Road Trip Stories

[samuellg1977]

Originally Posted by 66redw/white

all i got to say is.... awesome mustache

HECK YEAH!!! I can rock the push-broom like nobody's bidniss!!! Well, not since my wife said (and I quote) "You better shave that caterpillar off before you come over here hittin on me, Boy!!" Hahaha.....

[66redw/white]

yeah man. i used to be a submarine mechanic. and every time i come back in i keep the mustache till it trys to steal off into my wifes nose. then its time to shave it. lol

[pritch]

This starts out a road trip story, but ends up a love story.

Well, that certainly is a lame lead in.

In the Summer of 1980, I was living with a couple buddys in an apartment in Henefer, Utah. It's the next town down the crick from where I live now. We had been there for a year or so, but I knew it was coming to an end. Henefer holds the distinction of being the only town that sprang up as a result of the Mormon emigration to Deseret. Of course, in school we used to tease all the Henefer kids, because everyone knew the truth-Brigham needed somewhere to drop off all the sick and feeble minded ones before they got to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. At any rate, the people of Henefer didn't really want any of us longhaired kids hanging around and it was a tense situation. So just about this time of year, me and another guy decided to drift on down to So Cal and see if we could get some oilfield work. We were a couple of bums in the sun, hanging out at the beach for a time, hooking up with a commune for a minute, seeing the sights-the whole time getting more a$$ than the toilet seat. But pretty soon we screwed around and found jobs on a drilling rig just across the parking lot from the Queen Mary museum. About that same time, Roger met this blonde surfer girl and he fell plumb head over heels in lust. She was a total air-head, though, and I couldn't stand her. Dumber than a box of rocks, she was. I had a '67 Chevy with a camper shell and that was home, and after Polly moved in, I moved out. I slept out in that parking lot 'till this other homeless guy told me about all the wharf rats that was crawling all around me at night. So I slept on top of the camper, but as you can imagine, that sucked, too. I had figured that we would be able to get a real place come payday, but when payday did finally come it clearly wasn't enough to live on for the next 2 weeks. We decided to take the money and run, and headed back home. Of course, Roger just had to haul Polly back with us. I told him that it was a bad idea and no way it wasn't gonna end well, but at the end of the day, she came along.

When we got back to Coalville, we had enough to rent a room in the local flea-bag hotel and Roger and I both found work right off on different rigs. I spent as little time as possible at the hotel, since Polly was always there (it was starting to get cold by then, and she was totally unprepared for it). This went on for about a week, and then Roger's driller fell asleep and rolled his Bronco on the way home from the rig and put the whole crew in the hospital. Now I was screwed. Now it was up to me to make sure Polly remembered to breathe and that she had some food once in a while. As it happened, a couple days later was Halloween and there was going to be a big party at this little bar down in Morgan County where I used to tend bar a few nights a week before the road trip. The owner asked me if I'd come down and tend for the party. I was on daylight shift, so it was no problem. I stripped off a bedsheet from the hotel bed and cut in some eye holes and went as an off-yellow ghost.

The party was epic. The kind of blow-out that only happens once or twice a year if you're lucky. It was a homecoming of sorts for me, seeing all my friends that I hadn't in a couple months. I wasn't taking my bartending duties very seriously, and pretty soon I was about as drunk as I get, and that's when it happened. There was this pretty little blonde girl there with this other couple, and the other couple were having a big fight, so the blonde was pretty much being ignored so I started a conversation. I'd seen her around some, but we had never been introduced. She said she needed a ride home, and being the gentleman that I am was happy to oblige. But I told her that I was way to drunk to drive and that she would have to drive my truck. She said that would be fine and so we headed out. Now, that old '67 I had had a three-on-the-tree that was notorious for hanging up between gears like they do, and I was thinking that we probably wasn't even going to make it out of the parking lot, but she took off and never missed a shift! I was starting to be more and more impressed! And then she drove us to my place! I asked how she knew where I lived and it came out that she was best friends with this other girl I had gone out with some, and well, small towns being what they are, you know. This was going great! And then it finally sank into my whiskey-soaked brain-we were at the apartment in Henefer! Dang it! We didn't live here any more! I said as much.
"Well, where do you live now?"
"In Coalville, at Down's hotel"
So off we went. About halfway there, though, another thought made it up to the big head. Polly! Dang it!
"Hey, there's this one little problem with going to Downs", I said. So I told her about the road trip, about Polly, about Roger in the hospital.
"I hate to say it, but I think you should just drive us to your place. I have to be to work in a couple hours, anyway"
She still lived at home, and made it clear that I didn't want to hang around too long in her driveway, 'cause her daddy has a short fuse and a long shotgun.

I told her that I had days off in two days. I said that I had some loose ends to clear up, and that I would be back to get her then at such and such time. The next day was horrible. To this day I have no recollection of driving back to the party. That's where my driller lived, in a little cabin behind the bar. I somehow made it through work that day. When I got back to hotel, I told Polly to get her stuff together, that we were going to go to the hospital in Salt Lake to visit Roger. She hadn't seen him since the crash, so it was an easy sell. When we got there, I dropped her off at the front door while I 'went to park the truck'. That was the last time I ever saw ol' Polly. Roger was so mad at me, we didn't speak for like 2 weeks. He said the nurses took up a collection and put her on a bus back So Cal.

The next day, I went to pick up my new girl friend for what I thought was going to be a date, and she was sitting on a suitcase at the end of her driveway! Every instinct I possessed said keep on driving, but I turned in.

That was 32 years ago this Halloween. The blonde hair has returned to red, I can just see the top of her head in the next room as I write this. She's babbling on about work or something. I not really listening. I knew she was a keeper when she never missed a shift on that three on the tree.