The Last Spotted Owl - Installment Six

Mom was not happy at her job and I was definitely unhappy with my school.  Summer was just starting and my usual plans of spending two weeks hiking in the Idaho Wilderness Area appeared sketchy.  Something about "Tick Checks" had not registered well with one of the parents of the previous year's hike and a new adult guide could not be found.

Tick Checks were harmless.  You take one adult and 25 thirteen and fourteen year olds, put them on a trail in the middle of the wilderness and have them strip naked and look for ticks.  What was the big deal?  There were still things I didn't know.

Keith Lincoln, a football star who played for San Diego and alum of Washington State University had offered Mom and a pal of hers jobs in Pullman, Washington.  Pullman is situated near the Washington/Idaho border, just four miles from another college town, Moscow, Idaho.  Washington State University hosted about 15,000 students a year with a like number in Moscow.  Between both towns there wasn't a permanent population of more than 8,000, most of whom were professors and college staffers.

Playboy magazine ranked beer drinking colleges across the nation in 1968.  When they got to the University of Idaho in Moscow they refused to rank them saying, “You cannot rank professionals with amateurs.”  In that year, The Rathskeller Inn of Moscow, Idaho pumped more beer than all of Germany.

There were a considerable number of farmers in the area as the Palouse valley was home to some of the richest wheat land on earth.

This was the starting point for the Russian wheat deals of the 60's and 70's.  Forty million years ago, when Mount St. Helens was building the first time, some of the richest soil anywhere had been deposited there and the resulting crops were staggering.  Millionaire farmers were as common as agriculture students in this part of the world.

Mom and I moved into the Washington Hotel on the 1st of June, 1968.  We had half the third floor of rooms to ourselves.  The Hotel was built in 1922 and the original manager of the place, a fellow named Wes Versteeg, was still there.  He had a family in Spokane, Washington, 80 miles to the North whom he rarely visited or spoke of. 

Wes was fond of telling people that he was 8 years old before his parents knew if he would walk or fly.  His ears were like great wrinkled pancakes stuck to the sides of his head.

The Washington had been quite the place in the 20's and probably stayed that way into the early 50's.  By the 60's it had run down considerably and by '68 the top floor was condemned, the 4th floor rooms were rented out as storage, while the 2nd floor and half the third floor were rented as small offices.  There was an elevator with the name "Otis" etched in big friendly letters in the threshold so I began talking to the elevator and called it by name.  "Third floor, Otis!"  I'd say on entering, or "Take 'er down, Otis!"  It was a source of amusement for the architecture student who rented the office nearest the elevator on the third floor.

If there were only two things to do in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho they were two more than in Pullman, Washington.  Beer drinking was done in Moscow where the drinking age was a year younger than Washington and why would anyone want to get into a fight for fun?

Where it was stupid to be smart in Coeur d'Alene there was nothing but smart in Pullman.  All the kids were sons and daughters of college professors.  All the High School teachers had advanced degrees.  There was a permanent commitment to enrichment and education built into the community and enlarging yourself, from the earliest age, was the order of the day.

For the first time in my 16 years I was surrounded by peers instead of jeers.  The mass of opportunities for education in Pullman made me drunk with fantasy. 

There simply was not a subject I could envision that was not only possible but had a whole department that was devoted to and supported it.

The cherry on top was that there were hippies.  Real hippies.  Intellectual hippies.  Hippies who were just like me and there was, right there, in the corner space, ground floor of the Washington, a head shop. 

The "Psych Shop" sold everything that started with the letter 'p': posters, pipes, papers, peace symbols; then the inverse, the 'b's: buttons, beads, black lights, etc.  Everything for the budding young hippie was in one place.  I was in heaven.

I had a job making pizzas in the evenings then as the janitor overnights.  I had cash money and the place to spend it.  The only thing I did not have was friends.  Half of me missed The Mob and the other half was crying, "Good Riddance!"  It was not long before I met my first real friend, a real hippie, a fellow named David Wasson.

Pullman is a dusty town.  Dust will build up on a window sill faster than Otis Fensil could draw his shootin’ iron.  I had selected two rooms as my own in the Washington Hotel and began painting them in accordance with songs by Cream.  There was a white room with black curtains and a room with many fantastic colors.

The first time I saw David Wasson he was right outside the hotel painting letters on the side of a van.  The van was the property of the City Senior Center and was used to take seniors on tours and field trips.  The staff had titled the van The Blue Bird and David was painting the name and some birds on the side.

I was excited.  I planned out what I would say to this hippie to start a conversation and practiced it several times before climbing out a window from the pizza parlor to test it out.

My practiced line, "I'm glad to see someone else will be covered in paint before the day is out." was intended to inspire the response, "Oh, what are you painting?" 

Then, I could say, "I'm painting my rooms, would you like to come see?"  That's how it would go.  That's how I planned it.

So, I said my line.

David, having been startled as I seemingly appeared from nowhere, said, "Wow!  Okay.  Cool, I guess."

Well, that wasn't the correct response.   This would take some effort on my part.  "A lot of dust gets into the wet paint."  I added.

"Yeah, it's dusty."

"Okay, well, have fun I guess.  See ya."  And I entered the window from which I had come.

"You live in there?"

Yay!  Interest!  An unsolicited response!

"Yeah, I just moved in!  You wanna see my rooms?"  And it was done, or begun, however you may see it.

David and I became fast friends.  He introduced me to everyone in the Psych Shop and took me around town to all the best places to hang out and talk.

It turned out that the Psych Shop was owned by the same fellow who owned "The Magic Mushroom," the head shop in Spokane, a gay man who taught at Coeur d'Alene High School.  He taught there until, of course, it was disclosed that he was gay.

Bobbie Kurtz wore ascots and Nehru jackets and big brass medallions hung from around his neck.  If he had smoked it would have been in a cigarette holder held like a baton.  How it had gotten past the administration of Coeur d'Alene high school that Bobbie was gay is a testament to their stupidity.  The rest of the world knew it at a glance.

I bought at least 25 or 30 black light posters, and a 4' black light, for my room of many fantastic colors and another dozen or so black and white portraits for the white room with black curtains.

David and I went to the Compton Union Building (The CUB) and explored it fully.  I was immediately at home in the cafeteria.  A huge room devoted almost exclusively to drinking coffee, study, lively conversation, and eating inexpensive food.

Of particular interest were the listening rooms.  There were two, one for Rock and one for Classical.  It was dumbfounding to me that anyone would listen to Classical music on purpose but I sat in there, in an obligatory way at first, then for the pure ecstasy of it.

The listening rooms were anechoic so the sound was absolutely pure.  There were huge soft chairs that were highly conducive to fantasy and my mind would roll around the sound the way an opium addict drifts among the lingering smoke.

About two weeks after my arrival in Pullman, David came by early one morning and we smoked a joint.  It was not my first joint but it was the first good joint I had ever smoked.  It was a joint free of paranoia.  It was a joint free of abuse or threat from those with whom I smoked.  It was a joint that made me feel good.

For a fellow who had never felt good about anything in his life, the first good joint was an offering from the gods.  If a joint made me feel that good I would come back to it every time I wanted to feel good again.  Other drugs would come and go, I would experiment, but I would always smoke a joint.

The K House would become a favorite haunt.  Its real name was difficult for humans to pronounce but it started with a “K” so it was The K House.  Winding stairs took you to the belly of College Hill.  Tables and benches with initials carved in them over scores of years would belie the history of which you were now a part since you were there.

