Don't Say Nothin Bad About bush...

Elko is one of the last towns east in Nevada – a growing gambling town that now boasts of casino’s, restaurants, and yes, Starbucks! I stopped at the Albertsons, the only grocery store I can find, to see if they had any organic food.

            No organic food but many folks approached me in the parking lot and shook my hand, exclaiming how excited they were to see the truck.

At the gas station, I pulled alongside a pick-up truck that has survived many of these cold winters, with two young white people lounging in the bed. They smiled shyly and asked me if I painted my truck. The CodePINK alert side was facing them. I asked them if they heard of CodePINK, which they hadn’t. I started to give them my cp origins spiel: “Do you remember when bush started his scare tactic thing, ‘we’re gonna be in code yellow, code orange, code red?’”

They shook their heads in unison. Well I just got to the ‘code orange’, when this grizzled, wrinkled, old toothless skinny white man pops up in the front seat of the truck, sticks his grey head between the sliding window and shouts: “ Don’t you say nothin’ bad about bush!”

The kids flushed bright red as I asked him “Why the hell not? I can speak the truth, can’t I?”

He turns swiftly back into the cab, bumping his head as his passengers and I feebly attempt to hide our laughter, revs the engine and takes off so fast I think his passengers would have flown out if they hadn’t been seated with their feet braced against the tailgate!