Chapter II
TEXAS BARBED WIRE AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT By Larry Cooperman
“T
he speed limit is seventy-five in hospital parking lots, and they do a hundred to the liquor store, and a hundred and twenty coming home with an open bottle. Gotta get home—game is on in twenty minutes,” the Louisianan barmaid said, warning of Texas and the hazards of cycling through the one-state Midwest. My last stop in Louisiana was at the Outlaw’s Bar, a dark and dingy place with “retired outlaws”; one guy had a puppy in his lap— yeah, outlaws from their wives. By the time I reached Texas, I had become a function. I referred to myself as “the cyclist”. All the cyclist does is eat, ride, write, and sleep. Days went by and the cyclist spoke to no one—reset was happening. Some Texans even warned about other parts of Texas, therefore the cyclist was convinced that it would be best to avoid Dallas-Fort Worth. A day of inhaling car fumes seemed antithetical to the cyclist’s active transcendentalism, looking to John Muir rather than Ralph Waldo Emerson. In Texas, the people were very friendly. As soon as the cyclist was an hour into the state, a young woman stood outside her late model Honda Accord parked on the side of the road, she with a bottle of water in her hand for him. Her name was Jenny. She was a member of
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the Chain Gang Cycling Club of only five members. Seemingly, by law, tents were not allowed in RV Parks. Let the cyclist speak again of stealth camping. He does not endorse camping on private property but churches are non-profit organizations that his tax dollars may fund, therefore he will camp where the souls find peace and make no noises. They owe it to me, the cyclist thought. In Georgia, he left his friend’s house in Macon after a series of bad storms, got to a small town seventy-something miles west of Macon and camped in the deep green forest next to the Baptist church bone yard. He slept the sleep of the dead, attempting to copy his nearest associates. Never mind that the cyclist had actually camped just north of Marshall in an RV Park, The Pines. But the fancy RV Parks have a sense of permanence with mailboxes sporting
little polished brass doors in rows for the Brahmins of Winnebago. Later and further west, in Longview, Texas, the women were so sorry that they couldn’t let the cyclist camp because of brass-door permanence. Two nice large Texas women spoke mostly in sympathy with the fit, polished sixty-five year old man in his sausage shorts and two-colored cycling jacket (the cyclist actually found the jacket on the way to Boulder Creek, California. After taking a leak, he found it hanging from a tree.) No can do or will do, my friend, but have a cookie! The cyclist gladly accepted a chocolate chip cookie made in a propane oven contained in a behemoth fifth wheel’s opulent kitchen. Motels did provide harbor for the cyclist from time-to-time. Throughout the trip, pleasant and not-so-pleasant East Indian hotel and mini-mart owners greeted the cyclist with the normal lack of ability to parse out the cyclist’s aplomb from the average crack-head patrons’ aplomb. The cyclist may be sweaty but not regurgitating Taco Bell and mumbling incoherently. Onward . . . In Hawkins, Texas there were signs greeting the cyclist such as “Jesus Welcomes You to Hawkins” and assorted Christian statements planted on a v-shaped patch of thick green grass. Standing just north of the train tracks,
