But the people are friendly in Dallas. A hotel clerk didn’t ask me for a major credit card and actually said when I checked in, “Nice to have you with us.”
And Dallas is the home of the annual State Fair of Texas, perhaps the last of the great expositions of its kind in America. It opened Saturday and it will run two weeks and attract over 3 million visitors.
There will be horse shows and a rodeo, and livestock exhibits and gospel and country singing. The carnival midway is massive. See the world’s smallest woman for a quarter. She’s only four inches tall. See Emmett, the Alligator Boy. Billy Earl and his wife, Clovis, come every year all the way from Lubbock.
“This is where we spent our honeymoon,” Clovis smiled proudly. Billy Earl looked embarrassed and disappeared to look at the tons of prime meat on the hoof down at the cattle barn.
Texans are a proud and courageous lot. Remember the Alamo. The University of Texas football team, incidentally, had about the same chance against Oklahoma Saturday at Dallas’ Cotton Bowl. But they are a little crazy when it comes to football in Oklahoma, where the school president once said, “We want a university the football team can be proud of.”
Texans simply know themselves, what they like, and what they expect of each other. I heard it put this way from across the bar after a few more Coors at the Golden Steer Saturday: “If you don’t like Willie Nelson, longneck beers, long-legged women, rodeos, football, barbecue, the state fair, and an occasional fist fight, then you ain’t no Texan. You just live here.”
CASH ONLY
WASHINGTON—HERE I SIT in a big hotel room.
What fun.
When I was a kid, I liked hotel rooms because I could jump on the beds. Now, I like them because I can throw towels on the floor and somebody else will pick them up.
Washington is full of big hotels, because this is an important city and a lot of people from other places come here to work and to visit and to be politicians.
I suppose that the reason they always give you a booklet on security when you check into a Washington hotel is that there are lots of politicians here.
My booklet says, “Do not leave money, jewelry or other valuables in your room.”
It also says, “Please bolt your door. This will shut out all keys. Also, insure that the security chain is engaged and that the connecting room door is locked.”
Some rooms in Washington come with their own German shepherds. They are the ones nearest the Capitol.
This is a classy hotel I’m in. I knew it was classy when I saw the room service menu. The only thing cheaper than the $4.95 cheeseburger is a cup of coffee, which is $1.50.
One morning, I saw a fight between two taxicab drivers in the parking lot of my hotel. They were arguing about whose turn it was to pick up a fare. One driver bopped the other driver in the face, thus settling the argument. The other driver threw a rock at his colleague’s cab as it sped away with the fare. Like I said, this is a classy hotel.
Hotel front desks are usually manned and womanned by young people who are very clean, wear expensive clothes and have a habit of acting snooty. Whatever happened to the friendly night clerk in his undershirt reading tomorrow’s race entries?
Even the bellmen have come up in the world in today’s hotels. The bellmen here wear red uniforms like the one Omar Sharif wore when he danced with Julie Christie at the Leningrad ball.
There is one staggering problem in hotels today, however. Hotels do not like to deal in cash. They abhor cash, as a matter of fact, along with anybody who would deface their front desk with it.
I deal in cash. Credit cards are financial heroin.
“May I see a credit card?” the snooty young woman at the front desk asked me when I arrived at my Washington hotel.
“Don’t carry them,” I said.
She called over the assistant manager.
“He doesn’t carry credit cards,” she said to him.
A lady behind me gasped in horror.
The assistant manager called over the manager.
“He doesn’t carry credit cards,” the manager was told.
I rattled my change as loudly as possible.
“If you don’t have a credit card, sir” the manager asked me, his hands squarely on the hips of his designer trousers, “then how do you propose to pay your bill?”
Now, he had me.
“Cash,” I said. “American,” I quickly added, hoping to regain at least some face.
They wanted to see it.
A half hour passed before a decision was made. Finally, after I paid in advance, I was allowed to proceed to my room. They gave me a little card to read on the way up, however.
