"Shaking the tree, Boss, shaking the tree!"

Friends: "Shaking the tree, Boss, shaking the tree!"
Paul Newman

Late night driving, whether sober or wigged-out on uppers, produces thoughts that come out of nowhere, from the deep levels of lunacy lurking near the surface, ready to jump out at any provocation ~~~ particularly as one cruises east near midnight through the rural darkness along I-16 with a full moon and truckers as travel companions. This was my predicament last night.

The above lines from the classic movie, Cool Hand Luke, uttered by Paul Newman, came to mind. Remember that movie? He had "the urge to go," so the chain gang Boss let him ease into the edge of the woods for relief, only he was to continue shaking the bush so he wouldn't run off...and he did just that, with a very long string while he made his escape.

Sometimes I feel like Luke when I'm in Atlanta, always "shaking the deal-bushes" to see what might fall out. When the kids were very young they called me The Money Tree. Before they knew how to spend really big money, and when they needed coins for snacks, and not for cars or houses, they used to say, “Let’s go shake The Money Tree.”

Well, what goes around eventually comes back around, you know. And for a lot of years now I have been shaking the Atlanta banks' money trees for coins, and I suspect a whole lot of others have been doing the same thing, too, if the news has any accuracy to it. But for many their "string" has run out, and while they attempt to escape through the forests of confusion, the banks are closing in. Escape is never possible...and the past is always close behind!

Cool Hand Luke was ultimately captured, beaten, humiliated and forced to dig deep holes (which always happens when we shake the banks' money trees too much!), from which the famous lines by the Warden originated: "What we have here is a failure to communicate."

Leaving Atlanta for the coast reminded me that we can run, but we cannot hide (also famous lines from the boxer, Joe Louis). The string will always run out, and we will be captured, stripped naked, beaten, cast into cages for punishment and shaken without mercy, forced to pay the last farthing...at least metaphorically anyway. I saw the beginning of a lot of holes being dug in Atlanta this week, and I'm glad that one of them was not mine (at least not yet!). And I hope that none of the holes I see appearing down here are yours!


Bud
August 30, 2007