Chapter 2: Marysville Ain't Nothing but a Wide Spot in the Road Pt. 1

“Where are you going?” the driver asks.

“Uh, Europe?" I say. "Don’t suppose you’re going that far?”

“Europe? That’s ambitious,” he says with a chuckle. “How ‘bout Marysville?”

“Marysville it is.”

The drive south through the Northern California Sacramento River valley is dotted with small towns and farms, mostly farms. Big farms, small farms, dairy farms, cattle farms, pistachio groves (in fact, my brother Gary, a bearded, rodeo supplies dealer following horse shows around western United States with a mouth full of chewing tobacco and a talking parrot on his shoulder has a pistachio grove in the Sacramento River valley – but that’s another story), tomato patches (in fact my brother Gary and I and a band of his misfit friends used to pick tomatoes in a tomato patch in the Sacramento River valley - but that's another story), almond groves (in fact, my sister Gae, whose husband, Doug, had built the fastest Chevrolet powered AA fuel dragster on Earth has an almond grove in the Sacramento River valley – but that’s another story), rice paddies (in fact, my good friend Raleigh Singh, rumored, at the time, to be among the 10 richest men in America has the biggest rice paddy in the Sacramento River valley – but that’s another story) – you get the picture – Ah, yes, the Sacramento River valley - Fond memories tying a half dozen or more inner tubes together in a convoy filled with the baddest band of drunken and depraved kids known to man, drifting along its shores, lost in the ebb and flow of the rippling current with a case of Budweiser on the side, a lid of pot and a pack of zigzags in a water tight baggie. Damn, life doesn’t get better than this.

We pass the turn off to Lake Oroville, a California Department of Water Resources hydroelectric power project backing up the Feather River at the convergence of 4 forks by the largest earth filled dam in the world (at the time). As the dam was being built and the lake was filling we'd congregate after school in the back of my 1950 maroon Pontiac speed wagon I had bought for 50 dollars and set about aimlessly joyriding around its banks, watching its progress and looking for whatever mischief we could find.

There’s Ned and Bert and long tall Tim, the 4 Stooges on the rampage, smoking and drinking and raising whatever hell we could find. We pass our favored swimming hole on the west fork of the river, now inundated by the rising waters. With tears nearly welling in our eyes, we reminisce the glorious times spent basking under sweltering summer skies, dipping and diving in its crisp cool waters. We drive up this back dirt access road to a newly constructed train trestle crossing the filling tributary of the lake, park the car, each reaching for a fresh beer out of the ice box in the back of my 1950 maroon Pontiac speed wagon and get out to assess the damage done to our once beloved swimming hole under the deluge of the rising tide a mile below. We cross the train trestle to the opposite side where the tracks disappear into a dark foreboding tunnel leading up into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We follow them inside and light up a joint. Halfway through the tunnel, just past the fail-safe point of no return, Ned hands me the joint and I take a hit. Just then a rumbling noise is heard approaching in the distance, the tracks begin to tremble and we see a light entering the tunnel at its opposite end. We quickly estimate the width of the approaching train and the width of the tunnel we are now trapped within, take another toke on the joint and look at each other with dumbfounded, "What the fuck we do now" expressions emblazoned on our faces. I pass the joint to Bert, drop my beer from my hand and start sprinting in the opposite direction of the oncoming train toward the faint pinhole of a light coming from the tunnel’s entrance in the distance. With the approaching train quickly gaining, I imagine the pulverized remains of our flesh and bones being scraped up off the tracks with a coke spoon and an obituary reading 4 unidentified smears of train impacted mush have been discovered on the railway tracks leading up into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the vicinity of a 1950 maroon Pontiac parked up a back dirt access road near a newly constructed train trestle crossing a tributary of what is soon to be Lake Oroville. Just then, my hand uncovers a slight recess in the darkened tunnel wall just large enough for the four of us to dive into just as the train rumbles by not leaving more than a flea's dick between it, us and the gruesome slaughter we had just been exonerated from. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh the train flashes by, nearly sucking us from our refuge with the vacuum formed by its displaced air passing through the air tight tunnel, like a cyclone over Cali snorting all the coke in its course. The train's red tail lights rumble out through the faint pinhole light in the distance, I reach in my pocket, exhale the breath I had thought to be my last and light up another joint.

