Alaska Summer of '68
Or
An Angel and the Blue Dodge
John Smiley

I got the idea for the trip the summer before, when Mark Brown and I traveled around Colorado, camping and adventuring in my blue 55 Dodge.  The dodge is actually bird’s egg blue with a cream-colored top, and has large chrome bumpers and extra chrome on the front.  The ’55 is a classic style, a perfect blend of streamlined and box, a lot like the ’56 Chevy which you still see occasionally on the streets. That was the "summer of love" in San Francisco and new things and adventure were in the air.  I chose Alaska because I figured it would like the mountains of Colorado, only more so, and had also heard you could get jobs there.  We heard you could make a bundle of money.  Then came our senior year, a golden time of friends, parties in the desert, and school activities.  I mentioned that I was planning to make the trip to Alaska to my friends but I don't think anyone took it very seriously until just a few weeks before graduation.  As our youthful energy mounted toward graduation, we began to feel like we could do anything!  Joe Collins lined up a job in Glacier National Park, and that was enough to make Bob Harris decide to join me and head north as well.  Then at the last minute Ricky Harris decided to join us too.

Bob (or was it Ricky?) had a connection at an engineering firm in Anchorage who wrote us a letter saying he would try to find us a job when we got there.  This thin hope was all we had to go on.  We were so innocent and brave, or so it seems to me looking back.  At the time it just seemed like the right thing to do. The night before we left we had a get-together with all our friends.  I think it was out in the desert, and I remember moonlight and the warm glow of friendship.  I also remember the farewells in front of my house, a kiss from the girls, a handshake from the boys, tears, and lots of "good lucks."  I think an angel noticed us that night, and kept a lookout over us from then on.

We left the next day.  I said good bye to my folks, picked up Bob and Ricky, and off we headed toward Glacier Park, our first destination.  I clearly remember driving across the green hills of Idaho cutting my fingernails with my Dad's hunting knife.  This was his Navy knife, a fine wicked weapon with a narrow blade.  He kept it in a sheath he made himself from thick stiff leather.  I'm not sure why he loaned it to me since he obviously valued it; maybe he thought it would bring me luck.  I suppose it did though he never saw the knife again.

We talked and played records as we drove.  Bob had brought a little plastic battery powered record player and five LP albums as well as a few 45 rpm records.  I remember playing "The Doors" and singing along.  We ate crackers and peanut butter and drove 36 hours non-stop, except to buy gasoline.  I remember the beautiful Montana countryside, with green prairies stretching to the blue sky, and patches of dark green forest.  Big patches of cumulus clouds piled up sometimes, and we drove through an ice storm that froze the windshield wipers.

We arrived at Glacier Park in the evening.  We asked around for Joe and finally found him among a bunch of other concession-workers.  All the talk was about grizzly bears, because one had just killed two girl campers in their sleeping bags and scared some other people.  Some of the workers were afraid to walk around outside.  Joe came over to our campfire and we roasted marshmallows and danced around the fire like Indians to the tune of "Let's Go!"  We smoked cigarettes and had a few beers that Ricky had bought before entering the park.  I remember Joe saying he wished he could go with us, "but Glacier Park was cool too."  We sat inside our new tent, which had never before been used, and watched the shadows cast by the lantern.

The next day I found some "real hippies" in a camp nearby.  They had a landrover all fixed up that they lived in, and they all wore far out clothes.  Splashy shirts, striped pants, long skirts, funky hats, jewelry, and love beads.   The landrover (my dream car, by the way) was painted a la psychedelico.  I was fascinated.  I remember wondering why go all the way to Alaska when we could just tour the national parks in such style.  I figure they probably were stoned all the time though, which would be depressing.  And obviously they had money - we didn't.  They were rather standoffish to me when I visited their camp, I guess they had enough curious visitors to not be interested in another.

