Entry 1
The back seat of the Cutlass is filled with a cache of shit. Clothes, canned food, bread, a blanket, a bag of dry pinto beans, a package of flour tortillas, a couple sketch pads, my acrylic paints. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, cassette tapes, an old acoustic rockabilly looking guitar with ‘F’ holes. A Styrofoam cooler and a Bible. The shit is all thrown together in utter carelessness. It comes up even with the back of the front seat. The trunk has already been filled with a pup tent, sleeping bags, jumper cables. Also, an assortment of tools in case of an easily fixable mechanical problem like changing an alternator or a starter.
Just a little past midnight my mom and dad, two sisters and Willard see us off. Jenkins and I rumble away in the Olds. Jenkins talks into a miniature tape recorder, “This is it, we’re off... From CA to LA.”
Minutes later Jenkins again speaking into the recorder announces, “Okay this is the first of what will be many trips back to Jack’s house.” I’ve forgotten to bring several tapes I had recorded for the trip.
We pick up the tapes then stop at an Alpha Beta grocery store. We fill the cooler up with mayonnaise, mustard, two heads of lettuce, bologna slices and ice.
We get on the 405 at Brookhurst, head north on the 605, east on the 10, then on the 15 head towards Las Vegas.
In the morning, somewhere on the outskirts of Vegas, we pull over on the side of the road near a diner. The sky is dull-gray overcast. We’re burnt from being up all night. Not at all excited about being on a 3000 mile road trip that will include first traveling to my hometown in Michigan, then south to Louisiana where Jenkins is from. Jenkins had conned his grandmother into buying him a plane ticket to Louisiana, then had cashed it in to use for this road trip.
I rummage around in the backseat till I find a can opener. I grab a can of tuna fish.
With the driver’s side door open I sit with one leg out on the ground and one on the floor of the Olds. I barely enjoy my lettuce and tuna sandwich.
I reach over and open the glove box. Pull out a bag of pot, fat joints that for one reason or another we had pre-rolled for the trip. We had hoped to get some really killer shit for our adventure. After we’d made a last minute drive to San Clemente the previous night to score some buds, Tim van Lier had only been able to come up with some Mexican weed. I start the Cutlass, put it into drive and head onto the 15 freeway towards Arizona. I light the joint with the in-dash cigarette lighter. I take a big drag and pass the ‘bomber’ on to Jenkins before putting a Stones cassette into the tape player. We cruise along grooving to “Stray Cat Blues.”
While winding through a low altitude desert mountain area nearing Arizona, a blast of wind bursts through the car. It lifts the Bible which we’ve been using for a weight on the lid of the Styrofoam cooler. Rips the lid out of the car out into the desert. Drops the Bible in with the melting ice, lettuce and bologna.
“Fuck dude... That was weird,” Jenkins mutters, stoned, zoning out on the road and the music.
We cut through a small corner of Arizona heading towards Utah. We’re only in Arizona for about fifteen minutes curving through dry mountain terrain the wind still crazy. Then we see the Utah state sign.
“Fuck..., I think these Mexi-buds are fucked. I got a fuckin’ headache,” Jenkins grumbles.
“Yeah, me too,” I come back pushing the Olds through the wind.
Entry 2
In Utah we stop to camp at Zion National Park for the night. We pull in, pay a one night fee at the front gate and a ranger gives us a permit along with a map of the place. Then we motor around till we come to site B-34. I back the Olds in.
Me and Jenkins just sit for a while on our site’s picnic table resting. Jelling out.
After we recover a bit, I pull the bag that the pup tent is in out of the trunk. I spread the army issue canvas thing out and start driving stakes into the ground. Then I stretch the canvas up tight putting poles in place inside at the front and back. Once I’ve finished, me and Jenkins walk over to the park’s ‘General Store’ to buy some wood.
When we get back to the campsite, I start to build a fire. It’s not long before the fire is going good. I scrounge around in the back seat of the Cutlass and find a bag of dry pinto beans. Deep at the bottom of the backseat floor I dig out a grill we’ve brought along. Then we jimmy-rig the thing over the fire, set a pot full of water on it and pour the beans in.
After the water starts boiling, Jenkins gets a joint from the glove box of the Olds and we get in the tent. We close the entrance flap and smoke out.
Totally zoned out on the weed we kick back, again sitting at the picnic table. The Cutlass’ doors are both open as Hank Sr. plays on the stereo.
We’re sitting there just getting into the music all stoned and shit. Then the father of a family camping to the right of us walks to the edge of his campsite.
“Hey...!” he yells vehemently. “Why don’tcha turn that shit down!”
At first I think our country music has pissed him off. But soon I realize his anger is directed at the metal heads just to our left. The guys are blasting Whitesnake from a boom box that sits on top of a ’74 Dodge Charger.
We’re cruising around the park in the Cutlass exploring the place a bit, Jimmy Rodger’s “Blue Yodel Number 9” is on the stereo.
