Fear And Loathing In Madrid

I was backpacking around the world at the tender age of 18, back in 1980.  As was the custom among backpackers at the time (dumbphones have completely replaced such antiquated pastimes), folks would trade books at campsites while trading war stories of the road and hard-learned tips for survival.

It was during this adventure that I was introduced to such great works of literature as The Women's Room, The Other Side of Midnight and The Way to Dusty Death.  Though I occasionally lucked into the rare bit of Poe or Kant, for the most part my reading list was uninspired and uninspiring.

At one point, I was en route to Spain, mostly to experience the brand-new French TGV, but also because I spoke fluent Spanish and wanted to go somewhere other than an Anglophone country where I could communicate effectively.

At that time, the French trains stopped at the northern side of the Pyrenees mountains, and one had to board a coal-burning relic of a previous century for the arduous crossing.  This turned out to be one of the most memorable legs on my European trip.

Imagine the Hogwart's train after 20 years of ill-repair.  The wood used to finish out the interior had petrified in place.  Each car had a line of 4-person cabins lining one side and a narrow walkway down the other.  You could not pass another person in the walkway without one of you ducking into one of the cabins to allow the other to pass.

Along the outer edge of the walkway was a gutter, of sorts.  In this gutter, urine from the overflowing toilets would run first one way going uphill, then the other going down.

There was six of us backpackers crammed into my cabin (did I mention they were designed for 4?).  One of them, Tim, turned out to be the first fellow Texan I had met in nearly a year.  He was a student at Baylor University studying literature and on summer walk-about in Europe.  He also had the first peanut butter I had seen since leaving the US nine months before.

We became instant friends, partly because I had La Vache Qui Rit cheese and a baguette with olives and a few precious slices of luncheon (mystery) meat.  He happily traded a generous portion of his peanut butter for a quarter of my rations.

We both learned valuable lessons on that journey, such as don't open windows for a breath of unurinated air when riding on a train with a coal-burning locomotive.  We spent several minutes clearing out the thick, acrid smoke, then shared a crushed, filterless Gauloise cigarette from my dwindling supply.

The subject in the room eventually turned to books, as it always did.  A Swede, a German, two Spaniards and two Texans began the complicated ritual of swapping our libraries.  I don't recall what I had to offer, but it attracted the German's attention, and the book he offered attrated Tim's, who in turn gave me one of the most influential books I have ever read.

Up to this point, I had lived a fairly sheltered life.  I was blissfully unaware of Gonzo journalism and this guy - Hunter S. Thompson - peering at me with aviator glasses and a foot-long cigarette holder looked vaguely dangerous.  Despite my naivete, I had read Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (another profound moment in my life), and Time said that if I liked Breakfast of Champions, I would love this book.

This was a mighty big claim, but I took it on faith from my fellow Texan and dutifully stashed the book in my pack.  Attractive German girls were far more appealing at the moment.

As is the custom in Spanish culture, the entire nation shuts down mid-afternoon for siesta.  As luck would have it, there was a tavern a short walk from the hostel that stayed open, primarily preying on journeyers who were unused to a relaxed lifestyle.  Tim and I quickly became regulars, bringing our books and ordering copious amounts of lukewarm cervesa to while away the lugubrious afternoons.

No more than three pages into the well-worn paperback, I was hooked.

Here was a journalist, a profession I associated with Walter Croncite, being sent to the Kentucky Derby, the Superbowl, political conventions, and never actually making it to the assigned events.  Instead, he and his Polynesian lawyer sidekick were transporting suitcases full of booze, pills and weed, and trashing hotel rooms during paranoid hallucinations of bats and narcs, while occasionally watching moments of the events on television - at least until the TV was destroyed.

I gobbled down the yellowing pulp like Mother's Milk, while single-handedly expanding the marketshare of Estrella Galicia one liter at a time.  I vaguely recall one such day sitting down at around 2 in the afternoon and being asked to go home at closing time some 12 hours later.

