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Up North Part 9 – Riding with Ray
There was a nice long ramp with a guard rail for sitting on the 75 South on-ramp. It was an easy curve so traffic was moving by quicker than I liked and yet not as quick as well. I was uneasy hanging out where pedestrians don’t really go with a big bag pack in sight of the bridge. Bomb threats and all, a newly uncertain world. Not wholly new but far more intense. I did not feel confident under the steely gaze of the guys in white pickups with Bridge Authority emblazoned on the door when they drove by.
Before I have even filled in all the letters on the Grayling Please sign a big rig pulls to the side and hits his breaks and stops about 20 feet behind me. There is a giant cross done in blue lights across the grill of the rig, there are 8 or 10 extra lights across the top, and it is flying too many flags to count. As I stash the sign (another hiker might find it useful) grab my pack and hoof it towards the door. I was taking in all of the WWJDs, including How Would Jesus Drive?, Praise The Lord and all manner of similar such things. I did not have time to take them all in. I knew what I was likely getting myself into and was grateful nonetheless.
I also took in the driver, an older red headed guy in a mesh cap. He was grinning and moving shit out of the passenger seat. The lanes were narrow and there was a lot of traffic and the threat of terrorism response coming down kept me hurrying. I opened the door, stepped up on the first step and poked my head in. “Here pass that in and I’ll stow it in back” and I handed him my pack and he tossed it in the sleeper.
I stood awkwardly on the step as the driver finished clearing off the last of his gear. It seems he was using it as more of an office but eventually I sat down and he pulled out on to the ramp. He said, “Ray” and I said “Michael” as we shook hands between him grabbing gears. Ray asked me where I was heading and to cover my bases in case he was going down 27 or 75, I said “Lansing or Monroe.”
“Well which is it?” Ray responded. As I thought about the best way to respond Ray said, “Well, I’m heading to Chicago out 10 so I can get you to Claire.
“Sounds great. I’d rather go to Lansing anyway. That’s where I live.” I started to warm up in the heat of the cab and started to unzip my jacket until i realized i had picked up a powerful odor and decided to leave it on. Ray then turned up the volume of the previously inaudible cassette player in his rig and I heard Carman of all people. The cheesiest, Las Vegas lounge lizard turned crooner for Christ that I’d ever heard. It was one I hadn’t heard, a patriotic number with God Bless America swelling in the background and Carman is doing some kind of stilted spoken word number about patriotism and such. “We need to stop handing out condoms in schools and start handing out Bibles.”
When Ray first turned up the tape he just looked at me and grinned. I didn’t noticeably wince, I don’t think, and tried to put on a face of bemused appreciation, although it was more for starting to ride down the Mackinac Bridge and at worst get preached at a little instead of sitting in fear waiting to get shook down as a potential terrorist. Carman could be OK if you can appreciate the utter ridiculousness of it. He could on occasion at least be clever in his word play.
Ray then turned down the music and opened up a conversation about how beautiful it all is. We talked about what it must have been like for the Indians crossing the straights by canoe. We talked about where we were from and Ray told me about his job a bit. He then said, “Let me show you this,” and pulled out a vinyl cassette holder with a capacity of twelve or so. Every cassette is Carman. “I’ve got them all” Ray grinned proudly. He went on with a disclaimer, a couple that were missing or only out on CD and he went on to tell me about his efforts to track down Carman cassettes.
I casually mentioned that I saw Carman in concert once and that I had a lot of respect for the fact that he does his shows for free. Ray was blown away and I could see an innocent jealousy slide across his face. “He has a powerful message for the young,” Ray told me.
I nodded and smiled and remembered my falling out with Carman. I had actually been a pretty big fan in my teen years. I had a keen appreciation for fundamentalist novelty music and Carman walked tall in that little niche. As I grew up though I came to challenge the ethnocentrism of my native fundamentalism and ultimately had embraced a larger view of truth. I had seen Carman as a penniless high schooler and gotten on a mailing list and had sent him a few bucks on occasion. Until I read in one his flyers that “nine out of ten missing children end up sacrificed on a ‘satanic altar’. My brother is a cop so I know.”
