MAY OF 1976 was quickly waning, and the joys and pleasures
of late spring and early summer were in the air. I was going stir-crazy and
needed to get out of the sometimes friendly, other times restricting confines
of Oakhurst Drive. I was almost twenty-four and felt I should have my own place
again even though my parents’ house had been a necessary time-out from the
daily dramas of Silverspoon.
The weather was magnificent
so one morning bright and early before Helyn and Johnny were awake I
compulsively decided to hitchhike to Palm Springs with about ten dollars in my
wallet. After leaving a note on the kitchen table, I ventured out with both
wrists still wrapped in ace bandages. I got my first ride on Olympic heading
east. It took more than ten different rides to get to Pomona in Riverside
County where I saw a freight train meandering down the track that seemed to be
headed east. Just like in a Woody Guthrie song I hopped the train taking me
past San Bernardino, maybe fifteen or twenty miles closer to my destination. I
felt like I was living in a Jack Kerouac novel.
After climbing up out of a
ravine past the train depot, I found myself walking on the north side of the
freeway when I looked down and saw a dirty brown wallet hiding among the rocks
and other debris laying along the roadside. When I dusted it off up and opened
it, I saw that it had, according to the learner’s permit, belonged to some Asian
kid, Viet Nam, I thought. Then, of course, I checked the money compartment and
found a hundred and ten dollars stuffed inside. I remember feeling guilty about
taking the money, but I was broke and desperate it would come in handy,
especially if I needed to take a bus to get back home. It seemed like
providence, fate, at least that was my rationale. I did leave the wallet on top
of a post on the side of the freeway so it could be easily recovered without
the money of course. I knew that in time I would pay back this loan in some
cosmic way the universe would dish out—as it always does.
Hitch-hiking was getting tiresome,
and I found firsthand it was not all it’s cracked up to be as depicted in On
The Road. I finally made it to Palm Springs by about one o'clock in the
afternoon and man it was blazing hot, over a hundred degrees for sure. I then
headed over to the nicest part of the Coachella Valley, Taquitz Canyon, where I
remembered from past journeys there was a river and a waterfall at the end of
the trail. Part of the 1937 Frank Capra movie Lost Horizon was filmed there.
Originally it was named Pal Hani Kalet by a leader of the Fox Tribe who first
settled here over 2000 years ago. This is a place of power. Legend told that
when you entered tired and weak, you left rejuvenated and energized. I was
hoping it would be true.
It was a lot longer walk
than I recalled and by the time I made it into the canyon the sun was beginning
to hide behind the boulders in the west. I could hear the waterfall going strong from the snow
that had recently melted from Mount San Jacinto. Burrowing my way through the
rocks and Joshua trees, I finally came to the waterfall, and it was well worth
the strenuous hike. It was getting cold, and I was shivering in that poor
excuse for a blue-jean jacket I was wearing. I did have enough money to get a
cheap motel, but I decided to tough it out and sleep in one of the caves if I
could find one unoccupied or not too scary. There could be any sort of desert
creature more than willing to interrupt my evening with a sting, bite, or
claw.
I ended up cozying
next to a big rock surrounded by bushes, but the ground was hard and lumpy, and
I couldn't get comfortable. I think I only slept about one or two hours that
night, most of the time I spent pacing back and forth trying not to freeze to
death. I felt the hair on my arms starting to ice up and my nose was running
like a fire hose. Every bone in my body felt tense and brittle and I thought I
was going to die out there in the middle of nowhere. As soon as the first
glimpse of light hit the sky in the east, I scurried out of the canyon and took
the five-mile trek back to civilization.
It was now almost nine in
the morning and the glorious sun felt warm and soothing. I was standing on
North Palm Canyon with my face half-peeled off with a bottle of Boone's Farm
wine in my hand ready to thumb a ride out of Palm Springs. I called the house
back on Oakhurst for some reason to check in and my mom told me Blair was
on the other line. I gave my mom the number of the phone booth where I was and
told her to have him call me back. So, I waited around for about ten minutes
and finished off the rest of my wine. I knew that something was in the works. In
an act of true synchronicity, the phone rang the exact time I was thinking that
thought. It was Blair. “Jimmy we all have decided to go to Santa Cruz and
get the band back together. We're heading up there in Ric Green's Lincoln
Continental later today.” I said I would take the Greyhound bus and they could
pick me up on their way out of town. I was only a three-hour bus trip from Palm
Springs to the downtown Los Angeles bus terminal that cost only five dollars
and sixty cents.
Arriving at the LA bus
terminal at mid-afternoon, I waited an hour or so for Ric’s Lincoln carrying my
old band mates, but they never showed up. After calling Blair and
Stephen with no answer, I took the RTD bus to Hollywood. I figured by the time
I got there I would reach somebody on the phone when I arrived. On the bus I
met a girl, Pat, around twenty with red hair and freckles, who asked me if I
knew the city well. I said I had lived here almost eleven years, so she
attached herself to me like a barnacle on a sunken ship and we rode bus number
4 to the corner of San Vincente and Melrose together. She was lost and I was
burned out and tired beyond my limits—not a great combination. All she wanted was
get to, or near San Francisco, and I told her I would be heading up to Santa
Cruz, about a hundred miles south of there if I could ever catch up to my ride.
I told her that if there was room it would probably be alright for her to tag
along.
At the Sun-Bee market on
Sunset and Larrabee (hence the name) we ran into Traveling Travis, a fellow
wandering minstrel who told us he had been living in a cave in Laurel Canyon
for the past three years. Travis pulled out a joint and some liverwurst and crackers
and we smoked behind the old Licorice Pizza record store on Sunset and Larrabee
(the joint not the liverwurst). This is the same record store I would meet Doug
Fieger of The Knack fame behind the counter two years later. Sitting behind a
dumpster, me with my sunburned face and Polaroid bag stuffed with my
belongings, Pat with her Sacks Fifth avenue shopping bag and Travis with his
joint, crackers, and guitar, we sang some old Hank Williams songs about
traveling and destitute women and it was soon time for us to move on.
Finding the hitch-hiking down Doheny
next to impossible, Pat and I decided to flag a taxi back home, which cost a
whopping 2 dollars and seventy cents. We finally connected with my lost band of
gypsies and Ric, Richie Moore, Stephen, Blair, Pat and I left Oakhurst
Drive around one thirty the next morning for regions unknown, at least unknown
to me. Pat hardly said more than two words to any of the other five passenger
in the car and gave me nothing more than a mere whisper or soft grumble all the
way there. It was late and we were tired, so I gave her a break. The important
thing was we were getting out of the rat-race of LA, and we were going to play
music again. Things were looking up, but little did I know that I would be
heading out of the frying pan into the fires of insanity again in Aptos,
California.
No comments:
Post a Comment