Ramblin' Bob

By Dayton Lummis

The stage and film actor Peter Holden (Parkhurst) has called Dayton Lummis a cosmic town crier. Indeed, that he is, and more. This latest volume, Ramblin Bob, will reveal that. Read it! The California social critic Tom Englezos said of Lummiss previous collection of acerbic thoughts and often politically incorrect observations: I thoroughlyand absolutelyenjoyed NOTES. I was informed, andoftenoutraged! Great stuff. Damn! I hope you have more coming. A lot more! Ramblin Bob is more. And still more

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475905830

Dayton Lummis

Dayton Lummis is now of that advanced age where there is a confusing amount to look back on, and a frightening current scenario to confront and evaluate. His education and experience (Yale University and various Museum directorships), plus informal degrees from “The University of North Beach” and “The Cripple Creek School of Hard Knocks,” have enabled him to navigate through “The Sea of Sorrow and Regret.” He lives in a casita in Santa Fe, NM, with his pet armadillo “Crusty.”

Book preview

Ramblin’ Bob

Dayton Lummis

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Ramblin’ Bob

Copyright © 2012 by Dayton Lummis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4759-0582-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-0583-0 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 4/27/2012

Cover photograph Ramblin’ Ken, and author photograph by

Old Mister Moore, the East Mojave Desert, California

Contents

Prelude

Preface

Introduction

PART I

Lift Off

PART II

In Transit

PART III

Orbit

PART IV

Re-entry

Postscript

For Joe Cox, Headmaster of The Haverford School,

In Haverford, Pennsylvania

Prelude

Thoroughly—absolutely—enjoyed Notes. I was informed, amused, and—often—outraged. Great stuff! I think of the pieces as nano-essays. And, at this point, the essay is where it’s at. I think, the essay is the only modern genre and the most intimate, between writer and reader, of all genres. It is as close to an actual dialogue as one can get without actually offering another beer and cigar—that I longed for as I often sputtered, Yeah, but…, to myself. I think the essay is also the most heroic form as it often reveals the writer naked. Non-fiction writers often believe that they are offering a detached and objective view of the world, but too often a writer’s obsessions and neuroses are laid bare as it’s difficult to see with a cold eye thru our respective prejudices. Damn! I hope you have more coming. A lot more. (Tom Englezos, Pilot Hill, California)

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Preface

In this new volume of notes I am not exactly sure what I can add to the previous book by that name, but I am sure going to try. There is always something new. You just have to find it. Sometimes it is like coasting down a long hill on an old-fashioned, balloon tire bicycle. You think that hill might go on forever, but you know it won’t. There will eventually be a flat place where your momentum slows down and stops. And you with it. There will be difficulty in summoning the energy to start pedaling. But, you do, you beat on—as I am doing with this new book. I might repeat myself a bit here and there, so bear with me. Many thoughts are recurring ones. And, as we get on in years we do tend to repeat. Tiresome! Still, we plunge on, anxious to explore new territory. The eternal urge of our pioneer ancestors to find out what lies over yonder ridge. That is what drove Americans Westward—over the Great Plains, where of course there were no ridges—into the Great Mountain West, all the way to the Pacific Shore, seeking Gold and Nirvana—but that last word was not used in those days, except, perhaps, by a few mystics smoking opium in Cambridge, Massachusetts, drawing rooms, exotic stuff that had been brought to Boston on Clipper Ships in the China trade.

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Events, ever so small, sometimes have momentous, everlasting outcomes. James Wilson Marshall was a carpenter building a sawmill on the American River in California for Colonel Sutter. On the morning of 24 January 1848 he plucked two small shiny rocks from the channel of the river. I believe I have found gold, he remarked to a co-worker, Mister Scott. And thus was set in motion one of the most colossal events in all of human history—The California Gold Rush! Subsequently, Marshall was overwhelmed in the aftermath of his discovery. Mexicans looked at him as a sort of mystic, and whispered as he passed by, "El Que Cante Oro! (He Who Cried out Gold!) Drunken men rousted him in the night and marched him into the hills to find gold for them. He became impoverished and bitter, muttering, Someday people will make a fuss over me…" That finally happened. Some years after Marshall’s death in 1885 the California State Legislature appropriated funds for a monument at the Gold Discovery site, with a statue of Marshall on top, pointing at the exact location of his discovery. Today that monument is the focal point of the California Gold Discovery State Park. Actions have consequences. One can not foresee where a particular event might lead…

