A Walk In Time ©

This evening I went for a walk.
It was the perfect night for it, the air was cool and refreshing.
Baby Blue was knocking AC/DC through my head.
It was a fair walk and I ended up in the market place about 2 miles from my house.
This was where my introduction to a life of crime began.
It was down here that I bought my first beer and saw my first naked woman.
This was the place where my birth into manhood began.


The Market in 1850
It was concidered one of the most dangerous places on Earth to live in at one time.

The buildings are as they were when I was a kid and as they were over a hundred years ago.
Time and trends have taken away the taverns and replaced them in their spots with coffee shops, specialty foods stores, antique furniture shops and a whole bunch of other yuppie stuff.


The fat old hooker with the tits that hung down to her knees is now gone has been replaced by a hooker not old enough to grow breasts yet.
The streets are clean, sterile now where when I was here a lifetime ago there was garbage everywhere.
Drunks lying around in the alleyways, yeah they are gone now too, probably all dead in some paupers grave.
The drunks are gone but replaced by the junkies in those same alleys.





Walking up the street I remember a kid looking at ……… freedom.
Or what I thought freedom was.
Standing on the same spot looking out there I see. ………Defeat.
The times had come in and took over everything, even me.
Sometimes I feel like a wild animal being restrained from doing what I want.
I don’t mean run amok.
I mean just go and do what you want to instead of what you have too.
There was a time I did just that but now I can’t for many reasons.
It’s almost like the wild side is being tamed slowly.
Well at least it’s trying too. LoL
Now I know I will never change much, I have that bit of animal chewing at my leg to have some mischief but I think everyone should, just to help the spirit get fired up.
It doesn’t have to be anything big.
Take your partner in the laneway and fuck in the back seat of the car and if you don’t have a car ………. Go fuck in the neighbor’s car.
What happens if you get caught?
Well if there wasn’t that possibility it wouldn’t be fun now would it?
Just think of how cool it would be having to tell the cops that you were messing with your wife/husband.

The Bistros have now become the hangouts for the bikers.

You could see their Harleys parked in a line along one of the side streets.
Way back when I was growing up they littered the smoke filled taverns drinking and getting into fights.


They reeked of stale beer and puke.
The cleaner at night would sweep up the butts and mop the puke and blood up.
Today they sit in the cafes drinking cappuccinos.
There is something wrong with this picture.

I stopped but a vintage Harley.
Nothing special about it other than it was mint, like it just rolled on the line 40 years ago.
I knew this bike, well not this particular one but one just like it once.
Mad Dog had one just like it.
I don’t ride personally I used to know how and would probably catch on quickly if they ever got rid of all the idiots on the road.
Touching the leather I noticed it was new and soft.
A guy called from the table and said it was his.
He came over and we talked for a bite and he said he bought it from some guy a couple of years earlier and restored it.
I offered him ten bucks to sit on it but he would hear of it.
Straddling the bike I settled in to the seat.
My weight was well balanced on this steel mustang; this was a work of art.
I could ride this baby with no hands.
Leaning forward I gripped the handles and was taken back to a farm forty miles from here.
The ground was littered in empty cartages and ammo boxes.
This is where Mad Dog lived, out here away from civilization and in his own world.
We used the place for bush parties and some target practice.
Ok a lot of target practice, but this day I was straddled on this same type seat and bike flopping around the yard.
He just bought it and wanted me to take it for a ride and rattle my insides.
He spent a year and a lot of money getting that bike to look new again.
He died three months later.
I got off and thanked the guy but about thirty feet away I stopped looked back and wondered what ever happened to Mad Dog’s bike?

