Chapter 6. Spokane

The further North we went the colder it got. Although the Bay area wasn’t exactly a tropical zone, I was no longer adapted to anything below forty degrees. The ride we took from Portland dropped us off in the middle of nowhere up the grade from the Umatilla Bridge over the Columbia River. There were a few inches of snow on the ground and we made camp among the sage finding only a stick here or there in the dark to light a campfire. Curled up in our bags we drifted off to sleep. An hour or so later the sound of dogs yapping woke me up. At first, I wasn’t concerned but the yapping seemed to be getting closer.

Then Norm woke up, “What’s that?”

“Coyotes, I guess.”

“Shit, really?” Norm sat up looking around.

“Nothing to be afraid of...” I tried to be reassuring. The yip-yapping seemed to be circling us. I envisioned being found in the spring… our bones scattered and sleeping bags torn up. Then I thought of the old western movies, in which the greenhorn would get spooked by the howl of coyotes in the desert, and tried not to panic.

“They’re getting closer.” Norm was nervous and I was getting edgy myself. I knew how sound can fool you in this semi-arid desert but the yapping did seem to be getting closer. I had never heard of anyone being harmed by coyotes but I had heard of packs of wild dogs in the desert pulling down mule deer and attacking children.

“What do you want to do… break camp?”

“Nothing is open in Umatilla… not even a gas station.” There was a gas station our last ride stopped at west of Umatilla on I-80.

Norm and I, like brave outdoorsmen, left our bags at the camp and headed down the road back towards Umatilla. A midnight traveler gave us a lift to Boardman hearing all about a vicious pack of wild dogs, or whatever, back there. We hung out at the only gas station in Boardman keeping the attendant company until dawn. Making our way back in the morning and expecting to see our bags torn up within a circle of dog tracks, we found no foot-prints in the snow besides our own. I walked out hundreds of yards from our camp finding nothing.

Slightly embarrassed, I stuck to the wild-dog story, saying, “They were getting closer, eh?”

“Yeah, they sounded real close” Norm answered. “They probably gave up when we left.”

 The next ride from there was from a wild, long-haired and bearded, man in an old green International pick-up truck that lived outside of Spokane before Cheney. And, as another coincidence, hunted wild dogs where the rolling wheat fields make way for pine trees and arid ground with little or no growth in between. He had us in for a dinner and a smoke or two. He told of how folks from Spokane drop off their unwanted pups in the woods around his place. “Of course, the pups grow into dogs that can do nothing less than follow their instincts; packing-up, and posing a very real danger to animals and humans alike.” He had a quad stereo hooked up to strobe lights playing, of all things, Steppenwolf. “Born to be WI…ILD!” blasting at us, he wanted to know what happened at Altamont.

I explained the chaos, starting with the early dawn cue stick beatings of the folks in front of the stage, to the school buses plowing into the crowd; the rapes, the carnage on the stage and so on.

The fellow sat there and listened, hardly saying a thing until I’d finished relating it all. Then he spoke; “So, there were three hundred thousand people at the concert?” He paused a moment as I nodded, “… and how many Hells Angels?”

“Maybe fifty or sixty… I didn’t count.” I answered but I hadn’t anticipated what was to come next from the wild-dog hunter.

“Why didn’t three hundred thousand people crush the mother fuckers?”

I had no answer. I could have explained how impossible it would be to motivate that many people to do anything in synch.

“So, all those musicians had the mics and the amps and they calmed everybody down and let a handful of thugs run roughshod over three hundred thousand freaked out hippies!”

“Yes.” I was beginning to get his point.

“There was only one man with any courage out of three-hundred thousand people and he’s dead…”

The implication was clear. Anyone still alive that didn’t try to crush anyone wearing Hells Angels colors after that man died on the stage was a coward. The Wild-dog Hunter didn’t have to say it. I just hung my head.

Then I understood how the Nazis did it; how the Stalin did it and how every tyrant from before and after Genghis Khan did it.

