Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down

Ishmael Reed

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9781564787446
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

And so begins the HooDoo Western by Ishmael Reed, author of Mumbo Jumbo and one of America's most innovative and celebrated writers. Reed demolishes white American history and folklore as well as Christian myth in this masterful satire of contemporary American life.

In addition to the black, satanic Loop Garoo Kid, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down features Drag Gibson (a rich, slovenly cattleman), Mustache Sal (his nymphomaniac mail-order bride), Thomas Jefferson and many others in a hilarious parody of the old Western.

II. The Loop Garoo Kid Comes Back Mad

In Bath County, Kentucky in 1876, several tons of dried beef fell from the sky. How did this mass of meat get up into the sky—and how specifically dried beef?

from “The Day It Rained Cows”
Ronald J. Willis,
East Village Other, March 1st, 1968

Roy Rogers’ movie double’s name was Whitey Christensen.

from New York Journal American
Col. 5, May 4, 1948

Loop Garoo had to shoot his hoss. He hated to do it but under the circumstances it turned out to be the wisest thing he could do. The horse was a snafu anyway. One of Drag Gibson’s gunmen had wounded the animal in the leg.

You ever see a horse shot in the movies? So that gives you an idea of the fluke of luck Loop was reeling in on this queer fish of a day. First his fun burned down and now a lame horse. All around as far as one could see—desert. A hot mean and bitchy desert with a naturally formed misanthropic mood seemed to be saying well Loop good buddy, how you want it dished up, scorpion bite, rattlesnake, order anything you see, it seemed to be whispering in the voice of the rude hash slinger of the rockbottom dives of our lives.

Loop, weak and spent, dozed off, his arms stretched out in front of him. In the distance large birds with buzzard coupons could be seen lining up for mess.

He awoke to find himself surrounded by horsemen. The leader of this shabby crew—well they appeared shabby but closer inspection revealed bell bottom denims of a custom-made variety and fancy shirts which must have cost a pretty penny. The scarfs they wore about their necks were of an extravagantly rich material.

If it isn’t the alienated individualist stuck out here in the desert, the leader of these grim horsemen said.

It was Bo Shmo and the neo-social realist gang. They rode to this spot from their hideout in the hills. Bo Shmo leaned in his saddle and scowled at Loop, whom he considered a deliberate attempt to be obscure. A buffoon an outsider and frequenter of sideshows.

Bo Shmo was dynamic and charismatic as they say. He made a big reputation in the thirties, not having much originality, by learning to play Hoagland Howard Carmichael’s “Buttermilk Sky” backwards. He banged the piano and even introduced some novel variations such as sliding his rump across the black and whites for that certain affect.

People went for it. It was in all the newspapers. He traveled from coast to coast exhibiting his ass and everything was fine until the real Hoagland Howard Carmichael (the real one) showed up and went for Bo Shmo’s goat. He called him a lowdown patent thief and railed him out of town. You would think that finding themselves duped, the imposter’s fans would demand his hide. Not so, Americans love being conned if you can do it in a style that is both grand and entertaining. Consider P. T. Barnum’s success, Semple McPherson and other notables. A guy who rigs aluminum prices can get himself introduced by Georgie Jessel at 100 dollars a plate but stealing a can of beer can get you iced.

So sympathetic Americans sent funds to Bo Shmo which he used to build one huge neo-social realist Institution in the Mountains. Wagon trains of neo-social realist composers writers and painters could be seen winding up its path.

Hey Bo, one of his sidekicks spoke up. We’d better blast this guy right off the way I look at it. Nobody will miss him since he went out with that carnival. If he makes it across the desert he might land a typewriter and do a book on his trials. He’ll corner the misery market and pound out one of those Christian confessionals to which we are so much endeared. Then where will we be. How will we buy all these campy cowboy suits…

Shut up, Bo said slapping the man in the face with his prospector’s cap. The other horsemen remained mute. Bo Shmo did all their thinking for them. Their job was merely to fold their arms and look mean at the hoedowns or rather the shakedowns. You see Bo Shmo was a real collectivist. Worked hard at it. Fifty toothbrushes cluttered his bathroom and when he walked down the street it seemed a dozen centipedes headed your way. He woke up in the morning with crowds and went to bed with a mob. The man loved company. It seemed that he wore people under his coat although none of them would pull it for him. He resembled Harpo Marx at times, you know, the scene where Harpo has shoplifted a market and stuffed all the smoked hams under an oversized coat. He looked like that.

