12,006. RUDIMENTS, pt. 779

RUDIMENTS, pt. 779
(a regular fairy tale)
Hurling oaths at a meritocracy

wouldn't do any good. Not

that it mattered anyway, but

I did use to walk around

thinking if only some higher

form of 'elite' could just step

in and take over all this place

the world would be a lot

better off. I got pretty tired

of the headlines and all that

Walter Cronkite and Dan

Rather stuff  - it was all

people mentioned, for a

while. I got sick of it. Dan

Rather really irked me,

asking all those superior-crap

questions of his and then

smugly standing back for

answers impossible to give.

And then, if the President

gave them anyway, he'd rip

the answer to shreds; that

whole 'journalism' itself

was rotten and nasty. I used

to call old Walter Cronkite

as Wally or Conkrite. My

friend Alex called him Wally

Crankcase. They all fit, even

though, I admit, for a while

there I dug his daughter,

Kathy. Vicariously.

-

Pennsylvania had all sorts of

blasphemous foods; so did Elmira,

for that matter. In both locations,

there was some joke of a pizza

chain called 'Pudgies.' Whenever

my two friends came up, it

was Pudgies, at least once. 

It as more really like a bad wad

of bread, with some red stuff

on it, and maybe some cheese.

Evidently their idea of crust

was something you could sleep

on. There was also a place in

Troy called, way back then,

'Incredible Edibles.' Basically

that meant that there stuff was

sooo bad it was incredible that

you'd eat it. But, for wine-filled

extravaganzas and sitting around

the black-nighted darkness to

use up time, any of that would do

There was no delivery what with

dirt roads and all, and everything

being like 400 miles away by the

time some goofy high-school kid

would find his way to it (and

probably never return), we had

to go and pick it all up, so we 

made evenings journeys out of 

it, while getting progressively

more drunk on the oceans of

Mateus, or Lancers, that they'd

provide. Cheap Portuguese

sweet wines, both, as I recall. 

-

I don't know what people do

now in these situations  -  with

computers and hand-helds and

smart-phones and all that.

Maybe they just watch stuff  -

movies, TV, or porn. I guess

that would take up time; but 

we never did that. We'd drive 

around, go way up and out  -  

Finger Lakes, Ithaca, Cornell, 

Montour Falls, Watkins Glen. 

There were a hundred of these

loose kinds of resort places.

The problem was, they'd all

peaked in like the late 1940's,

so everything was leftover

glory, if there was any at all.

Run-down cabins, broken up

walkways, trails all cluttered,

etc. It made everything eerie

and kind of cool; like some 

George Romero movie set.

You expected the living dead

to start popping up out of the

ground and wander around.

There were half-assed roadhouses

and pull-over eateries; nasty

old waitresses, cranky and

at the margins, the butter was

old, the salt and pepper caked.

A good thing was that sometimes

the prices had hardly changed

since 1949, for some dumb

reason. You could eat like

Major Pig, tons of crap, for

like $4.95; even $3.95 if

they'd forgotten to remove 

it as a special, back in 1950.

Everyone always wanted to

know, 'Where ya' from? What

brings ya' here? I didn't even

know if those sorts of questions

warranted an answer, unless

I  told them my name was

Dante and I was searching

for a new circle of Hell.

-

I always hated those chummy

sorts of questions by otherwise

nasty waitresses angling for a

tip. They couldn't have cared

less what my, or anyone's,

story was. My friends though,

and my wife too, they always

fell for it  -  all that false way

of sincerity and qualification.

I ended up mostly just making

up outrageous stories, straight

with the face too  -  'Me? Oh,

I just got out after 7 years, and

we're up here trying to remember

where I stashed the loot, about

400 grand, from the heist. We're

in trouble though. because it

all loos to have changed. He

says I dig it in by the large

red rock two trees over from 

the stream, but as I remember

it, it was under the red rock,

which was next to the stream

in a line from two trees at the

steam, due west to sunlight.'

Yeah, she feign interest, raise

her eyebrows, play with the

pencil, and walk off. The order

would come, all screwed up,

10 minutes later  -  I figured

after she'd called her boyfriend

the axe murderer, who then be

following us discretely for the

next ten hours. Either that,

or she'd called the cops.

-

Outside of Elmira, way up

above Rt. 17, there was this

place called 'O'Brien's On the

Hilltop.' It was a large, active,

restaurant and wedding kind of

place  -  great views, kid of

half fancy, plenty of parking.

On the vast lawn,for the Rt. 17

people to see, they had these 

gigantic letters, like 15 or 20

feet each, one letter at a time, 

spelling out' O'Briens'  -  

they conveniently left the

possessive out; probably as

way too complicated. And

they always ignored the 'On

the Hilltop' stuff. But, anyway,

people came; it was lively,

noisy, plenty of booze, and

nicely staffed. We dragged 

into there, one wintry day

after having been riding

around for hours. My two

friends, myself, Kathy, and

a sleeping 6 year old. We

had some food, drinks, and

the one guy says, 'I'm getting

goofy.' And the other guy

says, 'I'm getting sleepy.'

Seeing my opportunity  -  

a golden, seven-dwarfs 

one, for sure, I piped up. 

'Well, hell then, I'm getting 

Snow White!'