PROLOGUE

It was the fall of 1974 that I set out on the great adventure of my youth.  I was just turning 21 and was working in a ski resort in the Sierras.  One morning my buddy and I were on our way to breakfast, discussing my latest dilemma.  The couple that I had been renting the top floor of their A frame had given me 30 days notice (could have had something to do with my habit of passing out with the music blasting at 2AM, I don’t know).  Rentals were tight in the village and my maintenance job, though steady work, didn’t pay that well.  As we approached the diner I scanned the bulletin board looking for rentals.  That’s when I noticed a note on a 3×5 card pinned to the bulletin board.  It read:

 

Driving to the East Coast and back in October.  Looking for a third to share the trip.  Contact Karen or Jessi in the Diner.

 

Karen and Jessi were both working that morning, and over breakfast the subject of their road trip was topic A.  They were getting laid off for a month and so were driving to New York, then down the eastern seaboard and back the southern route.  The plan was to camp and stay with family and friends along the way.  They were looking for someone to share the driving and the expenses.  This sounded too good to pass up, so I offered to go along.  They figured with the cost of gas, at 50 cents a gallon, and meals, etc. it would cost about $300 each, or about what a month’s rent would cost me.  It was a plus that I was handy with cars, also that I came across as a guy who could handle it if things got weird.   Karen had this big old Buick that would sleep three…we took turns riding the hump on the back seat floor…with a huge trunk for our gear. The plan was we would leave the middle of the next week so I set about gearing up for the vast unknown ahead, thoughts of Jack Kerouac floating through my mind.

 

The Great Basin

Getting a mid-morning start we headed up over Ebbetts Pass and down into Markleeville to cash our last paychecks and buy traveler’s checks.  From there north toward Reno and Interstate 80, the mainline to the east coast.  At Reno we turned east and put the pedal down.  As we had gotten a late start that day, the open stretches of Nevada highway were the perfect place to make up time.  Nixon on his way out the door had set the national speed limit at 55mph but in Nevada the fine was $15 for “Failure to Conserve Fuel”, which tells you how seriously they took the new national mandate.  Driving in shifts we found we could cover a lot of road.  So it was pedal to the metal across the vast expanse of the American outback.

The Great Basin, as the area is known, is an ancient seabed that now had become a high plateau stretching between the Sierras and the Rockies.  It is mostly high desert interspersed with small mountain ranges until you hit the salt flats of Utah.  The interstate is dotted along the way with small towns which support the region’s three main industries, namely mining, gambling, and prostitution.

This seems like a good point to introduce my fellow travelers.  Karen was the de facto leader of the expedition, owing to it was her car.  Karen had been raised down in the valley.  She was a child of the middle class, the girl next door.  She had just graduated college with a degree in French and was embarking on a post-grad spree before settling down to a career and presumably family.  Jessi had come up from Santa Cruz with her boyfriend to get back to nature.  She had a degree in Ecology and it was something that she cared very deeply about, as she also did for her Jewish heritage.  She was the girl next door…if you lived in Berkeley.

Shortly after sundown we hit one of those desert thunderstorms where the road ahead seems to disappear beneath a waterfall.  Nothing to do but slow down and let it pass which happened almost as quickly as it came on us.  Stopped for dinner in Elko, where I did my first legal gambling. The multitude of tv screens in the casino were showing the A’s playing the Dodgers in the World Series.  Then we headed across the state line and on to the salt flats, which gave off and eerie glow under the waning moon.  We drove on for a couple more hours until we reached the Salt Lake.  Finding a campground in the Wasatch mountains above the lake we settled in for our first night on the road.

 

Land of the Dinosaurs

Dawn broke on a glorious autumn day.  The vibrant fall colors of the maples and the aspens seemed to be reflected in the sunrise which in turn were reflected in the lake below.  There was a slight chill in the air which was vanquished by the rising sun.  We rose stiff and a bit tired and set about making breakfast on Jessi’s one burner camp stove. Priority of course was coffee, that caffeine infused supplement that our bloodstreams required to sustain us over the long miles ahead.  We ate at a leisurely pace and then packed up and hit the road.

East of Salt Lake City we cut south off of I-80 on state 191 headed toward Denver. The two-lane blacktop wound through the high desert, passing through small towns that were all centered on a small Mormon temple, each one identical with there distinctive central spire.  Turning east on state route 40 we headed for the Colorado border.  Around noon we hit Jensen, Utah where we saw a sign for the road leading to Dinosaur National Monument and decided that would be a good place to stop for lunch.  So we followed the road north along the Green River up to the visitor center, which we set out to explore after a quick lunch in the parking lot.

The visitors center is located in an old quarry and features exhibits relaying the geologic history of the area from it’s time as a primordial swamp.  The highlight of the exhibits is a glassed-in observation deck where you can watch workers on scaffolding expose fossils in the quarry wall.  They worked slowly and precisely, as if they were sculpting these giant beasts in the face of the rock.

The sun was getting low when we left so we decided to grab some dinner and call it a night.  We found a wide spot in the bank along the Green River and rolled out our bed rolls, vowing to make Denver the next day.

