I make my way to the bathroom. In the mirror where I once saw a strong, willful man, I now stare into the eyes of a weak, pitiful creature. All hope is absent in those orbs. They ask only for pity I find myself in no position to give. I am a walking corpse, too dumb, too numb to expire. I raise an arm searching for the muscular biceps I had for so many years been overly proud of. There is no real surprise at this point that I now own the physique of a concentration camp surviver.

I depart from the useless facilities of my water shed. I have nothing left to give to the porcelain gods and to amount of showering will ever make me feel clean again. I drag my heavy feet to the kitchen, chunks of dry, papery flesh tear away like stale bread crust, leaving a trail for the birds of death to follow. I brew a pot of white label, government coffee. I know it wont make a difference but I desperately want to feel alive one last time.

As the peculator gurgles, mimicking the contortions of my stomach, I gaze outside. It’s dark. It’s always dark on Darrian 7. the asteroid colony is so far from the sun, it looks like like any other stat to us. Street lamps dot the cavernous city but its not the same. There’s no promise of warmth under their dim bulbs. No life grows where they shine. God, I never should have left Earth. Why did I take this job? 40K a year isn’t worth dying on this thirteen mile stretch of dead rock. Not that I’m working much now. I haven’t had a ship to refuel in a month. Mother Terra abandoned her distant child the second she caught word of the space plague. I see movement in the street. Some one else is still alive. Some other poor bastard is still soldiering on, living only to suffer another day of pre-mortum rot. The queer creature sways drunkenly, as if the ground is rocking beneath its feet. I see its spider-like silhouette standing out against the backdrop of apartment windows across the street. It has an egg shaped head and an elongated, crooked neck. Its torso is roughly the size it should be but the arms and legs protruding from the extremities are reminiscent of a half drown daddy long legs. Do to constant bombardment by space radiation, the mutations had been common on Darrian long before the plague that eats us but together they are down right ghastly. Peeking through the blinds, I see not what is essentially a human being spewing his life blood on the masonry of the ebon streets. I see only a demon, spreading eternal sleep with every breath.

I turn on the radio. A drowsy reporter gives the same grim report he gave three days ago. The asteroids top scientists continue to hunt for a cure to the maddeningly deadly epidemic. The problem is, they still need to find the cause. If its a virus, they theorize, the bodies of the single cell killers must be too small to see under a microscope. That would make them one one thousandths the size of a proton. In our universe, that’s damn near impossible and without new technology, completely impossible to detect and stop.

If the culprit of the man devouring illness is some new form of radiation, it doesn’t show up in any spectral scans. Besides, we can’t even keep out the rads that cause the mutants to be born the way they are, never mind something we can’t even detect.

Maybe its in the water, I think as I sip the ichor liquid I just brewed from my own murder suspect. Aww, what the hell do I know? I crawl back into my uncomfortably moist bed and wait for the rest sleep won’t bring.

What first made me interested in studying Attila was his likeness to my favorite literary character, Conan of Cimmeria. Like Conan, Attila was a crude, uneducated barbarian out of the wilds of the far north, that with his own ferocity and cunning dominated a good portion of the “civilized world”. Attila is a name that will never be forgotten and if he hadn’t died young and under questionable conditions, he would have been crowned the first barbarian emperor of Rome years before Charlemagne’s Holy Roman empire.

