skepticism

The Chool Bus (ch36)

CHAPTER 36: Ghost hunting in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Now… Billie loves her road-dawg companions, her bandmates, but she doesn’t always go along with Jack and Professor T’s rigidly rational mindset. Case in point, she doesn’t automatically dismiss ghost stories swirling around in the cultural soup. When the gang was in Oregon and Jack’s nephew, Jason, was going on about local hauntings, Billie wanted to believe his story was legit, not just another hackneyed tale of wealthy landowners trying to scare people away from some environmental atrocity like those Scooby-Doo episodes. So as the Bus rolled into Vicksburg, Mississippi, Billie pitched a haunted house diversion. Her first idea was to visit Auburn, the Grand Mansion of Natchez, Antebellum home of Lyman Harding. But the advertised tour was way too expensive, and besides, Natchez is nearly two hours down the Mighty Mississip from Vicksburg, so the gang turned their attention to a more affordable spectral diversion at the McRaven House.

A waiter at the local Cracker Barrel pointed the Forks to McRaven because its ghostly reputation was featured on A&E and the Travel Channel. An authentic pre-Civil War home with a complete way-of-life tour and pioneer kitchen. National Geographic called it the “Time Capsule of the South” whose area gardens served as Confederate soldiers’ campsite/field hospital. Billie was eager to hear about the famous and infamous people of McRaven and why their spirits never seem to leave.

But first, the business at hand: focus-group interviews at Hinds Community College.

“Are you just going to sit there?” Buck was arranging chairs in a circle for the session.

“Hey, i got us here safe and sound…you can do the grunt work.” Billie wasn’t going to let the aggression stand unanswered. She gave Buck the finger, and he gave her a flirtatious wink.

Jack was watching this exchange and began to suspect there was something brewing between his favorite drummer and the new guy. He wanted to warn against potential discord that could occur between the members of this close-quarters group. After all, Jack had seen how things can spiral out of control when girlfriends/boyfriends join bands on the road. In fact, the Forks’ standing rule was to prevent significant others from getting involved with the band’s business or even riding along with them. The Forks were proper ambassadors of the “church of rock and roll,” including strict adherence to the first rule…what happens on the road, stays on the road. Of course, that was the ‘90s for Billie, the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s for Jack and Professor T…old-hat now, and Jack wasn’t going to stand in the way of what seemed to be developing between Billie and Buck. Jack knew Billie’s story and he hoped this romance might actually turn out good for her.

“Has anyone seen my gloves?” Professor T was protective of his guitarist’s hands.

“Are you serious?” Jack was quick to remind his comrade of the band’s chosen genre. The fact that it amounts to a slightly updated version of 1970s punk…a gritty business at best. “What self-respecting Punk guitarist goes around wearing ‘wuss-pads’ for their street-fightin’ hands?”

“Hey! I’m a punk scholar…a new breed,” said Professor T with a wink. “I leave scrappin’ to the roadies. You can join the fray if you want, but if i’m gonna have to slap a bitch, i’m gonna do it with my gloves…ON!”

Professor T did have to get mixed up with the shenanigans from time to time. There was that night where a groupie from Great Bend, Kansas, had a jealous boyfriend that traveled to one of the band’s gigs in Collier. He decided to sneak up on Mork Thompson during a break and grab him by the hair from behind. The future scholar impressed everyone in that roadhouse with a roundhouse kick that dislodged the jealous boyfriend’s hand. The two stood looking at each other for a tense moment, but the drunk’s friends pulled him away as it seemed fairly obvious they were outnumbered. Collier was a regular stop for the popular cover-band Mork was in at the time.

After the last encore, and while the roadies were tearing down, Mork stepped outside to catch a smoke and mingle with the crowd. He was surprised to see two rows of guys facing each other, and they all looked pretty tense as if there was some sort of nuclear détente. Mork looked on from a distance waiting for something to happen when a familiar face motioned him to join the lineup. Apparently, there was going to be a gang-rumble over the jealous boyfriend’s wish to beat Mork to a pulp, a move stymied by several local supporters lined up to defend him.

“Well, alrighty then,” Mork T said pulling his white load-out gloves on. “Let’s dance if we must,” he said while internally questioning his occasional after-gig carnal choices.

