*************************************************************** *************************************************************** ON THE ROAD ANARCHIST GAZETTE ISSUE NO 1 Published Quarterly Electronic Version: free Hard copy Subscriptions: Australia $10 Overseas airmail $20 US. per year to: Mark Davis, PO BOX 1130 BAULKHAM HILLS NSW AUSTRALIA 2153 Hard copies are much longer and contain graphics etc. A free sample will be posted to you anywhere in the world by writing a message to above address. We also want to publish stories, articles, poetry etc, for which we pay. These can be sent to above address or to: 100251.3250@compuserve.com *************************************************************** *************************************************************** Hard copy also contains gossip, anti-authoritarian views, cartoons, and there will even be some smut, from time to time. This is the best review I could manage: I can't see the world literary press queuing up to review it. I heard you even had trouble getting them into the libraries for free! It's printed pretty well, it's the best photocopied zine I've seen, but, I was expecting to see a few things in it that the straight press wouldn't touch. Apart from the undercover cop fake advert, and the vandalism competition, and the scanner frequencies, most of it's pretty straight stuff. You also had 'Explore Creative Techniques' on the cover. I was looking forward to getting to this part but it was nowhere to be found. However, not too bad for a first try. And you've created a pretty good mood, but try harder next time. I'll send you some stuff by email. If you want to use it you can. Bye for now. Michael The explore creative techniques will be in the next issue ED. And we didn't have any trouble getting it into libraries. One of them said she'd call the police, but we soon had her calmed down. -------------------- Boarding House Prospective boarding house tenants have written in to me and complained about the increasing complexity of reading Sydney's newspaper accommodation columns. What do all the abbreviations mean? What does a tenant do when he or she rings up and doesn't even know what the landlord is saying on the telephone? Where can you get help? This article is inserted as a public service for those of you who, like so many of us, find the task of getting temporary accommodation in Sydney just as daunting as so much else in modern life. If you haven't stayed in a boarding house before, don't worry, just read through at your own pace. If you have stayed in a boarding house before, don't worry, nothing has changed. As you will know, in the old days these boarding house operators were usually women, a particularly sagacious and vulgar breed of the feminine form. But over the years things have changed. Nowadays the boarding house industry has gone 'mod'. The landlords are a new breed, they have studied new management systems, and they get around with attache cases, and wear tinted glasses, but apart from that, everything is still the same. Bus couple: This does not mean that you are a couple who rides around on buses all day. It means 'business couple'. You are a couple who is engaged in important and highly confidential business in office blocks all day, while the landlord is at home going through all your gear. It means that you should be gone by six in the morning and return mysteriously at about eight at night, a weary yet successful business team. Of course, if you are a successful business team the question arises why you want to use the convenience of living in such a dump. But this question will be politely ignored. Share cons: This quite clearly means 'share conveniences'. A convenience is anything that you might find convenient, e.g., a toilet, bathroom facilities, kitchen etc. After all, I suppose, depending on the sort of person you are, most people would find it convenient to have a toilet, it saves having to go to the railway station in the middle of the night, dodging ticket inspectors, drunks and perverts - (or, perhaps drunken ticket inspectors who loiter around railway toilets in the dead of night.) The Bond: This is a present that you give your landlord when you arrive. There is still an archaic law that he is supposed to give it back when you leave, but this is the only time you'll find that he isn't lurking around. For this reason, some less scrupulous lodgers, find that it is an ideal time to steal any furniture or other fittings that could be of service to them. Key Deposit: This is a deposit, usually forty dollars, that you pay your landlord for the key to ensure that he gets it back when you leave. But he of course finds it cheaper to have another key cut than to return your money. And because there have been so many tenants in your room in the last year who have only lasted a week, there are about fifty persons walking around the city with a key to your room. Co-tenants: When you are awoken