Oh listen to this: A woman named Patricia Agness is taking a tour of every state in the country (excluding Hawaii) in a taxi! Wow! It will cost $15,000. Now how cool is that?

Do you remember, back in high school, studying about the 100-year war in Europe? Doesn't it seem like we have started a 1000-year war? Does this make sense to anyone? Actually it might be called the Eternal War since terrorist factions will always be popping up here and there. All you need are a few people and a mission. These are strange days indeed.

What is this? Zonk

Two Tanks to Asheville
(part 3---roadtrip blog)

The next morning we woke at 7. Zorrid went to the office and brought back coffee and Krispy-Crème donuts, and turned on the teevee. We watched some retro show called “The Little Rascals.” It was a hoot! A black-and-white of a rough-tumble gang, basically sweet-hearted, poor kids. When it was over I asked Zorrid which character he would be. He said Darla! He is so Darla, indeed, a sly dark-haired princess. I said I would be AlphaAlpha. He said, “You got that right! Same smile. Same optimism.”

NEWS FLASH: Noble, Georgia. Eighty bodies are found in a woods behind a crematorium. The owner has been ill so he turned the operation over to his 28-year-old son. More body parts are sticking up through the red-Georgia clay. More to come. Stay tuned.

I-64 to I-74 to I-75. Just before Knoxville we joined all of the Sunday saints for a buffet at Ryan’s. No kidding! I had been at Ryan’s in Rockford, Illinois just a few weeks ago! It is a chain. Argh. But Zorrid and I wanted to do it, so there we were eating buffet with lots of white, well-dressed church peeps. Guess what? Almost the same food-black-eyed peas, sweet potato Fluff stuff, except you could have carved ham, sliced turkey breast, or sausage, all served by a chef. It was yummy, sort of. Oh wait-they had my fav-vegetable lasagna. I think soul food and Southern food might be almost the same thing. It could be a big trick.

I swung out of the door singing…“Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me.”

Oh! It’s chilly this morning. I tie my road-sign green GAP scarf around my neck. Zorrid throws on his inky black leather jacket.

I-75 is quiet, mostly semis, those always-on-the-road men, carting must-have goods across the country. We are in the Daniel Boone National Forest. Outcroppings of carved out hills are scattered with scrawny evergreens seemingly growing right out of the rocks.

Speaking of rocks, I need one for my garden back home. Say the rocks here lot the same as those in Missouri. What’s up with that? I don’t want any repeats.

We are sweeping through a mountain range, the Bald Mountains. Oh no! The sheer rock cliffs are weeping. I am guessing this is shale. WATCH FOR FALLING ROCKS! The mountains are crumbling. We pass into the New Found Mountains.

Nice colors. The mountains are shades of blue, more intense close up, ombre, growing paler and paler the farther away they are. We are skirting the Great Smoky Mountains. Wedgewood blue peaks, Mt Sterling (5835’) and Chiltoes (5888’) rise out of a brilliant white ring of fog/clouds. The roads are still wide and softly rolling. Down in Maggie Valley I spy a roadside attraction…pink elephants, Davy Crockett, a circus seal, and plastic multicolored flags flap in the breeze. “Let’s get some groovy take home gifts.” An hour later my bag is full-a Herkimer diamond in matrix for my nephew, a pair of salt and pepper shakers shaped like mountains, one says “Blue Ridge Mountains”, and the other says “Great Smokies.” I have a hand-painted Bear mug for Jordan, some bizarre 9-11 memorabilia for CeCe, and a jasper picture rock for Jeret, it looks just like the image on his antique rotating man-fishing Beer sign! Five T-shirts and I am done with my little goofy presents. I bought a Daniel Boone tank for myself. Zorrid can’t find an amusement in the trinkets. He is laughing at me, again. He says my enthusiasm is all he needs.

I ask Zorrid to drive. The man at the store said it was 137 miles to Asheville, North Carolina, our destination. (I wanted to watch the sun rise and set in Key West, but there isn’t enough time.) Zorrid is a Tom Wolfe fan, the older one, “You Can’t Go Home Again” so he is interested in Ashville. F. Scott Fitzgerald didn’t live here, but he came on occasion to write. There could be magic in these mountains.

The storeman added, “Mountains?” when I asked about it, “Honey, you are just in the foothills here. This is nothing.” Whee-hoo! Hang on to your hat!

Already I have developed vertigo. If I am driving and look off into the deep dusky valleys, my head starts to spin. My body is always eager to toss itself off the side. I have to work at it, use my intellect, to save myself from flailing off the mountain. It happens on all mountains, here, out west, it doesn’t seem to matter. Zorrid must drive.

I love mountains…their grandeur, the colors, the way the wind makes curly-cue eddies. I am in awe.

