The best people you will ever meet often come to you like stray dogs, moving with graceful evanescence through you life, then leaving you forever with empty spaces that only your dreams can fill. I saw my childhood best friend, and Miss Amarillo 1969, several more times during the past forty years, they moved on the streets and alleyways of the world, leaving me with no choice but to relegate them to the blameless flickering of a computer screen like a journal still in progress, never quite being completed, thus never ending.

The last time I saw Miss Amarillo 1969 she waved goodbye to me from the departure gate of a bus station as I left to return to hell. She hugged me as I left the platform. I will never forget that beautiful golden haired girl with the peach colored dress. I rejoined my friend Bill; he also hugged me as I arrived back at LZ Betty. He looked pale and wan and a bit shaky but he still had that infectious, world-beating smile. This time, however, the smile did not seem quite able to reach up to his eyes.

He gave me an old Timex watch of his, passing on a trinket of his existence. That evening a mortar killed him.

I guess you would expect a want to be author to have an eye for detail, but sometimes tears conceal the keyboard so much that one cannot continue to chronicle certain details. Minutes later after the explosions and sounds of small arms fire the area around me seemed deserted. The whole world seemed deserted. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with a cold and unforgiving rage that came from somewhere deeper in my dark and deserted soul than I ever cared to know about. The sweltering heat around me turned cold and unforgiving also. Time had become a one-way street and it was a one-way life and you had to pull the trigger and kill someone, you either lived or died on this one-way street. There was nothing between me and the pajama clad being yards away. I aimed the gun and watched as the M-16 did what it was designed to do.

Several days later on a tarmac, I leaned over a black body bag and cried. "You were alright as friends go." I spoke.

The night before I left, the night before I was to ship out after a months leave. Miss Amarillo 1969 had shown up with a small suitcase. Of course her mother and father would not have approved of this evening but they no doubt knew how much I loved her and no doubt how much she loved me. I saw the sparkle in her eyes, dimmed recently by tears, during which time I promised I would return. It was a moment, it passed, and I let it. It was like that and I am not sure I can recapture that moment with words. I couldn't help a few months later thinking that she had slipped through the fingers of my life, consigned for better or for worse, to the flickering of a computer screen. And maybe that isn't so bad I thought, a few people you don't know might stop and read what you write, and they may or may not pass judgment. And that doesn't matter so much because at least they can't see the tears on your keyboard.

I guess the only things you really keep are the things you let slip through your fingers. Or something like that.

She lit two candles that night. The candlelight touched her skin like fireflies, like roses, like little fingers of light and lightness through which would slip a memory I would surely keep.

She slept in my arms that night, we shared love, we shared something, and we shared something I am not sure I have ever known since. As you know, Miss Amarillo 1969 was killed when a truck ran a red lightand killed her as she was returning to Amarillo.

Almost forty years have passed since that night And a lot of things have happened in the parallel world of Wes and TCBNTX. In less time than it took me to write this journal entry the candle of Miss Amarillo 1969 burned out.

Oh and by the way, I have forgot to tell you in the many times I have written about my friend Bill or Miss Amarillo 1969. About a month after I left, Miss Amarillo 1969 was runner up in the Miss Texas Pageant in Austin. She had written me a letter after that event. I kept it after these many years. Here I'll read it to you.

Dear Wes,

I am still in Austin, I am afraid to go back home. But I have made the decision because I won't be able to keep the secret very long. My heart is happy. I am at peace.

Love,

Teresa

P.S. By the way. You will be a father by the time you get home.

The Walk

Part 1
I had walked down Sixth Street, Old Route 66, in Amarillo, many times, but this was the first time I had walked down it actually shopping for something specific. I almost felt like a young suburbanite buying decorative things for the home. You can buy almost any kind of antique on Sixth Street, if you are crazy enough to want it.

I edged into a store, into an era that had ended in my teens, but was constantly being brought back from the dead by trendy Americans. I felt a little uneasy, like a kid just before he gets lost in a museum.

I found what I wanted and walked out into the odd reflected light of the first decade of the 21st century. I walked two blocks and turned into one of those places that Jack Kerouac used to hang out in. I didn't see Jack but this was one of those places you could almost hear the leftover conversations and smell the whiff of sweet and stale perfume wafting in the aroma of the coffee. One thing about all night places, in the daytime there are few customers and you are not interrupted as you hold onto your biggest memories like a weary circuit preacher hugging a ragged Bible.

