GREETINGS FROM THE CLOWN FARM

ADVENTURER: n. 1. one who has or looks for exciting and dangerous undertakings 2. one who seeks to become rich by dubious schemes

It was Monday. I had decided not to drive to San Francisco with my friend Brad a week earlier due to lack of funds, but when my friend Nathan flew in my door with an offer to stay on a farm in West Virginia FREE for a week, it was hard to resist. He even offered to drive the whole way there, paying for all of the gas and food...Wouldn't you go?

INSOMNIA: n. 1. condition causing an abnormal inability to sleep

I filled a bag with clothes, cassettes, a camera, a sleeping bag, some comics, two journals, and a guitar and was in Nathan's car within 20 minutes. After changing my answering machine message, we were headed for West Virginia. I had to laugh at just how spur of the moment this was, and didn't really know what to expect from any of the days ahead. We left around 8:00 PM on Monday night, planning to return by Friday evening or Saturday night at the latest. We did anything we could to stay awake for the 26 hour drive. By the time the sun came up, we were somewhere in Alabama. We stopped at a McDonald's for breakfast. I decided to wear an eye patch for the remainder of the trip. After taking pictures with the outside Ronald, we entered the wonderful establishment where kids were told to be quiet as they pointed and called me a pirate. By the afternoon we were holding up notes to the cars in the other lanes and dancing for people as in any road trip. It wasn't until much later that we began to talk about the contents of the trip.

GESUNDHEIT: n. (German) 1. good health

Nathan has lived in a couple of communal farms over the last couple of years. Gesundheit is not like any of the others. I didn't really know what to expect from his description of it. I just hoped it wouldn't be a Zendik farm full of dirty hippies. The Gesundheit Institute is a communal farm founded by Patch Adams. The Universal Pictures film about the early life of Patch Adams called "Patch Adams" is at theatres currently. Patch is played by Robin Williams.. (You can see the trailer for the film at http://www.patchadams.com). Gesundheit is a small community of doctors, artists, healers, and clowns living together outside of Hillsboro, West Virginia at the base of the National Park. Its main vision is Patch's dream of building a free public hospital on the land. Patch is also a professional clown. About once a week he and others from the farm go clowning at the local hospitals to cheer up patients. It is one of the silliest places I have ever been, and it was full of extremely happy and energetic people. Nathan had lived at Gesundheit about three years before and was returning for an annual reunion. We had driven for 25 hours and were almost there. A car behind us started to tailgate so we decided to pull to the shoulder so that they could pass. We ended up pulling off of the road into a huge hole, tipping the car over on its side. It wasn't 3 minutes before four cars had stopped to help us out. People are nicer in small towns. We hitched a ride to a gas station down the block where we got some big hillbilly boys to help us out of the hole. Ten minutes later two cops, an ambulance, a fire truck, two emergency vehicles, and a guy in a truck with a big chain had arrived. The guy in the truck pulled us out of the hole as the police blocked the street off with road flares. The hole was huge! It was about four feet deep and three feet wide! We were amazed to find that the only damage appeared to be a bent bumper. We bent it back so that it wasn't touching the front wheel and got away from the commotion as quick as possible. We finally made it to the farm. It's kind of creepy when you first drive up at night. We went in and I immediately met Patch and about 20 other overly hyperactive people. Patch is a tall man with long hair and a large handlebar mustache. The farm was kind of awkward at first (especially when the first thing I did was pee in a cup and pour it down the sink), but that feeling didn't last very long. We sat by a campfire for a while and found a room in a trailer which we decorated the walls of with our clothes and contents of our wallets and bags. Sleep was good that night.

SAFETY: n. 1. any device for preventing an accident

I was woken up early my first morning at Gesundheit. I helped chop vegetables for lunch and hung out with a girl named Pari. The day went pretty normal. Patch approached me at lunch with what I think is his standard opening question when he first meets someone. "So what are you passionate about?" I talked to him about my comics for a while and he introduced me to a strip called "There Goes the Neighborhood". The first day on the farm was mostly spent getting to know everyone there. That night, Nathan and I decided to put on a show down at the workshop. We dressed up as boy scouts and did a show about safety. It began with a spur of the moment song we made up called "Safety First" which was backed with a demo from the keyboard. We preached on safety and assured the crowd that we were safety professionals. Then we shot bottle rockets out of our butts. Recruits were taken from the crowd while singing the "safety first" song in a line and waiting to earn their butt rocket merit badges. It was wonderful. This and drinking pee out of a cow suit were part of Nathan's act when he traveled in a half assed circus called Cirkus Ridickuless. He was an abusive mime. I ended the day with a large bowl of cereal with lots of honey and a couple pounds of sugar.

OLYMPICS: n. 1. an athletic competition generally held every four years

I slept late the next day. When I woke up I immediately went to the garden to shovel manure. We took Pari to the bus station and stopped at Wal-Mart to buy a ridiculous amount of ice cream and some film. I got to see drawings of the buttrocket show in a little girl named Nune's journal, which was interesting. Every page of it began with "I woke up and ate food." She named our performance "the butt show". That night we got together and started "The First Annual Ice Cream Olympics" which involved ice cream in several messy events. It consisted of relays, ice cream baseball, races, eat offs, ice cream eggs on top of heads, and trying to throw handfuls in each other's mouths. The rest of the night was spent talking to Patch and others about finding it hard to relate with people.

