THIRD PART to Hearst Castle Caper
After the night plotting by the campfire, and a morning enjoying a leisurely pan-fried breakfast, about mid-day, we pulled the Land Yacht into the furthest point of the parking lot from the entrance to the Tourist Center. We didn’t want folks noticing the Land Yacht, if that was possible. No rain, thank goodness. In twos and threes we approached the Tourist Center at different times. It was high noon and shirt sleeve weather for us Minnesotans.
Rocky, and this time Skip, not Patty, bought the ten-dollar tour tickets on day two. Patty set up her video equipment much as any normal tourist would. The rest of us, in sets of two, pretended we didn’t know each other while we waited with actors’ jitters for the tour bus to return with Rocky and Skip. When we saw through the telescope that it was heading back, Max headed out to the gardens to meet the bus, Sally stayed inside for her part, and Huck and Steve prepared to play the straight-man role as a gay couple just happening to be touring when all the commotion breaks out.
Meanwhile, up by the Castle, Rocky and Skip had given the tour bus driver two $100 bills to let them ride back without taking the hour-long tour, and got the driver to agree to fake a heart attack just as the bus neared the gardens.
Now in real time, with Patty’s camera whirring, Rocky grabs the wheel and heads the tour bus straight for the gardens. Inside the tourist center Huck and Steve scream at the top of their lungs “Look! Look!” and pretty quick all hell is breaking loose. Someone screams, “The bus is going to run over those people!” And someone else yells, “Is that guy peeing right in front of us?!” The one security cop is on his phone going out the door screaming “Run fast!”
The bus is now careening, suddenly heading toward the last row of bushes, just where Max is pretending to pee. Then miraculously, just yards before the bushes where Max is about to be crushed to death, as dozens of people are watching, the bus comes to a sliding halt. Rocky and Skip jump out exclaiming, “He’s had a heart attack! The driver’s having a heart attack! Someone call a doctor!” Then Max (saying “I’m a doctor”) leaps out from the bushes and performs artificial resuscitation on the driver, who turns out to be okay, and drives his bus back up the paved road, returning to the top ready to get his tourists once they finish the tour.
Everybody is breathing a sigh of relief back inside the Tourist Center as Skip, Rocky, and Max come breathlessly in, Skip shouting “Damn our government . . . making his meds so dang expensive . . . Thank God a doctor was in the house! Let’s hear a shout for universal health care for all!”
Suddenly, Sally, already in her best Patty Hearst look-alike outfit, in black jeans, V-necked sweater, and a red beret, pretends to be Patty Hearst, strides toward the gift shop holding a piece of driftwood (it hardly looked like a rifle) and with maybe a hundred visitors for an audience, in a loud, but still sotto-like-voice, announces: “This is NOT a stick-up. My name is Patty Hearst. I was once a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Now I’m a RUMPKIN, R-U-M-P-K-I-N, find us at rumpkins.com and maybe you’ll join us too! That’s rumpkins-dot-com; see you down the road!”
Meanwhile, Huck and Steve have been screaming “Health Care for All!” and then in very loud voices start cluck-clucking with everybody near them, dozens of people, ticking off the bad things the government is doing – banning books, making abortions illegal, supporting Big Pharm, and “Not Letting Transgenders Use a Bathroom – our poor friend had to pee outside!”
And we all began to chant: “Health Care for All! – Pee Where You Want! – Lock Trump up! – Join the Rumpkins!”
And then quickly, we race to the front steps of the Tourist Center for our getaway. Skip had the Land Yacht waiting.
But somebody gave the cops a description of the Land Yacht’s colors and a trooper pulled us over less than a mile down California 1. We were escorted back. The manager of the Tourist Center was consulted. No one was injured. No one was harmed. The bus was okay. Nothing was hurt. The driver was back on the job in no need of an ambulance. It was just a movie scene.
Because no laws were broken and they believed us when we told them we had been hired by the San Francisco Shakespearian Theatre Company to perform spontaneous acts of street theatre up and down the coast – as a way to promote California tourism – we were told to be on our way. Patty was elated having all this good footage for our blog site, and maybe later, her movie. We didn’t know it yet, but that site was about to get lots of hits.