Author Archives: deansgreatwahoo

About deansgreatwahoo

After graduating in 1964 I headed to Hollywood to be a movie star, only to drop into the '60s. Lucky me! After hitch hiking around the country from '69 to '72, I graduated from Boise State University and settled into waiting tables for a living and pursuing other interests—teaching stained glass at BSU, writing for Boise Weekly and Idaho Magazine, publishing some Idaho and Biblical history, acting in a few local shows, and traveling at the drop of a map. For two years I produced a half-hour public access TV show available at www.greatwahoo.com. In 2011 I was featured in Scott Pasfield's book Gay In America. Through it all I've come up with some stories and am using this blog as an excuse to get them written down.

On The Road #1, a regret

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This account from my hitchhiking days includes a reference to encountering the scary Las Vegas police. For that story see Cops while hitchhiking #2

Shortly after my encounter with the scary Las Vegas police I got a ride with a trucker pulling an empty flatbed trailer. It wasn’t long before his destination pulled him off U S Highway 95 and I found myself with the sun setting in a very small desert town. There was one intersection, a convenience store, and a spattering of homes.

The prospects of getting a ride looked rather bleak.

I walked across the intersection, looked back to see the truck turn and pull away, and then noticed a lone sedan pulling through the intersection in a most hesitant way. Two guys about my age checked me out as they drove past. They pulled over and stopped.

It turns out they were on an adventure of their own. On their road trip they had given a guy a ride who had ripped them off. They had no money and were trying to get back to Oregon.

I did have eight bucks or so, enough for a tank of gas in an American sedan back in 1968. We filled up and headed north toward Boise. They were very cool, fun, good looking guys.

It got good and dark before the first driver suggested his buddy drive for a while.

A tank of gas was less than eight bucks back then and seat belts were an option most cars did not have. As the first driver laid across the back seat his buddy grinned and observed, “I know what you’re going to be doing back there.” The first driver admitted he had not given up driving because he was tired. Rather, he was horny.

Talk about an opportunity dropped in my lap! I opened up to them that I was gay and loved to give guys blow jobs. They didn’t freak out about it. Just then the Beetles’ new hit came on the radio, Why Don’t We Do It In The Road . . .

Now, I know, dear reader—I must be the only guy (and we can probably include you gals here, too) who looses his cool when sex comes knocking on my window of opportunity.

I’m still convinced we could have done it in the road all the way to Boise. But my tendency to find excuses and make conversation and keep myself avoiding what I really want kicked in. I babbled and babbled, lost in my own assumptions of other’s being uptight about enjoying sex when, really, it is I who gets upset and mindless when opportunities present themselves.

Yes, I do forgive myself for being human and I tell myself I probably share this frustration with most of humanity. But darn it. When am I going to stop and pay attention instead of go in automatic find-an-excuse-not-to mode?

My greatest regrets are not for the mistakes I’ve committed, my friends. They are for opportunities I turned my back on.

Why Don’t We Do It In The Road, indeed.

Cops while hitchhiking #4

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This is the fourth of four stories about my dealing with police while hitchhiking from 1968 to 1971.

For the story of my third encounter with the police, which happened in the day before this one, see Cops while hitchhiking #3

When I lit out hitchhiking from Princeton, New Jersey, toward New England in the spring of 1969 my objective was to avoid traffic. It seemed best to head to the north and pass well out of reach of the biggest traffic snarl of all: New York City.

So it was I found myself heading toward my fourth encounter between an Officer of the Law and a rumpled highway hippie.

Checking out a map I noticed a large green area well above the city, marked as the Catskill Mountains. Vague references to the Catskills swam somewhere in my memory but the real attraction on the map was the lack of towns in this large area. Plus, there was one very little black line jagging through it. I checked and sure enough, that little black line was the smallest road this map bothered to indicate. Tiny letters labeled it Frost Valley.

It was April, I was cold, and one would think an area called Frost Valley would sound better in the heat of summer. But I could not resist that little black line on a map.

