CANADA/US/CAMPER TRIP 1968 2 of 2
Saturday, August 24: Door flipped open about 2 AM. Puzzled, I went to close it. Also, it's cold--heater out? At 7 AM I'm awakened to kids screaming and water drip, drip, drip. Kids are playing, water coming from refrigerator onto Chuck's grip. Oh, well. Open door to a cascade, remove ice cube trays, move Chuck's grip, drop sponge onto floor to receive plots. At 8 AM we light the stove---it flames, then off. Change gas bottles, light stove, light heater, light refrigerator pilot, open Chuck's bag. Very minor damage along top (one pair chinos slightly damp) and along bottom (grip is the only thing that's wet). So much for THAT. Then the family next door begins to act up---the "father" saying COME in a deep voice to the dog Queenie, then again COME in a now normal voice, then COME in a very unpleasant high tone of a petulant boy. The children use his same tone, and when he fails to call the dog, point to a child and says "You're the one who's messing up the dog." Then as we get into the car, the mother is heard positively shouting at a child, and later father wanders around with his fishing pole as the kids go silently and independently about their assigned tasks. He's probably a TERRIBLE boss at work and AWFUL with friends. We try a dirt road that may lead directly to the Lake, but it goes into the Lodge area and quickly becomes too narrow for the camper. In backing out I look back in time to see a tree shake and shiver from the impact, and I shout out to Chuck to go forward. The tree shows a gash at the top and bark gone along the entire length, the top read is ever so slightly knocked in, and the aluminum fin on the back, which once had an I-shaped cross section, with the side of the L bolted to the truck and the leg sticking out at right angles, becomes a U-shaped cross section, the right part the leg of the L, the bottom carved out from the truck by the jolt, and the left part the part in place against the truck, but between it and the truck were wedged scales of pine bark. Stuck into the screen were the two-needled bundles of the Lodgepole Pine. Identification was complete. We turned around and went BACK to Highway 58. Chuck screeched to a stop at a Propane sign, and we decided to get gas and water. I went in to relieve water pressure, and there was so much water I filled the sink and did the dishes. At this point Chuck pulled forward for gas. I raced to shut the banging rear door and turned in time for Chuck to slam on the brakes; the soapy water in the sink lifted in a perfect wave and dashed against the drainboard, the water tank enclosure, and the floor. Suds sloshed happily around the floor. The water-filling session started at 10:35, and at 11 it was still going, thanks to the "helpful hints" from the attendant that the left of the truck should be raised on a block of wood, and that the water shouldn't overflow each time. So of course the whole thing took longer. The only bright (literally) point was the sky; bright blue it was, for the first sight in weeks, with clouds that were mainly white and not so much gray. I hoped we had crossed the boundary from the northern rain forests into the southern deserts. Temperature was 70 for the first time, also, from the rainy highs in the low 60's and the nighttime drops into the low 40's ever since the Tetons. Into North entrance of Crater Lake and spend many hours there (later); leave about 7 PM and head toward Klamath Falls. Stop at tiny general store (no meats but frozen, no fresh fruits or vegetables, no chocolate milk) and get some franks for night. Look for out-of-way road, discard an odd gravel turnout, and settle for a fork on a side road just off the highway. Burn the franks in the oven thoroughly (division of responsibility: I put them on, Chuck wanted to turn them to soon, I said no, next time I looked (I thought he WOULD turn them, he thought I would turn them) there was a billow of smoke). Have a stupifyingly tired talk until 10, then get to bed, really WEARY.
Sunday, August 25: The first sight of note is Mount Shasta as we enter California. The peak is ENORMOUS under a sun-drenched snow cover and a blanket of cloud that indicates, rather than delineates, how high the top is. Around it for two hours, and get to Lassen Peak viewpoint about 2 PM, time to have lunch on the windy valley floor. The hot soup and sandwich and a half seems finally to make up for two scrawny meals yesterday. Learn about plug (Lassen), cone (cinder cone), strato (or composite), and shield (tit-like) volcanos before getting to Lassen. Miss Minnie Big-Teats, or something, is talking about the Model T Ford sound that heralded the eruption of Lassen in 1915. Museum is crammed with stuff to read (and Chuck takes longer than anyone) then through park reading the guide. Pick up sugar pine cones, stop for views of red cedar, trout in Lake Helen (later on road almost run over three deer which bound up embankment faster than the eye can follow), and other goodies, but pass Bumpass Hell and Sulphur Works, since we've seen better in Yellowstone. Leave Park at 5, a two-hour record I'm rather proud of (even WITH stop for talk in Devastated Area). Aim for Tahoe and through Lake Tahoe City at 9 PM, out toward Nevada, where Chuck is sure the "action" is. Crystal Cove has Nevada Lodge and the Nugget and something else, and I lose $2 in nickel slots in half an hour and Chuck loses $10 in craps in about 25 minutes. Quick sandwich and to one hour show for #3 minimum for two brandy Alexanders and two Galiano and creams and comic and singer and chanteuse and dance extravaganzas (CUTE) and bed at 1:30 in timber yard.
Monday, August 26: Up groaning loudly from the first approximation to a hangover at 8 and finally get on our way by 9:25, despite my urgings that we might be rousted out by construction at any moment. Drive around blue and sparkly Lake Tahoe, then off to gas up and shit off and map out trip to Grand Canyon (which I finally pushed through, along with Bryce and Zion). Drive all day from 9:25 to 7 PM, stopping for lunch in Toiyabi National Forest, where each wind-swept tree has its own water faucet in the wind so drying that the sandwich bread looks parched and cracked like the surface of the moon, and the carrots are dry orange cocks in the dissicating breeze. Have 140 gasless miles between Warm Springs and Caliente, and truck takes it at 7.1 miles per gallon, without frequent shifts into second. Day's events included a hawk circling, a crow pulling at intestines of run-over jack rabbit, a real (you mean it's REAL?) roadrunner (meep-meep), distant clouds and rains on sunny mountains (it DID rain at dinner, to preserve a constant rain-day rate since Tetons), fragments of rainbows and an anti-sunset which Chuck neatly explains by saying the rays through clouds are PARALLEL and only LOOK like they converge at anti-sun by PERSPECTIVE. As sun sets in fantastic pinks and magentas and roses and mauves, we get to Cathedral Gorge (where Chuck loses and finds my notebook from car hood and road), cook GREAT Spencer steaks on hibachi, and follow with roast corn and marshmallows and get VERY satisfied to bed at 9:45, ready for an early morning push in a day to see THREE national parks, at least in PART.
