G.I. Joe or “baking soda” as in “apple of my eye, baking soda of my crack’, -what two 16 year-old conecticut runaway crackheads called him- Any way we bumped up on what turned out to be our first night as a homeless bums on the streets of Portland Oregon.

I was headed over and out to the Oregon coast to live in a cave and wait out my bad luck.  He was awol from the army.

But I had this plenty-tough-to-get joint that I’d brought up with me on the greyhound from skid row Los Angeles.

My plan was to go down to the shanghai waterfront and finally smoke this 5 dollars worth of dirt weed.  Then find a park bench or some dark section of grass to sleep on.

Waterfront park.

The willamette river.  Mysterious power factory of  the Oregon valley.  The end of the trail bringing in tall tales and fresh blood for 200 years to the ‘land of liars’.  The frothy brown water swirling , a deadly -looking mudslide.  The river seemed to move below like one huge chunk of water. The whole thing full of debris, hundreds of yards apart, moving as one connected glob at the same speed.  Also full of  all the bloated corpses floating or sinking from suicides and drunken accidents.

The whole murderous rampage lit by the murked-out lights on the industrial buildings of the other side.

Over there , it looked like there was the freeway roads of 1-5, railroad tracks and vacant industrial wasteland over there. I figured I could walk over the train bridge and sleep there, if I got kicked out of here. This town felt so empty at night, there’s not a lot of people around to get killed by.

I found a bench and dropped my big red frame pack. “Crack!”  I looked out at the river and the burnside bridge.

On one of the footings of the burnside bridge there’s a pile of shopping carts that had been dropped off the side into a jungle gym heap.  They were smashed-up into each other like a jungle gym.  Some must have bounced all the way off.  It was impressive work.  Who did that?

Pretty soon A more clean cut looking guy my age comes along down the waterfront stroll hauling a huge green sea bag.  THUD.  He sets up his operation on the next bench down.  We sat there in silence for a while, contemplating our business.  The world is full of guys like us starring into the abyss from park benches.  But I had this joint..

After a while of me thinking up something witty to say, he says..

“You drink beer ?” He pulled a couple 40’s of Blitz from his bag.

“Yeah. .. you smoke weed?”  I actually had the joint in my hand.

We laughed..

“I’d offer you some acid but it’s bunk”

“I’ll trade you some fake weed for it..”

“Ha that’s funny dude .. really?”

“Oh yes really.”

“Let me see dude!? “

I rummaged thru my pack busted it out..

“Whoa.” He was impressed by how good the quality was..

“I would’ve bought this, except no smell.. OH!, we could sell this easy.”

“I don’t know if I need any more of that bad luck”

“Well, I’ll sell it man?  I fuckin’ love bad luck.   Give you half .”

“I don’t know man. I paid 30 bucks for the shit .  It’s a like a souvenir.”

“Let’s sell it.. move the crowd!”

“maybe”

headphones on “What are you listening too”

“no means no”

oh shit everyday I start too ooze oh shit let me see if I can find that its on here I just heard it” “ oh man id kill to there that right now!

Let me see if I can find it .. they went to julitard didn’t even start playing punk till they were 40!  ff thru tape koss headphones.

The first thing you notice about Baking Soda/ G.I. joe are his maniacal blue eyes.  He  instantly came off as a big fucking rascal, and that never faded away.  Unless he was totally immobilized by crank.  When hed just sit down for whole days staring into the bushes , listening to an audiotape on headphones of someone telling him a funny story.  Except with out having a Walkman or headphones on.

At first he came off like  a surfer from a 60’s beach blanket bong-out movie, with long blonde bangs that he flips around.   Turns out he’s a violent criminal though.  But hilarious, friendly he looked straight through you like a blind pit bull.

“Impossible not to like.”  Always on the move  he’s from St. Helens Oregon.

“Not the volcano.”

I told him I was just coming in from L.A, city of dreams..

“RODNEY KING! RODNEY KING! Did you loot some shit? “

“No I missed the ones down there but I was in seattle for those ones.  They got pissed off black people up there too.  Almost got myself a new  pair of shoes when all these dudes went through the windows at this place sneaker city..”

“Shoes? Man I’d go to the gun store.”

“yeah. . Yeah they love a good riot in seattle next time they have one I recommend making the trip.”

“Yeah ill show those niggers how to do it bro!”  He pulled out this tool from his bag and motioned like breaking out a window with it..

“Yeah well when people are all hyped up in a riot man.. it’s like car flipped over here, bloody face guy there, gunshot to the left, people hitting the ground full speed running suddenly, guys getting robbed cops flying in..”

“Oh yeah I know they have riots here all the time too.. right over there.. but its white people..

You’re from seattle huh?  ‘I’m albino in a speedo’- he air guitars

“Yup kurt and the nirvanas, ever see them”

“Fuck dude!.. missed em like a bizilion –ass times”

“yeah me too..”

G.I. had money up till today.  He’s got “thousands of dollars” worth of logging equipment up there in St. Helens at his ‘dads house’ he needs to try go up there and get rid of it. Tons of stuff. He went down a list.

