All Is True: The Naked Girl in the Treehouse

Chapter 10

Headed west with a broken window

 

BY MARK HOWELL

 

The morning of our one-hundredth day heading west across the United States as two of the Rolling States was the very first time that I, Thom One (Brian Jones) and my pal, David Carpenter (Keith Richards) slept in.

The lazy morning was thanks to the highway patrol of Wyoming, who’d escorted us to police headquarters in Laramie when a motorcycle cop took note of two bullet-like holes in our passenger-side front window and took no notice of the car’s declaration that we were rock stars.

The holes happened because of my pathetic efforts to punch out the remains of the window, sliced in two when we drove out of our first-ever drive-in movie without removing the speaker.

“The hell they are,” said the cop back at the station.

“But we’re the Stones,” said David, explaining the whole thing.

“The hell you are,” said the cop.

It took the rest of the day to get to the truth — or the lie. A deeply disappointing experience for this couple of limeys (the police chief’s word) raised on Broderick Crawford as the hero of “Highway Patrol” in a TV series already long since gone by 1964 but only now a big hit in Britain.

The situation landed on four wheels once the motorcycle cop left for home and the chief asked us for a song. We gave him “Eight Days a Week,” the latest hit from the Beatles. It was a stirring rendition by David strumming on the guitar with a surprising counter-tenor falsetto from me, fueled by our amazement that the Laramie leg of our invasion of the west was so much wilder than we’d anticipated.

The chief loved it. Before he left for home he told us we could park in the station’s yard overnight and gave us the address of a local repair shop that might give us a good deal on replacing the offending window.

We slept deeply through an uninterrupted night, right through the arrival of the 4 a.m. shift change. We didn’t leave there until almost noon, with a wave from the chief, now a confirmed Stones (or Beatles) fan.

The west turned wilder still on our way to the repair shop on the outskirts of the city. We were still on Main Street when we first encountered them. A rusty old pick-up truck overtook our car at a leisurely rate so that the driver and passenger in the cab could check out the sign scrawled in white letters along the electric-blue side of our Plymouth Savoy: “London to Los Angeles: The Rolling Stones.”

Once they were past us and their rear profiles visible in the truck’s rear window, we caught the sweetest sight west of Lake Erie College for Women in Ohio. Their heads and their long, dark hair were each haloed by great white Stetson hats.

“ Cowgirls!” yelled David from the passenger seat. “Chase ’em!”

I nudged us closer to the truck’s rear end. The girls both looked around. Dark skinned, black hair. Beautiful. I backed us off a bit. David’s eagerness could put them off. I smiled and waved. They both laughed but the driver speeded up. The address of the repair shop was coming up fast. At the rate the girls were now going, I guessed it was time to wave goodbye.

We turned off the road into the garage while David kept up his pursuit scenario. “Lost ’em!” he yelled.

The repair was going to cost us for sure but we’d be losers if we didn’t have it done. While we discussed this with the mechanic, who took his time absorbing what looked like bullet holes in the window and some kind of ad on the side for the Rolling Stones, whoever they were, plus a note from the police chief that mentioned the Beatles, we were in for a surprise: Not just the lowball estimate for a new window but the return of the Stetson girls in the pickup.

They’d done a U-turn, left their vehicle on the repair shop forecourt with the motor idling, then begun to sashay their way toward us in their epically huge hats. And they were laughing.

Guess what, dear reader?

We were about to meet the naked girl in the tree house.

Or were we?

 

Next week: Winona is Lakota for first-born daughter. Hadi is Lakota for stream. Let the water run free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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