We spent two nights in Glacier Park.  We slept in late and drove up to a snow field where we had a snowball fight.  We crossed the border to Canada.  The border officer checked to see that we had enough money to get to Alaska (about $75 each) and we drove north to Banff.  We drove across hills and plains and then drove up a green canyon to blue Lake Louise.  In the early evening we couldn't find a place to camp so we found a dirt track leaving the highway and pulled off.  I opened the car door to get out and a cloud of mosquitoes swarmed us.  About 30 came in before we shut the door and rolled up the window.  We smashed these against the ceiling.  Some of those bodies remained with us for months.  After the windows were rolled up the mosquitoes clustered on them in a frightening way, and we were afraid they would get in by sheer force of numbers (kind of like the "birds" movie).  Bob and Rick refused to go outside but I was really hungry so I made a dash to get food and stove from the trunk of the car.  I succeeded by moving so fast they could not land on me.  We had a meal of crackers and soup, and some canned stew, and rested knowing the car was a safe refuge.

When we got to Dawson Creek we were told that this was the beginning of the Alaska Highway - 1300 miles of dirt road.  I decided to try and increase the clearance of the car by beefing up the springs of the suspension.  I bought some coil springs that fitted up over the rear axle, and put those in.  This kept us from sagging so much and bottoming out on ruts and rocks.

We all shared this tent, which worked fine.  But we definitely got to know each other’s sleeping habits.  I remember jumping up out of my sleeping bag, hitting the side of the tent, waking the others up, and saying something like "What time is it?”  Ricky did even better, mumbling "Hey, big Stud" in his sleep, which earned him the nickname "little stud."  Bob was more subtle, he would just get up and leave the tent in his sleep and come back later.  And we played the little record player to death.  I remember "Angel of the morning" - it kind of became our theme song I think - three lonely boys missing the girls back home.

We came to a lovely lake we called "swan" lake, and decided to camp.  The campsite was right next to the water, and we heard loons calling.  It was stunningly beautiful and we decided to take a day off and enjoy the spot.  I began learning to throw my Dad's knife against a tree trunk.  Ricky or Bob showed me the trick of holding my elbow out in front and extending it in a consistent way so that the knife always spun the same amount.  It worked and I got so I could stick it every time - as long as I was exactly 5 paces from the target.

We figured we were in the wilderness now and that no one would care if we cut down a tree, so we got out our axe and chopped a poor scrawny birch tree to the ground.  Of course it was alive and provided no firewood - we were just trying something we had always heard about but never had the chance to do (Paul Bunyan move over).

There was a certain amount of construction on the highway, and sometimes this created problems.  One time we were driving on soft gravel and slid off the road into a ditch.  The engine died and afterwards began leaking oil, but we managed to get the car out and keep going.

I remember the amazing glaciers and barren land scenery around Kluane National Park.  We drove though this country and finally came to the Alaska border.  The border guard was not too excited to see us, in fact he wanted to send us back down the highway.  It was a good thing we had Bob's letter and story of a job waiting for us; otherwise I think we would have been sent back.

We arrived in Anchorage after stopping at a glacier on the way and trying to take a bath in the ice water.  Bad idea; I didn't get clean and just about froze in the process.  In anchorage we tried to look up Bob's contact.  After quite a bit of searching we found out that there was indeed no job waiting for us.  This was not really much of a surprise though we were disappointed.  But we did hear from everyone that jobs were to be found down in Kenai, working the oil fields.

In Anchorage we found a campground and went out to dinner.  We also went to a drive-in movie.  This was a joke since it never really got dark except for an hour around midnight.  The sunsets lasted for over an hour, though, as the sun gently rolled from south to north along the horizon.  Ricky would leave Bob and I and go "score some money playing poker."  Unlike us, Ricky did not look like a high school kid.  I never figured out what he was really doing but Bob and I did not go in the bars so we never found out.  I also remember seeing the damage from the great earthquake which had happened just a few years before.  I talked to someone who was watching TV when the ground moved so violently that the TV shot out of the room.  The person was thrown to the ground and had to crawl outside to see what had happened.  A few buildings were completely swallowed up by the ground, and a large swath of destruction could still be seen running through town.  A ways south and east the ground shifted fifty feet vertically, and on one arm of the Cook Inlet I saw buildings which sunk to the rooftops as the land subsided.

