50 I picked up my bag, went lookin' for a place to hide part 2

Our ride was going to head east a bit and let us off near the road that would take us to Montreal. At least we'd be going in a general westerly direction. The other hitchhiker stayed with them. Bye! I wonder if they had any repercussions for what we did? 😑 I'm sure the border people must have notated their license plate, but who knows...

I don't know how our next ride could tell, but I guess you could. "Are you American?" Our accents didn't help, I'm sure. "Oh. A lot of people will resent you. Your boys have been coming in here to avoid the draft. Taking jobs away from our boys." Oh. We told him we didn't think we were going to stay. Going to California.

Montreal. 1970s.

We were let off in the middle of the city. Somewhere. Montreal seemed pretty cool. Lots of colorful people. Was everybody good looking? The streets were filled with people walking around. We had no problem asking people questions. Where's a good place to go? Oh! French speaking! Most everybody spoke English too, but it was kind of lucky I took French my freshman year. Couldn't really handle a conversation but I could read a menu anyway.

I guess we were somewhere near McGill University. Took a walk over there and checked it out. Not a lot of people because it was the summer. We walked through the halls and looked at the old photos of alumni. If I had only known Captain Kirk went there.

Now

Then

We hid our stuff in bushes somewhere there, in a nice clean way, and went back over to town. Starting to get a little low on that $35. I remember the restaurant we went in. Ordered something super cheap. It was just a regular place but the people there were cool. Some guy with long, curly hair came in and went around to the plates that people left and he picked a few things off of them. We talked to him. He had a french accent.

"Yes. It is cool. You can get some good food." Well. We finished what we had and picked up a few things off plates on the way out. Let's get some sleep. That was a hell of a day. While we were walking back to McGill we noticed how clean everything was. The complete opposite of New York. Astounding to us. Not even a piece of litter.

Here we go with that sleeping bag. The mummy sleeping bag the nice lady in Maine gave us. Thank God we had it but boy... we tried every position of both trying to fit in that thing. I'd like to see that acted out cause it was a hell of a time. We'd start out really squished, unzipped. The only thing we could do was to take turns. I got the first night, because, you know, I'm a lady. But LBJ was really uncomfortable and I needed him to not be dead tired. We were young so a good sleep every other night kept us alive.

Alright. Here we are. Now what are we going to do? Walked back down to that street. Not sure of the name but it was busy with people. Hey there was that guy with the long curly hair on the corner. He was panhandling. That wasn't LBJ's gig. All he had to do was to ask a couple of people where he could find some work and off he went. I was going to be ok there. Hmmm. Ok. I'll try panhandling too. So I started across the street from the french accent guy. I was doing pretty good. People were friendly. Panhandling was a little different then. We were just trying to make a trip and people were helping us out. 

Huh? Here comes the fella from across the street. Oh? It was like he was out of a movie. Excuse me, but I looked up at him and there was a glow around him. Maybe the feeling was mutual? We would talk about stuff for hours. But we needed to work at it for a few hours a day, so we'd split up and get back to work. He explained to me that I was really cutting into his deal. I was getting most of the money on the block. It was my smile. So I moved further on down the street and it worked out.

At the end of the day LBJ came back. We ate. Went back to McGill and wandered around. I think we walked many, many miles a day back then. Hit the sleeping bag or not. Went on for about a week and then said "We're getting nowhere." Better move on again.