A ROAD TRIP TO NEBRASKA TO SEE A PUNK KID

 

Part 1: Why On Earth Would I do this?

Somebody made a turn down movie called “Nebraska.” We stopped watching it midway, and Springsteen wrote an even grimmer song by that name. I knew Johnny Carson and other people without discernible accents lived there, but I never thought about it much. I read Willa Cather’s My Antonia years ago and that story pegged the toughness of the eastern European immigrant solidly into my mind. And also the Nebraska winters: Jesus H. Christ! But that’s about it. 

I guess most people think of Nebraska vaguely as part of “fly-over-country.” Me too, but I drive most places and Nebraska doesn’t seem to be one of them. I’m mildly embarrassed to say I’m not sure I ever passed through more than once or twice. Kansas? Sure, lots of times. Great people. Nebraska? Nah. Well, not long ago I did go there. On purpose. Turns out it’s a nice place too. For one thing, it’s got a world class zoo. In Omaha. A place I’ve heard of. Plus, there’s this guy I know.

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Among the catalogue listings of medical horrors unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic, one that’s affected almost every survivor is a strong element of psychological damage. Most of us were already half nuts to begin with, trying to get by in this new century that’s aging so badly. But the new protocols of isolation further atomized our already thinning social circles whether they were followed or not. And that ain’t so good for our thick heads.

I don’t think it mattered if these anti-hug rules were enforced by the law or simple survival instinct. If we were getting lonelier and lonelier before from our fractured politics and tech obsessions, now we were forced to cope with a whole new dis-ease vector of aloneness. And baby, we were not equipped.

Old friends who were slipping further and further away as we simply got older now seemed to have vanished altogether as the killer virus made its rounds. It takes at least some work to keep your “keeper” friends kept, so to speak, and that’s under ideal conditions. Not American conditions.

I think most of us tried in our way. We’d invite our friends over for beer and burgers, served entirely outside. It was, “Hey! Great to see you!” They’d go, “Yeah?, Really?” Visiting us you could go alone into the house to use the bathroom, but then it was right back out pronto to your lawn chair. We’d arrange them in a circle under the big post oaks, evenly spaced and far apart with the beer cooler in the middle—self service only. For over a year no one was basically allowed in the house. 

That was kind of nice since the place was a wreck anyway. But it was a wreck because nobody else came inside anymore. A big part of our house cleaning occurs when company comes (!), injecting us with a strong dose of “not-enough-time” adrenalin.

Then the vaccines arrived and even that, stupidly, became another jagged line of demarcation. As if we weren’t already fractured enough. But most all our remaining friends who hadn’t already ditched us over politics or dog smell got vaccinated. Then, we eagerly ushered them back into our now semi-sparkling house whenever they showed up.

Anyway, the Times is running story after story these days about the ‘Loneliness Epidemic,’ the rising contributor to suicide, accidental overdose, perhaps even mass murder (“Yeah, he was kind of a loner. Liked birds”). That sort of thing. I’m nowhere near slashing my wrist yet or blasting away in some Walmart, with or without manifesto. It’s true though, I do miss a lot of the people I am, or was, close to. A little lonely? Maybe a little. Three died during the pandemic.

And, I really miss the ones I can’t do anything about. The dead ones. There seemed to be a lot of them so I made a list. They outnumbered my live friends about two to one. So, I decided to do something about it. Actually, I didn’t decide anything by myself. This mission was birthed by the example set by a wonderful woman named Susan and her calm, globetrotting husband James. [Naomi Klein said that the British art critic John Berger once told her, “Calm is a form of resistance.” I immediately thought of James when I read that. Fits.] 

Susan, as I learned two years ago, is actually my oldest living friend. She rediscovered me when she blew the dust off an old diary and found me napping in there as a skinny kid she once met at Garner State Park in the Summer of 1962. [See: https://trailwriters.com/2021/07/07/the-davis-mountains/] Throwing caution to the wind like a damn fool, she looked me up after 60 years.

The next thing I know, there she is in my frickin’ house with Dahna as her wiseguy partner, hammering me and my much better partner flat in a depressing number of  straight losing card games. James, my poor partner across the table goes down with the ship slowly shaking his head like my dad used to do. He’s more patient with me than my dad was though. He’s kept a lot of his old friends too. And we’re a small sample of how it goes in their well-tended octopus’s garden of friends.

