Lot Lizzards, road trips and why Toto's House was the last stop

My first real road trip happened just after getting out of the army..Cuz got out of the navy the same day on the other side of the world..we meet up in the little town we called home. Both of us had bought new Harley's while we were in..my shovel is still with me today..I don't see cuz anymore drugs won the battle and he now spends his days locked up I don't know where..life been an in and out battle for him..This one's your Jimbo..

The trip had been planned two years before..Home on leave and riding the local roads on the year old but new bikes..Go North to the Bay area for a week or two,,then LA, Tuscon, Lubbock Tx..and Lawrence Ks..See some friends, make some friends and learn life's lessons..ride and be free..Sissy bar and saddle bags to pack what we need..shit gets to bad we can buy new stuff..Fresh oil,,new rubber and The first leg of the trip is off and running..

Vacaville Ca. was where we started to go..ended up in the little town of Martinez..Meet an old timer..Red and White before they were on the radar..retired before it got popular and still crazy after all these years..Taco Sanchez was his name,,introduced by some friends and one of the most memory filled weeks of a life time..Super 8 movies of the old days..early 60's and 70's..hundreds of pictures and a weeks worth of tall tales..bought allot of beer..a small expense for the history told by someone who was there when it happened..Saturday came and it was time to ride..

LA was a hot bed of unknown bands and clubs..about 2 nights of checking them out we figured it was not out place and headed to Berdo..Nasty dirty edge of the desert town at the times..a night there and it was Palm Springs..Ever been there is Sept. you"ll know that there no day life..to damn hot to play.. Headed to Tuscon..reason being never been there before..had a friend..

Rode all night to Tuscon rolled into town and found a motel with a Denny's and a 7/11 close..Hard to pack brew and food on the bike..About 10am headed to 7/11 after some bacon and eggs and learned about the blue law..Now being from California we had no knowledge of the laws in these strange far away lands..Walk in and there are locks on the beer boxes..Now having been an accomplished beer run advocate in my younger days I'm thinking they must do it for sport in Tuscon, why else would they lock up the beer..So we go and hit up the clerk for the key..we need beer..The kids looks over his coke bottle glasses at us and say's it's not noon yet..Jimbo say's what's that got to do with me buying some beer..we learned about the Blue law that day..Then had a week of riding, parting and Saturday came and we were on the road again..

Leaving Tuscon early in the evening headed for Texas..Cousins we had never meet and new country to see..For a California boy a new and some what backwards place to be..If you have never watched the sun go down in the desert while riding down the road try to do it before you die..breath taking even today..I-10 out of Tuscon was wide open and waiting,,we rode into the night..Passing the Dari-Queens that seem to have grown in the most unlikely of places..

First go stop and stretch was outside of Demming NM..Truck stop where we encounter the first of life's many Lot Lizzards..For those who don't yet grasp the term,,trucker groupies,,truck stop working girls,,rest stop queens..for the most part the rough fringe of the working girl..Most of these fine ladies were toothless before it came into fashon..Meet our first working pair while try to chow down a belly bomb burger the would scare a pack of Tums right out of your pocket. As these to big haired and rather dirty looking lovelies approached the table cuz Jimbo says shit this could be fun..I'm thinking he must enjoy wasting whole days i free clinics in what ever town we end up in. They used the old those are some nice bikes line and are you fine fellas getting a room..Now the grilled onions are the burger were strong but Brenda's breath could bend spoons...Naw were riding through..as Jimbo is thinking about true love..,

Back on the road headed to Lubbock..Rolling down 380 stopped in Roswell but the aliens are all in bed at 3am..so we keep moving..Suns coming up as we ride along and the sunrise in the desert is just as good as the sundown..through the reflections we see the metal roof of a giant barn just before we cross the boarder, last call for alchol..serious..

We thump in to Texas..Cotton fields as far as the eye could see..small town and pick up trucks..about 100 miles in we pull in to our next big life lesson..Dry countys..Pull up to the pumps, it around 10am so we decide a cold one would help make the rest of the trip a little more comfortable..we search the isles, we search the coolers and they don't have any beer..I stop at the counter and ask where's the beer??? The lady looks at me like I should have been on display in Rosewell..and says this here is a dry county..you'll have to go to Lubbock if you want achahol..Damn..

We ride..as we are approaching Lubbock we see a line of stores, walk in, drive through, run through and we deliver liquor stores..a dozen of them..we roll past and into town and grab a room..ask the clerk what's up with the liquor stores outside of town..He says they don't sell booze in town if you want any you have to go back there and get it..I said..call me a cab..