in the middle of the night by drunken screaming, loud nose blowing, belching and other extraneous sounds coming through your wall, you will find that it is these who are the source. These strange creatures will often play Iron Maiden at a hundred thousand decibels during the night, brawl on the front steps, and generally provide the reputation that your rooming house enjoys in the locality. Quiet Entertainment: This is the thing that your room is legally provided for. You can do anything in your room provided that it is quiet entertainment. This may include reading the Bible, thinking, or thinking about how to get out of the place without strangling the landlord, a co-tenant, or yourself. The Park: This is a place where your landlord says you will finish up if you don't pay your rent, but it is a place where you often finish up anyway when your co-tenants play Iron Maiden at a hundred thousand decibels at two o'clock in the morning. The Stove: This is an instrument that you theoretically cook your dinner on. But you know that if you were ever mad enough to actually use it, then your landlord would assume that you were the only one who ever used it, and in future it would be your job to keep it clean, and to pay the electricity surcharge. Door Flung Open: This could mean that the police are looking for some long gone fly-by-nighter, or, that your landlord suspects that you are using an electric heater, or, that two or more of your co-tenants are having an altercation in the hallway and lose balance before crashing through your door, or Social Security inspectors, or perhaps burglars who thought you were down at the dole office. Rent Rise: These will come whenever our friend the landlord suspects that we are down on our luck, and cannot afford to move to another abode and pay new lease money, new bonds, new key money etc etc. And your arrangement will also say there will be a rent rise after six months anyway, so in other words what this means, is that if you are still in the place after six months you must be down on your luck. The Talk: You get this just after you pay your bond and sign your 'agreement.' It is usually carried out in a monotone voice, because the landlord has many parts to play here. Not only is he a mate of yours, but he wants to impress on you at the same time the serious need to keep the stove clean, to pay your rent on time, to clean the toilet once a week etc., and he wants to patronise you, find out your business etc., all at the same time as well. This calls for so many role changes and their accompanying voice inflexions that he settles for just an audible monotone. This also helps to intimidate you, because you feel that you are dealing with a Clint Eastwood type. You look each other in the eye for what seems a considerable time then, before the landlord asks you to call him Tom, or Shirl, or Alf or whatever the name may be, so that everything gets along on matey terms. Because you will have many other matey talks in the future. You imagine it will be about an umpire's decision or something over a beer on the verandah. But the matey talks usually come about because of 'the state of the stove' - who spilt this, Mark? - "Oh, I don't know, Tom. Barry was using the stove last." (You therefore kill two birds with the one stone here. Not only will Barry have to clean it, but he is also likely to get lumbered with the surcharge.) A Clem: You will always find a Clem in every boarding house. He is the Polish intellectual type. You can easily recognise a Clem - he is the one who weighs about eighteen stone and walks around the kitchen in underpants and thongs. You will find him to be a rather large gentleman in every respect. Therefore, if you are eating soup don't let him let too close to the table, otherwise he might burn himself. Clem means Klemawow*!ski!* - and he wears thin-rimmed glasses and shouts loudly about Catholicism verses Freudianism. He is also responsible for that smell you encounter every time you enter the toilet because Clem neglects to press the button after every service. He also sits about twelve inches away from you at the corner of the table while you are eating your soup, and argues empiricism verses Nietzscheism, and prods with his finger. And in the politest way he calls you a bumpkin, uneducated, a village philosopher, because he reads the classics all the time, and then he looks at you through those thin spectacles of his and finds that you don't measure up to the profound profundities that he has been reading in Tolstoy and Dovstoyevsky all week. He has come to Australia to instruct all us backward people in the ways of civilisation, but when he gets here he is disappointed to find that the only audience he can manage is in the kitchen of a rooming house. There is only one way to get rid of him. And that is what is known as to kick him in the Bolly Bollingers. Clem will object to this of course, and this will explain the next