"The Truth Isn't Always Kind"

Background checks for ice-cream-truck drivers now. Driving a yellow and white striped ice cream van was the first job I did after I gave up twenty-two years of hitchhiking and bought a one-way bus ticket from San Francisco to Nashville in 1992. Best job I ever had: women and children running at me all day, waving money. You'd think it would drive a body nuts, but I swear, I grew to love that jingle playing out over the speakers all day. I decided if I ever won the lottery, I'd buy an ice cream truck and drive it around summers. I'd also used the van to explore, get to know my new area some, so my route was always totally random. It felt good when I'd turn down a street and see some little kid standing at the curb start bouncing with joy as I came into sight, but knowing I'd just picked the turn at the last second, I wondered what if I'd turned the other way at the intersection. I remember when Fonzi tried doing an ice cream gig supposed to be back in the 1950s on Happy Days. He told how he'd just get the rig rolling good, and then there'd be some kid holding up a lousy dime and he'd have to stop. I remember one house I stopped at four times. Out would come six or eight kids, the oldest one a girl about 11, holding an infant. The next youngest was another girl about 9, also carrying a baby, and then three or four more really little kids with them. The first two times the oldest one took charge and made sure everybody got what they wanted, all top of the line selections, and then, juggling the baby in her arms, she'd count out my money from a wad of bills. I was never sure how I got to that house and a few other spots on my rounds, just suddenly there I'd be again. So after a couple days of missing it, as if by magic I found myself there again, turned down the cul-de-sac and coming back out the kids were there waiting for me on the corner in front of their house like before. Except this time the oldest girl wasn't with the group, and the eight or nine year old was in charge. Also taking care of everybody and herself, she held out a bowl full of quarters, ones and fives. "Is this enough?" I took what I had coming and went on my way, feeling really good about dealing with such confident, polite, happy kids. The next time I was there was on a Saturday and a man came out of the house with them. Barking orders at the kids, watching me like a hawk, double-checking the money the girl gave me and the change I gave her back. What a different experience. (A guy like that would never in a million years pull over to give me a ride hitchhiking, so by being out there on the road the previous decades, my life had been spared having to deal with clowns like him.) Another time I was out in the country exploring, didn't have the music playing, there were no houses around. I was driving up a dirt road when I came to an abrupt dead end. Half-way through a back and forth 18-point turn to get back around, being like the top of a T in the middle of the narrow road, I looked up just as a scruffy guy in his thirties with a full beard stepped out of the trees carrying a shotgun. I'm thinking, "Tennessee". I can't go front or back more than a couple inches at that point, when he comes up and asks for an ice cream. As I'm counting out his change, he says, "Looks like somebody needs a drink this morning." I looked down. My hands were shaking like crazy. I grinned like that was it. Another time I was pulled over by three police cars for being by the lake at some National Park. "Can I see your federal vendor's permit?" "Say what?" "I warn you guys every year about slipping in here." I was still selling ice cream out the side window as they were running their check on me. Back at the place I asked the boss why he hadn't warned me about going by the lake. He said, "Well, you just played dumb, didn't you?" But for the most part, I only dealt with smiling people all day long. So anyway, now they want all the ice cream sellers to get checked out and probably pee in a bottle on a regular basis. The frenzy continues to build.

Tom ("We'll leave the light on for you.") Bodett has a video series out, "America's Historic Trails". On the one, "The Mormon Trail", he reads a quote Brigham Young gave his followers on their way to their promised land in Utah. "I have let the brethren dance and fiddle night after night to see what they will do. Well, they will play cards. They will play checkers. And if they could get whiskey they'd be drunk half the time. Do you suppose that we're going to look for a home for the saints, a place of peace where they can build up the kingdom with a low, mean wicked spirit dwelling in our bosoms?" And I say, "So what's your point?" Can't be having folks enjoying themselves and feeling good. Then they wouldn't need YOU, Mr. Young. You're just another one of those Guilt Pushers, selling your poison. All that born-in-sin crap. I say, "Let my people play."

Estri Hadrath diet Estrazi. The Silistra Series by Janet E. Morris. The High Couch of Silistra. The Golden Sword. Wind From The Abyss. The Carnelian Throne. (Then she rewrote the first one and called it Returning Creation.) Check 'em out. Brutal but really cool.

Summer is here again and I do miss rolling up my sleeping bag and sticking my thumb out over fabled Highway 101. April through October, just bouncing up and down the West Coast, partying. 1970-1992. Then every winter I'd do something different. Some winters I failed to run into anything to do and just continued to bounce. But during daylight savings was the best. Go anywhere, find a bush to sleep behind at night, people on vacation and locals and truck drivers keeping me amused and moving. April until October. For twenty-two years. (All one needs is a sleeping bag . . . you're going to get tired, and a flashlight . . . it's going to get dark. Most everything else just appears as needed.) "It's not like it used to be." Actually, it never was.

I wrote the above last night. Today, Monday, I woke up and the first thing I hear on the radio is a new plan for getting rid of prostitution on a popular street corner here in L.A. The joys of life have been brutally punished by religious people for thousands of years. Who first decided that God doesn't like a good time? They stone people to death and burn them at the stake for having sex. Many religions claim music, dancing, card playing, even laughter are all sins. It's okay to lock yourself up in a bare room for life for God, beat yourself bloody, or slowly torture others to death for not living like you and God think is right . . . but just don't have any fun. Where's the sense? Now the big evil is "registered sex offenders". Today we have thousands of little Joe McCarthys running around chasing commies again. Deny any sex education, pile on the guilt and shame for natural sexual urges, then vilify porn and strip clubs, outlaw massage parlors and prostitution, then come down with the wrath of the Lord of Lords on anybody who seeks a way to have sex. Now even teens are getting ankle bracelets and being registered for life for consensual sex because they're under the age the law has decreed is the age when the young people themselves have any control over their own bodies. Who are the sickos here? Tax money is being spent to fight the pleasure of sex and drugs for the Lord. Where's the separation? Who is this guy God anyway? Has He ever spoken to anyone who is sane? I think He was just created by guys who couldn't get it up and needed a good excuse for not having to try anymore. "Oh, sex is a SIN! I'm just being holy."

Give me a break.