Fear adn Loathing in Grand Island

Lucky people you get two tonight

Fear and Loathing in Grand Island
It was summer 1973. My brother and I headed off on one of those free wheeling no schedule excursions that were so popular in the early seventies with people who had just missed the sixties. I had just recently made an investment that paid a significant profit, enough to last me at least a year; if I didn't blow it.
We had also recently read Hunter Thompsons "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
and we thought that sort of a road trip sounded wonderful. Now Ric and I had no use for the lights and glitter of Las Vegas so we decided to check out the Rocky Mountains instead.
So we stocked up and packed our bags. It took a week to get the supplies we felt were required. We decided against a full bore drug collection and opted instead for a selection of cannabis flavors. We had a half pound of chocolate flavored Colombian, three fat ounces of some sweet Jamaican, half an ounce each of three kinds of hash and ten grams of real hash oil. The oil was the only thing that worried me; one toke and you were wasted, two tokes and you forget your name, three tokes you forget how to hold the pipe. We had been sampling everything else and I knew we would be sampling it heavily before too long.
We started out from the coast of New England which is just about as far east as it is possible to get, so we knew it would be a bit of a drive just to get there. Then there were the distractions. We would take every hitch hiker we picked up to their destination; no matter how far out of the way it was. Then we would stone them heavily in the process. When they saw what kind of people had picked them up and caught a whiff of the aroma in the cab the hitchhikers would break into a huge grin, then inhale deeply and smile. It made a pleasant diversion to visit so many little towns and crash on the living room floor and hang until the sun went down. Usually it was too hot to drive in the afternoon so we would run from midnight to noon or so then sleep and go at it again. It was wonderful. One hitchhiker took us into Indianapolis during race week.
"You gots to stay fer the day, I kin get you down inta centa field and you see more titties than Woodstock!" the hitchhiker said.
It was an offer we had to accept. We had a fist full of cash and ten weeks until my brother had to be back in school. We also saw lots of county fairs along the way.
Eventually we made our way out of the east and into the heart of the country. Once we got out of Indiana we headed north with our sights set for Cody Wyoming, and Yellowstone National Park. Then we went down into Jacksonâ??s Hole and through the Grand Tetons. Along the way we stoned people from Terre Haute to Topeka. We stopped in Pawnee and in Omaha. We were looking for wild country, places without people. Lots of folks had suggestions to share with us after we had shared a bowl or two with them. With our back packs and gear we were searching for the wildest country we could find in the lower 48. In my 1970 Landcruiser (2 door) I knew there was no dirt road that could stop me. Sometimes I had to get out the winch and pull my self through but I had not been stopped yet. I had found every road I could get to in New England and I wanted some new challenges. I had spent the past two years fording streams, climbing out of mud bogs and generally getting dirty every chance I got. I had put new tires on the truck before leaving and done every bit of maintenance I could think of.
It came as a bit of a shock to me when just outside of Grand Island
Nebraska the tachometer went to zero and the engine lost all power. I was
coasting down the interstate at fifty five miles an hour. The exit ramp for Grand Island almost slipped by as I pulled over and coasted up the ramp. At the end of the ramp was the stop sign. And just across that same road that intersected the ramp was the driveway for the Holiday Inn.
That particular model of Landcruiser has a curb weight of well in excess of four thousand pounds. We were packed with gear, fuel ,food, supplies, making a total closer to six thousand. There was no way on earth I was going to get out and push that sucker through that intersection.
I looked left, no traffic. I looked right, no traffic, this is Nebraska remember; and rolled straight through. I rolled into the first parking space in front of the hotel office just in time and brought the beast to a stop. We climbed out of the truck and headed for the lobby.
I don't think I want to know what the clerk thought when she saw us. I'm sure she had seen "that kind" on television, marching in those silly anti war demonstrations. But I am sure in her wildest dreams she never expected to see two genuine long haired hippies come into her hotel. My brother was the more conservative of us. His hair only came to just over his shoulders. Mine ran to my belt. I always kept it in a pony tail but my hair is so wild you could tell even from the front. Matters were not helped by the full beard or the mirrored sunglasses. In dirty blue jeans and T shirts, we needed showers and a change of clothes. We were also only partially coherent, we had been sampling the oil, again.
It had been more than a couple of days since Rick or I had carried on anything like a normal conversation. We had also developed a seeming tolerance to the effects of the oil. Now we were able to take five or six hits before dropping the pipe. As we were a couple of hippies in the middle of farm country I knew there were bound to be some problems. As I walked in the door it seemed a mile to the clerks desk and the surface of the carpet felt like some kind of mud flat. I remember thinking perhaps I should be wearing spiked shoes to get a better grip on this surface. By the time I got to the counter I felt like my feet had ten pounds of mud stuck to each shoe. The air conditioning was a tremendous shock to my system after three days of heat and sweat. I turned to my brother for support but he was staring glazed off at an empty space on the lobby wall. It was up to me to make the arrangements.
The young clerk did her best to communicate with me but there seemed to be some underlying uncertainty in her responses. This poor farm girl was befuddled in our conversations. There seemed to be some terrible gap in comprehension between us. At times I wasn't sure we were speaking the same language. I was quite polite, and she was patient. Finally she managed to understand we wanted a room, two beds, air conditioning, laundry service and a shower. I'm sure she had noticed that, perhaps she was even grateful that hippies would want to take a bath: it had after all been several days in the heat for us.
Some of her questions made no sense to me ( do you require our bowling service sir?) and there were more problems with concepts like "how long will you be staying with us sir?"
How could I tell, I hadn't opened the hood yet, for all I knew we could be gone tomorrow, or next week. How about I pay for three days and we talk about it later?
That was fine with her, which major credit card did I want to use. Another hurdle.
â??No major credit card, will my friend Ben do the job for me? How about this.....â?�
I pulled a roll from my pocket, peeled off three hundred dollar bills and put them on the counter. She nodded as she stared at the wad of cash in my hand. I never did see how she marked the card we were registered under but I never had trouble at the bar, or housekeeping or the laundry. The room number was mentioned and
â??A quick signature will be fine sir.â?�
We settled in to the room, got a smoke and Rick headed for the pool while I went back to the blinding heat and the truck to figure out what had happened. It took me ten minutes to find the problem with the truck. The distributor had failed, ground itself up and spit little pieces out.
The Landcruiser FJ40, as the two door models were officially named, were never a popular vehicle in America. Thatâ??s why they stopped importing them in the eighties. Parts were never easy to find. Even dealerships had trouble getting parts. Nothing was manufactured in the USA and the boats they shipped parts on were very slow. Getting parts was a problem, plain and simple. In the best of times, on home turf it was hard to get parts; and I was stuck in Cornville until I could produce the required component. There wasn't a Toyota dealer until I got to Colorado. Fortunately I had recently made the acquaintance of someone who worked in the Utah warehouse for Toyota. As the parts moved from the west they passed through this warehouse before distribution further east.
I called him immediately
â??Noâ?� my friend said â??there were none in stock.â?� â??Butâ?� he told me â?? there is a shipment due in a few days.â?� They were off loading the ship as we spoke;according to his computer.
And usually his computer was right. So I placed the order, gave him the hotel address and room number and assured him COD would be fine, please ship the parts next day air.
That taken care of I settled down beside the pool to drink, heavily. My brother had already settled in and was not exactly coherent when I arrived. I looked at the three empty Kamikaze glasses beside him and realized it would be a serious effort to catch up. I had the added burden of having hoovered a large joint before leaving the hotel room.
We put up the NO HOUSEKEEPING/DO NOT DISTURB sign from the
moment we got the room. We jammed towels under the door and smoked
continuously as soon as we arrived. We had brought a decent supply of the best stuff we could find before we had left home and along the way when something unusually nice came along we made an effort to get samples, preferably ounce sized samples. All of this collection was crammed into a leather briefcase. As long as we were stuck here we might as well bring the case into the room. We propped it open on the dresser and sampled itâ??s contents at will. After a day there were several ash trays in the room overflowing with half smoked joints. We usually started before breakfast, say six in the morning or so, and that set the tone for the daze. We would start drinking around noon. We were in bed, unconscious, by 10PM.
I don't know if you have ever been to Grand Island, but if you aren't a farmer or a fertilizer salesman there is not much to do. I found a book store in town, but it was twenty miles away, a bit too far to walk. I convinced the owner I wanted to buy five or six titles each in several categories and she was happy to deliver. My brother and I sat by the pool, reading, drinking and taking smoke breaks in the room every hour on the hour. I would call, once a day to Salt Lake City and ask
:â?� Has the truck arrived, did my parts ship?â?�
â??No.â?�
Four days we sat by the pool in the sun; and the afternoon showers, we waited and drank. We would stagger into the room at least every hour and smoke several joints each.
One morning we staggered off to breakfast and neglected to put out the â??Do Not Disturbâ?� sign. When we got back it wasn't until after we sat down and reached for an ash tray that we realized the room had been "visited". Every thing was immaculate. The beds were made with clean sheets. Our clothes were hung up and put away. The towels were new, the room had been dusted and.......the ash trays had been cleaned! We had left paraphernalia all over the room. Bags of weed and rolling papers, pipes, vials of hash oil and cash and everything everywhere. We began searching the room and just as we started to panic we noticed one ashtray in the bathroom, where our visitor had carefully piled the buts from all the other ash trays. In my shaving kit was the cash and the open bags of weed were in the drawer with the bible, the briefcase was closed on the desk; we were stunned. Then we saw the card,
â??Cleaned by Mary. How was my work?â?�
Rate me, you know; one of those cards. Well I called down to house keeping and I told them I wanted to thank Mary for the fine job she did and they know
"Where is she right now ?"
She was cleaning one of the units on the other side, in the three hundreds.
â??Thank you.â?�
We found her on the back side of the building pushing her cart to another room. Mary, it turns out had seen the city, and wanted to go back. But until her boyfriend got a better job they were stuck here. When I asked if she knew who I was she smiled,
"Every one 'round here knows about you and your brother".
She smiled again, she knew what I was asking.
"I tried that stuff in Omaha last summer. It's real hard to find around here so I kept one" she fumbled in her pocket and held out her hand with the remains of a smaller joint.
â??Not a problemâ?� I assured her â??here is a tipâ?�,
I pressed a fifty into the same outstreched hand. She smiled again,
"I'd rather have a few more of these if you don' t mind"
â??Not a problem, I will request you be our only housekeeper.â?�
She agreed that most of the other girls would not have been so thoughtful and understanding.
It was another two days before the parts arrived and I was able to
complete the repairs required to fire up the beast and ready our selves for the
next leg of our journey. I ceased drinking when I was notified the parts had
shipped and the next morning as the UPS truck pulled away my brother began to roll joints while I completed the repairs. Five minutes later I was finished and as I packed our gear back into the truck he continued to roll, until thirty joints were piled in front of him. I knew we would smoke no more than half that in the course of a day so wondered what he had planned.
"What do you say we leave her a little tip" he said pushing about half the pile on to one of her "cleaned by" cards.
â??Looks good to me.â?�
We found Mary pushing her little cart in our direction.
"They said you might be checking out today so I thought I'd better give your room a little extra effort"
And we do appreciate it, please clean carefully around the bible, thatâ??s where we left the tip. I did hear a little squeak just after she entered the room.
Checking out was not quite as much trouble as checking in. I hadn't been hitting the oil quite so hard and the lobby appeared normal this time. As rumored we were well known or at least much talked about around the hotel. We were greeted respectfully and presented with a significant bill. It appeared our bar tab exceeded the cost of the rooms, by about double. I asked for an itemized bill and they produced a large pile of receipts with illegible scrawl on them. No point in prolonging this I thought and peeled several bills off the wad and put them on the counter. The clerk seemed surprised. I looked around and noticed several people sauntering out of the lobby. The assistant clerk put down the phone and every one looked away. Obviously the locals expected some kind of trouble but well heeled hipsters was one they weren't used to. When they asked if I wanted a receipt I explained it would do me no good, there was no expense account to bill,
it was all on me. Mary waved from the room as we pulled out of the parking lot and back down that great American highway to follow our particular dream to what ever end we discovered.

