Jack Burns Lives!

I’m not much on collecting expensive memorabilia, primarily because of the often ridiculously high prices. But if I see something unusual, especially if it relates to my favorite Abbey works or subjects, I may bite.

Just tonight I found such an item, a 1962 “Showman’s Manual” for the movie Lonely Are The Brave, starring Kirk Douglas. The film was of course based on Abbey’s 1956 novel, The Brave Cowboy, the story that introduced the Jack Burns character, a character that would appear multiple times in other works under various guises. A first edition of that book will set you back $5000.

Easy come, easy go.

The description from the seller:

“12pp. 12″x18″. Showman’s Manual . Profusely illustrated with scenes from the film. This is the 12 page motion picture industry trade booklet for theatres to help them promote the film version of Edward Abbey’s novel The Brave Cowboy. The Brave Cowboy was filmed in 1962 as Lonely Are The Brave starring Kirk Douglas as the brave cowboy, Jack Burns, and a stellar supporting cast including Walter Mathhau, Michael Kane, Gena Rowlands, and Carroll O’Conner. Profusely illustrated with photos of all the cast, and stills from the movie, and several different versions of the movie poster. Several articles discuss everything from Kirk Douglas ordering the set closed during his fight with the one-armed man (shades of The Fugitive) to a story about the author Edward Abbey’s cameo appearance in the film and Abbey ‘s statement that this would be his “first and last film row”. Curioulsy [sic] the scene must have been excised from the final film, as no one has ever spotted the distinctive looking author in the film! Another interesting article talks about bulldozing a road to the top of Needle Peak in the Sandia Mountains, outside of Albuquerque (or Duke City in the film) to shoot the scene in the movie wherein the Brave Cowboy (Kirk Douglas) shoots down a helicopter. No word on whether the late author monkey wrenched the bulldozer. Some wear and creasing, minor closed tears, otherwise very good.”

You can click on the pic for a larger view, and once it’s in my hands, I’ll scan and post more info.

I responded this morning to a simple minded, conservative apologist railing against local food production. He’d posted some of his drivel on the Abbeyweb, and while thinking of what to say to him, I recalled a quote from Turtle Island:

“The return to marginal farmland on the part of longhairs is not some nostalgic replay of the nineteenth century. Here is a generation of white people finally ready to learn from the Elders. How to live on the continent as though our children, and on down, for many ages, will still be here (not on the moon). Loving and protecting the soil, these trees, these wolves. Natives of Turtle Island.

A scaled-down, balanced technology is possible, if cut loose from the cancer of exploitation-heavy-industry-perpetual growth. Those who have already sensed these necessities and have begun, whether in the country or the city, to ‘grow with less,’ are the only counterculture that counts.”

No one I know proposes a community model based entirely on local production. Especially for a nation with over 300 million swarming humans.

The indigenous people of this continent traded between bioregions for thousands of years. This includes the Chickasaw of my own bioregion, so I see no reason why that can’t continue, especially for critical supplies. But I don’t need California figs in October in the Mississippi Delta, and do believe the majority of what is needed can be produced and consumed locally.

Whether people like it or not doesn’t matter. The cold sober fact of the matter is the current system, propped up by inexpensive fossil fuel cannot continue ad infinitum.

People can face the facts, change behaviors or cease to exist.

Another glorious morning in the Mississippi Delta. My human neighbors are busy with their leaf blowers, stirring up dry as a bone biomass into a cloud of dust that swirls and settles only feet from where it originated.

Soccer moms head to Jazzersize. Carport sales are open so folks can sell all the cheap, plastic crap they’ve accumulated over the years. What’s not sold goes to the landfill.

Headline in the local paper: Farmer Massacres Forty Deer And Leaves Carcases to Rot In Woods

The killing was carried out with government approval, I might add.

And tomorrow morning, the suburban churches will be humming with activity as thousands upon thousands of believers leave 5000 square foot homes in expensive cars and drive to multi-million dollar buildings to worship a dead hippy that talked about peace and the rejection of material possessions. A high percentage of these believers are Bush supporting Republicans.

How they fail to see the disconnect between their everyday lives and their “belief” is a mystery to me.

But somewhere there is sanity. Order. Something that makes sense.

