Suspicious Packages...

No not a name for our new band. I mean we don't have a new band so we don't need a new name. It's not something that Wally G or Big E left for Pop Pop to find. If you are like me though and find yourself at border crossings, bus stations, airports and train ("Play a Train Song") platforms from Boquillas to the Vltava River you have heard the announcement, saw the sign "Watch for and don't accept suspicious packages. 

I know, everybody is scared of one thing or another.  On a recent Houston evening, after a rain that washed the humidity out of the air we came around a downtown street corner looking for a restaurant to meet Ali and Morgan. The place chosen  had modeled it's self on southern kitchen cooking and as it came into view I spotted outside seating crowded with young non native Houstonians in the tribal garb of light blue long sleeve shirts and tan slacks who had poured from the high rise offices way above our heads to have their after work fun. Everybody is scared of one thing or another and light blue shirts and tan slacks has always kind of been it for me but now a days I have enough money to join right in at these kind of places even though I might be dressed all funky and cool and we got a good table. Seemed at the end of the street though we might get some kind of show with our drinks. There were a bunch of fire trucks about a block down. 

Right before taking an outside table I spotted a little scrawny street person looking black man. He had a kind of suspicious package under his arm but I though hey, he might be the mayor of this block or something so I ask him "What's going on?" He said "Dey smoke comin' outta o dem bushes." Caught up on events, we took a table.   

They brought us tonic and lime in big mason jars just like at grandma's house and we settled in the watch the smoke, the guys in blue shits and slacks and just enjoy the mild weather. Only thing someone decided it would be bad if the smoke turned to something worse so the precaution was made to move all inside. We still got a good table. I ate a shrimp po boy. The blue shirts seemed to be on the company tab. The smoke curled up from the bushes. I did not see the street dude again. 

After awhile the fire trucks left, city crews puttered around at some kind of clean up which was probably boring and welcome after Hurricane Harvey activity which had been about three weeks before this. We left for other fun elsewhere. The blue shirts stayed. 

I note that a border crossing at Boquillas now requires a passport. Two guys in 1970s cop show windbreakers wearing pistols got on a bus I was riding from Prague to Munich and looked at my passport. It was not like that before suspicious packages. 

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