Whoopee Ti Yi Yo, Woody Guthrie Version

Whoopie Ti Yi Yo, Part II, Carlie Daniels Band Version

tinamurty — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 01:07:00 GMT

Why did I stay through the horror of the nighttimes in this way-out-west horse-wrangling town?

I was no southern chic. I was pure alabaster with Yankee blood and city manners; never even rode a horse, didn’t own blue jeans, and preferred my beer dark and heavy. I was out of context, the wrong verb form of myself. Yet I stayed a month. It was the cowboy locals that kept me there, wanting another sunrise.

I had nearly accepted a volunteer position at rainy National Park up in Washington, but I could barely get the bus fare there from my friend's place in Los Angeles. And I only managed to get to L.A. because I had spent almost all my money on the train there from Miami. And I had only wound up in Miami because I was required to purchase a return ticket before they would allow me into the Bahamas. And I only made it through three months in the Bahamas because I was kinda stuck by a karmic duty; the type of sentiment that is really strong when you live in a yoga ashram. These are the types of serious decisions that vagabonds make, and I was about to choose the dirt path to that haunted hotel.

I pleaded with the hotel to give me a job before the season started, saying I could clean, paint and get ready for the hustle and madness of the summer. I may not have written I AM BROKE in all capital letters on my application, but that was a part of my motivation. I also had this deep fondness for New Mexico. It seemed raw and cleansing; a place of dust and art. But more than either of these things, what really drew me to the state was its license plate. I wanted one of those red and yellow suns bolted onto the car that I didn’t own yet. I liked the idea of having a sunrise attached to me and my travels. And I desperately wanted to live in the ‘Land of Enchantment’.

I didn’t know the place was haunted when they offered me the job. I suppose that even if I had known, it wouldn’t have mattered. There’s a lot of magic that I believe in, but ghosts weren’t any part of it; especially of the angry sort. I imagined it would be a minor curiosity, like the ‘smallest pony in the world!’ at the state fair; somewhat intriguing, but a waste of a quarter.

I was wrong. I literally slept with the blankets over my head and a large jar in my room. Actually, I don't remember my feet hitting much of the carpetting between the door and the bed. Usually, I would lock the door and simply leap onto the mattress; as if the longer I stayed standing the more vulnerable I would be.

But each night I would sit along the beer sipping horsemen and sing another slow, banjo-y song with them. And from under the blankets, I would hum those western lullabies until the creeps that wandered up my spine became less intense. I never got the license plate that I wanted, but those cowboy regulars, with their big sweaty hats, made me feel like there would always be a sunrise attached to me and my travels, even if angry ghosts were right next door.

Photos: Travel Photos

tinamurty — Mon, 18 May 2015 07:17:00 GMT

The Haunted St. James Hotel

tinamurty — Sun, 17 May 2015 07:34:26 GMT

The place was eerie even in daylight. But in the dark of night, it petrified me. After kicking out the last drunk cowboys and shutting off all of the lights, I would dart to my room with my heart pounding in my throat. I can’t explain the goose bumps: maybe it was the screeching cat I would hear from the other side of my locked door; maybe it was just the cold heaviness in the air that pressed on my skin as I lay awake in bed. I worked for a month at this desolate hotel/bar in Cimarron, New Mexico. Unlike many who stayed there, I got out alive.
The St. James Hotel was built in 1872, seven years after the Civil War ended, when the west was a place of outlaws and vigilantes. Many infamous gunslingers spent nights among the thick, scarlet curtains and ornate brocade wallpaper of the hotel. And in the spirit of bullets and lawlessness, dozens of murdered men became its permanent residents.
If you are willing to sleep with the blankets over your head, book a room at the St. James on the second floor in the old hotel; sadly, the new addition is not nearly as haunted. When you arrive, ask for a tour. This is an ideal time to use the black and white settings on your camera, as the ambiance will deliver excellent grays and imbue a sharp sense of past to your photos. Request to see the always-locked Room 18, haunted by TJ, an angry and violent ghost. A few doors down, you’ll find the communal bathroom. I’d recommend finding a bucket or a large jar to keep in your room; that short walk will be frighteningly longer in the middle of the night.
But there is a softness and sweetness in this town whose name means feral and wild. You can find it in springtime, when the blooming desert wildflowers add a touch of color to the rolling tumbleweed and, more importantly, the summer tourists are still months and miles away. Everyone you meet will be a local: genuine horse wranglers with tight Levi’s and a loose drawl in their words.
Seemingly, the entire town will push through the batwing doors of the saloon around 8pm for a whiskey and a beer. Join them. Underneath the calluses and worn leather are small-town gentlemen with warm fire-side manners and a knack for lively conversation and storytelling. You will be swaying arm in arm with them, singing cowboy songs, and trying on their big, sweaty hats until closing time- when some lone barkeep has to kick everyone out, shut off the lights, and dart to her room.