I don’t know why so many our friends through the years drifted off. Weren’t our daring exploits in Utah and Texas enough? Or our famous tales of adventure drinking cheap whiskey and breaking up dog fights? Or our smooth playlists with nifty segues and lots of Stevie Ray Vaughn and Dean Martin? I couldn’t figure out why my profound thoughts on virtually any subject didn’t keep them spellbound, coming back for more. Very disappointing and far too many unsaid goodbyes from friends ghosting off to some mysterious somewhere else.

Dahna’s cooking, good sense, and spooky expertise continues to fascinate and exert a strong gravitational pull on some of them. Still, even our remaining friends’ orbits were widening. Not catastrophically like the gyres in the Yeats poem but bad enough to remind you of it.

It ain’t easy maintaining friendships through all the friend-wrecking vicissitudes life can throw at you: your weird tastes in music, movies, lifestyle, then there are kids, divorce, disease (pandemic and personal), geographical distance and, hell yes, politics and religion. And, plain old aging is a big culprit too. 

That nasty little gnome is always trying to push us into those creaky rocking chairs with the crocheted coverlets. It leans in close and coos, “Don’t bother. Nobody cares. Don’t get up. Don’t call, just let them be. Relax, rest your eyes.” Well, screw that.

So, I decided to take a page from Susan and James’s songbook. I looked up my best friend through high school, a really cool guy who’s been out of touch for 53 years. 

That’s P.K., my second oldest friend, extant. His WWII carrier pilot dad called him Punk Kid or just P.K. for short. Shades of The Great Santini and no shit. So, it stuck. Our re-connection was successful and, man, it was just like going home.

Once again, 1962, that pivotal yesteryear (gone girl Marilyn Monroe, Cuban Missile Crisis, John Glenn) saw my parents dragging my whimpering ass away from my friends and girlfriend 25 miles across Houston to a fancy new house they built. 

That was in order for me to attend a brand new high school way out on the western fringe of the city. It was supposedly a “better” high school than the one we left in working class East End. I was 14 and miserable, couldn’t drive yet and never even saw Linda again. But I got lucky. Right off the bat.

On my very first day in the new school, in the first period class, the Speech teacher asked us to stand by our desks, introduce ourselves and tell everyone what we did over the summer. Did not know a single soul. We all robotically did as we were told except the kid sitting directly beside me on the next row. He got up and marched to the front of the class and performed his kinetic impression of a Jonathan Winters skit. 

That’s when I was vividly reminded of what a bunch of cockroaches sound like when you turn on the light in the kitchen. It’s sort of a feathery foot scoot instantly known to anyone who’s lived in Houston or tried to. The kid nailed it and, horror stricken, we all shivered in delight. God he was funny.

The class went wild as the smartass marched back to his seat, turned and grinned at me. My own grin nearly caused permanent damage to my face. Maybe it did. That was P.K., my best friend in high school, or maybe ever and, from that very moment on, hands down the funniest human being I’ve ever encountered; stage, screen or school parking lot. One of the smartest too.

And, like I said, he could be a good imitator beside being a highly original talent. One time in ’63 he brought his guitar to school and said, “Hey Branyan, listen to this.” He started banging on the strings and “singing.” 

After about 10 seconds I said, “Whoa, Whoa, Jesus, P.K. That sounds like shit!”

He said, “No really. Name’s Bob Dylan. That’s how he sings.” 

“Nobody sings like that,” I said, missing the mark by a Nobel Prize. 

P.K. and I also had Geography together with Mrs. Frizzell. Together we were a hard handful for the poor lady, always pulling off some adolescent prank. But she was good woman and a fair teacher, and I think she liked us in spite of her exasperated sighing. She had a high nasal voice with a little honk that was strangely endearing but in a slightly annoying kind of way if you didn’t love her like we did. 

A guy like P.K. could have torn her to pieces with that and I’m sure he was tempted, but he’s good natured with nice people and he laid off. I’ll bet a cookie she often entertained her husband with tales of P.K.’s antics, honking up a storm.

We met a pretty girl in that class named Sue who liked him a lot but not me. She thought I was in the way or too good an influence on him, or something. Who knows? Trust me though, she wasn’t nearly as cute when she leveled her death ray stare my way. But P.K. fancied her and, discretion being the better part of valor, I never said an unkind word to her. My enjoying life dominated my darker, more suicidal impulses.

