As good as it gets. Tucson, Work and Long Hairs and the Dream.

Tucson just looked like adventure to me. The west, desert Mt. Lemon and lots of young people on the streets. I found a job at a place called Parttime. Largely we got sent out on day jobs cleaning job sites digging ditches whatever came our way. There was an odd assortment of guys working at Partime. There was the Hells Angles recruiter (or so he told us) I never saw a bike but did find him drapped over the hood of my car his head over a pile of wine puke by me drivers side tire. Didn't look very Hells Angle to me. Then there was the winos that hung out in the flood canal out back. I discovered one thing they knew where to hang it was cool in the tunnel under the road probably the ideal temperature to hang out in as good as any air conditioning.
I was about this time that I ran in to Tom the foreman on a job I was working on. On the same job was some long hairs from California. The job was back filling some areas on a hillside that had been opened up so a garage could be constructed using block walls we were back filling the walls. It was hard hot work. After back filling all day the wall collaped under the weight. It was the end of the day anyway.
Tom asked me for a ride home as i was the only one with a car. Home was a job trailer on a lot being readied for some appartments. The season had changed and the snowbirds were back in Tucson. Snow birds are people from back east that come out to Tucson for the warm weather while the east was still cold. It drives up rent so my cheap apartment over night had doubled in value I didn't want to pay it so was staying in my car. Tom told me I could bunk in the job trailer so I laid out my sleeping bag on something soft at one end of the trailer.
I had a strange dream that night I would remember clearly all my life. I started my dream as a young boy dressed in the bavarian custom of short pants with suspenders. I was in a small Bavarian looking town. I went up to one of the shops and stepped inside. The proprietor was a woodworker a toy maker by trade. Strange thing is he didn't have any toys in his shop. For his lifes work he had nothing to show for it but his shop and his tools and not toy one. Then I woke up on a plain under a lone tree. nearby were mountians ringing the plain snow caped mountains. Suddenly the snow fell off the mountians and caused what looked like a tidal wave in the ground it raced towards me. I wasn't worried reasoning it would die out before it reached me. Suddenly it was on me I could feel the ground sliding up one side of me and down the other. I woke under ground two oddly human creatures were with me. We were over looking some low ground heavy with fog and downed trees. It was a sceen right out of the Hounds of the Baskervilles. The thought went through my head the valley of death. On the other side the road rose up the hills side to the light illuminating the sceen. I woke finally to the sound of brickes being stacked. I looked out the window to see a young college age fellow stacking bricks in his backyard behind us.

As good as it gets. Waking up!

I was young twenty years old and living in Tucson, AZ. the year was 1971. In those days Tucson was filled with young hippy types from all over the country. I and a good friend Steve had come to Arizona looking for work in the copper mines. It was a bitterly cold winter some of the mines had shut down due to burst gas pipe line or so they said. We traveled around the state looking for a good time and work. We weren't long hairs didn't drink or smoke any of that funny tobacco. We did smoke cigarettes.
We took a trip to Grand Canyon. We got there in the middle of the night pitch black overcast with clouds and the ground covered in snow. I wanted to get out and look at the canyon in the moon light. As I mentioned clouds there was no moon light. You don't have to be on drugs to be stupid. Sometimes you are just stupid. I walked off towards the rim in the dark. I was trucking along when I tripped over a rock in the snow. I caught myself with one big step my chest just bouncing off my thigh. I was bent over and I could hear a strange sound in the silent darkness. A great ocean of moving air was in front of me. I pricked up my ears at the sound and noticed that the white of the snow ended at the tip of my shoe. I began to think the better of my Grand Canyon in the moon light idea. I turned around and followed my tracks as best I could to the car. We left to find an off the beatten path place to beddown for the night.
The next morning after a very cold night sleeping in my 59 Ford Station Wagon thank god for bench seats in a big automobile. The motor barely turned over the next morning it was so cold. The battery was a trooper it cranked and cranked and finally began to pop and sputter I just kept cranking finally it began to turn over and could make enough power to keep it self running. We went back to the rim to the same parking lot and space we had occupied the night before. I followed my tracks back to the rim much to my surprise there was no railing around the rim only a line of rocks such as the one I had tripped over the night before. My boot print was clearing visible at the very edge of a shear drop of a thousand feet or more. I think that night was a good learning experience for me maybe I began to wake up.
We never did find work. Steve asked me to take him back to California which I did. I went back to Tucson looking for the adventure I seemed to crave.