This ridiculous hyperbole, this incredible bald faced lie, so offended my sense of truth I had severed my relationship and never played his stuff. I didn’t even think about sharing this with Ray under anything but a direct question because hitchhikers are agreeable by nature and practice.
Then of course it came. “So since you’re a Carman fan I assume you’re born again?”
I told him “yes” more because I didn’t want to fend off Ray’s clumsy attempts to win me to The Lord though the actual answer to that question really requires more than a one word answer. I had in fact made that long walk to the altar on the seventh verse of a five verse song and asked Jesus to forgive my sins at the Monroe First Church of the Nazarene back in 1981. I still believe that “except one become like a little child one shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven”, I just think it may mean something more. So I took the easy way out and did not elaborate my conflictions on the term, besides in the moment I was kind of feeling it pretty heavy too. It had been a long week of thoughtful wonder in the wilderness and the unknown guarded over by wonder and naive enthusiasm.
Ray of course was delighted with yes. “I knew it all along. You see the Lord told me to pick you up. You may not believe it but I have been driving over the road for seven years and you’re the third hitchhiker I’ve ever picked up. Every one of them a Christian. I’m not supposed to have passengers in the rig, but my boss is a Christian too and he’d have to understand. When God tells me to do something I listen.”
I nodded agreeably wondering if I was going to get the follow up questions. “So where do you go to church ?” or try to pin you down on doctrine “so you must believe that Jesus is the only way to Heaven?” Instead Ray just started talking and told me his story, his testimony if you will.
It was the sixties and Ray was in high school and he had a sweetheart. This was all in Oxford Ohio and Ray was hoping to get a job at Miami University like his father and his grandfather before him. He wanted to marry his sweetheart but she wanted to wait until he was settled with the University. Before Ray got settled he got drafted.
He reported to his physical but failed the exam. It seemed that Ray’s mom had been doing his homework for a good long time. Safe with his classification of “too dumb to fight” he got his dream job driving truck for Miami U. and plans for the wedding move forward. Than this bucolic scene was rudely interrupted when Ray was drafted anyway.
Ray was classified as infantry material and shipped off to Germany where he was assigned to a tank battalion. Ray struggled through his tank training and was two instructional hours away from testing for tanker status he was reassigned to Vietnam.
Ray halted his narrative and pulled off at an exit to stop at his favorite truck stop. He bought us coffee and chatted up the woman at the counter. He looked at lights and bought two based more on his budget than what he wanted, which was all of them. I just followed, orbiting his energy and intensity and waiting to get back in the truck and hear the rest of the story, which he did, picking it up without a pause.
While home on leave he tried to marry his sweetheart but there was not enough time. They decided to marry after Ray returned from Vietnam. He was shipped to Vietnam and faithfully wrote, daily. After six months the letters from his sweetheart stopped. His mother then wrote that she had married another guy.
Ray took this badly and so became a machine gunner volunteering for every dangerous mission. “Whoo I kept my guardian angel busy Michael. When I arrive at the pearly gates my guardian angel is going to say, ‘boy you kept me busy’, yes sir.” Miraculously Ray made it back to civilian life, was pursued by a friend’s wife and married unhappily, but maintained it for the sake of the children, in spite of her infidelity.
Eight years later Ray ran into his sweetheart, divorced for four years now. Ray quickly followed suit and at last was with the only true love of his life. Four years later he lost her to cancer. “She’s with the Lord now dancing on streets of gold.”
It was really a sweet story and I didn’t add much beyond taking it all in as the miles flew by on our journey south. As we drove Ray pointed to a squirrel, dead on the side of the road. “Can I tell you a secret Mike? If I could ask the Lord for one gift it would be to raise those poor critters from the dead. They don’t know any better. They can’t read or nothing. Isn’t that foolish?”