So, Sue got away with it, me keeping my cool. And, I did love the maps that came into my life in that class. I am a map freak now, a bit of a geography freak, a traveller and Google Maps are a blessing to me. A fine way to travel a long way on a tight budget. I’lI zoom down to a street scene in the Bronx or Calcutta or even a sand dune in the Sahara, anything that crosses my mind. Pyramids? Well, there they are! I’ve got a first class berth on the Google Express and a bluetooth mouse goin’ clickety clack, Jack. Great tool.

Up To No Good In 1962

I will admit to still struggling with naming all the African countries on a blank border map. Still can’t do it and never will be able to. Can’t keep up with the revolutions. And Delaware always takes me a second or two extra.

When we had S/V Alchemy, I loved poring over the nautical charts and plotting long and, sadly, unrequited long distance courses across the Gulf to the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Azores and over to the Med. I researched seasonal wind and current patterns and tried to plot rhumb lines keeping the apparent wind driving the boat well aft of its beam. Best to keep a big sea a following sea and quartering a little too when you can. Often more distance to sail, true. But less sinking.

So, thank you for the maps and all that Mrs. Frizzell. Kisses.

Four years after high school, we got back together in Houston’s Montrose, a place back then where you could really travel just by lying on your shag carpet looking up at the bead curtain. Both of us got hit pretty bad from our travels in Vietnam; P.K. shot up as a 101st Airborne Army Ranger/Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) platoon commander. 

All of it was hard tough duty, his missions equivalent to those of Force Recon in the Marines, perhaps with a tad more gunfire. Slightly different mission. But, after all that we were both still above ground, back together and it was 1969. We closed out the decade with a lot of fun and high times. Some of it legal. None of it criminal, at least in the mostly accepted moral sense. Nowadays anyway.

Speaking of travel, think of having your own personal, lightning fast Robin Williams. Jokes weren’t P.K.’s thing. It was all stream of consciousness imagery, mind travel in big loops, kind of close up fish-eyed distortions that bent reality into one bizarre scene after another. Little fugues of insanity dancing up to and over the line like Fantasia’s lady hippo in her tutu but even better. Crazy better, funnier and never, ever G-Rated like Disney. 

One time in my smoky, bead-curtained apartment, P.K. got on a roll and got one idiot, Mike, laughing so hard he started crawling to get away. P.K. walked slowly beside him, leaning down and machine-gunning him with nonstop surreal absurdities. Finally, the sap collapsed on his face, helpless as a baby and, braying like a donkey, pissed himself. I was laughing almost as hard as Mike, but fortunately there was only one mess to clean up.

Comedic assault and battery is what it was. Who knew of such a thing? Mike was lucky P.K. didn’t put him down for real that night. Really, the guy was almost murdered by humor. Some time later P.K. pulled me aside and told me to ditch the guy. Thought he was a phony and was pushing too many liberal political ideas down my throat. 

No problem about the liberal ideas (my nature), but Mike was a phony alright. He was actually a rightwing, even reactionary, opportunist scavenging the 60’s counterculture for its low hanging fruit. Much worse, he later passed himself off as a Vietnam war hero though he never even served in the military, much less a war zone. He was 4-F. This guy, “Iron Mike,” died young at 49 wrapped up in a stinking shroud of stolen valor. His third wife, poor lady, never knew. Fuck him.

The kind of black gallows humor you’d see on TV’s M.A.S.H. is common among combat soldiers and marines of all nationalities. But P.K. could take it much darker and funnier than Hawkeye. He’d often go where polite company emphatically could not go, but I’d laugh and laugh at the surreal and lurid images he conjured up. 

It was kind of a private thing, and God help me it was funny even if it doesn’t sound funny. Like the insane elaboration of a dead and very bloody Vietcong soldier presenting himself to a squeamish Buddha. Well, you had to be there. Vietnam, I mean. “Honor? Gladly to the brave enemy,” P.K. would say in all seriousness, “but no mercy asked or given. Either side.”

The last time I saw P.K. was in 1970. He’d gotten married and had a baby, a “rugrat” he called the kid. I went off to Australia for five or six months and when I got back, he was back in the Army with two more combat tours and a 20 year career ahead of him. His calling as a soldier. To me, he’d vanished without a trace.

P.K.’s dad and George H.W. Bush were the two youngest Navy carrier pilots in WWII. Like father like son, P.K. piloted “Huey” Cobra helicopter gunships and lightly armed reconnaissance fixed wing aircraft in his latter two ‘70s tours. This was after our fun in ’69-’70 where we did not get arrested. Later, as a civilian engineer, he went on to a subsequent career as Safety Director for a nuclear power plant. Somehow he also managed to be commander of a Civil Air Patrol unit and police chief for a small town. 

