Gringo Trail

About the time winter starts to rear its head on the South Coast of BC, is when I start to yearn for the sun and some warmth and think about heading south on the Gringo Trail.

It starts slowly with a few vehicles leaking out of Vancouver and Vancouver Island spots like Hornby and Denman Islands. Then gradually picks up to the point where you think you may be part of a migration to the light. You start to see more campers, vans and old school busses filled with happy faces.

You are approaching Everett now almost in the shadow of Seattle. Seattle is one of the large Cascadian cities that seem to have retained some of its hippie flavor. I am not completely sure about this. It is more of a feeling than something you can weigh and measure. Vancouver once had a thriving counter community in Kitsalano but it has since been gentrified. Of the once strong BC Hippie Community there is little left. Nelson and the Slocan Valley are trying to hang on but the new people with money are closing in tearing down lovely older Nelson homes, putting in boxes and apartments and clogging the streets with cars.

In the southward stream, there will likely be some denizens of the Comet Tavern up on Pike Street and some from Pike Place Market Area.

South of Seattle, there are a number of small to medium sized towns that are much the same. They are usually set back from the I-5 and surrounded by used car lots, malls and gas stations with a few Big Box stores. Some of the downtowns are interesting. Think of Linden, WA but there isn’t much to them. Not enough to delay gringos hunting for the sun.

Portland is the next big town. My sister and her husband live out in Hillsboro, a suburb to the west that I always have trouble finding in a maze of freeways – no hippies here just Mexican families seeking the good life. But there are some interesting towns in the area. Some of my Bay Area friends from the old days spent summers in Seaside when it was an endless party. Eugene is another spot that attracts counter culture folk. People from the East Shore of Kootenay Lake go down for Rainbow Family gatherings. There are other towns where the Granola Gang holds sway but they are off the Trail. Like Hood River and Fairview.

The Trail follows the beautiful Willamette Valley south through some very productive land. I always wonder if some coastal BC birds that disappear for the worst parts of winter when the ground is frozen and snow covered, sneak down there until things warm up a bit. But I have seen robins in Nelson where there is frozen ground and snow for five months. The birds huddle together in a bushy tree and somehow tough it out. There is no mild valley for them to escape to

The Trail still follows Highway I-5 which is not the most interesting. Indeed. But as you approach Southern Oregon, there is another highway branching off at Grants Pass. In fact, there are several other routes you can follow to cut over to the coast. Highway 199 is the one I usually take. The Americans have classified it as a dangerous highway but the only thing I have experienced is someone yelling at me and delivering the one finger salute. I could not figure out why until I turned on the radio and heard a raging right wing radio broadcaster who told his lisisteners that Canada was a pinko country with a gay Prime Minister. Evidently Canada had not joined the fight against Iraq or made enough menacing noise about “weapons of mass destruction” I later learned that right wing radio ranters were quite common in the US and were not always held to the truth. I had always thought a Canadian license plate or flag was a kind of protection. Obviously not always.

Highway 199 comes out to the coast at Crescent City, CA. A not bad town and the start of a spectacular stretch of coast that goes on for most of California. This stretch is one I know well because I was a student at Humboldt State University from 1964 to 1968 and lived along this coast for many years from the Oregon Border to San Diego including Arcata, the home of Humboldt State. Life for students was very different then. Rent was minimal because I always lived with four or five roommates and we rented old houses or inexpensive student apartments. Tuition was around fifty dollars per semester and beer was about three bucks a dozen. I always had a job and a bank account. The football coach started a janitorial service so his players could have work. Few of them took the jobs but I and my roommates were happy to work them. I also worked for Coast Oyster Company and The Keg, a little hole in the wall pub but the best one I have ever been associated with. Every night was a feast of excitement and memorable adventure.

My first night at Humboldt was a good example. The party was rolling along pretty good when the staff pulled the curtains and locked the doors at 2 AM the legal closing time. We howled on. The Keg was owned by a character we called Junior. Sometime after three he snuck into a back room and stuffed a large hammer down his pants. “The girls will love this “he explained. Not long after he was cheek to cheek with a very young girl when a scream pierced the smoke-filled air and Junior ducked out the back door. The party was over.

