LAST JOURNEY

As we approached Newport I was nostalgically surprised to see highway workers installing a sign inviting everyone to the Fireman’s Booya.

My father was a volunteer fireman in Newport Minnesota when I was a boy. One of my early memories is the Newport, Minnesota Fire Hall. The Fire Hall served as a community center. Every Christmas inside the spacious building a large turkey feed happened complete with a Santa Clause and a tree and plenty of presents. And of course there were Easter egg hunts and Halloween dances -- and in the month of July there was the Booya.

Booya is a giant soup cooked in huge vats. People bring every form of vegetable and meat and throw it together. Beef and venison and lamb and turkey and chickens and rabbit and potatoes and onions and cabbage and God only knows what else. They cook it for three days. The main pot is as tall as a man. Firemen on ladders stir the Booya constantly with two-by-fours. It had quite an aroma...

I remember in my childhood that Booya day was a gaming festival too, not only children’s games but also a bit of gambling. I started out with a nickle and won two dollars once when I was ten years old.

I knew many more memories would soon be stirred to life. Back in April I’d had the foresight to write a letter to the Newport police department letting them know about my impending visit. I told them I was anxious to look up some of my old friends from my childhood days and listed a couple names; Ron Engfer and the brothers Steve and John Lind. I also enclosed a photograph of the Bike Bus and said I would appreciate any assistance on their part in helping me find them. Actually I wanted to stay around my old home town for a few days without police problems and I figured if I wrote them a letter in advance explaining what I do with all the bikes and letting them know that my wife and I lived in the bus then most of the pressure would be relieved from the situation.

I felt great anticipation as I wheeled our monster bus down Fourth Avenue towards the home my father built. I really wanted to see it again. When the house came into view I brought the bus to a halt and peered at the stucco paint and the large picture window and the wrought iron railings on the cement steps and all the other facets of the home I had not seen in almost thirty years. I let the memories flood my consciousness. Talk about life going full circle. What a feeling it was to have my Bike Bus parked next to the home I grew up in... What if my family had never left Minnesota? What if we had stayed right there? Would I eventually have still created the Bicycle Bus and parked it right there beside our house?

Several minutes later a police car pulled up behind my bus and stopped. I got out and walked back to greet him.

He smiled and told me he recognized the bus from the picture I had sent. We shook hands. He told me if I would like to follow him he would be glad to lead me to the home of Steven Lind, who lived only a mile or so away. Presently the huge old Bike Bus lumbered down the leafy lanes of Newport following the police car for about a mile. The cop pulled up and got out. We walked together to a house. The officer said,

When no one answered after several attempts the cop suggested that maybe Steve was around back in his yard so we walked around the house and came to a fence. There was someone sitting in the yard in front of a small fire. The cop called to him and a heavyset fellow got up and came over.

Steve looked at me with no recognition and then back to the cop, Nope. Steve was absolutely sure he had never seen me before in his life. I think he thought the cop was setting him up.

Ross is my middle name, the name my family and close friends called me when I was very young.

The cop bid us goodbye and I thanked him. Steve opened the fence gate and we greeted each other warmly. He invited Ellie and I to come and sit beside his fire. We talked for several hours.

He had thought the cop had come to arrest him because of the fire. He explained that back yard fires were illegal because the area was so dry and he lived next to a lumber yard and all. But his fire was safe and he had a garden hose right there two feet from his lawn chair. He couldn’t see why anyone should mess with him about relaxing with a small well-tended fire on his own property. But the fine was high and he said they were known to take offenders straight to jail. So he was really thankful that the cop had not mentioned the fire at all. He was even astonished by the fact, to think the cop actually had a heart in reuniting two friends who hadn’t seen each other in more than twenty years and maybe didn’t want to dampen the moment by reacting to Steve’s illegal fire.

Steve was a sensitive guy. He brought out some beer we both went back in time. I was ten years old in 1957. Steve would have been about eight. He was a skinny little kid back then. I remember when me and Steve and his brother John all climbed trees together and hiked in the hills behind their house. Man, Steve sure had filled out since those long ago days.

So we sat there and I asked him every question I could think of about what had happened to this or that kid and so on. I had waited thirty years to hear these things and I waited on his every word. Some stories meant more to me than others...

There was a kid named John in my elementary school, the same age as myself. He used to beat me up all the time. He was fast and wiry and he really liked winning and he really liked the power trip of hurting other kids. He was a bully and the kids he ran with were as bad as he was. He was also the class wise ass, making annoying noises and comments at the teacher to tick her off.

