but i will miss the hamburger skirmish

My view out the window of Best Western, room 253:
Concrete. A winter-strangled birch across the lot. Dead grass spitting up through the pavement. That sparkling purple American sedan which never leaves the Waffle House parking lot. West of Monkhouse Drive lies Airport Casino, which obscures my view of the Avis Rent-A-Car, the Hampton Inn, the airport. Power lines and storage sheds complete the clutter. And only a stones throw away, a Waffle House and a duel gas station/sandwich shop.

On our day off we pass the time in Samuel L. Jackson’s escalade. The rental company in Shreveport has only one champagne colored escalade, and we have to share it with Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson. The scene we use it for: actor Ray McKinnon takes a shot to the head, sprays blood all over the interior. We spend hours cleaning it, to varying success, and the felt-like interior is blanched pink. We hope Sam wont mind.
Jeremy takes her 0-60 with his foot pressed to the floor, lays a track of black strips on Louisiana’s highway five just east of Stonewall. We cut north around the lake, shuffle out the boardwalk that leers over the swamp, over the garbage that peers up from that murky water.
And as Valentine’s Day approaches, Shreveport and I ready ourselves to part, perhaps for the last time. Oh, the moments we’ve shared that I’ll never miss:

1.) Fried barbecued chicken.
2.) Pneumonia.
3.) The Couch In Room 253, The Best Western Richmond Suites, Shreveport LA, 71109. I wanted the Spud Webb Model, but they gave me the Mugsy Bogues Version. Sleeping on a couch that size—for a month—is about as comfortable as spooning a chainsaw.
4.) The Hash Browns at Waffle House. With tomatoes, onions, ham. The term ‘Round the Fleet’, here applies. This refers to the british navy phrase for flogging a man in front of the entire crew of ships, usually to death.
5.) Tom Sizemore’s story about the Wizinator. About when he took his urine test in front of the sheriff, and after completion, the fake dick came off in his hands. Precious.
6.) Biscuits.
7.) Styrofoam containers.
8.) People fat for lack of ambition, fat for abundance of fried, barbecued chicken, jalapeno poppers and TAB.
9.) The downtown casinos and every ten-gallon hat within, every menthol cigarette pinched between every dimpled sad-sacked finger and the sallow, jaundiced eyes of the backwoods pawns of this Sportsman’s Paradise.
That I will not miss.

(bonus) But the flea market where I got my sunglasses? And for a deal, could have bought My Awakening: A Path To Racial Understanding, By David Duke, AND gotten a free Ban The NAACP bumper sticker. That place? Oh, right. Wont miss that either.