30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Nine: Getting Close

 

The trip to the north continued in a thrust of several days of driving.

For some reason, we didn't cross the Golden Gate Bridge, opting instead to take the San Rafael Bridge across the bay.

Our usual pattern was that I drove in front with Woodley following in his step van. This was probably because the Housetruck was the slower of the two.

During one drive near Capella, California, I lost sight of Woodley in the mirrors. He continued to be not there for a short while, then I came onto a long, straight stretch of road where I could see behind me for at least a mile. Still no Woodley.

I managed to find a turnaround and got headed south again, just in time to see him coming over the horizon. We pulled over to find out what was going on (two-way radios would have been a great thing on this trip).

Woodley was way into stopping to pick up hitch hikers, having all that room in the step van for them to ride, and he had been stopping frequently since we left San Francisco. Too often it seemed, as he had about 15 people in the truck. All the additional weight, along with the cargo he was carrying had made his truck even slower than mine. Of course, stopping to pick up and let off passengers made the bus routine even slower.

As I mentioned, Highway 101 was a lot of two-lane roads then, much of that original pavement is now designated "Scenic Byways", as the main road has been blasted through hill and valley and paved four lanes wide through most of the length of the state.

One night's stay, we simply found a small spur road to the side of the Highway, and pulled out to set up camp. I do remember that we still had one hitch hiker with us who had been riding in the cab with me, as I set up a tarp for him to sleep under. Just before dark, the owner of the property pulled up to find out what was going on. We explained that we were just travelers passing through, and thought that this would be a safe place to spend the night. The owner agreed, and welcomed us to stay on the condition that we light no fires and leave no trash. Things were different back then, I guess. No fences or "No Trespassing" signs, and a property owner who respects the concept of the "Commons" for honest travelers.

The final stopover on this trip is certain in my mind. Our first night in Oregon was spent in a rustic campground a mile or two from Brookings. This was the most remote location we had stayed during the trip, being in a forested location near a creek or small river, and completely away from the city and traffic noise.

In the morning, we were preparing to get back on the road and met up with some other young people who had stayed in the campground. As they were leaving in their pickup truck, we told them that this was our first morning in Oregon, and that we were moving up from L.A. to live in the state. We made some jocular comment about probably not telling them that because Oregonians hate people from out of state, and they turned kind of nasty and said "Why don't you turn around and go back". I don't think they were joking.

In the 1970's, you didn't tell people where you moved into the state from. There was a very strong anti-non-native sentiment. The former governor, Tom McCall had made it pretty clear that tourists were welcome to come visit, spend their money and then go home. "Don't Californicate Oregon" was a popular bumper sticker, and you would frequently see "SNOB" stickers (Society of Native Oregon Born). There was also the small simulated Oregon license plate sticker with the letters "NATIVE" and an open space for stick-on numbers that proclaimed "Since ____", where you could post your birth year, in simulation of the real license plates expiration sticker.

It didn't take long before you found out that keeping quiet about your place of origin was a very good idea. Some people would press you for the information, and on more than one occasion, I would either tell them that I, too was a "native", or else out-snob them by telling them I was from Alaska.

The whole thing was a load of BS in my opinion. I would ask people who claimed to be "natives" what tribe they belonged to. They would get confused, "What'dya mean?". Hey you claim to be a "native", but all that means is that your ancestors came from somewhere else, possibly displacing real native Oregonians in the process, so put up or shut up, are you Nez-Peirce? Siletz tribe? Calapooya band? Alsea family? Clatsop clan?

These days, most of the white "natives" have either died off, moved away, or gotten over it.

Anyhow, back to the trip. We drove north on Highway 101, and after passing through one of the larger coastal cities (not saying which one), I looked in the mirror to see a County Sheriff following. After a short time he turned on his lights and pulled us (me, really) over. I was presented with my "Welcome-to-Oregon" traffic citation for impeding traffic.

As I mentioned, the Housetruck would only do 40 MPH. This meant that I frequently had to pull over and let traffic pass, which I had been doing since leaving LA. In this particular instance, there was nowhere to pull off the road to let traffic pass. The cop told me that it's a violation to have four or more cars following a slow vehicle. I tried to tell him that the first vehicle was Woodley, and that he had been behind me for the last 800 miles. The car behind him was an old granny-lady who refused to pass even on long straight stretches with a dotted center line. The car behind her had only been there for a couple of miles, then his cop car made four, and he had only pulled into line a half-mile back. No dice, I got ticketed anyway. Got to keep the roads safe from all those too-slow hippy trucks. Actually, I don't think he ever registered that the Housetruck was anything more than a moving van, as there were no windows, grilles or appliances visible on the road side to make it look like an RV-type vehicle.

After getting settled, I received a letter at my old LA address from the county directing me to pay the $17 fine for this ticket, or face certain penalty by the justice system. I wrote them a letter back respectfully telling them that they could stuff it. Of course, by that time, I had turned in my California drivers license by sending it back. When I applied for an Oregon license, they asked me if I had my old license, and I told them that I had returned it as a "symbolic protest against air pollution". Whatever, the Oregon DMV didn't care, and issued me a shiny, new license with no citations attached. I still drive straight through that county non-stop just in case there's still a warrant out for me....

The day of the week was Sunday, and we arrived in Eugene at the Franklin Boulevard exit of I-5, having taken Highway 38 from Reedsport to the valley and the Interstate. We stopped at the Shell gas station just across from the Joe Romania Chevrolet dealership and used the pay phone to call Kim and let him know we had arrived. Kim's father, Lyle (known hereon as "Jeep") came to meet us and to lead us through the basically deserted Sunday afternoon streets of Eugene to our new home in the south hills of the city.

 

 

 

30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Ten: Eugene, Oregon

 

Jeep (Kim's dad) lead us through town, past the University of Oregon, down West 11th avenue, and then up Chambers St. to Loraine Highway. Kim was renting a vintage single-wide mobile home on five acres directly across a gravel road from Jeep and Kitty's (Kim's Mom) five acre home. I was told to park my housetruck along side an unfinished shed, in front of an unfinished shop building on the side of the lot. Woodley parked his step van directly across the narrow gravel road at the foot of Kim's driveway.

We toured the properties and were shown a shower and toilet in a nearby office/shop that we would be allowed to use during our stay, and given keys to the building.

The properties were located on a forested hillside, well away from the noise and light of the city, and the gravel road carried only minimal traffic. It was quiet and private there, and about as much as two nearly burned-out city boys could ask for.

