el paso, entre ningún lugar y nunca

[jimboloco]

I picked up a hitch hiker heading west out of Houston goin nowheres in my 67 Impala out of a labor camp in south Louisiana, Berwick, where they charge ya for room an the cafe takes credits for food. I hadn't even broken even and was dragged out of my crib by the sherrif, hauled off to jail also, then let go for mouthing off in the street when he'd told everybody to clear the street on a Sunday afternoon, and there was nothing bad going on. The labor camp with a bar-cafe, a dormitory and a work place.

Haulin ass west I saw the fellow, toothless yet younger than me. He was heading for El Paso, and Ciudad Juarez.

We cruised out there, stopping at a roadside rest stop west of San Antone that night. Rattlesnakes were there. I think he drove also.
We got into Juarez the next afternoon, checked into this Hotel for a couple of bucks. Walked thru the sunny afternoon streets and to a cantina. we were drinking beers and enjoying the musicians with their large guitars.
Walking home, we were stopped by two young policias dudes they said, "Tienes marijuana. Estas borachos." They swiped my blue jean jacket pocket an took out 80 dollars. I got back to the hotel with 1 dollar.

Next day the American border patrol searched my car completely. I sold it to a dealer for 75 bucks in El Paso and gave the hitch hiker dude 5 bucks. He was walking to the mission and was gonna look for work at Ft. Bliss, the last place I wanted to be, a military installation.

I took a bus to Albequerque, got there at 2 am, walked to the mission, which was closed, dropped off some excess baggage and walked to the freeway.

I hitched to San Fransisco.

[jimboloco]

I picked up a hitch hiker heading west out of Houston goin nowheres in my 67 Impala out of a labor camp in south Louisiana, Berwick, where yjey charge ya for room an the cafe takes credits for food. I hadn't even broken even and was dragged out of my crib by the sherrif, hauled off to jail also, then let go gor mouthing off in the street when he'd told everybody to clear the dtreet on a Sunday afternoon, and there was nothing bad going on. The labor camp with a bar-cafe, a dormitory and a work place.

Haulin ass west I saw the fellow, toothless yet younger than me. He was heading for El Paso, and Ciudad Juarez.

We cruised out there, stopping at a roadside rest stop west of San Antone that night. Rattlesnakes were ther. I think he drove also.
We got into Juarez the next afternoon, checked into this Hotel for a couple of bucks. Walked thru the sunny afternoon streets and to a cantina. we were drinking beers and enjoying the musicians with their large guitars.
Walking home, we were stopped by two young policias dudes they said, "Tienes marijuana. Estas borachos." They swiped my blue jean jacket posket an took out 80 dollars. I got back to the hotel with 1 dollar.

Next day the American border patrol searcheds my car completely. I sold it to a dealer for 75 ucks in El Paso and gave the hitch hiker dude 5 bucks. He was walking to the mission and was gonna look for work at Ft. Bliss, the last place I wanted to be, a military installation.

I took a bus to Albequerque, got there at 2 am, walked to the mission, which was closed, dropped off some excess baggage and walked to the freeway.

I hitched to San Fransisco.

[Doreen Peri]

Excellent snippet, Jimbo.

I enjoy stories from people's lives.

Sounds like an adventure.... hell, sounds like you've had lots of adventures!

Thanks for the read.

What year did this happen, btw?

(why'd you quote yourself? just curious.)

[jimboloco]

Hey that is funny. Mercy.
I quoted myself. Crazy. An worse, I still have the original miss spelled words in the quote, now corrected. It must have come as some spontaneous expression an devil be damned I ain't trading my soul for perfect spelling, or rational behavior, but I did go back and re-correct my blatant misstyping, really. I knowed how to spell them wordz.

Er, it was after I dropped out of B-school for the second time, worked in Detroit, then had split to Lousyana where I was told, "If you don't cotton to our ways, we don't want you around here, "G Paw cracker....that's when I split on down to th labor camp in south Lousyana an then headed west, in the summer of '76.

