Driving on Acid

Driving on Acid

by John Rosenblum

Dinosaurs in California by Anthony Afairo Nze

I was eighteen in 1975 when I drove on acid. It was a crazy thing to do, and I was lucky to survive. Still, I wouldn’t give up the memory for anything. It was a turquoise and cream ‘56 Chevy Bel Air, one of the best cruising cars ever made. As I drove down Interstate 5 through Northern California on that clear summer night, the Bel Air and I merged into an ecstatic singularity.
        I was running away from a disastrous adolescence: depression, my parents’ divorce, my father’s blame, his disappointment that I wouldn’t be a scientist like him, his disapproval with my choice to become a classical musician like my music teacher, Mr. Sterkin, and—finally—Mr. Sterkin’s death. My girlfriend and I had dropped out of college to start a new life together, but a relationship isn’t like music. There was no teacher to guide me, and practice only made things worse. I had to get away for a while to figure out where I went wrong, so one morning I started hitchhiking from Portland, Oregon, back to my hometown, Santa Cruz, California.
        By that evening, I’d only made Roseburg, and was anxious to find a ride through a long stretch of Interstate 5 in Northern California that lay directly ahead. You could hitch right on the highway in Oregon, but not California. I’d heard stories of stranded longhairs harassed for days by local rednecks in Yreka and Weed. My own hair fell in a loose braid down my back.
        I was about to give up for the day and find a hidden place to spread my sleeping bag, when an old Chevy with a rounded hood and shiny grill rolled onto the interstate. Suddenly, I knew this was my ride. You get these feelings sometimes when you hitch, especially after long hours of nothing. It’s usually a deranged fantasy, but it can be true. For instance, I once made a solemn promise that if the next car stopped for me, I’d never pass up a hitchhiker, and all these years later, I still pick up everyone with their thumb out. I called out silently to the Chevy, “Stop for me! You’re mine!”
        The driver sized me up as he went by and pulled off about thirty yards down the road. I ran toward the car as it backed erratically along the shoulder. The driver was thirtyish, had dark curly hair, and hadn’t shaved for a while.
        “How far are you going?” I asked. “I’m looking for a ride at least to Sacramento.”
        “I’m headed to LA,” he said. “But I’m not sure how far I’ll get tonight.”
        “I’m waiting for a ride that’ll go through the night,” I said, though I already knew I had to get into this beautiful car.
        “I might do that if I can get some help,” he said. “Can you drive a steering column shift?”
        I nodded yes. I never had, but I’d mastered the violin and viola. How hard could this be?
        “Climb in,” he said. “I’m Stephen. We’ll drive a while and talk. Then let’s see what happens. What’s your name?”
        He looked impatient, and I sensed he’d take off if I started my story about Yreka and Weed. “John,” I said, shaking his outstretched hand. I threw my pack onto the rear seat and slid into the front.
        Stephen wrote and directed movies and TV series. He was returning from hanging out with Robert Altman on a Canadian set for a Buffalo Bill movie. The car’s dash was shiny turquois metal. A chrome clock in front of me had stopped at 12:06 who knows how long ago. The bench seat had a musty smell and embraced me like a comfortable old couch. Stephen told me this car was a ’56 Bel Air. That’s the year I was born.
        As the California border approached, Stephen offered to drive through the night and drop me in Sacramento, but on a condition. One of his LA girlfriends, Ronnie, who was “the ultimate hippie chick,” had given him two hits of acid. She didn’t want them herself because they were just speedy, not trippy at all. “They’re the perfect driving acid,” Stephen told me.
        I’d dropped acid and mushrooms a few times before and would have never considered driving, but Stephen pitched his plan to me like a movie plot to a producer as he drove his ornate living room on wheels through the sunset mountains. My teenage judgment had only partially formed, and any alternatives brought up nightmare visions of Yreka and Weed.
        We stopped at a pull-off with a view of western ridges rolling toward the ocean. The last sun struck us as a surprisingly cool breeze had me clutching myself in my thin T-shirt. After a bit of rummaging, Stephen emerged with two hits of blotter acid wrapped in a small piece of foil. He gingerly pinched one tiny square of paper between his thumb and forefinger and transferred it to me. I put it under my tongue and shivered uncontrollably, acutely aware that I had started an adventure.
        Back on the highway, the sky glowed. A sign welcomed us to California. I watched my body for the acid coming on but I was just jittery, which I assumed was only anticipation.
        These mountains were almost unpopulated. I knew Shasta’s huge cone would appear somewhere to our left, but it might be dark by then. Stephen looked for a café to get a soda and wait for the acid to come on. Once we got used to it, we’d drive again. He pulled off at an exit with only a gas station, topped off the tank, and was directed to a bowling alley with a café, sitting on its own just a bit down the road.
        Several dusty pick-up trucks were in the gravel parking lot. Stephen parked by the bowling alley’s front door, joking, “At least we’ll find the car when we come out.”
        I laughed nervously, feeling conspicuous with long hair down my back and a hit of acid in my stomach, but Stephen strode in with confidence.
        In the bowling alley, the men wore cowboy hats over crew cuts and the women had teased hair, tight slacks, and flowered blouses. Several people glanced over their shoulders at us when we sat at a table overlooking the lanes.
        As we sipped our sodas, Stephen made up stories about the locals as if this was his new TV series: There were two couples bowling in front of us. One guy was having an affair with the other guy’s wife. Their coy smiles whenever their spouses looked away were perfect. I couldn’t stop laughing. A bit further on, a man had secretly been in love with his date since high school. She’d been a cheerleader and had married the football captain, but had recently divorced. Just yesterday, the guy finally got the courage to ask her out.
        But it wasn’t long before the bang, roll, and crash of balls and pins began making a confusing echo. The lights had become way too bright, and Stephen had stopped talking. I recognized the first giddy energy of acid starting in my stomach, which I knew would soon radiate through my body as a rush of expansiveness. We got up to leave.
        The Bel Air’s location by the entrance now seemed overexposed. When we’d arrived, I hadn’t noticed the neon Budweiser sign on the wall above the car. Now in the dark, the sign flashed on and off every couple seconds with a sound like a fly buzzing against the window of a stuffy garage. I got into the car. We had to get away from here.
        But when Stephen sat down, he said, “I don’t know about you, but I can’t drive yet. I guess we’ll just wait for this to settle a bit.”
        The sign buzzed Stephen’s face with flashes of orange and blue. A redneck walked by and was impressed by the car, but looked annoyed when he saw us sitting inside. A family with teenage kids shot suspicious glances at us. I was sure the local cops would show up soon. I’d end up in jail.
        Ronnie had been wrong about the acid. We had to leave before it was too late. I considered grabbing my pack and walking away, but what would I do next? I asked Stephen if he could at least back the car to the far end of the parking lot, but he shook his head. “I don’t even know how to drive at this point.”
        I looked at the angry sign in front of us and heard myself say, “I’ll drive. We’ve gotta get away from this building.”
        “Are you sure?” Stephen said. “I agree, but can’t imagine driving.”
        “I’ll try,” I said. “Let’s change seats.”
        “OK,” he said. “But I don’t know if I can even open this door.”
        I understood what Stephen meant. The bowling alley swirled around the sign as it flashed and buzzed. The Bel Air formed a musty bubble of protection, but with a sedating effect, making movement seem impossible. With great effort, I opened my door. Fresh mountain air flowed in. It was the air of action. I walked around the car and opened the driver’s door.
        “You could just scoot over,” I suggested.
        Stephen’s eyes were glazed, but he managed to push his body across the seat to the other side.
        “I can’t believe this acid,” he said as I sat behind the steering wheel. “It’s not what Ronnie told me.”
        I shut the door. Again, the Bel Air’s stuffy spell of inaction crept over me, but I managed to open the window before it could take over. Stephen had lost the car key when he moved along the seat. For several minutes, I searched for it by the flashes of the Budweiser sign. At one point, I was sure this was the end and I’d have to walk away after all, but then, I felt a single key hiding in the folds of the seat.
        “Before you drive,” Stephen said in a pained voice, “I have to tell you about this car. It’s got a few problems.”
        The bowling alley door opened. An older man looked at us suspiciously. Was this the owner? He went back in.
        “OK, what are they?” I said.
