Hello folks. I promised you “House of the Muses II,” about the Woody Guthrie Center. Before I’m done with Tulsa and start on Italy, by Friday.
Since I’ll actually be flying “from the redwood forests, to the New York island”—flyover country, middle America—as I put it together, I’ll try to keep my word. That’s the theme here, in case you missed it, The Third Ear is always somewhere in-between, a mediator.
In case the wifi gets shoddy or I can’t deliver, what follows is a surrogate offering. Excuse the mistakes—I’m writing from Gate E4. (E3’s full).
My life’s been a comedy of errors lately. That’s what I told Harry Hew—my online booster. After I climbed into the cuckoo’s nest, and he messaged me:
Putting this out at 11 PM on the day Twitter crashed is a bold strategy, my friend
I launched The Third Ear on the Ides of March, I added.
Yesterday, frantically packing for Italy, I locked myself out on the deck. Trying to keep the doors locked before I leave, and the cat inside—it was 98 degrees; if he went out, I’d have to leave the door open—I went out on the deck to dust my son’s shoes off before I put ‘em in his suitcase. Slid the sliding-door latch behind me.
Click.
No phone, no shoes except for a pair of kids size 4. Barefoot. Nothing in my pocket but a few scraps of paper and trash I’d picked off the floor, for the house sitter’s sake. Our deck faces east, hot as a solar panel. So hot the paint’s peeling. Twenty feet above the asphalt and cobblestone.
I yelled to the neighbor, but I knew he was at the beach. Thought about shouting down a stranger passing-by to invite inside and let me in. Pacing back and forth, uttering self-directed curses and oaths, peering hopelessly over the edge, wasting my precious packing time locked out of my own damn bedroom.
Weighing the chances of breaking an ankle before a trip I’ve been waiting for since before the pandemic.
Then I noticed an extension cord, thank the lord, leftover from Christmas—the lights. One went off in my brain. I spotted two more. I wove those three into a rope, tied it to the least-loose bannister I could find, and let myself down easy.
How’s that for ingenuity, Mr. MacGyver? Sometimes life is a bitch, and all you can do is laugh.
Ain't life strange, ain't it funny?
Nothing matters much but love & money.
Things don't work out the way you reckon…— Warren Zevon, “Empty Hearted Town”
One comes first, and the other comes second…
Now for the strange part, the other day.
A man named David delivered me three tacos. Asked how I was doing.
“Oh… alright,” I lied. Words that mean one thing, in a tone that means another. “How ‘bout yourself?”
There was a pause, three beats. Same pregnant silence I offered my dental hygienist a week earlier, before I said “Don’t ask.”
I knew what the taco man was about to say. He had a certain look and mien: neat Western short-sleeve with snaps, salt-wavy beard under a Kris Kristofferson haircut. And an aura. The pause cinched it.
“My wife left me three weeks ago after thirty-three years,” he said.
About what I expected. Didn’t give me time to wince before he made me smile.
“All she left was the change jar,” the taco man said. “I said go ahead and take it. A little change’ll do you good.”
Heh heh. Where the hell’d you come from?, I thought. Sounded like he walked right off my page and up to my doorstep.
“Mine took off three months ago,” I commiserated. “Took more than a jar of change, though.” Left me with an empty-handed heart in an empty-hearted town.
Townes Van Zandt was just been playing on the stereo inside. Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas.
Along with Mr. Zevon. New playlist—guess the theme.
Townes told a joke between sad songs, before I answered the door. Something Jerry Jeff Walker told him. Goes like this, more or less.
Drunk guy’s wanderin’ around lookin’ for his car.
Cop comes up, asks does he needs help?.
“I lost my car,” drunk says.
“Well, where was it the last time you looked?”
“Right here,” the drunk points, “right on the end of this key,”
“Maybe we oughta go downtown, to the station,” cop says. “Get this all sorted out… But first, I think you better zip-up your fly.”
Drunk looks down and says, “Ah, man… they got my girl too?!”
I said to David, “Where the hell’d you come from?”
He said “Dallas.”
Took a lotta jobs, one of them was teaching country dance lessons.
Once danced with a woman he never met or looked-at, he said. Their first waltz was outside of work. Outside the dance studio, at the honky tonk.
She saw him on the dance floor, knew he could dance, and asked him to teach her.
Ended up marrying her. Few years later he left for Spokane, after she found another partner.
Never made it to Spokane. Stopped off in Portland along the way. Where he married the last.
I told him I’d been writing about country music and comedy, just came back from Tulsa. Woody Guthrie, Cain’s Ballroom, Bob Wills…
He said something about Wills always being a Texas playboy, no matter where he’d lived or played.
“I’m from Houston,” I offered.
“Hell you come from the armpit of the world!” he said.
I didn’t protest.
“I used to drive a truck through there. Awful. One night I came through at 3:00 am. Thought by that hour the Gulf Freeway wouldn’t be congested. It was closed for construction.”
Yeah, I said. They’re always working on something down there, adding an exxtra lane for traffic. By the time they get done they need another. “The street plan looks like a shook-up can of worms.”
“You know who Jerry Reed is?” David asked.
Not really. My mind jumped to Jimmy Reed. “Maybe…”
“Country singer. Played the truck driver in Smokey and the Bandit.”
Ah—“Yeah.” I knew that face.
“He had a good one, about divorce.” Said…
We split everything, right down the middle. Even the diamond mine. She took the mine, and I got the shaft.
I laughed and shook my head. We exchanged a few more stories, mine about Tulsa and life at home. Each of his punctuated by a joke.
We bid good night. As he walked down the steps, he paused for one more.
“Truly though, I tell you, I married Mrs. Right…”
Uh Huh.
“Didn’t tell me her first name was ‘Always’.”
I laughed again and muttered, “Where in hell?” Told him he came straight out of my writing.
“Maybe I was sent here for a reason,” were the angel of David’s last words over his shoulder.
It was surely more than brisket tacos.
I texted him, before I ate those tacos. Asked if he’d heard the one Jerry Jeff Walker told Townes Van Zandt. Told him the joke about the drunk guy looking for his car, who found out he’d lost his girl too.
Never heard from David again. But I’m damn sure he’d already heard that joke. Hope he finally made it to Spokane.
And me to Newark and Naples. Arrivederci.
I loved this and am so glad you lived to tell it!