During that week that Tim and I wandered around Madrid, discussing the finer points of Thomspson's symbolism, we stumbled into a medieval castle with the massive wooden doors slightly ajar.  There was just enough room for us to sidle into the empty courtyard.  Tim, being still partially tourist, took out his camera and began snapping away.  I, being a journeyer, began committing various still images to my long-term memory.

I don't know how long we stood there, but it couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes.  At some point, Tim and I both heard the unmistakable (to any real Texan) sound of a hammer being pulled back.  Michelangelo would have been inspired by our poses as we froze solid in mid-action.

As we stood there, a man in the uniform of a guardia civil strolled slowly around in front of us.  He was about six feet tall, wearing aviator glasses and sporting a foot-long cigarette holder clenched in his brown teeth.

At that precise moment, Tim and I both simultaneously burst into hysterical laughter.  Within seconds, tears were streaming down our faces, as a bizarre mixture of terror and irony tightened its grip on our funny bones.  Though one of the most terrifying sights in all of post-Fascist Spain was yelling at us and waving a .45-caliber pistol, locked and loaded, in our faces, we couldn't stop laughing.  Trying only made it worse, and as anyone who knows Thompson will tell you, having a man in uniform who looks like Hunter Thompson waving a gun in your face and yelling incomprehensibly only served to push us further to our certain doom, laughing uncontrollably every step of the way.

As I write this, I am stroking the scar on my left temple where the generalissimo struck me with the gun sight on the business end of his cocked and loaded .45-caliber pistol.  The warm, sticky feeling running down the side of my face sobered me up, but only slightly.  I still had a powerful sensation of someone poking my long thoracic nerve, causing my abdomen to convulse involuntarily.

I held my hand up...slowly.  "Wait, wait," I pleaded.  "May I show you something?"

He appeared to gaze intently at me, though it was hard to tell behind the limousine-tinted aviator glasses.  "What is it?" he demanded.

"A book, here in my pack.  I think you will understand when you see it," I said in a voice verging on fresh paroxysms of laughter.

The generalissimo yanked the day pack from my hand and gave it to a subordinate who had mysteriously appeared at his side, while the pistol never strayed far from the centers of Tim's and my chests.

The subordinate opened the bad, looked inside, then reached in and pulled out the slowly disintegrating copy of The Great Shark Hunt.  He showed it to the boss man, who glanced quickly at it then back at us.  "So what?" he growled like a pit bull on crack.

"Turn it around, please," I said.

The subordinate looked down at the back of the book, then started laughing.  The generalissimo snatched the book, thankfully dropping the ugly end of his pistol down to the ground.  He flipped the book over and stared silently for what seemd like minutes

"Who is this?" he demanded.  At that point, he flipped the back of the book towards Tim and me, and held it out to us.  From our perspective, there on the left was a mean, nasty, armed holdover from Spain's Fascist past, and on the right was Hunter S. Thompson's visage staring at us from the liner notes on the book.  The two of them were posed almost identically.

Tim tried so hard to stifle a guffaw that he blew a week's worth of snot down the front of his face and shirt.  I was on the verge of fainting, working so hard to stifle a fresh wave of hysteria while standing in Madrid's legendary summer heat.

"His name is Hunter Thompson," I managed.  "He is a famous American writer."  A week before, I wouldn't have known who Thompson was, but I figured the "famous" part couldn't hurt and might stroke the generalissimo's ego a bit.

The generalissimo turned the book around again and stared at the image.  After a moment, he tossed the book at the subordinate, who grappled with it then shoved it back in the bag.  He rummaged around a bit and took out my passport.  He opened it and held it up for the Big Guy to see.

The generalissimo grunted and said, "Americano."

After a moment's pause, he looked at us again.  "What are you doing here?"

"We were walking around and saw this castle.  The gate was open, so we came in to look around," Tim said through strands of drying snot - he hadn't moved his hands in several minutes now.

The generalissimo barked something at the subordinate having to do with puerta and abierta.  The subordinate stuffed my passport bach in the bag and tossed it on the ground, then ran off towards the entrance where Tim and I had come in.