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Introduction

Sometimes, often, in these notes I find myself rambling around in my lost past. And I reflect that perhaps that might not be an entirely good or healthy thing to be doing. But, it may not be very harmful, either. At a certain age it becomes more difficult to look to the future. As we grow older it seems more natural to be wandering around in the elements of a long gone past. With these notes I do grapple with elements of the present, trying to make some sense of it. And occasionally I peer into some imagined future, and often feel a very definite sense of unease. Soon—7 billion people on this planet, most of them in poor, undeveloped countries. Not good! Imagined and very real catastrophes looming. Glad that I won’t be living in that crowded world. The uneasy present is unsettling enough. We struggle to hang on, to conserve our energies and resources to deal with present day challenges. What comes later the often confused and conflicted kids we see today occupying Wall Street will have to deal with. Their problem(s)! Which is, I suppose, why they feel uneasy, frustrated and angry. We hide behind a curtain of forgetfulness, wherein we re-invent our past. And grope around in an unsettling syndrome that is our present. The future will simply be. As Walt Whitman said so long ago, but with certain insight, Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. (From Song of Myself.) Old Walt seems to have had a big ego in the scheme of things, and by imposing these notes on the reader, I suppose that I also have an enlarged ego, thinking them variously important and/or enlightening. Do I delude myself? Very well then I delude myself. These notes are like butterflies that pass each other in the springtime. We sail together for some brief time, and then, The boats that left from the same harbor have rowed away from one another…

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I remember years ago a graduate of Columbia University sued the University. The gist of his suit was that in the University’s statement of purpose was something about imparting wisdom, and the student’s position was that with regard to him no such thing had taken place or been effected. Needless to say, his law suit did not progress. So, I make no such claim for these notes. If any wisdom is acquired, it would have to be through osmosis, the eternal gasses of being, not anything that I impart. Now that Governor Romney seems quite likely to be the Republican presidential candidate, some people are taking swipes at his Mormon faith, implying in various ways that it is a bit strange. One news commentator jumped on this, saying, about Mormonism, I don’t think it any stranger than all the other stuff. As I hope you understand, he means by the other stuff the recognized religions of the world. Which indeed to rational analysis might seem rather more than a bit strange. It is currently reported that 40% of Americans believe that the earth is 10,000 years or less old. Created by God, etc. Only 13% believe in creationism, with no hand at all of any God. So why not the Angel Moroni?

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RAMBLIN’ BOB

I had a friend named ‘Ramblin’ Bob’

Who used steal, gamble an’ rob—

An’ I done tole him once or twice

To quit playin’ cards, shooting dice…

He’s in the jailhouse now…"

There have always been persons who in their somewhat solitary childhoods have had a secret friend, one that no one else knows about. My childhood secret friend was Ramblin’ Bob. He got me into trouble, and kept me out of it. He was partly suggested from me hearing my mother play her old 78 rpm vinyl record of the Ramblin’ Bob song by Jimmie Rodgers, The Singing Brakeman, on the old Stromberg-Carlson record player that my grandparents had in their house in Strafford, Pennsylvania. And Ramblin’ Bob also partially emanated from a hobo jungle that I had discovered down along the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks, about one half mile from the house. Hoboes used to show up at the back door occasionally, and my grandmother had instructed the cook Mabel to give those unfortunate men a baloney sandwich and a glass of cold water. One time I followed, pretending to be a stealthy Indian, one of those men back to the railroad tracks. He walked west for a bit and then went down an embankment into an area covered by thick vines. As I crept closer I could smell smoke and hear men talking. A few days later I went back and determined the site was empty, or so I hoped as I slithered down the path through the vines. It was. I found a rather private little area, surprisingly neat, a rock fireplace with some cooking utensils, and some scraps of newspaper from far-off and mysterious spots like Chicago and St. Louis. I knew those men had been riding in boxcars, probably all over the country. I was sure one of them was Ramblin’ Bob.

