Thanks, Peels, appreciated
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game*
A sinister kid is a kid who
Runs to meet his Maker
A drop dead sprint from the day he's born
Straight into his Maker's arms
And that's me, that's me
The boy with the broken halo
That's me, that's me
The devil won't let me be**
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above, "Have mercy, now save poor Bob, if you please”***
Lots of songs about “The Devil,” but most are by groups like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, Metallica and Alice Cooper. Crap. These songs about the devil are the carnival devil, the one with the goat face, wings, hooves, the one that looks scary, the one that would put anyone off.
No, not that devil. The real Devil is someone so much more appealing. In The Last Temptation of Christ, the movie, a little girl, curly blond hair. (Politically correct change compared to the book, btw, but I’ll leave that for you, reader.) The real devil can give you…stuff. Stuff you want. And it never ends well, just ask Joe Faust, or, you could have asked Robert Johnson.
Robert Johnson was maybe the most influential bluesman who ever lived. He grew up in sorta kinda my neck of the woods. Born in Hazlehurst, died in Greenwood, Ms; 1911-1938. Buried who knows where, at least three graves are in contention, the most likely was the one described by the grave digger’s wife. She said, years later, it was under that pecan tree in a potter’s field. Sony and Columbia records beg to differ, each setting up their own “grave” markers.
But the grave digger was there the night he was some-say murdered by the husband of the woman who he had “eyes” with as he played.
His friend told him,” Don’t ever drink from an open bottle a stranger gives you,” and took the bottle away…threw it down, all dramatic like. They sent another bottle and Robert grabbed it, didn’t let it go, drank it as much in contempt as in lust, and hours later he was dead…well three agonizing days later he was dead. Died at a white man’s house. Didn’t call a doctor because he wasn’t one “of his Negroes.” Strychnine? that was the talk, but as everyone (then) knows, it’s hard to cover the smell, even with whiskey, and it does kill much faster, you know. Poison? uh, huh. Strychnine, probably not. He died too slow. Grave digger was there. Saw it. Watched him breathe his last, the man who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, the first class of inductees.
Grave digger says he buried him in a unmarked grave under that pecan tree, the man Eric Clapton called the most important blues singer that ever lived. Grave digger was at the white man’s house, took the body of the man Keith Richards thought was two when he heard his recordings for the first time, “Who’s the other guy playing,” he asked. Brian Jones said “just him.” Grave digger told his wife where and it wasn’t until much later she was asked, long after Sony and Columbia laid their claim.
The wiles of a forbidden woman, the lure of liquor, many a downfall.
As a boy he knew Son House, knew Willie Brown, heard them play, sat in. “Late in life, House remembered Johnson as a "little boy" who was a competent harmonica player but an embarrassingly bad guitarist.” (Wiki)
Then Robert Johnson disappears for a while only to return. It is said that he went to his birthplace to look for his father and “learned other styles (of guitar) from Isaiah "Ike" Zinnerman.[14] Zinnerman was rumored to have learned supernaturally to play guitar by visiting graveyards at midnight.[15]When Johnson next appeared in Robinsonville, he had seemed to have acquired a miraculous guitar technique.[16] House was interviewed at a time when the legend of Johnson's pact with the Devil was well known among blues researchers. He was asked whether he attributed Johnson's technique to this pact, and his equivocal answers have been taken as confirmation.” (Wiki)
Pact with the devil. Not the goat devil. Scary devil, the other one, the one that can teach you guitar, not teach, Give you the gift. Legend has it that Johnson took his guitar to the crossroads of Highways 49 and 61, where he made a deal with the devil, dressed as a bald large black man who took his guitar, played it, retuned it, and handed it back. The price—Robert’s soul.
The lyrics from Crossroads Blues above are said to reference his change of heart.
So, how does all this apply to me: Why the Robert Johnson ride?
I leave Gallup and I am heading to Big Spring, Texas, for the night, then College Station, then home.
As I am getting close to entering Texas, I see off to my right dark clouds from way high to the ground, obviously heavy rain I see where I am going and I think that I am possibly able to skirt around it. It is this:
That is my route. I hit that bit of rain to the north, no big deal, make it through, take a picture of the good part of the sky to my left.
The other way doesn’t look so hot, but again, I think with some speed and some luck I will skirt around it.
I get to the “crossroads” of US 82 and Tx 137. I take a right and into the room where I will consider risking my soul
from google
You saw that red dirt a picture or so back. It was on both sides of Tx 137. To the east it just was canopied by a rainy day sky. To my 2 o’clock, all h e l l was breaking loose now. I still thought I could outrace the storm, those very dark clouds I saw off to the right, and I flew in the remaining dry air. 75-80, passing everything. Everything was letting me pass, they saw it too. I thought of Moore, Oklahoma. I thought of “rain shrouded tornadoes,” there was most certainly rain out there over those red fields. Middle of nowhere Texas, a big freaking storm, I am trying to outrace coming at me from my flank.
I see lightening, big bolts out there to the right. Vertical, fat. I consider am I insulated by the Pirelli’s, decide theoretically yes, but practically no and I would only serve as a bloody resistor. Maybe if I rode faster I would be a harder target and the telephone poles are taller than me.
I look again at the red dirt fields and I am now looking for stuff, red dirt, boards, stuff coloring the air above the ground now seeming to only be about a mile away. I don’t see anything but the overwhelming darkness of the rain and anger of the skies. Just to the left I see what could be a break in the clouds. That’s the good news. the bad news is that that break is illuminated by a very peculiar aqua green color, very pleasing to the eye, but oh $shiite! I look again for red mud dancing on the ground, still no, but I am now looking maybe a half mile away, still passing anything on the road, hauling a$$, still dry.
