Titanic Post

Hope, New Mexico: In the early 1980s, I saw a black and white version of the above photo over the bar of a pension on the outskirts of Biarritz, France on the Golfe de Gascogne. I blurted, “That looks like Hope, New Mexico!” The bartender smiled and said in only slightly accented English: “Yes I lived there for almost twenty years.”

Now Hope, NM is and always has been a small community on Highway 82 about 20 miles west of Artesia, which is on the Pecos River. Traditionally Hope has been a ranching area, think John Chisum whose ranch was to the North, now there are signs of oil drilling nearby. The story is that Hope got its name from two cowboys and a coin-toss. One of them said, “I hope you lose.” Anyhow the chances of running into someone in France who has lived in Hope are minute and the bartender, who was also the owner of the pension, had worked there as a sheepherder. He was a Basque, by the way.

I had met a second person from Hope, NM several years earlier in Sachsenhausen, Germany. Her name was Roberta and she was studying to become a pharmacist at the Frankfurt University. She was born in Hope and probably still has relatives there. I should have played the lottery after meeting the second Hopeian, because I was turning the laws of probability upside down.

It’s strange how life presents itself when you sit back and let things happen. All last week I had been feeling sorry for myself. My daughter was home sick and needed minor attention. It wasn’t much except I felt I should be there. And when I’m there, I’m nowhere else.

Yesterday my daughter was with her mother, and I took a ride on my blue motorcycle into the Sacramento Mountains. I spent several hours riding aimlessly about until I came to the turn-off to Apache Point in the southern Sacramentos. I turned in that direction. Apache Point is a stellar observatory (there is also a solar observatory nearby called Sunspot) and is positioned to overlook the Tularosa Basin to the South. When I got there I sat awhile looking out over the Otero Mesa. I could see Hwy 54 to El Paso, shining like a river in the sunlight and then disappearing into the haze south of Oro Grande. It was amazingly clear until that point. South of the wall of haze lies El Paso and Juarez, Mexico, too busy to worry about the air.

Did you ever shiver
Just because
You were standing
At a river?I sat awhile watching two big Ravens catching the up-draft off the hillside and getting tossed up into the wind doing some kind of acrobatic maneuver. Maybe an Emmelmann. They looked too old for that sort of nonsense.  On the way back to Cloudcroft, another Raven flew ahead of me for a short stretch, like he was making sure I wasn’t too old.  A little way before Cathey Peak, two adult wild turkeys ambled across the highway.  I slowed and waved, but they, knowing  that turkey season was long past, were too busy to notice me.

Going down the mountain, I stopped at Spring Mountain just before Mountain Park and had catfish and pinto beans with cole slaw, onions and pickles served with plastic utensils on a styrofoam plate. The master touch was a refreshing hot towel. A man was playing romantic songs on an electric piano and because I was sitting alone, I almost fell in love with myself, but stopped myself just in time.

Today I paid my dues to the IRS who hit me big time, because of some back payments I received last year. I wouldn’t mind so much, if I didn’t think the money would go to expand the Empire.

Indeed, life is like a sweet folk-song as it rambles down the road.

What does it say about a man who has Garrison Keillor for a hero? How dorkey can you get? None the less, he is my hero and speaks my heart most of the time. And I would give much to be able to write as well as he does. An old teacher of mine once said that we should always include at least one pretty sentence in anything we write. Keillor paints beautiful flowing pictures with every pretty sentence. Here is his latest painting.

Published April 5, 2006 in the Chicago Tribune.

April is here, time to cut loose of politics

by Garrison Keillor

Columnists should not write about politics. Take it from me, it’s a bad idea. You pick up your bright sword to harass the heathen Republican and your prose style goes limp, your verbs droop, and words such as “comprehensive” and “funding” creep in and you become thin-lipped and hissy, like Miss Whipple in study hall telling the boys in the back of the room to shape up or be sorry. Well, they aren’t going to shape up. What will shape them up is the day of reckoning and it’s not here yet.

It’s spring in Minnesota, the snow is gone except behind the garage, so it’s time to turn over a new leaf and let other people rag on the president. He is who he is, and anybody who hasn’t formed an opinion of him is not paying attention. I am going to sit and read poetry and wait for the enormous old crab apple tree beside our driveway to bud and then blossom, a mass of brilliant purplish flowers like a Mardi Gras float parked beside the house–you can almost hear the brass band playing “Just a Little While to Stay Here.” Or maybe it’s a funeral and the purple flowers are from the deceased’s old pals who are shuffling along beside the coffin, hankies in hand, on their way to the graveyard and then to O’Gara’s for a commemorative bump of whiskey. You can get all this just by looking at a crab apple tree. Visions of the vast grandeur of the sensuous world, intimations of mortality.

