Muddy rivers

“I saved the car,” Barbara said from Argelès. It was parked next to the riverbed that is usually dry. The banks are about twelve feet high. However, a snow storm and torrential rains brought the water to the top of the banks in less than 24 hours. The village police took down license numbers and called the car owners.

The racing muddy brown waters made me think of Al Grierson www.utahphillips.org/al/ and www.iww.org/culture/biography/AlGrierson1.shtml the folk singer that visited me in Geneva. He had also walked along the river bed in Argelès with me.

He lived in a bus on an armadillo farm outside Austin, TX. Al was swept awayin a flash flood coming back from a gig in his truck that his friends contributed money for so he could buy it.

The last time I spoke to Al was the night of the last Gore/Bush debate. Had he lived, he would have been horrified at the turn the world has taken. Known as the poet laureate of Luckenbach I can only imagine what he would have written had he not drowned.