THE GRACKLES
ÒSTEAMED ASPARAGUSÓ WEST COAST TOUR JOURNAL
November 2005
By John Huston
Here are a few shortened anecdotes
for the short-attention-spanned simpletons (read on for the full-on, gory
details): One of us was caught in a
women's bathroom doing something he shouldn't have been doing. We were rendered homeless for a night
and then shared the next morning with actual homeless people on a beach in San
Francisco. We found ourselves
stranded on the side of an Interstate without a functional vehicle.
It's a miracle we even made it to
the West Coast, let alone back to Chicago, in our truck Ð a 1991 Dodge Charger
that Fee got for free from a friend.
In fact, we were told it was impossible, just 12 hours before we even embarked. Fee had said that the four tires were
not of uniform size and that the spare had a leak. So the night before we left, he took it to a
less-than-reputable tire shop to get the spare patched, put on the car, and
have the one small tire thrown in the back. Not necessarily the best plan in the world, but a cheap
one. The tire guy's reaction, I'm
told, was incredulous. He said it was, basically, a retarded idea to take this
truck with these tires on it to California and back. Ended up convincing Fee to buy a new set. It was at that point I started to doubt
the intelligence of taking this hunk of shit on the road. But once the inertia is built up, no
one Grackle can stop the kinetic energy.
Without further adieu, the gory details of our 2005 tour of the western
coast.
11 a.m. CDT 11/9/05
Packed up and ready to go. Brian and Fee got the trailer from U-Haul. Before leaving town, Brian had to stop and pay his cell phone bill, then we threw $30 of gas in the tank and now we're on the interstate. We drive up near Minneapolis and then head due west until we get to Washington. Hopefully we'll arrive by Friday morning to meet friends and hang out for a night before our Saturday show in Olympia. Hopefully this fucking truck of Fee's will hold together.
The back of the trailer after we got all packed. Sort of a tradition when we go on tour to take this photo first.
The gas meter is fucked up and as
our luck would have it, the odometer's paralyzed. Fee has a though: "stop
every three or four hours for gas."
Besides last night's purchase of a
new set of tires, the truck stalled a couple times on Fee last week. So he got a new air filter and gave it
a quick and dirty tune-up and he says it's good to go. Let's hope so.
I think my non-smoking era is
over. At least for the next two
weeks. I'm trapped in a car with
two smokers and nothing but hours in front of an open road. Might as well.
10:52 a.m. MDT 11/10/05
We're driving through
Montana. We drove in shifts last
night. No stopping except for gas. I started at around 2 a.m. and went through
until 7:30 or so. Then I got a nice four of five hours of sleep in the back
seat while Brian took the wheel.
He and Fee said I missed some crazy-large trailer parks while I was out.
Montana looks like the old west. I
dig.
Last night, going through South Dakota, it was so dark Ð no road lights and no towns for miles and miles. It was a clear sky and I don't think I've ever seen so many stars. I also saw at least two falling stars. Then Fee and I saw what must have been a fairly large meteorite entering the atmosphere directly in our front view. It had a long green tail Ð real bright and neon-like.
So far I've only spent $11. I was real tempted to buy a newspaper
at a rest stop called "Trucker Romance," but it was $1 and the
machine only took quarters. "That's a good band name," said a
giggling Fee said. "Trucker Romance."
Is it wrong that, at the age of
27, the name "Butte, Montana" still makes me chuckle? We'll be going
through it in about 2 and a half hours to laugh it up. (Note: neither Brian nor Fee laughed it
up when we went through Butte.
Whatever. Fuck them. Old farts.)