Into Texas

It felt odd to find ourselves suddenly sliding into the world of strip malls, national box stores and familiar brands brightly illuminated by the afternoon sun in primary colors. Shreveport Louisiana was illuminated by neon. It felt as though we had spent half a lifetime in the back roads and small towns of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana so to suddenly come upon Panera and Best Buy and bright red fast food signs was a jolt. I know I'm not supposed to, because we all prefer regional variety etc... but I was quite happy to feel like I was back in a familiar corporate world. We did our shopping, vegetables at Whole Foods and other stuff at Target and me wandering Lowe's looking for my cheater bar to change my own wheels in the future... Soon enough we were on our way with a tank full of gas at $2.64 a gallon and expectations of an easy park for the night 45 minutes away.

Highway 79 departs Shreveport in a southwest direction aiming at Austin, the capital of Texas, about eight hours away, coincidentally our approximate target. It's a mixture of two lanes with some four lanes and all of it covered by racing eighteen wheeler trucks that would just as soon run you down as pass you. The speed limit is 70 miles per hour so my choice was go 60 and save gas or go 75 and save my life. As you can see above we arrived safely at the picnic area. 

Rusty liked it as empty as it was. We shared the night with two 18 wheelers whose drivers we never saw, nor did I go looking for them. In the morning with 45 degrees outside none of the three of us snug aboard Gannet 2 wanted to get up, not even Rusty who was curled up alongside my legs snoring happily. I had a plan so I got Rusty outside and we went for a stroll in the picnic area. A few pick ups came and went, one guy walked into the bushes presumably either to go bird watching or to relieve himself discreetly, I wasn't sure as I didn't watch too closely. There was a van across the way and as we walked inexorably closer the driver got out and lumbered toward me. "Can you give me a jump?" he mumbled shyly. What could I say? Bugger gave me a hand when I needed it and as a general rule I'm happy to help anyone out. This guy was huge, and taller than me, dressed comfortably, as it were, and my wife was still snugly in bed back at Gannet 2. I was sure she was ready to greet the day by saying Hi to a shambling stranger first thing. "Sure," I said and went to get my machine. Layne was surprisingly calm and stayed right where she was as her idiot husband shuffled around saving strangers.

I turned Gannet 2 round in a tight three point turn and we set to the business of getting him going. His name was Randy and he lived "about five miles away down by the Sabine." I looked puzzled because he said that as though everyone knew that the Sabine River flowed here. I had heard of the river: actually I'd anchored in Sabine Lake near Port Arthur thirty years ago so I wasn't doubting him. The day before I had simply been following Google's blue line so I had no idea the river was nearby. He told me he was 18 and was a licensed driver  for just the past six weeks. His mom wouldn't let him drive her van and he had to use the old beater as she insisted it was "character forming," as he put it ruefully. At least you aren't in a VW van I said, thinking back to those many long hours I had spent. stuck by the road. I'm not sure he'd ever heard of hippie Volkswagen vans of notorious unreliability so my allusion to my lost youth went right over his head. VWs are cult objects now but I much prefer my Promaster thanks. 

We waited for his battery, which looked brand new, to take a charge off Gannet 2 and he petted Rusty and told me about his rescue pup of uncertain breed that is scared of everything. His step father came into the picture as Randy now wished out loud stepdad had chosen to go to the post office to pick up the mail instead of sending Randy into this uncertain fate. He called his Mom on my phone (his own was discharged naturally) and told her he wanted to come home as the tow truck had said if he left the keys they would deal with the van. It had become obvious to both of us his old Chevy wasn't going to start. He cranked it and the engine turned over but refused to show any sign of firing at all. I told Layne, still in bed, we had a passenger and off we went.

We drove down Highway 79 dodging trucks -"They don't give a shit" my passenger agreed with my assessment of the danger level driving the highway but said his mother took him on a road trip to Houston the day after he passed his driving test and made him drive. How was that I asked, appalled..."A bit rough" he admitted with stoic understatement. Dude I said, I've been driving forty years and these people scare the pants off me. I nearly dropped the van into the ditch as I made another u-turn on the narrow lane in front of his home. Randy pointed to a white structure surrounded by weeds and not much else, "A nice fixer upper," he said wryly. I said nothing about the rainbow flag in a window figuring it wasn't his stepfather or his dog that were flying it. He shambled off and disappeared. In my head I wished him well but wondered about his prospects.

