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Wednesday, October 27, 2021

67 Gonna go to the place that's the best

Walking. We kept walking. Nothing going on. It felt like we just had to get somewhere. A truck or car went by here and there, but nothing. Just the sun. Rocks. And a long stretch of highway ahead of us. Walk. Sit down. Walk. Sit down. Peanut butter and jelly. Not too much conversation except for one of those “I'm going back” arguments. No. I'm not going back. LBJ even crossed the highway and started walking in the other direction. I kept going. LBJ smoked a cigarette and crossed back. We kept going. I know I laid down a few times too. 


 

We must have been at just the right age not to perish standing and sitting in the desert sun. Yeah, nobody cared about sunscreen back then. Luckily we had something to drink, I guess, in the morning. Maybe the jelly kept us alive. Good stock in both of us too.

The sun started going down. We weren't getting anywhere so we found what we thought was a pretty private spot off the road a bit. But I was still a city girl and he was a city boy. I said “But snakes?” “And scorpions?” Ok. We found a spot in a little clearing, away from plants (sagebrush.) Yoicks. I got the smelly sleeping bag. You know, the one that got wet in Ohio and stayed rolled up the whole time we were in Chicago. Earthy, moldy.

Didn't matter. So tired. Not even tired. Destroyed from the sun and heat. It all got pretty trippy. Just staring at the openness. Not much between us and the reality that we live on a ball floating in the universe. It was dark but light. Dark. No humans. No buildings. No cars. Just the stars. I felt like I was floating in space like never before. But scorpions. Hoping they didn't get me.

Morning was not easy. The sun came up and it was immediately hot. I picked up my sleeping bag and there were all kinds of strange bugs that I had never seen before. I did one of those freaked out scream things. Not under the other sleeping bag. I think this sleeping bag was still a little damp or something. Maybe the smell was attractive to them. I didn't realize we were so close to the road too. It was really dark the night before. No place in the desert to be modest as the trucks flew by.

Whew. Here we go again. I think we might have both been a little spacey from the punishment we took the day before. But Holy Mother of God. A pickup truck pulled over. I'll never forget it. One of those old classic Green trucks.

There were three people in it. An older couple and a younger guy. Indians. The younger fellow talked to us. He got out of the truck, worried about us. Asked if we were thirsty. Yeah. All they had was a thermos of coffee. Thanks. Great. Thank you. It was all so surreal. A Horse With No Name was playing on the am radio. That song was really played heavily on the airwaves that year, but it was like a strange dream to hear it after being stuck in the desert.

Oh. Where are we going to sit? Oh. We're getting in the back of the truck. Believe it or not this was the first time this Long Island girl rode in the back of a pickup truck.

There's a reason I have to describe what I was wearing. I didn't have too many clothes with me, so it was almost the same thing every day. My jeans with patches all the way up the front and on the butt. My light blue halter top. I had quite a bit of skin showing.

A little more material than this.

More skin showing than this.

Well, they take off. Oh, I wasn't doing that hair blowing in the wind with it all being one big knot again. I laid down in the bed of the truck. It seemed like we were in the back of the truck for at least a couple of hours. Further south on Highway 191 into Arizona. Oh there was nothing out there. We just laid there. Jesus. Could we roast anymore in the sun. LBJ looked at me. “Holy shit. Look at your stomach.” I had friggin' blisters on my stomach. Jesus Christ help me. I'm burning up. It wasn't too much longer the truck slowed down. The older couple just looked at us. The young guy got out again. “Hey. We're turning here.” What? Here? There was fucking nothing again. Holy crap.

We got out of the truck. We watched it take off down a dirt road that looked like it went to nowhere. As tough as I was, I was almost crying. But I didn't have the water to spare. Thirsty, burnt, blistered, spacey, tired. Holy hell. Not again.

Another pickup pulled over probably after another hour. We didn't even walk. We just sat there. I think I covered my skin with clothes out of my bag. The guy that picked us up said "Yeah. There's nothing here except for Indian reservations." That's all I remember for a while. We ended up in Winslow, Arizona.


