To Seattle
I never got to Seattle this summer, but growing up in New England, Seattle was a mystical place that always seemed to call me .... all the way across the country .... Salmon and Steelhead rivers .... snow covered Mount Hood in the distance and just tons of water - everywhere. I now know that thanks to Bill Gates, Seattle is almost as crowded as LA. Ten years later, I did spend a wonderful summer fishing my way up to Seattle with my dog Seamus next to me in the seat of my Toyota pickup. Today, Seattle does not have the same power over me that it once did.
However, while hitchhiking across the country, when asked where I was headed, I would always tell people that "I was on my way to Seattle" - that usually made them smile :)
I was standing on the side of a small four lane highway just outside of DC. My girlfriend was driving to Tucson to spend the summer with her sister and we agreed to take some time and think things through and that I would meet her there in a few weeks. I had never hitchhiked before and I certainly had never picked up a hitchhiker, but somehow I figured this was a good idea. I am 6'5" and maybe a little scary looking from a distance, but I was clean shaven and wore a clean shirt every day and my white boy afro was mostly under control. Hitchhiking is a funny thing .... in the 60's, everyone seemed to be doing it, but this was 1989. I had been in New Zealand a couple of years before and I remember hearing over the radio that a man had been robbed by a hitchhiker. This sent shock waves through the incredibly warm and friendly country that was New Zealand .... it was almost like their 9-11. Everybody hitchhiked and nothing bad ever happened. New Zealand really is paradise, especially the South Island and do go there if you ever get a chance. Anyhow, this was not New Zealand .... it was America, just outside our Nation's Capital and I was standing there on the side of the road with my thumb out.
Lo and behold, in just a matter of minutes, a car pulls over, and a dude and his girlfriend say through the open window .... hop in!! And so I did. When they asked me where I was headed, I babbled something incoherent about Tucson and we were on our way. These people were nice, a little "rednecky" or white trashy or whatever you call it, but they were nice and kind and they were heading to a campground in the hills of northern Virginia. I think it was in the Shenandoah National Park, but it was beautiful and I set up my tent and joined them around the campfire. Writing this, it sounds like the start to some camping murder mystery, but they were just simple folk and we enjoyed the night sky and the stars and a warm fire and .... just camping. The next morning they told me that they were heading South to some other camping destination and they dropped me off at Route 40 in Winston Salem, NC putting me on a freeway that would take me West.
My next ride came equally quick .... it was a college kid, who was heading to Asheville, NC where he had a simple apartment in the hills outside of town. He was kind and thoughtful and put me up on his couch for the night. I wish there was more to tell about these first couple of days .... I think I was in a pretty somber quiet place, still trying to make sense of the Coast Walk, and the relationship, and still adjusting to the hitchhiking thing. I really am an introvert, and I didn't do small talk well, but somehow, me and those who picked me up would just talk about life and wandering and that was that. I do wonder why people picked me up .... it is clearer in some of the rides coming up .... maybe people are just a little nicer than we think they are.
The next morning, this guy dropped me back on Route 40 - heading towards Nashville and this is where the fun really began. I don't remember who drove me to Nashville .... it might have been a couple of guys who let me ride in the back of their pick-up .... I do remember chatting with a couple of dudes through the slider window of a pickup cab .... The driver asked me what I was up to and after I told him the story, he said .... "You sound like a guy about to jump off a diving board." I said "Yup .... it does feel that way sometimes." He laughed and said "I knew a guy like you once." and after a pause, I said: "Yeah .... what happened to him?" He responded "Well .... he jumped, but on the way down his ass hit the diving board and now he has hemorrhoids on top of everything else." We both laughed heartily and I told him .... "Point well taken!" I just know that I never waited more than half an hour to get picked up .... it was a four hour drive .... anyhow, I do remember being dropped off near the campus of Vanderbilt University. As I wandered by the campus wondering where I was going to sleep, I started looking for bushes and shrubs where I might not be seen, but then realized with campus security all over the place, this was not going to work. So I headed away from campus hoping to find a more rural area or a park where I could spend the night. Then, the most amazing thing happened .... thank you God! .... As I was walking down the sidewalk, all of a sudden a dude in a golf cart pulls up behind me .... hops out .... grabs the pack off of my shoulders, throws it in the golf cart and tells me to hop in. I was so astonished that I did what he said. He then headed back to his place, cracked a couple of beers and we chatted. A little later, he said "Dude .... I'm going out to a party - hopefully to score some dope .... You are welcome to come or feel free to just crash here .... your call." The jock in me was never very comfortable around drugs and so I passed and as he left, curled up on the couch and went to sleep. When I woke the next morning, he was nowhere to be seen and I never did see him again. I pulled myself together and headed out in search of a coffee shop for some breakfast.
