Reno Nevada Blackjack May 29, 1974

In 1974 my 21st birthday was spent driving across Nevada with Andy, a pot-smoking pianist, and Carole, a blonde co-ed heading to the West Coast. We had made good time in the rent-away station wagon up to this point and I decided to celebrate my coming of age by gambling at every desert town along I-80. Elko, Winnemucca, Lovelock, and Sparks were generous to my cause. I was up about $1000 from playing blackjack or 21. It was a simple game and I had a good head for numbers as would anyone who had been a math major in college.

Sunset fell over Reno, the Biggest Little City in the World. The first bright lights since Denver. I picked out Harrah’s as my next victim. Before entering the casino I handed Andy my traveling money and $500.

“Don’t give me this no matter what.” I had seen gambling movies. No one came out on top. Carole shook her head. “What’s wrong?”

“If you’re going to play, then play. Never fix a limit.” Carole was a junior at a girl’s college outside Boston. She was studying business. Her advice sounded dangerous.

“I’ll leave the money with Andy.”

I sat at a blackjack table. The dealer was kind. I was up another $500 and felt like I could kill the bank for another $1000. Andy asked me to call it a night.

“We can crash in the Sierras.”

“Another ten minutes and I’ll buy us hotel rooms.” I couldn’t lose and tapped a passing cocktail waitress. She was tall and wearing a very short dress. I ordered a Jack and Coke. My favorite drink. I had several more. I recall something about threatening Andy for money and then nothing until I woke up along the Truckee River. The ground was no soft hotel bed and my hang-over not a crown of victory. Carole and Andy were standing over my resting place.

“Did I lose everything?”

“Everything but the car.” Carole wore an expression of pity. It wasn’t until we reached Sacramento that Andy returned my traveling stake. All my birthday winnings had reverted to the casino. There are no winners and I’ve avoided casinos ever since that day, having learned that blackjack doesn’t mix with Jack and Coke.

It’s a lesson that stays with me. I might not have scored good grades, but I was a good student and Reno was an even better teacher. It was a lesson I only needed to learn once.

ON THE ROAD / Kerouac's Map 1947

Click on map to enlarge.

Written Apr 10, 2016

This map from Jack Kerouac's diary detailed his hitchhiking across the USA in 1947.

His itinerary includes more stops than the classic hit ROUTE 66 sung originally by Nat King Cole.

New York City, Chicago, Davenport Des Moines, North Platte, Cheyenne, Denver, Laramie, Salt Lake, Reno, San Francisco, Madera, Fresno, Selma, Los Angeles, Prescott, Albuquerque, Dalhart, Kansas City, St Louis, Indianapolis, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Washington DC and finally New York City.

>This transcontinental voyage served as the inspiration for his novel ON THE ROAD, which remains an icon for readers seeking to relive the author's hell-bent adventures through a vastly different America than today. There were no highways and the population was 144,126,071 under the rule of Harry S Truman. Men wore hats and women were strapped into girdles. Hitchhikers were considered undesirables as were Kerouac and his friends in the post-war era.

They were dopehead beatniks and homo nigger-lovers.

And worst their kids wanted to be like them.

I hitchhiked across the USA in 1970. Boston-San Francisco-Seattle-Boston.

My friend Peter Gore and I were long-haired anti-war pot-smoking hippies. We were given rides by fellow hippies, speed freaks, truck drivers, salesmen, moms and dads, military men, farmers, ranchers, and RVs. We met America and America met us.

Hitchhikers don't exist in America today. People are too scared to pick up strangers and the steroid-juiced cops harass anyone beyond their vision of good. I told a French friend about their extinction and mentioned that I would like to make a cross-country journey ala Kerouac.

"Zis would make a good film."

"I know, but I'm not doing it to make a film." I envisioned standing by the side of the road with PARADISE written on sign.

No highways on this trip. No cities either. No sleeping under bridges. I'm too old for that. All I need is a couple of hundred dollars. New York-San Francisco to re-create Kerouac's odyssey.

The last hitchhiker.

On The Road - Kerouac - July 2022

Route 6 - The Bear Mountain Bridge

Every trip begins somewhere.

PAGE ONE - ON THE ROAD

I’d been poring over maps of the United States in Paterson for months, even reading books about the pioneers and savoring names like Platte and Cimarron and so on, and on the roadmap was one long red line called Route 6 that led from the tip of Cape Cod clear to Ely, Nevada, and there dipped down to Los Angeles. I’ll just stay on 6 all the way to Ely, I said to myself and confidently started. To get to 6 I had to go up to Bear Mountain. Filled with dreams of what I’d do in Chicago, in Denver, and then finally in San Fran, I took the Seventh Avenue subway to the end of the line at 242nd Street, and there took a trolley into Yonkers; in downtown Yonkers I transferred to an outgoing trolley and went to the city limits on the east bank of the Hudson River. If you drop a rose in the Hudson River at its mysterious source in the Adiron dacks, think of all the places it journeys by as it goes out to sea forever—think of that wonderful Hudson Valley. I started hitching up the thing. Five scattered rides took me to the desired Bear Mountain Bridge, where Route 6 arched in from New England. It began to rain in torrents when I was let off there. It was mountainous. Route 6 came over the river, wound around a traffic circle, and disappeared into the wilderness. Not only was there no traffic but the rain came down in buckets and I had no shelter. I had to run under some pines to take cover; this did no good; I began crying and swearing and socking myself on the head for being such a damn fool. I was forty miles north of New York; all the way up I’d been worried about the fact that on this, my big opening day, I was only moving north instead of the so-longed-for west. Now I was stuck on my northernmost hangup. I ran a quarter-mile to an abandoned cute English-style filling station and stood under the dripping eaves. High up over my head the great hairy Bear Mountain sent down thunderclaps that put the fear of God in me. All I could see were smoky trees and dismal wilderness rising to the skies. “What the hell am I doing up here?”

Filmed by Jacques Haven

October Crow Screening

Dr Neil Nepola.

Three nights ago an audience of fifty young peple showed up for the first screening of OCTOBER CROW. The crowd were mostly tgere for Brigette who is a star. But my dear friend of fifty-four years was drivinf from Staten Island. He was running late.

To stall tge impatience of the young, I regaled the audience with a tale of how Neil and I had hitchhiked across the USA in late August 1973, ending up trying to catch a ride to the East Coast on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Scores of hippies bound for colleges across America after another Summer of Love in the Bay Area competed for a lift. Cars and vans stopped every thirty minutes to pick up a traveler. Once a math major in university I calculated our waiting time. At least a day. My first economics class at Boston College started in four days. Getting there on time looked unlikely. I only had $23. Neil, could have flown, but he hadn't wanted to abandon me.

A few hours later a crapped out Pinto driven by a frazzled mother with a young daughter crammed in a backseat packed with what looked like all their possessions stopped and asked if one of us wanted a ride to Denver. Neil shrugged and said, "You go. You have to finish college."

"Are you sure?"

Neil was leaving the States for med school in the Phillipines two weeks later.

"Yeah, I'll see you in Boston,"

I jumped in the Pinto and we drove East. Marilyn had left her husband, a dancer in the Cockettes, a transvestite dance troupe. She had a friend in Denver. I took over the wheel. Her daughter was quiet in the back. Once she fell asleep, Marilyn joined her and I drove through the night, stopping once for gas in Reno. When we reached the Bonneville Salt Flats, I stopped at a desolate rest area. Neither had anymore drive in us. Her daughter asleep in the Pinto, we crashed in my sleeping bag. That night we made hippie love. At sunrise we awoke veneered by the dead lake's brine. Hours later we showered in Little America. Later that afternoon Marilyn dropped me in Cheyenne and turned south to Denver, saying she'd meet me in Boston.

Doctor Nepola showed up a day later at my house in Bug Village.

"So?"

"Yes."

"Good, because I would have been really pissed if you hadn't."

Forever friends.

ps Marilyn showed two weeks later.

With her daughter. I thought hell yeah. Instant hippie family, except my next door neighbors called her name. They had gone to college together. Shocked she and her boyfriend Andy was there. Shocked was I when she accepted their offer to crash with them, realizing I had been cock blocked. The young audience were gobsmacked by the tale.

Last night Andy's son was in attendance.

Neil was greeted with a standing O.

A small word and a long life.

ps the screening was a success.

Several minutes later when I introduced Neil the audience rousing applauded as my medical saviour and legendary traveler. Then the lights dimmed and the screen filled with the image of Alex standing by a grave.

The first seconds of October Crow.

Seventy nine minutes to go.

ps everyone loved the movie. Even Doctor Nepola. Then again what was there not to like.

No Hitchhiking Nowhere In The USA

Hitchhiking has existed since Jonah was swallowed by the whale on a Mediterranean voyage from Tarnish to Jaffa, fleeing the edict of Yahweh to save the sinners of Ninevah "for their great wickedness is come up before me." After three days the prophet was spat from the whale's innards and obeyed the Lord. Ninevah was saved from Jehovah's wrath. He was thereafter know as alte valfish stink' or Old Whale Stink.

Hitchhiking was a favorite form of transportation in the 20s.

Clark Gable immortalized the thumbing technique in the comedy IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT.

Peter: It's all in that ol' thumb, see?...that ol' thumb never fails. It's all a matter of how you do it, though. Now, you take number one, for instance. That's a short, jerky movement like this - that shows independence, you don't care whether they stop or not. You've got money in your pocket, see...

Ellie: Clever!

Peter: But number two, that's a little wider movement - a smile goes with this one, like this, that means you've got a brand new story about the farmer's daughter...

Ellie: Hmm, mmm. You figured that out all by yourself! Peter: Number three, that's the pits. Yeah, that's a pitiful one you know. When you're broke and hungry and everything looks black. It's a long sweeping movement like this, but you've got to follow through though...

Ellie: Oh, that's amazing.

Peter: It's no good though, if you haven't got a long face to go with it. Keep your eye on that thumb, baby, and see what happens. [a car drives by without stopping]

Ellie: I still got my eye on the thumb.

Peter: Something must have gone wrong. I'll try method number two.

Ellie: When you get to 100, wake me up.

Peter: [after failing to get over a dozen cars to stop] I don't think I'll write that book after all.

Ellie: Let me try.

Peter: You? Don't make me laugh.

Ellie: Oh, you're such a smart alec. Nobody knows anything but you. I'll stop a car and I won't use my thumb.

Peter: What're you going to do?

Ellie: It's a system all my own.

[She pulls her skirt above her knee and the next car screeches to a halt]

A beautiful scene.

In 1947 Jack Kerouac traveled from coast to coast and later wrote the classic ON THE ROAD.

Hitchhiking was a boon for beatniks and the hippies adopted the road in the 1960s.