Tuesday, August 27: The day of the THIRD flat time, from 3 PM to 5 PM in Orderville, Utah, DAMN! I wake just in time to see the sun pop over the hills and color all the walls red-orange. On our way by 8:15, Chuck complaining all the way, and drive up grove to the "caves," actually walled canyons, of Moon, Cathedral, Canyon, and Gothic. WHAT A STAGE SET! Chasms riven by runoff of rainstorms 90 feet deep, but 18 inches wide in some places seem to dwarf even the Narrows of Zion claim of 1000 feet versus 20 feet. Walls are of terra cotta, hitting against the fingernails like plaster of Paris, phony and blunt edged, rolling in the pattern of loose mud down the walls. The sources of these alcoves are most amazing, sheer bored holes going up to overheads that sometimes shut out the sky, as if huge trees had been pulled out of the mud and only the vertical markings indicate the strain of the extraction. Wander through in utter amazement, and even get hung up on the formations outside, which were of proportions such that a movie camera moving slowly past walls precisely simulate a place flying past cliffs, columns, entablatures and natural handiwork from a baked and planet closer to the sun than we are. Finish here by 9:30 and drive off toward Cedar City, and into Zion about 11:30. The entrance is stupendous, and the views only get stupendouser and stupendouser. The museum and information center we can grok, and we read of layers and swamps and oceans and deserts and Indians and animals, then out to the Mountains of the Virgin and the grokability goes fast. Into the canyon and the rocks loom above us, tempered by the willow leaves gracefully shading the roads. We stop frequently to gape, but even the stops don't help. Overwhelming masses of sheer rock face, with arches and eyes and columns carved into them, meet us everywhere, and Chuck's camera hangs helpless "I can't get any of it in." The eye manages to encompass much of it, but the mind fails as it finds such immensity indigestible. Possibly the Great White Throne is more "impressive" than the Cathedral because it is small and almost manageable: it's a huge white slab the size of the Empire State Building. While the Cathedral is "oppressive" in its bulk --- the car rides so low between the formations that even when I sit on my spine with my knees on the dashboard, I can't see the whole of it. Back to the intersection and up the winding highway and through the tunnel, and on the other side there are still the red rocks and checkerboard cliffs and cream palaces perched on top. Into Orderville for the flat, but continue through gathering clouds to Bryce. We get rain again for the day, and a rainbow again arches up. Red Canyon just before Bryce is incredible --- must be 100% iron oxide to give that flaming red-orange --- looking like red-hot charcoal formations sticking out of the blazing earth. The wetness heightens the redness, and the intensity of the red pales the gray-green of the trees, and the gray-blue sky forms the frame for the fantastic scene. Continue into Bryce and pull off into Fairyland, fantastic shapes and colors even though the sky is clouded. Chuck is absolutely exhausted from getting up at dawn, and says he'll go to the museum and refuses to go any further. We leave at sunset (8:10 PM) and find the first campground full and the second (thank God) available. I refused to think what the course of events would be had it been full. We cooked the hot dogs in the oven to save the hibachi time, and ate on the table, and it all tasted good indeed. I stared at the fellow at the next campsite who was reading at his campfire and I wondered how it would be to spend fourteen days limit at one place, doing no driving or setting up or taking down, wandering the woods and completely relaxing (but what do you DO as you completely relax --- sit and watch the grass grow?) probably watching the shadows change in the forest as it grows toward noon, having absolutely nothing scheduled except breakfast, lunch, supper, and bedtime. But it would absolutely depend on who you did it with. I guess that's the crux of everything. So we went to bed at 10 PM in preparation for dawn tomorrow.
Wednesday, August 28: Sleep very poorly for fear of missing the booby sunrise at 6:50 AM. Finally, after checking my watch at 12 and 2 and 4, it's 6:10, and I grab Chuck out of bed and he actually moves. At 6:30 I pull choke and start motor and get flashlight from the above-car sleeping compartment next door. I guess he couldn't believe I was real. Motor coughs and expires and as I try fruitlessly again, Chuck pops into cab, almost awake, and says he'll drive. We get to point in good time, Chuck acting solely on automatic reflexes, and the whole Bryce Amphitheater stretches below us from Bryce Point. Get ourselves used to what we're looking at, talk about Tropic, and the Aquarium Plateau gets lighter, until there's a sliver of light above the lowest point: sunrise. Chuck takes a picture to prove he's seen a dawn once AFTER falling asleep that night, rather than BEFORE. The rim bursts into light, and shadows appear behind the sentinels that have stood there in the canyon for hundreds of years. In rank on ordered rank they stand, encased in rock-garments of cream and rose and red and orange, looking toward the rising sun and expanding in its warmth. The colors glowed both from the light and in contrast to the shadows, and the Silent City slept still in her shadowed cave. The Wall of Windows came alive, and strangely there were also flies at that height buzzing about our smelly clothes. As the sun reached down the hill, more formations stood clear of the vanishing shadows, and the depth and breadth of the canyon that was only a hillside grew and became complex. We retreated to Inspiration Point, but Chuck demanded breakfast so we washed and ate and returned to the point surrounded by people. We decided to wait for the sun to rise there above the east face, and took off to Rainbow Point and Yavampi Point, looking south, and going oh and ah from the pink cliffs and the balancing pinnacles and the convolutions. How many ages it would take an artist to paint a scene, each amphitheater with each set of colonnades with each formation with each pillar with each joint with each vertical segment with each horizontal crack with each niche eroded away by raindrops and snowfall. The eye was dazzled by the detail, and binoculars showed the detail to be infinite. We drove back, making all the stops, re-seeing Bryce and Inspiration, getting to Sunrise (by accident from the accidentally discovered service station), and Sunset, looking, gaping, until by noon we had exhausted our absorptive powers and I started the long drive down to Kaibab and the Grand Canyon. The forested entry across the heights was most impressive, and the trees and parkland stretched to all sides in utter serenity. How different from the touristed desert entrance from the South. We got to the single campground and found a place at the overflow area, then found a better place as we gaped down over the Transcept. Moved, set up table and thermos, drove to the closing ranger's office for information, and parked in the Lodge and took Bright Angel trail to the end, where I alienated parents of demanding children by clambering atop the highest rock and sat watching as the sun slowly sank over the canyon, putting out all the lights and settling the veil of shadow over the rocks which must have been tired from glowing so redly all day. Back to the Lodge and found it convenient to eat there, and followed it by "Nine against the River" from 8:45 to 9:30," an advertisement for the stupidity of man's aspirations and the power of a jet boat. Decided to AVOID the three hour, 1200 foot, $7.50 mule ride for the primitive road to Point Sublime, made more plans for the rest of the trip, and got quickly to bed since we'd had dinner out --- makes it MUCH easier.
