Previews of "The 1972 Oregon Odyssey"

 Preview of The 1972 Oregon Odyssey

                                                                

The title above is not the title of the book, which is to be called 

The 1972 Odyssey

of

Poundso and Baddso

from

Lawrence Kansas to Eugene Oregon

Written in Lawrence 1972 and

Edited in Tokyo 2025

by 

Wayne Pounds

but it is only intended as a preview to whet the appetite of possible readers. The book is ready for publication but the cover has to wait on the artist (Shelley) to finish her university exams during the remainder of this month of July.

In the meantime, here are three samples of what await you:

1. Foss Junction, western Oklahoma badlands

When we arrive at Foss Junction I’m relieved to see semi-civilized amenities--a gas station and truck stop advertised 200 yards down the Foss Road.I always thought I disliked gas stations for their dirt and squalor (my father ran a couple of them kept scrupulously clean) but in this kind of country you cherish them as standard bearers of civilization. A place to wash and crap and eat, nothing else you could ask. Except a ride, except a ride, out of this forsaken cow-lot. We find an eight by twelve grocery store, snacks and beer for truck drivers. I have a vienna sausage sandwich, made from a heavy loaf of homemade wholewheat bread we’ve been carrying in the pack, and a quart of cold milk. A foul tasting sandwich. The canned potted meat is nearly putrid and the bread has taken on the flavor of the pack, orange nylon. Baddso has a sandwich like mine, a piece of watermelon, and a quart of milk. There is a big truck taking on fuel and the driver is standing in the door of the cab putting food and drink in an ice chest. Beezo for the road. I talk to him, ask him for a ride. Nothing doing, safety and insurance regulations, he’d lose his job if were seen--up and down the highway are safety inspectors in the limbs of every large tree. Otherwise, sure, he’d give us a lift. Every trucker would tell the same story. They don’t lack sympathy for the walking poor. That’s why when you raise a thumb toward them they throw up their hands or make some other helpless gesture from the wheel, meaning there’s nothing the driver can do. Who ain’t a slave, asks Melville’s Ishmael from the deck of a whaler in the 1840s. 

Back on the highway, the traffic streams west. I’m dead tired and sleepy from eating too much crap food, Shoulda known better. Hunger traps the hungry. In two hours we stop nothing but a Highway Patrol. He looks at our ID cards--how does he know that I really am who that card says I am? I could be a lie but he doesn’t care. The card makes me legal. I might in fact be Jack Guthrie, brother of the famous Woody and probable author of “Oklahoma Hills” and spitting on the interminable steps of the halls of justice. I’m only half listening to this prick who is reciting his catechism. Father, I ask, what shall a man do to hitch through Oklahoma. My son, thou must shun the shoulders of the road. restrict standing to the drainage ditches, and this above all, stand never beneath an underpass. I tell our highway mentor that I appreciate the instruction, which we were especially in need of because of the confusion planted in our minds by the compassion of one of his colleagues who earlier in the afternoon let us out of his car to stand in the shade of an overpass. He must not have known the law, comes the blustering reply. God help him, he didn’t know the law. They can really hang him high for not that.

2. The Ride with Menace

We leave Foss Junction in a squirt of exhaust fumes, fifteen hours there our longest wait. Wonder if Baddso is still keeping track of our waiting times and averaging them like baseball stats. He’s talking with the front seat people, telling them of the fifteen hours and thanking them in an excessively polite manner--no, nothing excessive about it, Christ on the cross fifteen bleeding hours. The threesome of men are a dubious combination and oddly sorted. A heavy guy with shaggy sandy hair cut around his ears in driving, named Terry. He and George sitting in the middle are about the same age twenty-five to thirty. The third man in his forties, uncombed curly brown hair, wearing a T-shirt, he talks like he’s from Arkansas. All three exude an air of marginal criminality. Menace. Either of the white guys could be another Charlie Starkweather. I’m afraid Baddso may be an Othello with too much fundamental decency to recognize an Iago.

