Excerpt from: Drifting

We hit the grounding running, well, more like 85 on the highway trying to get to California before the sun rose. We screamed down the bend, wondering if the gig in Esparto was going to come through or not.  Were we ever going to live the fantasies we talked about in our canvas, sand beaten tents, in that wasteland of political and spiritual fanaticism bent on keeping us on the edge of insanity? Jackson and I were just fresh out of the service, I’m not going to lie and say we were Delta Force Marines, nope, not even close, we were two electricians in the Air Force, and hated every second of it. How we both ended up with what was the worst job outside of the guys wacked out on heroin, which climbed down rat wholes to chase out Vietnamese in the 70's.

 Jackson had originally enlisted for Paratroopers, but something happened during a physical test and was washed out; empty with death, he accepted the first thing they were willing to give him as long as he could just get out of where he was. You could always sense a bit of shame with Jackson about it, but it would only come out every so often. I, on the other hand, was broke, hated the idea of school, but loved to be around university and the constant flow of ideas and openness that it brought with it.  I needed to do something, just simply get out of town or I was going to be stuck with my friends in Northern California for life.

Somehow during basic training we clicked really quickly, probably for the disdain of our female instructor or the fact that she could grow a mustache at the time and neither of us could muster anything better than blonde hair that resembled the broad side of a peach. We also both had a love of books. I know… different, but for both of us it was a way of rebellion, culture didn’t read anymore, and someone left the movie ‘Dead Poets Society’ in our barracks so both Jackson and  clung to the fact that we were being individuals. That same attitude is what would catch us in the most magical and desperate situations of our life, and it would all come, not in that lousy desert, but in the adventures we had after and what I am sharing with you now.

As we hit New Mexico sometime in the midnight under the full moon, we contemplated our next step, the one that would take us out of trimmed sideburns, 5 am forced wake ups under a cloud of ugly massive mustaches and testosterone filled juice heads waiting to prove that the daily time spent with the latest machine game was well worth it, because now he was going to go blow some fucking Arabs head off and show them that the raging fight he feels in his gut, is his manhood and he will puke it all over you after he kills you to prove it. But hey, we weren’t even around those guys. We were the Brahma Bulls and we didn’t give a fuck unless it meant our spiritual enlightenment, our sexual awakening, or our next drunk story in the morning under a memory of Jaeger and a plate of  eggs with as much gravy as humanly possible.

We were now heading for Chico for a brief stop, week or so, and then down to Esparto to build a deck and catch on with a vineyard and start living life like the men we wanted to become.  Saving for the trips that we had only read about in our wildest of imaginations during mad sessions of booze and trying to convince the local Texas girls I was the next great author and Jackson was the next great Superhero. This whole road warrior trip we were making was not merely a whim of two Vets getting out of dodge and finding a way to live life without having to live within the dominate ways of the culture. We both had signed our life away for 6 years in the spring of 2002. Like I said earlier Jackson came fresh off an injury and couldn’t be around his old man and his father’s not so old, annoying authoritative, annoying, amusing, annoying, wife. While I was fresh off living in a studio garage with my friend Chuck Renoylds and had more Oxycontin and coke in the house than we ever did food or girls. Before Jackson and I enlisted, we both spent our free time with characters of the world that made it their oyster. Books from Twain, Bryson, Kerouac, Joyce, Fitzgerald, Salinger and others made us yearn to be out in the world to live raw like Indian warriors gathering fruits of experience from everywhere our visas would let us.

During our final month of enlistment we were both undecided on what to do. The unknown was as unsettling as much as there was a sense of comfort within not knowing, until Jackson received his monthly “good mom” package loaded with cookies, books, pictures and newspapers.. Well in one of the nickel add magazines we saw our future inside of an eight font biblical rhythm. A vineyard owner by the name of Rick was looking to have a deck built and possibly might have an open spot for a few guys for the next season. Well, being the Twain like spirits we called as soon as we seen the advertisement and convinced Rick that we were the next coming of Jesus. We were to meet him three weeks from Monday and he told us to have sleeping bags ready, because we could camp in the vineyard if we wanted. Wow! We were about to embark finally on our own satori’s and we were embracing it with a full head of steam.