The rumble never got started because on Mork’s side was someone with a notorious reputation for putting folks stupid enough to get in a tangle with him in the hospital with grave injuries. And he was lined up directly across from the jealous boyfriend. Someone whispered in the jealous boyfriend’s ear, and that was that. The Great Bend crew decided the row wasn’t worth the expected outcome. They slinked off with their tails between their legs, and Mork was spared the trouble of potentially getting blood on his white load-out gloves.

Lighting a cigarette, Mork muttered to nobody in particular, “make friends with the biggest, meanest bad-asses in your social circle, and you’ll never have to get blood on your gloves.” Once the danger had passed, he joined the load-out effort, rolling cables.

Fast forward, back to Vicksburg, at the McRaven tour: Billie imagined a ghostly confab taking place on the astral plane. Of course, her travel mates were not on the same page. Billie imagined an inexplicable cold breeze but chose not to mention it in order to avoid the reliable shower of skepticism that would surely follow.

Billie constructed the scene in her imagination…a sudden, chilling giggle through the room. She imagined a spectral trickster, a little girl floating on a wisp of Spanish moss. She imagined a cackling sound like wind chimes in a graveyard. Then a chorus of ghostly laughter filling the McRaven House, echoing through the empty rooms. Of course, nobody heard it because it was all playing out in Billie’s fertile imagination. Besides, they were too engrossed in the tour guide’s monologue to notice Billie’s wide-eyed attention. In Billie’s imaginings, the trickster’s eyes were gleaming with mischievous delight, pulling on the drapes, flitting from chandelier to chandelier.

“What was that?” said Billie. “Who pulled on the curtains?” She was trolling for reactions. “Did anyone feel that?” Billie shivered as if recoiling from a sudden chill. She thought she saw Professor T twitch and wondered if he wasn’t silently haunted by the McRaven spirits as well.

He wasn’t… he was trying to remember where he might have stashed his white gloves.

NEXT WEEK: Sweet home Alabama

GO BACK => Preface and Chapter Links

The Chool Bus (ch19)

CHAPTER 19: The White-Knuckle Storm Crawl Continues… Tales of Ghosts and Mass Sociogenic Hysteria in Coquille.

At forty miles per hour, the trip from Florence to Coos Bay took every bit of two. For Professor T, the disappearance of what little sunlight was leaking through the bloated clouds resembled a gray leviathan slowly swallowing the sky. The colors bled out, leaving behind a dark and angry deluge of cold, suffocating water. Professor T hoped Billie wasn’t feeling something similar… an overwhelming sensation of being waterboarded by Poseidon.

As par usual, Buck was playing a reassuring role in the passenger seat…his low-key southern gentleman’s confidence bolstering Billie’s stoic resolve. Of course, they had no choice as darkness was near total and the lonely forty-eight mile stretch was mostly devoid of pull-over spaces.

They HAD to soldier on.

Contributing to Professor T’s claustrophobic dread was a combination of Buck and Billie’s hushed tones and Jack’s untroubled snoring. It was disconcerting for Mork T as he could not imagine how anyone would be able to sleep through the pounding of drops the size of small water balloons, peppered by the occasional flash-bulb appearance of Zeus’ shocking bolts, and the delayed crashing of the Olympic bowling alley. Professor Thompson felt as if he had survived a staredown with the abyss in the two-plus hours it took to cover fifty miles… not to mention the hairy beast he could have sworn he saw lumbering through the lightning flashes as darkness was closing in.

As Billie guided the Chool Bus through Mother Nature’s extreme water hazard, she kept her eyes peeled for the sudden appearance of animals, vehicles, debris, or God forbid, people in the road. And though this may have been the most intense rain dump she’d ever had the chance to conquer, she was confident in the advice her grandfather gave for inclement weather.

“Never mind the posted speed limit… keep your wheels on the road, and keep your speed within the bounds of ‘reason and prudence.’” This advice served to earn Billie the gang’s trust as a calm, vigilant, responsible, True Blue Chool Bus pilot.

By the time the gang finally rolled into Coos Bay, the downpour had settled into a gentle, steady shower. The drops pattered on the roof most of the night and the soothing ambience served to lull all into a deep, dreamless slide into comatosity. When the morning sun finally made an appearance in Coos Bay, the gang took some time in the twenty-four-hour fitness center where they had parked for the night. Once all had their morning necessaries completed, some light breakfast food, some coffee, back on the road ventured the Forks.

