I had my moment in Flint, but driving past places in Detroit or Chicago and I just said, John, don't go there. But I was running out of gas. Went through 10 red lights, dudes standing round burned out buildings.

Downtown Toronto has had 3 or 4 people shot in the last 10 years, but I meet Americans all the time there, (the wife and I are going up on Sunday), and they all say the same thing.

1. It's so clean.
2. It's so safe.

Oh well.

If they came here it would be better.

I miss the trips to Romeo, Port Huron, and the other 3 places north of there we paraded as a drum corps, until the fortress America thing came to be, and they took you sandwiches, came in the bus with drawn guns, and kept us if we took our cars for 2 to 4 hours to get in.

I'll still go once in a while, but it has to be a week or longer, 'cause I'm not sitting at customs and getting treated like a terrorist. I have a grey beard, and mustache, no hair, and never even had a ticket. In almost 50 years of driving, only been pulled over once. Cop told me my tire was going flat.

I wish someone would make a gps map with colours, green for ok, blue for maybe ok, orange for maybe not and red for never. That would be good. There might be 400,000 people here, but I need no map to tell me you can go out anywhere at night. Toronto, maybe not, stay our of Scarberia.

John Conley
Musica est vita