Arts Hall was a certified trip.  For absolutely no reason there was a mannequin's arm that hung on the outside of this stately brick facade.  I'm told that from time to time it moved ... the arm, not the building.  Inside there was a door that was drawn so perfectly that one immediately tried to open it.

The theaters were open.  You could go into a theater and just ... 'be.'  I had grown up doing theater, around the theater, around theater people, building theaters, to say that theater was my life was the simple truth.  Here, the theaters were open. 

You didn't need a key, you didn't have to pay to get in, you didn't need an adult to accompany you, you didn't even have to ask, you could just go to the theater.  It was there and you were free to use it.

I was losing my mind.  It was being replaced with a new mind.

The summer olympics were over.  A couple of guys from the U.S. took a position on the world stage to make a statement about the strength of their race, that Black America had scored the win.  U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles and died the next day.  The world was introduced to Dustin Hoffman, Mrs. Robinson and one word, are you listening?  Plastics.  We met Duke Wayne in Vietnam with the Green Berets and Mia Farrow ushered in the question of a Satanic Nativity with Rosemary's Baby. 

Richard Harris took us to MacArthur Park, Canned Heat took us On The Road Again, Iron Butterfly lead us to Inagaddadaveda (in the garden of Eden), the French tried to topple De Gaulle while the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia.  500 students were massacred in Mexico and the Students for a Democratic Society had branches in every campus at every University in North America.

Saddam Hussein became the Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq after a coup d'etat.  Truong Dinh Dzu was sentenced to 5 years of hard labor for trying to end the war in Vietnam.  James Anderson, Jr. was the first black soldier to be awarded the Medal of Honor.  Outside the Democratic National Convention, Chicago police clashed with anti-war protesters in a brutal display.  In late August France detonated its first hydrogen bomb.  Hypertext was invented in the Summer of 1968.

The summer seemed short and hot and dusty.  Then, it was over.

The Last Spotted Owl - Installment Five

There were only two things to do when you were 16 on a Saturday night in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.  You could do one, or the other, or both, but there were only two. 

You could get drunk or you could get in a fight.

Getting into a fight was easy.  Getting beer, with a budget of zero, was hard.  Getting free beer was the primary mission of The Mob almost any night.

The Mob was eccentric even for Idaho.  In Coeur d'Alene the biggest nightly activity was 'tooling the gut.'  That meant driving from the Topper In'n'Out to the Paul Bunyun In'n'Out and back, over and over and over and over.  Sometimes you would park at the Topper, never at the Paul Bunyun.  Fancy cars, suitable for 'tooling' could consume a teenager's every waking moment and a considerable volume of cash.

The Mob's cars were these; Duffy had a VW bug, Dougall had an old Fiat, Phil had a Volvo, I had a Morris Oxford (no, I'd never seen one before and I've never seen one since), Gary had a Henry J., Killian had a De Soto, and Mike King had a conventional Ford.  All of them were 50's vintage and with the exception of the Ford and the VW they were almost always broken down.

The Mob did not 'tool the gut.'  The Mob sat in coffee shops for hours on end enjoying free refills and planning the next beer heist.  We did not go to the bowling alleys or “The Games” or anywhere the jocks might be.  We would go to the Noodle Inn, an old road house in the 40's that was now a Chinese Restaurant to which almost no one ever went.

The Noodle had a jukebox that played 7 songs for a quarter and included several Chinese operas as part of the selection.  The old Chinese couple who ran it, and lived in it, could not say, "Pepsi."  So if for no other reason than that, we would go there and order Pepsi's.  "Poopsi, Poopsi, Poopsi, coffee." she would say, repeating our orders back to us.

Plastic checkered table cloths were stapled to the tables and the old lady had a habit of smacking flies with a flyswatter on the stacks of plates piled next to the order window.  We were certain they never washed the dishes.

The Mob had four primary targets for free beer.  There was the Wolf Lodge Inn, Gittel's Grocery, Don LaVoi's Distributorship, and Killian's Corner.  We knew we could only hit Killian's once so we saved that one for one big score.  The others we could hit repeatedly but infrequently.

Don LaVoi's Distributorship was the local Bud dealer.  He also carried Hamm's and a couple other brands but we never knew what we were going to get at LaVoi's.

The warehouse was built with its backside facing Bum's Jungle while the doors faced the old highway out of town.  When they laid the foundation there was a large granite boulder directly in the centerline and rather than move the boulder they poured concrete around it.  At the base of the foundation next to the rock there was a hole that was no more than 14" across.  I, being the smallest, could fit right through that hole.

There was a trap door in the floor of the distributorship and when beer got too old or stale to sell LaVoi would have his guys open the trap and dump the beer under the floorboards.  They would pour rock salt over the bottles and though they tried to break them all there were quite a lot of failures in that effort.

You start to get the picture.

The first time I crawled through the hole I had a flashlight but was not bright enough myself to bring gloves.  After that I stole a pair of welder's gloves from the Husky Truck Stop and things went famously.

I would crawl in and dig through piles of broken glass and rock salt to find unopened quarts of stale beer.  The Mob would wait quietly outside and pass bags through the hole to be filled.  Gunny sacks, duffel bags, newspaper bags we'd saved from when we all had paper routes; then I would shove the filled bags back through the hole and eventually climb out myself.

From there we would go down to the river and wash the outsides of the bottles.  If the caps were rusty we'd throw them out.  Maybe three fourths of the bottles were pretty good and we would get a lot of them so our beer bust would be assured.

We only did this a few times.  Getting drunk on warm stale beer was not nearly the fun that we thought it would be.  There was vomiting.  It was time to hit Gittel's.

Gittel's Grocery had a reputation for watering down their gas.  It was owned and operated by the Gittel brothers who were easily the only Jewish people in Coeur d'Alene.  I don't think they actually lived there.  It was a typical mom and pop grocery that preceded the Circle K's and 7-11's of the world.   The Gittel's had a poorly conceived walk-in cooler the door of which opened on the outside of the building.

We were regulars there because the Gittel's couldn't tell a 14 year old from an 18 year old so we bought cigarettes there for years.  In those days every empty soda bottle or beer bottle could be redeemed for cash. 

Soda bottles were worth a nickel while beer bottles claimed two cents.  Some beer bottles, the new ones with screw caps, had a high plastic content and could not be refilled so they had no value except as targets for shooting practice.

So, here was the plan we cooked up at the coffee shop in the Modern Drug Store, the permanent Mob hang out.

For a week, everyone in the Mob would collect bottles.  We needed to have some that were non-redeemable in the mix.  Dougall and I would fill two gunny sacks completely with empty bottles and take them to Gittel's.  Now Gittel, either one of them, was a shrewd fellow and would never take our word for how many bottles there were.  So, he would have to leave the front of the store and go to the back room with Dougall and me to sort through the bottles and make sure he got the right count.  Dougall and I had to keep him in the back room as long as possible so there was a whole routine of "is this one okay?  Are you sure?  What about this one?  Did you look at this one yet?"

Finally, we would get an accurate count and head back to the front of the store and buy cigarettes with our redemption money.  Then, we would walk out of the store and say, "Goodbye."

Once in the parking lot we would turn left and go up the alley.  There we would find Duffy's VW and Killian's DeSoto packed to the hilt with free, fresh beer.  The others would have already made their getaway in King's Ford.

We only did this a couple of times before the Gittel's moved the cooler door inside.

The Wolf Lodge Inn was easy.  You just drove up to the back door and loaded up the car.  The inconvenience was that you had to go to Wolf Lodge.  It meant a drive around the lake road, and crossing the Blue Creek Bridge in the dark.