Monet Waits

tinamurty — Sun, 18 May 2014 07:13:00 GMT

He was Italian, she Slovakian. Stuffed backpacks sit on the ground beside them. I see the guidebook. The entire US of A squished onto the pages of a book the size of a brick. I have held so many of them in my hands, but never, not once, was it my country. I’m shamefully over-excited by them, or more accurately, by that brick-book they have. They hand it to me and I eagerly flip to the page where My City will be rightfully glorified in words.

“Halfway between Syracuse and Buffalo,” it reads, “sits Rochester, NY.” Then, to put it mildly, it tells you to continue on your merry way because everything worthy of seeing is certainly not here. I’m hurt.

I’ve quit my job to travel nine times. But I always return home, to this not-even-a-paragraph-worthy-city in the US. Travel is always an unleashing of sorts. It is not intended to do this, but then we are there and it happens and we return. We leave for a month and we have been away for decades. And everyone else is still, still pushing something heavy up a hill. Only in coming home do we realize the depth of the journey.

“Go to the museum, go to the steakhouse”, I robotically direct the European duo. It’s a pathetic, soul-less suggestion, and I know it. My city has flesh and I had handed them bones. I want to take it back. I want to re-write that sentence in the book.

My hotel is clean and crisp and immediately I itch to get out of there. Dutifully, as a “tourist”, I head to the museum. Yes, to the one I sent Mr. Italy and Miss Slovakia to, but had never once set foot in. I’m one block away from Monet, next to the railroad-track-dump when I see it, a portrait of feet on the side of a building. It is just two feet, but precisely and intensely a person; going somewhere. It startles me. I get lost in the immobility of it, the story of it. There’s a fleeing in them. There’s also a freedom. Then I continue walking, right past the museum.

He’s short, stocky, bald, and smiling and he’s waiting for the same bus as I am. I point over to the feet that blew my mind and he says, “Well, our pockets is ripped out, but we still have hands, right?” He was a Rochestarian, I knew by his ‘a’s. We draw the sound out of our ‘a’’s with a whiny long swagger. The statistics say my city is poorer than I. This frightens me in the way that my mom must have felt when I travelled alone far away. But I was never hurt, bothered, or even cursed in those muggy cities. I walked next to them and they walked next to me. But my pockets are still firmly intact. “We still have hayaands”, he said. We have hope and strength beyond substance. I smiled tightly and slowly nodded sideways like a “no”, which is to say, “ain’t that the truth, though, ain’t that the truth?”

I don’t get on the bus. I just keep walking. I continue past the cascading river and duck in to grab a local blue collar beer. It’s cold and bubbly and tastes like beer, so I have another. There’s a crowd here, listening to music on a Tuesday night. “Roch-ster” people that all seem to want some meatloaf, some spicy hot sauce poured on sausages, and some cold, unpretentious beer. The band plays jazz. These are men with last names like Hochstein, O’Malley, Douglass, and Gonzales. These are men whose great-grandfathers built the railroad and the canal, men with day jobs and neckties, men whose kids draw murals of feet on hidden buildings.

The beat gets stuck in my mind and it becomes my eye-opening soundtrack back to the hotel. Past the old subway stop, past the immense library, past the community garden my mom helped plant, past the mansions and the slums, past all the things I used to just drive by. The bravest thing we can do is to re-examine who we are and where we are and why. Sometimes it takes distance to accomplish this. Sometimes it does not.

I collapse in my foreign bed in my cozy hometown and I have a journal that seems too small to hold all my words. Right here, halfway between Syracuse and Buffalo, in the enchanted land of graffiti-meatloaf-jazz, some flesh got on some bones. I dissolve into my dreams. And a decade passes.