This is where it really got interesting. As I sat drinking my coffee and eating my pancakes, there was a couple at a table nearby and the woman kept looking at my pack. Eventually, she said hi and asked what I was up to. I gave her an abbreviated version of my journey and she ushered me over to join them and bought my breakfast. We talked and talked and it turned out that she was working on a graduate degree in psychology and her husband ran some kind of outdoors/mountain biking shop. As it turned out, it was the 4th of July weekend and they asked if I was going to watch the fireworks over the River. I said that I had no idea that it was even the 4th and had no plans at all. To make a long story short .... they took me home and put me up for the better part of a week. Nashville is a wonderful town and they took me to watch the fireworks over the Cumberland River and showed me around town, and on Monday, when her husband headed off to work, she and I went to their country club and sunned by the pool talking about Jung and Freud and the connection between religion and psychology. We did this for most of the week and it was such a needed rest and blessing .... Thank you, God!!
These people were so nice, but it was time to move on and so reluctantly we said our goodbyes and the husband drove me to the freeway and I was heading south, now on route 65 I think. The rides that day were again unmemorable and there may have been two or three short ones, but I do remember getting picked up by a total southern redneck dude with a scraggly beard and a big wad of chew in his mouth. I knew I was in the south, when after driving for a while, I felt something hard against my leg and looked down to see a loaded shotgun in the space between the two front seats .... not in New England anymore .... that's for sure. He or one of the other rides eventually dropped me right smack in the middle of downtown Birmingham as the sun was setting and I felt the first real fear of the entire trip. I didn't really even make the connection that I was right dab in the middle of the powder keg of racial tensions back in the 60's. I had read King's letter from a Birmingham jail in High School, but I wasn't sightseeing .... I was just making ground. But, as I put the pack on my shoulders and started walking, something did not feel right .... it was just an odd creepy vibe .... maybe my own racism bubbling up a little, but I was clearly the only white person anywhere to be found and the city was pretty run down, a far cry from Nashville .... and again, it was getting dark .... where am I going to sleep?
Then, just as the panic was bubbling up inside, a dude pulls over to the curb and says .... "Hey .... you new in town?" I said yes, of course, and he then said "Hey look .... I am moving some new furniture into my place .... I'll buy you dinner if you give me a hand." Just relieved to get a reprieve from sleeping on the streets of downtown Birmingham, I immediately said yes and hopped in his car. He drove to some burger joint and grabbed dinner and took me back to his place on the outskirts of town. After we ate, I was a little surprised to hear no more mention of furniture and I wondered what was going on here. Then things started to make a little more sense after the guy said .... "Why don't you clean up a bit and you can sleep in the spare bedroom." He had no shower, so I poured a warm bath which felt great after the long day on the road. Then things made even more sense - while I was sitting in the bathtub, the guy walked in and sat down for a chat. I put my hands over my junk and tried to be polite, but this was awkward. My best friend back in Boston was gay so I didn't think of myself as overtly homophobic, but being picked up by a gay dude caught me completely off guard and though I am 6'5", I am ashamed to admit that I slept with a chair propped up against the door that night.
We woke .... in our separate bedrooms :) .... and over breakfast, he told me that he had to work that day and would be happy to drop me off on the outskirts of town on the way to work. As we drove, he opened up to me and talked about what it was like being gay in a town like Birmingham and how frightening it is in general as a gay man, never knowing if you hit on someone, whether they are going to respond with warmth or abeating. I remembered the scene in "Philadelphia" where a gay basketball player hits on Denzel and Denzel goes off on him. I learned a lot from this guy and I gained a new and deep empathy for the challenges of being gay, especially in the South. A lot has changed in the last 30 years, but this guy was really living on the front lines of being gay in America!
