Big Scary Adventure Dream
Kids go off on road trip adventure, steal a car, spend the nights in back fields.
A couple little kids join them at one point. Country kids riding their bikes around the boonies. They’re all having fun in the car. It’s night and raining out. “Hey you guys aren’t fags are you?” Well, they aren’t but one of the bigger kids gets worried about things like this so he kind of flips out. When the other little kid turns back to look the big kid tosses the head of the loudmouth into his lap. He screams, then the crazy kid has to kill him with his jackknife. It’s very messy. They make their getaway.
Later on, they’re looking to go home again, but they’re still rattled from what happened. They look a bit cleaned up, except one, when he takes his sweatshirt off, is kind of stained a bit red. He’ll have to wash better.
Years later a kid finds a jack-knife crusted over with dried blood under the car seat and knows who had that car that one time.
Now the town is a-buzz with the news. The two kids have to run away. They’re a bit older now.
They run away to a big old fancy town, San Francisco, I think. They meet up with an older Greek nomad and together they try to hop some trains. They’re hurrying across some trestle tracks at a boarding area overlooking a river, but are kind of late. The old guy thinks he can switch the rails or delay the train, so he gets under the track and he tries to switch the rails somehow with his hands, moving the rails a bit to the side. The train comes along and chops his head off, he plops into the water below.
The kids are scared and run out. Now one of the kids is me. I’m about 13 and the other kid, the one with the head-cutting temper, is about 11 now. Before, he was maybe 14.
I see down thru the trestles in the water, next to some parking ramps that there are big Leatherman tools on the bottom of the river next to shore. We just have to get down there. We’re on the run, in danger, but this is too good to resist. Besides, there’s a crowd and maybe we’re safe for now. We’ll go down thru this apartment building next to the tracks. We climb up the outside of this building and look in. It’s Victorian, ornate, like opera boxes and balconies. To get to some rooms across the way they see there’s a weird little spiral staircase. Well, that must be how the fancy people do it. I start to try. This is the smallest, trickiest rope ladder like staircase. Some fancy people come down the hall and see what I’m doing out there in the tall opera lobby overhanging everything. Hey, those are just decoration. The stairs start to pull out from the ceiling. I get up just in time.
We find another train to catch in the old urban downtown sector overlooking the river. Oliver Twist looking area. We hop into this room that’s built UNDER the train-car. It’s an apartment and this is how some people live in the city. The trains gets going and swaying and bumping and we’re in this little box, bouncing on the floor. It’s set up like a very mini apartment. It’s joints don’t look like they will hold. And how does this really work?
All of a sudden Dad is telling me that they used to live in an apartment in an train, very small, built right over the wheels. People used to live wherever there was space, he says.
Then we steal another car and go off into the countryside to get away.
Police are looking everywhere, especially at movie theatres and ice cream places. It’s summer. Many people are outdoors. We try to keep a low profile. Going to a movie, we notice lots of cops. New plan. We’re leaving town. But we want to stop by an ice cream place. We do. My pre-teen pal is in line. The line is too long. Trying to be casual. Blend with the crowd. I think he gets caught anyway.
I’m on the getaway again. This time in a long turquoise caddy with 40’s hot-rod styling, low-ride, filled-in wheel-wells. Mint condition. Some hot girl drives by and says to follow her. But I stall the car. Then I see her ahead in traffic, then get on her tail. We go out to the country. Way out back to an old woodsy motel. Looks pretty good. The other patrons seem decent. Doesn’t look like a dangerous place.
Then I go to sleep in my Grampa’s house and dream about how nice it would be to take a road trip in a nice car. An older car. A fancy, special one. Wouldn’t that really make a road trip stand out.
My own room comes into focus like from a distance.
