Hitching a ride out of Amarillo tested a young man's courage in July of 1974. Cowboys hated long-hairs. My friend, AK, and I dodged more than a few beer bottles, while standing on the shoulder of the east-bound highway. Most of the goat-ropers drank Bud. They had lousy aim.
The dusk sky offered a murky ceiling the color of faded jail jeans. Crows clutched top wire of a fence. They watched us like we were destined to be a meal. The slipstreams of the passing semi-trailers dragged diesel fumes into our faces. The temperature hovered in the 90s. Trouble weather and off in the distant several dirty fingers funneled from the sky. This time of year the Texas Panhandle belonged heat-driven tornadoes and hostile crackers.
An hour after sunset a dented pick-up swerved off the asphalt. The driver aimed at us with murderous intent. AK and I dove into the weeds. The Chevy C-10 fishtailed off the pebbled shoulder and then shivered on two wheels toward disaster. The redneck regained control and swerved into the slow-lane with a shudder.
AK and I rose to our feet and gave the fool the finger with a laugh. The humor disappeared an hour later after a greaser in the passenger seat of a SS Chevelle pointed a shotgun at us. We had seen EASYRIDER, the classic hippie film. The movie ended with the two long-haired bikers getting shotgunned by a toothless cracker.
"Which one of us is Billy?" AK's hands were shaking. This was no movie.
"Me." Dennis Hopper had played Captain America's sidekick as goofy as Jerry Lewis. Peter Fonda's ultra-cool portrayal of a biker/outlaw was beyond our reach.
"Then you hitchhike for an hour, because Billy dies first." AK stepped away from the highway alittle angry,since he didn't have to be out here. He had enough money to take a bus. I had $15, but AK wasn't abandoning a friend no matter how dangerous the road.
"I'll get us a ride." I hadn't slept in a day. My skin hadn't seen water in two. My hair was thick with road grime. I hefted a good-sized rock.
"What's that for?" AK sat on his bag. Weariness was painted on his face. He hadn't closed his eyes in 24 hours.
"The next hick that gets out of line."
"Better get more rocks." AK pointed out an oncoming car filled with teenagers. Their curses were howls at the moon. I could have chucked the rock through the windshield, instead I showed the peace sign with my left hand.
"Commie fags." Grits hated peace more than our long hair.
"Only one of us, you chicken fuckers." AK was 100% straight. I was a little curious.
The night sky filled with a treacherous darkness. Death was waiting for someone tonight. We had to get out of here. I pulled back my long hair into a ponytail and told AK to do the same. We almost appeared normal and cowboys drove past us without any more threats.
I dropped the rock and stuck out my thumb. This was not our America. We were cities, beaches, and mountains. Cars sped by us in the hundreds. Most of them had Texas plates. AK and I switched places twice. Neither of us were lucky.
Traffic died past midnight. Drunks weaved onto the Interstate. Bottles were replaced by beer cans. The throws were off, but we ducked with a flinch. One hit me in the arm. I didn't tell AK, but I had had enough.
"I'm going to crash." I hadn't slept since Arizona. Dirt grated my eyeballs. Exhaustion filled my every vein.
"Where?" AK stared around him. The grimy on-ramp offered no shelter from the elements. Cars and trucks zoomed ten feet away from us.
"Right here." I climbed over the steel railings. The ground was free of glass. I pulled out my sleeping bag.
"You can't sleep there." AK was horrified by my choice. He was half-Jewish/Half Wasp. He washed his hands after pissing in a bar.
"Watch me." I laid down on the rough earth. My head dropped on the rolled-up sleeping bag. The outer cotton smelled of every place that I had slept in the last month. Estes Park, Reno, Big Sur, LA, Encinitas, Pomona, and Flagstaff, Arizona. The interior reeked of me. My eyes shut forever within seconds and I hoped forever lasted until dawn.
AK woke me with a rough shake.
"Get up."
The black wind was thick with electricity. A nasty storm was roiling overhead in the WIZARD OF OZ sky. I scrambled to my feet. A pick-up truck was idling on the shoulder. Two surfboards were in back. The license plates were from Oklahoma. I threw my bag in the back. Andy sat in the middle. I had the window. The hot wind baked my skin to a glaze.
"Where you heading?" The crewcut driver had both hands on the wheel. He looked like he had been driving for days. His eyes were bugged from speed.
"Tulsa." The Spear Sisters lived within sight of the Arkansas River. I had called them from Flagstaff. They were expecting us tomorrow morning.
"A little more than 300 miles from here." The twenty-year old stepped on the gas and we left behind Armarillo. I gave the on-ramp the finger. The driver checked the mirror. "Been there long?"
"Long enough."
