Whiteclay part 11

The Happytown sign was a decrepit old billboard sitting along the east end of town along Highway 18. Some long ago patchouli shop set up by white college kids who came here to score peyote and get in touch with their inner Earth Goddess. I believe we failed to get any video of the sign, and that would be criminal if we did, because it's just to fucking perfect.

I had thought that the current coffee shop there, "Higher Ground" was run by similar types, but a quick web search revealed that it's actually owned by some middle aged-white women out to spread the love of Jesus.

The Natives, you should know, hate white do-gooders, especially the tie-dye wearing liberal-until-graduation set, and especially the bible thumpers, nearly as much as they hate the government. As well they should. This was not a problem for us. We had not come here to dance with the buffalo or wrestle with our spirit warriors in the sweat lodge. Our party is free of delusion to the point of being dysfunctional. Especially Dan, who has no soul and only makes a fool of himself when he pretends to have one in that flat cracker monotone of his.

So no, we had not come as messiahs to free the cute little race of natural born hippies from the system. We had come merely to observe, to mingle, to drink the local poison with the locals, and so we would.

We drove up and down both of Pine Ridge's paved roads for a few minutes, seeing what there was to see, downtown (which we've discussed) Big Bat's, the school (a light skinned child was being bullied by some of the redder children. Far be it for me to guess why.) The hospital, which is quite nice, the homes peeled paint, broken windows, outhouses, marks from kerosene fires. Some of the worst had laundry on the line or some other obvious sign that people lived there. This is just what we saw from the car.

We determined that we should get out of the car and walk through one of the neighborhoods to get a better feel for the place. So we pulled onto one of the dirt paths in the south part of town, parked where we found some space, got out, locked the door.