Northern Cardinals rise early, usually the first amongst our avian species in this bioregion, to gather food. Like the cardinal, chipmunks rise early and get their work done before the heat sets in, typically in the 90′s during late July, rising to the high 90′s in August. The cicadas warm up a song that will last until dusk. The Cardinals gather the last of the day’s bounty before yielding the sky to Evening bats that fly under the mysterious Southern moon.

Perhaps most fascinating of all are the female Araneus cavaticus spiders that arise each night and spin their large, masterful webs between the house and the garden, catching dozens of bedazzled insects. In the spring, they’re fairly small, but by September, they’ve grown and are often as big as a quarter, fat off a healthy diet of flies, beetles and other arachnids.

About the only thing that thrives during the day are the tomato plants. In this heat, a half ripened tomato spotted in the morning could easily be ready to pick by nightfall. At most, it needs just one more day. Even the pepper plants bow in subservience to the Southern sun.

Order, balance and continuity are found in nature, not in technology and religion. Not that the human world can’t produce order, balance and continuity. We can. But we should look to nature for how to do it, because all of the answers lie there, not in nanoscience, spreadsheets, Bibles and mysticism.

Just by observing life in your yard you learn a lot. You learn to conserve energy. Build efficient homes made of local materials. Rise and retire with the sun the moon. Live in balance with other life forms. Live in balance with the seasons. Take what is sufficient to live a healthy life.

Play. Sing.

Postscript: I couldn’t remember the correct details when I first posted, but I wanted to mention the renowned ecologist Eugene Odum. Odum correctly believed “there is more information of a higher order of sophistication and complexity stored in a few square miles of forest than there is in all the libraries of mankind.”

I agree.

I’m hoping for a real estate boom. Boom as in the sound of something blowing up and disintegrating.

Real estate is one of those businesses most folks view as benign. Even beneficial. But in my mind, it’s anything but benign. It ranks right up there with the worst in corporate greed, probably not far behind those stellar examples of humanity, oil and “defense” contractors.

When is the last time we used our mighty technology to defend Turtle Island?

The profits are often excessive, as evidenced in my own community by the Rolls Royce automobiles driven by at least one of the principles of the largest firm in town, Crye-Leike. One of their top producing agents, Judy McLellan, damn near ran me down the other day in her new, white Mercedes while barreling down Poplar Ave. about 60MPH.

Judy, if you’re going to drive like a self-absorbed maniac in your Merc, you might consider dropping the vanity plate with your name on it.

Top agents like Judy make well into the six figures, some topping $1 million. Or so I’m told by their peers.

Where does it come from?

They make their money from constantly increasing home values and environmentally destructive and unsustainable development. It’s a seemingly never ending cycle where the values must increase ad infinitum, because once it stops, and it must stop at some point, the bubble bursts. Fewer people will sell, and when fewer people sell or buy, the agents make less. Therefore, they want the exact opposite to happen. They want prices to soar and keep soaring. Expand the market. Cash the checks.

What’s wrong with the value of your home going up? Isn’t everyone getting wealthier? Isn’t that the American dream?

No, not exactly.

Because of price escalation, many people can’t afford to buy in good areas and are forced to remain in bad communities with high crime and bad schools. I once had a woman tell me that the key to keeping certain types of folks out of your community was to keep the prices so high they couldn’t afford to move in.

That’s nice.

And who are these “undesirables?” Blacks? Mexicans? Unwed mothers? Liberals? People that won’t spray their yards with chemicals? I can understand not wanting a child molester in your midst, but something tells me that this sort of comment is reserved for people that are sucking hind tit in the not-always-so-fair world of capitalism.

To buy a decent, family home just about anywhere, you can count on paying at least $175,000 and probably $250,000. That means even with a decent down payment, say around $50,000 (which most people don’t have), you’ll have a 30 year note over $1000 per month.

The logic, of course, is that you’ll buy a “starter” (I hate that term) home, make a profit and apply that profit to your next purchase. That purchase is supposed to be an even larger, completely unsustainable home.

And while all of this is happening, the real estate agents are depositing larger and larger checks into the bank.