 

The Road to Denver

I awoke to a crackling sound.  As I moved I realized that the sound was coming from above.  I poked my head out of my sleeping bag to discover a thin sheet of ice blanketing the river bank.  Overnight a mist had settled on the bank and then frozen.  Karen and Jessi were crawling out of their bags and seemed visibly cold and uncomfortable.

I discovered the reason for this was technology.  While my old polypropylene bag had kept me warm and dry, they had both opted for new high-tech down bags.  The new bags, which were filled with goose down were much less bulky than the old cotton filled bags.  However the goose down needed to “breath” and to accommodate this required that the outer liner be a permeable fabric and thus not waterproof.  So as the mist settled it settled into the bag and then froze, creating a cocoon of ice.

A dose of hot coffee cured the shivers and soon we were on the road again.  We headed southeast, climbing steadily through twisting canyons, until we hit I-70, the road to Denver.  Karen said she had a friend in Denver she wanted to visit who would put us up for the night so we pushed hard up the mountain over Loveland Pass and across the Great Divide.  Rolling down the eastern slope we stopped for lunch in Idaho Springs.  After lunch we decided to stretch our legs by exploring an old gold mine on the edge of town.

The Argo mine was a remnant of the Colorado gold rush of the late 1800’s.  The Argo was at one time the largest gold processing plant in the world and featured a tunnel that ran four and a half miles through the mountain and connected with other mines by rail.  Once the gold was gone the mine fell into neglect until the locals restored it as a tourist attraction.  It was here that the first tension on the trip surfaced.  As we were wandering through the site Jessi took me aside and voiced concerns that Karen was too focused on making time and that Jessi didn’t want to spend the trip on the interstate.  Jessi tended to be on the passive side and seemed somewhat intimidated by Karen, who was the more assertive of the group.  Jessi asked me to intercede with Karen and I said that I would.  I don’t know if Karen overheard our conversation but her mood seemed to change and she seemed to relax a bit.

Back on the road we soon came upon the turnoff for Lookout Mountain and decided to take the side trip.  At the top of Lookout Mountain is a museum marking Buffalo Bill’s grave site, which was dedicated to the life of the frontiersman and showman as well as other artifacts of the old west.  As the name suggests, Lookout Mountain also features impressive vistas, especially toward the east.  The image of Colorado is of a rugged mountainous landscape but eastern Colorado is as flat as Kansas, which you can probably see from where we stood on a clear day.

From there we made our way down to Denver and Karen’s friend’s house.  Karen’s friend lived in the Cherry Creek district, the oldest part of Denver and the epicenter of the Colorado gold rush.  Much like in San Francisco, the Colorado gold rush had spurred instant wealth and Cherry Creek featured blocks of elegant Victorians.  Karen’s friend was someone she knew from college and over the course of the evening it became apparent that they were more than just friends.  So it was no surprise that after dinner Karen disappeared upstairs into his room while Jessi and I crashed on the living room floor.

 

The Black Hills

Got a late start out of Denver due to some much needed laundry getting done and it was well past noon when we got back on the road.  The consensus was there was nothing of interest due east so we decided to head north toward the Black Hills country of South Dakota.  I had been reading “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”, so I had a great interest in seeing those lands.  Driving north along the eastern slope of the Rockies we arrived sometime after dark at Custer State Park where we made camp for the night.  After a quick supper we rolled out our bags under a sky full of stars and the thin sliver of a waning crescent moon.

We woke to bright sunshine and an incessant chirping.  It seemed that in the darkness we had pitched our camp in the middle of a prairie dog colony.  All around us they would pop up, chatter at each other…or possibly us…and then drop back underground.  And so we rose to begin what turned into a glorious autumn day.  After breakfast we decided to do some sight seeing and take in some of the local attractions.

Top of the list was Mt. Rushmore, a short drive to the north, so after breakfast we headed up past herds of thoroughly disinterested buffalo.  As we approached the entrance the iconic heads came into view nestled into the rock face of the mountain.  Up close from the visitor center it is hard not to be impressed by the scale of the edifice, the giant heads of dead presidents sculpted with dynamite from the granite cliff.

The rest of the day we spent on cave tours.  The Black Hills are riddled with some of the longest and most complex cave systems on the planet.  We visited two of the most prominent ones; Wind Cave, which is known for it’s unique cave formations, and Jewel Cave, whose calcite crystals sparkle like jewels when exposed to light.

It was mid-afternoon when we got back on the road.  We hit I-90 at Rapid city and headed east across the northern plains.  Sometime after dark we passed through Mitchell, home of “The World’s Only Corn Palace”, it’s ornate spires emblazoned in the night sky.  East of Sioux Falls we crossed into Minnesota and sometime around midnight we pulled into a campground outside of Mankato and made settled in for the night.