 


Thursday, October 14, 2021

66 Follow that truck

I can tell you where I went next. I can tell you some of the things that happened. But I can't always tell you exactly where I was when something happened. The next leg of the trip is really a blur. Honestly, it's pretty amazing that we survived.

We found trees to sleep behind near the Great Salt Lake. Kind of chilly under that open sky without all that pavement like in the eastern cities. Stars. 

Walked. Long walks. Diner. Plenty of coffee. Milk. Washed up a little. Got plenty of stares.

Thumb out. Truck pulls over. We were heading south. If we had known. If we had a map we would have jumped out at Interstate 70 and just headed west. Maybe. But we didn't care. We were seeing things we had never seen before. We'll get there.

I don't have much of a recollection of where we were let off. I'm thinking it was near Green River. The driver left us at Highway 191. He probably thought we'd get on I-70 and make that turn. But we didn't. We ended up on Highway 191 headed further south. I don't think we got anything to drink. Maybe we used the bathroom at a gas station and drank water out of the sink. Hydration was not a term anyone used back then.

Ok. A trucker pulled over. We were ready to jump in the front. But he told us the back was empty. We could stretch out. It was cool. This was before every deadly homicide show was on TV. Ok. Ok man. Sounds good. Thanks.

Get in there. He closes the doors. Pitch black. Strange. Strange. Ok. We're going. We couldn't see the road. We didn't see that it was a bit of a back track east to keep going south on 191. Maybe then we would have said "Thanks never mind. We'll get out here." But we were in the dark. We were cool with it for a while but then we started thinking and talking. "Hey. Is this weird? Is this guy weird? How much oxygen is in here?" We were really wondering. It's all cute nostalgia now, but there were a lot of people back then that didn't like the hippie type. In the big cities too. Have you seen Joe (1970), Peter Boyle?

The guy near Salt Lake in the 40's car warned us. This is the first time on the trip I really started to get nervous. We started banging on the front. I don't know when he started to hear us. We kept banging louder. Then started yelling "Let us out of here!" He kept driving. You might be thinking, oh they're just freaking out. But I began to sense real danger. And stuff happened. I couldn't do it now, but I used to practice blood curdling screams at the top of my lungs. For fun. Scare people in cemeteries and such. I let loose with some of the bloodiest screams you've ever heard. We didn't stop banging. He finally pulled over.

"Let us out of here." He did. There we were. Walking along 191 South in Utah. We were ok.


 Heat. Dry. Walking. Just keep walking.

Thinking it was past Blanding that we got out because we never did get to see any mountains around there. Oh boy, not many cars driving these roads in 1972. Looks like some kind of stop up ahead. 

I remember the red dirt. Red dirt? Dry. Red rocks around. A little restaurant. White against the red dirt. Plenty of people parked. There was probably a gas station too, but since we weren't going to use one, I don't remember. Sign on the front door. "No hippies. No back packs. No bare feet." Oh. What are we going to do? LBJ said, like usual "Fuck it." We left our little bags and sleeping bags behind some kind of bush or tree. In we go.

Regular old diner. Pretty full. I remember imprints on my brain of patrons. Not the same kind of truckers we were getting rides from. Harsher. Little did they know... we weren't weakling hippies. We were New York hippies. Not that we could do anything, but we sure as hell knew when to run.

I'll never forget this. The waitress took our little order. I always got a big glass of milk. Bone power. She had that Flo from Mel's Diner hairdo. I loved Flo from Mel's Diner but I didn't know that then because that was later on. She would have been nice. But this waitress was a mean one. Bad. She put that milk down in front of me. Looked me right in the eyes and knocked that big glass of milk all over me. Every damn drop. And then she kept looking at me.

I'm not completely crazy but I stood right up and yelled something at her. The whole god damn place stopped and looked. LBJ couldn't believe it either. He said "Cool it. Let's just go." That red plastic cup made it onto the floor too.

Oh. They hate us. We better go. It's not like we have a car to make an escape in. I didn't put my head down when I walked out and I sure as hell didn't pay for the milk either. Now I was going out into the hot sun with wet milk all over me. Oh my God. I was salty from the lake and sour from the milk.