The gneralissimo appeared to glance over our shoulders at the subordinate, though it was hard to tell behind the inscrutable eyewear.  After a moment, he holstered his pistol and took the camera from Tim's hands.  He opened the camera and pulled the film out, exposing its entire length, which he threw on the ground.  He motioned me to pick up my bag and waved towards the massive wooden doors.

"Go," he barked.

We didn't stop running till we were back at our tavern.  We drank heavily the rest of that day, and tossed uneasily that night while visions of bats and narcs haunted our dreams.

Run For The Border

Tim and I met on the TGV from Paris to Madrid. He was a tall, lanky sort with thick beard who was teaching English privately in Spain, but the thing that got us talking was that he was from Waco, and I hadn't met another Texan in almost a year. That alone was cause for celebration, but he also had peanut butter, which at the time was virtually impossible to find in Europe.

I was packing a baguette, cheese, cold cuts, and grapes, so I was able to negotiate a dollop of his ambrosia. We both had wine, his Spanish and mine French, so we made a decent feast for ourselves.

The TGV was slick, and this was 30 years ago. It was unlike any train I had been on: smooth, sleek and beyond fast. Inside was comfortable and arranged with four seats around a table. Between the cars were automatic sliding glass doors and the bridge between was enclosed to protect passengers from the 300 kpm winds. There was a buffet car and an observation car, and walking around was not unlike being on a jet plane: the occasional minor lurch but otherwise solid.

Tim and I lucked out and took over a whole table. We spread our feast out and stuffed our faces and Provence slid by at dizzying speeds ourside. Out to a hundred meters or so, everything was a terrifying blur, but beyond that was acres and acres of wine country. Somewhere out there was the field I had worked in for about a month during harvest. I earned room and board, plus a handful of extra duckies. In the purple distance, the Pyrenees rose against the horizon.

Late in the afternoon, we had arrived at the foot of the mountains separating France and Spain. This was the end of the line for the TGV and I was sad to see it go. We had to get down and go through customs. This was the first time since I had arrived in Europe a year ago that I actually had to go through customs. Usually, the officers just walked through the trains and stamped passports. After crossing through the gates, we has to wait for the train that would take us across the mountains, so Time and I hunkered down and did some intense girl-watching.

After about an hour or so, the train pulled in. My eyes grew wide. I had descended from the 21st century and I was about to enter the 19th. The train through the Pyranees was a coal burning steam locomotice. I felt like I was stepping into a old western film, with the ringing bells and the chugging heartbeat of the train.

We boarded the train and soon it was pulling out. Unlike the glass-smooth acceleration and mind-numbing climb to cruising speed, this was a lurching, chugging wind up that took a good 30 minutes to get to speed. There was no air conditioning on this train, and the interior looked kind of like the Hogwarts train with a aisle on one side and a line of enclosed cabins on the other. Unlike Harry Potter's idealistic transport, this one had a trough running down the aisle against the side that had urine sloshing back and forth as the train climbed and descended through the mountains.

Tim and I had gotten a cabin with a Spaniard from Barcelona, two German girls, and a Brit guy. My German was pretty good, so I spent the time chatting up the girls, while Tim chatted with the Spaniad. The Brit just slept.

At one point, the heat got to me. There was no air circulation and the air was growing unbearable. Having never ridden on a coal burner, I slid down the window without thinking. Within seconds, the cabin was full of stinking black smoke and we all had to bail out into the aisle, where in the confusion, I stepped squarely into the piss trough just as it sloshed to the rear of the car. My popularity quotient had sropped precipitously in less than five minutes.

I cost me a full bottle of wine to make peace.

At the base of the mountains, we switched to a much more comfortable electric train for the trip to Madrid. I still reeked of piss but it had one advantage: nobody wanted to sit in the cabin with Tim and I. For the next six hours, I tied my shoes together and hung the offending one out the window. It helped a little and made the cabin somewhat more habitable.

We arrived in Madrid early in the morning. Tim didn't have to get back to his job for another couple of days, so we found a pension and began to loot and plunder the acient city.

