My friend Terry was telling me one night in Gasoline Alley, "If you ever need anything, just give me a call."

"Thanks, Terry" says I. "I appreciate that."

My friends were being very understanding about the troubles I was going through that splendid summer of 1985. But for that one August night, I was feeling pretty mellow. In five days, I was planning to jump into my pickup and drive nonstop to Austin for Lone Star Con. (Originally we were going to drive in Janie's car, but Janie said she was a little worried about its brakes, and Janie herself has admitted she's not the most reliable person in the world, either.) Be- sides all that, I was supposed to be making a rendezvous with my favorite barmaid later at Mr. K's, linking up for one of our thrill- a-minute sojourns into the endless nightlife of Juarez across the international bridge.

With some time to kill, I wandered around the Alley making contact with my various friends and acquaintances. Ran into Krystle, whose mother was one of the Alley's waitresses. Krystle was, at this time, the most voluptuous sixteen-year-old anyone had ever seen on God's green earth. She was sitting at the bar with one of her friends, Amanda, a Stevie Nicks clone who I never saw without her red headband. (We asked Amanda how old she was, once. She spent a moment looking us over, gauging our gullibility I guess, then settled on nineteen.)

"Richard. Amanda is looking for a ride to a party tonight. You could give her a lift. Couldn't you? You can trust Richard," says Krys to her friend.

"So where is this party anyway?" I ask Amanda as we're driving off.

"It's out in the desert a ways. I'll tell you how to get there."

The desert?

Amanda asks if we can stop off and pick up some brews. So I pull into a Diamond Shamrock and use my gas card (you're never broke when you have plastic!). Pick anything you like, I tell her.

So off we go into the desert with a six-pack of Michelob.

Our destination, I find as we go along, is The Dunes. This collection of sand hills by the Rio Grande is actually somewhat anomalous for the geography inside El Paso's city limits, but this works in its favor for the teens who make it a hangout for four-wheeling, three-wheeling, and, above all, drunken weekend blowouts. (Later, the Sand Dunes even became the scene of a live remote by one of the local news programs during their series on teen alcoholism. I thought it was unwise of them to pick a Monday night, though; a reporter standing in pitch-black darkness in the middle of an expanse of empty sand....)

Over a horribly untended dirt road we go, and up a dusty trail to a turnabout where several cars and pickups are parked. Only vehicles with four-wheel drive are really considered trustworthy enough to progress further into The Dunes. As it is, I get stuck once making a turn and trying to plow over a small rise in the sand. Some of my new- found friends get me out of it, though.

Amanda and I hitch a ride into the center of The Dunes, where hordes of underage-looking folks are gathered around trash-barrel fires with kegs and coolers and coolers of brew. Amanda says she spotted a friend she needs to have a heart-to-heart with, so could I hitch a ride back to the pickup and she'll meet me there a little later.

Oh yeah. Sure. I already have a bad feeling about this, but regardless, I grab onto the back of a four-wheeler with one arm (the other is clutching that six-pack of Michelob) and hang on for dear life as we tear back up the trail to my pick-up.

After a long wait, during which I have not spotted Amanda in any of the vehicles returning from The Dunes, I decide I really can't wait any longer if I'm going to rendezvous with my favorite barmaid, etc., before closing time. My fatal sense of conscience won't let me risk abandoning Amanda without a ride, howevei so I start the reckless journey into The Dunes.

I get stuck once on the way in: I take a turn which leads me into a narrow uphill curve, and the pickup is hemmed in by packed-solid sand on both sides. I get out, grumbling, and dig my wheels out.

Well, I manage to get almost to the center of The Dunes before I get bogged down in soft sand. Amanda has, of course, left. A group comes out to assist my truck out of its predicament.

One takes the driver's seat, guns the engine, and I join the rest of the group in holding on to the sides of the truck and giving it a shove out. Once the truck gets going, I'm a little reluctant to let go of it, until it's traveling at a pretty good clip, and when I do let go centripetal force flings me head over heels some distance away. Luckily, I had a flashlight in the glove compartment, so I was able to find my glasses, which were amazingly undamaged.

Giving my thanks, I take off homeward, and promptly get lost. I take a turn at what looks like the right landmark, follow a post fence for a while, and find myself out in the middle of scrub brush, tumbleweeds and sand hills, sticking to three-wheeler tracks for dear life and searching through the black night for signs of the road. I manage to get caught between two rises in the sand, and this time I am inextricable. I rock the truck back and forth, pounding on things like Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces, scream, weep, wail, and generally act more hysterical than I can remember acting in any other situation.

