When I was a kid I did some shopping around for a father-figure. My real Dad was not around. He and Mom had a big ugly falling out, furthermore he was not a good rolemodel (more on that later). So, what is a kid to do but find a surrogate Dad. I picked Richard Menzies, our neighbor.
Richard spent much of his life on the road in this 1973 (bright orange) VW bus, while working as a freelance journalist and photographer. After years of prodding, Richard has put much of his writing into a great book, “Passing Through”.
Here's the link: http://www.passingthroughnv.com/index.html
His book is about some of the colorful people he has met while on the road. I put on some Neil Young, and started reading. The book contains the details of many of the stories that Richard has told me only briefly though the years about semi-homeless artisans living their experimental lives, the denizens of the great basin, the people who inspired him, the misunderstood, etc.
Richard is good a friend, but he’s been more of a father figure to me than just a friend. He and I have camped in the desert in that classic VW (which might explain my irrational loyalty to the VW brand), developed photographs in his lab, and I even dragged him along to church father and son’s outings since my father was not around. That was a stretch for Richard, but he was a good sport. I’ve gone to him for help many times, taken his advice about girls, and played the role of the son he never had (at least until he and his wife had a son). So maybe it was more of a sentimental journey. The book is great, and I value it more than any book in my collection.
I think I was four years old when I met him. He caught me running with a pair of garden scissors behind the apartments where we lived. He scolded me and told me to point those scissors down. Being a kid who didn't like being told what to do, I didn’t like him. The next time I met Richard was when he lubricated my squeaky tricycle. He was typing in his office and probably suffered from writers block due to the infernal noise of my trike squeaking as I rode on the pavement below. I'm sure that I was driving him crazy. He came down the stairs with a can of WD-40, and took away the cool squeaky sound that I liked so much. I liked him even less after that!
During the summer when I was five years old, we shared a garden spot behind the apartment complex. One evening when my Mom was working in her part of the garden, Richard came down the stairs with the coolest thing I had ever seen, a glow-in-the-dark Frisbee! It was getting dark, but Mom let me stay out and play. Frisbee became a nightly activity that summer.
The rest is history. For the past 30 years, I have kept in contact with Richard whether he liked it or not. We go skiing now and then. Sometimes I stop by his house and we talk about a lot of nothing. All I can say is that I’m blessed to have a friend like him. Not only did he give me someone to look up to, he gave me a counter balance to the strict Mormon culture in which I was raised.
I still dream of buying an old VW bus so I can take my kids camping in the desert and maybe some of Richard will rub off on them too.
Here are a few links to other things he wrote:
http://www.spyrock.com/nadafarm/html/thunder-menzies/NEVADA4.html
http://www.spyrock.com/nadafarm/html/thnder.html
And finally, his blog:
http://www.rdmenzies.com/blog
Enjoy!
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