Thursday, August 29: Up at 5:30 and coldly dress warmly and walk along the trail toward sunrise. Decide I can't make the ultimate point in time, so I clamber out onto a wedge of ledge to watch the clouds change from dark mountain-like masses to streamers of gray which turn pink and then white at the tops. I rather naively assume the sun will rise in the south, but as fluffy clouds above the San Francisco Mountains turn pink on the side, I see that the ridge behind me will delay the effective sunrise quite a while. There are small quiet cricket sounds from the hills, more like creatures disturbed in their nests than creatures active in the pre-dawn hour. The wind blows cold, and I look forward to the sun's rays to warm the air and the body. My nose is running and I'm sneezing and the rock on which I sit is cold. The ideas of death and suicide and flying (connected) come strongly and a sense of deja vu hits on a part of the path. Here, exalted on the precipice, I might again grow god-like delusions, and wish to sit on the air, or rise above the obstructing ridge, or journey to the sun, and take the fatal step off the ledge and turn slowly in the air, screaming surprise, as I plunge to death, suicide, flying. But the final flight is not yet. Distant ridges glow red, and the ridges stand out from the haze in fluted brightness. The trees across the Transept cast shadows one against the other, and from the right-hand shadows on the left and the left-hand shadows on the right, I can spot where the shadows are head-on. Half a horizon away from that point is the sunrise, and it's well up the ridge behind me. Curves in the ridge of the rim I hadn't believed possible come to light in the sun, and the form of the canyon took shape in an hour under my eyes, the shape that was first formed so many millions of years ago through so many sunrises and sunsets, and which is reformed every sunrise in a slightly different way for each viewer. The idea of "Mountain Standard Time 5:55 AM" becomes ludicrous, and the instant of sunrise in NOW for me and one minute LATER for someone x miles away, and then only if the altitudes and horizons are the same. Some possible feeling of the vastness of this canyon, so huge the sun will rise at different times at different places, leads to an intuition of the immensity of the motion of the earth around the inconceivable bulk of the sun. And we puny people gawk and grope and consult light meters and prate about "good" sunsets and "bad" sunsets as if what WORDS we used, or even our PRESENCES, were somehow a part of this vastness. But of course it is, and, in a sense, our presence is the CREATOR of this vastness, in the rainbow-eye-mist discussion by Alan Watts. I become almost a Stage Director at a cosmic pageant. The outside curtain rises when I wake before dawn, and I walk into the arena to see thousands of shadow-curtains still before me, and the sun, rising constantly, lifts a curtain here, a velvet drapery there, to show the top of Brahma Temple, the red edge of a butte, the tree line of the opposite plateau, a grotto on the side of the Transept, rank upon rank of palisaded rim, tumbled rocks clinging to the side of the drop-off. The sounds of day slowly increase: birds fly in the air, crying little bubbly sounds like air in a disconnected stream underwater. They're after the flies that started earlier: one bumbling about my head, then the harmonious chord after flying together, tumbling around each other in abandon. A skink-scurry on the ledge leads me to discover not a skink, but a nuthatch(?) industriously scrabbling over the rock face head down. To the flies, the Universe is their bumbling, to the nuthatch it is possibly broader, including some learned knowledge of the nest location and the best bug hunting grounds. How much broader my concepts, yet how provincial: I can see only what I can see, hear only what I can hear, smell only the circus-elephant smell drifting down from somewhere of stored years of campers' excrement deposited in the slopes above. But another mind, what may it comprehend? The macroscopic movements of the planets in a single, contained concept? The microscopic workings in each leaf cell around the world with no more effort than we can look at a nest of ants and see the whole movement, or can concentrate on one ant as we wish. Our minds are the greater than birds' because we can think more abstractly than birds, know in our reason that we HAVE looked into microscopes and telescopes and we REMEMBER what we saw. But we don't need a microscope to see grains of sand --- we look and they're there. We don't need a telescope to see stars, we look and they're there. We don't need an x-ray machine to look through deep water, if it's clear, we look and see the bottom. But what of an eye to which the electrons were grains of sand --- to be seen if looked at? Or the granules of the sun's surface to be seen without a telescope as we see the stars? Surely the amoeba can't see the stars, but we, up the ladder from them, can. Certainly the ladder rises above our mediocre capabilities. So I watch the lights come on the coves of Grand Canyon, and watch the hummingbird stop the silent note of the scarlet blossom with its probing proboscis. Rocks clatter into the canyon from creature scurries, and bird notes fly toward the sun, twisting to follow the insects they eat. There are glimpses from the base of trees on the ridge, and iotas of sunlight show the sun just above the ridge. Now temples are lit, and lit temples are lit more fully. The dream rock on top is all lit, with its green icing of trees, and much of the wine red is gleaming in the sun. Layers of trees that look like scraggly shrubs in the distance shake off the blanket of night, the clouds are white and the sounds of day are chirped and twanged and chattered. One bird sound is the taut-wire twang of a rubber-band like tone, plucked at random times. More movement as people appear on cliffside, and later sounds of automobiles again show the earth to be inhabited by people. They shout back and forth to each other and the sunrise spell is broken. Then I have no patience to see the sun rise above the trees, so I walk up the ridge and receive the sun full on the face and walk back to the trailer, where Chuck actually takes a shower (and will undoubtedly shame me into taking one too.) And that only takes to 8 AM, when I finish writing THIS longish entry. Into the car and out to the Point Sublime cutoff. The road starts out badly, and a maximum seems to be 15 mph, but things get better inside (still better all the way than that terrible road from Jasper to Vancouver), and the forests of birch and the gatherings of green and blue spruce make up for the bumps and heat. Close the windows as a yellow cloud fills the cab, and at one point a racing black Volkswagen cuts across our front and thoroughly shakes Chuck up. Stop at a lookout and get to Point Sublime in 70 minutes and the view is incredible. Since photographs can hardly do it justice, words seem less possible: buttes, mesas, square miles of red and magenta and green, and, at bottom, a sight of the muddy Colorado, tamed by Glen Canyon dam, but still making a chocolate and vanilla effect of river changing into white rapids. There's the haze of dusty distance over everything, but still the south rim is quite clear and the binoculars can roam the rim and find Canyon Village and roam the peaks and get the impossible sensation that the while view is simply not real. Sit and photograph and point and grimace with mock and real exasperation to other people the impossibility of encompassing the Canyon. I drive back and we make it in 50 minutes, stopping to find that blue spruce trees turn green when the bloom is rubbed off. There's no sight of the deer that bounded away as we drove up the 16.5-mile primitive road. Back down to the cutoff and take in Point Imperial as it rains a bit, then to Cape Royal for a view of five or six south rim drive pull-offs, huge white campers poised like grains of sand in openings in the pine rim. Sit and gape, but fatigue is setting in and Angel's Window stirs only the foggiest sense of "Gee." Take other cutoffs and drive out of the park, saying that my "ohh-ahh" gland has been milked dry. Get to Jacob Lake gas station about 4 to fill up with gas and water and eat lunch, then wend our way to Glen Canyon through Navajoland and red rock country and again patterns of cloud and clear and rock and plain make for incomparable seeing. A HUGE hewn gorge greets us as we rise onto the ridge above the valley, and the westering sun touches toward sunset as we drive across the bridge over the dam. The sheer rock walls look sanded down, giving no perspective in the blank flow to the quiet river. Into the Exhibit Center for maps of Arizona and brochures, and out to see the sun set over the red rocks. Barrel down the highway to where we got in, and the rocks that are terraced on either side glow dimly with color, and when we get to the Gap, we get gas and ask where we can stay. He directs us about 10 miles down the road and there's a rest area for some sort of Indian Community Church. Since lunch was so late, we don't feel like eating, but I take the first shower in some days, putting on clean clothes and feeling dry and comfortable and scentless. Chuck and I talk long into the night (later) and we get to bed about 11, finally having eaten nothing, but I feel just fine. There are some last remarks about the late campers that pull up with two couples, excellent for a possible switchy-switchy, but since Chuck observes that one woman climbs into the upper bunk and pulls the curtains to change clothes, this doesn't seem like the switchy atmosphere. Sleep comes easy despite the rush of cars past on the nearby highway, headlights peeking in through the curtains. (IDEAS: Now see Model of Grand Canyon (or better, a historical working scale model on display) only 12' deep, with models of lodges and roads. Fantastic way to build up a pretty little canyon. 2) music with, not lyrics, but love,love,love,spring,spring,spring, CHANTED by a chorus for effect. 3) Formations looked like giant TOES. 4) Film: America: Old Faithful erupting again and again; a DAY in Grand Canyon in Time-lapse; helicopter over Zion and Bryce. 5) Rest site on route 789. Best Site Story? 6) Buy a map of the US as it was in 1950 when I went to California and see how many roads and better roads have been added.)