From what I could gather (considering the endless bickering of historians over their origin) the Huns were a confederation of barbarian tribes that, under the conquest of a powerful tribe (presumably the Xongnu of northern China) gathered in a snowball effect so that when they burst over into Europe after defeating the Alan, they were a massive horde the likes of which the no one had seen since the Persians stared down from their city walls at the coming of Alexander almost a millennium before. By 376 the Huns had conquered all of the Germanic tribes between the Black Sea and the Danube on the northeast edge of the Roman empire and forced the survivors to flee east, causing them to spill into Roman territories and start the Goth wars against the Roman empire. The displaced Goths, fleeing the savage Huns, sacked Adrianople and destroyed two thirds of the roman army they battled there, including Emperor Valen. The arrival of the Huns in Europe came only a decade after Hilary bishop of Poitiers declared that the end of Roman civilization (and therefore the world) was near and that the Anti-Christ had already been born. It didn’t take the highly religious people of the empire long to identify the completely alien horde spreading across there frontier and there Germanic servants as the biblical Magog and Gog storming out of the north as was predicted in Ezekiel 38:1-39:20. many Romans believed that by the end of the century, the Anti-Christ would sit on the throne of an empire and that before that happened untold numbers would perish in the hours of judgment. By the time Attila was born around the year 400, his uncle Rua (also known as Rugila and Ruga) had united all the disjointed Hunnic tribes into a orderly military force. With there superior compound bows and unparalleled riding skills they were able to make lightning raids across the plains of eastern Europe, crushing German resistance and charging huge protection fees to the East Empire. After the death of his father, when he was a young boy, Attila and he brother Bleda were raised by Rua as his co-heirs. As a preteen Attila was part of a hostage exchange between western Rome and the Hunnic empire. This was a custom amongst cultures of the time to learn about one another. He was exchange for the young noble Roman soldier, Aetius. Where Aetius saw the Huns as a potential powerful ally he could learn from and turn to as a tool against the unruly barbarians the thinly stretched roman legion could no longer defend themselves against, Attila saw Rome as a disgusting and decedent culture, fat and rotting from the inside out. He swore to himself that he would some day return to the empire, not as a hostage, but as its new ruler. Ruga formed an alliance with Aetius and together they conquered the rebels in Gaul and many other Germanic peoples. After Ruga’s death in 434, Attila and Bleda ruled together for a time. Attila continued the campaigns with Aetius and his raids on the Byzantines, while Bleda remained a relatively unimportant king on the worlds stage. The siblings hated each other and barely communicated until cold hearted Attila killed his brother and took the whole Hunnic empire for himself in 445. three years later, the historian Priscus accompanying Maximinus (the ambassador of emperor Theodosius the second to the court of Attila) on a journey to meet the Hunnic emperor. Priscus gave the only reliable account of Attila’s physical appearance the world has ever seen. He described Attila as short and powerful with a broad chest, flat nose and a beard sprinkled with grey. Attila wore simple clothes and drank and ate from wooden cups and plates. The food he ate was simple too, mostly meat. He was a wise and grim looking man and the only time he smiled during Priscus’ whole audience with him was when his youngest son came to sit on his lap. It was said that Attila treated the boy as his favorite because an oracle had told him his empire would fail after he died and would be reborn under the descendants of his youngest son. Shortly after Priscus left his court, Attila defeated the Eastern Empire at the battle of Marcianopolis. As a term of the treaty between the two vast powers, extensive territory on the Roman side of the Danube was ceded to the Huns. Then Attila turned his attention to the Western Empire. After years of helping each other attain prestige, Attila and Aetius found themselves on opposing sides of a war. Under the advise of his vandal ally Geiseric, Attila prepared to Attacked Roman federate Gaul. While he was making his plans for attack, Attila received word from the western emperor Valentinian the 3rd’s sister, Honoria. She had been forced into a marriage with a low ranking official after her and a servant and lover tried to plan an overthrow of her dim witted brother. She sought an alliance with Attila and asked his aid in freeing her. To show the authenticity of her message, she sent an imperial ring which Attila took as a proposal of marriage. The bold Hun sent word to the Emperor that Honoria was to be released to him and that half of the Western empire was to be given to him as a dowry. Valentinian refused and Attila proceeded with his sack of Gaul. The barbarian leader swept unchallenged through eastern Gaul until he arrived at Orleans and found that Aetius’ Roman legion and Theodoric’s Gothic army waited within the city’s gates. Rather than tempt fate, Attila ordered a retreat. The two armies pursued him and near Troyes they struck hard at the invaders. The Hunnic cavalry, made useless by the rocky terrain of Gaul, were pressed into their own infantry and the losses the horde suffered were great. Thinking he had proved his point and not wanting to destroy the Huns who had become a political barrier between the empire and the wild Germans in the north, Aetius allowed the Huns to retreat and disbanded the giant Roman and Gothic army and returned to Italy. Not so much intimidated as embarrassed by the loss, Attila continued his rein of terror. This time he didn’t target the outlying territory of Gaul but the Italian peninsula itself. The Huns plundered northern Italian cities unchallenged and when they came within site of Rome herself, they were towing hundreds of carts of treasure. Without the combined armies of Gaul and Rome, the city had no way of defending itself. It was only luck that saved Rome. Plague had broken out within the ranks of Attila and food supplies were running low. To make matters worse their wagons were so full of plunder that the army could no longer maneuver fast enough to do battle and the east empire was sending a fleet of soldiers to aid their western brothers. Attila was allowed the out he was looking for when Pope Leo rode out of Rome to discuss peace with him. Attila took his heavy prizes and retreated from Rome, once again vowing to return as its conqueror. His dream of dominating all of Europe was never realized. Only a year later, he died in his bed. Most believe he choked on his own vomit like so many twentieth century rock stars but others theorize that he had heart failure, was poisoned or stabbed by his new bride. Like Alexander of ancient Greece, Attila’s empire died with him. None of his sons proved himself strong enough to hold the reins of their father’s empire and not long after Attila was buried with a massive treasure under a temporarily dammed off part of the Danube, one of his Alan generals staged a rebellion against his Hunnic masters. Without a strong leader, the horde fell apart and the Huns were scattered. Most of Attila’s people settled in modern day Hungary while others bred in or were hunted down in the lands of their former subjects. Never again would a Hunnic emperor rise to power.