He and his gang of three or four others used to wait for me when I rode my bike to school. When they saw me they’d chase me and run me into the ground and then they’d all beat me up. My parents wouldn’t do anything. They said I had to learn to fight my own battles. Sometimes I’d arrive late for school because I rode the long way around to avoid the hooligans.

John was on all the athletic teams, baseball, football, hockey. I was always chosen last. They hooted me and complained loudly if I ended up on their side. They called me “freckles”. Oh heck. They made my life absolutely miserable.

Once when I was hiking in the hills with my best friend Gary we found a bird that someone had hung by its neck from a tree. The poor thing must have struggled to fly for some time before it perished. What cruel torture children may inflict upon small animals if they are never taught any better! As Gary and I looked at the bird we heard voices and wondered if they belonged to the culprits that had hung the bird. It was John and his gang. They all had bb-guns and one had a 22 rifle. They detected us and fired a few shots in our direction. We ran, with them hot on our heels and made it home safe.

But John was the life of the party and the girl’s all loved him. He was thin and strong and everyone said he was handsome.

There was one girl especially of whom I dreamed. Cayenne -- a diminutive blue-eyed blond. Once in fourth grade she invited me over to her house and up to her room where she put on a floor show for me. I guess she thought she had created some exotic clothes styles. Actually all she had done was tied some colorful scarves together and wrapped them around her. I don’t think she had on much of anything else except for those scarves... I was bug-eyed. Her mother came upstairs quietly and surprised us and ran me out. I was never invited to her home again. Her father was a banker as I remember. They were a different class of people from us. But I dreamed of Cayenne every night.

In fifth grade Cayenne and I wrote notes to each other in school and passed them back and forth. Sexy notes. We drew nudes and passed them too. And we asked each other questions about sex. This went on for quite some time. Another girlfriend, Natty, Cayenne’s close friend, was a third friend in the note-passing. Between the three of us we planned some hot times, none of which ever happened.

The teacher caught one of our notes one day and after emptying our desks found many more. She was shocked at the contents and telephoned our parents. My parents dealt with me strictly.

During the next year John the Loudmouth began taking an interest in Cayenne and my heart was broken when she seemed to like him so much she never even looked at me any more. And so sixth grade passed, and seventh, and eighth. Still they remained together. Still I dreamed of her.

In ninth grade I noticed her in the home-ec room whenever I passed by the door on my way to shop class. She was filling out, becoming a beautiful young woman. John was still a bully. I avoided them both. I had my own friends. I spent a lot of time hiking in the hills. Or I stayed home and read books.

Then in 1963 my dad got transferred to a Naval Air Station in California. He’d asked for the transfer to try and save his marriage. My mother was bored with the limitations of Navy life in Minnesota, bored with trying to make ends meet on an enlisted man’s salary. He was trying to feed her dreams, to give her a few special things, to make her happy with him. He’s a Catholic in his heart. He didn’t believe in divorse. She’s Lutheran and saw things very differently.

So I learned I would be leaving my friends at the end of the school year. I didn’t mind that. Most of them seemed shallow and insensitive to me. I wanted new friends. I wanted a whole new world. But I looked with longing at Cayenne. I knew it was useless. Man I looked forward to California...

My last memory about John: He had taken to tormenting me constantly at the skating rink, pushing me and tripping me, calling me cruel names in front of all the other kids when I wouldn’t fight him. I was so tired of losing and being laughed at by a crowd of bloodthirsty kids that always sided with the winner and always jeered the loser. But I was getting so tired of being abused by him... Everyone was calling me a coward -- avoiding me.

I dreamed every night of beating him up good just one time. But every time I tried I lost. And he kept up his constant torments.

I was leaning against the stove railing in the ice skating rink when he came up behind me and kicked my skate out from under me. He didn’t expect what happened next and neither did I really. I had been standing there psyching myself up, telling myself I could do it if I tried. When he kicked at my skate I turned around fast and punched him in the face. In moments I had him pinned against the wall and I was flailing against him punch after punch, most of them landing. He was pretty bruised when they finally pulled us apart. He’d got in a couple good one’s too and my mouth was bleeding but he went home crying and I felt reborn. The rink manager called me a ruffian and made me go home too. As usual, adults had no idea what was really going on.

