A Road And A Dream
Chapter I Joplin
February had been dreary and gray. Winter hadn’t been too bad in southwest Missouri. Not much snow, and the temperatures had been mild for the most part. The drab setting matched my mood for the time. The previous year had been one I’d like to forget. I had finally spiraled down to what seemed like the bottom of a pit I fell into a year or so before. The encroaching end to winter found me sleeping on my mother’s couch. She had a two story, two bedroom place. My little sister had already claimed the second bedroom when I arrived around the beginning of the new year.
I spent my days wondering the streets of Joplin looking for something to alter my state of mind. It was usually easy to find, there were always other people doing the same thing and they were always willing to share, knowing that someday they might be the ones who were without. The code of the stoner “What comes around goes around”. Life might be a lot easier if all aspects of life were like that, but then some would call that communism. This kind of activity led to some unexpected partnerships. People with whom you would never even talk to became “comrades”.
One afternoon late in the month, I was sitting on the couch, that I slept on,watching woody woodpecker when the phone rang, mom answered and claimed “yes he’s right here”. Handing the receiver to me she said it was that guy I went to high school with “Greg”. He’s been calling looking for you for the past few days.
I hadn’t seen Greg for about four and a half years when we graduated high school. We had been, I guess one would say, best friends. We spent most of our free time together, making music in my parent’s attic. We would sometimes leave school at lunch time and go to the attic and turn the amplifiers up, knowing they could hear us at school four blocks away. Greg went to California right after graduation to live with his father. He wound up hitch hiking there, after I refused to drive him. Even his girlfriend, Theresa at the time, couldn’t convince me with offers of “favors”. He had called a few times since trying to convince me to go out there and join him, but I had no desire to go to the west coast.
He asked what I was doing with my life right now. I could only reply with a humble “nothing” I had no job, no car, I was sleeping on my mom’s couch. He then told me that he and his girlfriend, Kim, now his wife, had been in a motorcycle accident two years earlier. Kim was thrown from the back of the bike and almost lost her foot, as well as hitting her head on a car bumper, which caused her to be cross eyed to this day. She received a settlement from the insurance company, which was put into a trust fund that she would get when she turned eighteen. Her eighteenth birthday is in august, he told me, and the fund is over $32,000.00. Greg was bribing me, wanting me to join him in southern California. He then said if I were to come out there he would buy all the equipment needed to start the band.
He continued saying if we were going have a go at it that So. Cal. Was the place to do it. He was just trying to close the deal at this point. I’m not sure if I thought about it, if I did it wasn’t for long. I had no clue what I was going to do, mom was planning to move back to her home in Indiana. I was already in limbo, I wanted to make music but I had lost all my equipment, either to thieves or bad judgment. All I had left was an old beat up Les Paul copy, and a twelve string.
It was the offer I couldn’t refuse, I told him I had to help my mother pack in June, so I would be there sometime in the summer. Mom then reluctantly agreed to buy me a greyhound bus ticket to California, as long as I helped her pack a truck for her move to Indiana.
The next few days found me in better spirits although the thought of spending the next three months biding my time, waiting for summer in a town that held nothing for me other than the presence of what remained of my broken family, was unsavory at best.
I met Roger on the streets, or at a mutual friends. “The Streets” in Joplin Missouri in the early eighties were tame. More suburbia that urban, only there wasn’t a big city to be a suburb of. I hadn’t known him before this time. I’m not sure what brought us together, we were both just looking for a buzz, and we seemed to get along well. We ran into each other a few times, seeking a “mood adjustment”. We didn’t have many mutual interests, but when you’re high these things don’t seem to matter.
It was one of these afternoons we were talking about getting out of town. We were both ready for a road trip. I must have mentioned California. He had family in south Texas he was itching to see. Roger had been wanting to go south for a while but was reluctant to go alone and I had three months to kill. We got high one afternoon and the idea sounded better the more we talked about it. It was crazy and ill advised and was just the kind of thing we both felt needed to be done. After all we were stoned.
II
We met the next morning with what few things we could carry. I had a small duffel bag with a change of clothes and a notebook containing poems and drawings, a blanket and a twelve string guitar that was missing two strings. When he asked why I brought the guitar I said we might have to sing for our supper. I really thought it would come in handy to kill time waiting for rides.
The first ride was with a couple in a large sedan, who took us well into Oklahoma. Then a man in a pick up truck took us to just outside Oklahoma City. Both very good rides, nice people. They asked where we were going and Texas being the original destination, seemed to fade towards California in an indecisive sort of way. Roger did most of the talking on these rides, I played the role of “road pup” and enjoyed the trip. I always loved being on the road. No matter what the situation, there’s a sense of adventure, not knowing just what waits over the next hill. I had hitch hiked a lot in the year or two before, and had, for the most part, good experiences. However,There is the occasional looney.
We walked for a few miles on the northwest side of Oklahoma City. Having come down I-44 we could see the airliners as they approached the airport. Roger remembered he had seen on the news that the President was visiting Oklahoma that day and we got to see Air Force One as it flew by in the distance.
Our conversation somehow worked it’s way around again to our destination. Neither one of us had been to California, I had plans to go there in June, but we were on the road and though our original plan was to go to Texas, Roger seemed interested in going west. We decided at that point in our journey we would go the direction the next ride took us. As the sun began to drop in the west and the afternoon rush hour traffic sped by we reached the point where I-44 meets Interstate 40.
Standing at the convergence of these two highways at the base of an overpass there came a white full sized van, in the far lane of the freeway, and the driver, upon seeing us swerved, apparently without looking, across three lanes of traffic, traveling at freeway speeds, to stop on the shoulder right where we were standing. We heard a man yell for us to get in, Roger looked at me and declaring, a ride is a ride, jumped into the passenger seat. I slid open the side door to find there were no more seats in the back, and made myself as comfortable as I could.
The driver of the van, seeming somewhat intoxicated, asked us where we were headed. Roger told him we were going to L.A. Our latest chauffeur, noticing the guitar, then started ranting about Jesus and told us we should consider singing for the lord. As we sped along the freeway we approached the interchange of I-40 and Interstate 35, he exited and headed south. At this point he announced he was going to buy us a steak dinner and talk to us about our future. A few miles down I-35 we found ourselves in Norman at a little diner, where our host told a waitress, that apparently knew him, that we were going to have the steak dinner.
The waitress seemed annoyed, to say the least, at this guy who I’m guessing was a regular there, and usually drunk. He didn’t order any food, I’m sure it would have slowed him down. As we ate our steaks, he went on to tell us that we should go to Fort Worth, and find a guy named Kenneth Copeland. We should then tell this guy that we want to sing for Jesus! As he was telling us this the waitress has to tell him several times to quiet down as he is making quite the scene.
After finishing our steaks and the waitress brings the check, our intoxicated host stood up and announced to the whole diner that we were going to sing for our supper! He then looked at me and told me to go out to the van and get my guitar and play these good folks a song!
The first though in my head was that my twelve string only had ten strings on it. Roger and I had never sung together before I’m not sure he ever considered singing in front of people. We were totally unprepared and tired after a long day of traveling, we were going to sound like crap! The waitress came immediately over and told him “they’re not singing here, and you’re paying this bill and getting out of here right now!”
Apologizing, he walked to the cash register, paid the bill, and we got back into the van where the crazy drunk took us back to the interstate, gave us a five dollar bill, and told us to head south to Fort Worth. By this time it was fairly late and being full and sleepy we spread our blankets out under a bridge and slept until the sun came up.
The morning light came with a heavy dew on a cool springlike morning. We were up and having spent our cash on a breakfast of munchies from the shelves of a nearby convenience store, we walked at a brisk pace to warm ourselves. The sun rose higher and warmed the day, and we walked for what seemed like several miles until the suburbia of Norman began to fade into the countryside. About the time the day became comfortable enough to shed our jackets, a car stopped offering us a ride. It was a nice car, not too fancy, a Buick or maybe a Lincoln, driven by a man in his mid to late sixties.
Roger and I shoved our gear into the backseat where I climbed in beside it and roger took the front. Our latest chauffeur introduced himself as Leo, and after exchanging pleasantries he and roger began a conversation which went on for a while, then would go silent only to be broken when one of them noticed something on the road or had a fleeting thought. Leo told us he had traveled from his home in Minnesota, and was on his way to visit an old friend who lived in southern Mexico. He wanted to see his friend once more while he was still able to make the trip. Leo said he picked us up to have someone to talk to, keep him awake and help pass the time on such a long trip. I listened to the two of them talk as we moved from Oklahoma into Texas. The conversation occasionally came back to me but for the most part I was content to enjoy the view of a road I had never been on before.
I remember as we approached the Dallas-Fort Worth split on I-35 where I-35E goes through Dallas and I-35W though Fort Worth, Leo told us he preferred to take the west road as it seemed to get through the city in less time. We didn’t mention the night before and being told to go to Fort Worth, we had no desire to stop there.
Leo was full of stories about his travels across the country, and listening to him was fascinating. He knew people all over the country and even in other countries, but his favorite trip to take was the one he was on, to Mexico. By the time Leo grew tired of driving for the day we found ourselves outside of Waco. Leo took an exit that had a hotel nearby, and let us off at a truck stop where he stopped to filled up his car and told us that if he saw us on the road in the morning he would pick us up again.
There was still daylight left and having just enjoyed a great ride we enthusiastically hiked back to the highway. At this time Roger commented that the sky in Texas looks like it’s closer to the ground. That part of Texas is really flat, and it seemed that you could see for miles in all directions. Soon we got another ride that took us to the north side of Austin. We were making good time getting from Oklahoma City to Austin in one day with only two rides. We stayed with it, even though it was dark.
A small hatchback with three guys in it stopped, the driver was a guitar player and wanted to check out my twelve string. So I took it out of the case, there on the side of the freeway, and he plucked the ten stings that were on it, commented it was a nice guitar and asked where we were going. We told him were headed for a town down south of Laredo, he then said he was only going to the next exit but we could have a ride that far.
We had a hard time fitting all our things in the small car with what was now five people. He took us two exits further down the road and wished us luck with getting another ride, as it was getting late and we were near the middle of Austin.
The traffic had thinned out considerably, and the prospect of getting another ride that night was dim. There were large shrub like bushes on the side of the freeway. We poked around a couple of them and found one that had a space that could accommodate both of us and keep us hidden from cars passing by. There we spent our second night.
The third morning of our trip was warmer and dryer than the first two. I could feel the difference in latitude. It didn’t bother me that I was sleeping on the side of the road, in a transient kind of state. It was a freedom I hadn’t felt, not really knowing where I was going and I’m not sure I cared. I was feeling grubby by this time, the days hadn’t been too warm so I don’t think I was smelling bad yet as I hadn’t really raised a sweat. We trekked on down the freeway enduring the morning rush traffic with no luck as far as rides.
