Leaving Los Angeles: 1985

Life in L.A. had deteriorated. It had become, basically, Mike Jeff and Me living together at Oakwood in West Hollywood (Burbank, really). I was already looking for a way out--had kicked myself for not moving down to Key West where Brock and Matt were--and knew it was only a matter of time (of telling Mike who had asked me to come out to L.A., who had given me a job and shelter) before I sped off and away from SoCal. Then Mike met some girl--the lifeguard at the apartment complex's pool--and he got a house and she moved in with him. That was the end of our stay at Oakwood, which was month-to-month, and also, by that time, Jeff had met a girl (another girl, when we first met him he was living with a woman--Sherri, common-law-wife--and had a little boy from her) who was pregnant with his child and she lived way out in some suburban area west of Burbank, she lived with her mother and some other younger siblings (no father--it was common to find no father in the house in SoCal). So, Jeff moved in with her. But he and she and her mom were gracious enough to let me stay at their chaotic place until I left town--because by that time, I'd set a date.

I was waiting to finish one last construction job for Mike, then was flying to Pensacola and going to some small town on the beach in Florida to see Matt and Holly.

I had Mike's work vehicle for transportation, so I could get around. I had friends at Oakwood and said goodbye to them. Had friends in Burbank and at the Pago Pago Lounge and said goodbye to them. I stayed, illegally, at the apartment (still had the key and it had not been rented and no one came to clean it or check it) for a few nights, but it was lonely and I felt guilty and worried someone would find me and how embarrassing it would be to get kicked out of there. So, as said, I moved in with Jeff and his pregnant girlfriend at her mom's bungalow with her other kids and these three little girls who her mother--no, Jeff's girlfriend--babysat about every day. They were funny little kids and I think that was the first time I ever enjoyed being around little kids and got me thinking that, hmm, maybe, I'd have kids some day. But I stayed there--actually a very pleasant neighborhood with a park across the street--feeling displaced and miserable and antsy and ready to leave. . . It wasn't more than a week, but felt longer.

Then the day came, or rather, the day before the day. That night, Mike took me around to the old haunts he and I had invented for ourselves. We drank. Hung with some old pals--Jeff, Bob and Brenda, maybe James (no, James was gone by then). He had some coke (yes yes, we did coke in L.A. in the 80s) and for some reason we had a cheap motel room on Olive in Burbank (I must have flown out of Burbank, but I seem to recall it was LAX) and we drank and did coke in the room and then never set the alarm and we woke up late and I missed my flight (which set up a round of problems for when I was supposed to get into Pensacola and when Matt was supposed to pick me up) and so Mike dumped me off at the airport and I got another flight but had to wait around and try to inform Matt I was going to be late--I could only leave messages. Matt had no phone--only the restaurant where he worked as a number--and there were no cell phones and I used Mike's Dad's credit phone number to make these long distance pay phone calls. And so, finally, I tumbled into the sky and flew to New Orleans. Then a puddle jumper prop plane to Pensacola--where it was night and I had not heard from matt and I still left messages and waited and waited because he was at work in Grayton Beach--over an hour east--and had to finish the shift and the Pcola airport became empty empty except for a cleaning woman who kept her eye on me and asked if I was staying or what or something (she mainly spoke Spanish and my Spanish is very poor) and finally i got a message from him that he was coming and he showed up and around 1am or so we drove out of pensacola, headed for Grayton which I'd never seen and had barely even envisioned in my head.

It was dark and in my mind it was all just one big city, Pensacola to Grayton, with some unlighted spots in between.

And then in Grayton there was some massive young person party going on (they'd stolen the liquor from some bankrupt bar that had failed to pay them) and it was quite crazy crazy crazy. And then, when the sun came up, I got to see what a fantastic place Grayton Beach was.

