Bongo Freak

It's hard work keeping my head above the shit but the sun shone down on this dog's ass just when I needed it most. I was sleeping outside the salvation army shelter, slapping mosquitoes from my aching ankles, feeling that life would look up but otherwise spinning my wheels as I pondered how I would get to Mexico.


I had used all my shelter nights and even though it is now 110 degrees every day with humidity making it feel like 210, and the van could be used as a powder coating kiln, I'm optimistic. I want things to improve but I also want things to improve for humanity and though that makes me Christ-like in my martyred crown of thorns, what can I do? It is my nature to defeat this sick corporate colonization that cowards and do nothing cunts have allowed to take root in this land. We did not need to annihilate the Karankawa Indian but they are gone. Will the Arctic wolf follow them. I say, No.

My trail mix came from 12 fucking countries.

But I am destitute. My friends are felons, convicted torturers and disabled lunatics. I have no money to tie my own shoes. The library guard caught me watching a Bad Schoolgirl Lesbian video and kicked me out. I awake every day with no idea what is going to happen and as soon as my swollen feet touch the scorching sidewalk I am on the run from the law and the lord. But I remain optimistic. I have prayed for salvation. I have surrendered my soul to Jesus. I am no longer in control and I only pray that His plan will finally and completely resolve the justice that is so sorely absent from this plane of reality, which now bores me to tears, from which I ache to flee.

So I get a call that a man will let me stay at his junk yard out by the industrial auto scrap yards. All he had to say was, "I got this Honda Goldwing that won't charge." and I was revving up my van. I will follow any lead at this point.

My new Home. We got $80 worth of aluminum siding off that RV

And so I follow this lead even though it is far from paradise. Actually, the name of the company is Paradise Towing...hahahah. And it's sort of like paradise because I am surrounded by broken trucks and cars and a jeep I want to restore and literally three huge tool bureaus of abandoned tools (this was once a service station). But it's hot and I woke up to the sound of a puppy being killed, gang slaughtered by his 6 brothers and sisters. It was awful to hear the puppy cry but I was going to let nature take its course. All the dogs are at risk of mercy killings so who am I to step in when they decide to kill one of their own brothers. Fratricide among dogs isn't unusual. I listened and then looked at my broom and decided I had to do something. I went into the yard and moved toward the puppies. The pack had tackled the one puppy chosen to die under a trailer. He escaped briefly and ran but had no grace and was soon tackled against the side of a building where he got stuck under a natural gas pipe. Six puppies all gouged him will their claws and bit his face but they are young so they are basically nibbling this puppy to death.

You never see Snickers knockoffs...until now.

The mother dog (lame with a bad leg) looked around like she was checking on the police. I arrived and she fled. The puppy was crying bloody murder like the sound a dog makes when you crush his tail with a rocking chair, except louder and in the high tone of a puppy and continuously piercing the merciless skies. This wasn't a game that I'd seen before. This was what happened when 7 puppies are allowed to remain strays. They pack up and follow instincts as old as time. Oggy wasn't around during the ice age when brother deaths were common but he is around now and I swung the broom fiercely into the crowd of murderous puppies, something that I never thought I would have to do. The crippled puppy wept for mercy and bounded away crying with patches of fur missing. They were really trying to kill him. But the other puppies weren't done. They had some kind of boxer pit bull blood in them and three of them came at me. These puppies are hardly  6 months old. Maybe 3 months so I'm not too worried but the look in their eye was exactly like I'd seen dogs in Mexico who want blood. They were not afraid and three of them had the silent communication to approach me and then divide and try to flank me.
"Why are you fucking with our harsh methods," their raised ears seemed to say. "We make the laws because we are stray and have limited food and water to share. Don't meddle where you don't belong."
"You want to fuck with Oggy?" I yelled and swung the broom at one on my left until he fled.

The other two hadn't got the whole flanking hunt method down and they stayed too close together so I could watch them both at the same time. And they didn't coordinate their attack so I was able to counter attack the one on my right. He tried to get behind me and I threw a rock at him. The other wasn't brave enough and didn't try anything but I swung the broom at him just to make sure. When they were all calm again I returned to my van with my broom.

GM 350 V8 motor. This one froze up on the hot rod track but we needed the intake manifold.

