Slots, Sleeping Pills and Blueberry Muffins

Tuesday night I stayed in Baton Rouge...a non-smoking room at a Hampton Inn. I was lucky to get one at all.

Y'all remember Issac? The category one hurricane that come through Louisiana and Mississippi a few months ago? People are still down there "cleaning up"...cashing government checks to do it no doubt.

So, I'm still havin' to take what I can get in the area. Smoking becomes a real chore...Down the elevator...out the door...back in the door (which is locked for your protection)...up the elevator. What a hassle...all that walking.

It has an adverse effect on the blogging too. I can't do this crap without easy access to cigarettes That's right, I'm sacrificing minutes of my life for y'all...which, according to gov. propaganda, would go on forever if I walked more and didn't smoke.

I just don't stay in those rooms. I go where a human can still be. I go to the Casino. There I can sit and smoke indoors. The only walking I have to do is to the bathroom or from the Kenny Rogers Gambler to the Kitty Glitter slot machines. It might cost me twenty bucks...but, on the other hand, I could win big and walk out of there with enough money to make it sprinkle.

There are table games...Black Jack or Py Gow Flying Nija 4 card poker,etc. Those require way too much thinking and effort (you have to pick up the cards and look at them...toss them back..do basic Math). I'm not there to work, or think...I'm there to sit on my butt and smoke...with a glazed over look...hypnotized by the clink or the thunk of each slot falling into place, by the regular calls from a pleasant voice.."Cocktails? Drink? Cocktails?" Only to be awakened by the dazzling lights and fireballs of a jackpot. A jackpot I had no control over...a cosmic gift.

Eventually, even degenerate penny gamblers like myself have to go home.*  Back to the room where I can't smoke and nobody brings me coffee...where I can only flip the channels without hope of a two dollar jackpot. It sucks. There's really nothing for it but to go to sleep.

That can be a problem. In the quiet, my mind becomes as restless as my body is lazy. The dumbest things will set my mind racing...tomorrow, should I work in Baton Rouge long enough to have dinner at Zippy's Tacos. That's gonna put me in Leesville pretty late...but man, those are some good tacos.

Stupid ***.

That's when I reach for the sleepy time. Of course, it's not a magic pill. I'm usually jacked up on coffee and the adrenaline that comes from being on the verge of losing 50 cents for hours on end. After chewing up the pill there's probably 30 minutes before things go wobbly...then dark. During that half hour, for whatever reason, the stuff drives my sweet tooth crazy.

This presented a problem Tuesday night. I didn't have anything in the room.  The only vending machines in the place were for Cokecolas.  Sometimes they put cookies out at the front desk...worth a shot. It was not worth putting my shoes on though. I know y'all are used to only seeing pictures of me perfectly quaffed but my hair does get a little kinky after dark and on weekends...like a pompadoor that's been exploded with a cheery bomb.

So off I go...fright wig, barefooted...to find something sweet. Poor kid at the front desk looked a little scared when...as I, wavering slightly, demanded to know where the cookies were.

"You got anything sweet back 'ere brother?"

"Uhhh no sir...ummm...no. I'm sorry sir."

That's when I noticed the box of breakfast items for the next mornings to-go bags.

"Hey...what about them muffins man?"

I'm sure he thought I was high as a kite..upstairs hittin' the bong in my non-smoking room and it was with noticeable relief in his face (anything to get rid of me) that he handed me a blueberry muffin.

One muffin'?  He obviously didn't understand. I was gettin' ready to ask for another when the phone rang. So, while he reached for the that, I lunged across the counter and snatched up more muffins then scurried off back to my room.

The next morning, I woke to find crumbs and wrappers scattered around the desk. At least I hadn't eatin' them in bed.

It's hard out there on the road.




*I suppose if I drank while I was gambling I might be more inclined to stay there all night but, I haven't stooped that low yet. I do drinks all their coffees though.