We drove south to Kenai on the newly built Sterling Highway.  This was a beautiful drive, through big mountains, along rivers and forests.  We saw wild bighorn sheep.  When we drove in to Kenai we looked for a campground and found one on the north side of town at Beatrice Lake.  As it turned out we stayed in this campground for two weeks.  It was flat, with lots of small trees.    I remember trying unsuccessfully to catch fish at 1 am, and being totally oblivious to the time.  It never really got dark.  We slept when we were tired and stayed awake when we weren't, and the clock didn't enter in to our life style.

We met some other young folks like us, up from California looking for a job.  There was a redheaded girl named Charlotte from Palo Alto who liked to get a rush off vitamin B, and a nice, dark little man named Billy who was, I believe, a male nurse from San Francisco.  There was John, a lanky clean-shaven fellow with a wild look in his eye, Enzo, a black-bearded Jewish looking chap, and Gordon, a cowboy from Gonzales with boots and hat.  We also met a tall skinny guy named Doug.  Enzo and I liked to throw rocks and see who could throw the farthest.  Sometimes they got stoned on acid, and we shared some of their pot, but mainly we drank beer when we could get it.  I remember a beautiful sunrise one morning that seemed “enhanced,” either because I had partaken or was socializing with those who had.

In the tent nearby was a family with a bratty kid who thought it would be fun to throw firecrackers in our tent.  The second time he came around I caught him and held him upside down by his heels while he struggled and cussed me out, saying his Dad was going to shoot me.  I persevered and scared the little runt I think, but I didn't let him know he landed a punch down low where it really hurts.  The brat.

Bob and I decided to look for work every other day.  This seemed like a good balance between recreation and meeting our needs.  I remember going into drilling company yards and asking for work.  One time we heard about a cannery that was hiring so we rushed over there with our friends and stood in a huge yard while they chose a few employees.  I could not see how they chose anybody but clearly there were 10 times as many job seekers as jobs, at least at that cannery.

I remember walking with Charlotte and Bob looking for beer bottle caps.  One of the beer brands had a promotion going that if you found some marking inside the cap you would get a free six pack.  We looked and looked and eventually found one!

We began to run out of money.  We were so low that we started accepting gifts from the other campers.  One couple gave us a sack of potatoes.  I remember not wanting to call home to ask for funds, and the potatoes put that off for another day.  One time Bob and I heard about a cannery job at Kasilof south of Soldatna, but we were too broke to buy gas so we hitchhiked to the cannery.  A semi-flatbed truck gave us a ride to the cannery which [I just realized, as I write this, that the red blanket I spread on my lap to keep warm, was with me on that trip in 1968 - thanks, Mom] was the bounciest ride I ever remember in my whole life.  The cannery wasn't hiring "kids" of course, but I remember the isolation and the army-barracks-like atmosphere of the place and I think Bob and I were just as glad to leave.  That day we opened our last can of pork and beans, and we were officially broke.  No $$ left.  Bob (or was it Ricky) called home and got his folks to send some money the next day, so we didn't starve.  But at about the same time, we heard from Doug that a cannery further down the peninsula was hiring, at a place called Ninilchik.  We started up the blue dodge, put some gas in, and headed out of Kenai.

We went to the cannery office, which was on a sandy beach below green bluffs.  On top of the bluff was a little Russian Church with an onion-shaped dome, and across Cook Inlet, 30 miles away, was a smoking, cone-shaped volcano named Mt. Redoubt.  A quaint little village of old log cabins and a few newer cabins sat in a little green valley by a clear stream, the Ninilchik River.  The cannery office was a frame building next to a two-story scow painted red, and a large metal factory-looking building.  Just north was a small harbor full of small fishing boats, and some large wooden tanks.  The scow said "Berman Packing Co." on the side.

A man named Del hired us on the spot - we went right to work on the canning line packing cans into boxes and loading them onto trucks.  Bob I believe went to the pressure cookers for loading cans in and out of these large steel trays.  I remember the foreman of the boxing line was a young man with a bright eye and blond beard named "Valter" and he spoke English with an accent.  It turned out that Walter was Russian, and not just Russian but an "Old Believer."  My principal memory of Walter was his delight in drawing swastikas on cardboard boxes - I think he had Nazi tendencies.  It turned out that several of our other friends hired on at the same time.  Billy was on the boxing line with me, and Charlotte joined the women cutting fish.  I don't remember what John, Enzo and Gordon did, but we saw Doug and met two other high school boys from Big Sur, Micah Curtis and Paul Smith.

