Ed was studying Forestry at the University of Colorado, and on our first night in town he took us to a party on campus. We weren't there but a minute when a preppy couple came up to us all smiles and asked us what house we were pledged to. When Ed explained that the four of us were merely visitors the two of them lost their smiles, chirped, "Oh," and walked off with out another word. Thus was I introduced to Greek life. The following morning Ed took us repelling.
We stood on a cliff some three hundred yards high looking down at passing cars that looked smaller than match boxes. Ed was the first to go over the side. "It's easy," he said. Then he disappeared beneath the lip of the cliff we stood upon. It was the last we saw of him until twenty minutes later when he scampered back up to where us four were huddled with our second thoughts about repelling. After hemming and hawing I swallowed my reservations and volunteered to go next. Ed outfitted me with ropes and clips and backed me over to the edge of the cliff. With a lump in my throat I went over the side and promptly got snared in the gear just out of sight neath the lip of the cliff. As I struggled with the tangled ropes I glanced over my shoulder at the void below me. It frightened me as I'd never been before. But there was only one direction in which to go. Down. I cried out for help and as best as he could Ed coached me blind. It was a long thirty minutes before I touched the ground. Rick went next. He fired down the rope as if shot from a gun. At the very last moment the rope locked up and he dangled upside down some two feet above where he'd almost smashed into the ground. The leather gloves he'd been wearing were burned through to the flesh. Chick and Steve followed with incident free falls. The four of us declined Ed's offer to go again.
In Denver the next afternoon we visited a museum that had on display a rickety four wheel wooden cart that was called we learned by its accompanying plaque "The Death Cart." The text went on to explain that it was considered an honor to be touched by The Death Cart. From then on The Death Cart and the honor of its touch was a source of inside humor between the four of us. That night we Parked atop Look Out Mountain. All of Denver was spread out before us in multi colored twinkling lights. It was magical. In the morning we headed for California.
When we reached that golden state we went looking for Hollywood and Vine. Somewhere near Rodeo Drive Chick saw someone he swore was Johnny Mathis. A moment later at stoplight we saw a fully outfitted Leather Daddy. He was straddling a Harley Chopper. We ventured onward the whole while gawking at pedestrians on sidewalks. It was hard to tell who were actors and who were not. As the day wore on we headed further west until we stopped for the night at Zuma Beach. The next morning we backtracked and eventually made camp at a municipal parking lot at Huntington Beach. And there we stayed for a couple weeks.
On weekends the lot filled up with RVs. The driver of one parked next to us spread out lawn-chairs and posted a sign that had his and her names. Week day or weekend we spent the afternoon hours on the beach sunning and swimming in the warm Pacific. We passed our evenings in copious drinking. Late one afternoon a single woman parked her RV aside of us. We chatted and later that evening she invited Steve and I inside. By then Steve was into his fourth quart of wine for the day and he and I had each dropped several hits of acid about a half-hour beforehand. Our stay was an aborted one. We were asked to leave when Steve began seething, "Don't you talk about my mother," after the woman innocently said, "You must have been a handful for your mom."
Steve and I retired to the van where Chick and Rick were fast asleep. I plugged a Doors tape into the tape deck. We had seen Apocalypse Now the night before and by the time The End was playing the nearby lifeguard stands looked like thatched huts and the crashing surf sounded like explosions. I turned around to get some reassurance from Steve. But he was passed out, his quart of wine clutched in his hand was spilling out on to his chest. His eyes were rolled into the back of his head and his eyelids were blinking rapidly. I thought, oh God, that's going to be me in another hour. Thus began my worst trip ever, one that would leave me shaken for many months to come. The following morning when the woman next to us was up and about I explained how Steve and I had been on acid. She invited me in and went on to tell me she was on the run from the DEA. At the sound of a small craft flying overhead she scrambled for a window and told me they were out to get her. She showed me a pistol and then emptied a Pringles container in which beneath the chips she had in a plastic baggy a half-ounce of coke. She told me it was pharmaceutical grade and to take as much as I wanted. I laid out a thick line and hoped it would clear my head.
A day or so later we faced the ugly fact: The four of us were just drunks going nowhere in that milk and honey dream land. It's not however that we didn't try. We had one day during our stay at Hunington Beach, gone in search of jobs. We wound up in the industrial bowels of outer Los Angeles, where semis and dump-trucks reigned. We went from one smoke belching factory to another hoping to land work then and there. We had after all no address or phone number with which a potential employer might reach us. Our searching netted us no work and our California dream seemed suddenly mighty bleak. This was not where we would one day shine. We were just four nearly destitute guys living out of a van in a municipal parking lot. It was time to move on. We dropped Steve off at the bus station. He was headed for Oregon. Rick, chick, and I drove on to Tucson. We did so bypassing the Grand Canyon. It was after all only a hole in the ground.
We went to Tucson, because Chick's girlfriend, Terry, had gone there to live. He hadn't seen her in several long months. Their reunion was one of jubilation. But beyond that our prospects were bleak. We had just enough money to pay for a little food and a one week stay a cheap motel. Things however worked out better than they had in Los Angeles. We each got jobs, Rick painting houses, Chick working at a saw mill, and me at a foundry. Until our first paychecks it was one peanut-butter sandwich for breakfast and lunch and one hamburg apiece for dinner. One morning the peanut-butter jar slipped from my hands and smashed on the floor. I put the shattered jar back in the refrigerator. We were that broke. The next sandwiches we made we extracted glass shards out of the peanut-butter we spread.
It was my first time not living under my parent's roof and I was making minimum wage and shell shocked by the dictates of circumstance. I could only see before me in Tucson, a life of scrambling from paycheck to paycheck. I was not alone in my thinking. Rick and I decided to head to Florida. Chick was staying on. He and Terry were entertaining thoughts of either splitting up or getting married.
Rick and I were cruising through Texas, when we came down a hill around a blind corner. Parked behind a bridge abutment with a radar-gun was a Texas State Trooper. He pulled us over. He said he'd clocked us at 80 miles per hour. We had never had that van up over seventy. He told us we had to go to court and to follow him. We crossed over the highway and up over the bridge. On the other side was a trailer with a sign announcing traffic court and the honorable judge so and so. There were four cars parked in front of the trailer. They all had out of state plates. The inside of the trailer was paneled in dark wood and there were a number of black and white 20" by 16" photos circa 1963 of car wrecks. We were given two options. Pay the Hundred fifty dollar fine right then and there. Or post a bail of two hundred dollars and return in two days to fight the ticket if we were so inclined. We paid the fine.
Taking stock of our funds we faced the fact. We had just enough money to buy gas to take us to Florida with about twenty dollars left over to start a new life. Or we could go back to Connecticut. The unknown with a certainty of struggle? Or the comfort of home? It wasn't such a hard choice. We headed back to the nutmeg state.
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