3/9/23
Newsletter 270
The Crack of Dawn
I think this was 1981, but I’d have to check and I’m not home. Anyway, I was hitchhiking from L.A. to NY to visit my sister. Bits of this have made it into this newsletter at earlier points.
My buddy Sheldon took me to San Bernadino, clearly believing that hitchhiking across the country wasn’t a good idea. I kept saying, “This exit is fine,” and he kept saying, “No, let’s go to the next one. After about ten miles and five exits I could see that Sheldon was reticent to let me off. I finally said, “Honestly, Sheldon, this is fine.” Reluctantly, he dropped me off. It was in the middle of the desert, but it was a lovely warm day and this exit was as good as anywhere.
I made it to Denver. That’s where I saw two F-14 jets come zooming overhead, followed by a 747 with the space shuttle Challenger parked on top of it. A moment later the two jets flew away, closely followed by the 747 and the shuttle. A few minutes later the jets came back, then the 747, and I guess they landed.
I then got a series of short rides in and around Denver that progressively got me more and more lost. I found myself in some weird, funky outskirt of the city having no idea where I was going. I was picked up by a total piece of junk car with three fellows in their mid-twenties up front. It was quickly apparent that all three, who were brothers, were all special needs, goofy-looking, and didn’t make much sense. They couldn’t tell me where we were, or how I might get back to the freeway. As we drove along, something grabbed my ankle and scared the shit out of me. I pulled back a blanket and it was a tiny kitten. The brothers had found it and adopted it. Finally, they said they’d stop at their house and we could look at a map. They lived in the shittiest, most low-budget trailer park I’d ever seen, and in an old, rusty school bus. They rolled a big fat joint of what turned out to be total shit-weed, possibly Kentucky Blue Grass. They also had an enormous snapping turtle in the bus. None of us could make head or tail out of the map, so I just left.
Beside the trailer park was a steep cement embankment leading up to train track. I ended up having to crawl up the embankment it was so steeply inclined. I then just walked along the train tracks. It was dark as hell as I began following a road with just about no traffic. In the distance I could hear a car engine roaring. A moment later a car came speeding up going very fast, then slammed on the brakes and picked me up. The fellow driving the car took off and floored it. Soon we were going 100 mph and I was scared shitless. Thankfully, a minute later a police car came screaming up beside us and we pulled over. The cops knew the driver, and this was the twentieth time they’d stopped him. Thankfully, they just let me go.
So, I walked and walked up this dark road in the middle of nowhere hoping to see some sign of civilization. Every five minutes or so a car would come by and somebody would either throw a beer bottle at me or flick a cigarette butt at me. None of them hit me, but it all seemed like some horrible nightmare. This went on for miles.
Finally, a pickup truck stopped. I explained my plight to the two fellows, both wearing cowboy hats, and they kindly took me to the freeway. As I trudged down the circular exit ramp, I suddenly decided that I was too tired to go on. I made my way through the taill grass in the circle of the ramp, took off my backpack, climbed into my sleeping bag and fell fast asleep. I was awakened at some point later by a parade of big trucks all coming down the ramp getting on the freeway – maybe twenty of them. I figured it was time to get going – there was no way to sleep with all of these trucks going by – so I hiked to the end of the ramp, stuck out my thumb, and continued on my way to NYC.
And now I intend to have a fabulous day here in Delray Beach, Florida.
Good on ya.