Yours for the axing

In the late winter of '77 my friend Johnny Langford and I decided to leave Loon Lake, WA.. and thumb our way back south, he to Oklahoma and me to Texas. We actually made fairly good time despite the fact that we were scraggly hippies and Johnny wore a patch over the eye he lost when he was 9.

We had several interesting events but the theme is scars, right?

We had made it to, and through, Albuquerque but it was getting late and very, very, VERY cold. It started to sleet and the wind was blowing right through us. We decided to head back into town to see if we could find accommodations for the night.

We turned and walked about 20 feet when a chick pulled up in an old VW and said "Hey, do you guys need a place to crash". I looked at Johnny and then back at the girl and almost in unison we said "Hell yes". We loaded in to her car and she took us not too far to a ranch that had three houses on it. We had sleeping bags so we were happy just having a roof over our heads.

In the morning we awoke and they served us breakfast and everyone decided to have a sweat in one of several sweat lodges they had constructed. There were several people living on the property that had been left to this one guy by his grandfather. All was going well, especially when the girls got naked for the sweat (No this is not a sex story so forget it). We had to build a fire to heat the rocks so I volunteered to cut some kindling like I had done every morning back on Ralph and Ethyls ranch (That's another story).

They had some very dry pine logs which could be easily to split. I had the axe. The log was too easy to split. It seemed to go through the log like butter and didn't stop until it made contact with my knee. To say it was painful would be an understatement.

Here is the amazing part. As I write this, I still have trouble finding the scar even knowing exactly where it is. Why? Well, I'm not sure but it might be because of how our new found friends took care of my knee.

They escorted me hobbling and bleeding up to one of the houses. I had to drop my pants because that was the only way to get to the wound (Still not a sex story). One of the girls proceeded to grab a Vitamin-E capsule and an Aloe Vera plant. She punched a pin hole in the Vitamin capsule and squeezed some into the wound. Next she cut off a tip of the Aloe vera and repeated the process. They bandaged my knee and that was that. Of course I was still in pain but not too bad. I couldn't bend my knee for quite a while but that didn't stop me from hobbling back down and enjoying a sweat with a few naked women (I said no sex, ok). That certainly seemed to ease the pain a bit.

We stayed there about 3 days before deciding to continue southward (now eastward). Hitchhiking with a bumb leg is no fun but but we eventually made it to Oklahoma. At that time a decided to remove the bandage and to my, and everyone else's, amazement it was healed.

To this day the scar is nothing more than a small blemish on my left knee.