After work, and getting a little pay advance from Del, we moved into the forest service campground on the bluff to the south of the Ninilchik Valley (the little church was on the north bluff).  It was a beautiful campground, and I remember the flowers everywhere as we walked down the trail to the river, crossed the little bridge, and walked through the town to get to the store or the cannery.  We set up our tent, and threw a tarp over our cooking gear and food while at work so the rain wouldn't get everything wet.  Micah and Paul were camped there in their 57 Chevy station wagon, which they had rigged up with a reel-to-reel tape deck and speakers in the doors.  The other "California" group was there as well.

The work was fun for me.  I got to where I could fold the lids on the boxes in about 1/2 second, and loading trucks was just what a young man's body needed.  Sometimes we worked frantically to keep up, but soon learned that if things got too hectic it was easy to shut down the line by tipping a can sideways and jamming the boxing machine.  It took a few minutes to clear the jam, and everyone got a rest.  This crazy boy named Mike Painter loved to scream around the floor on the little forklift, moving pallets of boxes to the loading dock and stacking them for storage until the next truck arrived.  One time his skidding got out of control and he sailed off the boxing deck to the canning floor three feet below.  Miraculously neither he nor the machine were badly hurt, but I didn't see mike on the forklift after that for a while.

Bob and I were back in camp a few days after we settled in, when we heard that the law was after someone for breaking in to the little church and playing the organ.  Soon a highway patrol officer arrived and began asking around for John.  When confronted, John became belligerent and threatened the office with an axe.  The patrolman got in his car and left.  John, Enzo and Gordon cleared out, and we thought we wouldn’t be seeing them again for a while.   When the patrolman came back with reinforcements, the officer told us we had to clear out of the campground.  We asked around and decided to rent a tiny shack from Doris Kelly, behind an old store near the bridge.  Bob and I were up in the loft with Charlotte, and Billy, Ricky, Paul slept downstairs.  In the old store, actually a 100 year-old handmade log house, were a few other cannery workers, including a man named Okie.  I remember Okie offering me a beer, only to find as I chugged a big chug that it was vodka.  Okie used the "F" word every other word, and looked like he was going to die any minute from malnutrition, alcohol and bad language.

Up toward the church was a little cabin at the switchback of the road.  Whitey lived there with his wife and baby.  Whitey was a pale blond Scandinavian-looking man, but his wife was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.  She had long black shiny hair and Indian features.  I wanted to look at her forever.  We went there with Manny and Tom for a party, and I got to know Big Mike who worked in the freezer at the cannery.  Mike was about my size but built like a bouncer.  He told me you got better pay in the freezer, and longer hours.  I remember playing basketball with Mike and the others, it must have been at the school but I’m not sure.

The cannery was very busy that summer.  We got paid about $3.50 an hour, which was about double what we would have earned down south, and we usually worked more than 40 hours a week.  I wanted overtime pay, and lots of it, so I volunteered to go out with a truck driver and pick up fish.  We drove down to Homer in one of the army surplus 2 1/2-ton trucks, and picked up a load of fish from some boats which came in.  I got to get in the hold and throw the fish up into the truck with a "pugh", a pole with a bent nail at the end.  I was supposed to stab the salmon (mainly pink salmon, which we called "humpies") in the eye so as not to damage the meat, but this was taking too long so the truck driver told me to stab them anywhere.  I loaded about 15 tons into the back of the truck; we filled the stake-sided bed full and all 10 of the tires were bulging as we slowly drove back to Ninilchik.  On a later run I heard that the driver dumped his entire load of fish on the road and had to reload it and make two trips.  Another night we drove out on the beach north of Ninilchik and bought fish from gill-netters who set nets at low tide and collected salmon at the next low tide.  There was a bunch of "silvers" or Cohoe salmon.  These were more valuable since they were to be frozen and sent to Japan, so I carefully pughed them in the eye.  We later found out that this reduced their value and the bosses told us not to pugh the silvers at all.

