Las Vegas
The whole trip was fuzzy the day after we arrived back in Seattle and started back to Alaska, and the past thirty-five plus years hasn't helped things much. Still, I will try and remember the tale of woe as it happened.
It's hard to say where it began and it did end at Fisherman's Terminal in Seattle where Blaine and I were working on someone else's boat.
Still, I guess the tale has to begin somewhere so let's begin it with the time we went out for a couple of beers and something to eat. We were exhausted from burning the candle at both ends, working days and partying the nights away in some damned tavern. We didn't realize it but we were totally exhausted.
Previous evenings we drove back to the boat where we were both working and staying on because we were too damned drunk to walk. Back then nobody really gave a damn. It was a couple of years before the Mad Mothers arrived on scene and got things changed. I still have very mixed feelings on this. Whatever.
We picked a tavern we knew of specifically because we knew that it served decent food. Tavern food is generally fried and while I certainly like my grease, there comes a time when a civilized meal hits the spot.
I parked the pickup in a nearby shopping type area in front of some nondescript place that looked like a place that catered to the lunch crowd. It was an eatery of some sort. I parked it with no second thoughts.
We ate, hung out for a while and drank maybe three beers, possibly four but most likely only three and headed back to the blue '62 Dodge half-ton pickup I owned. When we arrived I commented that I could us a nap and Blaine agreed.
I opened the door, pushed the seat forward, grabbed the sleeping bag and tossed it into the bed of the pickup. Because I was going to sleep in the bed I got the sleeping bag. Blaine got the wide bench seat in the cab and got the old Army blanket that was also there.
We figured on maybe an hour long nap and we'd go out and do a little partying but nature had different plans for us.
We both went out like a light and slept the entire night.
I first to a typical Seattle misty day slightly disoriented. I looked around to get my bearings and the first thing I saw was the sign on the eatery. El Paso Barbecue said the sign.
Instantly I reached up and banged on the back window of the pickup. Blaine popped up instantly and I pointed at the sign.
He popped his head out the window and looked at me wide-eyed. “Holy shit!” we said, in unison.
“How the hell did we end up in Texas?” Blaine asked.
Instantly we both reached for our wallets. They were there. Back then there were few credit or debit cards. It was pretty much strictly a cash society. If you were out of cash you were out of luck.
I also checked my necklace which was really a simple piece of 550 paracord. On it was a small key ring with a P-38 can opener and a GI dog tag. On the cord itself were a half-dozen gold wedding rings. The wedding rings were my emergency reserve.
It was a trick I had learned from a Colorado Springs pawnbroker I knew. He told me that gold could be redeemed at practically any halfway decent pawn shop for market or near market price. Over the next few months I bought six of them, mainly from tanked up soldiers from nearby Fort Carson who let them go for a song.
They stayed on my necklace as an emergency reserve for years until 1985 when I cashed them in down in the Seattle area to finance a sailboat trip. I hit a high got somewhere close to $500 for them.
Still, back in '80 I could count on about a fast $150.
It was a pretty slick trick, actually. If my pocket was picked I could go to the nearest pawn shop and redeem one or more of them. If I was outright jack-rolled it was likely that they would be overlooked.
We both opened our wallets and everything seemed OK. We had money. I had too much money. I had about $400 more than I had when we left the boat!
To this day I have never figured that one out. Still, I am honest and knew I hadn't robbed anyone or done anything dishonest. I knew I didn't come by it criminally.
“Well, let's gas this beast up and get back to Seattle,” I said. “Skip's gonna be rightly pissed off at us.”
“Where's the highway north?” asked Blaine. “Too bad we don't have a LORAN. We could plot a course.”
Then Blaine saw something on one of the buildings. It said Greater Seattle such and such and he looked at a couple of the license plates. We were still in Seattle and about fifteen or twenty minutes away from the boat.
“You idiot,” said Blaine. “We're still at the tavern we went to last night! I guess we overslept.”
“Oh, well,” I yawned. “Keep your eyes open for someplace that sells breakfast. I'm buying. At least we're not going to have to sit in this shitbox for the next three or four days.”
“Yeah, but if we did, we could stop in Las Vegas and checked it out,” said Blaine.
I got in and we caught the time off of a bank. We had time so we wandered into a nondescript greasy spoon and ate breakfast. We returned to the boat with plenty of time to spare.