 

The Great Lakes

We rose to another beautiful autumn day.  The spectacular colors of the upper Midwest were beginning to fall from the trees, creating a golden carpet throughout the forest.  We drove into St. Paul, stopping at the home of friends of Karen’s parents, whom had grown up in Minnesota.  They were a very warm and charming couple who treated us to classic Midwestern hospitality, including Sunday dinner with all the trimmings.  It was late in the afternoon we drove up to Stillwater, where Karen’s dad had grown up.  The old farmhouse had been long deserted, a symbol of the migration from the Midwest that had followed World War II.  From there we crossed the Mississippi and head east toward the Great Lakes, stopping for the night at a roadside rest just west of Milwaukee.

Slept late the next morning and took our time getting around.  Life on the road was starting to get to us and fatigue was setting in so it was around noon when we hit Milwaukee.  We decided among us that no trip to Milwaukee would be complete without a brewery tour.  So we headed into the Miller brewery.  The tour was fairly standard…the kind where a budding sales rep tries to make giant stainless vats sound interesting.  At the end the tour we were led to a tasting room and served pitchers of draft in the different styles that Miller was featuring at the time.  On the table there were postcards advertising the brewery that could be sent postage free anywhere in the country.  We discovered that as long as we were filling out post cards they kept bringing pitchers so pretty soon we were trading addresses with the people at the next table.  Messages like, “Hi, you don’t know me but we’re having a great time”.

Staggering out of the brewery we decided a long lunch was in order so we didn’t make Chicago until mid-afternoon.  After enduring rush hour traffic and seemingly endless construction delays we finally crossed into Indiana.  Looking to avoid the toll roads we hit the back roads and rolled through rural woods and farm lands of northern Indiana and Ohio before crashing for the night in a parking lot in Kent.

The next morning we all felt in need of a shower, so we snuck into the dorms at Kent State.  Pulling into the college we looked across the green that had been the site of the infamous massacre a few years before.  Clean and refreshed we hit I-80 through Pennsylvania with the goal of making New York by night fall.

 

New York City

My first impression of New York was literally quite striking.  We planned to stay with Jessi’s aunt and uncle, the Isaacsons, who lived in Brooklyn just off Flatbush Avenue.  We pulled into a parking space on Flatbush looking for a pay phone to let them know we had arrived and get directions to their house.  As I am walking Jessi to the phone I noticed out of the corner of my eye a teenage male across the street talking to three very large plain clothes police officers.  As I focused on the group suddenly the kid smacks one of the cops while shouting, “Now take me to jail!”  The officers then obliged, stuffing the young tough in the back of an unmarked car for what looked like a very uncomfortable ride down to the precinct.

Getting directions we finally arrived at the Isaacson’s, our arrival celebrated in true Brooklyn style by sending their son down to the corner to purchase what would be my very first bagel.  See, back in the age of pay phones food was much more regional.  You couldn’t find a taco in Brooklyn to save your life…but bagels, they’ve got bagels.  The Isaacsons were a traditional non-practicing Jewish family with a teenage daughter and two adolescent sons. They had been born and raised in that same neighborhood for generations…in fact Mira, the matriarch of the family, firmly believed that the rest of the country was a dangerous outland and that you left Brooklyn at your own peril.   I was to sleep in the spare room in the basement so I headed down the stairs, inadvertently touching the doorknob of the door which connected the two rowhouses then releasing it immediately upon hearing the unmistakable sound of a round being chambered on the other side of the door.

Slept late the next day.  Took the subway to the Upper East side of Manhattan around Central Park.  Near the midway point of the park on 5^th Avenue is the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The Met was having a huge Rafael exhibit, so we spent a couple of hours immersed in the works of the great renaissance master.  Strolling through Central Park, we made our way south along 5^th Avenue to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, that massive gothic edifice of American Catholicism.  Entering through the giant bronze doors we stepped into the church.  Inside was a myriad of stone columns and arches stretching high above us. At the rear stood the high altar with beneath a bronze canopy.  Exiting the cathedral we crossed the street to Rockefeller Center.  A quick note about crossing the street in New York.  One of the first things I learned in the city was that pedestrians there have a herd mentality.  It doesn’t matter what the light says…you don’t step off the curb until there are enough of you that there is a reasonable chance that some of you will survive.  We wandered about the plaza and past Radio City Music Hall, where the Jefferson Starship was playing, before catching the subway back to Brooklyn.

Slept late again the next day, still feeling the wear of the road.  Finally got moving mid- afternoon, headed for Times Square.  Times Square is the epicenter of the city and gateway to the Theater District.  Sadly it’s former glamour had faded at this time and it had fallen into despair.  It had become a venue for porno theaters and trashy souvenir shops.  On the north end of the square we came upon a ticket booth, where we bought tickets for “Don’t Bother me, I Can’t Cope” at the Edison Theater.  We had a couple of hours before the show so we continued up Broadway.  Broadway, as with much of midtown, was in decline in those years. It was the post Rogers and Hammerstein, pre Andrew Lloyd Webber period and many of the theaters had closed or had been converted to movie houses.  Most of those that were still open were running a fare of reruns of old hits…such as “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Gypsy”…or low budget productions of newer works.  We past Jack Dempsey’s restaurant, which had just closed after almost 40 years because of a rent dispute.  On a side street found a wonderful little Spanish restaurant where I was served the best Paella a la Valenciana I have ever had in my life.  After dinner we headed over to the theater, which was located in the Hotel Edison on 47^th street.  The show was one of the newer style musicals which featured a presentational style where the actors expounded on the vagaries of the modern world…sort of a fore runner of shows like “Rent”.  “Cope” had the previous years had received two Tony nominations for the writer and a win for the director, but it was nearing the end of it’s run and that seemed reflected in the energy level of the cast.  Afterward we headed back to the subway, where at the midnight hour the world beneath Gotham seemed to take on a much more eerie vibe.