The previous owner of Jeep and Kitty's home had been a ferro cement freak of some type, maybe a contractor. Much of the architecture was made from cement of some sort, and there was a big, really big orange ferro cement pumpkin in the front yard. I mean, big enough to be a bus stop shelter, which is what I think it was meant to be. The other interesting feature of the office/shop building where our bathroom was located was that it had an inverted gable roof, that is it was a big "V", with a gutter down the middle. Not the most leak-proof design I've ever seen…

Jeep was the mechanical inspector for the city, and had been making "improvements" to the house, and those will figure more prominently later in the story.

The next day after arriving, Woodley and I were taken into town by Kim's wife, Terri (name changed a bit to protect the innocent, [me], as she has a very distinctive name, and might actually still live in the area), and shown around the downtown area a bit. We saw the pedestrian mall, where the main street and several side streets had all been closed to vehicular traffic and planters and benches installed to entice shoppers to spend time and money with the downtown merchants. Unfortunately, Eugene had gotten caught up in "Urban Renewal" a couple of years before, and almost all of the historic buildings in the downtown area had been bulldozed into rubble and carted off to the landfill. This resulted in many blocks of abandoned, excavated basements and still water pits, as nothing had been built to replace the old buildings.

We saw the Atrium Building, a multi-story modern building with an open, airy covered courtyard in the center, and marveled at the Citizen's Bank building, with it's modern brickwork.

In the very center of downtown was a large, and ultimately ugly concrete fountain in a contemporary design. It had no water flowing, and apparently hadn't for a long time. It was the perfect complement to the stark empty basements of what were once thriving business in the core of the city.

Terri gave each of us a welcome gift, athletic gray T-shirts with the word "OREGON" in green letters on the front. I popped into a coin-op photo booth at Woolworth's to snap some photos of my new shirt, haircut and such to send to my mother, who was now living in Las Vegas (I have the film strip somewhere, but I'm not going to scan and post it, so don't ask).

Of all we did and saw that day, one thing has stayed in my mind clearly. Walking on our way downtown from parking the car on the outskirts of the pedestrian mall, I spotted a small bit of graffiti scrawled on the boarded up windows of a building that no longer stands at 11th and Olive streets, perhaps penned by a bored UO student waiting for a bus. It read:

"I love you, California. I'm coming home, but I'm stuck here for now."

A cosmic message from the beyond, intended for my eyes alone, or simply the ranting of a disgruntled surfer fed up after nine months of rain? Something to ponder until the next installment…

 

 

 

30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Eleven: Settling In

 

After getting the quick tour of the town, the next order of business was to get our trucks unloaded. Both Woodley and I had packed them nearly full of household belongings, building materials for the conversion to housetrucks and a lot of tools and equipment for Kim 's "machine shop", which he was planning on putting together in the incomplete shed building. I hauled a large and heavy arc welder, and Woodley had moved acetylene and oxygen tanks for the gas welder Kim had purchased in L.A. In addition to some of the furniture I brought along, I had a gas stove, RV refrigerator and water heater, windows and doors and other materials. Most of this went into the shop building next to the truck, which needed only a door and some plywood to be enclosed and secure.

Jeep had wired the shop for power, but it didn't work correctly, so I figured out his wiring mistakes and ran an extension cord to my truck to run some lights and the electric blanket on my bed, as I had no other source for heat in the truck yet. Woodley was parked across the gravel road next to the pump shed that served Kim's rental trailer, so he was able to get power there for the same purposes.

We spent a few days exploring the properties, and getting to know the neighborhood. Kim's rental property was quite interesting, the owner had begun building an A-frame house on the lot, but it had burned down during the construction, so the yard was strewn with assorted building materials, car parts, appliances, fasteners, and a lot of miscellaneous junk. Of course, we were "forbidden" by Kim to touch any of it, which made it all that much more attractive. There were several derelict cars and trucks on the property, mostly so overgrown with berry vines that they were unapproachable.

There was a low platform in a tree up the lot from the trailer, a perfect place for us to retreat to for safety breaks when we didn't want anyone to know where we were or what we were doing. There was also a rope swing on the lower part of the property, tied way off the ground on the limb of an ancient tree.

As the days went by, we began clearing a circular area of berry vines and rocks, put up some fencing and began turning the soil to create a large garden area. Old stable stalls on Jeep's property were mucked out for composted straw and manure.

Saturday nights, the three of us would pile into the front of Kim's 1954 Chevy pickup truck and go into town to Max's Tavern on 13th street to drink some beers and listen to live music (frequently folk or bluegrass).

When we weren't being kept busy by Kim or Jeep doing some chores around the properties, Woodley and I would work on our trucks. He was painting the interior of his step van, and I installed an operable vent in the roof above the sleeping loft and began installing some wiring to run proper lighting.

I transfered the open claim for unemployment that I had from California, and the checks started coming in, and we both registered for food stamps, so there was income and groceries. The arrangement for parking our trucks on the properties was barter for our labor, so the rent was covered.

About all that was missing was having my own car, as Kim's truck was fairly unreliable and wasn't always available for us to use when we needed to go somewhere. Mostly, I ended up riding along with whoever was going into town. Woodley would frequently use his step van as basic transportation. Getting my car up to Oregon was going to involve a trip back to LA, one that I wasn't sure how to arrange. At least for a while.

One day in May, Woodley and I returned from a trip to the grocery store and found a familiar Buick with California license plates in Kim's driveway. It was TMAX's parents, Chick and Connie, who were on their way to Reno, and for whatever reason, had made a detour to Eugene. They offered to give me a ride back to LA to pick up my car, but I had to leave with them that afternoon, as soon as possible in fact.

I stuffed some clothes, my car keys and a small bit of money into my Boy Scout backpack, bundled up my sleeping bag, gave Woodley instructions on how to feed my Guinea Pig, and set off for my trip southward.

Our first overnight was in Bend, where the motel owner asked Chick where he had picked up the hitchhiker (me).

Then we were in Reno. I don't gamble, and so I was standing around, being bored and feeling alienated in some casino while Connie fed the slots when some elderly woman I never saw before ran up, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me over to one of the machines. "Here, Honey" she said- thrusting a handful of nickels at me, "This machine is paying, but I have to leave", which she did.

