After yesterdays' problem...

with the strange way my text showed up after clicking 'Publish Post' I'm here to try it again. Why the second half of yesterdays' blog is formatted more like a poem than prose is beyond my ken.

Hot and muggy in the highlands of Jalisco. Mid-nineties with threatening clouds but so far it's pure bluff. Tried to turn a little soil in the garden this morning but was soaked in sweat within minutes. I said the hell with it and went inside to watch the Federer,Nadal tennis match.

My quote of the day:

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar." - Edward R. Murrow

MEXICO (as I see it):

It would seem that if the Mexicans are going to wear American T-shirts with messages written on them they should, at least, understand the words. Being a little better versed in the verbiage one is carrying around might eliminate seeing silver-haired old ladies at mass wearing T-shirts that announce: 'SHIT HAPPENS!' or 'DO ME NOW!'

AND

Mexico is a place where modern sky scrapers are being erected and from among the massive steel girders and tons of wet concrete may be heard the incongruous sound of crowing roosters. Workers, away from home, living on the construction site for months at a time, raise chickens for food. And, maybe the birds help these Mexican men keep in touch with their perception of reality.


THE SERIAL: OXYGENATED WATER


"Let me tell you boy, when that gun went off it
nearly scared the dick right off me. I mean, I thought
it was the end of the world. People broke and ran
every which way. Quite naturally, the report of a
pistol is going to draw a lot of attention. River Side
Ballroom had some sort of security in the form of
off-duty police or rent-a-cops, I can't remember which
they were but they had them around because of the
place's rough reputation.

"Anyway, this gun goes off in the semi-darkness of
the parking lot and Darrell lets out a whoop and
shouts, 'The son-of-a-bitch shot me!' I groaned to
myself, 'Oh my God!' Since everybody else on the lot
was running all over the place, trying to get gone
before somebody official showed up, Mike and I joined
in with them. All three of us were hot-footing it for
Darrell's old car. Darrell was running too but not
very good. He hollered to Mike, 'Jump behind the
wheel, I can't drive!' I thought, 'Oh shit! What does
that mean?'

"We all piled in and Mike fires up this old rag of
a car and peels across the parking lot throwing dirt
and dust straight up into the few old yellow light
bulbs they had strung around out there. You can
believe me it was an eerie sight, seeing those people
charging all over the place through a big, yellow dust
cloud.

"We hit the street fairly flying and Mike pressed
the old car for all it had. We sped around the strange
streets of south Phoenix for awhile with no headlights.
We figured that was real smart; that way nobody
could see us. It makes you wonder about young people
don't it? At any rate, as we wandered about down there
we were trying to ascertain just where this boy was
shot. Darrell was beside himself with pain and was
making a lot of noise.
'God damn!' he was yelling, 'I hurt.'
'Where do you hurt?' Mike asked into the rearview
mirror.
'It's my leg, the dirty dog shot me in my leg.'
Darrell wails.

"We all wanted to get a look at his leg to see
what was going on. I forgot which leg it was and it
really makes no never mind so I'll call it the right
one. So, anyway, we stopped long enough to take a peek
and, sure enough, the boy was bleeding like a stuck
hog. The blood was oozing down his Levis and making
his sock all juicy and was even beginning to change the
color of his shoe leather.
"I said to them both, 'What in the world are we
going to do now?'

"We boys knew, even back then, just by roaming the
streets a bit that you sure as hell can't go to any
doctor or hospital when you're sporting a bullet wound.
If we had done that we'd have been trick-bagged for
certain. They would have told us, 'Sure, lads, we'll
help you out. You all just sit here in this nice
sterilized waiting room while we go for some medicine.'
But, what they really meant to say was...'while we call
the cops.'

"We had no way to explain the bullet wound. In
fact, there's hardly any sensible way a bullet wound can
be explained. I mean, it stands to reason that getting
shot involves an illegal act of violence, unless you
shoot yourself in the leg, in which case they're going
to ask you to show them the gun you did it with and we
didn't have any gun to show them. So, my question
remained, what in the world were we going to do?

"After some pondering we got to believing that we
could take out the bullet ourselves. It seemed, under
the circumstances, to be a reasonable idea since there
was no one to help us in a professional manner. It was
settled then, we'd just have to go it alone.

"Remember now, Darrell was married and had his own
apartment but we sure couldn't go there. Darrell was
married to an ugly woman. She was fat, she was strong
and she was mean; she was every bit as mean as he was.
Darrell had a somewhat inordinate fear of his wife.
It was because he knew she had had about all she could
stomach of him coming home beat up, shot up or with a
paddy wagon following him in. Going home with a sock
full of blood would not be rewarding. Things would only
get worse for Darrell. Lacking that option, and him
bleeding and whining all over the place, meant we'd
have to get on with it right there in the car.

"Since all the blood was below the knee we guessed
that the bullet must be in the calf of his leg. We
also figured that we might just squeeze it out since
that part of the leg is kind of soft and mushy anyway.
Why wouldn't it work?

"Darrell gave the word: 'Shit-fire, boys, let's
do'er. I can't stand feeling like this much longer.'
After that he added, 'But, I've got to have some
whiskey first.'

"Well, you know, that's how we thought back then.
Whiskey's good for bullet wounds; it was always good
for John Wayne. We knew them ole cowboys always got
drunked up before they took a bullet out of one of
themselves. So, we boys thought...'Well hell, let's go
get some whiskey then!'

"Neither Mike or I could buy liquor and Darrell
surely couldn't walk in anybody's liquor store. He was
leaking blood from his knee to his shoe and sniveling
quite a lot along with it. So, we did what we always
did in those days, we went down to Van Buren Street.

"It was a pretty wide open section of town;
prostitutes parading around and lots of bums, winos and
the like. Best of all, there were block after block of
liquor stores which were almost always open for
business. All in all, it was a nice area for anyone
who needed something. Many times we boys in the
neighborhood had pooled our money when we wanted
something to drink and headed for Van Buren Street to
hunt up an old wino. We'd call one over to the car and
tell him that if he'd go in the store and get us
such-and-such a bottle we'd give him enough extra to
buy himself a touch. It usually meant a half-pint of
wine or whatever it took to keep the fire lit for him.
"Darrell was still pissing and moaning: 'Come on
boys, let's get on with it. Son-of-a-bitch do I hurt!'
As we got to Van Buren, Mike and I are still scared to
death carrying around a shot man. Darrell's in the
back seat so he could stretch out his leg. He said he
felt better when he could get himself into a
semi-supine position."

I don't know if semi-supine was one of Uncle
Arlin's words or if his cousin Darrell had really said
that. Either way, it didn't make any sense to me.
But, I didn't say anything about it and Uncle Arlin
kept right on telling his story like everything was
clear to him.

continued....