I hope this letter finds you well. Thank you so much for the case of Grapico. My kingdom for a decent can of grape soda in the wilds of Honduras, even if that criminal reprobate Hambone drank most of them before I even got home from family court. It seems like just yesterday that we were sitting on Papa Jean’s back stoop playing Louvin Brothers tunes when he got to rattlin’ off about the bottom and the rocky reputation. I was either too young or foolish to understand his meaning. Now I clearly see, even those who manage to insulate themselves from the harsh realities of this world, eventually come to learn many of life’s grim truths. Nobody rides for free.
Welcome to the West Coast Turnaround: Loose Lucy Lost in Longmont Pt. 1. This is not going to be fun.
Stay on the road long enough and it’s bound to happen. Heckfire, it happens even when nestled in the soft womb of safe comfort, but out here there’s no harness among the sprawling mountains of the American West. Depending on available resources, support or innovation, things can quickly begin to spiral out of control and have dire consequences. Survival in the jungle may be a result of intelligence and creativity, or maybe it’s a product of hard work and a commitment to excellence.
Either way, methinks this could mean trouble
Family news first.
Uncle Cleophus fell down outside of church again Sunday. He’d had his nose in the turpentine since Saturday and was fairly cattywampus. Grandma put the kids in the back of the Buick so they wouldn’t see the show, but they already had. Laughing at the way the heel of his Bostonian caught a porch nail before he and his white socks went down in the red dirt. While trying to bush hog the back forty he’d wacked his leg with the swing blade, so he was gimpy to begin with. The night before he’d gotten into Pearl’s rubbing alcohol and the word from the doctor was, “If he’s not dead yet, he should be fine.”
We’d just passed through the rust deserts of Utah for the third time that summer and, even with its boundless landscapes, it surely felt as if the cliffs were creeping closer. The mesas and jagged crags, with their vertical cliffs of colored sand and crystals, had affected everyone, mostly Thunderbird, who could no longer be trusted to drive safely. He’d been in charge of the wheel for three days straight on top of another three days of “Salemesque” fun, which had left him scrambled and haggard at best. While the rest of us joined a family of Mexicans in search for dinosaur fossils, our campsite was pillaged by Uintah Indians near Little America. They finished all of our grease and swiped a freezer bag full of Washington smoked king salmon, leaving spirits at a new low. Come to find, the Mexican family wasn’t looking for dinosaur fossils, just shade.
Hambone took the wheel on highway 20 out of Ogden and came through the mountains east of Salt Lake City, exactly at sunrise. The early morning glare sparkled through the cracks and detritus of the windshield with such radiance we veered into the side of a Piggly-Wiggly truck. Not sure what he was doing this far west. Everybody knows this is Hoggly-Woggly country. It was Cat Stevens’ birthday and 101.9 was playing his hits. Not bad rock-n-roll for a Muslim. The road from Salem to Longmont had only taken two days but every clock in the Adventure Wagon showed it had actually been closer to five. Yes Virginia, wormholes do exist.
We headed south out of Rawlings, Wyoming, into the great beyond. Like so many localities in in the American West, it was often a serious haul to the next town. From what’s been witnessed, there’s usually about forty-two miles between gas stations so was crucial to fill up every time one is passed. Through West Texas and Idaho, there were times it had truly been too close for comfort. The sunshine state doesn’t train one well for this, as it mostly has gas stations every thirty feet. Mostly. Even Honduras can’t compare with Idaho in the middle of the night with the gas light blinking. It seemed fair to think we might never be found. It could be just leftover slivers of paranoia. When you spend a great deal of time alone, there’s no one to remind you that you’re still sane. Or for that matter, you ever were.
The vehicle, which had been acting persnickety, since La Push, failed to crank outside the Big Beaver, a Loveland brew house. No one had any idea what the problem was, other than the perfect silence when the ignition key was turned. After sitting for a few hours and some clueless scrubbing of the battery connectors, she miraculously came back to life with a pittiful stutter. With only seven miles left to Lyons and Rockygrass, the final show of the trip, the last stop on the line was Longmont.
Maybe the last stop. Maybe there were going to be no more stops from here on out. Just a series of loosely connected events ever moving closer together in time until reaching some kind of critical mass.
The Adventure Wagon came to its final rest in the Longmont Walmart parking lot. The big sleep. The crew tested the battery and found it to be speck. Come to find, their automotive shop only installed batteries. Nothing else really useful, except a power converter and bag of jalapeno chips. Upon turning the key, the engine remained eerily silent. Seven miles from Lyons and several light years away from South Florida, the parade had come to a crushing halt.
Silent. Still. All the way unmoving. Welcome to the stationary station. In a busted up Nissan with no spare, virtually covered with rocks and logs collected from the rain forests of the northwest coast, we were down to our last two bills. The vehicle immediately became some kind of demented sleeping quarters and recharging station. We hung sheets inside the windows to keep out the beaming halogen lights. In an effort to provide extra sleeping room in the ridiculously tiny vehicle, the Governor kicked most of the glamping gear out the back door, where it was indistinguishable from the flotsam and jetsam piled behind the shopping center. Once again, things had begun to get slightly silly and askew. It felt as though the knots that had been keeping everything bound together up till this point, were becoming slowly untethered.
To be continued…
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