This is the second part of a story begun (here) for a Featured_Grownups challenge to write about the 1990s.
When I left this story, my son and I were drying out in Seaside, Oregon
on the first sunny day of the trip. After he’d done his homework,
as our gear dried out in the campsite, we walked through the park,
giving Doug his first look at an ecosystem different from the one he
knew in Alaska, and an ocean with surf. Until then, his
experience of the sea had been limited to Cook Inlet and the fjords of the
Inside Passage. I don’t think he got his feet wet yet that day in
Seaside. That came the next day, farther south when we came to a
roadside park with real sand beaches.
Along the Central Oregon coast we stopped at the Devil’s Churn and at
Sea Lion Caves, places I recalled from when I lived in Eugene and went
on runs to the coast around Florence with the Free Souls MC. Doug
very much wanted to take the Sea Lion Caves tour and I let him go by
himself, a practice we repeated occasionally on the trip at attractions
where the child’s rate was small enough that I felt I could justify the
expenditure and either the adult admission fee was high enough or my
interest was low enough that I was willing to risk having my ADHD kid
wander off from a tour guide. He always came back, despite my
incessant worrying.
We took our time going down the Oregon coast, enjoying every free roadside
attraction and a few choice ones that cost a little money. One of
the memorable stops was in Newport at the Hatfield Marine Science
Center where the admission was a “suggested donation” — “free” in
other words. Among many interesting instructive exhibits, we had
a
hands-on encounter with an octopus. The docent made sure we held
our hands in the cold water long enough to chill them so that their
heat wouldn’t shock and discomfort the octopus, and then he let us
touch him. Tentacles came up, feeling and exploring, and Doug
and I giggled in unison at the sensations. I still grin when I
think of it.
Newport had many attractions of the tourist-trap type. I was
trying to hang onto the little bit of money I had, so we browsed
through
shops, watched the waves roll in under a pier, and I finally gave in to
Doug’s pleas and paid the entrance fee to the Ripley’s Believe It or
Not Museum Unwilling to turn him loose unguided in a museum, I
coughed up admission for myself, too, though it ran me very short on
funds.
I took some great photos in there. The prints from
that roll of film are among the missing ones, somewhere, probably still
in the old house over at Elvenhurst, lost in the clutter left by
vandals, looters and our increasingly infrequent forays searching for
this thing or that. We have searched, and I don’t think we’ve
found more than half of the pictures we took on the trip.
Greyfox had given me an old Minolta 35mm SLR at the same time he gave me the car to get rid of me,
back in Harrisburg before he reversed himself and talked me into
marriage, three years previously. He collected cameras, and that
one wasn’t one of the primo items in his collection, but it was way
good enough for me, nearly as good as the Mamiya-Sekor I had sold for
grocery money during the first winter that Charley, Doug and I lived in
this valley.
When Greyfox gave me the camera, he had also given
me an odd assortment of yellow Kodak pre-paid mailers that he had on
hand, some for color film processing, others for black-and-white, some
for 12- or 18-exposure rolls and others for 36. By the time we
started the Big Field Trip, I had maybe 3 or 4 of those mailers left
and had gotten a supply of film in sizes to fit the pre-paid processing
I had. As I used up each roll of film, I’d drop it in the mail
and the prints would be mailed home to Alaska. Greyfox followed
our progress that way and through postcards I sent home.
Today, I dug up a cache of postcards, some that I had mailed to Greyfox
and most of the ones that Doug had sent to the seventh and eighth grade
classes at Su Valley Hi, which they had posted for a while on bulletin boards and then saved for
him. The classmates with whom he had shared school since first
grade were then in seventh grade, and some of his best friends had been
third graders the year he was in a combined 2nd/3rd class, now in
eighth grade. These cards have helped me sort out the chronology
of our roundabout itinerary, and have refreshed my memory on some
facts.
