Wow - this is my 300th post... Who'd have thought??? :-) ... And yet the story goes on:
I went through a "journey of introspection" in the winter of 1972... It's kind of strange to describe because I really enjoyed living in Eugene (Oregon) and wasn't the least bit unhappy. As a matter of fact, I recall feeling a deep sense of peace and well-being... But I knew things couldn't go on the way they had been going - having my life thrown into utter chaos every time my mother or sister decided to do something stupid on a whim...
Furthermore - I was sick of never having a penny to my name. Even when I was making good money as a delivery driver in Dallas all of it went to my mother and sister... It wasn't that I wanted money to spend on "things" (I'd been around my sister enough to know the folly of that)... I just wanted some control over whether there would be a roof over my head and food in the fridge at the end of the month... Somehow, that really didn't seem like a lot to ask :-)
So let me recap where I stood in the late fall of 1972:
I'd graduated from high school (at age 16) roughly 30 months earlier and hadn't done a darn thing for at least 21 months of that time. I had spent one semester in college but that got disrupted when my mother was hospitalized and almost died of cancer. (I really didn't see myself as the "college type" anyway)... And I had recently spent a few months driving a delivery truck and (in retrospect) I had been extremely good at it, but I certainly didn't feel that way at the time. (I've always been my toughest critic, and having my former boss constantly berate me didn't help matters either) ...
Aside: The sense of inadequacy probably goes back to the "Dunning-Kruger Effect". One of the findings is that people who are exceptionally good at things generally assume everyone one else is as well :-)
So the obvious conclusion was that I needed to find a job. For the first month or so I checked the classified pretty much every day but there really wasn't much available, and there were a couple of reasons for that: The first was that hundreds of thousands of people had been thrown out of work in the Seattle area during Boeing's 1971 downturn and a lot of them ended up in Eugene. And the second was that Eugene was a college town and there were thousands of students looking for part time jobs. (There was no need to hire full-time workers for unskilled positions.)
It seemed like my best long term prospect would be in a car-related field. And since sales was out of the question (wrong personality type), and becoming a mechanic required a huge investment (mechanics have to provide their own hand tools), I figured my best shot was as a car parts counterman.
So, sometime in November I decided to "pull out all the stops" and made a list of every car dealer and parts store in Eugene. Then I put on a suit and tie, and (over the period of a couple of days) I went to every one of them (about 25 total) .. It wasn't easy because I didn't have a car and it was cold out. I took the bus downtown one day, but most of the time I walked... Miles and miles...
I got the same answer almost every place I went... A lot of them seemed to feel bad for me (I must have looked pitiful) and told me that it wasn't my fault - they were having to turn away aerospace engineers with families as well. But that didn't really make me feel any better...
There was, however, one place that was looking for a parts trainee: Centennial Porsche/Audi on Centennial Loop. (I'm not sure when it closed but it's definitely not there anymore.) I got along really well with the parts manager, my fluency in German was a plus, and it was a good location - right off of Coburg Road. I could walk there in less than 1/2 hour if need be...The manager said he'd get back to me, but he never did... I knew I should call, but I was afraid to because that was my only remaining option and I really didn't want to hear that final "No"...
You know - although being a parts man at a Porsche dealership seemed like a "dream job" at the time I've often reflected on how incredibly fortunate I was that I didn't get it... Because when I finally gave up waiting for that call (after about a month) I set in motion a chain of events that changed my life forever...
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Saturday, December 29, 2012
And So It Went
I'm not sure exactly how to explain the 4 months I spent in Eugene. That's because nothing significant happened - and that's the main reason I left after only 4 months, but I'll get around to that eventually. So the next couple of posts will be more "odds and ends" than narrative.
First - to wrap up the story of Bernie:
It took a while for him to make it from Dallas with the trailer, but he did eventually arrive in Eugene and he got himself a little apartment west of downtown. I vaguely recall that Karina moved in with him for a short while, but they had some kind of major falling out and that was the beginning of the end of their relationship...
Bernie got a job as a traveling piano tuner (nowadays they have electronic equipment for that but he did it mostly by ear - apparently people like that were hard to find back in the day), and one of his clients was a store called Tallman Piano in Redding, California. They offered Bernie a full time job so he moved down there, and in 1975 (after a few twists and turns) he opened his own store called Bernie's Guitar Shop. (He's been there ever since.) I visited him numerous times over the years, but I'm pretty sure Karina never saw much of him after he left Eugene... He ended up getting married in the late 1970s and afterward he didn't want to have much of anything to do with me. I guess he just wanted to put it all behind him.
BTW: Shortly after Bernie arrived in Oregon we all drove out to the coast and stopped at Devil's Churn and the top of Cape Perpetua before heading back. Yeah - I'm not even going to try and describe how incredible those two spots are. Hard to forget the first time you see them.
As I mentioned in my prior post, mom, Karina and I rented a 2 bedroom unit on the ground floor near the southwest corner of the Clairmont Apartments between Adkins Street and Coburg Road... The main thing I remember about the complex is that there was a really nice pool table in the rec room (but that's not particularly relevant). The manager was a widow named Jeanne (an absolutely wonderful woman). Her best friend Doris also lived in the complex (she was a retired school teacher who had never married). Mom got along really well with them and they all remained friends for many years. (Jeanne and Doris even attended my wedding reception, but I'm getting ahead of myself.) We didn't have a car at the time so Jeanne took mom shopping when we needed stuff. That was a huge help. (As it turned out, mom never drove again after being hospitalized for cancer earlier that year...)
Aside: Jeanne's car was a 1965 Chevy Impala sedan (cream colored) with a 327 engine. I remember that because I did a tune-up for her once. Unfortunately I couldn't get it running quite right because it had a burnt exhaust valve on the passenger side (probably due to a stuck heat riser). Sigh... Yet another detail that got stuck in my memory despite being utterly irrelevant :-)
Mom loved Eugene more than I did. She'd spent her entire life dreaming of moving to Oregon, and Eugene (as it was in 1972) turned out to be an ideal place to be a "psychic counselor / astrologer". It was only a matter of weeks before mom (once again) had a sizable group of followers. I honestly don't remember much about them (other than a couple of them were attractive women) because I'd kind of stopped paying attention to much of anything at that point :-)
My only activity in Eugene of any significance was playing guitar in a folk mass group at St. Paul's (not far from the apartments)... The parish had a young (progressive) priest, and I met some really nice young people there but didn't form any lasting relationships... I remember that two of the guys (about my age) were studying electronics at Lane County Community College. I was quite envious of them, although it seemed like they were just a bit too "full of themselves" about it :-) Yeah - I couldn't even afford to think about school at the time.
Also, there was a girl in the folk mass group (another guitarist) I thought was really cute... I recently did some poking around on Google and it turns out she was younger than I thought she was (that explains a lot). And yes - I do remember her name (her father owned the largest car dealership in town) but it seems kind of pointless to mention it :-)
Yeah... For me, the time spent in Eugene was about trying to figure out who I was and where I belonged in the world... And that will be the topic of my next post.
First - to wrap up the story of Bernie:
It took a while for him to make it from Dallas with the trailer, but he did eventually arrive in Eugene and he got himself a little apartment west of downtown. I vaguely recall that Karina moved in with him for a short while, but they had some kind of major falling out and that was the beginning of the end of their relationship...
Bernie got a job as a traveling piano tuner (nowadays they have electronic equipment for that but he did it mostly by ear - apparently people like that were hard to find back in the day), and one of his clients was a store called Tallman Piano in Redding, California. They offered Bernie a full time job so he moved down there, and in 1975 (after a few twists and turns) he opened his own store called Bernie's Guitar Shop. (He's been there ever since.) I visited him numerous times over the years, but I'm pretty sure Karina never saw much of him after he left Eugene... He ended up getting married in the late 1970s and afterward he didn't want to have much of anything to do with me. I guess he just wanted to put it all behind him.
BTW: Shortly after Bernie arrived in Oregon we all drove out to the coast and stopped at Devil's Churn and the top of Cape Perpetua before heading back. Yeah - I'm not even going to try and describe how incredible those two spots are. Hard to forget the first time you see them.
As I mentioned in my prior post, mom, Karina and I rented a 2 bedroom unit on the ground floor near the southwest corner of the Clairmont Apartments between Adkins Street and Coburg Road... The main thing I remember about the complex is that there was a really nice pool table in the rec room (but that's not particularly relevant). The manager was a widow named Jeanne (an absolutely wonderful woman). Her best friend Doris also lived in the complex (she was a retired school teacher who had never married). Mom got along really well with them and they all remained friends for many years. (Jeanne and Doris even attended my wedding reception, but I'm getting ahead of myself.) We didn't have a car at the time so Jeanne took mom shopping when we needed stuff. That was a huge help. (As it turned out, mom never drove again after being hospitalized for cancer earlier that year...)