Friday, August 30: Again I pop up at dawn about 6 and watch the sun come over the terraces. To the primitive john and two young collies and another pup tremble out to rub against me, but since Chuck only "middlin'" likes dogs, he doesn't appreciate the collie I bring into the camper. Continue the drive, skirting Flagstaff and I mail the 12 last cards and get my $10 Canadian changed into $0.38 American by a girl that multiplies 10.00 by .928 longhand, and uses the adding machine to add 9.28 to 72 cents that I plunk down to say brightly, "Oh, you want a TEN?" Follow the signs to Painted Desert and get in about 11:30, saying we had no petrified wood with us and I predict to Chuck we'll see much of the "Don't take the national wonders" and it absolutely turned out to be true. Tour the museum and grounds behind, but the heat saps us so much we decided to lunch in the Coffee Shop of the Lodge. Two sandwiches and a shake (made by hands other than ours) satisfy us enough to take the Long Logs Trail and the Agate House excursion. The heat beats down, unhampered by the clouds that are forming lower on the horizon. The long logs (I measured one 90 feet, they say they're up to 150 feet) are truly staggering, with almost opalescent colors of violet, lavender, red, magenta, yellow, brown, splotches of black and white, and some have green and yellow and white lichen (a combination of an alga and a fungus) thrown in. Amazing colors and forms and I decide I MUST buy something, and get a $1 psychedelic bag of colored stones and petrified wood and tigereye and maybe a piece of turquoise if I'm lucky. The sheer exhaustion of moving (plus the fact that I'm farting excessively from something) (and have the definite desire to run to the toilet more than twice a day). The stops at Blue Mesa and Agate Bridge (sadly disappointing; the concrete support along its length is painted black, and the log retains its bark, so there's very little agate showing in the agate bridge) and Newspaper Rock (down 120 steps, but I get a definitely phony feeling in the ludicrous figures on a rock in the dead open which appears to have been little affected by 600 years of erosion) and the Teepees (renamed the Melting Hills for some reason), and we zip out before the clouds get to the Painted Desert, but arrive at the first viewpoint too late. Give all the lookouts a more than fair chance to turn us on, and the last one does have the sun poured over it, and we do manage to point out colors, but as Chuck later says "By that time we were just jaded. We'd seen so many red rocks that by the time we got to Grand Canyon the colors didn't impress us, only the immensity." We stop into the visitor's center and ask if the colors have faded, and they give us a story about not being a perfectly clear day, and it's best just after a rain, and it's best at dawn. We thank them and leave, remembering that the signs kept saying things like "the Painted Desert is being washed into the Bay of California" and "the colors are not what they used to be," Oh, well. Cross into New Mexico, and everywhere we're depressed by the Indians. We drive through the worst section of Gallup to follow 666, and the slums look even worse than in New York, possibly because all parts of the slum are visible: unpainted houses, sagging porches, curtainless windows, bare floors, and wood-stick furniture, wrecks of autos lying in the grassless front yards, and thoroughly unhappy looking creatures: chickens, sheep, a cow, desperately foraging food on a desert backlot. The town women wear their full thick skirts, wrinkled and greasy as if all the clothes they had to ward off the zero-degree cold in winter were worn through the 110 degrees of the summer. The women looked frizz-haired and sexy-eyed, as if only a life of whoredom was open to them; the boys looked like toughs in a grade Z movie, except for the one or two bright-eyed, clean-looking cuties we passed. They'd make good hustlers. We passed hovel after hovel in the poor countryside, dirt roads dusty outside and inside the wooden windowless doors. There were tuna-tin stacks of adobe everywhere, only one step up from the cow-patty hovels of India. The children looked like they owned no underwear or shoes, and the lethargic look given us by the girl lying in the dirty-sheeted pallet above the bed of a pickup truck leading us through town, as she lay only inches from the unprotected roadside of the bed, spoke of sickness and lack of energy to improve. Even the tinkle of broken glass as something fell off the truck served only to lift her head an inch or two, and it fell back into the bunk. When we stopped along 666 on a wide part of the road, we felt vaguely guilty about being so comfortable in the "country" of those who suffered in the midst of a country of plenty. Trucks roared past all night, but I slept the sleep of exhaustion, only too glad for a level spot at the right time of night. Chuck can sleep anywhere.
