Listen: Brack-In Ridge
Reportage from Abilene, Texas.
The parking lot guy collects a five spot.
I joke: five dollars to see my
brother-in-law? The good ol’ boy
with the best trash and
the biggest damn stash east of the Pecos.
I suppose west of, too.
A cowboy swap meet.
Auto stuff, mostly.
Kind of a thing in a place,
next to a silent (today) drag strip.
I spied more vendors than not.
Gear heads. Rust is the most
favored color and condition.
Many men’s junk—treasures
for another’s home, yard, or garage.
To be sold again one day down the road.
Huge bushy mustachios, semi-clean blue jeans
with stained dirty shirts work, baseball caps
of some kind to cover secret coded bald heads,
hidden lips that barely part
speaking a strange dialect,
What’s the least y’all take?
I’h gotta have ‘at old junk.
Gotta get that much,
‘at’s mah last one,
except fer ones I ain’t sold yet.
Big sky country, gateway to western Texas.
And women looking. And high priced
cars, trucks, scoots, and toys
that been rustin’ for years.
Who knows where?
It’s a tribe thingy.
I like ‘em,
but I don’t get them.
They don’t get me. Seems fair enough.
Still, it’s fun to sit and stare. To look,
and to listen.
Look both ways, be y’all a seller or a buyer.
Mind the gaps for the best deal.
Our Literary Journey 
That truck looks like a bargain!
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Right, Peter. Maybe for the fender. 🙂
Most of what I saw indicated much pride $$ of ownership.
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Twelve hunnert fer that rust-mobile? I’m in. Lemme just shift some ‘o my “treasures” to make room….
I knew a man who collected aaaaaall sort of shit, I mean stuff – but he transformed them.
An old rod from something (a car? a truck?), with a couple tire rims attached at each end became the spit to roast a whole lamb and pig… an old wood-burning oven/stove, in the middle of the backyard, used to cook the beans. Two big-ass tubs of some kind where we burned the wood, that was transferred as braise into the pit. The turkeys were wrapped in foil and placed right into the braise to cool. Oh hell, I have to stop now. I’m getting hungry!
All’s that to say is his backyard looked like a friggen junk yard – but everything “had potential”!
Boy oh boy did you just set me back, lemme see… I was 25ish then? over thirty years ago… such great memories…
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I agree that 1,200 was not the price of the truck.
It is fun to watch & listen. My BIL had some old drive-in movie speakers with cut wires. He stuck them on poles and sold each one for $100. That was the actual conversation in the poem. The guy who bought it pulled out a wad of 100-dollar bills and just pealed one off. 🙂
But the culture is fun.
Glad it sparked some good memories for you. 🙂
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Wow. I love it!!
This culture is great (and wonderful muse for posts…)
That it did.
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Glad it did. 🙂
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