One time whilst driving through the desert I ran across Alice the maid from the Brady Bunch. She was standing there under a cactus. I pulled over got out and asked her if everything was okay? “Oh I’m fine but it sure is hot today,” she said. “I was with the Brady’s heading toward the Grand Canyon on vacation when we stopped for gas...and I guess they left without me.” she continued. Well I was just amazed that someone would leave a perfectly good maid out in the blazing hot sun like that so I asked her if there was anything that I could do for her? She looked me up and down and said rather sternly, “No...unless you have some empty potato sacks that we could use to have a race?” I told her that I didn’t but that I did have a canteen filled with cold water that she might have. “That would be nice and I’ll trade you if you wanna smoke a peace pipe with me?” I told her that sounded lovely and she pulled out the most enormous wooden pipe and sparked it up and passed it my way.
“How’s that grab you, it’s some good stuff right?” She said while exhaling a huge plume of smoke. I nodded her way in agreement trying to stifle a choking cough. “Hey have you ever done peyote, I scored some a couple hundred miles back at a ghost town I was at.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a handful of the plants and motioned for me to take them, which I did of course and washed them down with a swig from the canteen.
Feeling already dizzy from smoking the pipe, now my lips were beginning to swell when I started to hallucinate that she had turned into a large iguana.
I lost my balance and fell to the ground when she slithered toward me with her tongue darting in and out and said, “Here eat some of these mushrooms that’ll take the edge off.” She stuck out her claw and I did as she said and you know what she was right.
I was at one with the desert. “Hungry?” Before I could answer she turned her reptile mouth sideways and snatched a rattlesnake off a rock and spit it into a giant frying pan sitting atop a fire that appeared out of nowhere. “This will make you right,” she hissed as she sliced the still sizzling snake into pieces and offered me a slice. It tasted spicy and was filling. “Careful not to let the fangs get caught in your throat...you’ll have a heck of a time getting them unstuck.” I was terrified to ask and just went with it.
Then she swung her tail around motioning toward the mountains and said, “Have you ever been in a sweat lodge, it’s exhilarating, the closest thing to God, there’s one over that hill.” I told her that I hadn’t and thought it would be for the best to sweat out the poison. She snapped her mouth around my collar and dragged me for what seemed like days across the desert floor while vultures circled overhead. We came to a saloon out in the middle of nowhere and she flung me through the swinging doors. Inside there was a fire burning in the center of the room surrounded by cots and I noticed that one was occupied by Peggy Lee and another by Teddy Roosevelt.
A great bald eagle emerged from the smoking fire and handed me a bowl and told me to drink the contents. Immediately I was running and hopping across the clouds holding hands with Peggy and Teddy and Alice the iguana was scurrying along behind us. Each cloud was like a step reaching higher and higher towards heaven. With each skip I was getting closer to God when suddenly I missed a cloud and I was crashing toward the ground. I looked up and saw a lizard’s tail wagging for me to take hold of it but I missed it and saw Teddy shaking his head. I was losing altitude rapidly when I landed on the tail of the bald eagle who glided me safely toward the ground and into the back seat of my car.
When I awoke my lips were dry and chapped and my whole body was swollen. I looked around and saw Alice standing there under her cactus. She yelled out to me, “How are you feeling?” I thought to myself that I must be dead. I didn’t answer her and just then a station wagon pulled up and Jan and Marcia Brady got out and took Alice by the hand and put her in the back.
As they drove by Alice looked out of the window at me and I saw her lizard tongue flickering in and out of her mouth. That was the end of that and I climbed into the drivers seat and drove away never thinking about that day again preferring to believe that it had been a mirage. So if you ever find yourself driving alone in the desert and you happen upon Alice the maid from the Brady Bunch standing under a cactus, you’ll know what's about to happen.
