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US BY GREYHOUND TRIP 1963  9 of 10

 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8. A strange day in which I did almost nothing. Up late (might finally be getting into the habit) and come again, and get into the bathroom at 10:30 and out at 11:30, having done everything under the sun, including washing my hair which whipped around in the strong wind for the rest of the day, standing literally on end as I crossed streets, and was impossible to comb back. Simply a wild straw thatch for the entire day. Hardly silky, a better word would be bristly. Out in time to get into the main auditorium for a somewhat lesser recital at 12, and take their advice to gather at the Sea Gull Monument for an hour's tour through the grounds. The religion has elements that are quite fantastic [Hand-cart pioneers walked 1300 miles from Iowa City to Salt Lake City. 3000 set out in five years, 600 died on the way. 1830, through Prophet Joseph Smith, restored the original Church of Jesus Christ. Book of Mormon is HISTORY of people who left Jerusalem and came to US in 600 BC, and in 421 AD, in US the end of the righteous people in US, the end of Mormon people. Moroni in 421 was last of prophets, hid the Book of Mormon plates, and later reappeared and inspired Joseph Smith. Plates were had, then vanished. Christ also appeared to the people in US (these were the "other sheep" that Christ at the Crucifixion said he had to visit). These early US were the forerunners of the Aztec and Maya, and American Indians were their descendants. All clerical and choir and missionary (11,000) workers are DONATED to the Church. Missionaries not only do NOT get paid, but pay expenses.] and I jumped at the chance to buy a Book of Mormon for 50, only to find that they sell EVERYWHERE for the same price. Baptism of the dead and marriage for life and eternity are the only things the Temple is used for, all services in the ward churches, of which I see a rather great number through the next few weeks of my travels through the Northwest. Talked with the woman who sat next to me in the Tabernacle during the music tape (she started by "Are you a student of religion?" when I asked a number of questions of the pleasant Mormon-lawyer tour-guide) and got going a bit when I found she was on the Trailways $99 deal, knew how to drive, and wanted to go to Yellowstone. I said we should go together, and we started gabbing away at each other --- each bound to our own aims, neither REALLY listening to the other. We went to my place because she wanted to see the maps I had, and I lost 20 trying to call AAA. She got on the phone and gave the kindly Mormon telephone operator a good old-fashioned Brooklyn set-to and got the number free. I talked and got the same answer, "Not open, no tours, roads closed, etc." But he said there WAS a bus from May 1 in the park, and that cars could be rented along the way. She fumed and we went to Trailways and got the same answers. I said she should drive and she blankly refused: roads too bad. Not knowing enough to argue with, I let it go. She ended up saying, "Isn't he cute?" when I showed I was still going. She said if I found anything, call her; I never did. By this time it was 2:55, and I dashed to the bank to find it just closing, but got travelers checks I needed cashed and took them to the basement teller and was shocked to find a CHANGE in denomination cost again for the checks. I argued this, but I'd signed, so I paid $1 for five $20s and took $100 in cash --- the most cash I've had about me for a month. Wanted to eat, but wanted to read while eating, and ended up buying Italian short stories, decided to get to post office before IT closed, and discovered to my delight that BOOK rate was very cheap way of sending, so I sent one packet for 15 and one for 45, the first about twice as heavy as the second. Now I WAS hungry and went to the Far East, a Chinese place I'd seen being opened. Never know SLC had been a holding area for Orientals from the west coast during the war, and figured Chinese food should be pretty good there. It was, and in plenteous supply, and I stuffed myself full between 4:30 and 5:30. Out to pass bookstore (after ogling the neatly dressed Oriental and Caucasian gangster-types that gathered at the same group of tables at the entrance to the restaurant), and in to find a salesman personally acquainted with the trilogy and I got a copy of "That Hideous Strength." Walked back in bright, though windy, sunlight to the hotel, and left a call for 3:15, which the clerk repeated twice to be sure. Read until vaguely dark at 7:30, then got into bed where the uncertainty of the coming day kept me awake awhile, but fell fitfully asleep, woke twice, had strange dreams that I forgot on waking.

THURSDAY, MAY 9. Phone rang and I was up and packed and out while I feared being late, and got awfully wet walking suitcase that half-mile to the bus station. Heard the announcement as I crossed the street against a red light and settled down on the bus with few others. Exceedingly interesting ride through the early morning [Salt Lake City to Ogden: Left the city as the sun, far away from the horizon, colored the sky a royal blue, making the black clouds look like the puffs on the richest of mohair damask. The pure white lights on the Mormon Temple stood out in frozen contrast against this richness, and the gilded statue of Moroni lent authentic luxury. The light on the capitol gleamed greenly against the cut-edge distinctness of the mountains. As we left the city, a scene of typical beauty: a crewcut youth, in cut-off jeans so faded and so tight that in the harsh glare of the bus's headlights the line of demarcation was invisible between fabric and flesh, bounded into a car and drove off. We passed the exit to Bountiful, and 1/3 mile further, the exit to West Bountiful. A gleam on the west horizon resembled the glow from the lights of a city reflected against clouds, but a bit later it was recognized as the sheen of salt-saturated water from the Salt Lake gleaming in the full moon. Clouds confused the mountains, and beyond the bright blue line separating earth and sky appeared clouds, looking like further ranges of mountains, distinctness diminished by distance. Now the light increased in the false dawn of 4:30 so that what were cardboard paste-outs of mountains became 3-D as canyons were lit from the side, and configurations of snow reflected the light and made them appear. The skylight began to rival the streetlights, and the bus lights no longer shone on the road. Finally the dawn acidified the litmus of the sky, turning the lightest of blues to the lightest of pinks, a dark smudge that was a cloud separating the colors. As the bus moved, the sunrise (just as we passed the community of Sunset) moved from one valley to another, so the base took on the litmus to the southern canyons and weakened the pH in the Northern. But later it seemed all pink vanished and the earth received the light from a uniform canopy of icy blue. As mountain reflected itself in a huge flat conical cloud, like the sky-mirror in Lewis' "Perelandra," and a single pale star blinked in the interface, as the bus swung into Ogden, the star rolled down the mountainside and vanished. As we stopped, the sound of myriad birds came from the trees in the park across the way, and clouds became solid as half-light reflected from their tops. Dopy Duck, obviously Donald, sat unmoving between the checking lockers and the telephone booth, waiting for a dime to jump into action. As the bus stood, one lady got off, leaving only three of us, and the other woman curled up to sleep, and the fellow in the back, who had been sleeping all along, grunted and sighed as he switched to a new position. At last, down over the two-floor brick buildings along the north of the park, possibly Ogden's main street, the bottom of the clouds caught the solar fire and turned the genuine rose-pink of true dawn. Empty cabs waited outside, the top green lights proclaiming their willingness to be occupied. The driver emptied his pipe outside the door, fiddled with his seat, clashed gears, levered the door closed, left again to knock the rearview mirror into place, shook the bus as he climbed the stairs and sat down, ground metal against metal for his seat, started the grating buzz of the starter and the bus trembled as it started, backed out of the pier and rode around the station and out into the true dawn of a new day at 5:15. Hotel marquee stated "WEE LY rates."] [Thought nostalgically of the Thalia. What a wonderful theater! Can't wait for their new summer schedule. The sun and moon appeared to be the ends of some cosmic barbell, because as the sun came closer to rising in the east, the moon descended in the west. The pink sky dimmed to a muddy rust on the clouds, and now there were no lights from towns lying asleep at mountain's feet, but the passing Greyhounds still had them on to blink at our bus. Actual rays streamed from the canyon, and puddles reflected pink rather than blue. As the road skirted the rising mountains, the rays went out as dawn remotened as the mountains rose. White gulls flew over clean sorrel horses, and the moon lightened in the clear sky so that the configuration of mountains on the moon looked not so much like shadows on its surface as holes in a round piece of Swiss cheese tacked on the sky. Though the sign said smoking was prohibited in Oregon and Utah, the driver anticipated the Idaho State line, and a surpassingly sweet smoke savor permeated the bus with a combination of wood smoke and coffee smell. Clouds became white-pink and the sky white-blue, but the mountains reared over my right shoulder prevented the sunrise. Forgot: on the road we passed large sections of homes which had pulled themselves from the ground and grown wheels. They appeared preparing to flee from the enemies: ranks of derricks and plows and earthmovers that stood in silent siege against the sky. Spectacular mountain scenery with peaks and dolomites too abrupt for threes, not so tortured as the screaming rock layers at Storm Mountain, but fierce in contrast to the quiet pine and