Friday, October 10, 2003

We are reading ROADHOUSE TRAMP the salacious paperback from the french written by J. Evardd Herman. Translation by Quin. 7:24:15 PM    comment []

"What the hell you got a thousand tires for, Harvey Stimpson?" Mary Caldwell Stimpson asked her husband. "There's a war on Mary, tires are going to be hard to come by." "Ain't you got the government mad at you enough? Are these Claire's children?" Mary gestured at Ginnie and Charles who stood in the yard surrounded by a throng of youngsters of diverse ages who had appeared with a cacophany of whoops and joyous cries of 'Daddy's Home!' at the sight of Harvey Stimpson's returning Buick. "Yeah. They're pretty pitiful. The girl might be cute if she weren't so skinny and red-eyed. The boy hasn't said a thing to speak of over the thousand miles I drove them. I think maybe they liked their parents so I guess they're sad." "Can't imagine why. That sister of mine was a bitch." Mary said this to her husband softly, so that only he would hear. For Mary this was an unwonted discretion indicating to Harvey that she was truly moved by the plight of Ginnie and Charles. Mary Caldwell Stimpson was a tall forty year old woman with long disshevelled red hair beginning to streak white and wild gray eyes. She dressed eccentrically in cast off clothing and smoked a pipe. As a child of seven she had been a faith healer of some reknown eventually garnering a regular congregation of several thousand in a Fort Worth church her momma had built around her gifts for healing and prophecy. Then there had been 'the unpleasantness'. Many, many women, over the years, have had occasion to believe that they might take from Mary the role of being Mrs. Harvey Stimpson. Harvey is a handsome man of rakish demeanor who, when not scouring the country for 'deals', is fond of showing his newest suits in religious settings. Particularly Baptists churches. "What do you suppose is the quality of Baptist pussy that so often tempts me to sin?" Harvey asks his cousin Barnes. Barnes isn't listening. Harvey and Barnes are bound in a covenant of mutual dismissal. They are comfortable with each other, accepting and heedless. It was not always so. When Barnes was newly rich and Harvey a failing farmer in the early years of the Depression, Mary took Barnes as a lover and for a time the two men had studied to kill each other. It was from Barnes that the money came that allowed the Stimpsons to move from Nacogdoches County up to Belcher and to purchase the land there on either side of the highway. When Harvey complained Mary dismissed him: "You're a faithless hound, Harvey Stimpson. The only thing going for you on this Earth is me liking you. Your cousin got some of yours, you got what you wanted. Everything has a cost, Harvey, but you've been blessed to get off light. Don't worry me." Now Mary has no time for men at all. Mary shares her bed with Injun Girl and when she lets Harvey join them it is between Injun Girl's strong brown legs that he reaches his climax. And yet in his way Harvey is hopelessly loyal and in love with his wife Mary. 7:18:13 PM    comment []

"Sometimes you lose the election," said Bubel Andriessen to the Senator's son who had been crying loudly for the last half an hour. "But Bubel, Daddy says we're going to jail." The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Germany had declared war on the United States. The Senator's son had been the President of the Wisconsin German-American Friendship Society. Bubel had been the Treasurer. For Bubel, even in these latter days, when only someone as doltish and blind as the Senator's son had foreseen anything but eventual failure, it had been a wonderful scam in a lifetime of rackets and scams. Selling facism had demanded no commodity transference at all. From all over the world donations had been sent in by pro-German business interests simply to have Bubel maintain the appearance of a pro-Nazi American Heartland. Mostly that appearance had been simply the Senator's son, gorgeous, blonde, trim in whatever ridiculous uniform he had constructed for himself for the day. Bubel had learned that a mass movement is seven people as long as you keep the camera in tight. "The thing about politics is some times you lose the election." Bubel repeated meaninglessly. "I shall make you a drink." "Jesus, I can't go to jail, Bubel. You know people. There's got to be some kind of deal we could make." "Maybe," said Bubel. It was exactly that which he was considering but he did not intend on including the Senator's son. Daddy was going to give the boy up and while Bubel had enjoyed the long supple legs and the white ass of the Senator's son more than had the Senator (perhaps) they were neither of them willing to sacrifice such political leverage as remained to them in this brave new wartime world for the benefit of the idiot boy. Now it was every rat for himself. Bubel made the boy a very strong drink. The boy was snoring when Bubel left for his appointment with the G-Man. 5:40:08 PM    comment []

For Ginnie the bombing of Pearl Harbor was always the smell of the Hospital where they took her and her brother Charles to say goodbye to her mother though her momma never woke up and their daddy's body was already gone somewhere else. It was on the Wednesday following Harvey Stimpson appeared in a Buick out in front of Mrs. McCaferty's house. "I was hoping to get here for the funeral," Harvey said. "I'm your Uncle. My wife Mary was your Momma's sister and I guess y'all gonna come live with us now." Harvey smoothed Ginnie's hair back with his hand. His touch was an electric thing, pulsating reassurance. Harvey had a smile like a little boy's and smelled of barbershop and gasoline. He took a great roll of bills from the pocket of his suit trousers and made Mrs. McCaferty take some though she protested. Then he gave some money to Charles and to Ginnie both. "Money always makes a person feel better," Harvey said. "Y'all gather up your things quick because the road is waiting. We have to be on it." Charles had scarcely spoken since they had told him about the accident and how his mother and father were gone to heaven. Charles was only eight. Truthfully Ginnie had never had much time for Charles. Now she felt great remorse seeing him sullenly, bemusedly silent in the backseat corner of Uncle Harvey's Buick as they drove out of Detroit and away from the dead bodies of their parents and the life they had shared. Charles was all of her family now. Ginnie was fourteen. "Your Momma and my Mary weren't very close, I guess, in the conventional way of seeing things." Uncle Harvey had a melodious voice and did most of the talking. "Their upbringing was strained. I guess when you look back on it your upbrining's gonna seem sort of strained. Tragedy will do that. The thing is you have got to learn to see the opportunities afforded you in Tragedy. The whole world is convulsed in Tragedy right now. Another war. They said that last war would be enough, but there doesn't ever seem to be enough. The thing is my wife, your Aunt Mary, can be sort of a strange person to know but now y'all are going to get the opportunity. Because of Tragedy. But at the outset Mary can seem a little contradictory. That's what I suppose I should warn you about. Mary lives sort of upside down to everyone else and that can be disconcerting. Especially when you're very sad the way y'all children are right now having just lost your parents and everything. But it's going to be o.k. "Charles, are you scared of them Japanese?" Harvey called out to the silent boy in the back seat. The boy did not reply. "That's right, son. All we have to be scared of is being afraid." 4:44:18 PM    comment []