I'm still hysterical, but eventually I regain enough composure to take all the vital documents out of the glove compartment, equip myself with the flashlight and a bottle of Mich in each pocket, and head off in the direction of the nearest highway lights, wondering if I'll run into anything larger than a jackrabbit.

Eventually I find my way to McNutt Road, a not-quite-deserted country lane at this hour, although none of the occasional cars or trucks passing through wants to stop and speed my progress on its way. I find myself wandering past totally unrecognizable buildings and landmarks, as the road seems no nearer to intersecting with any familiar thoroughfare. I'm in Hell, I decide.

I do eventually recognize the extremely well-lighted entrance to Santa Teresa, a very ritzy country-club community across the New Mexico line. I make my way up the road to Billy Crew's, a ritzy restaurant where some employees are partying outside, but it is after closing (damn!) and the phones are locked up inside. So I go up the road a little farther, find a closed convenience store, and wonder if there's anyone I can call from the pay phone outside.

Of course! My friend Terry!

It's a good thing I have two quarters on me, since there are two of my friend Terrys listed in the phone book, and naturally I first dial the wrong one. At three o'clock in the morning. They would live in the same apartment complex, too. I apologize for waking the right Terry when I reach her, and explain that I really could walk the ten miles or so home if I really have to, but she says it's okay and comes to pick me up. She even volunteers to take me out looking for my pick-up the next day.

The next morning, I call in to work and explain I really don't feel up to working after spending the night wandering lost in the desert, and they're fairly sympathetic. (Things would be different on a weekday, though, let me tell you.) Teny and I head out to The Dunes, which look entirely different in the daytime, and can find no trace of my truck at all. Oh boy.

The next day, I'm back at work, calling the Border Patrol and asking if they can keep an eye out for my truck as their helicopter flies over the Rio at that point. No luck, though.

Four days after my truck got stuck, I head out there with a fellow reporter, Tim, and one of our cameramen, Will, who has a four-wheel-drive Cherokee. We drive down McNutt Road, and, sure enough, they spot something white out in the sand bills. We enter through a gap in the fence, take a treacherous winding trail through the brush, and park somewhere near where we thought we saw it.

Sure enough, we walk around a sand hill, and there it is. Tucked between two rises in the terrain, so I might have stood ten yards away from it the previous time and not seen it. Will judges the sand is a little too soft for even his four-wheeler to get close to it, however, and we don't have any chain or rope long enough to bridge the gap. We try piling brush under the wheels and backing it out, but my truck still won't budge.

So we pack up and head out for pizza, resigned that I'll have to call a wrecker tomorrow "Just call in to work and tell them you feel sick," Tim says. I feel a little funny calling in sick two times in the five days before I leave for a week's vacaton.

And damn that rich pizza, anyway; I really do feel queasy the next day. I try explaining to the wrecker company when I call that we'll need something with four-wheel drive, but they just send a routine wrecker to pick me up.

"Hey, you look a little rocky there," says my driver. "Yeah, I've got a touch of this flu that's going around, myself. It's awful, isn't it, you've got to go all the time, and it's like nothing's coming out but water."

"Rmmmph," I reply. Shut up, for God's sake.

When we get to the scene, he agrees, yeah, we'll need to call in the four-wheeler wrecker all right, so we sit around shooting the shit while he waits for his partner to answer the call. He shows up, we pile in, and we make our way in, shooting straight down a nearly vertical incline that my friend Will judged was too scary for his four-wheeler to handle the previous afternoon.

They hook up a chain, back off, and boom, there's my little Isuzu, back out on its feet again. My driver volunteers to take the wheel and drive me out onto the road again, for which I'm grateful. We decide to retrace our steps, though, so when we come to that scary nearly vertical incline again, he shoves us back into first and launches us straight up.

We make it, too. What a truck. How it ever got stuck in the first place is beyond me.

I empty my checking account to the wrecker company, we shake hands, and we part. I took that little Isuzu down to a self-service car wash, sucked all the sand out of the interior, and washed it down until every dent gleamed.

Those dents, of course, are another story.

First published in Pirate Jenny Number 1, Spring 1988, copyright 1988 by Pat Mueller. Illustrations by Kip Williams reproduced by permission of the artist. "It's like you were there, dude!"

Back to More of Me | Home