The trouble with you Loop is that you’re too abstract, the part time autocrat monarchist and guru finally said. Crazy dada nigger that’s what you are. You are given to fantasy and are off in matters of detail. Far out esoteric bullshit is where you’re at. Why in those suffering books that I write about my old neighborhood and how hard it was every gumdrop machine is in place while your work is a blur and a doodle. I’ll bet you can’t create the difference between a German and a redskin.

What’s your beef with me Bo Shmo, what if I write circuses? No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

All art must be for the end of liberating the masses. A landscape is only good when it shows the oppressor hanging from a tree.

Right on! Right on, Bo, the henchmen chorused.

Did you receive that in a vision or was it revealed to you?

Look out now Loop don’t get quippy with me, I’ll have one of my men take you off. We can’t afford the luxury of individualism gumming up our rustling. We blast those who don’t agree with us.

Aw leave me alone Bo Shmo to doing my thing which for now is dying. You presume to be able to give other people decrees—living in your expensive neo-social realist retreat while common folk who follow your rants try to match their nickel plates with aeroplanes and tanks. One of these days those people are going to rise up from the pavement where they died clutching coupons and unredeemable refuse from shop windows and take it out on your hide.

O.K. fat mouth, you asked for it. Discipline him fellows. The horsemen dismounted and began to put Loop through changes. Being neo-social realist and not very original they gave him a version of Arab Death. They smeared jelly on his face and buried him up to the neck in desert. Soon his face would be crawling with vermin which was certainly no picnic of a way to go.

Suddenly above them a whirring noise.

Gads! Bo said, the arch-nemesis of villains like me. The Flying Brush Beeve Monster. Let’s get out of here.

The horsemen mounted their nags and with Bo Shmo out front headed back to their institution in the mountains.

Not only would he be a desert carrion, but now something right out of Science Fiction was descending upon him from the heavens, Loop thought. It resembled a monster insect whatever it was and when it landed it stirred up the sand so that Loop couldn’t make out its dimensions. Much to his surprise a plainclothes Indian casually stepped out of the monster’s belly. He held a cigarette holder in his hand. He strode to the position where Loop’d been tied down in the sand and lifted a canteen to the outlaw’s lips.

Champagne! Who are you?

Never mind my man, I was on the way to Europe for an appointment with my tailor when I happened upon you surrounded by those mediocre bandits. The desert was fine until they moved into those hills coming out of their fancy hideout only to make raids on sniveling and s/m liberals that take that sick tour.

What tour?

O there’s this Royal Flush Gooseman, a rattlesnake heart if there ever was, he hires wagon trains which bring liberals out here for the purpose of having the trains surrounded by Bo Shmo and his henchmen. The whole thing is staged if you ask me. Since my people are no longer around to raise war parties Bo Shmo and his men are taking all the loot. Deserts are for visions not for materialists. Read any American narrative about crossing—apparitions, ravens walking about as tall as men, the whole goldern phantasmagoria. Maybe I can give you a lift to Video Junction, the town lying about 50 miles from here?

Loop regarded the Monster with apprehension.

O don’t worry about that. I created it to get around in, made it from spare parts I found in deserted ghost towns. I also used a new kind of plant called plastic I discovered growing in the hills like wildfire.

I’m a kind of patarealist Indian going about inventing do dads. This machine comes in better than nags and creaky stagecoaches. Stupid shmucks and boobs around here think it’s some kind of flying ghost cow. Legends, whispering among the peasants, protective charms on the door of each house. The whole bit. Bo Shmo and the cattlemen are in the same routine. Afraid of anything that can get off the ground, materialists that they are—anything capable of groovy up up and aways strikes terror in their hearts.

The Indian freed Loop an...