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November 4, 2005
Alaskan in Exile
by Neil Zawicki

    (Warning: this installment of Alaskan in Exile contains toxic levels of sentimentality, and the minimum RDA of political pontification.)

    “Don’t let the sunshine fool you…”

    That was Townes Van Zandt. The first time I heard his music was in Mexico in 1999, as myself and Wiley Davis rumbled along a dirt road while checking out the Baja 500, negotiating Federale check points and eating tacos at 6 a.m. The song was “Pancho and Lefty.”

    “And all the Federales say …they could have had him any day. They only let him get away… out of kindness, I suppose.”

    I pawned my guitar to be able to go down to Mexico for that trip, even though we were running a magazine at the time; it didn’t mean we were well-off. It was a vivid, edgy time of seat-of-our pants aspiration.

    I miss that. And whenever Wiley and I end up in the same town, if one of us puts Townes Van Zandt in the CD player, we both turn into a couple of old road buddies, and lapse into a sing-along, hitting every note and every word.

    It’s gloriously laughable.

    The last time I moved in such a precarious fashion was one year ago, while making it up to Portland. I’d traded my sailboat for a flatbed truck – after sailing [the boat] north for 36 hours –and then drove [the truck] 800 miles further north to put down roots here before my daughter was born. The truck overheated six times before I hit the Oregon border, so I pulled over in Weed, Calif., yanked the thermostat out, resealed the manifold, took a nap and then kept driving. It didn’t overheat again after that. In fact, during that road trip, I focused on the lyrics of another song by Townes Van Zandt, and one that I sing to my daughter these days:

    “If you needed me, I would come to you, I would swim the seas to ease your pain.”

    That truck sits idle in my driveway, as a monument to the road, and sometimes my daughter likes to play in the cab.

I sat and laughed last night, listening to Townes Van Zandt (which is why you are now enduring this little sentimental journey) and thinking about that whole trip, and about my time living on my boat, and about how before that I lived in Alaska, and about how readily I walked away from each place and each thing.

    “…but it never pays to think too much, on things you leave behind.”

    He said that, too.

    Everything changes. And I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m laying such a sentimental trip on you, when I should be banging away about politics and the world and current events and how we should all be grinding the axe and holding those savages accountable.

    Well.

    Right now, the boys in the administration are in it pretty deep. Do you know what it is? It’s “who broke dad’s fishing pole?”

    Nobody is going to tell who broke dad’s fishing pole, so we’ll just have to indict it out of them, one at a time.

    Who broke dad’s fishing pole?

    Not me.

    Then, who did?

    I dunno.

    Isn’t it goofy? The whole thing is goofy. And we all take solace in the fact that they are caught, and that Bush is pretty much done. And we ride the high wave and hope for the future.

    But it all changes, and is generally out of our hands. That’s why my official party preference is “amused onlooker.” It always has been. I only put on my political pants when the silly people that want to run everything start acting like tremendous assholes.
We can change things when there are arrogant criminals in power, but beyond that all we can do is pick out a little patch of this planet, and make it a happy place. That’s why there is value in stopping to consider where we’ve been and why, and how we came to be who we are, on a personal as well as a political level.

    Beyond all the rhetoric, I just want a good life for my daughter, and to buy a little farm with Beth. I just want to do this right. I would have said something different ten years ago.

    “Pancho needs your prayers, it’s true, but save a few for lefty, too. He just did what he had to do, and now he’s growing old.”

   

 

Neil Zawicki, exiled Alaskan, is Editor at Large for Insurgent49, a former reporter for the Alaska Star, and winner of the Alaska Press Club's 'Best Columnist' award. He is now living out the rest of his days in an undisclosed location in Oregon. He can be contacted at -  neil@insurgent49.com
- Columnists -

Editor's Desk
by Aaron Selbig

Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

Alaskan In Exile
by Neil Zawicki

The
Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford





- also by this writer -
Copyright 2005 Insurgent Media. All Rights Reserved.
in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.