The Road Has Eyes: An RV, A Relationship and A Wild Ride

By Arthur Rosch

This memoir is about making the transition from living in a house to living in an RV. In 2004 Art and Fox resided in a cottage in the woods of Marin County in Northern California. They had purchased a used recreational vehicle for travel to the southwest. Fox had recently discovered that she was one half Chiricahua Apache. This confirmed a nagging suspicion that had haunted her for more than forty years. The couple could use the RV to explore their passions. Fox wanted to connect with her Native American heritage and Art wanted to go places where he could master his photography and enjoy his enthusiasm for astronomy. They pointed themselves and their rickety RV towards Arches National Park and hit the road without any experience or preparation. The book begins with the story of their meeting. Art was using the internet to get into foolish and comical situations. He met Fox through a mix-up, through one of those fated coincidences that seems ordained by the spirits. Soon they were living together and the idea of RV travel was deeply appealing. They quickly got into trouble. Every crisis led them to people whose kindness and generosity had no ulterior motive When they finally got to the area of Moab, Utah the trip took on an eerie tone, as if they had traveled back in time. The Four Corners area is inherently surreal. Strange things began to happen; strange powers began to emerge through Fox. Art writes about her psychic abilities in childhood and the ways in which they were stimulated when the pair began their travels. In THE ROAD HAS EYES Art describes the process of acquiring a more sophisticated motor home. The search for a new vehicle took them to Florida. The return drive in a 38 foot RV coach was an epic journey. Art and Fox were following the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Driving across the south on Interstate Ten was like descending through Dante's hellish circles. All the campgrounds in three states were filled with refugees from the storm. A Canadian family wanted company and offered to treat the adventurers to a three day binge at Disneyland. Sure! Why not? Art's chapter "Disneyland as Hell" is a comic masterpiece of social observation. THE ROAD HAS EYES-A RELATIONSHIP, AN RV AND A WILD RIDE THROUGH INDIAN COUNTRY is an exciting and funny exploration of America as seen through the eyes of two odd characters who chose the road less traveled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arthur Rosch
• Release date: Sep 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310122569

Arthur Rosch

Art Rosch was raised in the suburbs of St. Louis. He attended Western Reserve and Wayne State University, but wasn't much of a student. He worked through his teens and twenties as a jazz and blues drummer. He met a girl who liked poets, so he became a poet. He found that he was attracted to the writing more than to the girl. He began exploring the novel form in the late seventies and wrote his first novel around '77. It was terrible.In 1969 Art moved to the San Francisco area. His first sale was to Playboy Magazine in '78. The story won "Best Story Of the Year" and he enjoyed fifteen minutes of fame. Since then he's been doing what most writers do: collecting bales of rejections and honing his craft. He has published in EXQUISITE CORPSE, TRUCKIN', SHUTTERBUG, POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY and, yes, CAT FANCY. Art loves science fiction and fantasy and much of his writing is inspired by the work of Philip K. Dick and Jack Vance. He teaches courses in amateur astronomy and photography through local parks and recreation centers.

Book preview

The Road Has Eyes

A Relationship, an RV and A Wild Ride

by Art Rosch

Smashwords edition Copyright2015 Art Rosch

The names of the characters in this book have been changed to protect their privacy. Cover photo and design by the author.

Table Of Contents

Chapter One: Up The Creek

Chapter Two: Meeting My Soul Mate

Chapter Three: Yertle

Chapter Four: It's All Down Hill From Here

Chapter Five: Building Relationships

Chapter Six: I Might Have A Little Gas

Chapter Seven: Apache Mastercard

Chapter Eight: Meeting The Old Ones

Chapter Nine: Back To Indian Country

Chapter Ten: The Time Of The Raven

Chapter Eleven: Under Its Wing

Chapter Twelve: Katrina's Wrath

Chapter Thirteen: Texas Rangers

Chapter Fourteen: Disneyland As Hell

Chapter Fifteen: No Room At The Inn

Chapter Sixteen: Doing The Limbo

Chapter Seventeen: Conversing With Animals. The Ferals

Chapter Eighteen: Meetings With Remarkable People

Chapter Nineteen: Coach Watching

Chapter Twenty: The Fugitives

Chapter Twenty One: Bankruptcy Blues

Chapter Twenty Two: The Feral Cat Wars

Chapter Twenty Three: The Psychic Speaks

Chapter Twenty Four: Animal Farm

Chapter Twenty-Five: Now, Farewell

Chapter Twenty Six: And So....