heading, but you have tried everything else to get rid of him. You have ignored him, threatened him, pretended that you were a homicidal maniac on a work release program, teased him, abused him, intimidated him, but nothing, absolutely nothing will keep him away from you. After this episode of course, you are not game to go into the kitchen for the next week, but you can hear him shouting in there even if you have your door closed - no doubt with much finger prodding - that there should be a special gaol for people like you. Where you could go for three months and come back a new man, and no doubt be polite and respectful to Clem, and never dreaming of kicking anyone in the Bolly Bollingers again. Cecil: Cecil weighs fifty stone and habitually wears shorts and thongs. He is the alleged business partner of Alf, and he also doubles as the bouncer of the establishment. When Alf suspects that there might be trouble in the house he will appear at the front door while Cecil, presumably to head off anyone trying to escape, will enter at the rear. Alf lets you know at every available opportunity that Cecil is also an ex-policeman. There are rumours about his reasons for leaving the police force, and this only adds to the general apprehension, because it is reasoned that he must be one nasty customer if even the NSW Police Force won't have him. The Girl: You have heard everyone talking about her in hushed tones. She lives out the back in the caravan and comes in at night to cook dinner. You imagine cooking your meals at the same time and starting up conversations - then quietly perhaps, offering her a drink, and then no doubt falling in love just like in An Officer and a Gentleman, (or something), and the stories of your lives changing forever. The only trouble is however - that everyone else has the same idea, and you can't get a word in edgeways. And neither can anyone else, because Clem is standing about twelve inches away from her in his underpants and thongs and prodding with his finger as he explains Catholicism verses Freudianism in pre-war Poland. And what should be done with any communists found in the locality. And concentration camps for anyone who disagrees with him. And the setting up of special prisons for people like you. And the special powers that should be given to the police to crack down on misfits in society. House Rules: These state that anyone can have their amplifier going at one hundred thousand decibels. They state that anyone and everyone can make themselves a disagreeable nuisance to you, but that you must stay in your room for the purposes of quiet entertainment, such as reading the house rules, listening to yourself think, or watching television with an earplug, provided that the light from the screen does not reflect off your venetian blinds into an adjacent room and thus upset the hoodlums in it who are playing Iron Maiden at a hundred thousand decibels, or interfere with the quiet entertainment of our Polish friend when he isn't in the kitchen. Settling in: This is an unofficial term which is also known as the honeymoon period. It is a period in which the landlord lets you know that he is so pleased to have a decent lodger in for once. And you let him know that it is reassuring to find a landlord who keeps undesirables out by charging a slightly excessive amount of rent, and always collects it when it is due. The period varies. In some places it can be as little as an hour. The end could come when he sees you using the stove, or it could last as long as a week until he finds that you don't have a job and sleep in till ten every morning. Just a word of warning here however - never, if possible, move into a lodging house where the landlord - or lady; I won't be sexist here - lives on or near the premises. Because if you pictured that in your new residence the twitter of birds will wake you every morning, you are in for an awakening of a different kind. What will wake you even more reliably is a knock on the door, inquiring whether you gave your landlord the rent last Friday - "Oh yes, that's right you did. Have you thought about employment, then?" You will have no option here but to come out with the 'whole truth.' That your grandfather died several months ago and left you large sums of money and other property, but his solicitors are fouling around with the paperwork, and you won't get it for several months yet. Then you can have a five minute grumble about the ethics of solicitors and he will retreat for a couple of hours until he churns all this over in his head and finds that something doesn't quite ring right. Then he will return to your door with a query, but you can't talk any more about your case because that could be construed as sub judice - (a bit like the movie Serpico.) This is all what is called, "getting on with your landlord." And what will make the relationship so difficult is that your landlord will have quite a narrow definition of