snow-covered slopes between them. I'm being a road-writer. Possibly I should stop this "writing as I see" because my thought processes as I see anything are becoming more and more "write-oriented." I continuously think slowly enough to write, verbalize completely, and think and see in simile and metaphor. I further remove myself from simply "feeling" what I see and think, but even more increasingly THINK intellectually, not emotionally.] ["Garden Fresh" permutes into "Garden Flesh."] [The moon has gone behind very low clouds, so time of moonset is indeterminate. Side peaks are sunlit at 5:45. Lights are out in Brigham, yet a low canyon yields not sunlight directly. As if in desperation to speed sunrise, the bus took off east from Brigham and started climbing through the canyons separating us from the sun. Dark clouds forebode a bad day, but the sun could not stay hidden for long. (Sophie Vessalago and Sophie Wasserman.) Pass through Box Elder and Cache National Forests. Sun rose about 6 into clouds. Logan: woman gets off, but two men on, still five in bus. Leave off guy in Richmond, back to four, but pick up girl in Franklin, Idaho, so back again to five. If sheep get wet, do they shrink?] [Idaho has a good brand name: "Enjoy Farr, better ice cream."] [Many get on at Pocatello, but the event of the ride, saddest, was the leaving of Tom "H" Considine (I think that's his last name, though the Idaho Falls City Directory failed to list the name) in Idaho Falls. After three years, nine months and eleven days in the Marines, as of yesterday, he's just incredibly soft-spoken, sweet and charming. And I WOULD like to see the worm he has tattooed coming out of his "belly button." Among those present was a blind woman and her dog, who gave every indication of being sick. As we left Idaho Falls, inexpressibly lighter, there were all of eight people and one dog on the bus.] [Another Si Clair in Idaho Falls and a new one SI C AIR (sic). South Idaho Falls, is not SIF, but Bach. Two off at Rigby, leaving six, at Rexburg (this count keeping is absurd), three get off, but little old lady gets on, so that's four people, one dog.] ["Cole Blacksmith" in Rexburg.] [Lady and dog off at St. Anthony. This leaves me, the driver, and a little old lady --- probably the least (or equal to least, I think it was only one other lady from Carlsbad to White's City) I'll have or ever have --- unless the old lady gets off at Chester, the single stop before Ashton.] [Cute gimmick "Your coffee free if you find us without a customer."] and got into Ashton as I open mouth to stop driver outside town on the highway, but feel stupid and let him go on (which is good, I never would have found the bus "terminal"). Off at back of drug store and walk to highway across from school and girls playing "move-up" in girlish way. Decide there are as many trucks as cars and get out at 12:25 to hitchhike. I have shirt open at neck and jacket, which I button up, but wind still comes through and numbs hands, and feet are cold and khakis hardly stop it. It's cold and only looking at girls in their sweaters and bare knees helps me survive. The count mounts higher as cars and trucks come infrequently. Clouds move across the sun and I find myself dreading the clouds as it gets colder, and the sun streams across the land with my thanks. I debate going further down the road, but I also think I may have to go back to Ashton and find a place to stay and go back on a bus the next day. I tell myself I'll stay an hour, then say 50 vehicles. Finally get to 21 and 13, and figure I'll have to get to 26 cars to double 13, and figure I'll have to wait for those last four cars. A truck leaves Ashton and slows and STOPS. All caution as to ultimate destination leaves as I heave trunk up on huge step --- the doorknob is just as high as I can reach. I swing up and say "thanks," and only when I'm in, ask if he's going to West Yellowstone. "That's just where I'm going." Seldom have I heard such welcome words. My story comes out, strained from shouting over the motor's roar, and he's strongly handsome, particularly when he smiles and his eye corners crease up. His huge legs are in huge straw jeans ending in larger boots. His hands are horny and hard and ham-like, but his face looks freckled and smooth and soft. We ride mostly in silence, though we both seem to be trying to make talk. We stop to eat in a roadside truck stop and he's a great hit with everyone, and they joke about the wife and kids they don't believe he has. Is EVERYONE here married? Into truck as it starts to snow, and ride into West Yellowstone. The Tetons I saw from the road now feel to be very close as I look at the blank town. He lets me off at a corner and I walk to a drug store to use his blessedly free phone. Try Park transportation and get the out-of-season "The number you have reached is not a working number" and find there IS no available transportation in the park. Digest this and walk back to find a place to stay HERE. Try a small motel, but it's closed and the girl recommends I try the Stagecoach Inn. "Any motels open now are the more expensive ones." I walk to Stagecoach and ask HIM what he knows. Nothing. I bat about looking in the phone book for bicycles and motorcycles and motor scooters, but they're all in Livingston or Rozeman, and those places are all 100 miles away. Try a gas station (Humble) that rented scooters, but they smiled and said they stopped two years ago. No, they didn't know anyone who did. Stop a kid with an English bike in the street, but he said his dad'd skin him if he left it go --- he used it a lot. Back to Stagecoach and the clerk said the room was $5. I said "Nothing cheaper?" and he asked how long I'd stay ("Hard to say, if I can't even get INTO the Park. Many people here?" "Oh, about 35." "Well, with that many, maybe I can hitch a ride into the Park?" "Oh, more'n half are permanent residents, work at the sawmill." Crushed), and I said three, anyway, days, Maybe he'd arrange something, $4, $3.50, then he said the WEEKLY rate was $15, and hinted it MIGHT be proportional to that. I figured this was enough haggling and took room 100. He wanted to help me up, but I said no, I'd do it. Corner room WAY at the other end of a long hall. Unpack and figure to call more people about transportation --- gotta getta round somehow. Leave room and find door doesn't LOCK when you leave. There's no BUTTON. Down to desk clerk, and he comes up to try door, and then tries others and most doors are the same. Amazing, he said, that no one said it before. I thought so too, and he said he'd give me another room. This one was room 4, right next to the desk. I pack and grumble and lug down that long hall for the fourth time and meet maid who says "OF COURSE door can be locked." I scoff and we're BACK down hall and she turns the knob and there it is; feel stupid and down to make the desk clerk feel stupid. He reveals he's only been working there five days and remarks to some janitor that he's off at five, but not the desk clerk. I move into 4 anyway, since I'm SICK of that long walk, and 4 is nicer, anyway, though both have nice private baths. Make a call to Old Faithful Park Service, and it's 45 because call must go through Bozeman, 100 miles away, to get to Old Faithful, 20 miles away. No help, try Mammoth. Operator tries another and gets fellow to talking about bus that transports employees. As she hears that she turns it over to me, and HE can only say I should call Mammoth. In disgust I hang up. I'll hitchhike or WALK the forty miles. If even I could find a BIKE. Get warm clothes out and walk in cold, up Madison and down Glacier and find a trailer rental. Maybe? Into house nearby and it's the same guy as at Humble. No, he does NOT rent motor scooters. Walk quite aimlessly down back toward hotel and an old blue Nash stops nearby. "Where are you going?" "Thanks." I hop into car and tell my sad tale to the old man inside. My aim is obvious, and he kills me with "I had nothing to do today, so I drove all around the park, and got turned back at West Thumb trying to get down to the Tetons." He's retired, nothing to do, rented a cabin for three weeks, seeing the park. "Oh, if I'd known." "I'll take you through the Park tomorrow, if you want." I didn't waste much on denying. "Yes, you've just made my day complete." We stop outside hotel and as he stops, car gives lurch forward. We arrange to meet at 5 am (WOW, but I beat him up at 3:15 THIS morning, he only got up at 4), and he starts to go, but car won't start. My happiness breaks into icy slivers. Oh God, not now! He spoke of weak heart, but we start pushing and it's only when he swings into front seat, red-faced, and starts blowing on the back of his hand and takes a pill out and pops it in his mouth do I think how stupid we BOTH are. He says "All I have to do is calm down, can't get excited; I shouldn't have pushed the car." I volunteer to go to service station, but he grabs cane and limps out to back of car to get tools, then slowly limps, sort of shuffles, back to front and raises hood and looks in. He touches this and it sparks and he tugs this and tries, but no go. Then he fiddles with connection from battery and gets wrench and hammers them. He gets back in and it kicks over. THANK God. "Yes, I should have known that was it. They went bad before, and I got new bolts, but didn't put them on." He wrenches and pliers them off, breathing hard, and I beg to be allowed to help now that I see what he's doing. I vaguely wonder what I'd do if he fainted away from a heart attack, right there on the car, or, as spark zapped and he banged his head against the hood, if he stiffened from an electric shock. He fussed and I sweated and finally he got it fixed, car started, and he drove off as I almost FELL from mental fatigue. Dusk now falling and I get into coffee shop for solitary dinner, yet happy about tomorrow. If only nothing HAPPENS. My mind plays with the idea he may be playing a huge joke, but I feel he must be out there at 5 am. Read a bit and leave call for 4 (from room 4) and fall into bed at 8:30. Fall asleep fairly readily, once the bed gets the horrible new-sheet, cold-night chill off it.