We pressed on with a choice ahead of us. The weather wasn't promising great heat but the rain had apparently passed on south of us. I suggested we stop in just half an hour at Lake Murvaul in a park flagged on the iOverlander app.

The approach road was a bit torn up as advertised and  of facilities there were none except picnic tables and trash cans. We had previously emptied our portapotty in a pit toilet at a nearby boat ramp so we were set for a couple of days of no driving. And we had this place to ourselves! Free, gratis and for nothing. There weren't even any rules posted so we applied the universal rule of common sense. There wasn't even much trash outside the cans. 

As you can imagine Rusty loved it. We walked together for a while and he sat around and watched the birds in the air, the boats on the lake and the sound of the breezes rattling the leaves. 

He gave me a big kiss before we set off for a circuit in the afternoon so I know he really liked this place, as that is how he shows joy. 

Yesterday started out overcast and breezy and cool but we decided it was time Gannet 2 got a proper clean so we declared it a make-and-mend day in the tradition of the Royal Navy and we spent the middle of the day scrubbing and brushing removing dog hairs from every conceivable orifice. We planted the portapotty in the light of day and scrubbed the shower compartment and the mats and so forth. It felt really good.

Layne checked her supplies and discovered Rusty is living high on the hog so we need more food for him. He is adapting to van life even though travel motion itself doesn't seem to agree with him. He loved the freedom of Rosie Jones Park.

Mind you it doesn't take more than two hours to do the deepest clean on 70 square feet. A brush, a vacuum cleaner and some spritzing and rubbing and it's done.

Rusty kept watch for us.

Layne has lined up a couple of harvest hosts, olive oil and cider related  around Austin with the possibility of checking out some barbecue to go. I like Austin from previous visits  but we are still being cautious about indoor dining and being around music crowds so our route is mostly rural for this part of the journey. Personally I'm looking forward to seeing Rusty's reaction to the deserts of the southwest. I'm betting he'll like the open spaces. For now there is no hurry, we're retired.

Induction cooking underway at 60 amps with burritos for dinner I'm told. Happily our batteries hold ten times that and after all the driving we are fully charged. 

I really like van life.

Gibsland Louisiana

At 9:15 on the morning of May 23rd 1934 a Ford V-8 came rolling down the Louisiana Highway 154 from Gibsland, where the occupants, two outlaws, had bought a BLT and a fried baloney sandwich for breakfast. The car was coming at speed until they saw a familiar pulp-wood truck parked on the side of the road, so they slowed to speak to the owner Ivy Methvin, the father of their accomplice Henry. The details get mixed up here but it seems that Ivy himself was not present in the most reliable accounts and the truck was parked simply as a decoy. It worked. Prentiss Oakley, Deputy Sheriff of Bienville Parish stepped out of the ambush and opened fire first. He hit the driver, Clyde Barrow, and before the other five officers could open fire in turn they heard a loud scream from the passenger, Bonnie Parker before she too was shot. They loosed off around 120 rounds and the two outlaws reportedly were hit fifty times each. It all happened here;

When I was sitting at my desk on long night shifts waiting for the 911 phone to ring I used to wander the Internet all over the place. Sometimes I would read a headline and chase down the details looking at Street views on Google or checking the history of an incident or place that caught my eye. I have trudged all over the most remote settlement in the world, Pitcairn Island on Google Street View. I have studied the last climb of Mallory and Irvine on Mount Everest in 1924. I got caught up in the life and death of Bonnie and Clyde and found myself surprised by the complexity of an apparently simple piece of banditry. I always wanted to include this post on our drive across country. We drove the back roads of Louisiana to get here and I am grateful to Layne for her indulgence.

Gibsland is the Parish seat of Bienville Parish, a town of of about a thousand people and though it claims to be the daffodil capital of Louisiana I don't think they would get too many visitors were it not for the garishly named "Ambush Museum."

The gift shop is the location of the coffee shop where the bandits stopped to buy sandwiches for their final drive, and they say Bonnie Parker had hers in her hand when she died. This whole Bonnie and Clyde thing is garish and weird and detailed and profoundly odd to me. Despite the many years I worked for the police in Key West I am not an aficionado of true crime stories nor am I much inclined to describe robbers and killers as "Robin Hoods" so for me crime is something I'd rather not deal with in any capacity in retirement. Yet, here I was and not by accident.