"I'm headed to Tulsa too. See my family before driving up to Fort Sill. Just surfed every spot between Seal Beach and Huntington. Stoked so much. A big wave is my God. The ocean my church. If it weren't for my family, I would have gone Surfer Joe AWOL."
"The Surfaris." The 45 had been a big hit for the trio from California coupled with WIPEOUT on the b-side.
"May 1963. I was living in Huntington Beach. My father was stationed in Vietnam. I surfed every day that summer." Chuck was career army. It was a family tradition.
"How you like the Army?" My father and uncles had served in WW2 and the Korean War., but no male in my generation had worn any uniform other than that of the Boy Scouts.
"Better than milking cows or plowing fields. Not much choice to do anything else in Oklahoma other than drilling oil." He was my age and asked, "Either of you serve in the military?"
"No." AK shook his head. "I protested against the War."
"Me too." The protesters were against the government's ruthlessness overseas and at home. The My Lai massacre was matched by repression of the Watts riots. Che Guevara's assassination mirrored by the murder of the black panther Fred Hampton. Our fight was with the Pentagon and White House. I never called a soldier a 'baby killer'. Only the presidents and General Westmoreland.
"Nothing wrong with that. It's a free country."
"I tried to enlist in the Marines at the age of 17. My mother wouldn't sign the papers." John Wayne was my hero. I wanted to fight in Viet-Nam. Two boys from my hometown had died during the Viet Cong's Tet offensive. She didn't want her son to be # 3. That honor was reserved for another boy from my hometown along with #s 4 and 5. "I would have had 6 years in the Corps, if my mother had signed her name.
"Probably for the better you didn't go in. A lot of Marines got killed there." The War was almost over. The troops were coming home. South Vietnam would have to fight its own battles. Chuck was happy with his life. Two more days and he would be back in the ranks, but for now Chuck was a rocker with very short hair. His 8-track played the Amboy Dukes. "I love Ted Nugent."
"He's a solid guitarist." I played no instruments other than the kazoo. "My friend here is in a band."
"That right? What kind?"
"R&B and soul. I play keyboards." Electric piano in a ten-piece band. The only white.
"I love soul music." Chuck pulled out the Amboy Dukes and slipped in Otis Redding.
SATISFACTION with a fat rhythm section.
We smoked a joint of Acapulco Gold. The weed dragged AK over the line into slumber. Chuck and I talked about the California beaches and girls. I had slept with two lesbians in Big Sur. He had one-nighted with several beach girls. My surfing was strictly body-surfing. His experience was big waves up and down the coast. His accent was straight Okie, but his heart was from the sea.
We outran the storms, however the heat of the plains was inescapable. the sun came up early. Out on the plains buzzards rose on the thermals. The thermometer on a Tulsa bank read 92. Chuck dropped us at Riverview Drive and South Indian. The Spear sisters lived two doors away. A light tan Impala convertible was in the driveway.
It was early Friday morning. The newspaper boy was running his route. Long-tailed birds flitted between the trees. We walked into the quiet neighborhood. It was a suburb. AK and I came from the same kind of neighborhood. The cut grass smelled of home.
"You think they're awake?" AK rubbed his eyes, as if he had been dreaming of a bed.
"Only one way to find out." I went to the door, while AK waited on the lawn. The girls lived alone. Their parents had a house on the next street. I rang the bell once. If they didn't answer, then the backyard was our crash pad. We had slept in worst places in the past month. Last night between the guardrails had been one of them.
Several seconds passed before I heard footsteps. I waved for AK to join me. He pushed his long black hair back to become a modern-day Ben-Hur. The transformation was a good act for a demi-Jew from Long Island. The door opened and Vickie greeted me with a hug.
"I was beginning to think that you were lost." The blonde Tulsan was tall. She was wearing a light white gown. She was very alert for this time of day.
"Not lost, now we're found." AK's eyes sparkled with the vision of a fair-skinned woman of the West. She was pure skitsah appealing to his father's bloodline.
"Spiritual on a Friday morning. C'mon in." Vickie was a mirage of America come to life. The goodness in her heart shone through her flesh. She had us dump our clothing in the washing machine and ordered us to do the same.
Vickie made us breakfast, as we showered in the bathroom. I went first. The Spear Sister were my friends. I soaped Amarillo off my skin and shampooed New Mexico out of my hair. I shaved with a Lady Bic. It gave a close shave and I emerged from the steamy room a new man.
"Your turn." I held open the door for AK. The smell of two days of road was ripe as cheese. I doubted that he would use the razor. He would question where it had been this morning.
Vickie had laid out gym shorts and a white shirt on the bed. They were my size. I followed the aroma of bacon into the kitchen. Vickie was patting the bacon dry of grease. She had changed into shorts and a white men's shirt knotted above her midriff. Bad Company's CAN'T GET ENOUGH was on the radio. I sat at the table and she turned around with a smile.