The Mass. Avenue onramp to the Mass Pike was a favorite for long distance departures.

I90 went straight across the country to Seattle.

I hitched from that spot to DC, New York, Buffalo, the Adirondacks, San Francisco, and Florida.

It all ended too soon.

The police hated hippies.

The GOP hated traveling for free.

State by state hitchhiking was banned on the highways and byroads of America.

The roads are empty.

Only ghosts exist now, although several years ago the director John Waters voyaged across the USA by thumb.

A true hero of all times.

Rock on hitchhikers.

Who knows where the road will lead.

BACK AND FORTH BY PETER NOLAN SMITH - CHAPTER 2 - FLATLANDS

I-90 weaved over the Berkshires and descended into the heavily forested Hudson Valley. Pam, AK, and Sean had been on the road two hours and they had no immediate plans to stop other than for gas or food.

“You know Jack Kerouac started his trip south of here at the Bear Mountain Bridge. He had $50 in his pocket.” A paperback copy of ON THE ROAD was stashed in Sean’s bag.

Behind him Pam put down Erica Jong’s FEAR OF FLYING and said, “We’re not picking up any more hitchhikers.”

“I’m not suggesting th-th-that,” Sean stuttered and added, “Just saying th-th-that he traveled on US 6.”

“There wasn’t much of a choice, since no highways existed in the 1947,” AK said from behind the wheel of the special edition Torino, whose purring V8 engine begged for more speed. “There were only roads like Routes 6 and 66. As a soldier in 1919 President Eisenhower traveled cross-country with an army column. The trip lasted almost two months on the Lincoln Highway.”

“And we’ll do it in less than a week.” Sean added up the distance to the Rockies from a map of the USA.

Colorado was more than 1500 miles from here.

“Little danger of us getting lost. I-80 runs from New York to San Francisco. No detours.” The four-lane ribbon of asphalt connected the East with the West and all points in between.

“None we know of.”

“But there are always detours on the road.”

After Albany the highway shadowed the ancient Mohawk Trail avoiding the cities of northern New York. A single hitchhiker walked off the highway, tramping to the Adirondacks or Montreal. Low hills escorted the Torino west. The low hills faltered after the Finger Lakes and the interstate straightened on fertile farmland between Phelps and Batavia.

“What about stopping to see Jackie?” AK asked, as the Ford Torino passed a road sign marked BUFFALO 35 MILES.

“She’s gone south with her high school sweetheart to her parents’ ski chalet at Kissing Bridge.” Pam mercifully fielded the query about her college roommate.

“And they don’t need any company,” Sean declared hoping to not show his bitterness at being bettered by an old boyfriend.

“I’m sure she’d be happy to see us.” AK joked at Sean’s expense, although he had not said a word about Anne-Marie, his girlfriend back in the Boston.

“You and Pam maybe, but not me.”

“Somebody sounds jealous.”

“I’m not jealous.”

Her boyfriend had been admitted to Yale’s law program and Jerry’s future was brighter than that of a substitute teacher at South Boston High School.

“Really?” AK scoffed at my lie.

“The last time I saw her, she seemed very happy with her decision.”

“You’re right. He does sound jealous,” Pam said, because while a man’s ears were captured the full pitch range of sound, a woman’s hearing deciphered the prism of emotions.

“Okay, maybe I’m a little jealous, but that’s not a sin.”

“Actually it’s one of the Seven Deadly Sins.” The New Yorker’s sense of humor regarded someone falling down stairs as comedy, while a paper cut was a tragedy.

“I can see that I’ll never be right on this trip.”

They had been on the road less than four hours and Sean had been the butt of their jokes for all four of them.

“Pride’s another of Deadly Sins.” AK grasped the steering wheel with his hands at 10 and 2 O’clock. A driving school on the South Shore had taught Sean the same technique in 1968. b“Sloth is one more.” Pam offered from the rear.

“I’m not lazy.”

“You drove taxi nights to pay your tuition.”

“Too many nights and I showed up at my morning classes.”

“Some of the time.” AK had driven with me.

“So I’m not slothful, but I bet ten dollars neither of you know the other Deadly Sins?”

“You’re on.” AK lifted three fingers. “We have envy, pride, and sloth. Greed and lust make five.”

“Gluttony is six.” Pam was a Catholic girl. The nuns taught her sin.

“So far so good. Now what is the Seventh?”

“Bias.” AK was half-Jewish.

“Wrong.” Sean was half-Irish. The English hated his tribe. Their troops had killed thirteen unarmed protestors on Bloody Sunday. Racism wasn’t considered a sin by the Holy Roman Church.

Pam and AK offered a dozen wrong answers before Sean terminated the contest by saying, “Wrath.”

“I should have guessed that first.” AK laughed at his answer.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You do have a temper.” Pam offered from the back. “And you can’t say that you don’t.”

“No, that would be a lie.” Sean’s fights in grammar school outnumbered his fingers and toes, although most had been to prevent ritual beatings by two bullies and he glanced at AK.

“But I wasn’t the one who threw Bill out of the car.”

“So I beat you to the punch for once.” His friend had protected Pam from the hitchhiker trying to strangle Sean from the back seat.

“Congratulations, meanwhile where’s my ten dollars?”

“Double or nothing for the Ten Commandments.” AK countered by speeding up to 68.

“You’re joking? I’m a Catholic schoolboy. The nuns blistered our palms for any mistake in catechism class.

You don’t stand a chance.”

“What about state capitols?”

“Geography was my strongest subject in grammar school.”

“Okay, but I have my own vast abyss of useless knowledge.” AK revealed his pop acumen by reciting the release dates of each successive Beatles LP, as if his brain had stored the information to teach a future class in Beatles 101.

“BEATLES FOR SALE was their last record worth a listen.”

“SGT. PEPPERS, THE WHITE ALBUM, LET IT BE and all the later Beatles LP hit the top of the charts here and all around the world.” AK owned all their records.

“That might be true, but when was the last time you listened to one?” Sean had bequeathed ten Beatles albums to his younger brothers with the exception of BEATLES 65.

“It’s been a while,” AK admitted passing a long-haul truck.

“You know the Beatles are Jackie’s favorite band?” asked Pam.

“They are?”

“Didn’t you ever notice their poster on our dorm room wall?” She shut her book.

“No.” He conjured up a vision of Jackie lying on her bed. Naked she had been a Playboy centerfold.

“Your Beatlephobia is another reason that you two were doomed in the long run.”

“She dumped me, because of the Beatles?”

“You told her that you had rejected the Fab Four after discovering that your first sweetheart was in love with Paul McCartney, the cute Beatle. Jackie loved Paul too. She loved all his music. Especially HEY JUDE.”

“HEY JUDE is the longest seven minutes and eleven seconds in music history.”

“Maybe so, but your hating the Beatles was just another reason you two aren’t together.”

“There are other reasons?”

“I’ve already said too much.” Pam concluded this indiscreet breach of a friend’s confidence by re-opening her book. FEAR OF FLYING had sold millions to women readers seeking freedom from the chains of marriage. She handed a tape to AK.

“Could you put this on?”

“Sure, I love Joni.”

They listened to BLUE for the second time in seven hours. It was the one tape in the car. At the Buffalo exit two hippies had out their thumbs.

“Not too late to make a stop.”

“We agreed no hitchhikers.” Pam glared at Sean.

“J-j-just testing your resolve.”

“It’s like steel.”

“You’re the co-pilot,” Sean stepped on the gas, because this trip was about what lay ahead and not old stories.

I-90 bypassed Buffalo and they stopped for gas just over the Pennsylvania state line as THE LAST TIME I SAW RICHARD came to an end. After eight hours of driving Boston was almost 500 miles behind them.

“Anyone feel like stopping to eat?” Sean indicated the diner. Grease covered the restaurant’s windows.

“Not here. I’ll take the wheel now.” Pam took the keys.

They left the gas station and Pam drove fifteen miles over the speed limit into Ohio.

“You’re not scared of a ticket?” AK eyed the speedometer.

“I never get speeding tickets.”

“Never?”

“Maybe when I’m older, but cops like a pretty face. If a smile doesn’t work, then I go for tears.”

“Maybe you could teach me your magic.” Sean’s friend was smitten by the wholesome blonde, but AK’s chance of success were near zero. She had a boyfriend and he had a girlfriend.

“A magician never gives away her tricks.”

“Like the Wicked Witch of the West.”

“More like Samantha in BEWITCHED.”

Sean rolled down the rear window and the buffeting wind blocked their small talk. To the right Lake Erie was more brown than blue. Sean pulled out his journal and wrote words to describe the scenery.

“Sky, earth, lake, highway, cars, trucks, trees, barns, silos, birds, steel, bridge, flowers, clouds, haze.”

After several minutes the pen fell from his hand and Sean dozed until hearing sharp voices.

“What’s the problem?” He leaned forward to the front seat.

“Your friend wants to stop for the night.” Pam was in a hurry. She hadn’t seen her doctor boyfriend since Christmas.

“And you?”

“I might have never been past Buffalo, but if I didn’t know any better, the last hundred miles seems like the same.”

“This is the beginning of the flatness. The farmlands stretch across the Great Plains. Always more empty to the West than the East.

“Than the less time here means more time in the Rockies.”

Sean agreed with Pam and said, “With three of us driving non-stop we can reach the mountains tomorrow afternoon.”

“What about sleep?” asked AK. “We could stop in Cleveland. It’s about fifty miles away.”

“Three years ago I spent a night in Cleveland drinking beer next to a junk yard. There’s nothing there. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois are strictly crapped-out factory towns separated by cornfields.”

“Strike one.” Pam stepped on the gas. No one was passing the station wagon with her at the wheel.

“What about Toledo?” AK read off the map.

“No Cleveland, no Sandusky, no Toledo.” Pam’s closed the argument with her hands white on the wheel.

“What about Chicago? We could see some blues. Maybe some Muddy Waters.” AK faced Sean. “Jack Kerouac stopped in the Windy City in ON THE ROAD. He listened to Be-Bop on the South Side.”

“Charlie Parker has been dead since 1955, plus we’ll hit Chicago around two in the morning.” Sean calculated the arrival time by dividing the distance by 75 MPH. “The bars will be closed at that time.”

“Have you ever been to Chicago?”

“I hitchhiked through it in 1972, but didn’t stop.”

“And we’re not stopping this time either.” Pam sped up more.

“Okay, no blues, but what about a motel?”

“The back of the station wagon is our hotel. The Hotel Torino.” Pam pointed behind her. Something had gone off between them during his nap in the back seat.

“Yeah, zero stars.” AK popped off the Joni Mitchell and fiddled with the radio dial to settle on a college station playing soul music.