I vividly remember coming in at dawn with a truckload of fish and being invited to breakfast in the scow.  Leo Steik's wife was the cook (I can't remember her name, but I later knew her as "Buddy's Mom" since I got to know her son) and she asked if we "might be hungry."  I think Bob was there too, after an all-nighter of his own.  We got all the hot donuts we could eat, followed by a hearty breakfast of eggs, sausage and bread.  Across the table our two Japanese egg-packers ate bowls of cornflakes topped by fresh orange-yellow salmon eggs.

The cannery ran on steam provided by two ancient boilers on the canning floor.  On cold days, or if we had been working in the freezer, we would stand by the boiler to warm our hands during breaks.  I think we had ten-minute breaks at mid-morning and mid-afternoon, and a half-hour lunch break.  

I wanted to work on the freezer crew since they got more pay ($4.25 an hour) and longer hours.  The freezers were for the silver and king (Chinook) salmon, as well as any halibut the cannery could buy.  Leo Steik was the boss of the freezer crew, a dark-haired man with red-tinted glasses who reminded me of Groucho Marx.  One day he asked if I could come in and move a cord of so of silver salmon in the main freezer.  The salmon needed to be re-glazed (dipped in cold water to coat them with ice) and re-stacked in cords just like firewood.  I just about froze but liked the work and from them on I was pretty much on the freezer crew.  Since I had no insulated clothes and no good way of getting any I dressed in layers: jeans over long Johns and three T-shirts, two long sleeved shirts, and a jacket.  I just had work boots on my feet and work gloves for my hands, so I got pretty cold.

The freezers ran on two big diesel engine compressors on the floor next to the boilers.  The mechanic who ran the compressors was this fat guy named Prince John the Cruel, which he wrote on the wall, except that he wrote "Prince John the Curl."  He had a twisted sense of humor.  He told us he always carried a gun back in Seattle where he was from.  There were some other characters as well.  The boss of the Filipinos was a sprightly guy named Arky.  The Filipinos were friendly little guys from Seattle and their job was cutting the fish.  They lived in the scow with the two Japanese.  One time Bob told me they thought I was a snob because I didn't try to be friendly with them; so I made an effort.  I think they mistook quietness for unfriendliness, and that was something I remembered from then on in my life.  There was also Indian Charlie, a man I saw only a few times but who had a bad reputation as a knife fighter.

Although Del Harris was the superintendent and the boss we interacted with, the "Big boss" of the cannery was a big redheaded man named Russ Bertusson, I think.  He was half-owner of the cannery with a family named Leman who lived up on the hill above the church, and the name "Berman Packing Co." was compounded from their names.  The only time I remember seeing Russ Bertusson was when boat ran aground trying to enter the harbor, and Russ came flying out of the cannery and started up his gigantic 10-wheel truck.  This truck had huge tires and dwarfed the army surplus trucks we had been driving around.  He drove around and down the beach, and tried to pull the boat out of the way using a cable.  I don’t think it was successful.

The harbor at Ninilchik was very tough to use because it was carved out of the sand spit and was very shallow.  The tides in Cook Inlet are huge, and when the tide goes out the harbor is left high and dry.  This meant that the fishing boats could only land fish during high tide, and that they had to get in, unload, and get out in a very short time, unless they were willing to wait 6-8 hours.  At low tide the shoreline would recede several hundred yards, dropping 12-15 feet and exposing a huge boulder offshore.  The boulder was near the end of a pipe that was used to pump the fish guts out of the cannery.  There were always lots of sea gulls out at the end of the pipe.  One of the Leman boys worked in the cannery with me, and he told me that one winter the inlet froze and the tide made huge tunnels through the ice.  The tunnels were big enough to walk through and the boys would dare each other to go out in them.

I remember that Russ Bertusson decided to build a fish-buying barge, which could go out of the harbor and buy fish off the fishing boats.  He bought a military surplus landing craft and cut it in half with a welding torch.  The welder then added sheet metal to the center, widening the craft about 10 feet.  I got to help the welder one day.  Eventually the craft was outfitted with a conveyer belt for unloading fish, and was put into service.