Yankees at Mack-Donalds

Sometimes I get a hankerin' for Mackdonald's Big Breakfast...pancakes, sausage, biscuit. It's good but, I'm always partial to the vacuous smell of clean when I'm putting things in my stomach.

That limits my options 'cause I wouldn't feel comfortable chewin' bubblegum in half of 'em that I walk into...and right back out of. Sadly, I've run up and down these roads so much that I know which ones are clean enough to eat in.

In Ocean Springs that'd be the one on 90...next to the Sonic...in front of the Walmart. It's new...the manager brings potted plants from home...and it has no unexpected, inexplicable odors.

Unfortunately, what it does have is five or six geriatric yankees that meet every morning to drink coffee and berate one another.

No statement goes unchallenged...

"If I was ganna travel...I'd fly into Ackapukuh*...

"NO...not Ackapukuh."

No? If he, with a desire to fly into Acapulco, sat down to make his own travel arrangements...he would not decide to fly into Acapulco? Really?

Their favorite subject is old age benefits...

"Ya ahtamaticaly quaalify fa that..."

"I didn't. They said I hada sign up fa it."

"Sambady lied to ya."

"'m nat ganna ahgu wit ya abat it.**"

Ha.

All I can say is they must love it...just a peculiar form of amusement for 'em I reckon. I've never been in here when they weren't at it.

Maybe I shouldn't be so hung up on stink.

* pronounced Ahhhhhhh-caaah-po-cooo in Mississippi.

**I have spared the reader here by not giving a more accurate description of the sound by making every sentence one word.

Waffle House - Ephemera and Detritus

High Street Waffle House.

After the closing of Tastee Donuts in Fondern, and before the need for wi-fi, I lived there. Waffle House is a Southern Institution...you wouldn't pass it up if you were in these parts.

A couple of weeks ago, I stopped at a gas station in Poplarville to get a cup of coffee. As I leaned on the hood smoking a cigarette two cars pulled up and out poured 10 kids from Birmingham England. They were on their way from New Orleans to Memphis. Best I could tell they had been having the time of their life.

Two things they were most excited about at the moment...one, the Mug Shot papers. You'll find 'em in every gas station. It's just a little paper magazine that reprints the county mug shoots, booking photos, for that month.

"Ohhhh...somebody be'd going to jail over this back home."

And the food..."Waffle House...yeah Waffle House," it kinda echoed around the nodding group.

It wasn't uncommon for Brits to show up at High St. on their way to New Orleans. It was right off the interstate.

"How much farther?"

"Three hours maybe"

Slumped shoulders and a look of total defeat.

The food is scrumptious...when they're clean enough to eat in. Usually the first six months they're fine...then the retired hookers, drug dealers, etc. are moved in and it's a steady decent. Most of the clientele don't care...truckers, cops, working girls and students.

The place is open 24 hours...that's all you really need to know.

High St. was where I got through school and met half the people in my life...and this was my view.



I was sitting in that very spot the night that David Allan Coe asked if he and a very young, very Asian, very stoned woman could have the booth.



It's also the place where I met Allan...our Allan. I was there preparing to start at Millsaps. He was already a superstar there....preparing for a senior year that would end with three Oral and Written comprehensive exams. He left the place with a degree in History, Philosophy and Religious Studies. He would go on to receive a PhD in Philosophy and is now warping young minds in Mobile Alabama. He is most famous for holding the position of non-contributing Philosopher here at Flimsy Cups.



I also met Matt M. there...and for the next four years we spent hours there almost every day. Talking (mostly music and his lady troubles), smoking and drinking as much coffee as they could make. About $1.09 for a bottomless cup back then.



Matt's at Princeton now studying music.

There was Brannon...a kind of brooding figure that delivered papers in the morning and pizzas at night during his last year of high school. He had calculated every dime it would take to pay rent and buy groceries for four years of college. He'd have a hasbrown...but, no smother or cover. That 75 cents might be the difference between having a tube of toothpaste in March or brushing with baking soda.

He was also brilliant and, last I heard, a PhD candidate at Harvard...probably done by now.




