Big Bend Gazette :: Sage Views: a trip to give thanks for

I will not bore you with all the silly details, but it might have had something to do with July camping trips in classic, non-air-conditioned Land Rovers and maybe a lightning storm and a metal-poled tent.

But, I really don’t know. Women are hard to figure. SWMBO is a fairly hardy example of the female species, and I hate to think she is beginning to go soft on me.

In any case, the decision was made, and SWMBO started looking for a bus.

And then we found it. The bus is a 1968 International Harvester and is nearly mint.

Much to my great joy, it was already nicely converted much as we had planned to do, and even better, it was four-wheel-drive.

Now, that is just cool (and will probably save me no small amount of digging in the future). Driving a bus is not at the top of the cool ladder, but driving a four-wheel-drive bus…

The bus lived in Idaho.

One-way tickets were cheap, so we splurged, and we all went: me, SWMBO, Ruby (10), Carson Mae (6) and Dixie (2).

The plan was to pick up our new bus and have an educational and fun camping trip all the way home.

Now, after forty-some years on this earth I admit to being a bit of a cynic. People in general disappoint me on a regular basis. The world around us often seems filled with the humanoid equivalent to okra with legs and a built-in mean streak.

What a joy it was to meet Mike and Margie, the bus’s parents. Yeah, I said parents, not owners. As we are discovering, this vehicle is not owned – it is part of the family, or perhaps kept, like a precious religious icon, and watched over by generations of protectors.

Mike and Margie were the third owners in line from the little bitty Montana school district that purchased her new, and the guy that bought her from the school.

Every now and then the right people find each other – they fit and they make each other happy. That’s Mike and Margie. Both are talented, educated and kind – the kind of people with the fortitude to stick to their beliefs and the decency not to shove them down your throat.

We had a wonderful day after they picked us up at the airport and the next morning we all had fun at the Discovery Center where Mike works as a designer. The Center houses hundreds of hands-on science experiments and illustrations – all bulletproof and begging to be touched, pulled, ridden and spun.

The girls had a great time. SWMBO finally dragged me out as well.

So, we said our see-you-laters, climbed aboard and headed east out of Boise.

We planned to spend the night at Craters of the Moon National Monument that encompasses a small part of the immense lava flows that are exposed in that part of Idaho.

The first night in the bus was great and, after a nice hike, we were on our way south.

In Arco, Idaho I pulled in for fuel, gassed up and then drove all of a hundred yards to “Pickles” restaurant. As I pulled in, there was a clunk, but I was hungry and everything seemed to be okay. I parked and we ate. Luckily, Pickles serves pretty good food.

Lucky, because we were destined to eat our next three meals there.

When I tried to back out, the bus did not move, but the transfer case made lots of interesting grinding noises.

Now, Arco is not a big town. It is typical of a lot of smaller communities where farming still makes folks a living – about 1,000 folks in the city limits and one of most kinds of stores you might need.

Back inside I caught our waitress and told her I needed a mechanic who could work on big trucks. She turned to a patron in a cowboy hat working on a cheeseburger and asked who he would use.

He told her, and then said he had just seen the man down at the Sawtooth Bar and offered to call him. I guess he read my face when he said that because he followed up with, “He was drinking ice-water,” and smiled.

Mike Showdin arrived fifteen minutes later. It was nearly three o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and very shortly thereafter, we decided I now needed a rebuilt transfer case for a 1968 four-wheel-drive bus made by a company that basically went out of business twenty years ago.

Better yet, I was a stranger in Hickville, Idaho. If ever a fellow was set up by fate to be taken advantage of – I was him. But, before five o’clock Mike had a transfer case on the way from Chicago. It would arrive in Arco in a week.

Now all I needed was a plan to transport four women and myself back home and then back to Arco to pick up the bus.

Problem was, if you didn’t bring your own wheels, the only way out of Arco is on foot. As I discovered just how limited the transportation options were, I began to get the sinking feeling the trip home was going to be a mess, and very expensive….

Boise, where we picked up the bus 230 miles earlier, was the closest airport where you could land something bigger than a crop duster. It was Friday night. There is no bus, train or even taxi service that runs through Arco.

