I learned a lot out at the Don Imus Rehabilitation Ranch. People say that you can’t learn the way we did out there, but they’re all wrong.
Don Imus breaks all the rules about learning. He had us learn college age things. Well that broke some rules. First, most of us were middle school aged, though there was a girl who was taller than most of us who claimed to be in fifth grade. I assumed that was a lie. I understand from Mr. Imus that in another, more sensible, time she would have been held back. That in those times, she could very well have been in fifth grade but maybe been sixteen or so-and-so several years older than the rest of us, meaning here intimidating physical presence would have been perfectly explicable as being a consequence of her superior age, mixed with a fair degree of protective macho or bravado put on to cover up the embarrassment of watching cohort after cohort of kids much smaller than her get the most basic elements of math and sentence structure and move up and leave her behind. That was not at all how Imus put it, but it is how I now know how to put it, thanks, perhaps, to the education I received out at his draconian ranch.
The word draconian isn’t quite right. Forgive this digression but it really isn’t one. You see that I am a young man, recounting his experience at the Don Imus Rehab Ranch, and I use a word not at all common for even an eminently educated person of my age, and, instead of reveling in its usage, I am pained by how inadequately it conveys what happened. Further, though I did not mention it anywhere in this or any number of the preceding sentences, I am also bothered knowing that any attempt to convey the reality of the Ranch experience will require too many words, and any reader well educated in the art and science of reading stories will regard my attempt as only so much meandering. These same people object to even using adjectives. They say “don’t tell us” that the Imus Ranch was draconian, show us. And then, when you show them, they accuse you of going on for too long, writing too much, and they say that you need to have most of what happens as the foundation of an iceberg moving the surface of the story along the freezing cold sea, but then leave that whole foundation out – that we’ll all know what you mean when you don’t say or write it. Well, I know that’s all horse shit, but I can’t help but feel like I’m doing wrong no matter what I do. And I’m from Arizona and don’t know anything about icebergs, except lettuce.
As you can see, what I have really learned at the Imus Ranch is intellectual neurosis. I am entitled, I believe, to go ahead and tell you this. There is a long tradition in literature of memoir-style storytelling replete, if not actually bursting with, all kinds of adverbs and adjectives, so I am just going to go ahead and take that liberty. I have read millions of stories from people captured and held slave by Indians, including some who got used to it and, when given the choice, never went back. To be honest, that’s how I kind of feel about the Imus Ranch, but he won’t let a person stay no matter how hard they beg.
But still, I hear all those voices from the Imus Ranch guest speakers. The funny thing is I do not at all object to doing any kind of wrong and would happily commission all kinds of intellectual crimes were it not for me not wanting this story to be published and the lessons it disseminated, more widely than I ever could ever do, to the wider world. I fear though, that such intermediaries, those, as one guest speaker said, “control the means of production,” will read this introduction, and find that I have broken a great many taboos and refuse to disseminate these lessons as I wish. I’d sure feel better writing all this without all those voices in my head chanting and murmuring all these stifling taboos, like some Indian chant I heard tell of by some spooked kid who once ran off the ranch by his self and when he came back, said he’d seen all kinds of red ghosts far out yonder, and that’s why he run back, and when he got his beating, thought it the best thing he’d ever had.
So Imus’s teaching style at the Rehab Ranch was to have college professors of all sorts drive the long way out to the dusty desert highway and lecture us all weekly on various topics. His intent was that we would give a respectful hearing to the professor. Seeing our young faces, many of which couldn’t help but look belligerent, not matter how hard we tried to put on “respectful airs,” the visiting professor would invariably look beseechingly to Imus, hoping for some kind of guidance as to what course of action to take. It was obvious that Imus had misled the poor man (and it was always a man for reasons that will be obvious soon) and given him no idea that the proposed “talk” about “the finer points” of his “academic specialty” was to be made to a group of formerly drug-addicted and formerly hard-drinking, alcoholic kids ranging from the alleged age of eleven in that girl’s case through that of fourteen.
