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O'Kane and the Chicken Bus.; Road & Track, circa 1972-ish
Topic Started: Feb 1 2013, 09:15 AM (470 Views)
Dewey
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HOLY CARP!!!
So I was sitting in my office at church #2 yesterday, and Erika, the Executive Director of Montana de Luz walks in (the church rents them office space; her office is just three doors away from mine). We started talking, and at one point in some story, she joking made a reference to living in Guatemala with her husband, who, conveniently enough, is Guatemalan, and having to ride The Chicken Bus. I laughed immediately. Everyone who's traveled - I mean really traveled, not just passed through a place, but really experienced it at any reasonable level - knows The Chicken Bus. Many countries have their particular version of it, but they're all basically the same, and something that leaves a lifelong memory. I know the Honduran Chicken Bus; you may know others.

But whenever I hear the phrase, I'm immediately about twelve years old again, and reading my uncle's Road & Track magazine. I was never a real gearhead, but the pictures were cool, and every other issue of so would feature an essay written by Dick O'Kane. I don't really know anything about him, except that I remember loving reading his articles, especially one from the early 1970s that was just titled, "O'Kane & the Chicken Bus." It was a really fun article that dealt - of course - with The Chicken Bus (in this particular case, in Morocco), and a number of other things. I remember laughing at this article, reading it and re-reading it, and just feeling like I was experiencing all the hilarity and absurdity he describes.

So this morning, I thought I'd try to find the article. The internet being the weird and wonderful place that it is, I actually found a newsletter from some driving club in Alabama, where some poor bastard actually hand-transcribed the whole thing. He made a few errors, but I'm not going to fix them; you'll figure it out. Also, it's definitely way-pre-9/11, and is a tad politically incorrect, so if you're offended by some of the comments, just realize it was a different time. So, with that lengthy introduction, I offer you "O'Kane & the Chicken Bus." I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

***

OKAY, HERE it is—one last time and then that’s it. All you Canadians and Germans and international hair freaks and Englishmen in your natty caravans gather round, bring your own wine and pay attention because tomorrow I’m going to Granada and I’m not ever going to run it down again. Not ever. San. Baraka. Enough! Now, "Will you like Morocco?" Probably not, unless you’re a hood or a car nut. Then you’ll love it. Otherwise, just take the one-day excursion over and come right back, with your patience and sanity intact.

See, it’s not like anything you’re probably familiar with. it’s kind of like being dumped off a ferry or a freighter into the 12th century—complete with all the inconveniences. discomforts and annoyances you’d expect the 12th century to have. But the driving! If you like to drive, man, that alone is worth the price of the trip. It’s driving you might have dreamed about but didn’t think existed. It’s the kind of driving a bunch of visionary car freaks might think up over a lot of beer late at night. But no matter how much you love driving, don’t go unless you’re ready to put up with some inconveniences, let’s say. Little hangups that might spoil your trip unless you’re prepared and equipped for them.

Like, for instance, get your wife some cast-iron underwear, because sooner or later she’s going to get fed up with being subtly pawed in the marketplace and she’s going to kill some Arab, and that’s not fair, ’cause Moroccans are non-violent people. And bring your own bedding and cookery stuff, because many places it’s difficult to find reasonably-priced bed or board without lots of little unauthorized beings in it. Bring a French phrase book and practice saying "La."’ It means "No" in Arabic and it’s your one most valuable word. That, or bring a couple thousand extra dollars and two or three hundred cartons of cigarettes; Morocco is a land perennially short of spare change and smokes and everyone you meet will ask you for one, the other or both.

Another thing—get used to being stared at by a friendly, curious mob 24 hours a day, and don’t ever turn your back on anything you’d like to keep; there’s no malevolence in the thievery, it’s just that Mohammed will assume that anything left just lying there was left there for him by Allah. When you go to buy anything, never accept the first price. See, in Morocco oh, hell, I’m getting ’way oil it again. I was going to tell you about the driving, wasn’t I? I’ll cover the cautions as I get to them. But for God`s sake bring your own vehicle! Otherwise, you’ll wind up on the chicken bus.

