Emendations must be made with Part II in order for Part III to make sense at points. First, Karl lives near Texas Canyon, between Benson and Wilcox, east of Tucson. I don't know much about the Papago (now Tohono Oodham) reservation and would rather write in settings I can see in my mind -- at least to begin with. Second, the narrator gets directions to Karl's place from Karl himself rather than from his granddaughter. Karl merely mentions that his granddaughter lives with him and does the cooking. This is necessary for reasons that will become clear by the end of Part III.



I had spoken with Jay over the phone on the night before the trip. He said he wanted to take time to stop at places that might look interesting, or to get off the highway occasionally to see the scenery up close. Jay pointed out that my VW bug was a great vehicle for rough roads. I responded by relating to him the many times I had become stuck in ditches and ruts out in the boonies because I had thought the same thing myself.

"I'm not talking about Jeep trails," Jay said. "Just dirt roads that might get a little bumpy. I mean, look, I really want to see this Karl guy and find out what's up with him. If you insist on driving non-stop, I guess I'll go along with it. But I just really have a hard time with rigid trip schedules."

He paused.

"For one thing," he continued, "I have to pee a lot."

"Do you have like a medical condition?" I asked.

"Nothing I have ever been diagnosed with it. Maybe I have a small bladder. Or maybe I am just more sensitive to my body than other people."

"Okay, Jay," I said, chuckling. "I'm not gonna make you hold it the whole way."

"See," Jay explained, "I experienced, well, a kind of trauma in my childhood."

Not knowing how to respond, I waited for Jay to go on.

"I mean, not like abuse -- or even neglect. But my family used to go back East every summer to visit my Dad's folks in New Jersey. And my Dad was like this road trip fascist. He would have my Mom bring all the food we would need for the trip in a cooler --stuff to make sandwiches, Tang to drink, space food sticks...my Dad really liked all that Space Age stuff. He would drive non-stop from Tucson to Jersey -- no sleep, no stops. It was like this big fucking challenge for him.

"Well, he *would* stop for my Mom -- so we stopped a few times during each trip. But he wouldn't let me and my two older brothers out of the back seat of the car. He said he had actually calculated how much each person who left the car during a stop would delay the trip -- each person would increase the delay geometrically, not arithmetically. Him and his fucking engineer brain!

"He would stop if me or one of my brothers had to take a dump really bad, he would accompany us to the shitter at a rest area and stand outside the stall, making sure we hurried. I would freeze up and could never go.

"Me and my brothers had a bunch of old jars in the car to piss in. My brothers had no problem with it, but I always had difficulty going. I am what they call "pee-shy". And there's a reason for that which I won't go into, but it has to do with those horse-trough urinals at the U of A stadium that I had to try and pee in when my family went to football games. You know, a bunch of old guys with there peckers hanging out standing next to you, and a bunch more lined up behind you waiting impatiently..."

"Okay, okay," I broke in, chuckling. "We will make all the pee stops you need to make. We will take scenic routes and stop at points of interest. I'm not in a hurry. But we will need to get an early start, then."

*******

Apparently, an early start meant something different to Jay than to me. I showed up at Jay's duplex unit south of the U of A at our arranged time of 10 AM, and he finally answered the door after I had been knocking for five minutes. I figured he must be there because I saw his motorcycle on his porch. Jay looked half asleep when he let me in. There was no place to sit. All the chairs were stacked with books and papers. He quickly moved the piles of detritus from a chair to the floor and told me to sit tight, he had a few things to do.

While I waited and looked around at the titles of the books and magazines scattered around his living room, Jay went back into his bedroom -- the duplex unit was your typical shotgun shack, living room, kitchen, and bedrom connected by doorways, one after another in a single row. I heard water running from his bathroom, the clatter of bathroom items, and then drawers opening and closing in his bedroom. There was silence for a minute and I got a whiff of the sweet pungent smell of weed. Jay came out of his bedroom holding a bong and coughing out some smoke.

"Sorry," he said. "I can't wake up without a few bowls. It's a weakness, I know."

I shrugged my shoulders. Jay knew I drank rarely and didn't do drugs at all. I never had a problem with drugs -- I just didn't like to have my consciousness clouded. It may have gone back to conversations I had with my old friend Don Pedro several years earlier. I had had a dramatic but frightening trip on acid, and when I tried LSD or even pot after that, I had disturbing experiences. Eventually, I gave up on drugs entirely and maybe had a beer or too or a glass of wine occasionally when the occasion seemed to call for it.

