WILD CARD

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MAR-TUK—Issue 0

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THE SEA BRIDE—Part 1

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THE SEA BRIDE—Part 2

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THE SEA BRIDE—Part 3

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THE SEA BRIDE—Part 4

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THE SEA BRIDE—Part 6

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THE SEA BRIDE—Part7

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THE SEA BRIDE—Part8

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THE SEA BRIDE—Part9

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THE SEA BRIDE—Part10

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THE SEA BRIDE—Part11

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THE SEA BRIDE—Part 12

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SEA BRIDE CHAPTER 13

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ADVENTURES IN OLD TOWN — Part 1

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MABLET TALES—Issue 1

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MABLET TALES -W- FAST LARRY

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MABLET TALES -3

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TV KILLIN TIME
So me and JTR3 and a dude named Byron who are both in the Up-And-Coming Austin band "Household Names" are all at Mojo's Coffee House today for the third annual "Kill Your Television" event where they unleash the sullen crowd on a bunch of hapless boob-tubes piled about the back parking lot and they smash em up with sledgehammers and axes and bats and chains until nothing moves.>>>

ASIDES AT THE CROWN AND ANCHOR
We're sitting in the Crown and Anchor, (Sleeves), (Joyce), and I, and we can't figure out why the girl is so alluring. You see her? The one over at the second pool table. She slowly stalks around the table, taking her time chalking the cue, and she seems to be winning most of the games. A faceless mob are back in the shadows with her, but she is the only one you watch And why? Other than a frizzy little hippy-girl haircut that works on her, she's not what surreptitious peeks at Daddy's Playboys have trained us to go for. She's basically as curvacious as a Stonehenge menhir, and fairly squatty to boot. She's not going to any special effort to be noticed.>>>

SMOKE AND MIRRORS AT THE SHOWDOWN
I know as soon as the lime goes flying across the spacious interior of the Showdown bar that it is going to hit with a hard accurate smack— but I am ahead of myself.>>>

WE ALL MEET AGAIN
Now you may think it's a silly thing for a grown man to go tracking down a pod of plastered Sorority Girls in some shot-bar on Austin's much-hyped Sixth Street, and you're probably right. But the piping-voiced message was on my answering machine, and here I am. >>>

SUBSTITUTIONS
(BikerGirl)'s mom asks me if I check out all my former students, and the honest thing to say would be, "No, just the ones who have great asses like your daughter," but honesty and long life are sometimes at odds, so I start talking about that local sports team instead. >>>

HOW DRUG-ADDICTION, CHILD-ABUSE, AND A GOOD MEXICAN RESTAURANT BROKE MY HEART
I started avoiding her when I realized she had an addict's lifestyle—no job, was about to get evicted —and was saying things to me like, "I am totally over my ex-boyfriend now" and "I know a good apartment if I could just find a room-mate". Actually, that's half the reason I started avoiding her. The other half is I knew I had no immunity to the disease that is a woman like (Bianca). I caught it before and damn near died. I don't mean figuratively either. >>>

WACO: THAT TINGLING ON THE BACK OF YOUR NECK MEANS SOMETHING
Now you all think you know something about Waco—Wacko-Waco, land of Branch Davidian Crazies and Baptist Baylor University, and maybe you do, but my guess is, you probably don't know jack. That's OK though, because Walter Moore has always specialized in being the eyes and ears of the fearful, the less mobile, looking into things, behind the masks, the assumptions, the lies. I am now starting my second summer in Waco, doing... well, never you mind what I'm doing. But if you want to know the truth about this town, hang on for the ride.  >>>

THE MONKEY AND THE MOSQUITO BITE
He had been a genius, had a family, discovered new medical techniques, won prizes. Went crazy and ended up homeless with all his notebooks on my girlfriends' living room floor. >>>

AY-RABS AND COWBOYS
After more than two weeks among the Brave and Noble French Nation, I think I have a plan: we give the French people monetary incentives to settle in small groups throughout the world. That way they can help everyone by improving the local trains and cooking, two things that they do fairly well without even trying that hard. And, being in small, groups, they would probably never again be in a position to govern anybody. >>>

BAR FIGHTS AND BIKE RIDES
OK, last time I wrote y'all I was pitching a fit after a long day at the prefecture, also known as the Place In France Where The Obsessive-Compulsive Find Employment. But my grandmother always made sure I knew there was good and bad in every race, and the land of Homo Francus in no exception.

For instance, did you know that the French love Americans? >>>

THEY AIN'T GOT NO FRIED CHICKEN HERE BOY
Now obviously if you are in France smoking like a 19th century factory chimney and walking miles every day between various governmental offices to get your bus pass or some other vital document stamped, you burn calories. You must eat, and you must eat well.

