Tag Archives: Grateful Dead

Jun7

New Collage (The Wheel)

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I took this photo of The Wheel, my latest collage creation. It’s a piece of interactive art, maybe a divination tool…

 

This is my latest collage. I created it in April 2015.

I wanted to create this to include in the January 2015 Truth or Consequences art show I participated in, but I didn’t have the right spinner. I found the right spinner at my favorite mega super thrift store. (It was from a How the Grinch Stole Christmas board game.) I found the Wheel of Fortune tarot card at the hospital thrift store in T or C. I removed the spinner from the card it came on, collaged the card, glued on the tarot card, then reattached the spinner. Then I glued on all the words I’d cut out of magazines and catalogs.

I call it The Wheel. (The tarot card is the Wheel of Fortune, and The Wheel is a Grateful Dead song, lyrics by Robert Hunter and music by Jerry Garcia and Bill Kreutzmann, which is related to that tarot card. For more about the song and the tarot connection, see http://artsites.ucsc.edu/GDead/agdl/wheel.html.)

To see what your future holds, just spin the wheel…

May29

Old Kernville Cemetery

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I visited the Old Kernville Cemetery in Wofford Heights, California in late April 2015. According to http://billiongraves.com/pages/cemeteries/Kern-River-Valley-Cemetery/12171#cemetery_id=12171&lim=0&num=25&order=asc&action=browse

This cemetery was used between 1863 and present by the residents of “Old Kernville” a town which was relocated in 1953 because of the creation of Isabella Lake which flooded the old town site. The old cemetery is located above high water.

Monument at the entrance to the Old Kernville Cemetery.

Monument at the entrance to the Old Kernville Cemetery.  The plague says Kernville was once called Whiskey Flat.

 

The monument was moved from Old Kernville and rededicated  in 1953. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernville_%28former_town%29,_California,

Kernville (also, Whiskey Flat, Rogersville and Williamsburg) is a former settlement in Kern County, California.[1] It lay at an elevation of 2,575 feet (785 m).[1] Kernville was established in 1858 as a gold camp, and was inundated by the Lake Isabella reservoir in 1954.[1]

I enjoy walking in cemeteries, especially really old cemeteries. I spent at least an hour walking around this one and looking at all the old grave sites.

I liked the inscription "Pioneer Teacher" on this tombstone.

I like the inscription “Pioneer Teacher” on this tombstone.

The next two photos go together. The first is a far shot of the grave site. The second is a close up of the tombstone. Someone planted a tree on Francis’ grave, and the tree has flourished. The words on the tombstone (which is actually made of wood,  not stone) must be repainted every so often. I don’t think paint from 1899 would still be readable.

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Many of the headstones in the cemetery are small wooden boards covered in varying amounts of peeling white paint. If names or dates were ever painted on these markers, such information is no longer there. A few grave sites were fenced off, but not very many. In New Mexico cemeteries I’ve visited, many grave sites have been fenced off. I’ve been told it’s to keep cattle off the graves.

 

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The Kern River is visible from the cemetery, which is on higher ground above the river basin. I could hear the river flowing as I walked around and read headstones. It is a lovely location.

Flag and beer. I guess a comrade left an offering.

Flag and beer. A comrade must have left an offering.

The man in the photo was 19 when he died. His grave site was right next to the other one with a Bud Light left as an offering.

Phillip Miranda was 19 when he died. His grave was next to the other one where a Bud Light was left as an offering. This was the first time I’d ever seen beer left on a grave site. I know about pouring alcohol out in memory of one’s homies, but I never heard of leaving an unopen can of beer. Life–and death–is different in California.

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White Blanket got a very plain marker. Something about the simplicity of this one, as well as the uncertainty of when when she was born, really got to me.

Baby graves always get to me.

Baby graves always get to me.

Below are two views of the same tombstone, apparently marking the graves of two children from the same family. Sigh. That dead bird is intense.

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The simplicity of this one got to me too. I love the way John C. Howe’s information was scratched into the wet concrete. I love that he was “a hunter and prospector.” I imagine he was a simple man with a simple death.