The next day there was a bit of political dissension among us.   Karen and I had planned to head back downtown and wanted to visit the United Nations.  However recently it had been announced that PLO leader Yasser Arafat was going to speak before the General Assembly in November and Jessi, who had spent time in Israel, was boycotting the U.N.  So Karen and I headed out, catching the subway to Grand Central Station.  From there we walked down 42^nd St.  to the U.N. building on the shores of the East River.  It was a slow news day at the U.N.  We took in a couple of hearings, one on international cooperation in regards to space exploration and one on a dispute between two African countries over  sharing hydroelectric power from a dam that bordered their two countries.  We discovered that each seat in the gallery had headphones that would translate the discussion into several languages and so as we listened we scrolled through various languages.  Walked back to Grand Central Station where we took a bus to Times Square.  The schedule said it took a couple of minutes, which factoring New York traffic came to more like a couple of minutes per block.  From there we took the subway over to Lincoln Center over on the west side.  The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a modern public complex containing a main theater, the opera house, the philharmonic hall, the ballet, several smaller theaters devoted to music and both live theater and film and the Julliard School.

Saturday Karen drove up to Boston to visit a friend, so Jessi and I struck out for Greenwich Village.  The Village seemed like a different world, much more colorful and lively than the general grayness that permeated the rest of the city.  The birthplace of the beat generation had taken on a tone of commercialism but had retain much of it’s freaky character.  Strolling through Christopher Park we past the Stonewall Inn, site of the infamous “Stonewall riots” that had taken place 5 years earlier and had been the catalyst for the gay rights movement.  A couple of blocks down Waverly Place we came to Washington Square Park.  There was a flea market in the park that day and so browsed among the items for sale and I bought a couple of books.  Brought a falafel from a street vendor and had lunch by the central fountain near the massive arch at the entrance to the park.  It was a lovely afternoon and everywhere in the park musicians busked, a tradition that went back to when the area was a mecca for folk musicians in the late fifties/early sixties and disciples of Woody Guthrie such as Ramblin Jack Elliot and Bob Dylan would meet and trade songs.  Wandered the neighborhood a bit before heading back.

Sunday was a quiet day.  We were leaving the next day so much of the day was spent resting and packing the car.  Watched the Jet’s game and afterwards played street football with the two sons and some neighbor kids.  Later that night had my mind blown as I watched my first ever episode of  “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” before turning in for the night.

 

Rolling down the Eastern Seaboard

Made it out of Brooklyn early.  Across the Verrazano Narrows and into New Jersey with Lady Liberty waving goodbye in the distance.  Headed for Lansdale  PA by way of Morristown NJ.  As we drove inland the fall colors were resplendent among the mix of farms and woodlands.  Morristown played a key strategic role in the Revolutionary War and there is a National Historical Park there.

From there we drove down into Pennsylvania to Lansdale, where we were going to stay with one of Jessi’s cousins and his family who lived on an apple farm outside of town.  We had a very pleasant visit and when we left the next morning they gave us a jug of home pressed apple juice from their orchard.

The Revolutionary War history tour continued as we drove from there over to Valley Forge, famous as George Washington’s winter encampment of 1777.  We wandered about the park like setting with it’s commemorating arch, taking in the history before heading into Philadelphia.  There we toured Independence Hall and viewed the Liberty Bell before rolling down the eastern seaboard toward D.C.  It was late in the day as we pushed down the I-95 corridor.  Somewhere between Wilmington and Baltimore night fell and the ambient light of the urban sprawl turned the sky a dirty brown over Chesapeake Bay.

Finally arriving in D.C. we stopped at American University where Karen had a friend, Alice, that she wanted to visit.  After dinner Alice took us over to a local hangout where after a couple of beers the girls tried in vain to teach this poor slow footed white boy “The Hustle”.  Upon giving up we headed back over to the dorms where the girls spent the night while I slept in the car.

In the morning Karen announced that she wanted to spend a few days in D.C. with Alice.  At this point we all felt like we could use a break from each other so we decided to split up and meet up later down the road.  Jessi had friends who lived outside of Burnsville in western North Carolina that she was wanting to spend time with so we drove her to Union Station to catch the early morning train with plans to all meet up there in a few days.  On the way back we took a driving tour of the Capitol area, past the Supreme Court and the Capitol, along the National Mall past the Washington Monument and the White House to the Lincoln Memorial.