Saturday, August 31: Wake to find two campers and a trailer joining us, and we ate and took off north on 666. The isolated mesas and rocks (Mitten Rock, Shiprock) remind me of Monument Valley's reputation, and even Chuck is inspired to photograph Chimney Rock. I muse how these monoliths must have looked fresh-sprung from the ground, without the moderating talus of self-rubble smoothing the entry of rock into ground. Generations after me will only see rounded heaps of mud, unless the upward pressures continue and constant peppermint sticks are being pushed out of the earth for our delectation, for erosion to lick down. Into Colorado, Chuck's 25th state "Now you've been to half of them." Get gas and groceries in Cortez and turn off into Mesa Verde. The road winds up and up, and threatens to overshadow the park itself. Stop at the knife-edge and the Forest Fire Watch Tower gives huge views of the Four Corners area and the sleeping Ute and the Rockies to the east. Pick up brochures and find there's rather more to see than I'd hoped. Decide to beeline to the Cliff Palace and Balcony House loop, in case the tickets aren't readily available. The John Lennon-7 guide is too scrawny to be cute, but the lowest tip of the earpiece of his round gold-rimmed glasses shows beneath his earlobe, and I fancifully transform it into a plug for a pierced ear, my dear. Like most National Park Service lecturers, he manages to get in the official dig, in this case urging us to write to Udall to stop the sonic booms that are destroying "the old mud heaps that a few eccentric archeologists want to scrabble through." Some questions are agonizedly unanswered: Why did they move off the mesa-top into the cliffs, why did they all suddenly leave the cliffs after only 75 years of habitation, why was the set of kivas in Balcony House set off from the North-South line (though another question is how did they KNOW the North-South line). The respective "answers" of "An enemy, a drought, fear of falling into the ventilation shaft" seemed weak and speculative. And the tantalizing fact that the brothers had found something like 500, and that only about 100 are known today, and many "have not been visited since the time of the cowboys" gives an exciting air of mystery and the unexplored, and the fleeting feeling of how much fun it would be to come back some day and find some NEW ruins. The Balcony house is loads of fun with its 30-foot wood ladder ascent, with 12 foot crawl tunnel, and its three flights of 12 foot ladders and series of toeholds on exit. (Where can heartache strike? Stop at Bear Creek Falls on 789 (beautiful 220 foot falls) and there's a Lawrence, Kansas, farm boy in tight-thighed blue jeans and well-pectoraled tee-shirt, whose large nose, curved mouth, and sideways glances tempted to love). Some of the wall work and plastering looks so new it's impossible to believe that it's over 700 years old, and even the guide sneers that Fewkes probably touched up the "original" painting in the four story tower. Then they repaired a bit where a piece of the roof exfoliated onto the corner of one tower. We eat lunch at the ungodly hour of 4:30 when rain interrupts our perusal of three Pueblo villages, with three structures from each period built on top of the other for cannibalizing material. The bit about the towers appearing as a first sign of the dreaded enemy which eventually drove them below smacked convincingly. Sun Temple was most bizarre of all, its elaborate shapes and entryless rooms (a prison?) baffling scientists' guesses as to purpose. The idea of concreting the double-coursed walls (and Chuck's serious "is it theirs or ours?") and letting people walk on it like a slightly addled roller coaster adds to its implausibility. Girls laugh at it (it was never even finished or covered!) and no one can understand it. But it was a lot of effort for SOME purpose. The clouds are gathering and both of us are being bored with the mesa, so be bypass the Tower (stop off at Spruce Tree House while Chuck spends an ungodly time in the john --- where intermittently the sounds of his sinus treatment (if his scalp treatment became a rubadub, why does he not take nose jobs every morning?) blew forth. I rattle down the road at a heart-stopping speed of 20 mph, and we get to the highway amidst a wild scene of black-clouded skies backing bright green trees when the sun shines in our area. As we drive toward Durango the sun gets lower and lower, staining the western clouds an improbable rose wine color, and the east progresses through an incredible series of magenta, orchid, red-orange, a real tiger-lily orange mixed with a blue-violet of inky lustrousness. Chuck demands a stop, but the colors fade too fast to a simple deep blue, fading to pink in the south and a brilliant Wedgewood in the west. Durango's lit main street looks garishly beautiful with its array of neon against the still-blue sky, and we drive north into the San Juan National Forest (which starts after Hermosa, contrary to the map --- something not usual, but not absolutely sure, either). Look at a turnoff for Rockwood and decide it's OK, park on the reasonably level ground and decide we're not really hungry. I fix myself two scrambled eggs and a couple other items, and Chuck nibbles on his raw vegetables ("I'm great on rabbit food." His other whimsies: Well, it looked like a good idea to begin with (said when something goes wrong); isn't that a kick in the head (said when something goes wrong --- but, for Chuck, things are USUALLY going wrong, and if things aren't wrong, they're "not just right" for some reason or another. Few cars go by, but we all sleep soundly in our little grove poaching on the Youth Hostel of America area a mile down the dirt road.
Sunday, September 1: Up even before the sun hits our hideaway, but not before the Hermosa Cliffs are bright with sun. Continue up toward Montrose over a road which is continually coming to climaxes at various summits or peaks or cress. Stop at Bear Creek Falls for a look at it and Mt. Abrams, look at the wide (Mormon-planned?) streets of Silverton, careen around corners and canyons and through Montrose to Gunnison, another good road to the first look at a schist, gneiss, and granite canyon that is not glaciated, but retains a deep V. The lookouts are close and end with a 20-500 yard sand sprint to a fenced lookout, beyond which it's usually possible to dangle out further on rocks to see the green river 1800-2500 feet below. The roar of the tiny rapids (10 feet falls) reaching the rim is quite a surprise, and I spot a number of people (not the two climbers on the Painted Wall, unfortunately) below and they're SO small the river must be considered sizeable. The spires and fissures and recurrences of dikes makes it a blackly beautiful fantasy. To the end of the road and eat at picnic tables before bees force us to flee, eat from 2:30-3:00, quite early, and I disgust Chuck by driving the next three hours rather too carelessly. The final straw came as I watched the shower lit by the sun, and I was caught in a reverie of similes: the mist was stationery, not falling, but being blown like gauze draperies. It was angel's hair combed smooth and long, or the fleece of an impossibly huge white wolfhound lowering from the clouds to the green hills. It was the highest waterfall in the world, or the three sections were the tallest wraiths ever seen. At this point I wandered into the opposite lane, with a car coming about 20 car-lengths ahead. Chuck shouted WATCH in sheer panic, which startled me more than the situation did. "OK, I'm driving, I can't take any more of this" followed, and I sheepishly slid across as he darted around the hood to get into the driver's seat. Silence followed for a number of miles as I gaped out at the rainstorm all around us, now mainly black shrouds over the hills, and Chuck drove intently, his frown lines deep. I tried the radio: static only. I felt terribly sorry and terribly sympathetic to Chuck, and I suspect he felt the same toward me, so that when I asked, gently, if he saw the mileage to Canon City on the sign, he VERY gently replied that he hadn't. Things seemed tender and peaceful between us. The Arkansas River was tiny and not terribly indented when we saw the sign for the south Rim. Gates closed at 6:30, the sign said, so of course at 7:05 we started up the hill, which was a grader's delight of curves and twists through a pine-park setting. We startled the two deer, and the setting sun far in the rear and the low black clouds over us gave more fantastic orange side-lighting effects on the hilly terrain. Got to the truly closed gates, went through toward the sound of cars clomping over the wooden planks of the highest suspension bridge in the world constructed by the Canon City Parks and AMUSEMENT Corporation in 1929, and it seemed like an enormous promoter's dream, the promotion idea being promoted by the fact that two of the three names on the plaque had been rubbed off. Walk across in the decreasing light and back to the car, deciding to stay right there for the night. Plans momentarily thwarted by a carload of people who only toyed with the idea of disobeying the "Danger, No Trespassing, Area Patrolled" sign as we had done, then drove away. We selected an elegant off-level site with a garbage dump, again frightening away deer, and I take a shit in the bushes for the first (and I hope only) time in the trip. Chuck starts the hibachi outside for the four chicken half-breasts, but it starts raining, so we come inside. Eat well, and talk for quite awhile about Chuck's hang-ups on completeness and understanding, and his writing and speaking carefulness as an indication of his not wanting to make a mistake. This last from 10:15 to 11:15, and then we launch into my driving problems: rubbernecking, overestimating the power of the brakes, and ignoring the condition of the road. We have an amiable discussion until 12:15, and he decides by default not to have his shower tonight, which rather thwarts any idea of repeating the events of the Gap, but we get to bed, my body feeling strange with the car slanted upward toward the front, and have all sorts of horrible visions of falling out of bed and Chuck finding my broken body when he wakes up of his own will about 2 PM the following afternoon. But I'm still tired (and more tired to come on the long haul back, I fear) and I fall asleep almost immediately, into the typically undisturbed, dreamless sleep I enjoyed through the trip.
