By Jeff Overley
Daily Forty-Niner
Parker, Arizona is a small desert town resting on the east bank of the Colorado River, which divides the city from California. It is something of a poor man' s Lake Havasu, with its locals and small centers of stores and restaurants and, most relevantly to this story, its periodic invasions of hard-partying youngsters.
My friend Luke and I set out for Parker on a Thursday, planning to meet a large group of friends for the Memorial Day weekend. On our way to the freeway, we notice our friend Billy pulled over by a police officer on the side of the road
Billy had been driving without a license, and the cop decides to tow his truck. Billy was always the driving force who rallied all of us to go to the river in the first place. His whole family would go, and they always made our time much better by supplying a boat for us to cruise the river in as well as most of the food that sustained us through the harrowing and exacting three-day trip.
So Luke and I wish him luck in getting his truck back, and we set out, our trip transformed before we even leave.
The road to Parker can take its toll on the even the most adept conversationalist. A quarter of it is spent in a snarl of hideous traffic — even longer without 91 FastTrac, which we mercifully have — and the remaining three-quarters of the four-hour drive pass by against the backdrop of quite understandably undeveloped land. Even the stars in the black desert sky lose a bit of their glory with knowledge of the drunken debauchery ahead constantly in mind.
We arrive at the La Paz Campgrounds at 1 a.m., shell out $24 apiece for the three-night stay, and have a little chuckle when we realize that we're both virtually broke. Billy's sister, Dawn, is already there with friends. Luke and I set up our tent, then crack a couple cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and wait for more friends to show up. We scream and hug when they do, and after a couple of hours we fall asleep.
The roar of fountain boats jolts us from an uncomfortable sleep on hard Earth at 6:30 a.m. We try to ignore the noise but then sprinkler heads pop up underneath our tent and there's no choice but to wiggle out of our tent, stumble down the rocky riverbank and fall into the water to start the day.
I grab a breakfast of champions — Powerbar and a Pabst — less than an hour later. Looking around, I notice a lot of my friend's cars. Gradually, they start emerging from their respective tents and we all start messing around, jumping around in the water and playing with horseshoes and Frisbees.
All the guys are starting to despair over our lack of a boat as we watch swarms of hollering girls race by in sleek white jetboats. But just then, Billy drives up in his truck, 23-foot boat in tow. The trip is back on, and everyone clamors for the first ride.
I'm in of course, and a bunch of us ride down the river, coasting and bumping over thick wakes until we reach the south cove. We drop anchor and hop out into waist-high water amid a plethora of boats and people and footballs flying everywhere.
It's a party. Billy and I, along with our friend Chase, decide to scale a giant cliff and jump off into a deep section of water. The whole way up Chase is taunting me. "I don't think you'll do it, man. I think you're gonna go back."
Billy leaps from the 75-foot peak without hesitation. That leaves Chase and me, and its not so much the height that's irking me, but the fact that you've got to jump out far enough to clear a small ledge poking out halfway down. I go for it and hit the water rear-end first, and at that moment I think I'm going to drown because I can scarcely kick my legs. But I make it out of the water alive, and despite the dark purple hue of my posterior, I feel good because I see that Chase has walked back down without jumping. Boy, do I let him have it.
By the start of the next day I'm out of money, but I've got a ton of beer. I start building a giant beer can ziggurat to amuse myself and inspire everyone to drink more. After a while, I lay down in my friend Doug's car. When I get up and get out, I accidentally lock his keys in the car.
So I go to wait for AAA at the campsite entrance. I bring a couple beers along, and while I sit there, a cop pulls up. He gives me a Breathalyzer test, and since I'm under 21, I fail. He agrees to let me off if I take him back to my campsite and let his deputy-in-training perform tests on all my drunken friends so she can pass her certification. I do, and it's quite a sight, all those teenage girls lined up in bikinis, giggling and waiting to take sobriety tests.
At the start of the third day we're all getting tired. Doug and I play some chess while everyone putters about in the strange beer-mud that had accumulated on the ground.
The rest of the time passes in tranquility. As Luke and I pull out of town the next day, we stop and write our names in the black and white rocks that border the railroad tracks just outside the city. I feel as though I might never be back and so I want to leave something behind. But I get to thinking that the town has probably already taken something: a few years off my life.