FRIDAY, MAY 10. Wake at 2 am, and again at 3:30 am. Decide I might as well get up, and fellow doesn't call on the phone till 4:20. I shower and get ready and am almost ready to leave room at 4:55 when phone rings AGAIN and the clerk says, "The man who's taking you into the park is waiting for you." I was a bit surprised at the promptness, because the first sight that greeted me as I looked out the window that morning was snow snow snow. Out to car and his face was cheerful, smooth and smiling, and I felt better already. Snow falling thickly, but MOST of it melts as it hits the road. He thinks gate might be closed, and I pray it isn't, and there isn't even a watchman there to say no (at 5 am?). We ride in and decide the first stop should be Old Faithful Inn for breakfast. He talks of how much he likes to watch the animals, and sure enough the fields lower down have herds of elk, and we see a few buffalo far off. Canadian geese, "honkers" as he calls them, are everywhere in pairs, and I tell him of the pair of trumpeter swans the truck driver pointed out to me on the way up. We pass the lower Geyser Basin after Hamilton (?) Point, where the park started. I hop out of car and find no maps, but wander the snow-covered ramps to see the boiling pools. And are they boiling?! I put finger in a little stream and it was warm, and the muddy-clay below feels hardened from the slow baking. The warmth is quite interesting, so when I get to a boiling pool, I stick my finger in, near the edge of course, and almost get boiled. I SHOULD have realized. I could see the bubbles coming up through the impossibly blue water when the wind blew the steam away, but for the most part the atmosphere was mixed: snow falling down and steam flowing up. I could feel the damp heat on my face as I leaned over the edge. And I marveled at the quantities of heat present. That marvel did nothing but increase through the day. Saw the mud flats, boiling in different colors and the new ponds formed since the earthquake, and looked at the cracks and sunken levels since that cataclysm. Had only wanted to go out and back because Mr. Parsons had to sit in the car, but went on to the next, and the next, and kept on around. Coming back I saw indistinct tracks in the snow and figured he'd come out. Later he said they must have been bear! The colors in the muds and waters were unbelievable, but the heat had to be believed: in many places there was simply no snow on the ground or on the boardwalk, and in other places it was ankle deep (I know, my feet were wet for the rest of the day). Back to car, completely amazed, and went on to the next geyser basin. Out again for small spurts, but I felt I could watch the water boil for days. We finally got to Old Faithful and got out of car, determined to wait the forty minutes. It smoked and puffed and every so often gurgled, but I waited for no reason because when he tooted me back to the car, he said since the earthquake it had been completely unpredictable --- it may or may not go off at any time. Oh. Into the Inn and stared at the six-floor ceiling of the wooden lobby. Breakfast was my treat and I was again pleased at the pleasant college people running around keeping house for the old, sexless tourists. Out again and I suggested the Steamboat Geyser in Norris Basin, so we drove up there, all the while fearing to be hemmed in by snow. Norris was even better, with geysers going off all around and the Black Growler roaring off steam. An incredible confluence of streams made a red, yellow and green ribbon of clay, distinctly marked, running under the footbridge. The pools bubbled and Spasm Geyser shot up fifteen feet. Mudpots bubbled and I went up the hill and looked at more pools and never got to Steamboat, which guide said had cooled down somewhat. I suggested we make the circuit and he said OK, so we went across to the Canyon and I again felt guilty he couldn't walk far, and raced down the steps to gape over the railing into the Canyon of the Yellowstone. The snow falling past obscured the far vision, but it made the close view more fierce. Snow fell away and fell down into the chasm where the rocks were too steep to hold it. The roar of the water, brownish, came up from below and the yellow burned even though the sun was behind clouds. I raced back up and we continued to lake, vacant, and then to West Thumb, through roads that were thankfully good, though the snow at the side of the road was eight feet high, covering the second of two Continental Divide signs entirely. Part of the road was being redone, and the ruts were fierce, but he seemed OK so I sat back and enjoyed them. No animals in these parts, but the view along the lake was beautiful, and we stopped more: at the Paint Pots where lavender and pink mounds were built from the burping bubbles, and again at the Dragon's Mouth and the Mud Volcano. Amazing amazing! We got back to Old Faithful, it had stopped snowing and I wanted to walk around the back to the others: Old Faithful went off with a long roar and the so-often-pictured spume of steam and water dozens of feet into the air. I laughed nearly hysterically at my good luck, and we got back through Madison and to West Yellowstone at just 2 pm, though I felt I'd seen most of the park. I tried to get him to take me over the Tetons and back to Ashton, but he said he had to work Saturday and Sunday, and seemed not at all anxious, so I dropped it. Said goodbye and dazedly back into the hotel, feeling I'd been out for twice the nine hours I had been. Read a bit and got out to the coffee shop to eat alone [Woman eating alone in Stagecoach with hand pressed against her chest as if "My land, that I should be eating alone." The flush of the toilet immediately and perfectly reminds me of a boiling mud pot. Leave the room at 7:30, marveling that the bed is not made yet. Back at 8, after dinner, look in drawer, throw coat on bed, fuss about, read bit of Mormon, take shade off lamp to read and THEN realize that the bed is made. Marvelous feeling of the miraculous.] and lengthy, quite good meal about 7 pm, then back to finish "That Hideous Strength." Still felt not like bed, so I maneuvered the chair around in front of the mirror and came with gusto, then decided I would leave the next morning and left a call for 7 and got to bed at 10, completely glad that I'd stood on that street corner and let "four more cars" go by before I decided to turn back. I laughed at Mr. Hoffman at Greyhound and everyone along the way to Mrs. Wasserman and the woman at Trailways and the man at Greyhound who laughed and scoffed when I said I was going to see Yellowstone. Even when things looked bleakest, something turned up, and that something gave me what I wanted. I felt very grateful to Mr. Parsons, but if HE hadn't turned up, probably someone else would (a dangerous frame of mind) have.

SATURDAY, MAY 11. Wake at 7 and turn the light switch and nothing happens. Debate about taking a bath and decide not to since the water's probably controlled by electricity. Get everything packed and ready to leave room when lights come on and I get shaver and shave, anyway, and out to find that's the first time it happened in ages. I doubt it, but I did hear thunder before falling asleep last night and there may have been a storm. He says $5 a night and I ask for regular fellow. He said, "Oh, that's right, he said something about $4." "No, he said something to me about $3.50, or part of the $15 per week." "Wait, I'll go see." I wait, wondering, and he comes back all smiles, "Well, that was easy, how's $5 for both nights?" "Sure, fine," and I jumped up and down mentally with happiness. How good can things get? Walk out toward Yellowstone and get half a block to find I'd forgotten to return key. Walk back to give it, and again to Yellowstone Street. No traffic at all at 8 am, except for two loaded-with-kids cars. Walk entire length of West Yellowstone to pick up any who might be leaving motels between. But I can't remember how truck came into town, and I see cars zooming down other streets, so when I get to the end of the motels, and it appears road curves to the right, I follow it, and sure enough it joins up with all other roads --- I should have gone the other direction, and I end up walking a distance of exactly halfway around the entire town of West Yellowstone, and my bag is certainly getting heavy. But only one more car passes. Finally do recognize the main entrance, and figure I should get a bit onto the highway, so I walk 100 yards more to the Ashton sign and set bag down and wait. Waiting is not too pleasant because as I look to the south I can see what looks like a cloud coming from the south and east, covering the airport and slowly coming up the road. If it's fog, I'll never be seen to hitchhike. If it's snow or rain, I'm drenched. No cars, no trucks. A few pass quickly. I start counting again, realizing that if I have to get up to 21 cars and 13 trucks I'll never get to Ashton on time. Stand about 25 minutes, and though it's colder, there's no wind blowing and I'm warmly dressed (and even beginning to sweat a bit with apprehension). This wait is not nearly so uncomfortable as the one to the park. And a fellow in a rattly old Chevy stops and pushes aside camp gear in the rear to get my bag in and lets me in. He's going to Blackfoot --- good --- one ride all the way. We get into the cloud and it turns out to be rain, which is bad, because he has no working windshield wipers, but good because it isn't snow and doesn't stick. It turns to snow. We continue on, somewhat slower, and every so often he sticks his head out the window and brushes off the windshield to make sure we're still on the road. Traffic is very light, and after awhile he forgets about avoiding potholes and barrels on. The snow turns back to rain, and the snow on the windshield turns to ice, which the rain melts and cracks and blows off. We can see again. He's attractive in a large, dirty- fingernailed sort of way, and he keeps reaching down to his jeans, stretched tight over his knees, to adjust his crotch. His smile is nice and his crewcut blond head is masculine and square. He's married with two kids. We talk about my trip and Idaho weather and finally get to the intersection at 9:45 --- he even made GOOD time. As he starts up to drive away, the motor fails, and I leave him, bent into the mouth of the open car hood, to cross the highway and lug back to the drugstore. Bus doesn't leave till 12:45, so I write postcards, go out for breakfast, dropping the key and attached door spring down the toilet in the process, and hand the spring back dripping wet, and mail cards and back to sit at soda fountains and read "Vipers" and look with amazement at the number of people during the day who come in for Cokes, root beers, lemonades, sodas and sundaes. 