Madrid is a beautiful city, with broad avenues, foundtains and lush parks everywhere that stood in start contrast to the arid and sweltering plains of central Spain. Tim and I wandered around soaking in the culture and flavor of Madrid and during siesta, we would find a cafe where the owner was happy to have the business, and we drank copious amounts of beer.

The second afternoon, after siesta and a case of ice cold beer, we had ended up at the south end of the city. Stangding like a white man at the African People's Congress was a castle of 14th or 15th century design. It was a classic castle with towers and parapets and ramparts that looked like they had stepped out of a story book. There were no signs, no tourists and no sign of life of any kind in or around the ediface, but the gate stood open far enough for a man to pass through.

Tim and I couldn't resist the opportunity and we slipped through the gate and into an empty courtyard. The place looked and felt abandoned and I was having fantasies about taking over and declaring the place a sovereign principality, with me as the prince, of course. We wandered around poking our heads into doors and windows, where we saw desks with papers and typewriters, so there was obviously something going on there. My dreams were fast evaporating.

I pulled out my camera and started snapping a couple of shots. My funds were limited, so I used film sparingly. I chose a couple of select scenes and recorded them for posterity.

Suddenly, there was a distinct sound. Tim and I were both from Texas, so we knew instantly what it was. It didn't just come from one direction, either. It came from everywhere all at once. It was the sound of a hammer being drawn back on a gun. I had heard it thousands of times, but this time it wasn't me doing the cocking. I did what any normal, red-blooded Texan would do when they heard that sound: I froze like a statue. In fact, I was so still I am still convinced to this day that my breathing stopped, my heart paused and peristalsis ceased in my intestines. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Tim was my mirror image.

Glancing up, I could see the wall around the courtyard was lined with at least 50 men, but could have been thousands, as far as I was concerned. At our level was another 20 or so. Altogether, we had at least 100 weapons of various kinds aimed at us. My shoe wasn't the only thing smelling of piss at that moment.

One man walked up to me. I could see from the various things hung on his uniform that he was at least a colonel, if not a general. He had a meticulously trimmed moustache and dark, impenetrable eyes. He stip searched me with his gaze and then reached out and slowly divested me of my camera. He looked at it for a moment, then popped it open and began to slowly pull the film out while staring me square in the eyes. I didn't flinch, though my bowels had taken off running a while back.

"Oh shit," Tim croaked.

"You're telling me," I breathed, still locked on the general.

"No dude. This is Guardia Civil," he hissed.

I knew exactly what he meant. The Guardia Civil was the secret police under General Franco, and still operating, almost with impunity, even after the General's death. By reputation, at best they could make us disappear forever, and at worst, kill us with the flick of a finger.

As I stared a hole in the General's face, I saw the barest flicker of a smirk, involving only the right corner of his mouth. The rest of his face was frozen. He clicked the back of my camera shut without taking his eyes off me, then handed it back to me.

A single bead of sweat had taken up residence on the end of my nose and was making my crazy, but I dared not make a move, other than to put out a hand to receive the camera.

"Enjoh-ee yurrr stay in MAHdreed, gentlemen," the General's voice was a rock hard Seville perfection.

"We should go...now," Tim suggested.

He was facing the gate and I was facing the general. We began to inch glacially toward the gate. We had each other's 6. My feet felt like stone blocks. After what seemed like a month or two, we reached the opening and slid through. Without looking back, we made our way down the street, as close to running as we could be without actually breaking into hundred-yard dashes.

When we got to the opposite side of the city an hour later, we planted ourselves at a table in a small street cafe and began drinking Spanish wine like two men who had just stared into Oblivion and survived.

The next morning, Tim bundled up his gear and headed back to work. Within the hour, I met Klaus, a German guy about my age on break from school and backpakcing around.

"I'm going to Morocco," he announced in that way that Germans do, that make even the loosest of plans sound like they are written in stone.

Morocco, I thought.

We were on the train the next morning, heading for Algeciras, and beyond that, to north Africa.

I wished I had more peanut butter. It's my greatest comfort food, especially slathered on an Oreo cookie.