Life as an Elevator
A Novel
By D. Witt
Chapter Eighteen
After visiting my family on the East Coast, I stop on the way back to
Texas at a Stuckeys for gas and a snack about 70 miles west of New
Orleans down on the Gulf Coast in the swamps. Next to the gas station
is an exotic animal exhibit with monkeys, aligators, and snakes. There
is an area where the monkeys are displayed and that is where I found
Pepper.
Pepper is the name of the cute little spider monkey that I bought for
twenty-five dollars from the guy who runs a roadside "zoo". I think the
place is called Monkey Jungle and is on the edge of shutting down
operations altogether. I really did the monkey a favor when I rescued
him from the roadside tourist attraction. The owner of the "zoo"
provided a cardboard box with air holes and we put the furry
brown-orange monkey into the car. Pepper has a very irritating
personality and is constantly screaming and chattering for the rest of
the way back to Texas. He is always nervously and obnoxiously chirping
in a high pitched voice while cracking peanut shells and rattling the
paper bag when it is empty indicating that he wants more peanuts.
Pepper will eat anything, chips, french fries, whatever I have that is
available from my roadside feasts and am willing to share with him.
After arriving in Houston we continue on to the Hill Country west of
Austin, near Kerrville, about 200 miles more. The record company,
International Artists, has arranged for us to stay on a sheep ranch
there to put together our next album. For the next couple of months
this summer, we will stay somewhere in the middle of nowhere to write
and arrange the new material for the album project that we will record
in a studio down in Houston when it is finished. Our producer, Lelan
Rogers, plans to release it in the fall of 1967. He will meet us in
Houston to produce the record at Andrus Studio. He recently produced a
session for his brother, Kenny Rogers, a country artist, at ACA
Recording Studio. He has been spending a lot of time promoting our
first album called the Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators.
He is well know in the music business as the "Silver Fox" and I am
hoping that he doesn't "fox" us out of our rewards if we ever make it
big.
Pepper and I finally get out onto the road for West Texas. I press the
pedal to the floor on my old baby blue 1962 Ford Galaxie 500 and we
kick up the dust on the way to the sheep ranch being careful not to
squash anything at the occasional armadillo crossing. I would hate to
provide supper for the ever present turkey vultures that are so
prevalent in the desert. It is easy to go 90 to 100 miles an hour here
in West Texas because the roads are long and straight, the towns are
few and far between. Cops are no where to be found on this desolate
stretch of highway. The dusty, dry, and scrubby hill country with gully
washes of bleached white jagged limestone outcrops are covered cactii
and mesquite bushes. The bleak topograhpy betrays the identity of the
pre-historic ocean floor that was here millions of years ago. Pepper
and I roll along the tar black ribbon of a road toward our destination
almost being hypnotized by the telegraphic flashes of the painted
silver streaks down the middle of the road. It is impossible not to
count them. Counting the lines somehow seems to get us there quicker.
We press forward on the hot desert pavement on cars tires made from the
sap blood of Equitorial rain forest rubber trees. I am sure that the
children of the Amazon are not aware that the destruction of their rain
forest is contributing to the production of another 13th Floor
Elevators album. Mother Earth is not amused. Pepper and his relatives
deserve better, I think.