Friday Story Day

A buddy had an itch, he WAS going to hunt down some peyote damn it, we WERE going to find some, this was the day. We got up very early, borrowed his fathers mercedes - brand new silver thing, pretty and comfortable and we headed into the desert - no, not the sonoran desert, the desert outside of Indio Ca, Date capital of the world. There is no peyote cactus there but we were sure that there must be peyote in any desert (just as newbie mushroom foragers are certain that all they have to do is get to a cow pie dotted field and walk in a straight line).


Well we used an old trick I learned of getting little pieces of paper and writing "right" "left" and "straight" on dozens of them, folding them up and putting them in a jar. we got off road in that dry sandy place that even had the occasional classic Lawrence of Arabia dunes and we used my little bits of paper at each perceptible "intersection" to get us as lost as we could be. Then we got out and walked in a straight line expecting mescalito to bless us, never knowing that the great mescalito was hanging out half a thousand miles due south.

after a long long day of finding nothing but rocks and the occasional creosote we got back in our car dejected and beaten. My buddy managed to get us on the right track for a real road when the wind started picking up - and picking up - and then it started picking up sand, and then tiny pebbles and then we could hardly see but neither one of us wanted to stop and being as stupid as we were we had no idea that the worst thing you can do is drive your fathers new silver mercedies through a sand storm. When we finally got to his house we found that pretty much all of the paint on the front and hood of the car was gone - sanded bare clean to gleaming steel, and the trouble we had seeing out the windshield wasn't just the weather, it was the fact that the windshield was pitted so bad it looked like we were driving through fog.

No peyote either.

Fucking canndo... thats hilarious.

Ha! Almost like that movie the hangover...sans the roofies!...

A group of us took my Wooden, home made camper perched atop a 1947 Willies pickup for a
long trip into the mountains in mid state Washington in very early spring. In places the
snow was still 4 or 5 feet deep but pretty soft.

There were 5 of us, we took several cases of beer, a dozen and a half tabs of high grade acid
(remember this is the old days, each of them at least two way, we took peyote buttons,
dexadrine, doriden, poppers and anything else each of us happened to have in our medicine
bags. Oh, and of course we had a big old bag of brick weed, stems seeds, sticks, bits of
rubber bands, pencil shavings - whatever, this was before we knew anything about good pot
except for the occasional tai stick and that columbian gold that everyone wnated but no
one was willing to pay - WHAT? FIFTY BUCKS for a LID?

We got up into the mountains to where the snow was several feet deep and just stopped,
right there in the middle of a dirt road. Sure, it was a dirt road but it was a mountain
thoroughfare, We'd been through there before and knew it was leveled and bermed but we
seriously doubted anyone would come this way for a month or more. It was COLD up there
still maybe 30 in the afternoon and below zero at midnight.


Then we set up a game of monopoly and laid pills all over the board. Cramped in the camper the
game was usually propped up on a few of our knees so every time someone shifted their
position to get comfortable again and - naturally, didn't warn anyone, things got ...
altered.

The do not pass go square had a tab of acid, park place had some speed, the tax square
had the doriden - and so forth. As we played we had to eat what ever pill was on the
square we landed AND the tab was replaced with another. Now I don't really remember which
pill was on which square but I do know that in the 9th or 12th hour we all began to loath
the game of monopoly and we began to forget who's turn was. I also remember pleading with
everyone else for the love of GOD let us cut the acid pills in half and only put halves
up on the designated space - after a bit of bravado the group consented.


The dice would wind up in a lap or under something and we would sigh in relief cause now,
finally we couldn't play any more but SOMEONE, one of us, a diffferent one every time
managed to find the dice and rally us to our mission - to continue playing, to reveal a
winner. Over and over this happened, there was never a time when all five of us
simultaneously just gave in - it was a point of pride, at times we rallied the others simply out of disgust or as payback for the last person who had managed to have us continue - on and on and on it went. And so we played, on into the
second day we were still going, nodding sometimes, buzzed others and the pills kept
getting eaten (we checked, no one was allowed to hide them - in the mouth, swallow of warm
beer and then a show of teeth and gums - see? no pill.


We all lost track of which pills each person had and how many - the doriden and the speed
tended to keep us from flying around the room under the influence of all that acid. We
were cooped up in this tiny camper with a little heater while the outside temperature
plumeted to far below zero. All the while we were drinking beer after beer after beer.
After a while this tiny room, filled with sweating tripping farting guys became our
entire universe except for the times when we, one by one crept outside to pee and toss our
trash.


Sometime early the next morning we decided to venture out at least to strech our legs and
I demanded that none of us go more than a few feet from the camper, I was certain that we
would all get hypothermia and die there in the middle of the road, after all, I'd read
about other campers who had died the same way.. That didn't happen, we took a several
hour walk and finally went back to the camper to continue our damn game. I don't know why
but it was infinitely important that we continue to play. If for some reason we quit
the game, the universe would end, everyone in the world including ourselves would die a
painful death so it was up to us to continue to roll the dice.


On the third day - I think it was the thrid day, I do know we were running out of stuff to
put on the board and we all were having trouble putting the right words in the right
places in order to communicate with each other.

The Banker, Neil still managed to grasp the technical aspects of making change, collecting taxes and the like.
He was the one who heard the engines. Remember that aside from that little excursion only
one of us at a time had ever been outside that camper universe - to pee, to throw cans and
bottles and butts and wrappers whereever.



And so, when the two park rangers on their snowmobiles pulled up to the camper we all
piled out and beheld all at once, in unison along with the rangers, the starburst of
yellow snow from half a hundred trips to pee all eminating from or leading to the camper.
Bright, bright yellow,on the dirty white snow, the kind of yellow that comes from
concentrated pee. The trash, the filth, the beer bottles, the empty cases, the sheer
ugliness of it all, the rich smell even in the cold and 5 guys with no pupils, stinking, greasy
hair stuck to our forheads just black pools in their heads where there must once have been eyes and an utter loss as to what
to say, how to explain this spectacular sight or even how to string words into sentences
at all.




But the Banker, Neil, stood there and made conversation with both of the guys as though
nothing were amiss, as though we had just returned from and unsucessful fishing foray or
simply a saunter down the hill a way. I wasn't close enough to hear much of what he said
or what they said except the end "please be sure and pick up after yourselves before you
go" was all one of them said as they started up their snowmobiles, skirted the stained
snow and beer bottles and cruized away.


After that the spell was broken. We climbed back into that craven wooden cave on wheels, we folded up the board, picked up our trash and
decided that Neil the banker had not only won the game but was charged with getting us
down off of the mountain. Hell, most of the drugs were gone anyway.

I'm pretty high as of now... but nothing great lol