[sooZen]

the streets of juarez
are no place for loco gringos
for they'll take you
for what you got
and give you back nada

especially now
the drug lords and pistoleros
shoot you if you even look
familiar'

you can get muy boracho
on tekillya and limon
or see the ladies
at the white lake
for a good dose of clap

the muchachas
working the maquiladoras
their bodies lie baking in the sun
along the rio grande
ripped, torn and cast away
...no le hace

so if you come to el paso
mi casa es su...
you can look at the lights
across the muddy river
from my back porch
(juarez es bonita that way)

Salud,
SooZen

[jimboloco]

oh I remember walking around town in Juarez in the afternoon and eating at a cafe and walking through a park with balloon vendors and families, veryquiet and gracious.

[stilltrucking]

Nice piece jimboloco. I think I got a song for the sound track. As if it was a scene in a movie.

written by Billy Joe Shaver

performed by Waylon Jennings.


Verse 1:
D E
Down the road a ways i've heard said a new day's coming on
A D
Where the women folks are friendly and the law leaves you alone
E
I'll believe it when i see it and i haven't seen it yet
B E
Don't mind me just keep on talking i'm just looking for my hat


Chorus 1:
A E
There ain't no God in Mexico,ain't no way to understand
A
How that border crossing feeling makes afool out of a man
E
If i'd never felt the sunshine then i would not curse the rain
A
If my feet could fit a railroad track,i guess i'd been a train


Verse 2:
D E
Me and Louise Higgins-Botham used to chase across the yard
A D
Back in 1947 that's when more than times were hard
E
Well pity me i didn't find the line in time like a fool
B E
In front of God and everybody i politely blew my cool


Chorus 2:
A E
Ain't no God in Mexico,ain't no comfort in the king
A
When you're down in Madamoris getting busted by the man
E
If i'd never felt the sunshine,Hell i would not curse the rain
A
If i hadn't been railroaded well i guess i'd been a train




If you ever get out to mile marker zero in texas check out the old truck stop on the airline blvd exit if it is still there. sits right on the bank of a river.

[jimboloco]

you mean east of brownsville north of the rio grande?
what would i be doin way down there?
like undiscovered country, not popular with the tourist scene.
just padre island for the locals.
mcallen and laredo is tex mex country.from brownsville to piedras negras, del rio? then winding thru deep pecoos country, wilderness, near alpine, another undiscovered vista, then west to elpaso and the flats.

[stilltrucking]

shadows deepen

sitting in darkness
chills my skin to goosebumps
dawn brings faint shadows

dim light with no warmth
old train rollin'down the line
opening my heart

war is wore
ryhmes with gore
scintilla of peace

[Axanderdeath]

the west has so much more cooler sounding names than the east I think. I still like the east better though.

[Lightning Rod]

Last time I was in Juarez it was for a wedding.

My wife and I got tired of working in Dallas and since I had sailed her birth control pills out the second story window like a frisbee because they were making her crazy, well, you can guess what happened next. So, I bought a puke green chevy van that had nothing in it but the driver's seat. I built a bed in the back and where the passenger seat should have been we put a rocking chair and headed to California.
It was very Grapes of Wrath or Beverly Hillbillies, I can't decide which.

We picked up TJ and his girlfriend Debbie in Austin. They wanted to get married but she was only seventeen. The four of us slept in the van. It was cozy.

TJ wanted to make an honest woman of her so we stopped in El Paso. I knew they would disassemble the van if we took it across the border, so we hopped a cab to la ciudad. The cabbie was very helpful. In an hour we were in a lawyer's office. Get married? No problemo, one hundred dollars and sign here. Then the cab driver scored us two fat numbies for five bucks and we all smoked them in the cab.

TJ and Debbie spent their honeymoon bouncing across New Mexico and Arizona in the back of my chevy van.

[sooZen]

That's a good story Lrod...Juarez is a good destination if you want a 'quickie' anything.

Used to be quite the place for me when I was a teen and underage for drinking here in the states. A bunch of us would head over there on the weekend to the Caverns for drinks and then to the Lobby to party all night with blues legend Long John Hunter:

snippit of interview by Ray Stiles

"It was just a few years later, in 1957, that Long John started a regular gig just across the border from El Paso in Juarez, Mexico that lasted more than a decade. He played at a popular club called the Lobby Bar in Juarez from sundown to sunup. John said with a laugh, "that was a party from 8 o'clock 'til 'please go home ya-all' in the morning."