“WTF?” was my first reaction, but I decided to play out the nickels she had left me and then get back to the important business of being bored that she had interrupted. It didn't take very long to figure out that the machine I had inherited was defective. If you didn't pull the handle very hard, only two of the disks would spin. After getting the sticky disk set on a paying number, it was fairly easy to keep the machine paying out almost every play. Soon I had nickels spilling off the counter and all over the floor. The drinks waitress would walk by every couple of minutes, muttering "Still winning?", and the pit boss (shift floor manager) made a couple of fly-bys, eyeing me suspiciously.

Eventually, I hit a jackpot, but despite the ringing bells and flashing lights, no nickels came out of the chute. I called the waitress over to collect my jackpot. The pit boss came by and told me that the machine was out of money. "Well, fill it up again, I'm on a roll" I told him. Nope, this machine is broken, we're taking it out of service, and they slapped a canvas bag over it, and invited me to play another machine.

I had so many nickels that the waitress had to go to the bar and get me a bunch of paper cups so I could collect them all and take them to be exchanged for paper money. I ended up making $40 (that's 800 nickels, BTW).

I don't remember if we stayed in Reno or moved on, but Connie was not very happy that I had cashed in so well at the casino. I think she might have lost a little while we were there…

Next overnight I recall was Bishop, California. It was a pretty warm night, and I had little interest in the TV in the motel room, so I sat on the hood of the Buick in the motel parking lot, sipping a soda and watching the night life on Main street.

 

 

 

30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Twelve: Back in L.A. ??!

 

Finally, we arrived in LA, and I borrowed my old 1962 Rambler American station wagon from TMAX so I could drive around and run some errands and visit people. I had given him the car when I left for Oregon as payment for a small debit I owed him. I ended up sleeping in the car at least one night while I was down there.

I visited Frank, who had moved into my old rental house to see what he was doing. One thing I did NOT want was to run into Crazy Robert while I was there, so I parked the car up a the Laundromat on the corner, hiding it between a delivery truck and the building, then walked to Frank's. After I left, Robert showed up a few minutes later, so my casino luck was holding.

The major task of this trip was to pick up my car, a 1960 Rambler Classic station wagon that I had left in the parking garage of Woodley's mother's condo in San Pedro. Of course, the battery for this car was in the Housetruck back in Oregon, so I went to Sears and bought a top-of-the-line Die Hard battery. The price? $39.95 (that's 799 nickels).

Someone (don't remember who) gave me a ride to San Pedro and dropped me and the battery off in front of Woodley's mother's condo, then drove away, leaving me to fetch the car myself. Connie (Woodley's mother, also named Connie) was not home, so I decided to see if I could get into the parking garage and get the car without her. As I was rounding the corner of the sidewalk, going to the side street that the garage entrance was on, a San Pedro police car went by, and the cop's head swiveled around like it was mounted on ball bearings. I knew what was coming next, so I set the battery down on the curb and waited for him to do his U-turn. Sure enough, he came around again, stopping right next to where I was standing. When he got out of the patrol car, before he could say anything, I pulled the receipt for the battery out of my shirt pocket, extended it towards him and asked "I suppose you'd like to see this?". Probably a little bit disappointed that he hadn't nabbed a battery thief, the cop didn't stick around to help me get the car, either.

Getting past the motorized gates of the parking garage wasn't too difficult, I simply waited outside until someone drove out, then dived under the gate with the battery before it lowered.

My car was still where I had parked it, covered with a fair amount of dust. Because the front end was parked under an overhead storage cabinet, I needed to roll it back a ways to get the hood open to install the battery. Unfortunately, the day I had driven it into the garage, the maintenance crews had been patching the road outside with hot tar. The tar had gotten on the tires, and although it was a thin film, it was enough to prevent me from rolling the car out to where I could work on it. The tires were effectively glued to the concrete, and working alone, I didn't have enough strength to break it free!

Eventually, I used the bumper jack to raise each corner of the car until the tires were lifted from the sticky patch of concrete, and placed papers and cardboard from the trash dumpster under them to prevent them from re-adhering.

Putting the battery in the car allowed me to start it right up, and once again, I was mobile…

After getting the car running, I dropped in on my friend Mike (known by his nick name, "Frenchy"). When he learned that I had been sleeping in the car, he offered to let me crash that night on his living room couch.

The next morning, I felt like I was getting a cold. By afternoon, it became obvious that it was more than that, and likely was either severe food poisoning or a bad case of the flu. Either way, I couldn't keep food or liquids down, had diarrhea, and a high temperature as well.

I was mortified to be an ill houseguest, but by the time Frenchy got home from work, I was much too sick to be elsewhere. Fortunately, he and his wife were both registered nurses, and weren't put off by my condition. They tended me, fed me broth when I could keep liquids down, and brought me back to health. I was down and out on their couch for three or four days. When I finally had enough strength to get up, I used the shower for the first time in too long, and had to lie down on the bathroom floor afterwards to keep from passing out.

Once I was able to get up and move around without fear of a blackout, I began getting the car ready to drive back to Oregon. One thing that I felt needed doing was to repack the front wheel bearings and adjust the brakes. Working in Frenchy's driveway, I had the car up on jacks and was making some progress when a car pulled up in the street in front of the house and none other than Woodley got out with his backpack! He was about the last person I expected to see, as he was supposed to be 700 miles away in Eugene. For reasons of his own (probably having to do with his estranged wife, Anne), he decided to hitchhike to LA, counting on finding me there for the return trip.

I was actually very glad to see him, because I was still not feeling 100%, and it would be good to have a second driver on the trip back. How, exactly, he managed to find me was kind of a mystery, because Frenchy had moved since we had left town, and I don't know for sure that anyone else even knew where I was while I was sick, or that I hadn't left town altogether. Must have been that TMAX.

Whatever other trouble we managed to get into, I can't remember, but before leaving town, we drove to North Hollywood to a discount RV parts store to purchase materials for our trucks. I bought a cosmetically flawed marine toilet and holding tank. Woodley must have gotten supplies also, because we pretty much filled up the back of the station wagon with RV stuff, and had to strap the holding tank to the roof.

Likely we visited with Woodley's father Wade, and perhaps stayed at Marion's estate for a short while.

I do know that we headed north, and I had to pull the car over in Ventura and remove one of the hubcaps and the dust cover from the wheel bearing because the cotter pin that I had put in after packing the bearings was catching on the dust cap and making an annoying clicking sound.

We probably stayed over with my grandparents in San Jose again. Woodley liked my Grandma Mace quite a lot. His own great-grandmother was a seemingly serious and very proper elderly lady, while my Granny had always been a salt-of-the-earth, give-'em-hell type.

