Filling In The Blanks

There were some great stories burned up in that book. Everyday for six months I had kept a journal of our travels around the northern United States and British Columbia. After dodging the draft, my brother Jeff, my cousin Skip and a rough version of myself hopped in a 1963 VW bus we bought off of my boss at the screen shop and hit the road. We left on a Friday night after Jeff got off of work. He had been putting in his dues at the studios our stepfather Bill was producing for. Jeff didn't have many talents's, at least none he chose to share, so Bill got him a position as a driver. Most days he'd shine the rims of the trucks while the coordinators would get drunk in the office. Every once in a while the union bosses would come over for a visit. They were large men with barreled chests and tough skin. They walked in a pack, silent, but aware. When on set, they didn't command attention, but they sure were given it. Jeff had always desired power. He grew up a fighter in school and it only got worse after Dad split. He only lost once, but he caught the same guy outside of Twains late one night and didn't lose again. Jeff shined the rims, knowing one day he'd be part of the mafia backed union. It was the crew's last day of wrap and our first day of the trip.

We never had a destination in mind; we just wanted to see it all. I left with seventeen dollars, my sleeping bag, a pair of chords, a pair of jeans, 3 shirts and a jacket. I had forgotten my underwear. Between the three of us the only food we brought was a 5 pound block of cheese, 7 boxes of saltine crackers and a tub of concentrated Hawaiian Punch. Many stomachaches were to come. We drove up the coast first, taking Highway 1 into the redwoods. The van topped out at 55 miles per hour, so we didn't get anywhere very quick. I remember how cramped I felt at first. We had taken out the rows of seats in order to optimize the sleeping room, but didn't take into account how uncomfortable thousands of miles sitting on the floorboards would be. The engine would heat the panels of the van nicely during the night, but during the day it was torture. For the first part of the trip the pain in my lower back was excruciating. I'd shift the position of my legs every few minutes attempting to ease the tension. Nothing really worked. It was always hot and I was always uncomfortable. It was somewhere between Oregon and California where I came up with the orange crate idea. We had found the crate behind a truck stop and had weighed it down with some bricks and duct tape behind the passenger seat. This orange crate literally saved the trip. Not much further than the truck stop we decided to pull off the highway behind the cover of pine trees and set up camp for the night. It was late September and even though we could see our breath when exhaling, a warm wind broke the chill. We built a small fire outside the van's sliding door for heat and slept stacked like sardines, head to toe, on the floor. We were all very timid. None of us had ventured too far out of the Valley and here we were about to enter Oregon with no particular place to go. The first few nights were draining to say the least. We'd argue for hours before arriving at our destinations about what to do. I always wanted to eat, Skip always wanted to sleep, and Jeff always wanted to meet girls. Jeff usually got his way, so we ended up spending a lot of time in Bars.

We were in the cascades now, somewhere in Oregon or maybe Washington, I can't remember. We had pulled into a town called Twisp and set up camp behind this little motel. In Twisp there was a diner, a bar, a gas station and a motel. It had been 6 days since we had left. We hadn't seen much because we spent so much time arguing. As stupid as it sounds, Skip and I wanted to see all the tourist stuff. We wanted to visit obscure statues, see waterfalls and drive through the trunks of redwood trees. Jeff wasn't having it though. At the slightest suggestion of pulling over, he'd begin to shake with rage. The knuckles on his hand would pulsate between red and white as he'd grip the wooden steering wheel and slam his head against the back of the seat. We'd usually egg him on until he began swerving the bus into on coming traffic. That would shut us up. About five miles before reaching this little town in the cascades, Jeff had pulled the same stunt and accidentally side swiped a boulder that had fallen just outside of the shoulder. Now the sliding door of our van was dented and didn't close all the way. For the rest of the trip we'd have to use a shoestring to hold it in place and deal with the cold wind that would creep through the cracks.

Twisp was an odd mix of people. It was one of those towns in the middle of nowhere that you couldn't imagine anyone actually living in. There were no houses, and the closest one I had seen was 20 miles back, yet there was a bar tender, a short order cook and a waitress, an inn keeper and even a wino who all called Twisp home. Inside the bar there was the typical mix of truckers, insomniacs and rough looking women. By the end of the night Jeff would always be talking to one of them. I can't even count how many time's we'd come back to the van only to find Jeff with a woman who looked older than mom. I didn't mind as long as he didn't lay her on my sleeping bag. We stayed in Twisp for a few days. We hadn't planned on it, but the waitress took an interest in us. She thought we were hippies because we had all neglected to shave and we were traveling around in VW bus. We'd always cringe when they'd make this assumption. Before leaving San Fernando we were all clean-shaven. I'd never loose the crease in my jeans and be caught dead before I was seen without my hair slicked back. As much as we fought the stereotype, the assumption kept being made. On our last day in Twisp we decided to embrace it. The diner had a few cans of paint in a storage shed out back. One was red, I think they used it to paint the bricks around the planters, and the other was a shade of purple that you'd believe was blue if you looked at it enough. Our van was a mix of rust and faded white so there was really only one thing to do. We painted an American flag on the driver’s side, top to bottom, bumper to grill. None of us were patriotic, we had just run away from the draft, but none of us were very creative either. If people didn't think we were hippies before, they sure would now.