My secret friend Ramblin’ Bob fueled my wanderlust. He accompanied me on long walks in the deep woods around Strafford, and on bicycle rides of country roads over to Valley Forge. I was sure that one day he and I would swing aboard a box car and rattle away westward into the Great West where a man could become anything he wanted to be and escape his past. In school we had learned about the Great Gold Rush and how men reinvented themselves in the Golden State, singing, What was your name, Oh, what was your name, back in the States what was your name? I suppose that I was looking to Ramblin’ Bob to eventually lead me to The Promised Land—was that The Big Rock Candy Mountain that I heard Burl Ives sing about? Now we are told there was some kind of ominous undertone to that song.

Then, when I was about ten or eleven years old, I realized that Ramblin’ Bob had gone off somewhere and he was not going to return. It was about then that the hoboes stopped coming to the back door, and when I went to investigate the hobo jungle I found no sign that anyone had been there in a very long while. Never again did any hoboes frequent our area. I guessed they were all out West somewhere, riding the freights, and Ramblin Bob" was with them, all grizzled and sun burnt, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and a bindle on a stick thrown over his shoulder, waiting for the Westbound. I figured that from that time on I would have to find my own way in the woods and hills. I did, and never looked back…

I have titled this book Ramblin’ Bob partly out of nostalgia for my old childhood secret friend, and partially to provide some sort of image for a guide to the mental rambles that make up this book. If you feel yourself getting lost, just remember that Ramblin’ Bob is there with you, he will guide you to safe pastures and help you settle down. He will see that no harm comes to you, mental or otherwise.

Bob is there, in that thicket of vines that you have wandered into and cannot seem to get out of. He is quietly sipping coffee from the enamel cup that he will hang on a tree limb for the next man to use. His bindle is tied tightly, and Bob is ready, when he hears the distant locomotive whistle, to scramble up the embankment through the vines to the spot where the train always slows before the long western upgrade. Just follow Bob and do as he says. He has been at this for a long time and he knows what he is doing. He is always heading toward Oregon…

