by Jim Hallaux
Pete started using his own products.
A lot of product.
Started selling out of the rental house.
Jackson’s idea was to deliver the dope to the client, never have them come to the rental. Pete tired of the hassle of setting appointments to drop off dope.
“Just come on over, dude.”
People showed up at all hours of the day and night wanting to score. Jackson grew angry with the constant traffic flow. When he found out about the cheaper weed, the hash, and the LSD, he was furious and done with Pete.
The lease for the rental house was in Jackson’s name. He moved all the pot out of the basement, into his VW and got the shoe boxes of money out of his closet. Then he paid off the rest of the lease in cash, threw all of Pete’s belongings into a dumpster behind the A&W drive-in and checked into the Eugene Hilton.
Jackson called his parents in San Francisco that night to tell them he had discovered his roommate was a drug-dealing criminal he had barely escaped from. He told them he would drive home the next day. On the drive south on I-5 he sold half of the pot to the reseller in Roseburg and half to the one in Grants Pass. He told both that Pete was a Eugene PD informant.
Jackson transferred his meager academic credits to the University of San Francisco and after four years there and another two years at Berkley got his law degree. He invested the Eugene drug money in a California real estate fund. With that sizeable sum, he started his law practice in Mountain View, south of SFO.
Both his practice and investments centered on the growing ‘dot.com’ industry. Jackson saved the mid-sized fortune he made during those boom years, by bailing out of dot.com just before the bust. Jackson retired at 42 and lives today in Hillsborough where he grows orchids and invests in new technologies.
Things turned out differently for Pete. He got back to the Eugene rental house after a day trip to Blue River, his station wagon loaded with pot. The house dark, his key wouldn’t unlock the door. No sign of Jackson. Finally, he broke his bedroom window, badly cutting his hand. Blood dripping, Pete went from room to room.
All his things gone.
The shoebox ‘banks’ gone.
All the high price dope in the basement, gone.
Pete checked into the Eugene Commercial Motel on a weekly rate. The next day he came back to the house. The landlord nailed plywood over the broken window and a police car sat in the driveway. Pete thought about reporting the theft of his things and money to the cop. Then thought better of it.
In the next few weeks the money Pete had kept in his own ‘bank,’ the glove box in the Dodge, started to run out. He had to check out of the motel. Started serially couch crashing at various friends. Living arrangements were loose. There always seemed to be a couch, a living room rug and even sometimes a bed and sometimes someone to share it with.
For Pete, college life began to be a distant memory. He kept up the pretense for his parents. His weekly phone calls to brag about his nonexistent grades (he had stopped going to classes months ago) continued. He asked that his parent’s checks go to a PO box. Pete told his parents he worried about mail being stolen from the box at the rental house. He didn’t want to tell his parents he wasn’t living with Jackson anymore.
Mr. Aro and Audrey had been planning to come to Parent’s Day, but Audrey’s bunion surgery conflicted with the date. When they called Pete with the news, he sounded relieved. It hurt Audrey’s feelings. She suggested he come home that weekend instead. Pete couldn’t, the bus trip too long. Pete had sold the station wagon to front a load of weed from a new source. The deal never worked out and Pete lost the money.
The bunion surgery got postponed; the doctor’s wife gave birth to a four-pound baby girl, four weeks premature. Pete Sr. and Audrey thought it would be fun to surprise Peter on Parent’s Day. The drive down to Eugene, a long one, both parents looking forward to a nice weekend with their son and his charming roommate.
The Aros stopped first at the rental house. No Peter, no Jackson. The young couple living there knew nothing about previous tenants. Their only information was that the rental had been a ‘drug house.’ The next stop the Parent’s Day Welcome Center; no luck there either. They placed a hurried call to the Registrar’s office and after a brief meeting, Pete Sr. and Audrey learned their son had stopped going to classes 8 weeks ago. His roommate, Jackson, dropped out of the university three months ago.
The last stop was the Eugene Police station downtown. A kind, but slightly bored police Sargent took their information. The Aros stayed in Eugene overnight, waiting for the mandatory 24 hours until a Missing Person report could go out.
