Waging Heavy Peace (39 page)

Chapter Sixty-Eight

T
he Continental climbs along up the grade with seemingly little effort, and the grade never seems to end. Traffic is thicker now, with more and more vehicles joining the procession. Six lanes wide, the big road winds and dips through the mountainous terrain, and I am a little lonely. For some reason the GPS is not functioning and Rhapsody is not getting enough signal to deliver another round of
Hell on Heels
, but everything else is going to plan as I glance in the rearview mirror and see myself looking back. I look really good somehow; maybe it’s the light, but my face doesn’t seem all lined with age. I actually feel great and eager to get to the city and see what’s going on, but also strangely hungry. Thinking back over the last many hours, I remember the Retirement Motel, the small farms with their green grass, the stench of that factory farm I passed, and as I trace back through the day, which seems to have started a long time ago, I can’t remember eating a thing or having a drink of water. Looking around the front seat, I don’t see any bottled water or snacks. From where I am, I can’t see the sun in the sky, although I can feel the heat on the convertible top. It must be noon or thereabouts. My mind is wandering to women I have met and loved, and when I come to Pegi, I feel really good, kind of complete in a way, like I really lucked out in the end, getting the best of the best.

I remember some of the dreams I’ve had where Ben Young is walking and talking, dreams that seem so real and vivid. The things he says are so natural, like he has always talked, and he exchanges a knowing glance with me as his mother makes an observation concerning the feelings she has had her whole life.

Family business is on the agenda, and reckoning with things is at hand. The meeting is set for tomorrow. Business people are flying in, and the pressure is mounting, or at least the anticipation. Perhaps we may not be able to keep everything we have and we may have to make some decisions and lighten our load. All of these houses, five on the ranch and three on the Hawaii property, may be too much for us to handle, and the moment has come to make choices. We have never looked forward to this, thinking that ultimately something might happen to help us avoid the inevitable, but here we are.

Brake lights line up in front of me and I slow to a crawl. Traffic is lined up for miles in the sweltering heat. I try rolling the window down to get a feel for the surroundings, and it’s excruciatingly hot outside, with a lot of fumes. The Continental’s generator cycles off and we are running on pure electric power, able to crawl at less than one mile an hour with total control, completely eliminating the stop-and-go actions of the older cars with their prime mover internal combustion engines. Thank God for the air-conditioning, which is still working.

The sound system comes on again with a glitch, somehow set to the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron”:

I met him on a Monday,

And my heart stood still . . .

What a great song, so simple and innocent. Somehow I am connected to a vintage radio show on Rhapsody, with a real DJ talking and old commercials. What a trip. Technology is amazing! It even sounds old. I remember that there is a café up here and decide to get off the interstate in a mile or two and take that two-lane road I remember to a little town Briggs and I used to visit, and get some food. That may give this traffic time to clear. After about twenty minutes of crawling along under five miles an hour, I finally arrive at the exit and discover it is closed. Looking about carefully, I spy an opening around the roadblock and decide to take a chance. There’s nothing better to do, and the most that can happen is I will have to back up and lose some time. The Continental just fits!

Making it around the roadblock, I turn on the two-lane and find myself cruising along with no problem; the other direction was completely blocked, but this way is fine. How lucky can you get? This is the old road we used to take every time we made this trip back in the day. It’s in pretty good shape really, and there is no traffic to speak of. A sixties car passes going the opposite direction, and I think to myself,
Wow, will they be bummed when they get to the interstate.

It’s very quiet out here, and I pull over at a place near a creek where I can just get a drink from the flowing water. Parking roadside, I get out and stretch my legs. I feel great! It’s a beautiful day, and this road is just the kind I like. Now, watching my step on the rocks, I edge my way down to the creek, cupping my hands and scooping up some of the crystal-clear water. I love to drink this way; it’s so refreshing. A couple of fish are visible in the pool in front of me, so I sit down on the shore to watch them for a while, remembering how I used to hang for hours near creeks in my boyhood, catching crawfish and chub and taking them back to my house in a little pail. Then I would store them in a little makeshift water scene I had created in one of my mother’s old roasting pans with some water, sand, and rocks placed carefully to give a natural look. I used to stick little green grass plants in the sand and make believe they were trees. I feel so good here, I decide to just take a little nap.

I get back in the Continental and continue down the road to the café. Then I pull in and there’s Larry Johnson’s ’57 Ford pickup in the parking lot. As I enter the little café, I see Larry and Briggs in the corner, drinking some coffee and having a late breakfast. I go right over and sit down with them. We don’t say much. David says something about Kirby getting a job at one of the studios. Kirby is very good with his hands and can fix anything, plus he has a very friendly personality. We are happy for him. Larry has to make a call and gets up, heading for the pay phone in the corner. He asks us to get him another coffee when the waitress comes back. Briggs looks at me and asks what I’ve been doing.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all the people in this book and my next book. There can never be enough pages for you.

Photography Credits

Frontispiece
: Photo by Graham Nash

1
: © Henry Diltz (Photo by Henry Diltz)

2
: Photo by Harold Whyte

3
: Courtesy Neil and Pegi Young

4
: © 1973 Joel Bernstein

5
: © Jack Harper

6
: Courtesy Ken Koblun

7
: Courtesy Neil and Pegi Young

8
: Courtesy Neil and Pegi Young

9
: © 1971 Joel Bernstein

10
: © Melissa Eagan/WNYC Radio

11
: Photo by Hannah Johnson. Courtesy Hannah Johnson and Neil and Pegi Young

12
: Photo by Ivan Nagy

13
: Dennis Hopper,
Buffalo Springfield
, 1967. Courtesy and © The Dennis Hopper Trust

14
: © 1973 Joel Bernstein

15
: © 1973 Joel Bernstein

16
: © 1970 Joel Bernstein

17
: Photo by Dennis Buford

18
: © 1980 Joel Bernstein

19
: Photo by Jeanne Field

20
: Courtesy Neil and Pegi Young

21
: © 1974 Joel Bernstein

22
: Photo by John Filo/Getty Images

23
: © 1978 Joel Bernstein

24
: © Craig Abaya

25
: © 1984 Joel Bernstein

26
: © Henry Diltz (Photo by Henry Diltz)

27
: Photo by Bob Seidemann. Art direction by Gary Burden for R. Twerk & Co. Courtesy Neil and Pegi Young

28
: Courtesy Neil and Pegi Young

29
: Courtesy Neil and Pegi Young

30
: © Murray Bray

31
: © Henry Diltz (Photo by Henry Diltz)

32
: Courtesy Neil and Pegi Young

33
: © 1978 Joel Bernstein

34
: Courtesy Neil and Pegi Young

35
: © 1969 Broken Arrow Music Corporation (BMI). Courtesy Neil and Pegi Young

36
: © 1970 Joel Bernstein

37
: © Danny Clinch

38
: Courtesy Neil and Pegi Young

39
: © Gilbert Hanekroot, Amsterdam

40
: © 1973 Joel Bernstein

41
: Courtesy Neil and Pegi Young

42
: Courtesy Neil and Pegi Young

43
: Courtesy Owen Clark/Brighit Morrigan private collection

44
: © Bettina Briggs

45
: Courtesy Neil and Pegi Young

46
: Courtesy Sal Trentino