(Published in The Village Voice, February 3, 1972)
Profiles of Little Egypt
Not too young to vote
By
Lucian K. Truscott IV
CARMI, Illionois--This is the county seat of White County. Six thousand people, three traffic lights, and a four-way stop, located about three quarters of the way down the state in Little Egypt, Southern Illinois. They say if you want to find out what's happening in this town, you get in a car, cruise through the red lights, take a right at the four way stop then another right, run straight for a half-dozen blocks, then go back around through the red lights again, right down Main Street, the middle of town. That's where it's happening. It's gotta be. You pass the Vintage Lounge, which connects with the Red Lantern across the alley through back doors.
That's where people go to "carry on." There, and the Elks, and you passed that, too. At one end of Main Street, you passed the County Courthouse. It's looking, pretty good these days. They rehabilitated it--the outside, anyway. Now the bricks are all nice and red, the window frames are painted White, and the roof doesn't leak any more. That's where all the important county offices are. All the important county officials work there, and it's also the place where the County Board of Supervisors holds its meetings, which have been pretty well attended lately.
Down at the other end of Main Street, you passed the motion picture theatre where they're showing "Black Beauty." You also passed the place where the Big Fire was last year—burned down the Oldsmobile Place and part of the newspaper, the Carmi Times (eight pages, fancy logo).
Off on the side streets, there was Teen Town, Egberts pool hall, and down there past the court house, across the bridge over the little Wabash, next, to the trailer lot, is the most famous laundry in town. The woman who owns it is supposed to be writing a book about Carmi, about life in this town, "kinda like that dirty one, 'Peyton Place,'" it's said. Some folks allow as how she might have some stuff to work with. "Old Carmi, I just bet it'll make New York look like a kindergarten," one man says to me. "Yes, I just bet it will," agrees his wife, a woman with an ascending beehive hairdo and a resurrected look to her face. The two of them smiled and glanced at each other knowingly, but the smiles were not comfortable. People in this town joke about the laundry lady writing her book about Carmi, but still deep within the joking is the hope she'll never finish. My presence causes a verbal dance. A kind of nervous musical chairs, and talk about White County with its people goes around life here, never straight through it.
Only the young people are excited about the newspaper guy from New York being in town. To them, "Peyton Place" is a TV show that went off the air a couple of years ago, and any comparison or Carmi to New York is just short of sheer idiocy. They are not yet old enough to be jealous of their lives, and as far as they're concerned, Carmi and environs suffer from that age-old Midwest malady, the nothin' ever happens here
syndrome. Ask any of them. They'll tell you.
Ask Sharon, the girl from across the street, coming in around 2 a.m. with her boy friend, Don, who drives a 66 Chevelle with a 289, three on the floor, six inch rake, wide tires, needs a clutch.
They've been to the drive-in movie to see the same three babysitter horror pictures they saw last spring at the same drive-in.
The babysitter gets left alone with the monster in every one of them, and every time she's molested, violated and then saved.
"Nothin' ever happens here." says Sharon, pouting. Plop, she lands on the couch, called a divan (long "i"), hands thrust deep in her coat pockets. Don nods. She attends the IBM computer school over in Evansville in the morning and works in a local department store in the afternoon. Evenings, she usually goes out with Don. "Ain't nobody found the spot where we park yet," she says, smiling finally, giving the impression that nothin'-ever-happens-here syndrome has some advantages, anyway. Don nods. "Nothin' ever happens here," he says.
What makes the older folks so jealous of their lives? Why do they want to keep from me all they figure is "bad," and let me find out about only the "good"? And why, in the middle of their portrayal of life here as the same you'd find in any sleepy little Midwestern Town, this sly aside about Carmi making New York look like a kindergarten? Their reasons, I found, are moral ones, and morality is more than just a word in White County. For amid the hypocrisies and allegiance's of the morals of these people is the stuff of their lives. Everybody who was anybody went and got drunk at the Elks on New Year's Eve. The next day, the talk among these people was about each other and it flowed thick and fast. Without the Elks, and without the inherent sinfulness of getting drunk, there would be no talk. And without talk of the night before, it may as well have not existed. Which reminds of a party given by a close friend of mine recently in the Village. There was a least a moth of every day logistical planning which preceded the party, and a good two weeks of talk around the bar about it afterward. The party itself was seemingly in duration in any case incidental to the entire experience, but without it, of course, there would have been no over-all experience. Without the Elks, without sin, there'd have been no New Year's Eve.