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I thought about the idea of ‘letting sleeping dogs lie’ because I hadn’t talked to him in 53 years. But, I could visualize Susan and James frowning and wagging their index fingers at me. So, I enlisted Dahna’s forensic skills to find out where he was assuming he was still kicking. I figured he was since I knew for certain that he was especially hard to kill. Sure enough, she found him in Nebraska of all places. Even so, I sat on it awhile until she said, “Write to him, for God’s sake. I want to meet him.”

Cather’s icy landlocked Nebraska didn’t make sense since P.K.’s most iconic image was as a cool breeze, blonde surfer dude with an eight foot Gordie board sticking out of the other seat of his white ’59 MGA 1500: black interior, black ragtop, black racing stripe. 

Anyway, I finally sent a card to the Nebraska address Dahna found and wrote, “I don’t know if you’re the man I’m looking for, but …” The next thing I knew, the phone rang and I was transported right back to high school and having a ball. That familiar voice, even if growly now, and that unique whatever the hell it is. Fifty three years? Nonsense. I’m finding out that time really doesn’t exist if you don’t overthink it.

We had a lot to talk about, as he said, face-to-face. Ironically, we thought about making a trip in the Arctic Fox up through Nebraska even before I found P.K. We intended to go to the Badlands in South Dakota, then north to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. 

From there the plan was to head up and over into Ontario’s Thunder Bay on Lake Superior then hop around over to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, cross the famed Mackinac Bridge and head south to soak up some classic Detroit iron nostalgia at the car museums. Then, a most important stop to see our old friends, Tom and Karen in Ft. Wayne. [See archived post: A Pineapple in the Desert https://trailwriters.com/2019/05/ – scroll down]—We’d made about half of the reservations when Dahna, while looking out the window said, “Should we be leaving this place for a whole month or longer during this crazy heat wave?” I didn’t have to look at the dying pecan trees and the crispy brown grass to get it. Two years of “severe-to-exceptional” drought plus the interminable record heat potentially put our place, along with much of the planet, in the crosshairs of an explosive wildfire.

We had “good”, paid up insurance but, you know, c’mon man as Joe might say. Sometimes you think it’s good until you make a claim. Those pages of indecipherable, fine print babblegab aren’t there for our benefit. I follow the writing of a old guy my age who lost everything in the terrible Paradise, California fire, and it’s one of those things no amount of insurance can really cover unless you’re an arsonist crook. Which, I might add, I’m probably not.

I’m learning more about the baking earth I live on, so I wasn’t too surprised when a freak F-1 tornado ripped through our place clobbering our pecan orchard and oak trees. We’re still cleaning up the mess several months later, so far stacking over three cords of logs that once produced Burketts, the best pecans in Texas. And the big post oaks? Don’t even ask.

But, we’d just gone to a lot of trouble to install a couple of circulating fans behind the camper’s refrigeration and all systems were GO. Still, we decided to cancel. No RV this time. The big midwest/Canada loop would have to wait. I wasn’t about to miss P.K. though, so we shrunk the big trip down to a surgical five night AirBnB strike to hang out close to where he lives, not too far from Omaha.

Total driving miles to go see my favorite punk kid was pushing 800 miles, a one day straight shot P.K. considers a fun walk in the park with a pretty lady beside him. That would be his wife M.L. That’s short for “Milliliter” (yes, mL) who’s little and cute as a bug. I also live with a beautiful woman that still likes me well enough to “suggest” an intermediate stop near Wichita. “That’s too far,” she said. “We’re stopping halfway.” So we certainly did, unfortunately.

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Since America is apparently a violent place literally dripping with freedom, the doors in most newer motels built in the last few decades only open inward to locked corridors. That’s for more security and less lawsuits from grieving family members. They’re accessible only by pass key or code and they generally work better if you know the proper four letter incantation. 

Our quirky 47 pound husky, Sacha, hates hallways and won’t go in one unless carried in with her “lifting harness.” That’s why my partially-torn rotator cuff hates them too because 47 pounds is a lot heavier than it used to be.

Thinking ahead about all this, Dahna worked hard to find an old style courtyard motel with exterior doors that dump you directly into the parking lot. Sacha tends to be able trot into these rooms without my assistance. Indeed, Dahna did find one near Wichita and I’ll say right out that it wasn’t the absolute worst place we ever stayed. 