The Blue Creek Bridge was fairly high, well over 50' feet in the center.  It was from the center of the bridge that the water was deep enough for diving.  On the upstream side of the bridge there was a rope swing that traversed the entire creek, maybe 100 feet total.  Every kid who grew up in Coeur d'Alene knew that it was a one way swing.  You could go from North to South and the other way 'round but if you got stuck on the South end you were stuck.  There was no way out except down a steep 40’ bank to the creek.  Otis Fensel did not grow up in Coeur d'Alene.

In one instance, after pulling up to the Wolf Creek Lodge and loading up, some uppity worker had the bad manners to call the law.  Phil and I were already near the Blue Creek Bridge when we heard the sirens echo off the lake.  We knew exactly what to do.  We pulled the Fuck Truck into the woods on the North end of the bridge, grabbed the rope swing and pulled it up then ran to the South end of the bridge and waited.

We were not expecting Otis but it was that much better that it was he who found us.  We offered a friendly wave from our position at the top of the cliff and as he stopped his squad car we scurried down to the South landing, maybe 8 feet, and waited for Otis to arrive at the top on foot.  When he saw how close we were Otis gave chase.  He slid down the bank to the rope swing landing, by which time we were already half way to the other side.  He opened fire without so much as a, "Halt or I'll shoot!" but at that distance and in complete darkness he was impotent.

Safely on the North side of the creek we tied the rope to the bridge and scrambled up to the Fuck Truck and perfect safety.  Otis was stuck, he couldn't go up or down, he could not radio for aid, he could not shoot us, he could not identify us or the Fuck Truck as the get-a-way vehicle.

Now Killian's Corner was different.  We could only do it once and it had to be just right or we couldn't do it at all.

The name Killian was on the banner of a half-dozen pretty good ideas in Coeur d'Alene; small businesses all, but thriving because they were pretty good ideas.

There was Killian's Small Plumbing that just handled the little jobs for which a plumber would charge a fortune.  Killian's In-Between would deliver anything anywhere in town.  If you had a flood or fire damage that needed attention you'd call Killian's Clean Up. 

Killian's Corner was a tiny grocery store but with close proximity to an elementary school and the county government offices you could pay the rent in penny candy sales alone.  There were living quarters on the floor above large enough to accommodate a family of five.

All pretty good ideas, none of which belonged to Killian.

What Killian did own was Bug-Ex; a tree spraying service.

Our interest was in Killian's Corner.  They had beer.

Killian's Corner was maybe 250 square feet and 30 square feet of which was the cooler.

A Chinese family owned, ran, and lived in the building.  They made a comfortable living and put four kids through college there.

When Killian had it there were pictures that floated around of the shelves stocked with one can of consommé and a single loaf of bread.

The Chinese family had failed in one respect; they had not changed the lock on the front door.  Butch Killian still had a key.

Butch Killian had a couple of problems and as such was only a quasi member of The Mob.  First, he tended to bring and discharge firearms wherever we went and second, he was a terrible driver.  Where World War One pilots would paint iron crosses on their planes, indicating an enemy kill, Butch would paint mailboxes on the DeSoto.

Many were the nights there would be 6 or 8 of us crammed into the DeSoto and someone would call out, "Slow down Butch, you're not gonna make it!"

To which Butch would reply, "I'll make it!"  Then, WHAM, a mailbox would go down.

We would not be driving to Killian's Corner.

"Sleeping Out" was teenage code for "We're gonna go do something crazy tonight." Three guys would go to a 4th guy's house with sleeping bags and fool around until about 2:00 AM when the campaign would start.  Three guys were sleeping out at Killians and another four at my house.  Killian's Corner was on the other side of town so we would never be suspects.

About 2:30 the Killian group showed up at my place.  All tolled there were 7 of us with duffel bags, newspaper bags, and I had a little red wagon.  We made our way across town without drawing attention or making too much noise.

Across the street from Killian's Corner there was a welding shop and some railroad tracks that were no longer in use.  We laid down between the railroad tracks for some time as we sized up the area.  Cars went past and no one saw us.  Finally, we began our assault.

There was a stairway, four stairs, leading up to the front door in the corner of the building.  We hustled across the street and hunkered down beside the stairs.  Butch crawled up the stairs and tried his key ... it worked.  The door was open.  In absolute silence Butch crawled along the floor, opened the cooler, and began to pull out cases of cold beer.

Dingman was behind Killian at the top of the stairs.  He handed the cases out the door where the rest of us quickly put the booty into our various bags.  The last two cases went into my little red wagon.  These were cases of quarts.

Quickly, we made our way back into the shadows having carefully locked the door behind us.  The next challenge would not come for a few blocks when we had to cross 4th Street.

4th Street was a busy street.  It went straight through the whole town from one end to the other and as such was a major route for police.  Caution had to be exercised crossing 4th.  That was our biggest risk for getting caught.

We came up the alley by the State Employment Office and waited there.  We could see for several blocks in both directions for cars or activity.  A vacant lot was across the street and we would be in the open for at least a hundred feet.  We'd have to move fast.  Darrell Dougall and I had the wagon so we would go last.

I should mention that my voice had changed at about age 12 so I could sound like an adult at any time.  It was a skill that had been used to great effect for things like prank calls or letting the school know that so-and-so would not be in class that day; simple stuff.  So, when the guys were 3/4 of the way across 4th street I stood up and yelled, in my best grown-up voice, "Hey, you kids!"

Duffel bags full of beer dropped along side newspaper bags full of same and a flurry of leaves in the hedge beyond concealed my brothers in crime while Dougall and I laughed so hard we nearly peed ourselves.

Then, as casually as if we were on a Sunday stroll Dougall, I and the wagon load of beer sauntered across 4th, giggling and clinking in harmony along the way.

We split up after that.  Phil was near home, the others lived North, and Dougall and I kept to the alleys to Walnut Street until we got to Cathy Anderson's house.

Cathy Anderson was as cute as a pixie and had starred in many of my playtime fantasies.  She had hosted "Kissing Practices" at her home on a few occasions and Dougall and I had been in attendance so our love for her knew no bounds.  Her parents were pharmacists and fairly well fixed so they had a fully stocked liquor cabinet to which we had made liberal use in the past.

We stopped in front of Cathy's and cracked open a quart.  We drank to her and our fantasies of her.  We drank to her friends and to each other and finished the quart in time to watch the sun rise over the mountains having enjoyed our free, fresh beer.

The Last Spotted Owl - Installment Four

Growing up on the lake you came to know a lot of things that you didn't really know but you knew.  Lake levels rise and fall.  I knew that.  Sometimes they'd rise or fall a couple of feet or more.  Sure, I knew that too.  Land might be exposed when the lake was at a low level and that land would remain land for years before disappearing again.  Yep, knew that.  When the lake was low you could sell that land.  I did not know that.

Now that I think about it, Skip Kindler owned the Fuck Truck.  Skip was in his 20's but we pal'd around together a lot.  His father had been friends with my mother.  He also owned the Silver Spray.

The Silver Spray was a small and highly maneuverable tug boat that worked the lake and had a fire fighting nozzle mounted midship.  The nozzle could shoot a stream of water 150' which was perfect for disrupting competing keggers on the beaches.  Alas, the Silver Spray was at the bottom of Lake Coeur d'Alene where it remains today; the victim of cruel maritime safety regulations and the ignorance thereof.

We could have used the Silver Spray.

Skip's Dad and One-Shot Charlie had surveyed a great deal of the land around Lake Coeur d'Alene before anything like development took place.  Skip's Dad had purchased quite a lot of that land, particularly land that was called "Waterfront." 

