The first time I met the Red Van Lounge, I actually only met her engine. I lived in the same dorm (for a week) as Chris Oken, the van’s previous owner. As I walked down the hall to my room, I ran into Chris. He was skating up and down the hall on a skateboard, zooming in and out of the open door to his room. He came up to me, flipped his head to get his stingy blond hair out of his eyes, and said, “Hey, man, you like the Grateful Dead?”
18
Sep
07
The Okens and the Red Van Lounge
Moving some books around today, I found three folded sheets of paper that had fallen out of one of the books. They were a fax that I wrote when I was an exchange student in Almaty, Kazakhstan, back in the spring of 1995. I had hoped that my little essay could be published in the school paper, The Signal, but I feared that I was sending it too late to make the last issue.
I wrote this at the pinnacle of my evangelical days. I basically considered myself a missionary to Almaty at the time, as I was preaching at the only English-speaking church in town — in the whole country, as far as I knew — and was leading a youth group and taking the kids from the church on outings. I fully believed that I would end up back in Almaty one day, teaching English and preaching to the inhabitants. Obviously, that did not happen, as I sit here, 12 years later, back in the States. But I still treasure the time I spent in Almaty, and I was grateful to run across these memories again.
Continue reading ‘The Land of Make-Shift and Bump-Your-Head’
14
Sep
07
Jim and Bonnie got hitched
They actually got hitched up back in June. I just now got around to uploading these crappy little cell phone pics of the cake cutting. It was probably the bitchin’est parties in Edge Dwelling history, and it really warmed my peak-oil-believing heart when Jim said something along the lines of “enjoy the food, folks, ’cause the oils gonna run out in a few years anyway.”
 |
 |
 |
Check out Jim’s photo compilation of the event for some real photography.
13
Sep
07
Hard Times
Since retiring from shuttling around Edge Dwellers, the RVL has been left to moulder in Evansville, IN. She suffered through a tornado in 2005.
photo by Jim Yates and text by Chad Pollock
13
Sep
07
Snow Van
The RVL resting in the snows of Evansville, IN.
photo by Jim Yates and text by Chad Pollock
13
Sep
07
the Exposure From God
While camping in the desert, Jim Yates opened the shutter of his camera intending to take a shot of the RVL in the nighttime desert. He fell asleep and didn’t snap the shutter closed for hours. The result is “The Exposure from God.”
photo by Jim Yates and text by Chad Pollock
13
Sep
07
Project: The Red Van Lounge Logs
Calling all Edge Dwellers:
In the spirit of the Ouachita Memory Project, we announce a new writing project: The Red Van Lounge Logs. Luke announced the project some time back:
Over winter break, Jim & I (the people, not the constellation) discussed a book we could make, but it will take all of us. In this book, photos of the Red Van Lounge will accompany stories of the adventures that surround it. Jim has plenty of images, as you can imagine. What we need are stories.
In its heyday, Jim drove that van across the country & as far north as Chicago and south at least to Dallas. He served us tea and freeze dried stew in Arkadelphia. I was there some of the time, so high I can’t remember.
So, in the spirit of the Ouachita Memorial Freewrite, I’m asking for your stories, anything you remember about Jim & the Red Van Lounge. Enough time has passed for him to assume I’ve forgotten all about it. That suits me.
If you have something you would like to contribute, you can either leave a comment here and Rix will email you get your submission. Or you can go to the contact page and drop us a line that way.
29
Apr
05
The Thinking Game
“Are you sure, man?” asks Rob. “There’s no going back after this.”
So it’s a head change. What the hell. Cough syrup goes down, four ounces apiece. It’s supposed to take about an hour to set in, but things get patchy fast. We’re in a car, headed somewhere to watch people do something. Rob’s asking the driver to pull over. He pukes red.
“Does that mean it won’t work?” I want to know.
“Hard to say. It’s been forever since I did this.”
20
Apr
05
Transformation – Part One
My liberation came when I met Luke. It had already started to dawn, but Luke, with his other-worldly charm and his way of embracing both body and soul, was the impetus I needed to shake me from the narrow religious track I was riding.
20
Apr
05
The Early Days – Part Two
Revival was my prayer.
By revival I meant a massive, miraculous undertaking of the spirit of god that would transform the world. I read books on the subject. I studied the history of the Great Awakenings. I read the sermons of those who had precipitated American revivals. Charles Finney was my favorite. By day I escaped to the woods to read his sermons, to read the Bible, to play, and to meditate. I sometimes took a companion. Often it was Rix. In my morning prayers, which were becoming longer and longer, I wandered about the OBU campus and into the city of Arkadelphia and I called forth prayers. I felt the need to make myself subject, to make myself into nothing, yet in attempting to do so, I was making more of myself than I ever could. I was addicted to religious power, and I was under a stressful messiah complex, for I truly believed that my efforts would save the world and that by doing so I would have to be destroyed. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if…” My life hung on that “if.” All else seemed meaningless.
The Edge Dwellers 
Recent Comments