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miles

2004-10-10 -

Maybe it was a godsend that Lucerne Valley High school talent show was cancelled this year. I didn't feel that way at the time, when I called the school and spoke to a girl named Michelle, who said that no, she didn't know why they weren't having one. I told her about my disappointment regarding the lack of school spirit this year and how I was really looking forward to the 130 mile drive, so maybe she could find out what was going on over there. Not surprisingly she never called back. I will always remember Michelle as the girl who didn't feel like going the extra mile. Luckily, I remembered Calico was one other town that was close enough to visit when I lived in LV, but too far for Liz, my only desert friend that whole lonely year. She wouldn't go with me for the Christmas ghost tour that year, probably because her boyfriend had her wrapped around his ego, and I was lucky enough to have lost my guy months before that. I never did get to the Calico ghost town. Till today, of course!

Hark and Mick drove with me on the 147-mile trip. The thing ended at five and we left late in the a.m. but no one cared. Beauty is in the eye of the guy with no watch on. The Calico event was going the entire Columbus Day weekend, which is amusing if you're anyone but me, because I realized I'm not off of work Monday as is the other 97% of the population.

I tried to tell Mick that I have a death complex which reintroduces itself at various times, like when I'm driving people in a vehicle, but I never had the opportunity. Holding preemie babies would be another one. Instead I fixated on the hard fact that one of my tires has had a nail in it for a few weeks, but it also has that fix a flat concoction keeping it together, so I asked God a couple of times not to let us go out that way, if he would. Plus Hark was trying to tell me the incredible story of how they were going to be building the caves at the land in Malibu.

"Then we're going to be hooking up the hot water, which is composed of...copper coils...solar....structure...utopia...beautiful land..."

So when Mick says, Ohell, what were you saying, you have a fear of the car doing what?

Like I'm going to ruin that with any thoughts of annihilating the three of us. If I were a man, I'd be the kind who always sucked it up and then cried later, like in between two big pillows, within a locked soundproof room in a garage, 50 miles from civilization.

Anyway, Calico was funny. The mining conductor told us it was never this crowded during the year except for these three days, being a holiday weekend. It was like someone cracked open a few hundred slow beehives and released them into a small room. Even during the gunfight the actors had to yell above the crowd.

"You'll be back, partner!"

"Oh yeah, Dwight? I quit!"

"You spewing out them fighting words are you Lyle?"

"I think I made myself clear, Dwight -"

"Well you better watch out or I'll - "

"- Mama. Mama! Hamburguesa o pizza? Que? HAMBURGUESA O PIZZA?!

Honestly, that didn't matter to anyone. I just wanted to point it out. Also I'd like to point out the idea that the Calico desert acting coach must not have been picky about the death scenes. Ten actors, eight of them ended up shot dead by the bad guy, otherwise known as the only guy left standing with a gun. Even after the last cowboy fell dead to the ground, I could still see their stomachs moving. Almost the last one to fall was the woman with the umbrella and the petticoat. She collapsed right near me, (A+), smacking her legs against the metal pole (A+) and then laughed at the rest of the punch lines with her eyes closed. And when I looked at her again a minute later, she squinted her eyes open and glanced up at me. I gave her a disapproving look my mother used to give me.

There was an amazing band there on stage later that I felt guilty watching, because an hour earlier the rubenesque singer was walking around in front of me and the wind blew her skirt up twice and I tilted my head to see her bloomers! Her singing was much better than her bloomers let on.

In the souvenir shop, all of the gold pieces in the little glass bottles said 'made in India' on the bottom, but it didn't stop people from inspecting them like they were from the artificially built dry bed running through the town. Having proven once again that gift shops are very lonely, I went outside and wondered what Mick and Hark would do if they came out and saw me squatting naked on the roof of the Deputy's office. When I looked down under the stairs below me, one of the actors was acting like a drunk who had passed out and was leaned up against an open wooden coffin. His cowboy hat was covering his face, but there was a little girl standing behind him in the coffin and moving his hat around. She was laughing, and it looked like she had her entire arm in her mouth. When we hit the bottom of the stairs, we realized that it was because she had Down's syndrome, and it was his daughter. His Mother was there too, holding her dog like a baby on the bench outside the Deputy's office. Actually she was a better tour guide than these other hired slackers.

"She loves her Papa, she comes here all the time and messes with him. You guys should look in the window at the holding cell. There's criminals in there."

I looked, but there were just a bunch of stuffed dummies, posing as prisoners. Still they were better at their job than the other actors, no offense. I kept waving at the little girl, and she kept laughing. Her Dad was another one breaking the Calico code, going in and out of character, when he opened his eyes and said

"The real criminal is the one behind me."

Then she bit his head.

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