There was a small pool table at The Keg. It was more trouble than it was worth. A small group of hippies often played there nursing their beer and not bothering anyone. Once in awhile they would play jukebox songs like Societies Child by Janis Ian. One night a bunch of Green Berets came sailing in and demanded the hippies give up the table.” We will be done in a few minutes” they said. The Green Berets were large and not in the best of moods, the Hipsters were skinny and underfed. “Your shrubs give up this table or get your clocks cleaned.” The big boys moved in and the battle was on. The Hippies whipped the big lads with ease. They were lightening fast and the Muscle Heads were way over confident.

Just another night at The Keg. I heard it has been sold and replaced by a fancy restaurant with table cloths, flowers and wine. It has been said that Junior has moved to Bellingham.

Not far from The Keg was an apartment building where my roommates and I lived. It overlooked the parking area of a hamburger stand. One afternoon Tom Spencer, our roommate got in line for some food. One us called down to tell the girl “There is a robber in your line up”. We carefully described Spencer and warned her to be careful because “he has been known to be dangerous. “I see him, I see him” she yelled”. Soon after a squad of Gestapo pulled in and logged Spencer into the Crowbar Hotel. We congratulated ourselves but before long the cops were back for me. Spencer had talked himself out of trouble and shifted the blame to us. I had an outstanding traffic warrant so I spent the night in jail and had to take a traffic safety course. Another roommate just dodged the bullet because he had scrapped with the Sherriff about a month before. Evidently the sheriff had forgotten and Spencer had the last laugh.

After Arcata and Eureka, Highway 101 becomes a very scenic by way. Spectacular groves of redwoods line the road. They surely are wonders of the world­ ­- the best of them is in the Avenue of the Giants. The redwoods exist in quite a narrow zone in southern Oregon and coastal California down to the southern part of Big Sur. They stick to the fog zone to dodge the heat and dryness of inland regions. There are some great coastal beaches and fern lined ravines where Roosevelt Elk are seen.

We are now nearing the Napa -Sonoma wine country. This is another beautiful area where the great writer Jack London once lived. I find it somewhat odd that he wrote about the harsh and deadly qualities of the Yukon when he lived in such a calm bucolic area. London was dogged by accusations of socialism which he freely admitted. He also drank his share of spirits which dragged him down eventually. I wonder if drinking also inspired him when he was at his best. Imagine the great story teller sitting by the fire sipping a drink and thinking of the northern trails and wolves howling at the shimmering northern lights

Then it’s across the Golden Gate to the towers of The City. Californians have only one city – San Francisco. No Californian will ever call Los Angeles, San Diego or some other pretender “The City”. San Francisco is the main city of California and the main city of the counter culture and many other movements. It is a beautiful city beyond interesting. However, when I last went out to Height Ashbury you couldn’t help feel it was somehow not real but staged by people who knew how to dress it up as the heart of Hippie Land. When I lived down The Peninsula in Sunnyvale, my high school friends and I would don suits and go up to strip clubs in The City. We would sometimes cross Broadway to the upper reaches of Grant Avenue to hear Beatniks beat their bongos and read poetry. We could have been seeing Kerouac and Ginsburg for all I knew. This is where it all started, where the Beatniks spawned the Flower Children. The terms Beatnik and Hippie were coined by Herb Caen who chronicled life in the city for more than sixty years. His column was termed a love letter to the city he called Baghdad by the Bay.

Just down the Peninsula is San Mateo. I was born there in St. Matthews Hospital in 1942. My Mom and I lived with Nana and Pappy Flynn and Nana’s sister Auntie Sanderson. Dad was away in the Canadian Army. Until he returned from the war, we would live in a wealthy district of San Mateo called Bay Wood. The house was located at 373 Parrot Drive and it was a beauty. “Pure redwood lumber” Pappy would say. Tom Flynn had made lots of money in the Nevada mines and was the President of The San Francisco Stock Exchange then. I sometimes rode in with him on the train. The house is still there as fine as ever. It is probably owned by a dot com millionaire now because it is in one of the most expensive neighbor hoods on earth. Pappy would be disgusted. He was very poor in his youth and remained frugal all his days.

