Driving Rose Trellis

“We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

Rose Trellis is one of the most creative, talented and outrageously funny people I know; imagine if Jim Henson and Phyllis Diller’s love child ran off and joined the circus. We were roommates in the ’80s, living in Phoenix. I was a long-haired rock n roll musician and she was a clown/puppeteer/drag queen. I chased my dreams to Los Angeles eventually and she followed hers to Las Vegas. Last I heard she was working the Boylesque shows at the Silver Slipper with Kenny Kerr. I heard she had a problem with meth, too. Then we lost touch – she fell off the planet. That was 25 years ago.

Back in the day, before moving to L.A., I was an aspiring keyboardist sleeping on a gal pal’s couch. Her name was Gaye. Rose had a friend named Joel and, through a series of events, the two met. At first, Gaye thought Joel was gay because he was Rose’s close friend, but he wasn’t. Long story short, Gaye and Joel were married, moved to Henderson, Nev., and raised two wonderful children. Gaye and I through the years often pondered what happened to Rose. “Should we hire a private detective and find her?” Gaye wondered. Then Facebook was invented; Rose was alive and well and living in Seattle. We reunited in Las Vegas in 2009, renewed our friendship and have remained close ever since.

Gaye and Joel, recent empty nesters, thought they’d “adopt” Rose, provide a temporary home and help prepare her for retirement. Joel thinks there’s a chance Rose could land a job as a teacher’s assistant. The move was supposed to occur during the spring or summer, but Rose was fired on Christmas from the designer botanical company where she’d worked for eight years – think hostile work environment, think retaliation, and plans changed. (“I’d sue the bastards,” I said. “I’m not like that,” Rose replied). Rose, age 53, without a driver’s license, needed to pack up and move. Me, with nothing better to do and always ready for an adventure, said, “I’ll drive.” And drive I did. More than 1,200 miles over 18 hours in three days. Piloting a 16-foot long truck from Seattle to Las Vegas. The things we do for friends.

The day of departure began with frost on the windshield and blustery foreboding clouds. A winter storm was rolling in and we had to make tracks if we wanted to stay ahead of the impending maelstrom. My intent was to get as far south and east as possible the first day, and our destination was seven and a half hours away in Klamath Falls, Ore. There’s a six mile stretch of road through the Willamette Pass Summit that worried me. A potentially dangerous stretch of slushy roads and icy patches we had to traverse before darkness fell and temperatures dropped. We merged onto Interstate 5 South at sunrise. A rainbow, a potent omen, peeked over our shoulder.

We only stopped as needed to refuel and stretch our legs and those of our companion, an adorable 8-year-old Maltese/wheaten terrier mix; perched with his paws on the dash, his nose in the windshield, alert for anything coming down the road. “Bare was a man magnet” Rose reminisced. “They’d say, ‘Oh, your dog is so cute’, and I’d say, ‘Yes he is, and his name is Bare. As in naked.’”

We slogged past the damp gloomy fields and vineyards of the Willamette Valley in our bright yellow truck. Low lying clouds obscured the bases of distant mountains; the lofty summits appeared to float in air. We bid farewell to the interstate highway in Eugene and followed a twisting two-lane road that paralleled the roiling Willamette River through the Cascade Mountains. The lush temperate rainforest was a canopy of moss covered trees towering over a floor of dense leafy ferns. “We’re not stopping”, I said whenever Rose marveled at the beauty of the lush greenery. She has a decorative attraction to, and an artistic flair for, rocks and branches, as evidenced by the buckets of rocks and chunks of logs packed in the back of the truck, along with the suit cases of clown clothes, wigs and drag apparel.

Light persistent rain was falling as we topped the worrisome summit, following in the wake of a logging truck. The windshield wipers struggled to remove the muddy smear of the 18-wheeler’s grimy plume. We left the rain and worry behind as we descended from the mountains onto the high desert plains, and checked into our motel two hours later. One day down, two more to go, I thought as I cracked open a beer and settled into bed.

We left early the next morning after downing cups of coffee and exchanging pleasantries (“You snore,” she said. “You giggle in your sleep,” I replied), and meandered through a cold drizzle along country roads. The sodden fields of Oregon gave way to the fields of California, which yielded to pine forests and rugged crags, which ceded to a vast long valley and a view of distant golden hills. The drizzle relinquished to overcast skies.

We had outrun the storm. The urgent need to press forward was replaced by a more relaxed driving style. If it wasn’t the dead of winter, we would have enjoyed a side trip to gaze into the crystalline depths of nearby Crater Lake, or to marvel at Lava Bed National Monument’s numerous caves, grottos and domes. Instead, we stopped to take pictures of the “shoe tree” Rose espied on the side of the road near Susanville, Calif., where hundreds of pairs of shoes dangled from the branches of a tall juniper.

