Compunction Junction

Rueben deGroot and All Kinds of Trouble (part 2)

**If you haven't already done so, please read "Rueben deGroot and All Kinds of Trouble" to get the first half.  So we were left in the police station giving our descriptions of the lil' troublemaker with a bit of "the good stuff" in our pockets.**

Our statements given, the police (coviniently located in a strip mall) let us go with a heartfelt thanks. 

We walked across the parking lot.  My good buddy Roob noticed a sub place "Oh man, have you ever had a Quizno's sub?  They're awesome!  They toast the bread and it tastes gooood!".  Somehow I got finagled into buying a sub and roob bought one too.  That exhausted his (already meagre) funds and leaving me with only aboug 43$ in my bank account (no cash in hand).  We ate our sandwhiches, aware we may not eat again until we get home, as we walked back to the side of the highway (conviniently, across a small divider of grass.

We stood their, outside the quiznos in Chilliwack (I think it was anyways), for an hour.  There were a LOT of cars going by: Well over a 70 a minute. 

No one was stopping.

I came to realize that waiting on the side of a relatively deserted road felt better than a busy one.  It is one thing to not get picked up by a handful of people.  It is altogether another thing to get rejected 1800 times an hour.

We blazed.  We waited there for about 4.5 hours all together (we got picked up at around 430-5:00).  That was a long wait.  BUT, we finally got picked up.

It was a nice ride too: One of those old school Jeeps.  Remember?  Back when offroad folks actually took vehicles off road?  Well this thing was pimped the eff out!  It was a nice clean, good lookin' piece of machinery. 

He pulled over and openned the door, "You guys don't got any drugs do ya" he snapped before anything else.

I'm not a good liar.  Rueben was: "No sir.  We're just heading towards Jasper.  Think you could give us a ride?"

"I can take you as far as Hetley Creek [aka a deserted stretched of lonely highway]" the middle aged hipster said with a somewhat (inexplicably) dejected tone.

"That would be great!" Rueben piped in and we both crawled into our preassigned seats.

We made some small talk for a few minutes, with Rueben sitting in the front and me and 80% of our stuff in the back.  Again the man asked, "So you guys got any drugs?"

This time Rueben, and I don't know how he knew what to say, said, "Hell yeah.  You wanna smoke?"  In no time at all, we were puffing away.  It was nice to finally feel relaxed and comfortable. 

It was at this time, we heard from this guy that he was an electrical technicial for a studio in Vancouver.  He said that he had worked on a few X-Files episodes but that he had just finished working on a movie with Kevin Bacon.  This made ME very excited.  Just before I left on this trip, I had heard of the famous "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon" game.  I realized, after talking to this fellow, I skyrocked up, like 4 spots.

Nice.

But that feeling passed when, at around 8pm, the man dropped us off nowhere (aka "the Hetley Creek turnoff").  We waited for about 20 minutes where we got picked up by a old stanza filled with high school kids going out to get pissed on their way to a party.  There were already 3 people in the car so two bigger fellas and all our crap in that Stanza made for a tight squeeze.  It was uncomfortable but we were moving forward.

Those young guns dropped us off in Clearwater at around 9:30, right in front of a hotel.  And I thought I'd never forget the name, but I did.  If you ever drive through Clearwater, it's the only hotel on the highway.  So you'd know.

We didn't know what to do.  So what DID we do? Well we went to see about a hotel room.  They were 30$ for a single.  Nice.  So, lucky for me (and having 42$ in the bank) we managed to scrape up a single.  After we went in and cleaned ourselves (not bad for hitchhiking bums) we went to the ubiquitous hotel bar.  There was a band in the bar.

Stoner's Wheel.  At the time (and being a bit of a... you know), it was just a bit too corny for me to say it was a good name, but I have heard worse.  We sat and watched them play.  Then (forwhatever reason) we ordered beers.  I'm not sure how we were gonna pay for them.  The band was fine; just another coverband that didn't suck.  The bar was empty and a bit appreciative.  And i mean empty.  I kid you not, there wasn't a single person in the bar except the waitress, bartender, band and us. 

When the band had finished their, slightly rocked out set, Rueben talked with them.  Again, Roob, using powers beyond my scope of comprehension managed to scrape us up for a coupel songs with the band.  First roob and I played a couple songs by ourselves.  Then we did a few simple covers that they'd know.  It sounded good considering we'd never played together before.

Since no one was listening, the band decided to forego their second set and just get wasted, promising the bartender that they'd get up if more people came in.  We sat around and talked.  Roob and i got to playin' some stuff.  these guys got out their acoustic guitars and tried to get a song in but when roob's taking off, goooooood luck!  It ain't possible.

At 2am, Roob thought it'd be great if we went to a house party (where there was promises of free booze and coke for musicians...great .

The bartender, the waitress (the only girl in th bar and, by default, the women Roob was serenading all night), and the two of us crawled into a hatchback and drove to someone's house where we were told the party would move to. 

Three hours later, the party had not moved and I had been asleep for two hours.  Rueben was making small talk.  We got a ride back to the hotel and went back to bed.

