OMNI, September 1980

Jung Ideas/UFO Update
Margaret Ludeman, a Californian in her eighties, is a medium for a spirit entity named Hilarion.  Commander of a UFO fleet hovering above the moon...  ...Lydia Stalnaker, spirit medium, spiritual healer, and UFO contactee.

March 2015

     "I had transportation when I went to jail.  When I got out, I didn't.  Somebody Stole my van."  Wednesday.  Two twelve-hour shifts, on each of the first two days of this work week, have gone flying past.  Today, working a simple nine hours shall surely be a snap.  At 6 AM, I am on a connecting bus to work listening to another passenger.  Thursday.  4:30 AM.  I am at a bus stop up the street, waiting for a connection.  I go to a trash can to toss my dental floss.  A couple of guys are standing there, discussing some kind of plan.  One asks me, "What's goin' on?  Want to buy a cigarette?"  Twenty-four hours later.  I'm on a bus up the street.  We are approaching the connecting bus with the customary anticipation and bleeding-ulcer worry that it is about to take off without us.  One passenger calls to the driver, "Honk at that bus!"  Another adds, "With the horn!"  We make it this morning.  An hour later, I am stepping onto the final bus in my daily journey to work.  The driver asks me, "What's the plan?"  Hey, pal, the passengers are supposed to be the ones who ask the weird questions.  He asks me, "Goin' to work?"  He wants to know where I work.  Down the parkway, we pick up a girl.  He wants to know if she goes to school, where she goes to school.  "Is their football team still 5A?"  He wants to know if the son of the city's football team's owner still goes to school there.  Saturday.  I will be working a nine-hour shift on this day until further notice, complete with a half-hour walk from the bus stop.  I have lost count of the number of customers who have come in, who all have casts on their right arm.  (They've all slipped on the ice?)  One guy comes in.  He has a brace on his right wrist, a gold cross on a gold chain around his neck, and a knit shirt with "Lucky Ass Club" on the front, along with a picture of a donkey head.
     Monday.  A quarter to 5 AM.  The train station.  A guy in a hoodie comes across the tracks in the dark.   He stops to ask, "Excuse me, sir, do you know if there are any plug ins for my phone?"  I tell him that I don't remember seeing any.  He ponders this, then replies, "I think I'll ask this guy."  Behind me is the guy who comes around to empty the trash and power wash the platform.  Six days later, on Sunday, I am outside my door in the late March afternoon.  We've had some nice days in the seventies.  This usually means that our local pack of Japanese motorcycle-riding kids comes out to travel the boulevard.  They like to stop into the parking lot on my corner for a few minutes, along with their car-driving friends, before they all head to the next parking lot over the concrete rainbow.  Well, right now, they have a real treat in store.  Behind a couple of cars at the intersection is a police car.  At the same intersection, when the light turns green, a couple of long pickup trucks takes off drag racing.  The police car's lights go on, and it goes after them.  'Tis Spring Break in Westwood.  No sand, and no bikini-clad coeds under the sun.  Just a cloud of dissipating tire smoke, gringo.  Wednesday.  I am up the street at a connecting bus stop.  There, in the dark, about a minute before the bus comes, I watch in the dark as a small figure carries a sleeping bag in a bundle from across the boulevard.  I listen as a female voice asks each person for "any spare change."  The following afternoon, I am on the train home from work.  A kid in a hoodie, sunglasses, and stubble is walking up and down the car, asking each passenger as he goes along if he can have a dollar because he just got out of the hospital, and he's trying to get back home to a town upstate.  Someone says no, and he replies, "Wish me luck."
     Saturday morning finds me at the deathburger around 5:30 AM.  I commune with a collection of street folks.  There are a couple of guys with long greay hair and beards.  There are a couple of kids with mohawks and leather gear, and a girl with pink hair.  And then there is the guy wearing what may be a woman's coat.  He's walking around, looking on seats, checking closed doors.  I watch him as he checks the door to the women's restroom.  And occasionally, he goes outside to yell, "FUCK!"  The following day, I am back at my old deathburger for lunch.  There is a group of Caucasian seniors in suits and dresses congregating toward a couple of tables.  I ask a familiar employee in Spanish, "What are all these white people doing here?"  She tells me that they are brothers.  Brothers?  "They are Christians," she expounds.  I see.  It's a fraternity...  From my table, I watch a derelict with lime earbuds stumble toward one entrance, which is sectioned off with caution tape.  There is fresh cement poured in front of it.  She motions for him to go around to the other entrance.  He comes hobbling inside and begins complaining to anyone who may be interested.  "Why is she telling me to go around?"  (Uh, caution tape...and wet cement.)  He confronts her, and a girl from behind the counter explains to him that she will call the police if he does not leave, yes, through the other exit.  He responds with, "FUUUUCK!  This is bullshit!  FUUUUCK!  BITCH!"  I'll bite.  What is it this weekend with deathburgers and "fuck?"