That’s not saying much considering the zillion of motel rooms we’ve stayed in. Right before we got there, P.K. sent a text, “Can you smell the prairie yet?” I answered back, “We can smell Nebraska, but we’re still in Kansas.” We were close to the motel and that’s probably what we were smelling. 

BTW, Nebraska smells just fine as it turns out, but producing those famous Omaha steaks does put a little parfum de bovine in the air. Nothing you won’t sniff out in Comanche passing through after your navigation goes down and you’re wandering around lost in central Texas.

If Dahna’s motel choice gave Satan a chance to offer us a preview of our possible afterlife, her choice of our AirBnb was divine. But first we had to get there. Roadtrip! To me, a roadtrip has nothing to do with lugging a big RV down the road pissing off all the Mad Max drivers behind you. That’s more like an expedition with a lot of parts.

Nope. A road trip is about blasting down the highway in an open convertible, wild at heart. Like P.K. in a leather flight jacket or Nicholas Cage in snakeskin. Unfortunately, I sold my last convertible in 1977, so we had to make do with our stodgy Outback. It does have a turbocharged engine and I wound it out good passing RVs, trucks, and old farmers a few times on the two lane going to Wichita Falls. If you see an army green Outback blow by you doing 100 mph, that’s probably me and you need to speed up Bub.

James worries about this: “What if you have a blowout?” I tap in a little putt, “We all die,” I smile cheerily. It’s funny because he grumbles at me for driving way too slow in the city. “Not even the speed limit,” he mutters. True, I can go from A.J. Foyt on the highway to a hunched over little old lady in the blink of a city limit sign. Terrified of parking lots too. Dangerous MFers.

Those 150 miles north from Comanche to I-44 make for a very nice prelude to the Great Plains where Nebraska is reputed to be. It’s a pretty part of Texas, no kidding. You drive through rolling hills and forested mesas made of prehistoric, lithified sea shell. Plus you get to cruise right through Graham, a very pretty little Texas town where our good friends Lorey and Ron live.

The first time we drove through on main drag Elm Street, Dahna said, “Why don’t we live here?” I said, “You tell me. Why don’t we live here?” That’s a good question, and one you might ask yourself if you drive through. Really, Google it and plop down on Elm or wherever and you’ll see what I mean. 

Plus, two of the finest people on the planet live in Graham. Lorey and I have been close since we first laid eyes on each other in the summer of 1986. Instant and strong bonds over Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” and Flannery O’Connor even though the great writer hated “… the piano and all of its works.” I love the piano and played it okay back in my two-handed days.

Lorey used to make me lasagna every winter but got out of it by moving 100 miles away. Then Becky filled in for her but she got out of it by moving up to Illinois for God’s sake. No lasagna for me. Until, that is, Dahna took pity on me and spent the better part of a day making five candlelight meals and it was, like Lorey and Becky’s, molto delizioso. Grazie amore mio.

We wanted to stop at Ron and Lorey’s for the quick cup of coffee she always makes just right, hot and strong, maybe stay the night. But we picked the exact instant she tested positive for Covid. We remembered the bad press our ancestors got from generously giving the Native Americans blankets awhile back. And, we didn’t want to take any microscopic riders along to Nebraska. Just ourselves, Sacha, and pecans. So, we tossed off a wave to our friends as we went by, three miles away, and continued north to Wichita Falls.

Well hell, the next thing I know, we’re in Oklahoma of which I remember nothing and then we hit Kansas. A place I’ve always liked even if its politicians are nearly as goofy as our good ol’ boys here in Texas. One reason I like it so much is because the people are crazy friendly, at least in my experience. Most of my experience is right here in the Lone Star State and I know a thing or two about friendliness. That’s for sure. But Kansas. Boy! Love it even if there is something the matter with it according to one crank I read.

Another thing I love is this little Kansas destination town called Lucas. You really should go there. No b.s. Somewhere in a ladies room stall in N.Y.C. it says, “For a good time go to Lucas, Kansas.” It’s all about the quirky art forms that thrive there in a wide variety of extrusions. We visited coming home from Banff and fell in love with the place: [See Fall Trip, Part 5: https://trailwriters.com/2019/10/ ] 

Populated with less than 400 wonderful nut cases, it also boasts a fantastic meat market/deli and you can order its stuff from anywhere: Brant’s Market (Google and read the reviews!). We’ll place another order in December.