Back at the University Karen and Alice wanted to go shopping, so I set out on a walking tour down Massachusetts Avenue along Embassy.  I remembered that I had a couple of buddies with the 82^nd Airborne stationed at Fort Bragg NC so decided I would headed down for a visit.  So after dinner I caught the Greyhound to Fayetteville.  We made a stopover in Richmond and got into Fayetteville about 1:00 in the morning.  I walked for what seemed like miles before rolling out my bag in an empty field and crashing for the night.

 

Fort Bragg

Woke at dawn.  Foggy and cold.  Grabbed a quick bite and headed back to the Greyhound station where I found out they didn’t have a bus to Ft. Bragg and so walked over to the Trailways station and caught the local.  This part of the trip being a spur of the moment decision I hadn’t had a chance to tell the guys I was coming, so the first challenge was to find a couple of G.I.’s in an army base full of them.  So when I got to the base I did what usually do when needing direction…find a cab driver.

The cabbie drove me over to the camp locator office where I got addresses for my two buddies, Charlie and Danny.  The cabbie didn’t think Danny’s sounded right so we headed over to Charlie’s barracks.  Turned out he has just gone out into the field and wouldn’t be back until late afternoon.  Tried to find Danny but discovered the unit number I had gotten didn’t exist.

Having no success I decided to chill and found a spot to read until Charlie got back.  In today’s post 911 world it seems strange looking back that some hippy kid could wander around an army base with his backpack without anyone taking notice.  I’ll admit it seemed a bit strange at the time but that’s the way things were back then.  The base itself looked like you would think it would, rows of nondescript wooden buildings and soldiers driving around in jeeps.

Finally got a hold of Charley and he showed up with some of his buddies.  Charlie was a friend that I had met through friends from college that he had gone to high school with.  Charlie was a gung ho kind of guy.  Hard working, hard playing…a little crazy, but then you’d have to be a little crazy to jump out of a plane into enemy fire.

We drove around off base for a while getting loaded before heading back to the barracks.  We visited there for most of the evening then went out to the obstacle course for a smoke.  I hadn’t smoked anything since I left California, so it had something of a tranquilizing effect.  Charlie took me by the motor pool to show me a jeep that had been dropped out of an airplane and it’s ‘chute had failed to open, reducing it in height noticeably.  Then he and his buddies dropped me off at a base park where I rolled out my bag for the night.

Woke again before dawn but stayed in bed for a long time.  A dog had been barking all night and so I started the day tired and grouchy.  As I lay there staring at the sky transports began flying overhead, no doubt heading for a drop zone.  After a while I rolled up my bag and went out to the side of the road to wait for Charlie.  The plan was that Charlie was going to pick me up but apparently something came up and he didn’t show.

Around noon some off-duty soldiers showed up started setting up a picnic, so I took off walking in the direction, I thought, towards Charlie’s barracks.  After walking for a while it came to me that I had no idea exactly where his barracks were.  Exhausted, I sat down by the edge of the road trying to figure out what to do.  After a while a G.I. came by who new where I should be and drove me over to it.  I found Charley in the barracks and we called Danny, who came right over.

No sooner had Danny shown up that Charley got word that the sergeant wanted to see him.   Turned out Sarge had an extra duty assignment for Charlie that night, so Danny and I headed out on our own.  Danny had a buddy in Fayetteville so we went into town to see him.  I knew Danny through the same friends from college.  Danny came off as more laid back than Charlie…just as intense but better at keeping the crazy under control.  All in all a good solid dude.

We hung out at Danny’s friend’s apartment most of the evening, watching tv and drinking wine and smoking.  I learned from Danny that his cousin Mark, who was an old high school friend of mine, was also stationed there.  We set out for the base to try to find him but had no luck that late on a Friday night.   I realized I hadn’t eaten in a while so I had Danny buy me a burger at the px, then we drove back to the park where I had spent the previous night.  I was leaving the next day so we said our goodbyes and I rolled out my bag for the night.

Woke early again but stayed in the sack for a while.  Danny had given me direction’s to Mark’s barracks so I walked over, figuring to at least say hello before I headed out.  When I got there Mark wasn’t there, but the sergeant had an idea where he was so he rousted a guy to drive me out to a single wide somewhere out in the woods off base. Mark wasn’t there when I got there but the young woman at the trailer told me that he and some other guys had gone to town to sell blood to buy a lid and would be back soon so I sat down to wait.

Soon enough they returned and to say Mark was surprised to see me would be a severe understatement.  Mark was a couple of years younger and we had hung out in the same loose knit crowd in high school.  Mark had been rather shy as I remembered him, but the army had toughened him some and he seemed very comfortable with his band of brothers.  We sat around watching wrestling, smoking and catching up for most of the day.

Late in the afternoon I remembered that I was supposed to meet up with my ride the next morning on the other side of the state.  Throwing on my backpack I said my goodbyes and struck out for Burnsville.

 

The Road to Burnsville

I was walking down a back country dirt road headed toward the highway when I guy stopped and offered me a ride.  He said that he didn’t usually pick people up, but the guy who owned that piece of woods was known to shoot at people after dark.  With that I accepted his kind offer and got in.  He drove me out to the highway, where I hitched a ride to Greensboro.