One of the most interesting things I found out about Attila and his people while doing this project was that despite their importance in history, very little is known about the Huns. The most common theory holds that they were descended from the Xiongnu. the Xiongnu were a confederation of nomadic peoples that built an empire north of China in the 4th century BC and had mostly disappeared from records by the beginning of the first millennium. This idea was first formulated by Joseph de Guignes in the 1700’s. The theory is re-enforced by the fact that the Xiongnu used similar artifacts such as composite bows and cauldrons buried along side rivers. There were also similarities in language. The most compelling proof is found in the book of Wei a classic Chinese history book compiled by Wei Shou between 551 and 554. Wei states that the Xiongnu conquered the Alans around the same time western history records the Alans being taken over by the Huns. Beyond the Xiongnu theory, there are countless opinions about the origins of the Huns. The two most likely contenders are the idea of the “white Huns” out of Iran and the ethnogenesis theory that the Huns were no one people but rather a confederation of peoples conquered by a small group of noblemen. I find that the latter theory could easily co-exist with the Xiongnu theory and even the Iranian tribes could fit in with the snow ball effect that created the vast horde that slammed into the Germanic people of Europe in the 370’s. Other theories are as varied as the return of the semi-mythical Cimmerian and Scythian races of pre-history as many historians contemporary to the days of the Huns suggested to Jordanes theory of Gothic witches breeding with unclean spirits and even the view of the church that they were the biblical Mogog that would Harold the end of the word under the rule of the Anti-Christ. . Historians can’t agree on where they came from or for the most part how they lived and even though Attila is a name that will live for the rest of western civilization, very little is known for certain about his life. No one knows exactly when he was born,we have no records of his home life beyond his brief meeting with Priscus and scholars can’t even agree on how he died. I love a good mystery and I don’t think the end of this class will be the end of my research on this subject.

The second most interesting thing about Attila in my eyes is the Sheer amount he was able to accomplish in a single life time. In the fifty years of his life he doubled his uncles empire and came within a hairs breath of destroying Rome. The tale of Attila is the ultimate under dog story. its awe inspiring to think that this one man rearranged and entire continent as if it were nothing but a chess board.

What made the greatest impact on me about the story of Attila was the dramatic aspects of the lives of the people involved. In all corners of Attila’s world you have back stabbing siblings, rival tribes, Rival emperors, unfaithful lovers and broken alliances. The mans life played out chapter by chapter like the greatest of Greek tragedies. I find myself surprised that Shakespeare never wrote of the great barbarian king. This has been both the most difficult and the most enjoyable research project of my life and I would like to thank the college for providing me with the resources needed to paint a clear picture of the shrouded but epic life of Attila, the scourge of god.

The story really starts two months earlier. I was too young to go where I wanted. So, when my dad decided we were moving to Myrtle Beach to live closer to my sister, I didn’t really have a choice. By this point, my father had been practically broke for years, but still entertained the idea that he could travel where ever he wanted. We arrived in North Carolina via greyhound. It was the middle of spring break and having no where to stay we camped on the beach for the duration of our time in the city. The camp ground was cheap but we had only brought $1,000 or so with us and the local stores, relying heavily on tourist dollars, jacked their prices up for the season. We stayed through bike week, but my dad was the only one able to find work, my brother Adam and I were to young and my brother Henry had too many tattoos and piercings to find employment in the deep south community. This led us to realize we couldn’t afford to stay in the Carolinas .

You would think at this point we would head back to Massachusetts. (By all right, we should have. Back home we had family. Dad had job prospects. Henry had an art company and Adam and me had school.) You would think wrong. It may sound mean, but my dad was never what you would call smart. A fact I’d realized years before that this trip re-enforced. He decided to take us to New Orleans, because he had never been there. I knew this was a bad idea, but I’d always wanted to see the city, so I went along with it. After a day long bus drive, we crossed the mouth of the Mississippi and soon found ourselves in the oldest city in the south. All around, I could see above ground cemeteries, voodoo shops and abandoned mansions. Again, my fathers “keen” mind came into play. Instead of taking what money we had and renting out one of the many inexpensive apartments in the city where more people were dead than alive, dad asked around for the cheapest hotel in New Orleans. I’ll say this again “THE CHEAPEST HOTEL IN NEW ORLEANS!!” the cab ride there was cool. The old, Creole cabby drove a vintage Cadillac with a cushy, red exterior. The interior was all beaded seats and fuzzy dash. The smell of marijuana and incense floated on air and the aging driver told us on the way, “ya’ll can gets whateva’ yous need in naw-lans.” I thought to myself, oh great, what are we getting into?