The help were ambiguous about our presence. They'd clown with us sometimes...ask for rides home, try to sell us dope...growl about having to make another pot of coffee.

They had their own problems...bail bondsmen, the poleese, ex girlfriends.



What really makes a Waffle House besides never closing and the ash trays...is the sound. Stainless steel constantly banging and scraping on cast iron, the ring of plates spinning on linoleum, shouted orders, metal spoons pinging against ceramic coffee cups.

For someone who can't concentrate when it's quiet it was the best possible place to study...and I worked my way through school in that place. That and I doodled.



Sometimes both.

I have stacks of these little tablets...occasionally there are notes but, mostly just doodles and misc. thoughts.

Somehow it all worked out.

We aren't done with the Waffle House.

&@#&%! Morrissey

This is my boss...



He's not my boss anymore and he's always been a close friend more than a boss but, in my mind, he'll always be my boss.

For seven or eight years...off and on...I worked for him as a house painter. Right after I left the Army, while I was an undergraduate at Millsaps, and after I came back from graduate school, me and him spent 30 or 40 hours a week together. Sometimes workin'...sometimes fishin'...occasionally gamblin'...often just drinkin' coffee and smokin' cigarettes. That's mostly what we did.

In the mornings, I knew the second he passed through the doors at Tastee Donuts whether or not we were goin' to work. He'd sit down...really more like a violent assault on the stool and counter...next to me, already smokin', in silence. I'd stare at him trying not to laugh...

"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?," starin' off into space.

"Nothin...nothin," still tryin' not to laugh...I'd duck back into the crossword.

We'd sit like that for a few cups of coffee, half a pack of cigarettes...me trying not to laugh, him muttering curses.

Here we must stop and take a moment to recognize an Artist's mind...a true genius. Had James Joyce known him...heard him handle the language, heard him swear and curse, heard him incorporate comic book heroes and the genitals of aliens into blue tirades...he would have gone straight to his Moma's house, gotten in a fetal position, and never have written another word.

"Whhhaaaaaaaaaaaat?"

"You tell me," without looking up from the paper, "I'm just sittin' here waitin' to go to work."

Then he'd start calculating where we were in the job...what it would take to make up for a lost day...how we'd have to really get after it tomorrow. An hour later we'd be on a bream bed or at a roulette table.

Don't get me wrong...when we worked we worked like Hebrew slaves but, he understood one of life's great Truth's...you can't live to work. We spent a lot of day's 30 ft in the air hanging off a ladder with one hand, pushing a grinder with the other...caulking until you ran out of fingers that weren't bleeding, running trim at the end of the day with hands that had gone numb from exhaustion...layin' across his lap, on three feet of overhang, four stories in the air, so he could reach out and paint a stretch of facia.

In his mind there was nothing that couldn't be got...and he was never wrong. In another life he would've been a hellava engineer. I've never met anybody that understood the relationship of objects to one another any better...or a better painter. There was only one standard for the work we did...and I've got the mental scars to prove it.

We had our moments for sure. He wouldn't just curse you in ways for which there was no defense...he'd get existential on you. He asked me one time, in the middle of a masterful harangue..."You ever thought maybe you're doin' something you don't know you're doin?"

I love the fella...that's all.

I hadn't talked to him in a while though until this week. We've been gettin' the house ready to sell..the burglary and all...and we needed some painting done.

"Hey cat...what's goin' on?"

"I been meanin' to call you just talk but we got some work for you if you want it."

"Hayle yeah."

"Can you come by the house this week...we got a crack we need looked at."

"Yeah man. I'm gonna have to come over tomorrow though. I'm leavin' town Winsdee and you aaain't gonna believe where I'm goin'."

You gotta understand and you may have already guessed...the default options for where he might be goin' and what he might be doin' are far greater than those of the average person. I took him at his word.

"Where?"

"I'm goin' ta Dallas...to see PHU-&^*^' Morrissey."