One really uptight guy came totally unglued. Like all professors who came out to the ranch, he got nervous finding himself in a dark, candlelit, drafty room, while coyotes and wolves howled off out in the mountain air, and surrounded by a pretty rough group of seasoned ranch hand kids who called him “sir,” and gave him “mighty thanks,” and tipped just slightly their cowboy hats his way all at the same time when he said “if you don’t mind, I think we’ll get started.”
Like the others, he hesitated, at first, to voice his surprise. The reason for the hesitation was always the same, to not show any fear or uncertainty. No man in his right mind in that room would want to make any of us, especially Imus, think him some kind of novice when it came to extremely isolated, half-desert, ranch life surrounded by thrice bitten tough guys like all of us. But this one guy did. He turned to Imus and asked in an almost English accent,
“How on earth to you expect me to lecture these children on shifting paradigms in the New History if they lack even the most basic familiarity with the socially agreed upon constructs that make up the old?”
One kid amongst us, who had advanced through Imus’s program with such alacrity that he had sidearm privileges, stood up and tipped his hat to the speaker. He then rested his hands on his holster belt, which, I believe, might have drawn the attention of the visiting professor to the fact that some of the bullet slots were empty. Now that I think of it, I very much doubt that. The professor appeared to being coming unglued even more and looked scared and gulped when he asked the kid “yes?” The kid then said,
“Sir, first, all of us here are much obliged for you taking the trouble to drive the long distance from your institute of learning all the way out to our humble, temporary abode here and offer us your specialized perspective on burning interlectual issues facing this once great nation of our’n, so please don’t in any way take my comments as indicating any lack of respect for you or your kinfolk who raised you as best they knew how given their limited perspective on what a man is, but you are quite mistaken to assume that we out here at the Don Imus Rehabilitation Ranch are not familiar with the basic outlines of the United States History – we are. That I can assure you of, and if I had a bible handy, I’d swear on it so you’d know, though I serspect you don’t put much stock in the word of the Lord, no matter if it came thundering down from the roof right on your bald head right this second. But that aside sir, you should feel absolutely free to proceed with sharing with us your take on the events and personalities that make up this nation’s great history, as we all understand you agreed to do when you spoke with Mr. Imus about coming out here on the telephone.”
He then proceeded with his presentation and, before we even got to the question and answer period, Imus had shoved the guy outside the hall and towards the fence around the horse corral, and we all kicked the shit out of the guy for a good ten minutes, more for his good than our own.
Unfortunately, everything the guy said stuck in my head and made me doubt what facts were, and made me think that some mental derangement on my part somehow matched up perfectly with what some downright evil-doing folks up at the top of the world wanted that I had a hard time not imagining as devils. And the very act of me thinking what I thought about, say, the origins of the Civil War, somehow harmed real live people in the here and now, drove me so nuts with overwhelming brain chemicals unleashed by all my confusion that I thought I’d explode if I didn’t get up out of my chair and go hit or shoot something. I didn’t have gun privileges yet but sure as hell wished that second I had. I even eyed the pistol of the boy who did and thought “I’m gonna shoot that guy if he don’t shut his yap real quick.” Then I felt that thought was some kind of wrong that played right into the hands of those devils I imagined, and I almost became paralyzed with neurosis.
These guilty feelings were such that I took more delight in the others kicking the shit out of the professor. And when he was breathing hard and not getting much air from his broken ribs, I took even more delight in Imus noticing the ass kicking I gave and then giving me the pleasure of smashing out the guy’s tail lights with the butt of Imus’s level action Winchester, an item so precious to him that kids new to the Ranch were instructed to avert their eyes from it, a hard thing to do since most times Imus had it, and we were all instructed to look him in the eye, except when we’d done something bad. Smashing out the tail lights was a privilege for the kid who gave the best ass kicking, though there were lots of times when no one did, so Imus just shot the lights out as the professor drove away.
