Beer For My Horses

Well a man come on the six o’clock news.

Said somebody’s been shot. Somebody’s been abused.

Somebody blew up a building. Somebody stole a car.

Somebody got away. Somebody didn‘t get too far.

They didn’t get too far.

For someone who never really paid attention to country music until a few years ago, I’m a big fan. I spend much of my working day listening to old songs by Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers as it emanates from the diorama behind me every 12 minutes or so. Just about every day, people ask me if it drives me crazy? I tell them no, because the songs are the same songs I heard in my childhood in the 1950s.

I, like most people my age, experienced early television with Roy, Gene, and Hoppy (Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Hopalong Cassidy). As I grew a bit older, Marshall Dillon laid down the law in Gunsmoke, Pallidan had a gun and would travel, and there seemed to be a zillion Warner Brother’s westerns on ABC (The Rifleman, Maverick, Sugarfoot, and many more).

And so when I heard this “Beer For My Horses,” it brought back memories of the days of the wild west as shown by early television. It was glamorous. It was brutal. We watched people gunned down and hung nightly. Is it any wonder how screwed up my generation is?

The song is originally by Rodney Carrington and Toby Keith and I understand it is from a movie of the same title. I listened to a version with Toby and Willie Nelson and I thoroughly enjoyed it. You can view it on YouTube. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1JOFhfoAD4

One of the biggest disappointments of my wasted youth was I didn’t get my cousin’s six shooters when he outgrew them. They remained in storage in the guest house. What a set of cap guns. Now if you go into toy stores at Wal-Mart, K-Mart and other places, you won’t find cap guns. But the tourist trap toy store where I work has all sorts and the kids flock to them. I spend much of my day listening to pre-schoolers shoot each other with popguns. And I swear in at least a half dozen “deputies” every day as they promise “by the code of the west” not to shoot their brothers and sisters and never use them in the car. This is not just a “boy” thing. Girls can get their capguns with pink holsters. Of course, there are also pink and lavender cowgirl hats too. It is also clear that this is a gun control related issue. Inevitably, gun owners let their kids buy the capguns while non-owners drag their kids away from the merchandise with loud “nos.”

Grandpappy told my Pappy back in my day son,

A man had to answer for the wicked things he done.

Take all the rope in Texas, find a tall oak tree.

Round up all of them bad boys, hang ‘em high in the street.

For all the people to see.

I remember when I was a reporter covering the Morris County (NJ) Courthouse in the early 1970s, the sheriff brought out the gallows onto the courthouse lawn for people to see. The role of the sheriff at that time was to run the county jail, and serve civil court subpoenas.  When asked, they would render assistance to local police departments, but that was very, very rare . . . usually for searching the woods for missing persons and a rare suspect.

I used a wide-angle lens and photographed the sheriff through the noose with his arms twisted and the gallows in the background. Of course it made our front page. But public hangings, and other forms of execution no longer exist in this country. I suppose some bleeding heart decided that it was too embarrassing to the criminal, or too violent for children.

Whatever it was, it brought to mind a photo I saw of a hanging. It was in the south and a bunch of white people were having a celebration underneath a tall tree where a black man was hanging.

That justice is the one thing that you always should find.

You gotta saddle up your boys, you gotta draw a hard line.

So do we need public executions? I don’t know. I know we kill too many innocent people, not to mention people who are incapable of understanding their actions. I certainly would not want to be subject to Texas or Florida justice.

We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds.

Too much corruption and crime in the streets.

It’s time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground.

Send them all to their maker and he’ll settle them down.

You can bet He’ll set them down.

But there is a basic wrong in our society today. Criminals are optimists. First of all, they think they can get away with the crime. Then when they get caught, they think they win a trial, or get a great plea bargain. And when they are found guilty, they think they can get off with a light sentence. And too often their optimism is justified.

And as I thought about it, it comes from childhood and the schools. A student knows the law well before they enter the sixth grade. They have learned that disobedience holds little consequence. They know that if a teacher touches them, the teacher will lose their job. They know their parents, who are both working, aren’t home when teachers call and there are rarely consequences at home either.

That wasn’t always a fact. When we were kids, you pretty much respected the teacher, though a sub got some grief. A call home, where mom was a housewife and not working, meant problems when you walked in the door and “Wait till your father gets home,” meant a very uncomfortable bottom.

When the gunsmoke settles, we’ll sing a victory tune,

And we’ll all meet back at the local saloon.

We’ll raise up our glasses against evil forces, singing

Whisky for my men, beer for my horses.