“Give a little candy to the babies and they are jelly in your hands.” The Wild-Dog Hunter said.

The Wild-Dog Hunter dropped us off in downtown Spokane a block or two from the Greyhound station. It was the part of town where the railroads were elevated before what was to become Riverside Park after the 1972 Expo. It consisted of three blocks of skid row up from the elevated tracks by the river to First Avenue. There was slush on the ground and my feet were cold wet and numb having only a pair of boots made more for looks than hiking in the damp and cold to ward of the chill.  We hoofed it up to Sprague Avenue hoping to hitch a ride. Walking out as far as the Dishman Hills, I was pleased to see that the Two Swabbies’ Army Navy Surplus store was still in business. I bought a pair of surplus Army boots and some wool socks. Finding a Navy pea-coat, wool watch cap, and navy-blue wool sweater, my mood was lifted by the familiarity of the clothing and warm feet... at last, I believed in that things were going to be fine from then on. My happy feet were ready to go now.

Norm was accommodating. He never complained. He had shot-up all his smack and was going through mild withdrawals but hardly ever complained about that either. I was afraid my pal might be a junkie but it turned out, I noticed, that some people can turn away from hard-core addicting drugs just like that and hardly miss it at all. As for me, sure that had I shot-up or snorted heroine long enough, like one or two times more, I would be hooked and there would be no end to it. I was finding it so true with alcohol and more so because I never kidded myself about the recreational use of heroin.

 We showed up at the door of my family’s home in Veradale, road weary and ready for rest. My folks were congenial enough and they listened as I related the story of what went down at Altamont. They had vaguely heard of it on the evening news but had no idea how big the event was. Some newspapers reported as many 500,000 attended while others as little as 80,000. Some played it up as “Woodstock West Gone Wild” while others hardly gave it note at all. The conversation around the dinner table turned and it went like this:

“So, are you going to settle down in Spokane now?” Mom asked.

“No, we’re going back to California. I’ve got to get back to my people,” I explained. Dad sat there with the sort of disappointment etched on his face that only a dad can feel for a wayward son.

“You know,” Dad spoke up, “You can go to school on the G.I. Bill at Spokane Community College.”

“I might do that later but I’ve got to get this out of my blood now.” I started to go into a narrative about “seeing America” and how a lot was going on now that I wanted to be a part of. I made casual mention of “My People” as though the whole Hippy Generation of Peace & Love was one spiritual body moving towards the future and that; jobs, careers, family and such, were not only being redefined but damned near irrelevant. The fact that I had little or no interest in any kind of peace movement was beside the point.

Dad made this one last stab at reaching through to me, “There is a spot open at Kaisers and I can get you in the machine shop easy enough.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever do that, Dad.” I was almost sneering at this point and, if I could have seen the hurt I was causing my father, it would not have mattered.

Mom butted in at this point, “What are you going to do when you are old? What will ‘Your People’ do for you then?”

“We’ll help each other, Mom. It’s incredible out there. We’re changing the world and, besides, when my people’s backs are up against the wall… we’ll be together!”

How incredulous this had to have seemed to my Mom and Dad whose lives had been completely devoted to family through the Great Depression and WWII. I had no idea how deeply my comments cut at the time but my fervor for something new... a hidden alternative social reality… was driven by a passion that ignored compassion as much as reason and went straight for blood at any hint of an argument.

After that initial confrontation Norm and I were treated as welcome guests. Dad showed off his trophy moose antlers from a recent hunting trip in Canada. We sat at the bar in the rec-room, played pool and Dad played his harmonica. He gave me a harmonica that he wasn’t using and tried to teach me some tunes but I wanted to play it like Bob Dylan. He also gave us some sausages (made from the moose the antlers had once belonged to) for our journey (whose antlers hung over the fireplace in the basement rec-room). We affectionately referred to it as Minnesota Moose Mung while on the road.