It said, “Because you have made a cash payment and did not present a major credit card at the time of your arrival, our operational procedure is to request that you make all further payments in restaurants, bars, and the gift shop at the time the bills are presented.”
How can you trust a man who carries cash?
The only time cash is accepted cheerfully in a hotel is when you give it to a bellman in the form of a tip.
After the experience of checking in, I followed a squatty version of Omar Sharif at the Leningrad ball up to my room.
He put up my bags, switched on the lights and the air-conditioner, and then waited impatiently by the door for his tip.
“Got change for a hundred?” I asked.
“No,” he answered, “but I can get it from the front desk. I heard some yahoo just checked in using cash.”
We both got a big laugh over that.
DISCO ZOO
NEW YORK—THE HOTTEST spot in town is Studio 54, a disco on West 54th Street, appropriately enough. Not just anybody can get into Studio 54.
Here is how it works: every evening at midnight, a throng gathers outside and waits to be chosen for entrance. The lucky ones are then allowed to pay $20 per couple for admission. Once inside, there is a huge dance floor, flashing lights, and music to give birth to a buffalo by.
The dancing and the music and the lights go nonstop until dawn, when many of the customers must scurry back to the sewers. These are the beautiful people? A regular had mentioned to me earlier, “Go stand by the men’s room. You might see Andy Warhol.”
I’m not certain by what criteria entrants are selected. Judging from some of the clientele I saw, it would appear to be in your favor to come from another planet. Besides the men’s and ladies’ rooms, there is one marked “it.”
I was given some advice on getting inside: “Make sure you dress in something unusual, or grease the doorman with a fifty.”
I needed the fifty for breakfast the next morning. I wore my college rush outfit—a navy blazer, gray slacks, yellow Polo tie and Weejuns.
I was inside in a New York second.
“Funky outfit,” said the doorman. To him, a wetsuit tux and snowshoes are normal.
“Disco” is our nation’s latest nervous breakdown. Studio 54 is the home office. Truman Capote might drop by with Norman Mailer. For that matter, Godzilla might shake his booty with Yasser Arafat while Leon Spinks plays the flute. This is a strange place.
There was a movie made about disco, Saturday Night Fever. In the movie, they danced the hustle, and the moves were graceful and with style.
In Studio 54, they dance something that resembles a monkey halfway there on an LSD trip. Say it ain’t so, John Revolta.
I paid my admission and went directly to the men’s room to interview Andy Warhol. He wasn’t there. Fan Man was. Fan Man wore a ribbon in his hair, lipstick, a long skirt and peered out from behind a fan.
“Funky outfit,” he said as I walked past him.
There was more. Golden Boy strolled through. He was a stunning blond. For the evening, he had chosen a sleeveless blouse, open to the navel. He carried a gold purse and wore a gold flame skirt and gold bedroom slippers from the Aladdin collection.
Later, he danced with Peter Punk. Peter Punk came in his father’s old bowling shirt, which he wore ou
tside his mother’s jodphurs. He had a black ring painted around his left eye.
There was a girl in fatigues carrying a hulahoop. There was another girl in a wraparound evening dress she had fashioned from a bedsheet. She had washed her hair in Thousand Island dressing and blown it dry with an acetylene torch. Fan Man was looking better all the time.
My companion and I eventually braved the dance floor. We immediately provoked stares. My companion was a girl person in a chiffon, ankle-length dress, appropriate for dinner at “21.”
“Funky outfit,” said the girl in the bedsheet dancing with Hoola-Hoop Hattie next to us.
Studio 54 is loud and kinky and, on this night at least, predominantly gay. Teenage boys wait tables in silver underpants, tennis shoes and nothing else. After they clean your table, they dance on it.
Two models show up in running shorts, pull off their blouses and dance barebreasted. Shirtless men dance with other shirtless men. I puffed a Marlboro. Most of the crowd rolled their own.
In the wee hours, it was time to leave. There was still the mob scene outside. As I walked through the crowd, a breathless girl grabbed my arm.