Aside: Jeanne's car was a 1965 Chevy Impala sedan (cream colored) with a 327 engine. I remember that because I did a tune-up for her once. Unfortunately I couldn't get it running quite right because it had a burnt exhaust valve on the passenger side (probably due to a stuck heat riser). Sigh... Yet another detail that got stuck in my memory despite being utterly irrelevant :-)
Mom loved Eugene more than I did. She'd spent her entire life dreaming of moving to Oregon, and Eugene (as it was in 1972) turned out to be an ideal place to be a "psychic counselor / astrologer". It was only a matter of weeks before mom (once again) had a sizable group of followers. I honestly don't remember much about them (other than a couple of them were attractive women) because I'd kind of stopped paying attention to much of anything at that point :-)
My only activity in Eugene of any significance was playing guitar in a folk mass group at St. Paul's (not far from the apartments)... The parish had a young (progressive) priest, and I met some really nice young people there but didn't form any lasting relationships... I remember that two of the guys (about my age) were studying electronics at Lane County Community College. I was quite envious of them, although it seemed like they were just a bit too "full of themselves" about it :-) Yeah - I couldn't even afford to think about school at the time.
Also, there was a girl in the folk mass group (another guitarist) I thought was really cute... I recently did some poking around on Google and it turns out she was younger than I thought she was (that explains a lot). And yes - I do remember her name (her father owned the largest car dealership in town) but it seems kind of pointless to mention it :-)
Yeah... For me, the time spent in Eugene was about trying to figure out who I was and where I belonged in the world... And that will be the topic of my next post.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Home - or Something Like it
Between moving away from Lakeshire (near St. Louis) in December of 1961 and arriving in Eugene (Oregon) in October of 1972 I lived a lot of different places. (Twenty-one addresses in three countries to be exact. But who's counting?) ... And none of them ever felt like "home". But Eugene did - and it's hard to explain exactly why. So I'll just throw out some observations and hope that (taken together) they paint the picture...
Back in 1972 Eugene was an ultra-liberal college town, with a number of "hippie" communes in the surrounding countryside. It was kind of magnet for "alternative thinkers" and "new age" types... And even thought the population was close to 100,000, it still had a "small town" feel. The majority of the residents were unpretentious, casual, laid-back and friendly - you got a smile and a greeting from almost everyone you encountered... And, whereas teenagers and young adults in most places tended to be extremely conscious of their "image" (clothes, hair, makeup), the younger crowd in Eugene didn't much seem to care. There was a de-facto "uniform" worn by both genders: bib overalls with either a plaid shirt or a sweatshirt. (You saw people dressed like that everywhere.) The girls tended to have long straight hair and very little (if any) makeup... And I actually found that to be rather sexy... (Yes - my tastes had changed significantly since my high school days.)
Aside: I've visited Eugene many times over the years, and at some point the place got overrun with pretentious douches... I think they were mostly refugees from the Bay Area who flooded north after the passage of "Prop 13" - bringing their home equity money, BMWs, bad driving habits and snobbish "hipper than thou" attitude with them. (I could go on a lengthy rant here, but I won't) ... But Oregon hasn't been the same since :-)
Then there was the climate... A quick recap: Since leaving Germany (which had a climate similar to the Willamette Valley) we spent two winters in Winnipeg where it was insanely cold, one and a half in Southern California where it was always "short sleeve weather", and two in Texas where the average high in January was almost 60°... The point being that I was looking forward to a winter that felt like winter but wasn't brutally cold. And the climate in Eugene pretty much fit the bill. In an average year the temperature might drop into the mid 20s a few times, but highs are typically somewhere in the 40s - chilly, but not that cold.
Another aside: In a strange twist of fate, the overnight low temperature on December 8th, 1972 (less than 2 months after we got there) reached -12°F. That was (and still is) the all time record low for Eugene - and pretty darn frigid even by Winnipeg standards... Yeah - we were miserable. The baseboard heaters in our apartment weren't designed for that kind of cold and we had to stay bundled up for days... Then for weeks afterward the classifieds were full of ads for really nice cars with cracked engine blocks - like a low mileage '69 Z-28 for $800... Yeah - if I'd had any money at all :-)
Yet another aside: A lot of people would be surprised to know that every major city on the east coast gets more rain (in inches, not days) than Portland or Eugene... So when people from out of town ask me about "all that Oregon rain" I tell them: "Yes... It does rain a lot of the time here - but it's a dry rain" :-)
But none of that explains what I liked so much about the "feel" of Eugene in the winter... I guess it was all the evergreens (I'd never lived anywhere that stayed so green in the winter), the smell of "nature" (enhanced by the earthy aroma of barkdust from the mill in Springfield), the fog, the mist ... the almost constant drizzle - and the dew that covered everything... It seemed to envelop and "embrace" you... Yeah - I know that's not everybody's "cup of tea" - but I loved it.
So, all in all, it was "bitter sweet" - being in a place where I felt so at home ... yet nothing had really changed... We were still broke - and I still couldn't find a job - or afford to go to school... And I couldn't see how that was ever going to change.
Back in 1972 Eugene was an ultra-liberal college town, with a number of "hippie" communes in the surrounding countryside. It was kind of magnet for "alternative thinkers" and "new age" types... And even thought the population was close to 100,000, it still had a "small town" feel. The majority of the residents were unpretentious, casual, laid-back and friendly - you got a smile and a greeting from almost everyone you encountered... And, whereas teenagers and young adults in most places tended to be extremely conscious of their "image" (clothes, hair, makeup), the younger crowd in Eugene didn't much seem to care. There was a de-facto "uniform" worn by both genders: bib overalls with either a plaid shirt or a sweatshirt. (You saw people dressed like that everywhere.) The girls tended to have long straight hair and very little (if any) makeup... And I actually found that to be rather sexy... (Yes - my tastes had changed significantly since my high school days.)
Aside: I've visited Eugene many times over the years, and at some point the place got overrun with pretentious douches... I think they were mostly refugees from the Bay Area who flooded north after the passage of "Prop 13" - bringing their home equity money, BMWs, bad driving habits and snobbish "hipper than thou" attitude with them. (I could go on a lengthy rant here, but I won't) ... But Oregon hasn't been the same since :-)
Then there was the climate... A quick recap: Since leaving Germany (which had a climate similar to the Willamette Valley) we spent two winters in Winnipeg where it was insanely cold, one and a half in Southern California where it was always "short sleeve weather", and two in Texas where the average high in January was almost 60°... The point being that I was looking forward to a winter that felt like winter but wasn't brutally cold. And the climate in Eugene pretty much fit the bill. In an average year the temperature might drop into the mid 20s a few times, but highs are typically somewhere in the 40s - chilly, but not that cold.
Another aside: In a strange twist of fate, the overnight low temperature on December 8th, 1972 (less than 2 months after we got there) reached -12°F. That was (and still is) the all time record low for Eugene - and pretty darn frigid even by Winnipeg standards... Yeah - we were miserable. The baseboard heaters in our apartment weren't designed for that kind of cold and we had to stay bundled up for days... Then for weeks afterward the classifieds were full of ads for really nice cars with cracked engine blocks - like a low mileage '69 Z-28 for $800... Yeah - if I'd had any money at all :-)
Yet another aside: A lot of people would be surprised to know that every major city on the east coast gets more rain (in inches, not days) than Portland or Eugene... So when people from out of town ask me about "all that Oregon rain" I tell them: "Yes... It does rain a lot of the time here - but it's a dry rain" :-)
But none of that explains what I liked so much about the "feel" of Eugene in the winter... I guess it was all the evergreens (I'd never lived anywhere that stayed so green in the winter), the smell of "nature" (enhanced by the earthy aroma of barkdust from the mill in Springfield), the fog, the mist ... the almost constant drizzle - and the dew that covered everything... It seemed to envelop and "embrace" you... Yeah - I know that's not everybody's "cup of tea" - but I loved it.
So, all in all, it was "bitter sweet" - being in a place where I felt so at home ... yet nothing had really changed... We were still broke - and I still couldn't find a job - or afford to go to school... And I couldn't see how that was ever going to change.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Regroup and Redeploy
I wish I could remember more about what happened when we got back from that road trip in September of 1972... I suspect it's so hazy because (as usual) I wasn't involved in the decision making process. (Just along for the ride.)
As best as I can recall, Karina and I told mom about the places we'd been and the things we'd seen, and it was quickly decided that moving to Oregon had been the right idea but (for whatever reason) the timing was wrong. Mom also determined that Eugene was where we were supposed to be - largely because of the rainbow that appeared next to our car as we were passing though :-)
So - around the start of October I got my child support payment, mom got a sizable check from aunt Vesti and we started selling everything we weren't planning on taking with us... I'm not sure exactly how long it took (maybe a couple of weeks?) but we scraped together enough money for three plane tickets and a couple of months rent once we got to Eugene... Yeah - we were "good to go".
