Last Journey
12. The Heart of the Matter
We
stood beside the Bike Bus upon a large empty lot and surveyed our situation. We had maybe
a couple hundred dollars, not much to work with in view of the circumstances. I got on my
bicycle and explored the town. Maybe, just maybe we might get lucky and find someone who
would for some reason help us repair the engine, maybe someone who would accept a bicycle
in return for his labors. Or maybe ten bicycles... or
twenty... Or thirty? Well, one can hope.
I
found a guy with a small Bike shop who was interesting to talk to, but that conversation
didn’t lead anywhere, so I kept looking. I came to a rundown trailer court and met
the down-to-Earth people who ran it. They
said we could park the Bike Bus there for a few days. It would cost us a little money but
we’d be safe and it would give us time to think.
Back
at the bus I. decided to try starting up the engine just to see what would happen. The
engine started right up, and even sounded rather smooth -- until I tried giving it any
gas. It had no power and it made noises. I tried to find someone to tow us to the trailer
court but had no luck. I wanted to hurry up and get there and get settled in, so I fired
up the engine and drove there, slowly so as not to strain anything.
A
fellow lived in the court who according to his sons used to be the best mechanic in town
before he retired. They fetched him over and he listened to the engine running and
pronounced that I had spun a rod bearing. He said there was no worthwhile quick-fix that
would be permanent but he told me about a patch job I could try that just might get us to
the other side of the mountains.
First
I had to drain the oil and remove the oil pan. Then I could plainly see the rod with the
loose bearing. I removed the rod cap bolts and the cap and pushed the rod and piston up
into the cylinder. Now I was able to examine the damage done to the crank lobe, which of
course was badly scarred. I obtained some eighty grit emery cloth from an auto parts store
and proceeded to smooth out the lobe by hand. The process took all day. Many hours spent
filing and filing and filing again, measuring with a micrometer, sanding smooth with emery
cloth. Many hours. When the lobe was as smooth as I could get it -- and as round as I
could get it—I measured the lobe with the micrometer and ordered a bearing that was
close to tolerances, which I installed with the connecting rod, and then the pan, and last
of all the oil.
The
lobe was imperfect now, a tiny bit oblong, which is not the way a crank lobe should be. By
rights, the crank ought to be taken out and turned in a machine shop and new bearings
installed -- but that would be a really big expensive project. There was a strong
possibility that the engine might require a new piston and all kinds of other things.
Pacific
Truck Repair in Canyonville Oregon had rebuilt the engine less than a year previous it had
cost me more than two thousand five hundred dollars. They hadn’t guaranteed it
because I finally ran out of money and couldn’t afford to put in the new oil pump
they felt I ought to have. My money was gone. I had to take the engine as is. They said, “OK
--&nbssp; No warranty.” So there was no use
telephoning them. What would they do? Nothing. And I didn’t have two or three
thousand dollars to do it all again.
But
if I could somehow get the bus over the mountains I could find somewhere to park and work
on it in my leisure. The weather was better near the coast. I wouldn’t be stuck in
snow if I was still stuck when winter came. And perhaps I could sell some bicycles and
save up some money. Such things were possible in the communities of the Olympic Peninsula.
But we’d surely starve and freeze if we stayed in Moses Lake.
I
turned the key. The engine came to life again. There was a distinct knock but if I was
gentle on the gas pedal we might just make it. We pulled out of the trailer park and
headed out of town. One slow mile after another slid behind us.
And
the knock became louder and louder and louder. And the engine ran hot.
Two
hundred miles later we were near the Columbia Gorge when I knew I would have to shut the
engine down or stand the chance of blowing it up totally. But I figured if I could find a
place to do the work I might try to hand-grind the lobe again and put in yet another new
rod bearing. We met a fellow who told us about a camping area right on the Columbia River
where we would find all the privacy and space we would need to do the job.
We
followed his directions. Whoa!! He hadn’t mentioned how steep the road was that led
down the cliffs to the river! How the hell would I ever get the Bike Bus out of there? Oh
well, It was too late to turn around.
But
man-oh-man it was beautiful down there...
It
looked like we might be there for awhile. It’s a good thing I had my Honda 750
motorcycle on the back bumper. Getting it off was always a big project. Six heavy bicycles
hung down from the top rack and covered the Honda and in between them were stashed all
kinds of bike parts. But if I ever needed to use that motorcycle this was the time, so I
dislodged it and rolled it down the ramp and it sat there in the sand looking like the
crusty old gallant steed that it has always been in every emergency like this. It fired
right up and purred like a mountain lion even though it hadn’t run in at least six
months.