We've all heard about French Cuisine, but just what the heck is it? >>>

I GUESS I DON'T *REALLY* HATE PARIS
So I was walking around down in Ile-de-France, dodging backwards-racing cars, just hatin' me some Paris, and it occured to me this one rare day that it wasn't really a bad place. In fact, I started counting the people I met to see who was a jerk and who wasn't, and only about one in six people was actually unpleasant. Higher than the small towns, sure, but I had to admit there were plenty of cool folks.

ROCKIN' AMIENS
I have just been made part of the local band Ribo, who are playing in the corner of this small smokey closet of a club that is packed sardine style, that is, if sardines squirmed rhythmically to music. At least, I think I'm in the band. I played some songs with them anyway. It's kind of hard to put two and two together, quite noisy, and even though they say a drink relaxes you and makes it easier for you to understand a foreign language, a lot of drinks counteract the process. And they keep buying me drinks. >>>

SOUP AND WAFFLES ON A COLD NIGHT
We talk about weapons in the US. I go on a tirade about how pistols are mostly good for committing suicide, or for letting your kids find them and accidentally shoot somebody. I say if you really need to fight, you're better off with a good old pump shotgun. Best to talk things out first, but if that doesn't work, don't use a pistol, use a shotgun! Everyone gets big-eyed and laughs at the American maniac. Maman gives me another waffle to split. >>>

WEASLES, DRINKING SONGS, AND THE KING IS BORN
There are few things I like more than standing in an Irish bar in France roaring out German drinking songs with actual drunk Germans, so you can well imagine that last week I was quite happy. >>>

MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY
If David yells in my ear one more time, I swear to GOD I am going to spin around and pop him one. And that would be a very bad idea. >>>

HOT WINE ADVENTURES
So you take a decent quality red-wine (they sell it cheap here), you drop a lemon-slice or a piece of apple in it, you get it really hot, and then stir in some cinnamon and brown sugar, and then you wait. That knock you hear at your front door is me. I am a Hot Wine addict, and I can home in on that stuff anywhere in the world. Luckily for me, they serve it all over town here in Amiens, Live Music Capitol of the Picard Nation. >>>

BURR-HEAD FRENCH KIDS
I wander the wet cobblestones, thriving like a beer-wagon horse in the damp cold, snorting steam and stamping my shaggy hooves, and I contemplate the thing that is French Fashion, Late 2001.

Your first clothing article is the scarf. You must wear a scarf. This is not an option. Put your scarf on, do it before you read one more word. I'll wait for you. It doesn't matter what kind, just put one on. >>>

LET THE RIVER RISE
The Amazone. A bar where nothing good has ever happened, and nothing good is ever going to happen. Only a drug-dealer would hang out in the Amazone if there were any other places open to go to. It seems that the Amazone is the catch-trap for all the riff-raff who get run out of near-by bars that close earlier. It is a bad stew. >>>

FAT, IGNORANT, AND CRAZY
It is exactly 718 miles from the circular driveway of my mama's house in Selma, Alabama, to the front parking area of The Crown and Anchor Bar in Austin, Texas. They had my space waiting for me right by the nautically-themed front deck. The little red Tracker's engine ticks with escaping heat as I flex my sore right ankle and cramped back by the open car door.>>>

SLIM, WELL-INFORMED, AND SANE
It is exactly 718 miles from the circular driveway of my mama's house in Selma, Alabama, to the front parking area of The Crown and Anchor Bar in Austin, Texas. They had my space waiting for me right by the nautically-themed front deck. The little red Tracker's engine ticks with escaping heat as I flex my sore right ankle and cramped back by the open car door.>>>

OLD GHOSTS IN THE 11TH STREET BAR
It is exactly 718 miles from the circular driveway of my mama's house in Selma, Alabama, to the front parking area of The Crown and Anchor Bar in Austin, Texas. They had my space waiting for me right by the nautically-themed front deck. The little red Tracker's engine ticks with escaping heat as I flex my sore right ankle and cramped back by the open car door.>>>

THE SOUND OF MUSIC
Jet-lag is a bear that bites one way. Going from Europe to America is not so bad: You have one really long day, then for a week or so, you wake up really early. Your family gets the false impression that you picked up good work habits in Europe. >>>

JUST ANOTHER NIGHT IN PICARDY
Gnawing a hunk of dried sausage that tastes like mummified rat, over-salted. There a piece of metal in it somewhere that they used to clamp off the end, and I'm trying to find it with my tongue as I chew it. Yes, you're supposed to cut that part off, but I didn't. I just don't care. >>>

