135 in the Shade

My South African friend Richard spends most of the year in Jeddah along the Red Sea. $40K for eight months teaching English to young Saudi boys. No taxes. A comfortable condo. The pluses are matched by one minus. The import, manufacture, possession, and consumption of alcohol or illegal drugs is illegal in Saudi Arabia. Penalties range from jail sentences, fines, public flogging to deportation. Richard likes drinking, but has no interest in violating Sharia law in the strict kingdom and he suffers his exile from booze in silence, although this last month Richard emailed these words of advice to his friends.

"We've reached 51 C now, and it's still rising! Those of you planning on visiting Saudi, if the would let you in, don't!"

Warning taken for 51 Centigrade translates to 123 Fahrenheit.

Hot, but I've experienced hotter.

August 1975. Andy K and I are hitchhiking east from LA. We were stranded in Barstow with 50 other longhairs. Not a speck of shade in sight. One car every ten minutes. A couple from the Haight said that they had been on the ramp for 20 hours. We were six people behind them. They were New Orleans-bound. Our destination was Boston.

"You two should split up. No one picks up two guys." The strung-out hippie had hair to his ass. His skinny girlfriend could have passed for his twin. They made a cute lesbian couple for anyone not looking too closely.

"Except for perverts." His girlfriend was fuming mad, hungry for a fix. They were 23rd in line. She wanted off this onramp limbo.

"Yeah, I've had a couple of offers from some sick fucks."

"Wanted me to watch." Her face screwed up with disgust. Sex was as distasteful to junkies as it was to nuns. "Nothing wrong with being queers." I danced with gays at the 1270 Club in Boston. They pawned me off to fag hags. A god deal for me. "Especially if it gets us out of here."

I tried to look bisexual. Andy didn't play that game and the cowboys weren't buying my solo act. The day was fast approaching mid-morning. The temperature was in the high 80s. By noon the sun would melt the on-ramp's asphalt. It was time to move. Andy and I dashed to the station. A bus station was in sight. A Greyhound was billowing diesel fumes. Its driver was exiting from the station's diner. $8.50 bought our escape.

The bus interior was AC Alaska. No one had dared get off the bus in Barstow. There were two seats in the back. The bus left on time. Next stop - Needles, California.

170 miles.

Two hours later the bus pulled into the desert town. I had a map. Needles was on the west bank of the Colorado River. Andy mentioned that the Joad family's first stop in THE GRAPES OF WRATH was Needles.

The portal to the Okies' paradise of California.

We exited from the bus into the desert heat. I stopped in my tracks, thinking I had walked into the exhaust of a thousand buses. Our Greyhound was the only one in the sweltering parking lot. The other passengers hurried into the station. The sun beat down as if its rays were ironing our flesh.My backpack had gained two tons. My sandals had sunk into the molten asphalt.

This was worse than Barstow.

Across the street a large thermometer displayed the temperature.

135F.

"That can't be right." Andy was gasping for breath. We were from the East Coast. New Englanders wilted when the mercury lifted north of 85.

"No one else is outside."

The highway was in the distance. Cars and trucks sped through a shimmering mirage. It was less than a mile away. In this heat that walk was a test of survival.

"There's a Dairy Queen." Andy headed toward the promise of cold. Ice cream and AC. I followed my friend without question. The heat was so dry that the sweat was sucked off our skin. We ran across the parched grass verge. The time was 2pm. High noon lasted long in Needles.

Our entrance into the ice cream parlor was loud. Doors opened and shut, as if the outside air was poisoned by the leaching sun. The other customers appreciated the gesture. They were farmers, teenage boys and girls. Hippies were a common sight. Their spoons fed their mouths with cold. The AC was 68. Everyone looked comfortable.

"Two vanilla ice cream sodas." My mother had given the sweet slurry of cold comfort to me when I had strep throat.

"I want chocolate." Andy stepped up to the counter. "Two too."

After the 3rd ice cream soda our core temperature had returned to 98.6.

"Is that thermometer right?" I asked an Okie rancher.

"Sun got to it. Ain't right by 15 degrees. Makes it 120. Hot but ain't half as hot as July 2, 1967. That was 122." He said the temperature with pride. Not many humans can handle that heat. "Felt like the Devil was burning my bones. You boys, headed east?"

He offered a ride to Topock. Some 20 miles from here. The other side of the Colorado. Okie was driving a Ford pick-up. His dog was in the front seat.

"He don't mind the heat. Don't like strangers though. You gotta sit in the back."

3:22. Temperature about 110.

"We're ready when you're ready." Needles was the type of town to suck a day from your travels. I had $33 in my pocket. I gave the driver two of them. Gas was 40 cents a gallon. He was grateful for the donation. Twenty minutes later he pulled off the highway. The town was two miles away. We were on the wrong side of the Colorado. The sun was fours hours from setting. The only shade was a bullet-holed billboard. Some 300 feet off the highway.

I stuck out my thumbs. Cars were coming our way. Trucks too. I pretended to be Jack Kerouac's illegitimate son. He had to have one somewhere.

"Look like you're harmless."

Andy was studying piano at Berkeley. He was good at looking harmless. So good the second car stopped for us. A retired couple heading for Kingman. A Delta 88. Gray. V-8. Leather seats. Power windows. AC. Escape.

The retirees had left Chicago for a ranchhouse on Lake Havesu. The view from their terrace was the London Bridge. The developer thought that he was buying the Tower Bridge.

"It's cooler up in the high country. Sometimes down here my head feels hot enough to fry an egg on." The driver had said the line maybe 100 times. It was funny to us. Mostly because we knew it was true.

"We're happy with the one we got." The desert sun had leathered his wife's skin. Her blonde hair was a homage to Dinah Shore. She had grandchildren. "That's why we picked you up."

"They're hippies too." The old man smiled in the rearview mirror. The man and woman complimented each other. "There's lemonade in the cooler. Drink as much as you want."

There were four glass screw-top bottles.

"Don't be shy." The driver was floored at 110. The Olds was torching the miles. We were on the only car on the road. The rest were trucks. Fruit and vegetables on their way east. "Drink as much as you want."

Andy and I drained one each in thirty seconds.

We were safe.

At Kingman they pulled into a motor lodge. The price of a room was $20.

$10 dollars each. We begged off poverty.

The old man offered to pay for our room. We thanked them and stood on the highway. Old Route 66. The air at 3000 feet was cool relief. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant. We ate spaghetti and meat balls. Good as the North End of Boston. The town was mentioned in Chuck Berry's ROUTE 66. I stuck out my thumb. The sun was setting in the pines. A semi was throttling its diesel.

135 in the shade.

That is hot.

Especially when the thermometer is broken.