|
Ky's travels (a work in progress) The first summer
Category: Writing and Poetry
Narrative:
My travels began in the summer of 1977.
journal:
New York 7/1/77
I'm on my way to the Adirondacks where I'm going to visit friends of my mother's and then start hitching to... well… on beyond where I've ever been. I can't wait to see what Ohio looks like!
I am in the most beautiful place in the world - I'm going somewhere - I'm meeting people - I'm so glad I made this decision!
rides log:
7/5/77 Balston Spa, NY - Turnersville, NJ
7/6/77 Turnersville - a trailer park in OH
7/7/77 Ohio - Madison, WI
narrative:
I started hitchhiking from upstate NY. I went as far west as Denver, with a notable stop in Madison, WI. I visited one of my cousins there who was attending University of Wisconsin. I sat in on one of his classes and wrote songs while sitting in the back.
rides log:
7/9/77 Madison - Des Moines, IA
narrative:
I didn't know where I was going to sleep on this trip, though Ray had told me that places would be offered to me in all kinds of situations. The first night, I slept at a trailer park, the second night at my cousin's house. The third night, in Des Moines, I slept by the freeway for the first time. It was not a scary experience. I was drunk. It was dark and I had no tent, just a sleeping bag, so I just wandered a hundred or so feet from the interstate traffic, laid out my bedroll and drifted off to sleep. I woke up with the sun and started hitching again before anyone could see I had been sleeping there.
rides log:
7/10/77 Des Moines - Denver, CO
journal:
I waited 3 hours in the desert of Nebraska. My mouth was so dry, I couldn't spit. I got called a "hippy bastard" by some guys driving by who also advised me to cut my hair.
narrative:
After a long day of hitchhiking in the sun, I arrived at an all night pool hall in Denver. I was nursing some iced tea and boredom when a hustler came in and challenged another guy to a nine-ball tournament: best 5 out of 9. The whole pool hall watched the match and this sustained me until about daybreak. The hustler lost his fifth game and I headed out of there on the southbound freeway I-25.
rides log:
7/11 Denver - Santa Fe, NM
narrative:
I ended up in Santa Fe where I went to visit Ray and the Christ Brotherhood. I stayed at the Free Hostel in Santa Fe for four days. I saw all kinds of travelers filter through and enjoy the hospitality of the Christ Brotherhood and their idea of feeding the poor and encouraging the world to live in the wind. Some of the visitors looked like religious wanderers with long robes and I heard some of them discussing the Gospels and significance of Paul's teachings with the residents, but other than that, there were no overt exclamations about the principles that led them to be called The Christ Brotherhood.
I met Soo-See there and she traveled with me much of that summer and the following year. Soo-See was from New Jersey and was taking a year off between high school and college. She had been traveling by greyhound bus when I met her, she had a pass that allowed you to travel and get on and off the bus as you please. She decided hitchhiking sounded like a better way to see the country and traveling with a partner, namely me, seemed safe enough to try.
rides log (with Soo-See):
7/15 Santa Fe - somewhere in Colorado
7/16 - 17 Colorado - San Francisco, CA
narrative:
We went north through Colorado and west through Utah coming into San Francisco at the end of a long ride in a VW bug. We stayed in San Francisco with a friend of Soo-See's.
rides log:
7/20 San Francisco - Lost Hills, Ca
7/21 Lost Hills - Los Angeles, Ca (took a bus to Van Nuys)
narrative:
From there, Soo-See headed to Santa Cruz and after hitching with her to Palo Alto, I went south by myself for a few days and visited my high school friend Katie Schaeffer in Van Nuys (by LA). She was visiting her dad (she lived in NYC) and he wouldn't allow me to stay over, so I called the "Runaway Hotline" and found a place to stay for the night. Since I was still under eighteen, I had once been advised that I could always call the "Runaway Hotline" if I was in a big city and they would try to find me a place to stay. The home where I was put up was beautiful. The fellow asked why I ran away and I explained that I really hadn't. My parents knew what I was doing. He didn't seem to believe me, but he asked no further questions.
rides log:
7/22 Santa Monica - Santa Barbara
7/23 Santa Barbara - Santa Cruz
narrative:
After my stay in the Santa Monica mansion, I visited with Katie for a while and then left kind of late in the day. I only got as far as Santa Barbara where I had my first experience panhandling outside of a 24 hour restaurant called Sambo's. Asking for change to help me get some food or a cup of tea seemed like a natural extension of hitchhiking. I wasn't lying to anyone, I was simply asking for what I needed. I could have offered to work for the money as well, but really I just needed a little bit so I could sit in the restaurant.
