No Muddy Clothes/No Crystals
This is private property I intoned in my pitifully inept attempt at sounding Scottish, so that I could relate to Bernadette the morning tidbit.
I had been sitting on the steps leading up to the pool, debating whether or not I should risk ringworm by petting the motel cat, when a van pulled into the lot and parked. A man and a woman exited the vehicle. I must admit that I unfairly profiled them to be maintenance workers as this was a motel in Arkansas, and they were black, and it was not quite yet seven in the morning and nobody checks into a motel at seven in the morning.
As they approached I swallowed a sip of warm coffee and croaked out a gravelly good morning and then in response to the man's question I said I was doing ok, was just trying to wake up. He then began asking me things to which I had no answer. I told him that really I had no idea what was what, or for that matter where they could park or when they could check in.
It was then that the female half of the proprietor couple came out from the dwelling attached to the pool area and alerted all of us--me, the cat, and the black couple, that this was private property. Now I must admit that initially I just assumed this was plain and simple good old fashioned racial intolerance, damn the century, we still don't allow no blacks around here, but as I write this, on a miniature device, seated in the provided chair out front the room, number 5, with my boot rested up on the front bumper of the shiny, rented Dodge truck, I am seeing two fellow guests exit their rooms and one is black and the other is Mexican, so out the window goes my racial intolerance theory.
But earlier by some freak of default I had been deemed the master of linguistic interpretation and was thereby adopted to be the translator.
The Scotts were now in full tandem force and after they said something the black couple would look at me with raised eyebrows and I would give them the regrettable news, and it was all regrettable, and they would shake their heads. The best I could offer in way of commiseration was the most subtle of smirks and a barely noticeable sideways tilt of my head.
In the end the black couple just disappeared into the abyss of the unwanted and misunderstood and I had another cup of coffee and waited for my party to coalesce so that I could drive the all of us from these Hot Springs on in to Mt. Ida, where we would in due time meet an array of interesting crystal miners and collect in various fashion some interesting specimens .
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