no stranger to the road

i was no stranger to the road by this time, i'd been out with freidrick, the road king i called him. he was this big german kid who'd come to see america, hitch hiking all over the country by himself and by the time i meet him down in mexico he spoke pretty good english. i was hiking out of baja the first time i ever saw him in a old vw bus that he'd painted by hand, an ugly unknown greenish color. he pulled up along side me and in this german accent asked me if i wanted a ride. when i got in i took a good look at him and was immediately struck with how big he was. his hands were huge, they held the steering wheel as if it were a saucer, he had long blond hair down to his shoulders and his face was all angles and the nose long and sharp, almost touching the postage stamp of the windshield, the bus seemed much too small for him, rather looking like a green turtle shell on his back and he was so wide i had to lean hard pressed against my door to fit in at all. We broke down a couple of miles down the road right after he picked me up and we had to leave the bus, pushing it behind a sand dune, the ugly green top poking out behind the dunes and then both us set out to hitching together across the border and into san diego. friedrick told me he'd been to every state in the union by then which if it were true would have been pretty amazing because we were both only twenty years old at the time. we hitched all the way up the coast of california having good luck with the rides and due to freidrick's deft and skilfull manuvering on and off the freeways. i started to believe his stories about being in every state and over the years of us traveling together would come to know it absolutely. so we hitched up the coast and the weather was good as it was early summer and we went all the way up to santa cruz which was where i was living at four mile beach, set up in a cave. we moved into the cave and decided to join forces and get some money together and go back and get friedrick's vw bus in baja, freidrick having some knowledge of cars having gone to a trade school in Munich before getting wanderlust. friedrick ended up gettting a job in downtown santa cruz in the Bug Shop repairing vws for these guys called the Smith brothers, two really low down looking dudes along with some mechanic named scorch, a short pug faced fellow who looked liked he was born covered in grease and lived out back of the quonset hut shop in a broken down camper. i was a gardener, mowing lawns, raking leaves, trimming trees and bushes and it was a neat trick considering i had no truck no car to get around town. we camped out in my cave at four mile beach that i had inherited from this artist from san francisco who painted these little tourist scenes of boats and wharfs and whatnot. we had a nice campfire and a big iron skillet to cook in, friedrick was a master at cooking potatoes, and making a big pot of beans we ladled onto tortillas. we got some money together after a few months, and i kept thinking was the vw bus still there after all this time, wouldn't someone have found it by now? finally having enough of the Smith brothers, this meaning friedrick having done most of the work while brother A and brother B smoked dope and Scorch did the oil changes, friedrick quit and we pooled our money, picked up friedrick's new vw engine that he'd bought and rebuilt the whole time he'd been at the bug shop, me having cleaned every part by hand with a toothbrush and solvent and friedrick putting the engine together in due course, i called it german engineering. we hauled the engine down to the freeway one late summer day, and we were off and set out back down to Mexico. at this point there was absolutely no doubt the vw bus was there, we were on a mission. we hitched down the length of california with the engine, which we named lolita and when we got down as far as Rosarita beach just over the border from san diego, friedrick meet janice a college girl from santa barbara in a bar where we were drinking, and she falling in love with him and now we were three. we had deposited lolita out in front of the bar where she drew quite a crowd to her gleaming shiny metal presence including the drunk Diego, who being fascinated with her, consented to give us a ride down the coast in his chevy pickup truck, repeating over and over, i jus don't believe it, friedrick and janice in the front with diego drinking Tecates and me in the back with lolita and we all went down the coast and without any problem and located the ugly green lost bus, and friedrick and i pulled out the old engine, replacing it with the lovingly reconstucted lolita and damn, gosh, lo and behold, the bus fired up on the second try and we were off, waving to diego who was shaking his head having i'm sure never seen anything like this in his life, and leaving the old discarded motor out there in the sand dunes. it's probably still there after all these years. we spent three great days camped out on the beach playing in the surf and friedrick and i having a footrace marathon up and down the beach, janice being our scorekeeper, friedrick finally winning on the third day, 37 to 36, and we ate a lot of bean burritos, drank beer and had giant bonfires on the beach at night, finding huge caches of driftwood thrown up on the beach. the best times are the times when you're young and you don't know any better. jgk