Hobo Jungle
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San Diegan
Austin is definitely nice. If (and when) I travel there, I will let you know beforehand. I would love to see it from your perspective.
One of my avocations is the construction of a teardrop trailer. It looks like this:
My purpose is camping, but there are a lot of folks who build them to match their ride, like this:
Thursday nights out in El Cajon and closer by in Encinitas are car nights and the array of vintage cars, rods, and tears (as we call them) is a sight to see. These are the cars I modeled as a teenager and could only dream about.
I get a lot of attention with a factory low rider Dodge Magnum and hope to be stepping out with the tear behind it soon. Perhaps one day I'll pull the tear down the road with a true Highboy. I love those things.
San
PS: No rat rods for me.
San
One of my avocations is the construction of a teardrop trailer. It looks like this:
My purpose is camping, but there are a lot of folks who build them to match their ride, like this:
Thursday nights out in El Cajon and closer by in Encinitas are car nights and the array of vintage cars, rods, and tears (as we call them) is a sight to see. These are the cars I modeled as a teenager and could only dream about.
I get a lot of attention with a factory low rider Dodge Magnum and hope to be stepping out with the tear behind it soon. Perhaps one day I'll pull the tear down the road with a true Highboy. I love those things.
San
PS: No rat rods for me.
San
I'm in for one. I just got back from the confines of Bristol Motor Speedway, where the rain has made a real mess of today's Busch Series race (got free tickets last night, so I went). They still haven't called the race yet, so my 12-year-old son Johnny and I may run up there again in an hour or join 140,000 other freezing fans for a true CRASH FEST Bristol-style. Meanwhile, I've got one more 24-ouncer that didn't hit the belly earlier today.
I picked a couple of those 70-ton ACF NKP covered hoppers on eBay this week and laid down the Cement Central with a NKP Berk in the front; man, I love watching that Atlas stuff - smooooth....
I picked a couple of those 70-ton ACF NKP covered hoppers on eBay this week and laid down the Cement Central with a NKP Berk in the front; man, I love watching that Atlas stuff - smooooth....
Flirtin' with disaster...
Tramp, Sure! I've seen the small tables set up on the side streets of NYC before. Plus a few people who hustled the card tricks. Easy money, and like P.T. Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute". 
Of course that was before the "moonies" invaded, then there was the invasion of window washers, and now it's just dealing crack.
Amalie, send some photos, I'll post 'em. Who's ready for another?
Of course that was before the "moonies" invaded, then there was the invasion of window washers, and now it's just dealing crack.
Amalie, send some photos, I'll post 'em. Who's ready for another?
Running that red block Charlie.
Jon, this the section?
On entering the Trackside Bar, they were swamped by a warm fetid haze with a stench that almost drove Mary back outside; she had to remind herself why they were there. A pool table—at least that. All four patrons and barman turned as they approached; only the jukebox ignored them, strumming out a bleary country ballad. The bartender, his eyes mere slits, exhaled smoke and stuffed out his cigarette in an overloaded ashtray.
“Hep you?”
“Kitchen still open?”
“Nope.”
“Is there anything to eat, anything you could make us? We’re pretty hungry.”
The bartender shook his head curtly. “We’re ‘bout closed.”
Someone sitting at the end of the bar mumbled: “Honey, I got something . . . eat,” and two or three of the others started snickering. She ignored the comment and hoped Garland hadn’t heard it.
“Just some chips, pretzels maybe?” She glanced at a snack rack behind him.
There was no reaction.
“Please. We’re really hungry.”
The bartender swiveled and grabbed two small bags of chips and tossed them on the bar. “Dollar.”—sounded like a grunt.
“Any coffee?” She got the Nope again. They needed something to drink, something to bring up their blood sugar. “Two drafts then, Rainier not Bud, and two bags of those pretzels, and some Slim Jims.” As he started pulling the beers, Mary walked down the bar, his pig-like eyes still on her. Garland was watching her as well—probably dawning on him that they didn’t have a dime. She singled out the one who must have made the comment—mullet haircut, bulky steroid muscles, low forehead, and an open short-sleeved shirt cheerfully printed in pineapples. “So, any of you play pool?” she said to him.
“And I suppose you do?” said Mullet.
She nodded.
“How much you wanna play for? Or maybe a sweet innocent thing like you wants to play for something asides money?” He gave her a confident leer. Jesus, this guy was too much. A skinny woman next to him whacked his arm. She sniffed a few times and her rabbit eyes darted nervously.