Growth in new home sales means more development, more sprawl and more damage to habitat. Since new housing starts are what is known as a key economic indicator, there’s pressure in our economy to build new homes ad infinitum, which is absolutely insane, since you cannot grow infinitely in a world of finite resources.

But no one apparently gives a shit as long as the profits keep plopping into the piggy.

Another aspect of all of this is what happens to communities. People don’t stay long. On average, I’d say about seven years, then they’re encouraged to sell and buy a new home. Better hurry before your home loses value! No one knows their neighbors for very long and home is never your “home.” It’s just transient occupancy.

And what’s with all this ego mania? Glamor shots on bus stops, magazine ads, billboards. It’s absurd! Why does every business these days feel the need to plaster photos of their employees everywhere? Could it be not only ego driven, but some sort of weird, outward sign that says “Hey, we’re just like you! White, conservative, normal folks. Do business with us.” Whatever happened to modesty?

A lot of businesses in Memphis put the Ichthus fish, that Greek Jesus symbol, on their signs and business cards, so you will KNOW they’re like you. They believe you should only do business with Christians. Believe me, atheism is bad for business.

When I see those photos, I think “insecure, ego maniac and boring as hell.” Complete dork. Goofball. A total tool.

What’s behind this scathing indictment of real estate agents? I’d like to move. I’d like to move somewhere with a few acres, a decent, energy efficient home and a good water source. Browsing through the ads in the places I’m interested in (southwest Colorado, northern New Mexico, maybe eastern North Carolina or northern Arizona) I quickly discovered I needed more money. A lot more money. Sure, I could move to any number of cities in these areas and get a two bedroom box jammed right next to someone else’s two bedroom box for $250,000. I could listen to the sounds of cars and loud music, not see the stars because of the city lights and hear sirens at 3:00 AM.

Or, I could move outside the city to a reasonable patch of land and hear birds, watch the bats and actually see the stars at night. But to do that, to live a decent life, I have to overcome human greed and the real estate industry. I need $500,000 to $1,000,000.

So, maybe I stay put, because one of the things that can be done to combat this insanity is to stop buying houses. Rent. Renters catch a lot of undeserved flack, but renting actually makes a lot of sense for some people. If you get a decent landlord. There’s no maintenance, no taxes, and you don’t have to worry about selling when you want to move. You just move, like humans did for thousands of years.

If you’re one of those people that whispers about “the renters” in your neighborhood, I’d suggest you not do it around me. Take your lank, pathetic language back to your swanky enclave and keep it there. I can’t stand snobs and bullies, and I’ll make sure you know.

Gary Snyder suggested in Turtle Island, his Pulitzer Prize winning 1969 collection of poetry and essays, that if we would all stop buying cars for one year (I think that was it), the automobile industry would collapse. If only we had listened!

And as Snyder, Abbey and others have ceaselessly pointed out, a continually growing economy is not healthy. It’s a cancer, and as Snyder states in Turtle Island, the waste that is allowed to occur so profits can expand is criminal.

I’m suggesting everyone not buy a house for a year. Two years. That will stop this insanity and bring prices back to fair levels. An even playing field where a single mom working two jobs can afford a decent home in a decent area. And no, I don’t give a hoot about your balance sheet. It’s soft dollars. What’s more important is a family having a decent place to live without having to worry about foreclosure.

Which brings me to another issue. Banks.

More on that later.

As a young boy, I used to walk around our neighborhood and look at all the houses. There was an interesting assortment, mostly 1930′s style bungalows, and I grew up in the same one my mother did. You almost never hear of that these days.

Three bedrooms and one bath. Nice screened in porch on the front (now glass) with two massive elms in the front yard. Two fig trees in the back with hydrangeas, azaleas and gardenias all around.

The street was quiet, lined with trees and perfect for football games, foot races and riding bikes. I remember my first bike well, a burnt orange model with a silver and white banana seat I eyed with envy during the fall of ’69. My grandmother bought it for me that Christmas. I was seven years old.

It was a quiet neighborhood in 1969. Mostly Catholic, Jewish and Methodist. There was one hippy family with a pet monkey. I seem to recall my dad telling me they weren’t Christians (it must have been that long, Jesus like hair) and that they were dangerous. I don’t remember them having any furniture. Just lots of candles and beads hanging around everywhere. Frankly, they did give me the creeps.

