A Strange Trip To Phoenix
From James Donahue’s Journal
After what we remember as a long period after Aaron was married the nightly telephone calls began. I don’t remember if we started them or if they originated from his side of the line. When I remember was that he said he did not care to talk, or was not free to talk until after Gail left the house for her night job, so we always had to wait until around eleven o’clock or midnight if we wanted to call Aaron.
Once we had him on the line, the calls sometimes went on for hours. Doris and I sometimes remained up most of the night talking to him. This was going on in the midst of that empty period after we left the church and were in the midst of searching for new spiritual pathways. Aaron talked a lot about these matters. He spoke of a near-death experience following the surgery on his jaw when he left his body. He also talked about being in drug induced states of consciousness and coming face-to-face with the entity humans refer to as the devil. He said this entity was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, but warned that looking into its eyes was deadly. He also said this entity hangs on a cross and is the very thing that the Christians worship.
Aaron’s description of meeting up with the devil, combined with much of the new information we were obtaining while reading the stacks of books we were bringing home from the Ann Arbor inspired me to think of trying to write a novel that in some way reflected our strange new journey into an unknown spiritual world.
Mary Summer Rain’s prophetic book, Phoenix Rising was another trigger. I began writing a story about a newspaper reporter in conflict with his editors over a political cover-up. I chose to place the newspaper in Phoenix, Arizona, because I wanted to draw from the name of the city because of its spiritual significance to the aboriginal people in the Southwest.
As my story unfolded, I realized that while I knew a lot about my old profession as a newspaper reporter dealing with government corruption, I could not write about Phoenix, Arizona, or the State of Arizona because I had never done more than drive through that state some years earlier on a vacation trip.
This was where I was in my work at the time I was called upon to make the frantic drive to Atlanta to rescue Jennifer. Not long after she returned home, Jennifer visited her friend Adam Wright, who was living in a make-shift shanty on the outskirts of Cass City. There she met two young “Rainbow” voyagers, Sky and Brian, who said they were traveling through Michigan on their way to a summer gathering of the Rainbow Children at Taos, New Mexico. Jennifer became intrigued with the Rainbow concept, liked these young men, and brought them home with her after learning they needed a place to crash for the next few days. Thus when Doris and I awoke one morning, we found Sky (like everybody else in Arizona he claimed to be part Indian) and Brian asleep on our living room floor. When it was explained that they were heading for New Mexico to attend a Rainbow rally everything was suddenly clear to me. All signs were pointing to Arizona. I was going to make the trip. Jennifer, of course, wanted to come too.
Who can explain our insanity that year? Looking back on it, I have no real explanation for my actions. But it all seemed logically correct at the moment. We were awakening to a new life of freedom, and Doris and I both felt that we needed to act on our impulses. So in one day I packed the Chevrolet for yet another trip, called my parents who were then living in Kentucky, and my brother, who lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and made arrangements to stop over on route. Then we were off.
I don't remember a lot about that trip. I remember spending an uncomfortable night with my parents, who did not like the two strange youths traveling with us. That Sky, Brian and Jennifer sat up all night watching my father's collection of pornography videos (which they discovered hidden in his personal things) and then joked about it the next morning over breakfast, only served to create additional tensions. It was good to escape that place and get on the road again. I don't think my father ever forgave Jennifer, or me, for that intrusion. It was a little skeleton neither we, nor even my mother, were supposed to know about. Of course Jennifer, being a natural psychic, went right to the videos when left alone for a few hours in that house.
The other thing I remember vividly about the trip was that it was my first experience with marijuana. We were stopped for the night at a motel somewhere just outside of Oklahoma City when the boys suddenly produced their "stash" and asked me if I would like to share a joint. At first I was reluctant, but Jennifer assured me it would be a pleasant experience and grant me a good night's sleep. After a long hard day on the road I was quite sure I was going to sleep well anyway, but I agreed and went through instructions on how to properly smoke a marijuana cigarette. You take a draw and then hold the smoke deep in the lungs as long as possible, giving the THC time to work its way into the system. Two or three puffs on a "joint" of marijuana give me a delightful feeling of being "stoned." Now I understood just what that meant. Time slowed down. I was having difficulty concentrating and remembering the thread of our conversation. I was even having trouble getting up and walking across the room. It seemed to take a long time just to reach the bathroom door and find a light switch. And yes, we all slept very well that night, although I was keenly aware of every little sound around me. I have had a few experiences with this drug since that night and I am convinced that THC works in a strange way to expand brain functioning while also affecting coordination and thought patterns. For days after that, I could see people's auroras without even working at it.