Part 2

I drank more coffee and looked out the window as history ticked by on the already ancient street outside. The past and the present are deeply intertwined I thought. History is what happens when one of them gets a little ahead of the other. When a couple of kids on skateboards rolled by, I closed my eyes for a moment amd it almost sounded like a street car.

Part 3


I walk alot now. There is a difference between the street and the road, I thought about it as I walked down one and remembered the other. Shadows seemed to shiver around me as I walked down a contridiction...Sixth Street.. Old Route 66... The Mother Road.....
I must have walked a while because by the time I reached the little store that specialized in Beer, Cigarettes, and Energy Pills I felt like a shadow myself, only there was no place to fall. The afternoon, like a well rehearsed magicians trick had turned into night.

The guys who ran the store were of a heavy rather uncertain ethnicity. They looked Italian, Greek, Lebanese or Pakistani depending on how you felt at the time. That evening they looked Pakistani. Nobody was from here anyway, I thought. Nobody spiritually speaking was ever from anywhere. Everyplace and everybody was merely a station along the way.

This is the legacy of the road. I headed home, in my memory I saw a clear picture of a dusty pickup and an empty rural Texas Road.

A door knob distributor, a Bible Salesman or a traveling nipple jewelry salesman may think they know the road, and perhaps they do. It is their territory they say. The road does not belong to them, nor do they belong to the road in my mind. But thats just me.

By the time I got back home, the road like my memory, receded like a lukewarm love affair.
A bright red Porsche sat in front of my house. It probably belonged to one of Janis Joplin's friends. It seemed out of place in the reeling darkness of my neighborhood.

Tonight...so did I.

and on and on and on

A bit of time has passed and I am now pretty much back to my senses. The mind is a funny little thing and God knows where it can sometimes take us.

The events and characters written about in this journal are not a dream. Some of the events happened exactly the way they are described, some didn't. But the characters of this journal are very real.

My best friend Bill, who went to Jesus in 1972, and Miss Amarillo 1969 who kissed a windshield in 1971, left this earth far too young and way too soon.

Many of the characters are still very much alive, the mysterious redhead, Freckles the lesbian dance class instructor, and many others, as well as myself sometimes stalk the valley of ennui.
As far as Miss Amarillo 1969, she was brilliant, gorgeous and sophisticated, but as I occasionally like to point out she had some growing up to do. Unfortunately she never got to.

She will always be there. Walking across the pages of my life with an awkward grace, saying nothing. Like the land my mother owned, all she did was hold my world together.

That may not mean much to you, but it has meant a river of tears to me.

Lovers and other strangers

lovers and sweethearts.

They are out there you know, the secret hearts, but these people are fragile and ephemeral as a smile in childhood. Yet they do exist. Places in the heart-oasis' where you may truly escape what we have come to think of as the world. Like walking down Yesterday Street. Dancing to music that was written and recorded before you were born. In those places you are safe from harm and sheltered from sorrrow. If you find one of those places, and then leave it, as I have done, you may spend the rest of your life with the better part of your soul living in the shadow of regret.

Love and happiness-it's either a hospital or whorehouse.

I saddled up and rode off to the lesbian bar, they wouldn't let me enter. I wondered if I had a discrimination suit?

The song I wanted on the radio was about as hard to find as an innocent priest.

Every one hundred years or so. She deflected the concept like a rare interlude, like a moonbeam trying to find a lover. I looked thoughtfully out at the endless Texas night. The night had become as dark as my mood. Such were the somber thoughts and deeds that came to mind this morning like the heavy grey clouds that hung heavy in the sky.

I had looked at her and wished, not for the first time, that she would never leave. She must have seen it in my eyes as she walked away into the night .

update

The loverly and oft mentioned Freckles the Lesbian dance class instructor and I had dinner last night. Her eyes are still the color of bluebonnets.

Where"s The Beef?

When President Obama signed the landmark $787 billion stimulus package, he proudly declared that he did not allow any members of Congress to insert wasteful, last-minute earmarks in their bills to benefit special interests in their states and districts. Dubbed "pork barrel" spending, these earmarks are notorious in Washington, perhaps the most infamous example being the $385 million "Bridge to Nowhere" for Alaska inserted into a 2005 transportation bill by the now-disgraced Sen. Ted Stevens.

