3/22/23
Newsletter #283
The Crack of Dawn
So, in June, 1977, at the age of eighteen, I began my hitchhiking trip to Alaska. My friend dropped me off in Malibu. In no time I was picked up by a VW micro-bus driven my a Hari Krishna family – shaved heads, white robes – with photos of dolphins pasted all over the walls.
I imagined that the 3,000 mile trip to Alaska would take a couple of weeks. What I hadn’t yet put together was, just like when I hitchhiked from Detroit to L.A. two summers earlier, hitchhiking builds up its own momentum. One ride leads to the next to the next, and perhaps forty-eight hours after I’d left L.A. I was in Medford, Oregon.
It was just getting dark when I was picked up by an SUV. In the back were two blond boys of six and seven who were insanely rambunctious and going stir crazy. In the driver’s seat was their mom – an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous blonde in a tight red sweater – who was at the end of her rope and ready to kill the boys. She begged me, “Can you play with them for a while?” I said sure. They were both nice boys, and after a few hours they fell asleep. I went up to the passenger seat. The mom, whose name was Chris, had a cooler full of beer on ice right behind her, and another cooler beside her where she was depositing her empty cans – six so far.
Chris was driving to Seattle for her sister’s wedding. As she and I drank beer, talked and laughed all the way north across Oregon and Washington, which took all night, I fell in love with her. She was perfect: gorgeous, funny, interesting, goofy, and could drink beer like a sailor. I couldn’t keep up with her. By the time we got to Seattle at dawn, I’d had six or seven beers and was kind of drunk; Chris had drunk twenty beers and appeared sober. She was slim, with a flat stomach, how could she consume beer like this? In Seattle we woke up the boys and stopped for breakfast, which Chris paid for. We parted company outside the restaurant. As her SUV drove away, I thought, “I may never meet a woman that great again in my life.”
So, I hitchhiked to Alaska, which took nine days, then I turned around and hitchhiked back. I found myself outside Vancouver in this strange, arid, Texas-like area with road signs saying, “Beware of rattlesnakes.” I suddenly had a whole summer in front of me. I decided to hitchhike across most of the width of Canada – British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario – and go to Detroit. I’d crash at my parents’ place for as long as they’d have me (two weeks, it turned out), then head back to L.A. where I’d left my car full of all my shit.
I wrote a whole Crack of Dawn (#125) about stopping in Edmonton, Alberta, and seeing the new movie of one of my favorite young filmmakers, Martin Scorsese. His brand new movie was New York, New York (1977).
In a state of grave disappointment I continued hitchhiking east across Canada. I stood there on the side of Queen’s Highway #1, thinking, “Taxi Driver was so fucking good, and this was such fucking crap. It sure didn’t take Scorsese long to sell out.”
I was picked up by a geeky 25-30-year-old thin white guy hunched over the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, he didn’t say hi or hello. I got in an off we drove. I asked how far he was going and he said he was going to Chatham, Ontario, which is right near Windsor, which is across the river from Detroit. This fellow didn’t talk and had one eight-track tape – Motor Head by Deep Purple – which I happen to like, but Canada is the second-largest country in the world. Each time Smoke on the Water came around it began to drive me insane — Bum-bum-bum/bum-bum-ba-bum/bum-bum-bum/bum-bum. Once an hour this guy would say, “Get me some of that beef turkey.” In the backseat was a garbage bag full of pizza-sized slabs of beef jerky. I’d tear off a foot-long hunk, hand it to him, and he’d gnaw on it as he silently drove through the day and night. He wouldn’t let me drive. And since eight-track tapes are a continuous loop, Smoke on the Water kept playing over and over again.
The tenth time he asked for beef turkey I said, “It’s beef jerky. Why do you say turkey?” And he said, “I just like calling it turkey. Could you hand me some more of that beef turkey?” Bum-bum-bum . . .
Sitting there in the passenger seat, crossing the vast wheat-covered flatlands of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, mile after mile, I went into a strange, dozing, dreaming state that seemed shockingly realistic . . .
I’m in the SUV with Chris, the gorgeous blonde, as we pulled into the restaurant in Seattle. Her kids are mercifully gone. She mischievously leads me into the back of the vehicle, disrobes, then makes mad passionate love to me . . .
I suddenly awoke in this car in Canada to the best wet dream I’ve ever had, and I’ve only had two. I have no idea what kind of sounds I had made leading up to awakening, but when I climaxed I completely let go, “Holy shit!” I declared. Suddenly, I had a big mess to deal with. And this guy was staring straight ahead and didn’t give me a look. I said, “Could we stop at a gas station?” He said, “Sure.”
And that’s my silliest hitchhiking story.
Today’s gonna be a humdinger, you betcha, by golly.