Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot

Now a Major Motion Picture

John Callahan

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781760636548
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

The memoir of legendary cartoonist John Callahan, now a major motion picture directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, and Rooney Mara.

Featuring more than 60 of Callahan's original cartoons

In 1972, at the age of twenty-one, John Callahan was involved in a car crash that made him a quadriplegic. A heavy drinker since the age of twelve (alcohol had played a role in his crash), the accident could have been the beginning of a downward spiral. Instead, it sparked a personal transformation. By 1978, Callahan had sworn off drinking for good and began to draw cartoons.

Over the next three decades, until his death in 2010, Callahan would become one of America's most beloved - and at times polarising - cartoonists. His work, which shows off a wacky and sometimes warped sense of humour, pokes fun at social conventions and pushes boundaries. One cartoon features Christ at the cross with a thought bubble reading 'T.G.I.F.' In another, three sheriffs on horseback approach an empty wheelchair in the desert. 'Don't worry,' one sheriff says to another, 'He won't get far on foot.'

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot recounts Callahan's life story, from the harrowing to the hilarious. Featuring more than sixty of Callahan's cartoons, it's a compelling look at art, addiction, disability and fame.

CHAPTER 1

On the last day I walked, I woke up without a hangover. I was still loaded from the previous night.

It was 11:00 A.M., a hot July 22, 1972. I had no idea where I’d been the night before. Past experience told me I had an hour or so of grace before withdrawal symptoms set in. So I was a man of leisure. First thing: light a cigarette. Everybody in the house was gone. I’d slept right through the taped mariachi music that Jesus Alvarado turned on at 5:30 every morning to pump himself up for another day of house-painting. Music from a Taco Bell in hell.

Alone, I could pad down the hall to the bathroom in the nude. I took a piss, making the sign of the cross in the toilet with the stream of urine, a compulsion I hated but couldn’t shake. Then I flushed and hopped into the shower.

Even there I had to smoke, holding the butt above the curtain with my left hand while I scrubbed the left side of my body with my right, then switching it over to my right hand so that I could use my left to scrub my right side. It takes imagination to support a three-pack-a-day habit.

Shaving, I checked myself out in the mirror. A big, six-foot, three-inch twenty-one-year-old Irishman, body hardened by work, ruggedly handsome if you discounted a little acne scarring, flaming red hair. Not bad. No handicap with the girls and a nice contrast to the creative artist, poet, and songwriter hidden somewhere within. But I felt the edge of nervousness. After all, what was I doing getting out of bed at almost noon? I was supposed to be job hunting, down here in Buena Park, California.

Drying off, I began to feel hungry, a sign that pangs of withdrawal were imminent. Stepping down the hall to the kitchen I dug a tortilla out of the fridge. No point in waiting for the oven. I just singed it on the stove element and spread on some peanut butter. Nutrition had no priority. The key thing was to get to the liquor store before the paranoia cranked up. I was beginning to feel very nervous just thinking about it.

So I went back to the bedroom and put on thongs and jeans and the Hawaiian shirt I had bought, which the Alvarado family had snickered at when I moved down here from The Dalles, Oregon, a month or so ago. The full heat of a Los Angeles summer day was leaking through Mrs. Alvarado’s spotless venetian blinds. I lit another cigarette. Outside, the Alvarado Doberman growled briefly at some passerby. In the L.A. suburbs attack dogs and eight-foot-high chain-link fences seemed to be standard household equipment.

Nearly noon. My nerves were telling me: get to the liquor store. I set out on the six-block hike, irritated at myself for not being able to enjoy the beauty of this day and the beauty of my life in general. The sky was brownish blue. The street seemed unnaturally wide and the palms that lined both sides of it had a grimy tinge. The white adobe-style tract houses, all with yucca plants, were pleasing enough to my eye, but I could sense the occupants peering out at me through closed blinds. The air was stifling. I felt certain the sky was going to cave in before I could get a drink.

Without breaking stride, for there was no time to waste, I tried to light a cigarette but burned my fingers instead. The shakes! My heart was starting to pound. I had to do something about it. All these staring people I couldn’t see knew all about me, my blackest secrets, my entire history: that I was a depraved alcoholic, the worst that ever lived. Two blocks to go.