“How about if we play for fun?” said Mary. She looked right at him, though it disgusted her.
“I won enough fun. Don’t your little cowboy there play pool?”
She shook her head.
“You think you can handle me?”
“I haven’t been playing much lately, but I still think I can beat you.” God, this was awful.
“Why not put your money where your mouth is then?” He stood, made a show of expanding his hairy chest, and took some quarters from his change pile. “Allow me.”
She glanced at Garland eating chips ravenously. The bartender set down the drafts, and Garland drained his. He asked for another, the bartender said something, and Garland pointed at Mary. His blood sugar must be climbing, his body warming; the grin returned. He was like Popeye with his can of spinach.
Mullet fed the pool table quarters, slammed home the chrome lever, and fifteen balls dropped onto the shelf with a ker-blunk. Mary took off her raincoat and examined some cues. She didn’t make a show of eyeballing along the shaft for straightness or rolling the cue on the pool table to see if it was warped. All that mattered in a cue was the condition of the tip, and she selected the best one. Garland brought her a draft and the bags of snacks. She couldn’t believe how good it tasted, stale pretzels and cheap beer.
Mullet racked the balls, ordering the solids and stripes meticulously. She winced; there was no such rule. It took him forever to rack the balls, sliding the triangle back and forth along the felt. He was probably showing off those puffy muscles. There was a freight to catch: she didn’t have time for this.
Mullet looked up from his completed rack. “So what you wanna play for?”
“Two dollars?” she said.
“How about a fin?”
She nodded. At least some of it was easy.
“You can break,” he said.
She intentionally held the cue wrong, forming a clumsy bridge with her thumb sticking up and gripping the stick at the very end of the butt. On her break, she purposely miscued. “Oh, damn.” She wanted him to break the balls.
“Go again,” he said with a wave of his arm.
“No, not when playing for money. It’s your shot.”
He turned and retrieved his drink, took a long sip, grabbed his smokes and lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply. Only then did he approach the pool table. He broke with a big flourish, sunk two balls, both stripes. He looked to his audience for approval. Sitting beside the skinny woman were two men, both in camouflage pants. To Mary they all appeared to have been hatched from the same egg. They matched the place—fake wood paneling, filthy plywood floor, rotating plastic beer light featuring the Budweiser Clydesdales, the pool table lit by a miniature Nascar.
Mullet hammered in two more balls and missed a cut shot by three inches. He still seemed very pleased with his performance. “Okay, honey, your turn. Let’s see what you can do.”
She missed. “Nice try,” he said. But by missing she locked a solid in one of the pocket jaws, leaving it just at the edge of the hole. The eight ball was on the rail close to this pocket—she’d blocked the easy shot. If he ran out his other balls, he’d be forced to play a difficult shot on the eight, which she didn’t think he could make. The cue ball had also ended up exactly where she intended. “Didn’t leave me much, did ya?” he said. She shrugged her shoulders.
Garland brought her more food and beer, and a glass of orange juice. It had been a long time since she’d eaten a Slim Jim. Did they even have any nutritional value? The juice was a good idea, she should have thought of that, but this place put her on edge. Maybe it was just the smell.
Mullet tried a bank shot and missed. Why did they always shoot so hard? She holed two solids, exclaiming as each ball fell. Don’t overdo it, she told herself, wondering why she was so nervous. She locked another solid in a pocket. He sunk a couple more, squinting through the smoke of his cigarette, obviously giving no thought to where the cue ball ended up. He was left with one stripe and the eight now. Since Mary had two of the pockets bottled up, his only choice was another bank shot. He missed. She allowed herself to sink only two more, but left him nothing, snookering the cue ball. He stared at the table. Did he suspect something? He missed his ball entirely.
“Isn’t that a scratch?” she said, knowing it was.
“No ****** way. Only on the eight. You scratch the eight, you lose.”
Time-wise, she had to end this, and did. No one expected her to miss the ones in the pockets anyway. She drove the cue ball off three rails getting position for an easy shot down the rail on the eight so it looked like luck.
He scowled and threw a five at the table. “Let’s play for twenty, see how good you really are.” He was irritated now, hopefully not too irritated. There was something behind his sexual bluster that was disturbing.
She approached the bartender. “How much?”
“Fourteen-fifty,” he said. More than she figured.
“You going to play or not?” said Mullet, loud, right in her ear, his breath like rotten meat.
She jerked away from him. “Rack ‘em.”
“For twenty?”