At Greensboro no sooner had I walked down the on ramp than a white pick-up sped past, then slammed on the brakes and back up the on ramp toward me.  Opening the passenger door they offered me a ride and said they were going all the way to Knoxville in Tennessee.  The occupants were a couple of guys who looked to be in their mid to late twenties.  The driver was a wiry little guy with a crew cut and a motor mouth, the passenger was a heavy set long hair who didn’t talk much.  We’ll call them Beavis and Cooter.  There was a partial sixpack on the seat between them and no real mystery where the rest had gone.  But the sun was starting to fade and the offer of a ride all the way across the state was too good to pass up, so I climbed in.

We had been careening down I-40 at a high rate of speed for a couple of minutes when Beavis looked over at me and said, “Of course you know this truck is stolen”.  Turned out it wasn’t stolen, just borrowed from his dad without dad’s permission…or knowledge for that matter.  They were on their way to visit Cooter’s ex in Knoxville to continue a party they apparently had started some hours earlier.

We stopped in Winston-Salem where I bought them some beer and we changed drivers.  The sun set and we drove on through the night.  By the time we reached Statesville Beavis, who was sitting in the middle, had passed out and spilled his beer in my lap.  It was starting to get late when Cooter pulled onto the shoulder and informed me that I could do what I wanted but that he had to crash.

So sitting there in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night I reviewed my options.  Option one was I could sit there until the cops showed up.  Option two was I could get out and try to hitch another ride, which seemed unlikely and probably illegal.  Option three was I could drive.  “Better to keep moving”, I told myself as I slipped into the driver’s seat and dropped it into gear.  And so it was that this hippie kid from California ended up driving across North Carolina in the middle of the night in a “borrowed” truck reeking of beer.

St. Stupid, the patron saint of fools, smiled on me that night and we made into Asheville without incident, where I bid goodbye to my redneck friends and look for a ride up the hill to Burnsville.  My luck held again as there was a VW van full of heads at the gas station in Asheville when we pulled in.  I climbed in the back and they gave me a ride up to Weaverville, which was halfway up the mountain.  They dropped me off on the edge of town, giving me a couple of joints for the road.

Got a ride up to Mars Hill a few miles up the road, where I waited for some time for another one.  It had gotten really cold and I put on my dayglo orange down jacket with a mismatched tan hood.  Fatigue was setting in and my thoughts were getting fuzzy.  Finally a VW bug pulled up and two guys got out and approached me.  I asked how far they were going and seeming startled they replied that they were only going a mile up the road and that they had only stopped because they thought I was a hallucination.  They said they were going down by the bridge to get high and invited me to join them.  I wasn’t looking to get high but I hadn’t seen another car for hours and my guess was that the bug had a functioning heater so I tagged along.

We drove down an old road that led to a creek below a bridge.  As we smoked we talked a bit about my situation.  One of the guys felt like the best thing would be to find a place to sleep for the night and continue in the morning.  He knew of a college dorm nearby where he thought I could crash.  We drove over to the dorms but the buildings were dark.  He tried a door handle but it was locked, so he started to kick the door in.  Having already pushed my luck that night I quickly stopped him, and they dropped me back off where they picked me up.

I stood there in the shivering cold for hours before getting a ride with a bluegrass musician who was heading through Burnsville on his way home from a gig.  He had a quart of plum wine on the seat between us and a pint of white lightning under the seat.  A couple of pulls and I warmed right up to the point where it felt like my insides were on fire.  Finally got into Burnsville about 3:30am.  Everything was closed so I stumbled along in a semi-stupor until I came upon what looked like a park so I rolled my bag out on the lawn and passed out.

 

Burnsville

Woke at dawn and peeked out of the bag to look around.  It turned out that the “park” where I was sleeping was in fact the town square.  Quickly rolled up my gear and headed down the street to the pay phone to get a hold of Jessi.  Burnsville in the mid-seventies had that Mayberry kind of feel to it.  You half expected to see Andy and Barney hanging around the barber shop.

As I picked up the receiver to call Jessi I glanced through the café wind and noticed the waitress resetting the big clock on the wall.  It was then that I realized that the time had changed over night and instead of 8:00 it was an hour earlier.  Feeling like that was too early to call on a Sunday morning I staggered into the café and sat down to a plate of grits and eggs with a generous helping of medicinal coffee.

Finally got a hold of Jessi and she and her friend Dan came down to pick me up.  Dan was a back-to-nature Jesus freak and he and his family lived on a small farm outside of town.  Their cabin, which they rented for $25/mo., was tucked back into a hollow among the woods, the fall colors of the leaves contrasting with the bluish hue of the mountains.  While it did have electricity it lacked most other modern comforts.  It featured an outhouse and a wood stove for heat and the water came from a spring on the property.  They raised cows and chickens which supplied fresh milk and eggs.  Dan drove an old Willy’s pick-up and gave me a piece of advice that years later I would rue ignoring.  The advice being that if you’re going to own a Willy’s you need to own two…one to drive and one for parts.