FRENCH VILLAGE SENDS BACK DOLLARS
Now this is a story that I read in the paper as I sat in a cafe near here, in downtown Amiens. It almost knocked me off my stool. The lady who runs the place let me have the page it was written on, and so now I'm trying to do a quick translation for you.-- Walter Moore >>>

EAT MUD AND DIE
I have two slightly-sprained wrists, a split lip, a grass-burn on the right side of my head, mule-kick-bruises forming all over my body, including one smack on top of that old hair-line fracture in my left shin, and cleat-marks on my inner thigh just inches away from a really bad place to get stomped by cleats. There is a thick layer of clingy black mud up and down my legs, arms, back, chest, and head. I can barely see without my glasses in the dazzle of the fields lights, it's all a blur until they start moving, and they are moving now: several large gentlemen running straight at me. Running fast. >>>

ALL OVER FRANCE I CRIED FOR YOU
So when I hear that I have been tried and condemned for crimes against Ireland, and that a team of shooters are on their way here to Amiens, I take a sudden interest in seeing the Ribo concert way down in Creil this weekend. I call Renaud, and he sets it up so that I meet Benedicte at the station, and she drives me and Jacques down south through the pummeling rain. >>>

SKATING AROUND THE CORNERS
So (Brassy), (Classy), and (Little Emma) are three nice English Girls who were born 60 years too late to be using long sticks to push model airplanes around on a map of Britain as plucky lads sprint to their Spitfires and Hurricanes and other plucky lads huddle inside the freezing cockpits of Messerschmidts and Heinkels already up in the air. Instead, they are in France at various tiny little towns teaching English most days of the week, except today, when we are all in the Amiens Sports Complex, iceskating. >>>

MANLIEST MAN IN AMIENS CONTEST NOW UNDERWAY
Event One: The Coin Toss (a Real Man is lucky)
Event Two: The Darts Game (a Real Man throws things)
Event Three: The Dress Contest (a Real Man is sexy, especially in a dress parading on the catwalk to "Barbie Girl")
Event Four: The Vodka-Drinking Contest (we don't know if this is Manly, but the boys saw it in a movie and insisted on including it)
Event Five: The Boxing Match, With No Sissy Rounds or Refs (a Real Man beats other men into submission) >>>

WHITE CLIFFS OF FEVER
The crumpled ferry-ticket in my pocket says that I am crossing from France to England in some sort of conventional surface-vessel, but that is not my experience. I am living out Captain Nemo images of being slammed into the rolling walls of the infernal ocean-machine, while the Spanish passengers roll their eyes backwards and mutter prayers to forgotten Phoenecian sea-gods. >>>

TRAINING CAMP
I am on the rugby team with Sebastien, or Seb, who appeared previously in these pages as "Mr. KillWalter" because that is what happens every time I try to stop him. He still hits way too hard for my peace of mind, but there doesn't seem to be any malice to it once you know him, it's like jumping in front of a train: the train doesn't *hate* you, but it is not going to stop either.>>>

HE LEFT RIDING, CAME BACK WALKING
My mother pulls the portraits out from under Mama B's old bed. "Careful, careful, that decoration on the frame is brittle." Gold leaf on sculpted plaster on the frames, chipped here and there. Oval glass over the two pictures. One is a boy about two years old. "That was Daddy's brother who died when he was young, his name was William too." The other is a big distinguished-looking-in-a-nineteenth-century-furry-way gentleman. He looks like he is about to laugh at something ridiculous. "That's Grandaddy Poole, your great-grandfather." >>>

WHERE ARE YOU, SOLOMON
Fat birds are hopping around in the sun, trees are sprouting out new green, and Valentine's Day came and went without too much mayhem, but you can't tell my students that. You can't talk to them about anything but their grades. They are wandering the halls hollow-eyed, shattered because their numbers don't add up to enough to make them pass.>>>

THEY ARE EVERYWHERE
There is a corner of this bar I have never sat in before, even though I come here far too often. We are at a table in a little nook near the door, me, (Hasdrubal), and (HorseGirl). It was the only table open. The bar is packed, but this little corner is a world of its own.

