Man or an Angel by Mark Anthony Given

       He whose intellect overcomes his desire is higher than the angels: he whose desire overcomes his intellect is less than an animal. -Rumi   

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           I TRY TO REMEMBER my quick encounter with death every day because it reminds me I must have done something right but secretly suspect my life today is the result of some more significant and more important barter with fate and destiny, in days past...  I imagine the oppressive weather of the bogs of Ballyutogue, Ireland, and the miserable climate burnishes a pure desire for something more in their life, something you would trade all your tomorrows for a single day of someplace other than here...

           HAVE YOU EVER through your very life on the line for one roll of the dice, betting it all against the built-in odds on the house, fuck it!  I just so fucking sick of my life I want to either life wholly alive or dead and stinking?  I did.  At the very end of Interstate 10 in downtown Los Angeles having started in Jacksonville, Florida ten days or so earlier. Everything has to come to an end and so do I burst across ten or twelve lanes of California car Crazy traffic flying at every bit of fifty or sixty miles an hour at ten o'clock on a Saturday night.  Probably a little drunk on the frenetic energy of the entertainment capital of the world, I rolled the dice to finally find out....

           RIGHT NOW as I write this, I am trembling remembering it right this minute and every time I thought of it 10,831 days ago because it ain't nothing you will ever forget.  And I wonder if that is precisely why I did it, if you can do this you can do anything.  I just wish I didn't have that damn backpack on because that is what almost got me killed... 

           THE  CAR'S FLEW by me in half a nanosecond, and I can still feel the late summer midnight air and all the fluorescent lights and the magical feeling Los Angeles has to it when you first arrive.  Even now, I have an overwhelming sense of "WAIT!"  "WAIT!" till an opening, there's no hurry... but like a moth too close to the flame I had to finally find out of if I was a Man or an Angel....

394 Words

 COPYRIGHT 2017 by Mark Anthony Given

All Rights Reserved 28 USC 1746  Public Law: Pub. L. 94-553 (Oct. 19, 1976)

U.S. Statutes at Large: 90 Stat. 2541

11:06 AM 1/28/2016

Freemesser's Bar by Mark Anthony Given

Everything you are and do from fifteen to eighteen is what you are and will do through life.  - #FSCOTTFITZGERALD

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             YOU KNOW HOW in The Godfather where you got a room full hot headed Italian guys ready to take action and right in the middle of them is a smooth talking Irish guy as the voice of reason?  That was Freemesser's Bar with Frank Costas, in reverse.  Except he would party with the best of 'em but everybody knew he had the last word, and when he got ready to go home he would pick out the soberest in the lot....  First time I met him I was eighteen driving a white fake rag top brand new baron red Chrysler with Florida dealer tags I had stolen off a show room floor along the interstate somewhere in Florida. He had me take him home in it not knowing it was was stolen and refused to put his feet on the floor he was so impressed with it.  Couple years after I knew him we tried to goof on him about it, but he said he was too drunk to remember....
              FREEMESSER’S ON Clinton Avenue South in Rochester, New York, was a neighborhood bar owned by an old Guinea, Frank Costa's, and had been there for years. Smack in the heart of "Swilburg," now a mixed neighborhood before entering the suburbs, but once an enclave of Irish and German potatoes farmers. There were no bar stools, you had to stand up and women could not drink at the bar, but would come to the door of the back room to be served. I got busted by my parole officer for a dirty UA and locked up in the Monroe County Jail for a month or two. While I was in there, I had my girlfriend pick up my last paycheck and take it to Frank to cash and pay my bar Tab.
              FRANK WOULD try to have Frank Guesford or someone drive him home about six o'clock at night because he was tired and too drunk to drive, so if you seen him in there after six, something was going on. A wedding, a funeral, a party for Fire Fighters, Roofers Union, whatever. I walked in there about seven at night and the place was at full tilt, but still only twelve or fifteen people, which was a lot in a little corner bar. As soon as Frank seen me come in the door he pointed at me and hollered across the whole Bar, "There's that son of a bitch! I been in business twenty years and never had anyone send me money from jail! Drink's on the house kid!" You would have thought I gave him first Grand Son they way he treated me after that.  There were so many people in there all of Swillburg probable heard about it and it was a good feeling knowing I was always good for a 'few buck's a Freemesser's Bar....

