Volksvvagen by Rousseau.
(Photo: Unknown)
Calie & I were in the Pyrenees, by the fragile Basque border between France and Northern Spain. It was raining across the dry Dali mountains and the colors were faded like an old photograph. We were dusty and tired and had come a long way. She looked hot with pink sun-burnt skin and frayed cordouroys.
A white Volkswagen bus pulled over just before a dangerous hairpin turn, and we climbed in. Wispy illustrations of mythic creatures and leftist symbolism decorated the side panels and a bunch of wild flowers hung from the rear view mirror. Bumper stickers on the back of the bus included motto’s that invariably mentioned Che, Zapata, ‘Mean People’, Free Tibet and other ‘free-thinking’ liberal identity validations.
Up front was a wiry Spaniard with a course grey beard, a Nepalese tunic, multiple tribal piercings, Thai fisherman pants; sitting beside him was his girlfriend, wearing mostly tie-dye, patchwork and burlap. Her hair was long, half-matted and half-dread locked. Sticky sweet incense burned neatly in the dashboard ashtray. Late-career Miles Davis was playing on the archaic tape deck: poly-rhythmic free jazz with the occasional lyric mumbling about time and space.
We settled in, said hellos, and I nonchanantly lit a joint I’d rolled in Denmark the week before passing it to the front. As though the cliched dope-smuggling van had suddenly caught on fire, the driver swerved jerkily to the rocky side of the road.
He yanked his head about angrily spitting while he spoke in broken English: “You Americans! You see two people driving a VW bus and think we all smoke drugs and think Jerry Garcia is god!! We might drive this hippie car but you’re a racist!”
