A Train Ride To End All Train Rides...

It was winter on the West Coast and the Chowchilla, California bus driver had just kidnapped a school bus full of Middle School kids. Andrew and I were listening to the local news because we were ten minutes away in Indio, California getting kicked off the highway and ticketed for hitchhiking on the Interstate (Six tickets apiece). We were so frustrated and very anxious to get away from all the action! Aha!! There is a freight train depot over the hill and Andrew remembered what his Uncle Fred said to him that "if you ever need to hop a train speak to the breakman he knows all the scedules and which cars that can be ridden safely" he was a breakman for Union Pacific, so Andrew asks the breakman all the right questions and comes back with all the pertinent info for our trip to Phoenix, Arizona. The break guy told Andrew that the train slows down through Yuma and stops in downtown Phoenix. As we waited for the mask of darkness we counted 10 cars like the guy said. We loaded our back packs and sleeping gear got on the train and waited with excitement and high anticipation for our little train expedition out of a town that we were in 8 days too long...The train starts to shake, rattle and squeek and I can feel the power of the dual diesel Frieghtliner Engines pulling that huge 135 car procession out of it's parking spot and heading toward Arizona. The train ride was beautiful you could only see silouettes of the fat T Cactus that lines the landscape. We saw some lone wolves and the tumbleweeds were our only friends until we met a couple of fella's heading back East. Donny 20 the younger of the 2 was heading back to meet his girlfriend in North Carolina, he was in California because he was A.W.O.L. from the Marine Corp at Camp Pendleton and the older guy Trey, 30 something was going back to New Jersey to meet his biological father for the very first time and was a little apprehensive because on one hand he wanted to love his father and on the other he wanted to kill him for abandoning him. We lost them when we fell asleep and we ended up stopping in Yuma and woke up as day break was upon us and so was Phoenix coming in faster than we expected.As the sun came up we could see each other and we looked like we were performing in a Minstrel Show in BLACK FACE, but really we rode 600 miles on a Creosote soaked telephone Pole train car and had the shit all over our skin and clothes. Fuck we are brown and coming into Phoenix at 45 miles an hour! The train starts slowing down to 35 miles an hour and I figure out if I don't jump I'm gonna be in trouble and if I do jump I'm fucked royaly because there is cement sidewalks and asphalt streets to hit when I jump. Andrew looks at me and I remember looking at him as I jump from the train and watch my pack explode all over the street and I roll so fast that I caught up and passed my stuff while the radio we used to keep us informed of the world's daily progress was cutting up my side like a precision surgical manuever. I got turned around enough to watch Andrew follow in my summersaults and spazmadic footsteps with all his shit passing him by and it was comedic at best! we are hurt really bad, I'm cut up and bleeding like I got caught cheating on my Puerto Rican girlfriend and Andrew was bleeding from his forehead and trying real hard to to catch his breath from having the wind knocked out of him and I hear laughter really close to where we landed, I mean rolling on the floor laughing your ass off kind of laughing and slapping and clapping!! When I craned my neck to see who could be so insensitive and there they were...Not one, but two Phoenix Metro Police Officers sitting on a bench in front of the Police Station smoking, laughing, gufawing, snorting and actually the bigger cop was coughing so hard because of us that I thought he was gonna choke up a lung. I looked over at Andrew because we had an Ounce of Humboldt Counties finest that he was in control of and he winks that everything was okay...The officer's took us inside, cleaned us up, got us medical attention fed us and drove us to the Best Western hotel. The two cops were laughing everytime they tried to tell the story to someone else who came into the precinct... Oh yeah, 1/2 mile later the train stopped...I believe we didn't get arrested because we gave those two Phoenix Metro Police Officer's a great laugh and a great story that I bet they tell every Christmas and laugh as hard as they did that December morning...

Where do I begin? Okay, it was in the Summer and in the 70's, I was going to quit school and become a Rock and Roll legend playing in a band that I met from LA. I packed up my Drums, a few ripped up (in all the right places) gauze shirts and 2 pairs of bellbottomed jeans with the bells restitched with huge embroidered patches sewn in and an Army jacket. What a maroon I'd be if I didn't mention the pair of FRY boots and the 4" wooden soled show boots (Still don't remember how I played double bass drums wearing them) and with my best friend (Who was also a Drummer) Andy we were going to California....HOLLYWOOD!!! Andrew as he likes to be called is a Monster, he stands 6'4" and 240 lbs and would eat your arm if you spilled any kind of sauce or dressing on it and also a Monster Drummer. He was a latch key kid when we met at 9 years old (The first time I smoked a cigarette) his dad was an over the road trucker gone 14 days and some times 3 weeks at a clip and his mom worked at IBM and was, well lets say naive...We talked her into driving us to Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania with 2 Drumsets and our clothes to visit his Mom's twin sister out in California and get into this band as double drummer's like the Grateful Dead! We started hichhiking and made it to Denver Colorado from the first ride and we were ecstatic it only took 4 days because we had gotten a ride from Mike, he was a traveling salesman selling Thai Stix and Rorer 714's out of the special compartment welded inside the trunk of a 1968 Cadillac Eldorado Brauham Landau Limited edition. It was HUGE and we drove the car packed with gear through the Rockies smoking Mike's weed while he nodded in and out from all the Qualudes he had eaten....It was beautiful and the mountains were breathtaking for a couple of kid's from New York we were free! Living it up in California and watching the Knack (My Sharona before it was a hit) back stage at a club in Los Angeles called The Whiskey A Go Go on Sunset strip waiting to go on....That was a trip of a lifetime almost 30 years ago and well, maybe Andrew and I didn't become Rock & Roll legends per say, but we sure played drums behind some of them and had some great times, made great friends and in a strange way our dream did come true....