Appendix: Brand Names, Leveling Jacks, Climate Control, Plumbing

Chapter One: Up The Creek

How could you be so stupid?

I was looking out over the mesa and talking to myself. A hot wind was blowing bits of sand and dust into my eyes. I wiped my tears with my sleeves and protected my face by making a visor with my hands.

My memory was suddenly jolted to a time almost forty years ago when my father had spoken those same words to me. I had good reason to remember the moment. Dad had seldom been so angry.

I had been granted use of the family car for three hours on a Friday night. When I arrived home, fifty six hours later, I felt like my eyes were spinning in different directions. I had checked in by phone twice in all that time, and had said something like, Everything’s okay dad, the dust motes are really colorful and pretty soon the sun will know my name. Don’t worry I’ll be home soon.

The car was fine. I was stumbling over imaginary boulders that were actually little pieces of gravel. I hadn’t quite come down yet.

My father is normally mild and calm. This time he was frightened and furious. I don't blame him. He was discovering that his oldest son was taking much stronger drugs than the benign Mexican Pot he had overlooked on several occasions.

He tried to keep his voice from shaking. What on earth have you been doing for the last two and a half days?

Rather than be honest, I shrugged and used a sulky whine that is the male adolescent’s indication of witless lying.

Uhhh, I don’t know, I said, fidgeting and not meeting his eyes. Guess I just lost track of time.

Generally, when I was in trouble I had no problem dishing up convincing stories. Now I was exhausted. I could not think! I knew my response was pathetic, but I had no idea how to confess to my dad that psychotropic drugs were involved. I didn’t know how to explain why my friend and I had just finished burying a bust of Beethoven in his mother’s rose garden. How could my father possibly understand the motivation for such a deed?

We had spent a prolonged LSD weekend in my friend's parents’ big empty house. All through the night, whenever we gazed at the composer’s frowning lips and fiery eyes we felt scolded, accused. The bust of Beethoven looked completely alive. He scowled down upon us like a disapproving parent.

What’s wrong with you, Ludwig? I implored. You were a revolutionary! We’re just doing the same thing in our modern way. You look like you're about to explode!.

He replied in German, which was just as well. He said something using the word vernichtung which is a word that Hitler was fond of using. It is a word meaning annihilated, or destroyed. Finally, we dug a hole, took the bust off the mantelpiece and put Beethoven under two feet of fertilizer. After that, we felt much better. We had annihilated HIM!

Don’t tell me you don’t know, dad riposted. You KNOW… you just can’t tell me without making yourself look like a fool. He was right about that. It was the mid sixties and my dad knew what was happening. He knew what I had been doing and said, simply, How could you be so stupid?

The words hurt. I wanted my father’s respect. I didn’t want to admit to being an idiot but I knew he was right.

I was sixteen then, much older now, and I was as disappointed with myself as my father had been all those years ago.

Again, I answered weakly.

I just didn’t know, I replied to this voice of memory, I didn’t think it through. I thought it would be easy. I thought we could do this, one- two- three.

The thing that I thought we could do, one- two- three, was go camping in Utah in the middle of July. The temperature was well over a hundred and there wasn’t a spot of shade. We were isolated and in trouble.

Yes, I was stupid. I had led myself and my partner down a certain famous creek without a method of propulsion. (There is, by the way, at least one real place called Shit Creek. It’s in Ireland.)

We were the worst campers in the world. We were camping at the wrong time, in the wrong place, with the wrong equipment. We were dog sick. Our heads were aching, our joints felt like someone had poured hot glue into every ligament.

The heat was stifling and we were at twelve thousand feet. We had a dose of altitude sickness that we were too naive to recognize.

We had arrived late the previous afternoon. We set up the tent in the middle of the desert near a leafless tree and a boulder the size of a bus. We ate while we watched the sun set over the buttes and the sandy wastes. Then we reveled in the beautiful star-lit night. We had done it, we had arrived!

By ten the next morning we were utterly miserable.

We had driven from the west coast, pushing hard across Nevada, traversing the salt flats of Utah’s Great Basin. We traveled on a mix of coffee and adrenaline, eating hideous truck stop food. Our car’s air conditioner insulated us from the desert reality outside. We had no clue what awaited us.

Then it hit us like a hammer. Heat exhaustion, altitude, bad food, caffeine and long hours of driving. It was a deadly combination.

At that moment we felt helpless. Outside the tent there was choking dust, a torrid wind and smoke from Colorado forest fires. Add to these miseries the existence of a trillion tiny white gnats, enough to get into every crack and orifice of our gear and our bodies. We had arrived during some kind of mating phenomenon. The bugs were frenzied with pheromones, they gathered in great opaque clouds which drifted towards our tent until we were lost in a storm of little white insects. We couldn't see our hands in front of our faces.

