the pool, or a weekend in Minneapolis (how about L. A.?), or two days of farm chores in mid-January. In this Jess and Pete thought alike-like city boys, my father would have said, looking for the payoff in a situation rather than the pitfall. Rose and Ty and I played like farmers, looking for pitfalls, holes, drop-offs, something small that will tip the tractor, break it, eat into your time, your crop, the profits that already exist in your mind, and not only as a result of crop projections and long-range forecasts, but also as an ideal that has never been attained, but could be this year.
iscussions around the Monopoly board were lively. Jess had plenty of adventures to relate, but Pete did, too. He told about hitchhiking across the country in 1967, just graduated from high school in Davenport and hoping to get to San Francisco, where he planned to join the Jefferson Airplane, or at least, the Grateful Dead.
Things were uneventful until he got to Rawlins, Wyoming. He was rich (thirty-seven dollars in his pocket) and had a new guitar (Gibson J-200, dark sunburst, $195, a graduation present). A rancher picked him up late one afternoon and offered him a place to stay, then a ride to Salt Lake in the morning. The rancher had two brothers and a wife.
They gave him a steak for dinner, then waked him up in the middle of the night and shaved his head and beard. The two brothers held him down, the wife held the flashlight. "You know," he said, "I've never figured out why they didn't turn on the lights. There wasn't anybody for miles around." In the morning they gave him more steak and a couple of fried eggs, and drove him to the nearest blacktop. When he realized that he had forgotten his guitar, he tried to walk back to the ranch and got lost. That afternoon, one of the brothers found him trudging along, handed him the guitar, and drove him back to the blacktop. It was nearly dusk, and the only car to pass him was heading east, so he waved it down, and that guy drove him all the way to Des Moines. "When I got out of that car," Pete said, "the guy touched me on the arm and said in a whisper that he hoped my chemotherapy was a success.
"Ha!" Rose exclaimed. We laughed the way we never did by ourselves, without Jess.
"Listen to this," said Jess, and he told about confiding to an American woman in a Vancouver saloon that he was evading the draft.
She asked him to order her another drink, and when he lifted his arm to hail the waitress, he felt her poke him in the side. She muttered that she had a loaded gun, that her boyfriend had died in Vietnam, and that "if I didn't say the magic word, she was going to kill me, so I waved off the waitress and I thought for a while, and I said, 'Bullshit."
She said, 'That's the magic word." She took whatever was poking me out of my ribs and then looked at me with a smile and said, 'Why don't I have a margarita?" I ordered her a margarita, and I paid for it, too."
When he was sixteen, said Pete, and hitchhiking regularly between Davenport and Muscatine to rehearse with his group, he got picked up by a New York couple in a VW bus, with an Afghan hound and two cats. They had been on the road for eighteen months, living in the van. They asked him if he had ever seen any Jews before, "because we've been the first for about seventy-live percent of the people we've met." The husband was writing plays about their travels for the street theater group they were going to found when they got back to New York, and one of the plays was called The First Jews.
He asked Pete if he wanted to drop out of high school and go back to New York with them as a member of their company. They pulled over to the side of the road and smoked a joint with him, then the husband took over the driving, and the wife took him in the back, where the dog and cats were sleeping, and seduced him. Rose smiled all the way through this story, as if the carefree glow it cast originated partly in her as well as Pete.
Pete was
iscussions around the Monopoly board were lively. Jess had plenty of adventures to relate, but Pete did, too. He told about hitchhiking across the country in 1967, just graduated from high school in Davenport and hoping to get to San Francisco, where he planned to join the Jefferson Airplane, or at least, the Grateful Dead.
Things were uneventful until he got to Rawlins, Wyoming. He was rich (thirty-seven dollars in his pocket) and had a new guitar (Gibson J-200, dark sunburst, $195, a graduation present). A rancher picked him up late one afternoon and offered him a place to stay, then a ride to Salt Lake in the morning. The rancher had two brothers and a wife.
They gave him a steak for dinner, then waked him up in the middle of the night and shaved his head and beard. The two brothers held him down, the wife held the flashlight. "You know," he said, "I've never figured out why they didn't turn on the lights. There wasn't anybody for miles around." In the morning they gave him more steak and a couple of fried eggs, and drove him to the nearest blacktop. When he realized that he had forgotten his guitar, he tried to walk back to the ranch and got lost. That afternoon, one of the brothers found him trudging along, handed him the guitar, and drove him back to the blacktop. It was nearly dusk, and the only car to pass him was heading east, so he waved it down, and that guy drove him all the way to Des Moines. "When I got out of that car," Pete said, "the guy touched me on the arm and said in a whisper that he hoped my chemotherapy was a success.
"Ha!" Rose exclaimed. We laughed the way we never did by ourselves, without Jess.
"Listen to this," said Jess, and he told about confiding to an American woman in a Vancouver saloon that he was evading the draft.
She asked him to order her another drink, and when he lifted his arm to hail the waitress, he felt her poke him in the side. She muttered that she had a loaded gun, that her boyfriend had died in Vietnam, and that "if I didn't say the magic word, she was going to kill me, so I waved off the waitress and I thought for a while, and I said, 'Bullshit."
She said, 'That's the magic word." She took whatever was poking me out of my ribs and then looked at me with a smile and said, 'Why don't I have a margarita?" I ordered her a margarita, and I paid for it, too."
When he was sixteen, said Pete, and hitchhiking regularly between Davenport and Muscatine to rehearse with his group, he got picked up by a New York couple in a VW bus, with an Afghan hound and two cats. They had been on the road for eighteen months, living in the van. They asked him if he had ever seen any Jews before, "because we've been the first for about seventy-live percent of the people we've met." The husband was writing plays about their travels for the street theater group they were going to found when they got back to New York, and one of the plays was called The First Jews.
He asked Pete if he wanted to drop out of high school and go back to New York with them as a member of their company. They pulled over to the side of the road and smoked a joint with him, then the husband took over the driving, and the wife took him in the back, where the dog and cats were sleeping, and seduced him. Rose smiled all the way through this story, as if the carefree glow it cast originated partly in her as well as Pete.
Pete was
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