It turned out that Karen had decided to spend an extra day in D.C. and so wouldn’t be in until that night.  So what had been planned as a travel day turned into a lazy Sunday afternoon in the Smoky Mountains.  Most of the day was spent recovering from the previous night’s adventure.  Dan was learning to hunt with a bow and so we spent a portion of the afternoon on archery practice.  Later he and I sat at the kitchen table and discussed theology for quite a while, really getting deep into the subject.  Jessi cooked dinner and soon afterward I fell asleep in front of the tv.

 

Burnsville to Idabel

Karen had arrived during the night and so in the morning we got ready to leave.  Dan had asked for a ride to Knoxville so we hit I-40 and rolled into Tennessee.  After dropping Dan off we put the foot to the floor and hit the fast lane and headed west.  We had lost a day so we needed to make up some time.  We made Nashville about lunchtime and grabbed a quick bite before heading for Memphis.  Got to Memphis at dusk, crossing the Mississippi into Arkansas.  It was raining when we pulled into a rest area near the river and bedded down in the car for the night.

The rain had stopped by morning.  We spent some time by the river before getting back on the road.  We were headed for Karen’s brother’s house in Idabel in southeast Oklahoma.  About noon we pulled into Little Rock looking for someplace to eat.  Parking downtown we strolled into a nearby diner.  Once inside the world paused for a second, for from the expressions of the other patrons and staff we were not only the only white people in the diner…it seemed possible that we were the only white people who had ever been in that diner.  After a startled moment we sat down and ordered…I had the fried chicken.  The food was good and we tipped well.

Just west of Little Rock is the town of Hot Springs, Arkansas, home to Hot Springs National Park.  After twenty days on the road a soak sounded really good so we spent a couple of hours in one of the historic bath houses.  As we headed west the flatlands gave way to green rolling hills.  Late in the afternoon we crossed into Oklahoma and soon after arrived at Karen’s brother Tim’s house.

Tim and his wife Jill had transplanted from California to a tract house on the outskirts of Idabel, which is nestled in the Red River Valley on the Texas/Oklahoma border.  Idabel was your typical mid-American small town.  It consisted of an older, somewhat quaint, downtown with newer structures radiating out from the center.  It was cattle country and most of the commerce catered to ranchers.  It was also at that time fairly homogenous.  I remember Jessi asking Jill if there was any prejudice against Jews in the area.  “Oh no,” Jill scoffed, “around here we’re prejudiced against the Catholics.”

It rained heavily overnight and awoke to one of those Midwest thunder storms that feel like the house is being shelled.  Must have dumped a foot of rain overnight it seemed.  After the rain we toured the local area, driving up to Broken Bow Reservoir.  The surrounding area is known as Choctaw Country, as it was the part of the territory to which the Choctaw nation was relocated to from their ancestral lands in the Southeast during the Trail of Tears in the 1830s.  The green rolling hills reminded me of the foothills back home.  The rest of the day was quiet and uneventful as we returned to the house.  Karen took a nap and didn’t wake until late afternoon so it was decided we would stay another night.

 

Route 66

It was raining hard when we left.  We crossed the Red River and turned west, following the river across the north Texas plains.  Soon the rain stopped and turned to an oppressive heat.  We pushed hard across the flatlands, the landscape growing more barren the further we went.  The only thing that seemed to be stirring were horseflies the size of bumble bees.

At a rest stop west of Wichita Falls we discovered an unexpected treat.  As we were rooting through the trunk we found the jug of apple juice that we had been given by Jessi’s cousin in Pennsylvania.  Over the days in the heat of the trunk the juice had fermented quite nicely and we had by luck caught it at exactly the right time, providing a soothing effect to the seemingly endless monotony that is the Texas panhandle.

We made Amarillo at sundown and caught I-40 west. In the old days this stretch of highway was the fabled Route 66, which in the days before the interstate system ran from Chicago to L.A.  Grasslands turned to desert as we drove through the night into New Mexico. Finally at a rest stop west of Albuquerque we stopped for the night.

There I found the second surprise of the day.  Searching through my pack I came across the two joints I had been given in North Carolina.  Karen seemed a bit freaked by this, maybe because we had transported what the feds considered a schedule 1 narcotic across several state lines through states where any amount of weed was a felony and likely prison time.  However Jessi and I promised to destroy the evidence, which we did laying out beneath the desert sky on that Hallows Eve.

 

Mesa Country

Awoke early.  The still desert air had a bit of a chill to it as we got back on the road.  The land had been rising steadily and we crossed the Continental Divide just east of Gallup.  At Gallup we turned north toward the Navajo reservation, rolling thru the high desert. Just south of Shiprock we stopped at a trading post.  Karen and Jessi wanted to do some shopping but I had no interest so I stayed in the car.  As I sat reading I noticed suddenly a large group of older pick-up trucks headed our way.  As they turned into the parking lot I realized that today was the first of the month and that the locals were coming to the post to cash their checks and stock up on beer and ammo.  Pretty soon the girls came out and we headed on our way north toward Mesa Verde.