But what I remember most about those last weeks in L.A. was staying at the old Oakwood apartment by myself. I felt very alone--almost abandoned--and like a homeless person. I was careful not to turn on lights at night or to make much noise. Had to stay indoors because I was there past the lease, was squatting. I had known--knew--a lot of people there. I don't know why i didn't call one of the woman I knew and stayed with her or ask them to come see me. There was the Lebanese girl whose father was a millionaire living in Greece, there was the musicians daughter (who liked me but she was only seventeen and I refused to mix it up with her because of that) and there were others. But part of it was I wanted to be alone, liked my cold self-pity, and also I knew I was leaving, was going away and would not be back and that my life was no longer connected to these people. Just another transient stop with transient relationships. So, I sat alone with the lights out, listening, squatting in an empty apartment in L.A. That pretty well sums it all up. I never felt connected to the city or region, I was always fighting it, never embraced it much.

But Los Angeles taught me some things. I don't dislike it and did go back a few times. I learned to drive in city traffic there. Learned that I couldn't abandon a wife and kids if I ever had any--something I honestly thought I could do, marry and sire and leave, but seeing Jeff's life and so many other people's in L.A., I realized I did have a level of morality and duty in me that would not allow that (which was why, I guess, I was in no hurry to marry or settle and was very picky about where I invested my deepest emotions). I learned about small bars and their patrons as second families and also learned about alcoholism and lives slipping away in dark dank drinking holes. I learned many things that come with living in a city and ones specifically that come with living in L.A.

But I was glad to leave. Never had a great desire to return.

I'll leave that for others.

Leaving New York City: 1988

It was mid-March when I decided to leave. I'd been in NYC for over a month, living in Queens with Jimmy, playing in Manhattan--the East Village mainly--drinking and goofing around with new friends and old (Donna from Iowa City). But I was broke. It was winter, still, and had snowed and Jimmy and I lived on beignet-mix pancakes and cheap whatever-we-could-find-and-afford foodstuffs. I actually had a job lined up--construction--but the madhouse of NYC was already getting to me. I'd lived in L.A., Seattle, spent plenty of time--weeks--in Chicago, but they did not match the density and intensity of New York. That's not to say I disliked it--far from it, New York was like an addictive cocaine-cocktail, such energy in a relatively small package. But I was broke. I was in love and that love lived in Illinois.

Fru did come out to visit while I was in NYC. She and Don flew out for a week (or was it just a long weekend?) and Fru loved it. She told me she'd quit her job and move to the city with me, if I wanted to stay. But, after she went back home, I thought it over deeply and decided I didn't want to stay. Even broke, New York was fun, exhilerating, but the idea of finding a place to live (we sub-letted in Queens), of riding the subway each day back and forth to a real job, of scrounging in a city where mucho dinero was, ultimately, necessary made me have second thoughts. Especially compared to a quiet life with Fru in her duplex on Ivy Court in little boring Champaign. If we were to move, I'd rather live with her back in Grayton, or somewhere out West. So, I decided to leave New York City. It had been but a life-experience experiment anyway. A lark that had presented itself during a cold midwestern winter.

I'd been hanging with Donna quite a bit, learning the larger city and hitting small bars in the East Village, eating Rays Pizza at St. Marks Square, visiting museums, took a long lone subway ride out to Coney island one cold day. So, the last night--before my flight the next day out of La Guardia, (a flight that Fru lent me the money to fund because I was honestly seriously broke)--Jimmy and Donna and I went out, caroused with some poets and other ne'er-do-wells , and I got very drunk. I spent the night on the floor at Donna's little shotgun hole-in-the-wall expensive knock-down apartment on some street in the village (east, that is). I was committed to Fru and did not sleep with Donna (though had, numerous times, back in Iowa City) and I can't recall if I took a cab--yes I did take a cab--to the airport the next day, hungover like a bad vampire bat.

I never flew much in those days, but I was feeling low, broke, cold, ready to get back to a sane existence with Fru, find a job in Champaign and pay off my debts (not too much), eat big hearty midwestern meals, sleep and sex with the woman I'd come to love. And so I did. Got on the jet, said goodbye to New York (never to return until over a year ago--almost twenty years) and off I went in the sky.