But here and now he’s got a “fuckin’ goldmine dude” couple hundred bucks no shit” in chainsaws  here.

He’s letting me in on the entry level to a deal.  A deal.. Something about an expired locker at the bus station, that he lost the key for.

He’s not “100 percent on ALL the serial numbers”.

But he really wants to sell the bunk weed to cover the 25$ back rent he owes on the greyhound locker.  And does a lot of trying- to- convince me to that end.

He’s Desperate, but in a way that could just as easily break ‘fuck-it’ on the whole thing.

Two 500 dollar chainsaws in a greyhound locker.  If I have 50 bucks to pay for the lost key and the  “stuff didn’t get confiscated”

He’d let me go in there and pick it up, and keep half the money.  That’s the idea..

He was sure his friend from the “porn shop” would pawn them for us.. there were a few hours before the 72 hour window expired. That’s why he’s talking to me.

“Well that’s something to think about..  I might need to get a little more desperate.”

I politley declined.  But I didn’t want to loose my only friend.

So he’d already been in prison, and the army.

“Got kicked out for trying to smuggle out a rocket launcher.  I figured out how to make one though. It’s fuckin’ easy as fuck dude.. but you need the rockets, honestly, they’re a bitch man.”

“Whoosh….Ka-blewy-pgghh.. Fuckin’ rush man”  He demonstates blowing up the other side of the river..

Everybody in Portland was having a good time..

He’d been into the army for demolition.  But also, it turned out, destroyed and ass ton of crank.  You got the feeling at the same time. They wanted him to go “over there” and help blow up land mines,

“Find em first.. then detonate! KA-pang-a-boom” that was his job. He sounded out stuff getting blown up on the regular.   I put together that he he wound up a No call no show for the army though, in his estimation, through no fault of his own.

He had been charged with theft, desertion and had flunked enough drug tests to where he wasn’t going to be blowing up land mines any time soon.  The army was looking for him..

He had a younger brother over in the gulf.  And an older brother with gulf war syndrome.

I’d thought about joining up myself.. But I racked up too extensive of a juvenile crime record..  The recruiter quit calling.  And besides, at that point when you watched the news everybody had on gasmasks. while scud missles and biological gases whizzed by.   You didn’t want to come back and give some chick rabies..

But I always felt like I would’ve made a real good soldier.  Get disciplined. Leading men in battle, they only let the REAL dudes have that job.  The hazing might have set off my temper but then again I might have learned to control it.  For use on the enemy.  I didn’t do good with being fucked with. Throw in that I was so stoked to be done with high school and be free but devide that by need for discipline and who the hell knows..

I’d always been such a total gnarly loner my answer was to just walk away. I really didn’t need to be accepted by the group I was in I was good at making friends and finding someplace else.  So maybe me and gi had that in common of being mildly sociopathic loners.

G.I.s got kids too.  Although that was normally the last thing you were going to hear about.  His mother and his baby’s mother had “ bullshit’ restraining orders against him.  His Mount St. Helens people are Redneck royalty.  Six brothers. Hand to hand combat.  Guys like him seem to always have a less threatening friend like me.  People who do not give a fuck about jumping off into a real nasty looking fight were  fascinating to me.

There’s not too many of them walking around on the streets as free men.

We hadn’t covered all this yet. We’d just bumped up.  .  When you’re an alpha male you don’t want dudes to think your just some regular bum.  He didn’t know I didn’t care if  he had noting WAS  a crazed junkie.  Quite frankly for me, that gave him a more high of a score

He knows Portland, but this is the “first time he’s been this broke.”  Formerly a high roller.  He was snorting ripper crank off the 50 yard line at all the blazers games.  Driving all the way from the volcano.  Blitzed out of his mind.

“Triangle of power.!”  A catch phrase, a shooting-up crank reference.

“Everybody does a big shot of dope at the same time and gets evil.”

Quasi religious

I’m checking out his tattoos.  One is actually still bleeding.  He’s the first guy I’ve met with real, like, fuck the world tattoos, prison tattoo’s.  Like ‘you’re really going to go through life with those?’

“YEAH”

But they were quite badass..

His bulletproof  torso is split up into 4 sections. Every group of muscles had a different satanic nazi-keltic drawing theme.  Maniac devils.  Tigers with knives and guns.  I thought he was a total hick till I seen those.

“Put some hell on myself.  Praise Lucifer” he wasn’t kidding. He brushed them off like they were dirty. He raised the horned hand..  Laughing at unseen forces.. starring at me.

“Yeah you know. No swastikas.. But  ‘Que Seraw Seraw’. I love that evil shit.”  He raises his eyebrows. He was the Aryan poster child for fun loving evil.

‘Que seraw seraw’ referenced the infamous ‘east side white pride’ skinhead murder-attack on Ethiopian immigrant mulugeta “seraw” in inner southeast Portland 5 years ago.  Those dudes pulled the man out of his car and beat him to death on se 16^th and salmon.  Imagine that.

