The Indian in a Toyota, and the Mystery Trucker
Note from the M/U team: This is an excerpt from a book in progress. If you like what you read here - and you will - keep your eyes peeled. There's much more to come.
“We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won
As we sailed into the mystic”Van Morrison
Crossing the state line into California at some unknown hour, we were run ragged after the dizzying events of this evening — How we managed to make it here was beyond me. Into the Mystic, I thought as we chugged up the Truckee river valley and through the town of Mystic. We tiptoed through the small town of Truckee being chased by the soon-to-be-rising sun, somewhere far out to the east and over the edge of the world. We pulled the VW off the highway and into the rest stop at Donner Summit, stopping in the late mid-August night. I pulled the bus in with the over-the-road rigs and wondered if any of them had witnessed the roadside events of several days earlier in Nebraska. I went inside the facility and washed off the last little bits of dried blood from the side of my face.
We had been gone for one week and we’d shot across this vast country of ours, from the great eastern woods to the great plains, into the Rockies, over the high pass country of Wyoming, and over salt flats. We had been thrown out of seedy casinos, and we had fought with a tweeker on the strip in Reno, all the while shaking trouble off like oil-skin sheds water. But now was the time for sleep, an honest hit-the-rack-and-dissolve sleep, a been-driving-for-most-of-a-week-straight-with-little-to-no-rest sleep, shit, a been-driving-for-an-hour-with-a-not-yet-hangover sleep. Sleep, yes.
It was early still, the sun just rising from the east up the pass at Donner, when something roused me from my sleep. My head hurt, my mouth was dry, and everything was like being in a waterbed with someone doing jumping jacks. I wanted — needed — more sleep, but this noise: what the fuck was going on?
I envisioned that a flock of birds had descended onto the rest area and my bus specifically. It wasn’t birds, but it was a flock. I opened the curtains just a crack, letting a shaft of the already intense summer sun into the dark bus, unsure what sort of mayhem might be afoot (a similar event outside of Albany NY after a Grateful Dead show ended in a car burning, fully engulfed, about six parking spaces from us, but that’s another tale). I was shocked by what I saw: there must have been 25 or 30 Asian tourists, all well dressed, all with cameras and taking pictures, and all congregated around my bus. They were all repeating the same . . . chant . . . in their foreign tongue which to me sounded like, “BAH OH! BAH OH!”
Jeff started stirring from the pull-out bed below with the obvious question, “What's . . . what the fuck is going on?”
“I’ve got no idea, but we should get out of here pronto.”
After all, we were sort of on-the-lam after last night, and we had all this weed from Nebraska in the back of the bus, and this was the Eighties. We pulled the pop-up top down, and I climbed into the driver's seat turning the key.
Nothing. The key to fucking nothing.
~ ~ ~
Our escapade across this big country had been mostly without any real trouble thus far. Well, Reno came close to real trouble, but we fled at just the right moment, dignity bruised but freedom intact. The couple days in Table Rock were close to trouble as well, but again we squeaked through, and driving a hippie van full of Nebraska ditch weed had trouble written all over its face.
What was a problem, however, was the electrical system. The exact issue was yet to be determined, but it was draining the battery dry — just not every night. I had gone over everything mechanical before leaving Connecticut, but I wasn’t exactly prepared for any sort of road repairs. We were more about “turning on” than turning bolts.
A few days prior to Donner we were headed into the great Rocky Mountains from the northeast, coming down I-25 from Cheyenne, through the Soapstone Prairie, with the massif of the Rockies to the west looming large; the Arapaho, the Medicine Bow, and Rocky Mountain National Park. It was in Fort Collins that we left the Interstate and turned to the west and up the slope of the grand range. The plan was to stop and camp in Arapaho National Forest, then cruise around Colorado for a few days, week, couple weeks, whatever. We drove up Colorado Route 14 — the road out to Kinikink, and farther along, the Medicine Bow. So much wilderness, never enough time.
So, we pulled into Mountain Park Recreation Area campground, just off the south shore of the Cache la Poudre river around dark, and we were done, just done. So road weary, our brains couldn't stop sensing movement even though we were no longer driving. We sat, unwilling to move a muscle in the rapidly darkening Rocky Mountain evening, depleted.
Soon, though, the urge of hunger was stronger than the unwillingness for movement and we started getting our camp together. Everything went smoothly, and soon the cookstove was set up on the picnic table, river sound carrying through the tall Douglas Fir and Bristlecone Pines. We were eagerly awaiting food. As I opened a can of something or other, a large camper pulled up and a man came over, accompanied by a pissed-off park ranger.
“You boys get the hell out of here,” was the first salvo from the National Park Ranger.
“What the hell is going on here? We just got here, this site had no reservation marker,” I defended.
The officer quickly pointed his Mag-Light about ten feet up a tree behind us. Fuck, we missed it.
