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118 NEW ZEN COWBOY TALES --A WORK IN PROGRESS
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The Zen Cowboy
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Titles
2. Two Crazy Women in a Peugeot 5. Limping to the Family Reunion 6. How My Ex-Wife Paid the Rent 9. When I became a shoemaker (in progress) Works still in the Think-Box 11. The Trucks I have Had 12. Sage Brush After the Rain 13. Cardboard Monsters in Germany 14. Pig, Fish Guts and Big Fat Thaana 15. Escaping the Nut-House In Germany 16. The Twist of Love in Yuma 17. Pop Spits Out the Window 18. Pop’s last Motorcycle Ride 19. Pop in Marseilles 20. My Brother Ernie 21. Ernie and The Piano 22. Famous Rides With Mike 23. Colette Gets Me out of Jail 24. Where is Rose? 25. Trooper Tires at Fort Rock 26. Tits In Isfahan 27. Flower Bag Incident In Isfahan 28. Lost Clown In Paris 29. Lost Clown In Austria 30. Chrissie’ Belly “I am Dolmoos” 31. Mustache on the Shah 32. Humpback woman of Isfahan 33. Painting Monymill 34. Saving Monymill 35. Fours Days Around Arran 36. Drumla Cottage 37. Bottle f Whiskey in Portland 38. Pig in the Redwoods 39. Hoz Returns to The Mountains -5 40. Hoz In San Diego 41. Hoz Returns to Telluride 42. Hoz and Brother Al 43. Poets of Edinburgh 44. Forest Fire Fighting in Alaska 45. Painting In Pilton/Smego/Phillip Spit 46. Tommy’s Dog Ring 47. Stabbing a Lizard 48. The Ice House/Johnston Boys 49. Running The D. I. Into The Ground 50. Leadership Schools Steps 51. The Wine House of Aushaffenburg 52. Returning To Aushaffenburg 53. Bandits at the Guymas Picnic 54. Plane Rides in Alaska 55. James The Donkey and The Fractal World 56. A Three Dollar Whore in Portland 57. Pepita in Barcelona 58. Gary Slack Rides and Crashes 59. Running Through Rattlesnakes 60. Class Reunions and $20 61. Dumped in the Needles Desert 62. No Brakes to Kingman 63. Hitch Hiking To Bakersfield 64. Meeting Bob Dylan 65. Getting Out of the Army/Chaplin/Doctor/Hand/Psychiatrist 66. My first Dead Body/ drive carefully, the life you save... 67. When I fell off the Wall and Screamed Jesus Christ 68. Scaffolding Rolls Into Traffic 69. Lost Car in London 70. Playing Dead in England (Mime) 71. Broken Hearts with Fi Fi La Boom 72. Rolling Tires Down Long Hills in Scotland/Wee Mark 73. The Errant Data Point 74. Dead Black Cat on South Broadway 75. Pogue, Grant, Max and Me 76. Escaping Mosquitoes 77. Mexican Farting Machine 78. Sleeping in Guadalajara 79. Sleeping Through Mexico City 80. Head-On Collision in Vera Cruz 81. Driving Around Fiji 82. In Australia the Sky Roars 83. A Gig With The Pope 84. “Sarge” of Telluride/Salt and pepper/age 85. A Babe Picked Me Up in the Desert 86. Homesteads and Weed-Fed Cows 87. Old Cowpokes at The Sinks 88. Pig In Utah 89. Finding Molly Gibson 90. The Rape of Molly 91. Pig Crossing the Street 92. Pig and a Light Pole 93. Pig Flies Out Window 94. The Last Time I saw Pig 95. The Love Affair of Rose and Boris 96. Rose The Gourmet 97. James Brown in Corsica 98. Losing Rose in Corsica 99. Rose in Paris 100. Mike the Blue Eyed Devil 101. The Hungarian Border 102. Lost in Transylvania 103. Red Cloud, Rock and Sean 104. Red Cloud and Tits at the Mailbox 105. Arrested in Matamoras 106. The Twenty-Five Dollar Pontiac 107. Making Love In a Hillman Minx Convertible 108. Trying To Kill A Marine 109. The Woman Who Gave Her Wigs Haircuts 110. Max Golfs Los Angeles 111. Pig in Redwoods and Hole in Roof 112. Love in a Chicken House 113. Hoz Goes To California 114. Looking For Castles 115. Three Bullets Past My Head 116. The 100 Mile Ride of Brown Valley 117. The Last Time I Got Bucked Off 118. Red Cloud’s Singing Truck 119. Spudnuts in Pueblo Rain 120. Scaffold Rolls into Traffic 121. Falling Off Ladders 122. Falling Off Scaffolding 123. Looking For Jeane 124. Four tires in San Diego for 25 Bucks 125. A Car in Oklahoma City For 25 Bucks Dec. 10, 2007 I left the United States in late 1973. I was sick of Nixon, the on-going war in Vietnam and disappointment of my drugged generation. I hoped I would