What we're talking about here, of course, is life. It would be a little premature of me to say that life in Carmi, Illinois, is really no different from life in Greenwich Village, so let me describe to you some of the life I found here in Carmi, and you can draw your own conclusions.
It came in bits and spurts, little dribblings that passed by like cars on a highway when you're hitchhiking. Fast. So you barely get a glance. But the glance you get is enough to make you hate, to fill you with enough feeling to cuss and turn around and flip that stinking bastard the finger and wonder why a salesman in a '71 Chevrolet won't pick you up when it's 40 degrees outside and raining. You barely saw his face, eyes riveted straight down the road, but the fact he didn't pick you up in enough that know him as well as if you'd talked to him in a bar for an hour.
When I got here, the radio station from up in Chicago was blaring at least twice each half hour one of those "SUNDAY Sunday--AT RACEWAY PARK--THE '72 WINTERNATIONAL DRAG RACES" ads, featuring rail dragsters that will do better than 230 miles an hour, from standing start, in a quarter mile, completing the distance in somewhere in the neighborhood of six and a half seconds.
That same ad format pushing drag races for as long as I can remember. Back when I subscribed to every hot rod publication existing, the same kind of dragsters, then referred to as "slingshots," were doing 150 miles an hour in the same distance. If a guy got "down in the nines," or in the nine-second bracket, there was cause for celebration. Now it looks like Don "Big Daddy" Garlits, the fastest man alive in the quarter mile, has gone about as fast as he's going to go. And now it looks like the kids in rural Illinois, like the big city and suburban kids before them, are pushing that same limit--approaching, that place where you've gone as fast and as far as you'll ever go.
New Year's Eve, while the Vintage and Lantern and the Elks were filled to overflow, there was the incident with the 16-year-old down-freak, the Geek alphabet machine, a flaming hot snarfer, and the shotgun blast, not to mention a savage round of pool. All of this was connected by high speed rides in a late model car, radio blasting, swilling Jack Daniels from a jelly glass, wondering what the fuck I was doing on New Year's Eve in Southern Illinois for crying out loud.
The guy I am with is in basic training at Fort Polk, Louisiana. He was going to become a preacher before that. He was even giving sermons, at his church, and everybody in town was talking about what a fine young man he had become since he had found Jesus, since he had accepted his calling. Then he freaked and enlisted in the Army, volunteered for the Airborne and Vietnam and that was that. He was gone. Now he is back in town for Christmas leave and people, taking a second look, were talking that maybe it was the girl he'd been chasing around for so long, who had put him down about once too often, who caused him to turn to Jesus in the first place, and then caused him to head out for the Army, him not being able to stick around the same town she was in and all.
So New Year's Eve he and I are driving over to Enfield, a town about 10 mi west of here, drinking, talking about pool shooting, and about this girl he knows in Enfield who has been known to be a good lay, or she was a night or so before anyway. We get there, he disappears inside for a minute, and comes back out with this incredible, skinny, pimply, wasted looking form who crawls in the front seat and immediately announces, 'Man, am I stoned."
Her eyes were thin slits, head thrown back, and she reaches forward to turn up the radio turned to an obnoxious top-40 radio station. With the noise from the radio at a deafening level, she proceeds to explain what happened that day. She fell down in the kitchen, right in front of her mother, "and the stupid bitch didn't even notice what was going on." She laughs, and then says it scared her, so she spent the rest of the day in her room, stoned, listening to music, while her parent went out to visit friends. We must stop at the Gulf station cafe to see if her girl friend is there. The driver protests, but she jabbers on about the necessity of finding her girl friend, picking over her words like stones in a fast-moving stream, afraid she might fall in if she moves too fast.