After the traffic slowed a bit and we had gotten out of the central part of town, Roger called out “It’s Leo!” and a familiar white sedan pulled over where we were standing. Leo commented that we had made it quite a way from where he last saw us. As we made our way south, I listened to he and Roger talk as the countryside changed from rolling hills to desert. Roger started telling about all the wildlife we would encounter in this part of Texas. The wild pigs, rattlesnakes, scorpions, all desert animals I had yet to encounter. We even saw some wild boars he called by their Spanish name “Havalenas” once we got past San Antonio, which we seemed to get to quickly after Austin. The road between San Antonio and Laredo was the first desert I had seen. It was beautiful, and desolate.
Early in the afternoon we arrived at Laredo. Leo wanted to stop there and spend the night before crossing the border into Mexico. He stopped on the north end of town, wished us well and thanked us for our company. We ended up walking through Laredo to the highway that went on south following the Rio Grande to Zapata.
As we walked down the interstate Roger brought my attention to the houses and neighborhoods we were passing. “Notice how each block has a house with a sliding window in one of the bedrooms?” He said. “When the oldest child grows up and moves out they turn his bedroom into a taco stand”. This was my first contact with Mexican culture, and whether what he said was true or not it did appear as though there was a sliding window in what seemed to be a bedroom of a house on every block.
Laredo didn’t seem to be very big, not compared to San Antonio or Fort Worth, and it took us only an hour or so to get to the south side of town and highway 86 to Zapata. After what must have only been a few blocks we were at the edge of town where behind us was civilization and before us empty desert. We stayed within sight of town not wanting to venture too far out right on the border. 1982 didn’t see the “border wars” we hear about thirty years later we were more concerned with getting stuck in the desert more than anything else.
Soon a white Chevy pickup with a large propane tank mounted behind the cab stopped and the roughneck driving gave us a ride. As we rode down the desolate highway this roughneck told us things ranging from the jobs that were available working the oil rigs in the area to how he had converted his truck to run on propane. At the time Propane was cheap, and he was saving a lot of money. We followed the Rio Grande river until it grew into a large lake out the middle of this desert, where this highway seemed to lead us to most distant point of nowhere one can imagine.
Chapter III Zapata
Zapata. One road, the highway we were on, and a few side streets was all I could see of this tiny village. One could walk the length of it in ten minutes. The highway had a store, with a gas station next door. Across the street was a bar, A square building, with garage doors for walls on three sides, and the word “Sportsman” painted on the stucco above the double wide doors. There was a laundromat, and a greasy gut burger joint with an arcade of sorts, they had three or four games and a shuffleboard table.
At the end of the three block stretch of road which made up this “town” there was a trailer park, followed closely by a bridge that crossed a part of the lake. One could jump off this bridge and swim to Mexico. Although at this point it would be a long swim. This trailer park was our destination. The trailers were small, no double wides, some you would expect would be more for camping than living in.
We walked into the park that had maybe two dozen mobile homes, and Roger climbed the steps to knock on the door of a single wide very common looking “house”. After knocking two or three times a voice came from next door. “They’re not home” claimed a woman, standing in the doorway of her home. Roger asked where they had gone. She then informed him that they had gone out of town.. At this time she recognized Roger, and told us that they went to Missouri, about three days ago. “Well damn, they didn’t tell say anything about it”. Roger said in disgust. The woman invited us into her home and gave us something to drink.
After some greetings and such Roger introduced me. The woman’s name was Shirley. Shirley was average height, a little heavy but not fat, blonde. I would guess she was around 30 years old. It seems the people we had hitch hiked three days to visit had gone, on the spur of the moment, to see Roger’s family in Joplin. Well now we were stuck, with no where to stay, in a town that was no where.
We told Shirley of our trip, how it had started out as a whim, neither one of us had told anyone where we were going or even that we were going at all. After a while and a couple of beers and some reefer we found ourselves laughing at the irony of traveling to see someone at the same time they were traveling to see one of us. Shirley was understanding and offered to let us stay with her till we decided what we would do next. That night I sat down with my twelve, uh ten string guitar, and started writing what would become a song. The situation in mind I claimed I always wanted to write a song that started with the word “Fuck”. It seemed the appropriate time.
“Fuck the world I just wanna get high,
never made the grade so I just said goodbye.
Three days of trippin’ through four different states,
to find our destination had taken up stakes.
Why do I wander, why do I roam?
To no destination never finding a home.
I look for the future and what do I see?
Just a road and a dream staring right back at me”
Man I got stoned, I mean I got cloned
be a pepper with sess-bud you could be dethroned
Joe Joe he taught me about aluminum cans
makin’ beer can bongs was a good use for them
It had a simple country-folk feel with a rocking bridge part A second verse would come a few weeks later, and would essentially tell the story of at least part of this trip. This song would later grow into what would become the opener for my band with Greg. It was easy and good for a “warm up song” to get your fingers moving. Guess I started a lot of performances with that word.
IV
The next morning Roger and I went to the “office” of the trailer park. Well, the trailer where the owner lived, and asked him if he had any work he needed done. We didn’t want much just a few bucks so we didn’t feel like we were mooching off Shirley. As luck would have it he was thinking of rebuilding the sign for the park which had been neglected and all but fallen apart with time. We agreed to build a new one for $50. The foundation for this sign was already there. A set of steel tubes about four inches in diameter, anchored firmly to the ground in concrete, with some angle iron welded onto the top about 12 feet up, to make a roof top shape. All we had to do was bolt some plywood to the frame, one vertically and two making up the “roof”,and then shingle the top side and he would paint the sign later. I wondered if I was the only one to see the irony in having a sign with a regular roof one would see on a house when none of the tailors had such a roof. But not to be one to question the hand that pays we went to work. The owner had the materials on hand, and an extension ladder along with one hammer and some nails a few bolts and a square of roof shingles.
The day had started out warm. As we worked into the midday hours it got to be very warm We had both stripped down to jeans and boots by this time and when we took a break for the lunch Shirley prepared for us I noticed a thermometer, which read 115º. First of all it was only noon, and it was, after all, still early march. Roger commented “welcome to the desert”. The rest of the afternoon was blistering hot as we nailed roof shingles to the top of the sign. When the job was finished we walked to the Sportsman and had a cold beer.
Roger then showed me around the town. We went to the burger place where there was a Ms. Packman game. Roger was addicted to this one, I was more into Astro fighter, or Centipede. He was good at Ms. Packman and I would spend more time watching him play as he would climb to more levels than I could. When the fruit would come out he would say “Cherries e’st tu whey!”. He would say things in Spanish, and when I asked what it meant more times than not he didn’t know, it just sounded Mexican and that was spoken a lot in that town, being on the border. When he finally lost his game we went to the store and bought a few groceries.
We spent the next few days looking for odd jobs around the trailer park, we cleaned up the trash from the area and the cleaned out the empty tailors and used the owner’s pickup to haul the trash off. There wasn’t a proper “landfill” it was a road that everyone in the area used as a dump. When we got to the “dump” a couple of Mexicans were rummaging through the trash looking for treasure. In the trash from one of the trailers we had cleaned out they found a girlie magazine. The language barrier has it’s bridges and here one presented itself as they gaucked at the naked women in the pictures, smiled and sounded out “good”, at this Roger said “bueno” and the bridge was crossed. They repeated “Bueno, Bueno”, and Roger turned to me and explained “that’s Mexican for good, it’s like saying “no way” only backwards “way no”. This was my first Spanish lesson.
One morning Roger woke up feeling ill and I spent the day sitting outside talking to Shirley while he slept. Late in the afternoon a man drove into the park and stopped at Shirley’s trailer. He was looking for workers to clean the mud pit on an oil rig in the area. $50 for a night’s work. Shirley woke Roger up and he came out to talk to the man, said he would like to but he still felt sick. The man then looked at me, “50 bucks” he said “I’ll take you there and bring you back in the morning”. “Yeah what the hell let’s go” I said.
We climbed into his truck, he had two more guys to pick up and we were on our way. We drove about 20 miles into the desert, then a few miles down another road when at about dusk we arrived at an oil rig. It was lit up by flood lights and there were a few vehicles there, belonging to the roughnecks who were leaving. The man we came with spoke to the boss for a minute then got out some tools, shovels and long poles with scrapers welded to the ends, told us to grab a nearby water hose and led us into what can only be described as the bowels of the oil rig.
The pit was full of mud, the mud was a by product of the pumping process that collected in the “mud pit” and needed cleaning out periodically. The pit was knee deep in the slimy stuff and all we had to do was flush it out using the tools and water. Simple enough concept, but hard work. A few hours into the night I noticed a tingling around my ankles which gradually turned into a burning sensation. When I mentioned this to the man who brought me, he told me there was lye in the mud “you are wearing boots aren’t you?” My boots were heavy leather with steel toes with plates going up to the ankle, to cover the strings. They only went up to the ankle. Everyone else had boots that went up several inches above the ankle “It’s too late to find you new ones now besides the damage was done you might as well tough it out.” the man said.
It took a good seven or eight hours to finish the job. After we had cleaned everything up the four of us climbed into the truck. We headed home as the sun began to come up. When we got to the highway everyone was quiet being tired from a nights work and the guy next to me fell asleep. The other guy and the driver started talking, when the sleeping guy started to twitch, slowly at first then more and more, suddenly he was in a full blown seizure, with four of us in a pickup, at 60 miles per hour traveling down the highway. The guy’s friend tried to find something to shove in his mouth, I guess to keep him from biting his tongue, while I helped to hold him down.
When he stopped seizing, he woke up and looked around and asked “did I fall asleep?” to which his friend responded “man you had like a seizure”. At this he looked at the man who had hired us and explained “It only happens when I’m really tired”. He continued “you won’t tell anyone will you? I really need the work and when people find out about this they won’t want to hire me, but I swear it only happens when I get really tired”.
When we got back to Zapata we dropped the other two off and the man took me home. “he really needs to take care of that problem.” he said “that could be a bad thing to have happen on the job.” He took me back to Shirley’s place handed me $50 and thanked me for my help. I went inside and took off my boots revealing ankles that looked as though they been burned by acid. I went bare foot for the next few days, not being able to even put on socks.
When Roger felt better we went to the Sportsman to have a few beers. At the bar there was a man, five or ten years older than us, sitting alone at a table. He had hair just past his shoulders, and a solid build. There wasn’t anyone else in the place at the time. The man motioned to us and we went over to his table, he then asked if we wanted to get high. This seemed to be the common practice in this town as there wasn’t really anything else to do. We finished our beers and followed the man outside and down the street a short distance, where he produced a joint out of his cigarette pack and fired it up. About half way through the doobie he asked if we knew where we could get rid of some weed. We explained that we were from up north and didn’t know many people here. We did feel however that we could turn a lot in Joplin.
