A Harry Knowles Production

Now comes my world.

BULLETS AND BUSES--BOTH MISSED THEIR MARK

It was 1978. The Bad News Bears went to Japan and George Romero livened up the mall scene. Rabbits made me cry and I learned to believe a man could fly. It was a good year.

The school year was dragging on and I couldn't wait for Thanksgiving vacation. You see the week surrounding Thanksgiving was set aside for a grand adventure. For a six year old boy named Harry it just didn't come soon enough. My parents bribed me into good grades with Star Wars figures. For every A, I received a single figure, for a B I got 1/2 a figure, for a C nothing was my reward and anything D and lower cost me a figure. I earned plenty of A's, you see "I was on a mission from Lucas."

Thanksgiving vacation arrived. The school let out as hundreds of jubilant freed spirits raced to their awaiting motor vehicles. No different was I. For no sooner had I reached the car, then we headed for Mexico.

The characters for this journey were truly characters indeed. First you had the watercolorist- personality larger than any you can possibly imagine, the master of the bad pass, and a layer of women aplenty. Next was the sandwich selling lawyer, who single- handedly took on the University of Texas and won, and defeated over 10,000 moving violations. Truly a man to admire. My mother, the Janis Joplin clone, and my father, known as DAD.

Oh yes and me. Your faithful guide in this world of mine.

Our first destination lay deep in the middle of the Sierra Madres. We were questing for the ghost town of Catorce. Catorce was a 16th century silver mining city that was attacked by Pancho Villa in 1912. Personally I can't imagine why Wallace Beery would attack this small town, till you realize that the town was named for the 14 silver mines that laid in the mountains enclosing this Ghost town. Half of the silver in the world came from these 14 mines that Pancho Villa flooded. Once the mines were shut down the once grand city dried up, in 1978 only 35-50 populated the town. To get to the town you have to walk through a 3/4 of a mile tunnel dug through the base of the mountain. When you reach middle all you can see is a pinpoint of light in either direction. The most unnatural echo I ever heard lay within this mountain. The sound never seemed to die, instead bouncing endlessly about till a new sound took it's place. When we reached the exit into the town we took a great sigh of relief, and knew that if we were to leave this place we would have to go back through. The town was great, no hotels, instead we stayed with a family and paid for a Thanksgiving feast that the entire ghost town shared with us.

However, the crux of the story took place some three days later while on an adventure to observe the grand waterfall that cascaded down the side of a 15,000 ft mountain at Zaragosa. Mom stayed behind sick as poor puppy that drank the Drano, actually that was a cat and is yet again an entirely different story. This waterfall was 2 miles off the road of a desert crossroad some 30 miles away from civilization.

After playing in the gigantic waterfall, we decided to head back to the highway to catch our bus back to the civilized world. However, my short fat legs could not move me fast enough. The last half mile was a sprint to attempt to catch the early bus. We arrived to see the bus leaving us for dead in the middle of this forsaken desert. As the bus left, the sandwich-selling lawyer pulled out his little '38 and fired four shots at the bus. To this day I know not the fate of those bullets, instead I only know the bus did not stop. That day the bullets and the bus missed their mark.

There we were, stranded in the quite literal definition of nowhere. The four of us strangers, scared by the history of the area. The stories of roving gangs of banditos on the look out for good shoes and gold fillings in your teeth. We kept walking in the direction of my mom. For two hours not a car. truck, bus, or mule came by. Our walking was now less like walking and more like the shuffling of zombie legs.

Then we saw a building. A small building, some 500 yards off the road. We headed towards it, as we got closer I realized that the building looked exactly like that cool place of Luke Skywalker's where he cleans the droids. My attitude became perkier, even though the dried out cheeks and empty stomach probably contributed to this delusion. Expecting to be greeted with gunfire, we instead raised our hands to except the fresh cooked black bean burritos that added fuel to our empty tanks. As we left we were very thankful, but were shaken by the warning of Banditos on the highway by night.

We walked another 2-3 miles before we decided to build camp beneath the stars. So there the four of us sat, hoping for someone to spot the campfire and pull over to help our miserable souls. Then without warning a truck appeared out of the night.

I sat on the far side of the fire awaiting the hail of impending lead death that was sure to riddle my black bean gorged body. That was when the watercolorist said we had a ride. I remember pulling myself up into the truck bed and beholding 4 masked men, each with shotguns and bandeleros strapped across their chests. At this point I knew death was a foregone conclusion. So there I sat terrified in the back of the truck of our saviors. I was watching the hairs on the back of their hands, but not one bullet fired. Instead they broke out a stash of honey cured peyote for the three adults in our group to ingest. I was left without any such treat. Instead I had to defend my life with examples of my own machismo. I told tales of eye-eating and conch-devouring. I was a true gordito rojo in their eyes, and still to this day some refer to me as that.

Prepare for next weeks episode of misery. As Harry's World will venture into a tale of sorrow and misery as lived out by a pawn that rides the coat-tails of my own genius through this world of mine. He has been looking for a way out ever since. This makes Nell seem clean.

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