We worked our way northward on Highway 101, heading back to our new home.

 

 

 

30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Thirteen: Back at the Punishment Farm

 

When we returned home, we found that Kim and Terri had been eating the groceries that we bought the day I left. In fact, the groceries were gone. It would be understandable for them to consume perishables like milk or eggs, but they scarfed up the staples too. We asked (quite reasonably, we thought) that they replenish these food items, since we had made the purchase but then not been around to share in their consumption, but we were told in effect, "Tough luck, you move, you lose". Requests for repayment were also rebuffed. After all, $20 worth of groceries (in 1975, $20 was a lot of food) for two people who weren't making a steady income wasn't anything to walk away from. This really disturbed Woodley, who had (and still has) a fine-tuned sense of fair play and justice.

The kitchen and food seemed to be a continuous point of contention. Whenever we were able, we tried to help out with meal preparation, or to take turns doing the cooking. Since Kim and Jeep were so fond of keeping Woodley and I busy doing their projects, we frequently had to fall back on Terri being the cook. In those instances, we would take responsibility for all of the dish washing after the meal.

Woodley and I had been attempting to follow a vegetarian diet for over a year, but unless we did the cooking, we would come in from pouring and finishing cement, or digging the garden all day to be fed Hamburger Helper, meatloaf or pork chops.

As for KP, Kim would have no part of it. He never cooked, would no sooner wash dishes than eat a toad, and would consume a meal, push his chair back from the table, and walk away, leaving his plate and utensils on the table. We tried to talk to him about this, but his response was "I'm a medic. I can handle having to stuff a guy's guts back into his body cavity, but dirty dishes are too gross for me".

Attempts to have "house meetings" to try and work out some of our disagreements didn't go very well. Terri was "very sensitive" and as soon as any complaints or dislikes were expressed, she would break into tears and run out of the room, which of course, put Kim into major defensive mode.

In all, Woodley and I decided that it was time for us to get busy and begin assembling our own kitchen to relieve some of the stress resulting from using the kitchen in the rental trailer. As such, we began building a kitchen counter for my Housetruck. I guess we chose my truck due to it's being bigger. My refrigerator was larger as well, and my cook stove free-standing. Woodley's step van was going to require some careful planning to fit in kitchen appliances and counters without it getting crowded in a hurry.

Woodley had good woodworking skills, but neither of us had built kitchen cabinets before. We just started logically, building a base and toe-kick from 2x4 lumber set on edge. Over that, half a sheet of plywood, cut two feet wide. Some 2x2 and 2x4 framing and another half sheet of plywood for the countertop base. Everything was cut and fitted to the space in the rear corner of the truck box were it would be installed. We decided early on to make the cabinet free standing rather than built in. This was a good choice for several reasons. I needed to pull the cabinet away from the wall several times over the years to change paneling, add plumbing or electrical, or make modifications to the cabinet's back.

Instead of nails to assemble the wood, we used wood glue and ⅜” hardwood dowels. I had never used these as fasteners before, but the construction seemed sturdy, and using the doweling jig to make blind fastenings made it all seem that much more craftsmanlike.

It would be a while before the counter would be ready for use, but in the meantime, we scoured the local building materials supply stores for a double stainless steel sink, a faucet and the bits of plumbing that would be necessary to eventually complete the project.

 

 

 

30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Fourteen: Sarge

 

Time out for a character bio...

Let's get to know Kim a little better, because he's about to get a nickname (or "Prankster" name as we call them up here in Kesey Country).

I'd known Kim for probably seven or eight years. When I actually think about it, I don't know that he ever attended my high school, or had transferred out sometime before graduation. Possibly, he was a friend of TMAX and Stu, who I did attend school with.

At any rate Kim had always been an interesting character. Possessed with a dry sense of humor, appreciative of the cartoons of Ghan Wilson, completely enamored of any music that Frank Zappa made, and fond of being a little wild in his own way. Never one to shirk from a challenge of any sort, he pulled off some nutty pranks.

Like the time one of his friends took his new girlfriend to the Torrance Drive In Theatre. Kim assembled eight or ten friends (including me), and BS'ed our way past the ticket takers to pull a "commando raid" on the movie-going couple. After locating their VW bug in the lot, we converged on it from all different directions at an arranged signal, grabbing the car and tossing it around violently while Kim hopped on the hood, stripped to the waist holding a machete between his teeth.

His favorite pastime when new visitors to his home came calling was to show them his parents "Custom, stock-from-the-factory dog" (a dachshund with one testicle).

One time, he talked me into climbing down a sheer cliff to the Pacific Ocean because someone had stolen a new Ford Mustang and driven it off the cliff. It was laying upside down in about two feet of water, and he wanted to see if it had any salvageable parts. It didn't, but so that the trip wouldn't be wasted, he collected about half a dozen Abalone (still in the shell), and a huge, heavy packing crate that he wanted to use as a cabinet for his stereo. Dragging all that crap back up the cliff wasn't my idea of recreation.

In the early 1970's Kim found that he was about 100% sure to get conscripted into the armed services and sent to Vietnam. Instead, he enlisted in the Army for four years and entered the medic corps. First stationed in El Paso, Texas, I sent him some custom cassette tapes of music, news and skits that those of us with high lottery numbers back at home would perform. I did this for a number of years, sending tapes to friends in the service stationed all over the world. Kim was the only one to ever send tapes back, filled with wit and his own selections of music (mostly Zappa). It was through these tapes that we formed the idea of creating a cooperative living situation in Oregon.

Back in the present (1975), Woodley and I found that Kim had positioned himself as the "alpha male", the boss, the "big cheese" and given that we were dependent upon him and his parents for a place to live, we were pretty much under his thumb.

At some point, I decided that he needed a more appropriate moniker. Since his military background was obvious, and because he liked barking orders at us, we christened him "Sarge", which suited him just fine. Terri didn't care for our choice at all, but Sarge would respond to our calling him by that name, so we continued.

Just so you can see how fitting this name was, here's a photo of "Sarge" at Christmas, 1973:

What Woodley and I were finding that instead of a cooperative living situation, we were more like hired hands, without the benefit of being paid or having days off. Pretty much any time we planned to take a day off, go somewhere, work on our trucks, or just read a book, Sarge or Jeep would find something for us to do, and we'd be forced to cancel our plans. It wasn't even possible for us to retreat to the tree house to practice duets on our recorders, as Sarge would hear the woodwind instruments through the trees and either yell for us, or, if we didn't respond, come up the hill and rout us from our time together.

