la plus ca meme chose

it's a small town. in the 3 weeks I've been here:

• a hand-written cardboard sign advertising "small medium large" portions at the boy scout-sponsored breakfast (that happened in may) has remained duct-taped to a large tree in front of the fire department as have the "join cub scouts" signs on the lawn accompanying it;


• cooney hardware, the largest freestanding building in town and operated by the widow of the original owner on a sporadic and unposted time schedule, has remained closed (to be fair, the faded hand-printed card saying "back at 12:30" has disappeared but that's as likely to be the final deterioration of the cellophane tape holding it up as anyone removing it);


• a torn green sweatshirt has been splayed across the bike rack outside the school, the only use I've seen that rack get;


• the radar speedtracker set up on one of the backstreets has registered a quick "13" and then swiftly dropped to "7" each time I've walked past it (although why the radar is set up on that street, which is actually more an alley and has almost no traffic, I couldn't say);


• and a wrapped condom has been sitting on a rock just off the paved trail leading to the school until I finally put it in my pocket this morning. hopefully I have not screwed up the life of some kid who cached it there, leaving him or her now to unprotected sex, although it could as well have been a sacrifice to the virginity gods and now it's gone its owner may think he has to make a move...

crazy in the thick

I'm on my way to see my sister and her family in monroe, new york, and to get there I've traveled about 150 miles through the thick before deciding that the scenery was simply not worth the sacrifice of driving 45 mph behind horse trailers. route 6 through the thick is full of ruined houses and barns, homes with doors that open onto the interstate, and grand, majestic buildings that probably once had panoramic sweeps of all the master owned but are now a mere driveway away from the abandoned trailer someone simply left by the side of the highway. it is full too of towns that appear suddenly in your windshield and hang for too long in your rear view mirror.

I've been thinking of things that have happened in and around austin since I arrived a week and a half ago that put the lie to everything one assumes--or at least that I do--about the dullness of a town in the thick. some local boy turned 21 and when the local bar refused to serve him, saying he was already too drunk, he drove down the street and backed his car into the town's cola machine, knocking it through one of the few unbroken plate glass windows of which austin could boast; this same boy led the local cop on a chase down multiple roads until he happened to misremember one was a dead-end, so if he was going he decided he was going big and switched back around to ram the cop head-on. apparently no one was injured. another boy, a 2-year, was air-lifted to the emergency rooms of one of the closer big cities, probably scranton, after being kicked in the head by a horse. my father says he remembers when such things didn't involve hospital visits. I came across a tabloid called the sovereign while in olean, an odd amalgamation of classic libertarian/right-wing paranoia and far-left resistence hackery that, for $4, promised to tell me what was Really Going On. I had more time than money so I sat in a comfy chair and read it cover to cover. there was not a single thing in there I hadn't read a hundred times and 20 years before only with the addition of "9/11" and "obama" where I remember "bilderberg" and "reagan." if I seem less than enthralled with the material, it was probably the comfortable chair that put me off. I might have appreciated it better if I'd been sitting in a straightback cane chair with my top collar button fastened. to get the full effect of how I'd put it if I could, as always, listen to james.

DON'T THINK SHE'S SEEN THE SKY/SINCE WE GOT THE SATELLITE DISH

out here on the rim I listen to a lot of james mcmurtry, and this line out of "levelland" encapsulates much of what I'm worried about by getting more and more involved with the seemingly unending flood of technology I've opened myself up to. I read an interesting reflection that bemoans the author's memory of doing more before she joined up with twitter and blogger and started bookmarking things and that's a concern I share. I've always been about the doing--part of the reason I'm on the rim--and I've already noticed a tendency by me to sit here and read the intertubes. like the author, I've learned a lot more and had my intellectual experience broadened, but I've also been less likely to venture outside when it's cold--at least partly due to my aging but I also don't need to go to the library as often--or dark or too hot, and I haven't felt the itch to jump in the car and go somewhere I haven't been before like I used to. may be age. may be I get too much electronic humanity.