“I don’t think that’s foolish at all Ray. Jesus himself tells us that ‘the Lord knows when even a sparrow falls’. I can’t help but think that he feels the loss. It’s refreshing really. Not enough Christians care about the critters and the rest of the natural world. Have you ever read Psalms 104 Ray?”
“Well I can’t say that I have off the top of my head.”
“Some call it the environmental psalm Ray. Its really cool and you should check it out. It says there” that the mountains belong to the wild goats”. We like to think it was all given to us to use as we please but that is not so. God made all of the species we are driving to extinction and the wild places that hold them for a reason and we are thoughtlessly and methodically killing off God’s creation for a profit.”
Ray perked up when I started rolling, giving my mini-sermon. I realized I hadn’t said more than a handful of words on our hours long journey and we had bonded in the telling of Ray’s story but I was a tabula rosa that Ray for the first time realized could talk. Ray asked again for the name of the psalm and he wrote it in his little steno pad he kept in his shirt pocket.
Ray then gave me a really searching look, paused, and said, “It says in the Good Book you never know when you ‘may be hosting angels unaware’”. He looked at me conspiratorially and I just nodded.
“Angel is just the Greek word for messenger Ray”. All too soon we were at the fork in the road where Ray went to Chicago and I continued south towards Lansing. Ray let me out on the side of the road ahead of where he was splitting off on 10. As Ray pulled away I walked away from the highway into the grass and sat down. It was another abrupt shift in environment and I wasn’t quite ready to deal. I sat in the grass and smoked a cigarette.
My thoughts turned to when I was in junior high and Cindy Ball who was the mother of a couple of my church buddies and would frequently give me a ride picked up a vagrant. She left us in the car while they had pie and coffee in a diner late one night, perhaps after church. She had quoted the same verse and was convinced of a miraculous encounter. I believed what I had said to Ray, anyone can carry a message. I tried to write a bit of verse as I stowed my stuff for walking to bolster my trepidation about being stranded on the junction of two highways and having to walk some up the interstate:
If you wanna be an angel
You don’t tell them your last name
That we’re all the same
Lost and confused
You give a few tricks for the game
Tell them they’re not to blame
When they’ve been abused
You listen more than you talk
Then show you’ve walked the walk
And have something to say
This bit came easy as I shouldered my pack and began making the difficult trek along the slope of the ditch, not yet wanting to dare the interstate.
Up North Part 7 –
Day 3
After sleeping fitfully I was fully awake at 3:00. I had to piss so bad I could taste it but I could not force myself out of the sleeping bag because it was so fucking cold. I lay there miserable for a long time before I promised myself a cigarette if I got up. I pulled on my jacket and boots, pissed, smoked half a cigarette and crawled back in the bag. I was freezing the whole night in spite of sleeping in everything short of jacket and boots and I vowed to put on my second pair of long-johns before tomorrow night.
When I started to get out of the tent in the morning I realized I had not zippered the inside, and the fly over the vestibule was the only thing keeping my heat in and the cold out. I replaced my vow from long-johns to diligence and double checking and started my day. It had rained during the night and it was cold and wet so I skipped pulling together a fire and had a bowl of Count Chocula. Since it was both cold and wet I had another.
I walked West along the lake shore and the waves on Lake Michigan were crashing hard, like the ocean. I was moved by the pristine beauty and saw only my tracks behind me and the tracks of gulls and a coyote or a dog, too small to be a wolf. There had been a display at the DNR office in Naubinway confirming that last drivers account about them being in the area. I had never seen wolves. I watched terns and the gulls making an honest living plucking critters out of the smooth sands behind the receding waves.
I walked out to Mr. “C”’s Pub and Eatery but it wasn’t open yet. I walked back to camp and made a big fire. I found a whole stack of firewood and a grate in another campsite. The grill fit nicely across the fire pit. I made broccoli and rice with extra veggies and had an instant cappuccino. I attended to the fact that my knee had been hurting bad all day. I was scared thinking of packing out of here in not too long. I couldn’t really figure out the cause of the pain but I feared I had torn some cartilage.