 

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Here’s one more view of the cemetery. I was sitting on a memorial bench under a tree, in the shade, when I took this one. I like memorial benches. It’s nice to sit in a cemetery and contemplate mortality. I don’t necessarily want a fancy tombstone, but I wonder how else anyone will remember me.

I took all the photos in this post.

May26

Dashboard Protection

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These are some of the objects I keep on the dashboard of my van home.

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I see them whenever I’m sitting in the driver’s seat.

The skeleton is from a Playmobile pirate set. I found it (I can’t say if it’s a he or a she, since I’m not the kind of anthropologist who knows a male pelvis from a female pelvis) at the mega super thrift clearance center, along with a canon and one or two pirates from the set. (Those went to a kid that the Lady of the House knows.)

In the middle is Kwan Yin. According to http://www.religionfacts.com/buddhism/beings/kuan-yin,

In Buddhism, Kuan Yin (also spelled Guan Yin, Kwan Yin) is the bodhisattva of compassion venerated by East Asian Buddhists. Commonly known as the Goddess of Mercy, Kuan Yin is also revered by Chinese Taoists as an Immortal. The name Kuan Yin is short for Kuan Shih Yin (Guan Shi Yin) which means “Observing the Sounds of the World”.

Due to her symbolising compassion, in East Asia Kuan Yin is associated with vegetarianism. Chinese vegetarian restaurants are generally decorated with her image, and she appears in most Buddhist vegetarian pamphlets and magazines.

I first learned about Kwan Yin when I went to Malaysia. I was told women pray to her for healing of the female organs. I got this statue for $1 too, at a second hand store in Taos.

Next to Kwan Yin is a guardian angel that I got from a woman selling at the Bridge. She had a $1 table, and the guardian angel was on it. I didn’t have many dollars at the time, but I figured I needed all the protection I could get, so I bought the angel. She reminds me of the little statues my grandmother and great-grandmother displayed when I was a kid. We kids were never allowed to touch the breakable figurines, so I think it’s kind of cool to keep something similar on my dash. The guardian angel must be tough because she hasn’t broken yet. She was actually my first figurine and survived the move from my last van to my current van. (I think any guardian angel of mine better by tough, because it must be a hard job to keep me safe.)

Next to the angel is a yellow question mark flecked with glitter. I also rescued it from the mega super thrift clearance center. It was part of some board game, but I thought it was pretty cool on its own. It’s a constant reminder for me to question.

Behind Kwan Yin is a Navajo vase one of my vendor friends at the Bridge gave me. He’s not Navajo, and he doesn’t make the vases; he buys them from Navajo women and resells them. This one had some problem with the glaze, so he gave it to me. The dried flowers in it were given to me by one of youngest friends, a delightfully funny girl I knew at the Bridge when she was five, the summer before she started kindergarten.

I can’t say that I actually believe any of these objects offer me protection. They’re more like good luck charms, although I don’t know if I believe in luck. (Lately, whenever something unfortunate happens to me, I do think about the three mirrors I broke in the span of three months last winter and wonder if maybe bad luck does exist.) I guess more than anything, they offer me comfort. The angel reminds me of my foremothers. Kwan Yin reminds me to treat others with compassion and mercy.The skeleton represents all things Grateful Dead to me. The question mark reminds me to keep searching and asking. And the vase makes me think of my friends.

May25

Hitchhikers Are a Blessing

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I left my temporary campground around 10:30 in the morning. I hadn’t made it even a mile out of the gate when I saw two people standing on the opposite side of the road. I thought they were just waiting to cross, but then I saw they had their thumbs out.

What?

I stopped next to them. A guy and a gal were standing there. Both were probably in their 20s (the guy a little older than the gal, perhaps), and both looked outdoorsy and totally wholesome.

My driver’s side window doesn’t roll down, so I had to talk to them through the little triangle window.

I asked if they were ok.

The gal began explaining that they worked at a camp and the battery in their car was dead. They seemed to be going the way I was going. I said I didn’t have much room, but I’d try to squeeze them in. I said I had to unlock the door and was about to climb out of the driver’s seat when I realized I was stopped in the middle of the road. I saw a turn-out ahead, so I said I’d pull off the road up there, and we could figure it out.