Monday, October 11, 2021

65 Scary kids live on (Part 3)

My dad was born in 1912 in the borough of Brooklyn. A lot of the people living in New York at that time brought their beliefs and customs with them from all over the world. They celebrated what they knew. But kids ran the streets, as I did and maybe you too, and meeting new kids in the neighborhood was always an adventure. You lived one way and then you'd meet up with someone who did things differently. You'd talk about, both in awe of the difference and you teamed up to make play with the best combination.

I'm not a historian but I'll tell you the little bit I know about Ragamuffin Day. When I heard about it I didn't know when it started, but I did know my father had the best wild memories of pranks and running the streets with his brother. Uncle Frederick. A lot of things came down on kids back then. Some of them started work young like my Grandma Sophie, or if you went to school there was some pretty severe discipline handed down. But if you could take that, the adults knew you had to let it out somehow.

I did read that it started around 1870, a couple of years after Lincoln made Thanksgiving a holiday. It was mostly a New York holiday but it was celebrated in other places too. But New York made it hardcore. My dad said they'd ask for pennies in the street and at doors, but sometimes they'd get food. So there you go. Asking for treats. If you didn't hand something over there would be a severe trick. A lesson you wouldn't forget. It was a night of mayhem.

Most of the kids, and some adults, dressed like bums. Always a disguise. I guess there were parades of kids but my father and uncle pretty much stuck to mayhem. How much fun. They had to let it out. Cold air. Fallen leaves. Fires for warmth. Running and laughing.

Whenever I see people posting really old photos of Halloween, with people in freaky costumes, I say to myself "That's Thanksgiving. Ragamuffin Day."

Jump ahead decades. More people moved in. I don't want to get into a bunch of philosophy, but commerce took over. Less mystery. People lost magical thinking. The push to end the night of mayhem. Alright. Things quieted down. Considerably. Think of all the fun you had as a kid and what they have now. What is in this push for blandness? Maybe we better rethink some of this.

Here's my little story of mayhem as taught by my father. It was the early 60's and my nieces were over for the day. We were all kids. My oldest sister was twenty years older and had kids just a couple years younger than me. Nice fall day in October. My dad told us a story about Ragamuffin Day. We all asked in glee "What did you do? Yeah!" Jumping up and down. "We want to do it!" "We want to do it!"

We had funny neighbors on either side. The Italians on one side that never spoke at a normal volume. They loved each other and communicated by yelling.

The other neighbors were Germans. He was a baker. Typically stoic. The only time I ever saw them was when my mom was gossiping over the chainlink fence to the German wife when they were both hanging laundry on the clothesline. I don't know what the story was... if there was some kind of reason for this, but they were the chosen victims of the educational prank. Maybe they didn't like the part of Germany my grandparents were from.

So my dad told us to get a dozen eggs. Alright. In the pile. Ok. "Get one of those cotton sports socks each." Alright, we each had one. "Now get flour." Ok. We had a whole bag of flour. Fill the socks with as much flour as possible. Ok. We did this. He told us how it was important to lay down the eggs first so that the flour stuck.

Now this may seem shocking to you now. I don't know when and how things changed but trickery was just part of life. Ok! "Go hit that car with the eggs! Get them all over!" I hit the top of the car more cause I was the tallest then, even though I was just a kid punk. "Now slam that flour all over!" Oh we did. My belly was aching from laughing so much. The destruction was complete and impressive. The sight of their car white like Mr. Freeze hit it with some type of magic ice gun. Just a typical suburban dad at the time handing down tradition.


"You may think I'm an asshole

You may think I'm a punk

But our life of mayhem was better

Than living in stupid funk."

Thursday, October 7, 2021

64 The wind blows free

Those truckers were mighty fine folks. Got another ride out of Ogallala from a kindly trucker. I guess it gets lonely on the road. I was sitting squished up in the front seat for a while by the window. It seemed like we were riding a slight hill and I noticed the landscape was more arid. Yeah, it was browner that time of year. "Where are we?" "Wyoming." "Are we going to go through Colorado?" I knew that Colorado was south of Wyoming, the nuns made sure of that. I just wasn't sure where the road was headed. "No. We're going to miss it completely." 