I walked the other way down the beach and watched the waves crash. I finished Circle of Stones and later left it in the john for a future camper. I watched the sunset into the lake. Beautiful but fast, like the ocean. I decided not to stay up to see the stars as I was exhausted from being active in the cold all day and knew I would sleep well, but I knew it was a long time until sunrise.
Day 4
I was up at 2:00 having to piss. I didn’t fight it I just got up and went, had a smoke and back to bed. I zipped up both layers of the tent and I was half-way toasty that night. I could’ve gotten up and started my day if there was anything to do in the cold night. I lay there and toyed with my regrets, hopes, fears, all of that stuff and drifted back to sleep. I woke up in the real morning awake and warm and refreshed so I only had one bowl of Count Chocula.
I walked East on Route 2 about a mile and half to a liquor/smoked fish store. I scored a cup of real coffee and a pack of smokes, no newspaper though. The store guy said the paper guy doesn’t come until 10:30-11:00 on Sundays. The guy did give me an update on the news: “They haven’t blown up the bridge yet. Did shut it down for half an hour with a bomb threat” and the weather, chance of rain tomorrow and the next snow was coming by the weekend, just in time for hunting season.
I lingered waiting for the paper and finished my coffee and smoked a cigarette. I decided to skip it and walked home via the beach. I collected shells on the way and sang a new little piece of song I was trying to work on:
Shells upon shells upon shells upon shells
We’re building up a world of shells
Out of the pretty ones we make a home
A place of safety we can call our own
We’re building up a world of shells
With several false starts a second verse did not come and so I continued towards camp after deciding not to write the words in the sand where the waves would wash it away. I saw an oily looking stain running toward the lake and traced it back to see it was likely oil and such from parking lot run off. Sad. I wrote about it and the rusty pump I’d been getting my water from on the comment section when I registered for the site for that night. I only registered for one night in case it rains and I get wet. My knee was still hurting but I had figured out I had bruised it busting up firewood on the first night’s fire. I vowed not to do that again.
I sat down and read the three scraps of narrative I had written on the road. It looked pretty shitty. I decided to scrap all those openings and I turned to the next full page even though there were only two lines and a word on page 5 and wrote: “10/21/01 Day one On Thursday morning I had Amee drop me off on what I thought was 27 North, just north of the I-69 loop.” I wrote for a bit ending with “…and praying the world would be gentle to him.” I was pleased with what I’d written because it told more of a story.
I walked to Mr. “C”’s for eggplant Parmesan and a Pepsi. I watched the second quarter of a Lions game. The Lions were actually winning and I was heartened, but not heartened enough to spend my daylight watching commercials to see how the gamed ended, so I walked back to camp and putzed around writing on the narrative and reading Meditation and Kabbalah while I sat on the rocks and watched the lake. The sun again set beautifully into the lake, perhaps more than yesterday. It was much cloudier and the clouds were streaked with soft oranges, pinks, and a robust purple and blue. I felt “ Sunset is the best time of the day”.
Poetry Archive #3 (what every driver should know)
my birthday is in three weeks
and i don’t have any friends
i am far from all that is familiar
except for that vague sense of malaise
that can kill poetry, hope, joy
not in a tragic shot of misery
but a rote cloud of routine half-reality
half experienced, quickly lost in
the next empty exchange.
real experience pulled forth only
at apparent enormous cost
most risk not taken
unless backed into a corner
called to account
even if you are looking away
an insular gaze to chill
in the ubiquitous hustle
cost without even the satisfaction
that you really helped
Poetry Archive #2 (Johnny Watson poems)
John E. Watson is a larger than life character. He is an artist and craftsman and lovingly hapless. I’ve written 2 songs about Johnny and i found the rough draft of one of them, Hey Mister Painter Man, in the large sketch book. I’d forgotten all about it and dredged it back up out of memory. I sang it for an associate who was tunelessly singing Hey Mister Tambourine Man, and he said he’d like to write some music for it. Chicken Fried Johnny i recorded with Milk Carton but we never did anything with the recording. Johnny claims the song is insulting but he listens to it. I never got a copy but our studio guy Nick Ridgio burned him one. How is that for fair? I started it when i went to see Johnny and he had gotten a nasty gash on his finger. He was going to sew it up himself because he didn’t have insurance and had preceded to drink a bottle of whiskey in preperation, which like a lot of projects, was as far as he got.