Copyright 2015 by Mark Anthony Given All Rights Reserved

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Star On My Ass by Mark Anthony Given

Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

 -Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

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             I HITCHHIKED the West Coast of California from just below San Francisco to Malibu and back again, it's several hundred miles of the most magnificent views I had ever seen, centering around San Louis Obispo where William Randolf Hearst's Mansion can be seen from Pacific Coast Highway 1.  Hairpin turns and death defying curves with death a second away if you look to see a dolphin in the brilliant blue surf it was everything I imagined it as a kid growing up on sixties television.  This was my second or third trip to California.  The first time I started in Jacksonville, Florida at the foot of Interstate 10 goes right to downtown Los Angeles and a shit storm of traffic going six different directions I think I was a little drunk and I knew if I didn't get run over at ten o'clock on a summer night, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's would grab me and save me from myself.  I turned around and headed back to Florida just to say I did.  Crossing twelve lanes of traffic in downtown Los Angeles at midnight my story almost ended and I must confess, is the most scared I ever been.  Looking back on it now, probably the stupidest thing I ever did but after Ms. Rita in New Orleans told me I had a "Star on my Ass!" after I give the New Orleans detectives the slip a couple of times, I felt invincible but I was a split second from being run over by someone who never even slowed down. I thought about it almost obsessively for weeks and nearly quit hitchhiking for good. 

           SOMEBODY STOPPED for me in a midnight blue Pontiac Tempest with headers and an 8-track playing REO, dude was kinda drunk.  He looked at me with wide eyed amazement after I jumped in as fast I could and I told him I had had someone drop me off right there and was going back to Florida just to say I did.  He said "Well you better hold on," and floored it for twenty miles all the way to San Berdoo after he handed me a beer and a joint.  You will not believe this but God as my witness, hauling ass in that jacked up muscle car drinking a cold beer and smoking California Bud I noticed this was biker dude and I think he recognized Donald Duck sitting there that just like him, I didn't give a fuck and probably wouldn't start no trouble, but if you did....  Traffic at that time of night was thinning it was an eight or nine lanes somewhere around race track in Riverside, you can see along the Interstate, this candy apple red corvette appeared in the center lane tracking us to get a look at what we were working with;  we were doing every bit of ninety miles and hour the windows were open and I couldn't keep the joint lit this Vette took off like we were standing still... The last thing I seen was 454 across the hood of his car before evaporating down the interstate.  Dude looked at me at me and said, 

"What the fuck was that?"  

"What size you engine you got in this thing?" 

 "427."  

"Fuck that!" 

and he fucking stomped on it but we never seen more than his tail lights. The interstate was alight and everything was flying by as we went faster and faster weaving in and out of lanes passing cars the fresh California medical weed and Coors's beer were eliciting a building excitement I hoped would end with Blue lights on the headliner before this maniac killed us...
          NINE HUNDRED and seventy miles from Orange, Texas to Anthony, New Mexico, took me three or four days and probably ten rides of some of the loneliest road anywhere.  As soon as I got into Arizona, I was half way down the entrance ramp so the thru traffic could see me, it was perfectly flat and people who did get on there were hauling ass by the time they went by me.  An Arizona State Trooper stopped me and gave me the whole nine yards.   Ran my ID that I didn't have, read me the Riot Act about the perils of hitchhiking and then told me if he saw me hitchhiking anywhere there wasn't water he was taking me to jail.  Said people would wait many hours there and start walking off into the desert not knowing there wasn't another Exit for eighty ninety miles.  And besides, it's a great place to get run over by people dozing off at the wheel...
          I HAD NOWHERE to go and no hurry to get there and born with little or no ambition, all I ever wanted to do was be a writer but I had something more serious than "Writer's Block," I didn't have anything to write about.   I could tell you about growing up the only boy and twelve girls in an orphanage in Florida and the nightly trials and tribulations of The Temptation of Youth, but you would never believe me.....
          SOME PEOPLE can't be alone and actually, ride up and down the Interstate looking for people to take home.  You ever heard of anything like that?  After just a few months of being on the road I had to lay down some rules from what I had learned so far:  I ain't going to your house if it's more than a mile or so from the Interstate, and no hitchhiking at night.  It is ten times more dangerous and you will get run over and more importantly 

Bad People Come Out at Night... 