Monday, September 2: I'm wakened at 6:45 by a clatter in the rubbish heap outside. Lay for a few paralyzed moments trying to decide whether to move, then open the curtains to the startled eyes of two fawns just out of the white spot age. But Chuck's "window theory" seems to work, and I can even move around soundlessly while watching without causing them to look up from their nibbling on flower tops. Soon one mother appears, then another, and they rather undignifiedly paw and chew through the plastic bags and paper plates that the concessionaires have badly wrapped in large beige bags and thrown into the dump. There's no bad smell from the predominantly plastic, can, and paper trash, but flies buzz aloud, and they come up with a half-eaten container of hot dog buns often enough to make their foraging worthwhile. Later, a buck joins them, a young one with just-grown antlers of about three points, and he takes to nibbling roots out of a hole dug just over his head, from which he peers comically every so often. I rouse Chuck at 7 to look at the two fawns, and finally he's out of bed at 7:15 and into the shower. I eat and begin writing this (after dressing and putting the hibachi away) and he continues showering until shortly after 8, the heater, water heater, and water pump all blasting away all the time. Finally he's out and fussing at 8:15, and by 8:45, as I write this, he appears to be about finished and ready to start breakfast (but, strangely he's now brushing his teeth). Our plan for a 600 mile day seems to go by the boards, since we have many roads to travel: the rest of the Royal Gorge cutoff, the rest of the road to Canon City, the big road up to Colorado Springs, then the long stretch of highway 24 before we get to our day's route --- 70 straight across to New York City four days from now. At 8:55 I desperately try to retain my sanity as he gets a spoon (and makes sure it's one of HIS, and fusses through the drawer for some unknown reason), drinks his juice (fussing about the glass, muttering, holding it up to the light, mumbling, blowing into it, frowning, grunting, fussing over the rim of the can, looking inside, humming, jiggling to see the depth of juice, humphing) pours his cereal (heaping the bowl, explaining about the lesser density of Rice Chex as opposed to Wheat Chex, mumbling), then thinks to put a can of grapefruit juice into the refrigerator for the next day (rearranging its entire contents for the second time --- once when he got the milk carton out --- the writing is interrupted by the clatter of Rice Chex to the floor, the incredibly hollow sound of his chewing on Rice Chex, banging the spoon against the bowl four or five times and against his teeth once or twice for each spoonful, then his sinus-ridden snorts as he attempts to breathe as he eats, punctuated by gasps and hums as he catches up, and huge sighs as he finishes the bowl, then fussing about precisely HOW he inserts it into the soapy water in the sink. He wants to finish the dishes, I ask him if he's ready, he says yes, I do them anyway. Then he smooths his beard in the mirror, gets some stuff from his suitcase, arranges it with stuff from his drawer, and goes to the driver's seat. I lock the door as he finished pissing against the tree, and he asks if there's still water left, because he wants to wash his glasses. I say patently yes, for it's now 9:10 and he hasn't come back, and I'm running out of things to WRITE about. I record the mileage and figure the nights in the states and look at the map, and FINALLY, at 9:15, he closes the door and hops into the cab. Oh, God, FINALLY! When we get going at 9:30, we get $2.25 combination for bridge and railway. Bridge curiosity is quickly resolved, and we scoot to the "World's Steepest Incline" for a tremulous double start that gives us a jolt. To the bottom in five minutes and look at nothing in particular, then up to the top, where again Chuck drives me wild getting "ready" to go. He reads the brochure and breaks me up by asking "Hanging Bridge?" "It was THERE." "What WAS it? I didn't hear about it." Then he remarked that he'd gotten Z in observation and something like 15th percentile in finger dexterity. So we go out onto bridge to see the Hanging Bridge below, and at 10:30 leave the park. Through Canon City and up to Colorado Springs, then out highway 24. Gas up in Calkan and pass about six miles out of Limon, me driving at 1:15 PM, and there's a clack-clack-clack from the motor when I accelerate. Slow to stop, Chuck says it's explosions and we have to check valves. Try continuing, but then turn and return to Limon. Stop at Chevron and he's only guy. Into town to Firestone and he recommends second Texaco. Attendant, back from lunch, takes it apart and finds the connector rod broken and a rocker arm damaged. "Good thing the rocker arm fell below --- it could have broken a piston just like that." Gee, how lucky we are. Sit 'til 2:30 for this verdict, and he's not sure if he can get parts. To A&W for a cheeseburger deluxe and back at 3:30 to find he HAS got parts. "Won't be long now." So at 4 PM I write this as the guy perches like an old hood ornament in the open hood and clicks his ratchet wrench and does other indecipherable things, as Chuck wanders around doing the pregnant father act, the flies perch absolutely everywhere, and dark rain clouds gather in the West. After this, and the fellow still not finished, I begin filling water at 4:15, and at 4:35 give up in disgust. We take off then at quarter to 5, the shortest accident yet (?) and drive and drive. Dark comes about 8, and at 8:30 we're pulled over by a police car: our rear lights weren't on, and BECAUSE the plug hadn't been pushed back in after the water cap went on. We thank them and drive off into the night as far as a Texaco Tasty-Freeze for dinner, and then to Wilson Reservoir for camping. Off road about 11:15, but there are no signs to Webster State Park, only Nootick something or other. Follow that anyway and get all hung up on gravel roads and the backs of signs to campground and to sign of what WE think of as a campground. Drive down around to the Men and Ladies, and Chuck suggests staying there on the slope. I veto and Chuck gets pissed and says "OK, it's your wheel, drive all night if you want." I keep quiet and drive around to grassy knoll off the road, wriggle back and forth for the right angle for Chuck's bed, and I take off for the john. The night is windy and beautiful under the cloud-hazed moon. The level rolling ground goes off to enormously distant horizons, and the infinite sound of the wind fills everything. The john is white and clean, the only graffiti being "The wages of sin is death. The hope of the world is eternal life through Christ His Son." Different. The toilet is different too, having a foot treadle for the seat which, if released, drops down on your back. Keeping one foot in place while wiping on a low seat is something of a chore, particularly when the toilet paper had loosened and hung in large loops around the roll, buffeted by the winds. Into the camper feeling great because we'd eaten two meals out, and Chuck is talking about bed and opens the windows slightly and decided to sleep with the blankets off. I take some sort of cue from this and shut lights off and crawl into bed saying "I presume once you'd said nothing more that you wouldn't care to repeat the experience of a couple nights ago." "Oh, it was pleasant, OK," came back so quickly that I got back out of bed. "But I'm not gay, or anything." "Of COURSE not," I almost shouted, "You just like to get your rocks off. You had fun and I had fun, so why not repeat it?" By this time I was seated beside him, but he on his own took his shorts off, and in the full light of the moon coming in the curtained window I could see he was hard already. I went to it with avidity, relish added by the fact I could see his pale skin and black kinky cock hairs. I spit him up good and smoothed him back and forth until his cock pulsed with pleasure. I so much enjoyed the pleasure of SUCKING that I grabbed him