Wilbo Believes He's in the Wrong Place for the 4th of July

Tuesday, July 4 2006 5:11 PM Texas Time

The 4th of July has always found me in the wrong place for summer. I am staying at the McKinney Inn, a hotel built for a different kind of business traveler or tourist. The room design is utilitarian and spartan, but with cable television, a pool and air conditioning, it's an easier place to sleep than a bedroll on my truck's bedliner. I can hear what my neighbors east and west are enjoying on television, and my western neighbors take in shows on a Latino channel between lovemaking. I was awoken by cries synchronizing two orgasms around nine in the morning. The passion lasted long enough for me to know it by ear. When she encountered me coming out of my car later in the morning, she addressed me a sir and wished me a happy Fourth of July. I think I'll allow young women to call me sir from now onward. Here in Texas, even introducing myself and telling them, "My father's name is sir" doesn't adjust their manners nor their formality. Why fight it and enjoy a little bit of respect, even what I'm wishing for is flirtation.

On weekends, I have slept on my bedroll in order to save money. I can count five occasions, once in the parking lot of the Choctaw Casino, twice at Texas Welcome Centers, once in a Target parking lot when parked among the cars of all-night stockers, and once at the Texas highway roadside picnic area. At the picnic area, I was napping under partly cloudy conditions, and I covered my face with an unfolded map of Texas. I had Texas as a shroud as I slept like death. The urgency to piss wakes me up three times a night, every two hours, and wakes me up mornings, better than an alarm clock. Those medications for older men with overactive plumbing are making more sense to me lately. Lately, it's just easier to sleep upright in my driver's seat, no pillow to find and no bedroll to unroll and roll back up.

I enjoyed three mid-day naps in a newly renovated passenger depot in Mineola, Texas, arising when a frequent freight car bearing containers stacked three high blew by east or west, a powerful whistle announcing its passage. I believe that powerful whistle actually set my truck's hazard lights to blinking, for that's how I found them after four hours at the station. A few boys boarding the train enroute from Los Angeles to Chicago, Illinois, which was going to be delayed one hour past its scheduled 6:05 PM stop, got to see a genuine hobo sleeping in a train depot with a museum section. The area enjoyed protection from surveillance cameras, and the Amtrak resident agent didn't showing until 6:00 PM.

I considered moving into a tent at Collins Park Marina, and I still might buy a tent at Wal-Mart and pitch it on a spit of land jutting into Lake Lavon. I had a nice time at a floating restaurant where a Texas original named Mallory and her team serve beers and steaks from a kitchen floating on four feet of water. If lake waters fall more, and lake waters will fall more, the floating restaurant will need to be pulled out to deeper water. I am sure it can't survive settling on an uneven sandy bottom. A restaurant can float, but it can't tilt, and plumbing under water might crush. The tent and a cot is almost a hundred dollar investment. I can stay in comfort in a hotel room purchased on Priceline for around 35 dollars a night. It's a good neighborhood for tenting, so Collins Park is asking fifteen dollars a night. After five nights, I would be even. Would I sleep in this tent on weekends when I aim my car for Texas destinations? Where would I keep the tent on nights when I sleep in a hotel? I've already mourned the lost of my fishing poles, which I kept out in the open in the bed of my pickup.

I am waiting to for a reply to my email concerning shower facilities. Most campers arrive by recreational vehicles, and those plug into water and ac and maybe sewer facilities. Collins Park Marina is west of Plano on Parker Road, the end of Parker Road, out past the South Fork Ranch made famous by the drama Dallas. Parker Road in Plano has the final light rail stop going north, so if I can wake up early, I could emerge from my tent, shower, and dress and take public transportation down to Cityplace Tower. I am sitting in a Starbucks at 75 and the Eldorado Parkway, and it is cool and outfitted with electrical plugs and wireless Internet. I can write in my Moleskinne journal, and I am not concerned that those words are off line forever or until transcribed. I write on my computer, and I am urgent about posting them at least to one of my two email boxes.

I needed to know how the rivers flowing through this valley connected to a sea, and I know the Trinity proceeds to Houston and then downward to El Gulfo De Mexico. I like knowing that my material passes over routers and switches on its way to blog, newsgroup, or a simple email box.

I haven't taken any painkiller today, not a Tylenol or an Aleve. I have drunk Gatorade. I have imbibed two bottles of liquid Yogurt and drank two Izze sodas infused with fruit juice. I haven't eaten any menu item with wheat as an ingredient knowingly for a full week. My knees don't feel swollen. My fingers don't feel cramped or sore.

Oh, my god, it is actually raining with some seriousness. Drops are potting the pavement, but I despair that it'll last long enough to slick the surface. I am not feeling a stinging in my biceps or triceps when I try to lift easy objects, like a computer bag. I might even try kneeling to see how that feels. Maybe I am now gluten intolerant. What does that mean in terms of my endocrine system and digestive system, which once kept up with gluten digestion. A mole on my inner right thigh is painful when brushed by underwear; it's added a few new ugly features that I'm planning to show to a dermatologist. No bright hemorrhoid blood recently on my butt wipe or in my toilet water, and I'm not bacon stripping a clean pair of Fruit of the Looms in two hours. I can wear my underwear a second day. It's a fine thing that Wal-Mart sells underwear in packages of seven for a good price, keeping me in clean undergarments for one dollar a day. I would call Devie to personally thank her for her suggestion, but I believe she's traveling through Honduras today; One of her girlfriends sells insurance products for Farmers, and that friend invited her on a sales incentive trip anywhere, and the pair chose Niagara Falls, going wine tasting in Canada along the river, discovering ice wine.

The pavement is more wet than it is dry, a dangerous moment to be driving because all those oil droplets from unmaintained cars hasn't washed sewer ward yet. And now pavement in wet enough to show raindrop splashes, and it looks heavy enough to look like a Michigan rainstorm. Yet it clearly looks lighter than a Michigan rainstorm, as if one raindrop in four boils off before touching ground. And a smear of grey coats the entire Texas sky, but only the awnings remember the rainstorm with intermittent drops. Oh, back again, rain drops for all. It's mustered up a cloudburst. Just in time to rain out today's firework festivities and make men barbecue under awnings. I'm betting those really big and swanky grills fueled with white tanks of propane can close a lid over sizzling steaks and keep grilling.

This morning, I visited the environmentally sound Wal-Mart store called the McKinney experiment. Amenities for birds were overlooked in the design, but I saw a clever bird, surely a kind of Texas Sparrow, hop under a newly parked Ford F150 and drink from a puddle of air conditioner condensation. Eleven feet isn't going to fall today. How much water vapor is plucked out of our sky by air conditioners, robbing rain clouds of proper nutrition?

I am listing a few things to remember. I could write a proposal to film an outage movie with Frank N, and I started working upon this today, but lost power as I fiddled with doing a schedule in Excel. Maybe after the impending nap I am driving to my motel room to sleep off. I could write a poem called "Thames Dream" based on the sonnets of Shakespeare, but I've begun that once and lost charge. I could write about my encountered with an aggressive woman in Oklahoma who was pulling men out on the dance floor and then rejecting them with pushes or punches and then pulling them out on the dance floor again. She bent my glasses, and even after adjustment by a woman at Wal-Mart with full-body freckles, the glasses still look silly. The arms of the glasses are no longer straight, and I'm sure that looks silly to fashion-savvy people. I've never witnessed a larger puddle of condensation around a plastic glass of ice water and soda-water juice. I didn't click it, so I got a ticket from Officer Odom, who was obliged to serve me a citation because Texas has a no-warning policy for seat belt violation. I don't need to call the judge in McKinney for a month, and the judge might show mercy on the phone. I've noticed a line bragging fines up to 200 dollars, which could make this morning an expensive morning. I had a faxed copy of my statement of financial responsibility, what is called proof on insurance in Michigan. He asked me where I was going, and he had caught me just short of the entrance to McKinney Inn. I think I'm going to pop for a week in the Gaylord Texan before I drive home; just to make up for my time spent accepting dank, worn accommodations. He thanked me for my courtesy, advised me to drive safe. His uniform hadn't wrinkled in the heat of a day of work, so he was just leaving the Texas Department of Public Safety office after punching his clock. Even the patches on his outfit showed no wear, suggesting he was a newly hired trooper stuck with holiday duty. He allowed me to turn on my car as he checked his databases and wrote my ticket. I was amazed on how low tech was the ticket pad; these could have been mimeographed forms bound together by the cheapest binding. No form in triplicate as far as I could see. I rolled down my window and hung my wrists out in the sunshine. He was studying my shoulder as turned the corner, and I could see him think a thought as he rolled forward a few feet, and then I could see him turn a uturn and begin pursuit of my truck. Of course, I have a traffic ticket about to go rancid in Michigan, where turning off driving privileges is used as a collection procedure. If he checked his database, a nationwide database, I'm assuming I'm okay, and I must call to pay that off Thursday if and when Citizens Bank delivers my credit card by overnight mail. He wanted to know how long I was staying, probably to know if he had to advise me to get a Texas drivers license and pass Texas emissions tests and safety tests. There are higher standards for being street-legal in the Lone Star State. I said I'm planning to pull out in a month, and he showed a sense of humor. "Yes, sometimes one has to wait until the organization approves a transfer." Today was the day when Texas boys in blue were pushing to make certain that enforcement of seat belt laws caught all scofflaws. I've been remembering to buckle up ever since.

The number of girls-got-it-going-on women today has astounded me. One woman noticed I needed a chair, and when I said that I was really looking for a plug, she transferred her interview from the corner table to a smaller round table a few feet away. She saw me first, and wasn't an unattractive woman. She was powered and lipsticked and recruiting a woman for an opportunity, and the woman will be training at her office in a Plano office address. I was wondering if she was one of those Christians I should know by her love? After her interview, she went off to her car and her candidate went off to hers, and I was almost expecting a sales pitch or a religious message. But it didn't happen. Mallory at the floating restaurant exclaimed some kind of yee-haw when I walked into a dining area of the rectangular craft. I want to know how to spell that exclamation.

Dallas is as far south as San Diego ! Maybe even further south! Aiyee!