find a better life in Europe. What I found was a wife, a baby and the idea that if I stayed long enough I would forget the land I left behind. I stayed five years before my wife convinced me we should visit my homeland and my family. My wife was excited to show our baby girl to her new American relations. I was a little nervous to see my red-neck brothers again, especially Tommy who was very proud of being a genuine Nevada buckaroo. The last time I saw him we argued over God, politics and hippies with long hair. He was convinced I was a communist. I was beginning to think he was as right-wing as Nixon. None of that mattered. My wife wanted to see the great wild west. Within a month we were driving into the ranch gates where I had spent my youth. All went well for the first day. My brother now had two children and the things we once argued over no longer mattered. Hippies had become yuppies and America had abandoned Vietnam. Everything was fine until a business partner of my brothers was invited to dinner. As my brother, the colleague had once been a Marine, and after a few beers, the theme of an old argument showed its ugly head again. According to both of them, the Beatles were homosexual, all hippies were traitors and everyone who had opposed the Vietnam war was a coward. I kept my mouth shut for once and tried to change the topic by talking about my experiences in Europe. That was when the business partner began ranting about how the British aristocracy was being persecuted by faggot welfare communists. Suddenly I could not take the stupidity of the man, and asked him how he knew so much about European social hierarchies. He said he once had spent a whole day in London. I looked him straight in the eye and said, "You must be a genuine genius." It was at this point suddenly I was back in the wild west and my wife got a glimpse of how crazy red-necks are. The "genius" threw back his chair and jumped up, but before anything else could happen my brother leapt across the table and grabbed the guy by the throat. Tommy yelled, "You get out of my house you son-of-a-bitch!" The "genius" ran out of the house and my wife sat there with her mouth wide open. Tommy's wife started crying, and saying, "My God we are going to be killed!" I was completely shocked and said, "Please calm down everybody, we were just having a friendly discussion." I thought my brother had drank too much beer, and his friend and him would be okay in the morning, but that was not the end of the evening. In five minutes I heard a vehicle come into the ranch driveway. Tommy jumped up again and went to his gun cabinet and pulled out a 30-30 Winchester and ran out of the house. I knew my brother had gone crazy and chased him out the door screaming, "Stop this madness Tommy and put that gun away." He ignored me and ran up to the truck that had slid to a stop in front of the house. I could see Tommy's weird friend. He was reaching for something next to him in the seat, but before he could get it, my brother poked the Winchester through the open window and stuck the barrel in the guys throat. "I told you to leave and I meant it. You get out of here you piece of shit or I will blow your head off!" The genius put the truck in gear and threw gravel all over the yard and then roared out the ranch gates. When we got back in the house Tommy's wife told me the full story. Apparently the "genius" had a habit of starting fights and cutting people with knifes or worse. My brother had actually saved me. The next day my wife, baby and I left for the airport and return to nice safe sane Europe. Tommy and I shook and hands. To my surprise, I saw tears in in his eyes as he said goodbye. 9. When I
became a shoemaker Everything I once did
seems so long ago now. I was so disappointed with everything and
everybody, especially myself. I decided to become a better humane
being. I went to shoe repair school in Denver, Colorado. I was living
with a beautiful girl I had met in the mountains. Life could have not
been better. There was some irony in me going to a shoe repair school.