About the Author: Tina Murty is a waitress who saves all her money to travel and never wants to retire. Her journals are her most prized, but most easily burned, possession.

Saving Private Nippleton

tinamurty — Mon, 2 May 2005 00:14:00 GMT

We could only assume that the mosquito bite had caused Sarah’s face to fall off. That, or the fact that she burned the shit out of herself. “Ecuador”, she says these days, wiser now, “is still on the equator, even on a cloudy day.” When she woke up that morning her face was a patchwork of nine different colors, like a big camouflage pattern of the United Colors of Benetton, like a pride parade left its confetti entrails on her. Her eye, the location of the bite, had swollen into a small potato then shrunk back to flat, causing ruined areas of peeling, dryness, and, well, grossness.

We were in the teeny, dirt-road town of Puerto Lopez, living like queens. We stayed in the nicest room in the nicest hotel there. But with our leper friend at our side, all we could think about was fixing her face.

‘Smiley’ was the happiest groundskeeper on earth. He was probably at least 70, nearly toothless, and was more than a few inches under five feet tall. Yeah, he was adorable. And he had this sweet, kind grin that we all fell in love with- hence the brilliant nickname we gave him.

“Go ask him if there’s a witch doctor in town that can help me”, Sarah pleaded. Since I spoke Spanish, I asked. But instead of an answer, he shuffled inside and returned with a five gallon bucket full of steaming hot water and herbs. I don’t know how that little guy lugged it out to us, but he did, with a smile. He explained that she should soak a washcloth in the water, wring it out, put the cloth on her face, and repeat. We did exactly as the doctor ordered. I could smell the pungent aroma of the herbs. It was something very familiar, maybe even delicious- like pizza.

“Oh my God, you guys!!”, Sarah, never a subtle alarm clock, shouted the next morning. Her decrepit face was healed. We all felt better and much less embarrassed by her. We returned to our lives of luxury, sipping beers and lounging by the hotel pool.

I was probably doing handstands in the water or practicing my diving when I spotted our wee miracle worker. I jumped out of the pool and ran over to thank him.

I explained that we did exactly as he told us to- and look! She’s better! Its amazing! Was that oregano? Hows your day? Whats the weather forecast? Do you have family? Let me tell you my life story…In spite of a slight language barrier, compounded by his lack of teeth, we had a really wonderful conversation. He seemed very pleased for all of us.

I waved goodbye as he turned to continue sweeping up the bird shit. I, on the other hand, returned to the edge of the pool, preparing for yet another Olympic-worthy dive. But then I noticed my three friends, huddled on the other side of the pool all choking, tripping on acid, and having seizures. It took me a moment to realize that they were just laughing- really, really hard. So hard, that they were all beet-red and silently convulsing. “What’s so funny?”, I asked, hating to miss out on a joke, especially one as good as this must have been. No answer, just the shaking fits. “What is it?!”; I asked, exasperated; tell me the fucking joke already.

Sarah, still weak and unable to speak, just starts pointing furiously behind me. I turn to look; nothing funny. She shakes her head no and points to her chest, then to me, then her chest, then to me. “Your…”, she finally gets out in words, “your…boob.”

I glance down and sure enough, my right boob had flopped completely out of my bathing suit and was just hanging sadly like a fat, drunk man who has fallen out of his hammock.

The flashbacks started. They came in slow-mo: my long talk with Smiley, running over to him, furiously waving goodbye. Little Smiley was so short, his eyes were exactly at naked-boob level. You know how you can always tell if one strand of hair is doing an alfalfa or you have spinach in your teeth- because anyone speaking to you will continually glance at it? Our pint-size doctor didn’t. Never once did he break eye contact; not even once.

Smiley was the coolest dude ever. And my friends are a bunch of bitches.

