Mom, Dad and the girls moved away from Enterprise in the summer of '83. That left me alone to my own devices, but Kurt stayed with a family friend that was generous enough, or stupid enough maybe, to volunteer to let Kurt live at his home.
I lived in town in a small apartment. The apartment building had a back courtyard that contained stables and an outhouse at one time. That pretty well dates the building. Circa 1890-something.
Mom and Dad sent plane tickets to Kurt and I so that we could come to Phoenix for Christmas. The nearest airport that actually had a flight to Phoenix was in Portland. Portland was (and still is, surprisingly enough) a LONG way from Enterprise.
For those of you who are geographically challenged,Portland is nestled into the lower-right-hand corner of that hump on the west side of Oregon. Enterprise is across a river from Idaho.
That's a lot of road.
It’s an ESPECIALLY long road if your cars can’t be trusted. I had a '69 Camaro which was great for getting around in a town the size of a football stadium. But it wasn't a good choice for a trans-state pilgrimage. Kurt, on the other hand, had a pretty Chevy Luv Truck that was fairly reliable.
FAIRLY reliable. You'll notice that it has been at least 10 years since you saw a Chevy Luv. There's a reason.
Kurt and I gave ourselves 2 days to get to Portland. Its really only a 13 hour drive, but we didn't want to miss our flight. We figured we'd just sleep in the truck. It was a good thing that we planned ahead because Kurt's truck had a trick or two up its tailpipe, and it snowed and snowed and snowed between Enterprise and Portland.
First, we ran into the weather. The Oregon National Safety and Feel-Good Agency was requiring tire-chains to go through the mountains. Kurt had some chains that he had got a really good deal on...almost free as I recall. You know the old adage: "If it’s too good to be true..." That’s the story of our life.
We stopped at the bottom of the mountains and put the chains on with all of the other people attempting to negotiate that Donner-like mountain pass. When we were sure that the chains were on securely we began our trek up the snowy mountain.
Almost immediately we heard the ominous "thump-scratch, thumpety-scratch, thump-scratch" of one of the cross-links of the tire chain tearing the paint off the side of Kurt's shiny truck. We got out and fixed it with baling wire and went a few miles until the same thing started on the other side. So we wired it up.
Again and again this happened. It took all day to get over those stinkin' hills. We almost ran out of baling wire. That would have been a catastrophe. A day without baling wire is like a day without sunshine.
We continued westward after we got to the low lands along the Columbia River west of Pendleton. But the truck wasn't running quite right. That is to say, the damn thing would die, at 60 mph, headed down the highway. Sometimes it would spontaneously restart, other times it would magically start only after having come to a complete stop.
It was almost like Kurt’s truck was trying to tell us something.
Not knowing anything about trucks, but having limited knowledge about 2 stroke dirt bikes I guessed the problem was ignition, and had to be fouled spark plugs. So we stopped and bought some plugs and installed them in the truck on a cold snowy Oregon night under a streetlamp at a truck stop. Nope. It wasn't plugs. In fact, the truck seemed to run better with the old plugs. We know this, because we switched plugs, then switched them back because the new plugs actually ran worse.
Somewhere during the course of changing the plugs, one of us bumped the air cleaner which jiggled loosely. I tried to tighten the wingnut holding it onto the carb, but the nut was already tight.
Its hard to figure this stuff out in the dark, along the side of an interstate, especially when you don’t know what you’re doing.
The carb was loose. But the bolts that had wiggled loose were installed from the underside of the intake manifold, which was securely bolted to the engine block. To further complicate issues, the Japanese design team had chosen to attach every possible hose, vacuum line, and linkage to the carb, so the array was pretty intimidating to two non-mechanical dudes like us (HAH! Stupid Amelicans wirr nevel figule this out). Apologies to Toshiro Mifune, whose work I enjoy.
So we did the only thing we could do. I rolled up my nasty old cowshit-smellin' Vietnam-era army jacket and put it on top of the air cleaner housing and slammed the hood on it. The idea was to put enough pressure on the air-cleaner to keep the carb in place, so it wouldn’t suck air through the joint between the carb and manifold.
It wasn't entirely successful, but we were able to limp at about 29 miles an hour the rest of the way to Portland.
We had planned to sleep in the truck and save money on a motel room. But we were COLD! I can't describe it, we were freezing. And my coat was under the hood holding the engine together. We got a motel room, and turned the heater on "Redneck Defrost." It was about 120 degrees in a half-hour, but we were still chilled to the bone.
That was the first time I had ever rented a motel room. Since I had no credit card we had to find one that took cash. My first motel room came with hot and cold running -dealers. I can't recall ever bringing a tire iron and a bowie knife into a rented room on any other occasion. But I did it that night. At least it was warm.The next morning, before our afternoon flight, we found a garage that only had a foot of water running through it from the torrential downpour hitting Portland right then. There was an old redneck mechanic in the service bay who told us it was going to cost thirty dollars more than everything we had. We explained our plight to him and he fixed Kurt's truck as a favor on his lunch-hour. What a good guy. We sure didn’t expect to find anyone who would be helpful in a city like Portland. I guess it goes to show that if you look hard enough, you can always find some good... Wherever you happen to be standing.
By now we were tired, cold again, and frustrated. Then we had to hike about half a mile from our parking space to the airport terminal in the cold driving rain. Now picture this. Two soaking, shivering hicks with cowshit stained boots and hats dressed in old, ripped army jackets which look as if they came across a state under the hood of a truck...and did, walking through an international airport looking pissed-off. Even the Hare Krishnas left us alone. When the stewardesses saw us coming, they changed our seat assignments to keep us away from the decent folk flying the friendly skies. They sat us right up front, next to the stewardess' station.... Presumably so they could keep an eye on us.
Once in the air, almost as an afterthought, one of the stewardesses got close enough to smell us, wrinkled her cute little nose and asked "can I get you...gentlemen.... anything?"
We couldn’t miss the "I’m from the city... someplace nice, and we don’t really like people like you" implicit in her otherwise proper question. I’m sure she would’ve added "like a bath and a decent set of clothes" if we hadn’t appeared so anti-social.
That was pretty much the last straw for me. I just looked out from under my shit-stained hat brim and said "two beers."She ever so politely asked "May I see some ID?"I impolitely responded "No, you may not."
"Well then I can't sell you two, uh, gentlemen any beer. The drinking age is 21."
I asked "In what state?"
"Well... in Oregon." She was losing her sense of humor. So was I.
"Well in California, Arizona, and Nevada it’s 19. Bring me two beers when we get over one o' those states."
She was licked, she was standing there arguing with someone who looked and smelled like the Broadway cast of "Deliverance"...She made the right decision. She brought beer. And lots of it.
I think she was hoping we’d drink ourselves to sleep. Kurt and I expended all of our remaining funds on beer somewhere over the whole western United States.
When we landed in Phoenix we were tanked, smelly, unshaven, and walking around in army coats and jeans with sweaty long underwear underneath.
It was 80 degrees in Phoenix. The crowd of greeters at the gate was full of beautiful women in halter tops. Life was good, women were beautiful, I was snockered and Kurt was looking for a trash can to be sick into.
It’s a good thing video cameras were so expensive back then. Otherwise, I’m sure Kurt and I would have been on "America’s Funniest Drunk Redneck Home Videos" ... Or maybe "COPS"It was obvious that we didn’t fit in, so we decided to be awfully blatant about not fitting in.
But that’s another story.
Them're my brothers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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