PAGAN LOVE AND WILDING HEARTS

7. Nightmare on Ice

        An experience I’ll always remember happened in Choo-Choo’s Saloon one afternoon; one of the dumb things that could only happen to ridiculous young people. I had just met a petuli-perfumed angel and we’d gone inside for a beer and conversation. Mutual attraction was a dynamic power in those heavy psychedelic days. Our sultry conversation was weaving us together like threads on a loom. We hung on every word. During silences we watched each other’s lips breathing and contemplating our inevitable sexual tryst. We sat opposite with our chins on the table staring into each other’s eyes. We were as distant from everyone else in the bar as we could get. She was wearing a flouncy full skirt—and no underwear of course; and I had my bare foot up in her crotch. I mean my big toe was INSIDE, gently, wildly making whoopy. And all the time our conversation went on huskily, looking into each other’s eyes. So deep. I was trying to make her orgasm—succeeding too, as I remember. Yikes. No one in the bar had the slightest idea what we were doing. We spent most of the afternoon like that, me and her and my dirty old bare foot! What an absurd thing to do! But that’s the way we were in those days.

        She invited me to sleep over at her place and for awhile there I imagined a warm winter ahead of me: but actually she lived with some guy and although he claimed he didn’t mind, the situation wasn’t the coolest.  As it worked out I only spent one night. The guy glared at me and in a soft-spoken little voice practiced keen-edged imprecations against my character.

        Tucson is one of the warmest places in the United States in winter and sleeping outside was often downright pleasant what with the fragrance of oleander blossoms everywhere—but where to do that sleeping continued to remain my largest problem. I heard about street people sleeping on the roof of the health food co-op but whenever I tried to get up there it was full. Sometimes I was so tired from walking around all night long that I felt like a zombie.

        The remedy came in the way of an International step-van. My mother sent me a chunk of money and I bought two things with it: the step-van for two hundred dollars and an extraordinary Sigma Martin guitar in a hardshell case for $90. And I still had enough money left to get me out of town and down the road. The only problem was that I did not have a valid driver’s license; nor did I have enough money to register the step-van or put good tires on it. They were bald. No insurance either of course.

        I’d gotten a California driver’s license shortly after my release, but it had gone the way of all things that are loose in someone’s pockets. There wasn’t much sense in getting an Arizona license inasmuch as I’d be out of that state in a day or two. I figured I’d pick up a license wherever I stopped.

        I built a wooden platform bed in the back of the van and got me a foam mattress and lots of blankets. Whew! I’d never had it so good. I also picked up a campstove and some dishes.

        I set my new guitar back on the bed and put the rest of the stuff under the platform. My house was neat and spacious. Gush-gush would have loved it. What a dog-house!

        The local police had been getting to know me. They’d checked my ID enough times. A road hippy walking around everywhere with a St Bernard was hard to miss. Also one morning a cop car had just happened to drive up the alley right after I had emerged from the shed. He hadn’t actually seen me come out; he’d just seen me standing there about ten feet away.  If he knew about the shed he probably couldn’t prove I’d been in there.  He wanted to know what I was doing prowling around that residential alley so early in the morning. I told him I was taking my dog for a walk! He asked me where I had slept? I told him I’d slept at a friend’s! He let me go but it was close. The same cop took to lurking around that same alley about the same time every morning after that so I had to be extra careful and wait till he passed. Well, Gush gush was gone now. I wouldn’t be taking him for any walks anywhere anymore.

        It felt like a bummer when the cops checked out me and my new step van on the day I was leaving Tucson. I sure lacked paperwork. I had a bill of sale; that’s about all. He found several mechanical violations with the truck, too. The only thing that saved my neck was that I told him I was leaving town that very day. He told me if I actually did that he’d let me go scott-free. I was already gone.

        Tucson’s weather was terrific but it can fool a traveler. I had been thinking spring had arrived on Earth. How wrong I was! Winter was still choking the planet everywhere else. Especially in Northwestern New Mexico where I next found myself. The step-van protected me from the elements and it had a good heater, and I had plenty of blankets; so being cold wasn’t a problem.

        The problem was the bald tires. They simply could not get any traction. And they did not want to stay where they were supposed to! Step on the gas too much and they squirreled sideways all over the icy highway. But highway curves were what was most terrifying. Frequently I would turn the steering wheel but the truck continued in the original straight line!