Sarge was very contemptuous of our desire to maintain a vegetarian diet, equating it with "stump-breaking cows". I didn't then, and never have understood how not eating meat is associated with having sex with farm animals, but that's what he was inferring.

He also took to using his pellet rifle to get our attention. If we slept too late in the morning, he'd stand on the deck outside the trailer and pepper the walls of our trucks with BB's. He even shot Woodley's oversized black Labrador, Zeus in the ass a couple of times, lodging lead pellets in his skin.

No, things weren't turning out to be too terribly cooperative after all.

 

 

 

30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Fifteen: Time Off

 

Just so no one gets the impression that things were all dour and lifeless, we did manage to do a few enjoyable things in between being worked like mules.

There were two young women that worked in the office of Kitty's interior decorating business on Jeep and Kitty's property. One (or both of them) took an interest in Woodley, and had the means to provide some entertainment. Most days, she would drive Daddy's Corvette to work, but it also turned out that her dad had a ski boat. One weekend after the weather turned nice, we all went out on Fern Ridge Reservoir for some water skiing. I hadn't been on skis for at least ten years, but the knack came back fairly quickly. It helped a lot that the boat was of modern hull design, and had a powerful engine. I learned to water ski being hauled around behind a little underpowered runabout on the Colorado River, and the boat would take forever to get to plane, meaning that getting up out of the water on the skis and in good form was a difficult struggle that took way too long.

Another time a neighbor invited us to borrow their horses, and we took an all afternoon ride over the ridge and into a secluded valley. Of course, on the way home the horses got barn fever and wanted to run the last half mile or so home. Sarge kept yelling at us to reign them in, but eventually, Woodley's horse broke into a gallop, inciting the other horses to run also, and we all got a chance to imagine ourselves in the Kentucky Derby. Woodley and I both got yelled at quite a bit afterwards, but I don't know that there was any way we could have kept those lazy barn stall layabouts in a slow walk when they saw home.

There was also that time Sarge took us fishing in a slough out somewhere near Franklin. It was pretty boring, and we didn't catch anything. I was used to fishing off the Redondo Beach pier, catching mackerel and bonita, or fresh water fishing in Clear Lake in Northern California. At least you could count on hooking a few bluegills to throw back.

Come to think of it, Sarge ripped off my fishing pole after that particular expedition.

Oh, I was supposed to be concentrating on having a good time. Well, there's a big celebration with a surprise ending just around the corner….

 

 

 

30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Sixteen: Taking a Dive

 

Well, OK, so this next bit is hard for me to post, partly because it's very personal, but it's also very heavy. I guess I could skip it, but it's part of my early life in Oregon, so here goes:

It's the second week in June, 1975. Sarge and Terri decide that Woodley and I can get out of the work harness for a day and visit the Great Outdoors in observance of my 24th birthday. An outing is planned to Sahalie Falls on the McKenzie River, about 75 miles from Eugene. Lunch is packed, swimsuits and towels stowed in my car, and the four of us are headed upriver for the day.

The McKenzie Highway (Oregon 126) is a very picturesque highway that parallels the McKenzie River, climbing gracefully up the valley through the foothills of the Cascade mountain range. Just before the road gets steep and begins to really climb into the mountains, and very near Clear Lake, the source of the McKenzie, there is a pair of spectacular waterfalls, Sahalie, and Koosah. The area is a National Park, and is developed with hiking trails, campgrounds, and picnicking facilities.

Crosby, Stills and Nash's "4 + 20" from the Déjà Vu album was just ending on the cassette player as we pulled into the parking area. We grabbed our gear, and headed down to the first falls, Sahalie. The view from the stone observation platform was indeed inspiring:

 

 

The spray from the falls made the air alive with negative ions, and the temperature from the constant evaporation of the mist lowered the heat of the day by a good ten degrees. Of course, the thunder of the water echoed off the trees and rocks.

A rustic path lead downriver, winding between the trees, and scrambling over roots and stone. The river itself is moving fast, fairly boiling with air and energy from the falls, and the colors of the water with the sunlight penetrating it was amazing. No painter's palette could ever hope to capture the shades of blue and green contained in that living body of water.

About a half mile down stream is Koosah Falls. Much rockwork has been done to the paths around the falls, creating stairways, observation decks both above and below the falls, and trails to an adjoining campground.

Another half mile of hiking brings one to Carmen Reservoir, where one of the electric utilities diverts a portion of the river's flow into a canal, to be carried to a powerhouse several miles down stream. Here, the water calms a bit, and the widening channel that leads into the reservoir allows the river to slow somewhat, although it's still a huge quantity of water, and moving right along as well.

Over the entrance of the reservoir is a vehicle bridge, a single lane span to allow cars to reach the parking lot on the opposite shore. A few fishermen try their luck on the far end of the bridge. Woodley and Sarge decided that the coolness of the air at the falls has worn off and it's time for some swimming, so they begin taking turns diving off the bridge into the river. I was content to sit on a large stump off to the side and observe. Eventually, Woodley came over and tried to interest me in trying a dive. I wasn't really into it, but he was persistent, and talked me into removing my boots, taking off my glasses and coming over to the bridge to try it.

Without my glasses, not much was in focus, so Woodley guided me over to the place on the bridge where they had been diving, stood me up on top of the guardrail, and said something like "Right here, the water is so cold, it's a rush". I seem to remember that my last words before I went head first into the river were "Aw shit".

Cold? Let me tell you! Some few years ago in July, I went on a rafting trip a few miles down river with one of my radio station clients on their employee appreciation day. The professional white water rafting guides had us all put on life jackets. Then they came by and "helped" each of us make sure that the jackets were secure. This consisted of the guides grabbing the straps that closed the jackets, and pulling them tight until the life preservers fit us like corsets. Then they told us that if any of us got pitched out of the raft, we would likely go into hypothermial shock within a few seconds, and that we'd probably be unable to save ourselves, even if we wanted to. I thought they were just being dramatic, but one member of our crew did get tossed overboard, and spent about two minutes in the water. Once we had hauled her back into the raft, she was unable to do anything, although conscious, and not injured, she was "frozen", and had nearly no muscle control. I thought she was just being a pussy, but when we reached our destination, and we were instructed to go overboard in thigh-deep water to portage the raft up the bank, I realized how really damned cold the water in the river was.

Anyhow, back to my birthday. Apparently, the cold shock of the water distracted me, and I failed to pull out of my dive quickly enough and crashed head first into the rocks on the bottom of the river. I stayed conscious, and swam quickly to the surface, where I shouted to the others that I had hit bottom and needed help. Then I began to pass out.

Terri had the presence of mind to scream "SWIM! SWIM OVER HERE!". This made a certain amount of sense through the pain, and I did swim the short distance to where they were. Woodley and Sarge dragged me out of the water and up the rocky shore. Once there, my respiration arrested, and I remember Sarge grabbing my shoulders forcefully and shaking me, telling me to keep breathing.

The fishermen began to approach to see if they could help, but Sarge waved them off, telling them I just had a bloody nose. I wouldn't discover the extent of my injuries until later, but I had perforated my upper lip in an "X" pattern below my nose, and torn a large flap of my scalp loose. I also had abrasions on my chin and chest. Terri used her white blouse to try and stop some of the bleeding while Woodley ran the mile plus back to where the car was parked. I managed to remind him to grab my glasses and boots from the stump on his way.

Time had little meaning, as seconds seemed like hours, and the pain made them pass slowly. Woodley arrived with my station wagon, I was loaded into the back with Sarge, and we set off for the nearest hospital, that being back in Eugene.

On the road, I went into shock, my eyesight narrowed to a tunnel, and my breathing went hyper. I remember Sarge telling me from very far away to breathe normally. I also remember hearing the engine of my car wound up tight in overdrive, meaning that Woodley was probably going close to 100 MPH . We were pulled over by a State Policeman somewhere near Vida, perhaps. The cop looked in though the back door of the car, and offered Sarge some sterile bandages, and told Woodley to slow it down some.

Once at the hospital, I was made to answer loads of questions, fill out forms, and got to wait around, laying on a gurney in some hallway. I was still wearing only a bathing suit, and the hospital had very effective air conditioning. Eventually, Sarge found me a blanket while we waited to see a doctor. I also needed to use the rest room, which I was allowed to do, and after using the toilet, I tried to look in the mirror to see what damage I had sustained. Sarge sensed the quiet in the room, and barged in, dragging me away from the mirror before I could make much of an assessment. I seem to remember being taken to radiology for some x-rays, waiting some more, and being asked literally a dozen times how the injuries happened. Either they weren't bothering to read my chart, or they had some suspicion that I had gotten hurt during some criminal activity, perhaps a fight.

Without my glasses, I couldn't tell what time it was, were I was or had been or was going, and couldn't recognize people until they had gotten within a few feet of me, not that I was going to know very many of them there anyway. I was eventually conducted to some room where a doctor looked at the various charts, films, and such, and prepared to suture my lacerations.

They started by throwing a sterile cloth with an opening in it over my face so they could work on my upper lip. Now I couldn't see anything at all. Sarge engaged the doctor in some small talk, and the topic turned to one of the popular news items in that day, malpractice lawsuits. I finally had to tell them both to shut up because I didn't think that I was very interested in the subject, considering my current position. It took 13 stitches to close the skin under my nose.

Part of my head was shaved, and another 17 stitches inserted there. The doctor told me that most patients that were admitted with injuries sustained in the manner I received mine spend the rest of their life in a wheelchair. If they're lucky. The nurse gave me a tetanus shot, and I was suddenly back out on the street in the last rays of a setting sun.

Woodley brought the car, and Sarge and I got into the back seat, sitting up this time. We drove about two blocks before Woodley had to pull the car over to the curb and jumped out to empty the contents of his stomach into the gutter. Apparently, I looked pretty bad.

Back at home, I doubt that I ate anything, as that would require using my mouth, which wasn't in much condition for exercise at the moment. One might assume that the indignities of this day were about over, but that's not quite the case yet. I was still wearing my swimming trunks, and they, along with most of the rest of my body were covered with dried blood and mud from the river bank. A bath was called for, but I was in no shape to conduct one. I ended up in the tub, and Sarge carefully washed my head and shoulders, keeping the soap out of the wounds. After the bath, I tried to look in the mirror to see what I looked like, but again, Sarge was lurking outside the door, and burst in to pull me away from the sink before I could get much of a look.

In the living room of the rental trailer, Kitty had come up to see me, bringing with her one or both of the young women from the office. I felt that I was being put on display, and really didn't want to be the focus of the spectacle. They made sympathetic noises, and then went away.

All I wanted to do was sleep in my own bed, but even that was denied. The doctor was concerned that I might have a concussion, so Sarge insisted that I sleep on the living room couch so he could check on me overnight. I didn't care, I was so weary, battered, and in pain that I just crashed there and gave up for the night.

Years later, Woodley confided to me that when he and Sarge had dragged me out of the water, he thought I was dead.

Not yet.

And that is how I spent my 24th birthday.

 

 

 

30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Seventeen: Recovery

 

So... I spent the next week going around looking like Frankenstein's Monster. I was able to pull a hat over the shaved area of my head, but my facial injuries were right out there for all to see. I got asked a number of times if I had a bicycle accident, apparently, the scrape marks on my chin made it appear that I had gone over the handlebars.

In about a week, Sarge removed the sutures, saving me another visit to the doctor's. From that point on, I let my moustache grow, partly to cover the scars, but also because shaving over the proud flesh with a razor was not a pleasant, or bloodless experience. In fact, I think I shaved my upper lip only once since then, which will be explained in a future posting.

The need for Woodley and me to have our own kitchen was still a pressing issue, so when we had the opportunity, we worked on the counter/cabinet, and I began installing one of the operable windows that I had salvaged out of the old Flamingo trailer factory. Some 2x2 framing was secured between the steel framing of the truck box, and a hole the correct size for the window was cut using a reciprocating saw. Some "putty tape" and drillets, and the window was in! Tres Bien! New light into the back of the truck and new energy for getting the rest of the project underway.

Of course, we were still regarded as servants, although unlucky and accident-prone servants by this time.

At some point, Kitty decided that Woodley and I needed jobs to bring in some money, and I got hauled off to the electronics repair department of Montgomery Wards in town to see if my TV repair experience would land me a paying job. In Oregon, it seems, repair of consumer electronics requires a CET (Certified Electronic Technician) license, which I didn't have. I was actually relieved, and when Kitty pressed me to check into getting the license, I told her that if I needed to study for and take a test to obtain a license, that I'd rather do that to get my First Class Radiotelephone license, which would allow me to work in my field of interest, radio broadcasting. (some years later, I did take classes to that end).