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We didn’t get an early start when we left the ‘motel’ in Haysville headed for the AirBnB in Omaha’s exurb near P.K.’s house. I know I’ve been grousing about this damn motel, but later that night P.K. reminded me of something I kind of knew from the clientele hanging around. He said, “Yeah, those places are mostly for the trades guys away from home on a job, TDY.” In spite of several careers in executive positions, I was happy to find my old pal hadn’t tracked completely down the straight and narrow conservative path. He was a union man deep at heart and a member of several. 

That jibed with what I remembered; a common touch from a guy born into a famously rich Texas ranching family. A family full of veteran commissioned officers, combatants like himself, willing to run straight to the guns, bone spurs or no. We didn’t do politics in high school or even after our Vietnam tours; his first one that is. Right about the time I got discharged from the Philadelphia Naval Hospital in November, 1968, I was astonished to find that the ‘Greatest Generation’ finally got talked into buying that used car from Nixon. 

He convinced them he was going to unite the country around ‘law and order’ and his secret plan to end the war. All bullshit swallowed whole by people who were pretty darn savvy otherwise. At that point he hadn’t gone on to prove what a crook he actually was yet, and we didn’t talk much about him. I even gave Nixon a chance. When he took the first step toward privatizing the Post Office, I thought, ‘Well shoot, why not?’ I was still a kid then.

The country was torn up over Vietnam to be sure but the angry and fearful 55 year long (so far) backlash against the kids’ liberal counterculture wasn’t yet in full swing. The terrible assassinations were still fresh and the earthquake of equal rights for women, African and Native Americans, gays and other groups was beginning to rumble louder.

But P.K. and I were young and still running with the optimism of the age that tracked naïvely alongside its violence. Even though we were still recuperating from our wounds, we felt good. There was sex, drugs, and the best damn Rock ’n Roll ever produced. That, and all the rest to come greatly unsettled our powerful, and once liberal, New Deal parents. 

Cynics like Nixon and his metastasizing spawn understood the value of those dark emotions and mastered the means to harness them. Several successive Democratic administrations warily, then quite merrily, yielded to the pressure and signed off on a lot of trickle down baloney. Losing most of their working class base, they were too stupid to realize that they were no more than Wall Street’s B Team.

Think about the poor electorate desperately seesawing back and forth from Nixon to Biden. Left, Right, Left, Right; whiplash PTSD nation wide. And then a cool breeze black president flipping to Trump? Really? In America? Your mom was right when she stroked your hair and looked over your shoulder to the horizon. Literally anybody can be president of this crazyass place.

Well, The New Deal bus is just about running on empty with the ancien régime back at the wheel grinding the gears of our aged Enlightenment rattletrap. Still, that’s what’s really driving now, if you can call it that, by staring wistfully in the rear view mirror while headed for a tree. Old Joe’s arthritic fingers re-programmed the GPS for Hyde Park on the Hudson, but now he’s back in the swaying restroom with urgency issues trying to keep his balance. Hang on Joe.

From a simple start in the 1970s these now ascendant Tory monarchists eagerly factory farmed that middle class golden goose for all she was worth. They couldn’t get over the vast wealth and power they so quickly glommed onto and successfully guarded. They were kind enough to leave us a mountain of poop and a dead goose and here we are now, grasping at mixed metaphors.

Anyway, P.K. and I found ourselves oddly enough agreeing about a lot of this stuff on the phone. Still, we seem to be speaking to each other across the decades from different political planets. But our friendship is as solid as ever and we keep spinning in toward each other with friendly little digs that start like, “Don’t get your panties in a twist, but Trump …” or “You’re gonna hate this brother, but Biden … ” But it was all built on the bond between two kids in that distant Speech class. 

Friends, the best thing there is; even better than the Pooper Scooper. (Oh, I forgot about sex there for a moment) We drew a line in the sand but not like at the Alamo. Our line was one not to be crossed with sabers flashing to perpetuate liberty or slavery or whatever that was about. Actually, it’s more like a fence we lean against and talk across like two close and longtime pals who married twin sisters and live next door. P.K. said, “You’re not going to change my mind and I’m not going to change yours, so let’s forget about all that and fire up the grill.” I said, “Yup.” 

It’s not that he doesn’t much care about what’s going on. He damn sure does, and he’s really pissed off. So am I. We don’t necessarily agree on who did what to who, but that’s secondary, maybe tertiary. We have a lot of other stuff to talk about that’s more important to us, inside the thing.

In the early afternoon we crossed the state line into Nebraska.

(To Be Continued)

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