Night Life in Happy Jack’s: El Niño’s coming! El Niño’s coming!

IMG_6070by Dell Franklin

Monday evening happy hour in notorious Happy Jack’s in Morro Bay and the usual crew along the bar—detached from the poolroom regulars and those scattered up front—and the topic of discussion is “El Niño,” the storm that pounded the area with a touch of disaster a few years back.

“No use stickin’ around here when El Niño hits,” states Eugene, a fisherman, “Cuz there ain’t gonna be no fishing. Might as well take a vacation—or go work at somethin’ else.”

“This El Niño’s supposed to be three times worse than the one in ’83,” claims Maggie, a 50ish woman with excess heft in her ass and bosom. “And IT damn near wiped us out.”

Chubby Estelle, Maggie’s fellow chain-smoker and best friend, says, “Don’t I remember! It rained 58 straight days, didn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” says Ed Stone, who lives with Estelle and has been on the wagon for months due to almost dying of alcohol poisoning and sips soda with lime and gazes at the Keno screen even though he’s a broke gambling addict helping to pay rent collecting cans. “I believe it wiped out the Cayucos pier and damaged some piers up and down the coast. I believe Cayucos was flooded, if I remember.”

Maggie nods. “Main drag was closed off, businesses flooded out.”

“I might go to Florida, try and fish there,” Eugene muses, holding up his empty mug. “Maybe try the Keys.”

“The Keys is nothin’ but a buncha goddamn queers,” offers Rafe Monk, known as One-eyed Pitbull, who hunkers over his chain of numerous keys, cigarettes, ash tray, change from a hundred dollar-bill, and a Stoli driver in a bucket.

“You can’t escape El Niño in Flor-uh-duh,” says Estelle. “El Niño’s got the whole world by the balls.”

You got that right,” Maggie says sourly.

Estelle giggles, grins, holds up her empty shot glass. She’s already survived a bout with cancer and started breeding at around 14 back in some hollow in Kentucky. Her kids are institutional parasites.

“I’ll tell yah one thing,” says Eugene, a strapping, rumpled man with swollen, enflamed eyes. “Fishin’s all haywire. Water’s so damn warm the albacore are only a mile off shore. Half the fleet’s down from Oregon and Washington pullin’ ‘em out like minnows. Hell, they’re half jumpin’ into yer boat. All those tuna fisherman out in the middle of the Pacific, they’re scrapin’ to survive.”

“Whole world’s cock-eyed,” agrees Maggie, squashing out another butt. I light her a new one. She coughs. “Goddamn pollution and the ozone layer,” she mutters, and coughs.

Estelle nods gravely. “Global warmin’, they call it, love.”

Stone nods, too, filling out a Keno card. “We’re gettin’ our comeuppance, it seems. Maybe we destroyed the goose laid the golden egg. Bad karma after hoggin’ all the resources on the planet and attacking dirt-poor, third-world countries.”

“Awh bullshit,” grouses Monk, a shrimper. Lacking front teeth, his incisors are formidable and his one eye flashes like a laser in a thick, mash-nosed mug topped off by a watch cap. “All them little bastards been leeching off us for years. Fuck ‘em.”

“I’ll tell yah one thing about tuna,” says Eugene. “That is one gnarly fish. You pull one of ‘em up and he’ll look yah right in the eye and tell yah it ain’t gonna be no picnic, he’ll kick yer ass. I gotta lotta respect for that fish.”

“There ain’t gonna be many of the poor fishies left the way this El Niño is going,” laments Estelle.

“Water’s so warm,” nods Maggie. “It’s killin’ ‘em all off.”

“I feel sorry for them poor people live up north on the Russian River, the way THEY get flooded out every year, with just a little bitty rain. They might be run out to sea.”

“Serves “em right,” says Walt, a fisherman at the corner of the bar, hunched over a draft. “There’s just a bunch-a queers up there anyhow. All them Frisco fags got the AIDS. It’s God’s way at getting’ back at ‘em for doin’ things ass-backwards and spreadin’ disease to normal folks.”

Monk, on perhaps his third pack of non-filter Camels, spits tobacco shreds off his tongue, and nods. “I laugh my ass off every time those butt-stuffers get flooded out.”

“You catchin’ any fish lately, Walt?” asks Eugene.

“Hell no. Boat’s down. I’m just drinkin.’”

Sheila, around 30, and only a little jiggly and nubile and fair-skinned like a Botticeli painting, always broke and looking for a job but picky about taking one, says, “I remember El Niño. It rained so hard every day we got washed out of our house. We got evacuated and had to live with my aunt in Atascadero.” She makes a glum face. “Atascadero sucks.”

“I’ll tell yah one thing,” Eugene says, holding up his empty beer mug and glancing down at Walt. “There’s no rush like hookin’ onto a 30-pound tuna and fightin’ that sonofabitch. He’ll come right out of the water and half onto your boat and look you in the eyeball and tell yah it’s gonna be hell to pay. He’ll tear you apart.”

Walt grunts. “Yeh yeh.”

“Whyn’t yah come out with me and do some real work and make some real bank, Eugene? I’m about fed up to the gills with One-Trip Dick and Weasel Frazier and his so-called shot-off dick. Been lookin’ for both of ‘em for two days. I can’t pay ‘em more than half their wages or I won’t see ‘em for a week, they might end up in jail.”

“I’m doin’ okay down at Virgil’s, Rafe. Make decent tips baiting up the tourists. Plus, I score a woman time to time.”

“Suit yourself.”

“I hear El Niño’s bobbing on the equator and takes up a third of the world,” Maggie states. “It’s like this monster jellyfish of hot gas, just comin’ at us!”

“I bet we get washed out,” Sheila says, appearing personally aggrieved. She loves drama. She had a relationship with this maggot named Jerome who sat in with certain bands as some sort of guitarist and tried to get on here as a bartender before I sabotaged his chances with the owner. He dealt drugs, was one minute deeply in love with Sheila and the next being a playboy, so she broke up with him and paraded this dullard named Marvin in front of him, reportedly the first guy Sheila dated in ages with a real job. This dork never had a woman devour him like Sheila, and when Jerome got jealous and wooed her back, this dork went crazy, broke into the pad Sheila and Jerome shared and beat Jerome up and set his long precious curly hair on fire and disappeared from Morro Bay. The whole ordeal was on the local TV news, with Sheila putting on a good show of emotion. “I hope I don’t hafta move back to Atascadero. They only got two bars and thirty-five churches.”

I keep mixing drinks and pouring beer and pushing Keno cards and emptying ash trays and mopping down the bar. “And the waves!” spouts Estelle, gloomy. “They’ll be like…tidal waves.”