**Note to Readers: In an effort to maintain integrity, I need to fess up a couple things. As I retell this story, I always get the little guy’s moniker wrong. “It was HAPPY, not SMILEY!” and when I pantomime the motion of my tit hanging out of my suit as I recount the details, I loosely clasp my fingers together as if holding a bocce ball/ grapefruit sized item. I dedicate this story to Sarah, (whose name I did not change for her protection.) She will always correct the name of our little sweetheart groundskeeper and she will also correct the grapefruit hand gesture to its more accurate orange size. My inadvertent nudity stories, of which there are many, truly belong to her. There are few that I can tell better than she can. She makes my unspeakable shame funny. And since I’m truthing, she actually IS a very subtle alarm clock, usually waking us up with a sing-song voice, saying, “Wake up, its a beautiful day in….wherever we are ” and then she gently pulls open the drapes for the morning sun. Though I do not re-neg on calling my friends a bunch of bitches, she happens to be my best friend and faithful travel companion. Being a bitch just makes it more interesting. I think we both feel this way.

Clothes to Grow Into

tinamurty — Sat, 20 Jul 2002 07:08:00 GMT

I memorized all English-language warnings before I left. Keep your important documents in a money belt close to your body. Bring change so you don’t have to pull out a large bill. Don’t wear jewelry or nice clothing. Carry your backpack on the front of your body so it cannot get yanked or cut away. Never walk alone. Don’t hang your camera around your neck. Never leave your hotel at night. Yet, there I was, in a town square, snapping pictures of a church when I realized I had lost my friends. I was alone in a strange and dangerous city.

I sat down on a bench hoping they would find me if I just didn’t move. Despite my dirty-hostel-staying hair and complete lack of jewelry, I was approached by everyone: the lady with the watermelon slices she carried on top of her head, the man with heavy blankets draped over his arms and his shoulders, the guy pushing a homemade, rather broken cart full of candy, the woman with an overflowing handful of plastic bags filled with juice. And I rigidly refused each of them, covering my money belt and hiding my camera (in an inconspicuous plastic bag)

A young boy approaches me and asks me what I am doing. I guess he’s about eight years old wearing clothes he can grow into. I tell him that I lost my friends. “They will come back for you,” he assures me. “Don’t be scared.” Its adorable, his concern for me. I’m surprised that he can read my fear. My pale skin and weird hair did not frighten him away, however, and this oddly puts me at ease. And then he asks if he can shine my shoes.

“No,” I say, trying to smile, “These are sandals. You can’t shine sandals.” I wanted him to go away, but I wanted him to stay. I wished he was just a kid. I could not, with any sense of justice, let this child shine my shoes. “You will see”, he says, “I will make them beautiful. Please.”

My heart became lead when I handed him that filthy sandal.

But then I thought of the many times when I, as a kid, would earn a quarter and run with joy to the store around the corner to buy some candy, remembering how it felt to skip back to my street with a little brown bag stuffed full of glorious, sweet, colorful sugar. While he scuffs and wipes, I try my best to talk to him about kid stuff in broken Spanish. He kindly corrects my words without judgment, like no adult ever could.

Another younger boy comes over, his brother. He seems shy or suspicious of me and sits a safe distance away, sneaking glances in my direction, but never making direct eye contact. I don’t blame him; I don’t look like anyone else around here. How old is your little brother? “No sé”; I don’t know. Well, how old are you? “No sé.” When is your birthday? “No sé”, he shrugs casually.

My friends find me and the boy is genuinely as happy about this as I am. Even the tiny one lets out a sly half-smile. We pour coins into their hands, more than the cost, but much less than we could spare. And we ask, “What are you going to buy?” He looked up, smiling huge, the way I must have smiled on my way to the candy store with a quarter, and he replied, "I'm going to get shoes someday". My eyes dropped and for the first time I noticed his bare feet. And my head just remained fixed in that downward position. He did not ask to shine anymore of our shoes and he just walked away across the hot cement with his wooden kit in his hand and his silent little brother a few paces behind.

I realized then that all the fear-inspiring travel warnings I had been adhering to had ironically been what robbed me. Holding on so tightly to what I possessed, I missed the chance to appreciate what I had, what I had to share, and what I had to learn. This little man showed more compassion and humanity to me than I had offered anyone that day. That shoeless boy with no birthday changed my life.

Tina Murty is a waitress who saves all of her money to travel. She never walks alone down dark alleys, but also never again refuses the chance to chat with a woman carrying watermelon slices on her head.

