So what I did today, and about all I did, was I rambled on down to Flag and I picked up mah pickup. My analog security system did not initially allow me to jump easily into the driver’s seat. I had to go in through the passenger side, lean over and put the key in, then crank and pray.

She started instantly after the two weeks with not a touch on the gas pedal, even though she’s three hundred and five thousand miles old.

Next, I thought about whether she was in fact a she.

Prolly. I mean … it’s a ship, and ships are supposed to get called she, yeah?

I don’t really know for sure yet though.

These things take time.

But if it does turn out more male than female, I will love him with devotion just the same, for that one fast start and for so many other things besides.

I don’t care if that’s queer either, god damm it.

***

Driving that unlovable rental 6000 miles taught me a lot, about people.

There’s a very high percentage of worthless idiots out there, to judge by driving style, and also to judge by the customer service received or not received, en route.

I did my best the whole way to be philosophical and chill about it, and mostly I was successful in that attempt.

Today on my way back though, on my home turf, I was not entirely successful.

I grabbed my big town organic groceries and started back home happily enough.

Coming up out of town I encountered one of those dreaded types that loves to camp the left lane regardless of the situation.

Which I was still calm about, until I had passed the maroon on the right twice, given it enough gas to tip the speedometer to a hundred, and still … here he comes again, up on my ass but in left lane, driving just fast enough again to make it impossible to pass a truck on the right in front of me. So I braked, and I got in behind him yet once more.

I was annoyed by now, but still doing really well.

Then.

Without signalling, the truck swung over in front of him and damn near chopped the nose of his SUV off, very very close. So he slammed on the brakes, and I did the same, safe and legal.

I let him speed up and go away as I considered what to do.

Gingerly, I started to pass the truck.

I pulled up level with his window and paced him for a minute.

Then I leaned over with my fingers held an inch apart and I just stayed like that, speeds matched, until I was absolutely certain that he had to be seeing those fingers and wondering what the hell.

Then I turned one of the fingers up in the universal gesture of opprobrium.

As I blasted all the way past he let go with his stupid air horn. So I know that all of my message got through.

“You missed him by that much, dude. Fuck you, you stupid fucking fuck.”

After that I needed a little break, so I got off at the next exit, half-hoping he would be enraged enough to follow me. But he didn’t.

***

The exit I used is about 30 miles east of Prettytown.

The sign just says “Two Guns”, with the arrow.

Mainly it leads to a gutted and abandoned gas station covered in multiple layers of nice graffiti.

But being who I am, I have come to know a lot about this place. In the middle of the last century, it was a complex roadside attraction with a kind of zoo at the center. They for sure had a mountain lion, because you can still read that on one of the decaying cages. I shudder to think of that cat in such a tiny concrete prison cell.

Somewhere in the bowels of the Internet there’s a document that tells the early history of the place. I read it once. The collapse of the enterprise was due to a love triangle that resulted among the owners and at least one other person who worked there.

The crude .pdf also tells about an outnumbered bunch of Navajos who took refuge in a cave at the canyon nearby, and how the larger group of Apaches burned them out of it, way before there was a Route 66.

If I remember right the canyon is called Diablo.

Go do your digging and tell me if I do, please.

I’ve visited the remains several times over the years, and almost always I was the only one there.

Today that was very different.

I didn’t go very far into the scraggly network of dirt roads around Two Guns today. But even a casual glance showed a half dozen cars parked in scattered locations around the site.

Parked hard, as if people were living in them. I feel pretty sure that some of them were semi-permanent residents.

This is America in 2024.

What once was only wasteland for curious eccentrics like me is now a budding Bidenville.

I don’t blame Old Joe personal-like, any more than I blame the Commander for who he was and what he believed and preached as gospel all those years ago.

But the jury is in, and the flagwaving democracy greatest-country bullshit is just another lie in a long series of lies like so many caskets at Arlington, like so many cars parked out in Mad Max land in the hundred degree heat, each one full of bags that say Walmart on them.

If you think I’m the one bullshitting now, you go ask the ghost of Tom Joad.

Tell him I sent you, and tell him I said hey, old son.