When I opened the side door, my stove and the tub with my cookware, and a random hat came spilling out. I’d forgotten to strap my tubs together, and things had shifted and fallen. The tub with the cookware only latches on one side (the latch on the other side broke off and has disappeared in the van vortex), so knives and forks fell halfway out the door. I’m sure the hitchhiking couple were wondering about my sanity (or at least my packing skills), but I guess they figured dealing with me was better than being stranded.

As I repacked and shifted my belongings to make room for them to sit on the floor (with my bicycle and the folding table I had just tossed in and not actually put away), they explained their situation more clearly.

They were working at a camp for kids, not at a campground as I’d assumed. They’d discovered the battery in their car (which was actually a small truck) was dead moments after co-workers had driven away.

They wanted me to bring them to where the people they worked with were, but I offered to give them a ride to their vehicle and give them a jump start. The gal was like, Oh no. We couldn’t ask you to do that. It’s three miles down a dirt road. I asked if she thought the van wouldn’t make it, and she said she thought the van could easily make it. The guy added that it was a really nice dirt road.

I realized they didn’t want to inconvenience me, but I didn’t have to be anywhere at any certain time. Heaven knows I owe a lot of hitchhike Karma and a lot of jump start Karma. I told them I would be happy to drive them to their vehicle and give them a jump start. Once they realized I was really glad to help them, they seemed really glad to accept.

They climbed in the back of the van and sat among my belongings, and I climbed into the driver’s seat and opened the curtains between the front and the back. That’s when I realized what a stereotype I am. I was driving this big ol’ conversion van, and (I’m not kidding!) burning incense and listening to the Grateful Dead. (I was not wearing a long hippie skirt, only because I was wearing my work uniform, which, perhaps gave me a bit of respectability.)

The drive to their camp (not campground) was down a road I’d passed several times in the last three weeks. I would have never taken the van on that road without knowing something about it. (It’s kind of sketchy to take the van down a dirt road in the mountains without having some idea of the condition of the road. I absolutely do not want to get stuck somewhere.)

The view was gorgeous! A couple of times I shouted Wow! A couple of times I stopped the van so I could get a good look at the trees and the mountains and the sky. I think my passengers were a bit amused by my outbursts.

They told me that at the end of the road, if one hikes about three miles, one arrives at the ruins of a fire lookout tower that burned down (is that irony?) and a cool rock formation. It sounds awesome, and I would like to go, although I’m not much of a hiker (and understand arithmetic sufficiently to know that 3 miles there means a 6 miles round trip). Maybe when my friend comes to visit we can go together.

The jump start of their truck was anticlimactic. Once the cables were connected and I started the van, their truck vroomed to life. There were hugs and thanks and we parted ways.

Their misfortune was my lucky day because I got to meet a couple of cool folks, see a gorgeous view, and learn about a cool place to visit.

May22

Steps to the Tule River

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On California Highway 190, between Camp Nelson and Springville, there was what appeared from the road to be a scenic overlook with steps (mysterious steps) leading down and vanishing.

Mysterious steps.

Mysterious steps.

There was no sign other than standard Forest Service signs, nothing to let one know where one was or where one might end up. On the way back from Springville, I decided to stop. There’s a place to pull off the road with three or four marked parking spaces and two plastic trash cans on either side of the steps, each chained to the guardrail. And just so everyone knows, no, I wasn’t chemically altered in any way, although I was battling motion sickness due to the continuous curves in the mountain road. I started down the steps, although, yes, it occurred to me that I was alone and no one knew I was there, but I decided whatever. If I wait to go places until I have someone to go with me, I won’t be going many places. So I walked down the steps. And then the path turned, and then there were more steps leading down. There were more turns, more steps, then a wooden bridge. All the while I could hear the river, but not see it.

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Looking down the steep steps to the wooden bridge.

There was vegetation all around and boulders, and if not for the fairly big lizards and lack of oppressive humidity, I could have been in Tennessee or Kentucky or North Carolina.

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Fairly big lizard.