The man then went on to tell us a story of how he and his friend had taken a small boat across the lake and made a deal with some Mexicans on the other side. They filled their boat with bales of pot to the point that they could not fit themselves into the boat. As they were swimming along side of the boat bringing it back to the Texas side of the lake they heard the Mexicans shouting at them to come back. They couldn’t figure out why, a deal was made and they had paid them. So they kept on towing the boat as gunshots rang out and the bullets flew all around them. When they got to other side of the lake the man hurried around to the side of the boat his friend was on only to find he had caught a bullet and was dead.
He then told us he had twenty bales of the stuff we were smoking, adding, “You can take some up north and sell it, but if you cross me I will find you and I will kill you” Talk about a buzz kill. We then explained that we had no way of transporting the stuff. To tell you the truth I don’t think either one of us cared to pursue the matter any further. We thanked the man for the high to which he responded “you two think about it.” I’m sure whatever he got out of the sale of the twenty bales of pot wasn’t worth the friend he lost.
It was beginning to seem like an old western. You meet some shady characters in a border town.
The next day we walked to the burger joint and then to the store for a 6 pack, where we ran into someone Roger knew from the last time he was in town. A slim guy about 6 foot tall and long blonde hair, who invited out to his place for a few beers and a joint. We got into his truck and he drove us out of town a few miles to a small trailer house at the end of a small dirt road. As we rode he told us about his job. He sat in the guard shack at the entrance road that led to one of the many oil rigs in the area. “A good job, it doesn’t pay anywhere near what the roughnecks make, but all I do is check the vehicles that come through.”
Inside his trailer house he had several rattlesnake skins. He told us that he keeps a revolver with him at all times while he’s at work ‘cause you never know when a snake will cross your path. This guy kept all the snakes he shot, skinned them ate the meat which he claimed was very good, and he knew a man that made hat bands out of the skins. They were nice hatbands with the heads still attached and facing open mouthed to the front of the hat. He then opened his freezer over the small refrigerator and said “check this out”. Inside the freezer was a huge rattlesnake coiled up looking like it was ready to strike, frozen solid.”This is the biggest snake I ever seen” He claimed. It had to be six foot long with nine rattles on it’s tail. The head was almost as big as my fist. “I’m still not sure what I want to do with this one so I’m saving it. Maybe I’ll get it stuffed and mounted”.
By the time we got back to Shirley’s house it was late afternoon. She had a visitor, a man who Roger knew. They introduced me to Mike. We sat and talked for a while. When Mike realized we were staying there with Shirley, sleeping on her floor, He made us an offer. He had a pop up trailer in the back yard of his house, yes a real house, and he told us we were welcome to stay in it for a few days. So we gathered up our few belongings and got a ride with him to our new “home”.
After we put our things into his pop up trailer he invited us inside for dinner. Mike informed us at that time that he hoped we wouldn’t be staying for a long time as his work would take him out of town soon and he didn’t feel comfortable leaving us there. After dinner he had to show off a new toy of his. He had one of those new disk movie players. It played 12” disks and the quality was better than the VHS movies that were out at the time. The only movie he had was M*A*S*H, so we drank a few beers and watched his movie before going out to the trailer to sleep.
We stayed in that trailer a couple of nights before we came to the conclusion that we had gotten everything out of Zapata that we could. We needed to move on to another place. The nearest City was Corpus Christi. And that sounded good to me but I didn’t like the idea of going back on the road totally broke as we had before. So we talked to Mike and he agreed to buy my guitar for $150.The plan was that we would be back for it in a few weeks. I think Mike knew better.The next morning we set out, this all seemed fun to me getting away from the cool northern state of Missouri. And seeing parts of the country that I’ve never seen. I had no clue thisadventurewas just getting started.
V
In the morning we packed our few belongings and helped Mike put away his pop up trailer. He fed us breakfast and we walked out of town on the road going northeast, towards Hebbronville. Roger told me that all the towns down here were 50 miles apart. So even though there isn’t much traffic, any ride we might get would most likely take us 50 miles as there isn’t anything between the towns. We sat for a while on that road just outside Zapata, but eventually someone picked us up and we were on our way. We arrived at Hebbronville in the mid afternoon and were dropped off at the south end of town. We had to switch highways here. Roger made a good navigator and knew all the roads we needed to take. He had obviously been on these roads before.
Hebbronville was a small desert town of maybe a few thousand people, old buildings made up the “downtown” area where we found a small Piggly Wiggly store. Here we bought some groceries for dinner. A bag of hot dogs, some buns and chips, a small jar of mustard, and some drinks. We then walked along the highway heading east until we arrived at a “city limit” sign, then we continued on a few hundred yards and set up “camp” in the ditch next to the road. The spot had been marked by an empty beer twelve-pack box that we decided would be good for starting a fire.
Roger went out collecting mesquite branches, pointing out that it was growing all around us and it was the best wood for cooking, adding that he didn’t understand why anyone here would ever buy charcoal when there is all this mesquite growing wild. We piled the trash and built a frame of sticks around it and started the trash on fire. As we sat next to the fire watching the sticks start to catch a scorpion ran out from it’s hiding place in the beer box and scampered right between us and off in the desert. Sleeping on the ground here didn’t seem too appealing anymore.
There were houses, fairly new looking, across the road and off in the distance. From that direction came a boy, about 10 or so, on a bicycle and leaning up against a fencepost asked us what we were doing. “We’re having dinner” we responded and went on cooking our hot dogs. He said he would be right back and rode off towards the houses. A few minutes later he returned and carrying a can called to us to come across the road . He then gave us a can of beans. He asked a few meaningless questions, what’re you doing here, where are you going…then saying he had to go home for dinner rode off again. Fortunately I always carry a P-38 on my key chain, it has come in handy many times and this was one of them, you never know when you’ll need to open a can of beans. There was very little traffic at this time of day on this road and we were planning to settle here for the night. After we had eaten all the hot dogs, chips and beans, we sat beside the road talking about what lay ahead in Corpus.
We were watching the sun going down behind the town when a car came speeding towards us. It didn’t take long to see it was a cop. The police officer stopped on the road next to us and asked what we were doing out here. We explained that we were on our way to Corpus Christi and waiting for a ride and we didn’t expect to get one till morning. The officer then told us to get in the car and he took us back into town, to a small city hall/police station/jail, where he asked us for our identification and told us to sit in a holding area while he checked us out. He explained that the parents of the boy who brought us beans called and said there was two men on the highway camping out, and he just wanted to make sure we weren’t fugitives running from the law.
The policeman was a fairly good sized Mexican who was intimidating with his badge and the attitude that probably came with it. We sat waiting for him to return for what seemed like a long time, when he did come back he gave us back our ID’s saying we were free to go, but he didn’t want to catch us hanging around his town. I explained to him that we were out of “his town” when he picked us up and he brought us back into town. He then stated that he could let us stay in the jail but he’d have to lock us up. Needless to say that wasn’t an option to us, he then pointed to a parking lot across the street from the jail. It was full of cars in various stages of disrepair or dismemberment saying “Those are vehicles we confiscate from people running drugs or wetbacks, you can stay in one of those tonight but when I get here at 7am tomorrow you better be gone”. Roger and I searched out a couple of cars that looked like they had a large and still intact back seat and made ourselves as comfortable as possible and got some sleep.
I awoke the next morning with the first light of sunrise. Roger and I seemed to emerge from our respective cars at the same time. I don’t think either one of us slept very well. Roger told me he spent most of the night searching the car he was in for something the cops might have missed. I was mostly concerned with insects and other critters joining me in the car, remembering the episode with the scorpion.
We walked back down the road we had walked the afternoon before. This time we kept on walking when we passed the city limit sign, wanting to put as much distance between us and Hebbronville as we could. This leg of the trip had a couple of roads crossing the road we were on so the next ride only took us to the next crossroad. From there we walked. All the roads here were two lane, desert roads with little or no development. Not many houses or buildings of any kind. Some fences here and there. Not even many signs, road or advertizing. Glorious desolation one might say.
By mid afternoon a pickup with three Mexicans came by and stopped. The man on the passenger side motioned for us to get in the back. As we climbed in and made room for ourselves it was hard not to notice the keg of beer standing behind the cab, with a tap laying next to it. Roger and I looked at each other and concluded that our ride was on it’s way to some sort of gathering, a party if you will. After riding about ten or twelve miles the truck stopped, a voice from inside yelled “this is as far as we’re going”. So we jumped out and the truck turned left down a driveway leading to a house.
As the afternoon wore on there was an increasing amount of traffic on this road. Cars and pick up trucks, all filled with Mexicans, going to this house. Several of them were bringing more beer. After a few hours of watching the party grow to several dozen people and ALL the traffic on this road going to said party, I finally said to Roger “I’ve had enough, we’re crashing this party.” We walked across the road and up the driveway. Only a few of the people there even seemed to notice us. They had all seen us standing on the road as they came in.
We made our way towards the house where a few older men were sitting in lawn chairs. One of the men was holding a spiral notebook and greeted us. I asked him if we could join their party. He explained it was a birthday party for his nephew, and if we wanted to contribute, we were welcome. I asked how much would we need to contribute. He then showed me the list on his notebook. The better part of the first page was taken up by names and how much they had given. The man then told me the money would go to his nephew for his birthday. I saw that the least amount that had been given was $5. So reached into my pocket gave the man a $10 and said “This for my friend and myself”. He had us sign our names and motioned to the beer kegs which there were several by this time and said “help yourself”.
There was a lot happening at this gathering. I wasn’t sure what most of it was, feeling out of place , not being able to communicate with a lot of these people. An hour or so later Roger approached me saying that there was skeet shooting contest, $5 to enter. I had no experience shooting a shotgun, but he wanted in, so I gave him a five and he joined that group of men while I wandered around talking to whoever would talk to me. A short time later Roger came over to where I was, bragging that he had won the contest and gotten $30. He had also found us a ride to Corpus Christi. Someone in the contest was going there in the morning. He pointed to a pickup, an El Camino or something like that, saying that was his truck. We put our things in the bed of the truck. As the night wore on I grew tired and climbed into the bed of the truck to sleep.