Aside: My sister Karina made her ex-husband Bernie rent a trailer and haul all of our stuff up to Oregon with the Mazda. (He had to go through California because of the weather.) I'm not sure he really wanted to leave Texas but he was kind of "lost" at that point and didn't know what else to do... I felt kind of sorry for him :-)
Now... Many posts ago I mentioned a young orderly (Ron) at the hospital in Denton whose wife had recently died during surgery - and he spent a lot of time with my mom while she was being treated there for cancer... As it turned out, he had moved back to Portland (his home town) and when mom contacted him he volunteered to pick us up at the airport and help us get settled in.
It was early evening when our flight landed in Portland - a bit too late to drive to Eugene. So we spent the night at Ron's house in North Portland (it was supposedly a bad neighborhood, but it looked fine to us)... I think we slept late the next the morning, went out for breakfast and took our time getting on the road.
I remember the drive down to Eugene quite well. That's because Ron didn't have a car, so he borrowed his brother's 1967 Firebird 400 convertible (dark green) and let me drive it most of the way there... Now - I am not a fan of GM cars in general, but I love Firebirds - and the 67 400 vert is about as sweet as they get. (The only GM vehicle I have ever owned is a '75 Trans Am - but that is yet to come.)
And while I'm on the topic of cars I guess this is as good a place as any for this story:
A week or so later Ron borrowed his sister's 1970 Mustang so we could spend the day at the Oregon coast. It was a "plain Jane" blue coupe - no emblems or badges to indicate there was anything special about it... Then I got into a situation where I was passing some slow traffic on a two-lane road and slightly misjudged the speed of an oncoming log truck. It was too late to back off, so I floored it - and the Mustang took off like a rocket - made it with plenty of room to spare... I turned to Ron and asked what the deal was with the car and he claimed ignorance, so when we stopped for lunch I popped the hood and found myself staring at what I instantly recognized as a 300 horsepower 4-bbl 351 Cleveland V-8 (the valve covers are a dead giveaway)... I was rather surprised, because that engine was a performance upgrade for "Mach 1" models. I had no idea you could even get one in a base coupe... Ron said his sister bought the car new off the lot and didn't think there was anything special about it, so I figure somebody else must have special ordered it and backed out of the deal... (BTW: I really like 65-70 Mustangs too, but again, I've never owned one.)
Aside: I was pretty "obsessive compulsive" about cars at the time. When we were in Tyler I subscribed to both Hot Rod and Car Craft magazines and had accumulated a small reference library of magazines, books and new car brochures... The point is that I can still name the visible differences between the Windsor and Cleveland 351 engines down to the orientation of the fuel pump bolts. But I digress...
When we arrived in Eugene we found a room at an old hotel in the downtown area. I'm not 100% sure, but I think it was the "Eugene Hotel" (now a senior living facility)...
We picked up a newspaper in the lobby and as soon as we got to the room Karina went through the rental ads calling out numbers to mom (who was working the phone) while I sat there with a map and a notepad jotting down the addresses. As soon as we had a workable list we prioritized it and took off in the Firebird with Ron driving and me navigating. I'm not sure how many places we looked at, but we quickly settled on a 2 bedroom unit in the Clairmont Apartments on Adkins Street (near Coburg Road south of Beltline). It was furnished and already vacant, so we could move in the next day.
When we got back to the hotel (not much more than an hour after arriving in Eugene) we called the telco to arrange for phone service and took care of a few other odds and ends (like calling Bernie to give him the "go" signal)... Ron was stunned... He said he had never seen anybody get settled in that fast after arriving in a new town. (It was almost like a military operation.) And we were like "Yeah - we've done this before" :-)
OK. There's one more related story that I thought was kind of funny:
After Ron left we decided to call room service for dinner (that was one of our usual indulgences) and after looking over the menu I decided on the "Ragout Hogie". When I told mom what I wanted I pronounced ragout just like it's spelled: "rag-out"... Mom and Karina both started laughing (they were frequently amused by my lack of sophistication) and explained that the correct pronunciation is "rah-goo". (Yeah - I was a bit embarrassed)...
So mom called to place the order, and for some reason she had to repeat "Rah-goo Hoagie" three or four times. When she got off the phone she totally cracked up and told us that after the last repetition the woman had said: "Oh! You mean the rag-out Hoagie!". (So - apparently my pronunciation was the correct one in Eugene)... Well - I thought it was funny :-)
The next morning we took a cab to the apartment - and thus began the next chapter...
As best as I can recall, Karina and I told mom about the places we'd been and the things we'd seen, and it was quickly decided that moving to Oregon had been the right idea but (for whatever reason) the timing was wrong. Mom also determined that Eugene was where we were supposed to be - largely because of the rainbow that appeared next to our car as we were passing though :-)
So - around the start of October I got my child support payment, mom got a sizable check from aunt Vesti and we started selling everything we weren't planning on taking with us... I'm not sure exactly how long it took (maybe a couple of weeks?) but we scraped together enough money for three plane tickets and a couple of months rent once we got to Eugene... Yeah - we were "good to go".
Aside: My sister Karina made her ex-husband Bernie rent a trailer and haul all of our stuff up to Oregon with the Mazda. (He had to go through California because of the weather.) I'm not sure he really wanted to leave Texas but he was kind of "lost" at that point and didn't know what else to do... I felt kind of sorry for him :-)
Now... Many posts ago I mentioned a young orderly (Ron) at the hospital in Denton whose wife had recently died during surgery - and he spent a lot of time with my mom while she was being treated there for cancer... As it turned out, he had moved back to Portland (his home town) and when mom contacted him he volunteered to pick us up at the airport and help us get settled in.
It was early evening when our flight landed in Portland - a bit too late to drive to Eugene. So we spent the night at Ron's house in North Portland (it was supposedly a bad neighborhood, but it looked fine to us)... I think we slept late the next the morning, went out for breakfast and took our time getting on the road.
I remember the drive down to Eugene quite well. That's because Ron didn't have a car, so he borrowed his brother's 1967 Firebird 400 convertible (dark green) and let me drive it most of the way there... Now - I am not a fan of GM cars in general, but I love Firebirds - and the 67 400 vert is about as sweet as they get. (The only GM vehicle I have ever owned is a '75 Trans Am - but that is yet to come.)
And while I'm on the topic of cars I guess this is as good a place as any for this story:
A week or so later Ron borrowed his sister's 1970 Mustang so we could spend the day at the Oregon coast. It was a "plain Jane" blue coupe - no emblems or badges to indicate there was anything special about it... Then I got into a situation where I was passing some slow traffic on a two-lane road and slightly misjudged the speed of an oncoming log truck. It was too late to back off, so I floored it - and the Mustang took off like a rocket - made it with plenty of room to spare... I turned to Ron and asked what the deal was with the car and he claimed ignorance, so when we stopped for lunch I popped the hood and found myself staring at what I instantly recognized as a 300 horsepower 4-bbl 351 Cleveland V-8 (the valve covers are a dead giveaway)... I was rather surprised, because that engine was a performance upgrade for "Mach 1" models. I had no idea you could even get one in a base coupe... Ron said his sister bought the car new off the lot and didn't think there was anything special about it, so I figure somebody else must have special ordered it and backed out of the deal... (BTW: I really like 65-70 Mustangs too, but again, I've never owned one.)
Aside: I was pretty "obsessive compulsive" about cars at the time. When we were in Tyler I subscribed to both Hot Rod and Car Craft magazines and had accumulated a small reference library of magazines, books and new car brochures... The point is that I can still name the visible differences between the Windsor and Cleveland 351 engines down to the orientation of the fuel pump bolts. But I digress...
When we arrived in Eugene we found a room at an old hotel in the downtown area. I'm not 100% sure, but I think it was the "Eugene Hotel" (now a senior living facility)...
We picked up a newspaper in the lobby and as soon as we got to the room Karina went through the rental ads calling out numbers to mom (who was working the phone) while I sat there with a map and a notepad jotting down the addresses. As soon as we had a workable list we prioritized it and took off in the Firebird with Ron driving and me navigating. I'm not sure how many places we looked at, but we quickly settled on a 2 bedroom unit in the Clairmont Apartments on Adkins Street (near Coburg Road south of Beltline). It was furnished and already vacant, so we could move in the next day.
When we got back to the hotel (not much more than an hour after arriving in Eugene) we called the telco to arrange for phone service and took care of a few other odds and ends (like calling Bernie to give him the "go" signal)... Ron was stunned... He said he had never seen anybody get settled in that fast after arriving in a new town. (It was almost like a military operation.) And we were like "Yeah - we've done this before" :-)
OK. There's one more related story that I thought was kind of funny:
After Ron left we decided to call room service for dinner (that was one of our usual indulgences) and after looking over the menu I decided on the "Ragout Hogie". When I told mom what I wanted I pronounced ragout just like it's spelled: "rag-out"... Mom and Karina both started laughing (they were frequently amused by my lack of sophistication) and explained that the correct pronunciation is "rah-goo". (Yeah - I was a bit embarrassed)...