My next ride was a hoot .... as I am standing on the side of the road in Alabama with my thumb in the air, out of nowhere, a big old gold Caddie pulls abruptly to the side of the road and screeches to a stop. As I look in the car, I am surprised to see an older guy, at least in his 80's, motion for me to climb in. I put my pack in the back seat and join him in the front and he tears off back on down the road. It is still astonishing to me when I think of the variety of people who picked me up .... they came in all shapes and sizes and almost all of them were totally unlikely to pick up a hitchhiker. But most of them had some kind of reason and I was soon to find out this guy's reason. We chatted a bit and he told me that he was an oil guy from East Texas heading back home after seeing family up north. He was a very sweet man and I liked him immediately. Soon, I asked if he minded if I dozed off a bit .... I really didn't sleep much the night before with the chair propped up against the door and so I drifted off .... After a while, I woke to a rumbling sound and the car was riding really rough and I looked out the window and saw that we were speeding down the grass meridian between the two sides of the freeway. The man had fallen asleep and we were careening down the grass in the middle of the road. I quickly grabbed the wheel and woke him up and stabilized the car and said - "Hey .... I'd be happy to drive if you like." He immediately pulled to a stop, hopped out, and handed me the keys and quickly fell back to sleep in the passenger seat. It was kind of funny, driving along through Alabama at the wheel of a gold Caddie .... I'm not sure what St Francis would have said about that, but it was nice to be driving and thinking and heading on down the road.
He eventually woke up and took me to a Waffle House for dinner and after a few more hours of driving, put me up for the night in his East Texas ranch house. While I am saving Alaska for my passing, I have been in every other state in the country, knocking a bunch of the Southern States off in that gold Caddie, though bypassing New Orleans, which is still on my bucket list. Also, I hadn't intended to spend no money on the hitchhiking part of this journey .... it just didn't seem possible, but as it was unfolding, once again, everything was being taken care of. People were so nice to me .... Thank you, God!
The next morning Mr. gold Caddie took me to a spot he thought would be good for catching a ride and as always, within a half hour, a guy in his twenties pulled over and told me to hop in .... this guy was a marine heading back to the West Coast where he was stationed at Camp Pendleton. I didn't even know what Pendleton was at the time, but he needed someone to keep him awake and I was happy to oblige and hear his story .... I remember waking up later that afternoon during a strong windstorm near Albuquerque, New Mexico, seeing tumbleweeds blowing across the road for the first time. I was transfixed .... we had no tumbleweeds in New England and I felt like I was in some kind of a movie. I assume we were on route 20 through Dallas and then onto route 10 through El Paso which eventually led right to Tucson. I had made it.
After spending a couple of days with my girlfriend's sister and her husband and new baby .... they were really good people .... the sister was a grad student studying how to turn human waste into fertilizer at U of A and the husband was a teacher at a Catholic High School in Tucson. They also were involved in the "Sanctuary" movement which was a Christian led effort to house, in church basements, people fleeing violence in places like El Salvador . They were really dear people! .... Eventually, we headed north to the Grand Canyon. We drove through the Hopi, Navajo and Apache reservations and after the Grand Canyon made our way to the Four Corners reservations where all the states come together and eventually up to Moab, Utah. Looking back, I think we were just that college couple who can't seem to let go, but clearly were too young to make a life-time decision and there were a lot of tears and heartbreak and confusion, but especially for me, there was just too much spinning around in my head. The grip of the St Francis call had not left me, but most of all, I just couldn't squeeze myself back into that Ivy League world. We eventually said our goodbyes and I decided to stay in Moab for a bit and then maybe continue my way to Seattle. While there always seems to be another chapter, this felt like a real break and as she drove away, I felt pretty raw and confused.
Moab has exploded .... I was driving through it last summer on my way back to the East Coast and I was amazed to see lots of hotels and restaurants and fast food. When I was there in 89, it was a sleepy little town with no McDonalds or chain of any kind. It is the town where Mountain Biking took off in the 80's because of the "Slick Rock" that made up the hills, and it was home to a River Rafting cottage industry since the town rests right on the Colorado River close to where it joins the Green.