Now
the entire Columbia gorge was accessible to us. We could go get groceries, and bearings
and whatever we needed.
I
pulled out our 650 watt Honda generator too. We’d have all the electricity we needed
for power tools and lights. We needn’t hurry anymore.
If
ever there was a more beautiful spot to be broke down I don’t know where it might be.
And we were nicely fixed to deal with the situation. Comfortable.
I
turned up the stereo as loud as I wanted. There was no one around for miles and miles to
bother. Then I crawled underneath and set to work removing the oil pan and the rod cap
again, and I went at that lobe with the emery cloth. And whenever I got tired I just fired
up the motorcycle and went for a ride.
There
was an old abandoned road that wound along the walls of the canyon. It was the original
old highway, made during the era of Model T’s, now fallen into disrepair, and
entirely impassable to automobiles anymore -- but just dandy for motorcycles. It was
pretty dangerous in some places. The old road had fallen in and only left a narrow bit of
road a couple feet wide. It could go too. And it was a long way down. Clearly only a fool
would venture there. I got so far out that road that I worried what I would do if I had an
accident or if I even ran out of gas. Exhilarated, and a little panicked by the chances I
had taken, I returned to the Bike Bus. There I crawled back underneath the ancient
behemoth and ground away at that lobe again. So, two days passed.
The
motorcycle took me into a nearby town for the bearings, which had to be ordered. The next
day I rode out again and picked them up. The trip along the gorge on the motorcycle was
always fantastic. I turned off the engine and coasted silently and slowly down the five
miles to the Bike Bus parked beside the Columbia River.
***
It
was time to try again. The engine was assembled. Our belongings were all packed aboard.
The motorcycle was nestled once more upon the back bumper almost invisible amidst the
bicycles and parts surrounding it.
The
engine sounded smooth as long as I didn’t press too hard on the gas. But it
wasn’t healthy. And now the sick engine had to pull the combined weight of the
motorcycle and a hundred bicycles and uncountable parts and all our projects and
possessions up that five miles of 13% grade to the top of the gorge. And that was just for
starters. There were still many miles between us and the Olympic Peninsula. But the
extremely steep winding road immediately ahead of us was the first test. If it was
possible, everything was possible. But if it was impossible then everything was impossible
-- because if the engine failed ------ the vaccum brakes would no longer function! And
the whole bus would start rolling backwards faster and faster with no way to stop it. I
wondered how good I’d be at steering the Bike Bus in reverse at seventy-five miles an
hour down that steep winding narrow road with the sheer cliff on one side. I told Ellie to
stand near the open door and to jump out if I yelled at her to do that. I assured her that
I’d be following right after her... She understood. We began to ascend. Looking back
now I realize it was one of the craziest things I ever did.
KNOCK
KNOCK KNOCK... We were asking a lot of inanimate metal. But there was a spirit that
could make that metal live and do impossible things and I earnestly began trying to get in
touch with that spirit... We inched along in
the granny gear. I kept the rpms exactly where the rod made the least amount of noise. We
moved so slow that we could have walked up the road faster. Inch after inch we ascended.
Elation mounted in my heart as we approached the top, and finally we were there.
We
drove out onto the highway. Ahead of us and far below we could see the bridge that
stretched across the Columbia river. I remembered how Ellie and I had crossed that bridge
on our loaded-down Peugeot bicycles in July of 1982. The highway over the bridge had been
freshly tarred and the hot sun bore down upon us like an oven. A man in a Winnebago had
told us that day that the temperature was 107 degrees. Benny, our Irish Setter, rode
across the tarred bridge on the cart I towed behind my bike; the hot tar would have
crippled him otherwise. That trip was our escape from the forces that had taken away our
children. We’d torn our hearts free on that trip. We’d set ourselves loose on
the winds of fate. We’d ridden from Southern California up highway 101 to Washington
and across through Spokane and into Idaho that summer. I will never forget that bridge or
the way the tar got all over our tires and derailleurs and chains. It took days to get all
that tar off.
As
the Bike Bus passed over the bridge I listened to the engine knocking and watched the vast
Columbia flowing beneath us. It seemed to me that we were making some kind of full
circle... Ellie and I were still together through everything. Here we were, still facing
trials and tribulations together. It must mean something...