Bad things happen in the day but it's ten times worse at night.  More drunks, more fugitives, more felons, more feigns, more faggots, more desperation and you just feel like shit when you get where your going.  About an hour before sunset I'm looking for a somewhere i can pitch a small tent until just before daylight I'll be up and gone.... and feeling like a Champ.

To be Continued

 2:30 PM 5/21/2014

The Elegant Sadness by Mark Anthony Given

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things,

but their inward significance. -Aristotle

         TENNESSEE WILLIAMS WASN'T born in Tennessee and The Battle of New Orleans wasn't fought in New Orleans, but ten miles up the river in Chalmette, Louisiana just past the parish line in Arabi where sheriff deputies on one side, and New Orleans detectives on the other watched the "Da Parish" Line day and night like they were sitting on a private stocked pond, often with a highly trained big Belgian Black Shepard Police Dog, that can smell you coming before you got out of bed this morning, and just like the British at the sudden turn in the muddy fast running Mississippi River, they could have spun their battle ships on a dime in the treacherous and fast current but by the time you see the motley crew of determined early Americans, they lit their ass up so fast it was like shooting ducks in a barrel and just like you, 'they didn't stand a chance....
           THE WHOLE PLACE with it's wide open expanse of wasted traverse with ground level fox holes and makeshift garrison belied the enormity of the Battle of New Orleans, and not even the brightest sunshine and clear blue skies overshadowed the number of withered headstones behind me and either them are American boys and girls laying claim to the soggy dirt or some of them ducks got out of the boat...   

           I WAS PROBABLY LOADED out of my mind driving a little old red Volkswagen, or VW Bug stole from who knows where.... both my girlfriends two children in the front seat they were maybe seven and eight years old and fit in the same seat.  Right past the Battlefield is the Battlefield Cemetery you pass thru a little gate to walk from the battlefield, or you can drive right down the middle of an old red brick road under ancient oak trees smothered in Spanish Moss darkening the already foreboding zone I was doing five miles an hour on Halloween evening.  I have a long-suffering habit of talking to my automobiles, and they knew it even if they never saw this car before. 

           "I'm sorry Mr. Red, 'bought bringing you back here like this on a night like this, but these two kids made me!"

           "Know we didn't! Jefferey screamed;  I didn't even know this place was here! 

           The littlest one Jillian was sitting in the middle and couldn't see over the window sills, but she was looking concerned.
           We are driving as slow as possible because I know if we run into one of these frightening gravestones you go straight to Hell without even a Bond hearing...  I traded a beautiful 1977 two-tone baby blue and white landau top Oldsmobile Cutlass 225 with white lettered tires for this old Bug that didn't have a battery in it and no reverse and had to be pushed to start.

          "Alright, I'm getting scared!" "Whose idea was this, the suns going down were not supposed to be back here!" 

 You had to turn around at the end towards the River to get back out, and I started acting like I was really scared and like we were having car trouble or running out of gas again, and reminded them they would have to get out and push.  It would 'start rolling down a small driveway it was so light and pop the clutch it would fire right up and run without even a battery in it and eighty cents of gas you could drive around all day in that refinery town.

            AFTER I WHOPPED them up into a hysteria of near frenzy I hollered, 

"That's it!, I'm out of here!" 

and I bailed under the front seat of the passenger seat with my foot still on the brake and the look on the kid's face, Jill was standing up on the front seat like a boat captain at the helm, and Jeffrey was trying to keep it in a straight line then I popped the clutch stalling it out and made them get out and push it started.. 

             Andrew Jackson's resounding defeat by outsmarting the British propelled him to the Presidency.   I used to drive out there and do a complete circle over a mile all the way around I would park all the way in the back with my back to the River, and could watch the park entrance right by the ancient cemetery behind low rusting wrought iron trying to hold back Time. I would park with a half a can cheap cola next to a half-eaten sandwich by a map on the dashboard with out of state plates like Joe Tourist except, I would go out there to shoot dope out under the bright sunshine, and blue skies and battle and it was kind of fitting of the elegant sadness left behind...