The Cinema hotel was an ancient French mansion converted into a sleazy inn. It was literally under a freeway and the railings of the courtyard stairs were rusted to look like coral growing on a ship wreck. The office under a big sign that stated “WE HAVE PORN!” housed a mean looking Korean woman with the personality of a hornet. She grumbled like we were bothering her by renting a room. The room was something out of a slasher flick. It was great foreshadowing for the weeks ahead. The walls were spattered in dried blood from some junkie’s needle. The sheets were covered in worse. The ceiling sported mirrors above the two beds and we had to buy cleaning products before we could even go near the shower and toilet. It’s a small wonder I didn’t catch a std just by staying in the room. The strangest thing we found was a large piece of tin foil full of what I think was angel dust in the dresser, next to Gideon’s bible. What followed was a solid week of hearing gun fights in the streets, trucks over head and the occasional sight of a police raid at a neighboring room. In one such raid the police were supposed to pick up a dead hooker the cleaning lady had found two rooms down from ours but instead busted in the next door and found a crack dealer, forgetting the body for another three days.

My father had found work a few days after we came to the city, but the wicked tempered land lady had no intention of letting us slide for a half a week. So, we had to leave.

My brother Henry and I suggested that we camp out in an abandoned building for the three days until my dads first check came in, but he said, “We’re not living like bums for three days!” and decided we would hitch hike to my great aunt’s house in Phoenix, Arizona. I think if he had realized just how long we would spend on the road, how large the four states were we were crossing really were, he would have changed his mind.

We took a bus to Baten Rouge. We split up there. It was decided that I would go with my father and Henry would take Adam. We knew it wouldn’t work any other way because Dad was stupid and Adam was spineless. Baten Rouge was a strange place. The sun was going down when we arrived and in the pools of shadow lying across the road I could see hundreds of palmetto bugs. It was during the height of the West Nile epidemic and the streets were littered with the dead cats and birds felled by it. we walked from the bus station in the center of town to the highway on ramps heading over a delta to the west. For the most part, people left us alone. The only people that stopped to talk with us were a group of crack heads that bought a lighter off of us and a Cajun hooker that tried to proposition us while we were walking under a freeway bridge.

We finally got a ride over the bridge and had to walk a few more miles before we could get another ride. We stood with our thumbs out for several hours before a sketchy, white van pulled over. The back windshield was plywood and the side windows were painted on the outside. As we entered the vehicle, the passenger, a scruffy Mexican man, said, “ hop on in, but if we see any women, you have to get out.” I thought that was a little weird but I just shrugged it off. It didn’t take long to realize we were riding with two cult members. They were heading to a commune in California and kept saying really creepy things like, “if I crashed into that car in front of us, god would forgive me.” The mattress I was laying on was folded over something that smelled dead and the inside of the painted windows were covered in decals. One sided read ‘Live with God or die with Satan.’ The other side said ‘Die slut die.’ I was really freaked out by this point and I should’ve known better but I was thirsty and I drank some of the water they offered me. I was lucky that I used to go to a lot of raves and my tolerance to the date rape drugs people sometimes put in drinks they thought were the girl’s I was with, was strong. I became unnaturally tired and things became distorted. At the next gas station, we grabbed our bags and ran.

We couldn’t find another ride and I was in no condition to stand for the rest of the night. We slept in shifts outside of an abandoned gas station down the road. In the morning a local gave us a ride to the middle of no where. We were stuck for most of the morning on a ramp outside of a big southern house. The place was falling apart and surrounded by cars from all over the place. I was reminded of Texas chainsaw massacre.

The next ride was more memorable. A crusty, old Nam vet in a beat up pickup pulled over. “Get in.” he called to us. We threw our heavy duffle bags in the back and climbed in.

“Thanks for the ride.” I said.

“Oh, I don’t mind giving rides.” He told us in a west Louisianan accent, “but…” he added as he pulled the biggest revolver I’ve ever seen from under his seat, “… I’ve been mugged by hitch hikers before an’ if you reach over here I’ll shoot you in the face.”

“Ummm… fair enough.” I choked out, a little nervous.

“The gun toting red neck actually turned out to be an interesting guy. In the two hours we spent in his truck he told us about his years at war in the Fareast, his love of bar fights and his career drilling for oil. He dropped us in Lake Charles .

It was afternoon and proving to be a hot day. I decided to dump my 90 pound duffle bag outside of a Mcdonalds, after we spent the last of our money on breakfast. We walked along the high way for the rest of the day. Lake Charles was a casino town and when the sun went down, we walked under the bright, neon lights of the roadside hotels. I was just thinking about how hungry I was when a car pulled up. It was a new Benz with New York plates. A black man with expensive jewelry and dressed in gang colors called me over to the side road.