A group of women had the job of cleaning the guts and scales off the fish, and packing them into the cans.  They all wore scarves and wore rubber gloves.  Charlotte got to join that line.

There was an abandoned double-ended fishing boat nearby.  One night Charlotte and I walked out there.  She wanted to get more romantic than I did so I pretended to have an LSD "flashback."  Actually she kind of scared me - she was kind of an aggressive person and I didn't trust her.  But we did "make out" a bit and she kind of stayed close to me after that.

After a week or so on the job we discovered the "Inlet View Cafe" as the place to go and cash our paychecks.  This was fairly new, up on the bluffs next to the highway, and had a magnificent view of the inlet.  You could see the whole north part of the Alaska Range; hundreds of snow capped peaks, running from north to south through Mt. Redoubt, Iliamna Volcano (the biggest), and St. Augustine volcano.  The cafe had a "Lido" pinball machine that we became familiar with, and wonderful apple pies.  It also had a bar, and the older guys would hang out there.  The owner was, we believed, a right wing conservative that didn't like us "hippies."  We often met there.

The highway through Ninilchik was new and the town previously had much more difficult contact with the outside world.  I think the highway opened in 1966.  One consequence was that people didn't have much respect for traffic rules or the highway patrol.  The story we heard was that some locals would tear up traffic tickets in the officer's face, and drive off.

One time Bob and I decided to take a drive out to the backcountry interior.  To do this I had to get the poor dodge running.  I remember Micah having generator brushes, and him helping me get the car started.  Then we loaded up anyone who wanted to, and headed up the dirt road to the interior.  About 12 people wanted to go, so there were folks on the hood and trunk as well as in the car.  I remember driving for an hour or so, turning around, and coming home.

We drove to the Laundromat in Anchor Point to do laundry.  I also tried some nature hikes and birdwatching on my days off, but there were so many mosquitoes that summer that it wasn't much fun.  It was a rainy summer and flowers were magnificent.  I remember driving a few miles north of town to look for a 40-acre parcel my uncle had bought, and seeing the meadows covered with lavender fireweed.

One time we were at the Inlet View and heard that the little movie house in Homer was going to show Liz Taylor and Richard Burton in "The taming of the shrew."  Bob, Billy, Charlotte, Okie and I headed south to the show.  We had to search around to find the movie house.  Inside, Okie started sucking on his bottle of vodka.  In the middle of the show, just when Richard Burton was reading something in Latin to Liz Taylor, Okie stood up in his seat and started ranting "God D..n F..ing Catholics! F..ing Catholics!."  The movie stopped and the manager came out and asked us to leave.  So we took Okie out the car and headed home.  He persuaded me to let him drive (how could I have done that?) and we took off down the highway.  He immediately floored the gas pedal and we began seeing how fast the old dodge could go.  We got up to 85!  Unfortunately Okie didn't slow down for the curves and things got scary.  I was at least smart enough to be sitting next to him, and I remember pulling his leg off the gas pedal and pushing it on the brake.  He gave up the driving job and I drove the rest of the way home.  I still have never seen that movie.

We made quite a bit of money that summer, in spite of our late start.  I think I came home with over $1000 (it seemed like a lot then).  In about the second week of September we were laid off, and we made plans to go home.  Billy and Charlotte decided to get a ride with us.  We decided to come home via the Alaska ferry system and the Inside Passage.  We packed up our things and headed off back up the highway to Anchorage.  It felt so good to return to Anchorage with friends, money in our pocket, and the feeling that we had met the challenges of making it on our own.  We stopped at Doug's aunt's house in town.  I remember that the windows were covered with aluminum foil to keep it dark inside.

We drove back across eastern Alaska.  I remember camping out near Tok Junction and hearing wolves.  I wanted to see the northern lights and I remember straining my eyes, imagining I saw them, but the sun must have been quiet that summer.  We left the main highway and drove over the mountains to Haines.  I remember arriving in the early morning and being so hungry I cooked a dozen eggs on my stove and ate them all.  We got on the ferry to Prince Rupert.  This was a new, ocean-going ferry, much larger than the smaller ferries, and we parked the dodge and camped out on the deck.  I remember buying hot cocoa and really trying to smoke a pack of cigarettes on the stern deck (before I wouldn't inhale, just like President Clinton).  Just about then the ship pulled out of the Inside Passage and faced the long swells of the open ocean.  I don't know if it was the swell or the nicotine, but I turned green and felt like I was going to die.  That was my last cigarette, then in 1968.