            THE CHALMETTE NATIONAL Battlefield is just off the highway behind a row of tall hedges opens into an open battlefield and makes a complete circle and straight back almost a mile and then circles back and there are places to pull in and read plaque's and hear tourist groups by the River.

         Peace negotiations in Ghent, Belgium. Although the peace agreement was signed on December 24, the word did not reach the British forces assailing the Gulf coast in time to halt a major attack.  Jackson's 4,500 troops, many of them expert marksmen from Kentucky and Tennessee, decimated the British lines. In half an hour, the British had retreated, General Pakenham was dead, and nearly 2,000 of his men were killed, wounded, or missing.
U.S. forces suffered only eight killed and 13 wounded.   Although the battle had no bearing on the outcome of the war, Jackson's overwhelming victory elevated national pride, which had suffered a number of setbacks during the War of 1812. The Battle of New Orleans was also the last armed engagement between the United States and Britain.
  

Anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven. -Sal Paradise

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All Rights Reserved
12:26 PM 3/7/2014      28 USC 1746

Murder Me, Please? by Mark Anthony Given

You may call him a tramp, but I know it goes a little deeper than that.

 He’s a -- highway chile.– Jimi Hendrix, “Highway Chile”

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             THREE-THIRTY AM and it started snowing at dusk, and now it's up to my knees, and I got a thousand miles to go, somewhere in PA or West Virginia, this time of year in late 1976 I was nineteen and freezing my young ass off, and doing jumping jacks to keep from freezing to death. Shiny brand new covered in ice and steaming State Trooper got onto the Interstate heading South and seen me and pulled over and motion me to get in the front seat. I threw my backpack in the backseat and got in the front seat it was warm and toasty, and I told him was heading to ODECO Charlie in the Gulf of Mexico and that I was a Roughneck out of New Orleans. Said to me he wasn't supposed to pick up Hitchhikers, but he would take me to the end of his jurisdiction about 30 minutes down the road and proceeded to tell me the most pitiful story you ever heard.
        RIDE AFTER RIDE I'd get picked up from somebody lamenting their miserable existence, trapped in a nine to five and married to someone cheating on them with their best friend hating their lives and envying me, sitting there Johnny on the Go, footloose and fancy-free.   Homeless on the side of the road without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of and they'd change places with me in an instant....

           INTERSTATE 10 East Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, thirty minutes outside of New Orleans I had a young kid drive me the nearly hour drive to right at, the Mississippi Alabama State Line behind an old 76 Truck Stop just off the Interstate to a place I never knew existed. Actually, it had only been there a couple of years but you would have thought they had a half price on gasoline sale by the traffic on that side street to a lone one-story building under a patch of Oak trees was a Methadone Clinic. This kid told me he drove there every day of the week but Sunday ninety miles in his mother's car, still living at home, to get a little sip of the Pernicious Pink. Hated his life. Fantasized about murdering his wife for adultery and when he told me he would give anything in this world to trade places with me before I climbed out of his mother's car, and I believed him. 
           STANDING ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD in the open desert air thick with mystery and fear the midnight air waned with a million stars in the dark blue sky in the Land of Enchantment, New Mexico USA I finally shed the last vestige of my fears. I had been riding in a tricked out 1965 Chevy Van with green shag carpet and a cork ceiling burning California Bud with another hitchhiker and some dude going to Texas or Florida. I had been reading Land of Enchantment on the license plates of New Mexico all day long, and I was fixing to find out why. Blaring Boston's "I Got a Feel'n," I tapped the dude on the shoulder signaling to turn the radio down.

"Let me out."

Dead silence while he tried to get his head around why anyone would want to get out of his fantasy ride into the wide open desert in the middle of the night?

"What?"

"Yeah, let me out at the next Exit."