“What you doing?” he asked.

“Hitch hiking.” I told him.

“Damn. Ya’ll white boys are crazy. I wouldn’t want to ride with no random rednecks.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but I don’t really have a choice.”

“I hear that.” He said. “Listen. I’m headed the other way but here’s some thing for you.” He gave me fifty dollars. “Good luck.”

I thanked him for his help and we moved farther down the road. We spent the night between the highway and a swamp. I slept in a ditch that looked something like a freshly filled grave. This became even more unsettling the next day when a convenience store worker told us that some one had been going up and down route ten, killing female hitch hikers. I thought back to the psychos in the van and shuddered. Not long after, we were picked up by another van. This one was driven by a drunk old man. I was a little skeptical about riding with some one that inebriated but we had been stuck in the town awhile and the only way out was a huge bridge with no side walks. Before leaving town, the driver stopped for a few tall boys at a liquor store. When he backed out, I heard the scrape of metal on metal. ‘Oh, great’, I thought as I chucked my beer out the window. The driver got out and found a car parked behind him. It was a brand new sports car without any plates. When its owner came out of the store, he seemed distraught but insisted that we leave without worrying about it.

The booze hound dropped us in east Texas . Outside of a truck stop we found our next ride. I climbed in and couldn’t believe my eyes. Driving the king cab tractor was none other than the professional wrestler, Stone Cold Steve Austin. I never expected to travel with a celebrity but there I was. He told us about taking time off for an injured knee and blared ACDC while smoking like Tommy Chong. He dropped us near Houston and we road the rest of the way to the city with a drunken couple. I was beginning to realize that almost every one on this highway was intoxicated.

We found ourselves walking through the middle of Houston ’s roughest neighborhoods. The walls of buildings were marked with gang graffiti and the city’s homeless eyed us like potential sources of easy cash. I thanked my sense of style and natural, large build for making people think twice before the messed with me. Not a lot of people would start a fight with a 200 pound teen ager with a spiked green Mohawk and a giant nose ring.

On accident, we found a grey hound station and had some money wired to us. We took a bus as far west as we could go. I fell asleep on the bus and woke to a bus driver standing over me saying, “Sadona. Sadona.”

“What?” I said.

“Sadona” he repeated, “This is your stop.”

I woke my father and we stepped out into the dusty street. For the first time in my life, I found myself in the desert. Sadona was a dust bowl. The tiny town had dirt roads, a single store and houses that screamed Middle America . We walked by a high school and a down a road with cacti and tumble weeds to either side. People who had probably never left their home town stared at us as they drove by. From their looks, they must have thought we looked fairly alien.

If I learned anything in Texas , it’s this; white Texans are the least helpful people in the world. We didn’t find any rides until a group of immigrant workers drove by. We loaded into an SUV with the back seats torn out, so a dozen people could fit in the cramped space. Our next ride was from a preacher. He didn’t trust us enough to let us sit in the cab with him and let us sit in the bed of his truck. We rode for hours. We passed ghost towns, Anasazi ruins and miles upon miles of wind mills. I enjoyed the ride until we headed up a winding stretch of road on the side of a giant plateau. I read a sign that stated ‘warning! 90 mph winds. Tie down cargo.’ We had to flatten ourselves to the bottom of the truck bed and hook our hands and feet to holes in the corners to keep from flying off out of the truck and into the chasm between mesas.

The preacher dropped us in Fort Stockton . He gave me twenty dollars and said, “My generosity is nothing compared to the generosity of Jesus. Look in your hearts and see if he’s there.”

I was never a religious guy but I didn’t want the preacher to think his help was for nothing so I said something I’ve never said before and will never say again, “God bless you.”

We slept in the desert that night. We only had one sleeping bag and slept on top of it. We were dirty, sun burnt and starting to become delirious from exposure to the sun and lack of food and water. Dad’s feet were sore and he removed his shoes before passing out. After seeing a scorpion walk close by, I slept light. Several times I was awoken by passing coyotes, snakes and birds. At one point, I felt something at the far end of the bag. It was probably just one of the vultures that had been circling us since we entered Texas but that’s not was my tired mind saw. I stared down at a Chupacabra , picking at my fathers bare feet. I shoed the creature off and it flew straight into the sky like a bat. The next day, we found a ride from a Mexican trucker. He fed us burritos his wife made. He dropped us around the south western edge of Texas . As I said, we were right on the edge of madness. The brain can only boil in the sun so long before it stops working. I now know how the natives felt on spirit quests. I only vaguely remember the next week. I came back to myself in a strange situation. We were being deported. My father is half Mohawk Indian and the immigration officers didn’t think his ID was real and I was only fifteen and didn’t have any ID. We were both sun burned and very dark. So the ignorant Texans automatically assumed we were Mexican. We spent about two days trying to find a good spot to sneak back over the Rio Grande . When we did find our way across the dirty water and over the tall, barb wire fence, I made my father go to a hospital and have his now infected feet taken care of. The Mexican doctors rubbed his feet down with herbs and gave him antibiotics.

