Desert Yard Ghosts and Scandinavians

Tonight I went down to the Oakland Union Pacific train yard - the Desert Yard - to bid a ghost goodbye. Gonzo, my spiritual adviser for a few nights under the stars at Black Butte, passed in his sleep a few nights ago. I heard of the news this morning.

I knew upon getting off the phone with Bruce that whiskey would will the spirit within and outward. And therefore I'm post-train yard, half drunk, with my new Scandinavian freight hopper friends possibly on their way to crash on my couch.



I'd like to post Joey's homage to Gonzo instead of my own drunk ramblings. I think he did a brilliant job of proper tribute....





Homage to the Gonz

Fuck man. Heavy good news and bad news all in one night. Gonzo didn't seem to care about politics anyway.


Anyway, Gonzo died in his sleep, laid up in his hooch at Black Butte a day ago. He went out peacefully in the shadow of Mt. Shasta high up in the volcanic air in his little trailer surrounded by Incense Cedars and Ponderosa Pines. I think dude had cancer, but I don't think that's what killed him. I think he knew he was soon to go anyway. He always talked about all his friends (his "brothers") who had already gone before him.


I'm not going to talk about him "catching the westbound" or any of that cheesy shit because I think it's lame and it should be saved for the douchebags at Britt and cheesy fake hobo novels. This isn't 1932. And Gonzo was fucking better than that.


Gonz was the real thing, old FTRA, and he probably did a lot of sketchy shit in his lifetime but the man I knew in his old age was fucking GOLDEN. He had everything that the majority of the kids riding trains today lack - conviction, wit, street-smarts, a fucking sarcastic and great sense of humor, guts, and a strong talent at using curse words properly.


I'll never forget him telling me about when he was young and lived in Detroit..."Yeah, I used to live with six titty dancers and a monkey, and I got along with the monkey the best.", or his goofy old man laugh that sounded more like a broken chainsaw motor trying to start, or the time I walked into the Black Butte shack in the middle of December and there was Gonz watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindoor on the T.V.
, nodding out on pills and slowly singing along to "WHY AM I SUCH A MIS-FIT?!"

Motherfucker could play a mean-ass guitar, too, and not cheesy old-timey shit, but the best blues I ever heard anybody play.


I remember the time I had just gotten off of work when I was on the 12 board and decided to stop by the jungle two years ago, and there was Gonzo and Jimmy and ten other old-ass tramps and one young oogle, and everybody looked at me like "who the fuck is this?" and then Gonzo yelled out "Hey! It's Joey! Joey Alone! Get the fuck over here man!" in his thick, high-pitched midwest polock accent.


Fucking Goddamnit. I'm going to miss that guy. He was a pillar in a sea of douchebags. There's not a hundred goofy-ass youngsters riding around today who together could amount to the level of spine and street smarts that guy had, and there's some good people out there, but nobody like him.




Gonzo, you're fillin up that in-between, and I'll be taking care of the children for you. You had my word. Love Shannon

POST NOTE
...And so down under the bridge at Desert Yard I met a couple of Scandinavian boys trying to catch their first train in the US. I called Joey and heard nothin was heading towards LA, so I shared my whiskey with them, exchanged some words about our cultures, I got to ask them about all those good Scandinavian punk bands (dudes were from Copenhagen, know what I mean?), and I rode my bike home while they went to catch Greyhound instead. Then, after I posted this, I passed out drunk in my clothes on top of my sleeping bag. Woke up feeling like a million bucks. And the sun is shining over the bay....

Why the city.

I live in Oakland with some eleven or so kids in a house on 11th street. The kids I live with are great, all busy with their own lives so I can stay busy with mine. I'm at this point where I'm lookin at the future. I'd like to just make a ton of money (cause i want to buy some land) but alas I can not do that until I really actually settle in Oakland, which looks like it's gonna be after September. Travels til then. I'm traveling in an effort to sort of blur the edge between the country/city transition. It's been pretty hard so far. The city...

I got some cool neighbors, a few good hiding spots amidst the chaos of the Bay, and the incentive to work cause there's not the kind of beauty here that's gonna take up much of my time. Anyway, here's some pictures, taken by Heather, a rad lady we picked up in Portland on the way down the coast on our July adventure. Here's a few...



