I guess the white power dudes had been more fun up till 1988.   But after all the hot heat from the Ethiopians death, it was rumored those guys grew their hair out and went rockabilly. The hq in Idaho got sueed into oblivion. While the anti-skinhead-skinheads made a power stab on the inside of town. The sharps. Straight edge.  I never gave it a second thought until the sharps had a boot party on my face during a blood-axis show at the paris theatre about 4 years later.  I thought I got beat-up by nazi skinheads.

Mostly what you saw lurking around downtown were kinda the halfway guy’s who might have a shaved head and flight jacket but were really just on drugs or first month homeless.  Not the just mad dog attack Nazis.  The fashion wore off to where it was more the super losers from places like Newport.

The Water of the river was all high.  Twisted kinds of wrecked up tree parts and then piles of garbage caught up in mooring lines and log jams.   Concrete looking spray foam swirls of dirty water.  The river stinks when it’s hot out.  Or the air stinks.  I doubt it’s all the tree’s.

We hung around our abandoned farm.. Taking turns keeping watch out for Derail and tigger.  Sure we speculated but we also  took wild guesses .. one  great falls worker said there wouldn’t be a train from Shelby till Monday night.  But another more friendlier seeming worker said there would probably be a train through in about 5 hours..

There are no absolute certainties about anything..  you might as well look go look at  rat with its head cut off in a graveyard.     It’s better than getting clubbed in the head with with a rat like in the old days.  Now and then, you’ll get purposely-wrong information from a friendly guy ,
A workman for the railroad  might tell you what they guess like it was a hard fact. Just like anybody else you might bump into.. Unless the worker radio’s in to the yardmaster to ask exactly what you what you to know.  Or you might ask the worker whose checking brake lines on your train.  Or you might hide from him..  Speculation on what’s going on is a major source of entertainment.. They certainly aren’t going to give out awards

(Yeah were leaving the shit in here that makes no sense whatsoever at first glance)

Now and then, you’ll get purposely wrong information.  I’ve always believed rather than flat out fucking with you, it’s because they want to keep you out of trouble during their shift. Or pissed that you startled or kind of scared them just for being a scumbag.  Or I mean you are a scumbag..
Were doing ken keseys bus tri nmow1111111111
“Oh sure you want the yard two hindered miles from here”

Or good information from a guy who looks like he never fuckin liked ya..  And never once looks in your eyes but also leaves a spool of copper wire..

“Yeah track one 8 o’clock”

Or they don’t really want to report you like they’re supposed to which gets them busted

I can’t remember exactly how long it was after we got there… but At some point 4 other tramps showed up at the hobo inn: There’s was a long haired, bearded, quiet gent with the thousand yard stare and an Oklahomishness, gaunt, intimidating- humbleness.

His wife, an equally silent native woman.  It’s actually not a mans world out here.  But not every chick in the world wants to hop freight trains.

A friendly, grass smoking Mexican who was the mouthpiece of the group.  Did all the talking

There was also a Native American guy, who was I believe he was thousand yard stare guys brother n’ law. 

It took a minute for them to decide we weren’t trained killers from the ftra goon squad looking to fuck their necks and vice versa and vice versa..  Of course the boo dog had to be restrained.. he’s a savage .  I don’t think he has a choice cause there’s nothing he enjoys more than unpredictable violence.  The type of dog who should have been headed for eternal slumber a long time ago.  But ended up with some speed freaks in Eugene..

We  sat around talking while they all set up camp in one of the cleanest of the chicken coop buildings.

Mostly the mexican  talked, and the others would comment on a subject if they had something to say. I don’t think the lady ever said anything.  She doesn’t have any reason to trust us, she’s not at all unfriendly though , and neither are we. They came from the old school.  Communal.  Help a brother out. , and leave something for the next
people. They pretty much wrote the book on tramping..  Something about the diversity of their group made them seem non-threatening right away… salt of the earth ..

Borrowed knife brings bad luck.

We didn’t know but there was a least one active serial killer Robert silveria riding the rails, killing other hobos at this time..

Chester was worried about this gash on his hand ..He asked if any of those guy’s were packing anything that could kill his perceived infection. The Native American guy looked at Chester’s shived up palm.

“You know you can piss on that to make it heal better”

“Piss on it?”

“Yeah you can piss on it. Uh-huh.. Urine’s is basically vitamins, yeah sterile.. hmm”

“huh. maybe I’ll try that, you’re  sure now? Right? Piss ..on ..my hand? you guys
wouldn’t kid a brother on the rails?”

“Nope. true story on that”

  The other two men solemnly nodded in dire agreement.

Oklahoma say’s “I’ve done it.”  Looking Chester in the eye.  He meant it.

The Mexican guy said ..

“Hey I know what’ll help you out.. You guy’s smoke weed?”

I said

“oh Hell Yes!. Well he dosen’t”

Ralph rolls his eye’s on cue “sigh”

“but the rest of us do”  
  
“Damn! I haven’t had any grass to smoke since Spokane.”