I continued descending the steps, thinking, should I be afraid? Maybe I should have been afraid because I didn’t know who was at the bottom of the steps or what people might be doing down there, but I wasn’t scared at all. I felt like Alice in Wonderland, entering a totally magical and mysterious world. Then the steps ended, and the ground in front of me was just rock, and where the ground of rock ended, I could see the river tumbling over other rocks, not quite a waterfall, and not rapids, but water tumbling down. I carefully climbed down the rock I was standing on toward the river. It was a gentle decline; I wasn’t repelling down the side of a mountain. The rocks I walked over were mostly flat and not slippery. IMG_2852I walked into an area with no vegetation, just these smooth, mostly flat, ever so slightly curving rocks right up to the water. The earth was stone, smoothed out, gently sloping, white. It was unearthly. Of course, it was earthly, because I was still on earth, but I also felt as if I was somewhere else, maybe the moon. (And then, because of the hippie I am, I thought of the Grateful Dead song “Standing on the Moon.”) When I looked over to the river, I saw that the water tumbled over rocks and into a pool. The water in the pool was green, but also clear enough to see rocks under the water. It was somehow both clear and green. I thought about sliding into that clear green water, but it wasn’t nearly hot enough for that, and I’m not much of a swimmer. I’m brave (or maybe foolish), but I’m not brave (or foolish) enough to get in a pool in river all alone when no one has any idea where I am. Besides, the water was probably pretty cold, and I do not like to be cold and wet.

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Water tumbling into the pool.

IMG_2848 The pool was big and looked fairly deep (another reason not to get in—I don’t like to be in water over my head, even in pools made by humans). There were big rocks at the edge of that pool. The water went over those rocks, and there was another only slightly smaller) pool. IMG_2854 The whole scene was totally amazing and miraculous. I walked on those big flat rocks and wondered if I were actually dreaming. The whole scene had an absolutely dream-like quality to it, so different from up above where I’d left the van. The terrain had changed so quickly—I think that’s what made it feel like a dream. It didn’t seem possible that my whole world could have changed so fast. I felt as if I were mentally stumbling around (my feet were steady), and I kept thinking, are you KIDDING me? I didn’t stay too very long. I hadn’t brought water with me, and I knew I had to climb all those steps to get back to the van. I took photos, but I fear they won’t do justice to the experience. (I don’t think photos ever do justice to an experience, but sometimes they convey something close to what really happened.)

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There’s the wooden bridge and the stairs I had to climb back up to the van. I like the way the wooden bridge is sitting on top of those boulders.

I just don’t even know how to explain how I felt. I was totally in the moment. My life was absolutely real, while at the same time I also felt as if I were in a dream. It was the flip side of those dreams that feel so real; it was absolute realness that felt like a dream. This little excursion was a blessing because it reminded me why I’d come to California: to see new places and have adventures.

 

All photos in this post were taken by me.

May5

This Is Love

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The man in the photo is Pigpen (legal name: Ronald Charles McKernan). He was the front man for the Grateful Dead from the beginning in 1965 until shortly before his death from gastrointestinal hemorrhage in 1973. He was a keyboardist, a harmonica player, and most of all, a blues man. Although he grew up in San Bruno, California, he had the voice and persona of an old black man who’d lived a hard life in the rural Deep South. The Grateful Dead started as a jug band (Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions), but with Pigpen at the helm, they were quickly singing the blues. If Pigpen wouldn’t have died when he was 27, the Dead would have surely been a very different band.

If you hang out with large groups of Dead Heads, you’ll see stickers and t-shirts that read, “I Miss Jerry.” Fair enough. I miss Jerry too (even though I never saw him perform live). But most of all, I miss Pigpen. (Somebody could make some money selling “I miss Pigpen” t-shirts and stickers.)

While I was traveling with Mr. Carolina, we had no music. My van had no radio. Neither of us had a laptop or a tablet or an MP3 player or a music playing phone. When we picked up the Okie and Lil C, we got a little relief. Lil C had a phone onto which he could download music. I mentioned how I had really wanted to listen to “Estimated Prophet” while in was California, and those sweet boys got it onto Lil C’s phone for me. Mr. Carolina and I listened to it while stopped in a gas station parking lot, one ear bud in his right ear, the other in my left.

