Poor as Texas

Today has me slightly north of Dallas, Texas after only managing a high-speed pass through the city because I couldn't link one of my 'dots', but it was a thrill to be hurtling through the concrete sluice-ways at breakneck pace. I had to try to 'thread the needle' at speed as I took the hole-shots and then hyper-blasted the super-ways with slicked-back savoire-faire and poignant pinache.

What a great sentence.

Now I am sitting in front of a Chicken Salad at Uncle Ron's. Ah, the peace.

The ride here was great, through a lot of back-roads, past dozens of power-poles leaning over at 15 degrees in front a series of truly horrible identical homes made of some sort of unlovable building material. The ugly hand of James Hardie again? Texas is as ugly as south-west Arkansas was beautiful. We all know that though. I didn't meet any aging preachers this morning. I have been averaging at least one a day since arrival. I imagine that they are in church, seething with jealous resentment at the latest head-chicken chaplin who is taking the service.

The churches, of every weird variety possible, were packed. Like battery-chicken sheds.

I saw a couple of 'banjo-boys' in an old pick-up this morning. They had the ugly leer perfected and in were in perfect synchrony too. My 'spidey-senses' got me out of there 'toute-suite'. I saw another guy at the 'gas-station' in bare feet, pyjama pants, backwards dirty polo-shirt (pocket on back) and a look of enduring misery to which I attached a 'note-to-self' about trying to avoid getting into the same hole he'd obviously dug for himself. He had an enormous dirty bouffant too. What a champ.

There is a guy here at Ron's in an electric wheel-chair, with rubbishy survival-accoutrements attached, he is currently working the freeway stop-light with a slushy cup for 'change'. He needs change alright. He was going through the bin when i came in, probably for the slushy-cup. He's mid-fifties, bearded and sad. Must remind myself to attenuate my will-to-live should I end up similarly indisposed.

I hope you all notice that I am resisting the easy targets of fat-bastards and road-kill. It's been done.

I could comment on the way America hits the eye (No, not 'Banjo-boy' style).

This place seems to be inhabited on a temporary basis. Everything is disposable-looking. The houses are usually pre-fab or apres-fab (falling to bits). The way everything sits on the landscape is jarring and unblended. In fact this country reminds me of my late father. His non-sense of style, his religious delirium and his indifference to the soul-destroying nature of mess and ugliness. I even smelt his body-odour as I was riding towards Dallas this morning. God bless him.

The way everything is either jerry-built or abandoned down here (up here to you) makes for a curious sense of ephemeral-yet eternal cruddiness. You know it reminds me of a cashed up Vietnam.

'How wonderfully poetic.' you are thinking aloud (with your silly lips moving without you knowing), but no, it's not meant to be Keats. It's meant to add up to an indelible impression and it is indeed doing so.

So there you go fellah.

"I hear that"