Skip's Dad passed away when Skip was still in his teens.  As a result, Skip owned quite a lot of waterfront.  Skip also owned Harrison.

Well, in 1965 the water level fell about three feet and it stayed low for about three years.  As a result there was a bay which Skip owned that was no longer a bay but a marshland.

Some enterprising young developer saw this as an opportunity and put up three things.  He put up a fence that ran the entire width of the bay.  He put up a 40' dock and he put up a sign that read, "FOR SALE."  Skip wasn't gonna put up with any of it.

You knew, just by looking, that this was not the real lake level.  You could see the water line on the basalt surrounding the cove.  You'd be an idiot to buy this land.  But I guess the fellow selling it thought he was pretty smart.  The access road was inaccessible in Winter and nearly impassable in Spring but not for the Fuck Truck.  Skip and I just put on the chains, dropped the Jimmy into compound low and drove in.

It was about a week after I had turned 16.  It was dark, about 11:00PM when we got there so right off we didn't see the FOR SALE sign and accidentally backed over it a couple of times.  We were so embarrassed that we took the sign and hid it in the lake.

The road was not clearly marked anymore either so we got a little lost and accidentally drove over 400 feet of fence.  The fence likewise, was not clearly marked.

The dock was a problem.

We couldn't do anything about the piling.  That was driven down to bedrock.  It was simple to detach the chain; bolt cutters, even a 3/4" ratchet would get the thing loose.  To get the dock to some other part of the lake where it did not constitute a safety hazard required a boat.

The Silver Spray had sunk.

Dick Smith had a boat.

Dick Smith was an amiable fellow.  His face was almost perfectly round, as were his shoulders.  A junior City Councilman, Dick was well liked and well connected in the community.

As a sportsman, Dick had all the accoutrements; guns, a snowmobile, a goat (a small sort of motorcycle), and a 10' aluminum boat and an 8 horsepower outboard motor for fishing and trapping.

It was nearly 1:00 AM by the time we made our way around the lake road and out to Dalton Gardens and Dick's home.  Dalton was a little North of town.  We had to stop to take the chains off the truck and we wanted to get a can of gas so that Dick couldn't say, "I don't have any gas!"   We stopped at Elsies for some hot coffee and donuts as well.  Dick would want coffee.  The donuts would seal the deal.

By 2:00 AM we were on the lake putting along at maybe 8 miles an hour.  The property was an hour away at that rate.  Dick was cold.  He wasn't used to adventures the way Skip and I were.

Skip and I had gone on a number of adventures in the Fuck Truck.  We went windmill salvaging through Central Oregon.  We took every back road in Washington for a few days just to see where they lead.  We went hunting for dilapidated railcars to line the road approaching Harrison.  And in the pre-satellite days we drove up to the relay tower that fed the West Coast ABC affiliates to see how hard it would be to patch in a gay porno during My Three Sons.  It was do-able, we just didn't do it.

When we got to the dock it was easy going to unchain it and lash it to the boat.  The little engine chugged along and by the time the sun was rising over the mountains we were smack in the middle of the North end, close to the city and our destination, the Blackwell Slough.

That's when I lit the joint.

Dick was steering so Skip and I stretched out on the dock passing the joint back and forth, giggling.  It took a while for Dick to catch on but when he did he started to panic.

"OH GOD!  I'm out here in the middle of the lake with a stolen dock and couple of acid heads!" Dick exclaimed.

It was a nice dock, well made, brand new; we should have taken it to Harrison.  Skip and I looked out at all the beautiful summer homes and cabins that lined the lake shore.  We talked a little about what the residents might think seeing a dock in the middle of the lake chugging along with Dick Smith at the helm.

This just made Dick crazy so we cut it out.

At the mouth of the Spokane River the current began to move us along at a pretty good pace.  We steered the dock into the slough and with very little effort the current helped it snap into two 20' pieces that wedged neatly into a bend.

Somehow we'd managed to be on the wrong side of the dock in the end so we had to go out the other end of the slough.  It was the long way around and meant going under the new bridge and past the Old Folks Home, an old mansion that had been converted into a state home for the elderly.

Dick was still rattled over our blatant violation of city, state, and federal narcotics laws, as well as the damage done to his person having seen it all so when we passed the pipe that dumped raw sewage from the Old Folks Home directly into the Spokane River, he just about came unglued.

"Did you know about this?" he demanded.

"Everybody knows about this, Dick.  It's been like that since before the railroad."

Dick's junior city councilman mind went numb with the implications.  There would have to be a special levy or an L.I.D. to extend sewer service to the Home.  The pipe might be out of city limits but there were developments downstream and Post Falls.  Those fatheads were always raising hell about the crap floating downstream from the city.  No, this was terrible.  There would have to be a special session called.

"We can fix it if you'll buy breakfast at Elsie's."  It was my idea but Skip saw the whole thing as soon as I said it.  Dick argued a little but we assured him we had the solution.  He agreed.  We loaded his boat and motor back up on the Fuck Truck and drove to Bum's Jungle.

Bum's was a little stretch of pine parallel to the river and adjacent to the rail line that ran North out of town and right under the new bridge.  It was used primarily by The Mob as a place to have beer parties since no one else in town would go there.  We could hop freights there and go for rides.  We could get loud and rowdy without disturbing anyone and in the summer we could fly on a rope swing hung from the new Blackwell bridge and into the Spokane River.

Yes, we were swimming in raw sewage but it was a really good rope swing.  You had to lift your legs to clear some rotten pilings then go out far enough to miss the deadheads floating just under the surface of the water.  Clearly a superior rope swing in every respect.

Dick asked us maybe 40 times, "What're you gonna do?"  We just told him he'd see when we got there.  It didn't take long.  We turned the Fuck Truck around so we were ready to go out.  I reached into the lockers for the blasting caps and dynamite I had stashed there after staking mining claims the previous summer.  A half stick would do the job so we took two.

One last tap on the door to make sure Dick was okay, "I don't wanna know what you're doing, I'm not watching, I don't see anything, I don't know anything."

"You sure, Dick?  It's gonna be pretty cool!"  No response so we went on our way.

It only took a few minutes and we were back by the truck staring in the direction of the bridge and the river.  It was a righteous blast that blew a 10'x10'x10' hole in the river bank and eliminated any sign of the existence of a sewage drain.

We climbed in the cab of the truck and drove off down the rough road.  The first cop car just whizzed past us.  The second cop car stopped us.  It wasn't unusual to see a vehicle like the Fuck Truck, with a boat and motor lashed to the rear, and three passengers in the early morning hours in North Idaho.  The cop wanted to check us out so he could say he did.

"Oh, good morning Mr. Smith!" said the officer, immediately recognizing the councilman, "Doing some fishing?"

"No, just testing the waters." said Dick.

"Say, did you hear anything like an explosion back there?" queried the cop.

"I did hear that." said Dick, "you say it was an explosion?"

"Yeah, we think so.  Did you see anything up there?" the cop stared right at Dick.

Dick looked right at the cop and said with a clear eye, "I didn't see a thing."

"Okay then, thanks for your time.  You be safe now." and the cop waved us on.

Breakfast at Elsies on Dick Smith's dime was more than welcome after such an adventurous night.  The side benefit of having a 10'x10'x10' hole by the river in Bum's Jungle was that The Mob would never have to carry empties out after another beer bust.

The Last Spotted Owl - Installment Three

My 16th birthday and the associated party had been announced to the entire Sophomore class for weeks in advance.  It was to be held in a banquet room of the local convention center.  It was to be catered.  A stereo system would be in place and every girl in school had been invited to bring along her favorite records.