What I recall about the flight is that it's the first time I ever had that sinus-afflicted headache you can get as the jet ascends or descends--that shift in cabin pressure. And it was so painful. Man, it hurt on top of the hurt of the hangover. But I landed--in Indianapolis. (One rarely flies into Champaign--adds $$--usually it's Indy or Chi-Town.) And there Fru and some pals picked me up. I recall, they took me downtown and we went to Union Station, a cafe there, and I ordered a pork tenderloin sandwich--a midwest thing, really an Iowa-and-Indiana-only kind of sandwich. It was huge but I was hugely hungry. I ate it up. The waitress came out and asked if I'd eaten the whole thing, and I said yes--the cook was looking at me from the kitchen--and she said no one ever eats the whole thing. I was actually surprised, because I probably could have eaten another one after the time of almost starving in New York.

After that we wandered Indy a bit. I was disinterested. It seemed small, pedestrian. Some old homeless guy stopped me in the street, was trying to tell me something that was important to him but I interrupted, asked if he wanted some money (by then, I was quite used to panhandlers--a lot in Seattle, some in L.A., even a few in Santa Fe, and of course many many in NYC). The old man, unstable, began to shed tears, accepted my dollar or so, but still tried to tell something (I can't recall what it was he said, exactly or even inexactly) so I listened a little more--it was more interesting than the city of Indianapolis--and then moved on . . . Eventually, we drove back over the barren landscapes to Champaign.

And in Champaign I readjusted. Hadn't spent much time there, really, since I came up from Florida to stay in January. I looked for work. Finally found full time employment at a nursery just east of Urbana. Later I got on a concrete construction crew. 

Sure. It was but a foray. It was a smidgen of a moment of a drop-in-the-bucket when it comes to knowing and understanding New York. I don't know the city. Yet, I do. Sort of and almost. I was more traveller than tourist. One and a half months, not working, living in Queens. A short stay but not a weekender, not a one or two week tourist. Sure. I'm a novice when it comes to the Big Apple. But New York was with me, is with me. The true Big City was and is part of my brain pan. And I'm glad for it.

Allow me this, at least.

Please.

To Whom It May Concern #3

Okay. No one still reads this blog--out of what, a million readable blogs out there--but that's okay. I have done no work--no links or self-promotion--to get anyone to even take a peek at this site. And--as said--that's okay. But I'll just pretend. (Eventually I'll do some groundwork, maybe, to get a few readers.) 

Anyway, 2009 is a-coming. So far I've stuck to the 1980s for subject matter; pretty much anyway. My plan is--come January or February--to shift the focus, to open it up to a real scramble of scattered little trivial memories. By no means have I "wrapped up" those wandering years--have barely scratched the surface on the places and people, the internal understandings of it all--but it's time to get on, get back further to childhood and high school years, and on to the 90s, maybe the Ought-Oughts. Yes, yes: no one cares but me. But that's kind of the theme, the point, of this memoir blog. Trying to be honest. Can I help it that I never did anything interesting or earth-shattering? (Okay, don't answer that.) It's all nuance and interpretive. How do I take the mundane and make it interesting?

The answer to that remains to be seen.

Leaving Des Moines: 1987

Throughout the Eighties I'd always kept my Iowa drivers license and kept Iowa plates on my car (when I had a car). Officially, I should have had a New Mexico license, a California one, a Washington State one, Illinois (maybe even Alaska and New York), definitely Florida. I never did switch until Montana in late 1988. But in the summer of 87 I was back in Des Moines trying to find work. I did my usual temp jobs--at warehouses and offices, a stint moving things around downtown where I showed up the first day still drunk and everything swayed and shimmied as I toiled). But then my old friend Kevin got me a full time job mowing lawns with TrueGreen and I was set until I left--heading back to Florida once again.

But I was down, felt rotten inside, but was writing. Living in the basement but working, seeing some woman--women--I knew and had met that summer in the bars. The difference, this time, was that I was using a computer, was rewriting about all my stories and my novel and starting new stuff (some of which eventually showed up in scenes of my third novel--the one that got published many years later). But my parents--though I didn't quite see it--were a bit dismayed. 

Understandable.

Here I was, a grown man in my late twenties, a college grad and a capable human being, romping about and returning to the parental nest and, basically, going around in my own static circles. 