“I’ll give you five minutes to get the hell out of here, and out of my campground, before I call in the Colorado State Police.” The ranger made several insults at us before he, and the camper left. The ranger however, just did the loop around the campground, coming back and sitting in his car, watching, while we packed up and left. He followed us to the end of the park road where he put his blues on, signaling us to stop. He strode over to the van.
“All the other campgrounds are full too,” he said, leaning in towards me. “If you know what’s good for you you’ll go elsewhere.”
At that point we had no resolve. Shit, we had had little sleep, and little food for days; now we had no food, and no sleep lay ahead for an undetermined time. After a forgettable argument with Jeff that somehow involved some girl in Oregon, I inexplicably agreed to forgo the Rockies and head straight to California, stopping only in Reno for a quick night. Now driving back down the range towards Fort Collins again, I turned the bus north and onto US 287, a two lane lined with sage brush and hares and midnight elk with glowing eyes that undulates in the basin between the Arapaho NP and Red Mountain. I saw a dirt turn-off in the headlights about twenty miles outside of Livermore near a place called Virginia Dale, which looked promising. This had been a favored resting spot on the Overland Trail, an old pioneers’ trail. There was nothing there, just a turn off in the wash of Dale Creek. Perfect.
The morning dawned bright and crisp on Dale Creek. We ate a quick breakfast, packed, and hit the road. Nothing like fried eggs and coffee cooked outside on an old Coleman white gas stove from the sixties. The last real breakfast we had had was somewhere around Davenport Iowa, in a truck stop where all the professional truckers glared and chuckled at us longhairs, muttering insults under their breath. We eagerly ate this morning in the cool air of Virginia Dale, but did not linger; we were most of the way to Wyoming and back to Interstate 80 and wanted to push forward, push further.
Laramie was crystal clear that morning, the highway empty, and we cut across the city in about two minutes. Interstate 80 at that point follows a great pass between the Medicine Bow range to the south, and the mountains of the Wind River to the north. It passes through places like Laramie, Rawlins, Rock Springs, and Table Rock. It passes long flat-topped buttes, one after the next. They start small on the edge of the world, growing larger, passing their great length, then diminishing in the rear view, back to, and beyond the edge of the world.
It was, of course, in Table Rock where the trouble with the bus became evident. We proceeded however, without trouble, through Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada without further issue from the VW.
~ ~ ~
“The world was so much smaller then, which of course made it all so much larger; moments deeper.”
Kathryn Mullen
The interstate was hot and numbing. The highway air that came blasting in the open windows, hot to even breathe, was of no relief, only pushing the sweat around on our faces. The blacktop stretched out straight for miles, only punctuated by mile markers and the ever-rolling hills and washes of that part of Nebraska. We had left our refuge to the north in the Sandhills a few hours earlier, our ditch weed dry and cleaned of its large stems, driving south through North Platte to get back to the “big road”.
The road was painfully devoid of any traffic at all. This made for a more monotonous drive. Jeff pulled out my guitar and was playing something or other, when I spied a tiny white dot behind us in the side view, at the edge of the world. The dot slowly grew larger, until I saw it was a small white Toyota pickup. As it bore down on us, I saw a very large crow sticker on the hood, which I immediately recognized as the “Wake of the Flood” crow from the Grateful Dead album of that name. A deadhead!
We were already puffing on a pipe of topshelf that Jeff had brought along for the ride, when the Toyota pulled alongside my Grateful Dead sticker pasted van. As he pulled alongside I held the pipe up, motioning if he wanted some. His eyes grew wide, and he nodded with excitement. As luck would have it, a rest stop was just ahead and he followed us in.
“Oh wow, I can't believe my luck to find you guys!” The guy was animated as he spoke.
He was the classic-looking example of an American Indian: tall with waist-length braided hair, a style known as chongo by the Navajo; with strong chiseled facial features. He wore cut-off blue jeans, a white vest over his bare chest, and a pair of Converse All-Stars.
“I’ve been driving a couple days, from Chicago, I’m heading to LA and then hopping on a boat to Hawaii, and maaaan I would love a little mother nature!”
We told him our tale, and that we had good weed, but that we had also found a bunch alongside the highway.
“What?”
“Yeah, right along with the corn.” I replied.
“I’ve heard stories, but I’ve never seen it.”
“We’ve been noticing it all over, I bet if we walk up that rise we’ll find some.”
Uncertain, but willing to see, he followed us up the small rise and out of sight of the rest stop. In very little time we found a beautiful, maintained looking plant, full of fresh flowers. He was amazed, and grateful. He said we had gifted his journey, and now he would carry this all the way to Hawaii where he was ultimately bound. He blessed us there under the west Nebraska sun. He said we would be watched out for, that his spirits were grateful, and would help us on our journey. I thanked him and told him how much that meant to me. We returned to the lot, got in our vehicles and hit the road again. He vanished down the highway until the small dot of his truck disappeared over the farthest rise. And he was gone, back to, and beyond the edge of the world.
