Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.
Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, November 10, 1871: Henry Morton Stanley was sent to Africa by his newspaper to find Scottish missionary David Livingstone.
Today he finally found him and made contact with the words: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.”
San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you’d find listed “Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service” at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this —
“Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, the free telepathic answering service that doesn’t cost a thing.
“I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway.
“You know, sometimes I think you Americans are so suspicious. Just now when I said our service is free, several thousand of you thought What’s the catch? and How do they do it?
“Really! So suspicious! OK, OK, here’s the deal …
“Look, when we deliver your messages to your friends and neighbors we deliver them by telepathy. No telephones. And we pass on the equipment savings direct to you!
“So next time you get that impulse to say something to someone and they’re not there — like Thanks! or Thinking of You! or I Love You! — don’t reach out and thump somebody. Just think it real clear and we’ll deliver it special delivery right to their head.
“Best of all, it’s free.”
Mount Shasta: Adrienne and I went for a Sunday Drive. On the map there’s this little lake called “Crystal Lake”, some few miles beyond Lake Siskiyou. A week ago we had snow on the ground, but it’s long gone now, and Sunday being bright and clear, we went to find this Crystal Lake.
Just past the Lake Siskiyou turn-off we found the road, and turned up the hill. The woods were auburn and lofty above us, and the sunlight streaming down upon the winding road.
A quarter-mile up the road, and higher on the hill, we found a sprinkling of snow beneath the shady trees. As we drove the next quarter-mile, suddenly the snow covered the road, and soon after, the road was frozen with six inches of snow.
We stopped and turned around. Crystal Lake can wait.
I’ve never before had the experience of driving from Fall into Winter. But there it was.
San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you’d find listed “Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service” at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this —
“Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, the world’s only telepathic answering service, designed to answer the question: Whatever happened to E.S.P.?
“I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway.
“And here are your messages for today —
“You got a message from Uncle Joe.
He just called to say hello.
And to mention Aunt Betsy’s
in the clinker again.
He sez he’s a little short on bail,
and wonders how you’re doing.
“Sometimes, I wonder, too.
“How are you doing?”
San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you’d find listed “Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service” at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this —
“Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, the world’s favorite telepathic answering service. All your friends and neighbors use it; and so do you!
“I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway.
“You know, the other day, I delivered a telepathic message to a guy in a big business meeting at the Bank of America building downtown …
“He was making a fancy presentation but I was moving at the speed of light and I knew it wouldn’t take long.
“So I just whispered in his mind:
“Your mama wants you to pick up a loaf of french bread at the Mom & Pop.
“Next thing I know, he’s yelling at me-
“Damn it, Ruru,” (he yelled), “I never know if this is a real telepathic message, or just a … faligmant of my noosination!”
“And boy! Didn’t those business bigwigs in that meeting stare!
“Let me just clarify that for a moment.
“You know when your imagination runs away from you?
“Well, that is a a run-away imagination.
“But when you hear that little ding-a-ling in the back of your mind … that’s us with your latest messages!”
Dallas, Texas, 1965: I didn’t know much about negotiating back then. I knew I wanted to buy the Morgan Motor Car, and Little John had a demonstrator for $3000. I wasn’t able to talk him down, and he wasn’t much interested in my trade-in, a faded-paint Dodge Lancer with “The Spook” written on the back.
The First National Bank of Henrietta finally came through at the end of the day, a day I’d been close to tears several times, and just as night was falling, Little John handed me the keys.
I’d never driven a sportscar. Certainly not one like this.
A Morgan is very light and low to the ground. Beneath the tan leather upholstery, you’re sitting on an inflatable cushion perhaps three inches thick, and the floor is only five inches from the ground. Kind of like driving a go-cart through traffic.
Further, the hood is long and tapering, and you’re sitting right in front of the rear axel, so when you turn a corner, it appears that the distant front end of the car turns the corner, and then some short time later, you turn the corner.
As I drove through the busy nighttime Dallas traffic in the unfamiliar car, working the gears, I suddenly realized that I was sitting so low that my head was lower than many of the headlights on other cars. The speed, the new gearbox, the flashing lights, it was all quite frightening.
By the edge of town, I’d decided to take the back way through the countryside, so that there would be less cars on the highway. Or maybe I just got disoriented and found myself on that road.