Fast forward a few weeks, and the Okie and I were in Asheville, NC. We’d left Lil C at his mom’s house in Kansas City. I decided I wanted to go to Arkansas to dig quartz crystals. Mr. Carolina decided he wanted to dig quartz too, then convinced The Okie to travel to Arkansas with us. From there, we went to Asheville and on the Monday before Thanksgiving, we delivered Mr. Carolina to his brother so he could spend the holidays with his family.

The day we dropped off Mr. Carolina? That was one of the saddest days of my life. We’d been together every day for a month and a half, and every day with him was a joy. Whenever I was stressed or upset, he’d remind me to breathe or hand me a flower. He never let me pump gas; if I was by the gas tank about to pump, he’d jump out of the van and run over to help me, take the nozzle right out of my hand. Whatever he had–food, money, friends, shiny rocks, weed–he was ready to share with me (or whoever else was around and in need). He always had a sweet, long, tight hug for me. He always thanked me for anything I did to help him. When we left him with his brother in the parking lot of a convenience store on the edge of Asheville, I felt as if I were leaving the nicest part of my life behind.

So the Okie and I were in Asheville. The Okie was a sweet kid, with emphasis on the kid part. He was 19 and acted it. He interrupted me whenever I spoke. (One day in exasperation, I snapped at him, “Do you interrupt me all the time because I’m a woman, or do you do that to everyone?” He claimed he did it to everyone.) He asked to drive the van (a lot), even though he didn’t have a license. The one time we let him drive on a deserted country road, he drove too fast, even though Mr. Carolina mentioned more than once that he needed to slow down. He acted as if he knew everything about everything, even when he didn’t know much about anything.

I had a lot of compassion for him. He’s been born to a young mom who ran off to California with him when things didn’t work out with his dad. When she got a new boyfriend, she shipped the Okie back to Oklahoma to live with her mom. After a few years, Grandma sent the Okie to live with his dad, a cop. That didn’t work out so well, and the Okie started getting in trouble and running away from home. By the time he was 15, he was living in St. Louis, hooked on heroine. He was clean when he was with us, but his emotional scars were obvious.

He certainly wasn’t accustomed to his friends being generous to him. We had a loaf of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly that we’d either been given by strangers or had bought with money given to us by strangers. It was for all of us. Whenever the Okie was hungry, he’d ask me or Mr. Carolina if we minded if he made a sandwich. The first few times he did this, he seemed considerate. We explained that the food was for everyone, that he should eat when he was hungry. After a while, his asking permission to eat got extremely annoying. Mr. Carolina started teasing him whenever he asked by saying no, he couldn’t have any food. I thought it was sad he didn’t trust that we really meant to share with him.

So yes, I had compassion for the guy, but he pushed all my buttons and drove me crazy. It was as if I were his 41 year old mom and he were my 19 year old son.

So we were in Asheville, with a huge quartz cluster we’d been given at the quartz mine in Mt. Ida. The thing had to weight at least 50 pounds. The Okie was convinced we could sell it to one of the downtown rock shops for several hundred dollars which I could use for needed repairs on my van. He was carrying it from store to store on his back in a huge Army issue backpack.

As we were looking for one of the stores, the Okie asked an older guy in a tie dyed t-shirt for directions. The guy told us how to get where we were going, and the Okie offered to show him the quartz cluster. The guy was impressed and told us he had a stall in an outdoor market around the corner. The Okie asked him if maybe he’d be willing to trade for some quartz crystals fresh from the Arkansas dirt. The guy said he might be, to come to his booth when we were done at the rock shop.

Unfortunately, we were not able to sell the cluster. We tried at two rock shops, and neither made us an offer, much less an offer of several hundred dollars, as the Okie expected. I wasn’t surprised. The cluster was gorgeous and magical, but it wasn’t perfect. There were a lot of nice points on it, but there was a lot of matrix too. For a rock shop to give us even $200 for it, the buyer would have to feel confident that the store could sell it for $400. I just didn’t see anyone paying that much money for it.