All in all, we were coping, but I think we were both aware that we were living out of touch with what we'd really rather be doing. This would soon change, the next event would be something that would affect me, at least, for the next 28 years or so…

 

 

 

30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Eighteen: Country Faire

 

The next couple of weeks went on as before, we worked in the garden and got recruited for chores around Jeep and Kitty's property.

The acrimony over the use of the facilities at the rental trailer continued, so Woodley and I put additional effort into building a kitchen in my Housetruck. Since my RV refrigerator was functional on electric, we put it in the truck and started keeping snacks, juice and yogurt in it to relieve some of the pressure at the trailer.

If the beginning of June was heavy, the end was sublime. Saturday, the 29th, Sarge and Terri loaded us up into the truck to go out to the country for a festival, held each summer. We didn't know much about it, but were told it was like Eugene's Saturday Market, but held in the woods, and it went on for three days.

What the festival turned out to be was the Oregon Country Fair, known that year as the Oregon Country Renaissance Fair. We paid a modest admission fee, and were thrust into a completely different reality once inside. There were all manner of hairy freaks doing whatever they felt best at doing, playing music, making and eating amazing food, selling handmade crafts, performing juggling and slack rope walking, or just hanging out. Many of the fairgoers were dressed in fanciful costumes, political commentary was displayed openly, lots of beer got drank and the air had a particularly pungent aroma most everywhere you went. There was even a circus! I had found my tribe!

We spent most of the morning and early afternoon completely lost in the maze of footpaths winding among the trees, marveled at acoustic music at Shady Grove, got down loud and hard at the solar powered Main Stage, ate wonderful organic meals, and found ourselves a home at last.

Sarge and Terri had their fill by early afternoon, but Woodley and I wanted to stay a while, so they left without us, leaving us to our own devises to find our way home again.

Some time after that, I was walking along on the Left Bank, looking at crafts when I spotted something that interested me in the rear of a jewelry booth. The crafts displayed were earrings, bracelets, brooches and such, but what I inquired about was a small wood stove that had been imaginatively created from a 6 gallon water heater tank. The jeweler was from Coos Bay (whose name was Bill Gates, no kidding, but not THAT Bill Gates…) said that he did blacksmithing in the winter, and that he had brought the stove along to cook on, but that he might sell it to me. We settled on a price of $70, and I gave him a deposit, with the promise to return tomorrow, the last day of the fair, to pick it up.

Woodley and I made plans to return Sunday with my car to get the stove, but we probably would have come back for another day anyway, being at the Fair was like partying with family after months of feeling like we were restricted to a correctional facility of some sort.

We stuck our thumbs out at the exit gate of the parking lot and picked up a ride in short order, hopping into the back of an eastbound pickup truck for the ride home.

Sunday we went back to Veneta with my car to get in another day's festing and pick up my new stove. While at the fair, we watched Moz Wright swallow swords and breathe fire and saw Avner the Eccentric conduct a collected audience of about a thousand people like an orchestra without ever uttering a word. Artis the Spoonman played his body in a frenetic dance that actually made melodies, and Reverend Chumleigh reigned over the circus at Chumleighland. The Flying Karamatzov Brothers juggled for the masses and performed Vaudeville skits while keeping an amazing array of seemingly unrelated objects in the air. Much good food was offered, and I was somewhat astounded to see a milk goat tethered in Kesey Park. When folks came out to the Fair with the family, they brought everyone along!

At some point Woodley and I bought a bunch of Queen Anne cherries, and got into a spontaneous cherry pit fight, eating the fruit as fast as possible, then using the pits as projectiles by squeezing between thumb and forefinger. About halfway through the battle, we realized that a crowd was gathering around to watch us, assuming that we were part of the scheduled entertainment. The cherries left semi-realistic red splotches when they hit, so it was kind of like a primitive paintball game.

Eventually, the day wore on, and we stopped by the jewelers booth to pick up my stove, carting it out the entrance and to the waiting car.

Back to town and the punishment farm, but with a new insight into what was possible in the way of alternate lifestyles here in our adopted home state.

 

 

 

30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Nineteen: Shut Out

 

Time to see if I can get another episode in this play written. The action is about to take a radical shift, bringing this chapter near to a close.

The date is Tuesday, July 1, 1975. The Country Fair is over, and it's time to settle back into "life as normal". This particular normal afternoon, Woodley and I returned home from a trip to the grocery to find that the electrical power to the Housetruck was off. When I asked Sarge about it, he told me that his dad, Jeep, had turned it off while he was working on a circuit in the office building.

My purchase of the wood stove the previous weekend meant that we now had a means to cook food without the use of the rental trailer's kitchen, and we had bought food with which to prepare meals, hoping to further extract ourselves from the discord over menus and diet. We put the food, which included some fish, into the ever-warming RV refrigerator in the Housetruck, and waited for the power to be restored.

Late in the afternoon, I began to be concerned about the food spoiling, and went down to the office to see if Jeep needed help figuring out his wiring problem. He was never very proficient at electrical jobs, and I frequently had to bail him out after his circuits proved defective. I found him noodling around with something not related to electrical wiring. When I asked about the power to the shop and my truck being turned back on, I got some vague excuses that didn't mesh with what Sarge had told me, and which didn't indicate that there was really an electrical problem to begin with. Jeep then launched into a diatribe about several unrelated subjects, the most distressing to him was the fact that I had done laundry that morning and hung it on a clothes line next to the Housetruck to dry. "What will anyone driving by think if they see your clothes hanging there?" he asked. Several replies came immediately to my mind, including "That I have clean clothes?", but what I said was what I thought he was thinking: "That a bunch of hippies had moved in" I didn't hang around waiting for a response from him, but headed up to the trailer to let Sarge know that things were awry.

At the trailer, Sarge asked me what I had said to Jeep to piss him off. I told him and said that I didn't understand why the power was still off, either. Sarge replied that his dad had just called up to the trailer as I was walking up the hill and said that he told me I was evicted, then both Sarge and Terri began to laugh.

Well, that was it then, the old man had cut the power, then let his son do the dirty work. I told Woodley that I was evicted, and his response was that if I was leaving , so was he. Of course, now that the cat was out of the bag, Jeep locked us out of the toilet and shower room. Sarge and Terri came down and made unconvincing sympathetic noises, like "Oh, you can still use our shower, and the kitchen too", but we all knew that it was over and done with.

