Saturday, January 14 (cont'd)

The water tower in Sandestin was,
as Faulkner said of the one in Jefferson, Mississippi,
"a footprint." Destin is not a sleepy little fishing village
anymore. It's Silver Sands Outlet Mall. Six-lane traffic.
Ticky-tacky goofy-golf. Tiki-god water-slides. Go-kart tracks
and pâpier-maché. Plastic, extruded from a pug mill.
Golf course phosphate fertilizer runoff eutrophicating the bay.
Florida's Emerald Coast is an algae bloom. A Green Tide.
Washing over me and you. Money and shit. And sex.
Wet T-shirt contests. High-rise condominiums and short-order
fast-food outlets. I knew a guy, a produce man in a grocery store,
who said the cashiers, standing on their feet all day made the blood
rush to their pussies, and made them horny. He was going to write a book
about it. Starring himself, and called The Retail Outlet. Sex and shit and money.
Have you had it in an olive, the oral polio vaccine? Have you had it on a sugar cube?
Good news. You don't have polio, you have simian immunovirus (SIV).

Potter was a deckhand
on the New Florida Girl
out of East Pass Marina,
in Destin. The third mate.
Owen was too. So was Slim.
The three third-mate amigos. Dick Vajs
used to catch hard-tails in the surf,
by the bridge. His wife dried them,
on the roof, with table salt. She was from
the Philippines. I am approaching Fort Walton Beach.
The Eglin AFB NCO Club Beach Club on Okaloosa Island.
The satellite tracking station radomes.
Gulf Islands National Seashore.
The Gulfarium. The Ramada Inn with
the grotto pool. The Hog's Breath Saloon.
Public fishing pier. The newspaper for the area
used to be called the Playground Daily News.
A member of the Freedom chain. Reactionary as Al Capp.
In my brogans I look like Li'l Abner. What Ed Sanders,
in Love and Fame in New York, called Genius Hick.
Penury and Limbo in the Sticks. Tom Wolfe writing
Look Homeward, Angel on the top of a refrigerator,
Edward Dahlberg muttering in his beard.

One time I took Owen to
an interservice parachute meet
at Hurlburt Field called Jumpfest '76.
I called the book I wrote about it
READFEST '76. I thought that I was to
contemporary writers as special forces troops
were to draftees. Not just a volunteer,
but one of the elite. A hard-charger.
Out there where the leaves tremble.
Now I'm a bit long in the tooth.
Hell, that was 30 years ago.
If I had been a GI I would have
a pension. Looking for a job
with no tits and no veteran's preference.
Working outside my AFSC
to the bitter end.
At least I was true
to my vocation.

I hit the squall line
just as I came off
Pensacola Bay. I missed the turn
to 98 West and had to take
Business 98 through town.
In a driving rain. I got off it
accidentally and ended up
in Chico Bayou. I didn't have
a map. What for? All I had to do
was stay on Highway 98 from my house
to Fairhope. At least I found a good
FM radio station. Panama City is in
a Dead Zone between Pensacola and Tallahassee.
The Sahara of the Bozart, as H. L. Mencken said.

There's a Roadkill Café in Elberta, Alabama.
It was doing a good business, too,
as I drove through. I pressed on to Foley,
where I had a rendezvous with Lambert's.
South on Highway 59. Throwed-rolls
and pass-arounds: fried potatoes and onions,
macaroni and tomatoes, black-eyed peas,
fried okra, sorghum syrup.

I ate supper at The Colony Grill in Fairhope.
I had prime rib and mashed potatoes, with red
and yellow bell peppers and onion julienne
and a house salad with vinaigrette dressing.
Then I went to the motel to read, watch television,
and write poems in my Top Flight composition book.