Astonished and amazed at not becoming a Big Mac minced by an southbound Southern Pacific freight train, we finish the joint and make our way back out through the pinhole light in the distant tunnel entrance and onto the trestle a mile above our beloved swimming hole on the west fork of the Feather River. We all look down at the seeming thimble sized pool of water below, judge the distance to be marginally less than fatal and look around at each other contemplatively. We wonder if the plunge would actually be survivable and figure there was only one way to find out. We look around at each other again, this time more daringly, and considering that we had already survived one near death experience that day, we're on a roll and are impervious to doom.

Hearts pounding heavier than a Studio 54 bass riff, we climb out over the steel girders of the bridge, down to their lowest point over the rising lake below, line up abreast of each other along the bottom girders of the bridge and on the count of three, leap dauntingly to our certain deaths.

With arms and legs clawing helplessly for the rung of a ladder that isn't there, like Wiley Coyote in an out of control free-fall spiral over a miniature valley a zillion miles below, my mouth is agape in sheer terror of becoming a soggy splat of donkey dung disintegrating on the water's surface and sinking to its depths never to be seen again. My exuberant tongue, flapping in the wind like a frayed flag in a typhoon, is nearly severed in half by the impact my jaws receive upon hitting the water's surface. Splat, splat, splat three more would be donkey dung patties come plummeting out of the sky, whooping and hollering, like a car load of thrill seekers coming unhinged from the apex of a roller coaster falling to Earth and landing on either side of me in the crimson waters, stained from the blood oozing from my semi detached tongue.

"Tha was'n so ba," I try saying to the surviving crew as they rise to the surface with half of my tongue dangling out the side of my mouth, held in place by a single sinew, blood drooling down my chin. We swim to the water's edge, I scoop my tongue back into my mouth, climb up the hill to my 1950 maroon Pontiac speed wagon I had bought for 50 dollars and off to the nearest surgeon to have my tongue reattached to its body.

Ah, yes, fond memories of Lake Oroville and near death experiences. We've all had them, like the time I was water skiing not far from where we had just had our near fatal fall about a year later. As soon as the lake began filling and boating facilities were being deployed, my folks were the first on the roster to order a spanking new berth for their ski boat. With the ski boat berth secured, their next procurement was a houseboat tethered to a buoy parked in the cove alongside their ski boat. I would then spend the next couple of summers living and working at the marina, diving off the back of my folk's houseboat, swimming to work pumping gas and selling bait and tackle in the gas and bait and tackle shop in the marina. It was on one such day, having just finished my shift selling gas and bait and tackle in the gas and bait and tackle shop in the marina, when we all head out for a ski. I had just done a dry water step start off the back of the houseboat, skied around the perimeter of the section of the lake we were using a couple of times and, still dry as a bone in a desert drought, I slalom over alongside the houseboat chugging through the water. I zero in on the houseboat's handrails, let loose of the ski boat's tow rope, reach out in an effort to grab on to the handrail and hoist myself aboard to complete my water ski stint without getting a single drop of water on me. I miss. My hands slip off the handrail and under the houseboat's pontoons I go, thrashing and kicking the underside of the boat more wildly than Joe Cocker on acid in an epileptic fit with my ski still attached to my foot while the propellers of the twin Bearcat 55 horsepower outboard engines suck me in toward them. I'm frantically kicking and thrashing the underside of the boat as the engines' propellers come whirling and surging by, missing the softest part of my abdomen by millimeters.

Ah, yes, fond memories of Lake Oroville and near death experiences. And the time not long afterward when water skiing with my buddy Drew - You remember Drew - Texaco Drew. We're skiing tandem behind our ski boat down the west fork of the Feather River with staggered length tow ropes. Mine being a half length shorter than his allowing me to zig zag back and forth across the boat's wake with Drew behind raising or lowering his rope as the command indicated. Thumbs up meant "raise" and I would zag across the wake ducking under his rope and thumbs down meant "lower" and I would jump across both wakes over his rope. So, on we go, zigging and zagging back and forth across the wake, thumbs up, thumbs down, raising, lowering, ducking under, jumping over behind our ski boat down the west fork of the Feather River when our signals get scrambled and Drew "raises" when he should have "lowered" and I "zig" when I should have "zagged". I come off the wake airborne directly into the middle of Drew's 'raised' tow rope. The only thing stopping Drew's tow rope from severing my torso in half was the shredded remains of the full fitting foam filled life jacket I was wearing...