But I worked the summer, got physically fit and saved a chunk of cash, got back on the writing trail. I got back in touch with my longest of friends, met new ones, stayed in touch with Matt and Brock (to some degree--these, my deepest friendships of those years, were beginning to fray) and with some people in Iowa City.

In fact, Roger--from the first Grayton days--was living in Iowa City (as he had when I came back for grad school in 86) and I went over to see him a couple of time, him and others I'd met less than a year ago. But eventually the time came to move on and that meant going back to the panhandle, to south Walton County FL.

So I made my plans, let some people know. I was going to drive straight south--take small roads down through Missouri, down through Arkansas and Louisiana and over: see some new country. But then I heard from Margaret--out of the blue--a letter or maybe a phone call and she was living in Champaign, Illinois and wanted me to come out and see her. Margaret was a friend, she had been Cin's roommate in early Iowa City college days. So, I decided I'd go see her, which meant a different route to Grayton, which also meant a stop in Iowa City.

All of which I did.

(And in Champaign I met her friends and co-workers, one of which was Fru; but that's a longer, different and involved story.)

But before I left, my mother came to me and wanted to talk to me. She seemed nervous, concerned, a little grave. She said, "I don't think you can come back here. You can't keep coming home."

That was all. And in many ways, it was a big statement. My father had always run a rather open family home, raised us to take our time and be practical to some degree, but mainly that our lives were our own yet the house would always be our home. But I quickly surmised that they had been discussing this--not exactly kicking me out (I was leaving on my own free will), but that this avenue of my indirection was now closed to me. I knew it had been a topic of deep concern and contemplation between them and that my mother had been sent to give me the bad news. But I didn't take it as such.

"Okay," I said. Was all that I could say. I mean, I interpreted it that quickly and understood it and thought it was--really--a good and necessary policy. So I had no complaints or quibbles. It didn't shock me and maybe even pleased me or satisfied me in inner ways. And we never discussed it further, never said more than those few words. It was understood and accepted and not an issue.

So, I left. Drove away. Left Des Moines for the last and final time--as far as living there goes. Of course I came back and visited, even stayed at the house for a few days, but never worked and lodged there again.

I really hadn't lived in Des Moines--saw the city as my home--since I went away to college and spent my summers in Iowa City in the early 80's (if not 1980 itself). I really wasn't even an Iowan anymore by then. I was just some itinerant gypsy vagabond nomad wanderer writer driver kind of strange guy, living mostly in my own head. . . Yet, that's not entirely true, because in my mind Iowa was still the center of my world, and Des Moines the center of that center. It was my home port, my pinpoint of comparison from which everything else was judged. So leaving it--essentially for good--had its profundity. It was--or should have been--a watershed event.

And it probably was.

But I refused to recognize it as such. Maybe I still refuse to do so.

I returned to Des Moines just a month ago for my Mother's 80th birthday (my father passed away in 2001). I spent about a week there, some of it on my own. My three brothers and my lone sister came into town for two to three days. I stayed on Grand and hung out on Ingersol, just west of the downtown core--even saw Scott and Larry, high school pals who are still there--and then downtown itself, east of the river near the state capitol, and got to see, re-learn the city while I was there. I was strangely impressed. Des Moines has grown up. It has its own level of sophistication yet still retains its Iowa-ness--a good Iowa-ness. I like it.

Who knows, maybe I'll go back someday. Back to stay?

Leaving Seattle: 1987

Spring came to Seattle and I was doing better. It was still gray and rainy most of the time, but there were days of sun, days of seeing the Olympic range out our window and towering Mt. Rainier from the streets. I began to write. And draw. And go for runs along Puget Sound at Seward Park where the big ships came in to unload grain and whatnot.

I was still depressed, but it was a more positive depression.

When I'd first come to the Emerald City, I worked as a busboy at Dukes, not far from our crazy apartment/house in Queen Anne on 1st Avenue West near the Space Needle. Then I'd worked for Brock's dad at his print shop next door (ADSCO Printing). But then I'd gone to Bellingham and failed and came back and then Matt had convinced Brock's dad that we should remodel the apartment (which he owned--a house really with upstairs and down, the down used as storage for the shop, the up a great place because it looked out over the Sound and was in a newly hip part of town), so I went to "work" doing just that.