You could walk to everything. Vollintine Elementary, Carl’s Bakery, Overton Park, Sears, Tops Barbecue, the barber shop. Everything was close. People walked to Little Flower Catholic Church and Baron Hirsch synagogue (once North America’s largest). My grandfather’s grocery was in the neighborhood. Nothing is there today but an empty building filled with old ghosts.

On Saturday’s, I’d have a little circuit I’d do, and I still do the same thing today at 44, only the circuit is to different places. Everything but the zoo is gone in the old neighborhood. Carl’s is long gone, the history of the remaining facade only known to a privileged few, since the original sign now stands broken and unreadable.

I’d visit some neighbors and quickly make my way to Carl’s, where the bakery ladies dressed in their white uniforms would always give me a free ladyfinger. Sneak into the zoo via the ditch and talk to my favorite tropical bird, a magnificent white, tufted cockatoo that would mimic my movements and follow me around the glass. He was a good friend, and when I was there, I’d dream of being a wildlife ecologist like Marlin Perkins from Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

I’d try out all the baseball gloves in the sporting goods section of Sears and pretend I was Brooks Robinson making a diving catch. Maybe even try on some baseball pants. They were wool and cotton in those days and hot as hell.

Our team was the Memphis Blues. AA franchise of the New York Mets, who would go on to win the Series in ’69. I was a huge fan and Tom Seaver was my hero. They had another hot shot pitcher back then, just not as well known as he would eventually be. His name was Nolan Ryan.

My dad and I listened to the Cardinals on the radio, although games on the black and white tee-vee were becoming more popular.

Walking down Garland, my first task was to visit a few little old ladies, almost all of which were widows. They were sweet and would always give me a glass of ice water, milk or a Coke and a cookie. We’d sit and chat about my grandmother, school and various other topics. Nearly all of them would become my clients when I turned twelve and started cutting yards. $8 included me sweeping the walk and edging. Cutting the shrubs was $5 extra.

I remember some of the houses seemed warm and inviting. Others seemed dark. They gave off a bad vibe. Forbidding and scary. As I considered each structure, I though about what went on in each room. I’d imagine a sad woman in her room. Standing in front of a mirror, coating her hair with Vo5 and Dippity-do and listening to Classical Gas on the transistor radio.

I envisioned the father sitting in front of the tee-vee. Getting up to change the channel. Sitting back down and taking a swig of Schlitz beer. He’d have on polyester pants and a white t-shirt. Unshaven and with a pot belly.

He beat his kids and his wife.

In the ’70′s, the woman would discover The Way. The man read porn.

Every once in a while, someone would come to a window or a door and look at me looking at them. I’d run. But one day, the super creepy man that lived alone asked me if I wanted to come in. My grandmother, who lived with us, and my parents told me to stay away from him, and I did.

After all my errands, I’d come home about 3:00 and watch Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan. I’d grab a Coke in a bottle (the only way to drink a Coke) and have a handful of chocolate chip cookies. My friends and I would meet in the street for touch football or for a game of marbles in the dirt. We’d run races down the middle of the street.

In the evenings, I’d catch hundreds of lightening bugs and put them in a jar. Plump, green Junebugs were tied to strings and and would fly around. The sound of the Cicadas remains so completely vivid. It’s the signature sound of the Southern summer.

And then I’d finally come in and climb into bed. I’d fall asleep dreaming of cowboys and how I’d try to stop people from killing Indians and try to make friends. I never understood what they did wrong.

Not much has changed there. I’m still mad about what happened to American Indians, and I’m still wearing cowboy clothes.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed the year before, about five miles from my neighborhood. I don’t remember it, but I clearly remember when the first black family, the Williams, moved onto the street. The father was in the military, and they had a son, James, that was my age. We immediately became friends.

James’ father was captured and became a prisoner of war in Vietnam. When I asked my dad what that meant, he explained that James’ father was fighting to protect us from Communists, and they were evil and wanted to change our way of life. This was hard for an eight year old to process, and I remember being more than somewhat confused. I hadn’t seen any Communists in Memphis. And everyone being equal and having the same things didn’t seem too far off from what Mrs. Moody was teaching us in church school about Jesus.