The name of the man on the right’s is Old Roland I learn from George who goes through a long routine trying to remember it. He fills us in on their history. Me and Terry’s old buddies, ain’t we Terry, punching his mate in the ribs. The way George says the name it sounds like Terrah like the British pronunciation of terror. Me and Terrah’s drinking beer at the Sundown Club in Tulsa last night and we wasn’t thinking about no Seattle, was we Terrah (punch), and Old Roland here comes in, been driving from Little Rock, going to Seattle to get a job, he comes in and we get to talking to the waitress, man she was built like a stone shithouse I ain’t kidding, ooh I’d like to got me some of that. He grabs his crotch with both hands and squirms in the seat, moaning in an ecstasy of thwarted anticipation. Old Roland is going to Seattle so what do we care, me and Terrah decide to go with him. Sheeyut, Seattle, man’s there’s women in Seattle. Baddso, myself, and these three bozos all with the same destination--the extreme northwest. Sheeyut.

George’s monologue goes on until no one is listening any more, repeating punches in Terrah’s side to get him to verify various points but never giving him time. The only other thing of interest I pick up from George is that they’re going to Amarillo where Terrah is expecting to pick up some cash money, the details of which are left vague. Taciturn Old Roland comes out of his apparent sulk in the corner to volunteer various bits of information already communicated to us by George. Old Roland says he’s from Arkansas by God and that he never saw these guys before last night when they all got drunk and took off together. He just wanted someone to come to Seattle with him. It’s his car by God and they’d better drive it right or they was a reckoning a-comin, no more of this bullshit driving, no more of this hundred and ten shit like Terrah was doing back down the road. I hastily agree with Old Roland that a car as to be treated right if you want it to treat you right and to get somewhere as far as Seattle. The car, as if to state its own opinion of bullshit driving, begins to register hot and Terrah pulls into a gas station to investigate. The car is three quarts low on oil. Old Roland is mad, claims the car never used to use no oil and by God people’d better start driving his car like it was supposed to be drove.

Terrah and George agree, obviously humoring Old Roland, buy oil, we’re running down the freeway again. Western Oklahoma is whizzing by under our wheels--Canute, Elk City, Sayre--but I’m too busy watching the antics in the front seat to pay much attention. Old Roland pulls a pint of whiskey from out of somewhere, gulps the remaining swallow left in the bottle, wipes off his mouth with the back of his hand, and embarks on what is evidently a serious subject. You fellers got any money to help us with gas? Me and the boys here has spent our last cent on this trip, then buying that oil busted us. This is said quite confidentially, and I give it the attention it warrants, rubbing my chin ponderously, consulting with Baddso about the state of our finances, finally replying that I reckoned between the two of us we might be able to come up with two dollars. Thinking while I was rubbing my chin that it would not be wise to let Old Roland know that Baddso and I had a hundred dollars in travelers checks between us and calculating that a hundred and twenty miles to Amarillo at twenty miles a gallon is six gallons times thirty cents a gallon is a dollar eighty, so two dollars ought to get us into Amarillo. . . . .

George offers a beer to Baddso and me as we drive back to the freeway but we decline politely. They have two apiece. When a bottle is to be opened, it is handed to George who does it with his teeth, neatly and with evident pride. When a bottle is to be disposed of it is handed to Old Roland who throws it with all his strength straight down onto the pavement where it explodes with a faint rearward tinkling crash that seems to delight him. 

Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law 

pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

Kidneys primed, they soon need a rest stop, and when no trees appear or other cover in five miles Terrah stops on the shoulder and all three piss, laughing and lifting yellow arches while the cars go by. We travel toward Amarillo, Terrah now talking, telling anecdotes in which he figures as a swashbuckling hero, George confirming the stories and grabbing his crotch at every mention of a woman. And Old Roland gently asleep in his corner. 

