friends – denelecampbell

It was 1972. A wedding in Long Beach requested our presence, a friend in our tight-knit group to join with his true love in holy matrimony. So we embarked on a road trip to the West Coast, that fabled land of golden sunsets and salty air. A 1930s wedding theme had been announced, so for weeks prior to the trip, I had worked feverishly to sew a gangsta-style three-piece suit in pink gabardine for my husband Frank and a long-waisted light yellow dotted Swiss dress for me. Our friend Virginia, who provided her bright yellow VW bug convertible for the journey, got busy sewing her own pink vintage-style dress for the occasion.

We had plenty of fun planning the trip, gathering wide brimmed hats, Frank’s fedora, the gloves, the hand-held fans. Freshly inspired by Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing book, we gathered the requisite pharmacy, tame in comparison to his. The itinerary grew with each passing day. On the way out there, we’d see the sights traveling in tandem with Jeff, Robert, and Franz in Robert’s shiny blue Karmann Ghia convertible.

The day arrived. We loaded up at Jeff’s house and then headed west, tops down and hair flying in the wind. In those days, Interstate 40 had not been completed. Especially in Oklahoma we found ourselves detoured through small dusty towns on the well-worn two lanes of old Route 66.

Long before Oklahoma City, we put up the ragtop to stop the torrent of wind tearing around us. Somewhere before that, my beautiful paisley turquoise silk headscarf disappeared into the landscape. Late that night, past Tucumcari and facing into a storm front that lit up the sky with magnificent lightning, the front hood flew open and the garment bag with our wedding clothes blew out. Frank steered to the shoulder, latched the hood, and backed up until we found the bag lying unharmed in the median.

More hours passed. We made the last curve around a dark mountain and Albuquerque spread out below like a bowl of lights. The garment bag fiasco separated us from the other car but we couldn’t go another mile. A cheap motel room felt like the Hilton.

gr canyon — l-r: Frank, Robert with Franz hidden behind him, Jeff tempting death.

The next morning, a quick drive through the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest renewed our wonder in the natural world. We made our rendezvous with the other car late the second night at the Grand Canyon. I spent a miserable night freezing in a too-short sleeping bag on rocky ground, probably no worse off than the rest of us. The next morning some of us dropped acid for a walkabout along the south rim. The Grand Canyon is mind-blowing on its own. With LSD, it became a second-by-second discovery of bizarre vegetation, rocks of every epoch, and the mystery of distance, time, and existence. Then we were on our way again.

Me and Virginia at the Calico ghost town in the Mojave Desert

The wedding was complicated—people we didn’t know, extended family, a church and reception. Before and after, we wandered through L.A.’s farmers market, Hollywood, Venice Beach and other places along the seafront. With the happy couple off on their honeymoon and the Karmann Ghia headed home, we set off to the north. From Santa Barbara we followed Highway 1, that hair-raising winding roadway that clings to the cliffs along Big Sur. I don’t do well with heights. My knees start shaking at the third rung of a ladder. I alternated between sickening glances down at the waves smashing onto rocks and hiding my face in my hands.

frank at big sur — Frank and Virginia along Highway 1 at Big Sur. Arrow points to two people in the edge of the waves. Perspective.

Exhausted, we gave up just south of Monterey and parked at the side of the road for the night. Thanks to Frank’s heroic decision to sleep outside, Virginia took the front and I had the back. Neither of us could lie down since there was the matter of bucket seats and gearshift in the front and an ice chest and assorted miscellany in the back. As it turned out, we both had it better than Frank who woke us in the frigid pre-dawn fog desperate to get warm.

frank golden gate — Frank at the Golden Gate

Disheveled and bone tired, we toured San Francisco, a drive-by effort to see the Presidio, Golden Gate bridge, and Fisherman’s Wharf. We walked through downtown, gawking up at tall buildings, dodging cable cars, and musing over oddities like the man playing bagpipes across the street from Woolworths. We wandered around the fabulous Palace of Fine Arts, a preserved portion of the original 1915 exhibit for the Panama-Pacific Exposition.