Mom and Dad weren’t sure what Norm and I had in common. Norm was so young and effeminate looking that they might have figured something strange was going on between us. The subject was not breached but Mom was likely relieved that we slept on separate beds and in separate rooms. After a few days, they drove us downtown where we could hitch a ride south. I felt the chill of icy roads and wondered why I was ever leaving that home for this adventure.

Our first ride got us as far as Richland and we were stranded there for half a day. It was getting towards the afternoon when I started practicing on the harmonica. I wanted it to sound bluesy but all I could manage was noise. About that time a big-rig pulled up; “How far you goin’?”  Norm called out as the driver reached over opening the passenger door.

“Depends, can he play that thing?” He pointed to me.

Norm’s enthusiasm embarrassed me, “Sure! He damned-well can play it.”

“I’m going straight through to Stockton and I need to stay awake.”

Hell, I couldn’t do anything but make noise on that damned harmonica but the driver didn’t care at all.

“Can you play ‘Red River Valley’?” the driver shouted over the noise of the diesel as we climbed aboard.

“I know the tune but I got to tell you right off I’m just learning to use this thing.” I admitted.

“Make yourselves comfortable… we’ve got a-long-ways to go tonight.” He motioned to Norm to crawl through the curtains to the sleeper bed in back.

“You can sit up here.” He wanted me up front with him... “I don’t give a shit if you can play or not. I just need some noise to keep my eyes open.”

“Okay then, you’ve got yourself some noise.”

By the time the rig dropped us off in Stockton I had learned to play “Red River Valley”. The ride was as wild as the I-97 through central Oregon. The two-lane highway was icy and completely sheeted-over with ice or blanketed with packed snow. This didn’t slow down the trucker one bit. I’d never seen anyone drive like that and I likely never will either. The guy handled that rig on those roads like he was a formula-1 racer, yet, I rarely felt my life was in danger. Passing rigs and slowing only when he suspected a speed trap, the driver chain smoked and coached me with his song through the long night. Arriving at the race track I was pleased Miriam was still there for me. We made up for lost time in the pillow shack and life was indeed good once more.

Most of the cleanup-crew had drifted off but Dan and Linda were still in the trailer. The company it was rented from had either forgotten about it or been waiting for somebody to return it. There were activities for what was left of the clean-up crew at the race track. One of the most enjoyable tasks was the dirt-bike races held on a track that was tricked-out with jumps, puddles and mud-holes, inside the oval of the quarter-midget track. A few of us volunteered to be red-flagmen. It was dirty, muddy, noisy and sometimes dangerous work, pulling bikes and bikers, from mud-holes after spills and waving the red flags until all was clear. Other times there were parties with a catered full-bar at the tower with the drivers and their dates or wives.

Miriam and Norm got along so well that we talked of going to L.A. together. We agreed that the race track gig was winding down and there was increasingly less for us to do there. Norm and I had a bond that happens on the road; standing in rain or sleet at a freeway entrance with a sign and a common destination. Miriam and Norm possessed combined street smarts that was tempered so very slightly by my age. I was twenty-three but may as well have been a white haired old man compared to my companions. Anyone seeing us could have imagined that I might be their leader or guru. However, Norm and Miriam had no use for a leader or guru and, even at times when I felt paternal towards them, I knew in my heart that it wasn’t my wisdom or age that carried the day.

“Is it warmer in L.A.?” I was huddled with Miriam under a blanket… it was drizzling wet outside the shack.

“Gotta be drier than this.” Norm answered, shivering in a corner from the other side of the shack.

“I’m ready for a change,” Miriam threw in, “the food is getting scarcer here and things are getting back to normal at the track. I have a feeling that Mr. Carter will have us out of here soon anyway.”

“Anybody been in L.A. at all… is there anything there?” I looked at Norm who shot back with another one of his, Duh, smirks. People like Norm make a place for themselves no matter where they are.

“I know of a house in Hollywood… sort of a commune… a big place.” Norm offered.

“How many people are there?” Miriam asked.

“Last time I was there it was like a family… about twenty. It had several rooms… pretty nice place really.”