As it settled on me that I was all alone in a strange town, I headed for water .... I figured I could camp somewhere along the River and so I walked the half hour from town. When I got there, I was not disappointed .... there was no one in sight and lots of hidden places and shrubs where I could set up my tent .... the first night was quiet and I lay in the tent looking up at the stars listening to Bruce Springsteen and crying. It felt good to vent my feelings and soon I was off to sleep. I had never really been in a desert before, but like most of the midwest, Moab was certainly in the middle of nowhere. I would later find that the steep cliffs along the river were once inhabited by Anasazi Indians and that many of them were adorned with quite famous wall paintings. I wasn't about to climb the cliffs, but I did imagine a whole civilization living there years ago.
When I woke the next morning, that hunger thing hit again and so I made my way to town. It was mid July now and pretty warm in the desert and, as I was kicking along in my flip flops, I had one of the scares of my life .... as I walked along looking at the hills, I looked down at the ground and found a scorpion poised for battle pointing his stinger right at my big toe. I jumped with fright, never having seen a scorpion before .... Yup, definitely not in New England anymore. After a bit of wandering, I found a little dive diner that served coffee, Biscuits and Gravy all for one dollar. I was in heaven--and Biscuits and Gravy is still my favorite breakfast to this day. After breakfast, I walked the length of town and got my bearings a bit and found a little store where I could get supplies and a little food for dinner and then I headed back to the river.
Once there, I wandered up and down the shore taking in this huge majestic scene. As I was rumbling through some bush, I noticed a little styrofoam container and to my delight, found it full of worms. I remembered that from my Coast Walk, I had some line and hooks stashed in my pack and pretty soon I had rigged up a stick and I was catching catfish on the Colorado River. Catfish I had been told, was the sweetest yummiest fish to eat, but I had never had one, and pretty soon, I had a fire going on a little island in the river and was cooking catfish while enjoying the setting sun. This was one of those magical nights .... fishing nirvana!
I might have spent another day by the river, but pretty soon, I was confronted by that looming dilemma .... WTF? What the hell was I doing? Should I stay or should I go? Should I call it a journey and head my way back to Rhode Island or should I follow through and make my way to Seattle? It was time to fish or cut bait and, after a good night's sleep--this time hearing the cries of the Anasazi spirits howling in the cliffs ....I headed to town for some Biscuits and Gravy .... It was decision time, but I really had no idea what I was going to do. As I sat munching my breakfast, not unlike the couple in Nashville, a guy at a table nearby was eyeing my pack and he finally asked - "What's your story? What's up with the pack?" After I gave him the rundown and told him my dilemma, he replied, "Well .... have you seen the arches?" "What arches?" I said .... "You are on the doorstep of two huge national parks .... Arches and Canyonlands .... you are in the middle of a geographical miracle right here .... you haven't seen them?" I said "No .... I didn't even know about them." and he replied .... "Let's go!"
We hopped in his van and headed for the hills. If you haven't seen these two parks, go .... they are amazing .... the arches and the canyons are natural rock formations cut from ancient glacial melting and they are amazing .... even cooler than Disneyland :) As we wandered through the rocks, Jim was his name, started asking me about my life and when I told him that I was studying and teaching religion, he went off on me. "Dude .... come on! If you take a bunch of people and put them in a big cathedral with light glowing through the stained glass and angelic music coming from the choir and light up a little incense .... of course, people are going to think they are seeing God. But that doesn't make it real!" I'm not sure how, but I had never been so directly confronted by an atheist before and Jim was not stupid. I did my best to counter his argument, but we all know when we are full of crap and I could tell I was making no dent at all. As I write this, I wonder if that was the moment when I truly began thinking for myself when it came to God and religion. Today I would say that God put Jim in front of me to make me think more deeply about religion and spirituality, which he surely did.
Jim was great .... and I crashed with him for a few days and avoided the looming question of what the hell was I doing with my life? Jim was a painter and a pretty creative guy. But, he felt like a sellout .... His work was to take multiple canvases and put them together as if they were one and then to paint an image on the now much larger canvas. Then he would methodically turn each canvas and weave the image into each new side. It was actually kind of cool .... 16 paintings in one. He was embarrassed that this gimmick sold a lot of paintings to big banks and other corporate types because they liked hanging them in the grand lobbies and rotating them every month. Jim had a good and pure heart!
After a week or so, Jim had to go up to Grand Junction, CO for an art show and we were standing on the main corner of town after breakfast, when a friend of his came up to us and said: "Hey Jim .... you gotta rescue me, Dude. My neighbors are being dickheads and I have to go to California for this art thing .... Can you watch my house for a bit?" Jim turned to him and said: "I'd love to, but I have an art show in Grand Junction." Without skipping a beat, the guy turned to me and said: "How about you? Would you house sit for me for a few weeks?" I'm not sure that I even responded .... he just handed me the keys and took off!
