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...