Hey Mister Painter Man
How ’bout a pretty picture
One that’ll make me smile
And maybe then I’ll forget her
Maybe you have loved before
Then you may know
Love brings the greatest joys
But leaves the lowest lows
So how ’bout it Mr. Painter Man
Can you fix my soul
Paint a picture to fill me up
Where love has left a hole
Maybe you have loved before
Then you may know
A place where i can heal my heart
I am ready to go.
#######
Chicken Fried Johnny
I put a suture in my finger
Cuz i didn’t have the money
For the plastic surgeon’s fee
To come and take a look at me
But i keep searchin’
Looking for the reason
Why most folks struggle to survive
But others got six cars to drive
But i like my chicken fried boy
I like my chicken fried
If i can’t have steak and champaign
I’ll settle for a chicken wing
I like my chicken fried boy
I like my chicken fried
With no fat to remind me
This was a living thing
Well I saved up a bit of money
And since i don’t have a honey
I’m gonna buy myself a forty ounce beer
It sure beats shedding a tear
And i’m gonna get me some bugler to smoke
And maybe a little toke
Of some cheap-ass mexican weed
That’s mostly just stems and seeds
But i like my chicken fried boy
I like my chicken fried
Poetry Archive #2 (large sketch book)
Resistance
Stand up for your convictions
Whatever they are
Whatever obstacles stand in your way
Whatever others may think
Resistance
Feel deeply your inner strength
Let your actions serve your will
As your will strives to serve the greater good
Fear overcome is the beginning of ecstasy
Resistance
The struggle outweighs the outcome
The journey surpasses the destination
Passive acceptance is the bastion of the weak
The meek have inherited nothing
Resistance
Dare to give your life meaning
Share freely what you have experienced
Care about what really matters
Tear down obstacles to justice
Resistance
Poetry Archive #1 (behavior mod. notebook 03-04)
unfinished novel page 25
(circa 2003)
don’t want to lose people
in unimportant details
but must establish
an understandable framework
to launch new memes.
as the only way to get
over the sun
enter Archetype Heaven
Unique Universal Knowledge
constructs contain ego-energy
we walk long swordblades
immutable in their truth
infinitely cruel
a tool of severity
excising kindness blob
of easy indifference to cancer
###############
selection from unpublished novel
Mitch is cold and dissatisfied with winter. a defuse chill that has begun to ache in its familiarity begetting contempt for himself and consequently the universe. He’s thinking about mirror shots and what they mean in movies, television, mitch’s mind. Watching from the outside not in a peeping tom kind of way but a stolen glance of a private place, in a public space. He has to watch to know. data collection. focus group testing, personal science. grist for the mill of mitch’s mind. working not the subconscious calculus of the thrown ball but its close kin….applied
more than just 2 lines
I got a compliment on the 2 line poem i posted, which didn’t make sense until i looked at the page. I had put in 2 complete poems and then it crashed. When i started it back up the poems were still there so i hurriedly published and lo and behold 2 lines. Second times the charm….