That is the occupational training I was supposed to have when I joined
the U.S. Army in February 1967. I didn't join out of patriotism. I
joined because I was flunking out of college and was almost certainly
going to be immediately drafted with the highest probability I would
be placed in the infantry or worse, being a combat medic. That was my
fear. The irony was the army recruiter was untruthful to me, and the
form I signed that had big bold letters 91-A-10 stamped at the top was
actually the classification for COMBAT MEDIC. Never trust army
recruiters is the short story and moral to that tale. So here I was
four years later putting in motion an experience the army was supposed
to give me. Repair people's shoes. |
September 20, 2007
A telephone call from my brother Robert. We have gone years between conversations. Our family is so big we get information from other members of who is doing what, where, when and so on. "Kenny, I think you should get down to Arizona to see Pop. He's not doing very well." That was all it took. Our mother had died the year before. The next day I had my thumb out on the side of the road, which led me through several dramas on the way to Phoenix. In four days I hitch-hiked only 1200 miles. When I got to Pop's house, he was fine, exactly as he always was and seemed to be surprised anyone thought he might not be fine. I stayed a day or two and stuck my thumb out again towards a drama in Tucson. 24 hours later my thumb took me to La Guna Beach, where an old friend got me drunk and put me on a plane with my guitar to San Francisco. The year was 1970 and most of flower power had passed, yet even so, my guitar and long hair had always been a ticket to ride. It was evening when I got to North Beach. It was cold and raining which is normal for Frisco. I was totally penniless which was also normal. What was not normal was no one gave a damn about my guitar, my long hair or me. At 3 in the morning I gave up trying to find a pad to crash in. I was cold, hungry. and totally exhausted. I found an all night laundry mat and went to a dark corner and stretched out under a table. I woke when it was light. My legs felt like they were being crushed. I looked down at my feet and saw a leg that was not mine crossed over my legs. I looked on my chest and saw an arm the opposite side that was not mine. I turned right to see the toothless mouth of a bewhiskered hobo. To the left was another ancient street urchin snoring like death. "Oh fuck." I said, "this is the bottom." Little did I know there would be future depths that would make this feel cheery. Sept. 21, 2007
2. Two Crazy Women in a
Peugeot
The problem with having more than a hundred stories in your head is that somewhere all of those stories are interwoven and overlap in time. The result is eventually one sounds like an old geezer repeating themselves ad infinitum...I always have looked on such people with dismay and thought to myself, "I will never do that." But sadly here I am, about to tell a story that no doubt I have written or rattled off to an innocent before they could run away. I rationalize now, it is not exactly the same story, but with time has gained an honorable patina. The same thing say, that happened to the Grand Canyon over several million years. That is, even though it is the same canyon, it just keeps getting deeper. So there I was sitting in the back seat of a French Peugeot whizzing past the rim of the Grand Canyon for the first time In my life. My newly wed wife and 8 month old baby were crammed next to me. Two completely crazy women were in the front seat conducting the tour. "Sure is big. Ya wanna stop?" the driver asked. It seemed like the thing to do. We all climbed out of the car and walked up to the edge. "Whew!" exclaimed the driver. "Well there it is. We saw it. Let's go." We climbed back into the French Peugeot in the middle of the American desert and rode into the black of the night. At three in the morning we arrived at the door of the sponsors who had invited us to work with Navajo school Children. Only 48 hours before my family and I had been in our home in Scotland and had no idea how the Grand Canyon had divided those hours. September 22, 2007 Today, September 22 is my oldest brother's birthday. he is more than a brother. He raised me from eleven years old. Before that he was a legend that came back to the family only once or twice a year. he always wore a huge black cowboy hat and boots that were two or three colors. When I was four the tops of those boots came up to my crotch. I only knew him by the name Indian cowboys gave him. Yup, redskin cowpokes. They called him Red Cloud, not because of the famous chief but because one day at sunset his red hair had a halo around it and one of the Indian cowpokes said, "Hey, you ;look like you have red cloud around head." The two other Indians present, laughed and said, "Yes, he is now Red Cloud." The name stuck. Sixty years later that is how I remember him--not the lame old man who could barely pull himself up into the saddle that was on a horse parked on the street of an old time western movie set. All of the broken bones Red Cloud had pinned together with silver from real life cowboy horse