My twelve closest buddies were invited and my cousin, Dave was not.  It would be the perfect 16th birthday party.  There would be fun and food and a cake and most importantly of all, girls with presents!  The icing on the cake would be, no cousin Dave!

I spent the last afternoon of my 15th year masturbating with a Fredericks of Hollywood catalog that I had stolen from my mother.  Cousin Dave had shown me the technique a couple of years earlier when we were left alone at his house on New Years Eve.  He didn't appear to be very good at it and in the interim I had spent many hours perfecting a routine that would serve me for my entire adolescent life.

Cousin Dave was a hack with his dirty sock, one arm strained to hold up an entire centerfold.  I was an innovator!  I was imaginative!  Employing exotic lotions and even more exotic fantasies, there was no such thing as an idle hour in my day.   I had a regular cast of characters comprised of the females of my 8th, 9th, and 10th grade classes, and sometimes for variety I would invite select movie stars to join in.  The penultimate was, of course, Barbara Eden; Jeannie of "I Dream of Jeannie."  With Barbara at hand, whatever I could imagine she could blink into existence.  That took careful planning and determined execution.

I was closing out my 15th year with a marathon session with Barbara Eden and a chorus of regulars from Fredericks of Hollywood, a place I imagined that was staffed by ingénues in "Naughty Nighties."  With them I had a harem of the mind, my crotchless, cupless, concubines that I could freely sample like a box of Whitman's.

So immersed was I in my rich and fulfilling fantasy life that I did not see Cousin Dave standing outside my living room window staring in at me.  Dave let himself in through the kitchen, it was his Grandmother's house too.  Dave was chubby as a child but started punching his weight in the 9th grade and had gained quite a reputation as a tough.  At this moment he was laughing as deeply as I was angered.

I would never know the fruition of the complexities of that fantasy; Dave had robbed me of it.  He would remain my enemy for life for this act of intrusion.

Then it got worse.

Cousin Dave blackmailed me.

If I didn't invite him to my 16th birthday party he was going to tell the whole school of my afternoon foray.  My face turned red then white then slowly back to red as I realized that he had me.  "Fine," I said, and the deal was struck.  He would keep his mouth closed and I would have my day in the sun.

I awoke on my 16th birthday full of the spirit of someone having been released from prison after being falsely incarcerated.  The chains of my youth had been cut.  I was a young man now.  I could drive at night and without a licensed adult in the car.  I could smoke cigarettes in public.  The city curfew no longer applied to me.  There was a perfect sunrise over the mountains on a perfect new Spring day, and I was a living expression of that perfection.  I was 16!

En route to nicotine knoll, the little hill behind the school where all the cool guys went to smoke, I walked through the breezeway past all the jocks, all the spirits (girl jocks), and all the trophies for jock excellence.  As I walked past I was greeted with jeers, sneers, blank stares and whispers.  The head cheerleader choked out, “Pew! Ick!” as I walked by.

Exiting the building I had to pass the gauntlet of toughs that leaned on their cars just outside the door.  Through the cacophony I heard snippets of "jerk off" and "ladies underwear magazine" and "pages stuck together," among the usual epithets.  The sort of moronic banter one expects of, well, of morons.

If it was not yet clear that Cousin Dave had not kept his end of the bargain, that he had in fact cast darkness on this, my day of divine light, clarity would come and right soon from my closest friends.

My "closest friends" were The Mob.  The Mob was made up of twelve core members myself included.  We smoked cigarettes and listened to rock and roll.  Our hair was grown to the absolute longest we could wear it without being thrown out of our homes, our school, or both.  We were the usual suspects when any act of malfeasance was committed around town.  Half the time we were guilty and 99% of the time we got away with it.  We wore clothes purchased from the La Eleganza catalog and were decidedly not welcome in most of the better homes in town.

Being the smallest in stature I was subject to the abuses they all suffered routinely at the hands of their fathers.  This was the trickle down theory of the cycle of abuse we would all be subject to break as adults.  My closest friends made me eat dirt, routinely pantsed me in front of the girls, stuffed me in garbage cans and threw me on the roof of the bookstore where they threw ice balls at me and dared me to jump down where I would "Really get it!"

One crisp Autumn night, just for their amusement, they stripped me naked in the woods and made me dance on a tree stump by flashlight.  Then they disappeared into the forest and hid my clothes.  They left me there like that.  They would steal from me and steal from the school then plant the booty at my home so I would get busted.

One time the closest of my closest friends, a fellow named Phil Dickenson, whose father was particularly cruel in his abuse, choked me to the point of unconsciousness.

They did these things and more, for years, because they made them laugh.

In their defense I was needy beyond reason.  I was so desperate for friends that I was the only guy in town who would hang around "Stinky" Dougall.  Darrell Dougall came from a welfare family of seven kids all of whom wet the bed into their teen years. 

Darrell slept on a concrete floor in the storage area of his basement where every night he climbed into the same sleeping bag he had wet in the night before.  I went to his home every day as we grew up, I'd awaken him and we would walk to school together.  The smell was horrific.

As a member of The Mob, Darrell too rejected my friendship and even resorted to punching me in the face to get rid of me.

The Mob was, however, the only group in school that would tolerate me at all.  The other groups rejected me on sight.  I had a reputation.  I tried too hard to be liked, I was a "show off," I didn't fit in, etc.

When I finally made my way to nicotine knoll The Mob was already snickering at me.  Cousin Dave was with them although they were not his group, he was a tough.  That was it then, the whole school knew.  I had been caught doing what they all did but I had been caught doing it.  Pariah is a kind word for their perspective of me.

The Mob was actually a little easy on me.  They offered advice on how not to get caught and such.

A bell rang in the school and it was time for first period.

Now, it bears worth stating that being smart in an environment such as this was not good and did not help my situation at all.  My I.Q. was higher than all my teachers' and my test scores shot the bell curve to hell for all the students.  One teacher said she wanted to cut off my head and give my brain to someone who would use it. 

Many of the teachers just gave up and resorted to hitting me, to "try and beat some sense" into me.  One fellow, a P.E. teacher and former lineman for the Green Bay Packers used to give me 5 to 7 good sound whacks with a 2x4 every day at roll call.  He said it was for all the things I did for which I didn't get caught.  An immigrant, Alphonse Alt was the son of a lowly German Shepherd and her human mate.

Not five minutes into first period I was called into the vice principal's office.  That was not too terribly out of the ordinary.  As I said, I was one of the usual suspects in any local crime.

I walked into the office of the vice principal, a fat sweaty little man who had wrinkles pressed into his suits and salt stains imbued under the arms.  He had to have had it hired out, only a professional costumer could have made his suits look so shabby, cheap, and ill-fitting.

I sat in his office and waited until he finally waddled in with his rolling gait and one cock-eye.  He was blunt and to the point, "Joey, you're sixteen years old today and you can legally quit school.  I can’t throw you out because you haven't done anything to warrant it but I still think you should quit.  You're just wasting everyone's time here and you're never going to amount to anything anyway."

I didn't know if he was serious or if this was just his fat sweaty attempt at reverse psychology, a class I'm certain he failed.  I left his office and returned to Algebra class and a rather surprised looking Algebra teacher.

The humiliation of the morning wore off as the day progressed.  People were still snickering at me in the hallway but they were tiring of me and frothing for new blood by lunchtime.

I didn't care any more.  Tonight was my 16th birthday party and they'd all be jealous for years to come after they saw it.  I kept smiling at all the girls with a knowing sort of "see ya tonight" look in my eyes.