We took a wrong turn at Shiprock and ended up having to take a back road north out of Farmington.  Somewhere north of Farmington we crossed cattle guards in the road and entered an area marked with signs indicating that the area was under jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture.  There we encountered a bizarre sight.  There were small herds of cattle that were apparently part of some kind of interbreeding experiments being driven south to lower elevations.  The herds consisted of many different breeds, some of which I had never seen before.  Judging from some obvious mutations among the younger cattle there had been a fair bit of interbreeding.

As we reached higher elevations there was a light dusting of snow covering the ground.  The wrong turn and the encounter with the cattle had delayed us to the point that we had to race up the winding mountain road to make the last tour.  As it was having to park the car I missed the tour, so I checked out the visitor center, where I learned about the ancient peoples who had built this pre-Columbian civilization.

When the tour ended we embarked on a driving tour the loop road but it soon began to rain.  Rain quickly turned to snow and soon the road was covered, forcing us to flee for lower elevations.  Leaving the park we stopped for dinner in Cortez, where I had my first Mexican food since Denver.  Then we stuck out for the Grand Canyon, rolling across the high desert as the moon rose full and luminous in the night sky.  Upon reaching the park around midnight moon glistened off the canyon walls.  We pulled into an overlook and settled in for the night, anticipating the spectacular views that awaited us come daylight.

When we woke the next morning we found that a snow stormed had moved in overnight.  The car was covered with an inch or two of snow and visibility extended to the hood ornament.  Since we weren’t carrying chains the decision was to head to lower elevations while the road was still passable.  Clearing the snow from the car inevitably turned into a snowball fight which I admit to have started. Once finished we were headed down the mountain and on to L.A.

 

Los Angeles

As headed down the mountain the snow dissipated and by the time we got to Williams it had turned bright sunshine.   We stopped for gas in Williams where the attendant tried to scare Karen into buying a new set of tires.  Pointing out some wear caused by a minor alignment problem and he told her that those tires would never make it to L.A.  This was a well known scam back in the day in which dishonest establishments would frighten unsuspecting travelers, especially women, into paying for unneeded repairs at exorbitant prices.  Employees often got kickbacks for recommending such work.  She consulted me and after checking the wear I advised that I thought the tires were fine but if she had any concerns they could rotate the tires front to back, for which the posted rate was $5.00, and that would take care of the problem until she got home.  She decided to have the tires rotated, much to the ire of the attendant who muttered that if we were going to drive around on shoddy tires maybe we should leave town.  Once the tire work was done we did so, back on I-40 and headed for the California border.

At Needles we turned south across the desert.  Hit I-10 east of Joshua Tree and headed west, rolling across the barren landscape of sagebrush and the occasional cottonwood.  Hit civilization again at Coachella and rolled west past Palm Springs.  At San Bernardino caught the 210 that skirted along the north edge of the valley at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains.  Traffic really bogged down here and it would take until well after dark when we finally arrive in L.A.  We found a little Italian restaurant on Colorado Boulevard and sat down to our final dinner on the road.  Karen had a friend who was attending Occidental College nearby in the Eagle Rock neighborhood so after dinner we headed over there to crash for the night.  The girls slept in the dorm while I stayed in the car.

Woke early to a pleasant Sunday in the City of Angels.  Karen and Jessi were up soon and we treated ourselves to a leisurely breakfast and did some visiting.  Jessi had some friends who were involved in the Save the River campaign, which supported a ballot initiative that sought to stop the damming of the Stanislaus River.  The election was on Tuesday and there had been a huge rally in L.A. on Saturday.  The headquarters were nearby so after lunch we dropped by.  There we found out that a busload of activists were headed north that evening for a final push before Tuesday.  I asked who they had working in Stockton and the answer was they had no one in Stockton.  I proposed that with a box of fliers and a seat on the bus I could be their guy.  It was agreed to and we drove out to Hansen Dam to meet the bus.

Hansen Dam was just north and it didn’t take long to drive up.  There we met a large group of activists who were waiting for the bus.  The wait lasted for some time as the bus was hours late, having taken a wrong turn in the L.A. traffic.  Finally it arrived and Karen, Jessi and I embraced in a long group hug before I grabbed my box of fliers and climbed onto the big yellow bus for the ride up north and the end of the long strange trip.

 

Epilogue

The bus dropped me in Stockton the next morning and I headed over to my folks place for some extended R&R.  They were glad to see me and after a month on the road it felt good to be home.  With no job and no place to live there seemed little point to going back up to Bear Valley, so I settled in for the winter. I went back to school and got my old job back as stage tech in the drama department at the college, all the time looking toward the next adventure.

I never saw Karen again as she didn’t return to claim her old job.  I ran into Jessi once when I visited Bear Valley to pick up some stuff I had left behind.  Ironically she and her boyfriend had rented the top half of the A-frame where I had spent the summer.  We all went our separate ways, fellow travelers who paths had crossed on an amazing journey and moved on to new adventures.

Years later what remains from the trip are a notebook, an old map, and some faded photos.  But most important are the memories of the sights and sounds and smells.  For words and maps and photos can tell you some things about a place, but until you have touched the soil and breathed the air and talked to the people you can never really know that place.  And this is how I came to know America.

The End

Of the road