Bill Hill's Dumb Scooter Ride.

November 18, 1990



Dear Jay,


Thanks for the weekend, I had fun and drank too much. I managed to piss some new people off and reassure less recent acquaintances of my nature. It was nice to see Margaret again.

Thanks also for the place to stay.

Margaret took me for breakfast and fun. We tried to go to Morning Call, but it was too crowded. Instead we went to a place called something like European Cafe across the street. It wasn't bad but it was expensive. Nothing beats Cafe du Monde. Having nothing better to do so early we went to Lakeside mall to look around and hide from the wonderful weather. They have a bizarre Christmas under the sea display to celebrate the aquarium. Everything was neat and clean. We were filthy and stank. We also saw that they are going to open up a Cafe du Monde in the food court. After that nothing went well.

My scooter ride home was a hellish six hour nightmare. Patrick's grandmother told me that I just missed him. I got my things and left without a shower or any more sleep.

The poor machine was not in good shape. After loading up and battening everything down I noticed that my rear tire was almost flat. I pushed the scooter onto the sidewalk and heard another abomination. The rigged and misaligned chain noise was getting worse.

Some problems could be fixed, but there was no substitute for brains. The chain would have to be ignored. I inflated the tire with a leaky hand pump and tried to push start the machine. I ran four blocks to the end of the street before I gave up. I then found the scooter's last problem; the carburetor was loose because I had stripped a bolt the last time I repaired it. I fixed it and then turned the fuel valve to "on".

Loaded beyond capacity, with no shocks and a flat rear tire the scooter was hard to drive. It heaved like a boat and the rear snaked strait instead of turning with the front. The rear tire continued to leak air.

The first round of fixings and gassoline carried me to the Reserve, LA Shell station at the intersection of the road that leads to Gramercy and Lutcher. While I was getting my gas a pick up truck parked. A black man got out and the tinted passenger window rolled down to reveal a white freak. She was dressed in casual black, had her hair dyed jet black and she eyed me mischievously with her black mascara and drug crazed eyes. Her man walked off to buy things. She continued to eye me and cranked up the song "Ice, Ice, baby". I don't know if I looked scruffy enough to interest her or if she was just a whore. When I went to pay the black man was in line with two six packs of beer. The nut scene had upset the fat lady behind the counter and she told me that the station didn't have any air. A man with a thick cajun accent told me that the station did have air in the garage and that he would show me if I brought my scooter around. I was happy not to have to use my hand pump, and followed him, to see what I would see.

The garage had two big keep out signs on the door. Inside, instead of tools and broken cars, they had stored the worldly goods of the cajun's "crazy uncle". I told the cajun that I was going to Baton Rouge to avoid hearing the crazy uncle story. The cajun was suitably impressed and laughed at me, "Do you think that you'll make it on that tire?". "I hope so", was the best I could do.

The tire went flat in the middle of an invertebrate wasteland before the I-10 intersection. The jungle was encroaching on old power lines that hummed and crackled on the left side of the road. The median was burnt or poisoned. A swamp that feeds the Blind river was to the right of the road where I pulled over. The grass was seething and crackling with insects. The trees in the water beyond were tall and impenetrable.
The sun was now high and fiercely bright, and I sweat profusely as I unloaded my luggage to balance the scooter on its front wheel and tire. I needed water to find the air leak so I turned around and looked for a dish to hold some from the swamp.

All sorts of things became clear in the grass. The first thing I saw in the seething grass was the skin and bones of a flattened racoon, two feet away from me. The bugs hadn't left anything else. I decided to use the scooter's plastic tool case to carry water. Walking to the swamp for water I found a dead turtle. The bugs had gotten inside his shell and left nothing but some of his skin and his clawy paws. Nothing but insects, cars and weeds could live there. I wondered what I would look like after a week of lying there, and my last patch to fix the flat.

It worked for about ten miles and left me in a field of cut cane, five hundred yards from Sorento. I had to push past a juke joint with "Club 61" painted from the ground to the roof on the wall and four or five crack heads to get to a Time Saver. Two wild eyes had been paintee into the b and the 6, so that the world would know what goes on inside. That damn song "Ice, Ice, baby" blared from the the little grey shack and the Sheriff was parked in front talking to some of the crack heads. The other crack heads were running around and dancing. The cop eyed me. A xeroxed list of laws restricting alcohol sales and banning loitering hung in the window and served as a welcome mat at the Time Saver. Miraculously, they had inner tube patch kits.

The cop was still eyeing me suspiciously when I sat down to fix my flat. The station was busy and a stream of families in big early eighties sedans drove through. The women were friendly, the men wouldn't give me the time of day and the children were fascinated by the alien. The cop drove up. What did this corrupt savage in his mobile throne want?

"You got a flat?", he asked.

"Yep.", I told him. "That's not good.", he told me.

"No, it's real bad.", I reassured him and he drove off, but not far.

That fix carried me through the red neck strip joints and run down motels of Gonzales, Duplessis and Prairiville. Despite the evil noise my chain made I started to think that I might make it home.

I suffered my last and final flat three hundred yards from a giant Baptist church outside of Prairieville. Someone was shooting vermin in the woods around the church and I wondered when they would get around to me.

At the first gas station I came to I put twice the recommended pressure, into my tire. It held all the way home. How nice and safe all my favorite dives seemed in the setting sun. Baton Rouge looked good.