So that was the learning process out at Imus Ranch. The professors came out, saw how young we were, and took some umbrage at being misled. A few dumb ones complained that they would need at least a week to translate their lecture into something age appropriate, while others simply gulped and went on with their college talk once Imus gave them a series of stern looking assurances that we would follow it all just fine, if not better than the folks they teach down at the university. Then, at some point, usually towards the end of Q and A, we would all drag the guy outside and give him a good ass kicking to, as Imus put it, “learn the dumb bastard that ideas have consequences and tellin’ bad dumb ones that are perverted and unpatriotic can still get a person’s ass kicked, that there are still some of us out there that have the horse sense to know the difference between chicken pie and horse shit.” This was more or less the pep talk he gave us each time just as the headlights of the speaker’s car shown through our airy lecture hall. Just as we all moved to go out and greet him, Imus reminded us to be respectful and, tossing his lever action Winchester from his left hand to his right, moved to the front of all of us and then opened the heavy door to the big hall and led us all out to give the poor sap a respectful and kind welcoming.
Another guest speaker came out and told all of us that economic injustice begins not with birth, but in conception. Someone out here said it starts with foreplay, and we took to giggling ‘til Imus cocked his rifle. Someone said its roots extend as far back, even further, all the way to the Edwardian Era. I don’t think he knew what he was saying. He just remembered the phrase Edwardian Era from a World War I lecturer who didn’t tell us anything about us warping things with our perception but instead spoke of nothing but how the war was fought, with what kind of guns and gas and artillery and he used the word “hero” a lot and asked what kind of soldiers call a truce to go celebrate Christmas with the enemy, and answered his own question and said “pansies and homersexuals” and spat on the floor after saying “pansies.” He was the only guy whose ass we didn’t kick.
No one asked if the kid even knew what the Edwardian Era was, but Imus did chime in that what the kid was saying “fell under the category of mindless speculation, like digging for gold in a flower pot.” That was Imus’ way of reminding him that we out at his Rehab Ranch are not to disagree with the guest speaker until they’ve had their whole say and not interrupt thinking we knew what they were saying, and we could go ahead and finish up with it and get to the point quicker than they can – that we out there know what virtue is and know patience tops the list – because if there’s anything you learn out at the Imus Ranch, it’s good manners.
In the free-for-all discussion following the guest speakers weird talk, others in the group suggested economic injustice might go back yet further, into the primordial slime from which our one celled ancestors were first drawn to earthly shores by some huge wave, and then over gizillions of eons slowly morphed into something resembling a sea-horse and went on from there, with the horse becoming a person that had a lot more money than everyone else and wouldn’t share it.
Things had gotten out of hand. All these guest speakers with all their weird notions had planted all kinds of ideas in the Rehab Ranch kids’ heads, and they took to the weirdest kinds of speculation. Imus shot his rifle to get us to shut our yaps with all our nonsense, then said perhaps all our horse shit was really his fault, for not having us beat the living tarnations out of that World War One feller. One kid piped in that there was no cause to do so, that he was a good man, who knew a lot about guns and war and knew a soldier’s job wasn’t to run off and play soccer with the enemy in no man’s land but to blow the dumb bastard’s head off. And if you were out of bullets and your bayonet was bent, to jump in his trench and rip the damn thing off with your bare hands and then beat as many other Kraut bastards to death with it as you could before they shot you. Imus let the kid have his peace, then said that while the kid was right, he still needed to “shut down and sit the hell up” and “relearn his manners” ‘cause Imus had a God Damn Point he would never make if he let “every pencil-dick pip squeak chime in with his own share of horse shit while I’m trying to talk God Damn It!”
Then Imus said all that aside, it was his fault. That the little shit is right, that the World War One feller was a good man, and knew him the difference between real history and horse shit speculation, and it was a mistake to have him come out and see us. We had no idea what he was talking about. He saw that and said it’s not ordinarily a good idea to tell ranch hands that they’ve learned their lessons good when they’ve still got more to learn, ‘cause they get fat heads and think they can do it all and always end up trampled by a horse. But, this time, he had to let the cat out of the bag and tell us that we ourselves had learned what makes good, common old fashioned horse sense, and what is just a big, old pile of steamy puck shaped horse shit. He said that kicking tarnations out of homersexual professors was a kind of transition phase, representing how we were halfway between student and teacher, on our way to becoming men. He then tipped his hat at the girl and said “much obliged.”