He just cranked the stereo back up because the exits were seventy eighty miles apart.
When I got out at an Exit on Interstate hundred's miles south of nowhere and another hundred to Anywhere USA, I checked all my gear real quick to make sure I wasn't leaving anything behind, and they looked at me like it was the worst idea they ever heard. I didn't care. I have always gone my own way....
           MID-THIRTIES KINDA PRETTY, kinda hippy black women with an open twelve pack of cheap beer in a white four-door older model Nissan stopped for me on the long entrance ramp leading onto I-10 at Bay Saint Louis heading East. She was all smiles and trying to act peppy, but I had a feeling in my stomach like I'd just snuck in the back door of a funeral home....
            I DON'T KNOW what it is about me, but after people see how chilled I am, they open up and tell me stuff you would only say to someone you were reasonably sure you would never see again... Someone you are certain doesn't know anyone you know or even live in the same town.  The Proverbial Two Ships Passing in the Night....She asked me if I wanted to go to her apartment and get cleaned up and drink some beer, cook dinner, watch movies, whatever I wanted. I asked her if she would bring back to the Interstate because I didn't want to have to walk thru Gulf Port, Mississippi, which is where she said she was from. We get to her apartment house in an all black apartment complex about four or five in the afternoon when everyone is out and about, and she acted like it didn't matter but I wasn't so sure....
            HAD TO CLIMB some stairs in the courtyard and at least a dozen black faces watched a middle-aged black woman carrying a twelve-pack leading a white boy inside her lair..... as soon as we get inside her one bedroom second story the mood changed from 'I'm getting Lucky to the "Twilight Zone." After she had a few beers and I had got cleaned up she said, 

"I guess you get picked up and taking home a lot?"

"Not really. Every few weeks, maybe."

"I guess you have heard a lot of strange requests?"

Oh, oh, I'm thinking.....

"Yeah, people seem to open up to me after they see  I'm harmless, you can tell, I'm not gonna bother you.        I think you can sense violence and hatred in people when you have been around them even a few minutes."

After a while, and this isn't exactly verbatim, but at some point, she made it clear she didn't want to have sex with me and said, 

"I don't really know how to say this, but I'm looking for someone to bludgeon me to death. 

Will you Murder me, Please?"

            I laughed right in her face to disarm the impending doom in the room; the whole atmosphere confirmed the depressed mood she exhibited. I told her she had to quit drinking and her depression would go away. I actually hoped to be a psychiatrist when I was younger and read everything from Freud to Schopenhauer to Nietzsche to Primal Scream's Arthur Janov and Piaget and Maslow, Skinner, Horny.   I know them all, but when a retired prison psychiatrist who picked me up hitchhiking told me that all the mental illness he cured, people who did horrendous things, that now he had to endure and was indeed tortured by it all;  I abandoned the idea....
            
          THE BATHROOM was off the dining living area, and I never saw in her bedroom door she kept closed, and it bothered me not knowing what was behind that door. When she looked me right in the eye and with the eye's of a tortured soul ask me again in earnest,

"Murder Me, Please?"

           I looked at her long and hard right in her eye's and wondered if I answered the wrong way that the bedroom door would soon burst open and the reason why I was really there,  the ceremony would begin..

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1288 Words 

Copyright 2017

 by Mark Anthony Given

All Rights Reserved

The Angel of Truth

 

 

         WHEN GOD WAS ABOUT to create man the angels gathered about him.  Some of them opening their lips exclaimed.  "Create, oh, God, a being who shall praise Thee from earth even as we in heaven sing Thy glory!"
   But others said:  "Hear us, Almighty King, create no more!  The glorious harmony of the heavens which Thou hast sent to earth will be by man disturbed, destroyed."
   Then silence fell upon the contesting hosts as the Angel of Mercy appeared before the throne of grace on bended knees.
   Sweet was the voice which said entreatingly:
   "Oh, Father, create Thou man;  make him Thine own noble image!  With heavenly pity I will fill his heart, with sympathy towards every living thing impress his being;  through him will they find cause to praise Thee."
   Then the Angel of Mercy ceased,  and the Angel of Peace with tearful eyes spoke thus:
"O God, create him not!  Thy peace he will disturb, the flow of blood will follow his coming.  Confusion, horror, war, will blot the earth, and Thou wilt no longer find a pleasant place among Thy works on earth."
   Then spoke in stern tones the Angel of Justice:
   "And Thou will judge him, God;  he shall be subject to my sway."
   The Angel of Truth approached, saying:
    "Cease!  Oh, God of truth, with man Thou sendest falsehood to the earth!"
    Then all were silent, and out of the deep quieteness the Divine words came:
    "Thou oh, Truth, shalt go to earth with him, and yet remain a denizen of heaven, 'twixt heaven and earth to float, connecting link between the two!" -The Talmud @330