The next thing I knew the sun was coming up and there was an angry Texican yelling at me to get out of his truck. I crawled out and grabbed my things. Roger was nearby looking as confused as I was. “I guess he’s mad that I beat him at skeet” he said. We got back out to the road started walking east. After a while a pickup with a Texican man and woman stopped and offered us a ride we climbed in the back and they took us a few miles down the road to the next crossroad. It was getting towards midday by this time, and as we walked along the otherwise deserted road we were joined by a dog. A good sized dog looked like a hound had crossed with a large lab, black and white in color. He seemed like he had nowhere else to be so he walked along with us for several miles. As the day grew to an end, and there was no other traffic to be seen, we decided to settle down in the ditch for the night, the dog lay down next to us.
I still believe to this day that dog was sent to keep watch for us that night. We might have encountered anything from a wild pig to a snake or whatever creature might be out there at night. In the morning we set out towards the northeast and the dog seemed intent on going south. So we went on knowing that he had served his purpose and been a good guard dog as we slept there in that ditch, in the desert. The next road we would cross was a US highway with more traffic and it wasn’t long before we found our selves at Kingsville and in a short time Corpus Christi. We got a ride that took us well into the city.
VI
Once to Corpus we got some lunch walked around the downtown area checking things out. We looked like a couple of transients, of course that’s what we were. We happened along a construction site, a new high rise was being erected. Roger had an idea and we found a small trailer “office” next to the construction site. We asked a worker, that looked like he was in charge, if anyone here was hiring, he instructed us to ask in the construction office. We went inside and found a man busy talking to someone on the phone. When he was finished he asked what he could do for us, we inquired about work, and he made a quick call. Then he said there was a crew that could use a couple of “grunts” and that we should show up the day after tomorrow at 7am and report to bill or bob or whoever was in charge. Feeling like things were going to get better soon we went on searching for someplace to spend the night.
There wasn’t much cash left in our pockets, and we wanted to save it for food rather than housing. So Roger suggested we head down to the waterfront, where he knew of a pier we might be able to camp under. After only a few blocks we got to the pier. There were two other guys there with the same idea we had, to camp there. One of them was our age, early twenties, and the other was younger not more than 16 years old. The older of the two welcomed us as fellow transients. After talking with them for a while we learned the older one John, had a car, that was parked nearby he was just tired of sleeping in it and the cool sea breeze coming off the Gulf of Mexico made sleeping more comfortable. I had brought a heavy quilt with me on this trip, and I remember this as being the first time since the night under the bridge in Oklahoma that I had to get under it instead of being on top of it.
In the morning the four of us tried to think of something to do as Roger and I had a “free” day and the other two didn’t seem to have anything planned. We walked up to the street where we found our new friend’s car parked in a public parking area. He let Roger and I put our belongings in the trunk for “safe storage” for the day. He claimed he didn’t have much gas so we would walk. Shortly after, we were approached by another man kinda skinny and dirty looking as were we. The man told us that he had been out on a nearby island where cattle was kept, searching the cow pies for mushrooms, asking if we would be interested in buying some. Now these weren’t your regular mushrooms you might by at the vegetable stand. Call them magic mushrooms, cylacybin, psychedelic, whatever you might, he claimed they were very good and fresh. Having not been high for a couple of days Roger and I scraped up ten bucks to buy a bag.
Now if you’ve ever tried “magic mushrooms” you would know that they’re not the most pleasant things to ingest. We were having trouble getting them down. The kid with us almost puked. So we decided to go back to the car and drive to the nearest McDonald’s, Where I spent the last of my money on a bag of hamburgers and drinks. We put the mushrooms on the burgers and washed them down with coke. John’s car was really low on gas so we then took the car to different parking area. When we had eaten our burgers someone suggested we go a beach. Roger and John knew where to and we drove a short distance and parked the car, in a parking area, at the south end of a really big bridge. Roger said the beach is on the other side of this bridge.
We had finished most of the mushrooms, it was mid morning, and I had the last mushroom, the biggest one in the bag, in my pocket. We started out walking across this bridge. Now the “Harbor Bridge” in Corpus is big enough for an oil tanker to clear on it’s way to the nearby refinery. So this is a very large bridge, three miles to cross it, and very high above the water. There was however a walkway beside the road so making this crossing was safe. About half way across, walking up hill all the way to this point, we were growing tired and we could see that this bridge went on a lot further. There came a point where we found a ladder leading down a few feet to a cat walk, so we climbed down to sit and rest few minutes in the shade of the bridge.
We sat there for a few minutes out of site of the cars on the roadway, awestruck by the size of this structure we were on. I asked Roger “So where’s this beach we’re going to?” We could see for miles from our vantage point and Roger said “Right down there” motioning almost directly below us. “So we have to walk all the way to the end of this bridge and all the way back here?” I asked. Roger replied, “yeah that’s pretty much it”. Then John said “hey we could go to the end of this cat walk climb down this leg of the bridge and jump over to that one then ease down onto yet another leg that goes all the way to the ground, and we’ll be there!” The prospect of climbing down a couple hundred feet in our altered state of mind seemed doable.
Roger was closest to the first leg so he was off . Then the kid and John followed by me. The first leg was easy enough it wasn’t too steep and the I-beams were easy to hold onto. Then it reached a point about halfway down where we had to grab onto another I-beam running horizontal and swing below it where it was a short drop to the last leg going to the ground. I watched Roger and the kid do it with ease and then the guy in front of me was about to go when we heard a voice from above. It was a policeman telling us from the top of the bridge to “get back up here” to which John replied “I gotta go down” then he dropped onto the last beam quickly followed by me. The last I-beam had oval holes in the top of it about three feet apart, that made for adequate footholds, it was a stretch to reach them, and they where only big enough for the toes of my boots to fit in. My knees hit my chin with every step. This climb was at least 100 feet and ended at a 12 foot tall concrete base.
Knowing the cops were after us I climbed down this last leg very quickly. When I reached the base I had to gather my senses and make sure I made a square landing so not to twist an ankle, or break a bone as the drop could easily do. I tried to quickly find Roger and the others but my legs were like wet rubber bands and would not function properly. I’m not sure if it was the quick descent to the ground or the mushrooms. Either way I wasn’t moving fast enough. I found Roger reading a historical marker of some kind probably about the Harbor bridge we had just scaled down, and informed him that the cops were after us and we should head to the beach to blend in with whatever crowd there might be there.
As the four of walked to the best of our abilities towards the beach area two police cars sped towards us and stopped a few feet in front of us. When I saw the police cars my first thought was of the contraband in my pocket so I reached into my pocket and shoved the contents, baggie and all, into my mouth and swallowed it whole in one motion.
The officers stepped out of the cars and confronted us saying they knew we had just climbed the bridge which was a violation of city ordinance blah blah whatever, and asked us for Identification. Three of us produced ID’s and the youngest of us stated that he had none. When they asked his name he replied “Rick”. I thought nothing of this he told us his name was Rick but when the officer asked his last name it struck the other three of us funny when he said “Springfield”. As it was we were all cuffed and stuffed and got a ride downtown to the courthouse.
We were all held in a holding cell, and after a short time a guard came and asked me to come with him. He took me to a courtroom, where there were only a few people a bailiff a recorder and the guard who brought me. I was still peaking from the shrooms when the white haired judge looked at me from behind the bench then said in a disgusted tone “Climbing the harbor bridge” and shook his head.
I said “I have no excuse” Then he handed me a small desktop calendar from his bench and asked “when is the next full moon?”. I looked at the calendar and handing it back to him said “Tomorrow”. He leaned back and cried “I knew it! I get all the crazies in here when there’s a full moon!”. “Well the fine for climbing the bridge is $300.” said the judge. “I have no money, but I have a job starting tomorrow” I replied. The judge then said “Well since it’s a full moon I’ll cut the fine in half $150, at $15 a day you’ll be out of here in ten days.”
I was then escorted through booking and “admissions” given an orange jumpsuit in exchange for my dirty clothes and taken to a cell. It wasn’t long before Roger and John, joined me and told similar stories about the full moon judge. Roger told me that when the judge found out there were four of us we should have all been brought in together. I asked about the kid ‘Rick”. They told me he was a 16 year old runaway, they put him in a juvenile detention area until his parents came to get him.
I spent the first night in a regular cell, with three other inmates who all griped about not having any cigarettes. Remembering a similar experience with this situation. I started looking under the mattresses, and found quite a bit of tobacco. Then I got the wrapping off the toilet paper and carefully tore it into pieces that could be rolled and made them all a few cigarettes. The thing was I didn’t even smoke cigarettes. Which surprised the other inmates but they were all grateful for the knowledge of how to roll their own “jail cigs”.
In the morning I saw Roger sweeping the floors. As he came by my cell he told me that he was talking to the guards and they thought it was a bum rap getting ten days in jail for climbing the bridge. So they made him a trustee. He had told them that John and I were with him and got the same sentence so later that day the guards came to my cell and took me to a holding cell where John and Roger were and made us all trustees.
The job of trustee is to sweep and clean the jail area, serve the meals to the other inmates, and do odd jobs as needed. The first night as trustee Roger and I were to clean the kitchen. We were left alone in the kitchen and Roger started looking through the cabinets and we made ourselves dinner out of the things he found there.
Being trustee came with another perk. Instead of $15 a day towards our fine, it was $25 a day. We also got to roam about the jail area, within reason.
One morning the guards came to get us saying they had a job for us. They led us to a central part of the jail where there was a room they called “The Hole”. The hole was a small room ten by twelve feet by ten feet tall with nothing in it but a small drain hole in the center of the floor. There was one door made of steel with a small six inch square door at eye level. Two of the guards were holding a fire hose in the small door and trying to spray as much of the inside of the hole as they could. Then the guard that had brought us there told us that the person, who was still inside, had defecated, had spread it all over and was eating it. It was our job to clean the hole.
The guards then opened the door to the hole and led a small Mexican man, who was naked and wet from being hosed down, out and down the row of cells to an empty cell at the end. Roger, John and I spent about half an hour with a small water hose and industrial brush cleaning the hole. The man had written things, in Spanish, all over the walls with his feces. It was all very disgusting, and the smell made us sick.
When we had finished the hole the guards went to bring the man back. When they got to where they had left him they cried out in disgust as the man had done the same thing to the cell they had put him in. “How does such a small man shit so much!” was a cry I heard. The three of us spent the next hour cleaning up the cell the man had been in. All in all a pretty crappy day.
I got called on one day to carry some band equipment, that was stolen property, out to the sheriff’s truck. He called on me, handed me his keys, and said “it’s the brown Chevy parked across the street”. So there I was carrying these amps and speakers across the street in my orange jumpsuit, with the keys to the sheriff’s truck, I guess it wasn’t like they’d never find me if I took off. Besides I only had a couple days to go.