After experiencing Sunnyvale and American Graffiti days where we cruised Fourth Street in San Jose just the way it was done in Graffiti, I signed on to Foothill College for a couple of years and worked at Bill Steffen’s Chevron, a garage out on Stevens Creek Boulevard. Foothill was one of the first community colleges. The Americans called them Junior Colleges and most students took advantage of them to get though the general education requirements: courses like English, Math and Social Sciences. You could graduate with an Associate Arts degree if you had enough credits. My folks were living in Los Altos then but myself and a few pals were living in an old house in Monte Vista we called the Sugar Shack. That was near the peak of the sixties. Watching our old TV one day we saw two of our roommates marching at Berkeley. Maggie had shaved herself bald and Mike was naked except for a Superman cape.

Bill Steffen’s was a neighbood gas station and we also did small repairs. We had a good mechanic but he was almost never sober. He kept a Mickey of WolfSchmits Vodka in his back pocket which he swigged from every few minutes. He would then take a swig of Squirt (a popular soft drink in the States) and mix it in his mouth. I tried it and was not quite up to it. Despite the steady input of strong drink, I never saw Jerry drunk. The rest of us at the garage imbibed at a nearby pizza house called Pagliachi’s. This became a solid neighborhood pub

Back down the Peninsula, we are still on the El Camino south of San Jose and edging into Steinbeck Country. The great writer once lived near Los Gatos at the edge of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Los Gatos is now part of Greater San Jose. And it is part of the Bay Area mega tropolis. You do not get the feel of Steinbeck until you get further south. He was born in Salinas and his best work is in his stories of his friends around Cannery Row including his pal Ed Rickets the great biologist who wrote Between Pacific Tides, a classic manual of inter tidal ecology. Steinbeck was plagued by various school boards and commissions that banned his books for reasons to do with socialism and suggestive content. He also favored strong drink.

Bob Ross and L went down on a hot late summer night after the onions were harvested and mounded up beside the fields. Their smell permeated the dusty air. The doors of the Gilroy cantinas were wide open and campesinos and their happy music spilled out onto the street.

Ross was from Salinas and knew it well. We had an ongoing debate as to where one could see the most deer. I argued for some of the east Kootenay hot spots like TaTa Creek where sometimes a vehicle would be held up for an hour or so while deer crossed the highway. Ross said the lettuce fields of Salinas Valley were beyond argument. I think he may be correct after we gazed at what seemed to be an endless herd of small coast black tails in the fields These deer live in a climate paradise (it might snow once or twice every thirty or so years but it will just be a flurry or two and no accumulation). There is no serious predation and ample food. On top of that, hunters often lobby for bucks only seasons. After the Salinas Valley, we are still in Steinbeck Country of low hills with grass lands and live oak there are some Digger Pine stands up higher. Many of the grasses are invasive weeds like brome, cheat grass, fennel and other junk that displaces native vegetation and is very flammable. Towns like San Luis Obispo, King City and Paso Robles come up. I like these towns. I am especially fond of Avila a small beach town of great beauty where I would often camp for a week or more when I was on the Trail. It is close to San Luis Obispo. We are now getting close to Southern California and Warmer Ocean water along with far too many people

I know almost nothing about this part of the state. We lived in Los Angeles for while in 1958 but all I can remember is the awful smog and wiping the car windows with a rag soaked in cleaning solvent to clean off the grease. I also remember Beer Can Beach and what a mess it was. A lovely beach littered with thousands of cans and other junk. I am sure it has been cleaned up by now some

The next thing I remember of Southern Cal is Pacific Beach. I guess it was part of San Diego or maybe La Jolla. We lived there in a small apartment just steps away from a great beach. My siblings and I would hit the beach early each day to watch old guys with metal detectors probe the sand for rings, coins and watches. Pacific Beach is a wonderful place. Mexico is just a few jumps away. Remember to pick up Mexican vehicle insurance in San Ysidro. Do not forget this!

I usually head down the Baja to the Mulege area on the Sea of Cortez. After a few days I take the ferry over to Mazatlan then go to San Blas and Puerto Vallarta. But you are on your own now – Enjoy.

