Repairs Underway At The Alamo

Jose and the boys had worked on the van since dark. More accurately, the amigos drank Buds, smoked Marlboros and held a spotlight while Jose crawled over and under the engine till man and machine became one, with equal parts grease and blood upon both.

They had a television in the van. A couple of amigos stared through the back window at a fast-talking Spanish dude leering at a cute, bouncy chick in a short skirt wearing three pounds of eyeliner.

The repair work took place in the garage and drive-in movie section of the Alamo, that is, the yard, long since relieved of grass as the Mexicans made pioneering strides to save the planet from global warming.

They had drastically cut carbon dioxide emissions from lawnmowers, nay, eliminated the need for lawnmowers entirely, by killing the vegetation in our hood. The Alamo courtyard had the barren beauty of a desert, marred only by cigarette butts, bottle caps and the occasional spare transmission.

I was preparing to tear myself away from that idyllic sanctuary to watch the State of the Union address. This required a trip to the office, as I kept no television in the compound.

One tube had already been shot after one of these presidential episodes. I pleaded shock and awe and paid the fine. Now, I hid the firearms and locked up the ammo. This made it more difficult to put the two together in a moment of patriotic fervor.

Just kidding.

You never know when the Waco killers, aka the feds or the Clinton clan, reascending to the hereditary presidency, might want to start a conversation with tanks and firebombs. We have women and children at the Alamo, not that it matters when the stakes are high, when the future of civilization is at stake, under siege by Saudi Arabian assassins, Texas polygamists or Idaho tax dodgers.

When you have a little chat with a peace-loving Democrat, wear Kevlar.

That's the problem they have with Bush's war.

He stole their mojo. It's the only big war in 90 years Democrats didn't start.

I watched the current War President speak. I have little to say except that the extraordinary Americans he saluted at the end represented the opposite of everything else he uttered. They appeared to be people who took action, who assumed responsibility for themselves, who expected no government handout. They appeared to be something that much, if not most, of the population is not.

The president even mentioned climate change, showing he has educated himself on this matter as well as he studied the ancient tribal blood feuds of the Middle East.

When he broached immigration, I headed back to the Alamo with the speech on the radio.

The amigos had the van in the street, its rear wheels on the asphalt and the front wheels elevated, chained on a trailer behind a pickup. The whole rig looked mechanically suspect.

The driver's door was open. Jose wore a cowboy hat, saddled in the pilot's seat, pointed up like the cockpit of a DC-3.

It struck me that Jose could have been Slim Pickens in "Dr. Strangelove," riding the big rod out of the bomb bay, a suicide bomber nuking those shiftless Ruskies.

The truck lurched forward. Down the road they went, the door open, the hood up. On the TV through the back was George Bush with the grave trolls Cheney and Pelosi seated behind him. The leadership.

They all turned a corner on a mission of repair.

I got the firearms and ammo together. I waited to hear the crash, to hear the explosion, to hear again the ancient sirens that haunt our hood.

Phil Lucas is executive editor of The News Herald in Panama City, Fla. Contact him at plucas@pcnh.com. To find out more about Lucas and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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