wrecks had finally caught up. But he is still Red Cloud, my personal hero who taught me what tough is. Sept. 23, 2007 As far back as I can remember I have driven cars that fall apart on a regular basis. The first was a 1929 Model A Ford which used 5 gallons of gas in less than a mile. It never dawned on me at 15 that perhaps I had a gas leak somewhere. From there it got worse. I bought a 1949 Ford commercial 2 ton van that had a 100 gallon gas tank. But even though it was full, the van always died in less than a mile, acting like it was out of fuel. It never occurred to me there was a gas line blockage somewhere. I was almost 30 by that time so you may note that automotive analysis is not my strong point. But even so, no matter how much my vehicles have fallen apart, I always manage to get from point A to point B...eventually. One rememberable ride if for nothing else was the usage of water. On the way to Oregon my family and I passed through Green River, Utah where the temperature was plus 100. The Oldsmobile Cutlass kept overheating, but each time we were close to a service station and water, that is until we were exactly in the middle of nowhere north of Salt Lake City. I could see the speck of a lonely ranch house on the horizon. Every mile I shut down the Olds and waited for it to cool. Finally I turned into a house that looked like something from the movie Deliverance. I knocked on an open door but no answer came from within. I could see a big pile of gallon plastic milk jug sitting ever so conveniently next to an outdoor water facet. Ten minutes later My little daughter was snuggled among 20 gallons of water on the back seat. We drove on 30 miles at a time for the next 500 miles until we reached my brother Tommy's ranch. He asked why there were so many jugs in the back seat. I told him I heard there was a drought. Sept. 25, 07 5. Limping to the Family Reunion Ten years ago, for the first time in 30 years my family came together in one of those classic beer/hamburger/TV football/tear filled marathon reunions. Considering our mutually advanced age and geographic spread it was a miracle seven of my living brothers and sisters arrived along with a bus load of cousins, nephews, nieces, uncles, aunts and never-do-good half bloods. My wife and daughter and I got with 45 miles of the occasion when our 15 year-old Chevy died. This time I didn't even to pretend I knew what the problem was. The car stopped working like I had turned off the ignition key. One of my nephews came to our rescue so we were only a couple hours late for the festivities. It was one of those affairs where you see people you have not seen for 30 years and after you express the time of your mutual separation you realize there is not much else to say and you are happy to let another 30 years slip by. Even so we all acted overjoyed at each others mediocre news. I was amazed how old we all looked and carried on with the main reason of getting together, alcohol. I come from a long bloodline of beer guzzling whiskey boozers. I drank my share of beer plus several others. As we were leaving late in the evening my Italian brother-in-law held out his hand. As I started to shake it I suddenly played the old W. C. Fields trick of twiddling my nose with my thumb. Nick-the-Wop, as my family called our dego division hauled off and hit me hard flat fisted in the chest. When I got my breath I said, "Geez, Nick, why'd you do that? I was just playing you like a kid." "I ain't a kid anymore," Nick said. I saw Nick last year. He was crying at my sisters funeral. There was nothing to kid him about. Sept. 26, 07 6. How My Ex-Wife Paid the Rent That old Oldsmobile Cutlass already had over a hundred thousand miles on it when I bought but it was a good car, maybe the best even though it sprung leaks now and then. It was the fastest car I ever had. It could do a 100 miles across the desert in less than an hour, so comfortable, it felt like you were doing 50 MPH. I was sad when after several years of service I traded it to a kid who was supposed to dig a cistern for me in return. He only got down a foot in the ground before he destroyed the Olds in a fiery crash. It was my wife who wanted me to get rid of it. I think the car was a reminder of her driving history. She had crunched the Olds two or three times, only giving it minor damage while more or less destroying the other party. She was innocent so she said, and apparently the police agreed being they gave the opposite crasher a citation. One time she was stopped at a red light when she was rammed by a small Jap car. It was wrecked and had to be towed away. The Olds had a bent rear bumper. Next my wife pulled into a parking lot as a man swung the very expensive door open of his very expensive BMW. The door was ripped from its henges. The olds had a little dent in the front bumper. The insurance companies paid for the Olds blemished parts, each time enough in a very cold and lean winter to pay the house rent. For years after that each time we would get low on money I would encourage my wife to go out for a drive. October 1, 2007
My girlfriend yelled, "You chauvinistic
son-of-a-bitch." She grabbed her bag and jumped in her sisters car.