It was a clear sunny day when the bus rolled into Coquille. First stop? The home of Jack’s cousin, Janice. She and her sizable extended family were happy to welcome the Forks to their quaint little Oregon town. After introductions and some familial catch-up, Janice, tipped off by anecdotes of the gang’s time in Seattle, was reminded of the local Pho restaurant…all agreed…lunch at the Coquille Pho House.

Now, many consider this signature Vietnamese dish more than a nutritious, delicious meal, but also medicine. And with this medicinal dish, there is a process. First, the host brings each diner a plate with juicy wedged limes, a handful of fresh bean sprouts, a few sprigs of fragrant basil, and for those who believe their meal should have an opportunity to bite back, several slices of fresh jalapeño peppers.

Once the bowls arrive, diners prepare their medicinal Pho (oxtail soup) to their personal tastes. The proprietor furnishes accompanying spices at every table, hoisin sauce (seasoned soybean paste), chili sauce, Sriracha, fish oil, sugar, etc… you can gauge each diners’ capsaicin tolerance by the color of the oxtail broth. If it’s red it’s hot baybay. Now that the accompanying spices, herbs, and citrus had been added, one engages in a graceful ballet which involves chopsticks, and soup spoons. Swimming in the broth, noodles, and vegetable additions, depending on the order, will be your choice of meat: brisket, shrimp, beef tendon, tripe, mystery meat balls, etc.. Some like to enjoy the medicinal qualities of the hot broth, soaking in the healing steam, draining half of it before digging into the noodles and meat. These folks generally consume the whole bowl, noodles, broth, herbs, peppers, citrus and all. Others go right for the solids, sometimes leaving half a bowl of the healing liquid unconsumed. Professor T always shakes his head when he sees so much medicine wasted.

***

Back at Janice’s secluded house deep in the woods, the gang sat on lawnchairs in the warm June sun among romping children, goats, and pecking chickens. The conversations were easy and breezy. At some point, Janice’s brother, Jason, was chatting with Professor T about a land deal he was trying to secure. It was a plot in the wilderness that was rumored to be haunted by the tortured spirits of a recently demolished insane asylum. Now, Janice’s brother doesn’t believe in ghosts. In fact, he hosted a “paranormal activity debunker” podcast for a time… till he got board with it and decided to get a job in the sawmill as it paid a whole lot steadier. His real motive was triggered by another rumor, that gold could be found on the plot. He said it would take some digging and due diligence to determine the reality of that rumor.

As for the hauntings, all Jason could muster was a grunt of incredulity, trailing off to a smirking chuckle. “Seriously?” Jason sounded somewhat defensive. “I’ve interviewed dozens of folks convinced of spectral hauntings. After a while it gets predictable and boring. Do you remember the Scooby Doo cartoons? Of the ghost stories i investigated, way too many of them resembled stock characters and plots from that wildly entertaining Saturday morning diversion. Some corrupt opportunist or even local official is responsible for one of several outrages: environmental damage, estate dispute, businesses gone bust, almost always the motivation is financial. Some desperate grasping inspires an elaborate ruse involving a haunting of some kind. In the end, they either get away with their caper by way of mass sociogenic hysteria, or they make a mistake and get busted.”

“Too bad we don’t have more of those precocious, inquisitive kids looking for mysteries to crack,” said Janice.

“Good luck with the site survey… i’d love to help pan for gold nuggets,” Billie was on autopilot, she was making sounds in order not to look bored.

Professor T was taking it all in. He considered Jason’s cock-sure outlook regarding mysterious phenomena a little too certain. In other words, Professor T was skeptical about Jason’t iron-clad skepticism. But turning his thoughts to Abigail Weiser’s inexplicable attack on his workplace integrity gave him pause. He was starting to wonder if he could accurately gauge the veracity of anybody’s fantastic story at face value. It seemed he was waking up to the depth of people’s public facing masks. He was starting to understand how the onion-like layers of personality can run deep and pungent.

Regardless, open-minded or not, Professor T considered the paranormal rumors about as real as Scooby Doo himself.

NEXT WEEK:
The gang lands in Eureka, NorCal, a beach town crawling with under-employed pirates giving the gang the heebie-jeebies, pushing them on to Redding.

GO BACK => Preface and Chapter Links

Audiovision: Truth vs Power

So a wise man, or a man who was at least passing for wise, started talking about truth. And the first thing he did, the clever bastard, was admit that nobody has the first clue what it is. We’re all just monkeys with car keys, little fizzing bundles of electricity piloting meat-suits around the planet, and we haven’t even figured out what the fizz is. Consciousness? Human thought? We don’t know what’s running the projector, but good lord, the movie is colorful, brief, and loud.