“Tsunamis,” Stone corrects.

“…They’ll wash all our itty bitty houses off the beach. If it flooded Cayucos in ’83, how’s it gonna be if it’s three times worse?”

“What I hear is it’s five to ten times worse,” Eugene says. “It’ll be so rough at sea, nobody’ll try and fish.”

“Who gives a shit,” Walt says. “Christ, I’ve survived worse. It’s only a goddamn storm.”

“We had three feet of water in our house,” Sheila is telling Estelle and Maggie, who sort of look after her, though Maggie, unlike Estelle, will not loan her money or buy her a drink or put her up for a night and castigates Estelle in private for doing so. Sheila, after more ups and downs with the maggot Jerome, actually married a Mexican immigrant who held three jobs and ran off with him to Las Vegas and came back a year later skinny as a rail and claiming she had a mysterious disease no doctor had ever heard of or cured. “Everything I owned was ruined or destroyed. I had to start all over.”

“I hope it’s not like what you see on TV when all them rivers overflow, like the Mississippi,” Estelle says. “All them doggies and kitties on rooftops and volunteers savin’ the poor, scared little things, and everybody’s house underwater and all their treasures ruined. That’s so sad.” Near tears, she holds up her empty shot glass, and I fill it with her usual—cinnamon Schnapps. I pat her hand. “Wouldn’t that be terrible if it happened to US? It always happens to THEM, but I don’t want it to happen to us, because we’re all friends and we LOVE each other.”

“Them goddamn queers up in Frisco gonna be scurryin’ like a pack of rats,” says Walt, managing his first corroded smile. “I got a good notion to go on up there and pick a few of ‘em off with my Remington. Damn El Niño’s probly gonna cost me huntin’ season anyhow. Shit.”

“I’ll tell yah another thing,” says Eugene. “You go up to Alaska and fish salmon, those big bastards’ll pull yer ass right on outta the goddamn boat! They’ll come right on outta the water and give you the evil eye like that goddamn man-eating monster in that movie, JAWS. I ain’t bullshittin’ about that.”

“Settle down for Chrissake,” Monk grouses out of the side of his mouth. “That goddamn movie was bullshit anyway.”

“Hollywood faggots don’t know doodly squat about the goddamn fishin’ industry,” Walt tells Monk. Before getting his own boat, Walt worked for Monk but couldn’t take it, joining a long list of deck hands who couldn’t deal with Rafe’s hard-bitten and tyrannical ways. He lifts his empty mug and scratches the ears of his majestic and powerful Chesapeake who is beloved on the waterfront and known to dive to the deepest of depths to fetch anything Walt desires. “Movies are bullshit anyway. I ain’t gone to one in thirty years.”

Monk motions to Sheila, who’s a few stools down. “Come on over here, doll.” Sheila raises off her stool and wiggles that tender ass and places her hands across her ample chest like a helpless little girl. He hands her a sawbuck. “Get me another pack of Camels and have one yourself.” She pecks him on the cheek, takes the bill and heads for the cigarette machine beside the video games. “Give her a shot and a beer,” Monk tells me. “And gimme a refill.” I mix his drink, pour out a shot of Jack and a beer for Sheila, and when she returns with his cigarettes, monk hands her another sawbuck. “Go play somethin’ on the juke, somethin’ to drown out the bullshit in this shit-hole.” He flashes his incisors. She bolts her shot like a longshoreman and heads to the juke.

While Sheila pumps the juke, an apparition materializes through the back door in the person of long, lanky, heavy-bearded Joe Farraday, in his usual pea coat and watch cap. Monk glances at him with venom, sips his drink, turns away as Farraday sidles up beside Walt, who motions me to give Farraday a beer. Farraday pets Hugo, the Chesapeake, who’s up on his hind legs licking his face, and flashes me a smile that’s more like a dog either sneering or growling before attacking. He has worked on and off for Monk for years, been fired at least twenty times, has actually fought Monk here in Happy Jack’s and on his boat.

After I serve Farraday, who shakes my hand and addresses me as “honey,” I wander down to Monk, who’s waved me over.

“Give the worthless rotten prick a shot of Jack,” he says, still not looking in his direction. “Think he’s been in jail. Probly the best accommodations he’s had in years.” He puffs his cigarette. “He’ll end up eating his own shit.”

I lean against the bar holding a shot of chilled vodka and watch Estelle and Sheila fairly swoon as they attached themselves to Farraday with huge, warm hugs. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his mate, Wilbur, a very needy chocolate lab he rescued from the animal shelter. He is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad, The Ball Player’s Son.

Favorite Cup

Silence, mixed media on canvas (16" x 20") by Donald Archer. ww.donaldarcher.com

Silence, mixed media on canvas (16″ x 20″) by Donald Archer. www.donaldarcher.com

It was his favorite cup. An old-fashion ceramic mug, plain, off-white. Thick. The kind you might drink from at an all-night diner in the working part of town. He was drinking coffee from it when she came to pick up the baby. He walked out to her car with the sleepy child cradled on one arm, carrying the coffee in his other hand. He put the cup down on the car’s rear bumper then opened the door and gently placed the baby into his carrier and buckled him in.

A strange man passed on the sidewalk, disheveled and drunk.

They watched him go by and did not speak.

He bent to double-check the baby’s fastenings and caught the sweet feral scent from the child’s silken hair. Sleeping already. It was hard for him to let the child go, difficult to close that car door. She had a new car. Nicer.

Next weekend? he asked.

I don’t know. We’ll see what the schedule is like. I’ll call you mid-week, she said, getting in behind the wheel. She started the car and did not look his way again.

He stood at the curb and watched them drive away. She turned the corner down at the end of the street and something flew from the car like a flushed bird. He heard it clink on the asphalt and saw it shatter. His cup. He started toward it and then stopped. Why bother, he reasoned. It was hopeless. Too many small fragments to gather up and put back together.

~Steven Bird

Night Life in Happy Jack’s: Beer Can Bessie

by Dell Franklin

Around 1993

Beer Can Bessie’s in the house. She only comes in on my shifts because she hates our three female bartenders and hates 98 percent of the crowd who drink in Happy Jack’s. Bessie is a formidable woman, the sister of four NFL lineman-sized brothers incapable of holding a civil conversation. Bessie is vituperative. She always sits at the first stool by the front swinging doors away from everybody and vituperates our clientele.

Before I could take my first sip of beer, she said, “Who the fuck are you, asshole?”

Before I could take my first sip of beer, she said, “Who the fuck are you, asshole?”

I first met Bessie at the saloon in Cayucos, where I live, and seven miles north of Morro Bay, where I work at Happy Jack’s. At one time Bessie lived with a ponderous, ornery, beer-guzzling, animal-shooting, profane cowboy named Hog Simmons, who had a prodigious gut and the largest forearms in creation and drove a dirt-encrusted pickup with an unfriendly cattle dog pacing in the bed. He wore the same sweat-stained outfit coated with dust days at a time and God knows why Bessie, a fastidious woman, a registered nurse, was with him, but then one day after tongue-lashing Hog she smashed her beer can on his soiled salt-stained 10-gallon hat and knocked it off and squashed his beer can against his skull and stormed out.

I’d met her a year or so before she throttled Hog Simmons in front of everybody in the Cayucos Tavern. I’d only recently moved to Cayucos and sat down beside her on the only available stool up front, facing the long bar during a busy happy hour, and right off felt the unfriendliness and animosity in the woman, and, before I could take my first sip of beer, she said, “Who the fuck are you, asshole?”

“I’m Dell,” I told her. “Who are you?”

“None of your goddamn business. Who said you could sit down beside me and think yer hot shit, huh?”

“I don’t think I’m hot shit. And this is the only remaining stool in the bar. Besides, it’s a free country, last time I heard, so I can sit where I want.”

“Oh, so you’re a cocky little struttin’ peacock, huh?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“You don’t look like much of a man to me. You look like a poor excuse for a man, from what I can see. You don’t look like you’ve done a real day’s work in your life. I bet you can’t catch a fish or ride a horse or skin a deer, can yah?”

“No.” I drank my beer.

“I thought so. A pussy. Not a hair on your ass.” She took out a cigarette. I grabbed a book of matches from a nearby basket and tried to light her cigarette, but she ignored my flame and lit her own with a Bic. “I bet you’re one of those lonely selfish slimy begging bachelors who can’t get a woman and can’t get laid, huh?”

CITYLIFE.BEERCANBESSIE2

I decided to cease trying to defend myself or reason with her. It was a bad time for me anyway.

“I’m not slimy.”

“Probably beat yer tiny little pud every night and cry yerself to sleep because women can’t stand you.”

I drank my beer.

“I can see why. You’re a pathetic excuse for a real man. I bet yer a faggot. You a faggot?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I say yer a faggot. What do you think about that?”

“I think you’re entitled to your opinion, lady, but you really don’t know me well enough to accuse me of being a homosexual. After all, you’ve just met me.”

“I can spot a faggot a mile off, in a second. One look at you and I know no woman’d have a thing to do with you and you had no choice but to be a faggot even if you didn’t wanna be, but you wanna be, I know what I see, and yer a damn queer.”

“What proof do you have?” I drank my beer.

“I don’t need proof. I think you can’t get it up with women. Yer a dogdick. I say yer a penis-puffer. Yer the most unmanly man in this squalid bar, and believe me, the competiton for unmanliness is big. In fact, yer like a girl. Drink yer beer, little girl, ha ha ha.”

Everybody along the bar was watching, enjoying the vituperation I was absorbing. She didn’t let up. I decided to cease trying to defend myself or reason with her. It was a bad time for me anyway. I’d been fired from the cab company after accumulating too many speeding tickets and getting into a fender-bender, was indeed womanless after striking out with the few available women in town, had no real friends in town, and Bessie sensed my vulnerability and pounced on me like a hungry animal.

When she finally wore down and stood to go, I quickly jumped up, grabbed her coat off her stool and held it open for her. She was reluctant to slip into it, but what could she do, especially when I was smiling at her in a manner indicating my understanding of her soul and appreciation of her vituperative skills? I waved the coat like a matador waving a cape in an inviting flourish, and she had no choice but to slip into it. I made sure she was very snug and bowed and said, “A pleasure to have made your acquaintance, madam. Hope to meet you again and continue our meaningful conversation.”

She was momentarily at a loss. “Yeh, that’ll be the day, bozo,” she grumbled, and hurried out. Then, after she 86’d the Cayucos Tavern, because they discontinued beer cans and Hog Simmons passed away, dying on his horse on the range of a heart attack due to eating meat every day of his life, morning, noon and night, she showed up at Happy Jack’s and did a double-take at the sight of me behind the bar.

“You’re the gentleman helped me into my coat,” she said.

“I’m not much of a gentleman,” I assured her. “But I am capable of old-fashioned courtliness when I run across a worthy and exceptional lady.”

So now we’re pals. I’m her adopted bartender through attrition. She sits down, says, “I’ll have a can of Bud, Dell.”

“We only have bottles, unless you buy a six-pack or case to go from the cooler, but you can’t drink ‘em in here.”

“A shit-hole like this has bottles? I’m impressed. Go ahead, gimme a goddamn bottle of Bud!”

I get her a bottle. “Bess, you sure are a vituperative woman.”

“You KNOW I know what that word means, don’tcha?” When I nod, she says, “Most of the dumb-asses in this snake pit, and that includes the bitches, have no clue what vituperative means.”

“Well, since you have no peer as a vituperator, it makes sense you of all people would know what vituperative means.”

“What I like about you, Dell, is you’re an intelligent man. I’ve known a few intelligent men, but they were wise-asses and punks. So I shit-canned ‘em. What I like about you, so far, is yer just a friend and I don’t have to find out what a wise-ass punk you are and shit-can you. What I don’t like about you is you work in this hell-hole of a dive that doesn’t have cans of Bud.”

She takes out a cigarette, lets me light it with our matches. She blows out some smoke, surveys the crowd, which is composed of many fishermen here in Morro Bay and their coteries. Bessie has a grating voice that carries. “Yah know, Dell,” she says, “in a sea of worthless dogdicks and pathetic losers, a buncha latent macho homos, a crew of unemployable misfits, you don’t come off too badly. Don’t ever lose this job, cuz it’ll probably be your last.” §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his mate, Wilbur, a very needy chocolate lab he rescued from the animal shelter. He is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice and is currently working on a book about his dad, The Ball Player’s Son.

 

HEROIC AND KNIGHTLY CHAMPION

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I pick her up in the Fairlane and we go up on this hill overlookin’ town, by this old castle that is like a fort, back when folks lived off the land.

by Dell Franklin

Verona, Italy 1966

I figure somebody lookin’ after Paladin Johnson when they send his black ass to the 25th Army field hospital in Verona, Italy, the summer of l966, when troops is gettin’ bumped off by the bushel in ‘Nam.