Gringo Trail

About the time winter starts to rear its head on the South Coast of BC, is when I start to yearn for the sun and some warmth and think about heading south on the Gringo Trail.

It starts slowly with a few vehicles leaking out of Vancouver and Vancouver Island spots like Hornby and Denman Islands. Then gradually picks up to the point where you think you may be part of a migration to the light. You start to see more campers, vans and old school busses filled with happy faces.

You are approaching Everett now almost in the shadow of Seattle. Seattle is one of the large Cascadian cities that seem to have retained some of its hippie flavor. I am not completely sure about this. It is more of a feeling than something you can weigh and measure. Vancouver once had a thriving counter community in Kitsalano but it has since been gentrified. Of the once strong BC Hippie Community there is little left. Nelson and the Slocan Valley are trying to hang on but the new people with money are closing in tearing down lovely older Nelson homes, putting in boxes and apartments and clogging the streets with cars.

In the southward stream, there will likely be some denizens of the Comet Tavern up on Pike Street and some from Pike Place Market Area.

South of Seattle, there are a number of small to medium sized towns that are much the same. They are usually set back from the I-5 and surrounded by used car lots, malls and gas stations with a few Big Box stores. Some of the downtowns are interesting. Think of Linden, WA but there isn’t much to them. Not enough to delay gringos hunting for the sun.

Portland is the next big town. My sister and her husband live out in Hillsboro, a suburb to the west that I always have trouble finding in a maze of freeways – no hippies here just Mexican families seeking the good life. But there are some interesting towns in the area. Some of my Bay Area friends from the old days spent summers in Seaside when it was an endless party. Eugene is another spot that attracts counter culture folk. People from the East Shore of Kootenay Lake go down for Rainbow Family gatherings. There are other towns where the Granola Gang holds sway but they are off the Trail. Like Hood River and Fairview.

The Trail follows the beautiful Willamette Valley south through some very productive land. I always wonder if some coastal BC birds that disappear for the worst parts of winter when the ground is frozen and snow covered, sneak down there until things warm up a bit. But I have seen robins in Nelson where there is frozen ground and snow for five months. The birds huddle together in a bushy tree and somehow tough it out. There is no mild valley for them to escape to

The Trail still follows Highway I-5 which is not the most interesting. Indeed. But as you approach Southern Oregon, there is another highway branching off at Grants Pass. In fact, there are several other routes you can follow to cut over to the coast. Highway 199 is the one I usually take. The Americans have classified it as a dangerous highway but the only thing I have experienced is someone yelling at me and delivering the one finger salute. I could not figure out why until I turned on the radio and heard a raging right wing radio broadcaster who told his lisisteners that Canada was a pinko country with a gay Prime Minister. Evidently Canada had not joined the fight against Iraq or made enough menacing noise about “weapons of mass destruction” I later learned that right wing radio renters were quite common in the US and were not always held to the truth. I had always thought a Canadian license plate or flag was a kind of protection. Obviously not always.

Highway 199 comes out to the coast at Crescent City, CA. A not bad town and the start of a spectacular stretch of coast that goes on for most of California. This stretch is one I know well because I was a student at Humboldt State University from 1964 to 1968 and lived along this coast for many years from the Oregon Border to San Diego including Arcata, the home of Humboldt State. Life for students was very different then. Rent was minimal because I always lived with four or five roommates and we rented old houses or inexpensive student apartments. Tuition was around fifty dollars per semester and beer was about three bucks a dozen. I always had a job and a bank account. The football coach started a janitorial service so his players could have work. Few of them took the jobs but I and my roommates were happy to work them. I also worked for Coast Oyster Company and The Keg, a little hole in the wall pub but the best one I have ever been associated with. Every night was a feast of excitement and memorable adventure.

My first night at Humboldt was a good example. The party was rolling along pretty good when the staff pulled the curtains and locked the doors at 2 AM the legal closing time. We howled on. The Keg was owned by a character we called Junior. Sometime after three he snuck into a back room and stuffed a large hammer down his pants. “The girls will love this “he explained. Not long after he was cheek to cheek with a very young girl when a scream pierced the smoke-filled air and Junior ducked out the back door. The party was over.

