That evening, we were somewhere west of Johnson City, Texas when the lead members of the caravan passed right beneath a gigantic highway sign for our turnoff, Route 290 to Fredericksburg, and we blindly followed along. Annie was driving Duke for me, and I was in the passenger seat not paying any attention to the road. It was after midnight and we were freezing our asses off in Duke. With no roof, the night wind at sixty miles per hour is more than cold. Annie said she thought maybe we had missed the exit, but we we're enjoying each other's company and without a working CB in Duke we had no choice but to follow the leader.

Meanwhile, Rainbow, Marble and Jack Splat were way back, a point in their favor, for when they reached the turnoff they assumed that was the way we had gone. They soon learned from the CB banter that we'd gone astray, and apparently Harrod figured it out about then, too. It's hardly worth mentioning the incident except that it amounted to some twenty miles out of the way, which for Annie and ice-cube-me was painful. That, and it made me sit up and pay attention, which allowed me to witness what happened next.

Lyndon B. Johnson State Park. It was foggy as hell when suddenly "Thwack!" Harrod hit a deer, sending a shower of thrift store cameras across the road. Bambi ate a dozen Polaroids for a midnight snack, thrashing the grillwork of The Camera Van.

Somebody said, "Jeez, if it weren't for all the cameras, imagine the damage to the grill!" I had a sneaking suspicion Harrod would have fed the deer the entire transmission rather than blow sixty-some odd pieces of an intricate camera puzzle to smithereens.

Skirting the headlight glare of a dozen art cars parked higgelty-piggelty along the roadside, the ghost of LBJ lurked in the darkness and not one car drove by. Tarzan Tim and Charles Hunt canvassed the nearby tall grass in search of the dead deer. The victim was described as a four-legged woodland creature with flashbulb eyes. Bambi the Terminator: half-android, half-Polaroid.

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Last update April 1, 2004