This was a smaller highway, a two-laner that wound homeward through a generally deserted woods. Once free of the city, I accelerated up to 65, then the night-time speed limit.
Wow!
In the low-slung car, it seemed like I was just flying. The tachometer kept reving up, the high-pitched engine eager. And the curves! They popped into the headlights, then I was zooming around like lightning with plenty of screeching from the wide tires. I felt like I was driving a hundred miles an hour.
When the occasional other car appeared ongoing, it was as if it no sooner appeared than zoomed past, receding tail-lights behind me. And twice I came upon other cars, just dawdling they were, oddly, all of them. I passed them like they were parked on the highway.
The mystery of the speeding car was solved the next day: The speedometer was installed wrong. What I thought was 65, was actually 95, and I’d driven all the way at that speed in the unfamiliar vehicle.
Just like Parnelli Jones. Only far more ignorant.
Denton, Texas, 1960’s: At North Texas State University (now called University of North Texas), Larry Burns and his father ran a coffee-house across from the English Building. It was called The Hob Nob. This place was home to some of us. Maybe it was your home, too.
I used to hang out with fellow artistes and literati Paul Miner, John B., and Billy Bucher. Paul drew pictures and wrote stories. John wrote stories and edited the school’s literary magazine. Billy played jazz music and wrote stories. I wrote stories.
All of us drank a lot of coffee and gabbed for hours and hours at the Hob Nob. We had a crew of friends — Rex May, John Mahoney, Larry Pine, Tex Allen, John Hill, Camilla Carr, Michael Murphy, and lots more.
The cups of coffee never stopped. The conversations never stopped, spinning and turning and returning again. This it was, once upon a time.
My friend Bill Bucher has expressed an interest in writing some micro-stories about that time, and about times that came later, and if any other Hobnobbers find us, we’d invite you to join in. For this purpose, at one point we set up a separate weblog for tales from that time, and tales from our later lives.
However, software changes eventually interfered, and we lost that site. Sorry.
So at least, join us in remembering. I’m sure in your memory, the coffee is as strong as ever, and in the fullness of time we’re hoping the gab will flow, richer than ever.
San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you’d find listed “Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service” at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this —
“Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, the modern telepathic answering service that can help you move your merchandise!
“I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway.
“Earlier today somebody asked me, ‘Ruru, what do you like to do for fun?’
“Well, you know, just being a fourtheenth-plane saint in the astral plane doesn’t stop a body from enjoying a little fun, gracious no!
“No, mind, what with ferrying your telepathic messages to anyone anywhere in the world at any hour of the day or night, I don’t spend a lot of time goofing off, as you’d imagine, but remember, time in the astral plane flows funny, so there’s always room for jello, so to speak.
“Now, to answer your question, for fun I like to whittle in my spare time. Sometimes I make little seabirds and stand them up on a little wire above a rock. Several gift stores in major cities carry these; you may have seen them. Next time you’re in one of these stores just ask the clerk if it’s a genuine Ruru the Guru seabird. I’m sure they’ll tell you, unless they’re, you know, secretive.
“Me and my buddy, Babba Jamas, like to play pool and pinball sometimes, down at the Himalaya Arcade in the gulch. You know, catch a pizza sometimes. I never know for sure whether he’s cheating, of course, but that’s just part of the wonder of living in the astral plane.
“The astral plane itself is quite entertaining. Just on the way to work or to the laundromat you can see most anything passing by. Yesterday Adolf Hitler — or maybe one of his doubles — was being drug through some cactus by a crowd of English schoolboys crying out, ‘Bloody bugger!’ And the day before that it was a bunch of Jamaicans playing a game with a rabbit, two washtubs, and some hubcaps.
“Sometimes I like crosswords, and as it happens, I’m stumped on number 26 across right now.
“Would you happen to know a twelve-letter word meaning ‘an imaginery beast invented by Lewis Carrol in the poem Jabberwocky’? It begins with ‘band’ and ends with ‘snatch.’
“Wait a minute, wait a minute! Several of you are telepathing the answer right now! …
“Why, of course! Bandersnatch!
“I wonder why I didn’t think of that … Well, as you can see, I just have lots of fun, most all the time.”
