One time Old Folks drove Owen up the country, to South of the Border, to
join the James King Band.
Owen had a cooler full of oysters from Polecat
Bayou he and Balder had gathered in the family secondhand yellow fiberglass canoe.
Whenever Old Folks would stop for gas, Owen would open the tail gate of the truck
and shuck a few oysters, which he and Old Folks would eat with hot sauce and Saltine
crackers. They were fat and salty.
* * *
Old Folks drove home on US 319, all the way to the end, at the foot of the
bridge across the Apalachicola River.
It was like William Least Heat-Moon's
Blue Highways, only Old Folks didn't see any sights, or talk to any people,
he just thought his own thoughts, inside his head, and wrote about books he had written,
trips he had made. With Owen, by himself.
Also, nobody would want to know
what Old Folks thought about a place like, say, Selma, Alabama.
He might
use the wrong language, he might hate freedom, he might disassemble something and
not be able to put it back together, like Humpty Dumpty, or All the President's
Henchmen, they're on teevee now saying how Deep Throat was a criminal.
Huh? There's Chuck Colson, there's G. Gordon Liddy, there's Pat Buchanan.