While sometimes the skipper would roust us if we sacked out on the boat, we knew he would not worry if we ambled in. We were men, expected to act like men and we were in turn treated like men.
The scary part is we were living so hard and fast that it was entirely believable that we had gone out for a beer and had woken up 1800 miles away from where we had started out from on a trip to get a couple of lousy beers and a meat loaf dinner. Things like that had happened before and were likely to happen again.
We worked on the boat for a few more days and then we were told the boat was headed into the yard and it might be a pretty good time to take a break for about about ten days to two weeks. We could have been useful in the yard but there are often rules about what the crew could and couldn't do. Besides, we had been married to the boat for quite some time now and we could use a break.
Blaine gave me a smug look. “Let's go to El Paso, Texas,” he said.
“We been there,” I answered, smugly. The skipper had heard about what had happened the other day and laughed. It really was funny. What made it funnier is that it was believable.
“How about Las Vegas,” I suggested. “That's partway to El Paso. Then again maybe that's not a good idea. The truck needs new rubber.”
Blaine immediately offered to buy new tires if we went to Vegas. I took him up on the offer.
The skipper pointed out that we should empty the refrigerator because power at the shipyard could be spotty. We did this, parking some of the stuff that would keep into a cooler. This went into the bed of the pickup and was accompanied by a couple of frozen gallon jugs of water that we got out of the ship's freezer. The freezer had already been emptied a couple days before. There really hadn't been much in it.
The skipper then somewhat surprised us with a check. One was our final settlement which was fairly hefty. Then he handed us $600 in cash as a bonus. The bonus was a complete surprise and we handed the checks back to him and told him to hang onto them for us for when we returned.
The pickup had a contractor's tool box in the back that would hold our sea bags and one of our sleeping bags. The other we could mash down behind the seat. Blaine took the truck, disappeared for a short time and returned. He had gotten beer and some real ice. The gallon jugs were ditched, the beer was put in with the food and iced heavily.
The next morning we were off and running.
The first order of business was to get some decent rubber under us. We headed straight to a wrecking yard in Tacoma where for about $5 each we could have the pick of the tires in the yard assuming we gave them the old rims back.
At this point we were running on two baloney skins, meaning they had no tread showing, two may-pops that had three layers of cord exposed. The spare looked brand new except for the fact that the sidewalls were dry rotted to beat hell.
The Dodge, fortunately, had a basic Chrysler Corporation standard lug pattern which meant we had a wide choice to pick from. We managed to come away with five matching snow tires all for the full delivered price of $25!
We took them out to the truck and changed them one by one and returned the old tires still on the rims and then returned to the elegant recycling emporium and scrounged three or four outer wheel bearings and a couple of bearing races. For some reason the old beast went through right front wheel bearings even though we had replaced the spindle a while ago.
I think he charged us two bucks and threw in half a paper coffee cup of grease and we were out of there with rubber so good it could actually pass a state inspection!
Then we gassed up, re iced the food and beer and off we went, Las Vegas bound but with a stop outside Boise, Idaho.
It's about eight or nine hours to Boise, Idaho and we knew a couple of girls in the area. We figured on stopping off there for the first leg of the journey and fooling around with them.
Back then there were no cell phones or GPS units. It was paper maps and phone booths. I broke out my little black book and tried calling one of them about four hours out of Tacoma. No luck. I tried again when it was getting dark and a guy answered so I hung up. Blaine tried calling a girl he knew there and reported similar results. It looked like a night alone in a sleeping bag on the road someplace.
In Boise at the time there was a sandwich type shop that I had heard of from one of the guys. It was probably a carryover from the 30s or maybe the 40s. They had a couple specialty sandwiches for travelers where for an extra quarter or so they would wrap it a certain way in aluminum foil and give you a piece of wire. You could tie the sandwich to your exhaust manifold and heat it up. We had actually been planning on buying a couple to heat up for breakfast the following morning.
We had the address, found the place but it was closed. We pulled into the parking lot to figure what to do next. Instantly a police car pulled in. Blaine and I put our hands where they could be seen after we kicked our beers under the seat.
We were not too worried about the beers under the seat. The pickup was so rotten that any beer that spilled out of the cans would dribble through the holes and onto the gravel beneath us. Occasionally I wondered why the seat stayed upright because the floor was so rotten.