You've got to understand the living situation. Brock had a room and Matt had the couch and I had the floor. There was one bathroom with only a tub. There was an attic, which we eventually made into a new bedroom, which Matt took and I got the couch. The only kitchen was downstairs among the stacks of printing supplies, so we'd cook downstairs, go out the front door and then in the second door which led up a narrow staircase to the door which led into the bombed-out apartment. When I say bombed-out, it's because the place was old and a wreck and was a complete toxic disaster when we started remodeling it. Matt had worked construction but didn't really know everything he was doing. We had walls torn down and sheets of plastic up and bare floors and dust and debris always everywhere. We lost half of our living space on day 1. But we muddled through. Matt and Brock worked days somewhere else (Brock for his dad) and I stayed at the "house" setting my own hours, drinking lots of coffee and writing. When I came back from Bellingham, I set up Brock's card table in a corner, got out his typewriter and began a few stories. I also began to draw a lot. Not that I'm very good, but I'm a decent sketcher and I drew a series of nudes--many of them funny--and began to post them on the wall each day or so. (Brock's father came in once, glanced over, glanced again, looked, and was embarrassed by the many nudes, some quite graphic, some cartoonish.) But I was doing better, but it became time to leave.

I wasn't broke. I loved Seattle. Was still friends with Matt and Brock (though the relations were starting to strain, Matt was starting to head into troubled substance abuse). But, it was time. Was going nowhere and when I'm going nowhere my urge is to go somewhere different. I knew I'd end up going back to the panhandle in Florida, but first I thought it best to go back to Des Moines (not exactly going somewhere different, but you get the idea). So, I said my goodbyes, packed and got in my ugly powder blue Ford Maverick and drove east, to Montana.

I must have spent the night somewhere, but from Missoula I headed south, down I-15, past Dillon and the state line and into Idaho where it became dark. Dark and lonely. A night at a very cheap motel in Pocatello. From there I drove to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, looked around, hit the road on little highways under clear skies. Took my shirt off and drove, school bus full of girls drove past, they all staring at me smiling and I so lonely and horny I stared back even though I was virtually an old man to them. It was a long drive. Took the route through Sundance into Nebraska and that groovy country around Scottsbluff and back into the familiar farmlands of the midwest and to Des Moines.

Once again, I lived in my parent's basement, worked weird jobs, saved some cash and caught up with my old buddies and women (those left). But I also wrote. Used a computer for the first time--borrowed from my older brother Michael, an Apple--and made some headway on that front. But I dreamt of Seattle, put it in perspective, and also dreamt of Grayton Beach, Florida.

I chose Florida by August or so.

But that's a different story among many piecemeal stories that all have connective tissue and a similar ring when put together. Sure, I returned to Seattle--as a visitor--when I lived in Montana with Fru. We were even married in Seattle. And though my times there were a comeuppance in a way, a demarcation from the fun days into more serious ones, a taking of stock as to who I was and where I was headed and what I really wanted to do, a bad time masked in good--maybe a good time masked by bad--I still love Seattle.

It's my favorite American city.

The Pleasure and Pain of Colorado, New Mexico and Oklahoma: 1982

It was supposed to be just a short long-weekend road trip. It was Matt and Clyde and I. Clyde and I worked for the university as housekeepers/janitors/maintenance workers, matt worked for his uncle. It was summer in Iowa City in 1982. . . It was supposed to be just a larky jaunt to Colorado Springs to camp and take in Pikes Peak and the Garden of the Gods. I think, maybe, it was a three day weekend of some sorts, then again, I could be wrong about that.

It was a great trip, a lousy trip. What happened was, we drove on out there, found a private campground outside of Colorado Springs. We hiked around the Garden of the Gods--all those spiky sandstone monolithish rocks and the mountains and the pines. We swam in a cold pond. Drove up to Pikes Peak where it got cold, snowed a bit and me in shorts. We drove up a dirt forest road and had to turn around precariously. We decided to hike up to a spot on tall mountain--stood there from the camp, picked out a spot, started hiking without any topo maps or food or water, thinking we could get up there in a few hours. Foolishness. After about one hour, barely maiking it up and down small hills and through trees, we knew it was impossible (mountain distance is always elusive to flatlanders). But it was sunny and sweet--dry thin air and the smell of pine; a vertical horizon. We went into Colorado Springs to drink, accomplished that, even danced a little. But I got a hankering for something else.

