We had no steps to walk down after our wedding ceremony, no ornately carved arched doors to exit a sanctuary. Back at the van, no one had tied tin cans to the bumper, and no hand-painted “Just Married” appeared on the rear window. We bumped down the canyon a mile or two, arriving at the Alta Lodge mid-afternoon.
Al had prepared an hours-long tape of our then-favorite music, recorded on a reel-to-reel. The Eagles, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Brown, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Bob Dylan…they all showed up to provide the soundtrack to our home-grown wedding reception. Despite Utah’s stringent liquor laws, Al managed to drink enough to lose his usual staid inhibitions. After dancing with me in front of the entire party, he staggered back to our room, where he remained upright long enough to undress, then fall face down on the bed. I brought the top layer of cake over to him. He stuffed it in his mouth, devouring it in two bites while I snapped photos to use as future blackmail should things turn sour between us.
Next day, we headed back down to Salt Lake in our school-bus-yellow VW van to start a two-week honeymoon through the Pacific Northwest. I had spent my childhood in southern California, never more than a few minutes from the Pacific Ocean. In a month, Al would leave our home in the Avenues to start his new job in Tacoma. To get from Salt Lake to Puget Sound, we first traveled across Idaho and landed in Joseph, Oregon, where we camped at the base of forested mountains. Families surrounded us, many with power boats in which they cruised on the lake during the hot, languid afternoon.
“These are the Wallowas,” Al said, pointing at the evergreen-covered peaks above us. “We can go to Hells Canyon tomorrow.”
“Hells Canyon?”
“It’s supposed to be the deepest gorge in the country, deeper than the Grand Canyon. Almost eight thousand feet from top to bottom,” he explained.
“Why is it called Hells Canyon?”
“The Snake River runs through it. Eighty or ninety years ago, some people trying get through these mountains in a steamboat came to grief. It’s narrow, treacherous, full of rapids. And once they got in there, the hills around them were so high and rugged, they couldn’t get out. Not a good way to go. The Oregon trail followed the Snake all the way through Idaho, but once they got to Oregon, they had to haul their wagons up over the mountains, near the road we took. They called the spot where they left the river, ‘Farewell Bend’.”
“Because that’s where they said good-bye to the Snake?” I asked, laughing. “How do you know all this stuff? Why do you know all this stuff.”
“I like to look at maps, like to read about how people traveled in the old days.”
This was the guy I married – his brain crammed full of history and geography. Somehow he made it charming, spewing out all that “useless knowledge”, as he called it.
“Tomorrow, let’s drive up to the overlook, the high point above the Snake,” he said.
“What’s the road like?”
“Umm, the map says it’s gravel.”
“Can we make it? Do we need 4-wheel drive or anything.”
Al hesitated. I’d learned over the past five years he didn’t like to admit a lack of knowledge, so I could tell when he was starting to deflect, trying make up an answer in the face of ignorance or lack of experience. “The van is like an approved traction device all by itself, with its rear engine, stick shift and high clearance. We should be able to make it, and if it looks sketchy, we can always turn around, right?”
The next morning, after we’d cooked breakfast on the Coleman stove, washed the dishes in the sink, put the food away in the icebox, lowered the pop-up top and turned our bed back into the rear seat, Al got up front and turned the key over.
“Click.”
“Uh-oh”, he whispered.
“What?”
“Well, it didn’t start. Like, nothing.”
He tried again, turning the key a few seconds longer. This time, “click, click, clickity clickity click”
“What is it, what’s wrong?” I hoped my new husband had an answer. Aren’t men supposed to know all about cars, how to fix them?
“It must be the starter motor,” he said.
“So, what do we do?” I asked.
“This is a stick, right? We should be able to jump-start it…”
“Then what? If the starter is broken, we can’t drive into the canyon, can we?”
“No. We’ve got to get it looked at, fixed, replaced maybe…I don’t know. But we’ve got to get out of here, get to a town with a garage. Let me ask those guys over there if they would help us push the van so we can jump it. You know how to pop the clutch?”
I stared at him. “Who taught you how to drive a stick, anyway?”
He started to say something, but saw my look, and walked over to the campsite across the road.
With Al and two other guys pushing, we got up enough speed to get the engine turning over. We drove six miles into Joseph and pulled into the only service station in town.
With the engine still running, Al got out and went into the office, coming back a few minutes later. “They said there’s a guy down in Enterprise who works on VWs, maybe he could help.”
Five more miles, and we found ourselves at a small garage on a back street of the tiny town. A sign featuring a smiling VW Beetle, pastel blue, swung beside the driveway.
Al came back with a guy not much older than us, dressed in greasy overalls, carrying a monkey wrench.
“Says he can fix it, knows the problem,” Al said, jerking his thumb back toward the mechanic.
“Yeah, this is a thing with those starters,” he said. “See, the copper coil sometimes doesn’t line up properly with the magnet and won’t turn. For some reason, there’s a dead spot in that system, it’s not wrapped all the way around. Poor design, for sure. Sometimes, ya gotta replace ‘em, but usually, you can fix it by just giving the starter a ‘whack’ so it jerks the rotor a touch and can get turning around again when the battery sends it juice. Here, turn off the engine.”
Al twisted the key.
“Now, try and start it again.”
“Click.”
“All right,” the mechanic said to Al. “Come back here, watch what I do.” He got down on his back, followed by my new husband, and kept talking. “See that up there? That’s the starter motor.”
I heard a loud ‘Clunk’ and felt a little shudder toward the back of the bus.
They got out from underneath and came up to the front window. “Now, start ‘er up,” the mechanic said with a wave of his wrench.
I turned the key, and was rewarded with a reassuring growl from the engine, rumbling now behind me.
“Good to go!” he said. “You make it to La Grande, or Pendleton for sure, you should be able to find a VW dealer who can give you a new starter, if you’re worried .”
[To be cont’d]