I looked at my watch and noticed that Jay hadn't gotten dressed yet -- he was still in his boxers. He was a stocky, hairy Italian guy, and though when I first met him in the early 80s punk scene he shaved his head, he later let his hair grow long and wore a fu-manchu. Along with his Triumph cycle, he had the appearance of an outlaw biker, though he was mostly harmless, very intelligent but kind of scatter-brained. Back in the mid-eighties, you only saw a few big bikes on the road. Motorcycles weren't for yuppies who wanted to buy an image.

"So I don't want to be a nag," I finally said, "but you told me you wanted to get an early start."

"Don't worry. I just need to take care of a few things."

A few things turned out to be several things. Jay brought his old medium-sized mutt in from the back yard and fed him. He discovered several ticks that had to be removed. ("We need to get you dipped you soon, boy."). He had to get some clothes off the line in the backyard, and he searched ten minutes for a match to the one clean sock he could find. ("I don't care if the color matches -- it just needs to be the same size and thickness. Yeah, I know, princess and the pea.") Two more bowls and finally, a full hour later, we were on the road.

We had barely been on the interstate for ten minutes when Jay asked to stop.

"You have to pee already?"

"No, but I'm hungry and the Triple-T makes a good breakfast."

I shrugged and pulled off onto the exit. We needed to be at Karl's house by 6 PM -- so we could afford to take our time. It just kind of bugged me to stop so soon after we had finally gotten on our way. But Jay was right. The Triple-T truck stop had an excellent breakfast. I had been there late at night for their famous pie but never for a full meal.

We sat in the area reserved for non-truckers. The era of America's fascination with truckers and CB radios had long been over, but I was curious about what "real" truckers looked like. I also wondered how they determined whether someone was qualified to sit in the "professional drivers only" section of the restaurant. Was there a trucker ID card they had to show?

Pleasantly full and stoked with bottomless cups of coffee, we passed group of truckers getting their boots shined as we made our way to the exit.

One of them whistled and said to me, "I like your purdy sandals, girlie."

I was wearing shorts and Birkenstocks, as I always did in the summer -- my Bug had no air conditioning. Jay began to walk toward the shoe shine stand for further discussion, but I pulled him along with me out the door.

"That's it, girlie. Keep your boyfriend in line," the trucker called out as we walked away.

"Come on, man. I just wanted to have a word with them."

"Yeah, I know, Jay. But we have better things to do with our time than to confront ignorant rednecks."

"We coulda taken 'em," he muttered.

Jay felt better after smoking a few bowls on the highway. The windows were open and a VW is a noisy vehicle under the best conditions on the road. We had to almost shout to hear each other.

Fifteen minutes down the highway, and we were passing through some rolling hills between the high forested Rincon Mountains to the north and the smaller Empire range to the south. Davidson Canyon was the major drainage in this area -- usually dry -- making its way south to Cienega Creek, a swampy desert oasis. But these parched rolling hills were a maze of smaller arroyos with mesquites growing on the banks, and dotted on the higher slopes with scrubby junipers.

"Have you ever seen the bristlecone pines," I asked.

"Nope. I've read about them and seen pictures, though."

"Well look at those scrubby junipers growing on the slopes. A lot of them are gnarly looking, with only a small living part at the base. Some are dead, and look like they've been standing for a really long time."

Jay looked over and grunted a "hmm".

"I know a guy," I continued, "who works at the Tree-Ring Lab at the university, and he says that some of those trees may be a thousand years old. Pretty cool, huh."

"Yep. Imagine if those trees could talk. If they could tell you all the things they've seen."

"Well," I replied, "we are on our way to visit someone who has also apparently been around a long time. But he seems to have a hard time remembering it."

"That would suck. You might as well not have been alive if you can't remember anything."

"Precisely, and there is the irony. Identity is largely based on memory."

Jay pointed out that I had pompously restated what he had just said. I grimaced in acknowledgement, but then we both started laughing.

*******

Places we stopped, either for Jay to pee or to see something interesting, or both:

1) Not far from the interstate, a large steel railroad bridge spanning Cienega Creek that flowed just south of the high forested Rincon Mountains. Then another bridge where the Southern Pacific line crossed the Cienega -- this time made from huge wooden beams.

Jay was something of a railroad enthusiast and pointed out how many of the railroad bridges were still made from wood. While we were looking at the wooden bridge, we heard a train heading our way. Jay pulled a Canon SLR out of his rusksack and got several photographs from our vantage point below, standing on the banks of the creek. The locomotive roared by and the ground shook below us. It was pretty grand.