I was there most of the night when I got offered a ride from a middle aged lady whom I dubbed the "cocaine lady." She was going to a beach near Big Sur and when I asked her why, she replied she was going to hunt "jade." Ignorant city boy that I was, I thought that was a bird or something. When we arrived at Willow Beach Sate Park, I found we were on an ocean shore where the stone, called jade, washed up for anyone to find. There was a fellow named John who lived on this beach. His daily ritual was to hunt for jade, sell it to tourists and buy himself wine with the proceeds. He was the first real street person I met in my travels.
This was years before the phrase "homeless person" was coined. I would have fit into that category but I never liked that term. I felt very home-full. I and others like me saw each other as people who choose not to fit into the accepted paradigm.
True to her name, the Cocaine Lady did turn me on to cocaine and peach wine and I found a lovely piece of black jade there before I headed on to Santa Cruz, where I stayed at a youth hostel of sorts. It was a school gymnasium and we all slept on the basketball court. Soo-See and I reunited in Santa Cruz, but because she was staying with relatives, I couldn't stay with her.
rides log (with Soo-See):
7/30 Santa Cruz - San Francisco
8/2 San Francisco - 150 north of SF
8/3 150 miles north of SF - by the Eel River, CA
8/4 by Eel River - State Park in Newport, OR
journal:
Finally made it to Oregon! We met Rick and Don in a 24 hour Sambo's restaurant and they invited us to stay at a State Park where they had a keg. It's a very misty night and I got very drunk.
rides log:
8/6 Newport - Portland
narrative:
I did not grow up in a family that emphasized religion. The road became my school in the meaning of faith.
journal:
I met Jesus Christ in the back of a pick up truck. Soo-See and I were riding through Oregon in the back of a pick-up truck when the driver stopped to pick another older hitchhiker who was kind of skuzzy and carrying a bottle of wine. His name was Cisco. He offered us some wine and we offered him some of the beer the driver had shared with us. We started talking. He said he'd been on the road for 15 years. He was forty and he loved the life. We told him what we were up to and he asked if we had any money. When we said no, he pulled out three dollars from a pack of cigarettes and handed it to us.
We insisted we couldn't, but he said, "don't worry, I have more." Then he told us, "when you have money, spread it around." Later on he told he was searching for someone some people call Jesus Christ. Then he told us something you might have called his "philosophy," if you had been studying him in high school.
He said there were three things important in this world: to understand, to accept and to share. You can't do one fully without the other two. It doesn't matter if someone is a junkie, a policeman, a vegetarian, a Jew or a catholic, you must try to understand them. Don't try to preach to them or bombard them with bullshit about what you're all about - if they don't try to understand you, then you try to understand them.
And accept it. Accept others and treat them the way you would like to be treat and - dig it! - you will be treated that way. More times than not, treat someone like a person and they'll treat you like one. But it's hard because they're so used to being treated like nothing... so you've got do it totally... and really - from your soul... with your total oneness.
And share. No-one should starve while someone else eats. Don't ask of others. Give to them. Don't worry about where you'll get your bread, it will come. If you give, you shall receive. And if no-one offers it to you, ask of them. They may not know you need anything, yet may be perfectly happy to give it to you. Wouldn't you give if it were asked of you? If you give of yourself freely wherever you go, you will always be taken care of.
Understand. Accept. Share.
I never knew or cared whether Jesus Christ lived before, but as he talked, I saw Jesus living in him. People talk about Jesus with such absolute admiration and praise that it's hard for me to believe he existed, but as I heard him talk, I really believed. And as for the teachings of the Christ, I now know he preached "Understand, Accept and Share." This seems like a strange experience to have and maybe it sounds like bullshit, but the tenderness in his voice and the love in his eyes made me feel like we were hearing from his soul when he talked. I can't explain it, I can only ask you to understand, accept and share.
rides log (with Soo-See):
8/7/77 Portland, OR - somewhere in Idaho
8/8/77 somewhere in Idaho - past Rupert, ID
8/9/77 past Rupert, ID - Logan, UT
8/10/77 hitched to Salt Lake City,
narrative:
We headed East to Logan, Utah, where we got an idea to ride a freight out of Salt Lake City which we did. We hitched down to Salt Lake City and roamed around the freight yard wondering exactly what to do. A friendly brakeman pointed us to a train that was heading to Colorado that he thought might have some "empties" - meaning empty boxcars. We met an old black man named Johnson who invited us to ride with him in his boxcar to Grand Junction. He told us all about freight hopping. You could ride on the cars that had semi-trailers standing on them, but that was very dangerous. Most yards had friendly brakemen, but you had to watch out for the railroad detectives, "yard dicks."
rides log (with Soo-See):
8/10/77 rode freight to Grand Junction, CO
8/11/77 rode freight to Pueblo, CO
8/12/77 (hitching again) Pueblo - Santa Fe, NM
narrative:
The train moved slowly across Utah and over the Great Divide and we huddled together in the night for warmth. The train tracks run routes that no roads would run. We were in an open boxcar. Sometimes we'd rush down the hills at 60 mph and sometimes we'd just stop.