My dad explained “it wasn’t the same,” so I just forgot it and hoped the best for James.

They moved away before his father came back, and I never knew what happened.

By 1976, I was the only white kid on the block and the dynamics had changed. My father explained he had “had it with the niggers” and was moving us and putting me in a “Christian school.” For me, going to this Christian school and eventually leaving Garland was one of the saddest periods of my life.

The school, full of wealthy white kids, came before the move. Two years of visiting their fancy homes in East Memphis and Central Gardens made me ashamed of our little house and neighborhood. The paint was peeling, the screens torn. The yard was basically dirt. My wealthy friends seemed to have everything. Grand, beautiful homes. Lavish vacations. New clothes. Exotic cars.

It wouldn’t be until my thirties that I finally “figured things out” and became proud of my little street and not growing up with a silver spoon in my mouth. I realized that Tony was really a great friend, one of the best I ever had. When I reconnected with him years later at the Midsouth Peace and Justice Center, I felt as if things had come full circle for me.

Tony was such an honored friend that when my pet rabbit Petey died, I had Tony serve as the sole pallbearer at the funeral. I used one of my father’s tool boxes as a casket and we had the funeral on Petey’s hutch. Built by hand, I might add, by myself.

My dear grandmother provided the stability in those formative years. Mom was not well. Several visits to Tennessee Psychiatric and a few rounds of shock treatment didn’t seem to help. She only became more strange. But then she found The Way, and it was all better. At least according to her.

I didn’t really understand The Way any more than I understood why we killed Indians. Although I surmised these two things were somehow connected. But I did understand that somehow my mom had become a kinder, more sane person, so when she gave me clear instructions on how I could become part of The Way, I listened carefully and did as I was told.

As I recall, it was a Wednesday evening in 1972, the night we always had the Fellowship Dinner at First United Methodist. I went to the little two seat chapel on the second floor of the Pepper Building and prayed for god to do the same thing for me that he had done for my mom. I cried because I thought of my mom, how much I had always wanted her to really be my mom and that maybe now I’d really have a mom.

After the praying was finished, I waited for some change. Jesus was supposed to come into my heart, you see. I thought this was pretty profound and hoped that it didn’t hurt.

I waited for thirty years for some monumental change that never came. Neither with me or my mom.

Not long before we both got sucked into The Way, my brother was born. She devoted the rest of her life to him, and I devoted the rest of my life to finding someone else to love. After a lot of false positives, I finally found her in 1984 and eventually repaired things with my mother. I’m happy that I did.

But back to my grandmother, affectionately known as “mawmaw.” As a child, she was my everything. She bought all my clothes. Taught me how to play piano. Taught me how to read and my multiplication tables. She schooled me in table manners and taught me to appreciate theater, Bach and Brahms. She instilled in me the belief that you should always do your best, dress nicely, open doors for people and always say “thank you.” She taught me to write thank-you notes.

She took me to fancy restaurants with her friends, and we always went to Britling’s Cafeteria after church. I remember Mr. and Mrs. Fox were always there, and it was a big highlight to see them, because they always gave me a dollar.

My grandfather died in ’61, and my mother confessed that she essentially just handed me off to my grandmother when I was born. We were there for one another, and no matter how bad I was, she loved me more than anything on the planet. I loved her, too.

At 44, I look back fondly to those days on Garland Street. I miss it and will never forget it. I miss the simple pleasure of just being a boy, wandering, playing and dreaming of being a man. And now that I’m a man with my own family, I find myself trying to recreate some of those simple pleasures of my youth. Sometimes I can, especially in my garden where I can just sit quietly and watch the chickadees, honeybees, dragonflies and bats. I’m just as fascinated by their lives today as I was as I was in ’69, and I still love animals, probably even more.

But most of the time, life seems tarnished. I know too much about life. I know that there are really evil people and fear for the world my children are growing up in. Yes, there’s so much beauty and a lot of good, but the world is different today. Or at least it seems that way.

Do we all nostalgically look back to the “good old days?” Where they really better? I think baseball was better. I don’t remember hearing about steroids. Willie Mays or Barry Bonds?

