After spending the night on the Allison/Onan parking lot while our generator was being repaired, we found Karen Breidenbachs home in Boring, Oregon. Karen, the daughter of my best friend, Bob Breidenbach’s brother, Walter, has graciously invited us to camp out in her yard for a spell. Karen has a wonderful home and spacious yard that is perfect for us to park our motor home in. It’s amazing to me that now Karen is fully matured into a wonderfully warm and caring woman with a children of her own. I remember so well when she was so tiny, running around with her brothers and sister. Such a great family they had with Walter and Marianne, Walter’s wife. I came to know all the Breidenbach clan over the years through my close friendship with Bob. Often times we would be at Bob’s family’s cabin on the Cuivre River near Hawk Point, Mo. Fishing and trot-lining and kids would be running up and down the river building little dams and capturing minnows and craw dads. Bob and I would give them all a turn on the seine net we would use to catch bait for our trot-lines. Karen was always so bubbly and happy and good natured. She still is. Such a true human being in the very best sense of the phrase.
There was a time once when Bob and I caught a 29 lb flathead on a trot line just below the Kelly Hole on the Cuivre. It was in October when the big cats cruise the river looking for all the food they can find to fatten up for the winter. We had that beast on the trot-line and he was running up and down the river as we were up to our necks in water in our underwear. Getting that cat to the bank took a lot of plain muscle and bravado. The very next week, Bob’s oldest brother, Paul, went out trot-lining on the Cuivre right where Bob and I had been and I’ll be darned if he didn’t haul in a nearly 45 pound flat head cat. He “one-upped us” big time.
There was another time when after fishing all night long with our good friend, George Jackson, we went into the Hawk Pointer, a little family restaurant in Hawk Point, for breakfast. George was so tired that when his breakfast arrived he passed out and his head went SPLAT...right into the pancakes and eggs and biscuits and gravy.
There was Shultz’s fish wagon. A rusty old food truck that would patrol the dirt roads of Pike county selling fried fish. I never could quite figure out how old Shultz made any money. No one was ever on those dirt roads...except us.
There was the time Bob and I went deer hunting and set out at 3:00 in the morning and climbed trees so that when the deer moved through we’d be ready. The largest fireball meteor I’d ever seen shot across the sky and lit the entire forest up like daytime. The animals woke up immediately, thinking it was dawn. I swear ( and Bob does, too) that we could see smoke coming off that meteor.
There is no way to describe the feeling of sitting on a river bank at midnight or 2:00 AM with all the bugs and katydids singing, snakes slithering across the water, coons and foxes and coyotes sneaking down to the river’s edge to catch a drink. Maybe the full moon is lifting over the heavy tree cover, maybe not. Maybe it’s new moon time and it’s pitch dark down there. There’s probably a little fog lifting off the river. You watch your line tied to a really whippy willow on the water’s edge to see if you can detect a pull on the line. We used to run the lines every two hours Lightening bugs are everywhere. There it is...you see the branches pulling. What’s on there? A channel cat, a blue cat, hopefully not a gar. You wade out there in the darkness together. The river bottom is thick with chunk rocks and it’s hard to keep your balance. You check every staging on the line. Maybe you have 20 or so stagings on every line you lay. You probably have 5 or 6 lines out there in the river. Now, you’re up to your neck in water, standing on your tip toes. Something slides by brushing your leg. A snake? A catfish? What the hell was that? If you’ve laid your line right, and you have the right bait on, and the fish are biting ( it’s always best when the river is rising versus falling) you pull off catfish. We never used nets. We thought we should give the fish a fighting chance, and, sometimes we lost one or two. Bob would pull them off the stagings and I would put them on the stringer. We always used the same knot on the staging attaching it to the main trot line. We could pull on one end of it and it would come loose easily. It makes for easy handling when you’re up to your neck in water.
Bob taught me the correct way to lay trot lines. It’s important to know the right way. The times we had out there on the river together were something I can never forget. Images of some of those times flash across my mind a lot. The stories are many. The last time we went together we were out there on the river while a million lightening bugs flashed over the river. In the distance lightening flashed with an approaching thunderstorm. I put that experience in a song I wrote called, Go Outside.
Fireflies and lightening light up the evening sky
The coolness of the breeze is sweeter than a cup of wine
Moments like these cannot be bought because they’re all for free
We all live in God’s garden, Can’t you see? Can’t you see?
Karen was the most gracious host. She took us all over the place around Portland. We went to see MT Hood and had a blast there. We went down to the Columbia River gorge and went to a Jerry Garcia Birthday bash at a great little spot that at one time was an old folks’ home but had been turned into the most creative hotel and concert venue. We sat in the grass and listened to some great Dead bands. We had so much fun with Karen. We even watched the Democratic debates on her TV.
We visited some dispensaries in and around Portland. We had started doing that in California, to see what they were like. I cannot believe the science that the Pot business has become. Back in the day, so to speak, you never knew what you were getting if you bought a nickel bag. Mostly seeds and stems as I remember. Now, you tell these well educated counter folks in the dispensary how you want to feel and they come back with just the right blend or cross pollinated buds to get you there. Sometimes I think things never really change, and then you walk into a “dispensary”. Well, ok then.
When the time came to leave Karen’s the carousel of fun came to an abrupt stop. Time to pay for the next go round. As I was backing up the motor home to turn around and head out of the tight space in Karen’s driveway, I got the back end of the motor home stuck on high ground. It came down with a thud on the dirt and it stopped moving forward. The wheels were off the ground in the back. I was scared. How bad was this going to be? I had not had any accidents yet with Nell, and now this. I fought with that thing for 5 hours, jacking up the tires and putting logs under them, trying every which way to get her out of there. I dug in the dirt to try to get the back end free. Karten tried to lift the back end up with a tractor. No good. I was trying not to panic.
Finally, after one last attempt at jacking her up and putting every log I could lay hands on under the tires she moved forward... and I kept my foot on the gas. We were free. I inspected the damage and it looked bad. The 7 pin connector whereby I hooked the jeep up to Nell was sheared off. There were cracks in the body where the fiberglass took the brunt of the force. Crap!
The good news was, I found a repair place not ten miles away and we were able to get the connector fixed...$350.00 later. I still don’t know how much the body work will cost. We’ll get that fixed later, maybe down in Albuquerque. It doesn’t seem to be critical right now. Whew! I will never let that happen again. Lesson learned.