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The Way it Was
Abraham Lincoln
Sometimes I either dream or fall into a kind of stupor and seem to
exist in a different time. I am able to see and hear whatever is around
me. I also remember sitting up against an old oak tree at the speedway
south of Greenville and remembered when I walked in and stood at the
guardrail and imagined racing cars roaring around the dirt track. And I
saw, as plain as day, one car hit the guard rail where I was standing,
flew over me and landed on parked cars some 20 feet below where I
stood. The south end of the old grandstand seemed to moan when it
happened as if it knew the driver was going to either die or be
seriously injured. How many Darke County Residents remember the old
speedway west of the drive-in?
I was hunting once and walked down this long lane that went down a
steep hill and over a small creek and up the hill on the other side.
Down there in the middle at the lowest place I could hear what sounded
like a million bees swarming in the dark woods on my left. I looked but
it was so dense that I couldn't see a thing but something made the hair
on the back of my neck curl up and I couldn't get out of there fast
enough. I had a shotgun with me but whatever it was made me more afraid
than my shotgun bothered it. I kept looking back and ended up walking
way around that spot when I went back to get in my car. I never even
saw a rabbit. I never heard of Sasquatch back then but maybe that's
what it was.
I was sitting on a Greyhound bus on my way from Tucson, Arizona to Palm
Springs, California where all the movie stars go to get away from
Hollywood. I was told to go there if I ever had time by a lady from
Massachusetts--a school teacher who took her summer vacations in Palm
Springs. She said she made more money in tips than she made teaching
for a whole year back home in Massachusetts and she was just a waitress
at the Hotel Desert Air Parkway in Palm Springs. So when I had enough
money saved, I bought a bus ticket and rode the bus from Tucson to Palm
Springs and along the way, in several places, one could see the
original stage coach road off to the side of the highway. In Palm
Springs her and her giant glass water jugs in her bedroom filled with
half dollars, quarters, rolled up bills and lots of loose change. She
said they were too heavy to move and she wasn't worried about somebody
walking out with a jug of her tips.
In those days I had no reason to live in the real world when I could
live among the Stars in Palm Spring and taste the same cup of coffee
they drank. I could eat a hotdog just like they were eating. I could
set on the stone slab around the flowers right beside a star reading
his mail from his post office box. I often wondered what it would be
like to be a movie star and here I was living the same kind of life in
their world on next to nothing and less than a dollar in my pocket.
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