{"id":1003,"date":"2026-10-05T22:23:37","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T05:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/?page_id=1003"},"modified":"2026-10-24T22:13:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T05:13:06","slug":"econoline-adventures","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/?page_id=1003","title":{"rendered":"Econoline Adventures"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<style type=\"text\/css\" data-created_by=\"avia_inline_auto\" id=\"style-css-av-muw9hmtl-75761af4acd9700fc2350d2fdc2ffd00\">\n.avia-image-container.av-muw9hmtl-75761af4acd9700fc2350d2fdc2ffd00 img.avia_image{\nbox-shadow:none;\n}\n.avia-image-container.av-muw9hmtl-75761af4acd9700fc2350d2fdc2ffd00 .av-image-caption-overlay-center{\ncolor:#ffffff;\n}\n<\/style>\n<div  class='avia-image-container av-muw9hmtl-75761af4acd9700fc2350d2fdc2ffd00 av-styling- avia-align-center  avia-builder-el-0  el_before_av_textblock  avia-builder-el-first '   itemprop=\"image\" itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\" ><div class=\"avia-image-container-inner\"><div class=\"avia-image-overlay-wrap\"><img decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\" class='wp-image-55 avia-img-lazy-loading-not-55 avia_image ' src=\"https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/rtone.jpg\" alt='' title='rtone.jpg'  height=\"479\" width=\"720\"  itemprop=\"thumbnailUrl\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/rtone.jpg 720w, https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/rtone-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/rtone-564x375.jpg 564w, https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/rtone-598x397.jpg 598w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<section  class='av_textblock_section av-muw9ie52-604dfaf5ef17f8ca137a5baab91f695d '   itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/CreativeWork\" ><div class='avia_textblock'  itemprop=\"text\" ><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Econoline Adventures<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Not knowing where exactly to start, I\u2019ll begin at the end. The last I heard from and about Dick was that he\u2019d been arrested atop San Marcos Pass selling dynamite to undercover FBI agents.<\/p>\n<p>Dick needed a psychiatrist when he was in high school, maybe earlier in life, but by high school he was in position to do harm. To himself primarily but with collateral damage to those around. Dick had chosen a path of self destruction, and he was planning on following it to the end.\u00a0 \u00a0 Seriously crazy, but the stories.<\/p>\n<p>I met Dick at a party one summer. His party, a party he threw that was ended early by the police. As well as ending the party they handcuffed and escorted Dick off the property and away everyone went.<\/p>\n<p>Dick&#8217;s mother took a 2 month trip to Russia and through Eastern Europe. His dad, who years earlier had suffered a massive stroke and was confined to a wheelchair, was placed in a care facility across town. His dad was in his 70\u2019s when Dick was in high school and a stroke had left him both immobile and unable to recognize Dick.<\/p>\n<p>Professional help may have been of some help, but of course, his serious abuse of drugs didn\u2019t help matters any.<\/p>\n<p>A house is not a home.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing happened to the house but the home was destroyed. Never in my day, had I\u2019d ever seen anything like it. But then there was that one party where a guy (can&#8217;t remember his name) ran through the living room or kitchen sliding glass door. The door was closed which of course it was, I can&#8217;t remember if an ambulance came or his friend drove him to a hospital, but I do remember the party continued.<\/p>\n<p>The party up over the SY mountains. Two vehicles had to be towed back to Santa Barbara. The Bronco broke an oil pipe and Don&#8217;s VW bug went down the cliff and into a cement drain channel. That&#8217;s was a tow job and a good thing my dog wasn&#8217;t in the car. Don, dog and I drove up together. There were two camp areas full of celebration-ers. I think this was our end of high school party. We stopped at the first area, it&#8217;s possible we were delivering cases of beer (Vandenburg price). That&#8217;s when my dog decided she was going to stay awhile in area one, Don and I could continue without her.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know who was responsible, but it all came to a stop when the police arrived. Long story short, no arrests were made, Dick was placed in the custody of an Aunt and Uncle, and the house was locked, officially closed. After numerous arguments with his relatives, Dick left and reopened the house [illegally], where the next two months were nothing but nightly parties, by invitation only, and a limited number of guests invited.<\/p>\n<p>I spent a great deal of time there those two months and we\u2019d be out on the town nightly, juggling time with three different sets of girls, and trying not to get our lines crossed. There was Janet and her friend , sisters Josie and Leslie, Colleen and her friend. And there was the van, the old Econoline van with a big peace symbol painted on the side, if that wasn\u2019t like painting a target for law enforcement as we drove across town at three am. And there was the Tequilla\u2026<\/p>\n<p>We started backing into the spaces at the drive-in. [yes, drive-in \u2013 what has now become an outdoor swap meet until the sale price of the land is agreed upon and another strip mall is born. With the back doors open, whatever movie playing, whichever pair of ladies, a fifth of Tequilla, salt, limes, ice and a shaker, we started learning how to make the perfect margarita. A fifth led shortly to a quart, then a half gallon\u2026 where once again, bring in the law.