     Vail is vacationland.  Grooming fleets, passionate chefs, stylish haberdashers...  No matter how much the outside world changes, family vacations are still sacred.  ...(living in Chicago teaches you to lock all your doors; Vail, not so much)...  "I go back to Chicago and say 'hi' and they growl at you.  (Here), you don't have to worry about that."  - Vail Lifestyle, 2015

      Monday.  I get upstairs to the shower around 3:30 AM.  In a dark adjoining bedroom are police lights reflecting through the window, on a wall.  I look out to see a police car at the gas station across the street.  A half an hour later, I am next to the gas station at the bus stop.  A young female police officer is shuttling back and forth between two police cars.  She has a metal clipboard with a paper on it.  She gives it to someone in the back seat of one of the cars.  A fuel tanker makes a fast stop at an unexpected red light at the corner before coming around into an entrance to the station on a cross street.  In the waning hours of night, a ballet of vehicles ensues.  The police cars move, a pickup truck backs up, and the tanker comes around and out onto the boulevard before backing up again.
     A couple of days later, I am working a late shift.  I'm at a bus stop on the University of Denver campus at a quarter to noon.  Across the street is a new housing complex for students.  In the huge lobby windows are images of what surely must be prospective tenants.  You know, the kind of folks the landlords would prefer.   Not to worry, this is a diverse collection of races.  Well, as diverse as possible I suppose, in their mid to late twenties.  Here's a young Vietnamese couple in the sunshine.  Here's a guy enjoying a relaxing cup of coffee.  A Caucasian couple appears to be in love, the light suggesting a sunset.  It's difficult to tell, as all of the images are giant heads.  My bus shows up, and onboard is a middle-aged guy on his phone.  He's telling someone at the other end that, if he gets "a job and all that shit," he "will be out in 4 months instead of 6."  It's a new world.  Some eight hours later, the bus is coming back the other way, past the same images.  Now they are hidden in the dark.  There are young women out in the streetlight.  It's a groovy campus vibe.  It brings back memories of another campus, where I got out in 60.

     ...the transformations...kept moving up Market Street, up Larimer Street, into the Platte Valley, spilling off to the left and right until today the swath of downtown from Cherry Creek and the Platte well up Brighton Boulevard is exploding, with people crowding outdoor decks and outdoor patios and fighting for parking and seats at the town's hottest new restaurants.  - Westword, Best of Denver 2015

     Saturday.  Deathburger.  Twenty after 5 AM.  The place is late to open.  It turns out that there is trouble with the grill.  The guy in the front of the line asks to use the men's room.  When he comes out, he sits down without ordering anything.  The next guy is a regular white stubble and white tousled hair.  He looks like a sea captain.  He orders and heads to a table with eight coffee creams, where he wipes half the table with a wet napkin.  A trio of youth are next, two guys and a girl.  The guys have a seat as the girl orders.  Last Saturday, it was two other guys with a girl in here.  Punk rockers.  This trio is from 2015.  I watch as a BMW pulls up and parks in the deathburger lot.  The driver goes over to the gas station next door.  Some minutes later, a pickup parks at the gas station, and three guys come into the deathburger.
     Monday.  I'm at the same gas station in the morning.  The windows are boarded up on one side.  Inside, a customer asks what happened to the windows.  "A drunk?  Goddamned drunks.  I got rear-ended."  By someone using cocaine.  He says it took forever for the police to show up.  When they did, he asked an officer what took so long.  He claims that the officer told him, "I was taking my kids home."  For lunch, I am up the street at my old deathburger.  At the intersection is a skinny guy with a grey crew cut.  He's in a sleeveless shirt which reads "word."  At the deathburger, the owner is escorting out a derelict for reasons which do not appear to be apparent.

     There is a brown chicken running loose in my front yard for the last several days.  It needs to go home.  If it's yours and you don't want it, please tell me what to fee [sic] it.  - Nextdoor Westwood, 3/30

     I'm back in my neighborhood around a quarter to nine PM.  Even though I have a green light, I must run through the intersection to avoid being run over by a couple of speeding police cars with their lights flashing.  During my short walk home, four more go flying past.  The next morning, at a quarter to six AM, I am at my old deathburger.  Which appears to be my new, old deathburger.  These continue to be strange days at work as my new schedule is a closing one for the first time in twenty years.  Every pickup truck in the neighborhood this morning is chomping at the bit to burn rubber.  Around the corner, straight on the green light, anyplace.  Inside, I hear one guy in line tell another that he "wanted to take the truck out this morning."  The other answers, "I would have gotten up at 3 AM."  Wow.  What do I not know, having lived in Oklahoma for twelve years, about pickup trucks?  I'm working in an old money neighborhood; Trader Joe's, a pancake house, a bakery...  The bus doesn't come until an hour after we close.  Shortly before 8 AM, I am out at the bus stop with a little guy who has no front teeth.  He has on a backpack with a rolled up American flag sticking out.  He asks what time the bus comes.  A few minutes later, he's bent over shaking.  He starts coughing.  The bus appears down the street, and he says, "Speak of the devil."