I WAS JUST THERE ON TUESDAY

309. I WAS JUST THERE ON TUESDAY:

I may have taken it all to heart by way too much the way the lemonade frosted the refrigerated glass the way the people were looking in at the Chinese grocer killing a duck and the view from beneath the bridge on East Broadway - the lined up buses to other cities the one-dollar bus to Washington DC the trek to Philadelphia - all of this (beats me!) kept me befuddled and confused as well and I turned to nowhere and saw instead the everywhere of time and place and the old soup kitchen I remembered so well was gone now and in its place two hankering half-boys eating hamburgers and some other westernized piece of toady food all dripping and wet and two drinks on the table they sure were so cute they sure were swell and people in a line waiting for something - more about food and more about where to be than anything else and then I'd lost my wallet I'd lost my place and the old cinder block bar-room I frequented was just then being torn down by a Captain Marvel lookalike just as I blew in and nothing had moved away all the same the very same where the Pilgrims had left their hats the new settlers had simply picked them up and ran : tall buildings finance kingdoms emporiums of doubt and distress the long torrid trail of money the Federal Reserve of the reservation the blooming idiot kids all tattered and torn and then just like that I stopped ! I stopped in at the antiques yard the place where everything salvaged from destroyed buildings was kept and re-sold and displayed and I found wonderful gargoyles and pictures of this and that old bus station counter and signs the ivory-topped coffee table of the centennial Hotel blown through by desert sands and forgotten as well the blinking sign of service and - on the very last shelf I looked - the blind and beautiful picture of you or so I thought a looks-like-someone-I-knew picture of the beautiful girl sitting on a stool and milking what appeared to be a very gentle cow but I left it there it seemed so nice not to disturb what I couldn't understand and the words below : 'Milk us for any information you may need ! boy have we got it in for you' : never could as much as I tried figure out what that meant or from where it may have come and I traveled the land years later still thinking of that little scene.