A beat up joint gets passed around..  D grade.  Got stoned .  The type of moment where it all comes together in soft golden hour sunlight of early October ..  The sun lit leaves rustling in the wind , pink shadows on the walls, big-big sky, this destroyed old farm that you knew they weren’t gonna let tramps crash out at forever.. in this scene you felt timeless.

“Hey, speaking of piss you guy’s hear about that hantrivirus?”

“that’s stuff that killed some Indians down in New Mexico, what was that a few months
back?”  says the Mexican

“yeah they said it wasn’t up this far ..but the shit just got this janitor up in great falls.  The man was sweeping up in some basement with no vent, that’s what they said, he huffed that dust of dried out  mice urine and the next thing you know .” 

“yeah we were thinking that house over there might have it but none of us have died or nothing’”

we kinda joke about it but the shits for real, we been paranoid about it, I guess it feels like the flu at first, then bang! you’ve had it”

“yeah, that’s right, I heard of it.  Fucked up, howdya get it,”

The Native American guy looks up from what he’s doing: making a small scale model of a
train out of copper wire that he’d pried out of one of these buildings. He’s got several cars in front of him.. No ones drunk and everybody’s under the big sky.

“You see it is the piss  or shit of the deer mouse, dried out and stirred up into the air, one whiff and you’re through.”

“mouse piss?! man that’s fucked up.  Whoa- oops”

Stoned he spilled some salsa on one of his train miniatures.. time stood still for a minute

“Uh oh.. I guess that’ll be the dining car”

catholocism is the thing with a heavy dose of

it cracked us up real good , his way of saying it.

“Hey think we could buy some of that weed off you guys?”

“What you got to give for it”

Ralph was the only guy with hard currency and he hates “stupid weed” and loves food..

Chester sweet-talked him..

“Ralph dude”

“WHAT?”

“ I’m gonna get stamps in Cheyenne dude, whadd are you worried about ? ..Ralph. RRRaaalph? c’mon!”

“So fuckin’ what?”

“Ralphy..”

He insists smiling and looking into his eyes.. Those guys we’re so funny! I mean if they weren’t totally incapable of it they could have a TV show! They’d been through so many fights and stickups etcetera..   They were like homeless/violent Abbott and Costello..

We pooled together a 10 dollar food stamp and three seventy-two in cash, and made a drug deal for a dime bag of seedy “Columbian”.. so we’re happy except for ralph who doesn’t smoke grass and contributed the 10 in food money. But was at his funniest when he had something to bitch about.. winery diner

Next day. Almost an entire garbage bag of burgers speedy runs sign

That night we were sitting around and those guy’s came back from town..
.. the Vietnam vet said “yall hungry? want a burger?”

“Burger? sure”

The Indian dude, “dining car” who by the way, I’m remembering was also a
Vietnam vet and had been travelling with his brother n’ law and sister this way for awhile it seemed.. think they fought back-to-back over there and stuck with it onto the closest thing to nam in America which was trains.. I didn’t really think of Native Americans fighting in the Vietnam War but I guarantee you that many gave their lives and still give them to that war.. Anyway he ended up being quite a character and had been fucking with these metal boxes trying to find a way to build a fire in their hut.  He’s using these boxes as stovepipes in an attempt to make the smoke flow outside. He got that going. A blaze!  Which always makes us think the fire department is gonna show up.  But also made flickering light dance around this Haitian level collection of leaning chicken coops and shed like houses.  Real stuff.  Petrified chicken shit everywhere like old paint drops in an art studio. paint in piles..

Our friends had dumpster dived a whole garbadge bag of burgers and roast beef sandwiches. 

“we couln’t eat this all if we tried.  Were gonna make it someplace on this .  That was the message out of the ethereal arby’s gabadge..  still wrapped, from this magical arbys dumpster that they had felt it’s power on other  voyages thru here. It’s no joke. scores like this every night.. that place had a  big cow on the sign. I mean we could a had five or six sandwiches each no joke they hit the jackpot!  But even for them this bag was I mean funny.

We regrilled the  hot roast beef and chese sauce  over a chicken shit fire and the wide open sky over the new complex fireplace and dined quite well I thought.. as I looked out at the stars, satisfied ..

Speedy went to town and came back drunk.  He would stay up talking to boo I cant say I ever really saw him sleep.  I mean speedy could beg up drugs in the middle of nowhere ..in space.  Those deep blue eye starring at you ..like Picasso.. like the guy just fell off the watermelon truck as a baby and society has been handing him free liquor and dogs and  ever since.

The morning of our third day we gave up on Derail and tigger.  Pussyhairs pull battleships.. 

We had Endless theories as to their fate became our main topic for discussion:  married?  arrested? Deer mice?  They had both been crack heads. Man.  I can’t remember many of the scenarios, but we were going to split tonight regardless.