8
When Pete’s friends, money and luck ran out in Eugene, he followed friends to the Sunrise commune deep in the woods east of town. Pete wasn’t looking for ‘Peace, Love & Understanding.’ He needed somewhere to hang out, stay high, and find girls. He wanted to “just relax, man, it’s been a tough couple of months.” All of this needed to be free. Pete had no money left.
If he had to put up with some hippie ‘mumbo-jumbo’ to meet his modest goals, that was fine. In fact, he believed in a lot of that ‘jumbo.’ Pete’s hippie leanings had a political bent. His favorite course at U of O, Political Science. He was thinking of making Poli Si his major before drug distribution got in the way.
Pete’s political stance was consistent with the times and his age group.
“The Man has screwed me royally. Me and a bunch of other people. Something must be done. And it will. You watch, man; it’ll happen.”
What had to be done was never known.
The Sunshine commune had been founded years ago. No one seemed to know for sure. It was somebody’s great-grandparents land. The site sat next to Gale Creek a tributary of the McKenzie River, outside of the village of Vida. The creek provided drinking water, clothes washing, fishing, and skinny dipping. The commune maintained pit toilets at an appropriate distance from the two dozen tents and lean-to shacks that provided housing for the group. Under an ancient oak sat a kitchen station with a giant canopy to protect it from the weather. There had been a cabin, but it burned down during a New Year’s Eve celebration.
Commune members and visitors followed a loose list of duties and responsibilities. Some members kept these guidelines religiously, and others, not at all.
Things at Sunshine changed when the great-grandparents died. Then, various aunts, uncles, and lawyers got involved. It turns out 65 acres of cleared grassland, graced with beautiful oak trees and a year-round creek was worth something. Worth quite a bit.
Neighbors near the commune were happy to hear something was happening; it might be shutting down. Some neighborhood kids had wandered over there and didn’t want to come back. The Sheriff had several calls about Sunrise and investigated rumors of drugs going in and out of the commune.
A survey party showed up first. Then lawyers and then the Sheriff.
But things at the commune had been going wrong for a while. Too many visitors, hangers-on, and some truly crazy people. Too many with different ideas that didn’t mesh with the original members of Sunrise.
The commune divided into two separate groups; ‘Peace & Love’ and a harder edge, more radical set.
The radical group was drawn to the sex, drugs and openness of the laid-back hippie lifestyle. But that’s were the shared beliefs stopped. The radical group was into tearing things down or blowing them up. Either for political means, profit or for the sheer elation of ‘Burning Down Amerikka.’
Pete gravitated to the more radical group. They had cars and drove into Eugene for drinks and concerts. Usually, Pete tagged along. A small group from somewhere in California showed up. It was three guys. Their leader, a scary looking dude with long dark hair, deep-set eyes, and a frightening Fu Manchu mustache. After trips into Eugene’s nightlife with this group, Pete got the impression they weren’t looking for drugs, but explosives. This group, not into Peace, Love or Understanding.
That group moved on after a few day
s and then another group, three guys and a girl from southern California passed through. Late one night they asked Pete if he knew of anyone looking for military-grade C-4. Hoping to make it with the girl (not a chance,) Pete was surprised by the question. He never knew if the two California groups got together.
When the Sheriff came back to Sunrise, he came with deputies and a writ saying that everyone had to be out in 48 hours. After that, anyone left would be arrested and their belongings confiscated. Commune members with outstanding warrants left first.
Within the 48 hours, everyone joined them. Leaving a hellacious mess.
Some traveled to a commune east of Ashland, near Lake of the Woods. Others headed for Big Sur. Some moved to a Clatsop County camp in the woods near Astoria, Oregon. And others just went into the wind.
Pete thought of the Clatsop camp near Astoria, his hometown. But he tired of the commune life. He hitch-hiked to Astoria to make amends with his parents.
It didn’t go the way he expected.
“Son, your Mother and I think you have made your own bed and now you need to lay in it. We don’t have a place for you now. Get a job, get cleaned up, we can talk then.”