Al Green followed Joe Tex and Ike Turner.

None of them spoke for the next few hours.

A quarter moon illuminated the eastern night sky.

The sun sunk below the western horizon.

A little east of Angola, Indiana they filled up the tank at a truck stop charging 60 cents for High Test. Sean ordered $10 at the pump and checked out the diner, which was cleaner than the last one.

“I’m hungry. Anyone else? A cheeseburger and fries are edible most anywhere.”

“I vote for a thirty minute break.” AK raised his hand.

“I’ll go with the mob to make it unanimous.”

Once out of the station wagon Pam stretched her body.

“We’ll see you inside,” AK said and entered the diner with Pam.

Her dress furled around her young body to conjure up a hippie goddess. Shaking off the illusion Sean paid the attendant and parked the Torino.

Diesel fumes wreathed the truck stop and the whine of bloodthirsty mosquitoes competed with the low growl of idling engines. Women wandered from truck to truck. A chubby blonde in a tube top beckoned to Sean to join her behind two trailers.

He hurried inside the diner

The long-haulers at the tables gawked at Pam and he wished that the blonde co-ed wore a jean jacket over her filmy peasant shirt. They regarded her as if she was someone they recognized, but couldn’t figure out whom.

As she sat down next to AK, several truckers snickered out jokes about Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters. Sean started to remark on their lack of front teeth.

“This might not be the South.” AK grabbed his friend’s hand and whispered, “But these truckers would love to beat up a hippie. Keep cool.”

A ravaged redneck in greasy overalls winked at him.

A very friendly wink.

“Excuse me for a second.” Sean stood up from the counter and told his friends, “I have to make a phone call.”

He indicated the payphone on the wall. Sean counted out of pocket of change and dialed a number in Buffalo. The call cost $1.75 for three minutes. It rang for a half-minute without anyone answering. He hung up to join AK and Pam in the diner.

“How’d it go?” AK was reading the menu.

“No one was home.”

“It’s a holiday weekend. Try later.” He didn’t ask whom Sean had called, because the answer was obvious.

A blue-haired waitress wrote down their order.

“Three cheeseburgers and fries with iced cokes.”
‘Doris’ was scrawled on her nametag. “That right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sean replied, since politeness to strangers was good manners on the road.

“And girl, don’t mind those houndbog hicks. They ain’t got a home or wives.” She regarded her clientele with a friendly sneer.

“We have wives,” the redneck protested with hurt pride.

“Mostly ex-wives, Chuck.” The waitress smirked, as if the truckers were deadbeat brothers. “All these bums are married to their rigs.”

“And we’ll stay hitched as long as the banks don’t know where we are,” a heavyset trucker joked with an outlaw smile.

“We’re happy men.”

“It’s not such a bad thing to be on the road.”

“What do you know about the road?” demanded a bearded long-hauler in greasy overalls. His tattooed forearms were thicker than Pam’s calves and his eyes were pinned from Bennies.

“Not much, but I drove taxi to pay for my college tuition. I know it’s not the same as hauling potatoes from Idaho to Texas, but I padi for college on wheels.

“Potatoes are a safe cargo,” the bearded long-hauler murmured with an accompanying nod and the redneck agreed, “They don’t shift weight.”

“Not like a squealing load of hogs. They’ll jackknife your rig and you’ll end up a dead man in a ditch.” A white-haired trucker grimaced from a flashback to a near-brush with death.

“Yeah, it might be dangerous, but trucking is better than working at a factory.” Another trucker professed from down the counter.

“Or a mine.” The redneck offered with a West Virginia accent, although his fingernails were black with grease not coal.

After his comment the men in the diner held a pissing contest as to who had worked the worse job. Sean’s employment as a janitor in a morgue was beaten out by a shit-shoveler at a pig ranch, but there were worst jobs to be had in America.

“My worse job was my first job,” said a skinny man lifting a hand with a missing little finger. A job was a job to these men and women. A way to provide for their families. “I was about 15 years old in Prescott, Arizona and this new restaurant was opening up. I asked the boss for a dishwashing job, but the place wasn’t opening for another two months. He gave me a job digging the stones out of the future parking lot. $1.20 an hour in the summer sun and I weighed about a hundred pounds sweating wet. One of the big stone slipped and crushed my finger to the knuckle.”

“My worst job was smashing knives.” An older man held up his empty coffee cup and Doris poured him a refill. “This pawn broker in Dallas was buying silver sets and needed the stainless steel blades taken out of the handles. My brother and me got a dime for each knife. We pounded out sixty an hour, but quit after three hours of breathing the lead epoxy inside the handles.”

Pam had heard enough macho bravado and said, “I worked at a DC restaurant for Albanian gangsters. They acted Stalin and had as many hands as an octopus.”

Not a single man said a word, while fantasizing the same thing as Pam’s Albanian bosses. The silence might have last a little longer, except Doris laughed, saying, “That sounds like my house after payday.”

The truckers chuckled heartily at the waitress’ comment and recommenced eating their meals. Doris came over to the counter and patted Pam’s hand.

“Anyone ever say that you look like someone famous?”

“No, but who?”

“I don’t know, but someone. You boys take care of this girl. She’s special.”

“And so are you.” Pam rose from her stool and blew a kiss to the truckers. “Happy trails.”

Several of the hardened long-haulers blushed like schoolboys on a first date and Sean followed Pam, as AK paid the bill.

Big rigs throttled out of the truck stop. The night temperature was falling into the low 70s and by midnight it might lean into the 60s.

“Those truckers weren’t so bad.” Pam shivered in the cool air.

“Most people have some good in them.” The stars overhead clustered into the thick marvel of the Milky Way.

“Bill?” Pam possessed no forgiveness for the redneck hitchhiker in this lifetime.

“Maybe not Bill.”

“No, not Bill.”

“What’s AK’s girlfriend like?”

“Who said he had a girlfriend?”

“Jackie.”

“Anne-Marie’s a nice person. Same as you.”

“I’m only nice?”

“Okay, you’re better than nice.” AK caught up with them. Pam’s eyes warned to say nothing about their discussion. Sean was from Boston. He knew how to hold his sand.

“I loved how you stopped being a hippie and shed your skin to become a trucker. You even started to speak with a drawl.” AK was happy to be away from the diner’s suspicious minds.

“I have a gift for language.” Sean wiped his face with a napkin from the diner.

“More like accents than language, which is tricky for a Boston boy with a stutter.”

“Thanks for the compliment. Guess it’s my turn to drive.” Sean opened the rear door for Pam.

“Jackie liked your manners.” The blonde bowed her head in thanks

“So at least I was a gentleman.”

“On some occasions.” Pam shut the door.

AK looked back at the diner.

“What’s the matter?”

“You and me. Our families dropped anchor on the coast. These people came inland. They’re not like us.”

“They’re Americans. We watch the same TV shows, played the same games, and eat the same food.”

“I know that, but both times I crossed the country I felt like a spaceman on an alien planet.”

“Or Captain America and Billy in EASY RIDER.” Dennis Hopper’s biker film had instilled longhairs with a healthy fear for rednecks and crackers.

Knuckles rapping on the car window cut short their conversation.

“Our mistress calls.” Sean nodded to Pam.

“As long as she’s with us, we have nothing to fear.”

AK took the wheel and Sean sat in front, turning to Pam.

“We weren’t talking about you.”

“I know. My ears weren’t burning.” She sported a protective toughness, for staying a virgin required a special devotion to purity in the 70s.

Sean started the Torino.

The V8 was raring for the road and the souped-up station wagon raced onto the highway. Behind them the truck stop disappeared into the darkness and he pushed the car up to 70.

“What about the cops?” AK had an unblemished driving record.

“I ain’t seen any.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re not there. You really want them to stop us?” AK fired up a joint.

“Okay, okay, play it safe.”

“Just like you.”

Sean had had two totals, been in a high-speed chase, and collected a stack of moving violations in eight years of driving.

“Better more like you than me.”

A half-hour later AK tapped his shoulder and nodded at a sleeping Pam. “Guess she found a hotel room in her dreams.”

“Why don’t you do the same?”

A radio station from Kentucky played Tommy James’ CRIMSON BLUE PERSUASION.

“Wake me, if you’re tired.” AK muttered and joined Pam in Never-Neverland within minutes.

The trucks rolled at 75 and Sean ran with the pack of semis. The big rigs’ drivers communicated on CB radios, pinpointing the location of rolling cop cruisers and speed traps, but even this fast this speed every miles of Indiana was a limbo of sameness. Only road signs indicated any progress west.

As AK and Pam slept, Sean listened to his interior conversation about a real job or lack of a girlfriend. He finally silenced the banter by speaking to the DJ, who proved a better companion than the voices in his head.

Past Michigan City a stretch of the Interstate broke free of traffic in both directions and his foot buried the gas. The Torino hit 100 within a half-mile and the speedometer touched 126 before Sean eased off the accelerator. The owner had been telling the truth about the Torino’s speed and they reached the old steel town of Gary three hours after leaving the truck stop.

Two summers ago the night sky over the mill town had shimmered from the blast furnaces burning at full tilt. The recession had killed off the graveyard shift and tonight Gary was dark as the midnight hour.

The truck drivers slowed down in the middle of nowhere and Sean decelerated to the legal limit. A mile farther they passed a state trooper hidden in the bushes. AK woke with a groan and crawled carefully over Pam into the front seat.

“Where are we?”

“A little west of Gary.”

“I was hoping you would say Chicago.” His eyes blinked to adjust to the night.

“It’s about seventy miles north of here.”

I-90 had become I-80. They were 900 miles from Boston and two thousand from California. Sean was ready to miss about a hundred of them.

“You ready to take over the wheel?”

“No, but I’ll try my best.”

They stopped on the side of the interstate and changed seats in less than ten seconds. Before getting behind the wheel, AK tapped Pam’s shoulder and startled the college student.

“What?”

“Let me fold down the seats, so you sleep like a human being.”

“Okay.”

AK arranged their sleeping bags and Pam slunk into the back.

Sean wished that he could have joined her, but he wasn’t so sure that AK could stay awake, but three minutes later he closed his eyes, praying that they were out of Illinois before his dreams were done.

He woke to JOLENE on the radio. AK was pulling into a truck stop. Sean sat up in his seat and checked the odometer. They had covered about 90 miles.

“We’ll never get to California at this rate.”

“I’m not looking to break any records.”

“So I see.” Dolly Parton’s song was a big hit in America. “You’re listening to country?”

“I like her twangy voice, plus there’s not much else to listen to out here.”

“No, I guess there isn’t.”

AK stopped next to the pump.

“What time is it?”

“About 3:30.”

He rolled down the window and told the attendant to fill up the tank with high-test.