        “Wait, I gotta think,” he said. “I can’t remember words. How could this happen to me? I’m a writer. Words are my thing.”
        Stephen’s body began melting into the seat. I looked away.
        Then he said, “It’s the steering wheel. Just try it and see.”
        I looked at the beautiful turquoise wheel. It was soft as velvet and had a shiny round horn with its own thin chrome orbit.
        “Turn the wheel,” Stephen said.
        I spun the wheel one way and the other, like when I was a little kid in a pedal car.
        “The wheel’s not supposed to turn like that when the car is stopped,” he said.
        I got it. The worn out steering mechanism spun a quarter turn in each direction before it engaged. “Gee, that’s a bit scary,” I said.
        “If you can’t drive, we should wait,” Stephen said. “Maybe I’ll find a motel.”
        “No,” I said, assuming Stephen wouldn’t share his motel room with me. “I’m OK. Anything else?”
        “Yeah,” Stephen said. “It’s the thing behind the steering wheel.”
        “I’m behind the steering wheel,” I said.
        “No. Look through the steering wheel. It says how fast you’re going. What’s it called? Anyway, it doesn’t work.”
        The speedometer was broken. I recalled a story about a guy, high on mushrooms, who was pulled over by a cop. He’d been sure he was speeding, but it turned out he was going less than ten miles an hour. How was I supposed to drive?
        “There’s a way to tell how fast you’re going,” Stephen said. “Look on the dash toward my side.”
        I called off things I saw in the flashing orange and blue light. There was a gauge with a dial.
        “That’s it!” Stephen said. “It tells you the pressure in the engine. When it’s forty, you’re going about sixty-five.”
        The oil pressure gauge was the Bel Air’s speedometer. I wasn’t sure I could drive, but I knew we had to at least get away from the front of the bowling alley.
        Everything took forever. The sign buzzed angrily. The clutch is the pedal on the left. I pushed it with my foot. A cowboy exuded uptightness as he walked by and peered at us. The key in my fingers; find the slot. Which direction to face the key? Bumpy side up. Find the reverse gear. The end of the column shift lever, shaped like a cone, is very beautiful in the light of the neon sign. Pull the lever back and up. The gas pedal is on the right. Push it with the right foot. Turn the key clockwise or counter clockwise? Only one way works.
        The Bel Air sprung to life. I let out the clutch. We jerked back and stalled. Another try and I backed toward the center of the gravel lot.
        “Lights!” Stephen called out, the first I’d heard from him for a while.
        I found the headlight knob. I found first gear. We moved forward. This steering wheel was strange, but I pulled away from the bowling alley.
        My first idea was to leave this parking lot in case the cops were already coming to check us out. Then a giddiness came over my body. The Bel Air was communicating with me through her vibrations. She wanted to cruise down the highway. I was her driver, and she was fine with that. I spun the wheel back and forth to steer out of the gravel lot and onto the road.
        I considered parking by the gas station next to the interstate, but the cops would find us there, the same as the bowling alley. And the Bel Air may have needed repairs, but she was ready to move. The highway seemed like the safest place for us.
        We entered I-5 South and I shifted through the three gears. The glowing oil gauge rose to forty. Staying in the right lane required total Zen-like concentration, but moving the steering wheel felt like dancing with Bel Air. We’d become lovers. She was the same age as me.
        As I relaxed into the experience of driving, I was surprised I could actually feel the cool air flowing over Bel Air’s elegant fenders, and especially the tip of her very shiny hood ornament, which was shaped like a modern jet plane and whistled through the night air, as it gleamed with each passing light.
        Amazingly, ecstatically, my body merged into Bel Air’s. The breeze created by our movement caressed our crystal windshield. The smooth road, still warm from the day’s heat, whispered under our soft rubber tires. Together as one, Bel Air and I flew down the beautiful black highway.
        But my ecstasy was interrupted when two bright white eyes appeared behind me. A huge roar vibrated right through us as a monster approached. I was terrified. It was a dinosaur, a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I was only a mouse-like creature, the prehistoric ancestor of all primates to come. I had to survive this encounter so my progeny could reproduce and ultimately evolve into humans.