Heating Up with Navy Joe, near Williams CA

When a car does hesitates it means it has decided to pick you up no matter how you look, which I don’t much like since I’d rather think we were being stopped for our visible merits, such as they are, such as they are, the Jack on a pack and my straw hat. We’re walking forward when the driver yells to us to hurry “before this thing heats up” so we jog packs into the van through the side door which somehow closes behind us and we take off. The driver a slender guy my age with curly uncombed black hair down the back of his neck and wearing a T-shirt. Looks like a mechanic who has just finished a four year stretch in the Navy. Thee’s a fourteen year old boy sitting in the righthand seat and a chick sitting on the cowl over the engine. Have to say “chick” here because if I use the more common “girl” that puts her in the same class as the “boy” and she’s not fourteen by at least six years. Steer away from the semantic chaos of gender. She’s sitting on some carpeting, as I first thought for padding but as I soon learned to preserve her soft butt from baking over the engine heat. In addition to this triplet, who have the only seats in the van, there are two brothers, hitchers like ourselves in their mid and late teens, and a chick with a four year old boy. She smiles and is suddenly pretty. Evidently these two belong with the triplet in front and all are bound for L.A. by way of Sacramento. Providing the engine stays cool, which it doesn’t. Watch that door and don’t lean against it, comes the sudden word from Navy Joe at the wheel, it’ll fly open. A very tricky door indeed it turns out to be and takes ten minutes to fasten every time it’s opened.

After picking up Baddso and me the van stops for water at the next gas station. In what appears to be a practiced routine, Navy Joe pulls up to the water hose, the kid jumps out to hand him the hose, the girl takes her carpet and moves to the rear, Navy Joe opens the cowl, the engine running, takes the proffered waters hose through the window and begins hosing down the radiator, shooting the water into the fan, causing a spray towards the passengers. With the cowl up and the van stopped the heat in the engine quickly passes the melting point of flesh and we deliquesce as we get out the door, forming puddles of liquid flesh on the concrete drive where we stand.

Navy Joe gets Maybellene cooled down to his satisfaction, radiator filled, and as we all clamber in and he takes off he tells Baddso and me that such stops are necessary only every hundred miles or so.

rainwater running over my hood

I knew that was doin’ my motor good

In five miles the motor is overheating again and we hit another station. This is Williams, and Navy Joe gets the idea of buying a thermostat and installing it. This requires driving around town to find an automotive parts shop, where we all stand around on the sidewalk soaking up the hundred and twelve degree heat while Navy J makes the purchase. The women and the four year old find shade in the entrance of a restaurant and I wonder how long it will be before the proprietor shoos them off as hindrances to trade and profit or calls the police. Baddso is walking up and down the sidewalk peering into windows. He disappears only to show up a minute laster with three oranges, just three because we’re at a little distance from the van with its passengers and he offers me one, telling me he had brought them from the same grocery store where he bought oranges for lunch on his way to Kelseyville from Oregon. He seems almost happy to be in such familiar territory . I accept the orange figuring that the third one will be offered for division to the others but Baddso goes on across the street digging the pulp out of the skin with his teeth like a steam scoop shovel getting mud out of a hole. Unlike him to forget the amenities. I take my peeled orange up to the restaurant entrance and offer slices around in a facetious way calculated to serve as an apology for all my sins against courtesy. Only the four year old accepts. He can’t get enough.

The fourteen year old and Navy Joe are tying to get the radiator hose disconnected from the engine block in order to put in the thermostat but the engine is so hot that the bolts and surrounding portions of the block are frying their fingers. I offer my small assistance but Navy Joe says he might as well do it himself because his fingers are already french fried. My grand piano sits blanketed on Connecticut Street and I agree, secretly relieved and twinging with guilt at being let off easy and being so cautious of my fingers. Rubinstein’s Friday Afternoon piano concert’s now on the road to Kansas and home: please do not bring guests and for that matter do not come yourself.

The bubbling rust-covered water has finished running out of the finally disconnected hose anded I hold the hose away from the block with the aid of a wet paper towel. Surprising how how rubber can be. It’s as criminal for a grand piano like mine to set with no one playing as it is for it to be owned by a talentless self-indulgent literature merchant who’s been playing only a few years. Girl friend said something to that effect, maybe less harsh, unable to believe that I could be so impractical and improvident. Money is to be saved invested for the home and kids and college and the heart attack machine. You wouldn’t sell your MGB to buy a piano? But I did.