If this story doesn't interest you, - and why should it? - feel free to look away. If you want to know more and disagree with the conclusions I have reached feel free and there is lots online on these two characters and the men who took their lives for you to peruse. Below you see the car that was used in the movie with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty to depict the life and death of the gang. In my opinion they got the sense of the crime spree but the details were woefully inadequate. 

If you want to see more artifacts, the actual car and Barrow's blood stained clothes (!) they are in a casino in Nevada, the kind of institution that can pay the absurd prices asked for these macabre relics. They have some in the small town museum but most of this place is dedicated to photographs, articles and re-creations. And they are dog friendly though Rusty was terrified of the cat that actually owns the place.

Like I said the cat is in charge and keeps a close eye on the mannequins and displays:

Bonnie and Clyde were on the run for four years and by the time they were caught and killed they had dispatched fully nine law enforcement officers and four other people. She was 23 and he was 25.

1934 was a time when photography was in full swing and there is a ton of pictures online surrounding the last day of Parker and Barrow but I was surprised by the number of pictures in the museum that I had not seen online. We were going down the road to the spot itself which was of much greater interest to me and I noticed how the road looked back then.Gibsland was seven miles behind the photographer and the hill on the horizon is where the markers are now. 

Three law enforcement agencies were involved, two former Texas Rangers, two Louisiana state police and two locals. They were armed to the teeth and set up their ambush with some care. The details once again are disputed as to how the ambush actually went down but the preparations aren't in dispute. They were led by ex Ranger Frank Hamer who was determined to catch them. He followed their trail, learned their methods and came to the conclusion that he could get ahead of the repetitive pattern their journeys took them on. 

They made a deal with Ivy Methvin to go easy on his son Henry and were ready when Clyde Barrow was supposed to be visiting the the Methvin home in Sailes Louisiana. We drove through Sailes south of the ambush site and it's a crossroads and two mobile homes along the highway. This is a remote area.

Some accounts say the ambushers waiting two days, others say they arrived the night before and waited. It is also said they were ready to give up when at last they heard the car coming down the road. There isn't much traffic today on the road and I wonder if there were much back then. In any event the ambush worked out. You have to think the lawmen were scared rigid of the two killers who had evaded the law for years and been utterly ruthless is pursuit of their freedom. I think that explains the 120 or more rounds fired into the car at close to point blank range.

We parked around the corner form the Ambush Museum and I spent some time on a rather cool afternoon checking the tire pressure on the van as we had had the tires rotated after we had our flat repaired in Ruston. The tire guy had rotated the tires but did not reset the pressure so I got busy and made sure the pressures were accurate front and back. It happened we were parked next to the town hall and police station which were both, oddly enough, closed for the day. I have no idea how a town sustains itself with just a thousand residents.

We left town to drive to the spot I really wanted to see, two small monuments on Louisiana Highway 154, I have no idea why, but I hoped that standing there I might get some idea why Bonnie and crude are such myth makers in American history. 

As we drove the seven miles down the road we were both silent. Later Layne said she felt a creepy vibe, melancholic even as we approached the spot. The road is surprisingly scenic, dipping and curving, breaking out on a hill top just past the "Historic Marker One Mile" sign giving views across the rolling tree covered hills. We came around the corner at the top of the next hill and in the distance I could see the markers next to the telephone poles.

The road as seen in the original photo was not nearly as clear of brush on the sides as it is now to accommodate the telephone poles. There were bushy ferns growing to give cover to the lawmen  who hid in the ditch for a very long time. They were determined not to fail. Lest we forget...they were the good guys in this story.

I wonder if in another life and with other opportunities and certainly a better sense of the morality of life Clyde Barrow might not have made a great salesman. He knew how to feed his outlaw life to the press for maximum positive publicity. He even wrote a letter to Henry Ford a month before he died in praise  of his best getaway car. The Ford Museum has it on display!