Water spread beyond the gas station and the lights of a big bridge split the dark horizon. “Is that a lake?”

“No, the Mississippi is in flood. A radio station warned that the high-water crest will hit Davenport tomorrow.”

“The water rises anymore and they police will close the Interstate.”

“The radio announced that Army Corp of Engineers says there’s nothing to worry about, plus cars are coming from the other direction. You ready for another shift?” AK paid the attendant.

It was Pam’s turn, but she was out cold.

“Not really.” Sean stepped out of the station wagon and massaged his neck.

“Regretting that vote against a motel for the night?” AK asked outside the station wagon.

“Just a little, but I like being on the road.” Kerouac was in his mind.

Two trucks whipped past the truck stop at top speed.

Their rear lights faded into the night.

“This land is our land.” AK quoted Woody Guthrie, because no matter where they went in their lives no one couldn’t escape being Americans.

“From the New York Island to California.”

“This land was made for you and me.”

The altered lyrics testified to a singer’s love for his country and Sean took the keys from AK.

“You know I like Pam?”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“And what should I do?”

“Play it cool. She’s in love with someone else.”

“Okay.” AK nodded and sat in the passenger seat, laying his head against the window. Sean had tried the same position for the last two hundred miles. It wasn’t a comfortable.

He raised his head and said, “Stay between the lines.”

“I’ll do my best.” Sean pulled out of the truck stop into the right-hand lane.

Ten seconds later AK was asleep.

Sean checked the rear view mirror. Pam lay from head to toe in the direction of California. The interstate was black ahead and black behind. The Torino was the only passenger vehicle on the road.

His foot pressed on the gas and the Ford Torino hit 70 within seconds. The Rocky Mountains were getting closer and closer. Sean wanted to see them tomorrow and pushed the speedometer to 80, because fast was the only speed to drive this time of night in America.

BACK AND FORTH Chapter 1 A Novel About Hitchhiking

CHAPTER 1 - THE FIRST TEN MILES

The morning sky stretched a cloudless blue from east to west over Boston. Two long-haired men and a young blonde woman stood on the sidewalk, as the trees wavered with the warm spring wind. May 24, 1974 was a good day to begin a trip and the three travelers boarded a Centre Street trolley.

The trolley driver clanged a bell and the orange streetcar rocked on Arborway tracks toward Forest Hills. When the twenty-one year-old Bostonian unfolded a map of America, Sean’s friend pointed to the West Coast and said, “I can’t believe we’re driving cross-country in a station wagon.”

“A ride’s a ride, plus we can sleep in the back.” Sean defended the station wagon, since his father had bought a new Ford every three years until his six kids were old enough to drive their own cars.

“We could have waited for a Cadillac,” argued AK.

“It’s all the Drive-Away company had going to Northern California and I’m all about CALIFORNIA DREAMIN, instead of DIRTY WATER.”

“I second the motion.” The blonde nursing student was dead set on leaving today. “Boston to Sacramento. Today.”

“Boston to LA would have worked for me.” The pianist was visiting a friend north of San Diego.

“No cars were going there for another week.” Drive-Away cars were in high demand from college students heading west after the end of the Spring Semester.

“What if the owner says no.” Pam was eager to get to Mendocino.

“It’s too nice a day for him to say anything other than ‘yes’, plus we already signed a contract with the DriveAway company. Here’s our stop.”

The three of them got off the trolley and proceeded down Boynton Street. Sean knew this neighborhood well. Everyone was Irish and he said, “Let me do the talking.”

166 Boynton was a three-story family wooden dwelling. A middle-aged man in a startlingly white tee shirt stood on the sidewalk. A porcupine crew cut topped an erect posture and the crease of his chino trousers had been ironed to a razor sharpness.

“Shit, he looks like a Marine.” AK pushed back his long hair.

“A career Marine too.” Sean respected the Corps. They fought hard.

“He won’t be happy to see hippies.” Pam’s blonde hair flowed over her shoulders and her peasant dress swayed with the twenty year-old’s easy gait.

“Just smile and make nice.”

Seeing the three of them the older man tapped his watch and said, “It’s 9:10. You’re ten minutes late.”

“Sorry,” said Sean.

Men the car owner's age and conviction preferred an apology to an excuse.

“I suppose ten minutes is better than twenty. The name’s Jake Moore.” The forty year-old seized Sean’s hand.

“Please to meet you.” Sean met the firm grip with strength and his knuckles did not buckle under the pressure.

“That’s my wife.”

An older woman sat on the porch. Her black dress testified to a period of mourning. Sean bowed his head in respect for her loss. She bit her lower lip and gazed at her folded hands.

“My condolences.” Sean wasn’t asking who had died, but the deceased had most certainly been a family member.

“Thanks.” Jake’s steely eyes studied Sean’s shoulder-length hair, regarded AK’s ponytail, and then warmed to Pam’s free-flowing blonde locks. “So you’re my driving team.”

“That’s us.” Sean released his hand and introduced them by name.

“You from Boston?”

“My grandmother lived on St. Joseph’s Street.” It was only a few blocks away.

“Irish?”

“Half. The Yankee side came over on the Mayflower and my Nana sailed over from Galway at the age of 14 in the year of the Crow. She came off the ship and broke her shoe. Nana said she arrived in America like Cinderella, but worked as a maid in a Marblehead mansion.”

“Which is much better than slaving in a Connemara potato patch. My grandmother came over in the Year of the Pig. What about yours?”

“The Year of the Crow.”

Their shared heritage and accents shortened the generation gap.

“We thought the year had something to do with Chinese Astrology, but my grand never told us yes or no.”

“Those women from the West of Ireland carried a secret to the grave.”

“What’s your family’s name?”

Sean told him.

“There were four daughters. Older than you, but my uncle served with in Korea,” he said Uncle Jack’s name.

My uncle’s platoon had fought off hundreds of Chinese Communists to save the retreat column from Chosen Reservoir. He was the only officer to see the dawn.

“I heard about Captain Jack. Never had the honor of meeting him.” Jake glanced over to the driveway. “That’s the car.”

His car was no normal family station wagon. Its chrome details had been polished to a high sheen and the fake wooden paneling was unblemished by dings. The spacious back would sleep two with the passenger seats folded down.

“Nice ride.”

“Better than nice.” Jake strolled over to the station wagon and popped the hood. “This 1967 Ford Torino has a 428 FE V8 with a three-speed automatic transmission. I was lucky to buy one with a Cobra-Jet engine.”

“Wasn’t the same engine in Steve McQueen’s ride in BULLITT?” AK stepped closer to admire the V-8.

“Ford stuck a 390 into that Mustang GT, which had a lighter chassis than the Torino.” Jake launched into a minute-long monologue extolling his car’s speed. “This baby can do a quarter-mile in 14 seconds.”

“Cool.” Sean nodded his head with appreciation. “My only car was a 1964 VW bug and its top speed was 85.”

“85?” Jake scoffed at his claim.

“Downhill with a tailwind in the White Mountains.”

“You know telling someone about speeding isn’t the best way to persuade them to give you a car.”

“I’ll make sure that he keeps the speed down,” Pam assured the owner.

“I had hoped for someone more like me to drive the car, but there’s not many of me around Boston these years.” Jake inspected their eyes.

“More than you think.” AK and Sean had smoked a joint this morning and he wished he was wearing his sunglasses. “South Boston still supplies the Marines with warm bodies.”

“Sounds like you protested against the War.” His statement was an accusation more than a question.

“Yes, but when I was 17, I tried to enlist in the Marines, but my mother wouldn’t sign the papers.”

“She was against the War?”

“No, my mother is a devout commie-hating Catholic, but she loved me too much to allow my fighting overseas in a war and threw the papers in the trash.”

“After which you became a hippie?”

“Something like that.”

Sean spared him the story of how an older friend had returned from Viet Nam in 1968, preaching Muhammad Ali’s creed that no VC had killed anyone in the USA.

“There’s a lot of ‘something like that’ going around.” Sadness tinged every word and Jake’s fingers twitched a request.

“Let me see your driver’s licenses.”

AK and Pam handed over their out-of-state driving permits. Sean’s had been issued from the Boston DMV.

“Any outstanding warrants or violations?”

“None.” Sean answered, although last autumn he had been arrested after a high-speed chase in a VW from Pam’s college. His Uncle Jack had gotten all the charges thrown out at court. He knew the judge.

“Well, the faces match the photos.” Jake returned the IDs. “We drove out here for a family visit. Normally I’d drive back, but my wife can’t bear driving through those cornfields again.”

“It is a long ride.” The distance from coast to coast was almost 3000 miles.

“You ever gone cross-country before?”

“I haven’t driven it, but I hitchhiked back and forth twice. The first time was in 1972. A Super Bee picked us up in Iowa and the driver drove 100 or better most of the way to Reno. My friend and I completed the trip from Boston to San Francisco in about fifty hours.”

Pam and AK dismissed this claim with matching smirks.

“Fifty hours sounds fast, but it averages out to about 60mph.” Jake stepped away from his car.

“The driver was in a hurry to reach LA, so we didn’t stop much.”

“People have been hitchhiking since Jonah rode in the whale. When I was stationed in Key West I hitchhiked to Boston every long leave. Everyone who picked me up told a different story, almost like they were trying to change their lives, if only for the time I was in their car and that’s the beauty of the open road. You become someone different with a new name and a new past. You get out of the car and you go back to who you are. There is no escaping the future of you.”

Jake’s unexpected insight constructed a connection between college students, hoboes, tramps, soldiers, beatniks, runaways, and hippies traveling the highways of America.

“No one believes my story about making the trip in fifty hours.”

“All stories are true, if interesting.” Jake clapped Sean’s shoulder. The War in Vietnam was coming to an end and they had lost their hatchets instead of burying them. “As for driving cross country in fifty hours, I’d appreciate if you take it a little easy on my car.”

“Driving fast in America is against the law now.” Pam opened the station wagon’s rear door and examined the car, which seemed to pass her inspection.

“These idiots in Congress think driving 55 will save gas and free us from the Arabs. There’s no shortage of gas.” Jake’s face turned red with anger.

“I don’t think so either.” Sean had seen the tankers riding low on the outer roads of Boston Harbor.

“How you planning to go out West?”

“We’re driving straight from here to the Rockies. I’ve always wanted to see them.”

“They’re beautiful this time of year with the snow up high.” His voice became dreamy, then he said, “You be careful on the road. Nothing the state troopers like better than arresting hippies for speeding.”

“Thanks for the warning. The station wagon should provide good camouflage for a passage through the Midwest.”

“Why are you driving cross country?” Jake stared Pam. She wasn’t wearing a bra under her paisley dress.