I’d had enough of hitch hiking for a life time. We found our way to a bus station, stopping only to argue with hobos who thought our hitch hiking near their bridge was an attempt to usurp their pan handling turf. When we told them we were just trying to get out of town one said, “Why would you want to leave? Don’t you want to have a drink?”

A pretty, young Latina drove us to the bus station. I got on the phone with my grandmother and had her wire us enough money to take us to Phoenix. The next day, after a circuitous ride across New Mexico we arrived in Arizona and finally got some rest. My great aunt had an air conditioned house, an in ground pool and a grille full of wracks of ribs. We were reunited with my brothers and almost as importantly, with a shower. I’d lost 40 pounds in two weeks and my feet were sore. I’d been burnt so long my skin was peeling and I hadn’t slept in a bed in what seemed like ages. After eating four wracks of ribs, I slept until noon the next day.

I walked countless miles. I faced death and bizarre situations again and again. I cook my mind in the sun and went days without food, but looking back the summer of 2002 wasn’t just an agonizing ordeal. It was my odyssey. Magellan had Africa, Luis and Clark had the Oregon trail (which has its own story for me) and I had Route 10.

Whoever built the place either wasn’t a local or was completely out of touch with the community. It sits between the worse neighborhood in the city, a park where people peddle crack and a club for the mentally handy capped. Can you imagine what people must think of us after a layover in Pittsfield? Upon leaving their bus or train, they would first encounter a large room of sub-humans and drug addicts. If They walked to the corner in either direction they would encounter either gang bangers, nut cases or two dollar Nate (the old wino that always asks people for two dollars). If they were female, they would get hit on by frightening creatures or propositioned for sex, burping or any number of odd requests. If they looked lost, there’s a good chance someone would try to rob them. I’ve often encountered Europeans in the city on vacation. When asked why they came to Pittsfield, they express a feeling of having been tricked and say “it looked like such a nice place in the brochures.

Originally bookstores and fast food restaurants were going to set up shop within the building but after viewing the crowd that resided within from day break until 7pm, the franchises pulled out and the city was forced to give the spaces to the store front artist project (a ploy often used to make it appear as if downtown isn’t completely dead). Amtrak was also supposed to have an office within the center, but their financial problems coupled with the dismal profitability of the locale caused them to pull out. The only rep of their company in the entire place is the janitor. Getting a train ticket is damn near impossible. You either need to go to a travel agent or shop online and have it printed or sent to you and the first westward stop in Albany won’t accept under carriage luggage.

On a boring day, it can be amusing to sit around the bus station or go on one of their mobile zoos (BRTA buses). I once watched two giants with a combined IQ of 10 beat each other senseless on the concrete platform outside. On another occasion I watched a drunken elderly man argue with the station employees about bringing his dog into the building. They threatened to call the cops and he threatened to call the president. It was all I could do not to break into uncontrollable laughter. You may encounter such legendary figures as the lady who yells at traffic, the woman who scolds her backpack, the lady with the bunny in a baby carriage, the lady that moves like a lizard, the running man, agent orange, good mosh, burping Joe or any number of others uprooted from the asylums closed down in North Hampton and elsewhere in the 70’s and 80’s. If you have a morbid curiosity about how the insane live day to day this is the place for you.

The guy at the counter is the least helpful transit worker I’ve ever met. That doesn’t surprise me considering he used to run the old bus station with the pay toilets and the open whenever he felt like it hours. Even at port authority, you can ask questions. At the inter model center you’ll either be ignored or directed somewhere else. The upstairs BRTA office isn’t much better. I tried to complain about a driver one time and the lady at the front desk put me on the phone with another woman in the back who was extremely unhelpful and talked down to me like I was one of the missing links sitting in the room below.

The timing for all forms of transportation are absurdly off, as well. I’ve seen local buses off schedule by two hours, trains five hours late and greyhounds that were rescheduled for the next day. It sometimes seems as though the bus patrons run the place. Maybe they do. You could not possibly be surrounded by insanity day in and day out for years with out loosing it a bit, yourself.