The party was to start at 7:00 and I arrived fashionably late at 7:15.  I wanted everyone to yell, "Hooray!" when I walked through the door.  That was my vision.  Then I'd have a coke, mingle a little, then go to the gift table and spend an hour unwrapping presents.  After that we could put on music, eat and dance.  That's how it would go.

When I walked into the banquet room it was better than my vision.  Since I worked at the hotel as a bus boy and dishwasher, and my Mother was the book-keeper and did the payroll, the staff had gone the extra mile and really dolled up the room.

The tables were draped as was the piano.  There were three huge platters of food; deviled eggs, little chicken legs, fruit and veggies, with five different bowls of dips.  There was a huge tub filled with ice and bottles of sodas.  They even hung a mirrored ball from the ceiling and lit it for effect.

I stood there for just a moment then looked around like the little Martian in the cartoons, "Where's the Hooray?  What happened to the earth shattering Hooray?"  There, lined up and seated against the wall were six guys, only two were in The Mob, the other four were older guys who I didn't know well and didn't particularly like.

Phil Dickenson was there along with Gary Dingman.  They were Mob.  They were invited.  Cousin Dave was there along with his older brother, George who was likewise not a welcome guest.  Mom had invited him.  Gary's older brother, Rod and a guy named Dave Bradymire were there as well.  I hardly knew them.

They just sat there with sinister smiles and demanded to know where the records were and where the girls were.  I told them the girls were supposed to bring the records.  They got threatening with me and told me I had better go call some girls.

I went to the lobby and bought a roll of dimes for the pay phone.  $5 was four hours work in those days.  I went to the phone booth to call every girl in my class.  It doesn't take too long when the whole phone book has only 26 pages.  It took less than 10 calls to figure out none of them were coming.

I went back to the banquet room to announce the news.  It was Cousin Dave's betrayal that soured the girls I surmised.  I was saved the embarrassment of sharing the bad news.  My “guests” had left.  Before they did they had thrown food and sprayed soda all over the walls and floor of the banquet room.

There were chicken wings in the piano, the tone arm of the record player was bent, the mirror ball was dented and laying on the floor.  They had ground deviled eggs and dip into the carpet and thrown them into the walls and ceiling tiles.  It took me four hours to clean it all up.  Afterward I stole a couple of beers out of the cooler in the restaurant and walked alone to the beach.  The lake was cold and black under a crisp, cloudless night.  I took solace that while I had the lake, I was not alone.

So ended my 16th birthday and began my 16th year.

The Last Spotted Owl - Installment Two

Del and I made our way to Elsie's for breakfast.  Del lived a country block down the road from me on Elm Street in Coeur d'Alene so by the time I had dropped him off and put the tent over the Fuck Truck it was time for school.

Delvan Shaw lived with his Mother, Father, a sister and a brother, three cousins, an Aunt and an Uncle, three junk yard dogs, and his Grandmother in what would generously be called a three bedroom house.  Grandma actually lived in the trailer house on the other side of the parking lot that served as Del's front yard.

Del's dad and Uncle were loggers and there were always three to five logging trucks in the yard in various states of disrepair.  Our toys growing up were peaveys, buck saws and cleats used for climbing 200 foot Idaho White Pines, aka "Lodge pole Pines," for topping. 

Jobs for 14 to 17 year olds in our world amounted to planting trees, thinning trees, pulling green chain (towing trees) or fighting forest fires.

The really cool thing about fighting forest fires when you're 15 or 16 is that after the fire was out the whole crew would go to Harrison and One-Shot Charlie’s for pool and libations.

Harrison was a village of just over 40 Christian souls and within it One-Shot Charlie’s was a sovereign nation.  Any man, no matter his age, irrespective of state laws, who put in a day's work fighting fires, was welcome at One-Shot's.  The whole crew would line up at Charlie's 25 foot bar and he would pour every one a double shot of moonshine from a jug he kept under lock and key.  You only got one shot and if you asked for a second he'd throw you out.  The shot was free but you had to pay for your beer and men under 20 couldn't have beer but you could play pool and look out the window at the splendor that was Lake Coeur d'Alene.

Charlie also had two huge boxes of photographs.  In one box Charlie kept pictures of every car he'd ever owned and he bought a new car every year starting in 1922.  In the other box were pictures of boats.  Working boats, pleasure boats, Sailboats, Sternwheelers, Steamers, etc. and every one of them right out there on our lake.  These pictures dated back to the 1860's and Charlie had written careful notes on the history and owners of each craft on the backs of the photos.

There were a couple of other jobs to be had in Idaho at age 15.  You could plant tulip bulbs in the Spring, move sprinklers for farmers in the Summer, buck bales in the Fall, shovel snow in the Winter, or you could lay mining claims.  To lay a mining claim you had to hike trails with this ancient Hungarian geologist to the middle of some part of the Bitterroot Range and dynamite a hole 10'x10'x10' in the ground then mark it on a map.

Laying mining claims was fun, you just had to carry a 60 lb. pack for 10 hours a day.  The pack got lighter as the day progressed and you used up the dynamite.  It was a good job.  You got to blow shit up and invariably there were leftover blasting caps and sticks of dynamite for the 4th of July. 

In the 50's and 60's, the 4th of July in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho was just about as American as you can get.  From the time I was 12, as a member of Boy Scout Troop 220, sponsored by the Fire Department, my 4th began atop the fire engine, in full dress uniform, carrying the American flag in a parade through downtown.

Following the parade there was a giant picnic in the city park with Bar-B-Cue served up by the Hydromaniacs, a community service group made up of local businessmen.  My Uncle, who owned the local gun club and rifle range, was the master chef.

Then, The Diamond Cup Unlimited Hydroplane races on the lake.  Finally, to top off a perfect 4^th of July, after sunset there would be an hour of fireworks.

Things were a lot different in the years prior to 1968.  In the 6th grade, for example, on the day all the girls were taken to see the movie "Molly Grows Up" the NRA would take all the boys out in the field for a hunter safety course.  Then we'd all go to my Uncles rifle range to shoot shotguns at clay pigeons.

In our town if you brought a gun to school it was because you didn't want it to get stolen from your car in the parking lot.  There was a good chance the vice-principal would want to see it and then bring his out for comparison.  If you did get a Deer or an Elk before class it would be tied to the fender or roof of your car in the lot.

The rules were simple; rifles and shotguns had to be kept in lockers and if you had a handgun it had to be in a shoulder holster and you had to keep your coat zipped up. 

Handguns were pretty rare in school.  You really needed a .44 to bring down an Elk or a bear and not a lot of guys wanted to pack a cannon around all day with their coat zipped up.  Too heavy and too hot.

Things got hot in Vietnam in the Spring of 1968.  "Escalation" was the buzz word the media threw around.  The My Lai Massacre took place but along with a nerve gas leak in Utah would be covered up until the following year.  General Lewis Hershey was shouted down in an address at Howard University to cries of "America is the Black man's battleground!"

A troubled election year lay ahead with names like, Rusk, Fulbright, McCarthy, Nixon, Kennedy, and Rockefeller being thrown around the ring in anticipation of being thrown in.  France was on the brink of Revolution. Ho Chi Minh (He Who Enlightens) and Mai Van Bo, who was the chief North Vietnamese spokesman, had their positions in the nightly news along side Kosygin and Gromeko of the USSR.  U Thant and Nguyen Duy Trinh were known as "Peace Feelers" along with the U.S.' William Bundy.