The Okie hoisted the cluster-laden pack onto his shoulders, and we walked over t0 the older hippie guy’s booth. He had a lot of hand painted light switch covers, and several Grateful Dead pins. The Okie pulled out some of the nicer quartz points he had collected. The man accepted them, and the Okie said he’d like to have a Grateful Dead pin. While he was looking at the pins, I asked the man if he was interested in looking at any of my points. He nicely told me he didn’t need any more than he’d already gotten form the Okie. I stood next to the Okie and looked at the pins too, although I certainly didn’t have any money to buy one.  (My pockets were so empty, I’d had to trade some of my points to a street kid for a handful of change to put in the parking meter when we’d arrived downtown.) I was just enjoying looking at them, and I was interested to see which one the Okie would pick.

I saw the one with Pigpen and pointed it out because it’s just not so often that I see anything with Pigpen’s face on it. Everyone knows Jerry, and his face is all over stickers and t-shirts, but Pigpen is harder to come by. (And if your guy is Keith or Brent–the other dead Grateful Dead keyboardists–forget it.)

Also, during our time on the road, whenever conversation turned to the Dead, it had been Pigpen I sighed over. All the boys knew I had a little crush on him, so it was natural I’d be excited to see Pigpen and point him out.

When I showed the pin to the Okie, he put down the one he’d been looking at and told the guy he’d take the one with Pigpen on it. Then he turned around and gave it to me!

I tried to say oh no, I couldn’t, tried to tell him he should pick one out for himself, but he insisted on giving the pin to me.

That is love! He did without something he wanted so he could give me something I wanted.

I’ll never part with the pin. It’s not just the photo of Pigpen or the stealie’s cool glitter background that makes it special to me. What’s important about the pin is that the Okie loved me enough to give it to me.

Thanks to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_%22Pigpen%22_McKernan for information about Pigpen.

 

 

Apr26

She’s Gone

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And by “she,” I mean me.

On Friday, April 17, I finally found out the date I was expected to report to California for my training for my summer job as a camp host. The date? April 27. Yep, they wanted me to arrive for training in ten days.

I was told that the snow on the mountain had melted, and people wanted to be up there camping, so they had to get the camp hosts in. They were getting all the camp hosts for that area together as soon as possible to get them trained and on the job.

At first I was kind of pissy. I had originally been told that the job would start in mid May. How is April 27th mid May? (Hint: It isn’t.) I had a job making $13 an hour (with the chance for bonuses) that was scheduled to last until May 20th. I had a place to stay paid for through the end of May. By leaving before April ended, I was effectively throwing away $300. Also, I was not ready to go. I still didn’t have new tires. I still didn’t have a back slider window. I still hadn’t replaced all the rusty screws holding the high top to the van. I still hadn’t bought a Luci light or a bunch of food or the cleaning supplies I need.

And then I just got over myself. I was on my way out. Out of the hot, dirty city. Out of a job, which, while well-paying was numbing my brain and causing me to have ideas about how I could really work better if I could could just get a little bump of speed, not too much, just enough to perk me up. Out of driving twenty miles a day through streets lined with strip malls and stores, supermarkets, restaurants, shopping opportunities of every kind. Out of the beautiful yet brown desert. Out of the rat race. Out of the game.

I was moving into free. Free on the road, with the Grateful Dead and Lucinda Williams singing through one cheap speaker and the tiny, cheap MP3 player which doesn’t even let me set up playlists, but instead plays whatever it wants, whenever it wants. Free to sing along at the top of my lungs or shout or curse or listen silently, no one in the passenger seat to judge or disapprove or be offended. I was moving into the mountains, into the trees, into a place that shows up on the map as a huge expanse of green. I was moving closer to the area of the magical hot springs I visited with my boys two and half years ago, knowing when I left that I would be back someday, somehow. Moving into quiet and solitude, but also into people from everywhere that I will meet as they too come to visit the trees. Moving into myself. Moving into the trees.