Wow, Doc. Even though you had to wait, it still sounds like you had a hell of a lot of fun doing it. It would be nice to have a lot more hotel housekeepers as understanding as Mary was. So far, it sounds like the seventies was a somewhat fun time. I'm kinda sorry I wasn't around yet.

god damn.that was long.good story though.u left her like a free 1/8th of weed!id be one happy room cleaner.i wouldnt have used nearly as much as u guys did because doing all that drinking and smoking is pointless,because after all that u would have a tolerance level through the roof,and wouldnt get high until a shitload of smokin

Ah yes but that was the point, MASSIVE CONSUMPTION
Remember the Coneheads? That's me
The Doctor

somone remind me to read this when im stoned :P

Once again Doc G I enjoyed :D Grande Island,NE sure is in the middle of farmville,,,I know where that is I live in S.Dakota. Ahhh the ease of traveling w/ ur suitcase of goodies especially in the Old Daze. Have a ~Merry Green Day~ :cool:

That was one hell of a story:D

Keep em coming!!!

That was great. Im an old soul, and i wish i was around in the seventies.

Tell us another.

Probally one of the reason they smoked so much is that the weed back then wasnt nearly as potent as the weed we have now.

Great story. . .

And your storys are so descriptive.

I have such a clear image of Mary, the Hotel, your car. . . everything. It was great.

another great story

write a novel dude

I have. These bits are just chapters. Now I just need an editor and a publisher. Any suggestions??
doctor g

yea... find one and send me a copy of your book. haha just kidding but that would be cool as hell if u did publish a book. i would for sure buy it

i want your fucking book...

Holy fucking shit man, i live only 20 miles from grand island, talk about a bad ass party town man. Hey Doc, have you ever been to Aurora Nebraska or Minden Nebraska? Its amazing part of your storie resides right next to where i live. BTW i love reading your stories!

Fantastic storytelling...superb

Peas out :D

I drove across country a couple of weeks ago and this Holiday Inn is still there. Abit faded and worse for wear. No I did not stay for the night again, I had too many miles to go
enjoy!
Doctor G

I'm a retired trucker that used to haul into Grand Island occasionally ... one time, somewhere around 1979-80 ??, I hauled a full truckload of nails into a big farmstore in Grand Island, a full 44,000# load ... they unloaded my trailer, and stacked all those cases of nails on their outdoor dock ... as I drove east out of town, on U.S.30, I saw a huge tornado approaching Grand Island from the west ... I watched it hit the town in my rear-view mirror, brutal sight ... a couple of weeks later, I had another load going there, and upon arriving in Grand Island, everywhere I looked, had nails stuck in it ... that must have been a BAD place to be, when those nails got sucked up by that tornado :wtf: ... Grand Island suffered a LOT of damage from that twister ... :smokin: