Love Amidst Rust at the Helium Cafe
We fly like angels through tin pan alley on wings of warbled words along trashcan roads to secret wrecks lost in the junkyards of derelict dreams.
Drunk on persimmon wine I carry her down memory lane looking for derelict cars in the haze of lost America where crushed beer bottles are strewn on junkyard plantations of golden-age rust buckets.
A mustang chassis catches the rain. The concentric circles of a shattered windshield are a catcher of the American dream.
The hood is a seat for weary pilgrims who can’t find their way home. Lost in the purple sunset we await the gospel dawn in the backseat of a Chevy.
She yells, “A round of stout kisses on the house!” She paints my face with lipstick until we yodel in a duet of beer drinking songs.
She says, “Bartender, give me a mug of barleywine strong enough to peel the paint from a 1970 Buick.”
“But all we have is the natural light I picked up at the convenience store.”
“Then let’s get just tipsy enough to celebrate Oktoberfest in this scrapheap.”
“Natchez is our Bavaria on the bayou.”
She replies, “We may not get drunk but we are happy as possums sharing a sweet potato.”
At noon the next day Rosie and I meet at the Helium Café downtown. The café is owned by Rosie’s aunt and named after her uncle. Her Uncle Bubba made his fortune in helium outside of Amarillo, Texas. So, in honor of one of our very own kin making it big Aunt Doris named her café after the very same helium he struck paydirt with.
Rosie and I share a piece of Aunt Doris’s pecan pie à la Mode served hot with a heaping scoop of vanilla ice cream. Hers is the best pecan pie this side of the Mississippi River.
In between bites I scan the classified ads in the newspaper looking for wheels.
We find a 1955 Thunderbird in the paper whose owner was about to sell it to the junkyard because of cosmetic defects but had second thoughts because he figured the car still had some miles left. We’ll be the perfect buyers to give his baby some more life. She says, “Now that we are about to be driving in style mind if I call you Thunderbird?”
“Being named after such a durable car is an honor. You’ve got barrels of gumption so you’ll be Moxie Girl.”
Aunt Doris moseys on up with her signature smile. But then she looks all serious. “Kids, I hear you two are headed west. Listen be sure to stop by and say howdy to Uncle Bubba if you are round Amarillo. He isn’t much of a philanthropist but he might lay a $50 on you two if you’re really sweet to him. If nothing else he’ll feed you a meal. He’s filthy rich but does his own cooking. If you compliment the chef, he’ll take a shine and you might get enough for some groceries. I’ll give him a call and tell him to expect you.”
Rosie tells her, “Aunt Doris, you’re so sweet. I’m going to miss your pie.”
Night falls like the cape of a Count. I imagine Dad and Mom heading to bed while grass harpists chirp a lonely refrain from the thick tussocks of their cricket’s hassock in the sunken forest of my boyhood haunts. All the while we hurtle through my native land in my goodbye to her bluesy soul.
We chug through the Mississippi Delta where Mama first opened her eyes while held in the arms of a mother soon to die after giving birth. By midnight we are in Greenville, Mississippi. I gaze at the city lights in a daze of insomnia. I am flying by the Dixieland of my youth like an angel in the night.
When we cross the Mississippi River at Greenville, I say farewell to the father of waters. We head for the continental divide into a zone where cheddar melts on enchiladas. A homeless orphan of dirt roads and tupelo swamps, I hear Janis Joplin sing me to dawn.
By morning we pass through Shreveport, Louisiana. I look out the window watching thunderstorms. Lightning bolts flash in a mad opera. By Texas the thunder has ceased its fury.
There are miles to go to Tucumcari and Texas seems like a flat earth dream. We sail the land sea of earthen plains, blessed by Indian soil. My foot presses the gas pedal like an organist pumping pipes in a Baroque road fugue. Love elopes into a desert mirage. I gaze out the window into desolation at red rock ghosts. My life is embraced by the quiet dusk while deep in stony silence.
The road melts into a tar dream as asphalt pours in buckets of black. I angle my sight into the blurry shoulder with an ancient rock outcropping as a focal point. Willie Nelson plays on the car radio. His sonorous baritone is like the Red River rolling on a dusky evening by the bluesy banks with old men smoking their last cigarettes dreaming of prairie sunrise.
Moxie and I are deep in the Texas Panhandle land sea where the highway drips in a river of ink. Our car takes us through nameless West Texas towns. There the neon sign of a motel flashes vacancy. Our bodies need a good night sleep. Therefore we stop for the evening.
A neon café beckons us weary travelers with roller shoe waitresses who weave like figure skaters in dips and curves bearing malted sodas with hips swaying to the beat of Buddy Holly. We park and I get served a thick hamburger. Fortunately, they have savory veggie burgers seasoned with garlic, onions, paprika, and red pepper as well as tater tots to suit Moxie’s veganism. We dig into our food while listening to Hank Williams croon your cheating heart. While we walk across the parking lot, a couple deep in conversation leans against an old Buick.
The motel room is a reprieve from the cold road; the endless asphalt stretching forward like a jet trail through the dark sea of land. There we warm ourselves by the heater listening to TV evangelists who sermonize apocalypse across the electrified airwaves.
My thoughts wander to childhood when there were limitless territories to explore and abundant life spreading across the world in a green revolution. The bright sun of justice reigned over our troubled land. Smiling faces looked out of store windows. People were simply living as though it were enough.
I hear a man curse and a woman scream obscenities through the motel room wall. As we lay silent in our bed, myriad thoughts unwind in my head; hungers, dreams, regrets; the flotsam and jetsam of a life. Slowly the screaming dies down leaving only my sleeping wife to keep me company.
The next afternoon we cross the Amarillo city limits. We head south and arrive at the cattle guard for Uncle Bubba’s ranch. Horses are playing the wind and we step out of the car and onto his porch. I ring the doorbell and there is Rosie’s Uncle Bubba whom I haven’t seen since I was five years old. He is all grey now but with that big Texas size smile I remember. He hugs us both one in each arm. The first words he says are, “You two done grown up. But by golly you are both thin as bean poles. Come on in and try my five-alarm chili.”
We sit at the table and he ladles the steaming dish into our bowls. Rosie grins and I smile shyly. Uncle Bubba says, “Now give me your honest opinion. Was that the best chili you two done had?”
Rosie says, “Whew, that chili is hotter than a firecracker on the Fourth of July. And you put just the right about of peppers in it. Tell me what is your secret?”
Uncle Bubba belly laughs and says, “Now if I told you my recipe it wouldn’t be a secret no more would it?”
Rosie replies, “Now Uncle Bubba, you can trust me. I won’t go gossiping about your recipe.”
Uncle Bubba reaches in his pocket and pulls out his wallet. He fishes in it and pulls out what looks like the biggest wad of bills I’ve seen in ages. He says, “Now this here is something I definitely don’t want you spreading around. This should pay your first month’s rent. Don’t go telling the family or they’ll come begging to me and my money will float away like the party balloons my helium fills.”
Rosie speaks for me as I am moonstruck by his generosity. “Now Uncle Bubba, that is a thousand dollars. Can I give you a kiss for that?”
He replies, “I’ll take your sugar and how about dessert? Praline ice cream.”
Rosie kisses him and says, “I thought I’d never get to taste another praline so far from home. Thank you so much Uncle Bubba for your generosity.”
“Ain’t nothing really. Just thought I’d help you as you’re just starting out. I remember when I was your age and out here on my own.”
We take off for New Mexico. Salvation lies ahead like the resurrected Jesus. We sail over the horizon into a cloud of carmine while the Grateful Dead on our car stereo sings us into New Mexico.
The big sky country beckons my free flying soul, seeking the Sangre de Cristo, where I can find snowy altars on high. There is a road which leads to Valhalla, amongst the piney halls of heaven, deep in light ethereal, where towns are steeped in ancient rhythms. There I will find a refuge for this fallen angel.
I don’t know where we’ll lay our heads tonight. But I know I we’ll find our way to those Blood of Christ mountains where peace waits like a bride cloaked in white. Just keep moving is the key; never get too comfortable; no arrival in our roam, as a ghost of the American dream. We follow the wind.
The highway leads west across the Llano Estacado or staked plains where my dreams unfurl like flags in the night, flapping freely in the wandering wind. I am no longer fenced in. Moxie takes the wheel while I nap. My invocation is for freedom to ring from Spanish Harlem to East L.A.
Moxie tells me, “Thunderbird, you are the soul of this car. You are eternally buoyant. You maintain the car making me feel secure as the miles unfold. You understand each gasket, seal, piston, and the chassis of this road machine. You breathed life into this tin lizzie with your mechanic’s magic long beyond its predicted lifespan.”
Onward we are pilgrims on the road to a Lourdes of the heart. I feel the ole rush of
acceleration of chasing the sunset in a mad obsession to reach the Grand Canyon. The Bossa Nova road dips and rises through red dressed lady land with her rosy mesa skirts. We pass gaping gullies of ruddy rock.
Our reverie is born of dewy-eyed love. I am spellbound by her Madonna mystique. We follow the sun west till it sets in a flower burst. The last petals settle on the horizon in an orange blossom grail. Twilight douses the sun wick. The desert melts into a night of desolation hymns eternal. A sign of impending touch, her Mona Lisa smile is cast in intimate shadows.
We gather miles like beads in a rosary ritual. Day comes and goes. My true companion is by my side on our mad capped adventure.
On our first night in Tucumcari, we find shelter in the ruins of a saloon. A dusky ghost haunts the dusty corners while she laughs at puns on my soliloquies. She’s never away – poised to leap but deciding more often to stay secret. She’s forever spooking and always beckoning. She blows smoke ring kisses and vanishes into a dust mote cloud.
I turn on our cassette player and Billie Holiday pours her blues for us like a bartender serving whiskey on the rocks.
Morning arrives and we take to the road. I look at Moxie’s face and hear her say, “Hey, I’ve hit some hard traveling too. I know you and where you’ve been.”