The only thing that concerned me is that he was possibly a deputy county sheriff type. I looked at the police car, saw a municipality name on the side and relaxed.
At that time a lot of county sheriffs were pretty corrupt. It was possible that they would try and pin an unsolved crime on someone passing through up to, but not including the murder of Sharon Tate. They couldn't use that one because Charles Manson was doing time for that one already.
At that time the consensus was it you were passing through you would probably get a fair shake from a state policeman or a local police officer. This is not to say all county mounties were corrupt but an awful lot of county sheriff systems were. One had to know which was which and it was prudent to assume they all were until they were proven otherwise.
We were not too worried. We were both sober by the standards of the day. This was in the early 1980s and the Mad Mothers were only in the offing. Of course, even by then the days of a cop holding your beer while you got your license out were a memory.
It's proper to note here that this was a few years before the Mad Mothers emerged. The standard the police used for intoxication was the officer's gut instinct as to the person in question's ability to drive safely.
While we were never tanked up, there was almost constantly a beer between our legs as we drove on long trips. Many of them were never finished. We'd toss them out when they got too warm. The general etiquette was that if one got stopped the brews were ditched and put out of sight. If I recall, the only state I was aware of the was strict about drinking and driving at the time was Oklahoma and they were draconian.
The cop approached us and asked for my license which I produced. It was an Alaskan license and he looked curiously at it because the pickup had Washington plates. He thought a second and apparently it made sense to him. A lot of people that lived part time in Alaska maintained vehicles and/or homes somewhere in Washington.
When he asked us what we were doing I told him we were looking for one of the sandwiches that we could tie to the exhaust manifold. The cop said the sandwich shop closed at three. I asked him where we could find a place to eat and he told us there was a pretty good diner up ahead.
Then I asked him where we could find a place to sack out.
He told me to let him make a call and wandered over to the phone booth, dialed a number, spoke and returned to us.
He explained that there was an old widow that occasionally rented rooms for a small amount and told us to call soon if we wanted to stay there. He explained it was in a regular home and that it was probably likely she would cram a full sized breakfast into us and it would be good form to stick a couple of bucks under our pillow to cover it.
He wrote her address and phone number in his notebook, tore it out and handed it to me. A few minutes later we ate at the greasy spoon and I called. She had a room with twin beds in it and we drove over. She met us at the door and we took one look and knew we had lucked out. In a few minutes we were both out like light.
We both woke up feeling refreshed, showered and turned our underwear inside-out so the clean side was next to our bodies. Then found out the cop was right. She offered us a breakfast fit for an Alaskan fisherman which we gladly accepted. While she was cooking I returned to my room and stuffed a ten spot under the pillow and returned and we ate. She wanted to talk and we actually enjoyed the old woman. After breakfast we took our leave.
When I lit the beast up it sounded a little loud so I crawled underneath and saw where the muffler had rusted through in a spot. Off to the greasy spoon we had eaten at the previous evening.
We fished through their dumpster and snagged a couple of number ten cans and threw them in the bed and found a parts house. I went in and bought a couple packages of Gun Gum. It was a muffler repair bandage.
Out in the parking lot I split the can after I had cut the bottom of it off with my trusty P-38. I slipped the can over the hole as a sleeve and then wrapped the entire thing with the Gun Gum bandages. If I recall the Gun Gum kits even included wire but I used our own because it was heavier. The wire just held things together until the Gun Gum set which I knew it would soon from the muffler heat.
We knew we didn't actually need to repair the muffler but we did because loud mufflers attract the attention of cops.
We were off and running and the truck was running smooth. We figured we were maybe 12 hours from Las Vegas and although we had a late start, we would be there well before midnight. As we rode we discussed things.
We pretty much had Las Vegas figured out. We knew that it was a tourist/gambler's mecca and they relied on the tourist dollar. The police would tolerate a lot. We could get away with being somewhat drunk, we could whistle and cheer in a strip joint if we wanted to and generally raise a little hell.
However, at any sign of violence, dishonesty or public obnoxiousness and we would be clapped in irons in very short order. We figured Las Vegas had a reputation to uphold and they would do so whatever it took. Keeping up appearances was all important to Las Vegas. Our plan was not to try and be totally invisible, but we did want to stay out of the limelight.