“Twenty. Let’s go.” She glanced back at the bartender. He was still staring at her through those slits, but she couldn’t read his expression.
She waited again while Mullet went through his inane racking procedure. He kept looking up at her, and it went right into her stomach. She wanted to get out of there badly—something was wrong. She glanced at Garland; he winked at her. Nothing ever seemed to bother him.
This time she broke using her normal stance. One solid fell and she quickly ran through the rest of her balls; Mullet, seeing she wasn’t missing, tried every obnoxious trick—screeching the chalk, saying “Don’t miss” just as she stroked, moving around in her line of sight. As she got ready for her easy eight-ball shot, the bartender called out, “Hey, you.”
She straightened and turned.
“You gonna pay me or not?” His arms across his chest, those eyes.
“As soon as I sink the eight.” She leaned back over to play her last shot.
A striped ball blocked it.
“What are you doing?” she said to Mullet.
“What are you talking about?”
“You moved one of the balls.”
“**** you, what are you talking about?”
“You moved that fourteen ball. My shot was clear before, now it isn’t.”
“You sayin’ I cheated?”
One of the louts got up off his bar stool and headed toward the exit. The skinny woman licked her broken-out upper lip and sniffed. Garland moved quietly beside Mary.
“You moved the ball,” he said to Mullet. “Bub, that’s no frigging way to play pool. Put it back.”
“********—stay out of it before you get hurt.”
Mary addressed the bystanders. “Did any of you see him move the ball?”
“Nope,” said one. The others shook their heads.
“It’s your shot, dearie,” said the skinny woman, her eyes gleaming. “Either make it or pay up.”
The bartender: “You don’t hit that eight, you lose. Them’s house rules.”
They all watched her. She saw what she hadn’t before—real trouble. This was no longer about an uneasy feeling, bad smells, or a pool game. They all knew something she didn’t. Her heart raced. She stared at the table, not sure what to do, her mind numb.
Then Garland whispered, “The curvy thing.”
Inverting the cue stick to a forty-five degree angle, she masséd the cue ball around the fourteen and into the eight, sinking it perfectly. A silence. A very ominous silence. It was broken by the call of a diesel horn.
“Just pay the bartender the twenty,” she said to Mullet. “We have to go.”
His face made her flinch.
“Maybe you need a real ****** lesson on the pool table—with your legs spread. ******** the toy cowboy can watch.”
The skinny woman, spit spraying from her mouth, said, “Now you’ll get yours, you uppity bitch.”
The one at the door snapped the dead-bolt.
It was then that Garland reacted. He picked up the heavy bar-table cue ball, and with a throw that had made him a local legend when he played shortstop as a teenager, he threw hard to first. He got the man out at the door; the cue ball ricocheted off his jaw, whacked into the wall, and down he went with a screaming thud.
“Run!” Garland yelled as he grabbed her pool stick. “Don’t think, just run. I’ll be okay.”
She did. Grabbed her coat and found the door, stepping over the body lying near the threshold, the man holding his mouth, bellowing. The bartender yelled something she didn’t understand, peripherally someone was darting toward her. She could almost feel him grabbing her when she heard a sharp crack. She fumbled with the bolt, her hands shaking. Got it turned, threw open the door, and plunged into the darkness.
She ran, cold fresh air surrounding her like a blessing. For an instant she slowed and glanced back. Through one of the windows was Garland, a pool stick gripped in both hands. He swung, struck Mullet squarely on the side of the head; the mouth opened in a contorted scream. Garland must have been one hell of a batter, too. Then she saw a body darken the doorway and she ran again.
On entering the Trackside Bar, they were swamped by a warm fetid haze with a stench that almost drove Mary back outside; she had to remind herself why they were there. A pool table—at least that. All four patrons and barman turned as they approached; only the jukebox ignored them, strumming out a bleary country ballad. The bartender, his eyes mere slits, exhaled smoke and stuffed out his cigarette in an overloaded ashtray.
“Hep you?”
“Kitchen still open?”
“Nope.”
“Is there anything to eat, anything you could make us? We’re pretty hungry.”
The bartender shook his head curtly. “We’re ‘bout closed.”
Someone sitting at the end of the bar mumbled: “Honey, I got something . . . eat,” and two or three of the others started snickering. She ignored the comment and hoped Garland hadn’t heard it.
“Just some chips, pretzels maybe?” She glanced at a snack rack behind him.
There was no reaction.
“Please. We’re really hungry.”