I don’t remember sprawl. I remember hearing frogs at night, but I don’t hear them much since lawn chemicals destroyed their habitat. Music was better. That’s not even a debatable point.

We walked and road bikes. Children played outside. We read a lot of books and were entertained by simpler things. Getting a new car was a big deal. A lot of families only had one car. Now most families have three or more.

I think it was better, but we can’t go back, can we. We can only go forward, carrying our memories with us and making new ones.

Onward.

Our society isn’t ready for anarchy. At least not on a grand scale. Then again, does anarchy have to be on a grand scale?

Maybe the grand scale is antithetical to anarchy. It is. Anarchy is small. Local. Decentralized.

But we need anarchy. We need more anarchy. We need it now, but most humans are not anywhere near ready for it.

Examples of where it is working and can continue to work? Cooperatives. Employee owned companies. Community groups. Neighborhood associations. Essentially small pockets.

It’s there. People just don’t understand it. Anarchism is democracy fully realized.

A=D

Why isn’t it growing? I don’t believe enough humans believe society can function without a standing government. Without hierarchy. Most people cannot conceive of such a world, because that’s all they know, and they are conditioned to think in a vacuum.

Most people enjoy being herded like sheep, and in a country that was founded on dissidence and resistance, our children (not mine) are now taught that resistance and dissidence are bad. Treason. Unlawful sedition.

Bullshit to that idea! We need something to remove the blinders. Open some minds.

A goal of writers, especially poets and essayists, should be to cultivate dissidence and critical thinking. It’s how we nourish anarchy so it can grow.

We’re the keepers of the garden. We till the soil.

DIG

Pics are here.

So, the big California trip is nearing an end. As I peck, tap, tap, tap…I’m trapped on a missile moving at 500 miles per hour with several dozen other tourists, peering over the edge into the abyss, contemplating my recent journey into the Shasta Nation. NorCal.

An inaugural trip for everyone but me and my daughter. A vacation I felt would offer something for everyone. Nature and all sorts of cultural curiosities. Food, literary sites, parks, oceans, mountains, trails, museums.

We spent two days in what’s left of the real San Francisco, four days in and around posh Carmel and the spectacular Big Sur coastline and the last day in the primeval, awe inspiring redwood forests of Big Basin.

Overall, a good time, though tiring. And if there is a weather goddess, she was on our side, blessing us with seven straight days of sunshine and reasonable temps. Pretty much the norm for NorCal in summer, but I like to think luck was finally on my side.

We buried our toes in warm sand, were awed by 300 foot redwoods, watched lizards “posture” on rocks and saw the fog roll in off the bay. The Museum of Modern Art was a highlight, featuring Picasso, Matisse, Warhol and interesting new art from artists like Felix Schramm. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time and enjoyed stacks of hot pancakes at Mama’s and at Katy’s. I finally made it Tor House, only to be disappointed that it was closed. Not to be deterred, I jumped the fence and explored.

Jeffers would have approved by rebellion.

Made our way to the Beat Museum, an exploitative disappointment decorated by blown up Wikipedia-like biographies, photos and copies of original book printings. Perhaps I’m too harsh, and it will improve. City Lights Bookstore was what I expected and more. I read Snyder, Welch, Ferlinghetti and Kerouac and imagined what it was like to be there when all the cool stuff went down. Listened to The Momas and The Papas driving through Haight-Ashbury, thought about what is was like during the Summer of Love and why we don’t have more Summer’s of Love.

We laughed and loved and completely wore ourselves out seeing all that we could see.

We saw friends, made new friends, scampered up hills and communed with the locals, human and non-human.

I was often moved to tears, simply from the joy of knowing my wife and kids were having a good time and that I was able to provide such a vacation before the children moved off, married and started their own families. I wanted so badly to do something nice for all them. In the end, I believe I achieved my goal.

Allison speaks of living there. A real shocker. Something I never thought I would hear from my deeply Southern rooted soul mate.

They mean everything, and without them, my life is nothing. So, I give thanks to the Shasta Nation for allowing us safe passage and blessing my family with its awesome sights, smells, sounds and tastes. It’s truly like no other place on earth.

Live there? Another visit? Not so sure about either.

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