We were in the Nevada desert when something funny happened.
We had the throttle pulled out most of the way and the little Slant Six was humming along at about maybe 70-something. This was legal at the time in the desert. There was no real speed limit there. Some guy pulled out to pass us and we saw there was a cop behind him. The cop stayed behind us.
Suddenly the guy pulled back in again and I had to hit the brakes. That meant the cop had to slow down, too.
Blaine turned to me and said, "Watch this." He took his nearly empty beer, lifted the floor mat and dropped the can through the hole in the rotten floorboard. It rattled out between our rear tires.
The cop saw the beer can and knew we hadn't thrown it out the window. The only likely assumption he could make was that the guy that had just passed us had tossed it out and it had caught in the slipstream and gone between our tires..
He whipped past us, lit up and chased the jerk down and pulled him over. By the time we passed him the cop had him out of the car and we simply drove on past, laughing our asses off.
The throttle was sort of the cruise control of the day and saved one from being a slave to the gas pedal It really didn't control the speed very well it just held the carburetor open to a fixed point. On level ground it worked reasonably well. While going downhill one sped up and when going uphill one slowed down. You could help it while going uphill simply by stepping on the gas. While going downhill you had to push the throttle back in. It was crude but it made life a little easier. On the flat lands it worked halfway decently.
Now things get a little blurry here and I am trying to remember the sequence of events. Our plan was to reconnoiter the strip upon arrival. I do remember that was the plan. It got changed on the fly, fast when we arrived.
Somehow we landed in North Las Vegas. We took a wrong turn or something.
Anyway, there was little glitz of glamour here. We later found out that this was where hookers, strippers, junkies and other drug cripples came home to die. We found out that they didn't even had a decent 1%er badass motorcycle gang here.
The crime rate was astronomical and here we were. This was not a nice place to be.
In a monumental moment of total stupidity of epic proportions we decided to wander into some beer joint and ask around and get our bearings.
I noticed the motorcycles parked out side were somewhat different. There were a couple of halfway decent looking Harleys but most of the bikes were ratty looking. No self-respecting 1%er would be caught dead on such a ride.
We went inside and we both sat down at the bar and almost the instant our asses hit the stool, Blaine fell down to the floor. Some three hundred pound ass clown was standing over him laughing with a big Haw, Haw, Haw. He had jerked the stool out from under him and informed us that Blaine had taken HIS seat.
I watched Blaine cower and crab walk to the wall and I just knew what was coming up. I quietly headed toward the door and waited. I knew Blaine would take any abuse whatsoever except for a direct physical attack. When the big biker was seated and relaxed, Blaine was on his feet like a cat and he went over, jerked the stool out from under the big guy and smashed it over his head.
The place exploded. His friends were on their feet and I knew the chase was on. I was out the door in a nanosecond and had the truck fired up about the time Blaine jumped in. I backed up and clipped a bike which caused a small domino effect. Another bike or two tipped over. I dumped the clutch and we were off and running. I jumped a curb, hooked a right and tore off as fast as the little Slant Six could go.
I knew we had a little time to escape. They would be picking up motorcycles and fumbling with kick-starters.
One of the things about the beast that probably saved my skin more than once is that I had no key to fumble with. The original had corroded into the ignition and when I yanked it out with a pair of pliers the core came out with the key.
I hot-wired it and took it straight to the parts house where I bought a pair of toggle switches, one was standard, the other was spring loaded.
The parts house guys let me run an extension cord out and I drilled two holes next to each other in the lower lip of the dashboard. There I installed and wired in the two switches.
The standard switch was the off/on for the ignition system and the spring loaded switch controlled the starter motor.
It was really pretty slick. I would hook my finger and pull both at once until the engine caught. Then I would release them. The spring loaded switch would return to the off position and shut the starter motor off and the standard switch would stay on, controlling the ignition. I'd shut her down by turning the ignition switch off.
I think it saved my bacon a couple of times when I needed a fast getaway.
I drove like hell and we got away fairly cleanly and hid behind a strip mall for a while. I was more than aware, however that in the lighted parking lot some of the bikers had gotten a pretty good look at the pickup. It was very, very recognizable. Anyone that had even glanced at it could recognize it anywhere.
We left and drove a few miles and pulled over in a convenience store for directions and headed out into the desert planning on camping there.