"What the...WHAT," I couldn't help but laugh right into the phone, "you're ole lady's makin' you go innit she?"

"Yeah...G*** &%&*%^&^ it...she's payin for everything. G** &&%&*&...*&*Y*yu8...&^^%%#@@...&&%$#$...&%%$##...

HAHAHHAHAHAHHHHAAAAHHHAAAAahahahah...I just hope nobody gets hurt.

Over/Under

For amusement purposes only.

I'll be on the road again here in a minute or two...back to the Gulf Coast.




Those of you who are regular readers should have some grasp...loose grasp anyway...on my tendencies by now.

How many cups of coffee will I drink on the way down today...more or less than 8?

How many scatological outburst will I have in the car today because I'm thinking about what happened in Jacksonville (the flippin Georgia game) this weekend...more or less than 4?



How much money will I lose to the Kitty Glitter penny slot machine at Boom Town Casino...more or less than 18 bucks?

How much will I be ahead on the slots before I promptly give it all back...more or less than 20 bucks?

How many packs of smokes will I go through in the next three days...more or less than 3?
(Remember I'll be in the casino...and the Gators wet their pants this weekend against Georgia)

How many times will I have to turn the radio on a Led Zepplin or Rush song...more or less than 12 times?

How many times will I turn the radio on a Led Zepplin or Rush song before I start cursing at the radio every time it happens...more or less than once?

How many times will I hear the greatest song evar - Hunka Burnin' Love by Elvis...more or less than twice?

How many times will I hear Thriller by Micheal Jackson on the way down...more or less than 6?

How many cops will I see on the way down...more or less than 12?


How many tickets will I get on the way down...more or less than 1?

How many Tato-Nut Donuts will I eat...more or less than 8?



Lastly, how many people will actually read this post...more or less than 5?

Feel free to share your reasoning with us.

Even for Me it's Gettin' a Little Ridiculouls.

6:21 pm Central Time Zone (Zulu 6.00)

Mack Donalds on Government St. in Mobile, Alabama.

Forced off the interstate by traffic. I've come this way 855 times in my life and I've never seen anything like it. It's a parking lot 20 miles from the tunnel. 'Course Government and Canal are starting to back up now too.

Mostly the usual in here...20 minutes in line to get a cup of coffee that's so hot I have blood trickling down my chin. I have to say...it's the first time I've ever been asked if the coffee was "for here or to go." Funniest thing though was the yankee in line with us...you can spot them immediately in these situations. All you have to do is turn around to see who's breathing down your neck. They really can't help it, especially the northeasterners, there is no space where they live...personal or otherwise. Plus people will cut your throat to get in front of you...even if it's just for a mcnugget. This dood...geeze, his man boobs were almost brushing the fella in front of me (I was a respectable two feet off to the side...just like the good'un that came in behind me...we are loath to do lines.

Lent - Round Two

Sunday was Rose Sunday.

Six in the morning I'm at Bedi's Texaco inhaling an Iced Texas-Sized Honey Bun. Then with my faced stuffed like a gerbil hoarding seed I squeezed a cigarette in between my cheeks...I had to get one more before the coffee went cold.

It's Refreshment Sunday...not Gluttony Sunday, but bet...at 11:59 and 30 seconds I was frantically chewing a mouthful of M&Ms tryin' to get 'em down before midnight.

Just sad...and wrong.

Somehow I don't think this kind of excess, or legalism, has anything to do with Lent.

Of course I'm not much better while fasting. I've limited myself to 15 cigarettes a day...and what do I do? I smoke halfs...quarters. See it's OK if I go out for a sixteenth time 'cause I only smoked a half of the last one. Sad...it's not like I normally pull on 'em til I can taste the filter. By the time Easter gets here I'll be carrying a ruler around in my pocket...by smoking 3/4 of each cigarette I can actually step out three more times...six if I only smoke a half each time.

That's pathetic man.

