Cultural and Life Style Choices among the Okanogians

I grew up in the car culture of the west coast of the United States.   Not the car culture of suburban sprawl and cul de sacs and drive through food and commuting and waiting in traffic jams and drive through churches and bedroom communities and drink holders.

No, I grew up in the Hot Rod culture and mindset of 1960’s west coast Americana.  Cars with really big engines and candy apple red paint jobs and bucket seats and big tires and chrome wheels and big overhead cam engines and getting rubber left on the road and girls hot girls in tank tops and short shorts smiling when you drove by and wanting to ride in your car because your car was so hot and fun and hot and you could be a real man if your car was a great machine with a lot of speed and maybe some fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror.

I loved that culture and I think every kid I knew wanted to be a member of that tribe.  I made models of hot rods as a kid.  I would patiently put them together on a little card table my mother set up for me in the dining room.  I would glue them together haphazardly, ironically I wasn’t very mechanical, and then I would paint the cars and marvel at them when they were done.  There were little coupes and woody wagons and drag racing cars and 57 chevies and other racing cars that would stir your soul.  I would sit at that little table and dream of a glamorous life with sunny skies and pretty girls and driving as fast as I wanted. 

There was a musical soundtrack to this fantasy life as I grew older.  There was the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean and then the song and car that nearly completely defined my car fantasy life the GTO.  The GTO was probably the original muscle car.  It was made by Pontiac who ripped off the idea from the Italian Ferrari Automobile company.  GTO stood for Gran Turismo Omologato and I remember when a kid in my high school English class rolled that off his tongue for the first time.  Gran Turismo Omologato.  I knew then I needed that car in my life to make everything else involved with being human worthwhile.  I lusted after that car for some unknown reason.  I was in love with the grill of the car and the shape of the body and the seats seemed so wonderful for driving around the most beautiful women in the world.

But because we lived in Omak and no one had ever seen a GTO in person I could only dream about the car.  There were rumors that some kid in Oroville had a GTO and he was coming home from college for Christmas and we could drive up there, 50 miles away, and see it and my friends and I almost did that but then one day late in November of 1967 a friend of mine called me and said he couldn’t believe it but a 1964 GTO was sitting in the used car lot of Price Motors.  I tore down to Price Motors in my mother’s car and stood in front of the apotheosis of my car culture dream.  There it was a real to life Gran Turismo Omologato and I knew I would be the most popular kid in the Okanogan if I could talk my father into this car.

 The GTO just sat there dark green with a dark blue interior with white piping around the seats and you could see your teenage face in the chrome bumpers.  I was alive with a thrill of the possibilities and I was about to bust out of my skin with happiness.  I called my father and begged him to come down to the dealership as soon as possible and although he assured me he had other things to do I think I nagged him so much he arrived within half an hour.  I was charged with electricity explaining to him that I would do whatever he asked me to do for the rest of my life if he would only help me buy this car.  By help I mean I probably had $200 and he would need to chip in the rest. 

This car was going to be the complete fulfillment of my life and I couldn’t bear living another day without it.  My father looked at me and then looked at the car and said no way.  If you get this car you’ll be dead in a week and I don’t want to have to explain that to your mother.  He drove off and I just stood there in front of the car until it got so dark and the dealership closed and they turned off the lights.

So as you can see culture in Omak and especially around me spun around our fantasies of cars and the possibilities of cars.  There was car music and car magazines and stories of greatness if only you had the right car.  But the best part of having a car was to socialize with that car.

I did recover from not getting the GTO.  My father was right the GTO was probably way to dangerous for me, a kid with his head in the air, so I found an easier way to go with a car.  I talked my quiet introverted mother who went to bed at 7:30 at night into buying a 1966 2 door Mustang hardtop with bucket seats and a 289 engine that went very fast thank you very much.  It was a good relationship my mother and I had with this car.  She pretended it was fun for her to drive around on her errands during the day and I got to look incredibly cool driving the Mustang at night and on the weekends.  What a match we made.  It was even better because my father paid the gas bill.