Then
we rolled on through Vantage, Washington and up the steep eleven mile long pass on the
other side of that town. We were on our way... We were definitely on our way...
We
rested the motor often. Some very steep mountain passes were up ahead of us. When we came
to them we took it real slow and easy. In the late afternoon we arrived in the town of
North Bend at the top of all the passes. It was down hill from there.
As
the day became night we rolled down out of the mountains and passed through Seattle
without stopping. We headed south towards Tacoma and Olympia. Those big Washington cities
were no good for us. We aren’t city people. The Bike Bus could no more survive in a
city that size than a wild bird could survive in a cage. Exhausted, I parked for the night
behind a 24 hour Tacoma gas station, with their permission. In the morning the Bike Bus
would not start on its own. We had to get someone to give us a little push. I popped the
clutch and the engine came to life with a clatter. We rolled down the highway again.
From
Olympia we headed west and north on highway 101. It was August 18, 1990 and still summer
and I figured that if I could get the Bike Bus to Forks, Washington I could still fix a
lot of bikes and sell some too. Forks, has always been one of our best towns for making
money. Also, it’s a logging community
and there’s all kinds of mechanics around there who know how to work on large trucks.
Forks was about two hundred miles from Olympia.
But
the rod was knocking louder and louder. The whole bus was shaking badly from the dying
engine. We went slower and slower. As we passed Hoodsport I knew it was not likely we
would reach Forks. After we passed through Brinnon the road rose through mountains again
and the engine really went through hell. At the top we rested it for an hour. The engine
would not start but we were facing downhill so we coasted towards Quilcene. At the bottom
of the long pass we engaged the motor and it started. The shocking vibrations resumed. It
felt like jack hammers were pounding on the bus.
In
Quilcene we pulled over and parked on the property of a defunct gas station. We were
opposite the town park and community center and just a few feet from a restaurant. It was
a spot where we had sold and repaired bicycles in times past. But the town was small and
poor and business had never been good for us there.
We
ate some french fries and drank coffee in the restaurant and I told the people that I
doubted that the Bike Bus would start up again. We went out to the bus and sat inside and
listened to the radio. I set up my bike shop and waited for a customer. None came. People
drove by and looked at us. People sat in the restaurant and ate and watched us from the
windows.
I
figured I could grind the lobe again and install another new bearing. But I wondered if
the damage wasn’t too great this time. We had covered four hundred miles on that
ruined crank. We had come over the mountains. We had arrived in the area that I felt would
give us the best chance for recovery. During the past few days I had prayed in my heart
that the God or Goddess of Creation would allow us to get over the mountains to a safe
place on the Olympic Peninsula. And we had made it. But
we had not made it to Forks. And I just didn’t feel that the engine could be made to
go any further. And I could not see what we could do in that poor little town. I brought a
chair outside and sat in it and watched the wind blowing through the trees. Night fell.
In
the morning I worked on a bicycle. I wondered what the use was to work on a bicycle. I had
enough bikes. All of them rebuilt. Many of them with new tires, new chains, new
derailleurs, new seats, new paint jobs. Did anyone want to buy one? No. What was the use
of spending more hours rebuilding one more bike to strap up with all the rest of the
rebuilt bikes on that broken down bus? What was I going to do now that the whole menagerie
could no longer move under it’s own power?
I
looked across the street and saw two people looking at me.
They looked vaguely familiar. They waved. I waved back. We stood looking at each
other. Who were they? I had no idea.
They
crossed the road and walked up to me. The lady wore glasses. She smiled sweetly. The man
was tall and round. His face was kind and full of humor. We shook hands. They asked me how
I was doing. As they spoke it all came back to me. They were the people from Faith Farm
I
told them about our engine problems. They said they would ask Scott Hollingsworth to come
and look at our engine. He was a pretty good mechanic and he lived on Faith Farm. They
left.
Scott showed up later that afternoon. He said he thought it might not be too difficult to repair the thing. He invited us to bring it up to Faith Farm and park there while we did the repairs. He hitched a chain behind his truck and pulled us the four miles. We parked on the grass.
All the Faith Farm kids gathered around us. What a happy bunch of rascals. What a
wonderful community.