I loved it as soon as I stepped onto the Frost Valley road. What was a little black line on the map was simply a little black line on the ground. There were no painted lines. Whenever a tree was in the way or a rock outcropping got close the road just narrowed itself around them. In the West this would have been an unimproved dirt road, but New York is more populated than Idaho and here the road was coated with what I learned was called grader mix—a process where gravel is piled down the middle of the road, thick tar is mixed into with a road grader pushing the combination back and forth across the road, and the mixture is then flattened across the road and rolled into a macadam surface.

It was heaven—spring hardwood trees and shrubs, just leafing out, crowding up to and pushing over the road. Ferns coating the ground under the canopy of the forest. Small waterfalls splashing down an occasional steep hillside beside the road. A clear mountain brook gurgling and babbling beside it all.

It was all new to me, being from the dry pine forests of the West.

Also new to me were the Private Property — No Trespassing signs. Idaho is 60% owned by We the People of the United States. I was not familiar with every fourth tree having a paper warning sign on it. What was this having to stay on the narrow strip of land between Private Property signs and the edge of the roadway? But stay there I did! Far be it from me to attract the dangerous, hippie-hatin’ cops.

I was several miles into the Frost Valley road and the light was starting to fade when a large Suburban filled with kids passed by. A minute later I came upon a wide spot in the valley with several buildings set back from the road, a mown field separating us.

A spunky kid must have gotten out of the Suburban and just made it across the mown field, where I saw him drop his books and jump on a jalopy that was little more than a motorized frame. He drove the contraption right to me.

He could not have been more enthused to meet a real genuine hitch hiker. I couldn’t help but really like this sparkle-eyed smiling bundle of enthusiasm.

The kid mentioned his dad might need some help with spring cleaning and I decided perhaps I’d go back a hundred yards or so and find a place to sleep. A place where the tree holding the Private Property sign was far enough off the road so I could wedge myself between trespassing and sleeping in the road.

The next morning I heard the Suburban pass, a load of kids headed to class. I rustled myself and brushed my teeth in the water running beside the road. I finished off my last half a can of beans. My toothbrush was tucked in my pocket and I was just getting the rope cinched around my sleeping bag, all dallying enough so the kid’s dad might have a chance to come find me.

Then I heard the Suburban headed back up the valley. I looked up as it slowed to a stop. In the right hand front window I saw the sign, CONSTABLE.

The dangerous cop got out with a grin on his face. His son had told him about me and he’d been glad to see me camping beside the road that morning. And sure enough he could use some help since the hired hand from the last several years had moved away.

Would sleeping in the den, eating with the family, and a buck fifty an hour be OK for a few weeks of spring cleaning?

I spent the summer.

Cops while hitchhiking #3

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This is the third of four stories about my dealing with police while hitchhiking from 1968 to 1971. For the story of my second encounter with the police, which happened in Las Vegas, see Cops while hitchhiking #2

One hundred miles north of New York City, State Highway 52 spent twenty-five miles winding its way from the Delaware River to the town of Liberty, New York. They were beautiful miles, neat farms tucked into hardwood forests on a casual, small, two-lane country road. Just what my hitchhiking soul was looking to travel.

Even though avoiding freeways was an aim of my travels, on this particular day I was trying to make it to Liberty just because it had a freeway passing by. Freeways mean substantial bridges. It was early spring and we can thank rain for the lush green of eastern forests. I was looking forward to a dry spot to sleep.

I walked beside the narrow road without sticking out my thumb, thankful if rides were offered but not soliciting the attention of authorities. Besides, were I was going was exactly where I already was—hitchhiking America’s byways. One is not in a rush when one is already there.

The countryside passed at the pace of a mosey.

A couple of miles before Liberty there was a bluff I’d have to climb. The road bent to the left and became a steep grade, cresting the bluff with a sharp right turn some hundred feet above the valley I was walking. My fear was the grade was probably cut as shallow into the hill as possible to save costs, and my fear was right. As I approached I saw the road narrowed even more.

The steep grade had no room on either side of the road. I could balance on top of the guardrail to the left, stumble over the steep loose dirt on the right, or walk on the road.

A dangerous situation, indeed. The road up the grade was narrow enough so cars had barely enough room to pass one another even without a pedestrian to get around. The grade was long enough so no one would want to stay behind me for the length of it. The grade was short enough so oncoming traffic could appear at the top of the hill with precious little time to stop for a car passing me. And, most dangerous of all, if there was anywhere a cop would stop me for walking on the road, this would be it!

