February 27, 2004
ULTIMATE THREE-DAY GETAWAYS
This whole thing started in 1976, when as a young teenage pup I smoked a joint with some girls while sitting on the old bridge at Chappaquiddick. There's a Bicentennial celebration for you.
I enjoyed that for some reason, and now and then I've had the opportunity to replicate this sort of thing. I roasted at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, and from behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll in Dealy Plaza. I'm not much of a toker anymore, but it seems like the thing to do on hallowed ground, where the mad hunted the made.
Where am I going with this? Oh, yes. My daughter wants to go to DC for spring break. For some strange reason, at the age of 11, she wants to go to law school and run for the United States Senate, so she can throw welfare families out in the street, crack mothers in jail, and parties for Disney Channel producers. She's burned out on Orlando now. DC is her Holy Grail.
So I was thinking, great idea! And maybe, just maybe, I can sneak a one-hitter into Ford's Theater, and pop it as near to the Presidential box as possible.
I know what you're thinking. Damn! I wish I'd thought of that. So think about these three-day-getaways, because I'm planning them all:
A weekend across the street from the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Better hurry. I think they're tearing it down, if it isn't already gone. Take a chef's smock, and pretend you're kitchen staff.
If you take that DC trip you can spin over to Laurel, Maryland. There's a certain strip mall parking lot begging for your attention. For extra enjoyment rent a wheelchair, and take a few spins around the asphalt.
Buffalo, New York. Is the site of that Pan-American Exposition still extant? And how many people get to say "I caught a fire where McKinley caught a bullet"? [Why yes! It's a Historic Site now. - Ed.] The trigger man was named Czolgosz. Czolgosz the Anarchist. That's straight out of a fucking Superman comic, eh?
Another DC coup: The train depot where Guiteau whacked Garfield. I'm going to need three one-hits for this trip alone. Guiteau. It sounds French. Fittingly. The great irony: Guiteau was an incensed seeker of spoils, rebuffed. Namely, the appointment as Ambassador to France. Wheels within wheels, people. Rumour has it the bastard was wearing laced panties at the time.
Bayside Park, Miami. The next time you're in South Beach stalking the Beautiful People with your squirtgun full of urine stop by the Park. In 1933 one Guiseppe Zangara, an Anarchist (another fucking Anarchist), took a shot at FDR. He missed, but successfully eliminated Anton Cermak, Mayor of Chicago. Said Zangara, "I don't hate Mr. Roosevelt personally... I hate all officials and everybody who is rich." Ach. The prototype of a Deaniac, or the Large Head Wearers at G-8 summit meetings.
Milwaukee (motto: "That smell is either the breweries, or Penny Marshall"). Here one John Schrank (Schrank!) shot Teddy Roosevelt in the chest during a campaign stop in the Bull Moose days. TR finished the speech, of course. Nor did he get a Purple Heart or Silver Star, as John Kerry did when he executed a mortally wounded Vietnamese while suffering from a splinter cut.
There's a start for you. Comrades, if you can't have fun at these places, you're just not trying.
UPDATE: Jack Straw comments on some seriously intense getaways. I, personally, want to do the Biograph right now.