The next day I felt wonderfully fit, although our moods soon became somber as we passed through Oklahoma City, making a long detour around the central core of the city. It had only been a few months after the bombing of the federal building there, and the place was still being treated like a disaster center.
It was a long hard drive across the Texas panhandle, one fraught with possible trouble. The police were everywhere. And the two Rainbow boys in my car now felt comfortable smoking marijuana openly in front of me. I realized that by coaxing me into trying the drug, they made me a joiner. I was no longer a threat to their open use of the stuff, even though I declined any more invitations to have additional puffs while on the open road. I knew that one police stop for a speeding violation would mean big trouble. We would all be tossed in the local clink on drug charges. Thus I was forced to keep a constant eye on the speedometer and another in the rear-view mirror. Try to imagine how difficult it is to keep the speed limit on open flat country, on an endless ribbon of flat pavement, driving across the Texas panhandle. There isn't a more boring place to drive in the world. Towns are few and far between. It is the open plain and some very large grain fields, so there are no trees. If it hadn't been for a dynamic weather front and a threatening looking thunderstorm that bore down on us from the west that afternoon, I think the day would have had no high points whatsoever.
Somehow we made it. We pulled into Albuquerque late in the day where my brother, Steve, and his wife, Paula, refused to accept my doped-up passengers any more than my parents did. It was an unhappy family reunion, even though it had been years since Steve and I had seen one another.
They gave us sleeping accommodations for the night. I think I would rather have paid the price of another motel room. Then, to top it all off, Sky and Brian chose that night to steal away, with Jennifer's prize T-shirt and a few other personal possessions. She went into a fit of rage the next morning when she discovered what had occurred. Again, I was glad to get out of that house and back on the road. Nothing about my new way of life seemed to be acceptable to my family. Not that it really mattered to me. I was on a new spiritual path and even though these were only the first baby steps, I was determined that nothing was going to deter me now.
Phoenix was burning at over 100 degrees Fahrenheit and we didn't spend a lot of time there. We drove through the city, got a general idea what the place looked like, then drove north into the mountains. I was happy that the air conditioning system in our old car was working. I took notes of the landscape, laying out a route for my book characters to take. Then we headed east to Taos, New Mexico, carefully skirting Albuquerque. Taos was where the Rainbow members were gathering that summer. Jennifer, just 18, wanted to be left off there. She got very adamant about it. I didn't like the idea and did all I could to talk her out of it. We stopped for a while at Taos. We also stopped at Santa Fe, where many of the Rainbow people were found hanging out in the park that was the open square in the center of the old part of that quaint western city. They were just kids, mostly Jennifer's age. Dark tanned, healthy looking, and close to the earth. I liked these people, just as I had liked the hippies, I knew back in the 1960s when I met them while working as a reporter in Kalamazoo. Pot smokers. Deep into free love and a quest for total anarchy, these new generation hippies were so free spirited their whole philosophy was appealing. Had I been 18 again and unencumbered, I am sure I would have parked that Chevrolet and camped out with them myself. Yet when Jennifer said she wanted to live with the Rainbow and travel with them for a season the conservative father in me leaped out. I resisted letting her go. The debate continued for two days while we drove hard, almost non-stop, until we got back to Michigan. There, after much debate, I finally consented. I filled her purse with as much money as I could provide, filled the old Oldsmobile with a tank of gas, and let her go off to Taos again with something close to a blessing. It might have been more of a prayer if I thought anybody was listening.
By the time she set off for Taos, yet another Rainbow pioneer, a young man who called himself Frosty had appeared at Adam’s place. He hitched a ride to Taos with Jennifer. In a way we were glad she was not traveling alone, although we wondered just what we were allowing her to get herself into.
Looking back on it, I think attending the Rainbow gathering was a grand learning experience for Jennifer. She joined up with a group of young people, camped out with them, then traveled around the country with them for the rest of the summer. She learned how to make jewelry to sell for food, and even did some “dumpster diving” for a few meals. She always knew she only had to call home if she got in any serious trouble, but that did not happen.
In the meantime, my work on the novel was interrupted by a new idea. I was in a Saginaw bookstore where I talked to a book dealer about my novel. This woman told me that the demand in fiction was for historical romance novels and suggested that I write in that vein. That gave me an idea of writing a story about a Great Lakes ship captain involved in a triangle love affair. Thus I changed course and started writing a second novel.
In the end, both books were finished, but I could never find a publisher. Thus they never got into print.
