Tuesday morning marked the day that my wife and I.N.K. merchandise girl would be leaving the tour. I woke up at 6 in the morning to take her to the airport. I said my goodbyes, dropped her off and headed to return my rental car.
I ordered an Uber to come and pick me up, but I realized that I wasn’t in a place where an Uber driver would be able to get to me. I made my trek through the grass (hoping to not get stopped by the TSA for some sort of trespassing charge and ordered another Uber. My phone rang instantly and it was my Uber driver Manoochehr.
He couldn’t find my location so I had to walk over to the DFW-Mart/Whataburger. The Toyota Camry took the turn and I immediately recognized him. He was wearing the same Ivy Cap as he had on in his picture. This guy may have been the highlight of my trip. He was from Iran, he moved here twelve years ago. He had a cousin living in Dallas, who never told him how great America was, I think Manoo thought he might have been trying to keep it secret from him.
Manoo visited one time, and it was all it took. He moved to America as fast as he could. He was as curious as he was talkative. I described my situation a little, and told him that I was in Texas to do poetry shows for colleges. Mostly his responses were to how amazing America is. Sometimes it takes meeting someone who was born in another country for THEM to prove to YOU that your country is awesome. We’d spent some time in Miami hearing students complain about Miami, so it gave me some perspective.
“You’re a-going to Shreve-a-port???” He asked. “Oh, you haff to shtay at the uh-Horshoe Hotel!” I had an inner sigh of relief, we were already booked at the Horseshoe in Shreveport. “They have thee most ameezzzing boofayy! My seester and mother come wif me and they geev me all of their left overs, they call me ze ‘human garbage disposal’. “I will eat anythin but I love good fud, and the Horseshoe has it!.” I mentioned several other times that we were already booked, but he kept trying to sell me on it.
“Some-a-times when my mother and I go, (we take the free bus to Shreveport) My mother start get deepressed bout not winning. I will put hondret dollar bill and cash eet out immediately. I’ll run up to her and go ‘We whon! We whon!’ She get soo excited and it make her whole treep.”
Manoo seemed like a good guy, who loved his country, and loved his mom. He dropped me off at the All Good Cafe in Deep Ellum. It’s described as “a little slice of Austin in the heart of Dallas. I chowed down on my biscuits and gravy wishing Manoo all the best.
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Today was sure to be a busy day. We had a tour of the Cowboys stadium, a show in Fort Worth, and a trip to Shreveport Louisiana ahead of us.
The cowboys stadium was incredible. The engineering, the decorations and the artwork. It was a modern marvel. We got to check out the locker rooms and the private sky boxes and all that goodness. We got to throw around the ball on the field as well. I couldn’t help but be preoccupied with thinking about how massive this trip was, and how incredibly it is that spoken word poetry at colleges brought me here. I may not be Jerry Jones. But I’m ok.
We went and met Courageous’s friend from Knoxville for some golf. Courageous’s friend Leslie was originally from the Knoxville area, but was living in Nashville doing recruiting work for Vanderbilt. Leslie was tall, with an athletic build, soft spoken, and extremely witty and funny. The golf game we played is called Top Golf, if you aren’t familiar with it, it’s kind of like a driving range meets a bowling alley. Hard to explain, but trust me, it’s fun. Afterward, we went back to Snuffer’s for more cheese fries, and then on to Fort Worth for the Fort Worth Poetry Slam.
Buddy Wakefield is a person that I’m proud to say that I know. Buddy was able to link me up with the incredibly talented Mike Guinn, to let us feature at a community of writiers. Obviously, performing spoken word poetry at colleges is our passion, but it’s nice to occasionally perform at poetry venues, as those audiences know poetry well and are able to digest it in a different way.
We thought we were at the wrong venue at first. It was far away from the center of town, in what appeared to be a lower income neighborhood. It was in a strip mall, somewhere between a Papa John’s and a Dollar General. It was in the back of a store called Dock BookShop. It was a store that primarily sold books written for African Americans, by African Americans. One of the authors on display was in attendance that night.
The performance was a warm welcome compared to some of the shows that we do at colleges. A room full of poets typically have a more impassioned response than a room of 50/50 students to parents when we perform spoken word for parent’s weekends. But we love doing both, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
We sold some merchandise, had some celebratory pizza and cake, and we hit the road for a long and late drive across part of Texas, and into Louisiana.
I tried to stay awake to give Courageous some encouragement. But I was unable to. I’d gotten up very early that morning to go to the airport and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. As we passed through the bright lights of Dallas, they quickly faded off into nothing, and our surroundings became bleak and dark. It became especially dark for me as I fell asleep, and slept until we hit the Louisiana border.
If you’ve ever played the video game Final Fantasy VII, you may be familiar with how our night went. We were in the middle of seemingly nowhere, praying that we could get to our hotel in a fast and safe manor. Then, off in the distance, a large looming gold structure appears over the horizon. It was 2 o’clock in the morning, and traffic was minimal. We felt very alone out there, but as the structure became more clear, we knew we’d made it to our hotel, the Horseshoe Hotel and Casino.
I make the gaming note because, in FFVII there is a part of the game where you are in the middle of nowhere, and you come across a place by the name of The Golden Saucer. It’s a large hotel casino where you can feel safe and play games for a couple of days before continuing your journey.
Even though the world felt like it was sleeping, the inside of this hotel was wide awake. Fountains, people running around celebrating their winnings, and restaurants that were still open. We felt safe within the walls of this place. Felt like we were in a fortress in the middle of the Louisiana wild. We drug our bags in and up to the 19th floor. The rain followed us to Lousiana. We heard thunder clap in the distance as we drifted off to sleep.