        The brutal beast moved to the left and began overtaking. Would it swallow me whole? It certainly could if it wanted. Its glistening red face towered above, expressing malevolence as smoke blattered from its great silver nostrils. The beast’s roar said, “I’m big! This is my road! Step aside!” The monster moved forward to display its mirror-like sides and huge rumbling black wheels. It took all my concentration to remain as inconspicuous as possible. Finally, the glowing red lights of its tail appeared. This beast had bigger prey to chase down. I had survived to wander the world as a fuzzy little creature. I would procreate and become the ancestor of all humanity. But I had to stay vigilant. There were many dinosaurs on this road.
        I looked over to Stephen. He hadn’t said anything since we’d started driving and was sitting with his knees against his chest.
        “You OK, Stephen?”
        “I don’t know,” he replied. “I can’t believe you’re driving. I’m totally tripping.”
        He was quiet again while Bel Air and I survived several more dinosaur encounters. I gradually realized that Bel Air wasn’t afraid of dinosaurs.
        Stephen said in a small voice, “I don’t feel good. I wonder if maybe I need to pee.”
        There was an empty pull-off not far down the highway with beautiful trees. I turned off the lights and engine and my senses pulled back into my body. I was a vulnerable and scared human being again. Bel Air’s musty air began working its narcotic magic, and the trees spun and melted around us. I opened the window and a nice, dewy smell entered. I got out. Crickets chirped. These trees were an ancient community far older than the highway. I walked around Bel Air and opened Stephen’s door. He was a curled up ball of immobilized fear.
        “Do you need help?” I asked.
        Stephen looked up. Without saying anything, he moved an arm toward me. I held him as he shakily stood up. This man, though I hardly knew him, needed my assistance. I realized that I loved him deeply. I took Stephen to a place between two trees and walked a little ways farther. As I peed, the branches curled toward me in an embrace. I provided nutrition, for which these wise old trees were thankful.
        I went back to Bel Air, leaned against her fender, and caressed the hood ornament. It was an instrument of great magical power. What industry had created this?
        Stephen staggered back. “I don’t know if I peed,” he said. “But I feel much better.”
        We got back into the car. Bel Air was inanimate without her motor running. The trees spun and melted around us again. How had I driven before? Where was the highway? But it wouldn’t be safe to stay here.
        Stephen said, “Even the way I feel now, I couldn’t possibly drive. Can you really do it?”
        “I’m tripping for sure,” I said. “But something amazing happens when I turn on this car. You know, she’s a very special car.”
        “Yeah, I know,” Stephen said. “If you can do it, go for it.”
        The key was still in the ignition. I pushed the clutch and turned the key. Bel Air hummed alive. Again, she welcomed me and pulled my sensations into her body: her engine, her shiny skin, her windows, her tires. I now saw the trees and pull-off from Bel Air’s point of view. She was at peace with this little forest and the sky above, but the black road with its sweet vanilla lines beckoned us to the horizon. We rolled through the gears and cruised down the highway again.
        Now Stephen couldn’t stop talking.
        “I can’t believe this acid,” he said. “I have no idea where I am. Yeah, I know this is California, but I can’t even imagine a map of California. You know why this is so weird? I was in the Israeli army during the Six Day War. You know what that was? And I was a map-reader! Everyone depended on me to know exactly where we were. I’m glad you know where we’re going.”
        “Actually,” I said. “I only know we’re going down 5 and it runs through Sacramento.”
        Stephen described several crazy, though not particularly violent, war experiences. In one, he was with three other soldiers scouting the Sinai desert in a Jeep at night. They were driving a narrow mountain road between a cliff and a drop-off when the radio man reported the latest Egyptian front line position. Stephen instantly knew it was just around the next bend. They stopped dead and cut the engine. The road was too narrow to turn around and too curvy to back up without lights. In desperation, four guys physically lifted the Jeep and turned it around.
        “That’s how I know,” Stephen said, “absolutely anything is possible with enough motivation. Even driving on acid!” We both laughed.
        Stephen could have done whatever he wanted after he left the Israeli army, but he loved movies more than anything and yearned to make them himself. He came to LA to study directing, but there was no college degree or other training available. He found out that people learned by working on sets, but how could he break in?