I began pulling apart the engine right away. Scott came by and helped occasionally. The job was huge -- much larger than anything I have ever attempted before. Days turned into weeks The picture on the right shows the Bicycle Bus days after we arrived at Faith Farm -- all decked out to live its life, to roll down roads doing the beautiful things it was created to do. All the bikes on the rack are rebuilt and ready to go to some deserving person. The headlights all work. The wooden door has the Indian Dream Catcher on it. Inside the bus everything is livable and excellent. The bus is entirely living and functioning -- except for one thing -- the engine is blown. The beauty is all dressed up for living life, but has no way to go and do it. |
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***
It
was autumn. Faith Farm was becoming more and more like home to us. We pushed the Bike Bus
back beside an unused trailer and plugged in to the 110 volt electricity.
I
took the head into NAPA auto parts to be rebuilt and was surprised to discover the bill
for that alone would be almost three hundred dollars! Machining the crank would be another
$250 or more. And the crank bearings would be $200 and the set of rod bearings would be
over a hundred. And those were the best prices I could find. I discovered that I would
need a new piston and I hadn’t located one yet. And the cylinder walls were tapered
and needed reboring and I had no idea how I would ever get that heavy block out of the
bus. I had huge pieces of the engine laying everywhere. As I looked at them I began to
worry that I wouldn’t remember how to put it all back together or that I would lose
track of some vital piece. But my biggest problem remained the fact that I just
didn’t have the money to do the job.
After
a couple months of sitting around Faith Farm Ellie and I felt restless and stuck. I was
anxious to see Eugene again and to sit in the hotsprings at Cougar. So we packed up the
motorcycle with a tent and sleeping bags and took a trip. The leaves were turning colors
and falling. The weather was warm. We arrived in Eugene in time to attend a Halloween
party at the WOW hall.
The
big news around Eugene was that the homeless people were staging a camp-in on the lawn in
front of the courthouse. They had built temporary structures of plastic and sticks up
against the marble walls. They spare-changed
city-councilmen on the steps. People were bathing nude in the fountain. (Eugene Oregon is
a rare city. It is legal for a woman to be topless, even downtown, if she desires.) All in
all, it was quite a statement.
We
were invited to join in the shenanigans and we would have if we weren’t on our way to
Cougar to bathe in the sacred hippy waters and watch the celestial virgins play in the
hearts of God and Goddess.
The
cops busted up the city hall campers that night. I’m glad we were elsewhere.
***
We
returned to Faith Farm and dug in for winter, purchased an electric heater and got out the
warm blankets. We attached our 12 volt color tv to a tall antenna and tuned in the one
station that was available. We set up our VCR and contemplated watching all the tapes we
had recorded over the past four years every time we had rented a movie.
And
we edited the tapes we’d made with our camcorder at the Minnesota Rainbow Gathering
in July and sent off copies to the people who had asked for them.
I
played chess in the evenings with Melvin, one of Faith Farm’s patriarchs. He’s a
bit persnickety about his views on religion, but how could an old hippy pagan like me
expect otherwise? At least for the time being we managed to forego any unhealthy
differences of opinion.
The
Faith Farm residents had a meeting and they decided that Ellie and I were welcome to stay
for awhile if we’d like and that no one would force any particular type of religion
upon us and I thought that was noble of them. But from the start I did not keep any
secrets from them. I let them know that my Rainbow brothers and sisters were freedom
loving nudists and that I was fond of photographing nudes, which I attempt to do in a
classical tradition and with a focus on the cathartic beauty endemic to the ancient human
spirit when observed naturally amidst the untamed elements of creation. They listened to
me talk and they even looked at some of my photos but they just shook their heads. It
wasn’t their way. So I kept my photos to
myself thereafter and worked on them in the privacy of my bus. And so November passed.
Christmas was coming and the weather grew cold and we had snow. The children came to see us nearly every day: Ezra
and Timmy and Brian and Jamie and Jennifer and Chrissie and Eleshiba and Julia and Sarah. Seeing them made Ellie and I miss our own children
more than ever...
|
I thought about Mary in Eugene whose stepfather had
forced her to get the abortion. How cruel the world is sometimes… How hard it is on a
woman’s heart and soul, a woman who loves children to have such a thing forced upon
her. The loss of our three children did scar us for life. Children are so sacred. Family
is so sacred. I spent much of the winter painting Mary’s Rose, pictured here
on the right. The painting in "The Pub at the End of the Universe" on Gladstone
street in Portland Oregon for many years. I really want my children to someday know how they were taken away from us against our will. And how it might never have happened if people had taken the time to really look at us and see us for what we actually are. --Although our lifestyles were different from general society we are still loving and intelligent people and would have parented them extraordinarily well. So I spent the largest portion of every day revising my book, COMPORTING ROADWISE. We might not be around anymore when they finally discover the book. In that case they will surely appreciate the effort we have gone to, to give the true story to them. |
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My book was getting close to being finished. Diane Frantz looked over each finished
chapter and circled misspelled words. She had
trouble with some parts, because she doesn’t ever use “bad language”. And
some passages described activities of which she could not approve. But she became a good
friend, one person with whom I always felt at ease.