The bartender swiveled and grabbed two small bags of chips and tossed them on the bar. “Dollar.”—sounded like a grunt.
“Any coffee?” She got the Nope again. They needed something to drink, something to bring up their blood sugar. “Two drafts then, Rainier not Bud, and two bags of those pretzels, and some Slim Jims.” As he started pulling the beers, Mary walked down the bar, his pig-like eyes still on her. Garland was watching her as well—probably dawning on him that they didn’t have a dime. She singled out the one who must have made the comment—mullet haircut, bulky steroid muscles, low forehead, and an open short-sleeved shirt cheerfully printed in pineapples. “So, any of you play pool?” she said to him.
“And I suppose you do?” said Mullet.
She nodded.
“How much you wanna play for? Or maybe a sweet innocent thing like you wants to play for something asides money?” He gave her a confident leer. Jesus, this guy was too much. A skinny woman next to him whacked his arm. She sniffed a few times and her rabbit eyes darted nervously.
“How about if we play for fun?” said Mary. She looked right at him, though it disgusted her.
“I won enough fun. Don’t your little cowboy there play pool?”
She shook her head.
“You think you can handle me?”
“I haven’t been playing much lately, but I still think I can beat you.” God, this was awful.
“Why not put your money where your mouth is then?” He stood, made a show of expanding his hairy chest, and took some quarters from his change pile. “Allow me.”
She glanced at Garland eating chips ravenously. The bartender set down the drafts, and Garland drained his. He asked for another, the bartender said something, and Garland pointed at Mary. His blood sugar must be climbing, his body warming; the grin returned. He was like Popeye with his can of spinach.
Mullet fed the pool table quarters, slammed home the chrome lever, and fifteen balls dropped onto the shelf with a ker-blunk. Mary took off her raincoat and examined some cues. She didn’t make a show of eyeballing along the shaft for straightness or rolling the cue on the pool table to see if it was warped. All that mattered in a cue was the condition of the tip, and she selected the best one. Garland brought her a draft and the bags of snacks. She couldn’t believe how good it tasted, stale pretzels and cheap beer.
Mullet racked the balls, ordering the solids and stripes meticulously. She winced; there was no such rule. It took him forever to rack the balls, sliding the triangle back and forth along the felt. He was probably showing off those puffy muscles. There was a freight to catch: she didn’t have time for this.
Mullet looked up from his completed rack. “So what you wanna play for?”
“Two dollars?” she said.
“How about a fin?”
She nodded. At least some of it was easy.
“You can break,” he said.
She intentionally held the cue wrong, forming a clumsy bridge with her thumb sticking up and gripping the stick at the very end of the butt. On her break, she purposely miscued. “Oh, damn.” She wanted him to break the balls.
“Go again,” he said with a wave of his arm.
“No, not when playing for money. It’s your shot.”
He turned and retrieved his drink, took a long sip, grabbed his smokes and lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply. Only then did he approach the pool table. He broke with a big flourish, sunk two balls, both stripes. He looked to his audience for approval. Sitting beside the skinny woman were two men, both in camouflage pants. To Mary they all appeared to have been hatched from the same egg. They matched the place—fake wood paneling, filthy plywood floor, rotating plastic beer light featuring the Budweiser Clydesdales, the pool table lit by a miniature Nascar.
Mullet hammered in two more balls and missed a cut shot by three inches. He still seemed very pleased with his performance. “Okay, honey, your turn. Let’s see what you can do.”
She missed. “Nice try,” he said. But by missing she locked a solid in one of the pocket jaws, leaving it just at the edge of the hole. The eight ball was on the rail close to this pocket—she’d blocked the easy shot. If he ran out his other balls, he’d be forced to play a difficult shot on the eight, which she didn’t think he could make. The cue ball had also ended up exactly where she intended. “Didn’t leave me much, did ya?” he said. She shrugged her shoulders.
Garland brought her more food and beer, and a glass of orange juice. It had been a long time since she’d eaten a Slim Jim. Did they even have any nutritional value? The juice was a good idea, she should have thought of that, but this place put her on edge. Maybe it was just the smell.
Mullet tried a bank shot and missed. Why did they always shoot so hard? She holed two solids, exclaiming as each ball fell. Don’t overdo it, she told herself, wondering why she was so nervous. She locked another solid in a pocket. He sunk a couple more, squinting through the smoke of his cigarette, obviously giving no thought to where the cue ball ended up. He was left with one stripe and the eight now. Since Mary had two of the pockets bottled up, his only choice was another bank shot. He missed. She allowed herself to sink only two more, but left him nothing, snookering the cue ball. He stared at the table. Did he suspect something? He missed his ball entirely.