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Now we/I have a more modern Ramblin’ Bob—actually Ken Haslett, formerly of Denver, Colorado, and recently divorced. After the divorce Ken quit his boring job and invested some of his savings in an old yellow school bus. He decorated the bus like that of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. Ken was reverting to the hippie syndrome that he had missed, being married and working. He drove the bus in a circuitous fashion out to Oregon, and down through Northern California to Los Angeles. He was frequently stopped and hassled by various law enforcement officers who warned him about things like tail lights, turn signals, worn tires, but always let him go along his way because he was a decorated Viet Nam war vet and they never found anything illegal in the bus. Ken bought twenty acres of desert out in the remote East Mojave of Southern California, near to the compound of my Colorado compadre Old Mister Moore. He lived in the bus on his twenty acres for a while, but then set about constructing a neat casita with a few minimal conveniences. That is where I met him, on warm desert evenings when Mike (Old Mister Moore) and I would drift over to his site to drink beer and swap tales of our various travels and involvements. Ken brought mucho cases of cheap beer down to Needles, and stacked them on the shady side of the casita. He always had a supply of it on ice that he also hauled back from Needles, in an old metal horse trough. Ken was full of adventuresome tales, some of which I believed and some I did not. It did not matter. In the long desert evenings we grilled steaks and drank beer as stars came out ever so bright in the unpolluted desert darkness. One evening Ken seemed troubled. He grew pensive and told us, The bus is done. Its ramblin’ days is over. An’ so is mine. Seen good times and some not so good. The bus is here to end its days, an’ so am I. Done used up most of our energies. This little spot on this empty desert seems like a good place to quit our ramblin’. Come a time… Mike and I had nothing to say about that. Ken grew thoughtful, and smiled as we got up to take our leave and walked back to Mike’s compound, a mile away, beneath the stillness of the desert stars, occasional coyotes yipping in a nearby wash. A few evenings later we wandered over to Ken’s compound for our weekly confab. We found him slumped in his chair, dead! He had shot himself with the old hogleg .44 that he used to fool around with, shooting at tin cans and such. He left a short note: Done Rambling! Why had we not heard the shot? Probably because he did it after he saw us go by that morning on our way into Needles for supplies. We drove over to Goff’s Café, twenty miles away, and phoned it in. Sheriff’s deputies said nothing, just shook their heads. Ken’s body was taken to Needles. A County Attorney interviewed Mike, told him that Ken had no known relatives, only the divorced ex-wife in Denver who said she wanted nothing to do with nothing. So, he told Mike, the State would take over the property, the casita and the bus. Ken’s few belongings would be donated to a Catholic charity in San Bernardino. Old Mister Moore and I watched the bus hauled off to a junkyard down to Needles, and drank the last of Ken’s beer as county firemen burned the casita to the ground, leaving just a charred smear that the desert would reclaim in a few years. The land would be part of the new East Mojave Desert Preserve. And that was that. Old Man Moore passed a few years back up in Victor, Colorado, where he had lived most of his recent life. I do not know what happened to his desert compound. I have never been back out there from Santa Fe. I just remember those warm desert evenings, the endless beer, steaks grilling away, and Ken talking about his rambles in the old bus, which seemed good times mostly. It all seems like it is from a very different world, and I guess it is. Ramblin’ Ken. That is what I think when I look at the photograph that is on the cover of this book. It brings to mind my old childhood image, Ramblin’ Bob. Thinking of the old school bus there in the desert moonlight, the stillness broken by occasional coyotes. Ken’s gravelly voice, and Old Mister Moore nodding and smiling sleepily. Might be a sort of desert hobo jungle." Some memories, huh? Sometimes, looking at the big photo print I have of Ken and the school bus I feel a twinge in my chest and a tear forming in the corner of my eye. Bourgeois sentimentality! Just those times. Gone! Won’t come back today, or any other day. Ramblin’ Ken and Ramblin’ Bob, I keep them ramblin’ in my heart, in my soul. That’s where it ends up—out West, in a lonely desert syndrome. Blown away in the desert wind—into nothing. Who knows, who can tell?

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The film Magic Trip made me think of Ramblin’ Ken and his bus, those warm evenings in the lonely desert—tales…

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PART I

Lift Off

SAN FRANCISCO, 1960s

Vesuvio Café in North Beach, glass of beer thirty cents, had been an old Italian hangout, where in the 1950s Kerouac and his gang used to go for the cheap glasses of Italian wine. Dago Red, they called it, but not in front of the Italians, who did not care for that derogatory term. Benno Strobel, at the bar. German, from central casting. In the import business, according to his card. Was a young boy in Berlin during WWII. Survived the bombing, the Russians. Told me, You cannot imagine the things people did then to survive, especially the young women… I think of Benno now and then.

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The better one defines the position, the more indefinite the momentum becomes, and vice versa…—Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.

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MURPHY’S LAW

If there is a wrong way to do something, someone will (eventually) do it that way.

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IS THERE A LIFE BEFORE DEATH?

In the darkness of existence, lost in that void, we hold up (only) the flickering candle of love and seek in the shadows cast some reflections of ourselves.

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TESTIMONY

After having consumed vast amounts of Good Old American Beer this night, and having retired to my quarters with a quantity of Rainier Ale (Green Death), I, Dayton Lummis, Jr., being of sound mind and body do solemnly swear that there is some strange ingredient in aforementioned brewed product that is uniquely dangerous to the rational state of mind of the average man (of course, very few women drink Rainier Ale!). And so, I hereby submit that henceforth all green bottles of the dark liquid known as Rainier Ale be thus labeled: DANGEROUS! TO BE CONSUMED MODERATELY ONLY. COST OF CONSUMPTION—TEMPORARY LOSS OF SANITY…

Respectfully attested to, 7 January 1964, 4 A.M.

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Several days have drifted by now… each one beginning with great expectancy only to dwindle away to nothingness. Not only is this fairly general of a day but of most everything.

To sway a decision… What?

