A. D. Gatto - Duct Tape Airlines and Other Stories

Copyright 2007 A.D. Gatto

Publish Green

212 3rd Ave North, Suite 290

Minneapolis, MN 55401

612.455.2293

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ISBN: 978-1-937860-80-6

"The word adventure has become overused. To me adventure is when everything goes wrong. That's when adventure begins."

-Yvon Chouinard

The summer of love, 1967 as I remember, was anything but. Faced with the prospect of leaving the warmth of the cocoon we call higher education, my options were depressing. My local draft board sniffing around made me increasingly anxious over the prospect of becoming rice paddy fertilizer. Add to that an absolute revulsion toward anything remotely resembling what we counter-culture folks referred to as straight employment. Depressing indeed! My grades were surprisingly decent, given the extra-curricular activities I chose. The problem, I believe, was not one of academic deficiency, more like a goal malaise. I had trouble planning the rest of my day, let alone the rest of my life.

My life style was typical of many people my age who were destined to become sociopathic drifters known varyingly as Hippies, Flower Children, whatever. School work was kept to a reasonable minimum so as not to interfere with the important aspects of college life. Maintaining ones' draft deferment status was, of course, paramount to ones' happiness, not to mention health and drugs were big. It is important to remember that we are talking "soft" drugs here, mainly Marijuana and the occasional Acid trip. In the main, Pot in my circle was the drug of choice.

Being an unemployed and destitute college student put marijuana, even by 1967 standards, out of reach financially. What was a poor boy to do? Like many of my peers, small time Marijuana dealing seemed like a reasonable solution. It worked something like this: buy an ounce of pot for twenty dollars (try to do that today) divide it into ten "nickel" (five dollar) bags, sell eight bags, which covers your investment and the price of your next purchase, and you still have two bags for your head. Cool! Now, this is arithmetic even I can understand. And so begins our story.

It was easy getting caught up in my image of myself as some kind of counter-culture entrepreneur. Beating the establishment by living totally apart from it. Being recognized as a person who would take risks for a lifestyle he believed in. Providing that which typified the rebellious nature of our subculture, and indeed, the times. The truth be known I was in the grips of some kind of danger lust which was deriving nourishment from my nefarious activities. The attention of women and the money weren't bad either.

The summer of 1968 became a kind of mass exodus for wandering youth. A generation of disillusioned children taking to our nation's highways and byways, searching for answers to only God knows what. In the spirit of the day two of my friends, Browman and Pags set off to hitchhike to California. Enroute, they stopped to camp at the edge of a road in Kansas. As the story goes, Browman, answering nature's call, stumbled out into a field of Cannabis Sativae growing right alongside Route 70. My phone rang at 8:00 a.m. the next morning.

"We're rich!!" the voice on the line screamed.

"Who is this?"

"It's me, Browman, you moron."

"Who's rich?"

"You, me and Pags, that's who. Really man, we stumbled into the mother load! Weed as far as the eye can see. Ours for the picking. Get a car, or better yet, a van, drive to Russell, Kansas via interstate 70. We're staying at the Melody Motel. We are spending what little money we have on this fleabag, but feel it' important to stay out of sight, due to our appearance, you know, like Hippies and all in fuckin' Kansas."

"Are you fuckin' with me?"

"No, I swear to you man, get your ass out here, pronto!"

"I'm on my way."

Clandestine scamming was not my modis operandi in 1968. Picture this, boy Flower Child screaming through Kansas in a borrowed Volkswagen Minibus, elaborately festooned with antiwar slogans and peace symbols on his way to make the score of the century. This defies even the best of luck and displays the ultimate of stupidity. Ahh, youth!

Upon my arrival, in Russell, Kansas (pop. 650), Browman was in full lather, all five feet three inches of him.

"You gotta see this man, it's fuckin' unbelievable. We figure there's gotta be ten acres of the shit, just sitting there."

"Yeah, man," echoed Pags, "We've been back there the past two nights and it's been as quiet as the grave."

You don't suppose they're watching it?" I asked with more than a little trepidation.

"No fuckin' way, man," said Browman, "it's totally cool."

I had brought two boxes of heavy duty garbage bags, three pairs of pruning shears, and an all-weather flashlight. As an afterthought, I included two rolls of duct tape. You never know.

The plan was simplicity itself. Wait until dark, cut and bag as much as we could until first light and get on the road headed east to reap our fortune. We spent the afternoon sequestered in a 10 x 20 motel room after stashing the van from sight. At dusk, we parked the van on a deserted dirt road a quarter-mile alongside of the road. We would load the van just before dawn. If there was a problem and we had to run, the van was a safe distance away and would serve as a rendezvous. It was a perfect moonless night as we walked from the van to the field. We decided to work rows about ten feet apart. Each man took a dozen garbage bags and a pair of pruning shears. I took the flashlight. The sticky, sweet smell of fresh cut cannabis filled the night as we worked along in silence. Bag after bag was placed into the drainage ditch as the night arched toward dawn. Somewhere around three a.m., Pags broke the silence.

"Put out that goddam light!"

"Who are you talking to?" asked Browman.

"You, you fuckin' idiot, put out the light!"

"I don't have the fuckin' light," replied Browman, "Doc's got it."

"Doc, you got the light?"

"Yeah," I sad, feeling the slightest bit uneasy.

"Well, put it out, someone will see it." Pags sounded a little more than uneasy. At the sound of my own voice, a distinct pounding started in my brain. "It is out." I cried. Instantly, my knees began to give way, and I felt a loosening around my sphincter muscle. "RUN!" I screamed.

Heart in throat, I ran until I thought my lungs would explode. Clearing the field, I came to the road that would take me to the van. Certain at this point that the van was under surveillance, I kept to the drainage ditches and kept very low. Another couple of hundred yards up the road sat the van. To all outward appearance, it looked exactly as we left it, however, I was absolutely certain that the second I made a move toward it, I would be cuffed, conked and probably coifed by some neanderthal redneck Kansas cop.

Caution, as they say, being the better part of valor, I decided to stay put and let the evening's events unfold. As I lay paralyzed with indecision, fate took matters into its own hands. Walking along the road as if he hadn't a care in the world came Browman. He proceeded to the van, opened the passenger door, climbed in and waited. Expecting the worst, I got lower in the ditch and tried my best to become invisible. Two hundred yards above me in the same drainage ditch and directly across from the van I noticed the faintest trace of movement. Here it comes, I thought, visions of metal rooms and cattle prods dancing in my head. Sure enough, someone was getting out of the ditch and stalking the van. The stalker's profile, tall, thin, almost gawky, had a vaguely familiar look. This was no redneck cop, this was unmistakably Pags. Pags, rising to the bait like a trout to the fly. The next half hour was endless. By my watch it was four ten a.m. less than an hour until dawn. There comes a time in everyone's life where fears must be confronted and decisions must be made. After an hour in the ditch, I was beginning to realize that, in fact, only Pags saw the light that caused the panic. It is entirely possible, even more probable that Pags had been licking the marijuana resin off his fingers and in a state of drug induced paranoia, hallucinated the entire episode. Here, I thought, are the options: stay in this ditch for the rest of my life; walk to the van, get busted and learn to like bread and water; walk to the van, pick up the bags and head East to a life of counter culture fame and fortune. Being young and relatively brainless, fame and fortune seemed the obvious answer.