One evening the guards brought a guy to our “holding cell” who the police had just picked up. This guy was drunk and said he was pretty high. He then asked us if we wanted to get high. Seems the cops had missed a large roach he had in his sock when they searched him, and he wanted to get rid of it before they made him change into his jail jumpsuit. The new guy claimed he was already high and didn’t want any so he gave it to Roger and John and me. It was more than a roach it was half a joint and there we sat Roger, John and I smoking a joint in jail!
The week seemed to go quickly, which was strange cause jail time usually drags on. I guess the guards keeping us busy with the grunt jobs they didn’t want to do made the time go faster. The day came we were to be released. They let Roger out in the morning, he had been made trustee four hours before John and I had been, so they kept us until just after noon. Roger told me goodby he planned to head straight for the interstate and head home, he would see me when I got back to Joplin.
My things were still in John’s car. He had called his grandparents who lived on a nearby island, and they had come to get his car before it got towed. We left the Jail together and his grand mother came to pick him up. He introduced me to her saying “this is Dan he left some things in the trunk of my car and wants to get them”. She said “everything is as you left it, we’ll have lunch when we get there, are you hungry?” You gotta love grandmothers. I listened as we rode across the bridge we had climbed and John explained what had happened to his grand mother. She drove out of Corpus and through a smaller town, until we came to a ferry. As we waited for the ferry I got out of the car and looking at the channel between the mainland and the island I saw a group of Dolphins swim by. First time I had ever seen them. I got a wonderful relaxing feeling. There was no hurry to go anywhere.
VII
John’s grandmother fed us a light lunch, then John asked if I’d like to check out the island. We thanked grandma and headed out on foot. The island was only a mile or so wide but John explained that it stretched all the way to the Mexican border close to a hundred miles. Up here, he said, it’s called “Mustang Island”. As you get down past Corpus it’s called “Padre Island” even though it’s the same strip of land, with only a couple of shipping channels splitting it up here and there. The first thing I saw as we got off the ferry was a restaurant called “The Blue Marlin”. We got back to the main road near the restaurant and walked east along a two lane paved road. There were a few businesses and a condominium which was being built north of the road. As John explained things about the town and the area the road turned more and more sandy until it terminated at a beautiful beach.
There were dunes with tufts of long grass, a hundred yards from where the surf broke and between the sand was flat and solid like the pavement we had been on. The pavement of the road ended but the road continued on down the beach, it was like the road just took a right turn when the pavement ended.
The road we walked in on was at the north end of the beach. The north beach was a county park, with a ranger station built on the dunes and a parking area with restrooms and showers behind that. The “beach front” houses were all built behind the dunes so there was an unobstructed corridor between the dunes and the breakwater that stretched on as far as one would care to wander, all the way to the south end of south padre island it seemed.
One of the first things I noticed as we walked along the beach was two girls, early to mid twenties, trying to put up a large tent in a relentless wind blowing in from the gulf. I told John we should go over and help them. He was reluctant but I had plenty of experience erecting tents like this one in my years growing up at church camp. I headed over to the girls and asked if they needed help, they graciously declined just as a gust of wind came up and knocked the tent down on top of them. I took charge and in just a few minutes had the tent standing and holding fast against the wind. As we worked the girls told me they were on vacation from their jobs in Dallas. “You know that building downtown with the thing and the lights and”……I had never been to down town Dallas so I had no idea what they were talking about. I finished getting the tent up made sure it was going to stay up and wished them a happy vacation. I walked back over to where John was still standing not knowing how to take all this and I stated “This place is great I’m gonna hang out here awhile”.
We walked on southward passing campsites and beach goers, meeting people and checking out the scenery. Eventually we had gone as far as John wanted to go so we made our way back to his grandmothers where I collected my things and thanked her for keeping them and the nice lunch. I then went to the Blue Marlin which wasn’t too busy in that afternoon and asked for an application. A manager came out and talked to me. He asked where I was staying, I told him the beach. He gave me a “of course” look, I’m sure he dealt with drifters all the time, He then asked how long I planned to stay. I explained I had obligations to my mother in June and would like to stay until then. This seemed to please him because the next thing he said was “it just so happens I need a dishwasher, be here 3 o’clock Monday afternoon”.
I spent the first couple of nights just south of the town. The dunes had spaces between them nicely bowled out and free of grass. These bowls made a shelter from the wind with the tall grass on top of the dunes so there was some degree of privacy. There were people there each evening partying and they didn’t seem to mind me hanging around.
In the mornings there was a van, an old Chevy van, one with the engine between and kind of behind the driver and passenger seat, that would come along shortly after sunrise. The side door would open up and the biggest “dog” I have ever seen would climb out This dog stood as high as the van, and the van would cruise slowly down the beach while the dog lumbered along beside. That puppy sure had fun running in and out of the surf.
There was a couple staying nearby and we would talk and drink together in the evenings. On the second morning the guy was sleeping in and the girl and I started talking. I’ve always been able to talk to a woman that I have no intention of “hitting on” and sometimes we find mutual interests which makes for good conversation, nothing more. This had however gotten me into trouble in the past, as it did this day. I had been on this beach two days and nights and had noticed the things that wash up on shore. Wood, tar, jellyfish, and the thought of beach combing seemed like a good way to spend little time. When she went to tell her boyfriend where we were going, however, he had something to say about it. “If anyone’s going to walk down the beach with my ol’ lady it’s going to be me” and he didn’t seem to happy when he said it. I tried to explain that it was all very innocent and the though hadn’t even occurred to me, but this didn’t seem to appease him and remembering how this kind of situation had ended in the past I excused my self, gathered my things and headed up the beach alone.
As I walked up the beach, doing my own “beach combing” of sorts, I noticed something buried in the sand up by the dunes. The sand had claimed all but a small part of what reminded me of an afghan my mother had knitted for me. There was just enough there to grab onto. As I pulled on it, the sand reluctantly released it’s grip to reveal a sweater. It was a nice sweater with large lapels and no buttons. Having shaken the sand out of it I tried it on, It fit ok but the sleeves were a little short on me. It was heavily knit and warm. A good find, It cleaned up very nice, I wore it in the evenings to ward off cool breeze from the gulf.
There was a lot of activity further up towards town and it wasn’t long before I found new friends, or they found me. Soon I found myself riding in the back seat of a car, cruising the beach. Along the way we stopped next a man sitting in a lawn chair, with a couple of large garbage bags filled with cans. We tossed our empties out at his feet and he thanked us with a smile. The driver of the car explained “That’s Ted”, “he makes a living off the cans he collects on the beach”. Wonderful, I thought he keeps the beach clean and makes money off the cans and gets to sit on the beach every day, good life.
That afternoon I found myself back at the north end of the beach, where I had helped the girls from Dallas set up their tent. They were laying out next to the tent and when they saw me they called to me telling me to come over there. They invited me in and produced a joint,to my surprise, I hadn’t guessed that they indulged in such things. They said it was to thank me for my help. They were returning home in the morning and wanted to thank me before they left. We burned half of it and they insisted I take the rest with me. I left their tent and wandered over to a “campsite” nearby where there was a one man tent next to a car that looked like it hadn’t run in months.
Sitting on the car was a guy and a girl, we struck up a conversation, and before long it had come up that I had no place to stay. When the guy heard this he asked if I wanted to buy his tent. “You can stay in the tent and we’ll stay in the car and we’ll split the cost of the campsite”. “Cost of the campsite?” I asked. “Yeah “ he replied “ this part of the beach is a county park, it costs twenty dollars a week for a campsite, and you have access to the restrooms and showers”. “SHOWERS!” I was sold, I told him I was starting a new job Monday afternoon and would gladly take him up on his offer.
I now had a place to keep my blanket and duffel bag and not worry too much if I would find it again. The campsite was a few hundred yards from the ranger station, and about the same distance from the “facilities” which were on the other side of the dunes. A wide pathway ran from the bath house through the dunes and emerged between the campsite and the station.
The tent looked like it had been orange at one time, but was bleached pink by the sun and gulls I learned quickly not to get up too early. Every morning around the same time, ten o’clock or so, I would hear the seagulls through the walls of my tent. They would travel in a small flock this time of day and I would watch the spots appear on the tent as they hovered overhead. They would leave their mark on my tent like graffiti art each morning. When they moved on I knew it was ok to go outside.
I soon found an old chair and made my new home comfortable. It was nice to sit and watch the world go by for a change instead of wandering up and down the beach. I felt a little like Charlie Daniel’s “Long Haired Country Boy” “I ain’t got a whole lot of money, but I damn sure got it made”
VIII
The time I spent living on the beach must have been 5 or 6 weeks. Maybe a little longer It’s hard to tell the days blur together. I got there in April and left near the end of May.
The town of Port Aransas was a small touristy place. A few shops a post office and a laundry mat. There were several houses in town, the coast being the popular place to live that it is. There were fast food restaurants, and areas of construction where new buildings were being erected. The town was growing, but still had a small coastal village feel.
The shift I was hired to work was 3:00pm to close which meant I usually got out of there around 11:30 to midnight. My first day was like returning to a job I had been on extended vacation from. I had done the dish washing job st a few restaurants in the past, and they all seem to use the same system, everyone brings the dirty stuff to your corner of the kitchen and you cycle it through, rinse, stack, run it through a machine and then put the items in their designated place.
I did well and kept up, and soon I was helping with other things. One of the waitresses asked if I would help prepare a shrimp cocktail. Once she showed me how to set them up, the wait staff would just call out “Shrimp Cocktail” and I would grab a parfait glass go into the walk in refrigerator put in a scoop of ice, hang five jumbo shrimp around the rim and put a pre-prepared cup of cocktail sauce on top of the ice. Usually I would take six shrimp putting one in my shirt pocket with a cup of sauce to eat over by the dishwasher.
The attitude in most of the kitchens I have worked in is the same “if you’re hungry, you work in a kitchen, make yourself something to eat” Sometimes the chefs would try a new recipe and bring the resulting dish to me to try. They brought me a flounder broiled in garlic butter one night and asked me if it was any good. I made sure not to answer until it was gone.
The first week or so must have been spring break. After work when I got back to the beach there would be several parties along the beach. Each with it’s own keg of beer and group of people gathered around it and sometimes a campfire. All I had to do these nights was find a cup and move from party to party. The beach was bustling with people having fun, sometimes it was hard to sleep so I didn’t.
One evening I was sitting in my chair by my tent, enjoying the nice breeze coming in off the water, when a girl came bounding in from out of the darkness much like a deer bounds when it runs. She was wearing a sweat shirt with no sleeves that was cut off to reveal her belly and a pair of cut off jeans. In her hand was a bottle of wine. Seeing me she stopped looked me up and down, then said “well hello there, who are you?”.