I think that night, Woodley and I cooked up the fish on the new wood stove, using a fry pan set into the open top of the stove where the eye had been removed. Made sense to salvage the most perishable of the food goods first. I believe that I also tried to wash my hair in a basin, and had a pretty miserable time of it. We were going to have to find another place to live in short order, because neither of our housetrucks were completed enough to sustain us yet.

 

 

 

30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Twenty: Packing Up

 

The next morning, I went into town to buy some ice and stock up on non-perishable foods. Neither Woodley nor I wanted to use any of the facilities at the rental trailer, and we would need to feed ourselves.

I also wanted to check out some of the bulletin boards around town, particularly those at the natural foods stores to try and find a new living situation.

In downtown Eugene, on West 11th street was an alternative mall called "Scarborough Fair" It was an old warehouse building that had been around for a long time. The cavernous interior had been partitioned into a series of small shops catering to counterculture types, and the natural food grocery there was George Brown's "The Kiva". On the bulletin board in the large common area of the building, I found a small note offering a room in a cooperative household located in an old schoolhouse outside of Creswell, about twenty minutes from Eugene. No telephone was given, just the address, which I copied.

No other interesting housing notices were at any of the other bulletin boards, and a bit of searching at "The Switchboard", Eugene's counterculture information exchange turned up nothing as well.

Back at "home", I told Woodley about the single possibility. He agreed that we should go check it out right away, so we loaded into my car and drove south to Creswell, through the tiny town, and west along Camas Swale Road. Three miles out, and before we realized it, we were passing the address and got a glimpse of the building on the left. Once we were past, and as I was turning the car around a bit farther down the road, we discussed what we had seen only briefly. I thought the place looked pretty rough. The old building had siding missing at the gables where a porch roof once must have been, and the skirting below the floors was a patchwork of old plywood and paneling. Woodley wasn't deterred, and wanted to stop and check it out more closely.

We drove up the short, steep gravel driveway and parked the car. A naked four-year-old came out to greet us, and told us his name was Jonah. He took our hands like we were long-lost uncles and showed us the way into the house through a back door and down long hallway into the kitchen.

Inside, we introduced ourselves to Rosalie, Jonah's mother, and explained that we were interested in the room for rent, with revisions. Rosalie made us tea and we explained our situation, that we wanted to find a place to live, but that we had our trucks to sleep in, so what we really needed was access to kitchen and bath facilities. She told us a little bit about the house, and the roommates, who were gone at the time, but wasn't absolutely sure that they wanted to rent to "bus people", and that what they were really hoping for was a single woman to balance out the yin-yang of the house. We observed that since we lived in our trucks, they could still find that person to live in the vacant room, and our rent contributions would make financial arrangements easier for everyone.

Rosalie told us that she'd have to talk to the other residents of the house and see how they felt about that, and that we should check back in a couple of days and see what the consensus was. As there was no phone at the house, we promised to stop in by the end of the week. I wasn't very hopeful that this was going to work out.

Back at Sarge's, we began loading our trucks with our belongings and tools that were stored in the shop and shed, preparing to move out. I turned my truck around and backed it up to the porch on the shop building, which fit it perfectly, acting as a loading dock, allowing me to use my hand truck to shuttle heavy items across a short ramp and through the open back doors of the van body. Woodley backed his step van in next to my truck and carried boxes and tools out, packing them into the back.

Not too long after we started moving things, Sarge appeared on top of the shed building, pretending to inspect and repair the galvanized steel roofing. It was plain that he had positioned himself to watch our every move. We noticed right away that he was wearing his .45 in a holster on his hip. Woodley asked him why he was armed, and he made some cryptic reply about making sure no thievery was going on. Yet again, we confirmed that we were getting out of this place just in time, even though we weren't sure where we were going.

I found out some time later after talking to TMAX that Fat Frank had found one of my old telephone bills after he moved into my rental house in LA, and extracted Jeep and Kitty's and Sarge and Terri's telephone numbers from the long distance portion of the bill. Pretty much from the beginning of our residency in Oregon, Frank had been making frequent calls to them and filling their heads with lies about how Woodley and I were going to steal everything that wasn't nailed down, and how we had to leave LA because the police were looking for us, etc.

Some gratitude, I give the guy a great little rental house, which is very difficult to find, and donate my couch, stove and refrigerator, and he poisons my new situation in Oregon out of jealousy. Tsk, tiny minds have little better to do...

 

 

 

30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Twenty One: Short Circuit

 

July 3, 1975

Morning, we took my car down into town to buy last minute supplies, check the bulletin boards again, and stop by the University to shower at the Men's Gymnasium. No new housing adverts, so our eggs were still in the Creswell basket for the time being.

Back at Sarge's, we gathered up the last of our belongings and made arrangements to return to pick up my car once we had settled somewhere. Not for the first time, I longed for a method of hauling the car along behind the Housetruck.

Since Jeep had turned off the power, and because his electrical acumen was so miserable, I decided to leave him a little going away present. Before we left the shop completely, I reached up and unscrewed one of the exposed 100 watt light bulbs from the ceiling fixture, placed a penny on the tip of the bulb's base, and screwed the combination back into the socket. Now he had an actual electrical short circuit problem to figure out when he turned the power back on, and I wasn't going to be around to help him find it!

By early afternoon, we had completed our packing, and prepared to drive away. As I passed Jeep and Kitty's house, I honked the horn, and they waved. I waved back. The difference in our salutations was that they were waving with all of their fingers raised.

I don't remember how we arrived at the idea of spending a couple of days at the Oregon Coast, but we pointed our trucks more or less west, and drove for a while, intending on taking back roads to the beach. A few miles west of Loraine, Woodley pulled off the road and talked me into camping there for the night. I wanted to see the ocean, but we didn't have a map, it would be dark soon, and we didn't really have a lot of money to be spending on gasoline. We pulled off the road near a bridge over the Siuslaw River, and set up camp for the night, assembling the wood stove and stove pipe on the ground behind the truck to cook dinner. A Forest Service or BLM ranger stopped to see what we were doing, and was only concerned that we wouldn't be starting an open campfire. I had installed a couple of shelves in the back of the truck, and mounted stereo speakers on them, so opening the back doors of the van body gave us audio entertainment.

I didn't know it at the time, but we were only a mile or so from Siuslaw Falls, which offers some pretty nice unofficial camping and is well off the road. It was probably a good thing we didn't try to go all the way to the coast that day. The road does eventually go there, but it's a lot of back road driving, and steep and twisty as well.