When she gets out at the Gulf station, I ask the driver how old she is, and he says "16". My jaw drops, and I take another swig of whiskey, then another, allow myself the momentary vision of the law swooping down to gather up these corrupters of youth and poke us away for the rest of the week, and glance into the cafe just in time to catch a glimpse of her falling into the juke box, people are grabbing for her, and then she weaves out the door. "This girl has got to go," I say, the words spitting from my mouth like sour milk. The driver nods and pushes her back in the car from his side. She hasn't found her friend, and now there's slight sense of desperation showing through, even in her condition. We've got to find her or we just can't do anything, she implores. The sad, deadened barbiturate litany is right there at the Enfield crossroads, the driver, slumped slightly against the wheel, staring glumly out the window, me virtually eating whiskey now, the pimply little thing between us going on about her girl friend, until the urge to slap her across the face arises in me. I suppress it, and act if the girl friend is her connection, and she nods. Christ. What the fuck am I doing in Southern Illinois on New Year's Eve with an underage down-freak at my side, violent urges coming on fast, half-crocked on booze, the whole thing turning into the same old drive-around frenzy I have despised since I was old enough to drive around?
There was only one solution. We left her off at a party her friend was supposed to attend later. Fifteen people were sitting around sullenly while two kegs of beer went flat in the kitchen. I think some of them were watching TV. The driver tells her not to drink because he doesn't want her passing out like she did the other night. "I couldn't wake you up, remember? You can't do that again while you're on pills." "Yeah, I know," she says. And then, "Man, am I ever stoned. See you later."
The party was at an empty farmhouse off the road that crosses Possum bridge, a rickety old structure that looks like it had see more than its share of traffic in the last 30 years or so. The party was given by the daughter of one of the most prominent Republicans In town. and by the time we go there, it was in full swing. The dirt road leading up to the house lined with cars, a few figures huddled around a truck getting a case of beer. Inside there was a constant din of noise. No one was talking. Every person was yelling.
Immediately after our arrival, a back room with a couple of uncovered mattresses is pointed out to me. "These will be in use, time this is over, you just wait," someone says, and everybody in the room laughs. They all know each other, having gone to high together at one level or another. Now most are in college, and this is a chance to find out what everybody else is up to. One guy, blond curls edging their way down his forehead, walks around spouting the Greek alphabet and various other gems his fraternity had him learn. He is studying journalism.
"You like big words?" he asks. "They make us study all kinds of big words. We have tests on them all the time. I'm not too sure I'm gonna like this journalism." I am introduced to him. His name is Jim, and he reaches across the void with that universal coupler of this age, the Revolutionary Drug Brothers Grip, as Hunter Thompson so accurately described it in his Rolling Stone column, "Fear and Loathing in Washington."
Right thump up, a serious, yes heavy look crossing his face for a moment, he waits for me to Revolutionary Drug Brother Grip him back. I simply shake his hand, and with a quizzical look on his face, he moves one. "The guy from New York didn't return the Revolutionary Drug Brother Grip. What could be wrong with him?" Oh well. More Greek alphabet. He likes the Greek alphabet, or so it seems.
Over against one wall of the kitchen, a particularly brave-looking individual has attracted a small crowd while he downs successive shots of flaming apricot brandy. Each time, the girls are favorably impressed. “Do it again,” they scream. He is a pleasant, obliging sort, and does it again. He likes this apricot brandy, he says. “Wanna try some?” In a back room, another group has gathered, and someone is exploding bottles of beer by hitting their tops on a counter in a peculiar fashion. Lots of guys say they want to learn how to do that. There is beer all over the floor and down the legs of the guy doing the exploding, and more beer decorates the wall behind the sink. Still they want to learn how to do it.
Over by the door, wincing slightly each-time another beer bottle bottom bites the dust, is a small cluster of unusually good looking young girls, each attired appealingly in what look to be new “outfits”. “They,” it is explained to me, “are cheerleaders at the high school. Seniors. That’s why they’re allowed to be here.” “Oh, “I reply.
One of them is drinking a ghastly purplish liquid in a funny looking bottle, and I wonder what it is. “It’s grape malt duck,” she answers. “Here. Try some. It’s real good.” She smiles broadly as she turns her head from side to side and her blonde hair bounces the way it does in hair conditioner commercials. I am petrified at the mere look of the stuff, much less even speculating what it might taste liken, and decline. Later, she offers me more of the grape malt duck, opining that it will get you drunk as good as the next thing. After “grape malt duck”, I can hardly imagine what the “next thing” will be, and decline once again. Getting closer to that edge, I tell myself, pulling on some more whiskey, from the bottle this time. And there’s only one way to avoid it. Leave.
