Mykel and Sid go to Tennessee Part 2

FRIDAY, APRIL 17: My last trip... to Trinidad and Venezuela... had a little different feel than this one. When I arrived in Trinidad, the morning paper was scary. Murderers set free. Dengue fever. Every spooky thing you can imagine.
 
Knoxville too has spooky headlines. Check it out... the newspaper office might be haunted, says a local paranormal team. And worse yet. CARS ARE GOING TOO FAST IN WORK ZONES. SLOW DOWN! YOU MIGHT KILL SOMEONE!

I have my biscuits and gravy breakfast. It's one of the reasons I come to The South. It's good, but not as great as I expect. Something a little bland about the gravy. Needs more lard or something. I donno... but the trip is young. 

Despite the blandness, it's the best breakfast I've had in months. Looks like you can just suck it in, huh?

Beats the usual raisin bagel and butter on the subway.

After that it's garage sales, then two tiny tacos in a local REAL Mexican place. [NOTE FOR GRINGOS: Tacos do NOT have hard nacho shells. They do NOT automatically come with cheese. They are NOT chicken or beef.] I have a tongue and a cabeza. 

The rest of the day is thrift store to thrift store. Piling up books, I buy another suitcase to hold 'em all those Amazon hopefuls. I'm still unsure of how I'll be able to keep track of them. That database program, you know.

Chad's the tourguide for the day. And before long it's time to pick up Sid at the airport. Chad asks if I want another taco before seeing Sid. But the name of the restaurant is Taqueria. Sounds like Taco + diarrhea. Mmmm. I don't think so.  

We stop for a beer, then find Sid, waiting for his bag after the others on his flight are long gone. Somehow (of course) his bag got separated from the rest. Maybe it's the bag full of Furbies. I can imagine how that must look as it passes through the x-ray machine. 

From baggage to a discussion with Ashley, the car rental agent. I need to make minor changes to my rental agreement. Do we discuss the rental agreement? Nope. We talk about Ashley's Spinal Bifida child and how it's a miracle of God's love that the kid walks when the doctors said he'd never do that. How it's a sign of God's love that the poor cripple can take a few steps. I do not ask her about the God's love that gave the kid Spinal Bifida in the first place. Nor do we discuss why the car rental agent is talking about her child's handicap with complete strangers... customers... in the first place. This is THE SOUTH. They do things different here.

At the airport, Chad asks if we want to go out, or to go to “a bonfire” at his girlfriend's house. Previously, he told me that his girlfriend's divorce had just been finalized. There had been some problems and it's been a while since... you know. One of the many lessons I've learned from traveling around the world for these 65 years is RESPECT THE NOOK. It's the number one rule for the global traveler. So I say “sure, we'll go to the bonfire.”

Rachel lives in a big house built in the 50s or 60s. It looks older. Sid asks her if she's ever felt A PRESENCE. She says not particularly. He's disappointed. Oh yeah, there's also a huge pit bull, Cain.

After a fire in the back, without ghost stories, but with screams from the park behind Rachel's house, we turn in for the night. Sid gets a double bed for himself. Chad gets Rachel. I get the pit bull. 

TURD REPORT: Silly string

Beloit (Skipping the rest of NC for a bit)

My life moves a fuck of a lot faster than my blog. So I'll have to come back to NC later, now, here's the first version of

BELOIT October 2007

I start this blog at 7:11 on October 4 at the Delta Shuttle terminal at LaGuardia Airport. I'm worried. Things have worked too smoothly. Dale was supposed to meet me last night at 9:30, just when I got home from work. I walk in the door from work, immediately the doorbell rings. It's Dale.

This morning, he's supposed to be in front of my building at 6:15. I take my suitcases on the elevator to be downstairs waiting for him when he arrives. He's there when the elevator door opens. We make it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. That's where I am now.

Not much sleep last night, but I rarely sleep much before I travel. I'll sleep on the plane a bit or not. I'm trying to think of all the stuff that can go wrong. Dale is staying at my apartment so it doesn't even matter if I locked the door. There WILL be something, but I'll be nervous until it happens.

