Quartzsite

(previous chapter)

I spent the first night in a wash under a bridge on the outskirts of town. People told me the best way to get a job in Quartzsite was to just ask all the vendors, especially if they were just setting up, if they needed help. I found a sunglasses vendor setting up her booth and landed a job on day one, the day before Thanksgiving. I was also sleeping in the booth as security.

Before work, I'd often take a walk down the road and smoke some weed and play my ukulele. This was often before the sun was up. Eventually, a family in a van picked me up and we went back to their camp in the desert to smoke weed together. I started hanging out with the family, and the whole caravan that formed around them nightly.

I shared a birthday (December 18) with one of the members of the family. Though I had the day off my regular job that day, another vendor had hired me early in the morning to help move her booth. Once that was done, I dropped some acid and went out into the desert. I made it back to the camp just as it turned dark. Everyone there was already raging a drum circle hard.

When I went to camp the next night to hang out, everyone was asleep early from the night before, but there were some newcomers drinking around a fire just before the camp. A guy and two girls. I hung out and jammed with them a little while. After I left, the guy beat the girls up, and set their car on fire with a couple of kittens inside. After hearing about this, I brought my knife with me when I went back to the area the following night for self defense, if I needed it. My boss was there when I grabbed my knife and flipped, though. Then, she flipped even more when I came back in the day after that and the girls had come looking for me at the booth when I wasn't there to say goodbye before they left town. For that, I quit.

I started camping with the caravan I had been hanging out with. It didn't take long before I was picking up more work. One of my friends and I started working for an Indian guy and his wife, helping him move a bunch of rough stone. After work for him ran out, I started working for one of his friends, power washing gemstones.

Eventually, everyone found notices on all the tents and vehicles at camp that we weren't supposed to be there, so we we bounced around a few different places (including the original one sometimes) each night. Work finished up once again, so I went to busking for a couple weeks before tear down went into full swing. I did some jobs for a few different vendors to help the pack up, then the left with the family back towards Tucson.