I have no clue whatsoever where we wound up. The attitude was simply, “We camp here!” The adrenaline of the chase had worked its way out of us and we were tired. We sacked out, I was in the bed of the pickup and Blaine had simply tossed his sleeping bag on the ground.
I manged to get some sleep and when I woke I looked over at Blaine who was already awake and looked at me ashen faced. He mouthed something and I approached him carefully. He mouthed it again.
“Snake?” I asked. “In your sleeping bag?”
He nodded slightly. I blanched. We were in Mojave rattler country and the bite was particularly venomous.
I looked at his sleeping bag. It had been a warm night and the bag was unzipped. He had simply laid down on one half and pulled the other half over himself.
I went back to the pickup and took the carpenter's level off of the gun rack and returned. I slowly got it under the bag and slowly flipped the top half over. There was nothing.
He mouthed something again. “Under the bag?” I asked.
I grabbed the corner of the bag and told Blaine to 'break right' and gave it a really hard tug and Blaine flipped over. When the bag came up I spotted the culprit. It was a very venomous, deadly looking piece of harmless worn out faded Chicago air hose about thirty inches long.
We both laughed stupidly and I called him an idiot.
A few minutes later when I dropped something I saw movement under the pickup and spotted a real Mojave rattler! I jumped into the bed of the truck, crawled into the cab, lit her off and drove forward a truck length and we watched the creature slither off.
I was feeling kind of crummy so I decided to clean up a bit and change clothes. There was water in the cooler from the melted ice so I washed my face, armpits and groin as best I could, slathered on some deodorant and was good to go. I fished the cash wad out of my dirty jeans pocket and transferred it to my new set of duds and crammed the dirty outfit into the laundry bad which went into the duffel bag.
Much of the food in the cooler had already gone bad so we cleaned it out. We dumped the actual food in the desert for the carrion eaters and crammed the actual litter into a paper bag (remember them?) and disposed of it later.
While putting the duffel bag and sleeping gear back in the tool box I noticed a canvas package and realized I had forgotten to put my deer rifle back on the boat. It wasn't much, just an old, battered 30-30 model 1894 Winchester. John Wayne never missed an Indian with one.
I mentioned it to Blaine and he shrugged. He reminded me we were in the Old West and reminded me tongue in cheek that we could be attacked by wild, whooping savages at any time.
Looking back on it I realize I felt a certain amount of comfort knowing it was there. This was long before the age of cell phones and if there wasn't a pay phone nearby we couldn't call the US Cavalry to come to the rescue.
Back then gun laws were only in effect in Massachusetts and New York. If we were stopped by the police and tossed they would pay it no mind. No charges would be files. It wasn't illegal to have and at the time a lot of pickups had rifles in the rear window gun racks. In Alaska the old Winchester was generally in the gun rack that now held a carpenter's level.
It remained there untouched for the rest of the trip.
We headed back toward Las Vegas slowly and stopped off at an out of town nondescript diner and ate breakfast. A mile down the road we spotted a woman standing outside a motel parking lot thumbing a ride. She was obviously a pavement princess headed home after a hard night's work but we picked her up anyway. If anyone knew Las Vegas well it would be a hooker.
She was pretty much a drug cripple, she was already high but she provided is with a wealth of knowledge and got us situated. We were lost and knew it but she got us on track.
We dropped her off where she wanted to be dropped off, grateful for her information.
After we were headed the the Las Vegas strip I heard a slight scraping noise in the right front wheel. The right front wheel bearing was acting up. Better to fix it now. If I did it was likely we would not have to replace the race, just the bearing itself. We wouldn't even have to remove the wheel. I pulled into a gas station, gassed up and pulled over to a quiet place in the lot.
We grabbed the high-lift and took a lot of the weight off of the wheel. Off came the dust cap and we grabbed the spare and the grease out of the glove box.
I pulled the cotter pin out, removed the castle nut and yanked the old bearing. It was on the way out. I ran my pinkie over the race and it was glass smooth. I packed the bearing by hand and replaced it. This time instead of tightening the castle nut up to line up with the cotter pin hole I loosened it.
Apparently I had been keeping the damned thing too tight because I only crunched it one more time and that was on the Alaska highway. That was to be expected back then.
We popped the dust cover back on, lowered the truck and we were off ready to roll.
