30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Thirty Eight: Rent Revolt

It didn't take much longer to get something done about the driveway. I had spent enough time in Eugene, living on the street so that I could build the Juice Bar, I had rationalized staying there so that I could be close to school and drive the truck to classes, I had even stayed at the end of the road nearby until I could get the truck back up the driveway, but something needed to be done. Mostly, everyone at the house had been parking alongside the neighbor's driveway, and although the old folks were pretty casual about allowing us to do so, we wanted to be able to park in our own yard again.

Here's what it looked like towards the end of our patience. Note the tracks on the right side, where we attempted to skirt the worst of the ruts. Also note that aside from the old 5-window Chevy pickup, which didn't run, there are no other vehicles in front of the house, they're all parked over at the Napper's place...

The very next month, Brian, the landlord came to collect the rent. Since I usually completed the transaction, I told him to forget it, until the driveway was repaired, no rent money from us. Of course, this made him mad, then he tried pleading, switched to threatening, and eventually gave in and promised to get it fixed. After a whole winter of pestering him, we finally would get it repaired!.

In the end, all we ended up getting was a dump truck load of gravel, dumped in a pile at the bottom that we had to spread out ourselves by hand, but it did make the driveway usable again, although the ruts were still awful on the suspension.

During the winter and early spring, Woodley had been telling us about this girl he had met at the University. I think most of us just rolled our eyes and gave him a knowing "uh-huh", as Woodley had proven himself popular with the ladies. He kept insisting that this one was different. They had met in his art painting class, and they had decided to take a ski class together. He referred to Julie as his "Snow Bunny". Uh-huh.

At some point in the spring, he announced that Julie was coming to visit at the schoolhouse, so we probably swept out the living room and maybe collected some of the wine bottles that seemed to always accumulate in the corners of the kitchen. When the Big Day came, they arrived in Julie's Dad's car, a 1976 Mercedes 450SL convertible. I'm sure that they had the top down.

Julie seemed bright and pleasant, if a bit young, and I couldn't help but wonder what all she was thinking about the surroundings and people she was meeting, but since she knew of and apparently approved of Woodley's step van, I guess we passed the test, as she visited often enough afterwards.

Since moving to the Schoolhouse some months before, I hadn't seen much of Sarge. In fact, the one time I went to visit him, he was rather rude and somewhat threatening, so I had stayed away. He did contact me eventually and asked if I was interested in buying the old Forney "buzz-box" welder that I had brought up to Oregon for him. Since I had now become experienced in stick welding, I agreed, and paid him $75 for the old AC welder, which came with heavy cables, a carbon-arc heating electrode setup, and some other small accessories. My intent was to perhaps start taking in some welding projects for pay.

Another electrical device that I purchased was a small, battery-powered Alpha brain wave biofeedback monitor. I had been interested in biofeedback for a number of years, and this device was being offered by a student at the university. It was a very basic monitor, but it did work, and I spent some time training myself to maintain an alpha brain wave pattern during meditation. It was also sensitive to the electrical signals of a beating heart, if the electrodes were placed on your chest, the device would sound out the pattern of heartbeats.

In the early 1970's, biofeedback was touted to be "a step beyond drugs", but I found it mostly useful for grabbing a little bit of inner peace that could be switched on and off without keeping you up all night.