CAN'T CATCH ME!

Holy God. Dear me. Are we belted in?

The twentieth century is about to end, even if the millennium isn't (2001, remember?), and so many of us don't get it. Pearls before swine, gods in human drag, window seats going begging on the cosmic express. What am I talking about? I hardly know myself. I'm not "on" anything except caffeine. I feel like a human piñata about to blow from the inside out. So much fun, so little time!

I should be unhappy. My wife just left our beautiful mountain valley to go back to Iowa and see what she can do for her father at Methodist Hospital in Des Moines. We don't know if he needs a nursing home or a hospice, the poor guy. There'll be tears to shed one way or the other, and I won't be immune. Sickness and health, life and death. But right now I feel the throb so strongly I know Jack will be all right no matter what happens. Y'unnerstan'?

If you're wondering what this has to do with the price of RAM, I haven't the faintest idea. The Sony boombox is ten feet away and cranked: I'm listening to KUNM in Albuquerque playing a Spanish version of the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen" by a group called "Manic Hispanic"! Outside it's 22 degrees, black as pitch, and probably snowing. The iBook is in my lap and the damn cat is asleep. Somehow it all fits.

Poor Santa Fe. That's where I took Katy Jane to catch her plane. I took the aptly named "Santa Fe Relief Route" (State Road 599), a soon-to-be 4-lane bypass that skirts the city to the west and luckily goes by the airport. But that road is a disaster in the making! Within six months of its completion it'll be just as congested as the main highway that goes south through Santa Fe down to Albuquerque. Anyone with the proverbial half an ounce of sense can see that the thing is really designed to open up vast tracts of P & J (piñon and juniper) for developers, and the "estates" signs are already going up. Fools!

At least the Santa Fe municipal airport is worth a visit. I mentioned once before that the place has to be an old Army Air Corps field. (This former Air Force brat knows "military" when he sees it, and just driving into the place tickles all the old memories.) I don't know when it was turned over to the town or county, probably a long time ago.

The terminal building is authentic retro and will give you the shivers if you're old enough to dig it. I felt like I had walked into a late '40's time warp, especially when we walked into the airport "Cafe & Grill" -- a PA system was playing Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra songs, the sandwiches and meatballs & spaghetti lunch were priced by the pound (!), and the walls were adorned with photos of old military aircraft. The patrons, all males, appeared to all be employees of an adjacent aircraft restoration outfit and included a table of crewcut geezers telling war stories. I swear I was afraid to look too closely behind the counter for fear of seeing Mickey Rooney jerking sodas! There was something oddly anachronistic and yet pure about a roomful of guys eating lunch together, too, kind of like those old WWII movies where nobody swears or shoots up. Better go check it out, folks: once the "Relief Route" is four-laned, they'll bulldoze this sucker and put up a plastic fantastic. I can just hear the C of C boys bitching about how it has to go. Right now when you turn off from newly-asphalted AirPort Road, the first thing you see is "Auto Acres," a fine old junkyard. Wanna bet there's an old one-eyed Ford in there?

But as far as I'm concerned, Santa Fe is over the top. Outside of the historic old downtown plaza, it's just another sprawling, overdeveloped, get-rich-quick Southwest disaster. Putting my honey on a plane to go maybe watch her daddy die was bad enough, but watching the roadbuilders cut the heart out of the quiet sacred vistas aroused immediate anger! I decided not to take the direct route back to Taos: "Sangre De Christo Estates," my ass. They could go ahead and sell their 2-acre "view lots" to rich California idiots, but no way did I have to drive past the scene of the crimes. I opted instead for Highway 503 and took the High Road through the real mountains, weather be damned.

Winter weather, that is. The road could have been icy, but several days of sunshine had dried everything off. Interestingly, the road salt that New Mexico highway crews use is a reddish mixture and leaves what look like big patches of dried blood along the shoulder. I felt like I was following a herd of wounded dinosaurs!

There was snow on the ground for most of the way, but the road was deserted and the scenery spectacular, as always. I saw what I could, but mostly I drove like a fiend, taking advantage of my temporary bachelorhood to reprise the multiple-G cornering techniques of my youth. I had the window open and the heater on, another solitary driving convention, and took full advantage of the the horsepower. My partner is a good sport but doesn't like 6000 rpm in 3rd gear or sudden deceleration, you see. (Can't say I blame her, because most passengers don't!) But there's something about holding a fat leather-covered steering wheel in your hands that gives you the confidence of a madman, and I raved all the way home.

Meanwhile, there's the iBook. Hundreds of thousands of people are snapping them up as fast as they come off the trucks and still a few keep whining about them. Today I read an article by a misanthropic fellow defending his dislike of the iBook (the very idea!) and not having much fun in the process, I judged. Of course not! This is like being an in-your-face dentist on Easter morning or Halloween night. What could he possiblly hope to accomplish? I'm having Extreme Fun with my iBook and I wish he were, too.

Part of the reason I'm all excited is the difference this thing has made in my life. Where we live now it's impossible to have a daily paper delivered. The weekly county paper is available at the Village Store, a converted 40-year-old singlewide, whenever the old lady decides to open it. The establishment is about a mile away down a dirt road, a very pleasant stroll on most days. Just watch out for the very big cows occasionally allowed to nibble the roadside grass! (If these horned behemoths were ambling down a rural Maryland road, someone would call the cops, but the furry beasts are actually quite docile.) So you see, reading a daily newspaper over coffee and Cheerios is not an option, or rather wasn't one, until I got my wireless iBook. Now I just open 'er up on the counter and check out the Washington Post! Until yesterday I still missed the funnies, but then I discovered the Houston Chronicle Web site. Glory hallelujah!!

Getting my daily dose of Doonesbury and Dilbert is great, but surfing from the sofa is even better. Yes, I know it sounds silly, and you have a perfectly fine desk with a comfy chair for using your computer, but you will never feel the same way about the Internet once you've tried it from anywhere in the house! Mark my words, we'll soon be expecting our laptops to connect like this. ("What, no Web sites?!? Stupid piece o' crap!")

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the critics wailing about no this or that on these machines are missing the point. These are enabling devices, not "normal" computers. Mine is never turned off. I just open up, click a few times, and read my email or check the weather, whenever and wherever I want. In fact, the iBook does too much! After having one for a while, it's easy to imagine the next step: eliminating or concealing the operating system altogether! We're closer to Star Trek than we think.

I think we're closer to lots more things than we think, actually. Closer to understanding how we think our world into being, for instance, and closer to realizing we get what we look for. Closer to not needing these cool toys to communicate, either. Maybe we're even closer to realizing there are more things to life than turning a quick buck by raping the planet.

Damn our temporary blindness, damn the developers, and damn all the poor ignorant sonsabitches who've gone before. We've built a world of greed and broken connections, left stinking muddy footprints over the bones of our brothers, and now my father-in-law is lying somewhere with tubes sticking into his arms, surrounded by strangers. If this kind of nonsense goes out with the century, I'll sit outside naked in the snow and beat a drum until my arm falls off. Hell, I'll go kiss a big furry cow. You can come too!

(I might even let you use my iBook. :-)

John H. Farr also edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives have links to all past columns and occasional snippets of biographical info.

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February 10, 2012