Bum Wines and the Peyote Coyote, Mike Marino [pdf e book reader txt] 📗

what it is, a downright shame."
The Roostertail Cafe had been a California desert landmark since 1930. Nobody was even sure where the name came from anymore, nor cared. Stan, along with Janet, his only waitress and also his wife and lifelong mate, ran the old place and tended to business, what was left of it, like his grandfather did when he opened it, and like his father did when he took over after Stans grandfather passed on to that great filling station in the sky.
Stan laughed, thoughtfully to himself. "What's so durned amusin' Stanley?" Only Janet ever called him Stanley; to everyone else it was just Stan or Stosh, a nickname he earned in Korea. He laughed again and banged the table with his hand. "Lifes crazy. Never thought I'd be running a restaurant, let alone a rundown one, and now, I get ready to sell the joint and I won't know what to do with my time. Live life like a broken down millionaire I suppose. Take up pottery or get a telescope and look at stars all night to fill my free time."
Janet smiled and let him have it. "Remember when you got home from Korea? Said you'd never settle down in the desert and stay put. Took a job on a Colorado railroad as a brakeman and damn near killed yourself, hated that. Then you made custom cowboy hats in Wyoming and you hated rodeos...but Lord, when you took over the cafe, why I've never seen you happier. You may think you hate this desert, but you don't, not really. You just think you're getting old, slowing down, running out of neon like that old sign out front, and well, you are, and I am and that's life." Stan smiled broadly and felt better, full of neon and full of memories, good and grand memories.
He remember the hustle and bustle of the old days, the good old days. Used to have small cabins in back, the diner itself a porcelain grease palace, stools and tables filled with cutomers talking about where they've been and where they're headed. East to West, West to East, North to South and South to North. Could hardly keep the gas pumps going. "Check the oil? How's them tires? No water for miles so better check that fer ya too. Goin' to Los Angeles, are you, well say hello to Mr. Gable when you see him for me. Stops here sometimes, yep, sure does". Some days there were so many Packards, Plymouths, Chevrolets and Fords, the supply couldn't keep up with the gas guzzling internal combustion demands of those piston pumping petrol hungry heavy metal mo-sheens on some days.
Big neon signs out front, like shimmering mirages in the heat of day, lit up the night sky for miles, brighter than Times Square on V-E Day. The cafe announced in simple easy to understand neon lingo, "EATS". The cabins beckoned with a big neon welcome, "VACANCY". The wooden cabins were filled at night with tourists glad to be off the road for a few precious hours of rest after keeping the beat to the steelbelt concerto. You could hear the childrens cacophony of muffled laughter in the knotty piners, parents laughing too, right along with them. The soft glow of the lamps within cozily illuminating the floral print of the cheap curtains.
Every now and them, the urbane family, constrained and shackled by months of claustrophobic skyscraper concrete, would walk, float in a dream state out onto the gravel parking lot at night to wonder in awe at the horizon to horizon palette of stars that filled the clear desert sky, natures nocturnal canvas. The succulent smells of the sand plants, the crisp, black night air..The Cactian Kingdom of the Great Southwest.
Next morning, refreshed, born again, they'd pack up the car and then head into the cafe. The flickering neon sign still on in the fading early morning hours as it made ready for the briliant sun and the heat of the day. "EATS" was all it said, all it ever said. Story goes that when asked why it didn't say more, Stans grandfather replied, "It says enough." The customers would wolf down big plates of fresh eggs cooked to cuisinal perfection, drink coffee strong enough to wake the dead, and feast on peppered bacon and thick slabs of sourdough toast with fresh butter and jam, homemade by Stans wife.
Afterward some would buy some to-go food for the road, long trip afterall. A postcard or two with a cartoon character Navajo chief on it, taffy candy and small pecan rols in a bag for the "are we almost there yet" kids in the back. They would then pull the cars and campers around to the pumps, fill 'em up, have the oil and tires checked one more time for good measure and buy a .25 roadmap to help guide them to the Pacific Ocean across the sea of sand they had to cross first.
On occassion, to have some fun with the tourist, Stans grandfather would sell the kids souvenir bags of "rattlesnake eggs" and stuffed toy rabbits with antlers glued to their synthetic heads. "Jackalopes is what they is. Lot's of 'em round here." The kids eyes would get wild eyed wondered, and the parents would smile at this obvious farce and tall tale. Road ready, mom and dad would load the kids, along with a bag full of memories, genuine rubber injun tommyhawks, plastic feathered headdresses and rubber tipped arrows for plastic bows and maybe a coonskin cap or two for good measure. Never know what you'll run into out in the mirages and heat of the merciless Mohave.