There was a small pool table at The Keg. It was more trouble than it was worth. A small group of hippies often played there nursing their beer and not bothering anyone. Once in awhile they would play jukebox songs like Societies Child by Janis Ian. One night a bunch of Green Berets came sailing in and demanded the hippies give up the table.” We will be done in a few minutes” they said. The Green Berets were large and not in the best of moods, the Hipsters were skinny and underfed. “Your shrubs give up this table or get your clocks cleaned.” The big boys moved in and the battle was on. The Hippies whipped the big lads with ease. They were lightening fast and the Muscle Heads were way over confident.

Just another night at The Keg. I heard it has been sold and replaced by a fancy restaurant with table cloths, flowers and wine. It has been said that Junior has moved to Bellingham.

Not far from The Keg was an apartment building where my roommates and I lived. It overlooked the parking area of a hamburger stand. One afternoon Tom Spencer, our roommate got in line for some food. One us called down to tell the girl “There is a robber in your line up”. We carefully described Spencer and warned her to be careful because “he has been known to be dangerous. “I see him, I see him” she yelled”. Soon after a squad of Gestapo pulled in and logged Spencer into the Crowbar Hotel. We congratulated ourselves but before long the cops were back for me. Spencer had talked himself out of trouble and shifted the blame to us. I had an outstanding traffic warrant so I spent the night in jail and had to take a traffic safety course. Another roommate just dodged the bullet because he had scrapped with the Sherriff about a month before. Evidently the sheriff had forgotten and Spencer had the last laugh.

After Arcata and Eureka, Highway 101 becomes a very scenic by way. Spectacular groves of redwoods line the road. They surely are wonders of the world­ ­- the best of them is in the Avenue of the Giants. The redwoods exist in quite a narrow zone in southern Oregon and coastal California down to the southern part of Big Sur. They stick to the fog zone to dodge the heat and dryness of inland regions. There are some great coastal beaches and fern lined ravines where Roosevelt Elk are seen.

We are now nearing the Napa -Sonoma wine country. This is another beautiful area where the great writer Jack London once lived. I find it somewhat odd that he wrote about the harsh and deadly qualities of the Yukon when he lived in such a calm bucolic area. London was dogged by accusations of socialism which he freely admitted. He also drank his share of spirits which dragged him down eventually. I wonder if drinking also inspired him when he was at his best. Imagine the great story teller sitting by the fire sipping a drink and thinking of the northern trails and wolves howling at the shimmering northern lights

Then it’s across the Golden Gate to the towers of The City. Californians have only one city – San Francisco. No Californian will ever call Los Angeles, San Diego or some other pretender “The City”. San Francisco is the main city of California and the main city of the counter culture and many other movements. It is a beautiful city beyond interesting. However, when I last went out to Height Ashbury you couldn’t help feel it was somehow not real but staged by people who knew how to dress it up as the heart of Hippie Land. When I lived down The Peninsula in Sunnyvale, my high school friends and I would don suits and go up to strip clubs in The City. We would sometimes cross Broadway to the upper reaches of Grant Avenue to hear Beatniks beat their bongos and read poetry. We could have been seeing Kerouac and Ginsburg for all I knew. This is where it all started, where the Beatniks spawned the Flower Children. The terms Beatnik and Hippie were coined by Herb Caen who chronicled life in the city for more than sixty years. His column was termed a love letter to the city he called Baghdad by the Bay.

Just down the Peninsula is San Mateo. I was born there in St. Matthews Hospital in 1942. My Mom and I lived with Nana and Pappy Flynn and Nana’s sister Auntie Sanderson. Dad was away in the Canadian Army. Until he returned from the war, we would live in a wealthy district of San Mateo called Bay Wood. The house was located at 373 Parrot Drive and it was a beauty. “Pure redwood lumber” Pappy would say. Tom Flynn had made lots of money in the Nevada mines and was the President of The San Francisco Stock Exchange then. I sometimes rode in with him on the train. The house is still there as fine as ever. It is probably owned by a dot com millionaire now because it is in one of the most expensive neighbor hoods on earth. Pappy would be disgusted. He was very poor in his youth and remained frugal all his days.