What vast grandeur do you find in Washington these days? The Jack Abramoff-Tom DeLay saga is the story of weasels. Men wheedling favors and skimming money off the top. Nobody in the Republican majority could be shocked by any of this, so why should you and I?

The people who are getting reamed by this administration are people under 30, and they are, like, OK with that. They walk around with little wires coming out of their ears and 10,000 tunes on their iPods, and if you go, like, global warming, they are, like, whatever. And you go, government deficit, and they are, like, duuuuuuuuuuuude.

Our country has been entered into a 30-year war against Islam, and I will not be fighting it. I am, like, 63. In fact, I am not only like 63, I am 63 and will soon be 64 when I hope you will still need me and feed me. I am sitting pretty. If the polar ice cap melts, it’s no problem here in Minnesota: The ocean isn’t going to wash up on our doorsteps. No hurricanes on our horizon. None of my friends are penguins. If the Iranian government gets the bomb, is it going to fly all the way to Minnesota to drop it?

Politics is a slough, and maybe we should let the weasels have it for now. Even if two more Republicans follow the Current Occupant into office, this country will still be around in some form or other. Cities may crumble and we may be forced to reside in walled compounds and hire security men to escort us to Wal-Mart and back, but much will remain, such as love, for example, and the quickening one feels in the spring. Flowers will bloom in whatever wreckage we make. Somewhere, someone will sing the old songs about love walking in and driving the shadows away.

People have been falling in love through every dismal era of history and through every war ever fought. Enormous black headlines in the newspapers and agitated talk in the cafes and yet she waited for him on the corner by the hotel where they had agreed to meet, and as traffic streamed past she watched the buses pulling up to the curb, looking for his familiar shape, his beautiful face, his slight smile. Under her arm, a newspaper, and inside it a columnist shaking his tiny fist at corruption, but it isn’t worth 2 cents compared to what’s in her heart. When her lover steps down, the air will be filled with bright purple blossoms and they will embrace and turn and go into the hotel, and on this, the future of the world depends.

Take the day off, dear reader, and ignore the world and let the president play his fiddle. Find the one who means the most to you and make yourselves happy. If that be ignorance, make the most of it.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Monday morning was beautiful and sunny–a perfect day for a motorcycle/camping trip. I had planned on two nights camping in the Gila Wilderness of Southwestern New Mexico. I say planned because “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley…” as Bobby Burns said so well. (more…)

I met Warren almost forty years ago at the Nuremberg Airport. I was working for Pan Am and he was taking flying lessons at the local flying club. Warren and his beautiful and bright wife, Herta, owned a Gasthaus in the nearby town of Fuerth. A year or so after we met, they moved to Long Island, Warren attended NYU and Herta started a successful beauty salon.

In about 1976, they returned to Germany and Warren took a job at the Frankfurt Airport where I had been working the past four years. While Herta was looking after their child, Chantel, Warren was teaching English and instructing airport workers on the finer points of loading and unloading commercial aircraft.

Eventually Warren became involved in an up and coming trade union and went on to be on the workers council and a member of the board of directors at the company that operated the airport, representing the rights of airport workers (Yes, they do that there.) There he caused agitation and consternation among the established leadership much to the joy and benefit of the employees. He was also an accomplished and well known magician in Germany. In the meantime I had returned to my beloved New Mexico.
In 2004 Warren and Herta visited his lifelong friend, who had moved to Arizona from Long Island. Warren and Herta liked the desert and climate so much, they decided to move there. Shortly thereafter they bought a house in Mesa, Az. I was able to visit them there on several occasions and Warren had planned to visit me sometime this month. I even cleaned out a room for him to stay in.

Herta called several days ago and announced that Warren had died of heart failure on St. Valentines Day. I think he was 67 years old. He played tennis and water volleyball and seemed to be in good health. Warren was a good friend and a great man to argue with. I hope he had a pleasant death and I will miss him dearly. My heart goes out to Herta and Chantel.

In a few minutes I will take possession of a new Suzuki V-Strom 650. There is also a larger engined one liter V-Strom, so I suppose that the 650 could be called the Wee-Strom. I see no reason for the larger machine. Now I will have two motorcycles.

This all started about a month ago while recovering from surgery to staighten out a contractured little finger. I had more time to think about things than usual and to savor things coming my way. One thing coming my way was an invitation from a friend to attend a reunion of four or five expatriates in the Riviera du Loupe area of Quebec. If everything comes together, we will enjoy the sunsets and frolicking Beluga whales along the St. Lawrence Seaway. There will be food and drink and stimulating conversations from these extremely enlightened and articulate folks.

To get to Quebec from New Mexico, I will have to go through Rochester, NY, where, it just so happens, my daughter Aretha lives with her family. What an opportunity! It must be obvious to all by now that I desperately needed another motorcycle. I knew you would understand!