Youth and road trips ...

It was January 1965. I remember it well. Road trip! They always took time off between semesters at the old U of A about that time. A friend, Leland Bassett from Fayetteville, had a Volkswagen Beetle that, I think maybe he bought from Ronnie Hawkins or one of the guys in the band. Another friend, later a Green Beret, named Mike Dunkum had a rep for being game for about anything.

They cooked up a scheme to drive to Phoenix, Arizona and look at some Frank Lloyd Wright houses, all three of us in “The Bug.”

There was only one problem. I didn’t have the money. I had scraped enough for a semester but had little over for “discretionary activities,” i. e. fun. I was janitor at the Chi Omega House. That gave me ten dollars a week plus meals. I budgeted $500 per semester, back then, and that included funds from summer work, weekly pay, and money my family could send. Back then, the U of A had no tuition, just a registration fee of a hundred dollars or so. Of course I had no car. What the hell need had a college student for a car?

Anyway. The thought of missing a trip to Arizona was disappointing.

But, at that moment, a miracle happened.

I don’t know if it was instigated by the Galilean or what, but the housemother, “Mother Mann” came by just before semester break came and brought my pay. Lord, lord, I had forgotten. They, those blessed Chi Omegas, paid me for the time during break when I was off. With some extra I had saved, I now had three ten-dollar bills: $30.00. that was an amazing amount of cash to hold in one’s hand at one time. I called the boys.

We “ciphered” awhile. Gas was about 20-25 cents a gallon. That would power a Volkswagen a pretty good ways. We didn’t plan to drink any beer or booze. Of course we could sleep in the car, two napping and one driving. Hell’s bells … road trip!

I won’t go into details. Let’s just say it was one of the highlights of my life. We saw the houses we went for. A few of the owners, including Raymond Carlson, editor then of Arizona Highways, and his gracious wife Lois, a contributor to the magazine, invited us in for a detailed history and tidbits of actual conversations with The Master.

Another highlight was waking up in a parking lot and watching the sun rise over the Grand Canyon. Half our money was gone by then and we couldn’t even afford to travel the Turner Turnpike, then a toll road, through Oklahoma on the way back to Fayetteville. Fun was scarce that semester and weekends sometimes were mockingly lonely and devoid of pleasure. But, Joseph Conrad described youth as  “… the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort—to death;”

I’ve never doubted for a second that our marvelous road trip was worth it.

Later, inertia overtook Mike Dunkum, and a recruiter named Sergeant Goforth (no, I’m serious) talked him into joining the Army. He came back from Vietnam a Green Beret captain and, perhaps it seems, with a residue of Agent Orange.

I cannot furnish the whereabouts of Leland Bassett. He always marched to the beat of a different drummer and there is no telling where it led him.

Myself? I returned from Vietnam before Dunkum, due to his advanced and lengthy training. I felt much embittered over the enmity I received from the Americans “whose freedom I had protected” (barf). Fortunately, I married well above my station and it has turned out fine. I do wear my "service" cap most places since it frightens most folks and pisses off a lot of conservatives. Life has settled into a gentle pace, kept fresh by the recollections of youth. Things are good for us.

Still, I miss my old friends and wish we could, maybe just for a day or two, relive life in a small car, driving unknown roads, even through an America I no longer recognize.

Oh well, we’ll always have the Grand Canyon and the Carlson House.

Fully restored, like me