(Hasdrubal) says "There could be ghosts here." >>>

SUN TAXI
Do you have any idea how long it has been raining here? I forget myself. But the river is rising, it's always grey and cold, and the prehistoric swamp this town is built on is waking up and plans to take the place back over. It is foggy with slick wet sidewalks, dog-doo dissolving down the gutters. >>>

A PERFECT DAY
I was going to quit rugby. I decided the other night. Quit. No more pain, smashed ribs, wrenched joints, spikes stomped on my shins. Just quit. Then I saw Fabrice's orange jacket across the bar, and I went and sat down with him and my other team-mates, Fabien, Jean-Luc, Guillaume (it's Guillaume's extra jersey I borrowed to play in)... We shared a drink, huscarls in the mead-hall, and they told me they needed me Sunday, we are short of players, we need everyone to stand by us Sunday.>>>

RELIGION AND POLITICS
Unfortunately, here's the truth about growing up Baptist from somebody who's been there: you will sit in a church like any other, sing a song or two, stand up, sit down, and be bored out of your skull for an hour or so. Having a human explain the divine always seemed as frustrating to me as having an English teacher explain poetry. >>>

SEEN FROM THE OTHER SIDE
BLAM! The front tire drops down perfectly and bangs the bike to a halt at the same time that the front end drops about 8 inches. My body keeps going forward, and I vault the handlebars and land hard on my left knee and hip, just as I had planned. Also, just as I had desired, the maximum number of people see me skidding off the flagstones and onto the bricks by a bench. >>>

HEAD HARD AS A ROCK
My head hits the ground so hard that Fabienne feels it through her feet over on the sidelines. The guys on my Rugby team say I was going straight up the middle with the ball, and Tall Fabien laid me out from my left side (Stocky Fabien was on the sidelines in a folding chair with his crutches next to him). My Texas buddy Fabrice says I got up and walked around in circles some, then plopped down on my butt and started babbling nonsense words. >>>

A FEW TIPS ON HOW TO STAY SANE TEACHING IN FRANCE
I am most of the way through my first year ever teaching English in France. It has been a very good year overall. But I remember some dark times at the beginning that could have been avoided if I had known better. Also, I lucked into a few things that helped me cope, that maybe someone else in a similar situation could benefit from. So I have done this write-up of do's and don't's to help anyone who comes after me.>>>

HASH-HEAD HOOKERS ARE HOLDING ONTO MY ANKLES
I am standing by the 7-foot-long penis in the Amsterdam Sex Museum. Outside on the main drag they call the Damrak, kids are smoking blunts big as my Granddad's old Havatampas. You can hear the taxis blowing their horns... >>>

BY THIS AXE I RULE
I am walking up the path to the Campus, and it has been 3 days in a row that the sun has been out here in Northern France. Like rain in the desert, you appreciate it for its rarity. Unlike rain in the desert, it will not cause camel-leavings to rehydrate and come bobbing past you while you huddle miserable and wet in chemical-protective gear. >>>

LIVE IT UP
So can anybody help me peel this Rainbow sticker off my forehead? I can't find it, but one must be there. Not once, not twice, but five times this last week I have been cornered by different women who want to have detailed discussions, with me, about other guys that they like instead of me. >>>

YES NO MAYBE
If you wake up in the morning and you have a hangover, you drank too much.

If you wake up with a hangover, and you are still in the bar, you really drank too much.

If you wake up, with a hangover, still in the bar, and your first conscious action is to run to the john because a gallon of liquid is coming up fast out the top half of your body, you don't even want to think about how much you drank. >>>

FRENCH COMIC BOOKS
Now seeing as how I just locked myself out of the building I live in, and I have to wait an hour for my neighbors to come home and let me back in, I figured I'd stroll down to my Internet place and clue you in to the best thing they produce in France. >>>

THIS WAS NOT MY LIFE
My Tunisian Associate, Maher, was delighted to find that he made it into some of my previous messages to you all. I directed him to the tenthousandmonkeys.com website so he could read about himself. He came back to me and said:

"Walter, in one of the stories you said that Kebab was Moroccan, but they just now got Kebab places in Morocco. We have them in Tunisia too. Kebab is really more of an old Ottoman Empire thing. I think it started in Turkey.">>>

A FINE DAY TO STAND UP FOR SOMETHING
Who is this Le Pen guy? A one-eyed paratrooper. A gifted speaker. He is a xenophobe who wants to turn back the clock to maybe 1912. Is he racist? Well, I wouldn't say he'd feel at home in the KKK... because not even the KKK say the kind of things Le Pen says these days.