Wait a minute! We did NOT gas the beast. That came later. We just changed the wheel bearing. We gassed up later in a complete panic which I will get to shortly.
We hit the strip and there before our eyes was the glory of Las Vegas. Whiskey, gambling, beautiful girls! Bright light a-flashing advertising Elvis, Frank Sinatra, the Rat Pack and the True American Dream! A roll of the dice could turn someone into an instant millionaire!
“Viva Las Vegas!” shouted Blaine.
“Viva Lost Wages!” I answered.
We drove up and down the strip several times past the bright lights, the Big Cowboy and even in the bright desert sun everything looked so shiny and bright enough to overshadow the sunlight. We both wanted to see a show and all of the glitter that went with it.
Both of us had been into a couple of sleazy topless joints with the usual collection of broken down drug cripples dancing to a jukebox box but here was a real show with attractive woman and a choreographed performance.
Elvis was long dead by that point but he was still there with a whole slew of imitators and wedding chapels.
The strip was astonishing to behold and as we drove along agape some idiot in a Mercedes cut us off and I wound up on the sidewalk. It was just dumb luck I hadn't clobbered someone.
We both recovered quickly and reentered traffic which was very light for the time of day. Fear gave way to anger and we were both livid. We caught up with the guy and he appeared to be pretty drunk because he was all over the road.
Ahead of us he took a right and entered a parking lot and handed the keys to a valet who took the car when he walked into a casino.
At this point Blaine said to me, “Meet me here! His ass is mine!” and bailed out.
I pulled over and watched as Blaine walked past the owner of the car and acted like someone returning to his car. A moment later I saw him approach the valet who looked upset and went into his booth and picked up a phone and spoke into it. Blaine disappeared out of sight.
A couple of minutes later a fire truck and police car appeared out of nowhere and a fireman got out and tore the trunk lid off of the Mercedes. He got it done just as the owner showed up in outrage.
Blaine showed up out of nowhere and started to get into the car but I saw the valet point to us. Blaine was wearing that damned red shirt of his and he stuck out like a neon sign.
A .30 caliber military National Match bullet leaves the muzzle of a bolt-action rifle at 2750 feet per second. I left the sidewalk a lot faster than that. The same bullet in a 1/12 twist bore spins at 2750 revolutions per second which is 165,000 rpm which is what I felt like. I was spinning at 165,000 rpm and flying along at about 1875 mph.
I knew that Blaine had inadvertently gotten us fingered to both the cops and fire department. He reported that he had told the valet that he heard a baby crying in the trunk of the Mercedes. They take that kind of thing VERY seriously in Las Vegas because every so often some compulsive gambler leaves a child in the car. There have been deaths because of this and the last thing Las Vegas needs is a black eye to chase business away.
The fire and police department are trained to break into a car and ask questions afterwards.
On top of that, he reported that the Mercedes driver looked like a mob guy.
Great! Wonderful! This was not the place to be! Being wanted by anyone is not a good deal but now inside the past ten or fifteen hours we were wanted by not only a dopey gang of wannabe bikers, but the Las Vegas police department AND the fire department and on top of that, the mob. I made Blaine get rid of that damned red shirt immediately. Talk about closing the barn after the horse got out.
I have no idea why the cops just didn't chase us down like dogs. None. They could have nailed us cold in under two minutes if they acted fast.
Still, the red shirt was enough to get us nailed even after the fact so I made him ditch it.
We were headed east and I decided that it might be a wise idea to gas up. We had cleared Las Vegas proper and the only thing we had to worry about was a stray county sheriff deputy. The again, we were headed east and Lake Mead was east.
It looked like we were making it easy for the mob guy because he would not have to transport our corpses as far to stick out feet in a couple of concrete buckets and deposit us in the deep part of the lake.
On the other hand, the Arizona border was under an hour away. We could cross the border into Arizona, go north and enter Utah, head north to Salt Lake City, cruise into Boise and then make the run to Seattle. It would mean more time and mileage but we would be avoiding all sorts of trouble.
I pulled into a gas station and gassed up. I reached into my front jeans pocket, pulled out my wad, paid for the gas and looked at what I had. I had two or three bucks.