They drove off to southern California. I stood there waiting for the
car to stop. It kept going and then disappeared over the horizon. I
realized she wasn't coming back. For a moment I was deflated but then
it turned to anger. There was nothing to do but continue the journey
by myself and Graffitus Melon Pig, my faithful canine pal who had been
given his full melodious name by my old musical partner, Fred. We went
on to Telluride Colorado, arriving in the late afternoon as the sun
came below the clouds and beamed light on the thousand foot waterfall
at the end of the valley. A double rainbow arched the sky. I knew it
was an omen of some kind. Two months later for a hundred bucks I
bought a 50 Ford pick up truck with four bald tires and HOZ spray
painted on its doors. I took off for California. Two weeks later
I was back in Telluride sitting in a Southern Baptist church,
dedicating my life to Jesus. A month later my truck was being towed at
60 MPH by Red Cloud, swerving up a mountain highway until we got to
Salida. Red Cloud was on his way north and I had to go west ,
returning to Telluride. It was January, three in the morning, cold as
a witches tit and I had 25 bucks in my pocket, just enough to get the
truck fixed and 5 gallons of gas. Red Cloud said, "You and HOZ are on
your own from here Kenny." He drove off over the horizon. It
seemed very familiar but some how just a lot colder.
The first art I remember is the a painting of a black stallion on a
small board, that was propped up on the dining room table by my cousin
Virginia Jackson. It was night time and there was a bare light bulb
hanging down on a skinny cord from a high ceiling. She had her back to
me, but looking over her shoulder I could see the horse, standing
proud on a rocky mesa, the wind blowing its mane and tail, and in the
distance were blue mountains. I felt like I could walk into the
picture. Later when I went to school and the teacher gave me my turn
to go to the drawing easel I drew the head of a horse just like the
head of the stallion my cousin had done. After that, the teacher let
me go to the easel most days, and every time I would draw some kind of
horse. That was a big advancement of what I had been drawing before I
saw my cousins painting. The first time I used a pencil, I felt like
my eye was right on the tip of the lead, and I would fill page after
page of very neat and regular loops all connected. I felt like I was
on a motorcycle. All of the years afterward in school, all of my
friends thought of me as the artist in their class. Only once did I
have a rival, Johnny Fuentes. We made a game out of both being
artists, and would challenge each other every day in drawing different
scenes. I began to think I was an artist, because the teachers and all
my class mates said I was. But I had other interests, mainly horses.
That is, I wanted to be like my oldest brother, Red Cloud. I wanted to
be a genuine buckaroo. A cowboy. Red Cloud had taught me everything I
knew about horses. He put me a young green bronco named Muskrat at the
age of eleven. By the time I was 15, I had my own horse. I called him
Wasco. He was caught as a mustang stud on the Warm Springs Indian
reservation. I loved Wasco more than anything. I thought Wasco loved
me the same until I was eighteen. Then that summer I went away for
three months. When I returned the first thing I did was saddle up
Wasco in the round corral and got on him very warily. Red Cloud warned
me that sometimes when you didn't ride a mustang for a few months,
they would revert to be wild. Not Wasco. It was like we had never been
separated a day. The very next day I saddled him again and took him
outside the corral before I got on him. When I climbed into the saddle
Wasco suddenly exploded and threw me to the ground. I was more
confused than hurt, but I took him back into the corral and got on
again. I got bucked off again and again and again. On the seventh
attempt, I was terrified but got on Wasco again. Bam, I hit the
ground, and Wasco stepped on my stomach. I remember exactly that
moment, for in my mind, I heard this voice, "Forget being a cowboy
Ken, because you are going to be an artist!"
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