Camps. The guy said he'd round up foreigners in France and put them in camps. Camps-- that's the word he used. >>>

MAY DAY
On a third floor balcony over us is an old woman. She is holding onto the railing with one frail hand. Her hair is long and white. She pumps her other fist in the air. The young men on the ground roar a cheer at her. She pumps her fist again. They roar. >>>

THERE IS NOTHING OUT THERE
I've got two tangerines, a baguette cut in two, and a bottle of water in my side-bag. I've got on a t-shirt because it's hot, and a long-sleeved shirt because it never stays hot. Jeans. I've got my new Italian hiking boots with the bouncy step. I've got a roll of that pink European toilet paper in the bag as well, because this is not the first time I have ever gone on a hike. >>>

ROLL ON
I know the couple in the parked Winnebago-travel-trailer thing are going to ask me for directions before they do. I slow down and make eye contact. The woman on the passenger side calls me "monsieur" with a German accent.>>>

HOT COFFEE
I put the money in the coffee-machine, and I stop. I hadn't thought about Kennedy for years.

Not the president. The little red-headed Jump-Master I knew in the Army. The one I got Donovan to shoot. >>>

WOLF HUNTING
Have you heard? There are wolves in France again. I read somewhere that there were several mated pairs, I think they said it was in some place like the Alps.

It wouldn't surprise me. Back home in Alabama my hunter brother-in-law tells me there are bear and coyotes and big cats back in the area close to my hometown, decades after they were supposed to have disappeared.>>>

SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS
So this morning my newspaper told me that the actress Angelina Jolie was "terrified" that her adopted Cambodian son might step on a land-mine. I was amazed to find out that land-mines were a problem in California, so I read more. >>>

ORANGE FLAMES BY THE CANAL
It is 12:48 am, and the car is blazing away by the canal. Rolling flames billow out of its cracked windows. Smoke drifts down through this district of little bars as waiters stack plastic tables and chairs, getting ready to close.

Maybe it started by accident. I seriously doubt it. Burning cars here is such a common occurrence that there is even a special verb for it: "cramer". >>>

SEA FOOD
You know, you can sell bugs and snails and anything else that crawls creeps or slithers to people, and they will eat it, no, they will PAY to eat it. All you have to do first is say it comes from the ocean. >>>

WHEN THEY PLAYED THE DOUBLE EAGLE
My dad and I are driving in the dark. We were at Lester's, a little bar also known as the Helotes Country Club, where there is a pump shot-gun propped against the wall behind the bar and the roof leaks in three or four places. There is an old German guy on a stool who will teach you Slovenian proverbs whether you ask him to or not. When it rains, chickens cross the road, come inside, and roost on the back of a chair by the skittle board. >>>

EARTH WIND FIRE AND WATER
So I am kayaking in Barton Creek watching the turtles dive for cover when the sky goes dark and the lightning starts crackling in the distance. My double-paddle is made out of metal tubing.

Flash...(1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 6,000 7,000 8,000) CROOM. >>>

GREETINGS FROM AGGISTAN
So, I went to Waco when it was known to be full of cultists. I went to Amiens when it was known to be a dreary rain-lashed waste. I even went to Paris when it was known to be the home-base for generations of unbearably pretentious American tourists. So, when the call came that it was time for College Station, land of the Texas A&M "Aggies", and supposed arch-rival of my old University of Texas, when it was time for them to feel the pimp-smack of Walter-Moore-style language teaching, well, there I went and here I am. >>>

ELIS ISLAND GIRL
My legs aren't tired from pedaling yet, but they will be if I keep hitting more little hills like the one coming at me. I just crossed the three or four branches of the sluggish Navasota river, so I know I have a climb coming to make up for the free coast downhill that I got a few minutes ago. Reasonable, but my legs don't want reason. They want it to be downhill both ways.>>>

BIG TEX
The wind is whapping on the fabric roof of the Geo Tracker making it thump like the sail of a ship at sea. I give up trying to hear the lyrics to my music and punch the radio over to a talk show. It is some home-grown version of "Cah Tawk", this is an humble Texas dude who honestly admits he can't really tell what is wrong with peoples' cars unless he looks at them in person. >>>

LIBERTY MEN
Everybody needs at least one folk song that touches on both indentured
servitude and the battle of Cowpens during the Revolutionary War. Here's one
for you: >>>

THE LAST TATTOO
Here in the Round Eye Reservation of the Beautiful Kingdom (in the Barbarian Style: Nebraska, Yueh-seh), this reporter had the poignant honor to attend the funeral rites of an ancient Round Eye woman, Pearl Moon, or, as she is known to those of her tribe who still speak the ancient Round Eye tongue, Je-si-ka Jian-san. >>>

SILENT NIGHT
Tonight I dropped a dime on my neighbors. You know the couple upstairs? The ones with the two little babies? They like to fight. Last night I had enough. >>>