I wasn’t sure how I would scrape together all the money I needed to do all the things I needed to do before I hit the road. (In my original plan, I’d have had four to six weeks worth of pay from scoring essays saved up before I took off to Cali. The way things actually worked out gave me 34 hours of pay on April 24, with another two weeks of pay coming on May 8th.) But then I realized, it was only money. I’d gone farther on less.

No sense panicking. No sense worrying. All I could do was do what I could do, then hit the road.

The title of my post is a reference to the Grateful Dead song “He’s Gone.” I took the photo in this post.

 

Feb13

Broke Down in Redding, California

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In October of 2012, I was traveling in Northern California with my new friend Mr. Carolina. We’d met in Colorado on Furthur lot. I traveled with him, three (sometimes four) other adults, and two dogs all the way from Red Rocks to Santa Barbara in Old Betsy, my 1994 Chevy G20 van. Two of the adults and their two dogs found a new ride in Santa Barbara, but Mr Carolina and I drove to Los Angeles to deliver L. and R. to the airport so they could catch their flight to Guatamala City.

After our brief stop in LA, Mr. Carolina and I kept heading north, eventually making it all the way to Mt. Shasta, California.

In Laytonville, we met a young French Canadian man and invited him to our cheese party. (By “cheese party,” I mean that Mr. Carolina and I were sitting in the van eating cheese.) The French Canadian man was heading north to Redding to catch a bus and offered to help pay for gas if he rode with us.

My van broke down in Redding, after we dropped the French Canadian guy at the bus station. By “broke down,” I mean we let her run out of gas. It was really my fault. The directions to Wal-Mart I got on my phone were wrong, or I misread them. In any case, we headed off in the wrong direction and ended up on some side street with no gas.

We pushed the van off the road, into the gravel between the road and the fence of the closest house.

We had not money. I flew a sign for a while and collected $24. (Blessings to the kind strangers who handed me a $20 bill.)

My gas can only held one gallon, so we walked to the closest gas station and back twice.We put in the two gallons of gas, and the van still didn’t start. We thought we had fucked up the fuel pump.

At that point, I gave up for the day. I just didn’t have the energy to figure out anything else. We walked back to the Jack in the Box near the gas station to use some of our meager funds to buy dinner. We met a really nice guy named Bernard there. He was in his 50s, maybe his early 60s and had been out to The Hog Farm back in the day and had seen The Grateful Dead a handful of times. We bought him a couple of tacos out of the little money we had gathered up, and we ate together. After dinner, he smoked his roaches with Mr. Carolina. He is one of my very few nice memories of Redding.

After dinner, we went back to the van and  slept right there on the side of the street, me in my bed and Mr. Carolina on the floor.

Here’s a poem I wrote about the first night of the experience:

This Night

We sat in my broke down van
pushed to the gravel
next to a random street
on the West side
of Redding, California
and said good-bye to the sun.

Without my glasses,
distant headlights became
vivid bright snowflakes
with blurred edges.

Raindrops pinged randomly
on our metal roof
while the scent
of nag champa
soothed me.

You smoked fresh Cali weed
in the dark
and a train whistle blew
far away and lonesome—
the exact sound
of this night.

My car insurance covers roadside assistance. I don’t even have to pay up front and get reimbursed, it’s just totally covered, so the next day I had the van towed to a nearby mechanic.  It turned out that once Old Betsy was out of gas, it took seven gallons to get her started again. My sweet friend KJ  called the mechanic shop with his credit card and paid for the gas and the jump start we needed after killing the battery with so many false starts.

By the time the van was running again, it was late in the day. Mr. Carolina and I each had one McDouble for dinner, and we saved the rest of our money to put into the gas tank when we headed toward Mt. Shasta the next day. We ended up spending that night in the parking lot of the Redding Wal-Mart. There was such a weird vibe at that Wal-Mart. People at the entrance were pulling some card trick hustle, and a guy in the parking lot came over and tried to make very fast small talk with us while we were playing cards in the van. (In all the Wal-Mart parking lots I’ve slept in, no one else has ever approached my van and tried to get friendly.)

Redding was my #1 Let’s Get the Fuck Out of Here town. The energy there was very harsh, angry, negative, dark. I said to Mr. Carolina, It’s starting to seem like everyone in this town is on meth. He said to me, That’s because everyone in this town is on meth.