“Going to visit my fiancée.” Pam added credibility to her portrayal of the girl next door by saying, “He’s an internship at a hospital north of San Francisco and I’ll be working at the same hospital as a nurse in training this summer. Harry and I met in high school.”

“You and he are high school sweethearts like my wife and me.” Jake glanced to at woman in black. “Somerville High School. Class of 1950.”

“What about you?” Jake directed the question to Sean.

“Xaverian 1970. My high school sweetheart and I broke up senior year. I just graduated from BC with a degree in economics.” Sean volunteered this information to change the subject from young love.

“What about a job?” Jake asked, as if he had served in the military without counting days or years.

“I drove taxi to pay for college. I probably spent too many hours behind the wheel and graduated at the bottom of my class.”

“His diploma read ‘sin laude’.” AK had told the same joke at Sean’s graduation party and his father hadn’t appreciated the Long Islander’s humor, yet his mother had beamed with pride after the graduation ceremony. Her mother had not finished grammar school back in the Connemara.

“You graduated, but what about getting a real job?”

“I’ll be a substitute teacher at South Boston High School come the fall.” Sean had taken no education classes in college, but his older brother’s friend had been elected onto the Boston School Committee and his position had been a reward for having working on his campaign.

“I’d rather face a banzai charge than a room filled with teenagers.”

“Yeah, I feel the same way, so when AK’s friend invited us out to Encinitas, I figured to take one long last beach vacation. 65 is mandatory retirement age for a teacher, so I will be working well into the next century.”

“Yes, they don’t have a twenty and out.”

“No, they don’t.” Jake continued to hold onto the \ the keys and Sean said, “We appreciate your letting us take your car.”

“And I guess I appreciate your driving it. It has a big engine and guzzles gas, so I’m giving you an extra $100 for the trip, but I want you to fill the tank up every time the gas gauge hits half and use the highest octane from Sunoco.” He gave Sean out the keys.

“Yes, sir.” Sean smiled to Pam and AK. They were minutes away from hitting the road. “We’ll see you in six days.”

“Make it seven and you’re in for a treat; the Great Plains, the Rockies, the high deserts, the Sierras, and finally the Golden State of California.” Jake had driven the road more than once.

“And don’t forget the Mississippi.” Pam beamed a smile revealing her happiness to be heading West.

“It’s a big country.”

Jake and Sean signed the matching contracts from the drive-away company and he told Pam, “Make sure they drive my car safe.”

“You have my word” The blonde stored her bags in the car and sat in the rear.

“You do that, Pam.” Jake studied her face for a few seconds, as she rolled down the window. “She reminds me of someone.”

“To me she looked like the singer from The Band Named Smith.”

“They had a hit with BABY IT’S YOU.”

“Yes, they did.” Sean was surprised that he knew the group, but Gayle McCormick was very attractive. “See you in Lodi.”

He tossed his canvas bag in the station wagon, sat behind the wheel, started the engine, and reversed out of the driveway. Sean beeped the horn and then headed onto the Jamaica Way. This engine ran smooth and strong.

“For a second I didn’t think Jake would give us the car.” AK unfolded the map of the USA.

“Why?”

“Because of your admission to being a traitor.”

“I was telling him the truth, besides Pam had him wrapped around her little finger.”

Sean drove around Jamaica Pond in the slow lane.

“The power of feminine wile.” The blonde smiled at Sean in the rearview mirror.

“Something never to be underestimated.”

“Only a fool would do that.”

Pam breathed in deeply.

“This car even smells new.”

As a child of the suburbs Pam liked things clean.

“And why wouldn’t it be? Jake’s in love with his car.” Sean rolled down his window. The morning was getting warm

“Car love is a man thing. Sometimes I think my boyfriend loves his car more than me.” Pam tied a scarf around her head to keep her hair from getting snarled in the wind.

“What kind of car does he drive?” asked AK.

“A 1974 Mustang II.” She sounded disappointed. “It’s red.” “Nice.”

Sean didn’t mean it, because Ford had dumped a Pinto engine into the classic Mustang to sacrifice power for fuel efficiency. “He drive it cross country?”

“No, he sent the car out on a train and flew to pick it up in San Francisco.”

“That’s one way of crossing the country.” AK rolled his eyes. His Pontiac Firebird was fast, but its low gas mileage and bald tires were two reasons that they were driving Jake’s Torino.

“I wish we were that smart.” Sean didn’t like her fiancée and his choice of a car reinforced his disdain.

“Are you making fun of Harry?”

“Not at all. My VW is on its last legs and I don’t have a girlfriend to love.” Sean steered past the hospitals of the Fenway.

“Funny.” She didn’t mean it.

Sean cringed at stepping on her toes this early on a long trip.

“Wonder what Jake listened to on the radio.” AK pushed a button to hear Wildman Steve cuing up America’s surprising # 1 hit ROCK THE BOAT by The Hues Corporation. His fingers played an imaginary keyboard. For a longhaired white boy from Levittown Long Island he had a lot of soul.

Sean obeyed the traffic lights through Boston and he smiled upon seeing the sun flashing off the Charles River, as they turned off Storrow Drive.

A bearded hitchhiker stood at the Brighton Mass Pike exit. His leather jacket was a patchwork of different colors and his jeans were torn at the knee. Sean veered over to the breakdown lane and braked a hundred feet before the tollbooth.

“What are you doing?” Pam asked with alarm.

“Stopping to give him a ride.”

“He could be an ax murderer.”

“I’ve hitchhiked everywhere in the States and never ran into an ax murderer.”

“There’s always a first time.”

The ragged longhair waited by the rear passenger door. Closer up he was older and rougher, but karma overruled Sean’s apprehension.

“Next week I’ll be hitchhiking down the coast of California. If I don’t pick up hitchhikers now, then I might be stranded in Big Sur for days. Let him in.”

“Okay, but I’m not happy about this.” Pam slid over to the driver’s side. “If he starts anything, I expect you to take care of it.”

“I promise I will.” Sean reached back to unlock the rear door.

“Thanks for stopping. The name is Bill.” A thick Southern accent slithered from his chapped lips.

“Where you going?”

“California.” Sean had friends from Dixie. Not all of them were rednecks.

“Damn, I always wanted to see the fuckin’ weirdos out in Cally.”

“Weirdos?” asked AK.

“Yeah, Satanists, drag queen, queers and fags.” Bill was no hippie.

“Where you going?” Sean hoped only a few miles.

“I’m joinin’ a fuckin’ carnival for the summer. We travel from Biloxi to Texas and up into the wheat fields. I specialize in bumper cars. How ‘rubes’ drive them says a lot about them.”

“How so?” AK turned around to face Bill

“Cautious ‘straights’ play it safe. Aggressive ‘squares’ go for fucking head-ons. You look like in-between.”

“Meaning what?”

“In-betweeners get sandwiched by aggressive ‘squares’. They don’t stand a fucking chance in life.” Bill had been in the car for less than two minutes and Sean already regretted having stopped for him.

“Where you coming from?”

“I spent the winter in a fuckin’ loggin’ town up north in Northeast Kingdom.”

“Vermont.” Sean was a native New Englander.

“That’s right. Them damned Yankees don’t give a rat’s ass for crackers like me. Last night I was in a bar on a river. They had a live band.” His hands draped over the seat. The knuckles were scuffed with scabs. “The pansy-assed guitarist wouldn’t play FREEBIRD. Fuckin’ Yankees.”


Pam sighed in disapproval of his favorite adjective.

“Sorry, Sunshine, if I offend you, but I was brought up twenty miles past the fuckin’ wrong side of the tracks.” He slid closer to her, as the radio station segued to HOLLYWOOD SWINGING.

“Why you listening to this fuckin’ disco shine crap?” Bill barked over his shoulder.

“Fucking disco shine crap?” Sean regarded their passenger in the rearview mirror. His face was swollen from hard drinking and well-aimed lefts and rights had flattened his nose.

“Yeah, I hate fuckin’ disco.”

“This isn’t disco.” Kool and the Gang’s song had been a big hit at the 1270, where gay boys loved dancing with straight boys and the deejay spun the best dance records in Boston. “This disco shine crap is climbing the R&B charts and the band is a thousand times more hip than that BAND ON THE RUN bullshit by that loser Paul McCarthy.”

“Loser? The Beatles are the fuckin’ best band in the world.”

“Yeah, HEY JUDE sucks.”

“Does not, you Mick sword-swallower.”

“What’d you say?”

“You heard me good, you fuckin’ potato-eatin’ fag.”

Sean seethed behind the wheel.

“I’ll handle this.” AK possessed a much cooler head and Sean shut his mouth.

“You’ll handle what, Jew Boy? What? You’re not a Jew? I can spot a yid as soon I see fuckin’ one. Sorry, you can love this music all you want, but queers and niggers play this fuckin’ music and you’re just a sand nigger.” he spat the words fag and nigger with a long-seeded hatred.

“That’s it.” Sean stomped on the brakes and the station wagon stopped in the breakdown lane The Charles River bridge was another hundred yards ahead and whizzed past switching lanes for 128 North or South.

“Why you stoppin’ here?” Bill leaned forward with menace.

Sean turned around in the bucket seat and revved the big V8. The Torino was still in drive.

“I’ll tell you why. Jack Kerouac wrote in ON THE ROAD that the biggest challenge for a hitchhiker was proving to the driver that he didn’t make a mistake picking him up and I have to admit I made a mistake picking up you. Now get out of the car.”

“Get out of the car?”

“He really means it.” AK was of the same mind about Bill.

“This isn’t the fuckin’ end of the road.” Bill hesitated opening the door.

“It is for you and us. I don’t like queer bashers or racists.”

“I fuckin’ knew it the second I got in the car.”

“Knew what?”

“That you two were fuckin’ queers.” Bill opened the door and sneered, “Girlie, you know your boyfriends are fudge packers.” “Even if I was, I wouldn’t fuck you with an elephant’s dick.” “You fuckin’ fag.” Bill started for Sean. He blocked the drifter’s hands from encircling his neck, as

AK leaped out of the car to grab Jim’s leather jacket.

The pianist mightn’t have been a fighter, but he manhandled the roustabout out of the car and flung Bill across the breakdown lane.
The vagrant tumbled down the embankment and AK chucked the his bag after him. A lucky toss hit Bill’s shoulder and he completed his descent down the gully.

“Go.” AK jumped in the front.

Pam shut the back door Sean’s right foot hit the gas. The Torino accelerated from a standing stop.

“Nothing’s broken.” Pam leaned over to examine AK’s knuckles.

“I’m not much of a fighter.”

“Unlike some people we know.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

No, you just stopped for a crazy ax-murderer. I hope you learned your lesson. He had his hands all over me.”