So we split. Later I am told that one of the more rambunctious members of that noisy gathering pulled a shotgun from the trunk of his car and celebrated the coming of the midnight hour by firing it aimlessly into the woods, narrowly missing a couple who had other ideas about what to do in the woods. The next day, the rumors about the party would escalate madly, heading rapidly to the point where the rumor would one or two wounded, the gun toter in the throes of a nervous breakdown, his girl friend wringing her hands with worry, and every telephone in town crackling with the news. Two walls in the house were badly damaged, and reportedly the mattresses never saw any use.
The driver and I headed back to Enfield, faster now, for we could feel the numbness coming on. There we engaged in several vicious games of pool with the local hustler. A curly-haired punk in a Gulf attendant shirt who shot a damn good game of eight ball, but who could be counted on to blow it in the clutch every time. At a dollar a game, with him yelling to shoot for five, and me soddely drunk by that time, knowing my erratic talents well enough not to push my luck that far, we made money. Maybe five bucks a piece, racking in, until finally the young hustler in the blue shirt had had enough. By the time I had lapsed into an obnoxious stupor, causing the driver to prop me up against the wall between shots. What did, what really convinced our curly-haired opponent that this just wasn’t his night, was the last game of eight-ball. The hustler cleared the table of the low balls in one run after his break. The driver then stepped in and did the same for us. The hustler’s partner took a poke at the eight-ball and missed, leaving it on the rail halfway between the side pocket and the corner. The cue ball rolled to a halt across the table, close to the rail, maybe six inches from the corner. The driver me off the wall, pointed out the dilemma, and told me quietly to bank it cross-side. “Eight-ball down.” I muttered pointing the cue in the direction of the far corner pocket, all the way down the rail from the eight ball.
“No, no,” the driver screamed. “You’ll never make it. It’s an impossible shot. You’re drunk, you’re a madman, you’re throwing away our money.” The room fell into a hushed silence, and a few guys wandered over from the pinball machine to check out the commotion. I shot the cue ball slow. You could see the chalk marks on it distinctly, rolling end over end, the ball was rolling so slowly. Straight for eight, it moved, as if if with mind of its own. Click. It snapped against the side of the eight and the cushion at the same--a perfect kiss. The eight-ball edged away, rolling straight down the rail for the corner, past the side pocket, slowing and plunk, into the far corner as if it had never been there at all.
“Shit,” whispered the driver. “Here’s your fucking dollar,” growled the hustler. “I ain’t playing you guys any more.”
Then it hit me, staggering out to the car, leaning on the preacher turned hired-gun, talking about the last shot like it really didn’t happen, like was really a dream. What I am actually here for is to write about the politics of this county, and her I am wasting my time at the Enfield Crossroads Gulf Station, worrying about what happened to the chalk, and whether the driver would make the next shot.
Wait a goddam minute. That nightmarish gathering in the woods, those guzzlers of “grape malt duck” and flaming apricot brandy, the girl with the big tits running around telling everybody she was engaged while she rubbed up against every crotch in the place, the idiot with the beer running down his pant legs teaching 10 guys how to bust the bottom off beer bottles--that was the youth vote, by god! I’m doing my job. I’m covering the Southern Illinois youth vote. Daley doesn’t run this fucking state any more, because he doesn’t know how important “grape malt duck” and the Greek alphabet will be this year. The ever so cautiously sought-after possible deciding factor in the coming presidential election, a monster goddamit, an ugly gross unpredictable thing that has candidates kowtowing and bowing to the four winds, the I Ching and the top 40 every time they open their mouths...the youth vote. I’ll bet Nixon has a small attack battalion ready to move out whenever he gives the word. “Get hip with Dick. That’s where it’s at!” they’ll say--and Muskie. He’s sincere. None of this hypocritical, two-faced shit. No sir. That’s enough for any youth. Why, I bet he’d even allow kids to smoke cigarettes in school, just like the teachers. That how sincere he is. And McGovern. Do these kids realize he was against the war when they were still in grade school? Do they realize he’s been looking out for them that long? Wow.
This youth vote is definitely going to be heavy, and I know about it. I know what these crazy kids are up to. I’ve been out there in the sticks researching my ass off, and I know what it will take to bring these fuckers under control. I know what will shake their eyes away from those big tits, and focus on what counts, what really counts in 1972 (We’re close to the car now, still staggering.) Every one of those screaming yeamies will be able to vote in the election, and, by god, that CBS computer on election eve will positively freak out when the returns start coming in from this part of the country.