        “I decided,” Stephen said, “to just tell people I’m a movie director. I managed to get invited to the right parties, and I know everything about movies, so I could always start a conversation.”
        He’d scored a job recently directing a TV episode for the Paper Moon series. He got six thousand dollars, rented a large yacht, and threw a party for the people he’d met at other parties. He was broke the next day, but didn’t care, since he’d impressed everyone he needed to. Anyway, there was plenty more money out there, and his three girlfriends always took care of him. Stephen described his girlfriends, how each of them was ideal in her own way.
        It occurred to me that Stephen had followed his dream, while I had abandoned mine.
        Stephen turned to me. “Do you have a girlfriend in Portland?”
        I felt a wave of sadness. The road became slightly sticky and the wind over Bel Air’s fenders was unsettled. “Yeah, but things aren’t working out,” I admitted.
        “Do you still have sex?” Stephen asked.
        “Not for a while.”
        “Do you love her?”
        “I love her.”
        “John, you’ve got to find a girl to have sex with,” Stephen said. “Don’t leave your girlfriend. Just find another one. That’s what I’d do.”
        “Would she be OK with that?”
        “Sure. It’ll take the pressure off. She’ll probably start having sex with you again. There must be a girl in Santa Cruz you know.”
        I smiled.
        “Perfect!” Stephen said. “You’ll have a girlfriend in Santa Cruz and another in Portland. But there’s something else about you. Why’d you leave Santa Cruz anyway? That’s Surf City!”
        I told Stephen how I didn’t get along with my parents, so I’d moved to college, but then my music teacher died.
        “Music teacher?” Stephen said, like he’d finally found what he was looking for.
        “Yeah,” I said. “I played classical viola and violin.”
        “Who was your teacher?”
        “Mr. Sterkin. He had a big career in LA, and traced his lineage all the way back to Mozart. He hated the ‘schlock’ methods that had taken over and wanted me to carry on his understanding of the great pieces.”
        “And he died?” Stephen asked.
        “No one knew he had a heart problem,” I said.
        His widow, who’d always been a complete mess, asked me to visit the day after he died, saying her husband had thought of me as his son and would have wanted me to have something of his. She gave me his gold mechanical pencil, which had been inscribed “To Dave from Rudy Vallée,” and then pleaded with me to come over every evening after my classes to take care of her. She sobbed hysterically while I cooked dinner and cleaned the kitchen. I returned to my dorm and freaked out. I didn’t answer Mrs. Sterkin’s calls and didn’t even go to the funeral.
        “Did you ever visit your teacher’s grave?” Stephen asked.
        “I never have.”
        “So how do you know he’s dead?”
        “Of course I know,” I said.
        “You didn’t see him die. You didn’t see him buried.”
        As Stephen’s words sank in, Bel Air sang a solemn melody down the pitch black road.
        “So you left Santa Cruz to do what?” Stephen asked.
        “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve been washing dishes at a hospital.”
        “John. You’re a musician. You play the fucking violin and viola. Join a rock band! Play jazz! Move to LA and become a studio musician. There’s a million things you could do.”
        With Stephen’s words of encouragement and seeing how he lived his own life, I realized I could do anything I wanted with mine. It was like Bel Air and Stephen and I had cruised down this infinite highway forever. There was no longer any past, no future. Nothing else would ever be needed.
        Stephen began describing a movie script he was working on. It was an epic story of the Mormons, updating the genre of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments.
        “Here’s a major religion whose holy land is in fucking Utah. Their Christ lived only one-hundred-and-fifty years ago. It’s a part of American history hardly anyone knows.”
        The successes and travails of the early Mormons came alive before me: Joseph Smith and the golden plates. The gradual move through Midwest farming communities. Handsome young men converting pretty farm girls and being repeatedly chased out of town, always farther west, by the angry farmers. Finally, a cast of thousands, mostly women, cross the American continent.
        As we drove on, it became very late. The road was empty of cars with hardly any trucks. The acid’s effects mellowed. Semis lost some dinosaur qualities, but retained their malevolence. My body was still entwined with Bel Air’s, though not as intensely. I didn’t want the sun to rise. I didn’t want to leave Stephen or stop driving Bel Air.