But there was nothing to do. I quickened my pace, stepped into the road, and started scooting to the top.

I hadn’t seen a car in miles and I hadn’t seen a patrol car in three days. So, of course, when I was half way up the hill and in the narrowest part of the road, what should appear at the top of the hill?

You, dear reader, are an excellent guesser.

The officer was alone, rather young, and began slowing as soon as he saw me. He stopped next to me, no room to pull over, set his brake, and started to get out. Even while he was opening the door he began expressing his concern about my walking on the road and especially in this very dangerous spot. I told him I agreed completely, was doing my best to get to past this very dangerous spot, but I had no choice since there were no rides. Along with my words of agreement there was a sincere laugh of admitting he and I could not agree more.

As I remember he asked what I was up to, to which I replied I was out adventuring and a little road through the Catskills was the perfect place to be. By his fourth sentence he asked a question I remember well: “What’s in the box?”

It was a wooden box, exactly the kind painters carry their paints in, and that’s exactly what I told him was in there.

“Oh. Those are my paints.”

He jumped in, “Do you work in oils or acrylics?”

“Oils.”

He gushed, “How do you get the paints thinned? I’ve just started painting and the paints are too thick when they come out of the tube!”

(This hippie instantly stopped worrying about a big, bad cop hassling hitch hikers!)

I told him about linseed oil and volunteered to show him, waving my box around looking for a place to set it. He motioned to the trunk of his car and I said I didn’t want to scratch it but he indicated that was the last of his worries. So I gently put the box on his car, popped open the lid, and showed him what to look for.

We both knew we were blocking the road, so he soon thanked me and told me he was sorry—he wished he could give me a ride to Liberty but unfortunately he was heading the other way and had somewhere to get to.

I scooted to the top of the grade, the curious cop being the only vehicle I encountered on the climb.

Cops while hitchhiking #2

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This is the second of four stories about my dealing with police while hitchhiking from 1968 to 1971.

Oddly enough, it was not until I wrote these first two stories that I realized the two very first encounters I had on the road were with lawmen.

For the story of my first encounter with a policeman, which happened earlier the same day as this story, see Cops while hitchhiking #1

Advice was abundant when I was about to start hitchhiking—mostly about how bad all cops are to vagrants. But one town’s cops were pointed out to be the worst of the worst. The pit of repression. The hell hole of cops having no place for street people.

This town’s name was Vegas.

Now, perhaps my friends had special warnings about Las Vegas just because they knew my maiden journey was bound to pass through it as I made my way from Twentynine Palms, California, to Boise, Idaho. But their reasoning was persuasive enough—Vegas was about money and spending it. Someone without money was useless. It was the cop’s job to make sure the penniless did not feel welcome.

I had hoped to get a ride through Las Vegas but my ride from the south needed to report to an office near the Strip. I decided it was best to avoid the crowds and cops of that particular slice of humanity so I got out as he turned off U. S. Highway 95.

Highway 95 passed east and north of the Las Vegas Strip on that December afternoon in 1968. At the time it was on the edge of town but still developed enough for sidewalks. I dutifully kept to the walkways, watching the impressive Sands Hotel slowly passing in the distance to the west.

It took a couple of hours, walking past Las Vegas. My WWII-issue cotton sleeping bag was heavy on the rope over my shoulder. My wooden box of paints was heavy in my hand. A bag with food and a toothbrush flopped around my waist. I wasn’t a snappy hitch hiker but but all was well.

Finally I was rounding the long curve Highway 95 took around the north of the Strip. Another mile or so and I’d be far enough on the edge of town to stick out my thumb.

I was half way through the curve, approaching an intersection, when a Las Vegas Police cruiser slowed to take a look. It turned at the intersection and I watched as it made a U-turn and parked on the side road.

So much for avoiding the Las Vegas cops.

I was just entering the intersection as they stopped, so started walking toward the cruiser. I checked to be sure my Boise for Xmas sign was visible.

Two officers got out. The driver did the talking. “Heading to Boise, huh? Don’t you have enough money to get a bus?” I replied I might have enough to make it from Las Vegas but I’d like to save it for Christmas.