One thing I’d forgotten about the encounter with Canadian
customs was the absence of my car registration. I could remember
making sure I had it before I left home, but it wasn’t there when I
looked for it in the glove box at the border. I’d asked Greyfox
in my subsequent phone call to apply for a duplicate registration and
send it to me at my ex-mother-in-law’s place in Texas, the only place I
was sure I was going to be.
My recall from Newport is of fatigue from too little sleep, pleasure in the warmth of the sun and the smell of my
Pacific Ocean, and anxiety over where we’d go from there and how we’d
pay our way. I had been using a campground guide that was several
years out of date. Places where my book listed fees as $6.00 a
night were now charging $14. We were running low on the groceries
we brought from home. I made up my mind we’d find a roadside spot
and sleep in the car again that night. Doug would sleep, anyway.
After dark, at an Applebees in Newport during their dinner rush, I
tried my first dine-and-dash of the trip. As low-key as possible,
I told Doug I was going to the rest room (I’d sent him to the men’s
room already as I finished my coffee), and he was to go to the parking
lot and wait in the car. From long familiarity with his ADHD, and
my awareness that his Ritalin blood levels were purposely low as we
were withdrawing him from the drug, I took hold of his chin, made sure
I had eye contact, and repeated my instructions: “Be sure you go straight to the car.”
I took the meal check into the restroom with me and pocketed it,
intending to casually walk out without paying, but when I came out of
the rest room, there was Doug at the cashier’s desk, looking at the
candy in the display case. Knowing from a phone call earlier in
the day that the credit card to which Greyfox was supposed to deposit
our PF Dividends was near maxxed out, I paid the last of my cash for a
meal that wasn’t worth the price, and left. In the lot, I sat in
the car wrestling with my conscience and groping for words.
Staring out at the darkness through the raindrops hitting the
windshield, I explained to Doug what I had been trying to do in
there. He asked me, “Isn’t that wrong?” I had never used a
moral argument with him, but he had gotten plenty of that
indoctrination at school. On one occasion when he had been caught
stealing candy in a supermarket, after a conversation in the manager’s
office I had tried my best to impress on Doug how pointless and stupid
it was to risk going to jail for a little bit of forbidden sugar,
something that would make him sick anyway. After that supermarket incident, I told him I didn’t
want to lose him, didn’t want him growing up locked up.
There in Applebee’s parking lot, I turned in my seat, got his attention, and began sharing with him
the socioeconomic indoctrination that I’d gotten in the 1960s, which I
have previously posted here in my memoirs:
Gary told me that, “property is theft,” echoing
Rousseau, Proudhon and Marx. He very quickly overcame my
learned-by-rote moral arguments with well-thought-out and practiced
socialistic reasoning. He expressed indignant concern at my struggles
to support myself. I listened to his insistence that I deserved much
better than I was getting, and couldn’t argue. He told me, and showed
me examples to prove, that those who really valued their possessions
took care to safeguard them. He said that anyone who had so much more
than he needed that he didn’t bother to secure it, was inviting theft.
I remember sometime recently, in just the last few years a British
cleric was censured for saying much the same thing in regards to
supermarkets being invitations to steal. Gary told me that if someone
had something I needed and had more than he needed, I was doing no
wrong to take it.
I assured Doug that I wasn’t going to ask him to do the stealing, and that I was
asking him not to steal, not to take the risks. I invoked “safety
rules,” the only rules I have ever strictly enforced for him. I
was aware of the risks I was taking, and I did my best to reassure Doug
that I had practiced these techniques and could, if caught, plead
absent-mindedness or illness caused by the food, which had caused an
urgent trip to the restroom and banished all thought of the bill from
my mind.
This was all new to Doug. I’d never before seen fit to burden him
with the harsh realities of our financially marginal life. I
explained that for as long as his dad and I were together we had bought
beans and hamburger when we had a little money, had grown what we could
in the garden, foraged for wild foods in summer and ate roadkill in
winter, and had eaten whatever we found in dumpsters whenever we found
anything edible there. When there was no money for food and
nothing to forage or scrounge, we’d hitchhike to town to a supermarket,
steal steak and eat better than usual.