Then, in light of the lenten fasts, there's my normal sketchy behavior and the questions that raises. If I was only required to love my neighbor as myself for 40 days a year I could probably find some sneaky way of pulling it off, but for the rest of my life....awwww come on. Yet isn't this what I've pledged to try and do just as surely as I've agreed to lay off the sweets for lent? I mean I wouldn't think of stopping by the donut shop this afternoon....well that's not true...I'll be thinking about it...A LOT, but I wouldn't dare do it because I've said I wouldn't.

But let some old lady pay for her groceries with a check in front of me at the store. I'll spend that twenty minutes fantasizing about elaborate scenarios in which she get's a flat tire on the way home...that's just mean. Yesterday at a light...there was a fella going from car to car beggin' for money. All I could think was please don't bother me dood...and then when the light went green and I had to wait while the lady in front of me dug around for a dolla to give 'im...I got uhhmm...a little impatient.

I know not every one of these beggars is legitimate. There's a fella at Waffle House on High Street that's been beggin' for twenty years...just tryin' to get enough money for a bus ticket to Baton Rouge where his cousin lives. That's not the point though...I coulda given that fella a dollar and I certainly could have not gotten so bent about having to wait three seconds at a green light.

Probably more important than me not eating a Honey Bun this afternoon...

Even though I could eat one the size of a pillow.

Coffee. Black. Hold the Politics

I haven't spent a dime with Holiday Inn for at least 15 years..since whenever it was they decided to no longer fly the Mississippi state flag on their Mississippi properties.



The state voted on it...and by a staggering majority(75%+) we, the state with the largest proportion of black folks in the country, voted to keep it.

Get over yourself...you're a low rent road-side motel with stupid television commercials.

You could call it race politics I guess, but it's not really about race. It's really about the insistent, sad and cloying U.S. need to be loved. They can't fathom that a group of people who, though they really don't deserve it, have the glorious privilege of being citizens of the United States of Uh-meeerica would still harbor separatist sentiments...that's all it is...FULL STOP.

Needy b****es.

Well I don't need to be loved (I'm well taken care of at the house thank you just the same)...

I NEED A CUP OF COFFEE!!!!

I've been in L'usiana all week workin'...with a co-worker who's trying to break the Guiness Book Record for loyalty points with Holiday Inn. So, here I am in one of their rooms...for now that is...until I need another cup of coffee. Then I'll be across the street (not a small feet when you're on Causeway in Metarie) at the curbstore standing in line behind 25 construction workers...all waiting to pay a buck fifty for a hot cup of bilge water marked Gourmet.


These morons have decided to remove the coffee pot from the lobby.

A motel without a coffee pot in the lobby!

Seriously...there's no coffee pot in the lobby.

Road Issues - #1

Tupelo again...for the last two days. I've spent so many nights up here that I get a Christmas card from the motel every year.

It's always the same in these places...up an hour before the alarm..rollin' around trying to find a comfortable configuration for the 15 tiny pillows they give you...it's noisy in the morning. Somebody above me turns on the shower. It's a creeking echoing sound with pings...like I'm in a submarine that's changing course. Construction workers and electricians, already up and at it, yelling at one another in the parking lot...slamming the doors to vans that are rumbling and ready to get going...the muffled sound of an infommertial.

(This morning it was some kinda body suit that hides your "muffin top"...say what now?)

At some point in the night I'll turn the television down, but not off. So, everytime I wake up it's just loud enought to be a curiosity. It doesn't take long to get sick of that and I'll break out of my pillow nest and swing my legs over the bed...Coffee.

That means I have to make my self presentable...sorta. I operate on the assumption that anybody in the lobby at 6am is gonna be as groggy as me and wont notice that I've come down in a sweatshirt, slacks and no socks...or that my hair hair is sticking out in every direction like it's scrambling to get away from my head.

This is how it starts...an issue that I will be dealing with for the rest of the day. I'll drink four or five cups in the room before I head out...to breakfast and more coffee. Then I'm in the car for the rest of the day. Doesn't take long before I'm huntin' a bathroom...and there's only one place for that on the road...gas stations. If I can find a busy truck stop it's no problem...I go in, I handle my business and I leave, but...

