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SUNDAY JOURNAL

The fourth stop's a charm

By DAVID WOOD
Published July 23, 2006

Stan and I had been working as tree planters along the coastal range of Oregon for several months when our crew moved on to Washington. We were at a rock concert the day the crummy crew bus left Eugene, so we had to find our own way north.

Stan got his 1960 Ford pickup out of the shop and drove it to the ranch, where we had been living out of his camper on stilts. Carefully, we maneuvered his truck's bed under the camper. After attaching some cables from the camper to the front of the truck so it wouldn't slide off, we were ready to go.

Stan had found the burned-out camper in a junk yard and had rebuilt it himself so that it was now a two-story thing, with the upper section a greenhouse that contained a crop of small marijuana plants. The greenhouse made the whole rig top-heavy and three times heavier than a regular camper. The Ford pickup had new springs and shocks, but even so they were barely enough to support the structure. We took off, Stan grinding gears, and headed along back roads to avoid traffic, and just in case we tipped over.

We stopped for dinner at a small-town diner. When we resumed our trip the sun was setting, and I checked out our map while Stan looked for the crossroad we needed. I was the first to see the flashing lights against the roadside corn. A sheriff pulled Stan over and ticketed him for driving through a stop sign.

"This is good," Stan told me as we drove on. "We just had our worst disaster on this trip. Nothing bad will happen to us the rest of the way."

"Now, wouldn't that be a treat," I said, hoping the road wouldn't be too windy.

Twenty miles farther on, Stan got another ticket for ignoring another stop sign. I know he wasn't doing it on purpose, but there was no point saying that to the officer.

During the night we got lost. The flashlight I was using to see the map died, so I had to read by the dim flame of my cigarette lighter. Around midnight, when Stan was sure we would reach the town where our crew was based, I saw the old familiar flashing lights against the trees. This time a heavyset sheriff who could have stood in for Jackie Gleason in Smokey and the Bandit, complete with shades and hat (though I couldn't figure out why he wore shades at midnight), ordered us out of the cab and led us to the back.

"You have no license on your camper!" he grumbled. "And you have no taillights! You want to get somebody killed?" I hadn't known. We could have gotten ourselves killed, I realized, if a logging truck had come up behind us too fast.

Then the sheriff opened the back door of the camper. He was about to climb in when he saw the second door inside, too small for his large bulk to pass through. "Is anybody inside?"

"Well, uh, no," Stan sputtered. I prayed the sheriff wouldn't ask if we had marijuana plants inside, knowing that Stan was honest to a fault. The sheriff let us drive to an all-night gas station, where the attendant admitted he couldn't even fix a bicycle. Stan borrowed the tools and wire and put his taillights onto the camper. When we saw they worked, we got back on the road and once again headed toward what we thought might be north.

I played my guitar as Stan drove, both of us giving up on the map by then and relying on guesswork. We sang together to stay awake until my fingers couldn't stand it anymore. I checked my watch and figured we'd be getting daylight soon.

When I looked up I saw the flashing lights again.

This time it was a young state trooper, but the problem, again, was a stop sign. The officer politely explained that the sign had been half a mile back at the crossroads. I told him that I had missed the sign and the crossroads, and that Stan hadn't seen it either, as we were both dead tired.

"I can't believe this!" Stan finally grumbled to the trooper. "Four tickets in one night!" He pulled the other three out of his shirt pocket.

"Four tickets?" said the trooper. "Leaping salmon!" He actually said that. He used his flashlight to study the tickets. "You must be going for the record. I guess I could skip writing this one. You have enough for a while." Then he told us where we could find a bridge that crossed the Columbia River into Washington State.

David Wood is a writer in St. Petersburg.

[Last modified July 22, 2006, 11:37:23]