How I Got Kicked Out of Texas

Heading into Louisiana at dawn

the first time

*sigh*

You’d think, well I would think, that this would take some serious doing, I mean, honestly -- TEXAS. It's the home state of some definite eccentrics and troublemakers -- Molly Ivins, Janis Joplin, Clyde Barrow, ZZ Top and Gene Rodenberry to name a few. And I'm tossed?

This wasn’t an official state mandated “Get out you awful human” – this was personal-ish.

At Northline, the last big spot of the season, one of my fellow carnies, Jean, asked if I would go to their off season HQ and watch her 2 bairn while she was in hospital for a depressing and delicate operation. I agreed since:

A) I’m really all nice and giving like that there. HONEST!
B) It was a good way to put off making/deciding on THE NEXT STEP – deciding where to begin my life as an adult, a college grad, a person apart from the carnival and  my parental units.

Jean’s husband Dan, the father of little Michael and Jessica was unable to care for his children during those few days not because he’d be down by his beloved’s side, in the Houston hospital, where she was seeing to the very sad termination of a pregnancy gone horribly wrong -- oh no. Hospitals squicked him clean out – you know, they’re icky, scary and depressing. So, he’d be up on the land in Pluck, Texas NOT minding his very own progeny because....because? There was brush in urgent need of clearing?

Whenever I asked what he’d done all day (in a totally non-accusing kind of a way and, let me just tell you, that took solid, class A hard work on my part!) he’d mutter angrily about ‘fixin’ stuff.’ Oh yeah and he was big on visiting the neighbors – more on that soon-like.

More fun than Pluck on any given Saturday night

A few days stretched into ten. Hard going for 22 year old me – the Sunflower Galaxy had more fun going on than Pluck, Texas on its most thrilling day. Happily, my Northline beau, Red, had come along with me so I had help in caring for and entertaining the two astoundingly, fabulous bambinos. At the end of those ten days he and I were more than ready to cut loose, cut a rug, cut a fine figure and all that.

On that first free night we went to a roadhouse in nearby Seven Oaks. A place with all the charm of your elderly neighbor's faux wood paneled basement entertainment room but with marginally better lighting and a spiffy jukebox.

After feeding the racket machine (Red graciously gave me free reign but, sadly, they had no Captain Beefheart!), I returned to the table to find two Men in Black sitting with Red. Rut Ro! Before I could sit down, Red allowed that I should go ‘powder my nose.’

All I could think was “christ, I don’t EVEN want to know. I’m happy to play ‘little lady’ and hit the head if it means I don’t have to get into more carny drama.”

Well, waddya know – the feds were asking all about Jean and Dan’s neighbors up in Pluck. Turns out the joint was a cat house and gambling den. Heh, Dan was ‘fixin’ stuff’ my pasty, fat arse!

I was all chuckles when we got back to the land in Pluck until...until. Having heard us arrive home, Dan descended like a rabid terrier on WAY too many steroids. He ripped open the ‘door’ (flap) of our tent, brandished his rifle (hey, it’s Texas – you’re busted when you don’t carry a sidearm there) and loudly demanded we GET OUT NOW! NO, NOW!!!

I had hearing then but there’s no way I could sort out what the hell his anger tsunami was about. There was loads of yelling, screaming even, but no shooting. Yea! The man was radically, but not fatally, out of his head. I guess we, not on purpose, got his fave hookers and pimps busted.

So yeah, we got gone and molto rapidimente at that. I threw my shit into a duffle bag, tossed it into the back of Red’s ’57 Chevy truck and we headed east.

We hit 16 east through Beaumont, Texas and on into coastal Louisiana at sunrise. Who knew I’d be thrown into adulthood at gunpoint!