“How did you get in?” she asked, in full swoon. With an air of self-assurance, I replied, “My funky outfit,” and disappeared down the street into a fog of reality.
“CHICKEN” AND THE “WORM”
PLAINS—A REGULAR WALKED into Billy Carter’s Service Station one hot afternoon last week and greeted Leon, the man who takes up money for gas and beer.
“Last time I saw you,” he said, “we were both drunk.”
“Believe we were,” agreed Leon.
“We go in them bad places, don’t we?” the man continued.
“Them dives,” said Leon.
“Them places we go in,” the man went on, “are so bad they got blood on the ceiling. Place with blood on the floor don’t worry me. Place with blood on the ceiling, that’s a tough place.”
He noticed a jar on the side of the bar. The jar had money inside it.
“What’s that for?” he asked Leon.
“For ‘Chicken’,” Leon replied. “We’re gonna get him in the state senate. You gonna help us?”
“Damn right,” said the man. “I’d do anything to get rid of that damn Hugh Carter.”
Some introductions are probably necessary. The Hugh Carter here is Cousin Hugh Carter Sr., antique dealer, state senator, worm grower and author of the book Cousin Beedie and Cousin Hot, in which he wrote all sorts of things about First Cousin Jimmy and First Cousin Billy and anybody else who came to mind.
Hugh Carter Sr. lives in Plains, and he is running for re-election as state senator from the Fourteenth District. The primary approaches on August 8th.
“Chicken” is another story. He is Malcolm “Chicken” Wishard, a local farmer with no political experience to speak of. He’s the man the regulars at Billy Carter’s Service Station want to see whip the pants off Hugh Carter in the election.
That includes Billy himself.
“Miss Lillian’s with us, too,” said Leon. “She said she would spend every dime she had to see Chicken whip that damn Hugh Carter. Billy’s done give his dime.”
It took some talking and a six-pack, but I finally got to the bottom of this split in the Carter political camp. For one thing, Hugh’s book didn’t set well with the family. And for another, said a woman at Billy’s, “there never has been no love lost between Billy and Hugh, and Miss Lillian and Billy are just alike.”
Chicken Wishard’s campaign was cranking up full blast at Billy’s this afternoon. Leon passed out cards that read, “Help Chicken Take the Worm.”
The “Worm” reference is to Hugh Carter, of course, the self-styled “Nation’s Worm King.” Even Mrs. Chicken dropped by for a visit.
“Why do they call Chicken ‘Chicken’?” she was asked.
“When he was a little boy,” she answered, “He was the first one in the family to get chickenpox.”
Leon calls him “One-Eyed Chicken.”
“That’s because he ain’t got but one good eye,” said Leon. Leon also had a stack of campaign posters with Chicken’s smiling face. Some body put an empty beer can on the stack of posters.
“Get that off of there,” Leon screamed. “You might get beer in Chicken’s good eye.”
I pressed for more details on campaign issues.
“Only issue I know,” said Leon, “is we can’t stand Hugh Carter and we finally got somebody to run against him. You can talk to Chicken. He’s loud and if he walked in here right now, you’d think he was half a fool. But he ain’t. He’s a good man.”
Billy Carter would eventually drop by the station. He was sipping something clear over ice. The tourists flocked around him. He signed autographs, posed for pictures, and sold six-packs of Billy Beer for $2.60. The local line is, “Jimmy’s making $200,000 a year running the country, and Billy’s already made $500,000 running his mouth.”
And Billy would do his best for Chicken too.
“We need two things from you to help Chicken,” he said to a farmer who came in for refreshment.
“What’s that?” asked the farmer.
“Your vote and your money,” said Billy.
I had to ask Billy Carter how he could go against his own flesh and blood. “Isn’t this man your cousin?” I said.
“He ain’t my cousin” Billy answers. “I gave him away.”
RIDING THE HIGH LONESOME
ONE A GEORGIA BACKROAD—There are only two sounds out here. Four tires are humming as they hug the taxpayers’ asphalt on Georgia 15. And the radio—God bless an automobile radio—has me in touch with you wouldn’t believe the faraway places.