12:45 finally comes and back on regular Greyhound service. It feels so secure. The bus trip back down to Pocatello is cloudy, and the Tetons are obscured, but towns are pleasant and land is rolling. Signs ["High School Band and Chorus present Spring Concert, May 16, 8:00, High School Gym, No Admission." Fine, I'll not go. I WAS the only one in the bus for the ride from the rear of City Drug to the front, but then two women got on. Rexburg, Idaho, incredibly SEXY.] [Idaho sells, Heaven forbid, Elephant Fertilizers.] [Trying to find a bus, a cab, a motorcycle, a motor scooter, a BICYCLE to get around with, around Yellowstone, I felt like a butterfly or moth battering, battering, battering away at a flame in a glass globe.] have more interest than scenery. There's an immense Snake River Canyon crossed by bridge just west of Twin Falls, and I gasp at the sight, which passes quickly into more boring territory [Blind man, without cane, got on at Rigby, Idaho. "Let's see (!)," I said, as he fumbled for the seat next to me, "there's an empty seat right back here," and guided his hand back one seat.] [Idaho's routes 20 and 191 between Ashton and Idaho Falls is blessed by a number of GOOD highway posters, with cartoons, caricatures of dealers, and clever use of people and expression and color.] [Bonneville Lumber Company is "Fencing Headquarters" in Ucon, Idaho.] [Ad bargains in Shelby, Idaho: Weiners: 2 lbs/79; $1.98 for 5# box.] ["Honey for sale, from producer to consumer." They missed the chance of "From bee to you."] [Capitol, Chief, Crest, Orpheum, Star-Lite Drive-in and Sunset Drive-in, and Mrs. Harold Prince, are in Pocatello, but no Princess Theater.] [And on the MARQUEE of the Capitol "Pocatello's Family Theater," the legend, "Now paying, the highest property tax in history." And the movie-ad-less exterior had only one sign, inside the box office, "Adults 60, Children 25."] [In middle of nowhere, with absolutely no other clue, the sign appears: "Next time / TAKE THE / COOL ROUTE / Go Underground." Followed by another "LOST? / Keep Going / You are making / good time anyway." And in the same black letters on yellow: "Road Constrcution, 500 Yds," but there IS. And "Don't just / sit there / Nag your husband."] [Now that I see the "Stinker" chain of Gas Station signs (plus skunk), I think THEY do it.] ["Nude Swimming Prohibited in this Area." (Near NO water).] [Central Idaho, but for glimpses of FAR-south snow peaks and sections of the Snake River Canyon before Burly, looks much like rolling Ohio farmland, except that it's nearly all under irrigation. And except for the potato storage sheds, looking like two garages, lined up, pointing opposite directions, connected by a huge mound of earth with grass growing on it and green wood boxes placed along the crest, one every 40 feet.] Five distinct points are mapped out this day: West Yellowstone to Ashton by 12:45; Ashton to Pocatello to change busses by 3 pm; Pocatello to Twin Falls to change busses at 6 pm; and Twin Falls to Portland from then on. From Pocatello a heavily tanned, heavily built, heavily sexual fellow sleeps behind me and across the aisle to Twin Falls, and there he entrusts me with his Air Force bag while waiting to get on the Portland bus. The bus is crowded and I sit in next-to-rear seat and he sits next to me. We listen to hilarious episodes in back about cars, and doll of a fellow shows interest in my neighbor, and when he asks "Which of you was going to Portland?" his face empties completely when I say it's me, and my buddy says he's getting off at Pendleton. He hardly speaks to us after that. We start talking and he talks about being stationed in Mississippi and how wild the bars there are because it's legally dry and thus they have no age limit, and thus 14-year-olds can be found drinking in the bars, which of course serve drinks. He talks of Honda ride across the Tetons and now going for his mother's station wagon in Omak to get scooter. He's in electronics school now, and I start in on computers and give him the cut cube problem and he does FAIRLY well, but I have to explain the sphere and go quickly through the twelve ping pong balls. He talks of places he's been: pyramid house in LA, and I talk about Walt Swan's in LA and John Connolley's in NYC and about mine. He marvels that I don't know how to drive, and we talk on and on into the night when everyone's asleep and the bus is dark, barreling over the rolling countryside. It feels almost like the surface of the fantastically low clouds that rolled along earlier between Pocatello and Twin Falls, seeming to move right along with the bus, ominous puffs of gray and black, scarcely 100 feet off the ground. We settle down to sleep, and his knee feels good against mine, but when I juggle to increase the pressure, he moves away. His head sinks down near my shoulder, but doesn't stay. I can't get to sleep simply thinking about the hunk of man next to me. His feet gyrate around and he rests fitfully and I punch pillow and get out for a quick snack with him at 11 --- sandwiches and shakes. At 2:30 we're in Pendleton and he settles down for a meal and I have an IMMENSE dish of strawberry shortcake. Back to bus and since the back is emptier it isn't so hot, yet it still smells strangely and I can't decide whether it's me or the doll, now alone, sleeping stretched out on the back seat, but tossing about as if sick. Drift off to sleep, finally, as we leave Pendleton.

SUNDAY, MAY 12. Wake about 6:30 about sixty miles outside Portland, and the Columbia River valley is extremely beautiful in the early morning. Carved bluffs almost as good as Arizona, and softer because the trees and morning mist line both sides of the river, and it's sad to see new dams being built because it will tame the rushing river through carved channels into a series of lakes through the tops of these channels, which would be not far removed from rolling hills. Pass Multnomah Falls, and I regret I'm sitting on wrong side of bus to get full view, but river vistas make up for it. View calms down near Portland, and there's a huge tangle of new-laid concrete east of the Willamette River for expressways. Cross the river and into the slum areas of town, again, after fairly nice, though industrialized, suburbs. Wonder where the Y is because I have no indication on the city map, and it turns out directly across the street from the bus station. What luck. The doll professes interest in the Seattle bus, and I lose hope of getting him at the Y. Buy papers and check in and read all through them and clip clippings for the next few days and read "Generation of Vipers" and unpack and fuss around room and finally, after getting in at 8:30, it's 3:30 and a typical day has almost passed. Out to wander the streets for a restaurant and end up at Roberts, a glorified coffee shop with a fully decent meal of turkey, and am horrified to see the odd couples and trios who come here for the Mother's Day meal. A son and his mother, a woman and an old couple, a couple and an old woman, married couples. A rather sick parade of people who have nowhere better to go than Roberts for a celebration meal. Out and back to Hilton, across from Y, to take the tour through for their opening ceremonies. Nice layout with fountain and sculpture on ground floor and rising to sky through a second-floor patio with glass-box eating room on one side and a swimming pool (later a blue-lit jewel outside my night window) on the other. Through flower-strewn restaurants and bars and over paper-covered carpets through typical suites with NO drawer space, TV, portable beds, and delightful window area. Take away the windows, though, and the rooms would be mediocre to poor, less practical than a YMCA room. Little old ladies totter up and down the white concrete back stairs as the tour goes down from rooms to basement and huge and attractive convention halls and meeting rooms and dining areas --- really planned for the convention in mind. Some of the designs were poor [One can easily predict catastrophe for the small cocktail tables area off the second floor bar at the Portland Hilton. Heating units, raised one inch off the floor, are placed in front of the drapes, before the large windows, perfect for knocking the chair against, or worse, perfect for knocking against with the foot, tripping, grabbing the draperies and crashing through the tall glass panes.] [Tuesday, April 23, written on Sunday, May 12, thus I merely got three weeks behind. As they sometimes describe the stock markets, the last three weeks could be described as a "period of generally declining" spirits. There were days of notable exceptions, of course, and none of the days were really NOT pleasant. Reading isn't generally accepted as the way to pass vacation days, yet I've had so many of them I can afford to waste a few.], but all in all a pleasant hotel and tour. Back to shower and write a bit, and I shudder that I'm three weeks behind. Finish four days and walk down to the Public Auditorium (in the worst section of town) and buy a $1 seat in the balcony for the contemporary oratorio "A Child of Our Time." The program started with an old symphony a la concerto grosso, and the Portland Junior Symphony strings were good, but the brass was bubbly and embarrassingly poor. The massed chorus of over two hundred was impressive, and the oratorio was interesting enough. Hardly will I see it again, but I didn't feel like walking out and I had not TOO hard a time staying awake, though I was very tired from the little sleep the previous night. Delighted to find it was still light at 9 pm for my long stretch back east, and walked back to the Y and fell into bed a little after 10:30. NO trouble getting to sleep.