hard and just gave one full suck, squeezing the shaft with delight. He fell in with the squeeze and made his hips move ever so slightly. I could feel his veins stand out in the palm of my hand, and the head of his cock grew inside my mouth. I drew hard again and again, and his whole body responded with pleasure. It was an absolute delight to feel him attain maximum girth and length, groan, and shoot off with countless throbs. I stayed down, sucking so that I could feel the flesh under my chin pull up into the jaw cavity, and I went further down on him as he shook from the orgasm, still throbbing. But in just a very few seconds, as I hung on like a human leech of his milk, he pulsed up to hardness again. I wet my hands and voluptuously jerked him back and forth, as he gasped in pleasure. Too quickly he came to the point of coming, and I slowed to gourmandize the tip and the length, running my left hand up and down his body, the right hand drawing his balls back down into the scrotum from which he would ascend in ecstasy, and press on the long full line of the prostate to heighten his pleasure. And that pleasure seemed transparent to me, so that as I gave the thrill I could feel his response to the thrill, and both our pleasures were heightened. At a point, however, I felt that he came, held on leech-like again, but he didn't go down, despite the sweet taste of semen that I swallowed, he again rose, and again I engulfed him, jerked him to fullness, and again he spasmed into come. I waited as he shrank, spent, then drew back: "Let me ask a technical question. How many times did you come?" Two. I'd not finished the second, and he was willing to follow down from an incredible peak and come back for his second that I thought was his third. I figured to get to bed, since it was 11:45, but he remarked that he was afraid he might enjoy this too much. I tried to convince him that a hand job or a blow job was simply not comparable to coming into a woman as she comes, citing "Human Sexual Response" as my guide. He said he'd come to sex late (not jerking off before 16), come to girls late (being in his late 20's for the Puerto Rican girl) and had learned to enjoy girls blowing or handling him off, and he "learned to be satisfied with substitutes." He'd only really come into the PR, the Swedish girl, and maybe one other. I took the tack that he was insensitive to the other person, thinking "I have to satisfy the girl" and "I have to amuse the girl so she'll amuse me," and such thoughts. "Did you have any sense of the pleasure I was getting?" "Um, no." "I knew that, but had to ask to make the point. If you KNOW and FEEL the other person's pleasure, you'll KNOW when the girl comes, KNOW when you please her. You'll get involved with HER, not with YOURSELF, and things will work better." He lapsed into silence. "Do you see what I mean?" "I know what it is that you're saying," he copped out. "So you don't believe me." "I don't know." "You ARE responsive (at which point he wanted to know what I meant by responsive), and that makes it GREAT to be with you sexually." He didn't seem convinced, only interested. I still felt, with joy, the full pleasure of his coming and his hardness, and erased from my mind the thought that he may now be fearing for his own normality. At the end, I repeated: you CAN get pleasure out of sex, you can GIVE pleasure. All you need is practice. So MANY girls will be swingers if you ASK them. I never dreamed you'd agree to my doing you, but you DID. I enjoy it and you enjoyed it because I had the courage to ask. TAKE the courage to ask the girl you want to fuck, TRY it more and more. I wanted to add that my so-called "expertise" at cock-sucking wasn't born in me, I had to practice and practice to develop it. "You JUST have to be more sensitive to HER," I concluded, and fell asleep. But I still wonder, for the story is not yet over. I love sucking him, but should I stop for HIS sake? I love to feel him come, and he loves it, but can't he use this to convince himself that HE'S good in sex, and that he HAS something to offer to the girl, AND he could develop his sensitivity if he just TRIED girls from that point of view. He SEEMS straight, he LOOKS at girls. He should CERTAINLY share pleasure with them.
Tuesday, September 3: Up at 7:40, exhausted, sun streaming in. Hold a terrible urge to shit as I light the water, wake Chuck up, and dash to the john. Onions? Back to shower and feel GREAT, then breakfast of terrible wallpaper paste as I give him the rest of the little milk for his cereal. Enjoy the look and quiet serenity about the lake and the park, then off to the highway by 9:30, on our way again. It's windy and Chuck has trouble steering, and the 45 minutes of weather forecast on every station warn us of the coming rain. At noon we stop for gas and notice two things: we needed two quarts of oil last night and one quart today: we have an oil leak, hopefully only as recently as the valve job. In clambering under the cab, the attendant sees we've worn THROUGH the cord on the right rear tire. Chuck says we MUST buy a new one (for 55.70 list), and reverse the good right front with the poor left rear. This is done while we eat from 12:45 to 1:45 in a Harvey House, and we get out to find more trouble changing the tire. I sit and write all this as the guy outside bangs and bangs and bangs to get the tire off the rim. He has no trouble with the ring, as the guy in Orderville had, but with the RIM. Chuck says he's not doing it right, but will tell me, not him. At present it's 2:30, we've shot more hours, and they're still not finished. I sit in the cab that he keeps boosting up on lifts, and it's hot and humid from the advancing rain front. Well, what NEXT? We finally leave about 3, knowing they can't check the tire pressure above 50 pounds, that we have to check the oil each time because the leak can't be easily fixed, and we pay $84 for a tire and some gas and labor. Drive through Kansas and into Missouri and toward St. Louis as it gets dark. We've been talking (Chuck's been talking) for hours: first my reiteration to him that each GOOD fuck counts toward getting clues as to what ALL makes a good fuck, while each bad fuck doesn't publicize him to the world as a bad fucker. It affects him JUST AS MUCH as he WANTS it to. Then I tell of my wonderful responses to my confidences. Then, apparently, he wants to tell ME a confidence, so he goes on for two hours about his entire history with Chouming and his problems and his leg and his transfer to New York. Toward the end I'm searching for the St. Louis arch, and finally it's lit far above us, shimmering in the twilight like some strangely inverted ice formation. We're both captivated by it standing in the moonlight, so when the exit for it comes, I take it. Sign says it closes at 0; good, it's 8:10. Also says last trip to top is at 8:30, good, it's 8:10.1. Park and wander, gaping, toward it. Down hugely monolithic stairs into the stark anteroom, buy tickets, and down a ramp looking like something from the War of the Worlds. Concrete everywhere, but softly lit and silent, rather than echoing. Down still farther, walls closing in, until we stand in a high chamber overlooking very broad steps below, each step holding a turnstile directing the groups which could stand on each step toward a door numbered 1-8. At the far upper end, an open door showed a sloping concrete corridor with steps alongside tracks coming down from a great dark distance. Soon a change of pressure and a sound heralded the caravan's approach. Each little car rambled past the opening, looking like ski gondolas moving like marbles down a slot. Small bits of light could be seen through the numbered doors, the sound stopped, and the doors slid to the side. As they were half parted, another set of doors to each car was revealed, the car doors parted and a rather dazed set of five passengers got out of each numbered car. I remarked that the ride up MUST be better than the view. And it was. We were in the car alone, and looked at each other wide-eyed as a recorded