BARS AND BUMS

There aren’t many bars or bums in national parks. A trip like ours takes you away from that and reality in general. On occasion we’d dip into some major metropolis and run into some guy like this.

Watching Seattle’s Emery Carl, I imagined what it must be like to wake up and think, “It’s time to go to my sidewalk. Once again I must sing, joke, and play guitar behind my head while hula hooping. Another day another dollar”.

Whew! When we walked away from the frenetic non-stop musician I asked Francesca for her thoughts,

I liked his act. The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say anything commonplace but burn, burn, burn like a fabulous roman candle exploding like spiders across the stars.

I had to agree adding,

Emery did so much at once. I love it when everything happens! Like when Rolle Grebb pantomimed a Verde opera in his pajamas while rolling his neck in spastic ecstasy. The guy can hardly get a word out he's so excited with life. Excitement spews out of his eyes like one great light!

OK, I’m making this up but we had been listening to Jack Kerouac’s 1951 novel, “On the Road” and throwing in some quotations seemed appropriate. Even if you’re not on the road consider getting the book on tape from your library and listening to it when you are. Frank Mueller, “the superstar of spoke audio”, will amaze

you with Kerouac’s words and his own performance.

The book will become a movie next year.

Here are a couple more photos

I’d like to share with you.

To the right is a flower perched above Norma’s sink in Fort Bragg,

California.

Six miles south we enjoyed this driftwood sculpture in front of the Mendocino Art Center.

It’s early on Friday morning

and off to work I go.

Another day, another dollar.

PS: You can catch Emery’s act by going to www.emerycarl.com .