MONDAY, MAY 13. Up at 8 greatly refreshed and walk to Gray Lines, in some hotel, to find Bonneville tour going in hour. Plunk down at lunch counter and have pancakes and read the paper longly and get called out for the start of the tour at 9:45. Only two other fellows on tour [Oregon: Benjamin Franklin Savings and Loan on block front with Poor Richard's Restaurant, same type brick and white frame window architecture.] [Mt. Helena looks remarkably like Fuji.] [Japanese split leaf maple has RED leaves year long.], and driver, I suspect, gives us short goods, particularly at the first stop, the Shrine of the Immaculate Mother, which Ann Jensen told me not to miss. No one, particularly the driver, was interested in staying the forty minutes allotted to take the elevator to the top, so we saw the chapel and I gaped at the growing green trees and cliffs, and because of the cliffs and streams and great shady dampness, the stones of the floor of the shrine itself were overgrown with fine moss, the whole looking literally like an immense soft green carpet of rich fineness. The light through the trees was underwater-sun-bright, and the leaves filtered it and the blossoming dogwood lent patches of purest white to lighten the green light. Birds sang and water dripped and rushed, and there was a clarity to the morning air and the sun's rays through, and in the trees, that lifted fog and shadows and caused a literal lightness and floating of body. I told myself I'd go back just to sit and soak in the shaded sun, like to the sound of breakers on rocks on the Pacific, and have all the joints washed and the nerves reinsulated where the unnatural treeless world had scraped them to the very neurons, leaving them unprotected from the slightest irritations. But I didn't go back. On the way back to the car, the people walking fast in front of me, I went through the Stations on the Cross backward and enjoyed solitude and the shifting light. Back to car and a remarkable view of some of the surrounding hills (the last time I was to see them as the mist closed in around then damp Portland). Along an upper road and the Columbia Valley and flower-blazing lawns with azalea and the lavender-blood Japanese split-leaf maple. Dogwood and rhododendron and tulips and green of unbloomed rose plants gave Portland an Eden-air. The road climbed into the hills and the roads were narrow and wound between fern cliff and cement balustrades which had been infested by ferns and split by damp and looked like what I would expect 500-year-old English roads to look like. The small transparent section at the top of the limousine had a handy view to rocks stretched out over the highway, and we saw up close some of the tiny falls I'd noticed all along that route of the bus coming in, only now the road was in the midst of the woods. Stop at a stupid pergola on a point of view and gazed down the river into gray morning haze and up into green light and gray waters. We stop at Multnomah Falls, second highest in US, for lunch at 11:30, and I welcome chance to pass up meal and their company and explore the falls. The rock path winds damply up the hill, and the water swoops down into a shallow hollow with such speed that it appears not to enter the water but to splash off the top as if it were concrete, the reactive force filling the bowl with, not spray, but an actual windy RAIN. Walk down on the rocks off the path and the wind is wrong and the hollow is wrong because there's no place to escape the vertical drive of the splintered water from the base of the fall. Get literally soaking wet, and my collar is damp and my jacket smells like fornicating lambs. Head out, blinded, to the bridge, and stand in the shade of the one tree at the brink, standing IN the torrent, and see the radiance and shadows spilling over the hill with the water. The path continues up the left of the falls and I bumble up it, worried about time, but hoping to get a quick trail to the top of the falls. With the huge swooping switchbacks away from the falls, there are good sights along the Columbia and some tree-obscured views of the falls. Climb higher and get 3/4 way up and find that the path will never reach the top in my time limit. Rocks get wet and vegetation drips clearly as path gets near that roaring hollow of wind and water, but the sun and dry air quickly dry me out and I can raise my hand to my hair without pulling it away dripping wet. Look out over the falls one last time --- and the restaurant and car quite directly below, and decide I'd better turn back. Despair making it back down the path in time, with its metal-wire-guarded cutbacks, but see a small trail going down almost straight under the topmost wire, and I slither and skid down hill, catching onto branches, and lowering off tree boles and bouncing and sending small avalanches to the bottom under my shoes. More glimpses of the falls and sprays of mist, and in no time I'm back to the bridge. Race down to the car to find one tourist missing. Takes him about ten minutes to be found (he looked at falls and started eating too late) while I get far view from the highway of the beautifully situated falls --- made for chance encounters [At Multnomah: "Hey, Elmer, that looks like your sister's car." "Yeah, it looks it." Pause as he looks in back seat. "Hey, it is." He looks in front seat, incredulous. "It is." Looks at license plate on the blue Valiant "4Z-1512" and looks at the license plate on his green Valiant: 4Z-1513. "Yeah, it IS." Definite, and they trot down the path to the falls. (They'd been in the restaurant, and beautifying a back patio which might have a view of the falls through the trees was an orange and green alternate checkerboard plastic opaque roofing that shed garish sun on the tablecloths and blocked all possibility of view.] [Pendleton the location of the "wheat ranches."] [A tug with a force-field of invisible cables is pulling logs like a child would herd toothpicks on a mud stream.] [Oneonta Gorge, between granite cliffs between Multnomah Falls and Horsetail Falls --- a GREAT place to go wading in late summer when stream loses depth and swiftness.] Drive out to Bonneville and only get glimpse of generators through windows of power station. The fish tanks are interesting for giant sturgeon resting on the shallow bottom [Albino salmon flecking thousands of fish with white. They are made to spawn by man for milk and eggs, and they die naturally after they spawn. "It's nature's way." But why are those artificially spawning handled by men with bloody hands? They have almost as many people at Bonneville as fish. For yesterday, 600 fish, 1400 people; in the year 601,000 fish, 400,000 people. Odd ratio, and people are so much bigger. As all dozed on the car coming back, the snow tires hummed monotonously to the driver.], and the keepers walk across maturing pens and throw what looks like red floor-compound into the salmon tanks and the dark patches gathered under the shadows of trees burst apart and become flashes of sun-silver as thousands of fingerlings fight for their food. No fish through the ladders, which were somehow unimpressive in their five shallow falls. Look at displays and marvel that even the dam site is covered with flowers in bloom and labeled. Back into car and dash directly back to town, and shout to be left off at the Paramount, where I see "Battle Beyond the Sun" and "Hercules and the Amazon Women" [See a good American double feature at the Paramount in Portland: "Hercules and the Amazon Women" (made by a French-Italian co-production, and dubbed in English except for the clipped British tones of Reg Park) and "Battle Beyond the Sun" (made by a Russian film company and dubbed in English). But the Amazon women were from Atlantis, and the Russians goofed or else the dubbers goofed --- as the editors did when they neglected to cover up one of the CCCP's on the rocket nose, and when they left the Pb and others going on the "Sputnik" floating by --- and the temerity of the dubbers to use Mercury and Discovery as the names on the phony movie. How did "American-International" pictures, or the "Filmgroup Presentation" get away with putting all American names as credits to what were CERTAINLY Russian actors? Did they transliterate and simplify? Technically the SF film was poor, the rockets changing shape and the fire changing color and many scenes repeated, exactly, from one time to another. Whatever the US translated as stopping transmission of the message from an airless planet to an airless space platform as "ionosphere blackout" or the exchange "The planet Mars absorbs the Sun's energy, thus there must certainly be life on it." The touch of having the wife of the astronaut doing the countdown was too much. And the monsters? Why throw in the monsters? The one with the eye on top and the HUGE, wet, vagina with TEETH in it sideways was someone's Freudian slip. And how the smaller creature managed to eat the larger creature (with that red hairy asshole on top) is yet to be explained. Awfully poor and funny films.] [Vibrascrew?] Two rather terrible movies --- but they help pass the time. Out at 6 and eat in the Y cafeteria and write a few more days and feel real good about it. Get to bed at 10 pm and toss and turn and feel tired but not like going to sleep. So I get up and attempt to come six times [OK, it's 10:25, May 13, and I've just decided to come six times. Let's see. Time one is surprisingly hard. I'm tired, I came this morning, and there's the feeling that I'm doing it because I want to do it, not for the pleasure. I ejaculate maybe fourteen good-sized drops on the table at 10:27, in four groups to which I add a fifth as "going-down drip." Five is good, since it should thus go down by one each time to the end, where there's none. Sometimes I have a desire for the second, but I'll certainly have to produce it this time. At 10:35 I've strained my calves to drop four splotches on the table, each of which contains a least two drops; two contain three drops, that's ten in all. That's coming twice, the white curds are not nearly so apparent, and the whole mass is more uniform. I had to strain and think about sexy people for the second. I usually have to do THAT for the third, though I certainly don't get ten drops for the third. Well, I START on the third (perfectly limp) at 10:38. End the third, perspiring wetly and breathing hard and dry, at 10:48, a whole eight drops in, strangely, five areas. I guess it's because I had to work so hard at it, and because the first few jerks of the orgasm were particularly rough, and split the sperm into separate drops. The FRONTS of my calves are sore now, and I can smell my mixed smell of sweat and come and old drawers. My nose and throat are dry and my forehead and the upper triangle of my back is wet. My balls vibrate a bit as they lower, and the muscle inside the leg quivers a bit. My hand is obviously unsteady. That's three. The first five have lapsed into four, the stiff high curds becoming fluid and clear. In the third, the come only had a few spirals of white, the rest was clear. Will start four, lying down, I guess, at 10:52. Terribly limp. Fourth came, with GREAT effort, after I stood up when getting nowhere in bed --- seems being short of breath and gasping has something to do with coming as far as I'm concerned. Came in six drops in three puddles, with a fragment scattered away from the three, hardly worth counting. Only the last double drop has a spiricule of semen, the rest were dark and clear. Came at 11:08 and at 11:10, I'll start the fifth. This time I'll try using saliva --- though lying down didn't help much LAST time. At 11:30 I wearily leave my sore cock alone, sit immobile and disgusted until I dry. Fuss about fellow above who starts strumming on his stupid guitar at 11:30, but he stops at 12 when I get to bed, and, feeling the muscles tense under the more-than-an-hour's strain, fall to semi-coma sleep.] Stagger to bed after it and feel the tightness in my legs for the next three or four days from the terrible strain. Feel understandably disgusted with myself, yet a bit proud now I KNOW that I've done four, can suspect that I MAY have (but probably not) done five, and still know that six would certainly be a new record, which I won't attempt until I'm home and have a good supply of rousing pornography around and am in condition. AND, since I came that morning, it makes five in one day (though not in one session) certain.