Profiles of Little Egypt
Not too young to vote
By
Lucian K. Truscott IV
CARMI, Illionois--This is the county seat of White County. Six thousand people, three traffic lights, and a four-way stop, located about three quarters of the way down the state in Little Egypt, Southern Illinois. They say if you want to find out what's happening in this town, you get in a car, cruise through the red lights, take a right at the four way stop then another right, run straight for a half-dozen blocks, then go back around through the red lights again, right down Main Street, the middle of town. That's where it's happening. It's gotta be. You pass the Vintage Lounge, which connects with the Red Lantern across the alley through back doors.
That's where people go to "carry on." There, and the Elks, and you passed that, too. At one end of Main Street, you passed the County Courthouse. It's looking, pretty good these days. They rehabilitated it--the outside, anyway. Now the bricks are all nice and red, the window frames are painted White, and the roof doesn't leak any more. That's where all the important county offices are. All the important county officials work there, and it's also the place where the County Board of Supervisors holds its meetings, which have been pretty well attended lately.
Down at the other end of Main Street, you passed the motion picture theatre where they're showing "Black Beauty." You also passed the place where the Big Fire was last year—burned down the Oldsmobile Place and part of the newspaper, the Carmi Times (eight pages, fancy logo).
Off on the side streets, there was Teen Town, Egberts pool hall, and down there past the court house, across the bridge over the little Wabash, next, to the trailer lot, is the most famous laundry in town. The woman who owns it is supposed to be writing a book about Carmi, about life in this town, "kinda like that dirty one, 'Peyton Place,'" it's said. Some folks allow as how she might have some stuff to work with. "Old Carmi, I just bet it'll make New York look like a kindergarten," one man says to me. "Yes, I just bet it will," agrees his wife, a woman with an ascending beehive hairdo and a resurrected look to her face. The two of them smiled and glanced at each other knowingly, but the smiles were not comfortable. People in this town joke about the laundry lady writing her book about Carmi, but still deep within the joking is the hope she'll never finish. My presence causes a verbal dance. A kind of nervous musical chairs, and talk about White County with its people goes around life here, never straight through it.
Only the young people are excited about the newspaper guy from New York being in town. To them, "Peyton Place" is a TV show that went off the air a couple of years ago, and any comparison or Carmi to New York is just short of sheer idiocy. They are not yet old enough to be jealous of their lives, and as far as they're concerned, Carmi and environs suffer from that age-old Midwest malady, the nothin' ever happens here
syndrome. Ask any of them. They'll tell you.
Ask Sharon, the girl from across the street, coming in around 2 a.m. with her boy friend, Don, who drives a 66 Chevelle with a 289, three on the floor, six inch rake, wide tires, needs a clutch.
They've been to the drive-in movie to see the same three babysitter horror pictures they saw last spring at the same drive-in.
The babysitter gets left alone with the monster in every one of them, and every time she's molested, violated and then saved.
"Nothin' ever happens here." says Sharon, pouting. Plop, she lands on the couch, called a divan (long "i"), hands thrust deep in her coat pockets. Don nods. She attends the IBM computer school over in Evansville in the morning and works in a local department store in the afternoon. Evenings, she usually goes out with Don. "Ain't nobody found the spot where we park yet," she says, smiling finally, giving the impression that nothin'-ever-happens-here syndrome has some advantages, anyway. Don nods. "Nothin' ever happens here," he says.
What makes the older folks so jealous of their lives? Why do they want to keep from me all they figure is "bad," and let me find out about only the "good"? And why, in the middle of their portrayal of life here as the same you'd find in any sleepy little Midwestern Town, this sly aside about Carmi making New York look like a kindergarten? Their reasons, I found, are moral ones, and morality is more than just a word in White County. For amid the hypocrisies and allegiance's of the morals of these people is the stuff of their lives. Everybody who was anybody went and got drunk at the Elks on New Year's Eve. The next day, the talk among these people was about each other and it flowed thick and fast. Without the Elks, and without the inherent sinfulness of getting drunk, there would be no talk. And without talk of the night before, it may as well have not existed. Which reminds of a party given by a close friend of mine recently in the Village. There was a least a moth of every day logistical planning which preceded the party, and a good two weeks of talk around the bar about it afterward. The party itself was seemingly in duration in any case incidental to the entire experience, but without it, of course, there would have been no over-all experience. Without the Elks, without sin, there'd have been no New Year's Eve.
