Essays Contents

Three Rail World

March 20, 2023


Many moons ago...
I used to pick up hitchhikers.
It was a sweet spot in time, you see...

We... were free... and we were all... harmless as doves.
So if I saw a hippie with the thumb out...
trying to get somewhere...
while hoping not to get busted in the meantime...
or get taken for a ride in the country... beaten... and robbed...
well... I'd give a ride... as long as it wasn't too far.

You see... hippies were the new niggers on the block.
There was something very wrong going on in this world...
and we were watching it on the TV...
and we were getting a ringside seat... ourselves...
just like black folk... we were getting neutralized.

We were the "boomer" generation...
and we were the best educated generation of human beings
that had ever existed on the planet...
(barring any visits from alien planets, of course).
and... I think... someone saw us... coming.
We were willing and able to fix this ole world...
but... we needed a leader... to help us figure it all out.

The leaders... were being taken out... one by one.


The last time I picked up a hitchhiker, though...
He showed me the knife he kept in his boot...
and it cured me... very quickly, I might add.
He just wanted to assure me he protected himself...
but it was a 7" fishing knife...

and... not all hippies... were good hippies...
Druggies and narcs... socialists and anti-moralists...
were souring the whole mix... ruining the innocent vibe.
I wasn't at war with the world... ...!
and I'd sworn to myself that I'd never touch hard drugs.
All You Need is Pot...!
and you should grow your own...!
I mean... really...
take something cooked up by a criminal in a dirty basement?
or maybe even concocted in a JUNGLE lab????
No... I pass.

Well, the days of innocence were ending anyway.
People were getting off the streets
("the streets" meaning the hippie towns in the cities...
with the live music, veggie food, and artsy craftsmen...
leather studio, designer clothes, health food bakery, art shops)...
... and moving to the country.

Don't you sometimes wonder...
who designed the hippie clan?
I mean... were there RULES ???
So... where do I get to see these rules...?
Who was the first person to write in big letters... FREE LOVE...?
and... what was that first person... really offering?
Free... something or other...??
Gotta watch out for those road hazards, people...

Did everybody get it wrong... and think FREE LOVE meant... SEX?
But... what if it DID mean SEX...?
and all hippies were supposed to screw each other without thought...
"All You Need is Love" really meaning... SEX...??
or... perhaps it meant... what I so strongly wanted it to mean...
that... it meant people could be friends...
WITHOUT thinking that... it was anything more...
that it was... loving people... WITHOUT... sex...
hmmm??? gotta... go... figure... darlings.

You see... dating in high school was rough for me.
I honestly knew that I would never marry any of these guys.
I had plans to move away... and start a life... somewhere else.
So... when a guy takes you out... and spends money...
it sometimes makes you feel... pretty rotten...
like... you were lying to him... for a free movie and popcorn...
and there was no future there... no future there...
so... the whole point of dating was screwed up to me.
I figured... if I went on a date... and paid my own way...
the guy would be insulted... that I didn't like him... the same way.
OR... else... if I went out with a guy... it would never be the same...
it would totally end a real friendship...

So... I wanted SOMETHING else... besides those games.
There I was a trained secretary...
and realizing it meant being couped up in a small room...
sitting on my be-hind all the day long...
for a full one half of my life.
My career was as a writer...
and that... was all I wanted to do.
I wanted to live on a little farm... and write...
and I didn't need to have a degree from a university...
to do that... !!!

Here's a hitchhiker story...
I think I might have given a ride to Neil Young...
it was long long ago.

I didn't know it at the time.
To me... he was just a handsome guy...
with a guitar case...
(something you don't want to lose on the road)...
looking something like a dream I had had...
He had a good face.

But, well... in my mind...
I kept seeing blonde California girls chasing him...
and he looked like he might like those beautiful beach babies...
and so... I was instantly jealous.
Never got over being jealous, either.

It was only later that... I saw a picture of Neil Young...
and... wondered... was it him? was... that... him?
I wondered if he'd found his blonde bathing beauty...
I wondered if he hated me...
me... being a dumb ole girl...
doing stupid things and all.

Some questions... never get answered.

But... Neil Young is always interesting.
I check in on him now and then.
And tonight... I went flipping through his website.
I'd never seen his railroad build... wow... what a project.
Neil built it with his sons.
Shoot... I used to build towns, myself, in a big sand box we had.
Building stuff... is real fun.