Well I guess I wasn't supposed to leave Moab .... Jim drove me to the house and I settled in, climbed up on the bed and slept for what felt like days. When I finally woke up, I made some coffee and found some cereal in the cupboard and did some writing. I guess I was going to live in Moab for the rest of the summer. OK .... I've got a place to live, time to find a job! I started at the end of town and banging on doors. Within a half hour or so, I was employed at an old Ranch House restaurant as the new dishwasher. Now I was raised with a pretty intense work ethic. My Dad always said, "If they are going to pay you, the least you could do is show up on time and do what they tell you! You are the one who agreed to take the job - no one is forcing it on you!" And so I set out to become the greatest dishwasher in the history of dishes. Honestly, in some ways it was my favorite job ever. In everything else I had done, there was always more to do. You can never read enough or prepare enough as a teacher. Coaching is the same way .... there are always things you could do to make the team better. But, with dishes, at the end of every night, they were all done .... often it was well past 1:00 in the morning, but every dish was cleaned and the kitchen was spotless. In a life as turned upside down as mine, it was great to have one thing that I could put in order every night. I also got to blast my own music and eat whatever I wanted. The restaurant was on the opposite side of town from the house, and so after each shift, I'd walk home amidst the most incredible star filled desert nights happy as can be .... it was kind of the perfect gig.
A few nights into my new career, I remember, while washing some bowls, I heard an incredibly loud shattering and clashing from the other room. I went to the door and one of the waitresses had dropped an entire tray--four full meals--onto the floor. It was hard not to laugh, but when I saw her face, I immediately rushed over and helped her clean it all up and did my best to make her feel better. Later in the shift, she wandered into the kitchen to thank me and we chatted and agreed to walk home together that night. Her name, I soon learned, was Patrice and, as we walked, I kidded her that she might be the worst waitress in the history of waitressing. She laughed and said I know .... I try, but I just can't focus on this goofy job. I said that I was only kidding .... that I noticed the faces on the people that she served and that they always looked happy and loved. She smiled!
I am not sure how to characterize this relationship. Patrice and I loved each other deeply, but we were never lovers. She was the first organic, green, hippie type that I had ever met. I wasn't in New England anymore! :) She grew her own tomatoes in the yard and she had two sons, one named Zach, who was born while she was living with a drug dealer on a boat in the Caribbean, and Konani, a little Buddha baby from another father. Zach was living with his Dad and apparently was kind of lost, but Konani was the most beautiful and sweet and free little boy that I had ever met. Patrice saw herself and her other friends in Moab as a kind of commune who in her words "Would put the world back together after the Corporate Idiots in the cities destroyed it." This sounds even more prescient today, but she meant it, and to be honest, we would be in good shape in her capable hands. At one point, Patrice turned to me and said .... "You are such an idiot! You are so smart and so educated and you know all this stuff, but it is all useless .... You are an idiot!" What could I say? She was right. Over the next few weeks, Patrice took it upon herself to try to make me less of an idiot and gave me a real education.
It started with some books .... she gave me my first Castaneda book, The Teachings of Don Juan, I think, and then Hesse's, Narcissus and Goldman, -- a hell of a book--and I think a book on forgiveness by the Dalai Lama .... It was eye opening for me to read stuff that had never been on a syllabus. It was also fun to be hearing such wisdom from someone who had no degree beyond High School, if even that!
One day, Patrice said to me .... "Have you ever seen a moonrise?" I said "What?" "Moonrise .... Have you ever seen a moonrise?" As she repeated the question, I must have had some dumbfounded look on my face and she said "You haven't .... have you?" I proceeded to tell her that I guess I knew that the moon rose every night, but I never actually sat and watched one. I joked that it isn't the kind of thing we City folk spent our time doing. She beamed .... "OK .... tomorrow night, I am packing a picnic and we are going up the canyon to watch the Moonrise!" And so we did and It was amazing .... especially from a cliff with the huge desert sky all around.