Handwritten on paper: Tulsa, Okla 10th April Mr Henry Ford Detroit, Mich. Dear Sir: - While I still have got breath in my lungs I will tell you what a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusively when I could get away with one. For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got ever other car skinned and even if my business hasen't been strickly legal it don't hurt enything to tell you what a fine car you got in the V8 - Yours truly Clyde Champion Barrow

Below I have added photographs taken by the pair and found abandoned by law enforcement as the chase closed in on them. I have read speculation that the torrid love affair between them inspired public interest and admiration. Perhaps their occasional acts of mercy, letting hostages go, made them folk heroes. But still they gunned down nine lawmen, people with families and who were as much merely state employees earning a wage, as the hard core G men of the "Bureau of Investigation" in Washington. Interstate crime laws were toughened up after the Bonnie and Clyde affair came to a conclusion, making the job of the G men that much easier to pursue criminals across state lines.

I enjoy being on the road and not being wanted and not having to camp out because I am so notorious restaurants will call the police rather than serve me. Faced with a life of drudgery they made the choice to become notorious, to play to the crowd, in the only way they knew. And they did it appallingly well. Even now these monuments to crime and law enforcement cannot be left well enough alone. The signatures and scribbles and crap attached to the criminals makes me wonder. Do you get glamor from associating yourself with the Bonnie and Clyde Death Spot, as Google maps labels it?

The life they avoided is still on display along the roads in the back country. I can't help but think a life of misery in poverty riddled, Depression era America could have been handled better than a murder spree. I suppose by the time the glamor wore off and the reality of their crimes penetrated the public, who turned their back on them, for them it was too late and they were trapped in the life. It's easy for us to put the glamor back into their myth as we are so far away from the reality of their awfulness. The desire for fame overrides all else in some people and they don't care who they drag down with them. After I saw the spot I celebrated the lawmen who did their duty and apparently suffered their own trauma after the experience, and I still wonder how we can celebrate fame unglued from morality. It still happens today all the time. We humans are weird.

Dog Mining In Louisiana

We crossed the Mississippi River yesterday and I was gad to leave the state of the same name. Roadside litter, inevitable in any state did not seem to be a concern to lawmakers charged with clean up and trash has piled up along the roads in an unsightly manner. I was surprised it annoyed me so much but I was vastly relieved to take a lunch break across the river in Vidalia, Louisiana, whose cleanliness and order were a balm to my middle class soul.

Vidalia is named not for the sweet onion or some other thing but in memory of the city's founder a Spanish official by the name of Don José de Vidal who created the city in 1792. It was a cheeky move as it pushed Spain's possessions across the river into French territory. In 1803 Vidalia got sold, along with the French colonies as part of the Louisiana purchase. In all these communities through which we pass I can only sympathize with the confusion of the residents who were constantly changing language, nationality, currency and allegiance whether they cared or not or had even been told or not.

Layne heated soup and made a salad while I walked Rusty along the waterfront deeded to the city by Vidal and preserved as a pleasant open space with an amphitheater and not one sign of trash, though we took advantage of the dozens of trash cans. I also took advantage of the public toilet, a prison-like affair consisting of a stall with a low wall and no door (!) to discreetly empty our own toilet. We had driven in past some people preparing floats for the inevitable holiday parade and on the way out they were gone.

Indeed they were gone and we found them up the street creating a giant traffic jam on the highway toward Monroe Louisiana...We are not in the Keys anymore I said  to Layne and there must be an alternative route. We turned back toward the river and took a side road out into the fields and farms settled behind the river levee. We drove in a wide arc under gray skies with no traffic and I saw a dog chained to a tree in a yard, and yes we aren't in the keys anymore as such barbarity is outlawed there. It was as pleasant as the washboard road surface would allow. As we bounced along Layne said: "How long is the gravel road to the Arctic Ocean, again?" Oh about five hundred miles I said through rattling teeth, "Not that far, really." Dawson City to Toktoyaktuk. That promises to be fun on the Inuvik Highway.

Meanwhile we had troubles of our own. Gas looked cheap in Jonesville at $3.16 ($3.15.9 but I always round up as I'm not fooled by advertising! Ha!) and I pulled forward to walk Rusty a moment. He likes to get out of the van at every stop and have a sniff and I try to indulge him when I can. Walking back I saw the white spot on the tire and hoped as one always hopes that it was a pebble lodged in the tread but it wasn't. The tire did not seem to be losing air but it was getting dark and our planned stop at an I-20 rest stop was two hours away. What to do? I could pull the screw and stick in an emergency plug from my wilderness kit. We could ignore it and run the risk of a flat front tire on a road with no shoulders in the bayou somewhere. Or I could change it here on the cement pad in relative comfort.