The Sangre de Cristos run through southern Colorado down into New Mexico. I'd read about the Great Sand Dunes area of Colorado, so I talked Matt and Clyde into heading down there and it was a beautiful spot: fields of wildflowers on the plain, the rise of the Sangres--brown and green and grey and purple--the field of huge dunes, golden and rough up against the mountains and trees. We hiked back in to the San Juan Valley--the National Forest--crossed a stream and made camp in a large clearing off the trail. We put beers in the stream that was there, hiked up a small, craggy-topped mountain, found some elk antlers, came back and drank the now-cold-beer and made dinner. We hiked the dunes. It was all rather stunning, fun for the young. But that evening--night--a huge thunderstorm came in and it rained volumes of rain. We had a huge fire, that crackled in the downpour and eventually drowned. The tent leaked. We sat in our ponchos, hunched above the ground on our heels, under the cover of pines as lightning scratched the air, thunder exploded, rain rained like an impossible faucet. But it was miserable fun. And the next day we decamped, walked out under gray skies, and I had a hankering to see New Mexico.

I'm not sure where I got in my head to go to Santa Fe, but I said to them, "We need to find the REAL Santa Fe.", which was sort of a joke but also a serious quest. And, with no objections, off we went. Now, I should say that we had borrowed Matt's sister's car for this trip. That we all had to be back to work on, what?, Tuesday or someday. But off we drove, hitting good sunlight by the border, dipping and bopping through the dry hills and mountains of northern New Mexico, stopping at a state park--Rio Grande State Park--where we hiked to a big gully/canyon where the small baby Rio Grande ran steel-colored far below. We took in the sun, headed south and down and into Santa Fe. 

(Okay, we did stop in Taos and drank dark Australian beer at a place called Ogalvies, sitting outside with shirts off soaking up the Zia sun.)

In Santa Fe we found downtown and found the Plaza with it's adobe buildings and trees and tourists and Indians selling turquoise on blankets under the ramparts of the old Government Building. Man, we liked it. And so we resumed our beer drinking at a place called the Plaza bar. It was a hole-in-the-wall dive of a bar, full of drinkers and drunks and it's not there anymore. I tried to speak Spanish to a couple of very inebriated hispanic men. We bought them shots of tequila--bought ourselves shots of tequila--and one of them would genuflect before each gulp. Fun. Overheard some youngish guys talking about the Whore House and we asked where this said whorehouse was and they explained it was the ORE House, a bar, almost next door. So, we went to the Ore House.

And it was jumping. It was a fancy place compared to the Plaza Bar, with music and dancing and a youngish crowd. Talked to a guy in cowboy garb, danced with some women, talked to those women, went outside--drunk as a skunk--where kids rode their bikes in the street, talked to them, tried to speak my mangled Spanish and they called me terrible names that I didn't understand, went back into the bar and talked to the women again until they said they'd take us to their place. But I didn't understand the directions and they pretty much ditched the three of us out in the parking spaces along the Plaza. So drunk, we headed out of town.

We did have the sense to stop at a diner and eat and study our bible: The Rand McNally Road Atlas of the United States of America. We figured our route and hit the road with full bellies and warped minds, driving driving across northern desert with the moon out like a giant hamster wheel, knocking our way into daylight and the empty Texas panhandle--Amarillo--then angling into Oklahoma City by two p.m.. Where we had lunch downtown, a downtown empty and silly and boring and I said it was time to discover the real Tulsa. Had a hankering for Tulsa, Oklahoma.