A few other questions and the officers seemed content I was not a threat to the community. They wished me the best and agreed that before long I’d be far enough out of town so the traffic would thin enough for hitch hiking. I thanked them and turned to walk the few steps back to the highway.

Then I heard the driver yell out, “Hey, buddy …” My stomach sank.

Both cops were standing behind the open doors of their cruiser. The driver was swinging his arm as he yelled out, “You can probably use this more than I can.”

It was tumbling in a high arc and I instinctively caught the gigantic Hershey bar. No almonds.

Cops while hitchhiking #1

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Advice was freely given long before I set a date to begin hitch hiking. The words of discouragement ramped up as the date came due.

You might think the advice was centered on the dangers of unscrupulous motorists, but this was 1968. More than half the advice I heard was to watch out for cops. Cops don’t like hitch hikers. Hitch hikers have no money and nothing to offer and it is the cop’s job to be mean so they keep moving on. Being young and not in the military I’d be a hippie for sure and the cops would just as soon beat up a hippie as go to their kid’s little league game.

With such concerns I set off from Twentynine Palms, California, where I’d fallen in with a military widow. Barbara insisted on driving me to U S Highway 95 and I was glad for the ride over long, straight, and mostly deserted Amboy Road and then old Highway 66. In those 101 miles we may have passed five cars.

Today Highway 66 is Interstate 40 and I’m thinking the sound of tires on pavement is pretty prevalent where U S 95 takes off to the north. But a few days before Christmas in 1968 it was a sandy spot in the desert with two small paved roads, one running east and west and the other taking off to the north. And that was it. Barbara’s Cadillac grew smaller on the horizon. The wind blew.

Barbara’s car had been out of sight for some ten minutes before an older gray sedan approached from the east. Low and behold, it slowed and turned north. My Boise for Xmas sign was in the air. I got my very first ride.

Within five minutes the rather rumpled driver had told me he was a cop.

A Federal agent, actually. Out on a reconnaissance mission. “Did you notice one of this car’s windshield wipers is missing?” he asked. (Actually, the only thing I had notice was I had a ride!) “It also has no front license plate. And my side mirror is busted. In fact, there are lots of things wrong with this car. I’m out here to see if any of the state or local police find any of these problems. That is, if they even stop me for no front plate or the busted tail light.”

It was the only time I’ve been in a car while looking forward to being pulled over, but I didn’t get a chance to watch this guy in action. We pulling into the south side of Las Vegas with nary a slow-down. As we approached the city he said he had to stop at the local office and report. He apologized, “there are rules about not picking up hitch hikers on duty, so I have to let you out.” I thanked him for the ride and the great chat.

And that, my friends, was my first run in with a big bad cop. It got me 95 miles and some stories about how easy it is to overlook absent windshield wipers.

The day would not end before my second run in, this time with two big bad coppers.

King Hill Contraption

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I was researching an article for Idaho Magazine about King Hill, a town about half way between Boise and Twin Falls, Idaho. The King Hill Irrigation District had always fascinated me and I made sure to stop by the district office. There I found this unidentified newspaper clipping:

(CAPTION: This is the Canal Cleaner machine that will be manufactured.)

Well. I could not figure out how such a contraption would ever have worked. But I was certain it would not still be working. I was wrong about that. On a tour of the irrigation district canals on June 22, 2013, we were not only assured it still worked, we were taken to watch it. Here’s a little 13 minute movie I made about the experience, including watching it do its thing:

If you like this movie, you may enjoy checking out the TV shows I produced for public access television. I made these shows every week for two years. You can review the topics I covered under Index of Topics. To watch the shows click List of Shows and then Watch Movie. www.greatwahoo.com

Gay Bashed, part 4

Gay Bashed, part 3

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This is the third in a series of four stories from a 2002 drive up the Alaskan Highway. See Gay Bashed, part 2 for the story leading to this one.

As far as gay bashings go, I was lucky as a guy can get. A swollen right side of my head and a lost hat, but my glasses still fit and nothing was broken. I’m most thankful.

Even so, the real luck of my bashing had just begun.

