Frank the Can Man
March 2017
Just north of Joshua Tree National Park, there is a large swath of Bureau of Land Management land that allows free camping for up to two weeks. After stopping at the Joshua Tree visitor center and finding out that all of the campgrounds within the park were at capacity and would probably remain that way through the weekend, I headed to the giant dry lake bed in the center of the BLM land to wait it out and explore the area for a few days. There was supposed to be a full moon in the next few nights so I was hoping I could find a spot somewhat isolated where I could roam around naked and soak up the lunar rays while my brain floated in a shallow pool of psilocybin. When I finally found one of the dirt roads that led to the former lake I was happy to find that the area was large enough and isolated enough to really appreciate the full moon spectacle I was anticipating. After setting up camp towards the edge of what I imagined as an ancient shoreline, I stripped down to a pair of running shorts and some flip flops, ate a little fungus, grabbed my water bottle, and went for a walk. I didn’t make it very far before two teenage boys on KTM dirtbikes came roaring up next to me in a cloud of dust and exhaust.
“You really ride that fuckin’ thing all the way from Ore’gun?”
They had obviously seen my license plate.
“Seattle, actually.”
I was instantly bored of them and prayed to no deity in particular that they would leave me as quickly as they had descended upon me.
“Seattle! Sheeit! Must be some kind of crazy or sumthin’!” The kid reeked of future Hold My Beer famedom.
I just looked at them as expressionless as possible and waited for them to bugger off.
After what felt like hours but was surely seconds, they got the hint and sped off, leaving me with a mouth full of powder fine desert dust.
I walked around the big dry lake for a few hours and poked around a few old campfires with a walking stick I couldn’t remember picking up. Every once in a while I’d pass by a big pile of spent ammunition shells and stop to pick through them. Then get distracted and wander in another direction until I found another old campfire or ammunition pile to poke. Hunger eventually took over and I decided to start my way back to camp. Being on a huge dry lake bed, all I had to do was turn in a circle until I spotted my tent and start the long walk back to it.
When I got back to my little plot I settled in the shade of my motorcycle and ate alternating spoonfuls of peanut butter and honey between bites of cereal bar. It doesn’t sound all that great to most people, but these meals are one of my favorite parts of living on the road. My dinner was interrupted when a squat, round, old man on a four wheeler pulled up to me and decided it was time to make a new friend.
“Name’s Frank. I guess on the website people call me the ‘Can Man’. Need any water or anything?”
I sat up from my slouch and looked around.
“I think I’m good, but thank you. Did you say ‘Can Man’?”
“Yep. Some Swedes came through here a while back and tole me I’m famous. Said that on that website they call me the ‘Can Man’. You seen that website sendin’ everybody out this way?”
I assumed he was talking about the BLM website, but I’d never seen any mention of a “Can Man” anywhere on it.
For the longest hour and a half of my life I stood there cooking my shoulders and trying not to let the combination of searing desert heat and psychedelic mushrooms distract me from getting to know “Frank the Can Man.” He and his wife had moved out to the desert from Catalina about seven years ago because “the heat was good for my arthritis and even better for my wife’s disposition.” He told me about the old days growing up in Catalina where he used to go skin diving out of a sixteen foot fiberglass skiff with a twenty five horsepower outboard engine on it, and how back in those days you could still see through the water off of the California coast, before “They” “mucked it up.” He told me about his two tours in Vietnam and how they liked him so much they sent him back after he’d already come home from the war once before. We talked motorcycles and we talked boats and we talked fishing. Throughout the entire hour and a half he stayed seated atop his old red four wheeler and told me stories about what he’d seen, what treasures he’d found, and which “idiots” he’d saved from certain death in the hills surrounding the old dry lake. He tried to talk Trump but I told him we’d better leave politics out of it in favor of continuing to have an amicable interaction. He muttered something about “Oregon plates” and thankfully decided to let it go.
As he was beginning to tell me how to identify which snakes I would certainly see in the area, and which ones there was anti-venom for and which ones there weren’t, the two teenagers on KTM’s from earlier in the afternoon came whipping by again. Kicking up another cloud of dust and sending Frank into a tizzy. He angrily grumbled something indecipherable and told me he was “getting too old for this”, whatever “this” was, and that he’d better head home to make sure his wife “hadn’t killed the dog.” He took the glove off of his right hand and offered me a handshake. As I shook his big arthritic paw I was reminded of what a life truly lived could someday look and feel like. He turned his four wheeler’s engine over, shifted into gear, and puttered back in the direction he’d come from.
I laid down with my head under the shade provided by my motorcycle and counted the dead flies splattered across the front of my radiator.