We were supposed to be back for work in Iowa City in maybe two days. We again found a campground outside of Tulsa--some long green pasture place with an artificial lake--them went into town. . . We never really made it into the downtown, but stopped at some neighborhood, ate, and hit a small bar called the Buccaneer Lounge. There we played pool and drank with the day crowd. Night fell. (We had to make a trip to the liquor store to buy whiskey and bring it to the bar for them to sell it back to us due to some oddball/Christian-minded alcohol laws in Oklahoma). We drank beer and whiskey and young people mobbed the place. Played pool, met people, met women, I almost went home with an African-American girl, some Spanish girl kept calling Matt El Diablo and Clyde just watched with bemused drunkenness because he had never traveled with Matt and I before (and never did again) but we closed the place, got back into Matt's sister's car, Clyde up from, Matt in back and me driving and I ran into a telephone pole.

Okay, I swiped the pole. Went over the curb and put a good dented scratch along the right front fender. Car was still drivable, so we headed for the camp, made it, went to sleep. The next day, sheepish and hung over, we headed for home. But of course, the clutch went out.

We were stuck along the highway, somehow got a tow truck to come get us (no cell phones, you know) and traveled into Bartlesville, Oklahoma where Matt's sister's car was taken to a Sears Auto who did not have the part we needed and had to order it. And we were stuck. It was hot hot over 100 degrees in Bartlesville and we had no money, no car, no nothing. We called our parental units and they agreed to wire the cash we needed to fix the car (and eat) (and sleep), but the money could not be wired to Bartlesville, only Tulsa (serious) and the only way to get to Tulsa with the money we had (no one our age carried credit cards in those days) was to take a Greyhound Bus and the bus station was on the opposite side of town. . . So, we hoofed it. Walking walking, thumbs out but no takers, stopping to buy bologna and bread and mustard and drinks and ate in the parking lot and walked and walked in the 100 degree heat, across town, to the bus station, where we bought tickets and waited and took the lousy bus back to Tulsa--near the airport--where we got our Western Union money from the folks and got a cheap motel room and took the bus back to Bartlesville the next day where the part came in and the car was fixed (except for the telephone pole mar). 

Man.

So we paid up and got the hell out of Oklahoma. Had to stop in Kansas because the bolts on the car where it had been repaired had not been tightened, had a mechanic do that, paid him five bucks that we needed, but we were off. Rushed to Iowa and Iowa City. I'd borrowed a backpack and walked from my apartment on Van Beuren, carrying the pack, to the U. and work--late. My boss chuckled, told me to go back home. I did. Walked back and slept and ate and slept. Went to work the next day.

So, it was quite the road trip. One of many in those college days. Usually it was Brock, Matt and I. Often Mike (Cheech) and there were others. Usually it was to Florida--Daytona and Key West--but also to Mississippi, New Orleans, Texas and eventually the big drive out to Seattle and up to Alaska. And after school was done, we split and continued our own version of those road trips. Santa Fe and L.A. and Grayton and Seattle and more. They were just, really, extended road trips, complete with jobs and apartments and loves and friends. A drawn-out horsing around with our lives. Matt and Brock and I meeting up again in Grayton and Seattle. Yes, we were ignorant. But we also understood what we were doing--this jumbled bumble against-the-grain-of-common-society, immature living. It was stupendous fun, idyosyncratically profound, a waste of time and a powerful tattoo upon our lives. 

I did it. We did it. And here I am to prove it.

Riding A Roller Skate Down Old Santa Fe Trail: Santa Fe 1984

So I lived in an old adobe on Camino de la Luz up in the hills east of town and got a job waiting tables at the Forge Restaurant downtown. I used to walk the mile or more to and from work each day, down Alameda along the trickling tree-shaded Santa Fe River. I only knew one person in Santa Fe--Joel, whose house I lived in--but after I landed the job, I fell in with a group of characters.

Though I got to know about, say, a dozen people just from work, it was mainly two young guys, John and Alex, that I hung out with. They were both locals, both going-no-where kind of young men. Nice guys, though. John was a cook, from a broken family who rarely saw his father (I recall we were out and around one night and some leather-clad fellow buzzed by on a Harley and John yelled out and the guy waved to him; "That's my dad," John said to me. "He's a freak." and this was kind of shocking to me, that you would casually wave to your father on a motorcycle in the street as if he were but an acquaintance), kind of a drinker/drugger ne'er-do-well. John was a bit of a harmless scammer, scrappy and interesting. Alex was a little more refined, a drummer and musician; he lived in a studio apartment at his mother's house but didn't see much of her because, as I was told, his brother had been killed which broke his mother's heart and she put a great distance between her and Alex because of that tragedy. But, they were guys--like most young guys--who liked to stay up late and bound about and look for things to do.

