Meet Buster: My Big, Fat Tumor

ROLL
Morgan Strub (1973-2010)

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
–Jack Kerouac, On The Road

Tall and lanky, wearing blue jeans loose from wear, a white t-shirt, close-cropped hair and wire-rim glasses, Morgan looked like a cross between Jack Kerouac and a holy wayfaring monk. At least to me. He wasn’t religious, but he had that wildman energy that comes from the open West, the wisdom that comes from hard traveling, and the poetry that comes from beat coffeehouses, all mixed together. A romantic, gazing at stars above the Arizona desert; a realist, driven by details, staying up all night hunched over a computer, coding. He taught himself HTML, then PHP. “Ahh, PHP,” he said to me, a couple weeks before his death, “that’s possibility.” He had a deep voice—not a booming one, like most men with deep voices, but soft and soothing, like a campfire, when it turns inward to glowing coals.

At 16, Morgan took off from home. He hitchhiked from Phoenix and headed to New Mexico. It started from being a rebellious teen, Morgan explained, but eventually “The Road,” both the romantic idea of it and the brutal reality of it, had taken hold. The Road would call him back again, and again.

In the Summer of 2001, Morgan set out to make “a big, crazy circle” around the US, stopping to find work, visit friends and hang with homeless and other pedestrians. He arrived in New York City two days after 9-11. The next summer, age 29, Morgan hitched 2,500 miles from Austin to Portland. It was in the drizzly Portland winter that we met. I was also 29 and told him I’d been recently working at the local PBS station, but wanted to start a non-profit devoted to making documentaries and teaching others to tell their story. He listened to my excited ramblings, nodding, and punctuating the ideas with, “yeah,” and “exactly.” And then he told me his dream, to make a website that connected the rag-tag sub-culture of hitchhikers.

He said that any hitcher could go to a public library and get online, but that there was no central spot for them to connect. A place to leave a message, or get some advice, maybe post a story or some photos taken during a trip. He told me that he’d recently discovered a programming system called a “portal” which might allow him to accomplish this vision and that he’d launched a site the year before called “Digihitch.” [http://digihitch.com]

He said, since he was paying for server space already, he’d share a small corner of it, like a friend offers up a couch to crash. Over that spring, with the help of Morgan and a small group of volunteers, we launched a website for NW Documentary, filed for 501c3 status, and moved into the sixth-floor of the New Market Theater building. The loft office had once held a Dot-Com start-up. The place was torn up, gutted, wires ripped from walls. We spent weeks cleaning, vacuuming, and painting. Morgan, the tallest, perched on precarious wooden ladders. Sometimes, when I’m sitting at my desk, I look up at the giant heating ducts, and remember Morgan, meticulously dabbing the paint, cutting a clean line around the trim.

As easily as Morgan had come into our lives, he left. “I gotta roll,” he said. Portland’s summer had been lovely, but the desert native just wasn’t up for another rainy winter. It would be two years later, in 2005, when I saw him again. I’d flown down to Tucson to the Center for Creative Photography for a new film I was making called, “Eloquent Nude.” Morgan had settled down in his hometown of Phoenix and met the love of his life, Kasha. He said he’d come join us in Tucson. Of course, he hitched.

He was up for doing anything to help, and I asked him to do some photocopying. He spent two entire days standing beside a Xerox machine, diligently copying, page by page, Charis Wilson’s Guggenheim Journal. In the evenings, we drove out to the edge of the city, to the desert, where I shot the orange Sonoran sunset and we drank luke-warm beers and talked about life. After my week in Arizona was done, I dropped Morgan off at a truckstop at the edge of town. “This is good,” he said, and climbed out of the rental car with his backpack. I watched him wander off along the wayside. Goodbyes are hard.

I’d started my next film project last summer when Morgan called. He’d been diagnosed with Stage IV Neuroblastoma, a cancer, he explained, that was more common in children, but rare in adults. Cancer is an unkind battle, but all the way to the end, Morgan lived with grace, dignity, and humor. He’d gotten a guinea pig that he named “Sweet pea” and he nicknamed his tumor “Buster.” I was able to spend a week with Morgan, at his bedside, recording some of his stories.

At the end of life, one looks for summation. All told, he’d logged over 30,000 miles hitchhiking throughout the United States and Canada. Digihitch had 18,000 members, who had posted some 2,400 stories, and engaged in more than 10,000 discussion threads. But there is no counter for the number of conversations, or campfires, and friendships struck along the road.

“Hitchhiking is a way to change things up in life, to meet new people, see amazing places and get creative in resolving issues that may arise,” he’d written on Digihitch.

“Morgan was all about gathering people together to share life,” said his sister, Melissa. “He welcomed all with their differences and facilitated a safe place to find some commonality.”

“Hitchhiking,” said Morgan, “teaches you that time is relative, and that where you go next often depends on where you’re coming from. Roll with things. Be open to the people, places and new experiences along the way. Don’t worry. Laugh, smile, sing. It will all work out, once you stop fighting yourself. Let the road roll in your soul.”

He loved that word. Roll. Roll with things. Roll.

Those are the last words on his online bio he wrote for himself on Digihitch. A fitting epitaph, my friend.

Ian McCluskey
NW Documentary
115 SW Ash St, 620
Portland, OR 97204

nwdocumentary.org
eloquentnude.org