August 4, 2002

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  Episode #8–the biker years

  
  

  A few days ago, I wrote about my worst day with the bikers. Now I’ve come to the best day. Best weekend, really. Rhododendron Festival, Florence, Oregon, sometime in Spring, 1969. I was out of work, recuperating from about a three-week illness that lost me my latest job. I had taken a job at Dairy Queen near home after I recovered from the workplace accident that got me out of the Alpine Village Inn. The fancy Bavarian restaurant–that job deserves a little digression.

  
  

  Worst waitress job–maybe the worst job I ever had, it paid more in hourly wages, and got me more tips than any I’d had before that. It was heavy china plates, tray service, white tablecloths, and not just a dessert cart to wheel around, but a “hot cart” with braised red cabbage, sauerkraut, beans, soup and vegies. We wore dirndl skirts with three crinoline petticoats and if two of us passed between tables, both skirts went up, of course. One wrong move and you could sweep a wine glass off a table with the skirt. That’s why we wore them, I guess: entertainment for the guests.

  
  

  We also had to work in black pumps. Mine had little Italian heels. Some of my co-workers had spikes; they also had a few falls. The trays could weigh around forty to fifty pounds or more, and we bussed our own tables…with the service trays. I’ve observed customers laughing at a waitress in spike heels on that thick carpet as she crouched to get her shoulder under a tray on a stand, then struggled erect under stacks of dirty dishes and teetered to the kitchen with them.

  
  

  I dealt with the weight-lifting and the traffic problems, never took a spill or spilled cabbage in anyone’s lap as another waitress did. My problem was a dishwasher who kept flirting with me. He’d try to make conversation over my need for more glasses in the dining room or a hot service plate. He was over-helpful, and that was what did it. I needed a plate and was reaching up for the last plate on the high top shelf of the divider between kitchen and dishwashing area, and he decided to help by pushing a fresh stack of plates over from the other side, knocking the lone remaining plate off my side. It landed edge-on on top of my big toe, the right one. It ruptured the tendon. The toe had to be taped up and then bound up with a bandage that wrapped around my ankle to hold the toe pointing at the sky. I couldn’t wear shoes, wasn’t supposed to walk for a while.

  
  

  They would have let me come back after the doctor released me, but I thought up a few good rationales and took the Dairy Queen job within walking distance of home. Usually I’d only have to walk one way because VW would be there to either take me or pick me up, depending on my shift. I’d been there a few months when I got some virus or something and was flat in bed for weeks. Carol looked after me. To amuse me, she brought me a little yellow paperback book: Write your own Horoscope. Starting out skeptical, I calculated a few natal charts for myself and people I knew, and found valid insights.   It started something big that has been helpful to me ever since, mostly in relationships. 1969 was a big time, astrologically, too. There was a major planetary alignment–and a big dip in the Timewave, as well. That’s another thing I’ve been wanting to blog about, but this one is supposed to be about rhodendrons and clowns.

  
  

  Since I wasn’t working and was free to help Steve out, I had been sitting at his place for two days and three nights. He came back with a load of crank and was met by three of his distributors. I had not been around needle freaks when they shot up. I’d been around them, yes, but don’t recall, before then, ever having watched them tie off, bring up a vein, stick in the needle, watch for the “flag” of blood that indicated they’d penetrated a vein, then squeeze the bulb or push the plunger, and get the rush.

  
  

  Their rushes took my breath away. “Contact high” is what they told me it was when I mentioned my empathic response. One of them even, half-jokingly, bitched that I’d “stolen” his high. His rush was too fleeting for him, I guess. Nobody else minded sharing the buzz.

  
  

  Steve didn’t have any dexedrine or benzedrine for me that time. He did have some mescaline, he said. He gave me eight big #OO capsules of a white powder, and warned me to take no more than two at a time. On the morning we left for Florence, I took two, washed down with a sip of wine on the highway. By the time we made a gas stop, I was asking, “where are we and what’s going on?” Leaving the gas station, VW did one of those spark-showering wheelies, which helped bring me back to reality. By the time we got to Florence, the rush had passed and I was coherent and radiantly, gloriously psychedelicized. It was such fun that I passed the other half dozen caps around to the other women and had company.

  
  

  We set up our camp in the shelters that had been thrown together from driftwood along the beach, and got a campfire going and had hot dogs. Then a few of us rode back into town to a bar to bring back some beer. We parked on barstools for a while and talked to some citizens at the bar. They were members of the Astoria Clowns, a group from a fraternal organization, Shriners, I think. They were in street clothes, but told us to be sure to look for them in costume in the parade the next day. We talked about bikes, because some of them rode motor scooters and bicycles, even a pennyfarthing and a unicycle. One friendly clown offered me a ride on the back of his motor scooter. He was kinda cute and VW was in a good mood, so after getting my ol’man’s permission, I said I’d take a ride on his bike with him.

  
  

  I got up before the rest of the pack the next day, got the fire hot and started coffee. Then I brushed my hair. It was thick and long and always tangled. I’d usually start every day with a thorough brushing, standing bent at the waist, brushing it down over my head. Standing next to the firepit, butt in the air, blood running to my head, with enhanced brain chemistry, I was enjoying the mingled smells of coffee, woodsmoke, and the Pacific Ocean.

  
  

  I took my time, gave it a full hundred strokes like Mama taught me. When I straightened up and shook the hair back out of my face, about a half dozen people were staring at me. It felt a little spooky, but then both of the girls in the group went, “…ooooh, wow, love your hair!” And a couple of guys swallowed hard and turned away and tugged at their pants. I was still high and already happy, and the approval and attention made me glow.

  
  

  We decided to watch the parade from the sidewalk in front of the bar. The day started with a little chill among the stone and concrete buildings, and I had on a black leather jacket, black jeans laced with a leather bootlace, and a black hat. As the contingent of clowns passed I spotted the bike belonging to the clown who had offered to give me a ride. It was the only vehicle in the pack with an extra seat. That had been the subject of some teasing the night before. He swung over to the curb, I got on behind, and we waved goodbye as we turned the corner and rode out of the parade, onto the coast highway, in heavy weekend traffic with which his scooter couldn’t keep up.

  
  

  Behind us, I heard a few horns, probably as cars coming up on us from behind braked and startled the drivers behind them. As people passed us, they grinned and waved. Several bunches of little kids went by with their faces flattened against the glass. It was about three miles, in choking exhaust, but other than that it was one of the wildest three miles of my life, to his motel, where he changed into street clothes and removed his makeup.

  
  

  As he was taking me out to the beach to join my friends, his engine blew, and we were standing there talking about our options, when a couple of bikers went by and saw us. One of them took me back to our camp on the beach and the other one helped the clown get his bike back to his group’s trailer for the trip home to Astoria.

  
  

  We all stayed around our fire on the beach and watched the sunset and then hit the road home. For a few miles of cool dusk, running through the woods, I ran the day’s highlights in my mind and made a mental note to remember the day. Then I fell asleep for the rest of the ride home.

  
  

  It has proven to be quite a memorable day. I have it in color and stereo, with smells and emotions and that mental clarity peculiar to mescaline. Mescalito es mi amigo.

  • 1:36 pm
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