We (somehow) managed to wake up by 9am and we made it out of the room by 10.  We headed down to the restaurant that seemed to act as the local IHOP/Smitty's type place.  WE managed to eat only 12$ worth of food and we were on the road again at 11:20.

Clearwater will always have a hole in my heart: A hole filled with confusion and hatred.  We waited on the side of the road for 2 hours before someone picked us up.  The person who picked us up had a Pontiac Firefly with the passenger seat ripped out.  It actually looked like something you'd see in the funnies.  The rather dirty looking owner of the car said "It's for my dog.  She's big".

That dude managed to take us about 2kms outside of clearwater where we waited for another 4.5 hours before getting picked up.  So now it's about 5:30 and we're in a Volkswagon trailer with a couple of treeplanting hippies.  They ask us if we have any "stuff".  We say no and ask them.  They say no.  They tell us that they can't take us very far.  They drop us off at a rest stop.

Roob and I are pretty dishearted.  It's about 6:45 and we are at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere.  We go into the (thankfully heated AND flush powered) bathroom to warm up.  We decide to make the quintessential version of "Things are gonna get worse" a happy little ditty written by Rueben deGroot himself.  It was funny.  Not funny enough to make us feel better, but funny.

We managed to get a ride at about 15 minutes later from a guy in a truck.  He ran a heli-skiing outfit in the Kootneys.  He dropped us off in Blue River: A town that was little more than a Husky truck stop and a Humpty's breakfast diner.  In Blue River fell down the most depressing rain I have ever been in.  It was nearing 8:00 and we had no hope of a ride.  We were completely exposed.  We hunted around for a piece of particle board or something.  Nothing was to be found.  We musta been a miserable pair of losers there.  And yet, someone picked us up.  I can't remember a thing about him other than he had a big, and very clean truck.  I put my guitar in the back.  Somehow the wind LIFTEd up my guitar and flipped it over in the box.  The next smashed against the top of the tailgate and I winced.  Turns out it was nothing major.

He dropped us off somewhere around Tete Jaune. 

I remember as a kid seeing that name and thinking, "I know what that means" because I could read French.  I had these ideas that Tete Jaune was a quaint little side of the highway type thing.  An idyllic little spot that had an amazing ice cream and pie shop.

It did not, and was not.  I've crapped bigger towns than Tete Jaune.  There was only one identifying feature that we were even IN Tete Jaune: A weight station for semis.  I wouldn't have known there was a town there (maybe the ice cream and pie shop was on some hidden side road off the highway that twisted and turned to a lush, hook in the river).

It was now about 9:30.  The good news was that we were in Alberta, but barely. The bad news was that it was 9:30, we were SOAKED to our swashbucklin' bones, and the night was getting cold (in truth, it felt like it was going to snow).

It was pure chance that a trucker was nice enough to take us from there.  I'll never forget it all.

Trucker: Imagine what you'd expected a trucker to look and dress like.  This was the man.  Trucker says, "Hey.  Where y'guys headed?" .  "Edmonton" Rueben replied, "but we're having some terrible luck".  "The trucker replies, "Oh sorry.  I'd take ya but it's illegal".  "Actually," Rueben responds, for the second time in our trip, "It's only illegal if you're rig is owned by a company.  If you have a privately owned truck, you're allowed".

The truck driver gets this, slightly confused look on this face; slightly confused but a little content.  And then his arms swoops around into a circle and he points to the door of his cab while saying "Well, hop on in".  We're pretty excited.  I dang near shatted my pants.

Being that it was Rueben's turn to sit in front, he talked to the man for the whole trip.  The trucker warned me, "Be careful when you lay down, you might squish my hedgehog".  And there it as.  This white and pink little thing, lookin pretty scared but kinda cute I s'pose.  I grabbed the little tyke and put him in his little pocket and put my head down.

I woke up once around Banff.  The snow was coming down so hard you couldn't see 50 meters ahead.  Back asleep.

I woke up again in Edson: About 2 hours from my home town.  I was excited.  I pissed in the entrance of some hotel and then called my friend in Edmonton collect.  Then we climbed back in and I fell asleep before we left the parking lot.

We pulled up to our road in Deadmonton, just off the Yellowhead, at about 5:30.  Roob and I hauled all our crap for about 1.5 kms to our house (the dear sweet Bedford). 

When we walked in, Garth, my good friend (who had dropped us off outside Edmonton on our way to Vancouver) greeted us with some strange news.

Apparently the fellow we had talked to the police about had stolen that huge flatbed truck from the Vancouver Fire Department lot.  He was taking it to Calgary to a chopshop he knew there.  The police wanted us to get back there ASAP so we could testify in court.  I didn't.

I managed to get to bed at around 630.  I  was supposed to go into work at 7:00 (starting my job) but I opted intead, to wait for their call, explain my situation and tell them that I'd come it at noon (I figured it wouldn't be a problem... and it wasn't)

The memories I have of that trip may be some of the most powerful from the first half of that year.  Itwas really quite an exceptional journey: It was about as close as I'm going to Kerouac.