That night we shot some skyrockets off the stern.  They rose into the night sky with a burst of sparks and made a loud pop.  Then we slept on the deck in our sleeping bags.  The deck was carpeted with Astroturf so it was pretty comfortable.  In the middle of the night Bob crawled out of his bag and started sleepwalking around the ship, saying "we're gonna crash...where's the steering."  I walked with Bob and tried to guide him back to his bag.

We came to Sitka and had a two-hour layover.  I remember walking up the streets and then up a steep hill under a power line or fire break.  In the woods everything was covered with moss, down logs, the ground, everything.  It looked as though leprechauns would step out any second.  Out in the firebreak there were tons of blueberries and Bob and I collected a whole bag full.  They were very tasty.  We came loaded back to the ship and shared our goodies.

The ferry landed us in Prince Rupert, British Columbia.  We must have landed and taken off, because I remember very little of the trip across BC to Prince George.  We went through a well-kept town named Smithers.  At one point we were driving on soft gravel, road construction, again, and we slid off into the ditch.  But with some pushing and gunning the engine we kept on going.  At Prince George we headed southwest and made it to Seattle in another day or so.  In Seattle we heard that the movie "2001" was playing, so we went to see it in a wide-screen theater.  The place was jammed so the four of us sat in the front row.  The movie was awesome, who cares that there wasn't much of a plot?  We drove south to San Francisco and dropped Billy off in the city.  Then we drove to Stanford, where I was to start school in a couple of weeks, and I dropped off Charlotte at her house up Portola Valley.  Then Bob and I headed south.  We got to Big Sur at 1 am and found a parking lot by the lodge.  We crawled off in the bushes to sleep.

We awoke with a sheriff’s boot tapping us at dawn.  The sheriff was not pleased with us or another kid with a guitar who happened to be sleeping nearby.  In fact he said he was taking us to the county jail in Salinas.  I finally got his attention by asking what I should do with my car.  He started to listen, and ended by telling us to pack up and get out, taking the other kid with us.  So we headed south through Big Sur in the blue dodge, driving through the morning, being serenaded by the kid in the back seat singing "Alice’s Restaurant."  Very well.  Maybe it was Arlo Guthrie?  (it wasn't).

We drove south, dropping the other kid off somewhere along the way, and went all the way to San Diego, where we were going to spend the night. Ricky had called his brother and gotten the address, on Elm Street or something like that.  We checked a map at the gas station, and found the street but drove all around and couldn’t find the address.  In fact we couldn’t even find the block of addresses.  Finally Ricky checked his memory banks and figured out that his brother lived in Long Beach not San Diego.  So we drove to Balboa Park in the middle of San Diego and looked for a place to camp.  We finally found a grassy field near the zoo and pulled off to cook dinner.  It looked iffy but we really had no choice as we were too cheap to go look for a motel.

A while later a policemen pulled up and informed us we shouldn’t be camping there.  We explained our situation and he kindly let us stay.  But he said he couldn’t vouch for any other cops who might come by.  We slept fitfully and sure enough in the middle of the night a different officer woke us up and asked us to leave.  After hearing our story he too let us stay until morning as long as we left early.  We decided that San Diego cops were good guys!

That was about the last adventure that I can remember for our trip.  I think the car slightly broke down on the way back to Tucson (was it the voltage regulator?), but we got there safely after a short delay.  I don’t remember too much after that, except that homecoming was no big deal.  Our friends had mostly scattered already, and I was looking ahead to college.  One thing, though, is that Bob and Joe Collins and I are still friends to this day.  Sadly, Ricky passed away a few years ago.  I also still know Paul Smith and Micah Curtis from Big Sur.  But nearly everyone I met that summer has a vivid place in my memory, and I still have the blue dodge to drive around.

(Written in about 1995)