At this point we had sixty-five dollars to get us back to Northwest Arkansas. There would be no more cheap motels or souvenirs and precious little food. Even with gas at 35 cents per gallon, we hardly had enough to get us home. Fortunately, Virginia had a Gulf credit card. We drove all night, white lines blurring down the pavement as we crossed the gray-white moonscape of Nevada. We hit Salt Lake City sometime the next morning and found a truck stop with showers and a buffet, all of which we could charge on her card.

After a brief gander at Mormon temples, we stuffed ourselves back into the increasingly crowded VW and dove into the Rockies. Up and down we drove, steep inclines, terrifying drop-offs, and legitimate worries about the VW’s clutch and brakes. Frank’s old friend John and his wife lived on the other side of all those snow-capped peaks at a little mining town called Leadville. He welcomed us with cocktails, grilled steaks, and a loft sleeping area in his mountainside chalet.

Oh the joy.

The next day, John took us sightseeing. Included in his agenda was an abandoned silver mine he’d discovered. What is commonly known as a road disappeared before we left the valley floor and soon we found ourselves clinging to the mountainside on a trail of sliding scree hardly wide enough for the Bronco’s wheel base. John was famous for his wild and crazy antics as a Kappa Sig in college, and he’d forged into Vietnam with the bravado only a lieutenant on point can respect. His patrol had walked into a land mine which nearly cost him his life, so when we neared the silver mine and the vehicle canted to a forty-five degree angle and he said ‘oh shit,’ it was truly an ‘oh shit’ moment.

bronco — After an hour of digging, Frank pushes uphill while John tries to pull out. Virginia watches.

We gingerly crawled out of the vehicle on the high side and while Virginia and I watched, John and Frank began digging out from under the wheels in an attempt to level the vehicle. We lost track of time out there in the thin air. The view was breathtaking. Unfortunately, my breath had already been taken by the vertical drop-off to the distant valley below where towering evergreens looked like matchsticks. I was sure we were all going to die.

Over an hour later, John deemed the vehicle level enough that he dared climb inside to drive back up to level ground. With his success, I reluctantly re-entered the vehicle for the remaining terrifying jaunt to the mine. Scavengers had been here many times, but we wandered around thinking of the old timers who came up here with a mule and a pick to seek their fortunes.

Glittering chunks of ore scattered over the rocky ground. The old log structure wasn’t safe to walk in, but we nosed around in the scattered remains where I found a little Carter’s Ink bottle buried bottom up in the dirt. It had turned blue-green in the decades since its contents had been used to pen letters home or tally the proceeds of a day’s hard work. I tucked it in my pocket and braced for the slip-slide trek back down.

From Leadville we hurried south to hit our planned stops at Garden of the Gods and Royal Gorge before turning east for the last leg of the journey. If you’ve never crossed Kansas, be warned—it’s the original never-ending story. You drive and drive and you’re still in the same place. We had cleverly planned what seemed the shortest route but which turned out to be a maze of two lane roads to nowhere. It got dark, the gas gauge sat on empty, and we were in the middle of corn fields with lightning forking across the sky.

Somehow we found our way to a tiny town and waited until the local gas station opened. Later that afternoon, crammed into the back seat with relics of our journey towering in the seat beside me, claustrophobia got me by the throat and I had to get out of the car. We stopped while I walked in the gravel along the side of the road and said I could not get back in that car. Finally Frank convinced me to try the front seat and he squeezed into the back for the rest of the way home.

So many memories, so many emotions. Frank is no longer among the living, nor is Robert. The rest of us keep growing older. But when I think about that summer vacation, I’m lost in the past, my hair flying in the wind, our laughter ringing up the hillsides. I hold that ink bottle in my hand and I’m back in the hot sun smelling pine in cool air and breaking my fingernails as I dig it out of that hard packed ground.

We did things, went places, had adventures. We experienced profound wonder that never left us. We grew. I see now—that’s what vacations are for.

All four of the women went everywhere together, aging women with their tropical wardrobes and big purses. Margaret didn’t question it. They weren’t alone in this regard. There were as many pale, slightly overweight tourists as there were brown-skinned natives.

After a day to recuperate from the tiring journey, the women began a kind of routine, each morning the beach where gentle Caribbean waves lapped onto the white sand. At lunch, the seaside cafe, open to the warm air with tables set close to the edge, awaited with chafing dishes of rice, steamed vegetables, grilled seafood, and lamb barbeque. Waves lapped more noisily here, hitting the rock and concrete sea wall. They ordered iced tea in the morning and Piton beer in the afternoon.