The booze—I couldn’t let myself think about it. I took deep breaths. I tried to concentrate on something. I made myself stop and pet a cat. I prayed, “Jesus, let me make it to the store!” My hands were clammy, I was starting to sweat and my mouth was totally dry. I was so scared. What if I lost control, flipped out and started to scream? Each thought was worse than the one before it. I just kept forcing them back down again. Why did I have to be this way?

The store was at a major intersection. Whatsa-Vista Ave. and Three Millionth Street stretched away in that uncompromising L.A. perspective that implies, if not infinity, then at least the curvature of the earth. Uncounted liquor stores, Jack-In-The-Boxes, 7-Elevens, topless bars and rent-to-own furniture marts serviced hundreds of characterless “towns” just like Buena Park. A faint smog hung over everything, an atmosphere of boredom and menace.

I bought a half-pint of tequila and stayed to chat a while with the owners, just to show how in-control I was. In fact they would have to have been blind men not to notice that my hands were shaking when I handed them the money. They probably knew my whole story. They could tell how ashamed I was. So what? Liquor store clerks are probably sworn to silence, like priests.

Next door there was a topless bar, the Club Heaven. Sometimes I stopped in there for an eye-opener, but the dancers were floppy-breasted and middle-aged, and there were more hookers than clients.

Maybe I could get all the way back to the Alvarados’ without opening the half-pint and taking an embarrassing first hit in public. Besides, as I headed back down the block, my hands were shaking too violently to open the bottle. I’d drop it on the sidewalk. The neat little half-pint, so inconspicuous and sophisticated, was snug in my hip pocket.

One of the whores in front of the Club Heaven yelled after me, “Hey Whitey, wanna date?” A lowrider cruised slowly by, full of tough-looking kids. Mexican gangs shooting from cars supposedly killed somebody nearly every day and had shot a three-year-old girl not far from the Alvarados’ the week I moved in. She had wandered in front of a shotgun aimed at somebody else.

In the heat the air seemed to have no oxygen. This featureless city, a thousand suburbs stitched together, stretched out around me. I felt unconnected to any of it. I had traveled maybe half a block before I stopped, willed my hands to be fairly still, and twisted off the screwtop. I took a big hit and jammed the bottle back out of sight as fast as I could, hoping nobody had noticed. If only I could shoot the stuff into my arm and not have to wait for the booze to take effect. I was panicked that the stuff wouldn’t start to work on me before I went nuts. What had I gotten into? How could I be so scared?

But seconds later I didn’t have a problem. I could feel the warmth coming through my body. The noise was turning down in my mind. The faces were pulling away from all the windows. Walking back to the house, I did not feel quite normal yet, but the edge was off. I was hoping to get back quickly so I could take a second shot. Then I’d be steady enough to light a cigarette.

At the house the sound of a ghetto blaster playing “White Bird” by the hippie uplift group It’s a Beautiful Day announced that Teresa “Terri” Alvarado was back for lunch. I didn’t like Terri. The Alvarados’ teenage daughter was a self-confident little number who probably thought I was a bum mooching off the household, when in fact I was paying room and board and helping her father, Jesus, rebuild his boat.

I went into the bathroom and filled a glass with water. I pulled my hooch, took a snort, then took a little shot of water and another great big hit of tequila. Now I was feeling good enough to go out front and say hello to Terri and a cutey-pie Anglo friend of hers, who looked up at me with a big smile and said, “Hi. Hear you’re from Oregon. How you doing?” But I didn’t try to hit on her. It was time to hop into my Volkswagen and set out on the job hunt. Business first.

It was really hard being alone down here. Maybe a little detour to the beach would cheer me up. I felt guilty about driving while loaded but any second the Mexicans might whip around the corner and blow me out of the driver’s seat with a Gatling gun. I had to keep a little glow going.

I liked the idea of half-pints because I wouldn’t get stoned too fast, but this one was almost empty. So I stopped for a beer at a bar in Costa Mesa, where nobody really spoke any English, as it turned out. In fact, I recognized this bar. Jesus Alvarado had taken me there before, during one of our shark-fishing expeditions. Once a week he took a day off, we went out on a charter boat, and while a bunch of old men tried to catch sharks, I climbed up top and got drunk with the captain.