Zorrid takes us up one side and down another, curving, going into the throat of two sharp tunnels dug out right through the mountains. They have lights inside at 2’ intervals. I hold my breath, not intentionally, it just happens.

My ears have been popping all day long.

Am I gonna see God, mommy?/Am I gonna die?/It really hurts mommy!/Am I gonna die?/Smile on mighty Jesus…
I put on ween’s “Spinal Meningitis” song. It makes me feel better.

Damn this is fun!

Asheville. We have arrived. Houses are built up in the towering mountains look down on the city, an old crumbly place with lots of empty storefronts downtown. Once it had been elegant, perhaps in the 20s or 30s, evidenced by a scattering of dramatic Art Deco architecture.

We followed Patton Street in to the Chamber of Commerce to get a local map and select sleeping quarters.

The brochure on Days Inn North looked great. I wanted a Jacuzzi suite. Heading towards Weaverville we found the hotel. It was 3:30 and the rooms weren’t ready yet. “In two hours” the desk clerk said. So we paid and went to a bookstore we had passed, The Reader’s Corner, on Monford Avenue. Inside the front door, to the right, was a large selection of used Tom Wolfe books-“Look Homeward, Angel” “The Web & The Rock” “Of Time and The River” plus a selection of his minor works.

I love used bookstores and this one was particularly nice, jammed floor to ceiling with worthy texts, yet open enough so your ass doesn’t bump into the bookshelf on the other side of the aisle when you bend over to look at the books on the bottom shelf. I bought two travel books. One by Lawrence Durrell, “Spirit of Place” and a contemporary book about an upside-down girl. Yes, I liked the title!

From there we headed over to Woodfin to see the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, the favorite son of Asheville. Ironically, he wrote scathingly of Asheville, much like Hemingway did of Oak Park, IL, “a town of wide streets and small minds.”

The other doodad of Asheville is the Biltmore Estate. It is touted as the largest private home in America, some 240+ rooms of overblown ornamentation. I wanted to see the French Renaissance Chateau architecture, so when we went to the visitor gate we were surprised that it cost $36 for a four-hour tour. No peeking, so we left. You could purchase souvenirs at the fancy store this side of the gate. It is like saying you were there when you weren’t.

We stopped at two galleries, New Morning and a folk art place. They need LuLu’s!!!!!!
I bought a pair of calla lily earring, fine little sculptures by Stuart Nye. When worn the stems that will wind down my neck, perfect for a wedding. Not mine, someone else’s.

Malaprop’s on Haywood was great. It’s the bookstore where they invite Southern authors in for readings. You can find almost anything here. Well, I should say I went shopping. Z stayed in the car and read a free paper called “Snitch.” He is an easy man to tend to. And he looks good naked too!

Swinging back north to the room, we stopped at a liquor store for Z.

OOOH-WHEE! The room was very very very pleasant… spacious, clean, and nicely appointed. Only $70 too! It would be three X’s that in Chicagoland or even Milwaukee.
We unpacked and filled up the Jacuzzi. Our naked bodies need the massage from the vigorous jets. We drank and smoked and ordered pizza. Well, we tried to order pizza from Frank’s Roman but we reached a message that said it was the Sabbath and they were closed, and you should be too. Well, something like that. We settled for Domino’s. Yike’s it was horrid! Big tasteless dough-ball pizza and the garlic bread was just a smash of dough with garlic salt on it. Come to Chicago if you want pizza…crispy thin crust or a deep-dish with spinach. Yummmmmm. And garlic bread is a Gonella Italian-style bread slathered with butter and garlic crisped up under the broiler.

After Z took a snooze and I read a bit, we dressed for a Sunday night in Asheville. Stella Blue was closed so we went over to Club Hairspray. The parking lot was crammed with cars. The building is a wooden nondescript place painted yellow and pink.

Inside it was too fun…50s hair-dryer chairs, Eames warped-plastic light fixtures, and a floor painted in amoebic shapes. All very casual. We ordered drinks and sat at a side table next to the bar where a bunch of men and women were clustered. The boys wore nice make-up and the girls looked like they could kick my ass all of the way to Florida.
In the center room, a bunch of 20-somethings were watching a Janet Jackson video on a big-screen. Then I saw it…a poster…Red Letter Day was playing downstairs. Whee-hoo! What luck.

We stepped into the orange stairwell, down 3 steps, turn, down 3 steps, turn, down 3 steps turn, where we met the Mad Hatter, okay not the Mad Hatter, a girl selling tickets, $10 apiece.

Through the black door we saw the band playing, drenched in spotlights. We could barely see the kissing men or the groping girls. It was so hot in there I was starting to scorch!