What we're talking about here, of course, is life. It would be a little premature of me to say that life in Carmi, Illinois, is really no different from life in Greenwich Village, so let me describe to you some of the life I found here in Carmi, and you can draw your own conclusions.
It came in bits and spurts, little dribblings that passed by like cars on a highway when you're hitchhiking. Fast. So you barely get a glance. But the glance you get is enough to make you hate, to fill you with enough feeling to cuss and turn around and flip that stinking bastard the finger and wonder why a salesman in a '71 Chevrolet won't pick you up when it's 40 degrees outside and raining. You barely saw his face, eyes riveted straight down the road, but the fact he didn't pick you up in enough that know him as well as if you'd talked to him in a bar for an hour.
When I got here, the radio station from up in Chicago was blaring at least twice each half hour one of those "SUNDAY Sunday--AT RACEWAY PARK--THE '72 WINTERNATIONAL DRAG RACES" ads, featuring rail dragsters that will do better than 230 miles an hour, from standing start, in a quarter mile, completing the distance in somewhere in the neighborhood of six and a half seconds.
That same ad format pushing drag races for as long as I can remember. Back when I subscribed to every hot rod publication existing, the same kind of dragsters, then referred to as "slingshots," were doing 150 miles an hour in the same distance. If a guy got "down in the nines," or in the nine-second bracket, there was cause for celebration. Now it looks like Don "Big Daddy" Garlits, the fastest man alive in the quarter mile, has gone about as fast as he's going to go. And now it looks like the kids in rural Illinois, like the big city and suburban kids before them, are pushing that same limit--approaching, that place where you've gone as fast and as far as you'll ever go.
New Year's Eve, while the Vintage and Lantern and the Elks were filled to overflow, there was the incident with the 16-year-old down-freak, the Geek alphabet machine, a flaming hot snarfer, and the shotgun blast, not to mention a savage round of pool. All of this was connected by high speed rides in a late model car, radio blasting, swilling Jack Daniels from a jelly glass, wondering what the fuck I was doing on New Year's Eve in Southern Illinois for crying out loud.
The guy I am with is in basic training at Fort Polk, Louisiana. He was going to become a preacher before that. He was even giving sermons, at his church, and everybody in town was talking about what a fine young man he had become since he had found Jesus, since he had accepted his calling. Then he freaked and enlisted in the Army, volunteered for the Airborne and Vietnam and that was that. He was gone. Now he is back in town for Christmas leave and people, taking a second look, were talking that maybe it was the girl he'd been chasing around for so long, who had put him down about once too often, who caused him to turn to Jesus in the first place, and then caused him to head out for the Army, him not being able to stick around the same town she was in and all.
So New Year's Eve he and I are driving over to Enfield, a town about 10 mi west of here, drinking, talking about pool shooting, and about this girl he knows in Enfield who has been known to be a good lay, or she was a night or so before anyway. We get there, he disappears inside for a minute, and comes back out with this incredible, skinny, pimply, wasted looking form who crawls in the front seat and immediately announces, 'Man, am I stoned."
Her eyes were thin slits, head thrown back, and she reaches forward to turn up the radio turned to an obnoxious top-40 radio station. With the noise from the radio at a deafening level, she proceeds to explain what happened that day. She fell down in the kitchen, right in front of her mother, "and the stupid bitch didn't even notice what was going on." She laughs, and then says it scared her, so she spent the rest of the day in her room, stoned, listening to music, while her parent went out to visit friends. We must stop at the Gulf station cafe to see if her girl friend is there. The driver protests, but she jabbers on about the necessity of finding her girl friend, picking over her words like stones in a fast-moving stream, afraid she might fall in if she moves too fast.