I loved lazily drifting on the California sea beneath the expensive mansion-strewn cliffs of Malibu. On the deck below me Alvarado’s pals got tangled up in about four million dollars’ worth of shark-fishing equipment. Their hats were full of hooks. I used to wonder why they didn’t just throw the hats into the water.

I finished the drive to the beach. The half-pint was gone but I bought another at a Payless Drug, stuck it in my jeans, and wandered out onto the sand to watch the people: hardbody girls in bikinis, guys straight out of soft-drink ads jogging with their dogs, fat old women with Scotch coolers full of picnic.

A girl in a bikini stopped for a chat. I fantasized she’d take me back to her bungalow, we’d have sophisticated L.A. sex, I’d move in, her love would turn me into a normal person forever. Then I froze up: She must smell the booze on my breath. She must know.

Alone again, I thought about how I got here. I came down to L.A. with Jesus’ brother Rico, a drinking buddy up in The Dalles. Rico was a minor pool hustler and a major ladies’ man, using the Bible as his main instrument. Not that he could read it. He had simply memorized some key passages. But Rico divined that the Word of God had a calming effect on women. So he became a born-again dyslexic.

Anyone could see I was in trouble and I resented having it pointed out.

He decided that we should go visit his brother and family, who were on vacation at Lake Havasu, Arizona. Then we would go on to L.A. His license had been revoked for drunken driving, and I’d lost mine too, but it somehow fell to me to drive Rico’s ancient Triumph sports car while he preached nonstop.

“Remember what the Lord said, Johnny . . .”

“Don’t give me the Lord bullshit, Rico.”

At virtually every gas station Rico leaped out to try his scriptural wiles on the local talent. Fortunately he was such a glaring, transparent phony (he even had a crucifix tattooed on his right hand) that few fell for his cornball. Otherwise we might never have reached L.A.

“Have you heard about Jesus Christ?”

“Get the fuck out of here, Spic!” And we were back on the highway.

We drove down 101 through the redwoods. I remember how magnificent they were and I remember thinking, God, I wish I could enjoy this sober. Then we crossed the mountains and drove down through the Nevada desert, through Las Vegas, where we did not gamble but drank; and across Death Valley with the top down, where we did not perish of thirst, to Lake Havasu, where London Bridge, imported by a gang of insane developers, shimmered improbably in the 110-degree heat. It looked like the set for a Mad Max movie. Jesus, a relentless boater, ran his outboard nonstop on the lake. The rest of us just stayed up to our chins in it, the only way to survive.

I hit it off with Jesus, so it was decided that I would live with the family for a few months while Rico wandered back up to Oregon to spread the Good News. I thought, I’m going to be really proud; a small-town guy moves to the big city and makes it. So far so good. Only a month in town and already I was drunk on the beach at lunchtime.

I got back in the VW. I bought a six-pack and got a little cardboard sandwich from a Jack-In-The-Box. I drove back along straight, broad, anonymous streets through the car lots, liquor stores, antique shoppes and lube-job places of Bellflower, Anaheim, Orange, Buena Park. Home after Home Sweet Home for the employees of McDonnell Douglas, Hughes, Lockheed, Northrup, and other southern California defense industries where, in 1972, business was great.

It must have been 3:00 or 4:00 P.M. when I got back to the Alvarados’, because Jesus was home. He was chatting out in the driveway with a man in a blue pantsuit sitting in an electric wheelchair. I thought, God, now I’m going to have to meet this guy. I’d noticed him around a lot. Jesus spotted me hurrying across the lawn. “Hey, Callahan, come over and meet Bill!”

My small-town experience was limited concerning disabled people. When I was a preschooler a man stopped in the courtyard of the apartment complex where we lived and sat under a willow tree. He played spoons on his wooden legs until our parents hustled us away from him.

Bill was paunchy and red-faced. I felt nervous and slightly hostile, thinking, Why does he have to wear a leisure suit? I shook hands, and Jesus said, “Look at this!”

Jesus handed me the guy’s ballpoint. It was a special pen. If you held it up to the light and rotated the end like a kaleidoscope, you saw a 3-D picture of a guy with an enormous hard-on getting a blo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author