Oh well. We're going to California anyway. We'll see mountains. Yeah, there's some pretty nice mountains in upstate NY and New England, but just not as big and grand.

I suppose the truckers take the easiest route. The least mountain passes. Less climbing means less gas, less wear and tear. So we were headed through high prairie country.

I'm sure we pulled in somewhere to use the bathroom, but it wasn't memorable and it was quick. This guy planned to get us through Wyoming and he wasn't taking his time. I felt like spreading out a little and went in the back. My usual daydreaming and staring at the ceiling, I fell asleep.

We started making more turns like we were pulling in somewhere and it woke me up. "Where are we?" "Utah. I've got to let you out here." I'm guessing we were somewhere near Coalville. Thanked him and jumped out. What a different looking landscape than the east. The sky really did look bigger. The clouds sat differently in the sky. No gray haze. Big blue. Deep blue. Wow.

Multiple tracks

Cool. There were a bunch of trains sitting there. Freight trains not passenger trains. Not the Long Island Railroad. God damn. I loved tales of depression era hobos hopping trains. Woody Guthrie traveling the country and singing songs of the common people. Excuse me for saying this, but we are just weak imitations.

There were multiple tracks and plenty of trains parked. It was a dream of mine to jump one of them. "Let's jump one!" Then we were walking up and down trying to figure which ones were headed west. It was a great time. Found what we thought looked good. Nice sliding door. Just as we were grabbing it we heard a deep mean voice. "Hey, you!" He came walking up fast. Pretty damn mean. "You get out of here now and don't come back. If I even see you again the sheriff will have you." He didn't smack us with a club like they did during the 30's, but we sure got the message.

Boxcar Bertha

Well, that dream was shattered and I thought "why?" But I guess who knows... maybe something crappy might have happened. We got the hell out of there. Pretty sure he meant business. Practically ran out to the road and stuck our thumbs out. Kept walking fast cause not much was driving by. Some kind of luck was with us and a fairly young guy with short blond hair stopped. The car was from the 40's and awesome. Just the way it was back then. One heck of a big front end.

We jump in and he said it was lucky he was driving by. "It's all Mormons out here. You might have been in trouble." Huh. This was before South Park and the internet. I was sheltered growing up in New York. There were cultures there, but little did we know just how much else was out there. Later I learned that a lot of Mormons are also really kind and damaged just the way recovering Catholics are.

He was so happy to see us. He was beaming. He wanted to hear about our plans and where we had been. He could only take us so far but he said it would be a better place to catch a ride. We never made it into Salt Lake City that day, but he dropped us right by the Great Salt Lake.

What was this place? Look at it! A lake that lasts forever. Mountains in the distance. Big blue sky. And white stuff all along the shore.

That was another long day. We started in Ogallala early but it was getting on. "I have to go in." "No. I have to go in." It was pretty shallow where I walked in. I don't think there were but a couple other people around. I heard from my dad about the Salton Sea. He traveled to the west and southwest a number of times for business. He really thought it was cool the way you could float so much easier on the salty inland water. I mean I heard about it a lot and he took slides. I had to try it out. I figured it worked the same way here. Walking, walking. Damn it's not like the ocean. Still pretty shallow. Hmmm. Lots of flies liked the water too. Who cares. I'm going in.

Wow. It was great. I was rolling around. But then I did something I didn't normally do. I was a good swimmer. I somehow breathed in water from the Great Salt Lake. I started choking and I mean big time. I got up and went to the shore and laid on the ground. I was gasping but no air was going in. I know there were people around me, but I turned over and just started gagging. I thought for sure I was going to die. If I wasn't such a healthy specimen, I think I would have. All those hold your breath underwater contests paid off.  They tell me I coughed up some water. Let me tell you that was not a pleasant feeling.

Time to find a place to throw our sleeping bags down where no one could see us.






20 Oh, take your time, don't live too fast Part 1

This is going to be a story about a personal challenge that I made good on. Now, I may repeat myself on some happenings in these stories. I&...