Jammin' by the time the sun is rising over it, the sun rises and you see beyond the highway lights, out into...into....
from off of 70, you drop down 27 to 50 if you got time, don't even go if you don't, and then you mosey along....East...
time for breakfast with the bus...it is getting hot, it gets hot in Kansas, I promise...we are going to feed ourselves, we will be lounging about the Arkansas River somewhere we can take our clothes off and swim or whatever and rest up for the day driving around. Travel all night, then the all-day mosey, my co-drivers shift, I am sleeping after I eat, if I can and I can, drivers bunk is on top of the engine compartment, he can hear the gears in the old crash box tranny, if I'm missing one going downhill, he can fly up the middle of the bus and shift it before we get flung off into space....no one else notices, tell me to mellow out, I love these guys...
Finally, no more mountains, you can boogie on the Kansas blue highways, lots of straightaways, and then you have to deal with the sky, which is bigger than it is anywhere I ever was before I saw the one in Nebraska but you get used to it and drive into the fruit and veggie stand at 7 am and all the fresh stuff is out...the Kansa people are in and out, kids, no dogs inside, Foghorn Leghorn speaks up, thumbs in his suspenders and a bellow "BLESS IT BILLY, IF YOU GET LOST I CAN'T FIND YOU" bags and boxes of dripping green and yellow organically grown things of natures beauty and generosity, you smell shit and sweat and fruit and bannanas doors are pushed open wide, braced...everyone is making noise,even if they aren't, it is fucking bustling in there, plenty of room for hippies with money just like everyone else, trucks in the back, giant hippie busses anywhere you can park it and man oh man... let us eat..you got fresh eggs with chicken shit still on them, corn, you can have it there is so much, tomatoes and peppers, wheres the milk we got two kids, where are they? someone go find the kids..look at these fuckin' pears, swear quieter, these guys don't swear, it's insulting for them, don't do it...,...
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| anti-covid beaver sculpture |
You are in the palace of the Seventh Day Adventists, they don't smoke, swear or eat meat and they know how to put on the feedbag, let me tell you, kindness and understanding, a little curiosity but not much, greets you with them, always nice to me, always gentle with me, disarming to an old reprobate but I got used to it quicker than a Nolan Ryan fastball could hit the big mitt, or Donald Trump can lie to you.
Now, loaded down with food for all twenty on board,we head for the appropriate locale to unass the kitchen and cook the food. Everyone is up and has to work to eat, if they want. Soon, the kids are in the Arkansas River and we can't get em' out, they got inner tubes and say they are pirates on the lookout for loot.
Everyone eats. Everyone can have all they want. It's all included, chow down.
No one is not glad to be there, in Kansas, with all the badass Kansans, who come to the river to swim and bar b q too, just like everyone else.
One guy said to me once, "Good mornin' neighbor. Hows it goin' this fine day"
He was actually asking me how I was feeling, he was interested, didn't want anything else, just how was I doing and it was obvious, he wanted me to be well, just because he knows the world works for us better if we care enough about the condition to see about it for real like he does.
I told him we were going to New York but he didn't care, he was going home to his ranch in heaven, where he stays and thinks for himself.
I always did and I still do, remember Kansas as a fine place to shop, eat and meet people. I love the River too, The Arkansas, I imagined myself on a flatboat with a load of rescued beavers, heading back upriver to release them back into the creeks they came from.
I know, what a sap...HA!
Sap is better than warmonger and anyways, I feel peaceful this morning.
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