~ ~ ~
Donner Pass is a hell of a place if you are familiar with its history. This wasn’t winter, and we weren't going hungry — but I wasn’t so sure about the motives of this pack of crazed tourists all yelling the same thing at my van. Maybe they wanted blood. Or maybe, they just knew to watch the show.
Having just turned the key to a very dead van, I hurled myself out of the bus, Chuck Taylors smacking the pavement and stormed to the back, opening up the engine compartment. Nothing looked wrong, until I noticed the gas puddle on the ground and I started adding it all up. I had been noticing this little noise at night, like something electrical running from around the engine, but had not noticed any gas leaking. I figured it out now: An electrical short in a tiny plastic part was causing my fuel pump to run on, depleting my battery.
So there we were, two hippie kids, one hippie van, loaded to the hilt with Nebras-kaya, broke-down in the mountains of California. The tourists had their blood too; I had bloodied my hand in the engine pretty good.
Logically, we thought to push start the van, though that hadn’t gone well for us in Table Rock, and there was one huge problem: the only way downhill was to go the wrong way down the off ramp from the interstate. I figured it had to go easy though. It was much steeper than where we had tried to jump it in Table Rock. We rolled it out into the off ramp and pushed, no go. Again, no go, again, no go. I was getting really nervous now because we were almost at the bottom of the ramp and into oncoming traffic.
That was when the California Highway Patrol arrived.
He was furious right out of the box. He slammed the door of his cruiser, a Chevy Caprice the size of a small aircraft carrier, and spun around on his left heel. He was a big one. Jesus, how they breed them like that is beyond me. He stood about 6’5” and likely weighed in at a fit 250. He wore a drill sergeant’s patrol hat cocked forward on his head and had a crew cut to match. This man was the living, walking embodiment of a poster Marine. He grabbed a firm hold of his junk as he strode at us, adjusting its hang like a mafia boss.
“What the fuck are you assholes doing?”
“Well, we . . . “
“Shut the fuck up,” pausing, looking at us with great turmoil, “You fucking assholes are done. Look at that van. I’ll bet dimes to dollars you’ve got some kind of drugs in there, and you know what? We’re going to fucking find them.”
Jeff and I stood looking like we just got caught humping the neighbor’s daughter. All I could think was fuck, this is it this time. There was NO getting around this one.
“No, no, we just are trying to push start, my van,” I said, trying not to convey my deep internal duress.
“Shut up you little fucker. How’d you like that fucking earring ripped clean out? I’m calling dispatch now to get back-up. Fucking cocksuckers.” He turned military-style on one heel again moving back to the patrol car.
“Now, you don't need to do that.” A voice, calm, cool, and very Southern spoke from just a few feet away.
All three of us looked up the ramp to see this LARGE truck driver standing just a few feet away. He was baby-faced, as wide as he was tall, clad in tight, pleated blue jeans with a massive belt buckle, a white collared shirt with a brown leather vest, brand new looking cowboy boots, and an immaculate ten gallon hat. The cop looked up at the mystery trucker completely stunned, as frankly so was I. How could a man of his sheer girth, and in shiny cowboy boots and tight pants get that far down the ramp without any of us noticing him? There was just no missing this man, wherever he may be.
He stood there, in proud and round form, morning sun bearing down upon him.
“Now, I’ve been watching these boys for some time, and I’ll tell you what, you don’t need to search them, they're just trying to get that thing running, and I’m sure they just want a jump.”
“What? No, no fucking way, these guys . . .”
“Oh come on, they're working hard here, and I’m sure if you jump-start them they'll be on their way, no trouble.” He looks down in our direction, “Right boys?”
“That’s right, that’s right officer.”
“I can’t jump them, I’ll blow the electrical system in that thing, these cruisers run on 24 volts. That thing is a fucking jalopy.”
“Well,” the mystery trucker went on, “Seems to me it’s not running now, and if it was they wouldn’t be in your hair. You boys don’t mind if he tries to jump start you do you?”
“No, not at all.”
Looking suddenly played, the cop capitulated. What the holy fuck were these Jedi mind tricks anyway?
Letting out a sigh, the cop turned to me, “You guys have jumper cables?”
“Yes sir, yes we do.”
I turned back to the trucker, but he was not there. John Q. Law saw my gaze and bewilderment, and looked where the trucker had been just a brief moment before. The officer turned to us, looking like he had just seen a ghost. We looked at each other for a moment, all of us confused and a bit uncomfortable. Where the fuck had he gone? A man that size just doesn't move quickly.
With jumper cables connected the bus roared back to life. Reincarnation. We thanked the cop. He didn’t say anything, just quietly got in his car, turned around, and left, without even seeing if we got turned around and made it out of the pass.
I’ve struggled all these years to explain that morning in Donner, and the mystery trucker, but I can tell you this: the blessings of an Indian in a Toyota are not to be taken lightly.
-WJM