With absolutely no place to go, Pete went back to what he knew; his childhood friends, Bill & Joe. And the three moved in together, always one step ahead of the rent, through a series of rooms to rent and small apartments until they found a rent-free squat in east Astoria.
9
Bill and Pete hitchhiked back to town from the Mink Farm. Fired, again. Bill and Pete always worked as a team. Not a great team, not even good or mediocre team; a hapless, bumbling collaboration that had been going on since grade school.
They lived there day to day lives as if they were already 3 drinks in and eagerly awaiting their 4th. And usually, they were either stoned, drunk or both. Friends and co-conspirators since second grade, Bill and Pete had been fired exactly as many times as they had been hired.
“All I wanted was a little shut-eye.”
“Where did he find you?”
“Under the cages in barn five. Said he could smell the pot.”
“What pot?”
“The pot in the band-aid box, under the sink at the house.”
“Hell, that’s my pot, my emergency stash.”
“I was gonna share it with you but couldn’t find you. I only smoked a little.”
“Well give me back the rest.”
“I hid it in the cage above my head.”
“Dammit, the mink ate it. So nothing to smoke when we get back. Thanks.”
“I got my emergency stash in the cigar box behind the stove. I’ll share it with ya.”
“Big of you.”
They weren’t all that upset about losing the job. They had worked at Mr. Perrina’s mink farm for five weeks, a record. Bill and Pete had been dishwashers, painters, movers, plumber helpers, construction hands, gardeners, lawn mowers, refuse haulers, delivery guys, grocery stockers, newspaper boys, tree planters.
Mr. Perrina had been good to them. A nice Finnish guy who ran a tight farm. He paid a good wage for a good day’s work. The wages worked for Bill & Pete; the actual work, not so much.
Mink are smallish, mean little bastards, with luxurious coats. They will bite a person viciously if given any chance. Driven literally mad when caged, they move constantly in their wire enclosures. Snarling and hissing, they try to bite each other and anything else that comes close.
Mink are caged separately and fed a foul mixture of fish parts, chicken parts, and grain. Bill and Pete would drive Perrina’s flatbed truck into Astoria to the canneries (They told Perrina they had driver’s licenses. They didn’t, both suspended) to get the fish guts, fish scales, bones and who knows what other grisly fish parts from the fish canneries. The cannery stuffed and froze this unholy mess in burlap sacks which Bill and Pete threw on the truck and tied them down.
Next stop, the chicken processing plant for that disgusting frozen concoction. Almost the same, chicken parts instead of fish, frozen burlap bags thrown on to the truck. Then back to the mink farm.
Since they didn’t tie the load down well, the load was always lighter getting off the truck than on. Fish and chicken byproducts were mixed with grain and water in an ancient cement mixer and poured into giant buckets which went onto wheeled carts. Bicycle tires made pushing the carts a bit easier going uphill and downright uncontrollable going downhill. Many near misses, collisions, and disgusting crack-ups with the side of barns; fish guts and chicken parts, like a soup made by Satan, covering everything.
A day on a Mink farm was physically hard, smelly, at times disgusting, in winter extremely cold, in the summer sweltering. A tough job for anybody. For Bill and Pete; hungover, grumpy, sleep deprived, it was a stumbling step into Hell and back.
Getting a ride back to Astoria took a bit longer than Bill and Pete had hoped. It turns out two, dirty, smelly guys, after a half day of work on a mink ranch, aren’t the most desired set of hitchhikers.
After walking backward, thumbs out, for a mile, they got a ride from a delivery van. After promising to take them all the way to Upper Town (east Astoria), instead, the driver demanded they get out at Miles Crossing, two miles south of town. The dirt and dishevelment didn’t bother the driver but the guy’s appalling smell gagged him.
They had a mile and a half walk to the old Young’s Bay Bridge. The bridge, built in the 1920s was barely wide enough for a couple Model T’s, much less modern cars and trucks and a constant stream of log trucks. Without a sidewalk, Bill & Pete crept sideways across the bridge, running when a break in traffic occurred.