“Sorry.” Sean turned his head.

Pam’s eyes looked into his.

“Let’s pretend it didn’t happen.” She tilted her head to the side. Blonde hair covered one side of her face and the twenty-year old nursing student pushed the strands behind her ears. “No more hitchhikers. This isn’t ON THE ROAD. And one more thing. Could we keep the use of ‘fucking’ to a minimum?”

“Your wish is my command.” Sean gripped the wheel and AK turned up the volume of the radio playing James Brown’s PAYBACK PART 2. The Godfather of Soul had a wicked rhythm section.

Pam was right about hitchhikers, but then women were right about everything and men were always wrong.

They crossed the Charles River and Sean slowed to pick up a ticket at the tollbooth. He thanked the attendant and laid a light foot on the gas.

“Now we’re on our way.”

The traffic on the Interstate rolled at 60. The Torino had a full tank of High Test and easily passed a procession of slower cars.

Five days from now would be his 22th birthday.

Sean stepped on the accelerator. The needle on the speedometer hit 100. The other cars on the road stood still, but none of other cars were going to California and at this speed the Golden State was only thirty hours away.

THE LIGHT OF THE MOON by Peter Nolan Smith

Tulsa was a very religious town in 1974. Sundays belonged to the Lord. The bedroom windows were open for the fresh morning air and the numerous church calling for the faithful bells woke me from sleep.

My good friend AK and I were guests of the Speare sisters. Both were long-legged blondes. Valerie had been going out with a schoolmate, Nick. He was out in the Philippines studying medicine. It was over between them, but she was happy to see me. Tulsa was a small town in the middle of the country. Long hairs like AK and I were an anomaly in Oklahoma.

Merle Haggard had scored a hit with I’M AN OKIE FROM MUSKOGEE in 1970. That city was one of the most diverse in the state, but Merle Haggard was right in saying that its patriotic citizens didn’t smoke marijuana, take LSD, wear beads or sandals. Okies had special words for people like AK and me. They were dirty hippies and we had bathed twice a day to prove the crackers wrong.

Mr. Speare knocked on the door. It was a little before 8am. His church was a walking distance from their tidy ranch house several blocks east from the Arkansas River.

“You boys awake?” The voice belonged to an older male.

AK groaned and pulled the covers over his head. Every free room had its price. I shut my eyes hoping that Mr. Speare would go away. The next knock was a little louder. I sat up in bed and told AK to do the same. My friend pushed his long hair out of his face and I scrapped order from my mop with a rake of fingers. We were Mr. Speare’s guests and I answered, “Yes, sir, we’re up now.”

The lanky banker entered the room in his Sunday finest. He looked like he could have played back-up for the Johnny Cash band. The family Bible was nestled under his arm. It was the Baptist Guide to the Universe and whatever wasn’t written in the Good Book wasn’t good.

“You ready for church?” His question was directed primarily at me, although Baptists regarded the conversion of a Jew as a great challenge and AK had the look of the Tribe, even though he ate bacon.

“No, sir, I’m sleeping in.” I hadn’t been to church in a long time. My Catholic mother prayed for my soul. She worried that her son was doomed to burn in Hell. My father was content that I kept my non-belief to myself. The government hadn’t put IN GOD WE TRUST on our money as a joke.

“Never to late to save your soul.” Mr. Speare had heard that I was distantly related to the founder of the Mormons and twice intoned what a great honor it would be his church to bring Joseph Smith’s ancestor back into the faith. This was the second time since we left LA that someone was desperate to save our souls. The last attempt had been by a Jesus freak promised salvation with cute hippie girls. It had sounded too much like heaven to be true and we had kept traveling east.

“I know, sir, but I have a head cold.” Valerie had taken us to a speakeasy last night. They served their own alcohol. The owner swore that it wasn’t moonshine. AK had played piano for the wicked and Marilyn had danced an Okie boogie to his rendition of LOUIE LOUIE. I stopped them from getting serious. Marilyn was only 17. The night had ended someplace called the Boom-Boom Room.

“Well, that old shine will break your head good. Believe me I was once young too. Drank the Demon Rum with my evil friends. I could have ended up in a bad way. In prison or dead or both, but I found the Light and God loves a sinner that has found his way back home.” The fifty year-old turned to AK what an outstretched hand. He was about the same age as our fathers. We had been brought up to obey our elders and I recognized the wavering of AK’s resolve. “I know that you young people thought that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, but it’s four years since they broke up. Jesus is God. God never breaks up.”

“I was never into the Beatles. I was more into the Rolling Stones.” This was as close as I could come to telling Valerie’s father that I did not believe in God.

“The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll band. They played here in 1965. The Stones were my band too, but I gave them up for Jesus.”

“That’s quite a sacrifice.” Almost as much as the Jews and Muslims rejecting bacon.

“You can’t always get what you want with the Stones, but you can with Jesus.” Mr. Speare wasn’t giving up on both of us. He turned to AK. “I know you’re a Jew, but my church has sent many missions to your people in hopes of bringing them back to the Way of God. Get out of bed and come with us. It will do you good.”

“Thank, you sir, but I’ll sit this morning out.” AK was half-Jewish. His mother was a Yankee same as my father. He existed a step down from the hierarchy of atheism on the plane of agnosticism. Doubt was much more acceptable to the believers than downright dismissal of God, however AK’s sacrament was marijuana and no preaching could make him abandon his Search for the Ultimate Holy Bong of Reefer.

“Can’t say that I didn’t try.”

“It’s the first syllable in triumph.”True Believers in the My wife, the girls and I will say some prayers for your souls, then come back here with some nice young people for a fried chicken dinner with all the fixings.”

“Your wife’s fried chicken?” I swung my feet onto the floor.

“The word KFC is sacrilege in this house.” He moved to the door. We’ll be back around 11.”

“We’ll be waiting.” I had eaten Mrs. Speare’s chicken on my previous trip to Tulsa. The taste was beyond finger-licking good.

Mr. Speare shut the door and AK faded back into the pillows.

“That felt like a sermon after a Salvation Army dinner on the Bowery.”

“No one forced you to drink last night.” He was a lightweight when it came to drinking and last night he had downed three tequila sunrises. “Another hour sleep, a shower, Mrs. Speare’s chicken, and we’ll be ready for the road around 1.”

“That’s a late start.” AK was eager to get back to Boston. His girlfriend was waiting at home. He hadn’t had sex once on our trip across America.

“Days last long this time of year.” It was only three weeks after the summer solstice. Depending on where we were in time zone, sunset could be as late as 9 O’clock. I pulled out a map. “Eight hours of travel puts us in Illinois by dark.”

“And where will be stay?” Our nights in the Speare’s house were the only time that the road hadn’t been our place of rest.

“We’ll find someplace.”

“Great.”

There was another knock on the door. It was Valerie. She came into the room and sat on my bed. Her sister was standing by the door. Both of the long-legged blondes were dressed in virginal white dresses. The hemlines were hanging at mid-calf. Their ankles were covered by sheer white sox. After a summer with hippie girls the Speare sisters were a breath of straight American sex appeal.

AK stirred under the sheets. He was having trouble hiding his erection. My problem was even worst, since I was sitting on the edge of the bed. I pulled the covers over my lap. Valerie and i were just friends. I didn’t want her to think any different. Even with Nick on the other side of the world, she was still his girl.

“Both of you. Out of bed.” Her voice expressed an unexpected urgency. “We have to be at church in ten minutes and you have to be out of the house in five.”

“What about the chicken dinner?” I hated hitting the road on an empty stomach and my funds were down to less than $10.

“My mother cooked the chicken this morning.” Marilyn held up a paper sack. She gave it to AK. “I packed you a doggie bag.”

“What’s the hurry?” I was up on my feet and pulling on my jeans.

“My father is coming back here with about ten Oral Robert football players dedicated to Jesus and they’re going to try to strong-arm you into becoming believers.” Valerie was stuffing my dirty clothing into my grandfather’s leather doctor’s bag. I rolled my sleeping bag tight and tied it shut with rope.

“Sounds like a lynch mob.” AK was dressing faster than a Polish Jew fleeing the Nazis. He looped his sleeping bag over his shoulder.

“My father has become a little too gung-ho about Jesus.” Valerie was apologizing for her old man. It wasn’t necessary. “Thinks the world is coming to an end. He’s not a bad man, but he’s worried that you’ll be condemned to Hell.”

“He should meet my mother.” She would have thanked Mr. Speare for the help.

“No time. We had a good time. Hope to see you again. Marilyn and I are getting our own place. We believe in God, but my father has gone off the deep-end. My mother is hoping that he’ll find a way back to reason, but that isn’t happening this morning. Hurry up and we’ll drive you to the highway.”

Seven minutes later Valerie jammed on the brakes of her Tempest convertible at the entrance to I-44. The sky was a blue eggshell from horizon to horizon. It was promising to be a hot one. Marilyn gave us two canteens filled with water. Valerie kissed me on the lips. Her were soft. She pushed something into my hand.

“We had a good time.”

“Us too.” It was a $20 bill.

“Be careful on the road. This state has some funny laws. Like no spitting on the street or taking a bite from someone else’s hamburger.” Valerie was showing off her education as a law enforcement major.

“Or wearing your boots to bed.” Marilyn added from the passenger seat. Her skin shone with the glow of an angel.

“Call us from Boston.” Valerie waved good-bye and then stamped on the accelerator. The two girls looked like holy virgins of desire. Before AK and I could jump back in the Tempest, the V8 spun the rear tires at with a squeal of rubber. The both of us covered our faces to keep from breathing the dust.

“That’s what I call a bum’s rush.” AK put down his canvas bag and stuck out his thumb to a passing pick-up truck. The farmer glared at us, as if he had been cheering for the rednecks in EASY RIDER. AK rubbed his face. “What a great way to start the day.”

“You want to wait for a football squad of Bible-thumpers?”

“No, those Jesus freaks forget the Messiah was a Jew a little too easy for my tastes. At least we have fried chicken and water.”

“A miracle.” I was starving, but resisted tearing into the chicken. It would taste even better when I was really hungry.

“A better miracle would be us getting a ride out of here.”

“I agree.” Muskogee lay to the south. I wrapped a rubber band around my long hair and AK followed my cue. We slipped on baseball caps. Any motorist not looking to closely might take us for college kids instead of long-haired hippies and ten minutes later a Cadillac stopped in the breakdown lane. The driver was heading to Justice, Oklahoma. It was about forty minutes up the road.

I jumped in the front seat and AK spread out in the back. The AC chilled the interior to a spring in Maine. The crew-cut driver was late for church. He had spent the night in Tulsa with a cousin.