Yeah, the driving. Well, first you have to get there, and the best way to get your car and person there from the States is on a Jugolinija freighter out of New York, which will land you and your car in Tangier or Casablanca for about $280 off season. Bring lots of cheese, crackers and peanut butter, though. From Spain, take the ferry from Algeciras to Ceuta—~a buck for you, less than ten for the car. No hassle with customs, usually, though if you have long hair they’ll probably make you cut it, and your only real problem when you land is to get out of whatever city you’re in and all of a sudden the
smoke and the noise and the hustlers and the billions of Arabs on motorbikes dwindle to a memory in the mirror, and there you are on the bloody moon, already—most fantastic landscape you’ve ever seen the sky’s so intensely electrically vibrating blue it hurts your eyes to look at it and everything’s so clear that that big ol mountain range just marches on over the horizon without hazing out first. Lord, it’s like the day of Creation just before they poured the air in! And there’s a road through it! Your road, baby, with nothing else on it. Now drive. Imagine driving flat out for two or three hours without even seeing another car. Imagine having utterly fantastic, don`t-believe-it scenery that changes its whole character every 20 minutes for three whole days. Imagine coming on a motorcycle cop, keeping your foot down, blaring the air horn and watching him grin and wave as you howl past at something over a hundred. Wheee! And wonder of wonders, all that fantastic, deserted scenery is right out there where you can see it, not hidden behind something. That’s one advantage of having so much illiteracy—when 80 percent of the people can’t read, there’s no point in having billboards!

Gas stations seem to crop up just when you’re beginning to think about needing one, and the coupons you buy at the borders and the bank’ll get you a 30 percent discount. Get out and stretch when you stop for gas, `cause the guy has to pump it in by hand and it`ll take awhile (I mentioned the place is like the 12th century—actually, their mechanical and medical technology is mostly French, which is somewhat better—maybe 17th century). Oh, yeah, maps. Get a good Michelin map of the place, because the road maps they hand out in the Moroccan tourist offices are designed to keep you
in Morocco for a long, long time.What kind of car to bring? Hell, anything! We blasted around all over Morocco for three months in a wild assortment of vehicles that included an elderly Porsche, an MG, a Jag sedan, a 2CV, a motorcycle, our mighty, hundred-dollar VW truck and a bicycle, and everyone of them was a perfect gas. And I watched one guy get off a freighter with—yeah—a great, mother Fire—breathing Harley chopper! Custom fork, megs, ape-hangers, everything chrome, the whole route. Damned Arabs went wild! Cat comes off thedock making about 9000 in third, this Arab on a
little buzzy motorbike looks back and sees him coming and gets so excited, he rides right off into the water, floosh! Doesn’t matter what you’re riding—but again, bring your own transportation. It’s that or the chicken bus.

Now wait, before you get all packed and revved up, let me tell you about the, um, road hazards, let’s call them. Every now and then you see a wreck beside the road, usually just a rusted frame, stripped of everything that can be pried loose, unbolted, chopped out or just bent back and forth until it breaks off—grim, lonely testaments to the fact that somebody Didn’t Know or Wasn’t Watching. We saw our first one just outside of Tangier, and a moment later we
found what had probably caused it "Oh, NO! There was a herd of goats up in that tree!" "Yeah, Jeff, sure . . . Jesus!" Just as I’m getting totally distracted by the fact that there really are herds of goats ’way up in the trees, I suddenly realize that there is a herd of goats also in the road, and for the next medium-length eternity everything bleats and screeches and leaps in the air . . ."Ba-a—a-a-!" remarks the goat standing on the roof."Monsieur! Monsieur!" Six Arabs who’d been examining their nails under the trees while waiting for their goats to come down are running toward us waving their arms and goatsticks. "Monsieur! Geef me cigarette! Donnez-moi an-cigarette! You got wan dirham. Geef me tabac! Monsieur!"

The goats, their keepers, ourselves and the borrowed Porsche have all survived miraculously unscathed but the car has stalled and I’ve got a dandy case of the Shakes coming on, can’t get the damned thing started, and while I sit there grinding the starter these Arabs are running through their languages, soliciting cigarettes and money in English, French, Spanish, German, Danish, Arabic, Swahili and three dialects of Berber. Finally, I get the ignition sequence all in order, the car rumbles to life, the goat on the roof marches down across the hood and we’re off. "Mein Herr! Monsieur! Mai fren!" The goatherds run waving after us, sure that we just haven`t heard them properly. They dwindle to dots, still running.