When she gets out at the Gulf station, I ask the driver how old she is, and he says "16". My jaw drops, and I take another swig of whiskey, then another, allow myself the momentary vision of the law swooping down to gather up these corrupters of youth and poke us away for the rest of the week, and glance into the cafe just in time to catch a glimpse of her falling into the juke box, people are grabbing for her, and then she weaves out the door. "This girl has got to go," I say, the words spitting from my mouth like sour milk. The driver nods and pushes her back in the car from his side. She hasn't found her friend, and now there's slight sense of desperation showing through, even in her condition. We've got to find her or we just can't do anything, she implores. The sad, deadened barbiturate litany is right there at the Enfield crossroads, the driver, slumped slightly against the wheel, staring glumly out the window, me virtually eating whiskey now, the pimply little thing between us going on about her girl friend, until the urge to slap her across the face arises in me. I suppress it, and act if the girl friend is her connection, and she nods. Christ. What the fuck am I doing in Southern Illinois on New Year's Eve with an underage down-freak at my side, violent urges coming on fast, half-crocked on booze, the whole thing turning into the same old drive-around frenzy I have despised since I was old enough to drive around?
There was only one solution. We left her off at a party her friend was supposed to attend later. Fifteen people were sitting around sullenly while two kegs of beer went flat in the kitchen. I think some of them were watching TV. The driver tells her not to drink because he doesn't want her passing out like she did the other night. "I couldn't wake you up, remember? You can't do that again while you're on pills." "Yeah, I know," she says. And then, "Man, am I ever stoned. See you later."
The party was at an empty farmhouse off the road that crosses Possum bridge, a rickety old structure that looks like it had see more than its share of traffic in the last 30 years or so. The party was given by the daughter of one of the most prominent Republicans In town. and by the time we go there, it was in full swing. The dirt road leading up to the house lined with cars, a few figures huddled around a truck getting a case of beer. Inside there was a constant din of noise. No one was talking. Every person was yelling.
Immediately after our arrival, a back room with a couple of uncovered mattresses is pointed out to me. "These will be in use, time this is over, you just wait," someone says, and everybody in the room laughs. They all know each other, having gone to high together at one level or another. Now most are in college, and this is a chance to find out what everybody else is up to. One guy, blond curls edging their way down his forehead, walks around spouting the Greek alphabet and various other gems his fraternity had him learn. He is studying journalism.
"You like big words?" he asks. "They make us study all kinds of big words. We have tests on them all the time. I'm not too sure I'm gonna like this journalism." I am introduced to him. His name is Jim, and he reaches across the void with that universal coupler of this age, the Revolutionary Drug Brothers Grip, as Hunter Thompson so accurately described it in his Rolling Stone column, "Fear and Loathing in Washington."
Right thump up, a serious, yes heavy look crossing his face for a moment, he waits for me to Revolutionary Drug Brother Grip him back. I simply shake his hand, and with a quizzical look on his face, he moves one. "The guy from New York didn't return the Revolutionary Drug Brother Grip. What could be wrong with him?" Oh well. More Greek alphabet. He likes the Greek alphabet, or so it seems.
Over against one wall of the kitchen, a particularly brave-looking individual has attracted a small crowd while he downs successive shots of flaming apricot brandy. Each time, the girls are favorably impressed. “Do it again,” they scream. He is a pleasant, obliging sort, and does it again. He likes this apricot brandy, he says. “Wanna try some?” In a back room, another group has gathered, and someone is exploding bottles of beer by hitting their tops on a counter in a peculiar fashion. Lots of guys say they want to learn how to do that. There is beer all over the floor and down the legs of the guy doing the exploding, and more beer decorates the wall behind the sink. Still they want to learn how to do it.
Over by the door, wincing slightly each-time another beer bottle bottom bites the dust, is a small cluster of unusually good looking young girls, each attired appealingly in what look to be new “outfits”. “They,” it is explained to me, “are cheerleaders at the high school. Seniors. That’s why they’re allowed to be here.” “Oh, “I reply.
One of them is drinking a ghastly purplish liquid in a funny looking bottle, and I wonder what it is. “It’s grape malt duck,” she answers. “Here. Try some. It’s real good.” She smiles broadly as she turns her head from side to side and her blonde hair bounces the way it does in hair conditioner commercials. I am petrified at the mere look of the stuff, much less even speculating what it might taste liken, and decline. Later, she offers me more of the grape malt duck, opining that it will get you drunk as good as the next thing. After “grape malt duck”, I can hardly imagine what the “next thing” will be, and decline once again. Getting closer to that edge, I tell myself, pulling on some more whiskey, from the bottle this time. And there’s only one way to avoid it. Leave.