So mom called to place the order, and for some reason she had to repeat "Rah-goo Hoagie" three or four times. When she got off the phone she totally cracked up and told us that after the last repetition the woman had said: "Oh! You mean the rag-out Hoagie!". (So - apparently my pronunciation was the correct one in Eugene)... Well - I thought it was funny :-)
The next morning we took a cab to the apartment - and thus began the next chapter...
Sunday, December 16, 2012
The Road to Home
Before I get to the topic at hand I wanted to address the fact that I haven't said very much about my thoughts and emotions in my most recent posts. And there are a couple of simple reasons for that:
The first is that between 1965 and 1972 I had been through the "emotional wringer" so many times there wasn't a whole lot left - I was pretty much numb... And the second is that I was trying to take a "faith based" approach to life. You know - assume that everything happens for a reason and there's no sense in stressing over it. Just "roll with the punches" and "go with the flow". So yeah - there was a lot of chaos going on around me but I never once thought about trying to change anything... "Que sera, sera" :-)
And on to the story:
It was early afternoon by the time we finished packing up and headed out of Portland on I-80N (now I-84)... I don't recall much from that day's drive. I'm sure we must have noticed the waterfalls along the Columbia River gorge but we didn't stop. And I'm almost certain we spent the night in Baker City. (Once again, it got really cold overnight.) ... Yeah - that's not very far from Portland, but the "disintegrating tire" incident had prompted us to slow down considerably :-)
The next day we continued on I-80N through Idaho and down to Ogden, Utah. But instead of continuing across Wyoming (like we'd done on our "outbound" trip) we decided to take a more direct route to Dallas, dropping down through Salt Lake City and Provo and then taking highway 6 to highway 50 through Colorado.
Aside: There's a place on highway 6 southbound where you drop down out of the hills and you suddenly find yourself in the desert surrounded by plateaus and mesas. (It's a scene right out of a "Road Runner" cartoon)... I was completely taken by surprise. I'd had no idea that sort of terrain extended that far north from Arizona... Simply amazing...
We ended up stopping for the night in Grand Junction, Colorado. I recall that it was a really nice little town, and we stayed at a much cheaper motel than usual (we were almost broke)... And (again) it was really cold out.
Another aside: I've been trying to remember what the usual sleeping arrangements were during that trip and I'm drawing a total blank. I vaguely recall that we typically got two rooms and I think my sister Karina preferred sharing a room with me rather than her ex-husband Bernie, but we may have all shared the same room (2 beds and a cot) some of the time... Obviously nothing memorable happened :-)
In the morning we awoke hoping that (with any luck) this would be the last day of the trip - and for once we were right :-) But first we had to make it through the Rockies...
Highway 50 from Grand Junction to Pueblo was a real nail biter... I don't know if they've improved it in the 40 years since but back then it was narrow and twisty with steep drop-offs and very few guard rails. Yeah - Karina was freaking out... It seemed like we climbed forever - finally crossing the continental divide at Monarch Pass (over 11,000 feet)... Amazing view - scary drive...
Sort of an aside: Nowadays you can drive your car just about anywhere and it will run properly because the engine controller monitors the amount of oxygen in the exhaust and varies the injector pulse width to maintain an ideal air/fuel ratio. So driving at high altitudes (where there is a lot less oxygen) is not a problem - the controller compensates for it...
But carburetors don't do that. They are tuned to operate at a particular elevation and as you gain altitude the engine gets progressively richer... So as we headed up into the Rockies I had to be extremely careful with the gas pedal because if I pushed on it (or backed off) too quickly the car would backfire (loudly)... Karina was already on edge - she didn't need to hear any explosions :-)
I don't remember driving down the other side of the divide. I know that when we got to Pueblo we took I-25 south to highway 87 and headed into the Texas panhandle. And I remember stopping at a restaurant in Dalhart with the intent of having dinner, but that didn't work out... As I've mentioned before, Bernie and I both had long hair and even though the restaurant was almost completely empty we couldn't get the waitress to look at us. We sat there for about 15 minutes before finally deciding we'd have better luck in Amarillo...
I think it was around Childress that we seriously started considering stopping for the night. It was late, we were dog tired, and Dallas was still 4 hours away. But we weren't sure we could find a motel we could afford and decided to push on...
We finally got to the apartment in Addison around midnight - right where the journey had started more than 2 weeks earlier (but with an additional 8000 miles on odometer and a lot less money in the bank)...
Mom was thrilled to see us. And it was good to be home :-)
The first is that between 1965 and 1972 I had been through the "emotional wringer" so many times there wasn't a whole lot left - I was pretty much numb... And the second is that I was trying to take a "faith based" approach to life. You know - assume that everything happens for a reason and there's no sense in stressing over it. Just "roll with the punches" and "go with the flow". So yeah - there was a lot of chaos going on around me but I never once thought about trying to change anything... "Que sera, sera" :-)
And on to the story:
It was early afternoon by the time we finished packing up and headed out of Portland on I-80N (now I-84)... I don't recall much from that day's drive. I'm sure we must have noticed the waterfalls along the Columbia River gorge but we didn't stop. And I'm almost certain we spent the night in Baker City. (Once again, it got really cold overnight.) ... Yeah - that's not very far from Portland, but the "disintegrating tire" incident had prompted us to slow down considerably :-)
The next day we continued on I-80N through Idaho and down to Ogden, Utah. But instead of continuing across Wyoming (like we'd done on our "outbound" trip) we decided to take a more direct route to Dallas, dropping down through Salt Lake City and Provo and then taking highway 6 to highway 50 through Colorado.
Aside: There's a place on highway 6 southbound where you drop down out of the hills and you suddenly find yourself in the desert surrounded by plateaus and mesas. (It's a scene right out of a "Road Runner" cartoon)... I was completely taken by surprise. I'd had no idea that sort of terrain extended that far north from Arizona... Simply amazing...
We ended up stopping for the night in Grand Junction, Colorado. I recall that it was a really nice little town, and we stayed at a much cheaper motel than usual (we were almost broke)... And (again) it was really cold out.
Another aside: I've been trying to remember what the usual sleeping arrangements were during that trip and I'm drawing a total blank. I vaguely recall that we typically got two rooms and I think my sister Karina preferred sharing a room with me rather than her ex-husband Bernie, but we may have all shared the same room (2 beds and a cot) some of the time... Obviously nothing memorable happened :-)
In the morning we awoke hoping that (with any luck) this would be the last day of the trip - and for once we were right :-) But first we had to make it through the Rockies...
Highway 50 from Grand Junction to Pueblo was a real nail biter... I don't know if they've improved it in the 40 years since but back then it was narrow and twisty with steep drop-offs and very few guard rails. Yeah - Karina was freaking out... It seemed like we climbed forever - finally crossing the continental divide at Monarch Pass (over 11,000 feet)... Amazing view - scary drive...
Sort of an aside: Nowadays you can drive your car just about anywhere and it will run properly because the engine controller monitors the amount of oxygen in the exhaust and varies the injector pulse width to maintain an ideal air/fuel ratio. So driving at high altitudes (where there is a lot less oxygen) is not a problem - the controller compensates for it...
But carburetors don't do that. They are tuned to operate at a particular elevation and as you gain altitude the engine gets progressively richer... So as we headed up into the Rockies I had to be extremely careful with the gas pedal because if I pushed on it (or backed off) too quickly the car would backfire (loudly)... Karina was already on edge - she didn't need to hear any explosions :-)
I don't remember driving down the other side of the divide. I know that when we got to Pueblo we took I-25 south to highway 87 and headed into the Texas panhandle. And I remember stopping at a restaurant in Dalhart with the intent of having dinner, but that didn't work out... As I've mentioned before, Bernie and I both had long hair and even though the restaurant was almost completely empty we couldn't get the waitress to look at us. We sat there for about 15 minutes before finally deciding we'd have better luck in Amarillo...
I think it was around Childress that we seriously started considering stopping for the night. It was late, we were dog tired, and Dallas was still 4 hours away. But we weren't sure we could find a motel we could afford and decided to push on...
We finally got to the apartment in Addison around midnight - right where the journey had started more than 2 weeks earlier (but with an additional 8000 miles on odometer and a lot less money in the bank)...
Mom was thrilled to see us. And it was good to be home :-)
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Point of No Return
When Bernie and I started our job search in Portland in September of 1972 there were economic forces at work that we hadn't been aware of... The country (as a whole) was in something of a downturn that (in my opinion) was exacerbated by the wage and price freeze Nixon imposed in 1971, but the northwest had been particularly hard hit. And that was because of Boeing...
Between 1968 and 1971 the number of people employed by Boeing in the Seattle area dropped from around 100,000 to 32,700. (Much of it due to the cancellation of the SuperSonic Transport project in 1971.) In other words, almost 70,000 skilled aerospace workers had been laid off in a very short period of time... But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Almost the entire Boeing supply chain was located in the northwest as well, not to mention all the local businesses that depended on all those aerospace workers for their existence. The aggregate job loss was probably in the hundreds of thousands. It was catastrophic...