Blaine and I generally carried only big bills in our wallets. We'd break out a Franklin to pay for something and put the change in our front pockets. That way we didn't have to expose the amount of cash we were carrying. I still do that and I suppose the trick has kept me from being rolled. At least it has helped me keep track of things. I knew I had at least four and probably five hundred bucks in my wallet.
I reached for my wallet and turned pale. It wasn't there!
“My wallet is missing!” I snapped.
In a Pavlovian reflex, Blaine slapped his back pocket. He turned ashen. “So is mine! I'll bet that little whore we gave a ride to lifted them!”
I thought a minute. “Doubtful,” I said. I don't see how she could have gotten mine. She was sitting outside you. Besides you were sitting on yours. Let's get the hell out of here.”
We had under $20 between us. It was over 1100 miles to Seattle. We had the better part of a carton of cigarettes, a full tank of gas and it was broad daylight and we weren't wearing sunglasses. I hit it and off we went, thinking on the fly.
There was a sign to Lake Mead and it was fairly close. I knew the Hoover Dam was there and there were very likely recreational areas and with that were camp sites. The government run sites were cheap. I headed to Lake Mead.
We needed cash. We didn't need much. Gas was about a buck a gallon and seventy-five bucks would cover it. If we could both find a day's work we could make that in a day or two. We needed work...or something evenly remotely resembling it. It was time to fall back and think.
“If we can find some dumb hippies we could probably get them to put us up for a couple of days while we hunted for work,” I said. “We just need a reasonable excuse they'd buy.”
The Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior had been in the news recently. “We could tell them we are with the Greenpeace people and are ashore raising money. Maybe we could get them to run around taking up a collection for us!” said Blaine.
“We're part of the relief crew and we're ashore to do a fund raiser. If they ask to see some paperwork we show them our Alaska fishing licenses and tell them they are required in Alaskan waters so we can reel in Japanese gill nets,” I added.
“OK, sounds good.”
At the time the federal camp sites were primitive. Now they have WiFi. We found a likely looking group of stoners and I approached them and started talking with them. It took only about fifteen minutes before they invited us to join their anti establishment little hippie group. I explained that we were raising money for the Rainbow Warrior and that we had just been robbed we were invited to stay and eat and sleep there for a while.
We offered them everything we had (except for the trio of twelve packs we had hidden in the construction tool box).
Much of the food from the boat we had on ice was good and they were happy to take it. In return they cooked it for us. We accepted even though hippie chicks are usually lousy cooks. A lot of them could burn a kettle of water.
Anyway, lousy cooking and all, we had a temporary respite and a low likelihood of being caught by the bikers, the Las Vegas police, the Fire department or the mob so long as we kept the truck hidden.
I don't remember if we were in Nevada or Arizona at the time.
That evening over the fire we discussed plans for helping out the poor beleaguered whales. The hippie group offered to help.
The next morning Blaine and I were up and the hippies crawled out of their racks to face the new day and instantly started on a search of every trash can and dumpster in the area. They passed word of what was happening to another group and in short order we had about 25 cans suitable for using to collect money in.
In the meantime we were given some kind of nasty tofu mixed with granola or some damned thing for breakfast. It was lame. Two farts later our stomachs were empty and growling but beggars can't be choosers.
One of the womenfolk was actually a pretty talented artist and drew a pretty good label for the cans. The label had a picture of a whale on it and simply said 'Save the Whales”. It mentioned nothing of Greenpeace. One of the other people had a relative that worked for the Las Vegas newspaper the name of which slipped my mind and took off for Las Vegas in a Volkswagen and returned with about fifty copies of the label, a small bottle of contact cement and at my request a clipboard and some paper.
It was still early enough in the day so three of us hopped into someone's Volkswagen and we returned to the outskirts of Las Vegas. We had to keep the beast hidden. We went into every convenience store, supermarket and gas station we could find and asked the manager if we could leave our collection cans there for a couple of days.
The Whales were big then. Everyone wanted them saved and it seemed to be a national issue. There was whale jewelry and Lord only knows what else being sold in their name.
The timing was right.
When manager agrees I would take out a can, put a number on it with a marker and carefully put the can number and the store address on my pad. A clipboard is essential to any good con operation. Clipboards make anything official.
During WW2 a trio of Prisoners of War escaped using a tape measure and a clip board. Two guys were in each end of the tape measure and the third wrote down the measurements. They measured their way out the gate and measured their way into Spain which was neutral.