I later would come to mark this night as the beginning of my own conscious engagement with the feminine. In Yin and Yang terms, the night and the moon are associated with the Yin feminine energy and while I had always been very sensitive, in my jock world, I had mostly repressed that side of me. Now with this moonrise, a whole huge part of my personality had been awakened and it was time to explore it.
A few days later on a very warm August day, Patrice and I took Konani up into the hills to swim in a small mountain stream. As we got to the swimming hole, Patrice and I jumped into the shallow pool and Konani went off to play. I think he had a life-jacket on, but I was amazed at how much she trusted him and just let him be in nature. There was none of the fear-based doting that most city Moms do. Then, as we sat talking about some deep shit, I heard a kerplunk and looked up stream to see that Konani had jumped off of a small waterfall and was floating down stream towards us, completely upside down. I will never forget .... without even breaking her sentence, Patrice simply reached over and turned him right side up and went on talking. Can you imagine what we would all be like if we were raised like Konani, not raised to fear nature .... it is no wonder that he was such a beautiful little Buddha.
Finally, the owner of the house returned to town and while I crashed on Patrice's couch for a few days, it was clearly time to go. Both Patrice and I were heart-broken, but I kept telling her that my heart was still all mixed up and that most of it was back in Boston and that I didn't want to drudge her into my mess until I had made some sense of it. She was struggling to hear this and gently and sweetly pushing back, when Konani walked right up to her and grabbed her by the cheeks and said "Mommy, he's not here .... let's go! He's not here!!" I couldn't have put it better myself and Patrice and I looked at each other and laughed and embraced and the next morning, I was back on the freeway - thumb in the air. Patrice was another Angel and again Thank You, God! (A year later, I found myself in San Francisco and Patrice and I reconnected and had some more adventures including the Sweat Lodge - Vision Quest story that I talk about in World Religions .... but this was Good Bye for now!)
The trip back to New England was a bit of a blur. I left Moab on a Tuesday and was back at my folks house in Rhode Island for dinner on Saturday. It would be hard to make much better time if you were driving it straight, but I was hitchhiking .... ride after ride after ride .... barely a wait! It was amazing .... Thank You, God!
The first ride was a Russian dude in an old station wagon. He was heading to Denver. When I asked him his story, he told me that he did import-export and changed the subject. I was naive enough not to realize that this probably meant Drug Dealer, but the picture got clearer as he pulled over to pick up another hitchhiker .... this guy a soldier heading home to Denver and then a few miles later, he pulled over to pick up a family of four. We were all packed into the car and I guess this was his cover .... a car full of family couldn't be involved in shady business. As it turned out, we still got pulled over and I remember the State Troopers kicking around the gas tank looking for his hidden stash. Eventually they let us go, and I was dropped off on the outskirts of Denver.
The next ride was some knucklehead High School kid who picked me up and drove straight to a liquor store and asked me to go in and buy him beer. I obliged and he proceeded to drive me maybe two exits down the road and left me off .... at least he gave me a couple of beers. This detour had cost some valuable time and it was getting dark and my odds of getting a ride were shrinking fast. I sat on the side of the road, drinking the beer and contemplating the thought of sleeping in the gully, a pick up truck pulls over and the guy tells me to hop in! I held up my beer as if to say .... "What should I do with this?" And he motioned to me to bring it with me.
As I settled in, I started noticing that the sky was exploding .... it was one of those huge apocalyptic midwest stormy skies that you see in the movies .... it wasn't raining yet, but thunder and lightning and the most incredible explosion of light and energy in every direction. As I watched this, I found that the guy driving was a priest, heading to see his folks in Kansas and I wondered if I was being driven to meet my Maker. It was an amazing feeling .... I don't know how this guy even saw me on the side of the road, let alone why he picked me up and now I find that he is a priest!
Eventually, we get to Kansas and he offers me the basement bedroom for the night and I fall fast asleep. When I wake up, I see chickens running around outside the basement windows and feel eerily like I have walked right into "The Wizard of Oz." His parents are great and after a nice breakfast, he drives me down to the nearest freeway and I am off again.
This time, I am picked up by a 70 year old couple heading to Iowa. I still don't know how these rides happened. Do any of your Grandparents pick up hitchhikers on the freeway? It just kept happening .... Thank you, God!