Derail had mentioned going back to Florida to see his family.. After 4 strait years as a road king he didn’t have anything left to prove.  My old pal 40 ouncer saw tigger at a dead show about 6 months later “She was drunk, she couldn’t stand up, I asked her
where you and your friend Derail were  but she just said she was pregnant. And growled. and didn’t know anything about it, or who I was!  I pulled her out of this bush and found her a tent to sleep in, with the people I had this like hell ride with bro, you wouldn’t have believed it, yeah so, ah, what was I saying, but I never saw that sister again.  Good to see ya bro!”  40 ouncer was a great man and A true friend and died a few years later..

Prospects for dealing with the yard discussed.. Over a gumbo full of cowboy coffee‘
made from delicious dumpster dived grounds..
I asked our comrades: “you know anything about catchin’ a train south from here.”
The white Oklahoma vietnam veteran seemed to know the most about this yard.  He thought for a while.

“I know alot of those hotshots are goin’ south. If you get a south bounder hotshot he’ll take you all the way to Amarilla”

“Is there a way you can tell a south bounder”

“well, they head out west from here, then they hit that junction about a mile west and
drop south, but that westbound hotshot could be goin’ spookaloo just as easy, you gotta ask a worker, if you can find one who’ll talk to you.  That yard ain’t nothin’ nice, that’s for sure, that ole bulls a mean somva bitch”

“yeah we met him, a young guy drivin’ a pinto?”

“You met the kid, he’s a real asshole too, but he works the day, the old mans there at night, that’s when you want to go.  Don’t be in or around that yard durrin’ the day.  The kid will have you locked up.  You might get lucky, there ARE times when there’s no bull. But they keep his schedule random, you can’t never tell.  He actually said that himself..”

“You think we could walk down to the junction and catch it on the fly when it splits off?” 

“Not unless you got those superpowers!”

‘WE had that same idea the last time we came thru” –indian brother

“Once it hit’s that green light it’s gone.”

“is that where you’re goin? south?”

“We haven’t made up our minds yet. You know how it is.. south today. west tomorrow,
yesterday we were thinking about wintering up right here.”

As the sun went down I climbed through the yard with the native man. You had to cross about 30 or 40 tracks get to the other side, but cutting through the yard is the quickest way to get to this country store where I can fill up water jugs and buy canned
food before we go. About 1/3 to 1/2 of those tracks have chains‘ of cars sitting on them.. One of the first things Derail taught is that you always climb over the cars at the little catwalks on the frontsides and backends that the workers use.  Always keeping one hand on the handrail.. if you get knocked by a unit at one end of the row of cars the “slack-action” can throw you off and under the wheels.  But my friend just goes crawling right
underneath.  I cringe to see it.  But eventually we jettison into the grave.. then a raod then a market. They must just see bums and trains,

  “You don’t care about getting smashed up huh?”

“who me? man fuck it! if I was going to GO.. it woulda been a long time ago, if these trains wanna take me.. that’s our business not yours.”  His voice is rouch and tough on that one

He was right, a lot of people out here seem indestructible, and it’s common.  Especially among Vietnam veterans..

4 x 4
Both of our groups decided to get going that night.  We were together at first, sitting in the high grass on the edge of the yard.  Speedy went looking for a ride for our team while we sat watching his gear and the boo dog.

He came back empty handed of information so we decided we were gonna have to get
into the middle of the yard and hide in a boxcar or something. A real man has nothing to under the stars.. they say. We’re hiding.. Set up closer to the action.  Staying out of the lights as much as possible.. beaming over the shat-o-lious like something out of close encounters.

Chester got bored ..he was always amped for the next phase of the operation..
So what’s the plan here..”

to not meet the bull bro”- say’s speedy.  The exact opposite of amped.. he’s exact opposite of amped..

Fuck it im just gonna go ninja, stealth style around.. and find out what’s up! Watch I’m gonna go find a worker to talk to

“Wouldn’t do that bro.”

Travis just kinda sneered and “what?” stood over speedy walking past..

Whatever the one wanted to do the other didn’t like it!  Finally after all this cloak and dagger shit.. Chester found out from a worker that a southbound train is departing from “track 9” Chester came back to tell me

“track 9 Dave” raising his eyebrows and waiting for some kind of argument.. “around midnight”!

That doesn’t necessarily mean the train over there on “track 9” right now is ours, or even that we can figure out which track-track 9 is.  The  mainline is track one. Or is it zero, what are so we have to count over 8 tracks?  We head that direction.. it’s the best lead we’ve got.

We climbed over a zillion strings of cars that night, carrying all the gear on our backs plus our hands are full of water jugs.  It’s like creeping through a pit of giant metal snakes.  Finally we found what, in theory, is track 9.  I dropped my gear and walked all the way down the length of cars in one direction, ralph walked all the way down the other.  Keep in mind the “old bull” was sposed to be a real jerk-face! We’re looking for
something we can ride. What we found was that this train is made up of nothing but container carrying flat-cars with no-where to hide. And then we have 48’ers with their cargo bays all the way full.  No “no 110’s”. So there aren’t any buckets to get down in
either. That’s the situation for the entire train. I did see a worker coming up the other side of the choo-choo towards me on his 3 wheeler: I hopped over and got his attention, making sure not to startle him,

“excuse me sir, can you tell me where this ones going'”

“south.”