Their cabin, its half-walled exterior open to the outside, clung on a hillside dense with flowering trees and thick undergrowth. A chorus of bird song, frogs, and insect sound vibrated the humid air. Green anoles, accustomed to the traffic, waited eagerly at the periphery to weigh these guests in their clever stare or sample their toes with little reptile mouths.

To the south, the twin Piton peaks jutted their eroded points into the sky with bits of jungle clinging to the vertical slopes. They say some climb those slopes, those here for adventure, the young. The women hired guides for their adventures, taken by car to lavish botanical gardens, abandoned sugar plantations, the remaining volcanic caldera where pits of yellow or pink mud bubbled and sent up sulphurous fumes.

Two young men ran the small boat around the point and along the cliffs toward the village of Soufriere. Other young men, bared chests glistening in the sun, waited at the dock to pull the boat alongside and secure the moorings so the women could clamor over the gunnels and then stroll gracefully along the seaside gardens to comment on the thickets of red blossoms, the architecture of big square houses with upstairs verandas that encircled the houses, their railings and roof edges ornamented with fleur-de-lis and painted the same pastel hue as the rest of the structure—green, aqua, coral.

Along the narrow streets, vendors squatted by small burners with their pans of sizzling wares—bits of meat, fried bread stuffed with spicy filling, batter-dipped plantain. Groups of two, three, or more attended each vendor station, daughters, grandmothers, young children all waiting for the American dollar. One man offered coconut shells he had carved with scenes of the land, surely a clever exploitation of the resource. But then, unlike the food, to what use?

Later, Margaret wondered if carved shells had been a front for his real business. At the time, wandering in this gaggle of female friends, she hadn’t known that women often traveled to these tropical islands for sex. He had been a handsome man, perhaps mid-30s, his black hair tightly fixed in dreadlocks that coursed past his wide shoulders. His ironed shirt stood open down the front to reveal his muscular chest. Advertising.

Looking back, she thinks now she noted a twinkle in his eye—would they catch the joke, the offer, the underbelly of tourism where a quick tumble or a week-long arrangement might lighten the burden of their years and pad his savings for the rainy season? The women did not. One of Margaret’s friends suggested she ask him for ganga, since she was considered the most risqué among them. Not that any of her friends would have shared, even if he had supplied it. She envisioned St. Lucian jails and declined.

How would it have been to walk away with a man like that, maybe a true Rasta man, to stand in a small darkened room he kept for such purpose, to wait trembling while his hands unbuttoned her shirt? Would his patois of French and Carib translate into decipherable words of encouragement and sensuality? How well would he tend to her fear, her despair at the slump of her belly, the sag of her breasts? Could she suspend disbelief and, just for a time, fly off in a state of mind where his desire felt real and her passion found voice and together they gained a moment of true pleasure?

Margaret has a photo album, a journal she wrote while there, and bits of shell and flotsam which she keeps in a box in her closet. It sits with other albums, each of the children in their growing up years, the early years of her marriage, scrapbooks of family trips to St. Louis, Colorado, the Florida Gulf, California with the Grand Canyon and other sights thrown in along the way. She doesn’t remember who she was then, those years ago on a Caribbean isle. Oh, she can recount the Castries marketplace and its handwoven grass mats, the stacks of colorful textiles, the patient women. She can picture the waiters in their white shirts, bowing and nodding. But she looks at the photos and remembers the experiences like watching a movie, an observer on the couch. What she felt then, how she saw the world, becomes an exercise in imagination, a fiction that might be true.

Who can count the missed opportunities of a lifetime? For surely they are far more numerous than the actual path taken. The Rasta man might have captured her lonely heart. He might have been forceful and clear-headed for both their sakes, stealing her away to a rough cabin deep in primal jungle where she would sleep in his bed and wake to his smile every morning. She doesn’t think on this. She and her friends were there for the adventure of tropical seas, exotic food, the sights and sounds of a foreign island. No one ever expected anything more.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Tag: friends

Summer Vacation

The Vacation