The next day they would abruptly disappear.

It was probably a hundred twenty inside the tent. Occasionally, I would stick my head outside, and find it even worse. The sun made me so dizzy I couldn’t stand up. I prayed for a cool breeze. I didn’t have the strength to be outside, nor did I have the strength to endure being inside. Fox and I dragged our sleeping mats to the tent’s door and lay there, half in, half out, turning ourselves every now and then to alternate head and feet.

I think I’m going to die, Fox said.

She was the color of an old bed sheet. She was serious.

Do you want me to do something? Find an emergency room?

Fox thinks she’s going to die four or five times a year. I knew she would refuse. She is terrified of doctors. She would rather die than see a doctor. She thinks that if she lets a doctor examine her, he’ll discover a terminal illness and tell her she’s going to die. I know this logic is like a mobius strip, it leads endlessly nowhere, but that’s Fox.

Look at you, she said, You couldn’t drive, you can’t even stand up.

If I have to, I offered, I’ll drive. I don’t know if there’s an E.R. within a hundred miles, but…..

No no no, don’t go to the trouble. Maybe I won’t die.

She got to her knees and lurched out of the tent in time to empty her stomach.

I pressed my palms to my forehead, trying to rub out the headache that sat like an anvil atop my skull.

At the time, I blamed part of our dilemma on age, as if camping were limited to young people. The end of my youth had come hard. I seemed to have gone from young to ancient without stopping off at middle age.

I was fifty two, Fox was forty eight and it was July in the desert. We were dumb rookies, not hardened adventurers. I hadn’t been in a tent since Boy Scout camp. If an eleven year old had come along, he would have rolled his eyes and sneered at me.

Why were we killing ourselves with this poorly planned trip?

Fox had compelling reasons for wanting to see the area of The Four Corners. A few months previously, she had learned that she was half Apache. This came completely out of the blue.

Give it a moment to sink in.

She was supposedly the child of a Swedish father and mother. On a trip back to the old Iowa homestead she was shown her birth certificate and a few other documents. They had been kept by Aunt Inge, the only remaining member of her generation. Fox learned that she was the illegitimate child of her father and an Apache woman named Star In The Morning.

Things began to make sense. Fox had black hair whose strands were thick as cables. She was slow to anger, but when she saw an injustice she could become a turbine of formidable rage.

Growing up on a farm, she saw a lot of animals being mistreated. These situations acted as a trigger to her rage. She often charged into a situation with fury, chastising a farmer for whipping a horse or prodding a cow. She was a little black-haired girl, standing between a farmer and his livestock. She was considered totally nuts.

She had a spooky ability to speak with animals. She was called an ear, what is now called a whisperer or, in some circles, a Pet Psychic. She wandered the plains alone, hunting for arrowheads, sage, abandoned birds’ nests. She gathered her findings into little packages, over which she made magic.

Whether or not we know it, the blood of our ancestors paints the world in its own unique colors.

Fox understood, at last, why she had spent her life wondering why she was not like the rest of the family.

Fox’s father had fallen in love. The child of this love was taken in, the secret was kept. Now only Aunt Inge remained. She had held the story forty eight years, waiting for the right time. Fox was Apache from the Chiricahua Band. She was a descendent of those fierce warriors who were impossible to subdue. They clung to their independence with a tenacity that has no parallel. When I consider these last sentences I think, yep, that’s Fox.

My own personal engine for making the trip is my enthusiasm for astronomy. I am crazy for the night sky, and for everything to do with night photography. I love lenses, binoculars, telescopes, all kinds of gear. City lights plague me. That means getting away, going to high desert, remote camps, away from the constant soaking of the sky by wasted electricity.

Our camping journey to the Southwest was something bigger than a vacation. Fox and I shared a deep bond: we both suffered some degree of chronic pain. We understood each other's limitations. What could we do? Sit around and feel sorry for ourselves? Grow old like a couple of leafless trees on a dry hillside where the water no longer flows? On the contrary, we felt a defiant need to go out and expand ourselves, to push the horizons a little farther back.

It was natural for Fox to be drawn to the epic lands of the Four Corners. We wanted to see Arches National Park, Monument Valley, the great Anasazi ruins. We wanted to see petroglyphs and walk the land of Fox’s ancestors. After the revelation about her lineage, Fox hungered for all things Native American. She tracked down her native cousins and followed strings of genealogy back several generations. The idea that her people had walked the continent for ten thousand years was compelling.