I said my name was Dan, she asked if I was staying here on the beach, I said “Yes”, and just when thing were getting interesting a guy came out of the same direction that she had and stopped, out of breath saying “There you are”. He grabbed the bottle from her and took a drink. The girl then asked if I would be staying here for long. I said I would, and she replied “maybe I’ll see you around”. At this she grabbed the bottle back from the guy and took off down the beach. The guy still trying to catch his breath took off after her calling for her to wait up.
After two weeks the couple that stayed in the car sold it to a Mexican with long blonde hair, down to the middle of his back. He and I got along good so we agreed to keep up the agreement to share the campsite. His name was Robert, he didn’t use his traditional Spanish pronunciation of “Roberto” he preferred to be more American. I got up one morning to find him sitting on the trunk of the car singing “Crazy Train” Turned out he was a big fan of Ozzy Osbourne.
Robert had an interesting philosophy. He said “My momma told me ‘there’s two types of people in this world, you’re either a respectable son of a bitch, or you’re a sorry son of a bitch’.” “Me I’m a sorry sum bitch”. He talked more like a Missouri redneck than a Mexican, in fact the only thing Mexican about him was his complexion. Robert and I got along well, we only saw each other occasionally. He would usually be gone when I woke up. We usually saw each other on the weekends.
I met girl named Jenny who stayed in a tent between mine and the ranger station. She was nice and we would talk from time to time. I liked Jenny I think I’ve always had a thing for girls named Jenny. One night I decided I was going to visit her, I bought a bottle of wine and went to her tent. I announced myself and stuck my head inside only to see that she had a guy in there, she yelled and he yelled and I was very embarrassed tried to say I was sorry it was just a bad scene. She didn’t talk to me too much after that. She disappeared a few days later.
People seemed to come and go at work, the restaurant had a regular turn around with employees. They soon hired a new dishwasher and we both worked the weekends. The new guy’s name was Joe and we got along well. We would talk about cars and music, the things people usually talk about to pass the time at work. I liked Joe he was a good guy, I knew I wouldn’t want to cross him, he seemed like he could have a bit of a temper.
One afternoon I was outside when his ride dropped him off at work, and in the car were the girl and guy I had encountered at my tent a week or two before. The girl recognized me and got out of the car to talk to me. She seemed pleased to see me again. Later Joe explained that the three of them lived together. Joe, Doug, and Tami, were all from the same small town, and Tami promised to “take care” of both of them if they would get her out of that small town. The arrangement seemed to work for them, but Joe was quick let me know that Tami was theirs, and he wasn’t willing to share. I had seen girls like Tami before and I knew she was trouble. She wasn’t the type to hold to the exclusivity that the boys wanted.
Payday was on Friday and they would cash the checks right there at the restaurant. My paychecks weren’t that big 4 or 5 nights a week at minimum wage only produces about $165 or so, which when you live in a tent at the beach is plenty. The money only lasted me until the next payday though. There was a liquor store next to the restaurant and it was a usual stopping off place after work.
One night in the middle of the week a new waiter asked me if I would accompany him to the bar, which was near the north end of the island. He had no money but assured me he would pay after he got his first paycheck. I didn’t have much money but I hadn’t been to this bar and figured “What the heck”.
At the bar the waiter got into playing pool and won a couple of beers doing so. At one point he came to me and asked if I would back a bet he was making. The bet was on what appeared to me to be an impossible shot. The cue ball rested on the bank at the end of the table near the middle, the object ball rested on the bank at the opposite end of the table also in the middle. The bet was he would cut the ball in the corner pocket with out banking the ball, and without scratching. He said the bet was $5. I explained I only had $5 left. Which he said was ok ‘cause he knew he could make the shot, with $5 of his own I wouldn’t need to buy him any more beers. I was reluctant to give up the last of my money on such a hard shot and said no. He looked at me disgusted and said “you just fucked up”. Then he turned around squared up on the table and with a quick stroke of the cue stick made the impossible shot. Then he turned around and told me to get him a beer. I bought two more beers, drank mine and went home broke. I didn’t see the waiter again. He never came back to work.
On a slow night at work the manager and I were talking and it came up that I played guitar. He asked if I would give lessons to his 10 year old daughter. I explained that I never had formal lessons and wouldn’t know just how to go about giving lessons to someone else, since I had learned by watching others and a desire to play. He asked if I would at least give her some pointers, “she really wants to learn and I just want to give her all the help I can, I’ll pay you for it.” I agreed to go to his house and show her some things but I didn’t feel right taking money for it.
I went to the manager’s house in the afternoon, he introduced me to his daughter and she brought out a six string acoustic guitar and a book of songs he had bought her. I looked at the book and saw it had tabs with the music. Asking if she knew how to read the tabs she said “kinda” and I went with that. I showed her how the chords were supposed to look, comparing the tabs with where the fingers were on the fretboard. I showed her how sometimes they show you the open chord when the way it’s played by the artist is different. I talked with her father and told him that the way I learned a lot of songs was by getting the songbooks, like the one she had, with the song I wanted to learn and using the tabs to work it out. He made us all lunch and after a couple of hours of showing her how to hold the chords and strum in rhythm, I was done. I felt bad I couldn’t do more, I learned by really wanting to do it. I told him it all depended upon how much she wanted to learn.
The beach at Port Aransas was flat and the water was shallow. I didn’t go into the water much. There were jelly fish and things washing up all the time and I heard people speak of sand sharks. One morning I was sitting in my chair enjoying a nice day, there was a man wading in the surf. He was about 50 yards out and the water was only up to his waist. The man suddenly jumped to the side and then taking three hard strides to his right he plunged his hand into the water and pulled up a shark by the tail. The shark was about 2 ½ feet long and pissed off as it kept trying to bite the man. He held it at arms length and waded back to shore. When he got to the beach a ranger, driving a county park truck, happened by on his way back to the station and stopped, the man asked “what should I do with this?” The ranger replied “There’s a trash can”. The man carried the shark which was still reaching towards his side with it’s mouth open trying to bite him and dropped into the trash can. He didn’t go back into the water.
Eventually came a day when I realized it was getting to be late May and I knew the time had come I must head home. I had just gotten a paycheck and decided a last hoorah was in order. I was on my way to get some liquid refreshment and possibly something to smoke when a familiar car came by. It was Doug and Tami and a friend who had just dropped Joe off at work at the Blue Marlin, where by the way I was also supposed to be.
They stopped and asked if I wanted a ride. I got in the back seat and explained I had decided I was not going back to work. When I said I was looking for some weed Doug said he had some back at their apartment in Aransas Pass, which was on the mainland. We drove back to the ferry and on to their place where the three of them lived in a house that had been made into three or four apartments. The whole time Tami sat on her knees facing me, alone in the back seat. When we got their apartment Doug went inside and soon came back to the car and produced a bag of pot, and Tami began to roll a joint as we began the trip back to the ferry. Then she rolled a second one giving the first to Doug and his friend saying “You guys smoke one and Dan and I will smoke the other”. She then climbed over the front seat to join me in the back.
As we rode back to the island Tami snuggled up close to share our joint, the whole time rubbing my leg and then my crotch. When she had had enough of the joint she started kissing me. I motioned to the front seat and quietly asked her “What about Him?” She replied just as quietly “They don’t own me, they share me. They can share me with you too”. Doug who was busy driving noticed this in his rear view mirror and voiced his disapproval to which Tami gave no notice. The whole scene made me nervous, I didn’t mind her advances, but I didn’t want an altercation with Doug, who was getting visibly perturbed.
When we got back across the ferry the Blue Marlin was a block away and he drove around behind the restaurant, where I could see Joe working through the open back door. Doug parked the car and went inside to get Joe, and seeing that this could only end badly for me I asked Doug’s friend to open his door and I squeezed out and quickly ducked into the liquor store next door. I watched from inside the store as Doug and Joe talked outside for a minute, then Doug got back into the car and drove off and Joe went back into the restaurant. Not sure what to expect I bought a twelve-pack of beer and walked back to the beach.
I spent the next few days wandering the beach, saying goodbye to the people and places that I had gotten to know during my stay. I sold the tent to Robert, who said he was tired of sleeping in the car, I got ten bucks from him, the same as what I had payed for it. I packed my things, my duffel bag with clothes and my notebook and rolled up my heavy quilt and started walking towards the ferry. I didn’t get any rides right away and wound up walking all the way to Aransas Pass, by the time I got there it was late morning, and I was getting thirsty. I went to where Doug, Joe and Tami lived. I wanted to apologize to Joe for leaving him to work alone on a busy night. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was ready for anything, and very thirsty.
When I got there Doug answered the door, I told him I was leaving asked if he could spare a drink of water, I would like the chance to talk to Joe. Doug invited me in, Tami was there, and while he went to the kitchen to get me a drink she approached me, she talked to me quietly, playing with the buttons on my shirt, and suggested that I should think about hanging around for awhile, saying “You never know what will happen.” Doug soon came back with my drink and walked me to the door. He told me that Joe had gone back home, he was already tired of the way things were, and after the other night he just decided to leave. Then he told me, “Tami is mine now”. I didn’t say anything, I guessed he’d figure it out on his someday.
IX
I had decided to go back to Zapata, I wanted to get my twelve string back. I didn’t have enough money but thought maybe I could work out a deal with Mike maybe do some work for him. I had to walk to the nearest highway. There wasn’t much traffic until I got to it. Once I go there a ride came quickly, and late in the afternoon I found myself in Kingman.
Here I had to change highways and go back through Hebbronville then on to Zapata. As I walked through the town to the next highway I passed a roadside park. In this park was a historical marker that marked the spot of a battle which took place during the war to free Texas from Mexico. As I finished reading the story of the battle that had occurred there a police car with “Kingman Sheriff” painted on the side came in and stopped in the parking area nearby.
Out from the car emerged a man in a sheriff uniform. The man walked over to me and asked what I was doing there. “I was reading about the battle here, in the Spanish American war” I replied. The sheriff glared at me through his mirrored sunglasses and said “You mean the Texas-Mexico war.” “Yeah that one” I responded. He then asked if I intended to stay in his park long. I told him I was going to Zapata and was just enjoying a shady area to rest in. He then pointed to the road at the other side of the rest area and said “that’s your road”letting me know in no uncertain terms that he didn’t want me hanging around. I walked on to the next highway, I didn’t have to wait long for another ride.
A man in an old pickup gave me a short ride out of town, where I walked for a bit in the late afternoon sun. As I moved west the coastal plain was turning to desert. As the sun sank low on the horizon and I began to consider places to spend the night, another police car stopped on the side of the road, I assumed to “check me out”. Out of the car stepped an officer, a young man, late twenties I guessed, Mexican looking but spoke English without the Mexican accent. The policeman was pleasant and asked me where I was going. I told him I was going to Zapata, and to my surprise he offered me a ride.