And so most of my family lives here in California, so the effort to get to the midwest is less imperitive, but I miss all my friends there a whole lot, so hopefully I'll be making it out that way soon. The schedule looks really full though. I've got too many plans. Overwhelmed.

quick update

cuz i live in the middle of nowhere without internet i can't find the time to write about how many amazing fun adventures i've taken in the last month, but it was all in the bay area, forests of oregon, and seattle washington. but the real update is im moving to oakland in a few weeks.
BUT THE REAL UPDATE IS my car sorta broke and so my move to oakland is gonna be a hitchhike, meaning that once-a-motherfuckin-gain im giving up all my worldly possessions minus, oh say, a hammer and some oil paints. im also keeping all these pretty pictures ive ripped outta magazines in the last few years. and im gonna try and ship my elk bone and rock collection.

mixed feelings but it's a wild lifetime. visit me in the bay.

What doesn't kill me will eventually lead me to kill myself

I need distractions. Oh, how I wish I could stop thinking all the time. It's only bad when it gets dark and it's too cold to leave the trailer and I'm left to my own devices. SO I'm gonna give a shout-out to all the little things that make time pass, especially when a girl's feelin' a little down...

(minus the self-manifesting art/writing which is what I'm trying to distract myself from)

MUSIC (ah-men)
lately it's been:
Faust - IV
Fucked Up - Epics in Minutes
Can - Tago Mago
Oingo Boingo - Good for your soul
Gray Matter - Food for Thought
John Hartford - Steam-Powered Aerotakes
Rites of Spring - End on End
New Model Army - Vengeance
Jawbreaker - Unfun
Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Zolar X - Timeless
Devo - Pioneers who got Scalped...
2 mixes i made, one lots of social distortion/johnny cash, the other xtc, sonics, hot chocolate, fleetwood mac, etc

Having a car has helped. Yeah, I bought a car. It's a Honda. I drive it to the library and back. I got some good books at the local library. And the librarians are way cool.

A local metalhead named Jordan comes around a lot. He's fun. Equivalent to Jay of Jay and Silent Bob. But uncannily similar is the thing. Probably cause he spilled acid all over himself at 16.

Phone conversations. I used to hate them but not anymore! NO, CALL!

Dinners with the locals.

Working on everyone's bikes. I am lucky enough that everyone's bike is totally busted. In exchange for one repair, I was given a trashed unicycle. I'm gonna fix that one up right away and unicycle to the library.

That about sums up my distractions. Be my pen-pal.

Aside from over-thinkin, I'm having a wonderful time in my isolation. Here's some pictures.

The farm common house, duck cage, and compost "sky pooper"


Jenny and Brandy at the local dive bar



Me and Julia at the bar wearing Jennie's six-year-old daughter's matching dresses


Swamp barbie

In the midst of death we are in life...In the midst of life we are in ...linear detail...

I’ve been living up on the farm now for over two weeks – after St. Louis I
took a week in SF, and 2 very brief visits to Eugene and Portland.

This is the first time I've had my own space in 8 months, and I'm living in a trailer by myself, surrounded by ferns and blackberries. On the farm there are six other adults and six little girls, ranging from 4 months to thirteen years old. We’ve been doing work on a new cabin that is almost totally complete and the nicest structure on all the property – after one month of hard work and less than $5000 on materials and pay for the resident expert. A LOT of work was done on salvaged materials.
My friend Matt, who owns Feral Farm and is an encyclopedia on wild
edibles, turns out like myself, has a fondness for abandoned structures.
So about a week ago we took a day to venture out to Shannon Lake (fo’real) and pick a salad, which was in the end just violet flowers. Along the shore sat our monolith temple “the Concrete Factory.” It’s quite like other monstrous abandoned factories I’ve explored, but more mossy and “Devil’s Tower,” as the locals refer to the highest indoor point, has a view over Shannon Lake of a line of cascades, humbled my Mt. Baker towering in the middle. We picnicked there on our flowers and bread
and oysters.
Yesterday we traveled back to Shannon Lake to canoe around all day at a pace of like .5 miles per hour... woke up totally sore. We stopped at all the different soil types we came across and I had my first experience with quick sand, I almost lost my boot... Instead i pulled it out and wore it all muddy and uncomfortable. But it was a beautiful and exhausting day.

Life here has been great so far. Last Monday's potluck brought out Matt
and a few regualrs from Feral Farm, the whole Finney Farm group, guitars, banjos, dancing (belly dancing lessons, even), sauna, mead, Franzia, and the Ramen Noodle of
Rural Life: NETTLES. Man I could never eat nettles again.

So I'm happy, settled down for a minute to give all you worriers a break from worrying about me. I'll post pictures soon, you've got to see how ugly my trailer is. Man oh man.