I am constantly turning the dial. Voices with no faces fade in and voices with no faces fade out. But at least there are voices, and without them the loneliness would creep even closer.
I have just departed from Sandersville, northbound through the deep-hole blackness the night brings to middle-eastern Georgia. There was a shooting in Louisville, clear-channel WHAS reports, but invading static keeps me from the details.
Dallas comes in loud and clear. It will be nice in Dallas tomorrow, with highs in the mid-seventies. I even pick up Cleveland.
You know they tried to recall the mayor in Cleveland. Now, the city council has been charged with accepting kickbacks. Things are tough all over.
Chicago’s country WMAQ, an old friend, is beaming to thirty-eight states and Canada. A man sings a song that includes the line, “Plant them ’taters, and pull up another tomorrow.”
It is difficult to avoid a hockey game, turning the dial on late-night radio. Hockey is enough of a problem for me in person. On the radio, it might as well be the noon news from Mars.
“Ro-jay brings the puck to center ice! Marcham-bo checks him there. Fabjare intercepts, and there is a whistle for icing the puck!”
I am on the fringes of Hancock County, Georgia, listening to a man from Fort Wayne, Indiana, describe the actions of twelve foreigners on ice skates, chasing a rubber disc.
I turn back to Cleveland.
My headlights tunnel through the darkness. The tall pines frame the road, and two beady pearls of light suddenly appear in the distance.
This is the Halloween season, but a stray dog crossing the road has simply turned its head toward the lights of the car, and its eyes have reflected back.
Give me a dime for every stray dog on every Georgia back road, and my creditors can relax. I’ll take a quarter for every dead possum.
I am trying to make Atlanta and home before sleep takes me over. Interstate 20 is somewhere ahead, just out of a place called Siloam in Greene County. The interstate is an auto jet stream after crawling over two-lane. There is no other traffic because of the late hour and because country people have been in bed for hours. They get up early out here, you know. Don’t let the sun catch you a-restin’.
There are tiny frame houses here and there, but not a sign of life to go with them. I grew up in a frame
house that went dark at an early hour. The peace and comfort it held until morning has been difficult to relocate.
Downtown Sparta approaches. There are streetlights, but no people. The old tavern in the middle of town, a historic landmark, looks haunted. It probably is.
Sparta lasts thirty seconds. The village of White Plains will be next. I cross Copeland Creek and Whitter Creek. There is a newscast coming in from WCAU, Philadelphia. Damn, I’m a long ways from Philadelphia.
What I am thinking is maybe everybody ought to do this occasionally. I am at least free with my thoughts here. Out like this, a man can talk to himself and it seems perfectly natural. You can ask yourself a question on a Georgia back road and get an honest answer.
Finally, Siloam. Siloam won’t awaken for hours yet. The interstate approaches, laden with eighteen-wheeled monsters with big eyes and loaded backs bound for the city.
Parting with Georgia 15 is more difficult than I figured it would be. I will be home in just over an hour, but I realize that out on that primitive stretch I had maybe stumbled upon one of the modern urbanite’s last escapes. I had ridden about all that remains of the High Lonesome on a pony with automatic transmission.
Cleveland has faded off the radio. I turn the dial again and a preacher is chasing the devil out of Tulsa. “Be saved or be damned!” is his warning.
Rolling along the interstate, I search for another hockey game.
COVERING THE ARRIVAL OF SPRING
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C.—Soft rain is falling, the wind is blowing, and the skies are cloudy. But the temperature is pleasantly mild, and for three days previous to this one, late winter’s coastal sun has shown brilliantly. I will be leaving here soon, and that thought saddens me.
I will miss my duck. There has never been such a duck. I don’t know much about ducks, but this one lives in a lagoon outside my bedroom window and makes a sound like, “Braaaack! Braaaack!”
He works the night shift. His job is keeping the alligators awake. Ditto for any other creature within the sound of his quack.
Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You: A good beer joint is hard to find and other facts of life Page 12