“Isn’t that a scratch?” she said, knowing it was.
“No ****** way. Only on the eight. You scratch the eight, you lose.”
Time-wise, she had to end this, and did. No one expected her to miss the ones in the pockets anyway. She drove the cue ball off three rails getting position for an easy shot down the rail on the eight so it looked like luck.
He scowled and threw a five at the table. “Let’s play for twenty, see how good you really are.” He was irritated now, hopefully not too irritated. There was something behind his sexual bluster that was disturbing.
She approached the bartender. “How much?”
“Fourteen-fifty,” he said. More than she figured.
“You going to play or not?” said Mullet, loud, right in her ear, his breath like rotten meat.
She jerked away from him. “Rack ‘em.”
“For twenty?”
“Twenty. Let’s go.” She glanced back at the bartender. He was still staring at her through those slits, but she couldn’t read his expression.
She waited again while Mullet went through his inane racking procedure. He kept looking up at her, and it went right into her stomach. She wanted to get out of there badly—something was wrong. She glanced at Garland; he winked at her. Nothing ever seemed to bother him.
This time she broke using her normal stance. One solid fell and she quickly ran through the rest of her balls; Mullet, seeing she wasn’t missing, tried every obnoxious trick—screeching the chalk, saying “Don’t miss” just as she stroked, moving around in her line of sight. As she got ready for her easy eight-ball shot, the bartender called out, “Hey, you.”
She straightened and turned.
“You gonna pay me or not?” His arms across his chest, those eyes.
“As soon as I sink the eight.” She leaned back over to play her last shot.
A striped ball blocked it.
“What are you doing?” she said to Mullet.
“What are you talking about?”
“You moved one of the balls.”
“**** you, what are you talking about?”
“You moved that fourteen ball. My shot was clear before, now it isn’t.”
“You sayin’ I cheated?”
One of the louts got up off his bar stool and headed toward the exit. The skinny woman licked her broken-out upper lip and sniffed. Garland moved quietly beside Mary.
“You moved the ball,” he said to Mullet. “Bub, that’s no frigging way to play pool. Put it back.”
“********—stay out of it before you get hurt.”
Mary addressed the bystanders. “Did any of you see him move the ball?”
“Nope,” said one. The others shook their heads.
“It’s your shot, dearie,” said the skinny woman, her eyes gleaming. “Either make it or pay up.”
The bartender: “You don’t hit that eight, you lose. Them’s house rules.”
They all watched her. She saw what she hadn’t before—real trouble. This was no longer about an uneasy feeling, bad smells, or a pool game. They all knew something she didn’t. Her heart raced. She stared at the table, not sure what to do, her mind numb.
Then Garland whispered, “The curvy thing.”
Inverting the cue stick to a forty-five degree angle, she masséd the cue ball around the fourteen and into the eight, sinking it perfectly. A silence. A very ominous silence. It was broken by the call of a diesel horn.
“Just pay the bartender the twenty,” she said to Mullet. “We have to go.”
His face made her flinch.
“Maybe you need a real ****** lesson on the pool table—with your legs spread. ******** the toy cowboy can watch.”
The skinny woman, spit spraying from her mouth, said, “Now you’ll get yours, you uppity bitch.”
The one at the door snapped the dead-bolt.
It was then that Garland reacted. He picked up the heavy bar-table cue ball, and with a throw that had made him a local legend when he played shortstop as a teenager, he threw hard to first. He got the man out at the door; the cue ball ricocheted off his jaw, whacked into the wall, and down he went with a screaming thud.
“Run!” Garland yelled as he grabbed her pool stick. “Don’t think, just run. I’ll be okay.”
She did. Grabbed her coat and found the door, stepping over the body lying near the threshold, the man holding his mouth, bellowing. The bartender yelled something she didn’t understand, peripherally someone was darting toward her. She could almost feel him grabbing her when she heard a sharp crack. She fumbled with the bolt, her hands shaking. Got it turned, threw open the door, and plunged into the darkness.
She ran, cold fresh air surrounding her like a blessing. For an instant she slowed and glanced back. Through one of the windows was Garland, a pool stick gripped in both hands. He swung, struck Mullet squarely on the side of the head; the mouth opened in a contorted scream. Garland must have been one hell of a batter, too. Then she saw a body darken the doorway and she ran again.
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