Pathetically concerned that my son’s good opinion of me was in peril, I
tried to convey the concept of an “ethical thief.” I explained
about the “shrinkage insurance” that supermarkets and large chain
department stores had to cover losses to theft, and went as deeply as I
thought he could understand into the banking and insurance lobbies and
how those industries controlled the government. I said I avoided ripping off
small mom and pop businesses, and always asked myself if I needed
something before taking it. I didn’t tell him that if I’d been
traveling alone I would have been going hungry a lot instead of trying
to keep him fed. I saw his attention wandering, started the car
and headed south on the coast highway.
I had wanted to show Doug some of the places in California that I had
loved as a child, but in my campground guide I discovered that some of
my most beloved places, such as Big Trees, were state parks and that
they had relatively expensive fees and required reservations to camp
there. It was apparent that we would be better off in National
Parks, so I headed to Redwood National Park. I had also
found that California had numerous “wayside camping spaces” along the
highways where no fees were charged for overnight camping with a limit
of one night in each place. There was a wayside park just south
of Orick, CA, within the boundaries of Redwood.
We
drove through Orick on Halloween, not realizing what day it was until
we saw kids in costume on the street. I decided to call Greyfox
and wish him an ironic “happy anniversary” and ask if he’d gotten the
duplicate car registration as well as to find out if the Permanent Fund
Dividends had come in. The phone rang and rang, no answer.
Near sunset we fought the wind on the beach to pitch our tent.
We were in the tent inflating the air mattresses and laying out our
sleeping bags when the drive-by shooting happened. We heard a car
going by, and a gunshot, then the impact in the sand just outside the
tent, and we could both see and hear the sand thrown up onto the wall
of the tent. It wasn’t any mystery to me. I had understood
how people who live in tourist-frequented areas tend to feel about
tourists for a long time. Doug says it’s one of his most vivid
memories. One that lingers for me is how sad I felt at the number
of log trucks passing on the highway, carrying redwood logs.
As I finished setting up camp, Doug got out of his long pants into
shorts and from there into the ocean. He’s reading over my
shoulder here again, and just protested that he didn’t think he’d
actually gone into the ocean. I know better. He took off
his shoes and socks, got his feet wet and then put his socks back on
wet sandy feet and ended up that night with sand in his sleeping
bag. I made sandwiches from some of our last brought-from-home
supplies, and we went back to the park visitor’s center, which was
closed by then. Failing that, we drove on into Orick on a
scouting trip.
Doug asked if we could have milk and cookies before bedtime, so I
parked the car and went into the supermarket. It had generally
been my preference when I was shoplifting to buy something to allay
suspicion, but I was so broke that time that I just walked through the
cookie aisle, snagging a package of Lorna Doones as I went, dawdled in
the dairy section looking at dozens of half-gallons and gallons of
milk, snagged one of the very few quart-size containers they had, and
took the time to ascertain that they didn’t have any Knudsen’s
yogurt. Then I went to the checkstand and asked if they had any
Knudsen’s yogurt. The skills were rusty, but they were coming
back to me.
Back at the camp, I discovered that the quart of milk inside my jacket
was really half-and-half. I warmed half of it on my tiny Gaz
stove and saved the rest for breakfast. It was heavenly, creamy
and rich, just the perfect accompaniment for scotch shortbread
cookies. For the rest of the trip, Lorna Doones (compact
packages, easy to conceal) and half-and-half (always available in small
cartons) became an occasional comfort-food treat when one or both of us
needed some comfort.
The next day I was up at dawn. I left Doug sleeping in the tent
and just wandered the beach, listening to the gulls and enjoying the
quiet before the traffic picked up on the nearby highway. In a
concrete fire ring on the beach I found a shiny new translucent
lavendar plastic disposable butane lighter from Wall Drug in South
Dakota, one of the places Greyfox, Doug and I had visited on our
honeymoon, where we had a rare good time together. It seemed like
a sign, but I wasn’t sure what the sign said. I put the lighter
in my purse, used it lighting campfires and candles throughout the trip
until it was empty, and then put it away with other memorabilia.