(Through you) I learned the meaning of emotion once more. This next time it will not be hidden beneath an ineffective exterior of coldness. Maturity, another experience, cures.

A great and satisfying future lies ahead. Take full advantage of each opportunity and enjoy…"

(portion of a letter from a departed lover…)

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Some bothersome words: acephalous, porphyry, tyro, diurnal, obloquy, eyot, detritus, palladium, quiddity, ambient, orrery, syzygy…

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It is strange—we live and we die. all life is circumscribed by the one immutable fact of death. And, for those who question all of it—well, there is the pain of existence and loneliness, the knowledge that we are born and must die alone. In life we invent and indulge in any number of fantasies to help us overlook an awareness of our isolation. But always, in many forms, such awareness is thrust upon us; we are alone. Life is an insoluble mystery. Death an unbroken stillness. Nothing…

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"‘Tis not love’s going hurts my days,

But that it went in little ways…"—Edna St. Vincent Millay

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shooting stars of human glory

mixed with galaxies of sadness

oh how it is all throughout

the heavens

      and sunk into seas

that men in their endless groping

have laid about the silver pole

but comes a voice stating

that it is not enough to see

            the stars

but to die with them trailing from

dead fingers

in a faint glow of last sparks

marking the passage of once

and ever only once

         for all time

an end

   fused into an endless end

hailed by some distant stranger

used to such things…

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Your cry broke the night

as, waking, you saw that you

Whose weight

This soft and supple earth

Suffered some little while,

Did hesitate

In the midst of a happy thought

And heard your laughter echo

In a vacuum called Life,

Which was suddenly Nothing,

And you, with all your dreams,

Less than that;

And saw the sun turn

This earth to a scorched cinder,

Wondering where it all went,

What we call History…

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Extensive greeting to you, sir, from this poor, tired, old (geographically and historically if not spiritually) East Coast, now awaiting a spring of great and rich promise which is most regrettably too far behind the final blasts of winter, and the sweet breath of this spring has been most tantalizing in the air some few times but now it has failed to materialize in the moments of greatest anticipation. But, what does it matter, really, because such things as seasons are only devices of the romantic mind to rationalize that erratic but ever forging onward journey we all make through the dimension of time, alas.

(letter to Mister Dunk in San Francisco, 1960)

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Necessity becomes a great claw that grips everyone and turns the vast machinery of the world. Humanity surges around in a great vacuum of hope and dreams, while individuals here and there rise and drift away as crisp, burned leaves, withered by penetrating thoughts of reality. Reason is a great and powerful weapon, but too often people turn it upon themselves and prod themselves to the brink of self-destruction.

Thus it is difficult to tell what is receding, the world or me. At any rate, I drift often into abstractions these days, spending long hours in no company other than my own. One sees the world going on around, and one can see no real sense in most of it.

This melancholia of which you speak, it seems to be a common thing these days. Who is to say what is to blame? Perhaps the seasons, the leaves of life, or what have you. The malady remains, and most have the strength to endure the solemn stillness and hollow emptiness that settles on the mind in moments of reflection. With me this melancholia is no stranger; it is an old but unwelcome friend who visits almost nightly now in the quiet moments before sleep passes a soothing hand across my brow and erases troubled shadows from the wall…

(letter to Mister Dunk in San Francisco, 1960)

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"Henry Morley also came that night, only for a short while, and acted very strange sitting in the background reading Mad comic books and the new magazine called Hip, and left early with the remark, ‘The hot dogs are too thin, do you think that is a time of the times or are Armour and Swift using stray Mexicans, you think?’ Nobody talked to him except me and Japhy. I was sorry to see him leave so soon, he was ungraspable as a ghost, as ever. Nevertheless he has worn a brand new brown suit for the occasion, and suddenly he was gone."

(Quote from The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac)

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July 28, 1944

How are you? I am fine. Yesterday we had a swimming carnival and Earl was King Neptune. Everybody pushed him in the water. I can take a canoe in the deep water by myself now.

August 2, 1944

Saturday the Seneca gave a show. Please send me the comics. I slept in the houseboat. I am going to be in the deep water tomorrow.

