Crazy Carl did. Re. LL, and I had not known that was part of the act. These two buddies are college English teachers. As in the early reading the female black genius down end of the bar left, maybe it was this act, the spoof of contemporary white rock'n roll.

I read last and after Michael Jackman, so it was literature again, but was the rosy crowd ready for Comanche territory. My anger is older than a hundred years. I cannot longer read with my glasses, took them off and laid them on an amp or somewhere, and presently got into it. Pretty funny. When I stepped down, King Wenclas stepped in to shake my hand. I returned to my end of the bar but to be certain the crowd got it spouted: All babies are the same. The other bartender whom I had not yet talked with gave me a bottle of the ale on the house. I noticed I had left my glasses, went and got the glasses.

Earlier meeting Crazy and Wred again, Crazy immediately had asked did I care to go out and toke on some good pot he had. I almost did, but uneasy, vaguely, I declined. I think it is better I be spooky in the police state. This time it was.

Will of RAT BLOOD SOUP told me before it was very late he was tired, wanting to get back to the motel. Jeff Potter was not ready to go, told me he would get me to the motel, and Will departed. Potter and I talked on, talking when he did drive me back to the motel. He pulled in and motor running we talked a while more. Corner of building from where we talked motor running stood one of these quite fat security guards, gray matter normally choked somewhere between paranoia and logic, studying us pointedly. We did not think much about him, and in some minutes of the hurried talk, I got out and Potter left. I went up to where I remembered our room to be on the second floor, not observing the guy right behind me I saw him when he complained when I went rapping on the door of where I thought Will slept. The guy was complaining we can't be disturbing the guests. I told him my roommate was in there drunk. You can't be disturbing the guests! There is nobody in there! he said also. That room is unoccupied! To this effect, we went around a bit. Room 243 I remembered being the one Wenclas had firstly rented me, that the next room for two beds was a couple doors down, thus I rapped where should have been 243, and the oaf telling me there is no 243. Thus I saw, where should have been 243 it said 214. Come with me, he said. Let's go down to the office. I followed the misguided commoner down to the office, to consult with another of his ilk, though not his color or sex, black female gobbler of French fries, sole authority at the moteil this night, tends the desk behind the window. Like my brother says, all my trouble all my life is the commoners. Well, them what get any kind of authority, otherwise of course there would be no problemo. Be commoners into money and send a son to cdllege and into U.S. Presidency, it is the same, folks unhip in authority. Behind her window at the desk this one declared Blackolive is not registered. At least my mission has been accomplished, thought I. Still, hiding out till dawn or going to jail and missing my flight and having to hitch hike back is not necessarily worth the writing of it, it was putting me beside myself. Yeh, good I was not stoned, because then I would have had to grasp for English, and I would have been self conscious looking at these two incredible human beings, and so on. Already trying to not be flustered with these fearful ones who but seek in me weakness or danger and cause for calling the police, ahd so on. But not being stoned on dreamy pot, I automatically interfere with their decision making better. Now, acid, and true psychedelics, I am but quicker, it is actually easier, and so on. I kept jabbering and walking right on back up, the Richard Jewel look alike, floundering back of me, reaching for his cell phone or walkytalky or whatever gadget these guys are equipped with these days. I was. saying if I could just take another look I could figure it out. I went rapping before recall set in - one more good reason not to have been on pot, too, or even acid, too - recall this motel had two buildings, two double sets of rooms. Will and I were in the other. Hey, I remember now, 243 is in the other building! This did not seem to help his mind. He kept after me, on up into the next building. See, there is 243! I went down two doors and commenced rapping, the security careerist telling me we cannot be disturbing the guests, and I saying, ah, he's just drunk. This guy was fatter than Richard Jewel, my frame or taller, twenty feet at least away always, now going for backup. I pointed to 243. There it is, 243, this is it, hell, he's just drunk! Before getting to Detroit PD the security person has to go through the fat bitch at the desk, she says: Is his name Blackolive! Very loud, I heard her.

Yeah, yeah, Blackolive, that's me!

Come with me, gestured. the official security.

In the office she asked for identification. I told her I am Olive legally but look here is my name Blackolive. I pulled toward her the upper corner of my white TexasGang.com sweatshirt which says in a longhand: Blackolive.

I've just been to a writer's conference. The guy up in my room who is drunk is a writer.

I am always aware, these are semiliterate citizens in a universe of fear and hostility. Their faces were impassive. I knew I was not illegal, which is to say there was nothing they could do about it. From my motel pillow case I jerked forth my TEXAS GANG book. Look, I wrote this book. This is me. (Bearded, no shirt, armed.) Here is my name. I am Bill Blackolive!

Stolidly, she pushed through the little gap in the window one of these key-card things in use now. None of us thought should they apologise.

Thanks!

This time he did not follow me and Will had gathered himseIf, and opened the door, flopped back down, door half wide.

Mike Olive has been writing Lyla good letters. We all have varied characteristics in common with one another. Lyla and Mike and Bonnie would believe in a pleasant, simpler world for mankind, where respect for authority could be OK, even. Interestingly, Lyla and Mike and Bonnie do not get much from alcohol, or pot. Bonnie does not even like coffee, but pardon me, I digress. Here is Mike.