The officer told me to get into the front seat I put my bag and bedroll into the back and got in making sure the door handles were working, this did seem strange after all. Before driving off he called on the radio, and using police radio talk explained what he was doing. I heard a voice call back with more code talk and such that I couldn’t really make out, to which he responded “this one’s a guy”. The voice on the radio then said 10-4, have fun we’ll talk to you later. The policeman then told me he would be happy to take me down the road to the next crossroad where there was a roadside park I could stay at.
The sun set in front of us as we rode down the two lane desert highway. After an hour or so we came to a crossroad where a park with a concrete table and barbeque grill were set up as a picnic area. The policeman stopped in the parking area next to the table and explained that this was as far he could take me. I got my things out of the back seat and putting them on the table said that this would do fine. I could bed down on the table and at least be off the ground. He said that I shouldn’t have any trouble getting a ride in the morning.
I was very tired by this time and was ready for the officer to leave so I could get some sleep. He then took an interest in my belt buckle. It was a pewter buckle, a number 1, with wings and the word “triumph” along the bottom, cheap really “I got it at a carnival for a buck” I said as he reached down and gently took hold of it turning it up so he could see it better in the light of the nearby street lamp. I thought to my self “I hope he doesn’t notice the marijuana leaves on the leather belt”, and then I felt his little finger begin to rub up and down my jeans below the buckle.
My first thought was to grab his head and raise my knee thus breaking his nose, but the thought of “assaulting an officer of the law” quickly stopped me. I took a quick step back and told him I was tired and wanted to get some sleep, trying my best not to get upset or get him upset. He gave me a disappointed look, wished me well, got back into his car and drove off into the night.
X
Morning came with a couple of quick rides that had me in Zapata by mid day. The first place I went was to Mike’s house. After knocking a couple of times It became clear that no one was home, so I walked over to the trailer park to Shirley’s house. She informed me that Mike was out of town and wouldn’t be back for a couple of weeks. This shot down my hopes of getting my guitar back, but I still didn’t want to go home with nothing, the way I had come. A friend of Shirley’s came by to visit and mentioned that she had heard at her hair dresser that a man who lived in town was looking for someone to paint his house. I decided to go get this job in the morning. Shirley’s friend had a son who was fifteen, and asked if I could use some help. “All I can get” I said. I had never tackled painting a house before.
The two of us went to the man’s house in the morning, and knocked on the door. The man was older, in his 60’s, and said he had the paint in his shed, and he was going to find a couple of wetbacks to do the job. To which I responded “why don’t you give a couple of white boys a chance”. He thought about it for a moment, and said he didn’t want to pay more than $150. I told him that would be fine when could we start? He led us to the back yard where he opened the shed and motioned to several gallons of paint and a few tools, rollers wire brushes and sandpaper.
We spent the rest of that day preparing the house, wire brushing and sanding off the old paint that had peeled and chipped. The house was small, sort of a ranch style. I could reach everything from the ground though I stood on a 5 gallon bucket to reach some of the higher parts. We had it ready to paint by the end of the day and told the man we would be back the next morning.
The kid and I showed up early the next day, eager to get the job done and get some cash in our pockets. The man opened his shed and we started getting ready to paint. It didn’t take long for me to realize that we didn’t have all the tools we needed. I knocked at the door and told the man I needed a paint brush to paint the trim. He gave me a disgusted look and informed me that they have them at the store in town. I explained that I had no money to get one He said he would get one and take it out of our pay, having no choice I agreed.
The job went fairly quickly, I got the kid started rolling and I went around painting the trim. It was a small house so we were finished in just a few hours. The home owner seemed happy enough with the job, he checked it all out and pointed out places that needed touch up, and then he handed us $150 cash and said thank you. I split the cash with the kid, and went to find the Mexican who sold pot.
Later that afternoon I found the person I was looking for and told him I wanted an ounce of the best weed he had. He told me all he had at the time was some “commerchal” stuff. He hadn’t had the good stuff for a few weeks. $35 an ounce. The commercial weed down here was often called “good stuff” back home and the price was considerably less than what It went for in Missouri, so I gave up the funds and took my bag back to Shirley’s where I asked for one more night’s sleeping on her couch. I offered to buy dinner for her trouble.
In the morning I packed my things, stuffed the bag of weed in my sock, there was a large bud in the bag, that would have poked through the baggie when I rolled it up tight to fit in my sock, so I took it out and put it in the notebook I had. There was a few plastic sleeves that held it nicely and pressed it out. Shirley fixed me a light breakfast and by mid morning I was on my way. It wasn’t long before I got a ride from a roughneck all the way to Laredo. He dropped me off at the south end of town and I walked the rest of the way to the interstate. Along the way I got very thirsty, after all it was the desert in June and very hot. I happened across a gas station and asked the attendant for some water, As luck would have it he didn’t understand English, so after thinking “what’s water in Spanish” I finally blurted out “aqua” to which he pointed at a hose for watering radiators in cars. I got a small drink, the water didn’t taste good from the hose and continued on my way.
Once at I-35 I stopped to rest, sitting on the guard rail. While I was there two men came walking by both about my height and slim build. One of them was about 18 or 19 with long blonde hair, the other in his 30’s. The men stopped to talk, saying they were from Sweden. The older man was a teacher and the younger his student. They were on a field trip of sorts. The teacher had a friend in Mexico they had come to visit, but his friend was sick. So they decided to hitch hike though the US for awhile.
As the conversation went on they had a lot of questions about the laws in the US pertaining to travelers such as us. I answered their questions the best I could. Then I mentioned that we would have better luck getting a ride if we split up, folks would be more likely to pick up one or two men sooner than three men. The teacher then said The two of them would go on up the highway, and I told them I would ask whoever picked me up to give them a ride if there was room. They started walking north and were soon out of sight.
Finally a car stopped to pick me up, a Chevy driven by a guy about my age. He got out and explained that the passenger side door didn’t work so I would have to get in on his side and crawl across. He opened the trunk, I put my things in and crawled through to the passenger seat. We started talking as we went up the highway, and he seemed like a decent enough guy, so when I saw the Swedes I told him “I met these guys earlier and they were ok they’re from Sweden and he pulled over to pick them up. The swedes put their things in the trunk and crawled into the back seat.
Our ride was going to San Antonio so we had time to talk and I asked the swedes if they minded if we smoked a joint. The teacher said he wouldn’t but the student nodded his approval. When we finished the joint I took the plastic from the driver’s cigarettes and stashed the roach in it, putting it in my pocket. The three of us were stoned and chatting away. Talking with the Swedish men was very interesting conversation.
About 50 miles up the highway we encountered a road block, the border patrol was looking for illegals coming from Mexico. The guy who picked us up asked “yer all legal aren’t ya?” and we stopped. A man in a Border Patrol uniform was standing in the road, leaned down to look in the car from the driver side, and asked Is everyone here a US citizen? The driver and I both answered “yes” and the younger of the two swedes remained silent while the teacher answered “We’re from Sweden”.
The Border Patrol officer upon hearing this told us to pull over to the side of the highway, and all of us to get out of the car. As they questioned all of us and checked the swedes passports, another officer searched the car. The officer interviewing us was just about to send us on our way when the officer searching the car came back with a marijuana seed and a piece of a stem. They had apparently fallen into the seat I was in when I rolled the joint. He asked “who was in the front passenger seat?” I told him it was me and he then told the others to get back into the car. The officer then asked me where the pot was, I told him I only had a little and we smoked it. He did a quick pat down somehow missing the ounce in my sock, and then told the driver to open the trunk.
Seeing all of our bags he asked “which one’s yours” I pointed to my duffel bag and he took it out and went through it finding only dirty clothes an my trifold notebook. He took the notebook out and opened the first flap of it revealing the words to “A road and a dream” the song I had started our first night in Zapata, I was really worried at this point cause all he had to do was open the other side of the trifold notebook and he would see the bud that I had in there. Seeing the words to the song he asked “you write poetry?’ I write songs I replied.
He then closed the notebook and put it back into the duffel bag and then told me to empty my pockets. I reached into my front pockets and there was the unmistakable sound of a cigarette cellophane wrapper crumpling. I knew he had heard it so I pulled it out and handed it to him saying “it’s all I have we smoked a joint and this is what’s left of it”.
He took the cellophane with the roach, looked at it then at the swedes in the car, and said “This is pretty stupid to get them busted over”. I assured him it was mine and it was all I had. He told me to put my bag back in the trunk, and be more careful. Knowing I had narrowly escaped, I crawled back into the car and we headed on to San Antonio.
The conversation consisted of the swedes asking about American culture and laws. Our driver and I tried to answer as many questions and explain the answers the best we could. I realized through our inter action that this country seems weird even to me at times.
When we got to San Antonio, our ride dropped us off at an exit on the south side of town where there was a convenience store/gas station, and nothing else. The swedes and I bought something to eat at the store and stood out side for awhile talking. It was interesting comparing cultures.
As we talked a group of people began to gather a short distance from where we were. They were off the pavement of the frontage road next to the interstate. The gathering grew over the course of 15 to 20 minutes with loud music and drinking was obvious. The younger of the swedes asked me how they could get away with such behavior in public. I tried to explain that they were probably on private property and the authorities wouldn’t intervene until they either took the party on the road or someone called in a complaint. I wasn’t sure if this was right but I knew the cops probably wouldn’t show up unless someone called for them.
The June days were growing long and time can get away from you when the afternoon seems endless. The sky was growing dim and I finally said goodbye to my Swedish friends and set out walking north up the interstate. I walked for an hour or two, the traffic was sparse and getting rides in town wasn’t happening.
Soon after I reached the junction of I-35 and I-10 the skies began to come alive and it was apparent that rain was on the way. I began looking, as I walked along the interstate, for a place to take cover. The area I was in was industrial and fences lining parking lots was all there was for awhile. Then I finally came to a lot that had several U-Haul trucks, there wasn’t a fence so I searched the lot for a truck I could get into and out of the rain. After three of four tries I found one with the back roll up door unlocked and crawled up inside, rolled out my now soaking bedroll, and tried to get comfortable. I didn’t sleep much that night being wet and cold.
The morning came with clear skies and I got back on the highway early. I must have looked rough after being rained on and staying in the back of a truck trying to sleep on the hard floor. I thought it must have been a weekend because there wasn’t much traffic as I walked past the downtown area of San Antonio. After an hour or two I reached the interchange where I-35 and I-10 split back up and headed north on I-35.
It seemed strange walking next to a six lane highway with no traffic. After a couple of miles a Trans-Am with two men in it came by and pulled over. By the time they got stopped they were a couple of hundred feet up the road, so I started running. Running in boots while carrying a duffel bag and bedroll for two hundred feet wears one out fast, and as I got to the car, out of breath, I saw the passenger look at me and laugh as the car took off and left me there. Disgusted I threw my gear on the ground, too out of breath to even cuss the jerks.