August 13, 1944

We had a water carnival. We went wading in the creek. We picked blueberries for a pie.

(letters from Camp Windermere, Lake Como, Pennsylvania)

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What platitudinous and maudlin depths are those into which you are forced to peer? Shrink not from the sight, shed not tears of pity for those who are good and yet must die young, but rejoice in your own good fortune and be secure in the knowledge that others will struggle after you. Glance not over your shoulder as did poor Orpheus, but hasten to the appointed place. Listen not to the voices of angels, even, though their music be sweet to disconsolate ears. And pay no heed to those whose minds have grown from dust—dry heads filled with straw…

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Vesuvio. One night I got talking to a vaguely looking Native American guy. Introduced himself as John Sequoia Crow. Yeah! Said he was a master tracker. Said that he could give me one hour head start in Muir Woods at night and he would find me before the sun came up. Yeah! I told him that I doubted that. He challenged me to go to Muir Woods that very night (it was about 9 P.M.), that he would give me a marked feather which he would get back and show to Sean, the bartender, who had been sort of listening to all this, smirking. I would owe Mr. Crow $100. Yeah! I brushed all that off as bullshit, though I did wonder if Mr. Crow could find me in the dark as he boasted. I rather doubted it. I never saw Mr. Crow in Vesuvio again. Sean said he had only been around for a couple of weeks, bullshitting people about this and that Native American stuff nightly. Hitting them up for drinks. A phony, Sean said. He had seen plenty of those…

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The 1960s were not a good time for me…

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THE MOVING PEN WRITES…

Don’t know why I thought of this. Back in Strafford, Pennsylvania, when I lived with my grandparents in the 1940s, a friend and I beat up a kid from our neighborhood—Fritz. He was a spindly nerd from our class at grammar school. He pissed us off for reasons that I do not recall and do not think we understood at the time. Just a reaction. We waited for Fritz near a pond that we knew he walked by on his way home from school. We jumped out from the bushes where we were hiding, grabbed him and threw his books in the pond. Then we began punching him in the face. He fell down, crying, and we kicked him a few times. He was not really hurt, just scared and crying. Weak! We shoved his face in the mud and walked off. At some point we stopped and looked back. We saw Fritz get up, look around, and try to fish his books out of the pond. Then he walked toward his house. He knew who had attacked him and would tell his parents and they would tell the one township policeman, Pete Nugent, who would come around to talk to us. I asked myself, ten years old, why had we attacked that kid who had done nothing to us? Because he was weak—and I and my friend were strong! The next day sure enough after school Pete Nugent was at the house with my friend in tow. Why, in God’s name, he asked, had we attacked and beaten poor little Fritz Scheidt? I had nothing to say, but my friend blurted out, Because we could! He was weak! That’s why! Officer Nugent nodded silently, having I think now some understanding of how the stronger prey on the weak. Then he said, I want you boys to stay away from Fritz. Leave him alone. If I ever hear of another incident like this ye’ll be goin’ to the juvenile hall over to Media fer a spell of re-education. And there will be there some big, tough nigra boys who will kick ye’re asses good. That’s the re-education! We surely did leave Fritz alone. He always flinched when he saw us at school. I wonder where Fritz is now, what happened to him? Did we turn him into a serial killer or something? I think not. He is probably still a nerd, with a nothing sort of job, married to a plain woman, and a mild spouse abuser. It had felt good punching and kicking poor defenseless Fritz. I do not to this day know why. Something perhaps primordial, now that I think of it. I think about so many years later punching his soft baby face, him going down, and us kicking him. Then turning away—he was weak! Pathetic! We, my friend and I, did not know why we attacked Fritz—we just did it!

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Here are some events of the past weekend in Philadelphia:

1.   5 dead, 12 wounded, by gunshots—all black.

2.   Black flash mob of teenagers attacked a group of young white people on upper Broad Street. One young woman suffered a broken leg. The victims were obviously attacked because of their race. The incident should have been classified as a hate crime, but it wasn’t.