John's second album on Alligator Records, called "Swinging From The Rafters" is a direct reference to some of his antics at the Lobby Bar in Juarez. I asked him about that album cover that shows him swinging from a rafter with his guitar in the other hand. He said, "yeah, I don't feel like doing that much these days. I'm about 100 pounds heavier and 40 years older. I still do crazy things but I don't swing from the rafters, I really don't have any to swing from. That really got a lot of attention when I started doing it though. It just happened too, I wasn't looking for it, it was just a crazy thing to do while performing. I thought, 'this ain't too high up here', the bandstand was about 'so high' and that made the ceiling a good reach for me. I just reached way out and got one (rafter) and swung way out. The dance floor was right out in front of the bandstand and I was up over the people's heads swinging there on one hand and playing the guitar with the other. They just went crazy. So it was just a thing I had to do 2 or 3 times a night after that first time."

Long John was playing the guitar behind his back and with his teeth waaay before Jimi even thought about it.

We would dance the night away and then stumble across the bridge to where the car was parked and who knows how we finally drove home.

Things have changed in Juarez...it is not a safe place anymore, especially for the young and vunerable and with the drug wars, you never know when someone will break out and start shooting. We never go there anymore even when the turistas come to town. "Take the trolley from the civic center" is our advice and we stay home and look at the lights from our porch where we can sip our margaritas in peace...

SooZen

[stilltrucking]

I got this compilation of blues that a musician made for me, but I am not listening to it while I type this. Silence and solitude almost, the window is open and there are occasional bird calls, insect chirps, trains, jet fighters, sirens but other then that it is silence.

Mile marker zero, she came out of the dakness and startled me, this was back in the nineties when the national press had not picked up on the murders yet. She asked me for a ride, she looked about 14 said she was 18 and she was spooked. I had to go to Laredo so I was going to have to drop down to old 90 and follow the river. I told her that I wasn't going anyplace she wanted to be. But she wasn't listening, she wanted to get out of town fast. Finally I said I would take her as far as Ft. Stockton. I figured she would be safe in a small town away from the border. All this time I am asking myself what am I doing? At that time I was no where near as horny as I am now it was only about ten years since my last lover. So I wondered and decided I didn't feel much coming from her except fear. It just wasn't my thing.
So when I got to the fort I gave her five bucks for coffee and told her I couldn't take her any farther and said good bye. I was feuling up when she comes hustling over and said "We got to go, the cops are coming."

I can't think about Juarez these days without thinking about those two hundred women murdered there.

Well why waste a macabre mood. Salem the black cat of Gylnda's the white Witch will not die. He wanders around a skeleton his eyes are white with mucous, his fur looks like a punk haircut he tries to come into my crib, he cries at night. SOmething Glynda is telling me don't compute, she says that the county won't come and get him because they don't want to spread the infection to the other animals? Man this is texas I know but still we are civilized people, she has to be twisting the truth, there has to be a county dog catcher or killer. Those trucks that gas the animals on the way back to the pound. Man there are children running around the place.

[jimboloco]

she got fired from the dawg pound
the big dawgs leave the porch
as i am told,
and we slackers remain
ensconced there, on the front porch,
roasted from drink and pot, gentlemen, and ladies, as it were.
i'l be my turn for the urn u-2 tambièn
oh yeah we went to this beach on kowloon
repulse bay beach, and we were alone, park bench
and a mostly cloudy day damn yes
what a day it was yes
she said, "i've got big tits for chinese,"
delightful sweet hong kong world woman tits, she was
mother earth herself, a demi goddess, yes, i confess, peggy funk,
hong kong U, a sudden split off a bus, a swift goodbye,
she got off the bus, gone,
went back to my hotel in shock,
sent her a tape from vietnam to hong kong U
"try asia" she said. ah yeah, she played me frank sinatra songs.
but i went back then refused duty
and blues took over un synchopated rhythm and shock set in
you can go anywhere with peace on your side.