I don’t know nothin’ about Italy. I only know my ghetto in Cleveland, Hough. I runnin’ in the streets, always in trouble, a mess for my momma to deal with, a bigger mess for my teachers to deal with, so finally they kick my ass out of school and judge tell me either I get my ass in the army or go to the slammer.

In the army, I bring with me some cocky street jive, wantin’ everybody know I’m a bad dude, but it ain’t long ‘fore them drill sergeants beat my ass down like I some kind of turkey, though I would never be a punk.

First time I get off post I just walk. It’s nothin’ like I picture in my head. So old, and crumbly, some places still broken up from bombs in the war. And the folks, these Italians, they like to sit around these cafes called TRATTORIAS and gabble and wave they hands, getting ’all riled, like everything a big deal.

Walkin’ through Verona nothin’ like walkin’ through white Cleveland, or downtown, where niggers all over the place and everybody look at you like you gon pull a job, snatch a purse, you know, bad news dude. In Verona, I one of the only black dudes walkin’ around, and Italians gawk at me like they curious, not scared, like they maybe wanna find out who I am and what I’m about.

Ain’t long before First Sergeant McCray got me trained all over the dispensary and put me in charge of the shot room, and that’s where I meet new trooper Thomas, we bros right off, he difficult, always scowlin’, actin’ bad, angry at white folks, readin’ Malcolm X. He bitch to McCray about honkies getting’ better duty and promotion, thinkin’ cuz McCray black he gonna give him a break, but Top don’t stand for no jive. Top treat me good, and he treat my white buds, Ruffner and DeSimone, good, too, cuz they stand-up and cool.

In fact, I got to know Maria DeRia, little lady work the post snack bar and bowlin’ alley, through these two honkies. When I go to the snack bar with Ruff and Dee for a burger, I got my eye on DeRia, workin’ behind the counter. She what you call pixie-cute, so tiny, not 5-foot-tall, older lady, maybe 30, but got her a fine little ass in that white uniform, and I always practice my Italian on DeRia, try and impress her, and I guess cuz I butcherin’ the language she think it funny, you know, cute, and she laugh, and give me extra fries with my burger, and when she smile and laugh them little lines around her eyes crinkle up and her whole face light up. She ain’t got perfect features, and she got a crooked tooth, but she beautiful and I know she sweet inside.

DeRia married, got her a 12-year-old girl. I find this out askin’ in my Italian. I don’t ever speak English to DeRia, though she speak some cuz she been workin’ this post snack bar 10 years.

Sometime Tom join me and Ruff and Dee at the bowlin’ alley, where they got dime beers. None of us bowl. Only four lanes. We go cuz DeRia workin’ at night. She give out bowlin’ shoes and sell beer and pop and snacks and make burgers. Only four stools at her little bar, and some time we all talkin’ to DeRia at the same time, butcherin’ Italian, teasin’ her, tellin’ her she sexy, and beautiful, I love you, caro mia, bella amore, and she laugh and tease back, she wear a nice skirt and sweater when she work the alley, and comb her short black hair and put on make-up, she know we like her a lot and all want her and we all bettin’ who gon sleep with her first, though ain’t no GI slept with this fine lady, so is the word on post. She a church woman. Catholic.

Well, one night I come in alone while everybody else working and bring her roses. DeRia look at these flowers, sniff them, hold them to her heart, and almost cry, and she say, “Johnson, you really love me, caro bello?”

“Si, Maria DeRia, mi bella.” I say. “Amore molto.” Then I make her laugh. She glowin’. I make her laugh again, and she still smellin’ them roses, and she look deep in me, and she say, “We make love tonight, Paladin. I like you very much. You are nicest American boy I know in all my time I work here.”

I go to the dispensary and get hold of Ruff and Dee, workin’ the graveyard, ask can I borrow the Ford Fairlane they own together and Dee flip me the keys. They don’t believe I got DeRia. I been in Verona a year and only been to two whores, both downtown. Ain’t no Italian chick goin’ out with me less I take the whole family along and they watchin’ like a hawk I don’t touch her.

So after DeRia close the alley she walk off post and I pick her up in the Fairlane and we go up on this hill overlookin’ town, by this old castle that is like a fort, back when folks lived off the land, and we got out two army blankets my two buds keep for such occasions, and DeRia and me make love. Man, she is a biddy thing, but all woman, and one hot kisser, she kiss me like no woman has, no tongue or anything like that, but just kissin’ and holdin’ and scratchin’ and bitin’ my lips, and when I inside her and kissin’ her pretty face she talkin’ to me, she yell AMORE, AMORE, oh, Paladin, AMORE, screamin’ that word when I come, and I know DeRia love me and I love her.

We start talkin’. She say her husband over 40 and fat, all he do is go to soccer games and argue soccer and drink espresso all day and vino at night and eat pasta in the little trattoria they own in their neighborhood. He too lazy work the trattoria. DeRia work days and nights on post and then she work the trattoria nights off while fatty drink and argue soccer, like this kind-a carryin’ on better than a woman.

Anyway, I drop DeRia off a block from home and I feelin’ so fine. I got my shot room where I boss. Topkick McCray in my corner. I get on with everybody, got two honkey friends like brothers. They slam my back and grinnin’ at me when I back after midnight, almost like family.

But Thomas, he angry, and scowlin’, sulkin’, say DeRia nothin’ but a white bitch, and we got at it, I pin his ass and wag a finger and he know I fuck him up, so he sag, and he angry with me, but that’s okay, cuz if he ain’t got nothin’ good to say, well, stay away.

Dee and Ruff, they let me borrow the Fairlane when I got nights off and DeRia sneak off, and we go to our hill and sip some vino from her bar and she cuddle right up to me, like she mine, and she is sweet, and so clean, and she love me and ain’t afraid to say so, she love me so much she cry every time after we make love, cuz she got to go home to old fatty, don’t touch her, don’t care about nothin’ but hangin’ out with his soccer buds.

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So now I diggin’ Verona. It is beautiful. A river run through it, and there’s this old coliseum downtown been bombed in the war. Across from this big old wide street with all kind-a traffic, you can sit at a café or trattoria on the Piazza Bra, which is like a promenade, and look at the coliseum, and hear the opera on summer nights. Piazza Bra go for blocks and ain’t nothin’ on it but cafes and trattorias with tables and chairs outside, and folks crowded up in ‘em. Folks walkin’ up and down the Piazza Bra past the tables, like they frontin’ at a parade. Girls arm and arm, girls and moms arm and arm, old folks and young folks arm in arm, even men arm and arm, jabberin’, wavin’ they hands. Back and forth.