From James Donahue’s Journal
After what we remember as a long period after Aaron was married the nightly telephone calls began. I don’t remember if we started them or if they originated from his side of the line. When I remember was that he said he did not care to talk, or was not free to talk until after Gail left the house for her night job, so we always had to wait until around eleven o’clock or midnight if we wanted to call Aaron.
Once we had him on the line, the calls sometimes went on for hours. Doris and I sometimes remained up most of the night talking to him. This was going on in the midst of that empty period after we left the church and were in the midst of searching for new spiritual pathways. Aaron talked a lot about these matters. He spoke of a near-death experience following the surgery on his jaw when he left his body. He also talked about being in drug induced states of consciousness and coming face-to-face with the entity humans refer to as the devil. He said this entity was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, but warned that looking into its eyes was deadly. He also said this entity hangs on a cross and is the very thing that the Christians worship.
Aaron’s description of meeting up with the devil, combined with much of the new information we were obtaining while reading the stacks of books we were bringing home from the Ann Arbor inspired me to think of trying to write a novel that in some way reflected our strange new journey into an unknown spiritual world.
Mary Summer Rain’s prophetic book, Phoenix Rising was another trigger. I began writing a story about a newspaper reporter in conflict with his editors over a political cover-up. I chose to place the newspaper in Phoenix, Arizona, because I wanted to draw from the name of the city because of its spiritual significance to the aboriginal people in the Southwest.
As my story unfolded, I realized that while I knew a lot about my old profession as a newspaper reporter dealing with government corruption, I could not write about Phoenix, Arizona, or the State of Arizona because I had never done more than drive through that state some years earlier on a vacation trip.
This was where I was in my work at the time I was called upon to make the frantic drive to Atlanta to rescue Jennifer. Not long after she returned home, Jennifer visited her friend Adam Wright, who was living in a make-shift shanty on the outskirts of Cass City. There she met two young “Rainbow” voyagers, Sky and Brian, who said they were traveling through Michigan on their way to a summer gathering of the Rainbow Children at Taos, New Mexico. Jennifer became intrigued with the Rainbow concept, liked these young men, and brought them home with her after learning they needed a place to crash for the next few days. Thus when Doris and I awoke one morning, we found Sky (like everybody else in Arizona he claimed to be part Indian) and Brian asleep on our living room floor. When it was explained that they were heading for New Mexico to attend a Rainbow rally everything was suddenly clear to me. All signs were pointing to Arizona. I was going to make the trip. Jennifer, of course, wanted to come too.
Who can explain our insanity that year? Looking back on it, I have no real explanation for my actions. But it all seemed logically correct at the moment. We were awakening to a new life of freedom, and Doris and I both felt that we needed to act on our impulses. So in one day I packed the Chevrolet for yet another trip, called my parents who were then living in Kentucky, and my brother, who lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and made arrangements to stop over on route. Then we were off.
I don't remember a lot about that trip. I remember spending an uncomfortable night with my parents, who did not like the two strange youths traveling with us. That Sky, Brian and Jennifer sat up all night watching my father's collection of pornography videos (which they discovered hidden in his personal things) and then joked about it the next morning over breakfast, only served to create additional tensions. It was good to escape that place and get on the road again. I don't think my father ever forgave Jennifer, or me, for that intrusion. It was a little skeleton neither we, nor even my mother, were supposed to know about. Of course Jennifer, being a natural psychic, went right to the videos when left alone for a few hours in that house.
The other thing I remember vividly about the trip was that it was my first experience with marijuana. We were stopped for the night at a motel somewhere just outside of Oklahoma City when the boys suddenly produced their "stash" and asked me if I would like to share a joint. At first I was reluctant, but Jennifer assured me it would be a pleasant experience and grant me a good night's sleep. After a long hard day on the road I was quite sure I was going to sleep well anyway, but I agreed and went through instructions on how to properly smoke a marijuana cigarette. You take a draw and then hold the smoke deep in the lungs as long as possible, giving the THC time to work its way into the system. Two or three puffs on a "joint" of marijuana give me a delightful feeling of being "stoned." Now I understood just what that meant. Time slowed down. I was having difficulty concentrating and remembering the thread of our conversation. I was even having trouble getting up and walking across the room. It seemed to take a long time just to reach the bathroom door and find a light switch. And yes, we all slept very well that night, although I was keenly aware of every little sound around me. I have had a few experiences with this drug since that night and I am convinced that THC works in a strange way to expand brain functioning while also affecting coordination and thought patterns. For days after that, I could see people's auroras without even working at it.