We'd stop and Soo-See and I would look around and wonder if we had enough time to jump out for a second or if the train was just about to start up again (which would leave us behind in the middle of some wilderness). We never knew. This mode of travel seemed to personify the Beatnik attitude - the Beatitude - that expanded time by slowing it down to the present. There was no getting in a hurry when you're hopping freights.
The train took us through Grand Junction, Co and into Pueblo, Co. There we hitchhiked to Santa Fe.
lyrics:
A train's being made in Salt Lake City
In Logan I'm still high
That train's being gift wrapped just for me
I'm going to ride that freight train 'til I die, Oh Lord
Riding that train with old brother Johnson
Watching as tourists wave by
Dirt in my face and jazz in my ears,
I'm going to ride that freight train 'til I die, Oh Lord
Narrative:
When we got to Santa Fe, we found that the Christ Brotherhood had closed the hostel, though they still lived there and let us stay the night. Somehow the Brotherhood had decided that their mission housing people in Santa Fe was over. It was all a little weird. Ray had gone off traveling with a woman named Mary. They didn't believe in marriage, but they traveled together in pairs often. Many of the Brotherhood were kind of cold to us. I wondered if we fit into a category of people that they had tended to that didn't quite get what they were doing as far as Christ's work. Sitting in the living room, we met a gently fellow named Michael reading the New Testament. When he saw my guitar, he asked if I would play him a song. I chose a song that I thought reflected a philosophy of love and freedom and he liked it, but asked if I knew any blues.
He had scraggly blonde hair, a crooked smile and a simple wooden cross around his neck. I took it he was new to the Brotherhood. He explained that there were many examples of two people traveling together, particularly when they were witnesses to extraordinary events. He suggested I read the fifth and sixth chapters of Matthew for guidance concerning traveling.
That night I picked up a copy of the New Testament and perused The Gospel According to Matthew. The fifth chapter begins Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount" with the beatitudes. "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The philosophy of the beatitudes certainly resonated with my political sensibilities, but it the sixth chapter more directly addressed the traveling lessons I had learned. "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.... if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you... Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" This is what we had found to be true as we hitchhiked along.
"If you give of yourself freely, you will always be well cared for," I pontificated to myself.
rides log (with Soo-See):
8/14/77 hitched to Belen, NM, rode a freight heading east
8/15/77 woke up in Lubbock, TX, stayed on train heading east
8/16/77 got off freight in Houston, boarded Greyhound bus to NYC
Narrative:
Soo-See wanted to head to Texas, so we caught a freight out of Belen, New Mexicio because we were afraid of hitchhiking in Texas. We'd had too many stories of hippie hating Texas Rangers. when the freight stopped in Brownwood, Texas I had my first encounter with Texans. I just really needed a cup of tea, so I walked into town. I ended up in this bookstore and checking out the books when I asked the owner if he knew where a diner was. I didn't have any money, but I figured I could beg a cup of tea. When I explained further, he says, "I'll make you a cup of tea, if that's what you want." His friendly openness totally shattered my preconceptions about Texas bigotry.
We stayed on that train through Brownwood, Sweetwater, Abilene, Coleman, Zephyr, Adamsville and Tyler, and ended up in Houston, Texas the day that Elvis Presley died. Over a breakfast that included my first introduction to grits, we decided it would be best if we were to take a bus back to the east coast and so we did.
Traveling together and being in love was a great adventure for both of us, but it had wore us out. We had each had a little money at the beginning of the trip and we kept it in travelers checks until we decided it was necessary to use it. In that fashion we experienced what it was like not to have any money, while really having a stash of emergency money. This was not really the same as being a poor underprivileged American who had to live without money, but it gave us an understanding of what that could be like. For me, it showed me that it was possible to live like that and furthered my resolve to live a simple life.
We used our remaining funds to take a bus back to the East Coast together and from there it was unclear if we would travel together again.
rides log (with Soo-See on Bus):
8/17/77 Arrived New Orleans, LA, left in the evening
8/18/77 Arrived Atlanta, GA, left in the evening
8/19/77 Arrived in NYC
lyrics:
Restless as a cat on a greyhound bus
Out the emergency window I fly
I'm gonna fill up an old jug with cold clear water
I'm going to ride that freight train 'til I die, Oh Lord
8:23 PM
-
3 Comments - 4 Kudos
- Add Comment
|
overstimulated
hopeful
I was so proud of a newspaper article written about me in New Hampshire, that I included the picture from it and labeled it braggingly, "newspaper article in Keene, NH 1993."
So I replied:
