Tales of the Enchanted Mesa

When Carlos Castenedas stopped at a New Mexico Sinclair station to get directions to Yaqui country, he got directions from a mildly disoriented but steady-handed stranger. It was Fullerton, of course, returning from the trail Castenedas was about to travel. These selections - a few recounting his sojourn, the others simply written during that period of his life - capture a darker side of Fullerton's imagination. He often talked about his time on what he variously called the haunted mesa, the magic mesa, the spirit mesa, the creep-show mesa, the hump-busting mesa, and so on.

"Never heard exactly what went on up there," Willie Nelson once said. "Tell you what, though. Ol' Hoss was dancing with beasties old Carlos never dreamed of."

Songs on this page:

El Gusano (The Worm)
Down On the Avenue
Gonna Feel Good If It Kills Me
Sheep Dippin'
Did You See Her? (Was She Doing the Frug?)
Delta-bound
Bad B Movie
The Crossing
Silver and Gold
She-wolf
Yellow Cafe
Mystery Town

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1. El Gusano (The Worm)
copyright Leon Fullerton

The worm in the bottle will be mine tonight,
little limbless lover, cheap but alright.
Black-suited hombre will set it all right,
represents interests you don't want to fight.

High razor wire, xylophone dogs,
Chevys on blocks, razor-back hogs,
maquiladoras, dates missing from logs,
remember as much as the evidence jogs.

If I could remember the place I come from,
I'd start walking backwards and stick out my thumb.
If I could forget with just one Coke and rum,
then adios, gusano, my chewable chum.

Foreclosure auction on the promised land,
a mud-flap mambo 'cross the Rio Grande,
a honeymoon hide-away one-night stand,
and you're alone.

"Guantanamera" on a bambino grande,
a craze of crows above the Rio Grande,
and you're still waiting for the man
from San Antone.

A pink motel on the blistering sand,
a dry, white season on the Rio Grande,
a blue margarita in a skeleton's hand,
bleached bone.

An unclaimed suitcase with a hundred grand,
a mescaline moon above the Rio Grande,
gotta get your soul into detox
and phone home.

The circuit judge looks rested and tanned,
rough justice rules on the Rio Grande,
storm clouds gather above the river
of sand and stone.

Composed in 1971 subsequent to an aborted trade mission to the land of accordions and very large men's hats.

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2. Down On the Avenue
copyright Leon Fullerton

Your shadow crossed the doorway,
a cool breeze blew you in,
all my best-laid plans for vanishing
suddenly wore thin.
I'd pass up the daily double
to show with someone new --
beats sifting through the detritus
down on the avenue.

The barkeep sleeved my sawbuck,
you accepted my largess,
I stood you for a couple -
here's to looking up your address.
Next time you're in the Mermaid Bar
and find me beached here to,
remember: Things have worked out worse
down on the avenue.

All that I won at strip poker
I lost to bathtub gin.
The floater in my waterbed said,
"Let's drink to what should've been."
There's many ways to spin the bottle,
and I've toasted quite a few
between the straits and narrows
down on the avenue.

The ghosts were driving Rollses,
the dogs and cats spoke Dutch,
the bums were quaffing Remy's
while the alderman chewed his crutch,
Memphis Minnie mixed Manhattans,
Lana Lang was in the loo,
Hedda Hopper was heisting hubcaps
down on the avenue.

You answered every question
I'd lacked the wits to ask.
The barkeep ascended from the underworld
with a candle and a cobwebbed cask.
In the quavering, wayward mirror,
our eyes me, two by two.
You were talking about a deal gone bad
down on the avenue.

Bar-as-pergatory is a standard Fullerton trope, one he mined throughout his career. We don't know whether the Mermaid Bar in Fort Lauderdale is the one Fullerton sang about in "Down On the Avenue." We do know he was involved with a swimmer at Sea World, Roberta Karpinsky (subject of "Roberta" and "The Best Song That I Ever Wrote), but the rest is conjecture. So let's go:

Locales implied by (or implicated in) the tune include Memphis, in his allusion to Memphis Minnie, Hollywood, in his allusion to Hedda Hopper, and fictional Metropolis, in his allusion to the fictitious Lana Lang. We also know that his orbit always included swings through Berkeley and its infamous Telegraph Avenue. All bear consideration, but we favor Berkeley because of the final reference to a deal gone bad. In Berkeley, if a deal doesn't go bad, it doesn't go anywhere.

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3. Gonna Feel Good If It Kills Me
copyright Leon Fullerton

Gonna feel good if it kills me,
gonna bop until I drop,
got the pedal through the metal,
don't let the music stop.
Gonna feel good it it kills me,
gonna blow the blues away,
don't need to heed the label
when you're going all the way.
Give me a double-shot of courage
and a triple-shot of light,
for my eyes are surely branded
by the things I've seen tonight --
gonna feel alright.

Gonna feel good if it kills me,
gonna chakra round the clock.
Can't you feel my palpitations?
Can't you hear my engine knock?
Gonna feel good if it kills me,
don't ride no soft machine.
Give me cold, hard steel and a love that's real
and I'll show you what I mean.
Give me one more shot of red-eye,
give me one shot in the night,
for the end will surely be here
by the time I get it right --
but I'll feel alright.

Give me one more shot of kindness,
give me one shot in the night,
for the end will surely be here
by the time I get it right --
but I'll feel alright.

Fullerton encountered proto-hippie beat messiah Neal Cassady on several of occasions. He was impressed by the amount of air Cassady could fill with words — “Like a comic book that has so much printed in the balloons there’s no room for the pictures” — and Cassidy’s ability to abuse any available substance.

They had little in common. Cassady was a talker, Fullerton a listener. Cassady was manic, Fullerton depressive. Cassady was the leader of the pack, Fullerton was the Steppenwolf. Cassady would boost any car in the lot, Fullerton generally restricted his larceny to Mercurys. But they both walked on the wild side — a realm so razor-thin that it was inevitable that their paths should sometimes cross.

One roseate dawn, after a night the two spent binging with a group of Taos artists and bohemians on hash, dexedrine, peyote, and tequila, Fullerton spotted Cassady walking into a barn, pulled along by a young potter from Sarah Lawrence. A swirling merengue of luminous words haloed the beatnik, whose free hand brandished a freshly inaugurated bottle of tequila.

Fullerton started after them — the supply of tequila was running dangerously low, and the bottle in Cassady's free hand seemed to glow preternaturally — but thought better of the enterprise when Cassady, disappearing with his new-found potter into the barn’s welcoming gloom, looked back and called to Fullerton, “Gonna feel good if it kills me!”

In his memoir, Fullerton wrote of Cassady’s untimely death in Mexico in 1968: “Professor Moriarty was probably feeling better than I ever have or ever will. My consolation prize is that I’ve managed to feel bad a whole lot longer.”

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4. Sheep Dippin'
copyright Leon Fullerton (instrumental)

Fullerton, a man of inviolate prejudices, frequently accused businessmen of screwing their customers, suburbanites of screwing their Labradors, cowboys of screwing their horses, bankers of screwing their customers, and farmers of screwing their livestock.

Among the latter, the only willing recipients of such agrarian attentions, in Fullerton's studied view, were sheep. “Pay attention to the very last note of ‘Sheep Dippin’,’ he said to counter-culture chronicler Paul Krassner in an expunged passage of The Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalogue. “That’s the sheep smiling.”

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5. Did You See Her? (Was She Doing the Frug?)
copyright Leon Fullerton

Seems like I don't get out much anymore,
night after night finds me pacing the floor.
Don't read no papers, don't watch no TV,
world keeps on turning just fine without me.
Unsolicited static has got me unwound,
existential winter's driven me underground.
There's only one think that I'd like to know,
when you drag your skin in from wherever you go:

Did you see her?
Did you see her?
Did you see her?
Was she doing the Frug?

Twenty-four hour graveyard shift,
twilight to reason and the second-sight gift,
farewell to shadows, midnight arrives,
fourth degree burns on every soul that survives.

Did you see her?
Did you see her?
Did you see her?
Was she doing the Limbo Rock?

(Rock that around the clock.
Well, what do you know? How low can you go?)

Well, there ain't nothing wrong with the way she swings,
everybody needs another chance.
Don't believe your tea leaves when they say them things,
all I need is just one more dance.

White noise interference is bringing me down,
keep your thoughts to yourself , man, or don't come around.
Ease off on the volume, I got thoughts of my own,
just tell me one thing now that I've got you alone:

Did you see her?
Did you see her?
Did you see her?
Was she doing the Peppermint Twist?

After his break-up with his first wife, Anastasia, Fullerton roomed for a short time with his nephew Cameron Fullerton. According to Cameron, Leon refused to venture out of the apartment and continually pestered his nephew for information about Annie’s whereabouts and activities - information which Cameron, of course, simply didn’t have.

Cameron eventually put Fullerton’s belongings out on the curb, rightly surmising that Fullerton would follow. Looking back on those heady days, the nephew explained to us, “I ain’t my uncle’s keeper.”

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6. Delta-bound
copyright Leon Fullerton

Hey, now, I am loop du jour, now, baby,
a loose caboose in a trackless waste.
I won't be coming home no more, darling,
I got me an outside line that can't be traced.
My structural integrity is in jeopardy,
and this magnificent facade has been atrociously defaced.

Keep them cards and letters coming, folks.
Who knows? Someday I might even drop you a little line.
Famous last words, darling -
they carved them on my chest down at the corner of Fourth and Vine,
and now I get a bluesy kind of hunger,
and all that jazz goes down just like vintage Ripple wine.

Well, I been thinking on my feet, baby,
because my head's so heavy it just keeps on sinking down -
an excruciating condition,
like living to be dying in this mean old neon town.
Get my grip, cause I am tripping,
nail my hat on tight, 'cause I sure am Delta-bound.

Fullerton drowned his suicidal impulses in songwriting. “Delta-bound” captures the artist’s existential anguish at its most acute.

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7. Bad B Movie
copyright Leon Fullerton

Hear the Beale Street blues man
playing all night long,
squeezing into twelve bars
every gal who done him wrong.
It ain't the Bosa Nova,
no, it ain't the Boogaloo,
oh, no, it sounds like what the band played
when she fell in love with you,

and now your soul is stalked
by the hunger in her eyes,
looking back for more,
to your surprise.
Like a late-night bad-B movie
about a man who goes astray,
you never pictured yourself
turning out this way,

but now you hear the Beale Street blues man
blowing all night long,
pouring into twelve bars
every gal who done him wrong.
It ain't the Mashed Potato,
it ain't the Boogaloo,
oh, no, it sounds like what the band played
when she fell in love with you,
in love with you.

”Physically, you are what you eat,” Fullerton told Rex Fowler of Aztec Two-step when they met in the studios of WBAI-FM in New York. “But that’s just molecules. Spiritually, you are what you fear. People who fear becoming martyrs usually end up getting burned at the stake. People who fear becoming monsters usually end up hacked to hamburger by Theseus in the Labyrinth. It's the perverse alchemy of the heart.”

He wrote “Bad B Movie” after the half-hearted attempted suicide of Sarah Finn, a girlfriend whom he later married briefly - his third marriage - in a quixotic effort to bring tranquility to her fevered spirit. According to his nephew Delmont Fullerton, the moral that Fullerton derived from the whole thing was: Never fall for anyone who’s crazier than you are.

Delmont further observed that women crazier than Fullerton a commodity existing primarily in the bard's over-active imagination. "Lucky for Uncle Leon, it was advice that the women he fell for weren't privy to, or he would've never hooked up.

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8. The Crossing
copyright Leon Fullerton

I stole away from Juarez
beneath a cold coyote moon,
I heard Juanita call my name,
but I was sure I'd be back soon.

So many promises I have made
and I've as many yet to keep,
and I count them like milagros
as I lay me down to sleep.

She wrote me on the fifth of May
but I never did reply.
They caught her at the crossing
on the fourth day of July.
She said she had to find me,
but I never found out why.
Now all my messages come in bottles,
and the liquor tastes like lye.

So many promises I have made
and I've as many yet to keep,
and I count them like milagros
as I lay me down to sleep.

Fullerton spent much of 1969 through 1972 volunteering with the United Farm Workers. “The Crossing” tells the story of Perce Pendleton, an unfrocked border patrol officer. Fired for one too many hydraulic lunches and haunted by memories of sabotaged love, he'd left behind a life of remorse to dedicate himself to la causa.

Pendleton lived in a trailer decorated to an OCD degree with Our Lady of Guadalupe candles, Day of the Dead artwork, and Mexican "miracle" charms.

Said Fullerton: "The man was not religious by conventional standards. Took the lord's name in vain at every conceivable opportunity. Got him to a few First Church [of Later Day Cowboy] services, but he was only interested in their social aspects.

"All that junk just kept him in mind of that Juarez girl. I think he needed that."

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9. Silver and Gold
copyright Leon Fullerton

This town is built on silver and gold,
this town is built on fortunes untold,
this town don't care if you're dirty and cold,
'cause this town was built on silver and gold.

This town don't care if you're hungry or old,
this town will lock you up if you don't do what you're told,
this town's been bought, this town's been sold,
this town was built on silver and gold.

Tell all the people, gonna take this town,
take this town, my friend.
Tell all the people, gonna take this town,
world without end, amen.

This town is locked down, this town is patrolled,
this town's got a grip, this town's got a hold,
this town's a story too often told,
this town was build on silver and gold.

Tell all the people, gonna take this town,
take this town, my friend.
Tell all the people, gonna take this town,
world without end, amen.

Tell all the people that you were there
to see it through to the end.
Tell all the people everywhere,
gonna take this town, my friend.

Those who took part in the anti-globalization Battle of Seattle in 1999 might remember a surly old coot with a weather-beaten ten-gallon hat, a severely compromized Japanese guitar, and an unerring knack for providing an inappropriate remark for every occasion, e.g: “Smash them damn MacIntoys! When we struck against Berzerkly, we used nothing but mimeographs and bullhorns!” and “I know a kid used a cell phone all the time’s got a brain tumor on the side of his head size of a Boca Burger.”

It was probably the quality of his attitude, not his musicianship, that kept “Silver and Gold” from becoming a movement anthem.

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10. She-wolf
copyright Leon Fullerton

Tried my hand at many secret arts,
but still I cannot see:
Can I be wiser than she
if she is wilder than me?
The she-wolf pawed the door,
but there were no tracks in the dirt.
I don't know how she got here,
but, Lord, it had to hurt.
I used to gather cinders
to press upon my eyes,
but many years have passed
since she has seen through that disguise.
My soul spun like a compass,
but to her I'd always roam,
like a signpost in the starlight
with an arrow pointing home.

It was early Sunday morning
when we heard the mission bell,
like an echo of the sunrise
singing words we dared not tell.
Every sticky situation
can lead to several more
when the fox is in the henhouse
and the wolf is at the door.

But, oh, that secret wonder
that makes it impossible to forget,
that feeling that devours us like thunder
and overcomes our terror of regret.

"I see you wear the tell-tale mark,"
the she-wolf said to me.
Well, I recognized the writing,
but I swore it could not be:
I was too young to take the oath
and blinded by the dark
and deafened by the blitzkreig
that nearly sank the ark.
She said, "It's forty days and nights
until this kingdom come."
She said, "The dam is busting,
watch them little people run."
Then she smote me with a might sign,
said, "Podner, drop your gun.
Yes, you can take your stand and die,
or you can cut and run."

Like a lifeboat on the water
that rides the tall rogue wave,
she could find me like a beacon
with just one last soul to save.
I believe it's always darkest
when you're sure there is no dawn,
and the slimmest ray of sun
outshines the lightning blazing on.

And there must surely always come a moment
when everything that's left is blown to chance,
when there is nothing left to say but "Hold me,"
and there is nothing left to do but dance,

just dance, just dance.

The only woman Fullerton never got over was his first wife, Annie. In his inscription to his first anniversary present to her, a signed first edition of Edward Abbey’s The Brave Cowboy, he called her his “lifeboat in this sea of constant sorrow.”