I rate the place as follows: the service is ridiculously terrible. Everything from the impossibility of acquiring train tickets to the cost of a bagel in their coffee shop screams inconvenient. The experience of being stuck in the large room where people wait for buses (as I sometimes find myself on cold or rainy days) is sickening. Your ears are violated by the crude conversations of people you would rather assume are A-sexual. your nose is bombarded by the scent of unwashed bodies and soiled underpants and your sense of touch is utterly repulsed by the sticky and crusty surfaces all around. I feel I would find more comfort doing sit ups in a patch of cacti than spending twenty minutes in that hell hole.

To be fair, I have been in worse bus stations. At port authority in New York city, you could be stabbed while stepping out for a cigarette in the lower levels of the cavernous building. Also, the thieves that frequent the labyrinth are far more adept and much easier to lose than Pittsfield’s counterparts. Salt lake’s station is by far the worst. Not because of the thieves and swindlers or because its one giant room is hard to navigate. Rather it’s the city’s unthinkable laws that make Salt Lake the dread of all western travelers. The city’s police routinely check every single bag coming through the station and harass people worse than an airport’s security personnel over harmless things like shaving razors and nail clippers. Its illegal to drink caffeinated soda outside of the station and if you smoke a cigarette beyond the tiny designated square near the entrance, you can be given a $5000 fine and are expected to remain in the city until it is paid. Another terrible place to be stuck is Richmond Virginia. They have buses going in every direction but no times listed and the most backwoods people announcing arrivals and departures. I was once stuck in the place for twenty hours because all I heard was “ rebo’ babadoo baba dou!” every time a bus was announced.

So, compared with these places, Pittsfield’s bus station is great but all in all, on a national level, it’s inconvenient, it smells funny and it makes most of us look bad. If I were grading it for some magazine, I would give it an overall c-. it’s not the worse, but our inter model center is far from the best. Its sad, if handled better, Pittsfield’s in a great position to be a crossroads for most of the North East. Easily reachable from Vermont and Connecticut and on the direct route from Albany to Boston, it would make a marvelous place to stop and rest, but do to its reputation, People go out of their way to avoid it. We can only hope that in the future politicians will do more work on making the city hospitable and worry less about how pretty the granite blocks look on south street.

Suddenly, no body gave a damn about the success of the many. The government and corporations that had supported the industrialist, capitalist way of life that had us constantly improving and reinventing ourselves to keep us above the rest of the world decided they just wanted there piece and the hell with every one else. Rather than teach kids new technology and basic skills for business, the companies shipped their factories over seas and schools stopped pushing the young to be better. Other problems also led to what I see as the possible decline of American civilization
The idea of “no child left behind”, or as I call it “it’s okay to be stupid”, was invented. Under this new system, a child could pass with straight C’s all the way through high school without getting a single paper right, as long as the showed up every day and handed in some garbage answers on their work. This eventually became so bad that I’ve heard a teacher at many high schools isn’t allowed to give an F to a student writing a paper in internet short hand.

Of course all this coincides with one of the other great ideas of the 90’s; “politically correctness”, or as I call it the “we should always be okay with everything” concept. At school, I suddenly found we were playing musical chairs with extra chairs so that “everyone was a winner.” kid’s shows stopped showing anything that resembled conflict, to protect the sensitive little ninnies being raised in our society from the harsh reality of the world. Before all this, cartoons like G.I.Joe had plots about characters turning traitor to afford chemotherapy for there dying parents. A few years later, TV for the same age group was dumbed down to songs about hugging and how everyone should always get along about everything and in no time kids up to eight were watching shows that tell a kid there a genius if they know what the color orange is. The final straw for TV helping a generation become stupider was when the new fad of cute shows where the characters make baby noises and grunts and roll around like idiots hit the networks. Imagine what it must do to a child when he is left alone in front of Teletubbies and Zoom for six hours a day during their crucial learning years.

This attitude of lets all get along is reflected in school. Besides for classifying the ever changing computer short hand (with it’s smiley faces and abbreviations) as a language, they’ve also included Ebonics (formerly Jive) and Spanglish as scripts to use on any high school paper. “Why?”, you may ask. Because it would be mean to tell them they aren’t using real languages. Similarly, you can’t tell a kid that he’s to small to be a football player. Do to lack of nurturing, (I mean talents not feelings) and the it’s okay if you can’t add fifty two and seven attitude, kids are coming out of high school fully ready to push carts for the next fifty years.