Feb5

We Feel for Your Situation

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It’s been a hard week at the Bridge so far. On Monday (after my usual 8+ hour day), I made $7. Yesterday, I did not have my table properly anchored, and the wind blew the whole thing (rocks, cholla cactus display “tree,” cinder block “tree” stand) over. I left in frustration after making $20 selling rocks to a very nice French woman. Today, the winds were worse (but I anchored both tables with rocks, tied down the table clothes made from sheets so they did not turn into sails, moved the van to block the wind, tied the “tree” to my side mirror to stabilize it, spent the majority of the day standing nearby so I could grab the “tree” and my flowerpot bracelet display in the event of movement). By about 4:45, I had made $10, and the wind had been blowing hard nearly nonstop for almost nine hours.

SDC10003

About that time a man and woman stopped at my table. The man was quite a bit younger than the woman, who was probably ten years older than I am. They looked at some of my jewelry and tried to  pick up a necklace with a pendant I made from a skull carved out of yak bone and amethyst beads. The necklace was pinned to the cloth wrapped around the trunk of the “tree” to it wouldn’t blow away. When I offered to unpin it, the woman said they would go look at the Gorge, than come back and shop. I thought that if they bought the necklace, I would go home. (Home being my friend J’s place, where I am house and cat sitting.)

They came back from the Bridge, and I unpinned the necklace.The woman held it up to the guy’s neck, and before I could grab my mirror so he could see how it looked, he decided he didn’t want it. They looked at some other things. We talked about the wind, how it had been blowing hard all day. They admired my work. The woman asked where I lived, and I said, In my van, because it seemed too difficult to explain my complicated living situation to them. (Well, right now I’m house sitting, and I do that as much as I can, and there’s a trailer on my sweetheart’s property that I stay in when I’m out there, but it’s 40 miles from here, so when I’m working, I sleep in my van at night…) The woman got a really startled look on her face and did not seem to be thinking (as many people do), Cool! You get to travel around and see the world. I told them I live simply and don’t need a lot of money.

They walked away from my table. I told my friends selling next to me that I’d thought I was going to make the sale, and it was a bummer those people hadn’t bought the necklace.

Not five minutes later, a car pulled up right in front of my table. When the window rolled down, I saw it was that man and woman I’d just been talking to. The man was driving, and he asked if I provided car side service. I said sure, and saw that he was holding a bill in his hand. He said he’d decided to take the necklace. I grabbed it for him and was going to say, Where else can you get smoked yak bone? Before I could make my little weak joke, he said, We feel for your situation. I think I said, Oh while handing him the necklace and taking the twenty dollar bill. He said, Not like it’s a tragedy…It’s paradise right? I think he realized how awkward what he said sounded to me. (I don’t know what my face looked like.)

I wonder which part of my situation they are feeling for. The situation of living in my van? The situation of being in relentless wind all day? The situation of living simply and not having lots of money? And what is it that they feel about my situation? Pity? Envy? Astonishment? I’ll never know, but I can guess.

 After that I packed up. I’m at J’s place now. The cat is fed. Rice is cooking and when it’s done, I’ll add beans and green chiles and cheese and have myself a dinner. It’s a good life, despite the wind, despite the fact that money is slow right now.

Today I traded a necklace for a pin with a Grateful Dead dancing acid bear on it. The guy I made the trade with is 24, on the road, trying to see every state in the U. S of A. The pin was special to him, but he liked the necklace made with green and black hemp and a serpentine pendant so much he made the trade and excitedly had me put the necklace on him, even though he doesn’t usually wear necklaces.

It’s a good life. I get to meet people from around the world and no boss, nobody tells me what I have to do. I make my own decisions. I decide to stand in the wind and look at the mountains.

To read about more customers, go here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/09/26/turtle-ass/, here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/02/10/red-letter-day-2/, here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/11/12/hard-times-on-the-highway/ here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/12/14/mean-daddy/, here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/03/17/how-much-are-these/, and here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/12/09/selling-hemp-again/