Sunday October 7 1:24PM Des Plaines Oasis, Des Plains IL: Except for a weird period of spaciness yesterday. Where I forgot people's names, was unable to come up with snappy answers, and felt an odd piece of blankness where I think my frontal lobes are, (This went away with increased alcohol consumption), things continue to go too well. The weather is HOT. In the 90s. Not Beloit in October weather.

The Beloit Reunion itself is disappointing. Many of the people I hope to see are not there. Being old, the first thing we talk about is who's dead. The only new death is the wife wife of a pal of mine who went from Beloit to being a brewmaster (imagine that!). His Japanese wife offed herself. The details are unclear, but it appears he was spending too much time in China and she hated China. Japanese people do these things.

Embarrassing moment for me: Jesse is the couch-surfing girl I'm staying with. She's in the Beloit Latino students leage. From Maine, she's a Latina by choice, not by birth. There's something Latina in her style too. The way she walks. The way she carries her body. It makes it necessary for me to... er... adjust myself. Cool, funny, with Mexican friends. She tells me about her adventures in South America. We take a walk to hit a new local food place. She's as friendly as a Brazilian.

When I walk in I see that she has her refrigerator planned for me, as well as her own future:

Later in the evening we hang at BERT'S BAR. That's Bert all the way to the right. Next to Bert is Jesse, and next to Jesse, her roommate Anya. Next to Anya you know, and the two on the end, I forget the names.

Everything goes great, except that the first night at her place, the air mattress slowly loses air as I sleep on it. At night I'm floating. In the morning I'm getting splinters from the floorboards. Then, there's the cow.

Jesse works at the Beloit “coffee house.” No coffee there. It's an on-campus bar. One of the beers they serve there is SPOTTED COW. (They also have a beer called FAT SQUIRREL.... but I do not accidentally ask her for a FAT COW. Jesse's not fat so it wouldn't make sense as an insult. But I could imagine ordering a FAT COW when a large female is sitting next to me. Hooey! My nose would still be in a splint.) I notice that behind the bar is a cow that just hangs wrinkled. I ask Jesse about it.

“Oh,” says Jesse, “it used to be blown up, but all the air went out of it.”

“I guess everything you touch deflates,” I say without thinking.

Jesse suddenly looks deflated herself. Then, thinking about my private IN-flation when we met, I realize how I've been misinterpreted. It's like an insult! No! No! No! But what can I say? That's not what I meant. Touch here! Check it out?” Too late! Sometimes I just say the wrong things! Who me?

The Beloit reading: As has happened from Harvard to Stamford, Barnes and Nobles has taken over the administration of the college bookstore. So far I've been able to avoid ever reading at a Barnes and Nobles, but now I've got no choice.

I'm competing with the college football game, Arab Women Speak Out on Arab Dress, folk dancing in commons, and several welcome back fratboy parties. I expected attendance to be sparse. Sure enough, at the appointed starting time, there's NO ONE! Within a half hour, though. The place is packed. Yowsah! The bookstore sells a ton of books. I sign 'em all. I'm happy and $35 richer from books the store had to buy from me because they ran out.

Despite it being a reunion, the greatest discover of the trip is the current students. I have more fun with them than with the old farts of my class.

Oh I like these people. Some of them are really good friends. But I know them. They're comfortable. I'm not such a fan of comfort. Give me adventure! And besides, I admire these new Beloiters. They've got something we didn't have.

I project backwards: It's 1969 and a bunch of alumni are back at school to celebrate their 30-something, or 20-something or something-teenth reunion. Keep them away from me! Those dumb fucks. They don't know anything's wrong, let alone that the revolution is just around the corner. Fuck 'em. They're part of the problem. I'm the solution.

Ok, if they want to talk to me. I'll talk. There's plenty they can learn from me. But I sure as a black flag aren't gonna sidle up to them and ask questions. What could I ask them? I have the answers already and they don't even know how to ask.

That's how I would've been. But now? The kids wanna know. They wanna hear stories. They want me to tell 'em about how we threw a piano out a third story window and spelled USA on the football field in partially dissected fetal pigs. They want to hear about the drugs, the riots, the firebombed dean's office (I didn't do that) or the plaster of paris in the keycard locks (that one,,, er.)

I'll have more to write about Beloit. I'll probably take this down after updating and rewriting... or maybe not. These adventures tend to fizz out, being replaced by new adventures that I start to blog and never finnish.

--Mykel