Sometime, when the weather nice in the evening, I walk back and forth, only black dude, they all watchin’, but I don’t care, I diggin’ the ALFRESCO VIDA, big time, lookin’ for an empty table, though I can’t afford one, and one evening, when I paradin’, I hear a voice I know callin’ out: “Hey you, heroic and knightly champion, get your ass over here!”

I look over and it’s Dee and Ruff drinkin’ vino. They know me so well they call me heroic and knightly champion, which mean Paladin, the reason momma name me so.

I sit down. They drinkin’ Bardolino red vino cuz they makin’ cash on the side sellin’ smokes and gas and oil and whatever they get their hands on to Italians on the black market. I am their guest. A stiff waiter, all proper and dressed, puts a glass in front of me and pours me some vino. I am a black dude with two honkies and ain’t nobody else like us here and ain’t nobody got a problem with us. We are tight and cool. We talk and carry on. We get another bottle and feel the buzz and decide to visit DeRia half a mile away at her trattoria in the poor part of town.

The trattoria jammed with soccer crazies screamin’ at each other and wavin’ at the TV. DeRia see us and she look unhappy and worried, shake her head, but we go on up and order Bordolino and she ignore us. We see her hubby, fat, bald, loud, need a shave. We leave and DeRia won’t look at us, so next night at the alley I bring her red roses and she cry and that night we go to our hill and make love and she tell me she love me so much it break her heart. I feel the same. I wonder if when I go home there will ever be another woman in my heart like DeRia. I don’t think so, cuz there ain’t no woman in America like these Italian women. When they love you there ain’t no maybe so and it run deep, they don’t care about your color or how much bread you make or how cool your threads are or what you drivin’ down the street, they don’t be frettin’ over circumstances, they just love your ass forever.

Couple months before my discharge I’m thinkin’ about DeRia. She is my true love but she ain’t leavin’ her husband and kid. She a Catholic. I can’t take her home and I can’t stay here cuz there’s nothin’ in Italy if I ain’t in the army. Dee go home and Ruff go home and they GIVE me the Fairlane, cuz it ain’t worth much and they can’t afford take across the ocean. So DeRia and me, we goin’ hot and heavy. She get a day off and I get a day off and we take the Fairlane out to Lake Garda and drive all around this beautiful romantic lake, hills and mountains and terraces with vineyards all around us, stop and have vino in little towns like Riva and Garda City and Sermione, sit outside at cafes on the lake, everybody nice to us, and we take a blanket on some hill above the lake and make love under the sun, and DeRia, she cry and tell me, “Paladin, caro mio, you so bello, you like a Michelangelo statue in Rome, mi vida.” She cryin’, and cryin’, cuz I got to go home to America, and when I think about leavin’ Verona, and my gig in the shot room, and my car, and Lake Garda, and DeRia, it bust up my heart, cuz there ain’t nothin’ go home to that I like in Hough but momma, and family, but that’s all, ain’t nothin’back there but trouble, but I got no choice.

What I gon do? I can stay in the army, but then I go to Nam and get my ass shot, and I ain’t stayin’ in the army anyhow, cuz you got to kiss too many asses and they own your ass, all they do is fuck with you, like Topkick McCray tell me.

Top and Doc Graves, they say I should go back to school and be a nurse. “Use the GI bill,’ says Graves. “You are a smart man, Paladin. Don’t sell yourself short.”

Week before I leave I got no duties and DeRia cryin’ all the time. She cry when she see me in the snack bar, she cry when I come in the bowlin’ alley, she got to leave work and go cry, won’t come back ‘til I’m gone. We make love the night before I leave and she cryin’, hug me so hard it hurt, tellin’ me her life was rotten before she met me and since we been lovers she happy all the time, and now she got to be unhappy again, and she think her life be lonely and sad from here on, like there nothin’ to look forward to anymore, just her fat old husband don’t touch her, and I feel so bad for DeRia, cuz there ain’t nothin’ I can say make her stop cryin’, and I’m cryin’, too, cuz I know what I feel for her ain’t gon happen again the way it happen with us. Oh, it will happen again, but it won’t be so perfect and funny and peaceful and deep like it is with DeRia, who I call my “poverina.” Poor little thing.

But I got to leave. Next day I’m gone. Everybody I know well gone home, just Thomas hangin’ around, got four months left, still grumblin’ and scowlin’ and bitchin’ about how he from South Philly and he a bad-ass. He carry my duffel bag and walk me to the bus take me to Milano for the airplane to America.

“My car is yours, good bud,” I tell him. “Y’all start smilin’ an’ get yo’ sorry ass some leg and sweet lovin’, good brother.”

“I do that now I got the pussy-mobile. Thank you, my man. Love.”

“Love you too.”

I take the lonely bus to Milano and I’m so sad. I already missin’ DeRia. I get to New York and then fly to Cleveland and go to the ghetto and it so strange, I wish I got me my DeRia. But I ain’t got no DeRia. I never will again. Italy is over for me. I get a job drivin’ an ambulance, pickin’ up the bleedin’ and broken folks, the dyin’ and the dead. I go to school nights and get my high school diploma and start nursin’ school, gon be a nurse, and do good, gon have a life, right here in Hough. It’s poorer, sadder, everybody angry, wantin’ burn the mothafucker down. I ain’t the same dude runnin’ in the streets, getting’ in trouble. I’m a man. Thank you, sergeant McCray, and all my cool buds I never forget, and thank you, Maria DeRia, I love you little thing, my poverina, ‘til they take me away. §

Dell Franklin worked many years as a bartender at Happy Jack’s in Morro Bay, once considered one of the roughest fishermen’s bars on the West Coast. He’s the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice, and author of The Ball Player’s Son.

Blind love

Together they tap the ground, safely passing sign posts and cement benches, the blind lovingly leading the blind, in perfect tender unison. Photo By Stacey Warde

Together they tap the ground, safely passing sign posts and cement benches, the blind lovingly leading the blind, in perfect tender unison. Photo By Stacey Warde

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees. —Pablo Neruda

by Stacey Warde

At the Camarillo Amtrak station a young blind couple, walking arm-in-arm, slide the red tips of their seeing-eye canes along the platform next to the train.

The tips of their canes make a parallel search of the ground, tapping out the echoes of potential obstacles, swinging this way and that. Between the sliding sticks the pair are joined at their elbows.

I watch them from my vantage point above, through the window where I’m sitting on Train 777, or “Triple Seven,” as the conductor says in his announcements.

They have just stepped off the train heading north and west where the sun is beginning its low descent over the Pacific Ocean.

The setting sun casts an orange glow on their faces. Together they tap the ground, safely passing sign posts and cement benches, the blind lovingly leading the blind, in perfect tender unison.

