A STOLEN CAR AND THE NORTHERN RUN(L Douglas St. Ours) A STOLEN CAR AND THE NORTHERN RUN


It was glorious day
to be out in the wild
along the coastal highway
full of narcs disguised as bandana bums.

Eight hours of thrills and spills
at America's number one amusement park,
happened just two days earlier
past time to get back on the road
when Evan and I got stranded at the entrance to Disneyland
after cavorting with Dumbo and riding the Magic Mountain,
hitching a ride among mobs of station wagons,
bursting with the angst and joys of wholesome families,
was not ever easy but especially in the summer of 69.

Finally two hours after closing time a janitor picked us up and took us as far as Malibu,
tired we stumbled upon a stucco shell that had been a gas station
imbedded in a cliff across the road from the star struck sea
and so we unrolled our sleeping bags ready to snooze
until we noticed from the flicker of headlights
the Hells Angels graffiti tattooing the interior walls.

Tired as toast we dragged our gear
half way up the flanks, found a snug ledge,
stripped naked out of our filthy clothes, climbed in our bags and slept.
It had been only 48 hours since we made it out of the furnace air
of the Mojave and its miles of unending roadside berms
on which millions of stones had been arranged by travelers
leaving messages mostly unheeded by drivers racing for L.A.

Hailing out of Virginia, up to then, I had only experienced an English speaking world of black and white.
Suddenly we were encountering wary Asians with friendly smiles
and Chicanos in pickup trucks hauling tomatoes flipping us the bird.
All at once it was strangely and magnificently exotic
and I just couldn't get over the palm trees and before that
cresting the last hill out of the desert and seeing the smoggy sprawl of an entire city.

Dawn erupts and we're awakened by a gaggle of blonde kids carrying surfboards
as they crawled and scurried down the cliffs while we're scrambling to put on our clothes.
We had laid down a few hours earlier in what we thought was the wilderness
but actually was within one hundred yards of the middle class lip of a suburban tract.

Back on the road we were uneasy wanderers on the coastal highway
where hitchhiking was banned in their ice cream parlor towns
so we had to bunch our thumbs among panhandlers, long hairs,
deserters, migrants, fugitives, crazies,
and serious girls with pretty faces
at the feet of bread loaf hills
spilling brilliant flowers down to the rocks
glistening from the battering of ten foot waves.

For me and Evan, in the midst of that familiar huddle of aimless and bedazzled drifters,
the views made the wait a little easier, when another Volkswagen appeared
and like an amicable predator slowed to a crawl
predictably driven by an unpretentious person
in a car too cheap to worry about ruining
or getting jacked for junk or a joyride.

We both figured a lift for sure,
then we watched as a van cut off the bug
and gun toting plain clothes cops rushed out of the van
and surrounded the hapless beetle
and shit man if we had not trudged a half mile north
to get away from the expectant crowd on the village's edge,
we would've been in the back seat of that good samaritan's car
and with him cuffed and stuffed for lunch out of a pail in jail.

But there were a lot of kindly strangers in those days.
You'd be hitchhiking in the wee hours of the night
and cars with no room would pull over and the guy riding shotgun
would say sorry man then stick out his arm and hand you a roach.
And I was happy to take the high when they couldn't give me a lift.

Any way we made it to a Hires root beer stand
where we hitched a ride with a kid sucking on a straw driving a spanking new Buick.
I'm tellin ya that punk was too young to be on the road without a babysitter.

Still we accepted his offer and stretched our bones all over the plush upholstery
as the kid kept the speedometer at 90 all the way to the wharves of San Francisco
where we thanked him and he said don't mention it
as he threw the keys as far as he could into the harbor.

Spellbound watching sea lions colonize a fancy yacht pier,
we then ambled down Castro Street
where men in mascara made us feel like ripe meat.

After running that gauntlet we paid five bucks
for a cockroach walkup with no TV and a shared bath down the hall
with a thousand little stains, creaks, and cracks
rented to us by a spinster who dealt
through a peep hole and a mail slot.

We made progress north of the Golden Gate
all the way to south of the redwoods,
dying of thirst,
when a panel van came along to our rescue.
We climbed in over a tangle of bodies
packed across two mattresses behind the cockpit seats.
I was face to face with the ferocious eyes of four bearded mountain men
sporting pony tails and bowie knives tightly cramped against
three guys with crewcuts looking worried, bewildered and withdrawn.

One crewcut was wearing a T-shirt,
a tattoo of a naked girl reclining seductively extended from his bicep to his wrist.
We joined them all eating oranges stolen from a grove.
The driver was bound for the tall tree north of Oregon and eventually Canada
picking up riders like eggs in an Easter basket.
In Eureka after an hour of fog, we stopped for food and fuel.

Evan and all but one of the gang disappeared into the store.
I remained with one of the crewcuts to guard
what little was stashed in our vehicle
missing a window and a door with a busted lock.
My curiosity was aroused by his camouflage fatigues,
so I asked, but when I pressed he changed the subject,
telling me how the mountain men planned
to melt back into the forest to outrun elk and deer.

But I wanted to know his story
so I offered to trade mine for his
as to how events led us to both arrive there.
Once I earned his trust, he nervously revealed
that he and the other two were Marine Corps deserters
on the lam from San Diego and the blood soaked battlefields of Indochina.

by L DOUGLAS ST OURS
April 2010

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