Now the greatest thing to do with a car in Omak in the 1960’s was to drive your car down main street from the union hall parking lot in the north to the south end of town and into the A & W drive in where the best girls in town worked and they had a great parking lot for meeting kids and turning around to cruise back up to the union hall parking lot at the north end of town.  What really transformed this mating ritual of driving through town with your best plumage showing was the musical soundtrack of rock and roll music.  The sounds and sensuality of rock and roll gave us a background for playing out our teenage fantasies of being popular and manly and desired by the local women. The soundtrack for our foolishness was provided by the local radio station KOMW. 

KOMW, at that time, during the day had probably the worst play list known to radio broadcast history.  It was so bad it was embarrassing.  If you had to listen to the music being played during the day it made life in Omak seem even that more at the end of the road.  It was excruciating to have to listen to the station while you rode in the car with your parents.  I did like the Dale Carnegie self improvement show in the morning that my father listened to while driving us to school but other than that it was hard to handle for a teenager.  But then every day from 4 pm to 5 pm the station transformed itself into a rock and roll station and played the hits of the day.  In a time without I Pods my friends and I would gather together after school and listen to the tunes.  It was so great to hear actual music coming out of the radio.  The Kinks would be blaring “You Really Got Me” one minute and then it would be another band yelling “Tell Her NO NO” and we would be rocking our heads and acting like we knew how to be cool.

The odd thing about KOMW was that it only had a license to broadcast from sunrise to sunset.  I guess that meant it was only half a radio station.  And the worst part of this flaw in their license was that from about November to February there were no rock and roll tunes because the station was off the air by 4:30 pm.  One winter the Beach Boys had a seminal hit “Good Vibrations” and we kids in the Okanogan hadn’t heard it because it was winter and everybody on TV was talking about having Good Vibes or Good Vibrations and we had no idea what they were talking about.  I was so upset about this that I strung some wire to the copper lightning rods on my parents roof and tried to tune stations from far away who played rock and roll in the winter.

But all of that was forgiven on a warm summer night when we could cruise on Friday and Saturday nights.  The union hall would be transformed on Friday and Saturday nights into a dance hall with rock bands from Seattle and Spokane playing long hours.  Teenagers from all over the Okanogan would come to Omak and fill up the parking lot and want to be a part of the scene.  For us local boys this was a time to shine.  We’d have our cars washed and cleaned out and had our oil changed and polished our chrome wheels and cleaned off our dashboards and sprayed carpet cleaner on the floors and seats so that when a new girl from out of town sat down in your car she wouldn’t smell the beer you spilt in there a month ago. 

Before the dance would begin we would start to cruise main street checking out the new people as they came to town (in Omak you knew everyone so if you saw someone you didn’t know you knew they were from out of town) and meanwhile the Doors would be screaming in the background “Light My Fire, Light My Fire” and your friend David Reed would be hanging out the window pounding the side of the car and making gestures at all of the strangers we would meet and tell them to meet us at the A & W.  Some Friday nights the town would be awash of pretty girls and with the music blaring and the drivers of all the cars bouncing around posturing for attention.  We’d stop at the A&W and get food with everyone.  They had the greatest hamburger with mushrooms and then add a chocolate milkshake or root beer and you were in car culture heaven. 

Sometimes some of the boys would get physical and mad and want to fight with strangers for no real apparent reason and they would all drive off in their cars to some abandoned metal shop parking lot and fight it out but I would stay with the chicks and see who you could get interested in.  We would do this for a few hours till about 7 or 8 pm and then head up to the dance hall.  Let me remind you that Omak was a small town with only one stoplight.  When there were 10 to 12 extra cars on the street the town was jamming.

We’d get up to the dance hall and my friends Doug Woodrow and Mike Smallwood would usually be up there on the steps of the Union Hall/dance hall persuading all the new girls to take a ride with them in Mike’s Opal GT.  Doug would start with some story about having to discover the geography of your mind and Mike would smile the widest smile and say that’s exactly what I was thinking and before long they were driving around with beautiful babes from who knew where.  It was usually about this time 8 pm that I would remember I had a date that night and the girl lived another 20 miles away and god can’t you remember to remember you had a date again.  I was always doing this.