TUESDAY, MAY 14. Up late, probably, and write some and read some Italian short stories and make a list of things to do. This quiets my mind, which is getting more and more full of the end of the trip. When it gets as easy to count the days left as it once was to count the weeks left, the pressure to be through increases twice. Call the Jensen's around noon and Mrs. asks me out to dinner, and I stall not at all. Decide I'll catch the 2:45 bus to get there at 3:30, eat lunch and mail packages and get to pleasant Art Institute [Portland Art Institute: certainly like Kandinsky's early paintings (when he was 40) better than later splashes of color. "Rapallo," for example, the "huge-point" illusion of rough color that I like so much --- bold, impressionistic, and REAL. But as soon as 1909 he began moving to improvisations --- #3 being Gauguin in color and almost completely formless. Later, occasionally, in 1923-25 when he got near Miro in humor and Tanguey in linear fantasy, he showed a bit of what I like. He certainly had FUN in later life --- it turns out the only part I don't like is the "dimly thoughtless" splashes between 1912-22. He got more patterned, more precise, more humorous, more "precious and precocious" if you want.] [Kress gave 3000 items to 45 American galleries at $50 million. If the painting doesn't show teeth, it's probably NOT by Carlo Crivelli (1430-1495), Venetian. Three Saints, by Sodoma, Siena (1477-1749) with an almost unblemished, almost nude St. Sebastian in the center foreground, might give reason for nickname. One facet of Bronzino's style, he did NOT know how to paint eyelashes, and his brows were usually awfully plucked.] [Paul Stone, born 1929, American, is certainly talentedly gay.] [Magnificent green and fragrant summer afternoon as I exit Portland Art Association, building built 1932 and sit on green bench en pleine air under the bronze of Teddy Roosevelt in the park. The green is that unbelievable "seen through new leaves" green, and the breeze is light and cool, to war against the perpendicular sun's rays which, if they concentrate on one spot, produce a decided warmth. When I came to the museum the students for the art classes which are held inside were out for lunch. Most of the fellows were in the park across the street, bending and chasing and laughing and punching like young colts enjoying the grace of the grass after the fluid of the womb. They moved and young muscles expanded and flushed under clothing made warm by the sun, and their faces emanated the halo of youth. On the steps the girls lounged, sitting flat on the cement, their legs flat out, spread out in front so wide that the toes had no laxness to point to the side, so far to the sides were the heels, so they pointed straight up to the curdled clouds in the mist-blue sky. They tucked the skirts above their knees and gathered the cloth in a clot at the crotch. They leaned back and shook their heads, and one said in a tone that implied she'd said it a few times before my ears heard this time, "I want to go swimming." The thought of water just liquefied from snow and ice, as the Pacific is near Portland, sent a small chill rattling. An artistic couple, she with loose hair and arty lank clothes hanging not to flatter but to conventionally cover, he with torn-off trousers for shorts and a Brillo beard and greasy face under sunglasses, shared their dinner, what looked like the two halves of some foot-wide bread doughnut with small nut-like specks on top. They waved their pieces in the air as they talked. Others slumped on curved spines and counted toes wriggling in the May air. If pigeons weren't so common, and seen only rarely, when shown in zoos, man would look at their beauty and marvel at colors and smoothness and not look with disgust as they poked by your feet as you sat quietly on park benches.] [Portland sure has lots of gay kids around the Art Gallery --- Let's hope they show at the bars tonight.] ["Space Shot All Set" and "Space Shot Put Off," two adjoining headlines by the Oregonian and the Oregon Journal, respectively.] and see it and write a bit and get back to Y to change and to bus station with fly open [Tucked my shirt in and did NOT zip up my fly. Rode down the elevator with two people in it, out into packed lobby, across street to Greyhound, into packed waiting room, down to get a 35 passable shine, up to wander and look at books, and wander completely around lobby, looking down all aisles, my coat on my left arm. Bus announced and I wander out and get on, sit down, open the window, put my coat aside, see that I'm riding the Tualaten Valley Busses for 70 to Hillsboro, and only THEN discover my fly is open. Close it.]. Ride out through rather typical "rural-urban" suburbia, unbroken by long unbroken stretches, but filled with shops and stations and stands and centers and homes. Out at drug store and phone and she says she'll be there and is. She's short and perky and like many older ladies says Mrs. X, and then pauses and rather distastefully says their first name. Guess I'll be "over the hill" when they freely reply to MY first name with THEIR first name. Drive out to the home and feel vaguely embarrassed because there's nothing so awfully different about it to praise, in fact their lawn is somewhat more drab than most in the upper-middle-class block, lined with birch, and their home is filled with the ordinary litter of modern furniture and antique bric-a-brac that no one can bear to throw away. I end by praising it as simply a HOME, which it is, not merely a house, and as the first I'd been in in some time. The closest was four weeks ago at the O'Shea's. We sit and babble away about my travels, her son's travels (who looks a DOLL from the beautiful portrait photo of him they had. He must be gay, living with some MD on 13th Street and traveling and in theater and radio work, and now in advertising at Breck), her travels, the storm there three months ago which tore down trees, the roof from the school, and prompted a call from their worried son. I thought of the Chinese "Romance Soon" fortune, and became quite infatuated with Jack Jensen right there in his living room. I fantasized later meeting, loving, etc., etc.). We talked of the World's Fair and both of us were determined not to let the talk lag, or we might see how rather silly it was --- talking away simply because SHE was married to a man whose brother's daughter WORKED with me in New York. Mr. Jensen came home, and we talked a bit, while she started on supper, then he put TV on and left and I sat as she came back to talk. It was pleasant and casual and I felt under no constraint. He suggested looking at their baseball team --- they'd won 22 straight and we drove out to the field at the end of the third with the score 9-0, and saw them drive in 13 runs, and most of the batting order came around twice. Everyone agreed it was a bore, that they should forfeit the game, and that the other team was possibly feeling somewhat poorly about that time. We went back home and sat down to an excellent steak dinner with a fresh salad and baked potato and strawberry shortcake for dessert and milk and cake. I think that combination may rapidly become my favorite meal. We all helped clear the table and she started the dishwasher and they started on a tour of the town. Showed me the primate research center of Portland University and tried to show me the closed zoo. Drove around Washington Park and looked at trees and dogwood and railroad and out to city. Into the rose park and looked at rhodos and azaleas and back to car for the city. Conversation lagged by now and they started picking at each other slightly. The relationship began to lose beauty just as I left car. I looked at time, 8:30, and decided there was just enough time to catch the movies at the Guild and saw "Tight Little Island," rather poor except for a few pleasant scenes, and "The Balcony," surprisingly dirty [That reference was somehow lost: only note here was this: From Portland Paper: "Hazelbauer, tenor, also will be head in a group of operatic areas."], with a real smacker of a Lesbian kiss. WOW did Shelley turn it on. The nude torso, sadly, was missing. Out and tried cruising a bit, but kicked myself back to the Y and into bed. I was tired.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 15. Up in time for the tour again, but in this case there was no time for breakfast. It seems I get less and less out of tours, but I guess that's OK since this was my LAST one. Into full limousine this time, even filled with noise from some infernal clanking device in the rear trunk and complete with an old-maid school teacher next to me who insisted on talking about everything. I nodded and smiled weakly as much as I could and in the afternoon sat up in the front seat. The morning tour was strictly residential. Toured the downtown section though there really wasn't much there, and then to the old section, nondescript, and the Forestry Building is interesting, looking a bit like a roofed forest with its massive center columns each a section of a single tree trunk. Get the quick tour around wood and pulp and plywood and products exhibits, and out to car to start riding around the western hills. The houses were grand and large, and we stopped again at the City Rose Garden --- the roses had not bloomed that morning, so the park was little different from when the Jensens had shown it to me. All through the canyons, looking like a minute Los Angeles almost, with the surrounding hills circling the lower built-up valley and many homes with a five-floor facade, two being simply concrete foundations, and one even built partly on stilts, but not nearly so completely, or so high, nor so projected, as Walt's. The lawns were much given to ivy and heather, some terraced so that they rose more than they went back from the street front. The highest hill was occupied again by a water company and a television tower (like Denver), which seemed a bit of a waste, but the many homes were quite beautiful and the "dead end" roads that we didn't get to, that went to the tops of the lesser hills, were probably as good again or better than the roads the tour took. But you can only look at so many houses, and the tour got a bit long for the little in the specific that it showed. Now if he knew who LIVED there, even though the names might not be familiar, it would at least distinguish some rather than others. Back to the bottom of the hill and leave us out for lunch. I want not to get stuck with the crew, so I take off to Hilare's for lunch, and have a good barbequed ham sandwich. Stand on a street corner for the half-hour left and enjoy people walking past --- an unending source of amusement, beauty, disgust and attraction [The hotel business must be pretty good because the Brown Palace in Denver had a new tower (vaguely same brownstone style with rounded corners) that probably doubled their capacity. And now in Portland the Beacon, which also had the dining room which was the only place in the state to make the Holiday guide, had foaled almost a duplicate of itself in red brick and white window frames on the half-block adjacent, the basement being livened by the local copy of Trader Vic's --- I wonder how many of THOSE there are --- probably somewhat more than the number of cities benefited by the Kress collection.] [Sign in Forestry building, "Please keep dogs out."] [Scotch Broom (like forsythia) and Spanish broom (smaller and bushlike) dotted fields with yellow. On Portland West Hills, fellow and girl in a black Jaguar coupe walking a huge yellow Afghan hound.] [Amazing the office space in many cities for unemployment buildings. And to branches of motion picture companies (now mostly for sale).] To the limousine to sit next to the driver and drive east to more neat residential sections, by way of Lloyd Center which we