In the Yukon, March is still winter. Folks speak of the temperature and never bother to use the word below. All the remote tourist cabins are closed tight so the only option for comfortable rest is staying in the far-flung towns. With hardly any employment, crime is a big concern in the towns of the far north and security lights make it so you cannot see the Northern Lights anywhere near habitation.

My swollen head convinced me it would not be fun carousing in the next town, Whitehorse, so I pressed on. I ended up in Carmacks, a remote outpost on the Yukon River.

The village’s only hotel featured the same security lighting I’d been frustrated with since getting to the far north. I expressed my desire to see the Northern Lights to the clerk at the hotel’s front desk and she said perhaps she could help. There was a room outside of town, built over a homeowner’s garage. They rented the room during the summer. It was closed for the winter, but perhaps they’d rent it for a night or two. The clerk made a phone call on the hotel’s phone and sure enough, the folks agreed to let me have the room for a couple of nights. They also agreed to turn off their outdoor lights.

So. A place to see the Northern Lights. And let my swollen head recover. A regular win-win situation.

The clerk was just ending her shift so she graciously led me through back roads to a lovely, modern room. For two glorious nights huge sheets of green light emerged and wafted across the sky, building to where they had bright maroon skirts edging the base of the emerald walls. I was up and enjoying it until the cold drove me in. Then out of bed and back outside every hour. Or less.

Civilization’s need for security made it so those were the only Northern Lights I saw on my trip. I would have missed them if it weren’t for verbally blindsiding a handsome lumberjack one drunken night in the Yukon.

Fortunate, indeed. But another great gift from my bashing was yet to come.

Gay Bashed, part 2

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This is the second in a series of four stories from a 2002 drive up the Alaskan Highway. See Gay Bashed, part 1 for an introduction.

I may have hitch hiked in my twenties, but my travels have taken on the comforts of an automobile and hotel rooms. Over the years I’ve crisscrossed many amazing places in this vast association of States, but the Alaskan Highway and a good dose of the Northern Lights remained. So I took off the month of March, 2002, and headed north. I was 56 years old, had a new Saturn and a trunk full of things to keep me warm.

Communities with hotels are few and far between in the far north country, especially before the summer travel season. On the 520 mile drive from Fort Nelson, British Columbia, to the Yukon boarder there was a herd of buffalo on the road. Although small, that herd far outnumbered the three vehicles I saw that day. So I was glad to pull into Watson Lake before dark.

Barely over the Yukon border, Watson Lake is a lumber community with several hotels and an equal number of bars. Its claim to fame is the Sign Post Forest, a small roadside park crammed with sign posts supporting handwritten arrows with distances to about every habitation in the world.

Settled into a pleasant hotel and full of dinner, I walked across the large parking lot of a bar. It was early Friday evening so there were plenty of empty bar stools for bellying up. At the far end of the counter was a stud of a lumberjack, in his late 20s with strong arms and a quick smile and plenty of spunk to keep everyone laughing. I knew I’d kick myself all night if I didn’t get over there and be a jolly good fellow in return.

My hero of the timberlands, fresh from hauling logs, was drinking with his dad to get the weekend started. The beer flowed and the bullshit flew and everyone was glad to give me pointers on the roads and the attractions and their travel stories. But buying beer in a bar is pricey for an all night stint so this handsome young man and his dad went home to drink. I stayed and revved jolly up to party.

Hours later the handsome young man was back, sitting at a table with his dad since the stools were all taken. I was engaged in chat at the bar and stayed put until I needed to take a leak.

It was a tiny two-holer of a bathroom, the toilet and the urinal practically overlapping. I was just finishing up when who should stumble in?

Well, there are guys in the world who could have been cool and stuck around to check this guy out. But I’m too shy for that and I wouldn’t want to make a guy uncomfortable. So I zipped up and began heading for the door.

“Hey, hey — you’re back!” I acknowledged while rinsing my hands.

“Oh, yea. Just went home to drink some cheep beer. Had to come back and chase some women.”

“Hum. Well.” I made a decision. “I really love to suck dick.”

And that was that. I was headed out the door when I started to say it and out the door I went. The devil made me do it. I knew better.