Of course no one ever listens to me, but how about a society where justice is swift and sure? In this era, I don’t know how it’s possible. Cops have always been corrupt. I suspect it’s worse than ever. I have a friend who did hard time because he tried to defend himself against an off-duty cop who chased him all over town -- and never identified himself as a cop.

No, justice has to be just as well as swift and sure. Just as their student’s test scores shouldn’t judge teachers, their number of arrests shouldn’t judge cops. Because if the cops are judged by the arrests they make, they aren’t judged by the arrests that didn’t happen because people fear the consequences.

When I was a kid, the death sentence applied to crimes other than murder. I remember there was a lot of news coverage about a black man who raped a white woman being given a death sentence back in the late 1950s.

And so I wish we could, just once, round up all the drug dealers, find that tall tree with all the rope and hang them for the people to see. I wonder how much better, or worse, our society would be as a result. What do you think?

When the gunsmoke settles, we’ll sing a victory tune,

And we’ll all meet back at the local saloon.

We’ll raise up our glasses against evil forces, singing

Whisky for my men, beer for my horses.

It's about time

"The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time." Abraham Lincoln

I suppose I’ve been obsessing about time lately. I currently abide in South Dakota. Most of the state is located in the central time zone, but some of the western part of the state, where I am, is in the mountain zone.

And that can be weird at times. For example, the CBS affiliate I get on cable is located in the central time zone. So prime time shows begin at 6 p.m., shortly after I get home from work. And the nighttime news is at 9 p.m. It’s rather strange to see Letterman two hours early.

Because of this, the sun rises about 45 minutes early and thus sets 45 minutes early. And today, with some mild bit of shock, I realized that summer is approaching its end. Oh sure, it’s still two weeks until Labor Day, which comes early this year. But I took a stroll with pup at 8 p.m. tonight and was rather surprised. About 3/4ths of a mile away, there is a huge dinosaur statue near the highway. It is, of course, an advertisement, but there is a paved path to get to it and it’s fairly safe. The lawn on each side of the path is regularly mowed and so there is little risk of encountering a rattlesnake.

But tonight’s walk was different. I started it around 8 p.m. and realized the sun was setting. This didn’t register because I knew I had left for my walk a little later than usual, not knowing the time. But shortly into the walk, I realized I was chilly. There was a mild breeze and the temperature was in the mid 60s. But I was wearing shorts and a tee shirt. The walking helped to ward off the chill, and I told myself this is a good thing, because I would hopefully burn off more calories. But on the way back, I encountered another couple walking their dog. They were wearing jeans and hooded sweatshirts. And by then, the sun was long down and it had turned dark. And it was only 8:30 p.m. And it hit me. The summer is ending. I had my first exposure to the oncoming winter. And it does not please me.

I suppose unhappy memories of last winter emerged. I arrived for a four-month stint along the Oregon Coast at a National Park. It didn’t snow last winter, but it rained just about every day from December to February. Of the 105 days I was there, I had about 20 days of sunshine. But the short days of the winter equinox were the most discouraging. I would arrive at work around 8:45 a.m., in the dark. And leave around 4 p.m., also in the dark. My nights were lonely and dark and depression was a constant companion.

Being alone sucks. Christmas and New Years were the pits. The area where my campsite was had become flooded and it added to the feeling of isolation. When Lewis and Clark wintered in the area in 1805-06, Clark wrote in his journal that the only good thing about the new year was they hoped to be with friends and family the next year. I felt the same way. I spent “Christmas” a couple of days early with my son’s family. Yet I knew the ex would have the actual day with them. The only part about the divorce that I regret is that despite having children and a grandchild in common, she cannot abide my presence. And that saddens me to. My son’s in-laws have a wonderful Christmas holiday with a breakfast at an aunt’s; dinner at my son’s and presents in the evenings at his wife’s parents.  I suppose this is what functional people do.

My life has been dysfunctional. Many of the Christmases I remember as a child involved my mom’s drinking and passing out. One Christmas Day, when I was a junior in high school, we had about two feet of snow overnight and I helped the landlord shovel the walk. We were marooned and plans to eat in a restaurant were shot. Mom got angry with me for helping shovel snow. She didn’t like the landlord I guess, but she had already been drinking. Later, the landlord brought us a half roast beef and the veggies and a pie and we had a real dinner instead of the planned canned stew.

Other Christmas days with the ex were often quite nice. When we lived in Queens, we held the annual dinner for everyone. After we moved to Long Island, my sister-in-law did the honors. But there were other times when family feuds meant we stayed at home.