DOWN IN STEERAGE ON THE TITANIC
You know, if you take 5 1/2 Mexican people, and 3 1/2 Irish people, and 1 Tennessee Hillbilly, and stir them all together in a bar called Duddley's Draw until closing time, and then spill them out in the street to find their way to Walter's place where there is a refrigerator full of beer and a big bottle of Ricard and a small but surprisingly powerful stereo with the Pogues and Steve Earle and lots of Mexican Rock CD's lying around it, if you do all this, you come up with a party that can flat wreck an apartment. >>>

NOVELYNE & PENELOPE
Long sunset on the hills
Rattlesnake in my heart
Might be a while before we cross again
This town ain't known for art
Damn bastards laugh at me
Crossplains
Novelyn
Remember my name >>>

SERGEANT BRICK'S FIGHTIN' HELL-MONKEYS
Ok, it's the day after Black Friday, I live in College "Walmart-Parking-Lot-of-Culture" Station, Texas, and oh yeah, we are about to go beat up an obnoxious homeless person who's been yelling threats in the street. No, I really mean we are about to invade Iraq, which makes sense because most of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia and were led and paid by a Saudi Arabian named bin Laden, and if history repeats itself it'll be more fun to fight Iraqis than Koreans, and they have oil that we can keep after we beat them up. >>>

BIRDS IN THE SKY
My grandmother takes another sip of her coffee. She's never without a cup. They say that drinking so much coffee is bad for you. She's 96 now. I plan on drinking coffee every chance I get. >>>

A CHEW OF TOBACCO
It was back in the 20s. John Howard wasn't ever going to share-crop again. He had become a builder, roads, bridges. Which for a white man in Mississippi meant that he was a foreman, supervising gangs of workers in the Egyptian heat. >>>

ANDY
My mother looks at the flower shop on Broad Street as we drive past. "Tomtom, do you remember when that was a burger place?"

"Barely, mama," I say. It was the "Thirsty Boy", a leftover from the 50's, barely hanging on in the mid-70's when I would sneak out of church as a teen and go hang out there with my other heathen friends. Unpopular. Deserted. I watch the road and let her tell it. >>>

GALVESTON
So I needed a mental-health break. My job isn't so bad, teaching at a large school in East Texas, but I needed a break. A drive in the country.

I call up Friend #1 and say "Hey, let's go get a Coke at some little store in the country."

"Sorry, I would, but I have to get X,Y, and Z done."

"So you've become an adult?"

"'Fraid so. But have fun on your ride."

"Oh, I will." >>>

NOUS SOMMES LES ROUGE ET NOIR
So Monday my visit to My Goodness got cut short because right when I walked in, some girl at the bar started yelling at me, and lo and behold if it wasn't our very own incarnation of Kali, botanical genius Reemu Bhogal.>>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
The Border: First time driving my own car across. A gazillion dollars to get liability insurance. I talked em down from their primo policy to one that covers me if I dent a motorcycle fender but still includes the rider that they THEY CALL A LAWYER TO GET ME OUT OF JAIL. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
Still in Zacatecas. Had some idea of being in Colima today instead of tomorrow, but after 4 straight days of packing and driving and unpacking and driving more, the body said "No".

And I know why now: It´s the altitude.

Now I hear you say, "Walter, you are tired because you never exercise and you are hauling around 20 pounds of extra gut and you drink way too much beer, so OF COURSE you are tired", but no, a dude told me yesterday that I was simply feeling the effects of going from near sea-level to about a mile high here in Zacatecas, and he lives here and you don´t, so don´t tell me it´s not altitude. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
I bonded with my class of kids yesterday. It was a two step process. First, it transpired that their favorite cartoon was Daria. Then I demonstrated how, by leaving my radio on all the time, I had memorized all the latest Mexican cheez-pop songs, including this annoying sing-song dance track that translates roughly as "You're so fat. You eat too much. You're so fat..."

Now we are working off of mutual respect. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
Perhaps I could explain why I am sitting here at this computer with a fake tattoo on my left forearm saying that "Colima es PRI", as in Partido Revolucionary Institucional, as in I am a gringo meddling in Mexican politics and therefore could *technically* get deported, but I prefer to blame it on the cat. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
The Rainy Season hit last night. I had most of the windows down on the car, except for the passenger side, so all the tapes on the floorboard underneath the anti-theft device (a pair of raggedy crusty shorts cut from old camo trousers) are all still dry. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
So yesterday I was sitting on the couch working on an exam, watching the clouds move in, and I thought "it would be nice to get a little rain".

FOOMP. All of a sudden the roof over the atrium was gone. Then the rain started. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
There's a place downtown on the plaza where I like to eat. It's the "Hosteria del Bohemio", funky dive with lots of tables outside under the arcade. They have breakfast, lunch, supper... and if you want, you can order a liter mug of beer for about two dollars.