        A big sign for San Francisco appeared. I imagined Bel Air driving steep streets lined with Victorian houses.
        “San Francisco’s cool,” I said, recalling outdoor rock concerts with wild hippies.
        “It’s true,” Stephen said. “I was going to LA, but I feel like I could do anything right now.”
        Another sign shouted, “SAN FRANCISCO!” with big arrows convincing us to go to this beautiful city. We’d eat fresh sourdough bread on Fisherman’s Wharf, walk the panhandle to Golden Gate Park. I’d score a used violin at a shop on the Haight and play Bach on street corners. I’d meet some members of a funky band and join them.
        “Do you want to go?” I asked.
        “Yeah,” Stephen said. “But I’m sure there are reasons for me to be in LA.”
        “I was going to Santa Cruz,” I said. “But San Francisco is so great.”
        Our lane was already going to the golden city of fun. We would have to change lanes for Sacramento, that boring city of government workers. “SAN FRANCISCO!!! SAN FRANCISCO!!!” the signs implored.
        But reluctantly, we trusted memories of former lives. Moving into the lane for Sacramento, Bel Air was disappointed, and the night lost some luster. Knowing that Sacramento was now on the horizon, I became resigned to hold out my thumb again on some freeway entrance.
        Stephen asked me to read the gas gauge. It was about a quarter. We looked for an open gas station and spotted a colorful sign. The station was lit with extremely white lights. Shiny silver pumps lined up beside a building painted the brightest possible white. I turned off Bel Air and became a human as before, but the difference wasn’t as pronounced. Stephen leaned against Bel Air’s glistening trunk while I pumped gas.
        “Where’s Santa Cruz anyway?” he said. “I still have no idea.”
        “It’s southwest of here to the ocean, still quite a bit north of LA.”
        “OK. Would you be willing to drive all the way to Santa Cruz?” Stephen asked. “I can’t drive yet, but maybe I’ll be able to when we get there.”
        “Wow!” I said. “That’s great.”
        We got back on the highway and soon hit Sacramento, where we took Interstate 80 toward the Bay Area.
        Stephen looked over to me. “Do you know the cemetery where your music teacher was buried?”
        “Yeah,” I said. As a kid, I had often ridden my bike by that small Jewish cemetery. It was surrounded by huge cypress trees.
        “When we get to Santa Cruz, let’s go there,” Stephen said. “I think you have to finally visit your music teacher’s grave. It’ll help you move on.”
        I knew Stephen was right.
        As we drove south through Berkeley and Oakland, the eastern sky gradually brightened. Delivery trucks appeared on the highway. The acid mellowed to a gentle buzz. We drove through San Jose, caught Highway 17, and ascended into the Santa Cruz mountains. Coasting down the curves toward Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay, I was glad when a dense fog engulfed us and hid the harsh morning light.
        We drove on Mission Street, by my junior high, near my high school, and took a right at Bay Street, where my elementary school still stood. A couple miles up Bay, we turned onto a rural street.
        I parked Bel Air in front of the cemetery. The tops of the cedars were lost in fog. The cast-iron gate squeaked as we entered. Strangely, I walked straight to Mr. Sterkin’s grave, as if I already knew where it was. The stone said, “David Sterkin 1903–1973.” Stephen and I talked about my music teacher while crows’ calls reverberated through the foggy cedars.
        David Sterkin had introduced me to a world of creative expression, so different from my father’s unemotional science, but I realized that my music teacher’s plan wasn’t for me either.
         Stephen said, “John. It’s time to say good-bye to David.”
        “Good-bye, David,” I said, using his first name for the first time.         Tears came to my eyes.
        We walked back to Bel Air. Stephen drove this time, and I directed him to my best friend’s house.
        I grabbed my pack from the back seat and felt like a different person from when I’d thrown it there so long ago. Stephen rolled down Bel Air’s window. We shook hands and smiled. As he drove off, I looked down at the business card he’d handed me. Stephen was a movie writer and director. I was just a young guy trying to figure out how to live and love.
        Not long after, I bought my first car. She was beautiful: a red ’62 VW microbus with rear corner windows. I outfitted her for camping, headed east, and joined a hippie commune in Vermont. But that’s another story.