I was 17, in the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. And I was crazy restless. Oh, I'd been up and down the east coast. Just a few years back we had moved from New Jersey to Charlotte, North Carolina. The culture shock was almost fatal. I remember standing in a McDonalds on Independence Boulevard, asking the girl behind the counter three times, "What did you say?"
"N'ai hep ya?"
"What?"
"N'ai HEP ya!?
"What?!"
Next in line and impatient: "Son, she wants to know if she can help you!"
So it wasn't like I had never been anywhere. But really... I'd never been anywhere.
That summer I was up from Charlotte, visiting my grandmother in Easton, Pennsylvania, when I thought, "I'm gonna go to Jamaica!" And so I did. I had a hundred dollars in my pocket, no car, no plan. Just the burning desire of youth, matched with a 17-year-old's liberating ignorance. So I had my Nana drop me on the highway, and I put my thumb out, and I was on the road.
You could do that back then, 1971. People hitched all the time. I'd been hitching since I was 12 or 13. In New Jersey, we'd hitch to New Hope, Pennsylvania, where there were "hippies". We'd hitch to Phillipsburgh, New Jersey, where Joe's Steak Shop was the best eats we knew of. But this was different. Easton, Pennsylvania, to Miami. That's a long hitch. I must admit I was scared shitless.
That evening, along the way, I ended up hungry in a small town. Not wanting to spend any money if I didn't have to, I went into a truck stop and asked for a bowl of hot water and some crackers.
"That's all?!'
Yeah, that's all, thanks. When the hot water came, I poured about a half bottle of ketchup into it and, there you go -- tomato soup! Not my invention, I must have read about it in some Life Magazine story about hobos and rail-riders. But all the same... break up the crackers, a little salt and pepper, you've got a meal just like Mom used to make. Then the waitress said "Oh hell, son, you gotta eat more than that!", and a few minutes later she brought me a cheeseburger and the biggest plate of fries I'd ever seen. That wasn't my intention, I really just wanted something hot to eat. But it sure was nice.
That first night I found a hotel, just off the interstate. It was a common place, a Holiday Inn or some such. Not expensive, but more than I wanted to spend. So I called my family in Charlotte just to let them know I was ok, and I left. Behind the motel was a junkyard, fenced in so I felt safe, up on a hill looking over the highway, and I found a car with some pretty comfy seats still intact. No windows, and the roof was rusted just about through. But it didn't look like rain, so I lay down. And I slept.
I found out later that my father had called back to the hotel with a credit card number. They had gone outside and looked for me, but by then I was already spread flat in the back of an abandoned Buick. So I could have slept in much more comfortable quarters. But then... I would have had a much less interesting story to tell.
NEXT: A Stop for a Friend, and On to Kingston