Take A Sip by Mark Anthony Given

When I was young I could remember anything, whether it happened or not. -Mark Twain

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Interstate 55 North, Picayune, Mississippi, April 7, 1977 2:07 PM ET

        NOT A CLOUD in the aquamarine, powder blue sky as usual along the Gulf Coast all year round.  The Interstate is built above the marshy flat no mans’ land until finally leveling out at about the twenty-six-mile marker, and the quarter-mile length exit ramp ends where I begin.  Standing across at the Entrance Ramp hitchhiking with just a simple day pack in flip-flops and T-shirt, I looked like the kid next door with a Florida tan and light brown hair streaked by the Sun.  I never waited ten minutes anywhere it seemed, I had people wrecking their cars pulling over for me.  As long as I kept my self-clean and new clothes and a big smile, the party never stopped when you’re young, hot and rambunctious….not to mention a set of “Balls of Atlas”. 
         I wanted to be a writer since I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain when I was ten, and I knew I needed characters.  Where do you get characters?   Like many great writers before me, I Hit the Road.  Kerouac, Jack London, Charles Dickens, I could go on and on.  I hitchhiked from one end of this country to the other a half a dozen times.  I can walk into any town in America, maybe most places, without a penny in my pocket or a friend or foe, and I’ll be just fine.  That is a very rare and marvelous ability.  I could fill volumes with the stories of the hundreds of rides I have had, a couple comes to mind when I look back on this time in my life; and Ride #77 is at the top of the list.  Ninety-nine percent of what I write is true, but to tell you the truth, Mark Twain said, “When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.”  I heartily subscribe to that as well, because I can hardly divide what happened from what I made up…. it is otherwise known as “Literary license,” and I invoke it here…
       I WISH THIS GUY never stopped for me as soon as I got in the car but it was so hot outside, I was hoping for some blowing air at least.   I was excited to jump in this ragged out, 1963 Chevrolet Bel Air like it was a new Lincoln but that didn’t last long.  An Old Man in a farmers bib with no T-shirt about sixty years old.  It looked like a work car with tools laying everywhere and fast food wrappers, he pulled back onto the long Entrance Ramp, and by the time we got to the Interstate he was doing all of forty-five miles an hour and never went any faster.  Cars were blowing right past us at sixty or seventy miles an hour and I thought I was in a time warp.  He had an old-fashioned small Coke Bottle with the white lettering worn off between his legs with what looked like water.  He asked me where I was going and I told him the same thing I told them all, “As far this way as you want to carry me.  I’m just traveling.”  Often they’d just look straight ahead in silence a few minutes, having never heard of that place….

“You ever drink any Moonshine boy?”

I glanced down at that bottle and say,

“No Sir.”

“You want some?” he said excitedly.

“Not really….” 

I saw a look of disappointment comes over his face and he stared straight ahead like he had been slapped.  After a long moment he glanced at me fiercely and leaned forward and started fumbling around under the front seat, just barely looking over the dashboard between the steering wheel and he was all over the road.  I kept looking behind us thinking we were going to get rear-ended by a barreling tractor-trailer hauling ass.  Finally, he whip’s out the biggest damn pistol I ever seen.  It was a Smith & Wesson 22 Model of 1917, and looked like Target Pistol with a long barrel.  Time stopped and I thought I could hear the Atomic Clock Seconds ticking away as he swung that big bastard up over the front seat and pointed it right between my eyes. 

“Take a sip, boy.”

         He took his other hand off the wheel to hand me the little faded green bottle and I suddenly remembered all the admonitions I heard when I was a kid about hitchhiking…  I looked at it for a second and then looked around to see if anyone was looking in case this was my last swig...