He then said he figured the reason we ourselves were presently engaged in so much horse shit speculation was because we took a week off from beating the living shit out of the type that was. He said we’d missed the whole point. The “ideer” of listening to some “homo post modernist tell you Shakespeare liked fags” was not to think about what the guy said and chime in with “ideers from other fellers like that evolution guy who said out great, great, great ancestors were one celled slime balls,” but to let him have his say, ‘cause that’s what you do in the only real democracy in the world, and then take him outside and kick hell out of the dumb bastard for insulting you and all the other hands.
Things were real bad ‘cause now a lot of us didn’t fully understand Imus.
“Sir,” I said. “I am real sorry sir, but I don’t quite follow yer train o’thought, and know the fault ain’t yearn but’s mine, but can I just ask ye a small question, sir? I’d be much obliged fer the over indulgence and promise ye I won’t take it fer permission to go run off all half cocked and speculate like some kind of college town dipshit, I give ye my word sir.”
Imus granted me my question.
“Sir, are you sayin’ that when one of these college types goes on and on about some dumb ideer that we are to let him talk all he wants and let him go back to town peacefully as long as he don’t say nothin’ that we should all take personal? That, to give an example from that homersexual who called himself a “neo-desconstructionist,” had he not said that all of us were the end result of all kinds of historical wrongdoing, and had just said that President Polk had provoked the Mexicans into war, and was a big pussy for not talking straight, and not having the balls to just look the Mexicans in the eye and say “Nueces River, Rio Grande, I don’t give no rat ass fuck about no boundary, I’m sendin’ my boys into whip tarnations out of all you papist bastards for what you done to a perfectly good mission in San Antone,” that if he’d said all that, we’d have been best to let the man go in peace?”
Imus replied that if the man don’t say nothing bad about what your dead kinfolk done, that you let him go in peace. I begged to ask another question in the same beseeching and apologetic manner as above and Imus granted the indulgence.
“Sir, I don’t understand why we beat tarnations out that Shakespeare Scholar who said that Shakespeare wrote Taming of the Shrew to keep Lesbians down, and that people who read it now or go see it are all keeping today’s lesbian down too. Why’d we kick his ass?”
“Well, his ideers were real dumb and he acted like he was smarter than us and that was a big insult.”
I didn’t even think to ask another question and took from what he said that pencil-dick interlectuals were free to say what they wanted but, like Imus said, words have meanings. So if you insult someone, then your words really mean “please take me out near the fence and kick the hell out of my guts so my ribs break, and if I don’t gasp out a sorry that we can all hear real good, then make way for when Imus comes in and takes a big leak all over my face.” Some part of me thought that maybe we were more like the speaker than Imus knew, that we were making the meaning of what they guy said, and taking a kind of revolutionary action like all the speakers said we should, that they seemed to say that the right thing to do was ignore what the law said and take action all based, not on what people who worked at institutions said, but what we thought. Well, we all thought those pencil-dick professors were dumb fags that had no business saying we were wrong to kick Mexico’s ass and take from them what they’d hardly had in the first place, the very desert Don Imus’s kin built his God Damn Ranch on. I knew that from just looking at the God Damn Maps the professor brought with him and forgot to take back after we’d kicked his ass and he crawled to his car and drove off criss crossing all over the place and even knocked down Imus’s mail box post. Looking at the maps what happened was real clear: Spain claimed Arizona and no one lived out here except Indians ‘cause it was so damn hot. Then Mexico left Spain and went ahead and tried claiming everything Spain had once claimed but never really had. Why on God’s Green Earth couldn’t America claim the same land? It was up for grabs, so we took it God Damn It.
Imus came in when I was looking over those maps and put a hand on my shoulder and asked “what are you lookin’ at son?”