How would you feel at almost fifty, if you discovered you were not as described? What would it be like to suddenly acquire a new mother, a new genetic heritage? How would you handle the abrupt and total validation of a lifetime of uneasy feelings and suspicions? Fox was having a major shift of identity.

We obtained one old black and white photo of Star In The Morning. It’s about two inches square. I scanned it, Photoshopped it, did everything I could to restore it. When we saw Fox’s resemblance to her birth mother, it gave us goose bumps.

Fox’s life changed. She fought her way free of a marriage that had been a nightmare. She had made a vow to herself: when her three children got into college, she would file for divorce. She would no longer be subject to the blackmail of having her husband take the kids to visit their cousins, as he charmingly put it. That had always been his ultimate threat, to snatch the kids and vanish back to the Old Country, where Fox would be unable to see them. Ever.

There were a lot of forces at play in this re-invention of our lives.

We wanted to keep traveling, but tents were not suitable. We purchased a pop-up trailer. It towed behind the Jeep and expanded into a two-bed canopy with fly-screens for windows.

We didn’t know, at the time, that we were embarking on a major life-change, that within a few years everything would be turned upside down.

The photographs I took on that first trip to Utah were the turning point of my career as a photographer. I won a prize from the United Nations, and my prize winner traveled the world in the U.N.’s exhibition.

Once we had recovered from that dreadful day of illness, we found a better campsite and spent the remainder of the week driving into and through Arches National Park.

I was in a fragile emotional state. While Fox was having a wonderful experience, I was struggling with anxiety and depression.

The main road through Arches is eighteen miles long, and every curve has a new vista, a gaping impossibility. The place scared me. It was so beautiful! I felt bad for not being able to let myself go and enjoy it. The place felt like the eerie silence before a tornado strikes. It was inhumanly awesome, a land of gods and giants.

Fox’s experience was different. She was possessed by spirits, she was walking with her ancestors. She had come Home.

As our week came to an end, we felt as if something had not been completed. We had not visited a major petroglyph site. We were looking for something off the beaten path. We wanted to avoid the crowded places with fenced-in panels and fact sheets in glass-encased marquees.

Fox was mingling with Native Americans. Being a distant relation of Geronimo didn’t hurt. We met a local native who gave us a tip about an obscure petroglyph site. It lay down a dirt road leading to a Ute reservation. At the head of the road, a defunct town discouraged tourism. It was a mess, a junkyard, a place that had died in the sixties. There was a wrecked motel, a dozen rotting houses, a gutted restaurant. A few people still lived furtively in this ghost town.

The road led straight into a canyon, whose sides rose ever higher as we drove, bumping and dusty, into the unknown. We felt anxious and isolated as we descended mile after mile on this gravel path. Our luggage tumbled around in the back of the Jeep as we yawed our way across several dry washes. It was late afternoon, slanted rays of sun lit the eastern wall of the canyon, putting the western side in deep shade.

After almost an hour of bumpy driving, we rounded a slight turn and there, on the west side of the canyon, hanging over a deep dry stream bed, were giant ochre figures. The site was overgrown by tall bushes of wild sage, unruly stalks of white yarrow and stink-weed. The owners of the land had put up a little fence composed of two log rails. There was a single information sheet in a small wooden frame. The place was deserted, there wasn’t a soul. The silence was as complete as a windless day on Mars.

The petroglyphs were from several different eras, some going back to Anasazi cultures thousands of years old. There were surreal helmeted figures with spooky blanks for eyes. There were incomprehensible shapes and signs. There were later petroglyphs layered on top of old ones, and finally there were graffiti laid down in the 1880s. There was one graffito, etched right over one of the ochre priests of the Ancient Ones. This witless white man had written, F.S. 1885. Thank you so very much, Mr. F.S., for defacing the holy cliff wall.

On the opposite side of the road lay another cliff wall full of ocher figures, rock carvings and yet more grafitti.

We wandered dream-like for an hour among these potent signs and symbols. Fox was in another world. She was CONNECTED. She gathered sage and juniper to make herbal remedies. Her big black hair seemed to coil with energy.

After a time, we heard the sounds of a car approaching. We had slipped so far back in time that the gurgling noise of the engine came as a deep shock.

An early 80s model Buick, buffed down to its gray primer, slowly drove past us. A man from the Ute reservation was at the wheel, staring straight ahead. I had to step aside to let him pass. He was just a few feet away.