The town of Rogers, Califonia was a thriving port in the automotive seas in those days. Hardware store, merchantile for linens, grocery store for food and even had a a small pharmacy in back. The Roostertail had one of the first soda fountains in California, and experimented once with bringing food out to the waiting cars to speed up service and increase profits. Grandfather noticed though, that then the harried motorists would hurry on their way, the cabins would sit vacant. He quickly but an end to his experiment marriage curb service socialism and carhop capitalism.
The old movie theater in Rogers advertised "100% Refrigerated Air". The Carswell family, who had opened the small theater in town just before the war, opened a drive-in movie theater in 1949 on some ranch land they owned. Showed all the latest films from Holly-wierd, and by the mid-50's the kids started to come from miles around, sometimes from as far away as Eastvale in the next county on Saturday Nights. It was a revved up processional of souped up '32 Fords, '49 Mercs and '57 Chevy's.
The movies sooned changed, and Errol Flynn was swashbuckeled by an atomic monster from Japan called Godzilla. Families that had enjoyed cartoons, shorts and main features now kept away, as the kids enjoyed sexual discovery and paradise by the dashboard light in the backseat vinyl with rock n' roll on the radio up front. On the silver outdoor screen, Bugs Bunny bested Elmer Fudd everytime. and who could resist the magnet of madcap that transfixed us with the eye-poking doink-doink "Soitenly!" mayhem of the Three Stooges.
"Times was good" the oldtimers chime in, but the times, as the song says, were a changin'....
The coming of the Interstate also brought with it a social whirlwind of change. The next generation of Rogers progeny realized they didn't want to farm or ranch anymore. Profits were too low to eke out an existence and prefered perfume and cologne to the smell of manure. Some went on to college, others joined the Army to to stop the Communist Domino that was devouring Asia, and others just simply left town and dropped off the face of the earth as they knew it, never to be seen again.
Some of them were plowed under the subsoil of finance, to the banks, and others sold out to corporate farms and huge behemoth American conglomerates. Sold land, pennies for the dollar just to get out from under.
Families moved away, back east to places like Indiana and Illinois, for God's sake, richer farm land to be sure. As the towns population was let out like air in a slashed tire, the merchants too began to feel the loss. Had to cut back on merchandise and service. Raise prices on products that nobody could afford anymore.
If you listen closely to the past, you can hear the voices of a family traveling on vacation. The radio on, tuned to some obscure daytime AM station in the middle of the desert, in the middle of nowhere. Count Basie pounding out the beat to perfection. The preachers voice, loud and proud looking for donations while preaching everlasting salvation. The kids making contorted faces at passing motorists. Time to stop at that cafe, been here a thousand times before on this road, but have to get fuel for the car anyway, and grab one of those giant burgers and homemade fries. The creme soda is also to die for.
The years passed. The kids have grown and gotten married and have families and little face contorters of their own now who rule the backseats and still ask, "are we almost there yet?" The families get together, as always for the holidays, sit through innumerable hours of 8mm film and Kodak slides, and reminisce about the good old days. Like clockwork, the conversation invariably gets around to those wonderful old roadtrips. "Remember that diner we used to stop at, in Rogers, in Califonia I think, and those huge burgers? Those were great burgers. I wonder if it's still there?"
The Rogers school too now stands empty, a panhandler, a hobo on the side of the tracks. Crumbling concrete and the phantom sounds of ghost football voices that cheer no more on Homecoming Night. The echoes of the past still reverberate through the empty, decaying halls. The windowless facade stares from empty eyesockets as though seeing the past as clearly as we see the present." I think it was '39" say the oldtimers. "Yeah, it was '39..that year we won the division in football..what was that kids name? God, he could run."
The school emptied itself of seniors every year, out to the cold world, away from the warm blanket of youth, scholastic routin, friends and familiarity. Some to college. Some to war. Most, all married now, blown and scattered across America like dandelion seeds. Every now and then someone pulls out the Yearbook from a box stored in the attic, opened slowly and carefully as though a rare Guttenberg bible, centuries old that threatens to crumble like a rotted shroud. Each page studied carefully. A smile here, a tear there, then recognition.
"Yeah, I told you it was '39. Billy, that was his the kids name. Got us the champeenship that year." Then a pause and a sigh. "Billy died in '43. Okinawa I think, just a kid at the time. Man could he run". As you walk by the empty school now you can almost hear the cheering from the stands as Billy's memory lives on today. Man, could he run, but not fast enough.
The drive-in is gone too. Weeds fill the empty lot, the old screen is tattered and aged, like the Gloria Swanson character in Sunset Boulevard still waiting for her closeup Mr. DeMille. The speakers were stolen or sold for scrap long ago, and the concession stand a testimonial monument to vandalism. Instead of the roar of Godzilla, now all one can hear is the scream of the wind at night as it blows through the empty lot, once full of life, teenaged angst, sexual discovery, heavy metal