There was even disclosure of a "Peace Hoax" perpetrated by the Hungarian foreign minister.  Janos Peter pretended for two years to be speaking for Hanoi and the Vietcong, proving that to be a major player in global politics all you had to do was engage the, "Because I said so," argument.

Meanwhile, the civil rights movement had made great strides since 1964.  Black people could vote in every state in the Union.  Communities in the South cut off water and electrical services to the Black neighborhoods if the citizens therein dared to register, but every American was entitled now.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and the riots in American cities lasted for days afterward.

David Frost, a British stand-up comic, was the big deal on TV in the Spring of '68.  He had an interview show where he would hold court with everyone from Eric Hoffer to Richard Nixon.  In theater you could get hung for your hang-ups in "Your Own Thing."  Nudity and hit songs punctuated "Hair," and on college campuses you could see Euripides' tragedy "The Bacchae" performed with electric guitars and scantily clad co-eds singing, "When shall I dance once more with bare feet the all-night dance tossing my head for joy!"  As Dylan was singing, "The times they are a-changin'" they in fact were.

1968 was a pivotal time in the history of the world.  On March 21st, 1968, the first day of Spring and the last day of my 15th year, my life was about to change permanently and inextricably.

The Last Spotted Owl - Installment One

"Stop or I'll shoot," yelled Otis.

When Otis Fensel yelled, "Stop or I'll shoot," every teenage boy in town knew to stop running.  If he yelled it the second time, Otis felt more or less obliged to go on ahead and shoot you.  Otis was a fair shot, putting three boys in the hospital while on the force.

Since Otis had only yelled, and had not yet taken the shot, John kept running.

John Mack looked like that bulldog hood ornament you see on the trucks that bear his name.  Running down an alley while carrying a 1957 Chevy transmission, and his tools, was testament to both his genetics and growing up in North Idaho.

The second warning and the first shot hit John simultaneously.  Evidently Otis felt threatened by this young man running away in the dark.  The boy was after all carrying a transmission and might well have thrown it at him causing a nasty bump.  So, lethal force was demanded and right soon.

John kept running.

Otis got pissed!  Guys are supposed to stop when he yells, "Stop."  He's the police!  They're sure as heck supposed to stop when he shoots 'em!  So, he shot him again!  Then he yelled, "Halt or I'll shoot you again, you sombitch!"

John kept running.  He slowed down considerably but he kept running just the same.

Otis drew a fine bead on John's back.  There were 75 feet between them now, maybe 85.  John dropped his tools but kept moving and clutching the transmission.  Otis let out one more, "Stop, or by God I'll shoot you dead!"  A short pause, a deep breath, a loud crack, and John dropped the transmission.

John stopped running.

It took four days for John to get the transmission back into the 57 Chevy.  Three of those days he was in the hospital though.  Day five he was back in school.  He was pretty embarrassed by the whole episode.  Now he'd have to go to court with his Dad.

The owner of the 57 Chevy was not pressing charges since John put the transmission back.  Still, John had done some damage to three of Otis Fensel's bullets, and the bullets were city property after all, so John would have to face the consequences in a court of law.

Otis' girlfriend was a waitress at the restaurant where I washed dishes.  Whenever he came in through the kitchen for a visit I would dive under the prep sink and yell, "Don't shoot me, Otis!"  It was always good for a laugh and better yet on those occasions when Otis would pull his gun on me.  We'd laugh; he'd help me up, and then give his gal a smooch.

These were the kinds of people and the sorts of events that surrounded my formative years.  This is the story of the year I was 16, the most important year of my life, the greatest year of the 20th Century, 1968.

January had already seen the start of one of the bitterest fights in Vietnam at Khe Sanh.  The Marines were outnumbered and under constant siege, but held their ground.  The media sided with the Viet Cong, calling the battle "controversial."  A B-52 crashed in Greenland discharging 4 nuclear bombs.  A pivotal moment in TV occurred as "Laugh In" first aired that season.  The Tet Offensive began and the Viet Cong attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.  Three college students were killed in South Carolina protesting a "White Only" Bowling Alley.  By the end of February Mister Rogers opened his neighborhood to America and Frankie Lymon was found dead from a heroin overdose in Harlem

Idaho winters can get cold.  Sometimes they'd pile the snow up in the middle of the main street, Sherman Avenue, 12 feet high; separating the East and West bound lanes.

It got particularly cold that winter over the pass of what would become I-90 between Coeur d'Alene and Wallace, Idaho.  Dry snowflakes became giants, collecting as they fell, and seemed to explode on the windshield.  Visibility was not good with all that powder reflected in the headlights so it was not uncommon to hit a roadside reflector from time to time.

On just such a night, Del Shaw and I had hit 39 reflectors in succession.  We were going for 40 when there came a thumping on the roof of the cab of the Fuck Truck.

Now, some moments must be spent on the Fuck Truck as it was a central character in many of the adventures of my 16th year.

Technically, the Fuck Truck was a 1956 Ford pickup. The bed had been chopped and the rear suspension beefed up for hauling trailers across country.  It could be outfitted with a tow-bar or with a 500 gallon barrel for spreading oil on dirt roads.  The bumpers were fabricated of railroad rails welded to the frame.  It had 7.50/15 dual tires on the rear, an 8,000 lb. PTO winch on the front, a flat-head six high-torque low-horsepower engine, and a "jimmy" that provided 12 speeds forward and 3 in reverse.  Put chains on the “dualies” and the Fuck Truck was, in a word, unstoppable.

The cab must have been red at some time and some old phone company lockers had been bolted on the rear and painted black.  One locker was the width of the truck and sufficient in depth and height to accommodate 3 kegs packed in ice with the taps running out of its top.

Every "kegger" party of distinction had been hosted by the Fuck Truck.  Parked at a campsite entrance off of some abandoned logging road, where fees of $3-$5 were collected, revelers knew the truck on sight.

There was a hand-held flagman's sign kept behind the seat in the cab.  On one side the sign read, "STOP" and on the other where it would normally read, "SLOW" it read, "FUCK."  That’s where the Fuck Truck got its name.

One time the cops showed up at a kegger hosted by the Fuck Truck.  On seeing the flashing lights, Del and I hopped in the cab and drove off into the woods, our nemesis Otis Fensel in hot pursuit.

When we came to a clearing we thought that meant we were in the clear.  About 50 yards into a farmer’s field we found ourselves axle deep in mud.  Otis got as far as the edge of the woods, knowing he could not enter the field; he ran his siren, fumbled with his spotlight and cursed at us over the loudspeaker.  We aimed the spotlight mounted the roof of the Fuck Truck at Otis, blinding him and giving him a target that was well above our heads.

In short order we had the chains on the Fuck Truck and plowed our way out of the muck while the bullets whizzed past and Otis made unkind remarks about our parentage.

The Fuck Truck did not belong to any single person as far as I can remember.  Word was that it was the property of "One-Shot" Charlie of Harrison, Idaho.  One-Shot had apparently loaned the truck to my Grandfather on the condition that it be returned if needed.  Its license plates came off of my Grampa’s Nash from 1963.  K9, the plate read.  K was the designation for Kootenai County, Idaho and 9 because Grampa was always the 9th fellow in line to buy new plates each year he was living.  It was the first vanity plate in Idaho.

The pounding on the cab roof was a predetermined signal that it was time to drain Uncle Wayne.

I stopped the truck on the shoulder of the highway just shy of reflector #40.  Del had been the designated "windshield wiper motor," working a pair of vise-grips, side to side under the dashboard that connected to the armature and drove the wipers.