A clipboard can take a person a long way.
When the cans were distributed we returned to camp. That's when the waiting began. Waiting is generally the worst part of any operation.
We bathed in Lake Meade and I laundered a pair of jeans, a set of underwear and a shirt and socks the Old School way. I knew that as soon as we found a decent shower I wanted something clean to get into. I air dried them and stowed them.
Two days later we emerged and decided to collect the cans. We were hoping for maybe $75 to $100 but expected disappointment.
I scrounged a cardboard box and we fired up the beast. Blaine drove it and followed me and the hippie that owned the Volkswagen. He parked on the outskirts of town and waited for me. There was no way in hell I wanted him to come along because he was the one that had been seen and could be recognized. The odds were slim but I was taking no chances.
The guy with the VW was at least partway intelligent. He wasn't a total acid head burnout which made dealing with him tolerable. He asked me why Alaska required a fishing license for all crewmen. I told him that not only did the crew have to get licensed but the rainbow Warrior had to get an ADFG (Alaska Department of Fish & Game) number on top of that.
I explained that there were several jurisdictions involved, state, federal and international. This is probably the only factual piece I gave him. There really is an International Pacific Halibut Commission.
He seemed mollified. The he asked me about the security and I told him I was required to seal all the cans, put them in the box, seal that shut and deliver the whole thing to Greenpeace, Seattle. I told him it was a joke, really because there was really nothing keeping me from stealing everything. He agreed.
It took us a while to collect all of the cans because many of the store owners wanted to know all about the whales. With a straight face I answered what I could and they seemed interested and mollified.
It's hard keeping a straight face. One crestfallen store owner said the can had been snatched and grabbed by a junkie. He looked pretty sad about it and offered me $20 for the cause.
I consoled him but refused the $20. What we were doing was illegal as hell and patently dishonest. While it was one thing to cheat the faceless general public, it is another thing to outright rob a man face to face, either with a gun or by deception.
I at least had a grain of integrity in my dishonesty.
It took a while to collect all the cans and as I got one I carefully checked the 'serial number' off of the list and put a piece of duct tape over the top as a seal of sorts. When we got back to the car I would place in in the box.
After the last can was collected I sealed the box carefully with the leftover contact cement we used to glue the labels to the cans.
The Volkswagen guy returned me to the pickup and we shook hands with the International Drug Brothers Handshake and handed the box to Blaine, fired up the beast and we left.
We had the better part of a full tank of gas, about 1150 miles to cover, an undetermined amount of cash. In addition to this we had three twelve packs of beer on ice. We had gotten ice from a trading post of sorts in the Lake Mead area.
The beer was getting cold and I drove off.
We skirted Las Vegas as best we could and I pulled over and plotted the course to Elko. It looked to be about six or seven hours away across the desert but it was a late start. We figured we'd camp in the desert again.
“I'm sleeping in the cab tonight!” said Blaine and I laughed. The no snake snake in the sleeping bag incident was still in his head.
“When you get up fire her up and move her ahead in case there's one under the truck,” I shot back and we chuckled.
As soon as we cleared the Las Vegas city limits and the metropolitan area we pulled over and cut the box and cans open and started counting our ill gotten gains. We were flabbergasted! We had a shade over $3000!
“This money is baaaaaad juju,” said Blaine.
“It sure is,” I replied. “What are we going to do with it?”
“I dunno but we gotta get rid of it somehow,” replied Blaine. “Maybe give it to a church or something.”
“Greenpeace has an office in Seattle. Maybe we could drop it off there. After all, we did steal it in their name.” I suggested.
“Yeah. We did steal it,” Blaine admitted. “Hey, Yvonne could sure use this. Screw Greenpeace. Those bastards! They are really pirates! The Japs ought to board her, throw the entire crew over the side and sail her to Japan as a prize! They're collecting money all over the place. This would probably wind up as some big shot's lunch money. Let him eat at McDonalds like the rest of us! I say we give it to Yvonne. Besides it never said 'Greenpeace' on those cans. It said 'Save the whales'!”
“Done deal,” I replied. “Let's keep track of what we spend getting home. We'll cash our settlements and toss in what we spent. For that matter I don't think much of whaling but I think a lot less of piracy.”
“That's fair,” said Blaine.
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