"Cotton was our Religion. Everything was designed towards White. One of the first things I learned in this life," we're listening to Barnes Stimpson, "one of the very first things is that we have two party system if you're a Democrat, and that Nigger Loving is a disgrace and a sin rich folks keep for their private enjoyment." Barnes is talking to Harvey Stimpson and it's January 1942. Harvey has just returned from a trip North bringing the orphan children of his wife's sister Claire, Ginnie and Charles, and one thousand whitewall tires. Were Harvey actually listening to Barnes he would be hearing Barnes' convoluted excuse for having been caught screwing his third wife's negro maid. Which is why Barnes is in trouble. Again. "Damn Harvey, that last divorce cost me a fortune. This woman is unreasonable in her demands. It was sort of good though, the drama of it. I really didn't think I was going to get that little thing to take her panties off. Mabel," this was Barnes' third wife, "makes her wear this white uniform like she was a nurse. Little slut wasn't even wearing panties. Mabel tells me she was going to play Canasta at the Golf Club like she does on Tuesday afternoons and Sirsy was polishing silver. I asked her if she'd drink a lemonade. Sirsy said she would and I put some gin in it and she made a face and I don't have to tell you how things are, Harvey, so I had Sirsy up on the dining room table, her skirt hiked up and my pants down and in walks Mabel with the guy taking pictures. It made me come hard. It was weird. I guess I like getting caught. But damn I can't afford it. And now there's this damn war." 3:28:03 PM    comment []

North of Nacogdoches up Highway Fifty Nine in Belcher County you come to Peach Stand and that's where Harvey Stimpson's Kingdom lies. Just before the war starts Harvey and his cousin Barnes open the Pig Stop across the highway from Harvey's TexasOil Gas Station. The "Pig Stop" is Barnes' visionary concept of the future of eating: "You won't even have to leave your car." The automobile has been good to Barnes. For two generations his family has been enslaved by King Cotton. King Cotton got killed by Boll Weevil. But then they found oil underneath Barnes' place, which is up towards Texarkana. Barnes says: "I hate the sight of cotton and I love the smell of gasoline. You know that can't be right, but there it is. Cotton was what all of this was about," Barnes gestures with his hand. "Cotton was our religion. I met a man who knows a man who says we're all of us going to worship Henry Ford in the future. I well believe it though I don't drive a Ford anymore myself." 1:51:13 PM    comment []

Elsewhere: "Roadhouse Tramp" was the kind of book you read in Houston in the years I was growing up somewhere between, say, "Slaughterhouse 5" and that thing by Angela Davis. We're talking about 1970-71. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young were about as good as they were ever going to get. Rich kids listened to Rod Stewart and Elton John who were still trying to sound country. The Jacksons were big. Nixon was President and the War raged. Downtown had died. There were some clubs and head shops down on what they called Allen's Landing but after that was big wasteland of dereliction before you made it back to Montrose. There were some old, old strip joints, but they were owned by a family I never worked with. I ran into this suit one time on an airplane who from his medicine bag of Texas Experience withdrew a visit to 'Sand Mountain". 'Man, they told me that if you were in Houston Sand Mountain was where it was at.' The implication being that he had found it so. I used to run weed to a dishwasher at Sand Mountain. I mean I think that must have been the place, I confess these years, like everything else, sort of hazy in my memory. Over on Richmond maybe. Or that street that runs parallel. Anyway I spent a lot of time there, enough to find it as ugly dull as everything in my remembrance of Houston in those years. Only the girls were cute. But sort of stupid. Which is to say Sand Mountain tallies with all the burning cultural experiences I have known. The dishwasher was an enterprising boy and went to one of the West Side High Schools which meant he had stupid short hair. He was good for about a pound a week. He'd buy benzedrine tabs to keep up with studies and legal and illegal employments. His money went into a Dodge Van that had an eight-track quadrophonic system on which he would play Chicago very loudly. Whenever I hear one of those ghetto boom-boom cars go by I think of David. David had some intricate scheme for escaping the War by getting into West Point and pursuing mathematics. He liked me for the reason everyone at the time liked or disliked me: I had very long hair. I miss being a boy with very long hair in 1970 in Houston Texas. Everyone had a decided opinion of you based upon the length of your hair. It saved so much time. Girls would let you have roam of their flesh to surprising degrees without you say a word simply because of the subversive meanings locked in your tresses. David had a bookshelf built into the wall of his van. This was absolutely a platform of conspicuous learning. "Roadhouse Tramp" was next to that Abbie Hoffman book. 12:57:51 PM    comment []