The President, the Governor, and a Parrot Walk into a Bus...

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The President, the Governor, and a Parrot Walk into a Bus…

Last week we saw the televised images of poor people in Martha’s Vineyard collapsing from the summer heat at a job fair. Leaping gracefully to action like a gazelle on a mission, the President immediately boarded his armored bus (and surely it is a hybrid), Merovingian 1, and betook himself to the relief of His people.

As the armored bus blew by displaced folks forced to wait by the side of the road, many raised their clenched fists in salute and cried “Strelnikov!”

Or possibly not.

Some scriveners have compared the grim, light-absorbing, windowless Presidential wheels to a police mortuary van or perhaps Darth Vadar’s Death Star, but the careful observer will note that it is actually one of the dark obsidian slabs that keep popping up in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

On its journey to the east the Presidential ‘bus shared road-space with Texas Governor Rick Perry’s bus. Although superficially similar – the wheels on all buses go ‘round and ‘round -- confusing the two vehicles would be quite impossible. The Presidential barge features a bar stocked with French wines and all the makins’ for martinis. The Governor’s rented wagon boasts a foam cooler full of ice and Shiner.

The horn of the President’s look-at-me goes “Toot-toot.” The horn of Governor’s rented vote-for-me plays “The Aggie War Hymn.”

The President’s rolling hideout is surrounded by armed Secret Service dudes in dark glasses. The Governor’s mobile deer stand has a gun rack with an old .30-.30 and a J. C. Higgins shotgun. When Rick Perry is President he will protect the Secret Service.

On the back of the President’s bus a Raleigh 10-speed is mounted; on the front of the Governor’s bus are some steer horns from an I10 truck stop near Marfa.

The President’s bus was armored in Canada. Maybe there was no mechanic or armorer still employed in the USA. But the Governor’s bus is not armored; if Carlos the Hamster or some other unwashed liberator were to attack it, Rick Perry’s glare would cause the Russian-made 40-mike-mikes to fall to the ground in a palsy, modify their lifestyle, and take up gardening and antique collecting.

But Governor Perry did not make the pilgrimage to the Holy Island of Martha’s Vineyard, for that was pacified long ago, and the sons and daughters of farmers and fishermen were set to cleaning the houses of their mainland betters. Governor Perry knew that somewhere, along the Brazos de Dios or on some dusty jogging trail, there were coyotes that needed taming and infinitives that needed splitting, and so he turned his trusty steed west.

Martha’s Vineyard is a small island off the coast of Massachusetts. The principle towns on MV, as the in-the-know call it, are: Tsarkoye Seloe, Potemkin Village, Brigadoon, Hanging gardens of Babylon, and Versailles, although the upstart resort of Xanadu is said to be the coming scene. To this Bower of Bliss, grounded as it is in the reality of the shared sacrifices of all Americans, the leaders of government, finance, art, cinema, theatre, publishing, broadcasting, and law withdraw every summer to do penance in sackcloth and ashes from Abercrombie & Fitch.

Some old Tag Heuer watchfaces will be missing from Martha’s Vineyard this year; those number-spinners who work at Standard and Poors will soon probably summer (and winter, and summer, and winter…) on another island, Devil’s Island, but that’s another matter.

And it is a curious triangle trade: people from middle America visit Washington and New York, people from Washington and New York visit Martha’s Vineyard, and the original inhabitants of Martha’s Vineyard, who can no longer afford to live there, well, who knows where they end up?

On a bus to nowhere?

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