When I say stay up late, I mean real late. We often worked the night shift at the restaurant and it got to where they started inviting me out afterwards to hit the bars, to go to Club West (where Alex's girlfriend was manager, where I eventually worked as a bouncer). Then, even after the club closed, say three, four in the morn, they'd take beers and wander downtown Santa Fe looking for things to do. Like I said, they were both natives of the city and they knew it block by block. But what I also found out was that they were both into roller skating.

Now, sure, I'd roller skated. Had last skated in Iowa City when I was a freshman and we'd arrange to go to a rink in Coralville with a another dorm floor--girls, of course. But I had a rather low opinion of it. But I'd walk and they--having brought their skates to work--would glide along, up and down sidewalks and empty late night streets, skating and spinning the concrete spaces around the state capitol and other government buildings. And invariably there'd be other characters about--cab drivers, hooligans, bar workers--who they knew and would stop to talk to and introduce me to. But otherwise, the city was empty and dark. Sometimes, downtown along the plaza, we'd even climb up to the roofs of the buildings. I recall one time we hopped up--I think on top of the bank--and looked own on the plaza below and there was a street bum wandering around and John--ever full of mischief--decided to toss quarters into the street. Alex and I watched as he did this, the quarters pinging down to the pavement, the unfortunate homeless bum hearing it, searching as another quarter came down, now the man seeing it, picking it up as more quarters and other coins began to rain from the sky. I admit I laughed. The bum finally figured it out, looked up, said, "Very funny". But at least he got to keep the change.

I remember one night after work I went out with them. We did the usual--drinking till Club West closed--taking beers and hitting the deserted town, walking while they skated. Then they said I should try. "No way," I said. "Your skates are too small, anyway." True, I was much bigger than both of them, maybe even put together. "You can ride on it," they told me. Ride on it? "Like a skateboard," Alex said, "you can use one skate and I'll use the other." I was more than skeptical. I was also sloshed. "Okay," I said. "I'll give it a try."

We were up on Santa Fe Trail, a main drag that ran as a hill down--eventually--into the center of downtown. So, beer bottle in one hand, I sat down on the tiny skate, balanced myself, and off I went . . . Indeed, I glided downhill, gaining speed, learned I could control it like a board or toboggan by shifting my weight, and I went a long long way. Just drinking and skating, sitting on one single tiny roller skate, bopping along in the dry night summer air of Santa Fe, the four am buildings brown dark and empty, stop lights flashing only yellow, trees full-leaved and dusky, the whole city empty and quiet and but a playground for fools like us.

We did it again, on different streets, until the sun came up. In fact, I had to be at work for the breakfast shift, so I never did sleep or get home, but went straight from drunk and sit-skating to my locker at the Forge, where I changed into waiter attire, and started my shift. 

But I was in pretty bad shape, though made it till about noon, then--after the initial rush--I begged off work. Sherri--the manager--let me go home. And as I walked, down some of the same streets I'd been wandering all night before, everything was surreal and strange, my mind bamboozled, my sensations discombobulated in a pleasant, if worn down, way. And, I discovered, it was the Fourth of July.

I'd forgotten. And as I tramped along the street I came across a crowd, across the Fourth of July Parade route and here it came, floats and clowns and Shriners and cowboys with horses and kids and wagons and red white blue bunting and me. Me strung-out stranged-out happy tired heading past the parade and up the long-walk hill to my temporary home in New Mexico.

Oh, it was just a dumb little thing. One of many dumb little things out of many dumb little days spread out over lo' these many years. If only I could get paid for such foolishness, I'd be a rich man. But, I still remember such trivial frivolities, can still conjure them up quite well, like a movie reel in my head that entertains me in my own idiosyncratic way, allowing me to laugh at myself.

Maybe that's payment enough.