And yet…

Out there in the great electronic shrieking festival… pow! slap! kick! BOOM! you’ve got no shortage of bloviators, of sidewalk saviors and cable news prophets with shellacked hair, their faces glowing in the 4k pixel bath, absolutely convinced they’ve got the universe on a leash. They are selling Truth like it’s a used car, a timeless, irrefutable, low-mileage beauty that can be yours for the low, low price of your own brain. And the loudest dealership on the whole cosmic car lot is, of course, religion. These fanatics, these apostolic holy rollers with their eyes spun back in their skulls, insist their particular brand of Truth is the only one that gets you to the bliss of heaven. Just have a little faith, they say. Which is a five-dollar word for blind credulity.

And so on…

Sometimes, you see, you have to do more than just believe. Sometimes you have to get up from the couch and move your feet. Take Vlad Dracul III. There was a man who put his convictions on a stick. A very long, sharp stick. He wasn’t playing around with faith and hope. He was a man of action, a walking thunderhead of revenge. Why? Was it because the Ottoman Turks read the wrong magic book? Nope. It was because his own father traded him and his brother like hockey cards to the Sultan, who was not a nice man. It was because while Vlad III was learning to hate in a Turkish dungeon, his father and brother were being tortured and murdered by his own people.

This sort of thing can change a boy’s outlook…

Vlad’s truth wasn’t a holy whisper in his ear; it was the hot, screaming fact of betrayal, and his answer was a field outside Târgoviște decorated with two thousand screaming, writhing, shish-kabobbed exclamation points aimed at a merciless sky.

That was his dark sermon… that was his truth…

Now, let’s rewind history to Simon the Zealot, a different cat altogether. For him, the truth was a revolutionary tinderbox just waiting for a match. He saw this Jesus fellow, this Nazarene miracle man, and his synapses started to crackle with visions of Roman eagles falling out of the sky. He saw the critical mass, the juice, and he wanted to turn the power of popularity into a revolutionary battle-cry. He was trying to shove a prophet shaped like a question mark into a political hole shaped like a sword. This, you might imagine, made the local authorities a little jumpy. While Simon was trying to crown a savior king, the Romans were sharpening their nails. Was Judas the real betrayer? Or was it the man who tried to turn a movement about turning the other cheek into a bar fight with an empire? As a wise old Chinaman is supposed to have said, “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” Simon may have changed his tactics, but his all too mortal king wound up in the same place as Vlad’s unfortunate enemies: pinned to a piece of wood, proving a point about the interaction of truth and power.

Undeniable truth? Not so fast. It’s a road, not a motel. Anyone who tells you they’ve checked in and unpacked is either running a con or they’re so lost they think the lobby is the entire universe. The best we can do is what that magnificent, gloomy German filmmaker suggests: you can actually stare into the void until misty clouds of undifferentiated nothingness take shape and stare back. Who knows? You might find something interesting in there. Mostly, you’ll just see yourself, your own egocentric story reflected in a million broken pieces. But if you can lose yourself, as the poet from Detroit once said, you might stumble over a shard of something real. Something inspiring. Just be wary the winds of power can short circuit your heartfelt illusions.

For now, until we actually begin to understand the wellspring of consciousness, could we please interrupt the merry-go-round of inherited cruelty, this endless cycle of pain passed down by people who were taught to be main characters in a story written by a mysterious, all-powerful Sky-CEO who actually cares to keep a running tab on every thought, every misdemeanor, every everything. The horror show starts when these people realize… and they usually do… that the Sky-CEO, in fact, isn’t watching and doesn’t care.

Anyway… what if we tried something else? A little compassion… a little kindness… a pinch of skepticism and doubt. After all, the points of light seen in the dark night are mostly distant clusters of billions of stars and their satellites. That the universe allows for individual micro-particles such as you, me, astrophysicists, theologians, filmmakers, schizophrenics, etc. a glimpse of itself is nothing short of miraculous. What we know (we’ve learned quite a lot over the last couple centuries) amounts to no more than a quark, on a barnacle, attached to a massive seagoing cargo barge. We’re as good as bats experiencing hearing loss, we’re constantly bumping into reality in the barely audible darkness.

But so what?

Don’t be afraid…
Keep stumbling…
We’ll see you there…
Fishing for ecstatic truth…
…in the gallery of the void.

Loopcircus