It was getting dark and I was getting tired so I stopped for a bite and for a beer at a pub owned by the owner of my regular pub.
Well to be honest I saw his Hummer outside and was hoping for a ride back.
J saw me as I walked in and waved me over to the table.
This used to be a dive once, a greasy spoon that fattened you up in preparation for the harsh winters that cover this neck of the woods.
People used to sleep on the streets back then and this food is just what used to keep them alive.
Today they serve gourmet food, stuff that would kill those people back then.
Their stomachs couldn’t take the spicy food probably because their stomachs were covered with ulcers from all the rotgut they drank.
I got my wish about an hour later, when J offered me a ride to the other pub.
As we drove through the market area it was like driving through a time tunnel and we went from the past and as soon as we went through the intersection leaving the market it was 2006 again.

People are not like they used to be.
Maybe that’s a good thing.
Maybe it’s not.
I think back to a movie I saw with Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Timothy Leary called Demolition Man.
The part that concerns me is that everything in this reality is sterile.
No kissing because of germs.
No sex, because of fear of deformities so test tube babies were being produced.
Having fun was not allowed.
Being wild and zany was illegal.
Everyone had to be polite and you got a fine for swearing.
“Fuck”.
Beep
That will be five credits Walker.
I would never live in a place like that and the only restaurant was Taco Bell.
How much fucken Taco Bell can you eat before you want Pizza?

Is this where we are going, to a sterile society where we are too afraid to touch each other?
My niece is a good example.
She doesn’t go out to the park to associate with other kids because her mother doesn’t want her to get sick.
Well if the kid doesn’t get sick how will she build up her immune system.
This is when she should be catching colds and the measles and what all kids catch to make them stronger for the future.
She should be out there learning how to associate with others.
How much protection is too much?
Will people finally get to scared to venture out into the wilderness because of the fear of the unknown or the what ifs.
I don’t know I have to take risks so that I can feel alive.
I have taken them in the past and plan to in the future.
Sometimes they pan out and sometimes they don’t but I know I won’t have to wonder about what ifs because I took the chance and found out.
I could go on and on to where in the end humans will be just people at home alone and at a certain time they have to push a button and that would be their work for the day,
Do you want to know what pushing the button does?
It tells a computer you are still alive.
For now I am here in the present and the future is not mine to live so I will still be a little on the wild side because that’s who I am and hope the future doesn’t take away what is important for people to be people and that’s the ability to let loose, live and get a little dirty.

Imagine making a law that says I can’t eat pussy pfffft
Come and enforce it, just send a female cop.





Update

I have to add this little piece because Michael Manning gave me such an excellent comment and made me think, then it reminded me of something that goes with my post.
Chief Dan George who played the Indian Chief was a well know Canadian and I have read a lot of what he has written.
Here is something of his.

The Wolf Ceremony

I wanted to give something of my past to my grandson.
So I took him into the woods, to a quiet spot.
Seated at my feet he listened as I told him of the powers that were given to each creature.
He moved not a muscle as I explained how the woods had always provided us with food, homes, comfort, and religion.
He was awed when I related to him how the wolf became our guardian, and when I told him that I would sing the sacred wolf song over him, he was overjoyed.
In my song, I appealed to the wolf to come and preside over us while I would perform the wolf ceremony so that the bondage between my grandson and the wolf would be life long.

I sang.In my voice was the hope that clings to every heartbeat.
I sang.In my words were the powers I inherited from my forefathers.

I sang.In my cupped hands lay a spruce seed-- the link to creation.
I sang. In my eyes sparkled love.

I sang.
And the song floated on the sun's rays from tree to tree.

When I had ended, it was if the whole world listened with us to hear the wolf's reply.
We waited a long time but none came.
Again I sang, humbly but as invitingly as I could, until my throat ached and my voice gave out. All of a sudden I realized why no wolves had heard my sacred song.
There were none left! My heart filled with tears.
I could no longer give my grandson faith in the past, our past.
At last I could whisper to him: " It is finished!"
"Can I go home now?" He asked, checking his watch to see if he would still be in time to catch his favorite program on TV.
I watched him disappear and wept in silence.

All is finished!

Chief Dan George

Have a nice day


Walker