We exited the cab and began to unlash a World War II vintage stretcher that was tied to the tops of the lockers.  Pivoting one end of the stretcher to the opposite side we were able to tilt one edge upward until it was nearly parallel to the side of the truck.  In short order a yellow stream emitted and landed warmly in the snow bank at the side of the road.

"How ya doin' Uncle Wayne?" I asked.  Wayne whined something agreeable.  I asked him if he needed anything.  He shook his bottle of pain pills, waved a half-empty pint of vodka in my direction and smiled his perennial smile.  We lashed him back up on top of the lockers, tucked him in and got back in the truck.  We were taking Uncle Wayne to Wallace to get him laid.

How Wayne came to break his back was not clear.  His body cast looked like a pair of plaster coveralls with shoulder straps, a functional opening to allow nature's calls, and legs to just below his calves.  Even bundled up as he was he looked like he was wearing iron plating.  With him in that cast, there was no way to get him into the cab of the truck.  Lashed to the lockers of the Fuck Truck he could be transported the necessary distance to Wallace and the comforts to be found there.

There were five brothels in downtown Wallace, all on the same street, all on the second floors, and with one exception all next door to one another on the same block.  The Lux, The Luxette, The Lucky, The Oasis, and The Arment Rooms had been open and serving the silver miners in Wallace and Kellogg, Idaho since the Civil War.  The Luxette was above the only 24 hour restaurant in town, located at the end of the street.  We were going to the Luxette.

Uncle Wayne was a short, fat, bald, myopic, long-haul trucker with a penchant for getting slit-eyed pretty much every day.  It was unknown whose uncle Wayne was but he was known to one and all as either "Uncle Wayne" or "Wayne Wino."  He was the most agreeable fellow one could hope to meet.  He even smiled in his sleep. 

When he slept it was usually on the floor of the Killian's living room with his head propped up on a 75 Lb. Bassett Hound named Amanda Jane.  Wayne would stretch out in front of the fireplace, lay his head on "Mandy," she would heave and fart and Wayne would smile.

Wayne had a custom tractor trailer rigged to haul sensitive electronics across country.  During the Vietnam War he hauled bombs to Fort Lewis or McChord Air Force Base in Washington State.  Sometimes he carried nuclear warheads to the submarine base in Bangor, Washington on Hood Canal.

Wayne always stopped in Bozeman, Montana on the last leg of his trips to have a few drinks to smooth out the rest of the road.  If it was Wednesday he would call the Killians and ask if someone could pick up a bottle of white and a bottle of brown for him.  He knew he couldn't make it to Coeur d’Alene before the state liquor store closed but if he pushed it a little he could be there in time to watch Kung Fu on TV.  So, there was Wayne, driving bombs across country, a little gassed, and ‘pushing it’ across America’s highways in order to get some place where he could do his serious drinkin’.

Wayne had broken his back and could not drive.  Del and I thought, given Wayne's dilemma, that it would be proper and Christian to take him to Wallace for a tune-up.  Del and I could not ourselves get service in Wallace as we were only 16 and 15 respectively but we could drive and help Wayne navigate the stairs once we arrived.

On our arrival, Wayne said he was hungry and since we were going to the Luxette anyway we stopped in the restaurant downstairs for burgers.  Waddling Wayne up the stairs to the Cafe' gave us an indication of what was in store when we would make the final ascent to the heavenly delights waiting above.

Once inside we propped Wayne up against the wall and took our seats next to him in a booth.  The waitress was friendly and very helpful with Wayne making him a little table with a tray and some fold-up legs used for serving.

The restaurant was warm and Wayne began to thaw, his glasses fogging up along with the windows.  When the door opened again it let in a gust of wind, a gale of laughter, and four very large, very cold, snowmobilers.  Snowmobilers in Idaho are very much like Bikers anywhere else, only colder.

Beards and moustaches frozen with snot and snoose, snow caked on up to the knees, hands frozen in the shape of claws from holding handle bars, hearing and equilibrium shot from the noise and vibration of engines; these are similarities between the two groups.

The point of difference with Snowmobilers is that which is missing; usually teeth and fingers.  Playing grab-ass with formerly hibernating bears at high speeds across the frozen landscape requires copious amounts of liquor.  You can't drink beer very well on a snowmobile but a couple of pints of Peppermint Schnapps or George Dickel single malt sour mash will fit very nicely in the breast pockets of snow suits and the contents will not freeze.

Ordering three or four hamburgers each and big plates of fries necessitated the condiment of choice for such fare: Ketchup.  All would have been well if the Ketchup came in a bottle, or better, one of those plastic squirt bottles that seem to be at every diner in the country except this one.  This restaurant, tragically, served Ketchup in those little packets that you have to tear open at one end.

Missing fingers and hands frozen into claws do not permit the opening of tiny packets of anything.  It was the biggest of the four who finally smacked a packet with his fist on the counter spraying red nectar across the counter and onto a milk dispenser.  This drew guffaws that grew foreboding.  Then the wagers began for distance, particular targets, and numbers of packets spewed simultaneously.  They had plenty of ammunition as the waitress had unwittingly provided two baskets full.

Del and I overheard a bet made over who could hit the waitresses' ass.  When she entered from the kitchen all four fists hit the counter top in unison.  It wasn't her ass that was hit but her entire front.  Laughter drowned out the muzak version of "Lazy, Hazy Days of Summer" and the waitress ran back to the kitchen crying.

The cook was a stout fellow.  The kind of man you knew on sight could consume his weight in prime rib. He made an amusing sight covered in Ketchup.

Del and I started getting very nervous as it was plain we were the only living targets remaining.  Wayne smiled.

The first cop who came through the door didn't even touch the floor on his way out.  Neither did the second or third.  It was cops four through ten, with the aid of the Idaho State Patrol who finally restored harmony.  A dozen hookers with too much makeup and too little clothing stood in the sub-zero streets smoking and gawking.  They'd come downstairs to see what all the commotion was about.  They spoke freely with the cops who they seemed to know by name, or better.

The rest of our night was spent in the Wallace Police Station.  We had to give our statements then wait and see if the cops had more questions.  Wayne did not get laid but he did get sober.  Wayne was unfamiliar with the surroundings of sobriety and was therefore feeling a little lost.

We were told we could leave just before the sun came up.  Standing in the parking lot, strapping Wayne onto the lockers of the Fuck Truck, we witnessed two visions of marvel.  The first was the inspiration for the name, Idaho.  A Native-American word that meant "Sunrise over the mountains," Ee-Da-How was a sacred place.  You didn't have to be indigenous to be awestruck or need further proof of the existence of God.

The second vision was that of four partly clothed snowmobilers running break-neck from the jail to their crew-cab Dodge 4X4 and trailer laden with snowmobiles.  Yelling, "Go! Go! Go!" as they piled in, all four tires were spinning wildly as the jail keeper came running after them shouting in some foreign accent, "You come back here, you somnabiches!  You piss my beds!  You sheet my beds!  I keel you!"

There were lots of flashing lights on the road back to Coeur d'Alene that morning.  Flashing lights on top of snow plows clearing the road.  Flashing lights on top of the four cop cars stopped near an abandoned crew-cab Dodge 4X4 with no occupants and an empty snowmobile trailer, and flashing lights from the road crew vehicles repairing bent-over reflector standards along quite a lengthy stretch of highway.

Uncle Wayne was pretty drunk by the time we secured him to the floor in front of the fireplace at the Killians.  We left him with his head propped up on Amanda Jane, who heaved and farted, as Wayne smiled and drifted off fully believing he'd gotten laid in Wallace.