I’ve never seen a blind couple as this making their way together. When I’ve observed the blind, often they have been alone, or accompanied by a service dog or friend whose vision is not impaired.

The pair turns tentatively toward the road, scouting the audibles, as a yellow cab slowly passes by, and they pause momentarily as if to hail the driver but another couple flags the car for themselves. How do they know that it is a cab? What bit of information causes them to turn at the same time to pursue what they cannot see?

They walk so closely and intimately that their bodies and minds seem as one. It’s a stunning scene. It’s touching. How did two blind intimates find each other? What brought them together? Did they meet in school? At a support group for the blind?

Their closeness, their intimate knowing and safety in being together unseats me, penetrates the armor I’ve worn to avoid the history and hurt of broken intimacies. An aching, bleeding feeling, as if something has begun to melt, washes through me, beginning inside of my chest.

My eyes well up with tears and, like the couple below, I put on a pair of dark sunglasses. I don’t want anyone to see my eyes. I don’t want anyone to know that I’m having a breakdown on the train. I want to avoid the appearance of a touched middle-aged man.

As Triple Seven pulls away from the platform, I watch the pair in a final desperate attempt to see what happens to them, and feel the cauldron of losses bubbling inside of me, streams of tears burning down my face.

Perhaps I’m romanticizing the idea of a blind love that isn’t blind at all but sees everything, knows everything, and moves in unison with the melodious voices of departing passengers, the low hum of cars in the distance, the passing of a cab, and the shared need to find a safe passage home.

Perhaps I’m a fool for thinking that such passage gains more from the company of another who is willing to share the risks and responsibilities of navigating through the darkness, guided by some other light that cannot be seen.

This coupling desire to be joined at the elbows and to walk in unison with another in a different kind of blind trust doesn’t go away easily, not even after one has passed his prime and love can seem so cruel and foolish.

“When does it stop?” I asked a friend once. “When do you stop wanting the company of a woman? When do you stop feeling like there needs to be another?”

“A great love poet,” he responded, “once said that it wasn’t until he was 70 that he realized the feminine no longer had power over him.”

It’s not merely the feminine, however, that haunts and wields power over me. Something more than charms and pleasure has broken through the walls of my resistance to love.

What moves me now is the formidable intimate knowing that is built on trust, the eagerness to hold space with another, even when there is darkness all around, the willingness to traverse obstacles despite the handicaps, to do with that one what spring does with the cherry trees.

The dark sunglasses do not hide my tears. I remove them to pat my cheeks dry with the sleeve of my jacket. Amtrak Triple Seven roars into the night and my view outside the window is blurred from blinding tears. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice

JUNKYARD AL ON THE RIVIERA, 1996

Wheelhouse

Al has unpaid tabs at bars and liquor stores all over Morro Bay, where Happy Jack’s is. Water color: Wheelhouse by Steve Santmyer: www.californiawatercolor.com/collections/steve-santmyer

by Dell Franklin

Around noon of a Saturday, Junkyard Al shows up in his rattling, rumbling, grease-smudged 20-year-old, four-door Buick bomber with wife and child to put in a water pump and radiator from the yard where he plies his trade, free of charge. Since Al is banned for life from every bar in the county but I allow him to drink in Happy Jack’s where I tend bar, he feels obligated to be my personal mechanic. He is also interested in reviving my non-operational ’76 Olds Cutlass and ’50 Chevy pick-up, which have collected dust in my driveway for over a year. I feel Al has his eye on both beasts. Al manages the largest junkyard in San Luis Obispo and takes advantage of every broke, desperate wretch who comes looking for a deal on parts. An ace mechanic, Al knows everything about every car ever manufactured in the world.

The fastest talker I’ve ever known, Al is wearing his usual filthy T-shirt, crusted Levi’s and boots. His coal-black hair is greasy and he needs a shave. He is stocky, with a gut at around 40. Having observed Al in Happy Jack’s, he seems to size everybody up as a potential enemy to fight or a schnook to scam. He cannot fight a lick. He incited a brawl in Happy Jack’s with some hopped-up young white supremists and was knocked semi-conscious with one punch and hid under a table while I took on three of them with a bar stool.

His heap is parked behind my ‘79 bumperless Chrysler Cordoba on the street. I’ve lived here on what can be determined in this beach burg of Cayucos’ Riviera for a couple years now and my neighbors across the street at the beach access, a retired dentist and retired CEO of a department store, and their wives, are not happy with my existence in one of the last one-bedroom beach cottages on the Riviera. The dentist, with his gray Marine hairdo, has accused me of single-handedly lowering real estate values and turning the neighborhood into a Third World trash heap.

Al peers at my crackerbox. “Swank pad, dude,” he observes. His wife, who resembles an overfed bullfrog, sits in the Buick with child. “How you afford this pad workin’ at the bar?”

“I know how to manage my finances, Al.” I leer at him, because Al has unpaid tabs at bars and liquor stores all over Morro Bay, where Happy Jack’s is, and Cayucos, and has currently moved to a rundown motel in San Luis Obispo on a weekly basis.

Al has his extensive tool collection out, along with a Styrofoam cooler, into which he reaches and takes out a beer, guzzling half of it down.

“Why you drinkin’ light beer, Al?” I ask. “That stuff’s for sorority girls in San Luis.”

Al ignores me and punches the back window of the Buick. “Go down to the beach, Sara, and take the kid!” he hollers.

They get out, hunched and glum. “Can I have some money for the store?” asks the wife, solicitous.

Al withdraws a crumpled greasy wad and hands her a ten and turns around to me. “What’s with the duct-tape on yer jalopies? You can plug those cancer holes real easy. I can do it for yah.”

“I prefer duct-tape, Al. If it disintegrates, I can always replace it with more duct-tape.”

He peers at me dubiously, knows that, among other deficiencies, I am a mechanical moron. “Whatever.” He swigs, watches his wife and kid tootle the few blocks to the little local market. He puts his beer down and withdraws a boom box from his trunk, slips in a tape, turns it on, and an explosion of shrieking, grating rock rents the quiet, golden afternoon. He places the boom box on the hood of his beast and goes to my Cordoba and yanks open the hood and peers in. “This thing’s pretty clean,” he remarks. “Compared to the outside.”

“I get it lubed every three thousand miles.”

“You can go four easy with synthetic oil.”

His music jangles my senses. The professors next door, who teach at the college in San Luis Obispo and are friendly with me because we have cats, peer over, for the violent sounds are ripping into their favorite—Mahler. Both play the piano. They appear pinched and drawn and frazzled at the discordance of Junkyard Al’s music. I ask Al to please turn it down. He gazes at me, disgruntled, but turns it down a notch or two. “Okay?” he asks, very sarcastic.

