Prelude (in E-minor): (Sunday 9/8/96) After a morning's workout ... cutting grass, trimming trees, spraying bugs, sweeping sidewalks, and generally pretending to be a civilized member of society ... I'm now ready to set straight all the myths and legends fairly leaping from various kibitzers, nay-sayers, hanger's on, and fellow travellers... What follows is the TRUE story of the "Tin Can Cult's" foray into the darkness of East Texas, as told by an eye witness and By-God participant. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Odyssius and Aphrodite Drift Across East Texas: I drove so Deanna could better view the scenery without having to dodge assorted hay-balers, vintage pickups, and teenage girls in blazing Camaros...I'm used to dodging same, being a Native Texan. Since, however, real Texas doesn't begin until you get about 20 miles out of Dallas county, Deanna read her Chevy-Lumina user's manual until we got outta 'town'. We stuck to the backroads in order to avoid Interstate Narcosis, and to test the Lumina's brakes while avoiding rear-ending slow drivers. We passed safey thru the infamous Lavon speedtrap...3 miles of highway patrolled by approximately 13 small-town cops, wielding radar detectors calibrated to 3 decimal places. Down Texas-6 we passed the local motorsickle graveyard, salvage, and dump...where aproximately 500 ex-motorcycles and small engine vehicles sit plaintively idle in some guy's front yard. Further along, outside Josephine, Tx (pop ~ 500), I called Deanna's attention to the "leaning calendar" unattached garage, which marks the passing years by leaning further and further to the rear with each rotation of the planet. By it's angle of incline I estimated the year to be 1998...the slowly falling over garage is running a little fast. Passing uneventfully thru Caddo Mills (pop ~1200), we roared and skidded into Greenville, the first of my true childhood haunts. Cruising past Victorian houses in various states of repair, we wound our way to my ex-grade school... now the Police and Fire Stations. Rolling past the little store (now closed) where I bought Baseball Card Bubble Gum and candy at age 10. After circling the 'square' in downtown Greenville numerous times, in an attempt to remember the way outta town (hey, it's been 40 years), we finally found our way to the Interstate-30 frontage road and to the house I lived in around 1955...showing it's age. On down the road, we slowly passed the country church where I first walked the aisle at age 10, then accelerated toward Commerce, Tx (pop ~8100), where I attended graduate school at East Tx St. Univ., and where they were foolish enough to grant me an M.S. in Chemistry in 1972. Just before Commerce proper, I pointed out that there was an ex-stump in the fields nearby which my school buddies and I had "removed" with the aid of ... what I have fondly called "Nitro-Prestone"...prepared for that loud event thru chemical 'magic', a gallon of "specially processed" anti-freeze and some unauthorized supplies from the ETSU chem dept. My wild and crazy youth... We circled the campus of ETSU, basking in it's academic ambience, pointing out various buildings where I had nefarious adventures. Then on thru downtown Commerce with it's brick paved main drag. Blazing outta town on Tx-24 toward Cooper, Tx (pop~2000), the first place I ever remember living, as a child of 4-5 years. Cooper depended solely on cotton farming in the 50's and polyester hit it hard...Cooper *still* depends on cotton and nowadays Goretex and cheap Indian cotton continues to hit it hard. Cooper is economically "depressed". The theater burned down, one of the Drug Stores went belly up, and the house I remember from age 5 is a vacant lot. In 1952 Cooper had 4 stop lights...it now has zip. But it has a Dairy Queen, where we pulled up for some refreshment and use of the facilities. Sipping our Cokes, spooning down a sundae, the place was packed with local folks; cotton farmers too hardcore to give up, dressed in blue jeans, broad hats and chambray shirts. Grandmothers in hair nets accompanied by small grandsons with burr haircuts. Salt of the earth folks. Down the back, back roads, twisting around the 90 degreee curves following the original surveyer's section lines, we rolled thru Pecan Gap (pop~250), and on to the North Sulphur river bridge about 5 miles out of 'town'. Time to blast tin-cans... We had selected three .22's from my small home-armory, mainly in order to forego the earplugs that the 9mm or .32 might have required... anyway .22 ammo is cheap. The day's armament consisted of a Ruger 10/22 semi-auto rifle with folding stock, a Ruger Mark II pistol, and a Beretta Jaguar pistol. Rifle slung, pistols belted, shod with boots, sweatbands, and assorted outdoor gear, we waded thru shoulder high Johnson grass to the clear area under the concrete highway bridge. The North Sulphur, in the 30's-40's had a bad habit of 'wandering' in it's course, playing havoc with the incipient cotton fields, so the locals convinced the Corps of Engineers to "channel" it in the mid 40's. The river bed, consequently, looks like one of the Martian Canals, about 100 yds wide, 30 yds deep, steep sides, and straight as an arrow. Standing under the shade of the bridge one can shoot down at the tin-can wildlife browsing in the riverbed, or for those not convinced of the statistics of 'long shots', shoot at rocks and/or debris up to 1000yds up-or-downstream. We elected the shorter range aluminum critters. The game I play is to hit just under the can from 20 yds to infinity, and "jump" them into the air, and eventually into the river water, where they are mercifully dispatched, amid loud noise and cordite smoke, to become a home of fishes on the bottom. I jumped a can or 2 with the rifle, then Deanna took trigger control. The girl can shoot! Once she mastered the aimpoint offset required for shooting downhill, she jumped cans into the river, preforated their aluminum hides, and danced several disposable Pepsi bottles. I did the magazine reloads. Trying the short barreled (4") Beretta, one handed, neither of us presented a statistical hazard to the cannery. The 5" barreled Ruger was easier to hit with, and she allowed as how it was "now hers". OK. :) The woods around the bridge had overgrown to such an extent with underbrush and the Texas equivalent of Elephant Grass, that we postponed a walk in the woods, probably until the fall. Exchanging outdoor togs for civilian, we mounted the trusty Lumina and set off for Dallas. Taking a different way home, we sailed down Tx-380 thru small towns, ex-cotton fields, and grazing land, inhabited by cattle, hay-balers, and pickup trucks. Round trip: ~170 miles, and several enjoyable hours. No one was terrorized, no one molested, no laws broken (except some irrational speed laws); and we arrived back unharmed, having culled the weakest of the tin-can population and thoroughly tilled the soil around the worthy (and lucky) species, mainly Coors, Miller, and Pepsi. I still have the guns to clean...so....Adios. MikeH.