So we split. Later I am told that one of the more rambunctious members of that noisy gathering pulled a shotgun from the trunk of his car and celebrated the coming of the midnight hour by firing it aimlessly into the woods, narrowly missing a couple who had other ideas about what to do in the woods. The next day, the rumors about the party would escalate madly, heading rapidly to the point where the rumor would one or two wounded, the gun toter in the throes of a nervous breakdown, his girl friend wringing her hands with worry, and every telephone in town crackling with the news. Two walls in the house were badly damaged, and reportedly the mattresses never saw any use.
The driver and I headed back to Enfield, faster now, for we could feel the numbness coming on. There we engaged in several vicious games of pool with the local hustler. A curly-haired punk in a Gulf attendant shirt who shot a damn good game of eight ball, but who could be counted on to blow it in the clutch every time. At a dollar a game, with him yelling to shoot for five, and me soddely drunk by that time, knowing my erratic talents well enough not to push my luck that far, we made money. Maybe five bucks a piece, racking in, until finally the young hustler in the blue shirt had had enough. By the time I had lapsed into an obnoxious stupor, causing the driver to prop me up against the wall between shots. What did, what really convinced our curly-haired opponent that this just wasn’t his night, was the last game of eight-ball. The hustler cleared the table of the low balls in one run after his break. The driver then stepped in and did the same for us. The hustler’s partner took a poke at the eight-ball and missed, leaving it on the rail halfway between the side pocket and the corner. The cue ball rolled to a halt across the table, close to the rail, maybe six inches from the corner. The driver me off the wall, pointed out the dilemma, and told me quietly to bank it cross-side. “Eight-ball down.” I muttered pointing the cue in the direction of the far corner pocket, all the way down the rail from the eight ball.
“No, no,” the driver screamed. “You’ll never make it. It’s an impossible shot. You’re drunk, you’re a madman, you’re throwing away our money.” The room fell into a hushed silence, and a few guys wandered over from the pinball machine to check out the commotion. I shot the cue ball slow. You could see the chalk marks on it distinctly, rolling end over end, the ball was rolling so slowly. Straight for eight, it moved, as if if with mind of its own. Click. It snapped against the side of the eight and the cushion at the same--a perfect kiss. The eight-ball edged away, rolling straight down the rail for the corner, past the side pocket, slowing and plunk, into the far corner as if it had never been there at all.
“Shit,” whispered the driver. “Here’s your fucking dollar,” growled the hustler. “I ain’t playing you guys any more.”
Then it hit me, staggering out to the car, leaning on the preacher turned hired-gun, talking about the last shot like it really didn’t happen, like was really a dream. What I am actually here for is to write about the politics of this county, and her I am wasting my time at the Enfield Crossroads Gulf Station, worrying about what happened to the chalk, and whether the driver would make the next shot.
Wait a goddam minute. That nightmarish gathering in the woods, those guzzlers of “grape malt duck” and flaming apricot brandy, the girl with the big tits running around telling everybody she was engaged while she rubbed up against every crotch in the place, the idiot with the beer running down his pant legs teaching 10 guys how to bust the bottom off beer bottles--that was the youth vote, by god! I’m doing my job. I’m covering the Southern Illinois youth vote. Daley doesn’t run this fucking state any more, because he doesn’t know how important “grape malt duck” and the Greek alphabet will be this year. The ever so cautiously sought-after possible deciding factor in the coming presidential election, a monster goddamit, an ugly gross unpredictable thing that has candidates kowtowing and bowing to the four winds, the I Ching and the top 40 every time they open their mouths...the youth vote. I’ll bet Nixon has a small attack battalion ready to move out whenever he gives the word. “Get hip with Dick. That’s where it’s at!” they’ll say--and Muskie. He’s sincere. None of this hypocritical, two-faced shit. No sir. That’s enough for any youth. Why, I bet he’d even allow kids to smoke cigarettes in school, just like the teachers. That how sincere he is. And McGovern. Do these kids realize he was against the war when they were still in grade school? Do they realize he’s been looking out for them that long? Wow.
This youth vote is definitely going to be heavy, and I know about it. I know what these crazy kids are up to. I’ve been out there in the sticks researching my ass off, and I know what it will take to bring these fuckers under control. I know what will shake their eyes away from those big tits, and focus on what counts, what really counts in 1972 (We’re close to the car now, still staggering.) Every one of those screaming yeamies will be able to vote in the election, and, by god, that CBS computer on election eve will positively freak out when the returns start coming in from this part of the country.
