makin' orange in provo

...later, post-college, I spent four summers squatting in a small coastal town overlooking the Pacific and vagabonded about on various systems of public transport (have never owned a car, perhaps I never will), becoming somewhat of an old pro in the process. Trips back to the Motherland involved cab ride to Coos Bay, shuttle bus to Eugene, Greyhound to Portland, flight to O’Hare (often with stopovers) from PDX. Then I’d leave Chicago and do it all over again in reverse, finally halting my travels in earth-toned, awshucks Bandon, Oregon (pictured), where nothing ever happens. Now and again I contracted an extreme case of the Itchy Feet and bussed or trained around the country with very little rhyme and zero reason.

A few memories from my long-haired days:

1) Somehow my Amtrak happened upon Provo of all places at about 3:30 in the morning and a man got on the loudspeaker telling how this is our chance to move about and stretch and smoke, you have twenty minutes. Though I don’t smoke, I followed everybody outside and for a steady while gawked at the enormity of Utah, thinking that everybody should—at some point in their life-journey—ride a train in the night through cities and towns that have never punctured their consciousnesses.

It was frighteningly cold outside. No light at all, save the orange of the cigarettes. Every now and then the ground made gravel sounds when somebody took a step, but that was it. No talking, just puffing. Provo—I couldn’t believe it! After a few minutes people started extinguishing the butts with their toes and we returned to our too-small seats and the wheels stirred and westward again, hey-oh!

2) Came to on an L.A.-bound Greyhound bus from Eugene, OR, which dumped us off without ceremony at high noon Sacramento for three hours of layover. Easily 96 degrees outside, if not 99 or even three numbers. At the time I was toting a guitar like the hippie I was but claimed not to be, and after placing my backpack in a storage locker at the station I moved in a downtownerly direction with instrument in hand, seeking shade so I might sit like an Indian and strum pleasant hippie tunes. After twenty minutes of walking I came upon a park and a nice enough tree, so I leaned back against it and played one of the six songs I knew how to play.

***This next part is going to sound made-up, but it is not.***

An old man approached the tree and began speaking to me. He was very friendly. After asking me all the right questions, he told me about himself. Back in the day, he said, I used to be in a surf-rock band. Whoa! I said. That’s excellent. What band? Swelling with pride, he answered my question with another. Have you heard “Wipeout?” I laughed. Of course. The Surfaris, I have ‘em on my iPod. Was that you? Well, he said, I’m the guy at the beginning who does the laugh. That was me. I’m Dale Smallen. He stuck out his hand and I shook it. I asked him to do the laugh right then and there but he wouldn’t, probably because he can’t make those sounds anymore. I’ll bet those old throat chords wouldn’t have handled something like that very well. After a few more words he left. That evening I Googled Mr. Smallen for purposes of legitimacy, and—sure enough—he's the guy. There was even a picture. I ran into Dale Smallen under a tree in Sacramento. He still receives royalties to this day for laughing once when the mic was on.

3) Then there was the same sort of trip as the Utah one, but backwards. I headed east from Chicago to NYC’s Penn Station on an Amtrak. The trip was supposed to take roughly twenty hours in total (I don’t remember the specifics) but ended up six hours past schedule, for some reason. Amtrak isn’t very reliable. Anyway, this was two years ago during that huge storm New York had, the one that left 22 inches of snow on the ground.

I was visiting New York to meet my friend for a thoroughly unnecessary vacation from reality (a week's stay in Amsterdam, via JFK airport), which was set to commence in three days. I don’t remember much about this train ride except it was terrifically long and there was a young man in my car who claimed to be a singer. He was very outspoken about it. When boredoms set in, a few of the more polite passengers asked him to sing, and sing he did. He busted out a Marvin Gaye meets Boyz II Men sorta thing, oh baby baby yeah get you under my covers, etc., etc. We lapped it up. Free concert aboard an Amtrak train while somewhere up ahead shovelers negotiated with the snow.
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