Soon after that, I’m busy pressing in a mental indent about mobs of goats being the Number One Road Hazard in Morocco, and I’m so into watching for goats that Number Two almost gets us; we’re winding up into the clouds digging the giddy drops and noting that there are no guard rails when this kid in a ragged djalaba suddenly rushes out right into the road in front of us to sell us some red berries he’s got. No, Virginia, we did not fall off the hill and we did not run over the kid. Only thing I can figure is that Allah or whoever runs the mountain suddenly provided us with another three feet of roadway where there had been only a serious fall before. A little farther down the road, though, we found where ol’ Allah had gotten that little piece of road, for here, the surface simply wasn’t there all of a sudden, and neither was the roadbed. Apparently it had rained or something, the road had gotten soggy and had slid on off down the hill. No warning or sawhorse or anything like that, of course. You’re supposed to know, that’s all. Number Three. Number Four . . . oh, hell, you’ll find out about it. And Five and Eleven and Eighty-Six. Be careful of that one—or rather those. Big huge mothering Volvo trucks that rumble along the coast road using all the roadway they’re so damned wide, blowing this gout of dense black smoke out the side (one imagines they’re carbureted to burn oily rags) so that to pass them you have to just charge blindly on into the smoke and hope there’s nothing coming, because you’re already into the shoulder.

Cops? Hmm. Frankly, I don’t know what to tell you about Moroccan cops. Every one I saw I just blew the horn at him and he got the hell out of the way. Two times when I was riding with other people, though, cops ordered them to stop. One guy did, the cop went all over his car, found a taillight that didn’t work and fined him two dollars on the spot. The other guy-—we’re charging downhill near escape velocity in this clattering, shrieking 2CV truck without a muffler, engine wound up ’way past the critical point, this mad, shaggy Dutchman at the wheel, the back jammed full of the standard tightly-compressed travel—pak of Arab ladies shagging a ride to town, can’t hear yourself think, already, Christ, a cop. Standard Arab cop with the grey uniform, little moustache, holster with no gun and a bicycle—only this one’s got a real snazzy red racing bicycle, so I figure he must be a Highway Patrolman, and he’s stopping us. Or rather, he’d like to stop us; he holds up his hand and steps into the road, begins to realize that this isn’t a very good idea at all, and j-u-s-t manages to get out of the way in time. "Ve cannot stop now," the Dutchman screams over the din. "There comes ahead a great hill." Sure enough, within two minutes we’re going stitcha-stitcha-stitcha in first gear, crawling up the mountainside in a series of little lurches. From the back comes a dismal moan from the Arab ladies; the cop is chasing us, pumping furiously up the hill a quarter mile back. Too late. The gasping Citroen heaves itself over the summit, the stitching builds to a whirr, then to a howl and then there we are again, watching for pistons to come through the sheet metal while the cop just ceases to be. "Ve stop maybe on the vay back," says the Dutchman. "He is a pain in the ass, that cop. Some day I run him over."On the vay back the cop tried again and ve don’t stop then either, and nothing ever came of it. But don’t giggle too hard—I heard tell of still another guy who got busted for some great traffic sin or other, and after four years in a Moroccan prison they had to let him out, as he was dying from the TB he’d contracted. You pays your money and you takes your chance, I guess.

I’m going to tell you about just a few other cautions, but first I’m gonna put on my djalaba. Neat one, huh? All wool,
comes right down to your ankles, nice and roomy inside, got a big floppy hood—greatest thing ever to drive in, on a cold Moroccan night cause it keeps your legs warm, too. Got it in Marrakech for three dollars—that’s the going price, though the guy will start out asking fifty bucks. Marrakech—there’s a fine town to spend about three hours in, but no more. It’s New York, only with Arabs all rushing around screaming at each other to get the hell out of the way, hustle-bustle, busy-busy, run-around, keep—up, keep-up, you know. New York City on a Monday morning. The whole place is Royal Moroccan Road Hazard Number One Hundred. Ever been to New Jersey? Know those insane traffic circles? In Jersey, all you have to do is figure time/distance/speed of the whole mass of Fords and Chevvies and stuff, then pick out a hole and zap?! You`re in.Marrakech is different. Because in Marrakech, you come into these wild, churning circles trying to figure the trajectories of thousands of cars, millions of motorbikes, plus camels, mule-carts, handcarts, bicycles, farm wagons, buggies and hordes of tiny donkeys, each staggering around under four hundred pounds of grain and an Arab, all of it moving at different, changing speeds in this great, swirling, stewing, sweating rush of animals, vehicles, turbans and
pointed yellow shoes. Gawd! Prudence, my friend, prudence! You don’t want to have an accident here, no matter how trivial. Nick a wing in Jersey and all you’ll get is a bored cop and a couple of morons who rear-end each other trying to see as they go by. Startle a local off his donkey here, though, and the whole damned city turns out to crowd in and watch, the Royal Moroccan Horse Marines come with a whole battalion, and you could be there for days, trying to answer questions in Arabic while the 40-member Marrakech All-Star Portable Commotion tries to sell you beads, crocheted skull caps, tin daggers, souvenir fezes, hash, blankets . . . ah, good old Marrakech. I got stuck there for six weeks. Was on my way out, actually, when the Great Darkness came and settled on our truck—and that brings me to the greatest caution of all; before you bring anything mechanical to Morocco, have it checked over thoroughly. and bring lots of spare parts and a shop manual. Otherwise, you’ll have to buy repairs there. See, when he’s confronted with any mechanism more complicated than a bent nail, the average Moroccan Arab is in very serious trouble. (I don’t know if this is true of Arabs in general, but if it is, it explains how they manage to lose mechanized wars with such marvelous alacrity. It also explains why Ivan of Arabia insists on flying his own airplanes. Ivan knows.) After half an hour in the shop of Mohammed the Fixer of Cars, I too knew what Ivan knows. For forty dollars American, Mohammed and his assistant, Mohammed, had agreed to do all of the nasty-work necessary to completely rebuild a fabulously bent VW engine, and then would guarantee that the rebirth would be viable. Fine.

