30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Seven: Accompaniment

It didn't take too long for Woodley to be included in the plans to move to Oregon. Kim, my old high school buddy, made several visits to LA after his discharge from the service to pick up machine tools, visit, and get his possessions which he had stored before entering the Army and getting married. Everything we did from that point on was preparation to move out of LA and to Oregon to escape the rat race.

The date for our final departure drew near. My rented house had been pretty thoroughly emptied, and the possessions that I was taking along placed into the moving-van-turned-housetruck for the trip, along with several large pieces of welding equipment that I was delivering to Kim.

The night we were to vacate the house and move into our housetrucks for the road journey, Big James invited us over for a small going away party. T-Max was there, along with Fat Frank and Crazy Robert. We cracked open a couple of beers and probably inhaled something illegal. Robert spent most of the evening in the bathroom. Eventually James told us that Robert had been vomiting almost non-stop since he arrived, and that we had to take him somewhere else, as his wife was tired of it. Great, just what I needed. Robert had always been the stone around my neck since high school, always getting me involved in his disputes and generally being a pest. Once he managed to almost get me shot by six nervous cops who were chasing him for brandishing his .44 Magnum. Now I was saddled with his sickness.

Anyway, we took him over to my old house and tried to talk him into seeing a doctor. He would have no part of it, and continued to puke his guts out into the toilet. I tried calling his parents and was told that they "had tried everything over the years and Robert was an adult now" so it was my problem. Eventually, we decided that because it appeared that he was regurgitating blood, we should just call an ambulance, which we did.

The ambulance attendants strapped him to a gurney and wheeled him off to the hospital, in spite of his protests. That was the last time I ever saw him. Last I heard, he had been born again and was living in Florida, so I guess he survived, in more ways than one.

At this point it was after midnight, the house was empty and cold (the gas had been turned off), so it looked like it was time to say goodbye to my old neighborhood. What a great send-off. Woodley and I climbed into our trucks, started the engines and began our journey.