His hands are permanently grimed. Already there are two empty beer cans on my lawn. I take a seat on my sofa out front of the cottage and start the difficult LA Times Saturday crossword puzzle. Halfway through it—a real grind—the wife and kids return with a grocery bag of goodies and approach Al, whose head is deep in the well of my Cordoba. He withdraws his head like a turtle and yells at them to stop pestering him while he’s at work. He tramps angrily to the trunk of the Buick and tosses them a blanket, pail, shovel, beach ball, and orders them to the beach. They comply, straggling hangdog past the CEO and dentist, both clad in off-the-links golf apparel, and their wives on their terraces, and down the beach access stairway.

Al changes a tape. More shrieking calamity. “Mind if I turn it up?”

“I think not, Al.”

“Suit yerself. Wanna beer?”

“Nah, gotta go to work at five.

“So? Yer gonna get drunk back there anyway. What the fuck?”

Al’s got the radiator and water pump out. He is skilled. Often, his wife and child linger at the doorway of Happy Jack’s during Al’s drinking hours in the poolroom, the child restless, crying, the wife long-suffering. She will come in and beg him to leave, but Al will snap at her to cease fucking with his “reward for working all goddamn day to feed your stupid asses.” Al supposedly owned a junkyard in Modesto. But I never know if I should believe half of what Al says. For instance, he claims to be a decorated Vietnam vet, but he’s far too young, at least ten years younger than I. He claims to have lied his age and gone in at 15. Al carries a pistol on his ankle. He works really fast.

I finish the crossword. Takes me around an hour. There are six cans on the lawn. The wife and kid return, the kid gnawing on licorice. The kid’s always eating, face smeared. When the wife timidly approaches Al with some sort of question, he explodes, tells her to get the fuck out of his sight. “I told yah t’ go to the goddamn beach! I told yah t’ STAY on the goddamn beach til I’m done. Do I look like I’m done? Huh? Go back to the beach!” Al orders.

“But the sun burns us, daddy,” the kid whines.

Clearly annoyed, Al tramps to the Buick, opens the door, withdraws a ball cap with SLO JUNK on the crown and shoves it down over the kid’s ears. He tosses his wife a mangled straw hat and orders them to the beach, and they straggle across the street, the retirees now on their terraces and on the pathway, hands on hips, stern and miffed.

I sit back on my sofa. I’ve got a book, but Al’s antics make it impossible to concentrate. Al pops open another beer and returns to the Coredoba, muttering about the trials and tribulations of husbandry and fatherhood.

“Don’t fucking marry the bitches,” he warns me out of the side of his mouth as he goes wrenching in the engine well.

“Never have, never will, Al. Confirmed bachelor.”

“Don’t knock ‘em up, dude.”

“I’ll try not to, Al. So far, so good.”

“You got it knocked, man. Me, I got nothin’ but wall-to-wall grief with that squaw and that munchkin. Why you think I’m in hock up to my ass? I could be a cool swingin’ dick like you, man, if I didn’t hafta support ‘em.”

“Know what Somerset Maugham said, Al?”

“Who?”

“Somerset Maugham. Great English writer.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He said, ‘There’s no object more deserving of pity than the married bachelor.’ That’s my anthem, Al.”

“Dell, I got some hosing in my trunk. You need new hoses. Can’t be usin’ duct-tape on every fuckin’ thing, man. I’ll put ‘em in.”

Al continues working and drinking. I do a load of laundry. Come back out. Al’s wrapping things up. He’s drank a 12 pack. I ask if he wants a shot of Jack. Hell yes he does. We do a shot on the porch. Then: “Where the fuck’s my fuckin’ family? I tole ‘em I wanted ‘em fuckin’ back, goddammit!”

He starts across the street, swinging his shoulders and arms, springing up on his toes, legs splayed outward, head bobbing. The retirees back away as he stands at the top of the stairway, cups his hands to his mouth, and bellows, “GET YOUR GODDAM ASSES THE FUCK UP HERE NOW!” Then he starts back. The ex-Marine dentist barks something at him, as does the ex CEO, but Al, without dignifying their presence or lowering himself to their standards, says nothing, merely flips both of them a quick no-look double-barrel finger as he continues along the pathway and across the street.

The wife and kid tootle up and obediently climb into the back seat of the Buick. Al gets behind the wheel. It won’t start. Groans and groans. Al gets out and kicks the side of the car. I get up and start my Cordoba and pull it alongside the Buick, and Al’s out with the jumper cables, yelling at his wife to turn the fucking key to the engine, and she does, and it catches instantly. Al disengages the cables and tosses them in the trunk and slams the trunk hard and jumps in the Buick, waves to me and rumbles off, leaving a dark smoke plume in his wake.

Al’s absence leaves a mesmerizing silence. Birds chirp, my cats come out of hiding. I collect beer cans. With the exception of myself, I can’t think of a single person in Happy Jack’s who can stand Junkyard Al. §

Dell Franklin worked many years as a bartender at Happy Jack’s in Morro Bay, once considered one of the roughest fishermen’s bars on the West Coast. He’s the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice, and author of The Ball Player’s Son.

 

Trampling the First Amendment in a small town by the sea

Even the chamber of commerce asked us to remove our rack from its vicinity. Images by Stacey Warde

Some readers felt we had crossed a line. Even the chamber of commerce asked us to remove our rack from its vicinity. Images by Stacey Warde

by Stacey Warde

In the early days of the Rogue Voice, when it was still merely a monthly newsprint journal, we published a story about what prisoners do when they get horny.

Tito David Valdez, Jr., doing 25-years-to-life for conspiracy to commit murder, wrote an essay about “Hittin’ it,” an intimate look at the secret ways inmates find opportunities to masturbate or get off without being observed in a well-guarded penal institution.

We also learned about lady boys in mini-skirts who look fabulous and would by all appearances seem to be real women, except for the fact they weren’t, and how most inmates, like David, avoided unnecessary drama and complications in prison, by not getting involved.

It was an informative and educational narrative. David’s column, a regular known to readers as “Life in the Cage,” and all his other subsequent columns, gave taxpayers a close-up, insider’s view of how their dollars were being spent to incarcerate convicted felons.

But one meddlesome mom from our fair village by the sea didn’t like his column. She felt we had stepped over the line, and offended the community standard for frank talk about prison sex in ‘06.