“We drank beers until dawn.” His driving was a classic example of what law enforcement officers called weaving. I grabbed the wheel at least once a minute to prevent us from veering off the highway.

“Sorry about that. I couldn’t find my glasses this morning, so I can see shit.”

“Damn.” AK muttered from the rear. He wanted to get out of the car. I was in the same mind, but north of Tulsa was the middle of nowhere and a lot of it.

Luckily traffic was light, but the windows of passing cars were filled with angry faces. The driver slurred out swears in return.

“Damn Methodists think the road was built for them.”

“How you know they’re Methodists?”

“Because all good Baptists are in church. Damn Methodists.” We were barely going 30 mph.

It took an hour to reach Justice.

We got out of the Cadillac and AK kicked a stone in the wake of the exhaust.

“I hate America.”

“You don’t want to say that. It’s a big country. There’s the good and the bad in every country.” He had enough money in his pocket to take the bus back to Boston. “You could catch a Greyhound home from here. Let us do the driving.”

“And what about you?” AK was a true friend.

“I’ll make it to Boston when I make it.” I had nothing waiting for me back in my hometown.

“I’ll stick it out with you.” He looked to the right. Justice was a small town.

“I’d wait with you till the bus came.” A gas station was a few hundred feet from the exit. It probably doubled as the bus stop.

“No, I’ll take my chances on the highway.” He was cursed by having read Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD.

“Let’s see if that gas station has food.” I cleared my mouth and spit on the ground.

We were lucky. A small diner was open for breakfast. AK and I ate a full breakfast of bacon and eggs. The price of a bus ticket to Chicago was $20. I was down to $27. AK didn’t offer to loan me the money and I didn’t ask for the $20. I was committed to the road.

We washed up in the bathroom and headed back to the highway. The temperature had risen several degrees in the low 90s. The sun was getting strong and the only shade was beneath the underpass. A state trooper backed up the ramp. His cruiser was a Plymouth Grand Fury built for speed.

“Where you boys going?” The young officer spoke through the open passenger window. He was about our age. His radio squawk out bulletins instead of the Rolling Stones.

“Back east. We just left our friends in Tulsa. The Speares.” At least Mr. Speare hadn’t reported us for missing church, but it was against the law to spit in the state.

“I don’t know any Speares in Tulsa, but I don’t want to see you down on my highway. That’s against the law in Oklahoma.” His sunglasses were the same ones that Boss Godfrey sported in COOL HAND LUKE. “Stay up here on the ramp and you don’t get no trouble from me. Have a good day.”

The trooper accelerated down the ramp. We stood in the sun. Only three cars passed us in the next hour. Two of the drivers pointed to the right and exited onto a dirt road a half mile in the distance. The third gave us the finger. Two hours later a Greyhound bus heaved up to the gas station. AK looked over at me.

“I’ll buy you a ticket.”

The panel across the top of the bus said CHICAGO. We had taken a bus out of Victorville. The temperature had been in the 100s. People at the back of the Greyhound smoked unfiltered cigarettes. Neither AK nor I were into tobacco.

“Thanks, but I feel good about this place. We’ll get out of here in a little while.”

The Greyhound passed us a minute later. The driver and his passengers on the right side of the bus regarded us as if we were the descendants of the hobos. This was Tom Joad country. THE GRAPES OF WRATH started in these farmlands. I looked at the fields stretching to the hazy horizon. Dirt roads ran straight lines through the crops. Back out beyond the highway still was 1930.

A steady processions of vehicles exited from the highway. Most of them were hauling speedboats. Two dammed lakes provided water recreation for the Tulsans. A couple of cars passed us in the next hour. Their plate were from Oklahoma. The drivers didn’t look our way. I suspected that the police officer had aired a warning to motorists about two hippie hitching a ride. AK suggested walking to the next exit. It didn’t have a name.

“We are where we are.” I finished off my water. The sun was sucking sweat from our skin. AK’s canteen was empty too and I went to the gas station to refill them. The gas station attendant said that he had seen two longhairs wait at this on-ramp for over a day.

“How they get out of here?”

“Don’t know. They were there one second and then they were gone the next. Might have been extraterrestrials.” The boy seemed a little touched by the isolation. “You’ll get out of here sooner or later.”

“Thanks for the good thoughts.” I planned on keeping this information to myself, but if another Greyhound bus showed up, I fully intended on taking up AK’s offer of the $20 or pay for the fare myself. As I approached AK, a car screeched through the stop sign. I turned my head to witness a Ford Falcon bat-turn into the gas station. Three men piled out of the midnight-blue convertible. They wore new jeans and their hair was short.

“What you think?” AK asked with the right degree of apprehension.

“I think they’re drunk.” It was barely noon. I picked up a rock in my right hand. AK started to do the same. I warned him ‘don’t. He wasn’t a fighter.

The attendant filled the car with gas and I saw the driver give him money. At least they were trying to imitate Charles Starkweather on a Nebraskan killing spree. The for of them got back in the car and AK said, “I hope they’re heading for the lake.”

The driver wasn’t the type to use his turn signal. The Falcon swerved right at the last second and the car fishtailed down the ramp. AK backed away from the road. I stood my ground. The car came to a stop and the three young men examined us, as if they were making up their mind whether they wanted to make today a bad day. They were born crackers and would die crackers, but the radio was playing FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY. The driver with the slicked back hair lifted a beer and said, “Damn, we’re fucked up. Can either of you drive?”

“Say no.” AK whispered behind me.

“You like the OJays?”

“You mean this music. Shit, we listen to anything as long as it don’t have no Jesus in it,” the pale-faced passenger in the rear right said with a laugh. “I hate God.”

“Shut your mouth. It’s the Lord’s Day.” The heavy-set man with tattoos writhing up muscular arms punched the blasphemer.

“My apologies for my passengers. I just picked my cousins up at McAlester Prison. They finished their sentence and are respectable citizens now they have been rehabilitated. Ain’t that right boys?” The driver raised his PBR and toasted their release.

“Definitely no.” AK was ready to flee into the cornfields.

“Yes, sir, we’re good citizens now. We done learned our lesson.” The thin rake on the right had an easy smile. He might have been the brains, except the strongman possessed sharp eyes. “Can you drive or what? We’re wasting gas.”

“Hold your horses, Garrald.” The driver wasn’t in such a hurry. “We’re heading to Springfield, Illinois. That out of this cow-paddy state through Missouri and halfway up to Chicago. It will be a little tight, but we had more people in this Fal-coon that six.”

“I can drive.” The Falcon had custom rims. I dropped the rock on the ground.

“Shit.” AK hated crackers.

“Then you get behind the wheel. My name’s Earl.” He popped open his door and stumbled to the ground. He gave me the keys and I opened the trunk. They had no bags, but wrapped packages with OSP stamped on them.

“OSP. Oklahoma State Prison. You got nothing against cons, do you?” Earl flipped back a fang of jet-black hair with his hand.

“Not me.” Something about the way the engine purred dissipated my reservations.

AK had his eyes shut. I told him to get in the back. I put our bags in the trunk and got behind the wheel. It had a four on the floor.

“Earl, what year is this?” Garrald had switched to the back seat with his brother. AK was between them. He didn’t look very happy.

“This here is the 1964 Sprint with a 302 Cubic Inch Windsor V8. It got a stiff suspension and a loud pipe. I probably shoulda got a Mustang, but the dealer gave me a deal I couldn’t refuse. Nothing down.”

“It ain’t hot.” I adopted a twang to make the accusation.

“Not stolen. My uncle sold it to me. The papers are in the glove compartment.” He whipped out his license. “You think I’d drive a stolen car with my cousins just out of Big Mac. Even I’m not that stupid.”

“I don’t know about that?” The one with the grin leaned forward. He smelled over harsh soap. “You’re related to us.”

“Only on my mother’s side, Jay Bob.” Earl shoved his cousin back from the front.

“We goin’ or we goin’?” Garrald asked from directly behind me. His spit hit the back of my neck.

“We’re goin’.” I shoved the stick into first and stamped on the gas. The Falcon was light even with the weight of five men and the tires peeled an extra layer of rubber on the hot asphalt. I turned up the music and we hit the highway, the fastest car of the road.

“Try and keep it under 70. The cops hate hippies.” Earl advised popping open a beer.

“Okay.” It was hard throttling back on the speed, but any police officer searching this car was bound to find something wrong.

The two boys in the back dedicated their new freedom to sucking down beer. AK wasn’t keeping pace. Earl handed me a cold PBR. The wind blew back my hair.

“Where you comin’ from?”

“The Coast.” It sounded better than San Diego.

“I never been out there. Girls fun out that way.”

“Fun enough.” I told him the story about meeting two lesbians in Big Sur.
“Whoowee. Better not say that too loud. My cousins ain’t had a touch in years. Felt the same way they did only three months ago.”

“You were in prison?”

“Same as them. It’s a hard place, but it used to be harder.” Earl rubbed his face. He was tired from driving, but he kept on talking. “Back in the bad old days the guards liked to torture inmates more than kill them, so the prison commissioner sent two squads of inmates to build a new prison. The women at that time were held in Kansas, so the warden had them build a women’s prison.”

“What you do?”

“Do?” He looked over his shoulder. “I followed bad advice from my cousins. We cousins tried to rob a church. Stupid idea, since it was a Friday and if you’re gonna rob a church better you do it on the Sunday. All three of us were drunk. The judge was hard on us, since we were long-hairs and they don’t like longhairs in the Sooner State. Only reason we didn’t do more time was that we were related to the preacher. I got me two years and them got three. I was 19.”

Earl was my age. We were the same size. He had probably made more than one mistake, but he had to pay for his. I tried to explain about my life, but Earl had a motormouth to match the Falcon’s V8.

He told me about the first prison escape from OSP and how the killers were shot dead on a ridge.He played DJ with the 8-track. GIMME SHELTER set off a long rant about the Hell’s Angels subverting the prison system.

“They play the race card, but all they care about is themselves. Set poor whites agin poor blacks like they cud make Helter-Skelter come to pass. Fuckin’ Beatles. I hate the Beatles. They never played in Oklahoma. They did the goat-roper state, but never Oklahoma.” Earl hailed from Guynon in the Panhandle. With ten thousand folks it was the biggest city in the west of the state. “Rodeo and prison are the only two ways to get out of that town.”

I drove and Earl spoke. AK and I shared our chicken. The two cousins said that it tasted better than anything they ate in Big Mac.

“I wish I had the recipe.” Garrald picked off the last meat and chucked the bone behind the Falcon. It almost hit the car following us. The Chevy blew its horn and I picked up the pace.