But with or without earmarks -- and despite what Obama said -- special-interest spending has found its way into the stimulus in massive doses, budget watchers contend. "We were told this was going to be a massive infrastructure spending program," says Veronique De Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center. She argues that the bill is overflowing not with needed infrastructure spending, but with hundreds of billions in pork.
Now the majority of the $787 billion isn't pork. Indeed, tax relief alone makes up some 34 percent of the bill. Where you might find the pork is in the so-called discretionary spending portion of the bill, which amount to $308 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Of that money, $48 billion goes to the Department of Transportation for various rail and road projects to repair and expand infrastructure. That leaves about $260 billion of discretionary spending that goes to various federal agencies, as well as to state and local governments. How much of that amount helps special interests instead of the economy as a whole? That depends, of course, on what you consider a special interest. But decide for yourself. Here is a list of some of the most controversial individual pieces of discretionary spending that might have the pleasant taste of pork.

1) Green golf carts. Ever rode a "neighborhood electric vehicle?" Well, you might want to now. The stimulus includes a tax credit toward the purchase of NEVs, which closely resemble golf carts in appearance. They are considered green vehicles because they use an electric battery instead of gasoline. You fill it up with juice by plugging it into a home electrical outlet. Don't expect to be able to take your NEV far outside of your neighborhood, though. Federal regulations limit their top speed to between 20 and 25 miles per hour. Freeway cruising is out.
Those aren't the only green vehicles getting stimulus subsidies. There is also $300 million to buy "green" cars for federal employees.

2) Closing the ice-breaking gap. The U.S. Coast Guard is getting a shot in the arm from the stimulus, thanks to $98 million for a "polar icebreaker." That's not a new gum flavor, but a ship. The service currently has three ice-breaking ships able to sail through the frozen Arctic Ocean, but it wants a new and improved one to upgrade the aging fleet. Thad Allen, commandant of the Coast Guard, testified before a House panel last summer that icebreakers are needed for national security reasons. "Russia, Germany, China, Sweden and Canada are all investing and maintaining and expanding their national ice-breaking capacity," he said.

3) Homeland security stimulus. That pricey icebreaker is just one of several examples of homeland and national security spending contained in the stimulus not directly connected to restoration of the economy. There is also $200 million to "design and furnish" the Department of Homeland Security headquarters. De Rugy says that security spending should be considered by Congress in bills related to security, not the economy. "There was no debating these things on the merits," she says.

4) Clean Coal. While Obama has stressed the number of "green jobs" his stimulus will create, $3.4 billion of the $787 billion will be spent on old-school, non-green energy technology. That's how much goes to the Fossil Energy Research and Development program, a Department of Energy project that, among other things, seeks to reduce the amount of carbon emitted by the use of fossil fuels. Daniel Weiss, a senior fellow and director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, says that most of this money will go toward the development of clean-coal technology. "The goal is to develop a technology that can capture carbon dioxide from coal in a coal-fired power plant," he says. And where's the stimulus in clean coal? Weiss says that we won't see the results of this investment anytime soon, and $3.4 billion is probably only a fraction of what is needed for real clean-coal technology to ever be achieved. But, he adds, in the short term, "this would create research jobs and jobs at power plants." That isn't stopping critics from calling this fossil energy provision pork.

5) Mystery Meat. It's hard to know just how much pork there is in the stimulus package for one simple reason: We still don't know how exactly a huge chunk of it will be spent. A whopping $144 billion from the bill is flowing directly to state and local governments. That means the true amount of pork will depend on the priorities of your governors, legislatures, and mayors. The best guesses for what this money will be spent on might be in a list of "ready-to-go" projects released by the U.S. Conference of Mayors in January, dubbed the "Main Street Economic Recovery." Some of the most outlandish of these projects -- such as an $886,000 36-hole disc golf course in Austin, Texas -- won't be allowed to receive stimulus dollars because the bill explicitly says that none of its funds can be used for "any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, or swimming pool."

But a prohibition on funding toward any "stadium, community park, museum, theater, art center, and highway beautification project" was dropped from the final version of the bill. That means that many other porky projects from the U.S. Conference of Mayors report are open to get money. That includes $150 million for parking improvements at a Little League facility in Cidra, Puerto Rico, and $6 million for a "snowmaking and maintenance facility" at Spirit Mountain ski area in Duluth, Minnesota.