Of course, many of those who couldn't find work migrated south, so by the time Bernie, Karina and I arrived in Oregon jobs were all but impossible to find... And so it went... Bernie had once been an orderly, so we made the rounds of the local hospitals. That was usually pretty easy work to get, but there was nothing. Bernie also checked out all the music stores, and again, no luck...
I don't recall how many days we spent in the Portland area, but we did do quite a bit of exploring, and I can't help but be amazed at how much it has grown in the years since.
One day after stopping at St. Vincent hospital (no job openings) we had lunch at the Love's Barbeque (long defunct national chain) on Cedar Hills Blvd across from the Beaverton Mall (under construction at the time). That was pretty much the "outer bounds" of the Portland metro area. (I had no idea that 13 years later I'd be working a few blocks from there.) Then we headed south on 217 (a two lane rural road with stop signs) all the way to Lake Oswego, a rather tiny (albeit well-to-do) community - there wasn't a stoplight anywhere.
O.K. This is funny (or not)... One day when we were heading up Skyline Blvd I saw a "No Barking" sign... I thought that was one of the weirdest things I'd ever seen. I mean, the idea that there was a local "anti-barking" ordinance and they put up signs and everything... It took a full five minutes to dawn on me that someone had "doctored" a "No Parking" sign. (That's the funny part)... In my defense, the modification had been quite well done. You really couldn't tell :-)
We also spent some time poking around the inner southeast part of town (Buckman area - rents were cheap there) and I also recall that there were two sets of ridiculously tight curves on the locals freeways. One was at Terwilliger on I-5 south and the other at 39th on the Banfield. Fortunately, they've both since been significantly straightened (the latter one when they built the east side light rail in the early 1980s.) Yeah - the Banfield was pretty dangerous at the time...
All in all we really liked the area. We just couldn't find jobs anywhere...
And then one morning we realized we had reached the "point of no return". We had just enough money to either drive back to Dallas or rent a cheap apartment and eat for a few days - and that was it... So we decided it was time to throw in the towel, head back home and regroup...
Between 1968 and 1971 the number of people employed by Boeing in the Seattle area dropped from around 100,000 to 32,700. (Much of it due to the cancellation of the SuperSonic Transport project in 1971.) In other words, almost 70,000 skilled aerospace workers had been laid off in a very short period of time... But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Almost the entire Boeing supply chain was located in the northwest as well, not to mention all the local businesses that depended on all those aerospace workers for their existence. The aggregate job loss was probably in the hundreds of thousands. It was catastrophic...
Of course, many of those who couldn't find work migrated south, so by the time Bernie, Karina and I arrived in Oregon jobs were all but impossible to find... And so it went... Bernie had once been an orderly, so we made the rounds of the local hospitals. That was usually pretty easy work to get, but there was nothing. Bernie also checked out all the music stores, and again, no luck...
I don't recall how many days we spent in the Portland area, but we did do quite a bit of exploring, and I can't help but be amazed at how much it has grown in the years since.
One day after stopping at St. Vincent hospital (no job openings) we had lunch at the Love's Barbeque (long defunct national chain) on Cedar Hills Blvd across from the Beaverton Mall (under construction at the time). That was pretty much the "outer bounds" of the Portland metro area. (I had no idea that 13 years later I'd be working a few blocks from there.) Then we headed south on 217 (a two lane rural road with stop signs) all the way to Lake Oswego, a rather tiny (albeit well-to-do) community - there wasn't a stoplight anywhere.
O.K. This is funny (or not)... One day when we were heading up Skyline Blvd I saw a "No Barking" sign... I thought that was one of the weirdest things I'd ever seen. I mean, the idea that there was a local "anti-barking" ordinance and they put up signs and everything... It took a full five minutes to dawn on me that someone had "doctored" a "No Parking" sign. (That's the funny part)... In my defense, the modification had been quite well done. You really couldn't tell :-)
We also spent some time poking around the inner southeast part of town (Buckman area - rents were cheap there) and I also recall that there were two sets of ridiculously tight curves on the locals freeways. One was at Terwilliger on I-5 south and the other at 39th on the Banfield. Fortunately, they've both since been significantly straightened (the latter one when they built the east side light rail in the early 1980s.) Yeah - the Banfield was pretty dangerous at the time...
All in all we really liked the area. We just couldn't find jobs anywhere...
And then one morning we realized we had reached the "point of no return". We had just enough money to either drive back to Dallas or rent a cheap apartment and eat for a few days - and that was it... So we decided it was time to throw in the towel, head back home and regroup...
Sunday, December 9, 2012
And Back North Again...
By the time the sun rose on the eighth day of our trip Karina had decided that heading south out of Oregon had been a huge mistake and we needed to head back up there right away.
We had just put down a deposit (and first month's rent) on a house in Escondido so Bernie called the landlord and explained the situation. Luckily, the guy agreed to tear up the lease and give us all the money back, so we swung by his office and hit the road...
Aside: It had all happened so fast that I didn't even have time to get in touch with my friends and tell them we were leaving... I had just showed up out of the blue saying I was moving back and then they never heard from me again... Until Facebook :-)
We really didn't want to drive through the center of L.A. again and since we were already on Highway 395 we decided to just head north into the Sierras. (We'd never been that way before.)
We got as far as San Bernardino when we heard the thump and the vibration started. I pulled over and discovered that there was a huge chunk of rubber missing from one of the back tires. And upon closer inspection I realized that there were blisters and bits of rubber missing here and there on all the tires...
Another aside: There was a huge problem with the early radial tires. The manufacturers hadn't yet figured out how keep the steel belts from accumulating heat, and if a belt stayed too hot for too long the rubber would start delaminating. (Lots of people would not buy them for that reason.)... It wasn't a problem as long as you took it easy, but we didn't know about it and had driven the car more than 4,000 miles heavily loaded at some pretty high speeds. So yeah - the tires were toast.
There was a pro-rata factory warranty on the them and we made some phone calls and found a Mazda dealer in Riverside that had a set, but when we got there they claimed that (based on tread depth) the warranty would only cover something like 30% of the cost. We thought that was B.S. but we didn't really have any other options. (We needed to get back on the road). Yeah - that put a healthy dent in our finances.
It took a couple of hours to get rolling again and by the time we reached Bishop we had no choice but to stop for the night. (It was many miles to the next town.) ... And I have to admit I instantly fell in love with the place. It was a small town (population 3,700) in a high desert valley (4100 feet) almost completely surrounded by mountains. Definitely one of the most beautiful places I've seen.... Of course, we got hold of a local newspaper and (as expected) there were no rentals or jobs... (The population hasn't really changed in the 40 years since. You pretty much have to be born there to live there.)
We spent the night at a motel out on East Line Road. I know that because we were right across from the high school football field and it was Friday night. (The lights were on and it sounded like the whole town was there.)
When we woke up the next morning the temperature was in the low 20's, and the warmest thing I'd brought with me was a sweatshirt. (No "vinter coat")... We stopped at small grocery store just north of town and I waited in the parking lot while Bernie and Karina got coffee and donuts... There had been a hard frost and everything was covered in white (almost as if it had snowed). I remember sitting there shivering in the passenger seat (Bernie was driving) waiting for the car to warm up while I listened to the (recently released) "School's Out" album by Alice Cooper on the 8-track. I couldn't figure out what was taking them so long... (It's an incredibly vivid memory.)
I figure I must have not been feeling well, because I can recall going past Mono Lake and then nothing until we were passing a bunch of vineyards that smelled really bad (natural fertilizer?)... So we must have taken highway 108 down into Sonora and across to Stockton (I apparently slept most of the way)...
We had decided on Portland because we figured that was where we stood the best chance of finding jobs. And when I started writing this post I didn't recall exactly how or when we got there because I've traveled the I-5 corridor between Sacramento and Portland more than a dozen times and it all gets muddled together... But then I dredged up a couple of memories that I'm certain are from that leg of the trip that nailed it down:
First - we were somewhere around Ashland heading downhill through a twisty section of I-5 when we came across an accident scene. It was dark and foggy, and someone had rolled a Chevy K5 Blazer in the left lane. Seeing the flashing lights and the upside down vehicle appear through the fog was totally surreal... And given that it was already night time I suspect we stopped for the night in Grants Pass again.
And the next day (around noon) we were heading north through Eugene in the rain (kind of a fine mist) when the sun came out... And a full rainbow appeared between our car and the car in the next lane... I had not know that was possible - it was one of the "trippiest" things I'd ever seen... (We took it as a sign - but that doesn't come into play until later)... And yes - I was in the passenger seat again. I must have really not been feeling well.
When we got to Portland we needed to find a place that was centrally located but reasonably priced so we ended up at a motel on SW King Avenue a couple of blocks south of Burnside (about a mile west of downtown). I no longer remember what it was called back then but now it's the "Park Lane Suites and Inn"... Yeah - I've noticed that when a someone remodels an old rundown motel they often give it a foofy sounding name with "Suites" in it :-)
And (if I'm counting correctly) I have now reached the end of the 10th day on the road - and there is still no end in sight...
We had just put down a deposit (and first month's rent) on a house in Escondido so Bernie called the landlord and explained the situation. Luckily, the guy agreed to tear up the lease and give us all the money back, so we swung by his office and hit the road...
Aside: It had all happened so fast that I didn't even have time to get in touch with my friends and tell them we were leaving... I had just showed up out of the blue saying I was moving back and then they never heard from me again... Until Facebook :-)
We really didn't want to drive through the center of L.A. again and since we were already on Highway 395 we decided to just head north into the Sierras. (We'd never been that way before.)
We got as far as San Bernardino when we heard the thump and the vibration started. I pulled over and discovered that there was a huge chunk of rubber missing from one of the back tires. And upon closer inspection I realized that there were blisters and bits of rubber missing here and there on all the tires...
Another aside: There was a huge problem with the early radial tires. The manufacturers hadn't yet figured out how keep the steel belts from accumulating heat, and if a belt stayed too hot for too long the rubber would start delaminating. (Lots of people would not buy them for that reason.)... It wasn't a problem as long as you took it easy, but we didn't know about it and had driven the car more than 4,000 miles heavily loaded at some pretty high speeds. So yeah - the tires were toast.
There was a pro-rata factory warranty on the them and we made some phone calls and found a Mazda dealer in Riverside that had a set, but when we got there they claimed that (based on tread depth) the warranty would only cover something like 30% of the cost. We thought that was B.S. but we didn't really have any other options. (We needed to get back on the road). Yeah - that put a healthy dent in our finances.
It took a couple of hours to get rolling again and by the time we reached Bishop we had no choice but to stop for the night. (It was many miles to the next town.) ... And I have to admit I instantly fell in love with the place. It was a small town (population 3,700) in a high desert valley (4100 feet) almost completely surrounded by mountains. Definitely one of the most beautiful places I've seen.... Of course, we got hold of a local newspaper and (as expected) there were no rentals or jobs... (The population hasn't really changed in the 40 years since. You pretty much have to be born there to live there.)
We spent the night at a motel out on East Line Road. I know that because we were right across from the high school football field and it was Friday night. (The lights were on and it sounded like the whole town was there.)
When we woke up the next morning the temperature was in the low 20's, and the warmest thing I'd brought with me was a sweatshirt. (No "vinter coat")... We stopped at small grocery store just north of town and I waited in the parking lot while Bernie and Karina got coffee and donuts... There had been a hard frost and everything was covered in white (almost as if it had snowed). I remember sitting there shivering in the passenger seat (Bernie was driving) waiting for the car to warm up while I listened to the (recently released) "School's Out" album by Alice Cooper on the 8-track. I couldn't figure out what was taking them so long... (It's an incredibly vivid memory.)
I figure I must have not been feeling well, because I can recall going past Mono Lake and then nothing until we were passing a bunch of vineyards that smelled really bad (natural fertilizer?)... So we must have taken highway 108 down into Sonora and across to Stockton (I apparently slept most of the way)...
We had decided on Portland because we figured that was where we stood the best chance of finding jobs. And when I started writing this post I didn't recall exactly how or when we got there because I've traveled the I-5 corridor between Sacramento and Portland more than a dozen times and it all gets muddled together... But then I dredged up a couple of memories that I'm certain are from that leg of the trip that nailed it down:
First - we were somewhere around Ashland heading downhill through a twisty section of I-5 when we came across an accident scene. It was dark and foggy, and someone had rolled a Chevy K5 Blazer in the left lane. Seeing the flashing lights and the upside down vehicle appear through the fog was totally surreal... And given that it was already night time I suspect we stopped for the night in Grants Pass again.
And the next day (around noon) we were heading north through Eugene in the rain (kind of a fine mist) when the sun came out... And a full rainbow appeared between our car and the car in the next lane... I had not know that was possible - it was one of the "trippiest" things I'd ever seen... (We took it as a sign - but that doesn't come into play until later)... And yes - I was in the passenger seat again. I must have really not been feeling well.
When we got to Portland we needed to find a place that was centrally located but reasonably priced so we ended up at a motel on SW King Avenue a couple of blocks south of Burnside (about a mile west of downtown). I no longer remember what it was called back then but now it's the "Park Lane Suites and Inn"... Yeah - I've noticed that when a someone remodels an old rundown motel they often give it a foofy sounding name with "Suites" in it :-)
And (if I'm counting correctly) I have now reached the end of the 10th day on the road - and there is still no end in sight...
Saturday, December 8, 2012
And the Next...
I really don't remember much from day 5 of our road trip in September of 1972, so some of this is going to be "dry narrative"... My apologies :-)
We slept kind of late that morning and headed south from Grants Pass down through Medford and across Siskiyou Summit into California... I remember coming down the hill and seeing Mount Shasta for the first time. (We pulled over at the viewpoint for a better look.). I also remember Lake Shasta (we kept crossing it - seemed like it went on forever) and Redding. (It was a nice town but we didn't stay long.)
And because of our late start it was dusk by the time we reached Sacramento. (That's where I-5 ended at the time.) We didn't stop - just continued down Highway 99 through Stockton and Fresno, eventually stopping for the night in Visalia. (I recall that there were lots of interesting and unfamiliar aromas as we passed down through the central valley...)
The next morning we headed down past Bakersfield to where I-5 continued and managed to make it through the Los Angeles area without incident. When we reached Carlsbad (where mom used to work) we got off I-5 and onto Highway 101 so we could drive along the coast through La Jolla and Mission Beach and see the places we used to live...
Aside: We were just south of Carlsbad when we saw the "Ponto Beach" sign... That was the name Karina and I had accused mom of making up when we were playing "places starting with the letter 'P'" on the road from California to Texas back in December of 1969. We had teased her mercilessly about it, so the sign came as quite a shock... (We apologized the next time we talked to her...)
Then for some reason Karina decided she wanted to see Tijuana... Yeah - I was not OK with that. The "grilling" I had endured at the Canadian border was still fresh in my memory and I figured coming back from Mexico would be significantly worse... But luckily, she changed her mind as soon as the border crossing was in sight, so we turned around and headed back up I-5 and then onto 395 to Escondido.
Quick refresher: Escondido was the last place we had lived before leaving California... Karina had never really liked it there but in the interim she apparently decided it wasn't so bad after all...
We got a couple of rooms at the TravelLodge and spent the next day checking out the job / rental situation and by late afternoon Bernie had lined up a job as a hospital orderly and we had put down a deposit on a really nice rental house next to an orange grove in the hills south of downtown. (It was owned by a church - probably left to them in someone's will.) And the cool part was that the house was vacant so we could start moving in the next day...
And since we had decided to stay I got in touch with my old band members (Gary, Bill and Mike) and we got together and hung out for a while before I called it a night.
Aside: It is now 40 years later and I still remember that "Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells was playing on the P.A. system at the gas station where I met up with Mike and Gary... Strange what sticks in the memory...
So in 7 days we had traveled close to 4000 miles - from Dallas - to Seattle - to Canada - to the Mexican border - and we had finally found a place to settle down... (Or so I thought...)
We slept kind of late that morning and headed south from Grants Pass down through Medford and across Siskiyou Summit into California... I remember coming down the hill and seeing Mount Shasta for the first time. (We pulled over at the viewpoint for a better look.). I also remember Lake Shasta (we kept crossing it - seemed like it went on forever) and Redding. (It was a nice town but we didn't stay long.)
And because of our late start it was dusk by the time we reached Sacramento. (That's where I-5 ended at the time.) We didn't stop - just continued down Highway 99 through Stockton and Fresno, eventually stopping for the night in Visalia. (I recall that there were lots of interesting and unfamiliar aromas as we passed down through the central valley...)
The next morning we headed down past Bakersfield to where I-5 continued and managed to make it through the Los Angeles area without incident. When we reached Carlsbad (where mom used to work) we got off I-5 and onto Highway 101 so we could drive along the coast through La Jolla and Mission Beach and see the places we used to live...
Aside: We were just south of Carlsbad when we saw the "Ponto Beach" sign... That was the name Karina and I had accused mom of making up when we were playing "places starting with the letter 'P'" on the road from California to Texas back in December of 1969. We had teased her mercilessly about it, so the sign came as quite a shock... (We apologized the next time we talked to her...)
Then for some reason Karina decided she wanted to see Tijuana... Yeah - I was not OK with that. The "grilling" I had endured at the Canadian border was still fresh in my memory and I figured coming back from Mexico would be significantly worse... But luckily, she changed her mind as soon as the border crossing was in sight, so we turned around and headed back up I-5 and then onto 395 to Escondido.
Quick refresher: Escondido was the last place we had lived before leaving California... Karina had never really liked it there but in the interim she apparently decided it wasn't so bad after all...
We got a couple of rooms at the TravelLodge and spent the next day checking out the job / rental situation and by late afternoon Bernie had lined up a job as a hospital orderly and we had put down a deposit on a really nice rental house next to an orange grove in the hills south of downtown. (It was owned by a church - probably left to them in someone's will.) And the cool part was that the house was vacant so we could start moving in the next day...
And since we had decided to stay I got in touch with my old band members (Gary, Bill and Mike) and we got together and hung out for a while before I called it a night.
Aside: It is now 40 years later and I still remember that "Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells was playing on the P.A. system at the gas station where I met up with Mike and Gary... Strange what sticks in the memory...
So in 7 days we had traveled close to 4000 miles - from Dallas - to Seattle - to Canada - to the Mexican border - and we had finally found a place to settle down... (Or so I thought...)
Friday, December 7, 2012
The Next Day
I've reached a point in the story where things start getting confusing, so I'm not sure that my recollection of the order of events is 100% accurate, but I am sure that it's pretty close - so I'm going to tell the story as best as I can remember...
We left Pasco on the morning of September 16th, 1972 headed for Vancouver, B.C... Yeah - that was a decision Karina had made during the night. I don't know if it was prompted by memories of living in Canada, or just stories of how beautiful B.C. was... Regardless, we found ourselves heading up though Yakima, Ellensburg and Snoqualmie towards the Seattle area... There was one spot along the way I remember in particular:
As you approach Ellensburg the highway suddenly drops off the high desert plateau to reveal a beautiful lush green valley (fields and orchards) down below with snow capped mountains in the distance... It's an incredible sight... Absolutely beautiful!
I don't remember much else up until we crossed the border into Canada on I-5. We had only gone a couple of miles when Karina decided it just didn't feel right so we turned around and headed back... Now, getting into Canada had been easy, but getting back into the USA - not so much... (Especially when you have long hair and tell them you only spent 5 minutes across the border.) But eventually they let us back in and we headed down I-5... After we got past the Seattle area we remembered that Snoqualmie had been a really cool place so we turned around and headed back there. But it didn't take long to discover that rentals were scarce (and outrageously expensive) and there were no jobs... So we poked around the Seattle area for a while longer and headed back south through Tacoma (there are some scary places in that town) and ended up in Centralia for the night. (It was really late when we got there...)
The next day (Sunday) we passed through Portland, gave it a cursory glance, and decided to head on down to Eugene. We got there around noon and really liked it... So we bought a newspaper and started looking at rentals and quickly realized that apartments were a lot cheaper in Springfield. So after having lunch at the IHOP we headed out Franklin Boulevard and across the bridge, and found ourselves in a different world... Yes - whereas Eugene was a college town with a reputation for "organic / free spirit" types, Springfield was a solid blue collar mill town. And the locals did not want any college punks on their side of the river...
We only got three blocks down Main Street before a Springfield cop lit us up... (He was a tall skinny guy with a huge adam's apple - one of the goofiest dudes I've ever seen - I figure he must've become a cop because he was tired of people making fun of him.)
When I inquired as to why we had been stopped he told us that we were driving a new car with Texas plates and that made us "suspicious"... (Suspicious? A car with out of state plates near a major university at the start of the school year? Seriously???)
When he asked what we were doing there I told him we were looking for a place to rent, and that's when things "went south"... He informed us that we definitely would not like living in Springfield and then asked to see the registration. That was a problem because Bernie had (inexplicably) stashed it somewhere in his luggage instead of the glovebox. So the cop made us all get out of the car while Bernie went through his suitcases, and in the meantime he collected our IDs and got on the radio with his dispatcher (probably checking to see if there were any APBs out on us).
Bernie eventually found the registration, but by then the cop had started giving Karina the third degree because she had three pieces of ID with different names on them. (As I recall, it was her green card from when she was an infant, her Social Security card, and another piece of ID she'd gotten while she was married to Bernie.)
I'm pretty sure the cop was about to let us go when this happened:
As Karina was explaining the different names he said "You can see how I might be confused." and Karina's immediate response was "Yes... I can see how YOU might be confused"... (Yeah - it was one of those "Oh shit!" moments... I don't think she could help it - that's just how she was...)
So he went back to his patrol car and got on the radio - and we stood there on the sidewalk ... and waited ... and waited ... and waited... And eventually he came over and told us "I'm certain that there's something wrong here but I can't seem to prove it, so I guess I'll just have to let you go." (He acted as if we had gotten away with something... Very insulting...)
The traffic stop had lasted roughly 45 minutes and by that time Karina had already decided we should head for the San Diego area (where we had lived from 9/68 to 12/69). So we got back onto I-5 and stopped for the night in Grants Pass...
And thus ended "day 4" on the road...
We left Pasco on the morning of September 16th, 1972 headed for Vancouver, B.C... Yeah - that was a decision Karina had made during the night. I don't know if it was prompted by memories of living in Canada, or just stories of how beautiful B.C. was... Regardless, we found ourselves heading up though Yakima, Ellensburg and Snoqualmie towards the Seattle area... There was one spot along the way I remember in particular:
As you approach Ellensburg the highway suddenly drops off the high desert plateau to reveal a beautiful lush green valley (fields and orchards) down below with snow capped mountains in the distance... It's an incredible sight... Absolutely beautiful!
I don't remember much else up until we crossed the border into Canada on I-5. We had only gone a couple of miles when Karina decided it just didn't feel right so we turned around and headed back... Now, getting into Canada had been easy, but getting back into the USA - not so much... (Especially when you have long hair and tell them you only spent 5 minutes across the border.) But eventually they let us back in and we headed down I-5... After we got past the Seattle area we remembered that Snoqualmie had been a really cool place so we turned around and headed back there. But it didn't take long to discover that rentals were scarce (and outrageously expensive) and there were no jobs... So we poked around the Seattle area for a while longer and headed back south through Tacoma (there are some scary places in that town) and ended up in Centralia for the night. (It was really late when we got there...)
The next day (Sunday) we passed through Portland, gave it a cursory glance, and decided to head on down to Eugene. We got there around noon and really liked it... So we bought a newspaper and started looking at rentals and quickly realized that apartments were a lot cheaper in Springfield. So after having lunch at the IHOP we headed out Franklin Boulevard and across the bridge, and found ourselves in a different world... Yes - whereas Eugene was a college town with a reputation for "organic / free spirit" types, Springfield was a solid blue collar mill town. And the locals did not want any college punks on their side of the river...
We only got three blocks down Main Street before a Springfield cop lit us up... (He was a tall skinny guy with a huge adam's apple - one of the goofiest dudes I've ever seen - I figure he must've become a cop because he was tired of people making fun of him.)
When I inquired as to why we had been stopped he told us that we were driving a new car with Texas plates and that made us "suspicious"... (Suspicious? A car with out of state plates near a major university at the start of the school year? Seriously???)
When he asked what we were doing there I told him we were looking for a place to rent, and that's when things "went south"... He informed us that we definitely would not like living in Springfield and then asked to see the registration. That was a problem because Bernie had (inexplicably) stashed it somewhere in his luggage instead of the glovebox. So the cop made us all get out of the car while Bernie went through his suitcases, and in the meantime he collected our IDs and got on the radio with his dispatcher (probably checking to see if there were any APBs out on us).
Bernie eventually found the registration, but by then the cop had started giving Karina the third degree because she had three pieces of ID with different names on them. (As I recall, it was her green card from when she was an infant, her Social Security card, and another piece of ID she'd gotten while she was married to Bernie.)
I'm pretty sure the cop was about to let us go when this happened:
As Karina was explaining the different names he said "You can see how I might be confused." and Karina's immediate response was "Yes... I can see how YOU might be confused"... (Yeah - it was one of those "Oh shit!" moments... I don't think she could help it - that's just how she was...)
So he went back to his patrol car and got on the radio - and we stood there on the sidewalk ... and waited ... and waited ... and waited... And eventually he came over and told us "I'm certain that there's something wrong here but I can't seem to prove it, so I guess I'll just have to let you go." (He acted as if we had gotten away with something... Very insulting...)
The traffic stop had lasted roughly 45 minutes and by that time Karina had already decided we should head for the San Diego area (where we had lived from 9/68 to 12/69). So we got back onto I-5 and stopped for the night in Grants Pass...
And thus ended "day 4" on the road...
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
On the Road Again
After a bit of planning and preparation Karina, Bernie and I left Dallas early one morning (I think it was Thursday, September 14, 1972) in Bernie's orange Mazda RX-2, aka "the pumpkin" (packed to the gills with our personal belongings)... The original intent was to find a place to live in the Portland area and then fly mom out (and retrieve the rest of our stuff) once we got settled in. But Portland turned out to be only one of many stops on an 8000 mile journey that ended exactly where it started...
A bit of background: The one thing Bernie and I had in common (other than being guitarists) was that we both pretty much always did whatever my sister wanted. The road trip was her idea, and her "gut feel" was the compass that guided us along the way... And since Karina was more comfortable with me driving I ended up behind the wheel almost the entire trip...
And here goes:
I don't remember very much from the first day. I know that we headed up through Oklahoma on I-35 and onto I-70 east in Kansas. And anyone who has ever driven through the plains on the interstate knows just how boring it is. But there were a couple of "highlights":
First, Bernie had grown up in rural Tennessee and was constantly trying to convince us that "corn" and "maize" were totally different things and that all the fields alongside the road were actually maize... (Yeah - he was wrong about that.)
And the second involved another motorist in eastern Colorado... It was in an area where the interstate was still under construction and there were stretches where the westbound lanes were diverted into what would normally be the eastbound left lane. (Basically, the eastbound lanes became a two-lane highway with one lane each direction.)
So - I was heading westbound in one of those two-way stretches when I encountered a motorist coming from the other direction in my lane, and he wasn't making any effort to get back into the right lane (where he was supposed to be)... Yeah - he apparently missed all the "two-way traffic" signs and was so convinced I was going the wrong way that he decided to make a point of it by refusing to yield... So I just moved over onto to the shoulder (I didn't slow down - Karina and Bernie were freaking out - not sure why) and as we passed I saw that he was laughing and making gestures at me... What an idiot... I could tell from the expression on his wife's face that she was not OK with him playing chicken with oncoming traffic :-)
Then I checked my mirror and saw a bunch more westbound cars about 1/2 mile behind me, and I've been wondering to this day exactly how long it took him to realize that he was the one going the wrong direction... I would have loved to see the look on his face when he finally figured it out.
Aside: This is a bit of a non-sequitur, but one of the things I noticed on that first part of the trip was the complete absence of Japanese made cars. By 1972 there were quite a few Toyotas and Mazdas in the Dallas area (and the occasional Honda N600), but there didn't seen to be any at all in the plains states. As a result, the RX-2 drew quite a bit of attention at gas stations. (I talked to some of the locals and they didn't think it made sense to have such a small car in a place with constant winds and (in the winter) deep drifting snow...) But back to the story.
We stopped for supper just east of Denver, and it got much more scenic as we headed north on I-25. There was a period of time after sunset when the dark silhouette of the Rockies was framed against a deep red sky. It was quite amazing...
By the time we got to Wyoming it was pitch black and we ended up stopping for the night in Laramie (more than 1000 miles from Dallas - a heck of a day's drive)... Needless to say, there were stretches where we were going significantly faster than the 70 MPH speed limit...
Another aside: One of the neat things about the rotary engine in the RX-2 was the flat torque curve... It had a surprising amount of power and pulled hard from just above idle all the way to 8000 RPM. It cruised effortlessly at over 100 MPH... The bad thing was that the gas mileage was abysmal. We never got better than 14 MPG, even when going the speed limit. (Only slightly better than my '66 Charger.)
The next morning we continued west on I-80 across Wyoming... The area around Rock Springs was kind of neat, but I suspect they could strip mine most of the rest of state and hardly anyone would notice :-) It didn't get interesting again until we crossed into Utah and started heading down out of the Rockies (lots of twists and turns and interesting geology). Then we cut north onto I-80N (now I-84) through Ogden - and once we left the Salt Lake area (and got closer to the Idaho border) it got really boring really fast...
Crossing the border into Oregon was kind of a momentous occasion because mom had been talking about going there for as long as I could remember. (She read lots of books about the Oregon Trail as a child.) ... Then there was the time in 1961 when my family was supposed to spend Christmas at Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood, but then my dad got transferred and we had to cancel... And now we had finally arrived...
We pulled into Pendleton around dusk and got totally freaked out. That's because Bernie and I both had long hair and tried to avoid cowboy types because they were usually assholes about us being "hippies". But Pendleton was "wall to wall" cowboys. We couldn't avoid them because they were everywhere... We ended up eating at a drive-in and everyone was staring at us so we got out of town as fast as we could :-)
BTW: It wasn't until days later that discovered we had gotten there on Friday night during the "Pendleton Roundup" (one of the largest rodeos in the world)... That definitely explained it.
Then we took a wrong turn... We headed into Hermiston intending to find a motel but didn't see anything we liked and ended up on Highway 395 heading into Washington. I was about to turn around but Karina insisted we should keep going north and we spent the night in Pasco instead...
And for those keeping score - that's about 2000 miles in 2 days...
A bit of background: The one thing Bernie and I had in common (other than being guitarists) was that we both pretty much always did whatever my sister wanted. The road trip was her idea, and her "gut feel" was the compass that guided us along the way... And since Karina was more comfortable with me driving I ended up behind the wheel almost the entire trip...
And here goes:
I don't remember very much from the first day. I know that we headed up through Oklahoma on I-35 and onto I-70 east in Kansas. And anyone who has ever driven through the plains on the interstate knows just how boring it is. But there were a couple of "highlights":
First, Bernie had grown up in rural Tennessee and was constantly trying to convince us that "corn" and "maize" were totally different things and that all the fields alongside the road were actually maize... (Yeah - he was wrong about that.)
And the second involved another motorist in eastern Colorado... It was in an area where the interstate was still under construction and there were stretches where the westbound lanes were diverted into what would normally be the eastbound left lane. (Basically, the eastbound lanes became a two-lane highway with one lane each direction.)
So - I was heading westbound in one of those two-way stretches when I encountered a motorist coming from the other direction in my lane, and he wasn't making any effort to get back into the right lane (where he was supposed to be)... Yeah - he apparently missed all the "two-way traffic" signs and was so convinced I was going the wrong way that he decided to make a point of it by refusing to yield... So I just moved over onto to the shoulder (I didn't slow down - Karina and Bernie were freaking out - not sure why) and as we passed I saw that he was laughing and making gestures at me... What an idiot... I could tell from the expression on his wife's face that she was not OK with him playing chicken with oncoming traffic :-)
Then I checked my mirror and saw a bunch more westbound cars about 1/2 mile behind me, and I've been wondering to this day exactly how long it took him to realize that he was the one going the wrong direction... I would have loved to see the look on his face when he finally figured it out.
Aside: This is a bit of a non-sequitur, but one of the things I noticed on that first part of the trip was the complete absence of Japanese made cars. By 1972 there were quite a few Toyotas and Mazdas in the Dallas area (and the occasional Honda N600), but there didn't seen to be any at all in the plains states. As a result, the RX-2 drew quite a bit of attention at gas stations. (I talked to some of the locals and they didn't think it made sense to have such a small car in a place with constant winds and (in the winter) deep drifting snow...) But back to the story.
We stopped for supper just east of Denver, and it got much more scenic as we headed north on I-25. There was a period of time after sunset when the dark silhouette of the Rockies was framed against a deep red sky. It was quite amazing...
By the time we got to Wyoming it was pitch black and we ended up stopping for the night in Laramie (more than 1000 miles from Dallas - a heck of a day's drive)... Needless to say, there were stretches where we were going significantly faster than the 70 MPH speed limit...
Another aside: One of the neat things about the rotary engine in the RX-2 was the flat torque curve... It had a surprising amount of power and pulled hard from just above idle all the way to 8000 RPM. It cruised effortlessly at over 100 MPH... The bad thing was that the gas mileage was abysmal. We never got better than 14 MPG, even when going the speed limit. (Only slightly better than my '66 Charger.)
The next morning we continued west on I-80 across Wyoming... The area around Rock Springs was kind of neat, but I suspect they could strip mine most of the rest of state and hardly anyone would notice :-) It didn't get interesting again until we crossed into Utah and started heading down out of the Rockies (lots of twists and turns and interesting geology). Then we cut north onto I-80N (now I-84) through Ogden - and once we left the Salt Lake area (and got closer to the Idaho border) it got really boring really fast...
Crossing the border into Oregon was kind of a momentous occasion because mom had been talking about going there for as long as I could remember. (She read lots of books about the Oregon Trail as a child.) ... Then there was the time in 1961 when my family was supposed to spend Christmas at Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood, but then my dad got transferred and we had to cancel... And now we had finally arrived...
We pulled into Pendleton around dusk and got totally freaked out. That's because Bernie and I both had long hair and tried to avoid cowboy types because they were usually assholes about us being "hippies". But Pendleton was "wall to wall" cowboys. We couldn't avoid them because they were everywhere... We ended up eating at a drive-in and everyone was staring at us so we got out of town as fast as we could :-)
BTW: It wasn't until days later that discovered we had gotten there on Friday night during the "Pendleton Roundup" (one of the largest rodeos in the world)... That definitely explained it.
Then we took a wrong turn... We headed into Hermiston intending to find a motel but didn't see anything we liked and ended up on Highway 395 heading into Washington. I was about to turn around but Karina insisted we should keep going north and we spent the night in Pasco instead...
And for those keeping score - that's about 2000 miles in 2 days...
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