Unknown Chaos on the Side Streets

The sun was shining in Sliverville today. My chargehand, foreman and his superiors were cranky despite of it all because I took a few days off and got checked over by a doctor for symptoms I could make no sense of. For no apparent reason I felt like I had been kicked in the gut by a horse. I am still sore but it hurts less when you know you are going to be better soon. The sawmill I work in, like most such businesses, does not plan ahead for unforeseen predictable eventualities like people thinking for a minute their jig is up.

I heard on the radio that the tour bus that was carrying Canadian band Great Big Sea into Dope City turned over in a ditch causing an 80 block line-up and unknown chaos on the side streets. Nobody from the band was hurt. The bus driver had a bad case of hurt feelings as he had suddenly become just another bad B.C. driver.

In the park with the dog a crackhead wandered in the hardening mud. In the portable can another crackhead sat coughing. In the trees below the park their makeshift shelter blew like a feeble Anarchist protest in the stubborn winter wind.

Steepleton was a good town of religious crazies when Sonja and I moved here many years ago. Now it is just another no good town twisting in the winds of Prohibition.

Sonja says she is going to phone the mayor and get something done. I think it may be time for us to move on.

***** ***** ***** ***** ****** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

In my computer some cool fucker from Virginia I will never see unless we paddle into one another on the Yukon River one day put up some sweet bluegrass by Rebecca Hoggan who looks like a daughter of a friend of mine and sings like the beauty of the America I am after. And the Drive-By Truckers' new record has been leaked as we say 'round here after we have had too many beers. I will be buying their cd and a bunch of their shit if they make it this spring to Dope City. The two songs I heard today were enough to make me forget for a moment I am a prisoner of evil in a sawmill from Hell on a planet ready to explode.