“thanks.” 

I don’t know how it happened.   maybe Speedy didn’t want to ride on this train with no rides.. Since he was wanted in Montana! And since Chester found it, he wants to ride it. But all of the sudden Chester wants to beat speed down right there in the middle
Yard! I’m not sure! the shit broke out!

“Whoa what the fuck”  finding those two squaring off.

“STRAIT UP DUDE I’LL KILL YA!!” something Chester’s been wanting
to do for a while.

The whole thing seemed so stupid.  It was obvious jimmy didn’t want to fight. He stayed seated and dint look at Chester..  After having been threatened with death myself I flashed back and somehow lashed out in a rare show of courage.. I faced Chester down,

“Man we can’t be havin’ a fuckin’ freak-out every day!  If we split up cool, but let’s get
the fuck out of here first!” he kept coming up on Jimmy and I pushed him back

“NEVER! fuckin push me again Dave!”

“I’ll push you anytime you start that shit, look where we are! your gonna fuck us all up with this shit!,” I could tell if his fists started flyin’ I was first in line,
He would eventually beat some one to death..

“I’m in this man, and this is the closest thing I got to a family right now. We can’t be havin’ this shit” I thought he was gonna sock me,  I didn’t know him well enough to tell. Actually maybe not, we’d been through alot of shit together!  Besides that’s how I felt about things anyway.  He just glared, and walked away.. and dished out AcoupleA blows to one of the train cars we were getting ready to ride..

All this in the middle of this “hot” train yard. Crouched down. workers buzzing on ATV’s someplace. I sat down on a empty track and shook it off, you know the feeling where the fights in your body, but it doesn’t happen.

Chester is the alpha male here no question but he isn’t much of a leader.. my ego’s been boosted considerably, I’ve been standing up to oppression lately..

He came back and apologized, and also said he was surprised he didn’t throw a punch at me

“Well we have that to look forward to”

We laughed it off..  you do get sick of  people because everybody should be in a mental insitition.  I understand I mean speedy and his killer attack dog, ralph and his redneck goth lame attidude. You want to fuckin punch em’.  But im not that pissed of and full of hate and violence.  I mean I can feel the presence of god out here.  Even if it’s only the god of the dumpster.

Then the air started to come thru the brake lines as the train moved back slightly eastward, which meant that the units had hit on the west side, so far so good. In one of those moments where you decide !fuck it! we decided to lay out on a flatcar and take our chances. We’ll just ride out that way even though were going right past the tower. What the hell, what more can happen? My sentiment exactly. We didn’t want to fuck around finding something else. faith. Right before we moved out we saw the native gentleman from the farm, we explained the situation to him, he shook his head,

“alright good luck to you.”  He gave us all a soulful look and was on his way..

Finally we’re pulling out slow-slow sliding twords the tower. Creaakk creaak the engines are pulling.. the cars strain against the couplings, we’re laying down, flat-out, melting into the woodwork,.. pretending we’re invisible for just a few minutes..

I think as the lights of the tower came closer we considered getting off and running for it, but don’t worry we kept our cool, we’re in it now. We’re invisible! + The Jedi mind trick! At this point doing anything else would be like locking the barn after the horse was stolen.. It’s exactly like being in that moment where you’re exiting the store you are shoplifting from.  Had to go thru freight trains.. had to go thru depression suicide 10 years after.  Had to to write this book.  This is pretty fuckin’ nuts tho..

“So I got a warrant in Montana” speedy was scarred to go to jail.

..Only in this case that moment draws on and on.  Believe me, if they catch us on this thing we’ll be paying a visit to the crowbar hotel in‘ billings.  Speedy again! He was not going to Montana so sir. Wouldn,t catch him there.  We’re eye to eye with the tower.  The train is really dragging ass, the thought of getting off and running for it sounds good, nothings going on over at the tower though.. No sign of our big cop foe or the kid in the pinto.. then..  BLAST OFF! into the night! Reaching critical mass like getting shot out of an illegal orgasm! Devotion..! trusting the test..

Those three are rolled out on the other side of the this car behind a container that blocks the wind, there’s not really room to sleep 4 across. Nothing to stop us from rolling over the edge of this moving trains in peaceful slumber town either.  My old, beat-up, ductaped 150$ bivy-sac, is slightly totally useless except it’s windproof, so I volunteered to be on the wind side. I had the half sleep type dreams that you get on the train all mixed together within the waking.

Laying out on this rusty car, the orchestra of train noise, starlight overhead.. the sensation: like napping on the strange wing of a spacecraft. There’s nothing to keep you from sliding off  into the oblivion. and the entire deck is always lurching and tilting. A subtle ride through a pitch-black carnival.. lights from buildings pass, otherwise it’s dark.  Nothing around but the cosmos out there. Deep space in 3d. Every once in a while you pass through a huge complex, coal, oil, electricity, with a million lights and fires, and mechanical apparatuses. Really looking like something out of the end of the world.  I usually wake when it gets bright because at first it seems like maybe somebody’s got you in their spotlight. Totally exposed.   Quite a surreal setting to drop back into from sleep, although in my dreams I’m usually riding the trains, sorta like being in jail for awhile and dreaming about being in jail. It’s easier that way then to dream of being out! and waking up in. 