I told him,
“These maps, sir, and they tell a different story than that homersexual that probably drove off to die in a ditch somewhere on a lonesome stretch of long desert road back to town. And that serves him right, sir, for lyin’ to us sir and the whole time havin’ right next to him these maps that show he weren’t tellin’ the truth!”
Imus took a swig from his bottle of bourbon.
“And what truth do these maps show that that buzzard meat homo saw fit to insult us by pretendin’ it weren’t there, by puttin’ these maps right in front of our faces like we’re all so dumb that we wouldn’t notice?”
“That we didn’t steal Arizona from Mexico, sir. We was older than Mexico, sir, and it had just come into being, and it ran off and said all that desert up there nearer to us than them is theirs, sir! It was up for grabs sir. And all them Mexicans were pussies, just like the Spanish, and didn’t have the balls to move out in the desert and just laid claim to it. But when we show our balls and say it’s ourn, then all of a sudden they throw a big hissy fit. They got what was comin’ to ‘em sir, and that guy out in the car, he deserve to be eaten by cay-oats and wolves this ‘eve for lyin’ at us the whole time and showin’ us that he was lying right in front of our faces, sir.”
“That’s a mighty big insult. Don’t quite follow what you said though son.”
I asked him if he’d mind if I told another story that would help it all make sense. He took another glug of bourbon and said “aw hell, mine as well.”
I told him that Mexico sayin’ Arizon is their’n just after they got their independence from Spain was no different that us saying we get Canada after our independence from Britain. He took another glug and looked at me real confused.
“Sir, them Mexicans think that they get any land where a person is Catholic and speaks Spanish. That’s no different than us saying we get any land where a person ain’t Catholic and speaks English.”
I pointed at the map.
“Look down yonder from Mexico, down south there. See that land linking North and South America? Now Mexico didn’t lay no claim to that! And everyone there, they spoke Spanish and were Catholic!”
“So you sayin’ that Mexico thought they could just tell us not to come to Arizona ‘cause we didn’t speak Spanish and weren’t Catholic.”
“Yes sir, and that’s prejudiced sir. That’s one set of rules for one group and a different set of rules for another, sir.”
“So that guy was not only lying to our faces and waving the proof of him lying right at us, but he was telling us that we should all think one way that’ll make us all losers while others get to think another way that will make us all winners.”
“Yes sir.”
“Then he weren’t only a liar, but he was a hippercrit too.”
“Yes sir, he most certainly was.”
“C’mon son,” Imus said, and he walked to the glass case of rifles, taking the keys out of his pocket when he did it. He opened it real quick and tossed me a lever action Winchester, and I caught it with one hand. Then he tossed me a gun already holstered up, and I caught that too.
“You’ll need these too,” and he tossed me one box of bullets, and I set it on the table.
“Those are for your six shooter, “ he said, then tossed another box for the rifle.
Just outside the door was a wall with coats hanging on it. Imus told me to pick one, so I got a suede overcoat and cocked the rifle lever with one hand. I said wait and ran back in and grabbed the bullet boxes and put one in each side pocket. Then we grabbed some saddles from inside the barn and went out to the corral where the fastest horses were and got the saddles on real quick and got on to race after that man who we figured had insulted us not one, not two, but at least three times. We jumped right over the fence. They were the best, most strongest horses on the whole Ranch.
Imus didn’t need to say it. I was done with rehab. I had learned my lessons real good, as good as any lessons could be learned.
We never found the guy, so he was real lucky. On the way back we rode at a slow trot and he told me stories of how kids used to get held back, and how if we did that again, people’d learn their lessons a lot quicker and a lot better too. He even passed me the bottle as we rode. The thing about Imus Rehab Ranch wasn’t to get us to stop drinking forever. It was okay to drink. We just had to learn us how to do it right.
Jason Half-Pillow’s writing has appeared in the Iowa Review, The Bicycle Review, Hobo Pancakes, and the Driftwood Press. He currently lives in Vicenza, Italy.