I still have it, know right where it is right now. I still don’t
know what the sign said, other than simply, “Wall Drug.”
After Doug got up, we went to the visitor center, watched some
orientation videos, pored over park maps and tried to decide how long to
stay and which groves of trees to see. Then the kid persuaded me
to redefine what I considered a “need.” He saw the Park Passport
display with all the colorful collector stamps and the little desk
attached to the wall with the rubber stamp for stamping the
passports. He wanted one. He argued quite reasonably that
we would be visiting many of those parks, and that it would be good to
have that record.
I wasn’t sure. I remembered some wisdom I’d found in a book on
East-West astrology, about Leos born in the year of the Cock, that they
need a certain amount of material luxury and/or discretionary spending,
or they become bitter and mean. As always when confronted with a
moral dilemma, I asked my Spirit Guide. Then, loudly enough that
the sales clerk could hear me, and softly enough that it sounded as if
I were trying to keep my discussion just between me and the kid, I told
him simply that we couldn’t afford it.
Then
I boosted one for him, hung around until no one was looking, and
surreptitiously stamped it. That was the last of the stamps I put
in his passport. I surprised him with it as we were driving away
from the visitor center. He never knew for sure, after that,
whether a public, “we can’t afford it,” meant he’d get it later or
not. It was always the final word, a wait-and-see just between
us. From time to time, I’d boost a t-shirt for him, film or
prepaid mailers for processing, or souvenir patches to add to the
jacket we had started decorating with patches from the places we
visited 3 years earlier on the honeymoon: the “necessities” of a
tourist, ripping
off the tourist traps that were ripping off the more affluent tourists
around us.
We
had been there at Redwood National Park a day or two, had been camping
out or sleeping in our clothes in the car or on the ferry, making do
with quick sponge baths at public rest rooms, and the dirty clothes
were accumulating. We found a laundromat in the town of
Trinidad, south of Orick. On the window was a poster advertising
a psychic fair to be held in Eureka on the upcoming weekend.
There was a contact phone number on the poster. I called and
talked to someone in Medford or Grants Pass, Oregon, paid my table fee
by credit card, hoping that it wouldn’t already be maxxed out, and
proceeded to continue enjoying the redwoods for the rest of the week.
One of those memorable days, I drove up into the coastal mountains to
the grove where the tallest trees on the planet have survived both fire
and flood for centuries. We hiked a long trail down from the
parking lot to the bases of the trees in the riverbottom below.
We marveled at the obvious signs of recent flooding that had scarred
the trunks and bared some roots. On the way back up we picked
berries alongside the trail and filled our bellies.
[A word here about the credit cards: I had three with me, two
Visas and a Chevron gasoline card. Greyfox had the same
cards. When I left, our arrangement was that I would use one of
the Visas, the one from his old state employees credit union in PA,
which was close to maxxed out. He was going to pay down the
balance as soon as Doug's and my dividend checks arrived. He
would use the other card, which was new, and had more available
credit. As I had been traveling, calls to the toll-free customer
service number had revealed that the available credit on "my" card was
diminishing faster than I had been using it. No payments had been
made on any of the cards, including the Chevron. Given these
facts and Greyfox's having gone incommunicado, my plastic was feeling
awfully shaky. I had a strong suspicion, based on prior
experience, that he was on a drug binge.]
When it was time to go to Eureka for the psychic fair, as we were
preparing to leave
Redwood, Doug went back to the visitor center and stamped his passport
again. He continued stamping it at
every National Park, Monument and Historical Site we visited on that
trip. It suffered damage from rainwater, sun and sand, and a
Kool-Aid spill, but most of the stamps are still legible, and have
provided very helpful chronology for this story.
The psychic fair was to be held in an exhibit building at the Humboldt
County Fairgrounds. First, we scouted it out to make sure we
could find our way there on time in the morning, then I went looking for a cheap motel
for the night. I felt that it would be good business to soak off
the grime and stink, and get a good night’s sleep before I went to
work. A man in a gas station let me use his phone to call a few
places and compare prices. He even suggested some and it was one
of them that we ended up using.
