Rainbow River

The first time I ate some of the mushrooms that made Dope City famous before dope did Bobby took me picking out in the fields not far from where I walk the Hammer now. It was raining pails as Bobby poked through the long wet grass for the brown sweeties and tried to teach me what mushrooms were the good ones. It did not take us long before we had a couple huge bags to take home to my punk rock apartment.

Mushrooms were legal then. Our only fear was being shoo'd off the field by a farmer who knew what was growing in his field was worth more than the steer that once grazed and, more importantly, shit there.

Back at my place we made some mushroom tea. It tasted about what you would think mushroom tea would taste like. We sweetened it with honey and gulped it down, had a few beers and waited to see if the mushrooms were any good. Pretty soon we were hallucinating wildly. Then I went to work.

At work the river was a rainbow beneath my dubbined leather caulk boots. Luckily the company had towed us in some dandy logs to be pushed up into the mill so I did not have to do too much besides watch the Yellow Submarine river roll by.

But while I was still under the fungus spell my boss hollered for me. "Get over here you lazy cunt. Give me a hand with this motherfucking plug. Cocksucker!" Plugs are the wooden wedges hammered into the holes in boom sticks to keep boom chains in place. This plug needed the skills and muscle of two boom men, one drunk, the other stoned, to remove it. "Jesus motherfucking Christ! Son of a motherfucking bitch! Fuck me up the fucking ass!" We pried away, sweating in the rain and at last found success. "At a boy Beer! We'll make a boom man out of you yet you lazy cocksucker! Fuck this fucking shit! Let's go for fucking coffee! Fuck me! Fuck!"

Just the same I was relieved when the mushroom's effects slowly wore off and I could lean on my pike pole, smoke a bomber and watch the sun, which appeared as the day came to a close, set behind the wood-chip scows.

Near the end of the shift I choked back a handful of mushrooms to re-new my wastedness. It was Friday night and I was soon on my way to the Bad Allah Cabaret where I would be the soberest man in the crowd.