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1/18/06

I’m about an hour out of Philly – flying back from some weekend gigs in Northern California. It was a good trip. Arrived Thursday and stayed with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott in Marshall. Met Jack in Memphis while on the City Of New Orleans tour with Arlo Guthrie last month. He gave me directions to his place on the phone. (You don’t want to get directions from RJE long distance! I filled three pages long hand and had barely gotten out of the Oakland Airport…) Jack lives on one of the most scenic roads in the world-- the Coast Highway. When I finally pulled into his driveway at four in the afternoon he was testing out his new .44 semi-automatic  in the back yard; showing it off to his landlord – talk about rent control!  Jack greeted me warmly and announced that he was about to make his first-ever batch of navy bean soup. Since all he needed to complete the list of ingredients was an onion, he asked me if I wanted to take a ride to the store down the road with him.  I said yes and we took off in his 1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass (or as Jack calls it …“Gutless”) Supreme.

 It took seventeen hours to get the onion. 

As we wound toward the grocery store through the tight mountain curves high above the Sir Francis Drake Bay , my mind was slowly drawn from the beautiful vistas. Gradually I began to notice the lack of guard rails or shoulders on the ever shifting two-lane blacktop; then I became acutely aware of the precarious drop-offs and steep cliffs that lay mere microns from the hopefully road-gripping tire tread that I had not had the good sense to inspect before getting into the car… I straightened a bit in my seat and slid toward Jack, trying to eyeball the starboard sideview mirror and  ascertain just how close our rear white wall actually was to the faded white line on the road that served as the only separation between my name and the asterisk that would surely accompany Jack's nationally published obit. (*Also killed in the accident was lesser known songwriter...)   Ah well, it was to be a short drive to town and as he throttled through the tight turns I realized that Jack obviously knew every inch of this road very well. My growing confidence in his sure handling of the Olds was to be shaken only slightly when he confided in me that its brakes were shot and that the reason it seemed to wander a little was that the steering wasn’t all it should be.  

Jack talked as we  drove.  

He’s a world class raconteur and -- as any good story teller would-- he made a lot of eye contact with his listener. Each second that his twinkling, 74 year-old eyes left the road seemed like a college semester as I surreptitiously cinched my seat belt tighter and squeezed the remaining blood from the fingers of the right hand that  had become unconsciously entwined in the cracked vinyl hand grip mounted above the Olds’ passenger- side window.  

Jack tracked through the switch-backs like a seasoned formula one driver – taking the straightest line through each by entering and leaving high in the curve. (The only problem was the middle of the bend -- where we would actually spend several seconds in the part of the turn known by non-race car drivers as the oncoming lane.) 

We had soup at one diner, flapjacks at another, saw the sunset on the ocean and a full moon emerge over the coast, explored estuaries, talked music, politics and life, covered miles of road, met bartenders, fry-cooks, boat-builders, waitresses, cowboys, young women in equestrian garb (Jack would introduce me to each female we encountered, regardless of age,  as the illegitimate nephew of the swashbuckling silver screen star Errol Flynn. (This produced little in the way of reaction until we finally made the acquaintance of a German woman with very high cheekbones who claimed her mother had actually DATED Errol Flynn.) 

At one point we hooked up with some carpenters in a pool tournament who invited us to spend the night at a work camp out by the ocean where they were rehabbing a pier, Jack thought it sounded like an adventure and was itching to try out his new “cowboy bedroll”, a recent catalogue purchase consisting of heavy canvass, wool and rope that unfurled into a cozy, weather-proof one-man cocoon. I had a three hour jet-lag, jeans, a windbreaker and a t-shirt (all the camping gear I figured I’d need for a run to the market.)  The temperature had dropped 15 degrees since we'd left Jack's that afternoon and I was starting to to think that a nice bed & breakfast might be an altogether more comfortable way to spend the evening.  I suggested Jack drive me back to his place so I could pick up my rental car. Having done this I then followed him back down the highway towards an inn I had managed to locate through the kindness of a woman named Layla whom Jack had introduced me to in a Point Reyes Station saloon. At one point in the drive the taillights of the Olds lit up bright red. The car rocked forward as Jack braked hard, swerved slightly and ejected a spinning black and white projectile from beneath his right rear wheel.  

There’s a singular aroma that skunks emit.  

The Gutless escaped it. My car didn't.

The noxious cloud immediately invaded the cockpit of my Plymouth  -- my heater had been on full blast at the time. The smell was so overwhelming that I could barely see through the windshield and needed to slow down and open my windows to breathe.  

By the time I made it to the front porch of the inn, it had closed. (I'm a motel guy...They CLOSE inns ?)  My heart sank as my insistent knocks on the door went unanswered. I fired up  the Plymouth and gunned the foul smelling rental back up the highway towards the saloon – where I thankfully found Jack perched in front of a half drained Guinness. He was delighted to see me again so soon but when I told him I’d had a change of heart about accompanying him to the camp -- I was exhausted and any options that didn't involve a lengthy drive down the coast to San Francisco had pretty much dried up by this point -- he informed me that the whole outing was off. “They just wanted me to PLAY for ‘em!” he growled. "I ain’t  gonna play music all night for FREE!... Hell, I told ‘em I ain’t no musician! I’m a bank robber! I do it for the MONEY!”  

As Jack sipped his beer I my mentioned my new predicament — the awful lingering stench in my car made it almost undrivable. “Yeah, I felt bad about that” he said. “… tried to miss the little fella but the steering box in the Gutless is kinda loose.” I told Jack I was worried that the nice people at Dollar Rental Cars were not going to be too pleased with me when I returned their vehicle in a few days.  Jack thumbed his ball cap back on his head and offered that tomato juice was the best known remedy for skunk stink. “Jack”, I said, “I can’t just splash tomato juice around inside my rental car. Besides, this smell is EVERYWHERE!” Jack said, “Yeah, you’re right. We need a delivery system… a way to atomize the tomato juice. Maybe we can find a pump bottle and SPRAY it into your car’s radiator and air intake .”   

As Jack went on I became aware of a real struggle to keep my eyelids from going to half mast.  The jet lag was really catching up with me. The fatigue started to wash over me in waves and my back was  sore from the six hour flight from Philadelphia. I needed to stretch out somewhere. Jack kept talking. What was he saying? “You have to admit… the car couldn’t possibly smell any WORSE… Tomato juice would HAVE to be an improvement!” Jack’s voice seemed to grow more distant… “The problem is” he went on, “where to get tomato juice around here in the middle of the night”.  

I planted my elbow on the bar, put my hand in my chin -- shaking my head and laughing to myself softly. This guy's the real deal. A true legend. Not just the kind of legend who's famous. Jack was famous alright but so are  lots of other folks. Jack is the kind of legend you find on maps. The kind that tells you what the symbols mean.

I thought back on the inn. I could picture the big soft feather bed. From a far away place I seemed to hear Jack talking to Tony the bartender. “Antoine, my good man, can you make us  some Bloody Mary’s?”