NATION'S ENEMIES ON THE RUN AGAIN

In this same paper were editorials in favor of the oil depletion allowance in the Federal income tax, and against efforts to control air pollution.

The clouds here are wonderful. Because of the heat, they are piled up high vertically and the light then hits vertically and the light then hits them at different angles. They look like massive sand castles, and elephants, and horses, and lobsters floating through the sky. Every day like that. Then late in the afternoon, big blue-gray storms start coming up over the delta from the Gulf of Mexico. Then there's thunder and lightning all over the place. Water running down the roof and into your ear. Rain filling up our top down MG until you can float toy boats in it.

There are exactly two different kinds of peoples in the South: those who are just past the rich-enough line so they can have air conditioning in their house, their car, and their office, and those on the other side of the line who have to sweat all the time. The air conditioned ones are fatter, pale, and old. They sweat people are rugged, skinny, and tired but tough. When we were hitchhiking into Montgomery, Ala., the air conditioned guys used to zap by with their windows rolled up not even looking at us, not even looking at anything, not even existing. While we've been in the South, we've stayed places where there's been only fans. It is much better without air conditioning even if you're here in New Orleans where it's ninety something everyday with the humidity so heavy you can touch it in the air. Walking from an air conditioned room outside into the heat and then stepping back into the icebox again gives you headaches, diahhrea, and slothfulness. It feels real good to sweat: your body is keeping you cool the way God wanted it to.

Our fan belt broke outside a town called Monroe, Georgia. No one in town had a fan belt that could fit anything but American cars. (Even Volkswagens were virtually unknown in the South about five years ago.) So we wound up in a Phillips 66 station with a kid trying on all different sized belts until one fit. It took a long time. It also happens that this was the gathering spot of the local youths. In about ten minutes they all came pouring into the gas station with their GTO's and motorcycles. They were looking in at the engine of our MG crowded around until no more could fit. The younger boys, say, fifteen and sixteen, sort of hung around on the second circumference smoking and talking to each other. The older guys had been drinking, and were drinking then in their cars parked around the gas station. It was all pretty groovy, so I sat up on the back of my seat behind the wheel and leaning over the windshield answering questions about origin and destination. They were poking each other after a while and saying coded little things to each other that I really couldn't understand. I think they were making cracks about how they'd like to get the other of us, who is a girl and was standing there looking at the engine equally unable to understand what these funny little southerners were doing. It seems that people in the South like to speak very indirectly and address their remarks to a third person. Pretty crafty of them, but it puts a gap in between you and them. I wanted to ask one of them. I wanted to ask one of them. I wanted to ask one of them if he felt like becoming a hippie.

Mississippi is probably one of the only places left that nature still has control of Most of the land isn't farmed or inhabited, it's just wild jungle. We departed from the main highway and went speding through the night with top off on this up-and-down, curving, two-lane country road. We were going about sixty-five or seventy with the sound of the jungle roaring out at us from both sides. It was either five million grasshoppers rubbing their back legs together at same time or lots of big whooping birds crying into the swamp. The sound was tremendously loud. And we were the only ones on the road just screeching into this darkness and noist, full of lions and tigers whose eyes shone in the night.

This is typical of conversations that you hear all the time down here. This one in particular took place in a food store here in the vieux carre:

"Hot enough for you?"

"What?"

"Hot enough for ya?"

"Yes, it sure is mighty hot."

This is an actual thing that the other of us said right after getting up in the morning:

"I've got a headache. Let's go to the bar."

People come to New Orleans to get drunk. During Mardi Gras they close off the French Quarter and the people swell into the streets. By dawn you can't take a step without crushing a beer can. The Jax beer brewery is right here in the Quarter on the banks of the Mississippi River. Good beer that Jax. And cheap: only thirty cents in most bars. People drink it all the time. Last night I had a dream that the daily afternoon cloud burst happened to be Jax beer this time around. It was a little sticker than the usual rain, but no one in New Orleans was surprised. I can't imagine them ever being surprised.

There are lots of fags and whores in the various bars here. You can tell the fags because they all wear jerseys like the Jefferson Airplane, and they all are together in the same place at the same time having fun and smiling. The whores are all making it up to men in the bars on the stools. You can tell they're whores because they are touching the men, something that the wives never do. I feel a lot of empathy towards the whores and fags because they are oppressed people. Authorities of various badges are always trying to stamp them out and they just want to live their own lives. The worst thing is when other people try to tell you how to live your life.