All too soon, the rains of autumn washed away the ebullience of summer in the redwoods. The first brisk storm cleaned the dust off the boughs, and all the needles glistened in the air like jade-colored rice. The thirsty ground absorbed the water greedily, and the accumulated layers of wet duff exuded the earthy odor of fresh mulch. As the humidity in the air rose, the trees stretched their branches up and out to sip from the diaphanous mists in the canyon.
The Rusty Bucket Hippie Hostel was growing again. Besides having Otter & Rabbit, Tim, and Pippin staying with them on a more or less permanent basis, Marge brought home a couple more drifters from the Slodge, on the pretense that they would work for room and board. Lenny was a sarcastic alcoholic with crow’s feet chiseled deeply around squinty eyes, bawdy tattoos on his arms and neck, and a cigarette permanently glued to his lips. He jabbered like a blue jay, and could laugh, drink and eat without ever taking that cigarette out of his mouth. His nicotine-stained hands couldn’t stop moving, and could often be seen rolling a new smoke from his pouch and lighting it with the old butt. Lenny proudly exuded the odor of a walking dive bar: stale beer and tobacco, with a hint of urine lingering in the bouquet. He used to be an electrician for a traveling carnival, and thankfully spent much of his time under the house, continuing the rewiring job that Buzz had left unfinished when he got a permanent gig up north. Whenever Lenny was crawling around at all hours of the day or night, “busting rat’s asses,” as he put it, Marty could often hear random bursts of heartfelt cursing through the heater grate in the kitchen floor. It was like having a 150 lb. parrot living under the house. At night he slept in one of Tim’s broken-down cars and snored loudly, as if the engine were left running. Once he fell asleep under the house, and everyone thought he was using a generator, or a chain saw.
The White family also sheltered a refugee from the China House, on the condition that he must always wear clothes in public. Darby was a pseudo-intellectual freak who lost a few brain cells in the turbulent Sixties and didn’t realize it. He cryptically described how Camille and Frederick were “taken home” by a spaceship, and how the aliens scrambled his brain, and Marty couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. He had a long, stringy beard like a wizard, an equally long, sad face that resembled a goat, and several baggies under his eyes to match the ones in his pockets. Being a nudist had been convenient because he didn’t have to decide what to wear, and now that he had to wear clothes, he was confused. He dressed in shabby Turkish pantaloons and flip flops, a faded tie-dye shirt, and a ragged, embroidered vest that evoked the high mountain passes of Nepal. A stained, tri-colored, Rastafarian cap covered his dreadlocks and doubled as a handy place to hide his drugs. He always carried a colorful patchwork shoulder bag, in which various interesting items were stashed. When he spoke, he absentmindedly pulled out feathers, bits of fabric with pleasing patterns, or odds & ends of seashells, and fondled them with thin white asparagus fingers. Darby stayed in a tent down by the campfire ring, and didn’t seem to mind being damp most of the time.
“Hey Darby, have you seen Krishna?” Marty approached him one day, looking for his cat. She could go in and out again now that the Animal Witch was gone, but Marty liked to know where she was. The faded hippie looked up from the woven fabric pot holder he was making, startled that he must use his cognitive powers to communicate. With distinctive unclarity, he wondered if Marty was asking him a religious question. Whenever spoken to, it appeared a train started rolling again in the tracks of his mind, chugging a few words, and building momentum, until he was talking full speed, more or less picking up where he left off the last time. At first, Marty politely listened in fascination to his ramblings about Hindu philosophy, the government, cosmology, and quantum mechanics, until he got curious and fact-checked some of what he said. It was all pure, unadulterated bullshit, but Darby channeled it so earnestly that it was difficult to stop him once he got started. It was obvious he’d asked the wrong person. Marty made an excuse about going to the bathroom and left him there, muttering in dismay to himself, wondering why so many people became incontinent whenever he spoke to them.
Needless to say, this offbeat assortment of humanity was manna from heaven for a budding young cartoonist like Marty. He was reading a lot of MAD magazine, National Lampoon, and comic books; listening to his stereo, and honing his skills at drawing elaborate party scenes with characters scrawled in every corner of the paper. While he sketched, the song being played over and over again on KTIM, the funky, local rock station, was Hotel California by the Eagles, and although Marty got tired of hearing it every fifteen minutes, he could really relate to that tune. Every time he stepped outside of his room, he veritably entered the lobby of that hotel. Their little cabin in the woods often resembled the set of a very strange movie, or a lively beat generation bar with loud voices trying to be heard over one another. Sometimes you couldn’t see across the living room through all the smoke. At times it resembled an R. Crumb cartoon, or a long-haired, barefoot Grapes of Wrath. There was rampant inflation in those days, and work was hard to come by, and the local barflies soon discovered it was cheaper to drink over at the Rusty Bucket Bar & Grill. The Slodge must have been hurting for business, what with all their customers at Marty’s house.