After experiencing Sunnyvale and American Graffiti days where we cruised Fourth Street in San Jose just the way it was done in Graffiti, I signed on to Foothill College for a couple of years and worked at Bill Steffen’s Chevron, a garage out on Stevens Creek Boulevard. Foothill was one of the first community colleges. The Americans called them Junior Colleges and most students took advantage of them to get though the general education requirements: courses like English, Math and Social Sciences. You could graduate with an Associate Arts degree if you had enough credits. My folks were living in Los Altos then but myself and a few pals were living in an old house in Monte Vista we called the Sugar Shack. That was near the peak of the sixties. Watching our old TV one day we saw two of our roommates marching at Berkeley. Maggie had shaved herself bald and Mike was naked except for a Superman cape.

Bill Steffen’s was a neighbood gas station and we also did small repairs. We had a good mechanic but he was almost never sober. He kept a Mickey of WolfSchmits Vodka in his back pocket which he swigged from every few minutes. He would then take a swig of Squirt (a popular soft drink in the States) and mix it in his mouth. I tried it and was not quite up to it. Despite the steady input of strong drink, I never saw Jerry drunk. The rest of us at the garage imbibed at a nearby pizza house called Pagliachi’s. This became a solid neighborhood pub

Back down the Peninsula, we are still on the El Camino south of San Jose and edging into Steinbeck Country. The great writer once lived near Los Gatos at the edge of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Los Gatos is now part of Greater San Jose. And it is part of the Bay Area mega tropolis. You do not get the feel of Steinbeck until you get further south. He was born in Salinas and his best work is in his stories of his friends around Cannery Row including his pal Ed Rickets the great biologist who wrote Between Pacific Tides, a classic manual of inter tidal ecology. Steinbeck was plagued by various school boards and commissions that banned his books for reasons to do with socialism and suggestive content. He also favored strong drink.

Bob Ross and L went down on a hot late summer night after the onions were harvested and mounded up beside the fields. Their smell permeated the dusty air. The doors of the Gilroy cantinas were wide open and campesinos and their happy music spilled out onto the street.

Ross was from Salinas and knew it well. We had an ongoing debate as to where one could see the most deer. I argued for some of the east Kootenay hot spots like TaTa Creek where sometimes a vehicle would be held up for an hour or so while deer crossed the highway. Ross said the lettuce fields of Salinas Valley were beyond argument. I think he may be correct after we gazed at what seemed to be an endless herd of small coast black tails in the fields These deer live in a climate paradise (it might snow once or twice every thirty or so years but it will just be a flurry or two and no accumulation). There is no serious predation and ample food. On top of that, hunters often lobby for bucks only seasons. After the Salinas Valley, we are still in Steinbeck Country of low hills with grass lands and live oak there are some Digger Pine stands up higher. Many of the grasses are invasive weeds like brome, cheat grass, fennel and other junk that displaces native vegetation and is very flammable. Towns like San Luis Obispo, King City and Paso Robles come up. I like these towns. I am especially fond of Avila a small beach town of great beauty where I would often camp for a week or more when I was on the Trail. It is close to San Luis Obispo. We are now getting close to Southern California and Warmer Ocean water along with far too many people

I know almost nothing about this part of the state. We lived in Los Angeles for while in 1958 but all I can remember is the awful smog and wiping the car windows with a rag soaked in cleaning solvent to clean off the grease. I also remember Beer Can Beach and what a mess it was. A lovely beach littered with thousands of cans and other junk. I am sure it has been cleaned up by now some

The next thing I remember of Southern Cal is Pacific Beach. I guess it was part of San Diego or maybe La Jolla. We lived there in a small apartment just steps away from a great beach. My siblings and I would hit the beach early each day to watch old guys with metal detectors probe the sand for rings, coins and watches. Pacific Beach is a wonderful place. Mexico is just a few jumps away. Remember to pick up Mexican vehicle insurance in San Ysidro. Do not forget this!

I usually head down the Baja to the Mulege area on the Sea of Cortez. After a few days I take the ferry over to Mazatlan then go to San Blas and Puerto Vallarta. But you are on your own now – Enjoy.