The roads are crowded to the shoulders with cars running with fewer than a full capacity of passengers and every ditch has a couple of rusty ones in it. I don’t need a car. I just need a ride in one that doesn’t overheat. The thermostat is in, the hose reconnected, and we resume the intermitted journey. Naturally within two miles the temperature gauge 

is standing on the H peg and we’re stopped in the middle of the Great American Desert with the cool cars running by in herds like bikini-clad girls or like bright metallic lizards. Consternation and consultation in the front seats.

oh Maybellene why can’t you be true

you done started back doin

the things you used to do

Who could be so asinine as to put a thermostat into an overheating engine with the temperature at 112 outside in the starry blue-eyed hope of cooling it. An afterthought of mine, didn’t occur at the time because I thought Navy Joe was a mechanic, what with his T-shirt and oversized tires. Also thought he was replacing an old thermostat with a cooler one rather than as I learn later putting in one where there had been none before. In short, thought he knew what he was doing and what do I know about mechanics anyway. What’re we going to do now, use the water in the ice chest, the geniuses say. Not much of it. Sit here baking till the cool of the evening maybe, which is only eight hours away, being one o’clock now.

The first thing to do is get out of the ovenish inwards of the van out into the relative chill of the hundred and twelve. Once out I sing Baddso a few lines of “Cool clear Water” and am surprised to find he knows the song. Didn’t know you had deserts in England or is it merely the power of pop.

Don’t you listen to him Dan

he’s a devil not a man

and he paints the burning sand

with water, cool clear water

At the chorus I spot a ditch fifteen yards from where we’re standing with warm murky water in it. I report this feature of the topography to Navy Joe and he orders his lackeys, the fourteen year old and the hitching brothers, to break out the empty pop bottles and haul water. There’s a freeway fence between the road and the ditch so the kid and I get on the other side and do the dipping while the brothers and Baddso foot the bottles back and forth. It’s the old pour it into the fan trick again, and in fifteen minutes we’ve got things cooled down, we refill the carton of pop bottles, reboard and head for the next filling station to pull out the thermostat. Baddso and I conferred while we were outside about abandoning the van and trying for another ride but Baddso said we ought to stay for one more breakdown to be polite. Both relieve to be moving again.

old Dan and I

with throats burned dry

and souls that cry

When a mile down the road the temperature gauge starts its H-ward swing and the cowl gets to hot to touch Navy Joe and the righthand kid get the cowl up with a hand apiece while Navy Joe holds us in the road at sixty-five MPH and the kid pours the ditch water into the fan. The spray comes back on us and the older brothers who is most exposed hides behind a map of California. The bottles cool the engine for another miles then it’s up with the cowl and into the fan with the ditch water again. With two more full bottles left we start refilling the empties from the two inches of cold water in the ice chest. After first removing the contents of course, two cans of cola and a small jar of vaseline. The kid pouring the water into the fan is having himself a fine old time. Each time the spray comes back and the older brother ducks behind California he grins broadly in toothy idiocy as if to say we’re sure having some hell of a ride huh.

We make it into a station just as the water runs out. Waterboy jumps out and hands in the hose and Navy Joe gets it spurting into the fan. Cool it down a little than park it out of the way till you can get your fingers back on those hot bolts. I fill some pop bottles and pour water over the bolts and other metallica (a heavy-metal band) to save Navy Joe from deep frying his fingers. Hold the radiator hose again and spray into the fan, pretty soon we’ve got Humpty together again. Fill all the pop bottles and the ice chest and re-embark. It’s three o’clock but Sacramento is only thirty-five miles away. Don’t ya listen to him Dan / he’s a devil not a man.

Navy Joe and Waterboy keep the fluids going into the fan at regular intervals while Baddso and the girl who was on the cowl fill bottles out of the chest. The four-year-old’s mother strips him naked and deposits him in the chest of water. He and I discuss my hat, wants to know am I cowboy or Indian. Mexican, I say, which in the westerns is a kind of ethnic limbo. Billy the Kid didn’t even count the Mexicans he shot, carving notches on his pistol only for the white men.

         Jesus

he was a handsome man 

                                                  and what i want to know is

how do you like your blue-eyed boy

Mister Death