CRAZY: adj. 1. unsound of mind, insane 2.foolish; not sensible 3. very enthusiastic or eager

On Friday I spent most of the day cleaning the main cabin, swatting flies, and participating in water balloon fights. We took pictures with a 20-foot tall puppet named "Mama" which will travel with Patch to Russia in his annual trip this year. At night we went with Patch, a lady named "Beach Clown" and several others to a bar called "Kenny's". Beach Clown brought balloons and clown makeup for everyone in the bar while we shot pool. Patch Adams is an excellent pool player. A bluegrass band played at the bar while many spastically danced on the dance floor. I drew a horrible stick figure picture of the band and gave it to them. They told me that they would put it in the local newspaper and on their web site.

OIL: n. 1. any of various greasy, combustible, liquid substances obtained from animal, vegetable, and mineral matter

Saturday had rolled around and it was time to leave. We procrastinated for as long as we could and got interviewed for a Swedish documentary of the farm. Nathan voluntarily cleaned out the outhouse that day. Let's all clap for Nathan. Just before we left, a lady who had been taking pictures all week ran up and poured glitter down our pants, calling it "pee pee dust". We got about 40 miles out of town on the way back when the car started to smoke and rattle. We pulled to the side. We soon found out that we were out of oil. We crossed the interstate and jumped a barbed wire fence to knock on some of the unfriendly neighbors doors to ask them for oil and were eventually picked up by a State Trooper. He took Nathan to buy oil while I played guitar on the back bumper of the dead car. The only things you need on a roadtrip are clothes, comics, and an instrument. We eventually got some oil in the car, and drove about a mile before it happened again. A conservation officer pulled over as did a tow truck driver named Jason. He towed us to Jerry's Wrecker Yard to diagnose the problem. It wasn't long before we saw the huge hole blown through the side of the engine block. We sat around and cleaned out the car and ate bologna sandwiches while waiting for someone to pick us up from the farm. It was about this time that I really had to go to the bathroom. I asked if I could use their bathroom and they said they didn't have one. "We used to have one. The pipes ran out into the creek, but the state didn't like that too much," commented Jerry. I was more relieved than ever to see Jason and Hannah, our personal saviors, who drove us back to the farm. The car ended up being flattened for twenty-five bucks.

OPTIMISM: n. 1. the belief that good ultimately prevails over evil 2. the tendency to take the most hopeful view in matters

The next day we started to worry about how we'd get home with no money. We thought about hitchhiking, UHAULS, and drive-aways but nothing seemed to click. I did get to meet a really interesting guy named Flick who was working on a sculpture on the farm. He was a friend of the designer of PeeWee's Playhouse. There was also a guy there who builds robots. Eventually we came up with the ingenious plan to bounce a check and cover it the day we got back into town. The nearby bus station was closed due to the State Fair, so Jason drove us for an hour and a half to Beckley, West Virginia to try and get us on the bus. We got there right as it closed and they wouldn't let me write an out of state check. We were stuck. We couldn't go back to the farm. We went to a gas station to think things over. We were just about to sleep in front of the bus station when I asked a guy that worked at the gas station what he would do if he were in our situation. He told us about a homeless shelter called "Pine Crest Haven of Hope" which wasn't far down the road. It was kind of scary when we first got there. We filled out a bunch of paperwork and were put into a room full of homeless alcoholics in bunk beds.

CHARM: n. 1. an action, object, or words assumed to have magic power 2. a quality that attracts or delights -vt. vi. 1. to act on as if by magic 2. to fascinate; delight

We were woken up at 6am. We ate tiny boxes of Raisin Bran and mingled with the angry alcoholics. We played chess for a while. A guy who smoked a cigar and played horseshoes all day got mad at me for leaving the chess box in front of the coffee. We tried to go back to sleep for a while. We were woken up and told to take the garbage out and to go see our "case workers". After talking to them, we were more comfortable with being stuck there. I started drawing and skipped lunch because the sloppy joes looked gross. This guy who looked like Moses got mad at me for using one of his expensive charcoal pencils. I decided to take my guitar out. I changed clothes and shaved and began playing guitar on the outside porch. The first friend I made was an old man named "Cliff". He introduced me to all of his friends there. It wasn't long before we had a whole herd of people singing along with "Folsam Prison Blues", "Sweet Home Alabama", and "House of the Rising Sun". The homeless shelter turned out as being one of the most fun places I have ever been. You didn't have to do anything. You just hang out, smoke, play games, get fed, talk, and sleep. We talked to Cliff and Forrest Gump about hopping trains while eating dinner. I must have played guitar for 6 hours. We were eventually driven to a Western Union and to the bus station. I shopped for peaches with an old lady who had just gotten a shot of Demerol while Nathan got money wired to us. We shot pool and played Galaga for a couple of hours before the bus came. It's hard to prepare for a 32-hour bus ride.

FIDGET: n. 1. a restless or nervous state -vi. 1. to make restless or nervous movements

The bus ride consisted of asking millions of questions to kayakers, truck drivers, and a French guy who was going to see his Mexican girlfriend. He had tight green pants on and looked like a minstrel. We made hundreds of stops, had lots of delays and bus transfer confusion, and did meaningless things to kill time. We complained about these stinky kids that visited the potty every ten minutes. They seemed to be stinking up the same busses we were on for the last 24 hours. At the same time, it helped to remind us of all the fun disastrous road trips we took as kids. We played guitar and keyboard in all of the terminals, and eventually got home. Looking back it all seems ludicrous.