So, I called Mike and Margie. I did not really want to, because I have had the pleasure of knowing people like them and knew they would be horrified that the bus had given us trouble.

Like I said, it was their baby, and the workmanship and care is evident. Mechanically, the only thing that had not been rebuilt in the past 20,000 miles was the now-broken transfer case. The motor was a rebuilt 392 that had been doctored nicely and will accelerate a 10,000-lb bus with the aerodynamics of a brick up the side of a mountain. (Really, I did it).

The thing will run 70+ and the steering wheel does not vibrate – this thing is running on axles and springs similar to an army truck. It ought to vibrate. It does not. The oil dipstick has a safety wire to double-make sure it cannot fall out (in the event the bus is upside down I guess?). Every light and switch works.

You get the picture.

But, I was in a jam, and work was not going to allow for an unexpected weeklong vacation in Arco. I called.

Then I called Southwest Airlines and Southwest confirmed my usual insistence on flying with them. For SWMBO’s anniversary I had long-before purchased tickets to Lake Tahoe for a romantic weekend – the first such event since Ruby was born in 1999. It was scheduled for the next weekend.

In minutes I had tickets leaving Boise for Midland on Sunday, and had the return trip for our anniversary trip changed so that we would fly back to Boise instead of home to Midland – hopefully to find a ready-to-go bus in Arco.

Mike arrived the next morning.

That whole thing about clouds and silver linings? Maybe so.

We had a really nice day with Mike and Margie. They put us up, and Margie is wonderful cook. The next morning we were back on a Southwest jet.

Even so, by the time SWMBO pulled the suburban into Barstow, we were ready to be home, and I was still sweating a broken bus in Arco, Idaho were I might be simply, “some tourist boy with lots of money.”

The girls were disappointed that they would miss the second trip, but their Aunt Anne and Grandma were coming to stay, and that made it all okay.

One of the better stories that flows from this trip involves Dixie Jo. We were a bit concerned about her, or more accurately, about Aunt Anne and Grandma, since this would be Dixie’s first night(s) ever away from Mama. Aunt Anne went to great efforts to simulate the real Mama down to wearing SWMBO’s perfume and “talking really loud and shrill.” (Anne’s words, not mine). At one point, however, Dixie Jo decided it was time for somebody to produce the real deal.

After a bit of demanding and not getting, Dixie picked up her bottle, got in Aunt Anne’s arms, looked at Anne, said, “Annie Mama,” and snuggled in to be rocked to sleep.

When you think about it, that is a pretty big jump in thinking for a two-year-old. “I know you aren’t Mama, but, I need a mama now, so I can have my bottle and go to sleep, so, you’ll do, but you’re not the real deal so here’s a “mama” name for you, just so long as we both understand that you are not the real deal.” Way to go Anne.

After a nice weekend playing tourists in Tahoe, we were back in Boise with Mike and Margie. They put us up again, and then drove us the 230 miles to Arco, with me anticipating the worst.

The worst did not happen.

I tried to buy Mike and Margie’s gas but was politely but firmly refused (I did not even try to offer cash outright as it would have been pointless).

Mike Showdin had the bus ready and the old transfer case on a palette ready to be shipped out so we could get the core charge back.

The bill was excessively reasonable.

We had one last meal at Pickles, said our see-you-laters again and pointed the Baby Binder south. Corn binders, by the way, are the implements that made International Harvester famous, and IH’s are often known as Binders. Sine the bus is a short bus she’s the Baby Binder. I replaced a sticking thermostat somewhere in New Mexico, but other than that, the return trip was uneventful and fun.

And that is story of how we brought the bus home.

I could, and probably should, be relating to you a very real nightmare. Numerous people had the opportunity to lie, cheat and steal their way into our bank account, or simply not bother to get involved. Instead, we met two incredibly nice folks in Mike and Margie, and then were taken care of like lost friends by no small part of the population of Arco, Idaho.

So, as the holidays approaches and the nightly news is filled with people acting like semi-intelligent, rage-filled okra gone insane, I am giving thanks for people like Mike and Margie, and the many folks in Arco who treated us like family.

Smokey Briggs is owner and publisher of the Monahans News and The Pecos Enterprise. He can be reached at smokey@pecos.net.