“Fuck dude...!” Jenkins blurts in a stoned stupor. “We’re goin’ on this rad trip, to all theses rad places and we got all this rad music!”
There’s lightning striking here and there, but no rain. We pass a group of photographers with their cameras poised ready for shots of the discharges. They’re grouped next to a mountainside park road peering into a dale below. Then a bolt blasts from the heavens and strikes the ground around 500 feet off in the distance.
We get back to our site and check on the beans. Still hard though they’ve been boiling for two hours, some have cracked in half.
We have bologna sandwiches for dinner and smoke out again. Then we’re tripping out on the face of a cliff that is situated across a rocky plain behind our campsite. It’s made up of an innumerable amount of crannies, crevices. Different shades of red bordering on purple mixed in with some oranges also. There appears to be an infinite number of faces in there. I get my sketchbook out and try to draw it but end up dizzy giving up. Jenkins tries to sketch a bit with the same results.
Later, not long after it gets dark, we crash out on top of our sleeping bags and blankets. It begins to rain. Soon it’s pouring.
Not long after the storm is going at full force. There’s a steady flow of water moving through the pup tent. All of our gear gets soaked. Somehow Jenkins is able to snooze on despite the torrent passing beneath us. But I lay awake until three or four in the morning until the rain finally stops.
Entry 3
At Colorado National Monument, just outside of Grand Junction, me and Jenkins are digging into some canned refried beans. Jenkins found them after going through the shit in the backseat for a good ten minutes. We’re eating the stuff right out of the can with a spoon.
“We put the tent where the rain was washin’ downhill last night,” Jenkins surmises. “We gotta put it in a place that the rain won’t be washin’ through.”
We set the tent up in a good looking spot then head into town to get some insulin and needles for Jenkins.
I pull up in front of a drugstore in downtown Grand Junction. The area has an old school ‘Main Street America’ feel.
“Yeah,” can I get some B-D microthin syringes and some insulin?” Jenkins asks the pharmacist after brushing his mop of hair to the side of his face.
The guy eyes us over for a bit then inquires, “Ya want swine or human?”
“Swine.”
The pharmacist gets the order ready, Jenkins pays and we head back out to the car.
“What’s that shit about swine or human?” I ask after we’re seated in the Cutlass.
“Pig insulin is almost the same as humans’, so you can use it. Swine is cheaper.”
Jenkins takes a syringe out of the ten-pack bag. He breaks the metal seal on the insulin bottle, pushes the needle through rubber and draws back on the plunger. He pulls his tee-shirt up exposing a little fat on his belly. Then he sticks the hypodermic into his flesh and plunges the insulin in. He throws the syringe out onto the sidewalk and mumbles, “Let some Colorado hick trip out on that.”
When we get back to camp it’s nighttime. We’re both pretty tired from our 400 mile drive and crawl into the tent ready for sleep. Soon it starts to drizzle. Then it’s raining hard. It’s not long before a stream of water is flowing through the pup tent. I lie wide awake while Jenkins snores away.
Entry 4
The Cutlass climbs a steep grid in the Rockies heading towards Denver. Pine trees, infinite in number. Absolute beauty. We don’t stop to check them out taking the scene in as we ride along wanting to get into Nebraska by nightfall.
Denver. We don’t get off the 70, just cruise through a little before rush hour.
After the two previous hellish nights with the water rushing through the tent, Jenkins and I decide to tough it out and just drive straight through as night comes on.
Entry 5
Nebraska. I wake in the middle of the night in the backseat. All the shit is smashed around, the guitar, clothes, a frying pan. The whole mess off to the side and on the floor, with some stuff shoved up in the back window area as I’ve made a spot to sleep. Jenkins is at the wheel listening to some local a.m. radio. The thought crosses my mind for a second that a fifteen-year-old kid is up there, navigating, blazing along probably a good ten miles an hour over the speed limit without any kind of driver’s license. Not even a learner’s permit. And we are in the middle of backwards-ass America.
Entry 6
We stop to make some dinner at a rest stop a little outside Des Moines, Iowa. After a bit of scavenging in the trunk, me and Jenkins find the charcoal we’d got for the trip.
Jenkins squirts lighter fluid on the charcoal in the rest stop barbecue, one of those that stands on a pole. Then throws a match the fluid exploding in a big flame. When it dies down we get out a frying pan and start to cook some bacon and eggs with hash browns. We had bought the stuff in a small town back up the road a bit.
A long-haired, bearded biker cruises up on a Harley and shuts the machine off next to the Cutlass.
He sits on his bike for a whole minute, stares, then, “Hey man...!” the guy’s yelling at me. “Why you got white hair...?! You a homo or somethin’?!”
“No.”
“Look like a couple uh faggots...! White hair..., and him..., with black hair hangin’ in ‘is face!”
“Hey, ya want some eggs?” Jenkins asks trying to defuse the situation.
“Ahh..., no. Had a burger at some joint back in Harlan. It was great goin’ down, but now it ain’t sittin’ so well.”
Photo by jetolla