I look into the clouds for funnel clouds, no funnel clouds, but there is a funny one, more or less “scrotum” shaped. Yes, that’s what it looked like and mine was becoming clearer and clearer to be on the line. It was just hanging there, right there, and I am distracted by a huge lightening bolt up ahead, no longer to my right but horizontally crossing the road. This is not good. Then another now on my left. This is worse. there is no shelter, no place to stop, only the progressively diminishing hope that I can out flank this thing.
The first big drops hit, fat drops, drops with legs, a wave of them, a staccato of automatic weapon fire. BRAAAP, a moment of nothing, then suddenly full force. I am soaked in less than a minute. My visor is now splattered inside and out, and fogged. I glance to my right for the rain shrouded tornado that I know is there and consider my mortality, for a moment, can’t say how long.
What physically happens next is the straight line winds, right to left, trying to blow me into oncoming traffic. And the rain is stinging and blinding and I am slowing down. Hard to see. Gonna maybe go off the road, maybe hit by a local. there is a shoulder. Later research (as I am not writing this from the grave) informs me they were steady at 60 mph, with gusts, and about 90 degrees to my direction of travel.
Ok, I am getting ahead of myself. Something happened between those last two paragraphs. There are moments that can define one of these rides and this is it. Not something I am proud of, but part of the appeal of these endurance rides is what you learn about yourself.
What happened here, between these words:
“glance to my right for the rain shrouded tornado that I know is there and consider my mortality, for a moment, can’t say how long.
RIGHT HERE, and this moment was maybe a few seconds long
What physically happens next is the straight line winds, right to left, trying to blow me into oncoming traffic.”
Right there was a moment of some kind of clarity. All h e l l is breaking loose around me, and I think of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil to play the guitar. And I think, no, I don’t want to do that, I’ll take my chances. Not going to offer to sell my soul. I think of my obituary, and how people may write that I died doing what I loved to do, riding my motorcycle on backroads cross country. And I think the back story is, Really? outside of Lamesa, Texas? Taking foolish chances? Really? I think there is a “cool” factor to it, but not now as I have decided I want to live forever—recent development. So far so good as thoughts go with a near death experience, then the last thought crosses my mind. This one troubles me still. That thought is the one about the “deal” you make with God, that if you just get through this, then I will do (or NOT do) such and such. I am thinking this and I decide, with full frontal lobe activity, that ,no, I am not going to do that either, because I do not trust myself to keep the promise, to honor my end of the deal, and I thought the the risk of pi$$ing off God because of a promise, made outside of Lamesa, Texas, during a thunderstorm, ok, maybe deadly tornado, was worse than actually being killed in the storm. And I remember chuckling a little, hoping God was on my side and had a terrific sense of humor. That’s what happened right in that spot. That revelation to me that I would rather die than break a promise to God, has lasted with me and I’ll always remember it. I truly do not know the significance of it. I don’t know what I should learn from it, but 12 years of Catholic catechism and I come up with that? I don’t know and please don’t analyze.
It was the eye of the storm psychologically, but after that thought I was slammed to the other reality by those winds with the rain.
I struggle to ride on a bit but eventually pull to the shoulder, just giving up on continuing, taking my chances as a stopped vehicle in blinding wind and rain.
A big truck pulls along side, passenger opens window.
“You got to get out of this!”
I open my visor, Yeah I know!
“You have to find a gas station with an awning!”
OK! Where?
“About 3 miles up the road!” In this weather it might as well be 300 miles.
Then
“There’s a hospital about a half mile up!”
Great (ironic and perfect)!
“Show me the entrance with your blinker!” it was that blinding that I could not see the drive to a hospital.
And they do, and I pull in under the portico, out of the weather, counting my lucky stars and deal free!.
I go in the lobby of the Medical Arts Hospital. The American flag is fully erect, the cables banging loudly, thunder and lightening outside like there’s no tomorrow-and for many in Texas during the recent wrath of the weather there was no tomorrow.
I leave a puddle of rain water on the floor. I find a bathroom to dry off a bit with paper towels.
This is me in the hospital a little after the worst of the weather.
I am ready to make a move. 40 miles to Big Spring, but the worst of the weather had passed. I think.
As I am getting ready to go a couple of nurses appear and we chat. They warn me to watch out for flooded streets. Right. Great.
The first flooded street is the street outside of the hospital, good ole Tx 137. I do not chance turning right onto the roadway through water God knows how deep. I plow through and across the street, and then back onto 137 heading into downtown Lamesa, where EVERY intersection was flooded, with currents, flowing pretty quickly. I watch cars and trucks go through as I await my turn. there was NO PLACE to stop, Lamesa not being the most cosmopolitan of Texas towns. There were at least 10 intersections with deep water crossings. Almost or maybe axel depth. I could feel the radiator forging its way through as I revved high in first and feathered the clutch and churned through blind to what may lie under the waves. It felt like the rear part of the front fender was catching water. But, Blanche pulled me through, and I make it to the big highway, 87, and I am on my way when the rains start again, not deadly, but annoying. And I take a breath and 87 is mostly no standing water, when I see my oil light flashing red. Oh man! wtf! I’ve never seen that before and I am hoping it just means I am a little low on oil, I have oil!. But, I really don’t know if it’s that or irreparable damage to the engine from trouncing it through the flooded streets of Lamesa.
I stop under an underpass, put in 250 ccs of oil and MIRABILE VISU! the light goes out . I settle in for a cold wet ride into Big Spring for the night, somewhat knowing or suspecting the regret Robert Johnson felt at the end of his days.
*“Sympathy for the Devil”…Rolling Stones
**”Sinister Kid”…The Black Keys
*** “Crossroad Blues”…Robert Johnson
epilog to follow