From there on, a long, desultory march to their destination on 39th Street and the need for a functioning car mentioned almost every step of the way.
Bill & Pete squatted in the basement of a once grand Victorian house.
Built in 1902 for the Gilbert family, the owner of Astoria’s leading department store. The Gilberts already had a beautiful home, but Mrs. Gilbert didn’t feel it truly reflected the style and wealth of one of Astoria’s leading families. The new home stood three stories high (not counting the basement) and was a monument to turn of the century elegance. It had a beautiful porch, grand 10-foot high front door and a color scheme that used eight different colors.
The inside was every bit as grand as the outside, the woodwork intricate and beautiful. Banisters, doorways, windows, all done in the best mahogany and teak. A team of six artisans from Belgium created the plaster ceilings and cornices. The architect was from San Francisco and the general contractor, from Seattle, brought his own team of 12 with him. They worked on the house for 18 months. The only work done by locals was the most menial and labor-intensive kind.
The Gilbert department store, founded in 1875, sold everything from rope to millenary, hardware to housewares, Levis to linens. It burned down in the fire of 1922. The owners rebuilt the store, but the business never regained its past success. The Depression killed it. It lingered on through the early 1930s, but really died in 1929.
From there Mrs. Gilbert’s beautiful structure fell on hard times. A couple of buyers tried to bring it back to life, but in each case, it was too expensive. It became a rental, some sort of a boarding house and then a deserted house and a public nuisance. Still standing but ruined.
Bill & Pete didn’t know who lived upstairs and thought it better not to ask. It was a true 60’s sort of living arrangement. Bill & Pete needed a roof and not much more and the basement filled that need. The fewer questions asked, the better.
After the day they had been through, a shower would have been ideal. Unfortunately, no shower, no tub. Only a cast iron sink, with cold water, not hot. The toilet was at the other end of the basement, in the open. Like a silent sentinel.
The basement unfinished, to say the least, had no interior walls, just one small window, a door and a massive amount of junk. Bill took one corner of the cramped space and Pete had another. Joe the 3rd roommate was at work. Unlike his pals, Joe had and could
keep a job. His space was beside the nonworking oil furnace.
The basement resembled a forest floor; layers and layers of duff, some of it new, some ancient. The top layer mostly the flotsam & jetsam of Bill, Pete and Joe’s daily lives. It was a thin but growing, crispy layer of fast food wrappers, beer bottles, the odd whiskey fifth, clothes, shoes, garbage never taken out, Playboy magazines, cigarette butts and who really knew what else. During the rainy season—in Astoria, November through June—a small stream meandered through parts of the basement.
Women who came over never stayed long.
Scattered throughout, over & under this mess was a full set of golf clubs; a drum set, buried deep but easily stumbled over on a late-night trip to the toilet; a TV, radio, phonograph console that didn’t work, but served as a stand for a small black & white TV; a Hammond B4 organ, a croquet set; basketball hoop; a mostly complete set of Colliers encyclopedias; a small refrigerator from the Truman administration era, a much older stove; several broken chairs, lamps and a couch that had a tie-dyed cover. The couch which everyone said was still there hadn’t been seen in months.
The actual floor, never seen.
After a brisk spits bath, armpits and face, Bill and Pete set about the main part of every evening – smoking pot. Pete’s emergency stash presumed behind the stove was under the refrigerator. That took an hour to find. The rolling papers were never found. The bong took another 45 minutes to unearth. At last, Bill & Pete—stoned and at peace and sitting on an unbelievably dirty mattress—watched TV.
The black and white TV Pete found at a yard sale but never paid for. Just walked away with it. Astoria was too far away from any TV station or broadcast tower for almost any antenna to work. Portland being the closest at 100 miles, Seattle much further. But Astoria became the first American city with cable TV. A powerful antenna on top of the John Jacob Astor Hotel pulled in the Portland stations. At first, the images went only to the Fir Trader bar in the lobby. Later, out to nearby businesses, homes, and then wires were strung throughout the city and the Cable TV business was born.