If you like punk music you will love Red Letter Day. They are from Illinois. Go to MP3 and listen to “Sincerely Beautiful” or “Friday The 13th” or “Saturday the 14th” Good music for your ears and your happiness.

Fill that hot tub up again. Let’s dip in honey.

You know those winter days when brilliant snow covers everything and it is so bright and vibrant that it feels like it could scorch your eyes into shimmering orange cut-outs? Well there is actually a term for that. It is called ALBEDO. Put your sunglasses on!

Hello

A loud thirtysomething woman at the shower was talking about her husband, ex-husband. She was out in her yard gardening behind a line of shrubs when her husband came out to put something in his car. Right then a woman, one dressed rather provocatively, pulled up and jumped out. She says to the husband, "Hi. I didn't know you lived here. I have missed seeing ya." The woman hears her husband saying under his breath, "Get out of here. Get out of here now."

A car pulls away and the wife stands up, she looks at her husband and says one word, "BUSTED."

Later the whole mess came out. He had been fucking strippers for most of their 7-year marriage, not all of the time, 3 or 4 times a year.

Luckily they didn't have any children. They divorced less than a year later.

Now this woman is going on and on about the virtues of lesbianism. She was hitting on everyone. She seemed desperate and sad and she wore enough gold jewelry to pull a Third World out of poverty.

Seems to me that both she and her ex now like the same kind of woman. Most strippers hate men and are lesbians, and now she is a lesbian, so the same girls, sort of.

I pulled this story out of the March Wind Suite. It doesn't really belong there. The other stories are from last weekend, this story was told to me last summer by a man.It was both hilarious and frightening when he told it. Yes it really happened, the stripper part. The wife was in the house at the time. It became a near tragedy. The stripper kept driving by the house stalking him. The husband never gave any of his "side women" his real name or address or anything. Finally he and his wife had to move. He secretly looked for a new house and convinced his wife that the move was a good idea.
He laughs about it now. He said he was scared shitless at the time though and the whole event upended their lives. He doesn't go to strippers anymore. He says that cured him once and forever.
So see...sometimes the real stories are better than the ones I make up.

Dear Floozy,
So you are interested in my measurements huh? Well the “ideal” woman is supposedly 34-24-36. I am not that.
Since I still don’t have a tape measure I will need to give you my measurements in another way.
My beasts are smaller than a grapefruit, not as hard as a Valencia orange, let’s see…they feel like medium-sized tomatoes to me. I rarely wear a bra (34B) because my tits don’t bounce and are smallish, instead I wear camisoles.
I have a smaller than normal waist. If I place my hands on my waist and try to touch my thumbs and middle fingers, well, I can’t. I would need a man’s hands too. So my waist is about four-hands wide.
Hips? The ones you were obsessing about…well I don’t know. In a mirror my ass looks like the size of a basketball if you cut it in half and glued it on me. It’s round like that too. Like I told you I have a Kenyan ass. I am slim-hipped, which I guess is smaller than 36.
Think size 7.
So I will guess I am about 33 1/2-22-34 ¾…and 5’ 7 ½” but you remember that part right?
But since I have a small waist it makes my ass look larger than it really is. Proportion is the secret to everything!
I am about 2/3s legs. My feet are long and skinny. My hands are too. Ha! My neck is too! I seem to have hit on a pattern here.
My belly button is an “innie.” My hair is longer now…about 4” above my nipples. Eyes still large and green. My mouth is smallish, the upper lip like normal, the lower one puffy. I think that is from men sucking on it.
You can discover my peach and other parts on your own.
There. Now email me with your stats. Tit for tat.

Bec

Why I Won't Be Coming To California
Reason #1 I dress Midwestern because I am Midwestern and I don't want to go shopping when I first arrive. I am allergic to malls.

Commercialization

Did u ever see that Land Rover commercial where a teller is pleading with a man, “Take me with you?” I’m a roadwhore just like that. If a man comes up and says, “Want to eat corndogs with me in Boise?” I say, “YES.” No questions. Just tell me when we leave.

Cold Snap!

Saturday I slid home from the shower. It was only 6 and a bunch of us wanted to go up to Tinman's. Well winter had arrived, finally. No one could go anywhere…sheer ice. Then the plow came around and snapped my cable line. Damn. It was so cold inside my house. I piled comforters up on me and cozied up on the couch. After three movies I was practically praying for a commercial or The Weather Channel or even TV Guide. No dog, no man, damn I was getting lonely.

Last Thursday I met a man who had recently moved here from San Francisco. He said that he thought Midwesterns made up all of those cold snap stories. “This winter has been the same as it is in SF.”

I shouldn’t have thrown away his number. I’d like to see what he thinks now.