I finished my beer and several more before deciding to check out another bar. I got up. Put on my scarf and coat and hat. Walked through the bar and out the door and half way across the parking lot. And there it happened. Some sounds behind me. Awareness I was being hit. I put up my arms to protect my head and began yelling, “Hey — Hey — Hey.” I knew I needed to stay on my feet. I kept walking. And it was over. I didn’t hear anyone behind me. I turned and the strong, young lumberjack was in the doorway of the building, “And don’t come back.”

I decided I’d probably had enough to drink and should just go to my room. The night clerk observed I was bleeding from my head. I said I didn’t know why the guy had hit me, but that wasn’t what I meant to say. What I meant to say was I didn’t know why the guy had blind sided me. I was disappointed in him for having hit a guy from behind.

But that was a lie, too. I knew he had physically blind sided me because I had verbally blind sided him.

Gay Bashed, part 1

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This is the first of a four-part series. A shortened and greatly edited version of this story from my experiences first appeared in Scott Pasfield’s book of portraits, Gay In America, 2011, Welcome Books, an imprint of Random House.

On the edge of a Western town in the ’50s, when time was not yet divided into school days, the game of Doctor captured my eager attention. The neighborhood girl and I seemed quite good doctors and our practice was always open. The neighborhood boy and I proved equally adept.

The neighbor boy’s grin and excitement remain vivid in my memory as he promised, pants around our ankles, “I’ll suck yours if you’ll suck mine.”

There is a memory of feeling and watching as he went first. And there is a stunning awareness—in high-definition and complete three-dimensional precision—of the moment I felt him in my mouth. There is the smooth texture, warmth, and light smell. There is the summer dryness and dust in the air. There is the light filtering through the blackberry bushes twisting through the logs of the shed we were in.

That night I discovered masturbation and, although years from ejaculation, I experience my first climax. Was I four? Five? Three?

We played until he started school a year ahead of me. He became the “big boy” and seemed filled with interests other than private playrooms. Little by little I convinced myself he wouldn’t want to play right now and before long the ability to ask was driven behind a wall of reasons to put it off.

The habit I started with him became my habit with all the guys. Not that I didn’t try, but at that early age interest in sex didn’t seem prevalent in the other kids and I took disinterest to be rejection.

Soon the more I wanted someone the more impossible it was for me to bring up the subject. Words like queer and ferry began entering sexual talk and they were not used in fun ways. I found myself afraid of the guys I lusted for the most. Afraid of being beat up. Of being bashed. Inside I was running frightened, a coward digging my hole, as addicted to talking myself into rejection as any heroin user watching himself cook up another pipe.

Making cowardly decisions is not something one walks away from. I carried it with me the day I graduated from high school and moved to Los Angeles to become a movie star. With a bag of clothes and a hundred dollars, I stayed at the downtown Y before moving to a seedy neighborhood and walking several miles to a job on Sunset Boulevard. Walking in my neighborhood during the mid-60s I didn’t think much about the sound of gunshots when the LA riots broke out. There were three years hitchhiking around the country, sleeping under bridges and taking rides from anyone who stopped. There were times in bars where it was so dark my only sense was feel and there were times walking the streets of lower Manhattan at four in the morning. Yet always I was a coward. Avoiding the crowd if I could.

Why didn’t I talk with or proposition that man I was so attracted to? Always a coward. Always letting a fear of being bashed get in the way of my freedom.

My fear was to come true. Fate held my rodeo on a bar parking lot — Yukon Territory, Canada.

	rangewriter on Atlanta Idaho
	JAMES GARDNER on Atlanta Idaho
	rangewriter on My Folks #15: 30th Street #3:…
	JAMES GARDNER on My Folks #15: 30th Street #3:…
	rangewriter on My Folks #14: 30th Street #2 :…

Deans Great Wahoo

Enjoying the wahoo !

Author Archives: deansgreatwahoo

About deansgreatwahoo

On The Road #1, a regret

Cops while hitchhiking #4

Cops while hitchhiking #3

Cops while hitchhiking #2

Cops while hitchhiking #1

King Hill Contraption

Gay Bashed, part 4

Gay Bashed, part 3

Gay Bashed, part 2

Gay Bashed, part 1