“Relax, said the night man, we are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave…”
Thanksgiving was conducted more like a soup kitchen than a family holiday, and Marty got a warm, genuine feeling watching his mom provide food for so many hungry men who had nowhere else to go. A peanut farmer from Georgia had just been elected to be their new president, and the Whites could relate, as they were living on semi-moldy bread and peanut butter. It seemed like the entire country was withdrawing back to its roots after the extended anguish of the Vietnam War, the political embarrassment of Watergate, and the hazy, social residue of the Sixties. Marty shared a table with many disillusioned vets like Tim and Lenny, who couldn’t find steady work after returning to the states. It seemed to him that they felt tainted and irredeemable because they had participated in a dirty war.
School and work were Marty’s only structured outlets for growth. High school culture was diverse and fascinating, where rich kids sat in the same rooms with the poor, and nerds waited in line at the canteen with the stoners. Naïve young women played social games as if the boys were stuffed animals at a tea party, while the boys tried to act cool, and project the vibe that they knew everything. Eventually, (after football season), the entire school turned its attention to basketball, which was not Marty’s favorite sport, due to a persistent vertical handicap. But Drake had a rich tradition on the hard court. The hoop jockeys turned out to be the most admired studs on campus, much to the derision of the bleacher creatures, who refused to go watch the “fluffy boys” – even though Drake’s team was competing for the state championship. Every Friday afternoon, the teachers and administrators would herd everyone into the gym for a forced “pep rally,” where flushed and overly perky cheerleaders tried to lead the student body in hyperbolic pledges of counterfeit allegiance. The entertainment was awful, but some of the cheerleaders were liberty and justice for the eyes!
During that school year, Julie was employed as an apprentice mechanic at a gas station close to school. She was working nearly all the time when she wasn’t in classes, so she could save up for another car. She often got a ride home from Marge, so Marty would usually walk the half mile down to Red Hill Shell after school. Henry, the owner, was a gregarious maniac with the energy of a prospector from Alaska, and was good at working on cars when he wasn’t drunk. His back was always painful from the war, and he went through life with the frustration of one who stumbled off the path in the wrong direction. He lived in Forest Knolls, the town next to theirs, so there was always a way for them to get back to the Rusty Bucket Ranch one way or another. Marty began helping around the shop for a few bucks, cleaning and organizing. When a gas attendant quit, Henry offered him the job. Why not, he thought, I’m hanging around till Mom picks us up anyway.
That was in the days before self-serve gas stations. When you pulled in to Red Hill Shell, you were greeted by a smiling young man (or woman) wiping his hands and ready to talk through your window. “Fill ‘er up with super?” was the usual greeting. A good gas attendant always suggested the most expensive thing first. With the polished, offhanded sincerity of an actor, he would inform you that your wipers needed replacing as he washed your windshield. When he checked your oil, it was always at least half a quart low. Walking around the car he’d say, “Those tires look like they’re wearing unevenly – we can rotate them for you in a jiffy!” This was a form of organized confidence game. Henry’s motto was that no car should leave his lot without something extra done to it. For the customers, buying gas at Red Hill Shell was as risky as being a thirsty antelope approaching the waterhole where the lions hung out. As an official member of the pirate gang of grease monkeys, Marty got a share of the booty.
Chuck and Ricky were the senior primates, and they actually got to work on cars – doing simple things like changing tires, fixing flats, and installing batteries. They sold a lot of batteries, because when refilling the cells with distilled water and charging them as part of a service job, they would deliberately place the battery directly on the concrete floor, which drained it of its power like a sponge. “Aw, look at that,” they lied as they showed the customer the meter, “Your old battery can’t even hold a charge!” Wicked, wicked monkeys! In contrast, Julie was very forthright and popular with the customers, and also helped the mechanics with bigger jobs like brakes or radiators. One of them, Geoff, was a taciturn giant about 9 and a half feet tall, who put together cars the way boys assemble plastic models. It was amazing how Henry could keep 3 or 4 mechanics busy at a place where people simply came to buy gas. He didn’t care that there was an auto repair shop right next door. His service station was a Venus flytrap offering cheap gas, free advice, cold drinks, and clean restrooms as bait to lure the drivers in and separate them from their money. Because Chuck and Ricky lived in the house right behind the station, one or both of them were always “hustling the islands” (referring to the concrete pads where the gas pumps were installed). Usually one was funneling work to the other, as if the only exit from the gas station was through the service bay.
Marty took to the game readily, making tsk-tsk noises under the hood when checking the oil, then coming back to the driver’s window shaking his head and wiping his hands with regret, “That fan belt looks like it’s cracked.” That generally frightened the old people out of their wits, whether or not the belt was actually cracked (it usually was… belts were easy pickings). Once he tried this ploy on a wise old geezer with a crew cut, who was too feisty to be told what to do by a grungy, fifteen-year-old, long-haired, liberal freak!