When I picked my things up off the pavement I saw a Toyota pick up, towing a U-Haul trailer had pulled over , once again a couple of hundred feet up the highway. Being tired and out of breath I walked until I got to the truck. When I got to the truck the passenger door opened and driving was a young lady, about 20, slim build and she had a “Dyan Cannon” perm in her long blonde hair.
She looked at me and said “I’m sorry I would have backed up so you didn’t have to walk all that way but It’s hard pulling this trailer. I saw what those guys did to you, and I wanted to show you that there are real people in Texas”. I found myself thanking those guys, they didn’t know the favor they just did for me.
As we rode up the highway the girl explained that she was on her way to Austin for the summer semester at the university there. The conversation got around to where one of us mentioned getting high, so I pulled out my stash and rolled up a doobie. After partaking in that she handed me her bag saying now roll one of mine. She had better weed than I did. The ride was as pleasant as the company. We talked constantly for the two hour or so ride to her destination.
As we approached Austin my college bound driver mentioned that she would be staying in Austin for a few months, maybe I would think of staying around for awhile. Sadly I explained that I had to be in Joplin to help my mother pack for her move. When we got to the exit near the university she passed it and took me two more exits so I would be closer to the edge of town and possibly have a better chance at getting a ride going farther than just the next exit. Yes there are real people in Texas.
It wasn’t long after the co-ed dropped me off that I was picked up by a man driving a Monte Carlo. He said he was on his way to Dallas. As we rode we talked about all the things two strangers might discuss. He drove at a speed of about 90 miles an hour. He only slowed down once, when we went through Waco. The day had gotten very warm and he had all the windows down, so it was a bit windy in the car at that speed. He seemed to have a good knowledge of the highways and when I told him my destination he recommended I take the road that eventually turned into highway 69 in Oklahoma. It didn’t seem to take long to reach Dallas. When we got to the downtown area he pulled over and told me to go through downtown and on the other side I would find the North Central Expressway. That was the highway I wanted to be on, it would take me the most direct route home.
He dropped me off on the side of the freeway, not near an exit but at the bottom of an embankment which when I climbed I found my self at the foot of the Reunion Tower. A large parking lot separated me from Reunion Arena, where the professional sports teams play. Passed that stood the tall buildings of downtown Dallas. I remembered the girls who’s tent I had set up in Port Aransas talking of working in one of these skyscrapers and wondered which one it was as I walked through the empty streets.
Once in the central area of the town I was struck by how clean it was, and quiet with no one else around. I was especially surprised by a mural on an old cinder block wall, about two stories tall that depicted a face wearing a pair of mirror sunglasses looking back at me with the mirrored image of what stood before it painted in the shades. All very well done and accurate. I don’t think this walk would have been as enjoyable if it had been during the week. Having the streets all to myself like this was surreal.
When I had crossed the downtown area the tall buildings being behind me, to the west, gave a little more shade from the hot afternoon sun. I soon began seeing freeway interchanges and stayed beneath the bridges to be in the shade even longer. There was no traffic so the prospect of a ride at this point seemed bleak.
Eventually the expressway came down to ground level with high walls on each side, six lanes wide three each direction separated by a narrow concrete median, and shoulders just wide enough to fit a small car, in places set up to make the freeway and extra lane wider. The North Central Expressway, Texas highway 75. I pictured hundreds of cars traveling at freeway speeds on this narrow strip of concrete road and was once again thankful it was the weekend.
As I walked up the narrow shoulder A Cadillac came by and stopped on the shoulder and the passenger door opened up unleashing some Van Halen being played very loud. When I got to the car a man in his 50’s sat in the driver seat turning the music down asked me what the hell I was doing out here. I told him I on my way home, to which he told me to get in and he would get me out of where I was. The first thing this man said was he had a son about my age and he hoped that if his son were ever in a situation like what the had found me in, that someone would do him a favor like he was doing for me. I didn’t realize I was in a bad place, I had enjoyed my walk through downtown and was tired of walking so a ride was welcome.
The man then said he would take me to the outskirts of the metroplex, Plano, where I would have better luck getting another ride. Seemed to be my day for helpful rides. When we got to Plano he gave me a five dollar bill and wished me luck, then went back the way we had come on the freeway. Behind me was the metroplex of Dallas and before me lay the wide open spaces of north Texas. I went to the store at the exit he dropped me at, bought a quart of beer at went back to the on ramp sat down and enjoyed a sunset confident that my trip home was going well.
Soon after I finished my beer a a man in a black Chevelle stopped on the on ramp and asked me how far I was going. I told him Missouri, he said he was only going to the state line, and I was welcome to ride that far. After a short time talking to this guy it was apparent he was a “get high” and I broke out my stash, he then had me roll one of his, seemed like everyone had better weed than I did.
We were about a hundred miles along and he said he needed to stop for something, we took an exit where there was no services just a frontage road, and he took that a short way until we got to the top of a hill where he parked. Reaching under his seat he produced a paper bag, and pulled out a plastic baggie with what must have been an ounce of off white crystaline powder. He then pulled a leather case out of the glove box which held a spoon and a hypodermic needle. After he had set himself up and injected the drugs he asked if I could do my myself. I told him I would like some but I didn’t do needles, then I asked would he lay me out a line. He found an 8-track tape and laid out two half inch lines, This was crystal meth, pure stuff better than I had ever seen. We flew the rest of the way to the Oklahoma border, talking all the way, about anything and everything. When we go to his exit I asked if I could have a little more for my trip, he put some in a cigarette cellophane and gave it to me, wished me luck and disappeared into the night.
It was only a few minutes later that A man in a pickup stopped and gave me a ride. He told me that he had been driving all day and still had a couple of hours to go before he would be at his home near Mc Alester, he needed someone to talk to and keep him awake. I responded with “Boy did you pick up the right guy”. I talked his ear off about everything and anything and I’m sure I wound have been very annoying to anyone else but this man seemed truly thankful to have me chattering away at him.
When we got to his exit he thanked me and offered to take me to his house where I could sleep on his couch and he would bring me back to the highway in the morning. I said that I didn’t think I would be able to sleep, and I had just had one of the best days hitching ever. I could visualize myself arriving in Joplin by morning. He wished me luck, thanked me again and drove off towards the west.
My mind and heart were racing from the crystal and walking came easy. The night was warm and moist, and soon I noticed the sky seemed to be growing much darker to the west. I knew what this was and walked on hoping for some kind of cover.
The lightning began to make the highway visible in short flashes. I saw an overpass that was about halfway between me and the storm. I had about a mile to go to reach the bridge and got to it just as the wind picked up and rain drops began to fall. I climbed up to the highest point under the bridge and sat there watching as the rain fell harder and the wind blew faster until the gusts blew the rain sideways.
My mind wouldn’t stop, I found my self talking to a friend that had died a few years before, it seemed no less insane that talking to my self, because I didn’t expect an answer. The storm raged on for what seemed like hours, wind, rain, hail. I would later find out that there was a tornado reported north of McAlester, that’s where I was, at least this night I was high and dry.
The wind eventually stopped, the rain carried on awhile longer, and I sat under the overpass unable to sleep. It was Sunday night and there was little traffic. I saw maybe two trucks go by all night, which wasn’t real encouraging, so I sat there until The sky began to lighten up and the storms had past. By the time the sun was showing it’s face I was on the road, the skies were clear, it was a warm June morning.
As I walked north on highway 69 in eastern Oklahoma, I came upon a sign that said “Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers, State Correctional Facility”. There wasn’t any traffic so I walked on. Soon I saw the prison off to the right, about a quarter mile off the road, tall fences with razor wire topping. It sat all alone on the prairie, nothing nearby wide open spaces all around. Finally I had past it and it faded off into the distance behind me. There was the occasional car but I didn’t hold out my thumb feeling it was futile.
I had walked a few hours the traffic started picking up and eventually a small car with two women stopped and offered me a ride. I crawled into the back seat and asked them if they were worried about me being an escapee. The driver replied that a con wouldn’t be carrying a bag and a bedroll, she figured I was safe.
It was nearing lunch time and the driver said she had to make a pass through Eufaula, her daughter was in school there and she wanted to go by the school and check on her. I asked how old her daughter was. Fifteen she replied. I was now convinced this woman was nuts as she and her friend carried on about her daughter. We “cruised” by the school where she looked through the kids outside on lunch break, and then said “that’s here over there with those two other girls. Isn’t she pretty?” I couldn’t tell which of the dozens of kids she was talking about so I gave an approving remark, and with the knowledge that her girl was at school she steered the car back through town to the highway.
The two women took me a few miles up the road to a crossroad, they were getting off the highway here to go home, and they let me out. I thanked them for the ride and they wished me well and took off toward the east. Right away another car stopped, a four door Buick, driven by a young lady, about my age. She was wearing a pretty summer dress that went passed her knees, brunette hair cut above her shoulders, some flowers were laying in the front seat. The girl told me as I got in she saw the two ladies drop me off, they survived so I must be safe.
My new ride was on her way to her grandmother’s to pick flowers. She seemed as if she didn’t have a care in the world. We talked as if we were old friends and the miles flew by as we rode past Muskogee and on to the north. She told me that her grandmother’s was up by the Kansas state line She would drop me off near there. Then she searched through her purse and brought out a bag of pot, which was once again better than what I had. This seemed to be the theme for this trip.
When we neared the northern edge of the state, we came to a small town where she said she had to turn west towards her destination. There was a small town and she dropped me off near a drive in burger place. At the drive in were two guys in their car, eating. I walked over to them and asked if they knew the way to Joplin. The driver said that it was about an hour down that road, motioning to the back road running near the drive in.
I asked if they would be interested in taking me there in exchange for a buzz, stating that I would get them high on the way and give them some weed to get them back home. Apparently they had nothing else to do and agreed. I got in the back seat and started rolling joints as we rode along the back country roads. I didn’t know where we were but knew as long as we were going east I was getting closer to home. I told them of my trip up from the border, they seemed more interested in my keeping the joints coming.
When we crossed the Missouri state line things began to look familiar and the driver made his way to highway 66, that led into Joplin. When we got to town I asked how well the driver knew the town. He didn’t seem interested in going further than what we had, so I gave them a few buds and thanked them for their trouble. They dropped me off at the west end of town., and turned back toward Oklahoma.
I had a few dozen blocks to walk to my mother’s house. I had a feeling of relief and accomplishment, as I took a triumphant march through the familiar streets that I had been down many times before. I had conquered the road, before me lay the dream.