Nevada greeted us with rugged landscapes of stark stunning deserts stitched together by an endless ribbon of unbending roadway. Convoluted sun-dappled hills, wrenched by a violent geology, calico-colored and gleaming in the crisp clean air, rolled by and faded in the rear view mirror. Horizons like long awaited opportunities stretched before us in every direction, as vast as the promise of tomorrow.

Rose, slight and wiry, wearing thick bifocals and sporting short greying hair, spoke a lot about opportunity and the future. She said the move was “spiritual”. She, although grateful for the chance Gaye and Joel offered, was frightened of what would happen in “the next phase” of her life. But what a life it’s been! The hours on the road were long, but rarely boring. Rose would regale with stories of past loves (“Turns out I was the only guy in town my boyfriend wasn’t sleeping with”); of celebrities met (“I was Cher’s errand boy. I would fetch whatever she needed. And she was only there to introduce a DJ!”); of awkward moments backstage (“Carol Channing shook the hand of this one celebrity impersonator and asked, “And who are you, dear?”, not realizing the celebrity the performer was impersonating was her!”); of trouble with the law (“I was picked up on an outstanding warrant and managed to get the bag of meth out of my wallet and eat it before the cop found it. I was in jail for 72-hours and didn’t sleep a wink, wired to the tits, staying to myself and watching brutal fist fights”); of her greatest fear (“I haven’t used meth in a long time, but some friends are still using and I can’t be around them. That’s a huge temptation”).

The fading rays of the setting sun were reflected on the calm waters of Walker Lake as we approached our destination, Hawthorne, Nev., a small town on the edge of a large army depot in the middle of nowhere. Better days hadn’t been seen in these parts for quite a while.

Dawn the final day was a blaze of color, like pink cotton candy stretched across a periwinkle sky. We skirted the edge of the Great Basin awed by the ancient valleys, ridges and dry lake beds created over eons by slow inevitable change. The historic mining town of Tonopah was where we stopped at the Clown Motel for photos and T-shirts. The motel stands adjacent to an old cemetery and is rumored to be haunted. We lunched at KC’s Outpost eatery and saloon in Beatty, Nev., an oasis of deliciousness in a wasteland of truck stop and greasy diner food.

A few hours later, I backed the truck into the driveway of Rose and Bare’s new home and shut off the engine. Gaye greeted us with open arms, a warm smile, and frosty cold bottles of beer. We chatted for a while, then Rose began sorting through the numerous boxes and packing crates, separating what was needed now from what could be placed in storage, or donated to Goodwill. She was imperturbable, pre-occupied and focused on the task at hand with single-minded intent. Observing her efforts I couldn’t help but think our trip may have ended, but her journey had just begun.

The next day, I checked into an off-strip hotel/casino after unloading a portion of Rose’s belongings into one of the ubiquitous rental self-storage units, and handing over the big yellow truck’s keys to a sales associate who hinted her underwear matched her fuchsia lipstick. I needed a couple of days to unwind before heading home; time to work out the kinks from the road and jot down a few notes. Refreshed by a good night’s sleep, and encouraged by a friend’s recommendation, I enjoyed a guided tour of the Neon Museum. The dramatically lit collection of rusted and broken signs, and the glorious neon of a few restored beauties, is best viewed at night.

I met Rose and Gaye for dinner on my last night in town. We rendezvoused at Sporting Life Bar; a gastropub voted one of Las Vegas’ Best New Restaurants in 2014. Our friend Chef Daniel Dalton III, formerly the sous chef at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bistro, has elevated simple bar food to an entirely new plane. For example, Chef Dan told me it takes more than 20 hours (!) to prepare the chicken wings. “They begin with 12-15 hours in a green salt cure, then 11-15 hours of slow roasting in duck fat…” We also won the animal-themed trivia contest and claimed our prize; a $50 bar tab. A wonderful evening to celebrate the end of one chapter, and the beginning of another.

I’m thankful for sharing a sometimes outrageous history with Rose (“Do you remember the time when the traveling circus broke down and camped in our front yard?” Rose asked. “How can I forget having a living breathing bear cub in the house,” I responded), and I can’t wait to discover the adventures awaiting us. We hugged and kissed in the gentle mist-filled night the way long-time friends do as we said our goodbyes. “Are you crying?” Rose asked. “Don’t be silly,” I said smiling, dabbing away a tear. “It’s only the rain in my eyes.”