And I can feel the winter closing in, even if it isn’t even Labor Day yet. I am looking at this year’s holidays with a sense of grimness. I haven’t a clue where I will be. I am probably visiting the New York Metro area for a couple of weeks to see my son, my doctor and some friends. Then I suppose I will be heading south. Then I will head for Georgia, where I expect to make my winter quarters. The RV park I would be in is like a second home on the road. I feel safe and secure there and my fellow snowbirds are friendly. But all this is up in the air.

And so I need to take another look at time -- one day at a time. I don’t need to deal with the uncertainties of the future. I shouldn’t deal with the drama of the past. Just for today, I am significantly saner, my blood sugars are at or below the normal range and I’m losing weight. I am grateful for the return of some of my health. I’m working at a job where I’m appreciated and my co-workers are pleasant to be with. My neighbors at my RV site are great and I’m trying to count my blessings.

But it’s so effin hard. Time sucks. Not all the time, but much of it.

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit." -- Albert Schweitzer

You might be a biker if ...

Welcome to Sturgis, South Dakota, where motorcycle rallies have been a tradition for more than a century.

You might be a biker if … your best shoes have steel toes!

Prejudice is an ugly thing. And we all have them. We often judge a group from what we hear from others. One of the groups I didn’t know but didn’t like was bikers.

Now the first person I knew who had a motorcycle was my best friend, Bill. In fact, back in the ‘60s, we spent a week camping at a state park in central Pennsylvania. Starting in northern New Jersey, He drove his 250cc Honda while I chugged along in my ’61 Ford Falcon.

Bill still has a bike and I think he’s a great person. My only other acquaintance that owns one is Bobby Mac, a man who was once a hard-core drug user who has become a minister of the Gospel. Another wonderful person.

But as a newspaper reporter, I covered a few incidents involving outlaw bikers and my worst experience came upon discovering that we had purchased a house whose back yard was across the street from a biker bar. The gang didn’t come by too often, but were there on summer holiday weekends. I remember one day around July 4^th when I had my son in our backyard pool and started hearing shots. I quietly removed him from the pool and brought him inside and insisted everyone stay in the front side of the house. The bar, then known as the Silver Dollar Saloon, underwent many name changes until it burned to the ground. I remember watching the fire with my neighbors and the fire department concerned itself mainly with ensuring the fire didn’t spread, rather than salvaging the building. There was great happiness on the block, though we had to wait nearly five years before the building was demolished.

There was constant traffic (and noise) from the hundreds of thousands of motorcycles invading Sturgis every day. 

And so I had a definite prejudice against bikers. Last July, I spent a month throughout South Dakota and learned that there is an annual biker rally in a town called Sturgis, west of Rapid City in the Black Hills. About half a million bikers attend the ten-day event. I made damn sure I got the hell out of the state several days before the rally started.

You might be a biker if…your two best friends are named after animals!

This year was quite different. I had my prejudice blow up in my face. As many know, I work in a tourist trap along I-90. It’s about 90 miles east of Sturgis and thousands of bikers stop by every day during the rally. While they dress tough, they are kind, gentle people -- every single one of the thousands I’ve met has been so, without exception.

There were lots of portable toilets scattered throughout the town

The black leather they wear inevitably features a home “club,” usually a city or small region. A lot of them are Christians who spread the Gospel through their contacts. Some even belong to my group – RVers and keep their motorcycles in what we call “toy” trailers that feature a storage area for motorcycles in the back of the trailer and have a fold-down door to ride out of.

Despite some incredible tattooing, biker babes are “hot.” I can’t quite figure out how these women in their middle age through seniors, who are athletic and toned with often rock-hard bodies, are doing with fat, aging men who look (and often smell) horrendous.  Of course, I’m jealous. Besides a bike, what do have that these guys don’t. I suppose it’s money.

I’m told a lot of these men are doctors, lawyers and other professional people. In other words they’re well to do, if not rich. Whatever! I asked a lot of them and almost all said they were just plain lucky. One guy had an answer that made sense. They had to be that way to fit on the back seat of a bike!

And so I just had to visit Sturgis on my day off. At this point, I only have a single day off during this time because of all the bikers stopping off at my workplace. So my impressions are based on a single day there. And the visit was daytime one, so I didn’t observe the legendary wild partying. But I suspect what happens in Sturgis, stays in Sturgis.