decency. One thing strikes me about my landlord, is that he is such a remarkable clean fellow. I think that he has three showers a day at a duration of forty-five minutes each, as well as seven baths per week. So clean these Germans - sorry, I mean Austrians. Even in his gardening clothes he seems so immaculate and clean. Such decent fellows the Germans. And the accent in his voice always suggests that he is such a law abiding fellow. He also gives the impression that he is articulating his words so legally and precisely. By my tone of voice and manner I show him that I am also a law and order man who has little time for misfits, uncleanliness, and other petty criminal types. I also agree that the police are doing a fine job, even though I haven't supported them as I should have done over the years, but that is what misdirected tolerance can do. If we tolerate vagrants, vagabonds, dole fraudulents, where will it end? He discovers here that we have like minds on these subjects, and now decides to unburden his soul. "Will it end with people not having to work at all? Will the likes of ratepayers have to support these criminals?" 'Rent criminals' he calls them. "Have these people got no social development?" Ah! Ahhh aha! - I take a deep breath - 'social development', he's a philosopher too. I show the contempt that I have for people who tip tea leaves down the sink, and go on the dole, and with a world-weary look I intimate that the only thing he might have to watch for is that if I see a fellow tenant in such a lewd act of indecency I'm likely to speak my mind, even if it does make me the most unpopular tenant in the boarding house. But when all is said and done, do you think all this will get him off your back? - no, ten minutes later he is knocking on your door wanting to know who it was who left the saucepan cooking last night while you were in the shower. To assist further I have formulated an exercise below for the prospective tenant. Decipher each word and give proper meaning for each. Bhse, bed sit, bus cup, shr cons, no pts, Clem bb's, P Fld 10x4 decib, ex-pol Cec, 2am park, hammer sound 7am, no t lvs snk, three quart income rent, 50 keys to room. Ring Alf. (Time allowed 15 mins) --------------------------------- LITTLE OXFORD ST. old men in the back of abandoned cars warm in muscat dreams under dirty overcoats green plastic garbage bags tired hearts torn open revealing tin teeth rotted fruit, ash, broken glass relics, letters not worth keeping small bones old men wake like Thomas who had to touch to believe John Davies --------------------------- "The White Line" I have had many homes. Some that I have stayed in for years - but they were rented and temporary. And pretty soon I found myself back on the road. The road mind you, is not such an awful place. It can be cruel at times, but often it is kind. I remember many things as I stand here late at night. It is what I call, 'deep night'. It is raining heavily outside. It is a storm which I think will last for several days. I am looking out the window of a Caltex garage, the owner's voice talking in the background. Water is washing down the window pane casting wavy shadows over my face. I am thinking - deep in thought, cigarette smoke curling between my fingers, a can of half-forgotten Coca Cola in my other hand. I have a poorly paid job driving a cab in this country town, and I have come here for a break, just to stand, quench my thirst, and have a cigarette. Apart from the rain outside, the only sound is the voice of the owner, boisterous and loud. He stops only to take another sip of beer and think of another sentence. If any soaking wet motorist were approaching from the road with an empty petrol can, the owner's voice would be the first thing he'd hear. He is putting forward a scheme where we could juggle the petrol account of the cab owner I work for. "We could go fifty fifty," he says. "The way I look at it is that you provide a service, a service no one has any complaints about. And he never questions any of the accounts you sign for with me. You're a good customer; you fill up your own tank. I never look to see how much is on the gauge. I take your word for it. You provide a service. I give you a couple of extra bucks on Friday night; I don't ask whether you hand that in at the end of your shift. You provide a service. That's the way I look at it. Whenever you take me home from the club Friday nights, I don't let the others say nothing to you. They have to mind their manners while I'm around." I wonder while watching the rain, how, after all my travels, I come to be standing here, at this hour, surrounded by spark plugs, and cigarettes, and drink machines, and car wash bottles, in the middle of nowhere. There are times when I feel I have been on the road all my life. Temporary jobs, temporary homes, temporary enemies. I feel I have never belonged anywhere. I like to be moving on. Nothing is worth hanging on