“Where you headed?”

“Just outta here pretty much..”

“You got a paper on you?”

“I don’t think so..”

“Eh man..” he lowers his voice and looks around..

“I’ve got this killer Thai stick .. I’m fixin’ to roll up a ripper, but I need a paper bro..”

  This guy looked all right,  he had a tie died shirt and looked like he was from northern California.. he looked like a Fleetwood Mac song.  He appeared to have just gotten off a bus.

“You  need any help?”

“Sure”

As soon as I hit the ground I found myself talking to some guy..

My luck was already down the toilet so how much worse could it get?  Actually I’d decided on the grey hound from  Las Vegas  that I was going to quit smoking dope forever ; at least for a while. But it looked like I was headed for a relapse.  Besides this is kind of a survival situation.. Can’t lie around in bed all day..

  I was grasping at psychic straws, the way I felt:  I’d go anywhere or do anything.  I’d go to china and get ate by the cannibals.  I was spread thin. I was looking to see what people said. Working on Zen. I was taking some heat from the Great Spirit. Once you don’t give a fuck and a half.

By and by Dick Fleetwood  motions for me to sit down. We’re sitting on an outside concrete bench in the prison wall courtyard.  That L.A. station is a real utilitarian fortress.  Severe architecture.  If things ever went bezerko .. look out.  Not a safe place.  You got every kind of person.  Like a modern Ellis Island.

Luckily I got over most of my nervous breakdown yesterday while I waited at Las Vegas general for a botched minor surgery.

Speaking of anxious, my buddy seems to be ready to roll. He wants to do some weed with the quickness.  In the twilight of the night.  Also the twilight of our relationship..

“I don’t think were gonna’ be able to smoke this thing right here.”

“Well, what about around the corner?”

“You don’t want to go out into that neighborhood.. I’ll tell you what. I’ve got a 50-dollar stick left, but I’ll let it go for $40.  It’s yours if you want it Bro.. That’s a sick deal bro.  This is some ‘killer shit’, tear you up bro.”

I figured “Stick” was just the way they said it down here…

He wanted to hurry up and make this drug transaction.  He suddenly became terse, direct..

“We got to do this quick cause they know me down here..”

“I’ve only got $30 on me”

“Fuck dude!”

Now I’m fucking it all up..

I saw the bag in his hand. It was Thai stick, neatly tied with thread. I’d never seen one before. “I’ll be damned”

He pulled the bag away, and went to work trying to tear a chunk off the end.. In retrospect comically harder to do than you would think..

“man they really wrapped this shit tight”  fuck yeah they did.

“O.K. take this , put it away! but be cool..! wait till I tell you to give me the money..”

He kept looking around.

“HURRY UP”

He was rushing me.  One pocket I knew had 30 and I got the right wad of cash.  We did the deal though.  People were going back and forth in the dark in the distance.   Getting a lungful of the dry dingy downtown world..

“Alright here!”

I gave him thirty of my last 200 dollars..

“Righteous bro!  Be careful with that shit now!”

I wanted to check this Thai stick shit out, so I shoved into the bus station bathroom with my large frame pack and another big duffel bag worth of all my possessions..

On the way in, as I was coming down the desert on the grey dog, the air conditioning was the first thing to go.  I was seated next to this 70-year-old black Louisiana catfish farmer who’d just lost a wife.  And when the grumbling about the heat started he wasn’t part of it.   But then this bearded good ole boy country gentleman, looking like grizly Addams started strolling the isles singing his song about the air conditioning, and leaving Las Vegas and some guy who bought him a ticket.  Barefoot with a guitar and an unbuttoned wool shirt on the ride across Death Valley. . I mean he brought joy to peoples hearts. He’d asked about weed as we waited for the bus in Vegas, but I didn’t have any.  This guy was living life off charm alone ..No doubt finding his was into infinite adventures.  That seemed like the life for me.  If only I wasn’t bogged down with all this survivor guilt.  I figure, I smoke a bowl with this guy and see where he’s going.

So I wrestle all my worldly possessions into the grey-dog bathroom.. and check out the merchandise. This erotic weed turns out to be some of that dog bullshit.  Hand painted rubber cement and toilet paper and moss glued together with an eye for color and texture. Totally real looking but it would bounce off the floor.  Definitely not what it was cracked out to be.  Totally schwagerino..  My heart sank.

“Boy, that guy really screwed me over”

I laughed at myself, in a new, cool, hypnotic-post–post shock- consciousness I had attained. The window had been broken but bricks kept coming.. What I mean is this counterfeit weed was at the heart of the least of my problems. I just needed to cut loose all attachments and then no problems… It’s all nothingness, an illusion, like this weed.  If I never opened my mouth or went out in public, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen.  That’s a question for the philosophers.  I’m not the kind to go try and chase the guy down.   In so Cal life’s a bitch. I thought about re-selling it.  Could an individual get busted for selling fake weed?   This  seemed like rock bottom, but I wasn’t taking any chances.  Besides it’s my souvenir from the southland.