And... if you are familiar with my "Structure of Society" thesis...
(on my main website... follow the links)...
I do a little figuring on building things, even now.
I once had an idea... to design a prototype village.
(I pictured a group of hippies going and doing this in Africa).

The village would be formed around a newly dug water well.
The stones would begin to be laid... for a patio... then paths.
Then... we would design houses from natural materials...
things we had at hand to work with... bricks or clay...
and then we'd build a garden... for each family... or church...
and teach gardening... cooking... preserving... all that.

And there would be a school... in a community center...
anyone of any age could come and learn...
There would be a teacher and a library with many encyclopedias.
There would be history, art, and music.
We would welcome Africa into the world...!
See what the rest of us are doing??
Join the party...!!

When a village got too big to be pleasant...
Or if the water wasn't plentiful...
another village would have to be built.
And so on... and so on... and so on...
until we showed the world... how it can be done.

Being a prototype... we would learn as we went.
I really loved dreaming of doing this.
The world was just... too crazy.
Someone who knew more about that stuff...
would have to do it.
I was doing my own struggling...
and I didn't speak swahili.

And then... tonight... I typed something in a search bar...
and... wikipedia "talking drum" came up...
and it reminded me... that I used to design villages, too...!!
just like Neil did... well, sort of like it...
and African Talking Drums was quite an interesting subject in itself.
So... I added the links here... to the Talking Drum stuff.
So, the subjects are... kinda... connected...?? ok??
Enjoy.
Peace.



Talking Drum wikipedia page source

The talking drum is an hourglass-shaped drum from West Africa, whose pitch can be regulated to mimic the tone and prosody of human speech. It has two drumheads connected by leather tension cords, which allow the player to change the pitch of the drum by scraping the cords between their arm and body.

In the 18th century, talking drum players used tones to disseminate messages, such as news of ceremonies and commands, over 4-5 mile distances.

A skilled player is able to play whole phrases. Most talking drums sound like a human humming depending on the way they are played.

Similar hourglass-shaped drums are found in Asia, but they are not used to mimic conversation, although the idakka is used to mimic vocal music.

Five varieties of dùndún pressure drums of the Yoruba and the atumpan and fontomfrom of the Asante (Ashanti) are especially notable. They send messages up to 20 miles (32 km), where other drummers relay them, quickly spreading news.

Example
The message "Come back home" might be translated by the drummers as:
"Make your feet come back the way they went,
make your legs come back the way they went,
plant your feet and your legs below,
in the village which belongs to us".

Single words would be translated into phrases.
For example, "moon" would be played as
"the Moon looks towards earth",
and "war" as "war which causes attention to ambushes".

The extra phrases provide a context in which to make sense of the basic message or drum beats. These phrases could not be randomized, when learning to play the drum students were taught the particular phrase that coincided with each word. This reason alone made learning to talk in drum language very difficult and not many were willing to take the time to do so.

The extra drum beats reduce the ambiguity of the meaning.
Ironically, when the West understood the mechanism of the drums, they had already begun to be used less often in Africa. Also, words often lost their meaning. In an interview with Carrington, he explained that when words that are not used often, the phrases that correspond to them are forgotten. When given the beat for young girl, the drummers thought the phrase played was in fact the one for fishing nets.

As emphasized by Finnegan, the messages sent via drums were not confined to utilitarian messages.
Drum languages could also be used for specifically literary forms,
for proverbs, panegyrics, historical poems, dirges,
and in some cultures practically any kind of poetry.

The ritualized forms and drum names constituted a type of oral literature. Among some peoples such as the Ashanti or the Yoruba, drum language and literature were very highly developed. In these cultures, drumming tended to be a specialized and often hereditary activity, and expert drummers with a mastery of the accepted vocabulary of drum language and literature were often attached to a king's court.

In some ethnic groups, each individual was given a drum name.
Examples from among the Bulu of Cameroon are
"Even if you dress up finely, love is the only thing"
or
"The giant wood rat has no child, the house rat has no child".
Talking drum players sent messages by drumming the recipient's name,
followed by the sender's name and the message.




Talking Drums
Not a perfect way to pass along gossip, I'd say.
Imagine... the mistakes your ears could make!

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