I would leave my house with the best of intentions but it was so much fun to drive through main street on a Friday night and who wanted to do this with a steady girlfriend even though she was wonderful and you wanted to be with her but it was more fun to cruise and chase girls than be all responsible with a steady girl.

So I would tear out of the parking lot and drive north to Tonasket another local metropolis of 1,021 people but a town with more beautiful girls per square mile than anywhere else.  When you were out driving at night you could pick up radio stations from Seattle and Portland if the conditions were just right and you’d be listening to a song

and then it would fade out and if you knew the words you’d keep singing and then it would fade in again.  The song that pounded over the airwaves that summer was “White Rabbit” by the Jefferson Airplane and you always knew the beat of “Don’t You Want Somebody to Love” when it was coming if you could hear the song or not.  My favorite station to listen to driving around at night was KNBR out of San Francisco.  Something was going on down in San Francisco         and I knew I should pay attention to it but I was late picking up Susan Farley.

Susan was the love of my High School Days.  She was smart and funny and pretty and she had an air about her that said I’m not a hometown girl.  The world is waiting for me.

I was just cruising through life when I met Susan and she helped give me some definition to my life.  But as usual I was late picking her up again.  When I got to her door at about 9 pm her Mother was standing there and made a remark that Captain Midnight had arrived.  Susan’s mother actually liked me because I was charming her all of the time but she hated that I was always late to pick up Susan.  What could I possibly be doing to always be late?  I just smiled and Susan would come storming out and she’d hit me with this ridiculously large purse that was once a tool bag and then we’d laugh and drive down to the big dance.

By 9:30 the dance would be hoping.  All the out of town girls would have met the local guys and then the out of town boy friends of the out of town girls would have arrived fashionably late and tensions would begin to mount.  The alcohol consumption at the dance was beginning to show as guys were starting to do floor dances where they got down on all floors and gyrated around and people were yelling at each other to give them space to spin their girls around.  The bands were loud and screamed into the microphones a collection of pop songs, rhythm and blues and Motown songs that rocked. Lyrics like “Nobody, Nobody Does the Boogaloo like she do, Nobody, Nobody.”  Or “G L O R I A, Gloria.” permeated the room.  It was loud and intense inside and the night was turning out just right.

When the dance was starting to wind down cruising main was starting to pick up again.  You’d drive down the street trying to look good and cool with your windows open and your girl friend’s hair blowing all around and you’d go to the A & W for the sixth time that night and eat some fries and kiss a little and see who ended up with who.  By about midnight the street would be really quiet and you’d drive your girlfriend home and hope she would give you a few more kisses before the night was through.

All of this cultural choice changed for me though when I got into the mustang one Saturday afternoon and turned on the radio.  It was hot and I had the windows rolled down and I was off to see my friends and as I turned up the volume a new song by Bob Dylan started to blare out, it was “Like a Rolling Stone.” And as I drove down main street I began to realize that my life was changing and maybe this car culture thing was a bit limited and Dylan was going on and on about a person’s life changing and how does that feel and are you really the person you think you are and are you ready for what life is going to throw at you and by the way, “How Does it Feel!!!”  What the hell is he talking about how does it feel?  What do you mean we have to feel to?  We can’t just cruise through life and smile and wave and be charming.  We have to feel and tell people how does it feel. Oh god I could see my little world coming apart and it had been so great to not have to feel and worry about if you were doing the right thing and NOW even rock and roll wanted to know “HOW DOES IT FEEL.”  And as you drove past all of the familiar places in town the song keep going on and on because it was six minutes long and that had never happened before and you could cruise all of main street in about six minutes and the entire scene was now being viewed through the eyes of “Like a rolling Stone” and you began to realize that you were just another shallow kid who needed to start asking big questions and making big decisions and you couldn’t hide from it anymore and even if it took you your whole life to get to those questions you knew you’d have to find answers some day and How Does that Feel? God won’t this song ever be over.