        The ice on the highways was so slick that it was difficult to even stand up and walk on it. If I had been anything but the ignorant California kid that I was I would have known that the only intelligent thing I could have done was to park that behemoth and wait until a crew came by and sanded the roads. Or maybe I should have traded my Sigma Martin for some good tires and chains. But I wouldn’t have done that. The guitar was worth five hundred dollars but was almost more important to me than the van. I needed my music. I should have done something but all I did was drive. I figured that if I went slow enough I could negotiate even the worst curves safely. To do that sometimes I had to crawl along at one mile per hour but even that didn’t always work. I was surprised to see the big truck slowly drift across lanes even then—and more than once it ended up completely sideways in the middle of the highway! At one point I spun into a ditch and had to get pulled out by a passing motorist who had chains on his tires. Sometimes I couldn’t get up slight inclines and I’d have to slip and slide backwards and look for a rougher part of the road or go up with the right wheels on the snow-laden roadside.

        And the roads got worse. Black ice was everywhere; I’ve never seen it so bad. And the highway led up mountain passes with steep cliffs rising up or plummeting down on either side; gorges, crevasses, drop-offs: sure death. It was insane. I continued to crawl along, especially whenever I saw a curve coming up. More than once I came to a complete stop and walked ahead to have a look at the road before I tried the curve—because now the truck went out of control on every single curve no matter how slow I moved. Finally I parked on the side of the road and slept til morning.

        Snowy mountain wilderness surrounded me; my noisy mind considered the profound silence in astonishment. I realized I could do considerable mental healing in this element. My heart was full enough...  But everything was disordered, angry, hurt. Birds flew from one snow laden branch to another. I was trying to listen to everything, pausing, watching me, like little messengers from the Creator.. I was searching for answers. I dreamed wonderful dreams.

        In the morning I felt fresh, exhilarated. I was anxious to make some miles. But the roads were as bad as ever. On every curve the truck went wild, ending up off the road. The sheer drops still were frequent.  Despite the cold I started keeping the sliding doors open so I could jump at the last moment if it came to that. At least there was hardly any other traffic on the road. I hadn’t seen another car all morning. I was the only human dumb enough to be out on that slick sheet of ice.

        The last curve had been the worst so far: I spun completely around and had difficulty even getting enough traction to turn the truck back in the right direction. Now this one up ahead must have been about the tenth bad curve of the morning. I stopped dead and just looked at it.  Finally I allowed the truck to roll forward. I was about halfway through the curve when the rear end decided to drift on its original trajectory which caused the truck to slide sideways. A car appeared out of nowhere in the oncoming lane. I was going so slow -- surely there would be time to avoid a collision. But the lady driver could not put on her brakes because of the ice: she could slow down or speed up; that was about it.  I’m not sure which of those she chose to do, or if she chose either. I do know she had lots of time to watch the rear end of my rig coming at her.  It plowed right into her driver’s side door with a terrible crunch. When the rigs stopped I hurried over to see if she was hurt. She was all right, just frightened: a middle-aged woman on her way to the store. She was pretty upset though.

        Another car drove up. After making sure we were both okay he proceeded on to call a tow truck for the lady’s car; and to notify the police of course. My truck wasn’t damaged much; just some small almost unnoticeable dents. It was an old heap anyway. But her car was a recent model. There was going to be a problem getting it repaired. She asked me about insurance. She didn’t like my answer.

        The cop didn’t like the situation either. Especially the fact that I seemed to be without any paperwork; neither license, nor registration, nor insurance, nor money for fines, nor money to repair the lady’s car, nor a regular job, nor a regular residence, nor a regular haircut, nor a regular life.

        Being a regular guy, he took me to a regular jail and brought me before a regular judge—who gave me a regular sentence of eight days in the local jail. He told me from the bench that he would have given me more time except that he had spoken with my father on the telephone and that my father had seemed to him to be an upright and kind person, which is true; and on the merits of that conversation he had decided to be lenient. It was a small town. My truck was towed in and parked behind the jailhouse.

        There was a kind of kitchen area where the inmates could cook up their own meals. The worst thing about the place was that the toilets didn’t work. I guess the cold weather had frozen the pipes. Each commode was full to the brim and the place stunk.

        My jailmates were a scary lot of countryboys, but they were generally tolerable. The jailer was taciturn and opinionated and not easy to get along with. But the whole place was colorful; the accents, the clothes they wore, even their attitudes. When I talked the jailer into letting me have my guitar in my cell I even got a fair amount of respect from practically everyone. And eventually the eight days passed and they let me out.

        But they wouldn’t let me drive my truck because I didn’t have a valid license. So I packed my pack and my guitar and hitchhiked north towards Trinidad, Colorado where once upon a time, back in 1969, I had had some friends.