drive through the garages of, and to the rhododendron test center. The huge bushes are head high and are Van Gogh splashes of color on the grounds, and the path through these and over a small pond with ducks swimming and into another grove of plants is quite charming. How does one describe a garden? Colors and slightly altering smells, and soft grass underfoot and a fresh breeze as the chlorophyll shoots streams of pure oxygen into the air under the potent sun's rays. Silence of leaf brushes and petal leaning on petal. I wander in grove-center and laze my head from side to side to catch clusters, and feel them on my hands and see their hues above and beside and below me. I feel akin to them and luxuriate in them, having the feeling as if I'd already stripped and started rolling in a bed of the blossoms, savoring them with my whole body, and possibly tasting them too, so as to bring the last of my senses into intimacy with them. Some were newly peeping out of green casements, some were rotten-red and wilted, a moist rot rather than a dry crackle, on the stems. Blazes of colors and combinations of colors, and the names meant nothing because this was a riot of emotion, not thought. Straggle back to car and look very closely at bed of small broom, and, funny, a fly, scouring tiny plants for bits of goodness --- they sate their senses fully, standing on them, heads buried in them, sucking and devouring parts of them. How close can you get to something (or someone) than by devouring and thereby ingesting something internal to it as something internal to yourself? True vital communion. Drive a short way to Lambert Gardens and these were more formal and more intellectual, less emotional gardens. Neat gardens and borders and hedges, with cranes and herons and flamingos on the grounds and a few peacocks, too. Tulips and azaleas and other unknown flowers, and a ghost tree and poor statuary and striking color groupings. Wander alone over terraces and through white wood-gates and past Chinese gardens with bronze herons and paste figures and water running from three pads to the fountain below. Select the four free cards due to entrance, search the gift shop and fail to find anything different and suitable, and get amazed by the learned and cooperative mynah bird [For the PM part of the Portland tour, I crawled weakly into the front seat (almost winning three fingers from the driver as I slammed the door), and left the 25-year-old-maid school teacher to mumble to herself two seats back. For her sake I wished a grand knight would ride up, unattached, and sit beside her, white horse and all.] [Imaginary exchange: "Still alive, I see." "Not so's you'd notice."] [Rhododendrons: Individually savored, no smell could be detected, but as a group they emanated a savor undeniable.] [White godaisher, immense pungent bloom.] [Phrases from amazing bird: 1) I'm a Mynah bird; 2) Hello; 3) Hi, how are you? 4) Are you happy? 5) Laugh; 6) whistles Dixie; 7) My name is Joe; 8) What's your name? Exceedingly clearly in about ten minutes.] Back to town and read papers and get haircut and waste assorted time by looking and writing snips of thought before going back to the Paramount for "Mondo Cano" and "Stark Fear." [So many cute kids hanging around the Y lobby --- have to keep telling myself that ARE kids and that they wouldn't be interested in ANY kind of advance, except as something to tell the guys about. "Hey, you know that funny-lookin guy with glasses? He made a pass at me. He's a queer!" No thank you. So I sit and look at them and pant at their tight trousers.] [Ten or fifteen minutes with nothing to do is worse than one or two hours. With longer time I can masturbate a new way, settle down to read, or torture myself into writing up a week or so. But with a short time there's not enough time for sex, no use getting into a book, and it takes too long to trace back where I stopped and go on from there. So I waste time while waiting for "Mondo Cane" (on an empty stomach) by writing this, by reading papers in the Y lobby and getting mental hard-ons as those gorgeous creatures come limpid up from the showers, damp smelly wonderful towels under their arms, crotches probably still damp and slightly hot from the pressures of the muscles of the legs against the balls. Ho Hum --- and looking at the objectively cute girls wandering through the Paramount lobby as I sit and write does absolutely nothing for me --- does LESS than nothing for me since it takes my mind off cute boys --- well, maybe does MORE than nothing for me. There's a blare of sentimental music from the undoubtedly shoddy second feature (hope it at least has cock) and a blare of trumpets and the banal intermission music and I stop and buy popcorn (love popcorn --- for the same reason I like movies, they were denied me in young days?) and go in.] [Mondo Cane not worth refuting. What's wrong with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? Good thing they didn't do it man-to-man. They torture sharks a week before they die? We condemn Caryl Chessman to eight years of torture before death. Showing the snake being skinned right there is much akin to plucking chickens --- or shooting rabbits. Gurka sailors dress as women --- what about US sailors? Turtles crawling inland was sad, but don't some fish NEARBY climb trees? And what about showing HUMAN deformities from the bomb? New York restaurant that serves ants and charges $20 for lunch? Don't know where, but the clientele looked cute. After hula dance lesson pictures, I'm re-convinced for the dozenth time that I'll never travel on any other tour to anywhere. Only point, if point it had, was that ALL people everywhere share enough, even the odd enough, to be ALL considered human and part of the SAME world. It's not Country Cane, it's Mondo Cane.] ["Stark Fear," the first movie I've seen with credit to a Psychological Consultant.] ["Milwaukee is only 10 miles east (?) of Portland, but I've got to go 1800 miles east (?) to get to Milwaukee.] [Most objectionable part of Mondo Cane was hardly the blood, I would have expected bull's decapitation to be much bloodier, and they didn't get NEARLY as gory with the roast pig as they could have --- but the sarcastic, sneering, and patronizing VOICE of the narrator. He was possibly sicker than the film. If the picture was a chronicle, as it MAY have been as they stated, the narrator had not at all the voice of the chronicler.] Back to Y and wash hair and get to bed at 10, leaving a call for 6:30 to let me leave, finally, Portland, the westernmost section of the trip. Only one direction left to go: East!

THURSDAY, MAY 16. Up and pack and out across the street without breakfast and suitcase feeling vaguely light because I'm wearing sweater and jacket and have only two books inside case, and the supply of maps has dwindled almost to nothing. Cut out a tiny city map of Minneapolis and stick it in my pocket so I can find my way about when I get to city just 46 hours from now, by far the longest trip in one swallow I've taken. No comparison with the 46-minute one from New York to Newark which, however, took hours surrounding. Morning scenery is beautiful even though the bus passengers may not be [Pronounced will-A-mette, not willa-METTE, as Indian (green water), not as French.] [Why is it that huge stretches of plate glass on houses seem suddenly unattractive? Reflecting the sun in a baleful glare, or swallowing up light into a black cavern, windows seem unimaginative and stark. Tracks and telephone wires ran parallel, but not quite. The tracks were the true curve, but the wires were only the minute straight-line segments like calculus uses to approximate the curve. High-tension poles, far apart, were of lesser accuracy and finer posts, clearly closer, gave a truer curve. A road, however, was like an erratic freehand sketch of the smooth track. An airplane route ignored all these, and flew as the crow flies, except for minor collisions which we are not told crows make.] [If camels are ships of the desert, trailers are ships of the highway.] [The fellows who held the "Slow" and "Stop" signs on Oregon highways seem elected on the basis of personal appeal. They're always the cutest of the crew.] [Every so often, when looking at simple groups of trees or a nearing hillside, every color green, with black stalks sticking up from old forests, I have to say to myself "Stop thinking! Only look and like." Oregon, along Columbia, real Japanese art. Jagged peaks with pines, morning mists, waterfalls and lakes and pleasant foothill plateaus.] [When I feel like crying, am I more like a baby or an old man? But that's his second childhood. I prefer to think of them as the tears of the enlightened, uninhibited, extremely sensitive and high-feeling adult.] [Garrulous bus out of Portland. Missionary woman "was in India six years, we lost everything we had, got an incurable spine disease --- can't give it to anyone, but I'm in constant pain." She couldn't hear and cackled loudly when moronic woman in back of her (in front of me) suggested she was 33. She said to whisper her age and even I heard it was 53. Cute girl in back of driver shrewdly guessed he was 38, and he was 43 and looked 33. Another sophisticated older lady in back of her jangled her gold plate bracelet and entered the talk every so often. The talk bug took over and one old lady turned around to the other and started telling along the lines, "He didn't know he had it, but they found out when they operated. I'd rather not know I had it, wouldn't suffer so much." Bus drivers earn $40 for the Portland-Spokane run, 4 1/4 hours east, 3 3/4 hours west from Umatilla. Thus earn $800 a month for only 4 hours per day and "earn $1300-1500 in months when you work extra runs." Not bad, though there's probably schedule keeping and passenger headaches outside driving hours.] Pick up milk and donuts in The Dalles [Air pollution particularly disgusting in beautiful country. Hideous factory across Columbia from Hood River spewed yellow smoke that filled valley for miles on either side. Factory operator and owner should be CASTRATED. Crazy drawing and writing on the john walls in downstairs The Dalles. "My 7" cock is too big for my tight pants. My hot solid cock just shot off. Smell that smell? My prick is too big for my tight bell-bottoms."] [Man gets on, unshaven, snorting, mumbling to himself, carrying three large loose packages, and smelling to high heaven of a smell mixed of urine and smoke.] [New trends are rather frightening: billboards with polio and dystrophy and sclerosis and heart disease and cancer, movie shorts propaganda for Bell Telephone Company. Ugh, and more and more people cough, longer, louder and more gratingly. Old and young, smoking or not, from asthma and colds and talking too much. Bus sounds like a morning sickroom, punctuated with sniffles and sneezes and the pop of plasticene corks being removed from polystyrene vials, removing the nylon cotton and taking pills.] [Oregon, along the Columbia, as mentioned before, is spectacularly beautiful countryside --- if they ever stop building new dams and submerging picturesque bluffs and moving the highway and railroad higher into the cliff side. Pretty soon the Columbia will be nothing but a series of quiet pearls, connected by concrete bluffs of dams.] [Oblivion de Havilland?] and out to look at the sexy marquee for "The Magic Sword." Lunch at Umatilla [Gradually, pines die out and grass and scrubland replace them on hills. Rocks are more and more frequent, and the land has leveled out somewhat near Arlington. Riders eagerly sucking fags at rest stops in bus-smokeless Oregon.] [Just figured it out. Not anxious to see Broadway comedies because during lunchtime, in the right company, I can laugh more in 1 hours than I laugh at an entire play --- not to mention wasting an evening and paying $3-8. As