I left them the truck, and three days later I stopped in. There in the middle of the big open yard was my engine, all in pieces, and there’s Mohammed and Mohammed and another guy who was introduced as Mohammed the Seller of Parts,
they’ve got a big pot of mint tea going, they’re taking hits off this big long pipe with a little bitty bowl, and the main Mohammed is trying to measure the crank journals with a ruler, already. That’s when I decided I’d better stick around as a sort of, um, technical advisor. Talk about Problems in Communications! Try finding "micrometer" in your Little Handy French Dictionary. Or "machine shop." Or best of all, try sneaking around "Mag-na-fluxing." "A wonderful machine with which to regard prudently the crankshaft was tried, among many, many others, and it took three days and forty pots of tea and a whole bag of the stuff they were putting in the pipe to get the idea across. (Ah, Monsieur, such a wonderful machine does not exist in all Morocco! But no matter—to see if the Great Bent Piece is cracked, one merely holds it up, thus and beats upon it with a great iron bar, BLANG! BLANG thus. See, it makes a fine ringing sound and can therefore be used again! Ahmed, more tea! Ah, in but three more weeks Monsieur)"Three more weeks!?" "Alas, Mohammed the Seller of Parts—may Allah witness his perfidy—he has ordered the wrong parts, Monsieur What is one to do?" "We’re getting
out of here today—right now!’ I fumed at Jeffi when I got back to the hotel. "I’m not gonna wait those three weeks in Marrakech.
"Fine," she said. "I’ll steer and you push."
"No, I mean it. We’ll walk if we have to. We’ll crawl!"
"Well there’s always the bus."
"Yeah, I guess there always is. You want to try it?"
"The chicken bus?"
"The chicken bus."
"I’m game if you are."

Scream, yell, bleat, cackle, the whole world is a swirling flailing mass of wool and elbows and live chickens tied by the feet, everything making this incredible din, shoving and pushing! "Balek! Balek!” and this super-laden hand-cart thumps into a donkey and the donkey and its rider and five tons of grain go fwisshh all over the ground and they all get up braying and screaming and berating and slipping in the grain and this woman’s copping a big load of it while they fight and just e—v—e-r-y-b—o-d-y is here today because the chicken bus is going and everybody wants to get on! Yeah! Funny little cat in a torn djalaba, stoned out of his mind trying to sell tickets, trying to get it together, giggling ’cause he can’t, only nobody thinks it’s funny but him, and somebody starts to scream at him and that really breaks him up, and meanwhile three people start a high-level yammerthon with the chicken bus conductor because they don’t want to put their live chickens on the roof, they want to take ’em inside, and inside it’s not much better because it’s hot as all hell, everybody’s yelling and screaming and jumping up and changing their seats, and this one guy’s got a big sack with him that grunts and squirms, and the driver’s yelling at him to put it on the roof, and he’s yelling back, and two blind holy men are blessing the bus and begging at the TOP OF THEIR LUNGS and babies are screaming and the conductor’s screaming and the driver’s screaming EVERYBODYGET OFF AND PUSH CAUSE THE CHICKEN BUS DOESN’T HAVE A STARTER and you ask me if you’d like Morocco?

I don’t know, man. I really don’t know.
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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