Another nail in the coffin of the communal brain of this country was when pop culture began advocating stupidity to make marketing easier. Those selling whats cool found a beautiful gem in “Gangsta Rap.” suddenly, MTV was pushing the image of an uneducated, rebellious drug dealer shooting people and robbing liquor stores so he could be new clothes and luxury cars. None of the young minds that fell victim to this logic realized that most of them were going to end playing don’t drop the soap in state prison or shot by a fourteen year old while selling him crack, rather than living in mansions and sitting in hot tubs full of champagne. The girls of my generation found their moron inspiration in Hollywood’s equivalents of the bar flies you find at any shady dive in the world. I’m speaking, of course, of the teen idols. Paris Hilton, Christina Agulara, Britney Spears and others proved that no brain was needed to be famous. All they did was lip sync and dress slutty and the whole world was open to them. This isn’t the ideal I would want a future daughter to look up to and I would like to point out to anyone that tries this will end up older, not quiet as pretty (and therefore broke) and with a sexually transmitted virus they caught off the a fore mentioned Gangsta Rapper.

Another major problem with the development of young brains in contemporary America is the concept of sheltering. Sheltering is by definition protecting kids by keeping them ignorant to the darker aspects of the world around them. Kids with heads full of misinformation and gaps in their knowledge of the mechanics of the world can only grow to make bad and uninformed decisions. I’m not looking forward to the day when people that think the world is all kitty cats and puppy dogs run the world. Book burners, censors and religious fanatics bother me as much as the ignorance the promote.

This is all based on my rather bias views of the world but I think my opinions speak for themselves. Turn on the TV and you’ll be bombarded with stupidity and half truths. Watch a movie popular with the youth of America and you’ll be confronted with thin plots and happy go lucky Emo vampires. Go online and you’ll find more misinformation than the useful knowledge it was supposedly designed to house. We’re looking at a sad and confused future. The only good thing about it is that I will seem that much smarter in comparison.

I stepped outside the other day and became witness to a state of near panic. Traffic was blocked for a half mile in either direction in front of my home on Dalton Ave. Several cars almost collided trying to cut each other off at the entrance of a certain overrated donut franchise across the street.

And what were they giving away that could cause such pandemonium? A cure to the next Asian-bred super epidemic? Barrels of crude oil? A bucket of lobster tails, at least?

No.

Cold coffee! You know, that nasty sludge with a taste reminiscent of morning vomit after a hard night’s drinking. That bitter surprise you get sometimes when you pour a cup without first inquiring as to the time it was brewed.

I could scarcely believe my eyes as hordes of the city’s fat and ignorant flocked from all directions for a free taste of something nobody should ever have to pay for.

It just goes to show, you could probably give away needles full of AIDS blood and somebody, somewhere, would still want it.

End sermon.

Are you fucking serious?

Ok, so I don’t support vandals, but that’s what bored South County rich kids do when deprived of entertainment. Really, though, that’s a matter for the pigs…er, police officers, that is (hey, I can’t help it if they’re too incompetent to watch one tiny little village). I’ve been around and mark my words, a deal with the Angels is virtually a guarantee that the blood of your wayward children will be spilled on your wholesome streets.

Let me try to explain the Guardian Angels a little bit. Basically, they are overzealous vigilantes who hate everyone who isn’t either Irish or Italian, and Christian. I’ve seen them actually jump people over littering. I’ve heard of poor souls ending up in ICU simply for spitting on the sidewalk or taking “the Lord’s name in vain” around those self righteous dirtbags.

My point is short and simple: Berkshire County, we don’t need that element. We don’t need some wild-eyed lynch mob descending on us just to grapple with graffiti. Personally, I don’t want to have to kick some guy’s just because I said “goddamn” in front of him.

Guardian Angels, WE DON’T NEED YOU!!!

But few places are stranger than the place I grew up and still live today. The Berkshires have long been a valley of secrets. Strange things happen, but are usually ignored (for the sake of our quaint image and continued influx of tourist dollars) or covered up (via a quick exchange of green paper for zipped lips).

A few weeks back I heard one such story. A young man- who wishes to remain anonymous- was working on a dairy farm in a certain south county town, and told me that a crew of men digging a foundation and found a mass grave of pregnant women at least a century and a half dead. Apparently, when the servant girls of wealthy masters became knocked up by the master of the house, or the farm hands, they would be murdered, and entrenched amidst dozens of other corpses on the property.

This is only one of many stories I’ve heard over the years in this quiet purgatory, and so even as I write this, I can hear you asking, “Where’s the proof?”

But that’s just my point, there isn’t any. People in the hill towns around this decaying metropolis are bred for secrets, conditioned to lie for generations to avoid negative publicity…and enough money floats around those villages to hush even the most honest person- though you’d be lucky to find one in local bureaucracy, law enforcement or journalism. I bet if you think about it, you’ve heard one or two that was creepy or wrong that was never reported or investigated.

I could of course delve into more recent, relevant and proveable matters but I’d be be asking for a lawsuit or an ass beating by our local boys in blue, so I’ll leave you with this thought: closed eyes lead to broken noses.