I had an engine to install.which is another tale. It turns out the tow truck company owner is actually a master mechanic who was service manager at two dealerships, mechanic since age 15, could put a steering wheel on a flying nun. Had a car talk radio show for 13 years and "Was never stumped.". He didn't need any of my advice about rectifiers or stators. He literally swapped out an air conditioner compressor on his huge tow truck with one hand while talking on the phone. Casually. Nothing with wheels will ever intimidate him. He just needs someone to do it for free or barter a corner of the lot. In fact, he had a phone to his ear and was walking out of the garage to go tow a fatal accident vehicle that was folded in half (Toyota Tacoma overturned by drunks in the surf) and said casually, "If you could take those bell housing bolts off, swap the starters onto the good engine and change the oil, that would be great," like a real service manager. By the end of the day I was so greasy with transmission fluid that the mosquitoes dropped dead when they stabbed my neck.

Torque converter to fly wheel bolts are hell to get on and off.

 But the job only allows me a place to sleep with no shade way out of town and a wall spigot for water. I need money today so I got back into my arts mode...



My Jarritos Belt Buckle Project

My favorite part

At this point I had no idea what to do.

The coveted Gold Jarritos Cap accents this Mexi-art piece nicely.

But I keep thinking that the world does not need more manufactured crap such as Jarritos belt buckles. I will make one of these for myself and that's the end of it. I am totally baffled that people exist who make something like this and think, "Someone else will buy this. I should make ten million of them." What kind of an asshole thinks like that? Make your own custom belt buckle. Didn't you go to Kindergarten? Remember Art class? Go make something instead of driving to Walmart to pay a chinese slave to make it for you. You fucking lazy piece of shit.

Anyway, I was desperate beyond desperate, eating the rat droppings I found in the abandoned garage, envious when I watched the bats fly around eating moths. Starving and sweating and lonely and still obsessed with a failed Mexican love affair. The radio man says, "Look forward to 110 degree temps the rest of the week. Here's CCR with Bad Moon Rising..." God, I am in Hell.

So, Monday I decided would be the day of decisive action. I needed money. I would go to the scrap yard and ask for work. I would go to the Pik-U-Part salvage yard. I would go to the machine shop. I would go to the motor rebuild shop. I would sell blood...and then the phone rang and I picked it up. Do I want to be a repair man at a trailer park? Yes.
I jump through the hoop of pissing in a cup (luckily I didn't smoke that joint JJ was passing around) and they don't even look at me funny that I'm wearing my "SUPER VAN" overalls with "Chris" on my name tag. I pass the piss test. They want me to start today. Fine. I need to eat. I weighed myself at the drug testing clinic and I came in a 151.9. Most of that is scar tissue and guilt so I drive to the island and show up at the trailer park.
Day 1: Someone has shit in the pool...and it's not a snickers bar. The maintenance man of 10 years fell in love with a girl who drove drunk across a lawn and destroyed a trailer. She got kicked out. He snuck her back in and got caught so he had to choose between the job and her. He chose the girl and he's gone. Enter Oggy...savior with a hammer...first project is a leaking faucet....I can't go into details because it basically included every problem that could be conceived and all plastic trailer home "pipe" and cheap faucets that stink of poverty and china. A good O ring would cost more than the whole faucet. Everything reeked of SSDI welfare. The guy running the Dixie lawnmower gets it stuck between an underground utility post and the water main box, totally stuck requiring Oggy ingenuity involving a post to use as leverage. We get it free. The manager locks herself out of the office. I cross thread the only cheap plastic fitting on the property but manage to make it work by flipping it upside down. The maintenance man's trailer, which he was provided for free as long as he fixed it up, is a total dump/disaster. One small room has 7 electrical outlets. The additions are slanted like a fun house. One ceiling power wire has no switch. One doesn't have power. He has stapled a carpet to linoleum. All the fans wobble. It's 140 degrees inside. My back aches. But it's work and I don't complain as I'm already dreaming of the slice of Spinner's pizza I will eat. The other handyman asks me to cut a piece of sheetrock to fit in a place on the ceiling where it doesn't meet the wall (awful Mexican sheet rockers did a horrible job. I do the most half assed job imaginable, actually hammering the piece into place (crushing one corner) and then using nails to hold it there. THe edges don't match the other ceiling piece. He sees it and says, "Perfect. Exactly what I wanted." and I smile because we understand each other. This isn't the Taj Mahal or even the Indian slum outhouse a mile from the Taj Mahal. This is a trailer in a janky trailer park and it's a rental and this is a custom addition that was once a pot nursery and who cares what it looks like? I move on to tackle the lighting until it's time to go home.

Then I get a call from a preacher who wants me to be a gate guard, camping in the middle of nowhere for $125 a day to sign in truck drivers to hydro-fracturing sites in the Eagle Ford Shale area. Sounds tempting but I'm hungry for Jarritos and God has my feet on his shoulder like a little baby floating me to my salvation and merging me with my intake manifold majesty.