The man did not acknowledge our presence. He passed as if we were invisible. Or, I thought, as if he believed HE was invisible. There was no communication, zero, not a nod or a flicker of an eye.

The isolation of the spot was so complete that to encounter a human being felt very odd. We were a hundred miles from a town, sixty from the nearest gas station. The man was hexing us. By refusing to nod, make eye contact, turn his head slightly, he altered our reality, he put us into negation.

He scared us.

Fox and I were seized by an overwhelming sense of danger. We wanted to escape from the canyon immediately. We had used up our welcome, that was the only way to express it. Our allotment of time, granted by the residing spirits of the place, had expired. Night was falling. We got into the Jeep, quiet and apprehensive, and drove back out the way we had come. We rolled onto the interstate highway, and began our trip back home.

Chapter Two: Meeting My Soul Mate

At the time of my first encounter with Fox, I had spent my life failing at relationships. I’m surprised there isn’t a support group, a twelve step program, a Failed Relationships Anonymous. If I became a member I would find a few musicians from the group and form a band. We would develop a special repertoire. We would play carefully chosen love songs, such as Killing Me Softly and Crazy.

We could call ourselves The Damned If You Do.

My relationship history is pretty boring. Everyone's history is boring except to those directly involved. Let's just say that I had failed a lot and was single at fifty two.

I needed the right woman. She would have to attach herself to me like a barnacle and never let go. I needed someone who had already decided she would hold onto me, someone who would make the commitment FOR me.

I was attachment-phobic and averse to responsibility. I was becoming aware that life's clock is brief. It was time to put this childishness behind me. I decided to make a serious effort at meeting my partner.

I started visiting websites. I had been told that the internet dating world is a freak show of fantasy and bad judgment. Fine! I’m a writer. I thrive on fantasy and bad judgment. Bring them on!

I subscribed to matchmaking sites and perused the ads, looking at the pictures and reading absurdly perfect descriptions of prospective partners. Where were the neurotics, the nut cases? They’re right here, I thought, hiding in plain sight.

This was the nineties. The internet wasn’t so slick back then. The ads were brief and the photos took agonizing minutes to download.

Here’s a typical ad: Fit female professional, petite, 38. Loves reading, wine, fine dining, romantic walks on the beach. Looking for financially secure man with sense of humor.

My problem with these ads was the way people presented themselves as generic versions of human beings. The honest text of this ad would read Female professional running out of eggs. Obsessed about weight. Keeping thin via fiendish treadmill workouts. Loves trashy novels. Gets sloshed during dinner. Looking for generous man or will soon commit suicide.

My email box filled quickly. Having twenty or thirty letters a day was exciting. I was hoping to find my destined soul mate. I kept looking and reading, ad after ad, email upon email, and it was difficult to stop. I fantasized about finding that honest ad accompanied by a photo that would make my testosterone sit up and notice. Just one more, I kept thinking, just one more. Maybe that will be The One!

It became an addiction. Every day, I spent all my spare time at the computer. I looked at photos, exchanged emails, spoke on the phone. Once or twice a month I went on a coffee date, hoping there would be that magical ingredient, Chemistry. I met teachers, single moms, lawyers, nurses, psychologists, tarot readers and massage therapists.

Without exception, they were crazy. Fit female professional was a nail biter. She compulsively gnawed the ends of her fingers and spat the leavings onto the table.

She was an attorney. She kept talking through the nail biting, P-tuh. P-tuh. She spoke quickly and emphatically. While she gnawed her left hand, she waved her right hand in my face. This right hand was her way of telling me not to interrupt because her story was much more important than any of my stories. I was to shut up and listen.. It was okay with me. I didn’t have anything to say. Attorney stories are incredibly boring to non-attorneys.

I’m sure the ladies found me just as strange. I think we (I mean the collective we, the human race) would be better off if we stopped pretending to be well adjusted and wore our neuroses like outer garments, as plainly as blouses and jackets. Someone should invent a kind of portable holographic billboard, a way to display personality profiles. They could be called REALITYGRAMS . Our therapists would write them. No one is honest enough to write his or her own. For example, when a man comes into proximity to an attractive female, he can switch on his REALITYGRAM™, which will say something like I am a needy narcissist with food addictions and a tendency towards cruel verbal ‘leakage’. I’m working on these issues in therapy. I dwell excessively on my childhood abuse. I blame my mother for everything that’s wrong with my life.

The dark side of one’s-personality is up front, out on the table. The man I’ve just described, whoever he might be, could look for a woman with a hologram saying, "I am a compulsive nurturer. I can’t say ‘No’ to anyone. I’m submissive but full of repressed