“What’s that you say?” His voice cut like an electric razor. Everyone made Marty repeat the fan belt assessment, as if it were an important medical diagnosis about which they might want a second opinion.
“I’m no expert, but your fan belt looks cracked,” Marty repeated with the tone of regretful warning that worked best. “Ricky inside, he –”
The old man bayoneted him with the steely eyes of a drill sergeant from the Great War. “Dagnabbit, I just bought that fan belt here last month! What’re you fellas tryin’ to pull on me, eh?” He was getting red in the face, the veins stood out in his neck, and he unbuckled his seat belt to get out of the car. Marty stepped back quickly, as if he’d seen a snake on the seat.
“Oh yeah, sorry, haha, I’m new here…” He wanted to crawl back under the hood. “I must have been m-mistaken.”
“I’m watching you, now!” The tough old geezer pointed a long, bony finger outside his window. “You’re on my list!” He made a big show of taking a small notebook out of his glove box, then scribbled something in it, and pointed his pencil at the name sewed on Marty’s yellow attendant shirt. “Henry!” Then he drove off with as much contempt as the retreating rear end of a Buick could convey.
Still shaking, Marty walked around the back of the station into Chuck and Ricky’s house, where they had potato chips, cigarettes, and a bong on the kitchen table. When he described the old man and his Buick, Chuck spit out some of his chips, and Ricky snorted in his beer. “We gave him the works last month, man!” Chuck had a remarkable memory, and an uncanny resemblance to Cat Stevens.
“Yeah, his fan belt was really cracked!” Ricky said wryly, and they all bust up.
“Ding, ding!” That would be another car pulling in, and Marty had to run back to the pumps. The kitchen window provided a clear view of the gas station, which was located in such a crime-free area that they all left the cash drawer and tools unattended for a few minutes anytime they wanted.
It was Henry in his pickup truck, and he was very drunk. “What the hell’s going on here? Where were you?!”
Marty had to think fast. “I saw a rat run back there, and I chased it.” Henry was a former POW, and he hated rats. He growled in disgust, “Dirty little fuckers! (Burp!) I’ll give you a dollar for every one ya kill!” He farted loudly, and dropped his cigarette. (Yes, he was smoking next to the gas pumps, he was the owner and could do what he wanted.) Marty was just glad he fell for his story.
Henry drifted sideways a few steps where he could see into the bays, and Marty discreetly ground out his cigarette. “Ricky! Chuck!” He growled some more and hitched up his pants. “Where the hell are those fuckers?” Henry was as friendly as a life insurance salesman, but could hardly utter a sentence without a cuss word, unless he was talking to a customer. Chuck and Ricky arrived cleverly from two different directions, and managed to appear spontaneously busy.
“Hey boss, what’s up?” Chuck said as he grabbed the broom and started sweeping nothing at all.
“C’mon Henry, I’ll drive you home,” Ricky said with genuine concern as he put down the tire iron he’d grabbed as a ruse. His dad was a fireman, and he looked out for people. “Chuck, you follow us and we’ll catch that party out in Woodacre after I drop him off.”
As the three of them drove away, Marge showed up, tired from a salty day at the fish tanks. She had taken a second job working at a wholesale saltwater fish supplier in the Canal, an industrial area of San Rafael, and put in long hours. Marty closed up the station, (making sure to turn off the pumps), put the money in the safe, and set the alarm. “I can’t believe Henry lets a teenager close up his gas station at night,” she said, then quickly tried to backpedal, “I mean, you’re a very responsible young man, but something could happen, you know?” Marge had a disarming way of talking that always included an escape hatch. She’d often say something provocative, then take it back immediately, so you were left uncertain if she meant it or not. But she got to gauge your reaction all the same. During the drive home, she kept up the small talk to compensate for stepping on Marty’s ego like that. It was all right, he knew how much she depended on him now as “the man of the family,” even though there were about half a dozen other male specimens residing on their property at the time. “Family is family,” she concluded sagely as they pulled into their dark driveway, as if the palindromic sentence had some hidden meaning.
A muffled cheer came from inside the cabin as they walked down the dangerous path with a flashlight. During the day, Marty could navigate those eroding “steps” to the house in about 8 or 9 well-placed hops. At night, however, it was treacherous without outdoor lights, because the pathway also served as a drain for the mud puddles in the driveway. Inside, the living room was brightly lit and full of hairy old rogues wearing castoff clothes, watching football, drinking beer, and throwing the empty cans at Howard Cosell on the TV. The 49ers were losing (as usual) and the mood was as sour as the smell. Marty went and hid in his room, where Susie was doing homework on the other side of the half-wall. She usually got a ride home from Lagunitas School with Tillie’s mom, or they’d walk home if it was nice out. Marty looked around at the beat-up furniture, wrinkled posters, dirty clothes on the floor, and the mold-spotted paint. “Home sweet home,” he muttered another inane platitude, and fell into bed.