Daughter Gwen said to us in our conversations about this project, “You can see right there why it was never going to last. Mom could never penetrate Dad's zeal for gloom and foreboding. She sure as hell tried.”

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11. Yellow Cafe
copyright Leon Fullerton

You checked into the Hell Hotel,
but I know you'll do alright,
'cause there's a blue moon over Tucson
that says tonight's the night.
They whisper legends in saloons
of those who lost their way,
but no stray word is fired
in the
yellow cafe.

Trucks shotgun through from Phoenix,
trains rage past cloaked in rain,
you can feel their howling requiems
like nitro in your vein.
No one but fleeing Bedlamites
would ever stop this way
except to pay their last respects
at the
yellow cafe.

There's nowhere it is written,
just what the lifers say:
You can spend a lifetime looking
or find it in a day.
When you're outcast, worn, and wired,
purgatory's prey,
you spot a star above a one-way dead-end alley
and a
yellow cafe.

It's the next red-eye back to Paterson or
the girl in the drive-up booth,
who cries hard as a beauty queen
ask she rings up fries and truth.
You try to tell her life works out,
but your tongue twists what you say.
There's always room for a tongue-tied Jersey boy
at the
yellow cafe.

Strangers have become your familiars,
even your demons have fled.
You've gained a taste for the uncooked flesh
you once left where it bled.
But you've heard word of a border town
where ocarinas play -
just a boxcar ride to the other side
and the
yellow cafe.

It's only what I've written,
but I believe them when they say
you can spend a lifetime looking
or pass it on the way.
When you're empty as a ghost town
or a promise rashly made,
straight down that crooked highway,
it's the
yellow cafe.

Fullerton’s vision of Nirvana: an adobe cafe whose doors are always open to stray cats, scrofulous dogs, lost souls, fleeing Bedlamites, and other poor wayfaring strangers.

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12. Mystery Town
copyright Leon Fullerton

Circus geeks and gamblers
hawk indulgences by the pound
to finance final passage
to Mystery Town.

Panhandlers and pariahs
liberate the lost and found
to retrieve their holy relics
in Mystery Town.

She said, "I'll never leave you,
good luck, see you around,"
and absconded with my ashes
in Mystery Town.

"Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder,"
the trickster told the clown,
out beyond the magic kiva
in Mystery Town.

You'll find me when you need me
deep beneath the Shriners' burial mound,
with a cactus for my pillow
in Mystery Town,

in Mystery Town, in Mystery Town, in Mystery Town....

As recounted in his unfinished memoir, Ugly Roomer, Fullerton picked up a hitchhiker in Reno, a comely young hippie named Sunshine, in the summer of 1972 on his way back to New Mexico after a speaking engagement at the Naropa Institute. Traveling slowly across Nevada (it was June, and in triple-digit weather, he wrote, "That ’55 Mercury was pissing coolant like Man o' War"), they pulled into a ghost town nestled in the foothills of a thousand-foot mesa.

Highlights (they took a walking tour of the town) included an abandoned mine, an abandoned Hopi prayer kiva, and an abandoned garage that contained several tiny, dented, abandoned cars of the sort Shriners loop about in in circuses and Fourth of July parades. Each car was boldly emblazoned with the Kora scimitar, star, and moon.

Fullerton, who had once been bitten by a monkey, harbored ill will toward fezes and, by extension, anyone who would wear one. The possibility of localized Shriner spirits made him nervous.

The day lacked other dark portents, however, and one thing led to another, as they're purported to do. Their discovery, in a vacant second-story law office, of a chaise lounge and an undisturbed cache of port, madeira, and absinthe raised Fullerton's spirits considerably, and following a languorous afternoon of purple dalliance with Sunshine in the comfort and dust of the errant attorney's sanctum, he fell into a blissful slumber.

But when the moonrise woke him that evening, Sunshine was gone, and so was his wallet. She had apparently calculated (correctly) that if she could hoof it down to the highway before the sun set, flagging a ride would be quick business.

He had just enough gas to get to Flagstaff, where he sold the car and bought a bus ticket back to New Mexico.

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"Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!" Mick Jagger