The next day I felt wonderfully fit, although our moods soon became somber as we passed through Oklahoma City, making a long detour around the central core of the city. It had only been a few months after the bombing of the federal building there, and the place was still being treated like a disaster center.
It was a long hard drive across the Texas panhandle, one fraught with possible trouble. The police were everywhere. And the two Rainbow boys in my car now felt comfortable smoking marijuana openly in front of me. I realized that by coaxing me into trying the drug, they made me a joiner. I was no longer a threat to their open use of the stuff, even though I declined any more invitations to have additional puffs while on the open road. I knew that one police stop for a speeding violation would mean big trouble. We would all be tossed in the local clink on drug charges. Thus I was forced to keep a constant eye on the speedometer and another in the rear-view mirror. Try to imagine how difficult it is to keep the speed limit on open flat country, on an endless ribbon of flat pavement, driving across the Texas panhandle. There isn't a more boring place to drive in the world. Towns are few and far between. It is the open plain and some very large grain fields, so there are no trees. If it hadn't been for a dynamic weather front and a threatening looking thunderstorm that bore down on us from the west that afternoon, I think the day would have had no high points whatsoever.
Somehow we made it. We pulled into Albuquerque late in the day where my brother, Steve, and his wife, Paula, refused to accept my doped-up passengers any more than my parents did. It was an unhappy family reunion, even though it had been years since Steve and I had seen one another.
They gave us sleeping accommodations for the night. I think I would rather have paid the price of another motel room. Then, to top it all off, Sky and Brian chose that night to steal away, with Jennifer's prize T-shirt and a few other personal possessions. She went into a fit of rage the next morning when she discovered what had occurred. Again, I was glad to get out of that house and back on the road. Nothing about my new way of life seemed to be acceptable to my family. Not that it really mattered to me. I was on a new spiritual path and even though these were only the first baby steps, I was determined that nothing was going to deter me now.
Phoenix was burning at over 100 degrees Fahrenheit and we didn't spend a lot of time there. We drove through the city, got a general idea what the place looked like, then drove north into the mountains. I was happy that the air conditioning system in our old car was working. I took notes of the landscape, laying out a route for my book characters to take. Then we headed east to Taos, New Mexico, carefully skirting Albuquerque. Taos was where the Rainbow members were gathering that summer. Jennifer, just 18, wanted to be left off there. She got very adamant about it. I didn't like the idea and did all I could to talk her out of it. We stopped for a while at Taos. We also stopped at Santa Fe, where many of the Rainbow people were found hanging out in the park that was the open square in the center of the old part of that quaint western city. They were just kids, mostly Jennifer's age. Dark tanned, healthy looking, and close to the earth. I liked these people, just as I had liked the hippies, I knew back in the 1960s when I met them while working as a reporter in Kalamazoo. Pot smokers. Deep into free love and a quest for total anarchy, these new generation hippies were so free spirited their whole philosophy was appealing. Had I been 18 again and unencumbered, I am sure I would have parked that Chevrolet and camped out with them myself. Yet when Jennifer said she wanted to live with the Rainbow and travel with them for a season the conservative father in me leaped out. I resisted letting her go. The debate continued for two days while we drove hard, almost non-stop, until we got back to Michigan. There, after much debate, I finally consented. I filled her purse with as much money as I could provide, filled the old Oldsmobile with a tank of gas, and let her go off to Taos again with something close to a blessing. It might have been more of a prayer if I thought anybody was listening.
By the time she set off for Taos, yet another Rainbow pioneer, a young man who called himself Frosty had appeared at Adam’s place. He hitched a ride to Taos with Jennifer. In a way we were glad she was not traveling alone, although we wondered just what we were allowing her to get herself into.
Looking back on it, I think attending the Rainbow gathering was a grand learning experience for Jennifer. She joined up with a group of young people, camped out with them, then traveled around the country with them for the rest of the summer. She learned how to make jewelry to sell for food, and even did some “dumpster diving” for a few meals. She always knew she only had to call home if she got in any serious trouble, but that did not happen.
In the meantime, my work on the novel was interrupted by a new idea. I was in a Saginaw bookstore where I talked to a book dealer about my novel. This woman told me that the demand in fiction was for historical romance novels and suggested that I write in that vein. That gave me an idea of writing a story about a Great Lakes ship captain involved in a triangle love affair. Thus I changed course and started writing a second novel.
In the end, both books were finished, but I could never find a publisher. Thus they never got into print.