I had been a bit anxious about trying to work a fair without anyone to
keep an eye on Doug, but when we got there for the fair I found that
the exhibit hall across the way from ours was hosting a gem and mineral
show and sale. Doug amused himself going back and forth from
there to the psychic fair all weekend, coming to me for money for hot
dogs and a few rocks as I earned some cash. When I got hungry, he
brought me a hot dog. I got some great pictures of the rock show
and of my professional colleagues at work across the way from it.
They’re among the missing.
Business wasn’t really great, and most of the readings I did were for
fellow psychics who were fascinated with my Earth Oracle. The
hundred and some colorful stones, fossils, and mineral specimens laid
out on a black cloth surrounding a white central cloth where the client
places the five stones he or she selects for the reading, made an
impressive display. Nobody had ever seen anything like it and I
explained it to dozens if not hundreds of passersby that weekend, many
of whom had strayed into the psychic fair from the rock show.
The two days netted me enough cash to pay for the motel, a tank of gas,
all of Doug’s and my food for the weekend, and a little bit more.
My socializing at the fair brought some interesting acquaintances and
invitations to stop in and see a few of them if I happened to be
passing through their towns.
When we left there, we headed north for a little swing through southern
Oregon, to Oregon Caves National Monument. We passed a night
alongside the road in a day-use picnic area, sleeping in the car
again. I discovered something that served me well on several
other occasions during the trip. I parked Gina nosed up a slope
so that the bucket seats tilted back and became as comfortable as a reclining chair. I slept better
there than I had in the motel surrounded by city noises.
At Oregon Caves, Doug again got some unaccustomed liberty when I was
too fatigued, short of breath and weak from the high elevation to
complete a two-mile nature walk we started. I let him persuade me
to allow him to finish the walk up the mountainside alone while I
turned back to the picnic area to wait for him. I sat still, but
didn’t really get any rest until he was back in sight. I was
sufficiently reassured by his successful completion of that solo
journey to let him take the guided cave tour without me and save the
price of my admission as well as the wear and tear on my lagging
body. I love caves, but let practicality rule in that instance.
Oregon Caves is a beautiful place, and we were there when deciduous
trees were turning to fall colors and the weather was neither hot nor
cold. Doug responded to his increased independence here by doing
his assigned schoolwork without the usual procrastination and
protest. We had stocked up on sandwich makings after the psychic
fair, and this bluejay showed intense interest in our picnic and hung
around hopefully afterward.
We would have liked to stay longer just because it was such a wonderful
place, but there was no camping and he had already taken the tour. After discussing our options and looking at maps and
brochures in the visitor center we decided to head back into California
to Lassen Volcanic National Park. We were traveling at night in blowing
rain, so I got onto Interstate 5 and made a quick trip of it
until I reached Redding and the turnoff for Lassen.
In the wee small hours, too sleepy to drive on, I pulled off the road
at a small park surrounding some waterfall whose name I don’t
recall. I took pictures there, too, and can’t find them. When the sun came up it
was a glorious foggy morning filled with birdsong and wonderful
scents. The waterfall was obscured by morning fog, but another
visitor there assured us that it would burn off soon and the sight
would be worth the wait. He was right. We waited and it was
worth it.
When we got to Lassen Park, we discovered that it was Veteran’s Day,
November 11, 1993, and the visitor center was closed. Doug was
disappointed at not being able to stamp his passport, so I wrote a note
and slipped it through the mail slot, explaining his
disappointment. When we got back to Alaska, he had a letter
waiting for him, apologizing for their not being there on the national
holiday, with the dated stamp at the bottom of the letter. The
penciled square on the left-hand passport page above was reserved for
the Lassen stamp, but we don’t know what became of the letter.
Doug and I were almost alone there walking the paths among the
fumaroles. I finished off one roll of film and changed to a new
one and got this last shot from Lassen, the only one I have now.
Next stop: Susanville, CA — then Reno, Nevada.
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