When Key West PD advertised for a Quartermaster a few years ago one requirement was knowing how to change a tire. Apparently it is a lost art among the younger generation. I want say here and now I never call Triple A for tire assistance unless it's a last resort. I had practiced lowering the tire under the van at home, I bought a padded mat to lie on in comfort no matter the surface, I have and use a compressor and I even had a car sized plug repair kit similar to those I have used successfully on my motorcycles. I even bought an additional lug nut wrench for what I presumed would be tougher wheel nuts to remove. I was ready for this. Layne retired to the bed to catch up with her friends on the phone and I got happily to work.

I actually bent the tool slightly as I tried every way I could to loosen three of the five nuts. An older black dude had driven by and offered help but I was so confident I'd said I was fine, thanks. Over confident me. We called Triple A as we had forgotten to activate our Good Sam Membership (!) and help was on the way in 90 minutes. Then Bugger came back. You not okay! he laughed. I explained my predicament. I'll be back he said. I canceled the tow truck.

You can see my salvation in the picture above between Bugger and his happily intoxicated side kick, the long silver fence post. I'm buying one in Shreveport after we fix the tire. Then I will be ready for any flats that come my way! I asked his name and he said: "I'm called Bugger, and people think that's my nickname but its my real name." I was slightly taken aback as I say "Bugger!" when I'm confounded and I don't want Americans to know what the word really means. "That must have been tough at school," I stuttered. "Oh," he said shrugging, "I only got to third grade." He refused our offer of money but his wino buddy, sweet as Walter Brennan in To Have And Have Not ("Did you know you can be stung by a dead bee?") eyed the $25 like all he could see was jars of Night Train stretching out before him. Give it to him Bugger laughed and "Eddie" took the money gratefully.

It was a lovely encounter brought on by my own shortcoming. I was annoyed for a while I had failed to properly prepare and I nearly missed a turn or two in the darkness as I pondered my failure. In the end though it was good that it happened the way it did in the right place at the right time and I know where I will stash that tube we need!

We drove through the dark, arrived at the rest area and ate the barbecued chicken Layne bought at the gas station and it was delicious. And then we passed out. I awoke around seven to the sound of scrabbling under the bed as though the largest rat in the world was sharing our 70 square foot living space. A peal of enormous thunder rolled over us and rain hit the roof of Gannet 2 like hail. I must have been awakened by the thunder I thought to myself. Then I heard the scratching again from under the bed. Layne went to look for Rusty and there isn't much to look at in our living space. Sure enough our traumatized dog, shot at and abandoned in the Everglades with angry farmers for neighbors had crawled up under the bed.

Leave him there Layne said if he feels comfortable. I thought that sounded a bit off but it's true: Rusty knows what he wants and right now he wanted a dark tight space to evade his nemesis. I lay there for a while as Layne tried to get a tire company in Shreveport to answer their phones. Then I got up because I couldn't leave the poor runt squashed up under the bed like a Russian miner under a roof fall. I got up, got dressed, fumbled for the umbrella and put on my head lamp. "Are you going dog mining?" Layne asked. I never thought this would be one the tasks of van life but here I was ready to go out the back in the downpour and pull my dog to "safety.".

I was reluctant to get out as it was pouring with rain and as I dithered the scrabbling and scratching started again and sure enough a small brown face reappeared under the bed. We waited together for the rain to ease and we ended up going for a splash filled walk.

I felt better once he felt better, but I think the storm was fierce enough to make telephone communications awkward. We couldn't get through to Shreveport so we will stop after our planned and long delayed stop on the way, and the we get to the city we will see what's what this afternoon. It's at times like these that not being on a deadline is really rather lovely.

From the 1944 movie Walter Brennan with Lauren Bacall:

• Eddie : Was you ever bit by a dead bee?

  Slim : Were you?

  Eddie : You know, you got to be careful of dead bees if you're goin' around barefooted, 'cause if you step on them they can sting you just as bad as if they was alive, especially if they was kind of mad when they got killed. I bet I been bit a hundred times that way.

  Slim : You have? Why don't you bite them back?

  Eddie : That's what Harry always says. But I ain't got no stinger.