3.   A black man was ejected from a bar for smoking. He came back with a gun and shot 6 people, one fatally.

4.   A black woman in North Philadelphia shouted to 2 male companions, That bitch who dissed me. She on that bus. Light her ass up! The 2 men pulled out guns and fired wildly at the bus. The bus driver sped his vehicle away, down a one way street the wrong way. Several passengers were slightly injured by flying glass.

5.   A mob of black teenagers from West Philadelphia surged into a Sears store just outside the city limit in Upper Darby, shoved and punched clerks and customers, and began looting merchandise. Police arrested 16 of them.

Is this behavior of a civilized and productive populace? I certainly do not think so…

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When Meredith went to the remote East Mojave to paint in the 1980s, she collected and read a number of books devoted to the desert. One of the very best was/is called simply The Desert. It is a lyrical and poetically descriptive volume by a somewhat effete New Jersey professor of Art History by the name of John C. Van Dyke. Professor Van Dyke writes of coming to California in 1900, buying a horse, acquiring a small terrier named Cappy, and with minimal supplies riding over Cajon Pass and out into the vast and that time little explored deserts of the American Southwest. He wrote that for the next 3 years he wandered, living off the land. He does not describe his travels geographically, only in the poetic language of the art historian. He may have roamed as far north as Canada, as far south as Mexico, depending on the seasons. His descriptions of the desert are captivating! In 1903 he fetched up in El Paso, sold the horse, bundled up his manuscript and sent it off to Scribner’s in New York, tucked Cappy under his arm and bought a train ticket back to New Jersey. He never again returned to the southwestern deserts. The book made a tremendous impression on me.

Recently I learned that the whole thing was something of a sham. Professor Van Dyke had a wealthy brother who, for health reasons, had come out to California and acquired a large ranch in a remote corner of the Mojave Desert. The ranch was a rather comfortable affair, and it was there that Professor Van Dyke rode after crossing Cajon Pass. He hung comfortably around that ranch for 3 years, indeed riding a bit into the desert, and taking trips by train to visit wealthy friends of his brother who had comfortable desert habitations. Professor Van Dyke was indeed impressed by the desert, its changing shadows, colors, vibrant light, and did commit his impressions very commendably to paper. The book remains valid from that point of view. As for the faking of roaming around living off the land, well, there are those who dismiss that as just a good yarn, paving the way for future desert explorers and interpreters. Maybe…

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In a recent New York Times review of a book about the infamous Central Park Jogger Crime of some years ago, reference was made, with implied condemnation, to the racist term wilding. The implication was that the term, which refers to gangs of (black) youths roaming around and attacking people randomly, seems to describe a pack of wild animals—hence the racist angle. A group of such youths was arrested and convicted for a vicious such attack on the female jogger in Central Park. Well, wilding may sound like a racist word, but in reality it is a black term, conceived of and used by young blacks—i.e. Let’s do some wilding… Meaning to roam in a thuggish pack and attack and terrorize persons. It seems that was what the young men who were arrested for the Central Park crime were doing on that particular night. It happens that the female jogger who was so viciously attacked was not targeted by them. Another person eventually confessed to the crime. I asked a friend of mine who considers himself sociologically quite au curant if he could distinguish between the terms wilding and whirling? He, of course, knew all about wilding, but was not familiar with the other urban black term. Whirling takes place in a crowded social scene wherein a group of young men seize a young woman and whirl her around, tearing off portions of her clothing. This term—which does not come up in Google—may be limited to inner city Philadelphia.

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AU CURANT

Some rain, much needed, has finally arrived in New Mexico, but big fires are still burning to the west of Santa Fe, in the Jemez Mountains. Shortly I will be proofing what may be my final book—NOTES—The Psychic Dislocations of Dayton Lummis, comprised of my notes written down in the depths of night over the last thirty or forty years. The reader may make of them whatever.

I have just recently worked my way through the book The Grand Design, by Steven Hawking and his Caltech collaborator, not grasping all that much of it except that there are all sorts of scientific/cosmic concepts that exist and are evidently provable. All of which seemingly add up to the grand design that we are a part of amongst perhaps billions of universes that emanated from nothing—that concept has always puzzled me. Not so my old