to, though there are small incidents, fragments, conversations, stored away at the back of my mind that are coming back now. Out on the highway a car goes past every so often, wheels throwing up a trail of spray, headlights illuminating the dark road. But the road is now empty. I sip on the Coke again. You know - the highway never changes. Its life just goes on. The white line is always the same. It seems it is leading nowhere, but everywhere. I see another car going by, tail lights of deep red, ghostly figures sitting inside, reflecting signs lighting up as it passes. It reminds me of moving on, to a place that is different. Perhaps via the same ghostly freeway I imagine they are headed for tonight, so alien and so deadly. It seems that everyone lives on the road. It seems that everyone is following that white line, but not many know it. It seems that we have been chasing a dream all our lives, and we are certain of finding it, but we never do. The highway - the highway. It has a spirit of its own. Motels with flashing signs - Vacancy, or No Vacancy. Cold fluorescent markers - a hundred and nineteen to Newcastle. A picture of a knife and fork, with an arrow showing the way. I can take it to outback towns, where everything is loneliness - where once I saw an Aboriginal girl walk a silent and barren main street after dinner, still in her school tunic, just to sit near a phone box and watch a flickering street light. I can take it to country towns to share ignorance and isolation, to share the hates and passions of their people, towns where one would not have expected them to live, but where emotions have a habit of exploding at the most unexpected times. The road is sometimes exciting, sometimes boring, or even threatening - but it is always there, it is always the same. It can be a lonely place, a happy place, a sanctuary for lost spirits on the run, because no matter who you are or what you have done, the road holds no grudges; you can begin again. The road of course has devils of its own. There are breakdowns, there is sudden death, but there is no trickery in that. It is always what it seems. We know what the road is and respect her for it. The road is something I always come back to. It all began after World War II with the invention of cheap passenger cars - and people who did not belong. And this is what the rain outside reminds me of - a night years ago, when I saw two such people. I was driving along the highway at Peat's Ridge about one o'clock. It was raining just as it is now, and I chanced on a motorcycle accident. I did all I could before going to get help at a farmhouse, then returned and waited for the emergency services. The pillion passenger was dead with head injuries. She was probably dead before I got there. The rider was vaguely conscious, but I knew that he didn't have long to live. Their Triumph had smashed into a telegraph pole after it had failed to take a bend. There was some patchy fog about that night. Maybe it was the cause. I felt sorry for the two, because as soon as I laid eyes on them I knew they were people of the road. They had nowhere to go. Nice people with nowhere to go. I stood and watched as coarse-voiced men in yellow plastic clothes went about their work amid flashing red and yellow lights. I imagined that I could read the same pictures that were flashing across the eyes of the dying man - the things that will never be recorded, the memory of meeting a master spirit, who was a poor but happy outcast. Perhaps a small girl, without enough to eat, but full of joy; a struggling young mother, not clever, but terribly beautiful; a girl on a petrol pump who only asked for a dollar to fill his tank, because she said, "The gauge is busted." Perhaps a nurse in a hospital one day gave him a cup of tea and made him feel as if he belonged. Maybe he recalled three drunken teenagers with nowhere to go. They came across him one night while he was changing a head gasket, and they sat on the curb and talked because they had nothing better to do. Did he remember a man in a wrecking yard, who removed a valve from an engine while he passed the spanners, and only charged him a dollar? But these are not the common run. These are all the spirits of the road. After finishing the Coke I go back to the cab and pull out onto the highway. Through the misty rain I can see a freight train making its way along next to the road. I begin overtaking it so I will beat it to the level crossing, and pull up level with the dark and deserted guard's carriage. I gain speed and pass it slowly, carriage by carriage, coal vans, and tanker vans with Mobil Oil in blue lettering. After catching the diesel locomotive, I hear the roar of its engines and the gush of its exhaust shattering the midnight air. Gradually I leave it behind, and pass through the crossing just before the boom gates come down. END Copyright. All rights reserved, but may be freely distributed electronically.