I ended up just mumbling and laughing and went to try to find my way out of there..
In fact I couldn’t say shit as for fiscal responsibility because I’d just wrecked a 4000$ loaner truck and put a lady in the hospital.  I didn’t think I’d be able to pay all that back anytime soon.  I just wanted to go someplace where I didn’t have to deal with people anymore.

But first I’d need to get out of downtown Los Angeles.  I was wondering just exactly what I should do to get out of here.  I figured sleeping on a park bench in Venice beach would be the best way to go homeless with class.  I could see the lights of the skyscrapers in the distance of the downtown buildings up the way.  You understand that I’ve got at least 100 pounds of luggage.  Everything I could scavenge from the car wreck.

It’s like 10 p.m. on a Sunday. Night of the zombies, I don’t know actually, there’s plenty of humanity around here.  I get directions to the R.T.D bus stop.
 
“The rough tough and dangerous”

“Across the street and down the way..” The B team of greyhound gangsters beyond the outside of the walls help me out.  

Looking if “I’m lookin’..” I tried to act like this wasn’t my first day on the job.  They were sizing me up.  But there’s a lot going on.

A long-long block away is the bus stop.  Looks like I got somebody else wait with: fellow bus rider,  a big round  African American gentleman wearing sunglasses and carrying a one of those canes for the blind..

“Hey..  Who’s this now?”  He had a drawl like Biggie and looked like Blind Lemon Jefferson.

“I’m just some guy trying’ to catch the bus out to..”

“HUH.”

We sat there. I was trying to think of how to ask my gruff-blind associate directions how I get a bus out to Venice Beach.  I’m  thinking about where I’m going to sleep.  Not in this part of town.  I wasn’t cracked-up enough for that yet.  I’m going to go sleep under the pier like ‘Carnival of Souls’..

Then another black dude approached across the wide street with no traffic.  Walked right up to me..

“David Parker”- (My name)

“Whhaa  yaaaa..?”

“Mr. Parker, I’m officer Hassle.  L.A.P.D.  Greyhound division. He flipped out some kind of badge. You know why I’m here right?”

“N-No”

I’d never been more startled.

“Oh come on now..  Games Mr. parker?  Must we? . I just watched you buy marijuana form one of our undercover agents.. time to go to jail.”

He was pissed. Jail.  Downtown L.A.  I had a clear picture in my head of what that would look like.  Crazy gangsters dancing around in shower caps and bed sheet diapers and teddy bears.  Men’s central lock-up.

“Jail. For real? Are you sure?”

“We got you on the video machine”

He was wiry, in his early 40’s carrying a small Marlboro mile duffel bag, wearing glasses and a backward NY Yankees ball cap, jeans an old-faded-brown Members Only style leather jacket with triangular lapel.  He had a hard look and a New York accent. More authentic “ghetto” style than any cop I’d been around. More like Rockford.

“Whooeee” the blind guy exclaimed..

I hoped this would just be a ticket or something.  Could I take all this gear to jail? I mean backpacks and duffel bags. Wait a minute this weed was bunk.  Is it illegal to buy fake weed?

“O.K. So what happens now”

“Well Mr. Parker let’s take a walk back across the street and we’ll see how the sergeant wants to play it.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah you’re fucked.  I got you.” He smiles. 

“You see though Mr. parker today is your lucky day sir, there is a one time holiday special deal,  you might say..” He said cracking a full grin..

I was interested.

“If you got 20 dollars cash money we can just forget the whole thing.”

“20 dollars?”

“Or even 5 would work.”

It was beginning to dong on me that there was some kind of sick double -hustle. But who the hell knew what the hell..

“Nah man, I’m bullshitting you, I seen what happened back there with that dude.”

He looked at the blind man.

“I had him GOIN’ huh?”

Blind guy and him thought that was so funny..  guttural laughs “Chhh Chhh Chhh”

All this coming out of the dark fog of impending near death trouble, the clear L.A. sky with no stars.

I automatically paid the 5 dollars..

“Nah man I’m just fuckin’ with you player.  I seen you get ripped off by that dude. I can’t see a man get ripped off twice in one night!”

“Oh-Oh – nah man”

He tried to return the 5.

“Nah man you got me fair and square.  That’s a good one”

“Alright then! You’re a good sport Mr. Parker. Now,  I got to go! David parker!. My name is James.  Look me up if you want some real weed.  I’ll be around.”

We shook hands.  He started off.

“Hey!  Just one thing though.. How’d you know my name?”

“Right there” 

He pointed to my baggage tag on my backpack.

“Damn!”

“Alright Mr. Parker we’ll see you around..”

  He was surer than I was. When you’re caught on a metaphysical roller coaster ride there’s ups and down’s but at least we’re just joking around this twist of the corner.