We stopped for gas outside of Joplin, Missouri. His cousins stalked into the KFC like they were casing it for a robbery. Earl was in the store, buying more beer. AK was picking the wind out of his ears.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can handle.” Wedged between the two cousins couldn’t have been a party. “All they talk about is fucking women, but I don’t like the way Garrald’s been looking at me.”

“I’ve been listening to Okie 101 for the past hour, but them boys ain’t no trouble.”

“Since when have you started talking like an extra in OKLAHOMA?”

“I like to fit in with the locals. Listen, we’re heading in the right direction and I’m behind the wheel. If anything changes in that equation, then we get out of the car polite like.” It was a little past 2 pm. A regular car would take five hours to cross the Show-Me State. I planned to do it in three with the souped-up Falcon. I had a friend in East St. Louis.

“I would rather be with bible-thumpers than sitting between two cons.” AK had sat on the hump all the way from Justice.

“You’re only thinking about Marilyn. She’s 17.” The image of Valerie driving away from us was stuck in my mind.

“I know that she’s too young for me.” AK easily repented for evil thoughts. His mother was an Episcopalian. They were almost Catholics, which had been the religion of my youth.

“Not really, AK was twenty-four, which was a much more acceptable age differential than that between Jerry Lee Lewis and his ‘fifteen’ year-old bride, a cousin once removed too. “But neither of us want to live out here.”

Joplin didn’t look as prosperous as Tulsa. The woods surrounding the truck stop were yellow pine. The forest surrounded the city with a thick belt of green. Joplin was mentioned in the song ROUTE 66. No one ever sang about stopping here. The boys were taking their time in the store. I had the keys. Stealing the Falcon crossed my mind. It had nearly a full tank of gas.

The price per gallon had been about twenty-six cents before last year’s oil embargo. The cost at the pump in Joplin was more that twice that in the beginning of 1973. My $20 bought about thirty gallon of regular. The Falcon could make Chicago on that much gas. I showed AK the keys. He shook his head. Neither of us were Bonnie or Clyde.

A month earlier I had left Boston with the words of BORN TO BE WILD as my philosophy of the road. I had sought ‘whatever comes my way’ and found it in California and few other places. Now a little over a thousand miles separated me from my hometown. Back in Boston I would resume my life as me. Time for ‘whatever comes my way’ was running out.

The two cousins exited from the store, carrying cases of PBR and a box of fried chicken. They were wearing sunglasses. Earl followed them, holding a brown paper bag. Glass clinked against glass.

“Sorry about the wait, but the chicken took some cookin’, plus I had a special order delivered.” He lifted the bag. “White Lightning. Hard to find in the Sooner State.”

“It’ll be a welcome change from the Pruno we made in Big Mac.” Jay Bob was in the back seat, opening a beer. “I’m lucky I didn’t go blind from that shit.”

“Well, you look like Ray Charles in them glasses.” His older brother pushed AK back onto the hump.

“Do not. I’m better looking and a lot more white.” Jay Bob gave a big grin. He had most of his front teeth.

“Ain’t nobody 100% white in this world. The only reason white people think they’re white is, becuz artists painted their kinfolk white in them old pictures. Everyone got a bit of tar in them.”

“That’s some very advanced thinking you got back there. What you been doin’ at Big Mac? Getting educatified?” Jay Bob laughed to himself like he was on nitrous oxide. I drove out of the truck stop and the wind ripped through my long hair to baffle out the conversation in back.

Earl put on Deep Purple. The boys were more into rock than country. Earl drank his beer without talking. I guessed that he had driven down to the Oklahoma State Prison from the Panhandle last night. He might have slept in the car. He pulled sunglasses out of the bag and put them over his eyes.

“Don’t mind me none. I’m gonna get me some sleep.” He placed the open PBR between his thighs. Within a minute he was snoring like a buzz-saw through ice. I stepped on the gas. The speed limit had been changed to 55 around the nation with the passage of the Maximum Speed Law to conserve gas. President Nixon had wanted it to be 50, but his time in the White House was coming to an end. Nobody on I-44 was traveling less than 70. The country was too big for slow this far from the cities.

Sunday traffic through Missouri was heavy around Springfield. Church was out and the older people in their cars stared, as if we were monkeys in the circus, while their kids smiled like we had fallen from the sky. The land got very country on the way to Lebanon. Cars with boats on trailer hitches were heading south from the Ozarks. The weekend was fading with the setting sun. I pulled off the interstate and drove down old Route 66.

“Where are we?” Earl sat up in his seat.

“About four miles west of Cuba. I was getting tired on the highway.” I kept under the speed limit of 40. People like us made a Sunday for cops in small town America. “We need some gas and I want to stretch my legs.”

“I can drive from here.” AK volunteered from the back.

“Okay.” The last drinks at the Boom Boom Room had sapped my strength. It was time to take a break and I pulled into the Fanning Outpost. The stop offered gas, food, and lodging to travelers. Once spots like this dotted Route 66 from Chicago to LA. I-44 was putting most of them over the edge into extinction.

“Sad to think that one day there will be no Route 66.” I got out of the car and started pumping gas. My legs were stiff from sitting in one position for the past three hours. The Mother Road had run over 2400 miles from end to end. “Only a few parts left.”

“All the Okies drove to California on Route 66. Reckon I got a lot a family out there.” Earl stepped out of the Falcon. He wiped the hood with a finger. Dust was laying deep atop the steel.

“Probably.” People with his background would explain how the conservative streak in Orange County. Whittier was the home of Richard Nixon. “It had its time.”

“My grandfather worked on the Chain of Rocks Bridge crossing the Mississippi. That money saved my family from having to leave our farm. Plenty of times I cursed that old man. If he hadn’t been working, we would have moved to California and I might have ended up being one of the Beach Boys.”

“That’s a laugh.” Jay Bob was helping his brother out of the car. Garrald had no idea where he was and lifted his sunglasses. “Damn, we there yet?”

“No, we are not there yet.” Earl shook the cramps out of his back. “We’ll be in Carbondale some time this evening.”

“What’s Carbondale?” This was the first I heard of a destination.

“A college town in southern Illinois. We have family.” Earl and his cousins had family everywhere. “There’s work there and we need jobs. The police don’t like ex-cons that ain’t workin’. We’re not even supposed to be in the same car together.”

“Speak for yourself. We’re free men. We didn’t get out on parole.” Garrald scratched his head and examined his fingernails. They were crusted with dirt. “Our uncle promised us jobs in the university kitchen. I learned a lot about cooking for numbers at Big Mac. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get me a hippie college girl. I hope she shaves her legs. I don’t like hairy women.”

“Just as long as you don’t mistake any long-haired guys for girls you’ll be fine.” I didn’t like how he was looking at AK.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” He took a quick step forward. Earl got between us. AK stood behind me just in case.

“Just a joke. I come from Maine and the women up there are twice the men you and I will ever be. Moose women we call them.”

My insulting the female of the Pine Tree State placated the big man. AK headed off tot the Men’s Room and Jay Bob led his brother into the store. I finished pumping $5 worth of gas. “This one is one me.”

“Be careful with Garrald. He had a hard time up there. I got out last June and was glad to get out. Things were getting bad. The COs treated us like dead men. Food was crap. Something happened in the mess. An inmate shanked two officers. The cons took hostages. Buildings got burned to the ground. Three inmates ended up dead. Garrald and Jay Bob were lucky to be working on the grounds, when the trouble started. None of us want to go back again. Never. But it ain’t easy for ex-cons. People think of you as just waiting to go bad and they ain’t too wrong. You see how fast Garrald got in your face.”

“Yes.” My temper belonged in Girl Scout camp in comparison to Garrald’s volcano. I had been arrested in grammar school for vandalizing an abandoned missile base. The cop knew me, since I had saved his son from a beating. He cut me loose and never said anything to my parents about my crime. Earl never received that break.

Garrald came out of the store and shook my hand.

“Sorry, I have to keep my mouth shut more often.”

“Me, too.” I was surprised by his hug, half-expecting a knife in my back.

“You’re good people and so’s your friend.” He embraced AK with the love of a young man freed from prison.

We switched places in the Falcon. I sat on the hump between Earl and Jay Bob. We opened the jar of shine. It was clear as light in the dying rays of the sun. My first sip ripped a layer of taste buds from my tongue and it sluiced down my throat like burning lava.

“Damn.” I was reborn with the spirit of Moonshine and happy to not be driving a car. AK and Garrald were talking in tongues. Between patches of the wind I heard the words Sly and the Family Stone, Brooklyn Dodgers, The Battle of the Bulge, the Gold Rush, and a thousand syllables distorted by the breeze.

Night closed on the sky tight north of Bourbon. The chicken was finished south of St. Clair. The ‘shine just kept coming and I kept drinking until we were surrounded by bright lights of a city. A ribbon of steel owned the stars and a moon was straight ahead above the highway. I recognized it as the St. Louis Arch. A baseball game was being played under the lights. AK drove past the stadium without slowing down. His father came from Brooklyn.

“Welcome to St. Louis. We’ll be turning on the other side of the Mississippi toward Carbondale. You can come with us to Carbondale or we can drop you at the Indian mounds. I’ve crashed there once or twice. It’s a good night for sleeping under the sky.”

The moonshine erased the decision ability from my mind and fifteen minutes later AK and Earl helped me from the Falcon. I was in no condition to walk and stumbled into a grassy meadow. The world swirled around my feet and my head hit the ground without me feeling a thing as I fell through the Earth to bury myself in a stupor designed to last eternity.

I woke with the dawn. It took me forever to find my glasses. A large grass mound rose from behind the line of bushes shielding AK and me from sight. There was no mistaking that the shape of the mound was a pyramid. I rose to my feet. The taste of sick was in my mouth. I had slept on my bag. It was clean, but my jeans and shirt were covered by dirt.. AK and Earl must have dragged me here last night.

“How you feeling?” AK asked from his sleeping bag.

“Not good.” My speech was reserved for sentences missing verbs and articles. My head pounded with flashes of drum thunder. “Damn, that mound is big.”

“You tried to climb it last night.”

“Any success?” My legs and back must have been bruised by several falls.

“None.”

That explained the dirt.

“Earl and the boys said good-bye.”

“I wish I had stayed in the car.” My arms were dotted by mosquito bites. “Probably better that you didn’t. You got sick last night.”

“Yeah, I guess as much.” I picked up my canteen. It was empty.

“You offered your last water to the gods.”

“I guess they spared my life. You have any left.” The sun was a red ball to the east. The morning air was thick with humidity. Today was going to be hot. I said as much to AK.

“If we’re lucky, we can get to Boston tonight.”

“If we’re lucky.” I walked forward toward the mound. It rose a hundred feet from the ground. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

“I know.” AK shucked his body from the sleeping bag. “You have nowhere else to go.”

And nowhere else was the truth for the right now.