        I TOOK JUST A SIP of this stuff that looked like water and tasted like it could have melted the chrome off a car bumper and burnt a path south in my intestines.  Just then the “Balls of Atlas,” part kicked in and I took another good swig off this nasty shit like I meant it.  Time to Man up…  I thought I saw a slight ember of happiness dim his fierce blue eyes and he started to lower the big gun that looks like it covered the length of the bench seat in the old car.  A sense of warm recognition came over me and I felt like I was in my grandfather’s old car going fishing.  A sudden whiff of Gulf of Mexico, this might not be a bad ride after all even with sitting on tools and a screwdriver sticking in my back.  The old guy nudged me with the barrel of the big gun bringing me back to reality and handed me the gun and said, “Now you hold it on me while I get a sip!”

Tent next to I-15 near pond

Got Bounced from the best camp site ever

got run off by the cops on friday night. I seen some lady walking her dog early in the morning after seeing a deer freak out. Spotted her walking away and sure enough she seen me and sent the bulls after me. 4-5 times I have got there business cards from the Helena City Police with a hand written "time to move on" on my tent...
finnaly moved everything including my beauty rest Luxory mattress and slept under the Big Sky full of stars on a thousand dollar mattress (No shit I googled it!).
beautyfull weather, heading to springs after I leave here and fix my disabled buddy breakfast, sweep and mop his house, probably run to the corner store for some "Snoot" he calls it but its nasty snuff like skoal....and straight to the beach by 2pm.

New Day in Paradise

Honeypot Honey Pot

My Honey pot attracts spamers like crazy who leave me spam, i.e., "Comments"....  come get some!!!

Montana Mountans out my front door

More hitch hiking pictures.  Just got my camera out of hock so more pics soon...

The other side of these Bridger Mountains

is Yellowstone National Park North Entrancs, probably 60 miles due south at Gardner at the bottom of Paradise Valley, pics here http://markgivenphotographs.blogspot.com/

Historic Helena Montana

Montana Sunset

Haven't posted in a while so here is some pics

Everything going good here in Helena, Montana: I get to study Torah everyday and that's what matters most.
I don't see where to upload my jpegs....

labor day run

all is very well indeed; gearing up for a back road montana mountain bike labor day run to white sulpher springs for the rodeo this weekend. Bike in the shop til friday, sleeping bag on the handle bars, fishing pole under the seat, back pack and go.....really looking forward to it..you ever need to get back to whats real the backroads of montana in the summer time is priceless therapy...isnt a day go by I don't think about sailing down the side of the Continental Divide after a 6 hour ascent, down hill and smooth sailing all along the river road to Missoulla...no place to go and no hurry to get there; i am real big on keeping things simple and light. Just found some super light rain gear at the thrift store....and its my favorite color light blue....gotta run having to much fun..
Gota bike?

The King of Montana Sleeps on a beauty rest Mattress

Sleeping out in the woods on a new Beautyrest Mattress only the King of Montana rolls like this....
wonderful weekend at Spring Meadow state park soaking in clean, clear spring water. you gotta love it.....

Montana Camping

Montana Dreaming

Woke up at 5:49 am like every other morning next to the best camp site I've ever had; about 300 yards where I was camping the last three years on and off. You got to get thru to locked gates and hop a barbed wire fence to get to me and yet it is smack in the middle of town...this picture taken outside my tent last night..
Ggot my old buddy dirty Burley Brown http://thekingofmontana.blogspot.com a bike with a trailer to stablize it to see if he can ride it...we'll see.
Work on my blogs in the morning at the state law library and hit Spring Meadow State Park (3 miles west) in the afternoon, old guy knocks himself out with seraquil at 6-7 I watch cable tv til 10 or so and head down in the valley to my camp, roll out at 6-7 am and do it again! Got 116 volumes of 340 in the computer...hand collected every winning criminal case in the history of the montana supreme court now putting them inthe computer to put on a pay site. BOLO Where is the Love of My Life Britney Patience Marie Smith at?

Giant Mountain Bike

Best bike and sleeping bag I ever owned....that an a nice Kodax Easyshare 7352 camera I am ready to roll to Missoula (zoo town) this week for my annual back road run across Montana....