for musicals, classical music and ballet are epitome of musicals, and I prefer these. Sexier, too, which probably characterizes that which I LIKE on Broadway. SEX. As for drama, off-Broadway or reading usually provides more emotional SHOCK.] [Black rocks, of uniform size dotting the fields, had the look of frozen hexed Black Angus cattle (between Bitts and Umatilla, Oregon).] and I'm glad for a chance to get out and stretch. The morning was not bad, except for the people, because my body doesn't yet know how long the trip really is. Stop in Spokane [Land is grazing-prairie flat. Past Umatilla the land changes again, into undulating fields covered with live sagebrush and their black, burnt-looking skeletons. Washingtonians fascinated by sound: Walla Walla near Wallula.] [Just across the Washington border, buttes and temples rise above the ground, carpeted with green grass and buttressed with rock. One looked precisely like the dome of the City Center, even to the addition of having the Islam "doily" on top, traced out by furrows. Battlemented castles rose up at roadside at the right and on the left flowed the blue Columbia, which we needed not to cross over to change states. Some of the huge rocks looked like huge lobed foreheads sticking out of the ground to the eye sockets and sharp juttings were proportioned like teeth.] [Again, early, the exasperations of bus riding are besetting me --- the talkative old ladies who gabble to each other in voices so loud you suspect they carry loudspeakers so the whole bus can hear. The women cough, cough, cough, cough, cough. Another woman with jingly bracelets which are never still. WOMEN!! PFAGH!!! The Smoke River has impressive crossings: the clean green-steel sweep south of Pasco, Washington; the eye-popping canyon west of Twin Falls, Idaho.] [Dissect green moist wheat after lunch at Umatilla and am amazed (amazement with the inner parts of plants is not new with me) by the pairing. The green stalk goes up and wants to branch. On one side appears a grain, on the other appears the stalk, which continues until another branch, with the grain appearing at the opposite side. The grains, green, are soft and folded in on themselves, and each one has a long green streamer that changes to red on the extreme sharp-looking tip. The grain continues up until there is a small area which sinks to the microscopic. The nude stem, when all plucked, looks strange. After plucking off the two fibers that grow on either side of where the kernel was, the reason is seen to be the smooth-broken appearance. For two kernels the stem is smooth, then there's a step, and two more smooth. On the other side, the step is in the middle of the smooth area.] [The plain fellow looks almost better than mediocre because of neatly combed blond hair. He looks at me at stop, and in the basement of one john looks over as he pisses and asks how far I'm going. (All the way, Mack.) He seems wrapped up in my eyes as the older fellow he'd been talking with, sitting in back of, and eating lunch with, comes down as "protector"? Later, he produces a Polaroid and a lady gives him a quarter for the snap. I fantasize about spending a pleasant 4:15-5:30 taking pictures of each other in various poses. I can hear the opening now "Polaroids are fun to take pictures with, aren't they? Don't know how many I've burned because I was ashamed to have them laying around after I'd had so much fun taking them." Yummy. But, of course, nothing will be done.] [Just like the Army: sends a convoy out for maneuvers, can tell by the crested helmets the "enemy" wears, and what road do they send them over? The bus-truck road, of course. When? When they're repairing the road and stopping traffic for half-hour at a time in each direction, of course. What time of day? The middle of the afternoon, when it's hottest, and it's probably, if I know the Army, when the traffic is heaviest, too.] [The delicacy of the lower Washington grassland is unpaintable; tiny tiny flecks of white and yellow and light green, very pleasantly and evenly spaced (no, paradox, pleasantly and UNevenly spaced), and each stalk can be seen in the bright sunlight, and every tiny stalk has its shadow. It's this fine alternation of light and dark that makes the field so attractive: green, in general, but the fragile colors in patches. To paint a square inch of canvas like this would take painstaking days. Sand and rock has crept into the land, and this southeastern part of the northwestern-most state looks a great deal like greener sections of the southwest, or drier sections of the northeast. Got it located? Birds sing and by golly I recognize a whippoorwill on a wire by the brush around its beak. A pleasant feeling to be going through the barren country now, in the spring-green and not later, when the hills crumble in silty brown dust. Interesting: a simulated cattle guard; rather than having a metal grating which cattle CAN'T walk on, they have yellow strips stretched an inch off the road, which they probably won't walk on.] [Little "devil-twisters" on the dry plowed fields made leaves play leapfrog in circles.] [Contour plowing left patterns that changed, appeared or vanished with direction, like looking at velvet in a directional light.] [You WANT (sexually) want you want to be --- that's why when younger I preferred someone older, because I thought they were more "in." Now I want youth, because "everybody who's in" wants them. But most of all, I want someone like ME, which shows I'm fairly content with me.] [As the bus moves, you can see ALONG rows. The rows seem to move as the bus moves.] [Horizons are broken only by men --- not by their bodies or even their machines, but by the huge pillars of dust their machines generate.] [Connell has "What Room" in their Ritz Bar, and on the ground I can barely see huge green areas next to huge brown areas of dirt, like island-filled seas of Perelandra.] [Fode Chevrolet of Ritzville.] [Series of cartoons: very fat man, bent curved back, comes out of snack shop with something to eat; looks around for place to sit, but there's only a pole; sits on pole, back bent; last picture shows him sitting on ground where he was, back very straight, face shocked.] [At Ritzville, a bitch looks at me from distance, circles around looking sheepish, cringing, wagging tail between legs, looking fearful. It sidles closer, begging affection. I wait, rubbing fingers low. She whines closer, closer, finally I can touch it, rub neck and the bitch snaps around and bites. Bitch.] [Now, where the ground looks most desolate and rocky, not even cultivated --- wild daisies --- growing up from light green clumps and covering fields.] [Finally conversation died on the bus --- I brushed aside the thought of a bunch of speechless, emotionless, lifeless automatons barreling along the highway in a silent steel hearse.] [Can't have the blissful silence and life too --- that's the trouble with young life --- it's too incessantly boisterous and noisy.] for dinner and have greasy pork steak and am amazed that my stomach's stood up as well as it has against onslaughts of grease, changing water, and odd eating hours (but it had a good background for the last in NYC). As it gets dim out of Spokane, bus bumps and humps along highway, and I notice driver leave to make a call ahead for repairs and get down to front to avoid getting seasick. Bus stops in Coeur d'Alene [As we enter Spokane Country, the hills which have gradually been lifting get coated with pines. I feel in the Northwest again, rather than in some dismal Central state. And, again, twenty miles from Spokane, the snow-capped Rockies. The bus out of Spokane is back on the main route again, and it may have been worth it to go up to Seattle simply to get first crack at seating. As it is, the bus is half-full coming in, and despite the fact that I'm third in line, before it's called, the perfectly horrible old women from the morning bus push ahead of everyone, despite the insistence that the driver wants only those who came IN on the bus. They take two separate window seats and talk back and forth across the seat back. The one with the bojangles, mercifully three seats ahead, sadly across the aisle, makes her noises by fanning herself in the hot bus with her itty-bitty ticket. May she be everlastingly tormented.] [Cartoon series: man driving car, baby in baby seat with steering wheel, baby cries, man tries bottle; rattle; man exasperated, baby cries harder, man in baby's seat, baby driving.] [Beginning to think Greyhound busses might be fallible. Got a flat going into Salt Lake City, and between Spokane and Butte it got that traditional thump-thump once again, and the driver got out at Idaho state line to check it.] and everyone gets off and I'm pleased at the way the Negro parents with four girls win their way with the whites on the bus. I read a bit since there's nothing to look at and get back on the bus when the new one comes, and it's a non-scenicruiser, a welcome relief. College student gets on later, near dark, and rides with me to Livingston. [What a beautiful "Canadian" lake there is just east of Coeur d'Alene (which we left at 7:45). We climb and climb out of CDA, and reach imposing Fourth of July summit. Elevation? 3081 feet.] [Sign near Pinehurst, Idaho "No Petting / DEER / on Highway."] [Kellogg and beyond looks blasted, flooded, burned, eroded, fowled up, and the homes are deep-South squalid.] [9:45, Lookout Summit, Idaho-Montana border, Elevation 4300 ft. "Only" 1 hours behind schedule, due to air rod on one of the bellows springs, making necessary a new bus from Spokane to Coeur d'Alene.] [Cops making things rough for a drunken sleeper in Butte.] [Fellow prattling on how the fellow next to him talked to him all the way from Los Angeles to Montana. All busses wait in Butte about 1 hours for late bus from CDA.] ["KBMY in Montana, channel 1210, color radio," in ad.] The sun goes down behind treed mountains, and am amazed to see crews working on the roads in western Montana through the night. Far ahead a brilliant light appears, and the bus drives through it and cuts off light from some huge earthmover looking like a mining tool because of the artificial light and the fact that the light lumens only it and sheer rock. Men work in the light, others stand outside and direct traffic with flashlights. This too, because of its unnaturalness, seems inhumane, and it seems it would be very difficult to work on a highway at night. As landmarks for the trip I have another list made up, of points to cross. From Oregon to Washington, from Washington to Idaho, the time zone from Pacific to Rocky Mountain time in Idaho, from Idaho to Montana, the Continental Divide past Butte, from Montana to North Dakota, the time zone from Rocky Mountain to Central time in North Dakota, from North Dakota to Minnesota, the Mississippi in Minnesota, and finally Minneapolis. My neighbor is a help near Butte since he knows the country. He advises me to look at the city, and it is nice as a spread apron of lights around the base of some mountain, spreading evenly in all directions for a great distance. Then he tells me to prepare for a climb to the Divide, and a few miles outside Butte the road climbs and twists up hills, and various views of the city can be had until one final turn, and the only indication of distance are small lights far away in valleys, and the only sense of movement is the swaying of the bus and the random erratic pick of the headlights as they show fences at the side of the road, or sheer rock walls. Sometimes cars coming toward us show curves we have yet to negotiate, and stabs of light from the rear show cars following where we have been. We pass the Divide and start down and the bus relaxes and I chat with him for awhile, then adjust pillow and fall asleep about 2 am, with a full day of traveling ahead of me.