Magic
I believe in magic and god and all good things
I believe in the power of the soul
To touch the mindlike basis of material reality
And so become the whole
I believe in angels and fairies and listening to canaries
When they say the mine’s gonna blow
Watching for signs and divining designs
And knowing which way to go
############
I believe that the universe exists
For i have seen and heard parts of it
I have tasted of the summer fruit
And smelled the coming rain
Felt the gentle breeze
As it rolled across the plain
Not first in nobodies’ heart
We walk this world alone
Like a single set of polar bear tracks
Covered by the blowing snow
We are destined to live out our lives
And then it is our lot to die
Never knowing what will be our fate
When we leave this world of lies
But i believe that i am body, soul and spirit
For i have lived and loved and felt the One
I have felt the power of god
And danced with a spirit
Felt my soul leave my body
To touch someone near it
Not first in nobodies’ heart
We walk this world alone
Like a single set of polar bear tracks
Covered by the blowing snow
We are thinking machines
But so much more
We carry the spark of the divine
And our souls can live for all eternity
Look to your dreams for the sign
belief poems
i believe in magic and god and all good things
i believe in the power of the soul
This page still gets some hits on searches based on the title. I actually have two belief poems i had tried to post here but in a technical glitch they didn’t pop up. Check out the link I’m rather proud of them. and kudos to you for such a great search term, hope you follow the link.
talking about squirrels
Squirrely’s comment has got me thinking about squirrels. Back when i was crazy i had this fantasy of putting together an all girl teen rap-punk fusion band hiding messages of female empowerment behind teenage rebellion. I wrote a couple of the songs and thats about as far as that ever got. One of the pieces of a piece that i liked goes like this:
I was kicking it one night just me and the girls
We were watching TV and talking about squirrels
It seems the law of the jungle is the law of tooth and fang
And the fat male squirrels wanted to make themselves Kangs
But the little girl squirrels knew that wasn’t right
So they banded together and they tought themselves to fight
When the big male squirrels learned of their might
They ran out of town and never stopped for a bite
East Toledo Euro Trash
When I was visiting the homeland I had the great pleasure to see London’s own The Stash play at Frankies. It was an incredible nostalgia-fest because i hadn’t been to Frankies in probably a decade. It was probably the first club i had ever been too, my first girl friend Tais Jalal took me there and we saw some bands that looked and sounded very much like the bands i saw their last week opening for my pals The Stash. It would of course take a friend’s band to get me to go out to see a show these days. But I went to Frankies pretty regularly from my late teens to my mid-twenties. Most memorable were going as Fidel Castro on halloween with Chad Osborne (father time i think) and Bill Soleau (something morrissey inspired), seeing the Laughing Hyeneas with Mike Leonardi and losing my glasses slam dancing and later pulling Mike out of a brawl with some Vietnam Vets arguing about the first Gulf War. The show was great except way too late. Nick and Rebecca are great folks and Nick at least is a genius. They did a band Universe Crew with a heavy alien theme. Nick also did mixes and had a European record deal, Green Tea records I believe and ultimately they offered Nick a job doing mixes and Rebecca one designing record covers. This must have been 6 years ago or more and their still making it, still making music. Closest of my friends to be rock stars. Nick produced 3 songs for Milk Carton (if you weren’t blessed to get one of the 100 Milk Carton tapes you can get aa little taste if you go to the Memory Hole and go look at one of the older versions of myspot.org) that we never did anything with and I made some music with Nick solo after we broke up. They’re good people and their new band is pretty good. More rock -n- roll than Universe Crew, a three piece, Nick on guitar, some presumably British guy on drums and Rebecca playing the Moog (Nick’s got a thing for old synthesizers). The CD is even better since Nick’s had a chance to work his mixing magic on it. I didn’t get a chance to talk to either too much being the stars of the show but they both looked great. Nick took a little rubbing for wearing eye shadow but its hard to be a rock star. I’m proud of them and wish them the best. They’ve picked up an accent but since they live their i’ll let it slide. On the trip home i started a new piece (i haven’t written in ages) based upon Phillip K. Dick’s idea of the Black Iron Prison as an analogy for the rise of a totalitarian state. Here’s what i got so far:
Theres a Black Iron Prison casts a shadow across the land
From the strip mines of the North to The Wall at the Rio Grande
So show us your papers, your bio-metric ID
How about a mark on the hand or forehead so that all can see?
That privacy is over, the world is made of glass
So much for your delicate sensibilities our society is crass
Multiconstruct 
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