There aren't a lot of busy truckstops on the roads I travel. Mostly small stores where the proprietor is staring you in the face as you walk through the door...and he's not offering his bathroom up as a public service. You gotta buy something...more coffee. I know better, but it's cheap...it gives me something to do in the car...besides havin' a cup a coffee in one hand and the other on the steering wheel is being on the road.

And so it goes...from cup to curbstore until I finally pull in the drive.

At which point I make a mad dash for the bathroom.

A Cup of Coffee...Just a Black Cup of COFFEE Please.

There was a time when I drank most of my coffee at a place called Tastee Donuts. Those were the best coffee drinking years of my life.

When you asked for a cup of coffee it was brought to you in a plain white cup, on a saucer, with a smile from a big lady named Shareese...and the pleasant sound of a metal spoon clinking against ceramic.

The chatter was constant...starting as a murmur at the other end of the L-shaped bar, babbling at the corner, words and snippets, then pieces of conversation until they were full blown and an amusing distraction from the crossword puzzle or a genuine threat to draw you in. It ran like that from one end to the other and back again...punctuated by the constant clank of spoons against cups.

The counter was cracked linoleum...white with silver wood grain pattern and flecks of glitter. The seats were chrome wrapped, red vinyl topped, spinning stools...and there were brass ash trays. Smoke obscured everything but the noise, and those who weren't smoking were too busy stuffing their faces with fried bread and sugar to worry about it.

It was a DONUT shop...the coffee was Community Coffee and it came from a can...it was a Southern place.

It's a Quizno's now. If you want a cup of coffee you've got a choice between a prissy national chain or one that's owned locally. I don't have to describe these places...you've all been in 'em and they all look the same..they are all the same.

I'm immune to 'em now...whatever just give me a "small dark-roast to go." I've learned that even at Starbucks this will get you a small cup of black coffee. My Daddy on the other hand is not so familiar with these places.

Every once in a while me and him will end up in one of these cafes...like yesterday. Normally he insists on paying...but I do the ordering. It's not a plan of attack or anything. I just know these places and I know my Daddy...and instinctually I know that the less contact they have with one another the better. If all he has to do is hand over three bucks...he'll be fine. If he has to answer a series of meaningless, but increasingly baffling questions...he wont be.

Somehow he beat me to the counter yesterday but it wasn't until I heard him say...

"Do you have a styrofoam cup back there?"

...that's when I realized we were headed for trouble.

"Well," says the squirrely fella behind the counter, "we have paper cups with.."

"That'll do just fine."

It's cheaper if you use a ceramic cup..so if you tell them you want coffee they start in with the difference in price and bah. Once that's settled you get a stream of nonsensical questions about what kind of coffee you want...

"Would you like our seasons jambo java medium snowflake or.."

"Say what now?"

It was time for me to act..."two small dark-roasts please...to go."

"OK"

We got our coffee, he paid...confrontation with the ridiculous current state of the world put off for another day.

Tastee's was a very relaxing, comfortable, familiar bit of cultural affirmation...Lord help us if that's what these places are meant to be.

Mack-Donald's Coffee

Mcdonalds being sued over a hot cup of coffee was maybe one of the dumbest moments in the history of organized human behavior, BUT...

that crap is hot...HAWT!

And those stupid lids they give you gather coffee under the lip at a normal angle forcing you to tip it up slightly unleashing a tsunami of scoorching lava into your mouth.

I think they do it on purpose...to kill anything that might be livin' in that sausage they give you.

By the time I get up from here my lips'll be peeling.

Ask a simple question...twice

This isn't at the house..though I'm sure once Martha sees it....

It's not at the Sister's. No, this is at work. The high-handed Mrs. B------ put that up after I had some trouble locating the coffee filters.

You think she'd cut me some slack for actually trying to make everybody coffee for once...No. I get this.