It was once after a liter or two that I walked inside past the tall waitress and saw that she was reading "El Buscon" by Quevedo. It's in 17th-century Spanish but hilarious when you can understand it, all about a raffish little scam artist on the make. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
Friday night I tried to teach my TOEFL class to say "black people" instead of "Negroes". Not only can they not pronounce "Negro" properly, mangling it in a most unfortunate way, but I cannot convince them that bad things are sure to happen to them if they use this mangled form. Ah, innocence.>>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
So I'm in the bathroom, and yet another person is knocking on my door trying to sell me something, and I deliberately come lurching out shirtless looking as scary as Randy Quaid, and there stands my coworker the Mormon, she has dropped by to see if I want to go on a bike-ride. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
The old man was sitting at the bus stop in the middle of nowhere, someplace called "Agosto", no town, just the orange bus-stop shed. We made eye-contact, and I slammed on the brakes and went back to get him. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
I actually got asked if I was "from here" the other day by a local. I figured he was messing with me, so I said "Sure, guey, I grew up right down the road on a little ranch other side of Coquimatlán." But he was all serious, saying "No, I know a guy who looks like you, his parents are German, but he was born here, he speaks Sapnish with just a little bit of an accent, like you, because he speaks German at home with his folks."

A "little" bit of an accent? I was strutting for a while there. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
So the Ukranian and I are driving along in the Tracker. I am showing her the good parts of Colima, because she had seriously freaked out from culture shock her first day at the Tec. It was sort of my job to show her good stuff, un-freak her out, because her new classes start this Monday.>>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
This morning I participated in a bit of improv street theater at the body shop where they gave me an estimate for fixing my wrecked Tracker. The only rules of the game were that you had to be super-polite while thinking insulting things about the other person.

For instance, Memo the body-work-man was thinking "Idiot" about me, while I was thinking "Thief" about him. We successfully completed our game with everybody smiling and polite, and me agreeing to tell him whether to start work or not on Monday. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
In Guanajuato they have mummies that look like old pancakes.

They also have the hooks on the building where the Spaniards hung Hidalgo's head.

The hooks are on a building that the rebels took. Nobody could get to the door of the building alive, shot down from the windows. Finally one little strong guy picks up a rock and walks forward with the slab on his back. Musket balls smack it and leave blue marks here and there. The little guy gets to the door and sets the fire. They get in the building, they win.

The brave little guy has a statue on top of the hill. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO
So since none of the usual drinkin buds were in, I nixed the pizza plan and instead went to a nearby tiny-mall and caught a movie while chowing down on the Healthy Choice, hot dog and pop-corn.

It was some black-comedy cop-movie with Harrison Ford, called "Departamento de Homicidios" en español. It was pretty cool, lots of funny stuff, minimum amount of splattered body parts. Not a kid movie though. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO -
It seems that being kidnapped by me and publicly shamed helped my body-work man rediscover his artistic pride. He and his guys did a really good job with no games this time. Not only does it look good, but when I drive the Tracker at high speed down the autopista, there are no vibrations or shimmies. I take my hand off the wheel, and it doesn't pull to the side. I hit the brakes with my hand off the wheel, and it stops straight. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO -
Today was one of those days where you just fling your keys up in the air, and whichever way they are pointing when they land, that's where you go.

The Tracker key pointed East. You are probably getting the first and only e-mail of your life from the little mountain town of Pihuamo. >>>

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO -
Happy Halloween to you all. I couldn't get my students all that hyped up about it, they would look down and wiggle and then somebody would always say, "That's not really a Mexican thing, that's something they do in places like (and then list a couple of neighborhoods where they consider the people to be wannabe-Gringos)". >>>

POTOMAC FLOAT
I can see the Woodrow Wilson drawbridge towering above me to the right, and far past it, sailboats floating like moths in the distance where the Potomac gets wider yet. Here it is mostly motorboats, small yachts, and a blue double-decker tour-boat chugging down towards Mt. Vernon loaded with tourists, looking like something from a Popeye cartoon. >>>

DC RAMBLE
The Metro Yellow Line is chugging north from where I boarded it with the shiny-tennis-shoe tourists at the King Street Station. We are crossing the Potomac and I am flipping a coin, heads yes, tails no.

L'Enfant Plaza: tails. >>>

I LOVE THAT TOWN—A Tale of Old New York
Lies lies all lies.

