Texas Barbed Wire and the First Amendment

Chapter II TEXAS BARBED WIRE AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT

By Larry Cooperman

“The 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 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,

at a four-way stop, a man held a sign, a woman held a large wooden cross, and an ancient little woman sat in a beat-up lawn chair. The cyclist turned around and rolled up to these people who were very welcoming.

The sign attested to the First Amendment infringement by the city council. The signs of Christian welcome were a thorn in Watkins city council’s side and they wanted them taken down. It was the lawyer for Freedom From Religion that instigated the case against the sign planters. It seemed to the cyclist that the people holding this hot-day-vigil were correct. The First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion and these expressions of the Christian welcome were on private property!

The cyclist stayed a few days in Mineola, Texas, ten miles west of Hawkins. The cyclist and the sign holders had lunch together at the town’s Chinese buffet and spoke of the ACLU. He camped at the Mineola Wildlife Preserve. Let the cyclist introduce a condition that some have suffered from in Texas, the changeability of the weather. The cyclist is exposed. The opportunity to camp legally, in a designated area, with boy scouts and their leaders to talk to was a soothing balm for the lonely man.

The next day, he awoke in the woods; everyone else had cleared out. The weather seemed very nice, but if you like the weather now, you won’t in ten minutes, as one permutation of the saying goes. The cyclist went to sleep on a beautiful night with gathering clouds; on instinct, he had moved his tent and possessions into a food preparation pavilion. A tornado’s wind collapsed the tent! The cyclist grabbed his computer, dragged the tent to the side of the food preparation area that offered some hedge against the wind and slicing rain.

One of Texas’ finest, the drenched cyclist thought as the wind force scattered his belongings across the parking lot and beyond. His bike slammed into the concrete of the pavilion and was lying akimbo, the four panniers scattered, and the fierce gale continued and lifted a support beam but the structure held. The cyclist dragged the tent into the women’s bathroom and shut the door, turned on the light, and eyed a section of the floor that was not wet where he huddled against the howling wind. Why the women’s bathroom and not the men’s? Everyone knows the women’s bathroom is always cleaner than the men’s.

Out and into the overcast morning, after a restless sleep, the cyclist gathered his things off the concrete floor, the gravel parking lot, and far into the woods. He recovered everything minus a balaclava.

He straightened the handlebars, but the back hub now had play in it. Later in the day, the skies cleared, and at that moment, (not previously mentioned to the reader-the cyclist is a novelist) he finished the introduction to his historical rhapsody, “Fiddler-Yosemite and the Opium Journal.”

“The Wood County Monitor” sent a reporter to cover the cyclist’s ordeal. The woman, who had protested with her husband, called the newspaper, telling of the cyclist’s journey and location.

Zuni appeared like a dream, attainable but distant; the Panhandle laid before him…Amarillo and bike repair.