message came through the compartment (hardly enough room to stand, claustrophobic if not well-lit, and thankfully containing four windows in the small sliding doors) telling us that the tilting we would feel were the automatic leveling adjustments to be made as we ascended, and that the ride took four not-to-be-alarming minutes. In the middle of this, the doors shut, and with more noise than expected, we took off diagonally upward. The clicks came every few seconds as we swept off to the right, rose on an even-ascending pitch, then actually went straight up and doubled back over to the left, as we ascended into the leg itself. Concrete abutments, stairs, and electrical panels and cleaning materials heaped on the stairs gave way to the inside of the stainless steel arch itself, all braced and internally staired in a bright orange paint, lit every 10 or 20 feet. We traveled upward, as scale after scale of oddly shaped stairs swept downward, alternating near the cab and against the far wall. The flights were broad at the bottom, but got narrower at the top, finally being interspersed with spiral areas as the space got constricted. The levels got busy again as we neared the top, wires and ducts and panels again appeared, and we moved past four doors before stopping in front of the fifth, which opened and let us out at the top. We all look like children just come out of a combination Toyland and Purgatory. The windows are set into a slope that necessitates our reclining on the wall, kneeling onto a step below. St. Louis is below, light patterns as seen from a plane, except that in the near distance stands the neat courthouse lit with a white light that reflects off the grassy areas and turns a straw-filtered greenish glow that makes it look like a charming model set up below under optimum lighting. Cobo Hall turns into Busch Stadium, and the new round motel is appropriately futuristic, as are the swimming pools atop the lush apartment buildings nearby. Lovely view, but certainly taking a second place (to us jaded New Yorkers, anyway) to that phenomenal ride, repeated as we left in the last load at 9 PM. Zip through the rather skimpy exhibits of the "Museum of the West" as the lights are going out, and back up to again admire the patterns of light and reflection on the gently undulating surface of the arch. A self-appointed guide to two old ladies echoed my feelings "I prefer it like this, they wanted to floodlight it, but I hope they don't." Chuck takes three time exposures of the arch at night of 5, 10, and 15 seconds, then we debate spending the evening in the parking lot. Follow exit signs and see sign to Riverfront. "Take it" says Chuck. I don't want to, but do anyway. Down cobbled street and find old brick Commercial Street. Park and look around; Chuck finds Levee House, I find the old depot area with a road winding behind the three-car train sitting there. Move car and eat steak, but throw out much corn and put carrots back. I'm not that hungry. Chuck definitely wants a beer, so we're down to Levee House, to be served steins by Tiny, an enormous cherub with a raunchy sense of humor. A belting soprano does "My Bill" and stuff from "Porgy and Bess," and a shaky tenor does terrible things after repeated urging from the audience, who must hate him. The entry is great: narrow front, tall black pillars from top to bottom with glass panes between, a cricket chirping in the hearth ("Oh, he's just asking to get laid, like everyone else," said Tiny, as well as "He'll sing "The Man I Love,"" when the tenor stood), and old posters extolling the efficacy of MacLean's Cordial for ailing females, who are giving a thumbs up-good cheer sign to the audience. Great globed converted gas chandeliers take the ceiling just as Tiny takes the space behind the bar, giving free drinks to those he doesn't want to leave. When Chuck and I leave, however, he charges 60 cents EACH for the drafts. He didn't like us because we were tourists who popped in to "see the place" and had to buy a beer. Back to the car at 12, and Chuck says he's tired. "Oh, you wouldn't want to satisfy my curiosity, then." "About what?" "The dry hand job." "You'd like to try it on me?" "Yes." "Tomorrow." "I was afraid you'd say that." Pause. "Could I try it now." "Yeah, I guess so," and the lights are out and I hop down from my perch (taking care to step into the middle of the tire) and get to him. He rolled over, pulled off the quilt, and took down his shorts, which slapped his ever-hard cock against his belly. I used dry hands as long as they stayed dry, but as I sweated in anticipation, I had the idea to take off my soft cotton pajama top and use it. It was hugely successful. He writhed under my soft-handed, dry-pajama attack, growing very hard and pulsing under the soft cloth. I rubbed the head unmercifully, and finally he got into the spirit by thrusting his hips back and forth, turning his head from side to side on his pillow, gasping, and tensing his thighs. I had two balls, watching. He seemed slowly to be attaining some sort of peak, so I cupped his head in one hand and rubbed for dear life. He began sweating to match mine, and his gasps were lovely to hear. But he couldn't QUITE get to the point, and finally relaxed, saying "That's frustrating." I tried again as he seemed hugely desperate to come, but I could take it no longer and leaped upon it with my mouth. I sucked in as he got maximum hard, again the veins and ridges distinctly felt, and he thrust twice, then paused, and the spasms along the length sent his sweet fluid into my mouth again and again and again. When he was relaxed, he said he couldn't come if the ONLY stimulus was on the head. I wanted to try again, drying off his come and spit-wet cock with my pajamas. But after fifteen minutes of working he wouldn't come up, so I attacked with wet mouth and hand and after some effort he came up. I lazed around, tantalizing him, and again he began his pelvis thrusts, nice, long, and easy. I followed with my mouth, hand grasping hard as he strained harder. As he reached the orgasm he slowed his pace, and I went along with him to slow it further. As he became content with his orgasm, he paused, I paused, and for marvelous delicious seconds his cock stood hardest in my hand and mouth. The pause at the roller coaster top before the plunge, breathless. Then pulse and pulse and pulse and pulse, diminishing through time, his strained face back in the pillow.
Wednesday, September 4: Drive past the arch again and drive through Illinois and Indiana and Ohio and West Virginia and into Pennsylvania. Drove so well through lowering skies that we didn't stop for lunch until 5 PM, made worse than 4 by the switch from Central to Eastern Time in Indiana. Stopped at Lake Clark and ate sausages on the windswept picnic tables, Chuck leaping back into camper as bees became friendly. While waiting for sausages to cook, I packed my suitcase --- the final phase begins. Chuck screeches to a stop to buy corn, screeches again to get butter, and screeches again as he misses turn onto 70. Both getting edgy from driving. Into Pennsylvania and try to Bedford, but as we pull into New Stanton at 11, it's obvious we'll be too tired. Get gas and ask for place to park, and the kid refers us to Fox Den Acres Park, up route 119 toward Greensburg. We follow his directions and pull into flat spot between trees among the THREE tables. Have a long discussion and set to (later) and fall asleep at 1:50.
Thursday, September 5: Up at 8:30 and eat (Chuck in rain) and get going by 10. Chuck into Pennsylvania Turnpike at 10:15 and zip along in rain until it clears, stopping only for gas and to see a Reo and an Auburn. Off and over Delaware Memorial Bridge and check onto New Jersey Turnpike at 3:15. Phone Mike and say we'll be there between 6 and 9 PM today. Stop to eat in a truck and trailer parking area and have lunch of corn and chicken half-breasts and finally get rolling again at 4:45, 60 miles from NYC. Hope to get to my place by 6:30 and to Hempstead by 8. HOPE! [DATEBOOK: Get camper back by 9PM. Home.]