"You clean up good." Vickie cracked eggs into the frying pan without emptying the bacon grease. Fried eggs the way I like them.
"It's good to feel clean, but I understand why the crackers call us 'dirty hippies'. Not many places to clean up on the road in the desert. "The only rivers between LA and Tulsa were the Colorado and the Rio Grande."
"We can go swimming this morning. I know a place out of the city." She flipped the eggs and then buttered the toast. Coffee was brewing on the stove.
"Sounds good to me." I loved swimming holes.
AK came into the kitchen and studied Vickie's back. I wasn't gifted with ESP, but could read his mind as easily as a comic book. I knew Vicky through Nick. He was my friend and I protected his interests by asking Vickie, "You heard from Nick?"
"I got a letter from the Philippines this week. He's settled into Dagupan City and med school starts next month." Vickie loaded two plates with our breakfast and recounted Nick's letter in detail. AK scowled at my interference. He hadn't had sex since leaving Boston a month ago and I assured his drought by mentioning his girlfriend at home twice during breakfast.
Her sister Marlyn joined us. She was a younger blonde version of her older sister. All of 18. Either of them could have won a spot on the Dallas Cowboy cheerleading squad. AK and I told them stories of the road; driving a station wagon through the Rockies, seeing a fight between cowboys and farmers in Idaho, my hitching in Big Sur, hanging with hippies in Southern California, and getting stuck in Needles.
"The temperature was 135," AK said the number, as if we had survived Hell.
"Not really 135. The thermometer was broken. It was 117."
"Never gets that hot here." Vickie had the windows open. It was warm outside, but not even close to a 100. "How about you finish eating and we drive you around Tulsa? Show your friend the sights and then go swimming out on the river. You can go swimming in those shorts."
"What about your job?" She had been working as a private detective for two years after graduating from University of Tulsa. She had her heart set on joining the State Police. Her uncle ran the barracks out in the west of the state.
"I took off the next two days and my sister is out of school. We're free as birds."
AK had to be back in Boston. His girlfriend was waiting on the South Shore. He had a job teaching music for a high school. I had nowhere to be for the rest of my life and said, "I'm about that free too."
Vickie packed a lunch and we drove around Tulsa. Vickie and her sister in the front. AK and I in back. The 8-track playing Grand Funk. There wasn't much to see; Oral Roberts University and its Space Age Prayer Tower, the statue of an Indian in Woodward Park, and the cut-out of the Golden Driller at the Tulsa County Fairgrounds. The morning sun was warm on our bare skin. The girls were burnt golden. AK and I had California beach tans. We passed through a residential neighborhood south of the County Courthouse. She hadn't showed this part of Tulsa to Nick and me last year. Most of the people on the street were black and I realized that I hadn't seen a black person since leaving LA.
"This is Greenwood. In 1921 the white people of the city burned it to the ground, because someone thought a young black boy had touched a white girl." Vickie sounded embarrassed by this speck on history. "Vigilantes marched into this neighborhood with guns. The blacks fought back. Nobody knows for sure how many died in the riots."
"I never knew that." The Tulsa Riots were not taught in American History 101 at my university. AK was equally ignorant even thought we had read THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X. The black minister had been born in Omaha. Black wasn't just Harlem or the Deep South.
"No problems like that now." Vickie waved to a couple on the sidewalk and they waved back with a smile. 60 years was enough time to forget the past. Forgiving it would take longer. "Enough sightseeing. I'm hot as a snake on a rock. Let's go swimming."
"We swimming in the river?" It had looked low.
"No one swims in the Arkansas if they know what's good for them. Too polluted." Vickie stepped on the gas. "We're going to the Blue Whale. Out on Old 66."
"The Blue Whale?" My family had hunted whales across the world in the 19th Century. Oklahoma was known for oil from the ground, not blubber.
"You'll see when you get there."
Vickie sped east out of Tulsa on Route 66. Only fragments of the great road running from Chicago to LA remained intact. The land was flat farmland with long lines of trees acting as windbreaks. The houses dated back to the Dustbowl. The wind blew back our hair. The Le Mans was the fastest car on the road. Twenty minutes at 80 mph and Vickie braked the car to pull into a dirt parking lot bordering a pond on which floated a large concrete whale painted blue.
"The blue whale?"
"One and the same." Vickie got out of the car. Teenagers were diving from the whale's head. Young girls were basking in the sun. It wasn't Malibu, but the pond was spring-fed cold. This was middle America at its best. None of the crackers said anything about our long hair. Hot dogs were sizzling at the refreshment stand. The troubles of the nation were distant. We spent most of the day in the water. Marlyn and AK raced across the pond. She won by several body lengths. Vickie and I floated on blow-up rafts.