The day started a lot later than I planned. On the previous night, actually early this morning, we were hit by a tremendous thunderstorm that dumped about five inches of water on us. With the lightning, I couldn’t get to sleep and didn’t do so until the thunder stopped and I finally passed out around 3 a.m. with a constant drumming on my trailer roof.

Even at 11 a.m, the party had already been well underway.

I also didn’t know how to dress. I’m not supertanned and windburned like the bikers are and I don’t own leathers. But somehow jeans and a tee didn’t work either. So I decided to go cowboy with boots, hat, jeans, a plaid shirt and a bolo tie. I looked like a tourist one way or another.

En route, I stopped at a rest stop about 10 miles before Sturgis. I spoke to some bikers after I admired a three-wheel custom machine. It was more than I paid for a brand-new pickup last year. Oh well. Back when I was in high school, there was a thing going around that Army surplus cycles were available for $13. It wasn’t true, but I had my $13 ready to send away.

So I got into town. The outskirts were packed with bikes and all sorts of places offering service. Churches and Service organizations were giving away free breakfasts and there were many free bike washes along with oil change lifts where you could change your own oil.

You might be a biker if … you have motorcycle parts in your dishwasher!

The place is mobbed. More than half a million people, mostly bikers, attend this rally. And area motels, RV parks and restaurants increase their prices as much as 10 times. One biker told me he was paying $800 a night for a chain motel!  Even where I am, 80 miles away, motel prices have been doubled.

And so it took me nearly an hour to drive through all the traffic and find a place to park. A biker sent me to a church at the top of a hill, where teenage girls, showing very low cleavage, charged me $8 to park on the church lawn. At least it was going to a good cause. I saw private homeowners whose lawns were filled with tents. Other houses were rented out to biker groups.

Parking was difficult for bikers, nearly impossible for cars and trucks.

You might be a biker if …your idea of jewelry is chains and barbed wire!

And so after a brief lunch, Pup and I started our tour. As I opened my truck’s door, I was overwhelmed with the noise from bikes. It was loud and constant. We walked into the main street where thousands of bikes were parked. It was around 11 a.m. and the party was well underway. Bars were packed and people were filling up. Yet there were no problems I could detect. Everyone seemed well behaved and easy going.  The booze industry was very supportive of the event. Huge signs and inflatable bottles were everywhere.

Of course, there was plenty of money to be made and vendors had pitched tents all over, selling tee shirts, leather goods, helmets and much more. One of the most popular areas were places selling patches that the bikers put on their leather vests. There were people to sew them on right there and the cash registers were rocking!

Top: one of the many biker clothing suppliers. Bottom: Patches for biker vests were quite popular, with people sewing them on right on the spot.

You might be a biker if … you can tell what type of bugs they are by taste!

Along the packed sidewalks, people were very nice about letting me through. Many stopped to pet Pup and tell me what a wonderful dog he was. Now Pup loves being the center of attention, but after perhaps 50 people stopped to pet him, he started freaking out. He seemed OK, but he started dumping. Now I had three empty bags to take care of his remains. And they were all used quickly. I had to stop at a place selling patches to ask for a few more bags. I knew Pup had just about had it. Besides pooping all over the place, his tongue was starting to drag. He rarely pants, and drool was coming out at a constant rate.

It wasn't "normal" to be topless and tattooed, but this woman was pretty much ignored.

We headed back to the pick-up. En route, I noticed a topless woman who had tattooed her breasts being interviewed by some sort of television crew. On another block, I spotted the Hell’s Angels hangout. I was surprised to see that most of these guys were clean-shaven, compared to the rest of the crowd. They were quiet and orderly and caused no trouble at all, quite a contrast from their “outlaw” image.

You might be a biker if…You’re only sunburned on the back side of your hands and your neck.

I had hoped to stay through the evening and observe some of the louder party activities. Major rock and country musicians were scheduled for the evening and I was thinking about leaving Pup in the truck for a couple of hours after darkness when it was cooler. But Pup was beat and exhausted. He was also confused. I opened the door and poured him a bowl of water and placed it on the ground for him. He didn’t know if he should jump in the truck or drink the water. He kept looking at both. Finally I said “up” and into the truck he went and I placed the bowl on his seat.

He lapped up way more than usual and quickly went to sleep as I started driving the truck homeward. He stayed that way for the two hours it took to get back to my RV site.  If I’m in the area again sometime, I’ll be sure to re-visit, and leave Pup in the air-conditioned trailer.

You might be a biker if…you know where Sturgis is

 Hells Angels from California were quiet and well behaved.