As any good moralist, she decided to take action. She meant to protect her teenage daughter and other impressionable youth in our town from the adult content, and unseemly influence of our magazine, which was then in 2006 only four months old.

Like an enormous huffing beast, she stormed into the coffee shop where I was talking with a friend and barreled into the rear of the shop where we kept stacks of our magazine. I felt her rage as she passed by me.

Seconds later, she came back our way, a full stack of Rogue Voices stuffed under her arm. “Hey, wait a minute!” I demanded. “Where do you think you’re going with those?”

“I’m going to make a barbecue out of these,” she fumed, heading for the door.

“No you’re not!” I answered. “I work my ass off to put out those damned magazines. Put them back, right now!”

She harrumphed, breathing loudly and laboriously through her nose. I felt as if she were about to punch me, but she turned away, with close to 100 of my magazines stuffed under her arm, and walked out the door of the coffee shop.

A sheriff’s deputy arrived. The barista, a contributor and editor and supporter of the magazine, had called for law enforcement to protect my First Amendment right to free speech.

The angry mom had stolen that right. She was violating state, federal and constitutional law.

The deputy dutifully questioned me, asked me what was the problem, and I told him that a woman had walked out of the coffee shop with a stack of my magazines and threatened to burn them.

“Well, why should I help you,” he said finally, “when you write negative stories about law enforcement?”

Dell Franklin had recently written a first-hand account of the City of San Luis Obispo’s fascist policing operation to intimidate Mardi Gras revelers by bringing in hundreds of police from around the state to control the unruly student mob.

By many accounts, including Dell’s, the police, called upon to keep order, were as likely to create disorder—randomly shooting bean-bag rounds into parties, freely harassing passersby on the street, detaining and questioning revelers—as students were to misbehave by celebrating the centuries old annual tradition of upending the conventions of culture.

Dell’s article offered graphic evidence of police going a bit too far, terrorizing college students who were minding their own business.

Tired of moralists trashing our publication, we ran a full-page ad reminding them of another standard.

Tired of moralists trashing our publication, we ran a full-page ad reminding them of another standard.

“Your job,” I reminded the deputy, “is to protect my First Amendment right to free speech. It doesn’t matter whether you like what I print.” I pointed my finger in the direction where I’d last seen the angry mom walking out the door with my property: “She’s violating my right to free speech. What she’s doing is illegal.”

He thought for a moment. “It’s a free magazine, isn’t it?”

“That doesn’t mean she can take the whole stack!”

In fact, state Assemblyman George Plescia, a Republican from San Diego, had recently authored, and the legislature passed, a bill, AB2612, protecting free newspapers and magazines from abusers lifting full stacks off the racks. Apparently, San Diego was having the same problem. The offense carried a sizable fine.

“We must work to ensure that no one is able to deprive others of their First Amendment rights,” then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement on AB2612. “The freedom of the press is one of the most precious freedoms that Americans enjoy.”

The deputy left, presumably to consult with the offending party, and asked me to wait. He returned and informed me that the woman had been reminded that it’s my right to publish what I want and that she didn’t have the right to refuse it.

“Where’re my magazines?” I asked.

“They’re gone,” he said.

I was too angry to press the matter about the fate of that stack of magazines. I did not want to be thrown in jail for harassing or assaulting an officer.

I wrote a letter to Plescia, thanking him for protecting my First Amendment rights, while local law enforcement and would-be protectors of community standards thought less of those rights than they should.

“I edit and publish a free monthly literary journal,” I noted after thanking him, “which has had its share of vandalism from those who object to its content.

“Until now, our only support [has come] from readers who do not want others deciding for them what they can or cannot read.

“Thanks for your support. We lift our hats to you, Mr. Plescia, for your defense of our First Amendment right to a free press.”

As regards community standards and federal guidelines for offensive material, we avowed again in our pages the value of reading, of determining for oneself whether there are any redeeming qualities in our content, which would then guarantee its full protection under the law.

Not content with literally trashing our magazine, the angry mom rounded up a herd of like-minded matrons to pester local businesses to cease advertising in our magazine or to quit displaying the Rogue Voice on their premises, which is their perfect right.

The Cayucos Chamber of Commerce, coerced, asked us to remove our rack from its vicinity. We lost one advertiser while another said: “Tell those gals to get a life!”

Those “gals,” I noted in a 2006 February column titled “Our naughty little rag,” were going about town, raging to this or that business owner, “to protest its unseemly content, and to protect our impressionable teens from words like ‘fuck’ and ‘titty.’”

We were amazed that our troublesome youth had given up the internet and cell phones to go in “search of colorful language in the pages of our…morally reprehensible rag. It’s hard to imagine youngsters,” I mused, “pulling themselves away from their computers to actually read a newspaper; more terrible to think they’re reading one with naughty words.”

Oddly, or perhaps not so odd, the small-town upheaval came on the heels of an earlier trashing of another publication in which it seemed everyone everywhere in the county felt they had a moral duty to censor content they didn’t like.

Local alternative weekly New Times had published a story about methamphetamine by Alice Moss that also included a recipe on how to make the stuff. Residents went berserk, lifting the rag off racks throughout San Luis Obispo County and sending them to the landfill.

An eery absence of the weekly could be seen on virtually every rack in the county. Not one New Times could be found any where. The article itself had been informative enough and may have actually had some redeeming social value, despite its loony and irresponsible instructions on how to make meth.

A better method for informing readers about the ease of making meth would have been to take a photo of and list the ingredients. Let some fool decide how to put it all together. Good citizens, meanwhile, took it upon themselves to protect hapless individuals from the dubious joys of meth-making by eliminating the newspaper’s presence from our community.

The hysteria broke national news.

Amid the frenzy of throwing newspapers into the trash, KVEC hometown radio host Dave Congalton asked me and Dell to go on the air to discuss the issue. Many callers agreed that while they may not like what our publication prints, it’s our legal right to publish as we see fit. In fact, despite our “liberal” label, as some claimed, our most vocal defenders were more often conservatives.

It wasn’t the last time hoodlums took it upon themselves to sabotage our publishing efforts. Throughout the county, we continually heard reports from our friends that individuals were helping themselves to stacks of our magazine and making them disappear.

Finally, we’d had enough and ran a full-page photo on the back cover of the Rogue Voice showing nothing but a bible sitting on our rack, no magazines, with the headline, “Thou shalt not steal.”

It may not have made any difference in whether people trashed our magazine but it made us feel better, and we got a good laugh out of it. More importantly, we continued to publish, 32 more editions in all, without apology, and with a commitment to give voice to those who don’t often have a voice, protected by the First Amendment. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of TheRogueVoice.com.