2) The Amerind Foundation Museum. Just before the Texas Canyon rest area, we exited south into the boulder-strewn oak woodland, taking a road that wound through old ranch land, and wound up at the museum. We spent forty-five minutes or so taking a cursory look at the Indian artifacts -- we decided that we should come back when we had more time.

Driving away, we noticed a picnic area amongst house-sized bolders in the area. It was mid-afternoon and hot, but we found a place in the shade of the rock formations. Jay smoked a few more bowls, and I looked around at the dozens of canyon towhees skittering beneath the shrubs in the cracks of the boulders. I wished -- for the umpteenth time -- that I owned binoculars. I enjoyed watching birds, and knew quite a few species, but never actually went on trips specifically for the activity.

3) The Thing. Yes, The Thing. Jay insisted. He had never been there before. See above for his story of the non-stop road trips of his youth. The signs for this tourist trap extended 500 miles in either direction, and each sign was a reminder to the little guy of a mystery that was forbidden to him.

"Okay", I said. "But you're going to be disappointed."

The Thing is a kind of museum attached to a gift store and a fast food restaurant. We got fries and shakes before we went into the museum (Jay was always hungry) and finishing those, proceeded to the museum. It was fifty cents to get into.

"And a dollar to get out of," I jokingly warned.

As ridiculous as The Thing is, there really seems to be a code that those who have seen it usually follow. Maybe it's like the Man Eating Chicken attraction at old time carnivals. You felt gypped, but it was fun to get your friends to see it when you were in on the con. At any rate, I won't reveal any of the details of the museum. There are several "exhibits" that you walk by on your way to The Thing, itself. It's all under a huge steel shed. And then you exit -- out to the parking lot, actually, to discourage customers from going back into the gift shop and complain, I guess.

But Jay wanted to go back anyway, not to complain, but he had seen some items in the gift shop he wanted to buy. You see gift shops like this throughout the western United States. Lots of cheesy Western curios -- Cowboy and Indian stuff, Mexican jumping beans, Indian moccasins, leather fringe jackets, cowboy and trucker hats, etc. Jay walked out with an Indian feather head-dress that barely fit around his skull, high-rise Indian moccasins, and a bow and arrow set that shot rubber tipped arrows.

"I have a nephew I'm going to give this stuff to...eventually," Jay explained.

*******

Thus, finally, we arrived at Karl's door. We had taken an exit north, just a short way beyond The Thing, and heading through a scrubby expanse of Chihuahuan desert -- which is distinguished mainly by its desert grasslands dotted with stately yucca plants -- and we circled back around into the higher oak woodland with scattered boulders, the same environment as Texas Canyon and the Amerind Museum, only north of the interstate. We passed over a cattle guard providing access into land protected by a barbed wire fence. There was a sign that read "Private: No Tresspassing". Karl had told me to come on in and, about a quarter mile down a dirt road, we would see his place.

The house was sprawling but all one-story. The main dwelling was built into the side of a hill, with a huge boulder providing most of the back wall, the other walls built from precisely laid stone masonry. Later additions looked to be wood frame and stucco. There were a few outbuildings of dry-stone construction and beam roofs -- but these looked like they hadn't seen use in many years.

Jay and I got out of the Bug and stretched. Jay was still wearing his Indian head dress.

"Are you actually going to wear that thing to the door?"

"Sure, why not. Let's see if Karl has a good sense of humor."

I sighed. "Well, let's go find out, then."

I have to admit that when Karl told me he lived with his grandaughter, I felt a twinge of excitement. I had once fallen in love with the grandaughter of an elderly gentleman who had befriended me -- Don Pedro, about whom I have written in a previous memoir. I told myself it was stupid to expect that she would be either attractive or available, but I couldn't help wondering.

I knocked on the screen door with Jay standing behind me -- the inside door was open and we saw a figure appear behind the screen. The glare of the late afternoon sun kept me from seeing much detail, but the screen door opened and we were met by an elderly woman, seemingly the same age as Karl. She had grey-streaked black hair pulled back in a bun. She was wearing a long black dress and a frilly bright colored smock. About her waist was a silver concha belt, and around her neck was a silver necklace with conflowers, and turquise and obsidian stones. She was slender and moved gracefully for her age. Clearly Indian, I thought -- Apache or Navaho.

She invited us in and introduced herself.

"I am Alberta, Karl's grandaughter."

I'm not sure who felt stupider at that moment: me with my amorous hopes, or Jay wearing his dumb-ass Indian head dress.