Tales from the Christensen Cruiser

Fuck.

Where to start?

When I posted last, I had been back from the trip for a couple of weeks or so and I posted about Nahant, the town I lived in until I was eight and a half. (Remember when a half-year really meant a lot?) It was right about that point that my life started to totally unravel. This is not the place to write about any of that. Those of you that know me well know more than you probably ever wanted to, and those that don’t wouldn’t be all that interested anyway.

It’s now the beginning of September, 2013 and my divorce will be final at the end of this month. It’s been a rough almost two years. (two and a half!) It wasn’t all bad, even in the marriage department. I actually got a lot of things done in the midst of  my marriage falling apart.

I am in Rockport, Massachusetts at the moment and have spent most of the last month here. It is where the trip ended in October of 2011; it was stormy inside and out the week before I flew home. I want to be clear that I didn’t set out on this trip to get away from my wife or anything, I do these trips for all sorts of reasons, but mostly to heal – the road has always done that for me, and to begin this trip, I was pretty worn out from tearing the inside out of an old house and restoring it. Rescuing is more like it. There was that, the preceeding years had been tough due to losing both my parents and all that entailed. It’s a long list, but it was a busy time and I was just plain tired of everything. By that time the house was to a point where I knew I could finish it. It was a daunting project and I had been thinkin’ like a thirty year old when I started it. Suffice it to say that I’m not. I’ll be sixty this coming February, god willing and the creek don’t rise. The main point being that I didn’t start the trip to get away from my wife, but I‘m resuming the trip to heal from losing a marriage that I really thought was going to go the distance. Well, now I am at a distance in a few ways, and things tend to get clearer from that perspective. (Where are those glasses anyway?) I spent some time getting the truck ready to go after spending two winters in Massachusetts, including replacing the other exhaust manifold, which involved three broken studs and about twenty hours.

Rockport is where my aunt Jean (my dad’s older sister), and uncle John lived before we moved to California, and also where John’s parents lived, Aaron and Missie Arsenian. I have been coming here since I was a little kid. We came at Christmastime, and Aaron would dress up as Santa and everyone totally believed it. Aaron was about as skinny as me but that didn’t seem to matter. Aaron died early so I never knew him well, but Missie – Missie was a treat. She talked like ZsaZsa Gabor, and it was totally genuine. She was wonderful. She cheated at croquet and cards – she was  wonderfully full of life and a lot of fun. It is her cottage that I am lucky enough to stay in. She had it built by a guy who didn’t have a lot of experience building houses according to the family lore, but I love it. Not fancy and built with a lot of used material.  There is oak wainscoating all over that must have come out of some grand old mansion in Boston. It’s totally charming, and happens to sit about thirty yards from the Atlantic. It faces directly East, so the sunrises are astonishing, especially for a west coast guy. I have been swimming in the quarry that my uncle John used to tow me around before I could swim. He was a former lifeguard and it was no problem for him to let me hang around his neck when I was four or five. I met some new friends in the Rockport area, which was great. I think they will be friends for a long time. I did some figure drawing at the Rockport Art Association, realizing that I hadn’t drawn from the figure since last I was in Rockport – a long time for me. The time in New England was very healing for me. I deposited some of my parents’ ashes in the water off Meyer’s beach, across the street from the house we lived in in Nahant. It was a house my dad remodeled. I grew up with televisions on cement blocks and bare studs. I still live in a house with bare studs that is being remodeled. Some things don’t change.

I finally hit the road on September 14^th. I headed down to Rhode Island and stopped by Bristol to see the town and find the house that my friend Stubby Huey grew up in. Cool town, and the only one I have been in that had a red, white and blue centerline through town, just as Stubby said. I stayed at Burlingame State Park, near Watch Hill, which was on a large pond and was just great. Next day I got to meet an old college pal, Sandy Wood, who was travelling North on a road trip himself with his wife Sally. It was great to catch up, brief as it was. He gave me his road atlas to take with me, which is close to the shirt off his back; it’s come in handy already several times.

I then took off for Long Island and took three ferries to get there – a really fun day. The only drawback was that the truck blew out a doughnut at the just replaced exhaust manifold and started making noise.  The first night there I stayed at Hither Hills State Park, right on the Atlantic. Met some very cool people there and was treated to coffee and bloody marys in the morning. The next morning I went to Montauk at the very end of Long Island to find parts and check out the town. Once there the truck turned over slowly, and by the next time I went to start it the battery was dead. I ended up staying there another night to try to figure the problem out.

Which brings us to yesterday and a little sample of what life on the road with a forty year old truck. In the morning, the battery was dead again, even after I charged it up with the alternator and didn’t use the battery the previous night. I got a jump and headed on down the road, planning to get through New York City without touching down. I headed towards the Hamptons with this very loud, very old rig, expecting to get arrested for just being there – it is loud. So I’m just about there and I pull out the light switch and the engine starts missing, telling me that I was running just on the battery and was running out of time. I found a shop at the side of the road, full of Rolls Royces, Mercedes, and vintage vehicles. (Even though it is forty years old, my truck doesn’t qualify as vintage – it is just old!) Everyone was busy, and this guy probably didn’t want my truck in his yard, so he directed me to another shop, which I limped in to, of course leaving it running while I asked if the guy could charge my battery while I waited. Gallagher’s Auto Repair was the place, and the owner charged the battery. While I waited, I found a place about six miles away that had an alternator to sell me. I put the battery back in and headed there where the owner of the shop, a rebuilding plant as a matter of fact, Jamco Auto Electric. Amazing to find this place so close to where I was. I then went to three different auto parts stores to find the doughnuts and a few other things.

I then hit the road, running on the battery, intending to do some repairs once I was in a good place to do that work. I wanted to get through New York City as soon as possible to miss traffic. I drove like hell and was on the approach to the Queens-Midtown tunnel when I was pulled over and told that no propane tanks can go through a tunnel in New York state by law, whereupon I was dumped off the highway and into the thick of the city – ust what I was trying to avoid. Long story short, it took me over two hours to find my way to a bridge to get out of there. At one point I ran out of gas in one tank and had to switch over to another tank on the fly and hope there was enough juice in the battery to start it again. It did, and I made it to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and over to New Jersey, but not before the other tank went dry right in the middle of the bridge, and I had to pull over. Fortunately, the left lane was closed and I actually could pull over – at the very middle of the bridge! This is happening at four in the afternoon with everyone trying to get out of the city – major traffic. I made it over and into New Jersey and drove like hell through the state. I ended up near Newark, Delaware. I was so beat that I stopped at a Motel 6 to get a shower and regroup. So there you have it – a day on the road full of excitement. The soul of an old machine indeed!

I am heading off to the east side of the Delaware Bay today. I am hoping to find a spot on the coast for tonight and maybe tomorrow as well. I obviously have some repairs to do, but am getting into the rhythm of the road. I have my hat on the hook for my hat, my coat on the hook for my coat, just like Scuppers the Sailor Dog, my favorite book when I was a kid. Everything is finding its’ place. It takes a while to get in the groove.

More soon. Thanks for tuning in.