Once in Iowa, I am quickly picked up again, this time by an Episcopal Priest .... Wow - looking back - a drug dealer, an alcoholic High Schooler, two priests and someone's grandparents all gave me rides .... it was amazing. This priest was very kind and he was heading to a monastery in Michigan for a retreat. We talked a lot about God and life and more about God and he eventually invited me to stay at the Monastery for a day or two. I remember waking up with the monks for early morning vespers and it reminded me of St. Francis' followers and I was moved by a whole group of men who had made very different choices about how to live a life than mine.
My next ride was pretty amazing too. As I was standing on the side of the road, a guy in a souped up van picked me up. He was a custom van designer and was delivering one of his masterpieces to his customer in Allentown, PA. This was a huge gift .... lots of miles and I would soon be back on the East Coast .... he was a nice man .... kind of simple, but he seemed to be grateful to have someone to talk to on this long drive.
We got to Allentown well after dark and I was both relieved to be on the doorstep of New York and a little worried about where I was going to sleep that night .... when I saw a bar across the street. I figured it was a decent time to have a beer and toast my journey and so I sat down at the bar and ordered a draft. After a while, I noticed that the guy sitting next to me, a very warm and jovial fellow, was dressed all in black and he had these huge rings on his fingers. I said hi, but didn't want to invade his space .... but there was something about him. A little later, someone across the bar yells .... "Johnny .... come on .... you gotta sing for us." The man smiled reluctantly, but after more pressure from other patrons, Johnny Cash walked up to the mike and started singing "Where I'm Bound!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXowP1Ss5kA
Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound
Johnny Cash
I don't know where I'm bound
I don't know where I'm bound
Whistles calling me away
Leaving at the break of day and
I don't know where I'm bound
Can't stand locks, bars or doors
Mean cops insanity and wars
Gotta find a place of peace
Till then much travellin' on seas
But I don't know where I'm bound
There's gotta be a place for me
Under some green growing tree
Clear cool water running by
An unfettered view of the sky
But I don't know where I'm bound
When I die don't bury me
Cause then I must be free
Cremate my body with a grin
Throw my ashes to the wind
Cause I don't know where I'm bound
I don't know where I'm bound
I don't know where I'm bound
Whistles calling me away
Leaving at the break of day and
I don't know where I'm bound
Got myself a little gal
She has been a damn right pal
That ol' highway's calling me
And free I gotta be but
I don't know where I'm bound
I really only knew Johnny Cash by name, but this was a little slice of heaven and no song could better describe what I had just been through.
After another beer and a firm handshake with Johnny, I headed off to find a place to lay my head. As I walked out of the bar, I noticed that I was right across the street from a Golf Course .... perfect .... I walked out onto the middle of the nearest fairway, set up my tent and slept like a baby!
The next morning, I woke up to someone yelling "Fore!" as a golf ball rolled by my tent. The guys in that foursome never said a word to me, but they must still tell the story about the time they almost hit a dude sleeping in a tent in the middle of the fairway.
I was up and on my way in a hurry and my adrenaline was rushing a bit .... almost home and I quickly got picked up by a guy in a delivery van heading to New York. We hit it off and as we got close to the city, he told me that his partner was going to drive the van all the way up to New Haven and that she'd probably be happy to take me that far .... I was conceived in New Haven .... this was just two hours from home .... I might even sleep in my own bed tonight .... I thanked him effusively when he handed the keys to the other driver and we were off again.
Once in New Haven, I had the only truly frightening ride of the whole trip. Two kids picked me up .... pretty clearly stoned on something and I had the distinct impression that they had stolen the car .... basically, they wanted me to buy them some gas and beelined straight for the freeway gas station .... I remember not even taking my arms out of the backpack straps and as soon as they pulled up to the pump, I was out of there.
I soon was in another car moving along towards Rhode Island .... I was so excited and full of feelings that I don't even remember this ride, but they got me within twelve miles of my parents house at the beach. At this point I was so excited, that I wandered into a nearby 7-Eleven and I just walked up to a young couple and said .... "Hey - You guys .... I literally just hitchhiked across the country and I am twenty minutes from my folks' house .... is there any chance you could take me the final 12 miles to Little Compton?" They both said .... we love Little Compton .... our favorite Chowdah House is down there .... the Focsle .... we'd be happy to!"
A half hour later, I walked in the front door to my Mom squealing, " Timmmmy's home" .... gave everyone a big hug and sat down for Saturday night dinner!
Thank You, God!!