I had one last thing I had to do before we moved away. Towards the end of winter I went up to Cayenne and asked her if she would like to skate with me. I’d never dared do that before. We held hands and skated around the rink. I put my arm around her. It was getting dark and not many people were left on the ice. I put my lips against her cheek and kissed her. She looked at me not unkindly. She wished me good luck in California. We parted and I never saw her again.

It’s so strange the way a child’s first infatuations may still haunt him decades later...

And the anger I felt in my heart against the bully John stayed with me too. Even years later it still lingered. Those times of long ago passed in front of my eyes and I smoldered.

“Oh, John. Well, he married Cayenne after high school. Remember her? Then he joined the army during the Viet Nam war -- and then he committed suicide. Shot himself. It was in all the papers.”

I was shocked to the core. To think I had been so angry in my heart against someone who had been dead for so long... And to think that he had taken his own life... Whew...

I took a photograph of Steve Lind standing in front of the Bike Bus. Then we drove over to the Red Rock Saloon and drank a couple beers.

The Red Rock Saloon had become a rather raunchy place. Lots of bikers drank there. After Steve went home, I hung around for another hour and dug the vibes. I wasn’t a Minnesotan anymore. I couldn’t relate to their local conversations. I was far from my Oregon-Washington element. But these old Minnesota places were still my roots and I closed my eyes and felt the roots growing deep down in the Earth.

We parked the bus for the night at Pioneer Park where the ice rink was located in winter. Gary and me used to lay on our backs in piles of autumn leaves and listen to our transistor radios through earphones. Jerry Lee Louis. Patsy Cline, Elvis Presley. Paul Anka. Gene Pitney. I remembered how I had kissed the two twin sisters in the park, one at a time. Sherry and Cheryl, standing there in the dark, beneath the moon...

And then another face appeared out of my past: --Corky. He went to elementary school with me.He'd heard I was in town and had come to say hello. He was about the only guy in town who faintly resembled a hippy. --And he even knew about the Rainbow Gatherings!

Corky was a further repository of information about old classmates. He told me more about John but he didn’t know why he had shot himself either.

The only person I could get no information about was Rita Swenton, the girl who lived in the next house up on the hill from us. My parents have pictures of her and I holding hands walking through fields of grass when we were just three years old. They say we were always like that together.

Rita was part Indian and she always had beautifully combed long brown hair down to her waist. Our acquaintance more or less ended when my parents and her parents got involved in a feud. So we weren’t allowed to talk to each other for years. We never even said hello in school. Then when we were ten her family moved out to a farm in the country and she went to a different school.

I pestered my mother until she finally restored her friendship with Rita’s mother and we drove out to their farm for a visit. I must have been eleven or twelve then. We sat up in the hayloft and talked for an hour until my parents called me to go home. I thought about that conversation for years afterwards.

When I went to check out the nearby town of St Paul Park and the school where I had attended ninth grade a rude cop grimly inspected our Bike Bus paperwork and ran us both through his computer.

I'm sure most human beings feel the same way about it. When someone in authority treats us with a lack of respect it is hard to just shrug it off afterwards. And if it starts happening regularly, we start looking for some remedy. The one Newport cop had been great to us, but most of the other meetings we had with Minnesota cops were very unpleasent. We crossed quickly over into Wisconsin, hoping things were better there. Good ol’ “Whiskey and sin” should be lenient. We got on highway 30 and headed north and never got stopped by any cops all the way to Lake Superior where we crossed back into Minnesota.

The city of Duluth was larger than I remembered, more sprawled out. The streets were a confusing hodgepodge. The streetlights weren’t timed together in the slightest and the old Bike Bus didn’t like stopping and starting on the steep hills. We’d picked up some Rainbow hitchhikers, two girls and a guy, and the bus was cramped for space with all their packs and bags. We were all a little nervous about the Duluth traffic, especially when we noticed a cop eyeing us real bad. But he was in the wrong lane and couldn’t turn where we did. We didn’t stop for gas or coffee or nuthin’ until we were well past that city.

The Rainbow Gathering was way north, almost to the Canadian border. The northern wilderness was largely populated with businesses catering to sportsmen and tourists. The people we met who lived there year-round seemed quiet and easy-going and happy.

When we got to the small town of Lutson a Rainbow sign directed us up a road into outlying hills. I said “up”. I hadn’t expected a road so steep In Minnesota. It was steeper than any road we had climbed coming over the Rockies and it was seven miles long. We had to pull half of it in granny gear. The other half we had to have someone sitting on the gear shift to keep it from jumping out. Slowly but surely we were climbing up the Rainbow.