The Chinese Bus from DC to NYC costs exactly $20. No more no less. It's not the biggest bus in the world, but it's clean, and Chinese people tend to be small, so there is plenty of room left over for a gangling White Boy. >>>

MARBLES
So I'm sitting there with my mom complaining about somebody on the TV news mumbling with that put-on "I'm-just-a-dumb-southerner-I-don't-know-nothin'"
ying-yang voice, and she says:

"When you were a baby, I got so tired of not being able to understand the kids I taught in Columbus, Georgia, that I made them put pebbles in their mouths." >>>

THE FISH PLACE -
So my name is Franklyn Thomas, I'm 19, I'm not from here, I just moved here from Missouri. Vicki is her mom, Lashae's mom. Yeah, I helped them both move down here from Missouri, and I stayed, because I loved Lashae. I still do. And you know what? We broke up two weeks after I got set up here in Selma, Alabama. >>>

AWASH IN WINE -
The best thing about working in a store where they have wine-tastings is that you work in a store where they have wine-tastings. Simple, obvious, no less true because of that. >>>

B'HAMSTER: BOBBI'S WAKE AND THE BISHOP
My dad's 3 word phone message left no doubt as to what had happened, the only question was who.>>>

B’HAMSTER: GUNS, GUEROS, AND PANCHO VILLA’S GOLD
My son Joseph and I tool down the west side of San Antonio past cheap apartments, tattoo parlors, body shops and strip clubs. “Hey Joseph, if we can sell this gun for at least 50 bucks, we can dart down to Mexico for the day.”>>>

B'HAMSTER: BRUISES BASHES AND BOUNCING BALLS
The other morning I went to get a Chinese Deep Tissue Massage. My boss at the market swears by these. She claimed it would really hurt, that 30 minutes would be all I could stand. She alleged that all the toxins released from my muscles would make me sick as a dog. She said that getting them out would have a healthful effect. >>>

B'HAMSTER: "I AM FRIDA"
I gave my Spanish classes a different sort of homework assignment. Google "Frida Kahlo" on the internet, be able to tell me about her life, and tell me which one of her paintings was their favorite, and why.

The next day they greeted me wide-eyed. "She painted WEIRD pictures!" "There was one where she was being born and her head was coming out of another woman!" "There was one with her head on a deer running through the woods, shot full of arrows, I printed it out, here!" >>>

B'HAMSTER: FREE FOOD FRENZY & STEEL DOGS -
Little did I know, when I suggested a "paper-grading party", that the front door would come crashing in and that Aunt Sue's house would be swarmed by all the Coolest Women From The Language Department, bearing armloads of groceries. >>>

B'HAMSTER: BRITISH WEST FLORIDA
I always knew my hometown of Selma, Alabama was different. Now I know why: It was supposed to be in a different country.

No, I don't mean all that Dixie foolishness, 4 years of war and 140 years of hype. If you like it, you can keep it. I am talking about something older. >>>

B'HAMSTER: VIVA LA REVOLUCION
Katherine hands me the walkie-talkie and asks me if I know how to use it.
"With these," she says, "We can call each other from the greenhouse or inside the store without having to run all over." >>>

B'HAMSTER: WINDING DOWN
The Samford campus grows peaceful. The last classes have been dismissed with a "Good luck on the final next week." The last professors have whispered about the patriarchy down by the water fountain. The last golden heirs of fortune have drooled away a morning on their dorm-bed pillows before eventually rising to dream up pitches for extra-credit. The snap and sizzle of the fry-table in the snack-bar slows and fades to its final, barely-heard, pop. >>>

B'HAMSTER: MINE-SHAFT BLUES
West Blocton isn't on the way to anywhere. Two major highways pass within a few miles of it on the other side of these hills, but you'd never know that. The Cahaba River is just a few miles east, down in some ravine that you can't see. In fact, even the road that goes right next to the town doesn't show you much, all you glimpse are the tops of houses set back on a plateau.>>>

THE TRIP TO ITALY—PART ONE: DOWN TO PARIS
THE TRIP TO ITALY—PART TWO: WE MAKE IT TO MILANO
THE TRIP TO ITALY—PART THREE: THE FIVE LANDS
THE TRIP TO ITALY—PART FOUR: PISA
THE TRIP TO ITALY—PART FIVE: FIRENZE

MONTERREY MOON—PART 1: The Border
MONTERREY MOON—PART 2:  The Check-Point
MONTERREY MOON—PART 3: The City
MONTERREY MOON—PART 4: El Escarabajo
MONTERREY MOON—PART 5:  Nelly
MONTERREY MOON—PART 6: El Puto
MONTERREY MOON—PART 7, CONCLUSION: Loma Larga