"You graduated from college this year, didn't you?" Her blonde hair hung in the water. She appeared to be a mermaid stranded far from sea. Her beauty was home-grown, but Vickie would have stopped traffic in LA or New York.
"Yes. A degree in economics." Without any honors.
"What are you going to do when you get back home? You have a job?"
"Nothing yet. I went on several interviews." Two banks and a hotel chain. "Nobody offered me anything."
"You might want to cut your hair. Ponytails in banks are only for women." The blonde detective stroked herself farther into the center on the pond. I followed her.
"One bank said I had a stutter." My speech impediment was a small one. Therapists had taught me how to control the repetition of syllables.
"And do you?" Vickie glided her hand over her flat belly.
"Only when I'm nervous. The interviewer was a bald man. He wore a pin-striped suit. I was scared that I could end up like him." The man had told me that my grades were less than fair and that he wasn't sure that I could apply myself in a 9 to 5 job.
"Everyone has to work, unless you're rich, and I don't think anyone hitching around America is rich."
"No, I'm not rich."
"So what are you going to do?" She had her eyes closed and her face turned to the sun. Her future was assured by her desire to be a state trooper. Vickie would look great in a uniform.
"I don't know." I was not cop material. They were anti-pot and I had no intention of giving up weed.
"You don't look like bank material or hotel or insurance. You like traveling. You should join the Peace Corps."
"I thought about that, but I have to pay off my college loans." I owed about $5000. The price of a Cadillac. Starting salary at the bank had been $300/week. At a $100/month the loan would be paid in full about 1980.
"Too bad, you seem perfect for that job."
Her advice was on the money. I was dead-set against joining Corporate America. I couldn't go back to my summer job at the telephone company. My parents expected better than a clerk from me. My entire life lay ahead and I had no idea what I wanted to do. Boston was less than two days' travel from Tulsa. I would have to make a decision soon. I had no money.
AK and Marlyn swam to us.They hung off our rafts. Marlyn made a face. "Why so sad?"
"Your sister and I were talking about my future and I realized that I didn't have one." Americans expected college graduates to excel at their jobs. Our destiny was a house in the suburbs, a wife, kids, two cars, TVs, and credit cards. That dream held no appeal. I was counter-culture to the bone.
"Everyone has a future. It will come to you."
"In California he almost joined a hippie band. He was going to play kazoo in a street band for quarters."
"It seemed like a good idea at the time." I had been high on LSD.
"Everything sounds good when we young." Vickie lifted her head. Storm clouds built black towers on the northern horizon. Everyone was decamping from the Blue Whale. "We better be going."
Hail racketed the Le Mans on the way back to Tulsa. The size of frozen peas. The top was up. Lightning crackled from dragon-tailed clouds. Vickie kept the speed to 50. She wanted to be driving 100. The road condition was safe for 20. The storm broke at the Tulsa city limits.
AK and I retreated to the guest bedroom. The girls' father was having us over for a BBQ. Tulsa was a dry town. Vickie's uncle was bringing beer that he had confiscated from a bootlegger. Our clothes were clean and I picked out a white shirt and jeans. I dressed slowly and AK asked, "What's wrong?"
"Nothing." I sat on the bed with my sneakers in hand.
"You don't look like it's nothing." AK and I knew each other two years. It wasn't a long time, but the last month had tightened our friendship. The road does that to people. "Let me guess. You're freaked out by that talk with Vickie about your future."
"Yes." I was 22 without a plan. No business wanted to hire me. The country was suffering a recession. My only opportunity in Boston was driving a taxi. "You have a job teaching. Vickie has a job. Chuck, the soldier, has a job. Everyone I know has a job. Not me. I don't have nothing."
"It's don't have anything." AK joined me on the bed. "Not everyone knows what they are going to do with their life. I graduated with an English degree and I'm teaching math. I don't want to being doing that and most people end up doing what they don't want to do. They end up having to do what they have to do and so will you until you figure it out, so get dressed and we'll go drink some beer. That's something you do well."
"I guess you're right." I pulled on my sneakers. Even they smelled clean.
"Of course I'm right. We're on the road. Our goal in life is to reach Boston. Until then screw jobs. We're free as the birds."
"Like the song." Lynard Skynard had released FREE BIRD in 1973. It wasn't a hit for the Southern band, but something told me that it would be a hit soon. I got to my feet and thanked AK for his counsel.
"It's only something I would have told myself."
"And you would believe it."
"No, but then the best lies are the ones you tell yourself." AK put his arm around my shoulder and led me from the bedroom. I was free. I was 22. The entire world was before me and that was the beauty of the road. Anything was possible.
"
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