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Okay so was a little worried today. Thought I would have to lose some money to the hotels or motels of the northwest. I’ve been using Craigslist rideshares to hitch it around the states so far. It’s been fairly useful and cheap and a lot less hassle than just hitchhiking. Been meeting a lot of people too that way (Such as Foley, whom I shall meet up with in Maine hopefully.

My ride share going into Arcata California couldn’t give me a place to stay as the people he was bunking with did not want me on their property. Pretty sure some sort of marijuana deal was going on. As Humboldt County is the major grower in the area from all I have heard.

Forced out into the wilds of the night I told him I would just stay up all night till morning came. We would rendezvous then.

So came Dennys. Yes. That archaic restaurant of humble prestige. That figure of the utmost American cuisine ever known across this fair continent. Ended up staying there for about six hours. In short? It was pretty boring. Luckily my mouth was able to save me a few times from getting booted out of there.

Every time one of the waiters came to ask me a question I’d bring up something I had heard them say before and talk a little bit about their past. Even was offered two cigarettes with the main waiter who let me stay till 6 in the morning.

With 6 more hours to go, I was in need of something to do. Across the room sitting in front of me there were two men with welder tans. One seem to be dull witted, very slow, the other seem very capable but his talking was so quiet it was as if silence warped from his mouth.

We started talking based off the oil field, he said he knew the same type of people having done heavy industrial welding (Thus the tan!). Eventually I asked him if there was any place I could hangout for another four or five hours. He nodded and said, “Well why don’t you come to my camp!”

So, thinking why the hell not this guy seems pretty cool, I decided to follow him. As we left Dennys I realized that I recognized his trench coat he wore. Cause I had seen him earlier that day picking through trash. Which meant, this man was also homeless.

No big deal. I usually enjoy talking to them cause their nuts. But this guy did not seem that nutty. I got his story, and it was hard not to feel overwhelmed.

He was by far the most virtuous man in his situation I have ever met. He’d go to various trash cans looking for metal cans and putting them out in front of them as clues to his fellow disabled elders and wanderers that there might be more in the trash. He himself was also a disabled elder, having lost all of his nerves in his left hand due to a welding accident and a messed up back from an even more horrible and darker experience.

There was an incredible strength of character to Talub (He told me it was his last name, meaning fur-trader in the Scandinavian tongue.) and I delved further into his story. Constantly leading the conversation to how he ended up to where he was today. He was actually hitchhiking throughout Arcata, he had just got a room mate and was buying a house soon to live in. As our conversation leaned towards the meat of his life’s problems, I was overwhelmed with a sense of relief that this good man could at last rest in his weary journey.

His story takes place back East. At the ripe age of 18 (Now 62) he was studying Literature and Art in college It was this year he got married and started a small family. With the new responsibilities he dropped out of college and began his career into construction and welding. Supporting them with all he could while his wife took care of the new baby and also began to attend college.

Eventually he ended up joining the mafia. There was just so much more money to be made in it. He started low with transporting hash, but eventually he was working with the king pins as their bodyguards, keeping their names out of the public eye as cash that would dwarf Bill Gates flowed through various drug networks. Speed, hash, meth, heroin, it was all up for trade and though he did not participate much in the usage he did participate in the business.

It was when two meth heads decided that Talub must had ratted them out. They came to him at a bar but Talub was able to fend himself against the junkies. Which later he found that he had a contract out for his head for the grand sum of two-thousand dollars. It was lucky for him he had joined the Hell’s Angels, the actual guy who sponsored him had been part of the very first chapter of the group. Least to say, they talked about how the meth heads went on a camping trip.

The attempts didn’t stop though. He was attacked twice more. What drove him over the edge was when they threatened his family, wife and two sons. They were going kill them or him, his choice. So in an act of desperation he played the role of insanity for a couple of weeks. Distancing himself from his family, and finally, running off towards the west coast.

When asked if he ever came back, he said once after twelve years of being gone. they had been waiting for him still. Quiet with murder in their hearts, they ambushed him and tied his legs to drown him in the creek. As they pushed him down on the rocks he pulled out his boot knife and cut the ropes, when the hands came down to push him off the rocks into the deep end of the rushing river, his hand grabbed the man’s arm and the knife went straight for the man’s brain underneath the soft part between the ear and skull. Talub did not believe in killing people or hurting anyone unless he was forced to, so instead he forced the man to drive him to the hospital to where he had surgery on his now ruined back and let the man off into the night, remembering that instance when he almost saw no other night.

Talub left the East Coast for good after that. He lamented he never could really talk to his children or to his now ex-wife. He could only check up on them via friends of friends, send what he had anonymously and so on to help them. His wife ended up marrying his friend, and he said they were better off together than he and her had been.

I’ll never forget the sad static tear that was held in his eyes as he spoke about how you can love someone but not be their true someone. He was quiet after that (Up to this point he was just nonstop talking!) and I nodded my head in friendship.

We stopped talking about all this and I suggested we go to the Target. At this point we were in the middle of one of his camps which he had many everywhere. This camp was a social circle where other people like him could come and escape the tweekers and the harshness of the streets.

We went to the Target and talked little of my own adventure. I gave him the largest coffee at Starbucks I could get him and said farewell to Talub. Probably one of the most incredible people I have ever met.

Wherever you are Talub, God Speed!

-Greg the Writer