Lost and Found

tinamurty — Tue, 20 Jun 1995 01:07:00 GMT

The main thing that sticks out in my memory is that I did not feel like a total idiot. But there I was, halfway up a mountain in a Kodiak Bear Preserve, bloody and exhausted, clutching what little remained in the one small water bottle I brought on the trail-less hike.

Six of us had started out together, but after an hour of hiking, the tangled masses of brushwood and the incessant bee stings became too much for three to handle. They left claiming pain and possible allergies. Wimps.

Boredom brought us here, into this rugged and relentless mountainside. The cannery had no fish which meant no work. We were stuck in a town that wasn’t even a town. There was no main street. There wasn’t even a road leading to somewhere else. Coming and going was by plane, by boat, or by foot. We only had feet- restless, adventurous, curious, brainless feet.

I was sitting on the rickety steps leading to my dorm, reading a letter from home that morning when someone asked if I wanted to go for a hike. “Sure”, I said. I put the letter in my bag and left. One person pointed to the mountaintop, as if asking a question, and we all shrugged an indifferent agreement and headed up. It was all very nonchalant.

Getting to the top took hours and our entire bodies were a mess of bleeding welts. Our arms, our legs, and even our faces were shredded like we had been swimming through barbed wire. We cheered for ourselves for making it, but the victory was not wholehearted. We each knew the peak was only a half-way point. I wondered what those wimps were doing back at the Cannery. I was envious of all of them. This hike was already a disaster.

I grew up in a city. My family never camped. ‘Wilderness’ in my neighborhood was what we called the 10×5 foot patch of dirt behind our garage. We played there and felt untamed and free. But I vividly remember sweeping the dirt. Somehow, it was part of the game of wilderness for me; sweeping. I had no business in this Alaskan forest.

Each new type of land had been a milestone to cross- getting through the bushes that were well over our heads, reaching the shrubs that hit our knees, and then arriving on the grassy top of the mountain. We looked to the next obstacle to pass as we sat on that peak. There were two options: attempt to go back down approximately the same way we came up with the barbed wire, the bees, and the immense piles of fresh grizzly scat or go down the other side of the mountain toward the ocean. This way was heading even further away from the Cannery, but appeared to have less brush to wrestle through. We stared down from the peak at the sheer, rock-covered cliff that we would have to descend.

One by one, we slid down the gravely rocks until the first row of trees got in the way of our tumbling. From here, we couldn’t see the small beach that we would eventually get to, but we knew it was waiting for our beat-up bodies. Once there, we would walk all the way around the mountain along the shore to get to our starting point; our boring and now very appealing home.

The patch of brush on the way down was equally as treacherous and sharp as the way up, but this time we didn’t make a sound as the edges ripped through our skin; we didn’t even try to stop the bleeding. We just kept pushing our way downward focused on that beach. But when we finally barreled through the last wall of razorblades, our precious little beach had disappeared. Tides had stolen it. What we thought was the end of the struggle became yet another challenge: rock climbing.

I had just climbed over the eighth shaky rock wall and I was perched on top of it looking down at the base of the ninth. Then I just stopped. I felt like there was nothing left under my skin; my muscles were gone, my blood was dried up, nothing hurt anymore. The appropriate reaction would be to cry or scream, but I didn’t even have the energy for emotion. I just stared down at the rocks; empty.

We weren’t even really friends, the three of us. We worked different shifts, maybe said hello to one another, but weren’t close. I’m paralyzed on top of a rock cliff, they are ahead of me scaling the next pile, skirting around the narrow edges, about to fade out of view. And I don’t care. They call my name and I don’t respond. They call again, encouraging me to keep moving. The encouragement became begging, and then became screaming, “Stand up and Go, Tina!”

Alaskan summer nights are bright. It was 10pm. We had started our hike in the morning. There was four hours before a true darkness set in. The boys understood this. Maybe they didn’t sweep a ‘wilderness’ in their backyard growing up. They came back to me, still screaming, then begging, and then encouraging. And with one ahead of me and one behind me, they herded me like a sick animal through the last hours of the climb.

The rocks ended and we were in a meadow of wildflowers. It may have been the garbage dump or the plane runway, but I remember it as a meadow. The sun was just fading when we arrived back at the barracks of the cannery. I was still clutching my now-empty water bottle and had my arms around the shoulders of my two best friends.

For the rest of the summer, I was playing chess.