Weird Harold, Episode 3 of 5, Road Trip

It was a dead-dark night, clouds obliterating the stars and moon when we topped a hill doing one-hundred twelve miles an hour.  A drizzle kept the road wet and the first sign of any people we'd seen in fifty miles was the firey pillar of a burning car in a wheat field and the shaking sillhouette of a naked woman standing in front of it.

Weird Harold and I had managed to convince the First Sergeant to let us drive from Minot, North Dakota to Great Falls, Montana rather than fly with the rest of the squadron.  We'd used the promise to take him on a fly fishing trip during a training TDY (temporary duty) and we swore to stay out of trouble to get the special exemption.  Then we'd promptly stocked the Grand Am with beer, sandwiches, tackle boxes and fishing poles. 

Road trip!  Remember those days, when driving was as fun as arriving?  Loud music and beer and hundreds of miles of blacktop, rest stops wherever you could pull over, hard-breaking whenever the radar detector chirped.

We only had until Monday morning to report for duty, so we took off right from work on Friday in a packed car and changed out of our uniforms on the road.  We planned on getting as much fishing in as possible before reporting to the Montana Air National Guard Base on Monday morning.  That's how we ended up floating over that hill to the surrealism of a burning car and a naked woman in the rain. 

Harold locked up the brakes and we slid right on by for over a quarter mile before a he executed a beautiful Dukes of Hazard U-turn and we got back to the spot. 

The flaming car had obviously gone off the road and at least a hundred yards out into the field before coming to a stop.  I have no idea how the fire started, but this blonde lady was screaming about her car and jumping around.  Harold brought a blanket and his field jacket and got her wrapped up in that while we made sure there wasn't anyone else in the car.  There wasn't.

After a few minutes she calmed down and said that she'd been driving home and lost control.  This girl was high as a kite. When the fire started, she said she thought it was her burning so she'd stripped off her clothes before getting out of the car.  It was perfect, she was high we were drunk so we offered to give her a ride to her friend's house, where she'd started out from.

We piled into the car and she gave directions, so we drove around for at least an hour on back roads until we found the right one, and that was a dirt road going way out to a double-wide trailer miles off the highway. The place was surrounded by beat up cars and lawn furniture and when we knocked the door gave way like it was made of cardboard.  Some dude yelled, “Come in.” So we pushed our way into another surreal scene.

We walked into a main room lit in blue where probably ten people were sprawled on furniture and carpet.  Two televisions on either side of the room were playing low-quality porn movies from rented videotape players, the really heavy ones with the eject that popped the VHS tape up from the case on a mechanical carriage.  The place smelled sweet, like marijuana and incense, which is a really great aroma unless you're afraid of weekly random drug tests.

With us came excitement and confusion, but in slow motion.  People were getting up and sitting down and talking in hushed tones, all the while the girl we'd brought disappeared down the only hallway.  Peter who owned the trailer invited us to sit, so we hopped up on the breakfast bar and took hits from his bong, forgetting about drug tests in this atmosphere of slow-motion people.  Eventually the woman came back, wearing a striped robe and she handed Harold his field jacket and thanked us.  Her name was Rhonda. 

I asked, but no one was interested in calling the police about the burning car.  “We'll get it tomorrow,” Peter said. 

Beer and pot.  I passed out.

In the morning, Harold woke me with exciting news.  A trout stream flowed just out back of Peter's trailer and we could fish it all day.  Groggy, I said, “Okay.”  I looked down and my clothes were gone, Rhonda was lying next to me on a blanket on the kitchen floor, and eight people were in various states of awakening around the trailer.  Outside, the sky was blue stretching forever like only a Big Sky can do.  I normally despise those state slogans, but Montana's is apt.

I helped Peter tow the car out of that field later.  We dumped it in some kind of country landfill full of rusted metal.  The rest of the weekend we fished and hung out with the Montana Hippies, drinking and getting high until Sunday night we sped off down the road, making it to Grand Rapids in time for Monday morning Roll Call.

- rick, the trouble years.

First Episode - Weird Harold

Previous Episode - Weird Harold and the Bull

Next Episode - The Grand Am

Comments

[Mark]

you know, THAT I would have never expected from you, knowing you now...ah youth...