Diane
and Merle, husband and wife for twenty years or so, were a real pair of lovebirds. They
raised their brood of five children with laughter and sensitivity. I was always welcome in
their home. Merle and I talked together often and as time passed I began to think of him
as one of my closest friends. For me to have a friend like that has been too rare.
I’ve been moving around so much...
I
brought a large case of all my VCR tapes into their home. On many evenings we all sat
around and watched tv and ate large bowls of popcorn.
Daniel
Boone’s great-great-great grandson, Douglas Boone, was Diane Frantz’s
step-father and he lived in a little cabin beside their large home. He was getting on in
years and had trouble walking. He and I began to become friends too and I counted that as
something special.
They
all seemed to understand Ellie pretty well. Ellie makes more social errors than most
people. But Diane had read the book I had written about Ellie and she knew better than
most people why Ellie was the way she was. And I could talk with Diane about those things.
Her insight was invaluable. Melvin’s wife Sarah was also very kind towards Ellie.
So I
began to realize that in the long run, the fact that we were broken down might not be so
bad after all, because of this opportunity to spend time among such sensitive people.
Ellie
and I cooked our Christmas turkey and cranberries and sweet potatoes and ate quietly in
our broken-down Bike Bus and watched the fire through the thick glass on the side of our
little woodstove. Our bus was a warm place. It was too bad it did not run anymore. There
were roads we would have liked to have been wandering, snowy roads with children on snowy
bicycles. But we had that at Faith Farm without moving if we could only learn to be
content.
As
to what we were going to do about the engine repairs, I could not answer that question. It
appeared to me that the God or Goddess of Creation had set us there for a reason, perhaps
to do some thinking and some feeling.
The
hand of Providence was clearly visible in our lives. We had a path. Our path was not
always understood by other humans, not even by people who considered themselves to be on
one of God’s paths. Our path included an Edenistic nudity, an amazing openness.
Normal religions would have a hard time understanding that our path was as pure as theirs.
But the hand of Providence had been there for us time and again. What a miracle it was!
The way our engine had finally died in Quilcene of all places. In Quilcene where we had
made friends with the Faith Farm people earlier that year! Of all the towns along the long
road we had traveled, where the engine of our Bike Bus might have given up the ghost, the
hand of Providence had moved within those cylinders and bearings and brought the old
Bicycle Bus safely to Quilcene. And there it died. And here we were, snug and safe,
amongst people who not only allowed us to stay with them as long as it would take to fix
our Bike Bus, but who had a place for us in their hearts and in their lives. Many are the
Christians I have met in my life who would have had no such initiative or intention. Of
all the Christians in the world, Providence had brought us to these Christians, who were
willing to befriend us to such great lengths. How would we have survived otherwise?
Isn’t it truly amazing?
And
this was just one of many many very visible instances where we could clearly observe the
hand of Providence caring for us.
This
year of 1990 was a great transition for us. The old 1941 International Bicycle Bus had
served us well for five years. What a wonderful wandering home and business it was. What a
blessing it was! That we had even had the opportunity to wander in it for those five years
fixing bikes in little towns and Indian Reservations, wandering through deserts and
mountains and seashores! What a Blessing!
|
The old Bicycle Bus would never move again under it’s own power. But we would live in
it for three more years there at Faith Farm. Then it was towed to a storage yard where it
has sat for years and years as if abandoned. I have paid the storage on it month after
month -- because I love the old hulk. And because I have a dream, that if ever I make some
money from my writing or my art, I will repair the old Bicycle Bus and restore it to its
beauty. There it sits in its home in the grass, waiting, over a decade later. It was a
dream while it lived. People would see the Bicycle Bus rolling down the road and their
faces would light up and they would wave to us. They loved the Bike Bus. A dream as good
as this one deserves to live again. And who knows? Maybe it will. |
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The
End