THE NEFARIOUS BUNCH
By noderel:
I got a phone call from the head GoodDude a few years past, while I was sojourning in St. George, Utah, way down there in the southwest corner of Utah. “Hey,” says he “a bunch of us are coming through your area next week, and we need some guidance getting over to Highway 89 from your place. Can you do?” Hey, is the Pope Catholic?
What they needed was a point rider as their entourage set their cayuses east toward the rising sun. “I’ll meet you on the north edge of town, and do you one better. I’ll go with you clear up into Green River country. I’ll leave you there and continue north to my spread in Idaho.” Done deal, jose.
We left town just ahead of the sheriff and went through Zion Park and picked up 89 northbound just down the road a piece. A rather nice piece of two-lane that Burly Burlile tells me is the only numbered highway left linking all the way from Canada to Mexico border. Haven’t verified that.
So, up and down, left and right, a really great hot rod trail, and I called a halt for noon biscuits and beans at a place I knew near the crossing of east-west freeway 50. Inside the café, we sort of ended up huddled around a large table, nervous perhaps that someone might recognize us from the wanted posters.
I was visiting with the Purple People Eater, aka Guasco, when the middle aged waitress sauntered. “Them neat cars belong to Y’all?”
Our spokesman in the bright yellow sedan (all his cars seem to be yellow, probably because he got some left over from a schoolbus painter) opined as how, Yep, that was our herd. “Boy, I’d like someone like that to ride through this burg and carry me off……yada yada yada”. Immediately all eyes at the table were on me. Because I had recently become separated at birth with loss of my long time partner. The purple maurader was equally uncomfortable.
“You need to take that filly up on her deplorable situation, Tex. Sashay over there and invite her to ride off into the sunset in your roadster. Take her away from all this…….” Yada, yada, yada. With friends like these, who needs anything else!
Unseen by me, one of those rapscallions slid a note to the lady fair with my phone number, the one in Utah thankfully, where I would not be for the next year. This, along with a tale of woe and how lonely it was on the roadster trail with no pardner and so on……..Like I said about friends.
I wondered why the little lady was so friendly like as I sallied up to pay my bill, and why I was catching covert glimpses from my saddle pals. Later that day, over at Green River where we would stay the even’, one of my companions mentioned in the parking lot, “Say, that waitress back there left me this note, and asked if I would pass it along to you.” After handing me a many-folded scrap of paper, he scampered into the sagebrush.
The note was succinct “tex, you get back through this way, call me at……..”
I went up to Idaho and never looked back. And, I don’t stop in that café anymore.