Dear Mother,

I've always liked autumn in Boulder. You get some yellows and reds from leaves turning and the days are sunny and mild. Temperature around 70 degrees F, with a breeze coming down from the mountains. It's a good time for hiking in the hills, a little rock climbing; up high, there's an eagle or so moving around and, sometimes, es- pecially towards evening, you might see a red fox. A lot of people are out hiking the trails around Boulder right now. They are friendly, some are in good physical shape, some aren't. A lot have dogs along with them so, when you meet, you stop, pet the dogs and talk dogs. But sometimes I just prefer being alone. So, I go out and hike the forgotten trails, or, just cut across the hills, working way up high someplace. Then I play on rocks or, just sit for a while, up in a meadow somewhere, near giant rocks and spruce-fir forest. I feel comfortable there. Those kind of places seem to fit me.

Anyway, autumn is great and, really, tho I'm poor, I'm very thankful. I have friends and family and my body is good enough so I can play around in the mountains. Not a bad life.

As you know, fires were very bad in the Colorado forests this year, the worst in recorded history. This happens because of our drought and, because for one hundred years, we've not allowed forest fires in Colorado. So, the forests got clogged up with a lot of deadfall and underbrush. Basically, we had a lot of excess wood, old and dried-out. Once you get a fire started under those conditions, it tends to burn very, very hot. This means that, with the help of wind, it burns fast and spreads quickly.

Overall, these burns will be good for the forest and for the critters that live there. For the next few years, we'll have more meadows and, a lot of burned-over stumps and half-burned trees. All the ash left over will fertilize the ground and, even now, you can see new, green grass coming up.

Winter snow will bury all this but, for a few years, we'll have more meadows, new grass, small trees and bushes coming up. Deer like to browse that stuff and a lot of small rodents like to hide in it and munch away. Hawks and eagles and coyotes like to eat the rodents and so it goes - the forests will be different but, it's all OK. Eventually I suppose, we'll get better at doing controlled burns every year, so you don't have the great accumulation of old, dead trees - that extra fuel, that's what make the fires burn so fiercely and get out of control.

Well, hopefully, we'll do controlled burns. Our president Bush- the-Shrub, wants to open all the national forests to timber companies. Let them cut all the trees down. Then there won't be any real big forest fires anymore. A stupid plan, of course. But probably, to some degree, this will happen.

In the long run, however, I believe that people are smart. Event- ually, we'll get our forests back to where they should be.

Well, I didn't mean to go off into the politics of managing the national forests. But, after many years of spending time there, I do have strong feelings on the subject.

Another nice day outside, I see. Several cups of coffee and I'm ready to go outside and check out the morning.

Take care of yourself. Tell "Y" hello.

Love
Mike

A package comes from Jackson Jones. He sends me the world's most powerful comic. PALESTINE, by Joe Sacco. 285 pages. Right to my heart.

Among other pieces from checking the name Blackolive on the web, this.

When searching the internet for "Blackolive", Texas Gang, Out Your Backdoor, etc. always comes up. This time, the above also came up. I have no idea what it means or who did it. There is no other page to the website. Weird, huh?
Jackson Jones

I was thinking it could be from published poetess Charmaine Black-Olive - uses the hyphen. But, if I can read what is in the corner, it looks like U.S.A. Today. Ann Vliet who deserted me in paranoia of the Mexican Mafia did/does have connection with U.S.A. TODAY as a book reviewer, re. THE EMERYVILLE WAR.

What can it mean? Mysteriously I get famous. Wish I could cash in. I am on SSI. I have a daughter.

Joe Sacco works are available
from FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS, 7563 Lake City
Way, Seattle, WA 98115; or call 1-800-
657-1100 to 6rder by~phone; or order
from www.fantagraphics.com

Trooper makes unfair arrest

Editor,
My father passed away this year, and I have been living with my mother who Is in her 80s and walks with a cane. I am driving my father's '85 GMC rusty pickup.
Yesterday, 9/10, my mother wished I drive to get some vegetables. I did this and returning was stopped by a DPS patrolman, in as the registration sticker was not correctly aligned with the inspection sticker on the windshield.
The patrolman spent some time with me, inquired as to how much education did I have. He began testing me for being drunk. He called in backup. He called in a wrecker to haul off the truck. I recited the ABCs a couple of times, counted fingers backwards and forwards, did the toe to toe walk, but could not appease him blowing into his little apparatus. He contended I was faking. I did say to him, "You know I am not drunk."

Nor was I unruly, understanding he was pressing me to be impatient. He arrested me for drunk, and hand- cuffed me telling me to quit resisting. The backup Aransas Pass cop may testify. All along I requested a breathalizer test from the breathalizer machine. Finally at the A.P. station I got this, twice. Also I called my o1d mother, telling her of this nonsense, which perhaps unnerved the trooper. Whatever, he conceded I passed the breathilizer test, and he released me, had to drive me home.
At that point I did badger him, a bit, that he is protecting nobody, helping nobody, etcetera. He let me out and I wished him luck in catching any gangsters.
Later, I learned he is doing this to many people, most who can not deal with him, and he presses them on through the process. These may be regular folk who, for example, turning into a dirt road from a highway, can give him any excuse. They are also told there is really nothing they may do about it. In court, they lose, they pay.
Thanks,
Bill Blackolive

The Aransas Pass Progress did print a letter from me, never called me and took out Brown's name in pseudo-legal fear.

Back