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019d been seeing, or trying to see as much as possible, a pair of sisters Josie and Leslie. I can\u2019t recall how we\u2019d met, but will never forget the last time we saw them. They lived with their mother and her boyfriend, a studio conga player that had recorded on Santana\u2019s first album. We just knew him as Big Pete, and he was that, at least 250 pounds. Pete, mom, and the daughters were planning on leaving Santa Barbara soon and the day finally came when they headed north and soon thereafter on a Thanksgiving weekend Dick and I headed up to visit. I could list the miserable Thanksgivings that I\u2019ve had over the years, the topper probably being the one when I fell through a storefront window. A plastic surgeon who lived nearby performed the surgery, and just to prove it wasn\u2019t minor, the glass had sliced my face almost in half from just below my eye through my lip. I\u2019d been cut across my neck just missing my juggler vein, a ten inch long gash across my shoulder, other cuts on my arms and elsewhere, but the big one was a piece of glass that cut into my lower back just missing my spinal cord. One might say the opposite and conclude it was a day of thanks, but it cost me years of scars and pain\u2026a Thanksgiving to remember. But this one was just as sad as that one was bad. From Morro Bay north we\u2019d hit a fog bank thicker than I\u2019d ever seen. The Econoline steering wheel had so much play that you could turn it a quarter to either side before it was actually having any effect. Add that to dim headlights and we were in great shape. Actually, as usual, we were in great shape or rather \u2018happy spirits\u2019, but even in our state of joy we knew this drive was not a safe one. Whatever highway marker we\u2019d been given had finally appeared. A right off Highway 1 up a dirt road took us to a spot where we could park, then up to a main house just further up the hill. Not wanting to intrude on this family(s) Thanksgiving, we had our own in the van; crackers, cheese, and a couple six packs of Miller Highlife. Josie and Leslie brought us some turkey, spent most of that night with us in the van, and brought the fog back tearfully telling us that their father was driving down from Monterey the following day to pick them up for the rest of the weekend. Sometime that next morning was the last time we ever saw them again. We watched them drive away, but never did have any way of contacting them, and either never thought one step ahead, or it just wasn\u2019t ever meant to be. Their mom, Big Pete, other friends and the owners of the property did all they could to console us, actually put us to work in order to take our minds off the sadness of the mornings event. What better way to change your frame of mind is there then to dig an outhouse? I\u2019d never dug an outhouse before, although there\u2019s no real science to it. It\u2019s just a big hole like others, but it\u2019s the structure atop the hole that\u2019s the key. As it turned out the property owners, residents of the house owned a few acres and were letting friends build structures on the property, Big Pete and mom would be building an A-frame and we could help starting this morning by digging what would be their toilet. We dug till noon, said our good-byes and headed south. I\u2019ve driven up and down that section of Hwy. 1 between Morro Bay and Monterey a hundred times since. I\u2019m pretty sure I have seen that turn off that leads up to where the house, an A-Frame, an outhouse might still be but don\u2019t know if they too exist in memory only.<\/p>\n<p>Dick got more daring and was busted on posession charges, but I can\u2019t recall what he\u2019d been caught with. He\u2019d run the full gambit from shooting heroin, shooting reds, taking acid, orange sunshine, and any combination of pills and alcohol he could get his hands on. I hadn\u2019t seen him but for a couple times and then got the news one afternoon. He\u2019d been arrested atop San Marcos Pass selling dynamite to undercover FBI agents.<\/p>\n<p>I remember he once told me he\u2019d tried to hitchhike to New York in 1969 to attend Woodstock, but was arrested in Ohio. Ohio law states that it is illegal to stand on any part of a freeway, including the shoulder, unless in an emergency situation. Attending Woodstock is not or rather was not obviously considered an emergency situation to Ohio authorities, only to Dick. Maybe if he\u2019d gotten to Woodstock, everything would have been different.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n<style type=\"text\/css\" data-created_by=\"avia_inline_auto\" id=\"style-css-av-muw9j73p-f18fe5eafa25b98ea9dbd79b07975026\">\n.avia-image-container.av-muw9j73p-f18fe5eafa25b98ea9dbd79b07975026 img.avia_image{\nbox-shadow:none;\n}\n.avia-image-container.av-muw9j73p-f18fe5eafa25b98ea9dbd79b07975026 .av-image-caption-overlay-center{\ncolor:#ffffff;\n}\n<\/style>\n<div  class='avia-image-container av-muw9j73p-f18fe5eafa25b98ea9dbd79b07975026 av-styling- avia-align-center  avia-builder-el-2  el_after_av_textblock  avia-builder-el-last '   itemprop=\"image\" itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\" ><div class=\"avia-image-container-inner\"><div class=\"avia-image-overlay-wrap\"><img decoding=\"async\" class='wp-image-76 avia-img-lazy-loading-not-76 avia_image ' src=\"https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/02\/econoline2.jpg\" alt='' title='econoline2.jpg'  height=\"143\" width=\"190\"  itemprop=\"thumbnailUrl\"  \/><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-blank.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1003","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1003"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1012,"href":"https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1003\/revisions\/1012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluehighways.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}