Andrew Jarvis

I learned something about the town I grew up in today so I'm going to see how quickly I can summarize it.

Every weekday from Late August to Mid June I walked out my back door, usually forgetting to lock the door, and walked or jogged to school. The high school was about a one mile walk for me. Maybe a bit more. 2 miles tops. "You'll be late," my father would inform me through dream cotton ears...and I paid him as much heed as I did to Nancy Reagan. My father left slightly earlier in the morning but it was a rare day I could get up in time to get a ride with him. I'll tell you why: normally, I would lay awake at night listening to the radio with headphones attached to my Sony Walkman. WHEB would play Dead or Alive and Pet Shop Boys over and over until 4 am. Then I'd get 2.5 hours of sleep and in attempting to make it 2.75 I would oversleep and miss home room. I could listen to the radio all night long in 1988. Faced with a choice between listening to Madonna's "Material Girl" or eating breakfast, I chose Madonna.

"Home Room" that phrase seems very unfamiliar to me now that I have been out of that artificial/codified world. I'd have to walk up South Street hill and endure the jeers of students who honked at me in their cars. Sometimes they'd stop and let me run up almost to the door and then take off fast, honking and flipping me the finger, calling me faggot. They were real heroes, laughing at me as they would arrive at school exactly on time and knew that I'd never beat the bell. Rain and sleet would lash my face and they'd always laugh and drive away. Real winners, those guys. (I'll add that one morning a kid let me catch up and get in. He was drinking vodka, playing Def Leppard wicked loud, laughing. He took a left turn in front of a speeding car and it smashed into us, glass covering our faces, flipping the car over and around. I got out and he forced the bottle into my backpack and said, "Get rid of this." and I limped away from the carnage, having injured my hip and neck. I tossed the empty bottle into a garbage can...and was still late for Home Room. When the Vice Principle asked for my excuse I said "It was my destiny." and was given an extra day in detention.)

Safety Email

"MAX HEAT INDEX VALUES ON TUESDAY WILL RANGE FROM 105  TO 107 AND MAX HEAT INDEX VALUES ON WEDNESDAY WILL RANGE FROM  106 TO 110. THE COMBINATION OF HEAT AND HUMIDITY WILL RESULT  IN AN ELEVATED RISK FOR HEAT-RELATED HEALTH PROBLEMS." 


Strange that it doesn't mention the impending environmental collapse caused by unfettered destruction to fuel our grotesque infrastructure. It must've slipped their mind.

Note: Today, the only two places on Earth that were hotter than this area of Texas were Adrar, Algeria (middle of Sahara Desert) and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Ridiculous.

Street Guitar

Oggy's fat free ass rested hard on the concrete flower bed that protected a few weeds dispersed by wind and fate. The bearded one had to shift his decrepit hips to avoid sores. Graffiti and pain were painful distractions that Oggy wrestled against, mentally pinning one against the other and grappling alternatively with reality and an image of symbolic warfare. "Famuz G." was one such purple paint tag. "BLK BOYZ RULE" was another. "Vato Street Brothers...V.S.B." Nowhere was the wingnut nation represented, lacking literacy and publicity department of the aforementioned...and this omission bothered Oggy because it touched on a larger problem within a problem, a hidden problem, one of education strata enjoyed by the dispossessed, not merely defacing property but a subclass of undesirables who were voiceless.

Retirement

This place looks like it has enough character and quirks to keep me entertained. A music school is all that is missing but there is one of those in Puebla.

The Last Ride

Hitchhiking is like buying a lottery ticket to the wide world of lunatics...but you don't want the winning numbers. It's probably the most misunderstood modes of traveling because if you have ever hitchhiked then you know it's terrible and if you dream of hitchhiking then you believe it will be awesome. Go to the end of a dirt road, where no one passes you and stick your thumb out for 16 hours. I'll tell you what will happen: You will kick the dirt, piss behind a tree, snack on food even though you aren't hungry...hum songs you know, and invent melodies that you'll soon forget. Every demon you've ever developed, every regret, every skeleton will haunt you mercilessly. You'll wonder if anyone will find your body...you'll be certain you're going to die of starvation. Hours and hours of watching the sun go down until you realize that there is no way you'll get off this road without walking. But walking how far? 10, 20 100 miles on dirt? But it's too late to start because the sun is down. You'll walk all night? No, that's crazy. No food, no blanket. You'll curse your bad luck at forgetting your sleeping bag in the last station wagon who dropped you off way the fuck in the middle of nowhere. But you had to flee because the guy was super creepy and his wife looked drugged. What kind of maniacs were they? Now you'll freeze all night, hungry...cold...lonely...hours more pass...you aren't even tired. You sit down and ants crawl on your legs. The moon comes out through the trees...what state are you in? What's the difference? Finally you see lights and are relieved...you'll be saved! And it's the same car that dropped you off and the same creep who rubbed your leg. But he's going to town for cigarettes...and you have no choice but get in again. It's a Rorschach test because what you see is who you are.

Few hitchhikers attempt to record their experiences and even fewer do it convincingly. It's kind of like war combat. Kerouac might be the only person to get to the heart of it as On The Road touches all the sun and shadow of the experience and he ends with Big Sur "being passed by fake wood panel station wagons, wifey looking straight ahead, hubby ignoring everything at the wheel, two kids gawking through the window..." bleak reality of 1962...

This is the first time I've hitch hiked in years and I soon begin to see things have changed in America, you cant get a ride any more […]. Sleek long station wagon after wagon comes sleering by smoothly […], the husband is in the driver's seat with a long ridiculous vacationist hat with a long baseball visor making him look witless and idiot -- Besides him sits wifey, the boss of America, wearing dark glasses and sneering, even if he wanted to pick me up or anybody up she wouldn't let him -- But in the two deep backseats are children, children, millions of children, all ages, they're fighting and screaming over ice cream, they're spilling vanilla all over the Tartan seatcovers -- There's no room anymore anyway for a hitch hiker. - Big Sur --Kerouac


Kerouac had come full circle from being picked up by the darling L.A. blonde actress in a sporty ride in Dharma Bums, who wanted amphetamines, to being stranded in Big Sur. The highs and lows had become only lows...and he'd never hitch again...what was culturally the spreading of White America in Healthy Camelot prime time to Kerouac was the homogenization and degradation of Bohemia.