Hippie Picaresque: On the Road Meets the Summer of Love

9781626758773

One

Live with a woman without the sanctity of marriage, you might as well take a gun and kill her. But no, you aren't responsible, live for yourself, don't get hassled, it's not your fault when she takes a gun and blows out her brains.

You think you know everything, but let me tell you miserable sinner. Let me tell you that until you know Christ, until you take Christ into your heart, you don't know a thing ...

It is seven-thirty; the clock radio has turned itself on. Possessed of its own will, it has lately taken to selecting stations.

I shut it off and turn back to bed. Tessa has not awakened, not that it would matter. She is impossible to leave in the morning. If she is awake, she pulls you toward her and with your head on her breast you fall back to sleep. And if she is asleep, the temptation is to place your head on her breast yourself.

I get out of bed and reach for the underpants on the floor. But ants have multiplied in the night and are crawling all over them.

Tessa, these are full of ants,

She stirs, taking a minute to come awake. Well shake them out the window. She is angry to have been awakened.

I open the window and start shaking, feeling increasingly foolish. How would it look to someone passing on the street? There's some asshole up there waving a pair of jockey shorts.

Tessa, what is this going to look like to someone passing on the street?

It will look like you have ants in your pants.

From the refrigerator I take half a gallon of milk, from the shelf, an individual serving of instant breakfast. I should be in an Irish novel. They eat rashers and eggs for breakfast. Irish novels got really hung up on rashers. Too much trouble; rashers always taste like plain old bacon.

Why read Irish novels? Not because I'm Irish, I don't think about that, except maybe at breakfast. My grandmother does, born in a barn in the old country. Saw the barn when I was ten.

My family descended on Uncle John in County Cork. Old man couldn't fathom that we didn't live in Chicago. They were poor but laid it out for the American relatives; put an extra piece of peat on the fire, squandered their bread and marmalade on us.

I saw the barn where grandma was born (or great grandma). It had fallen into disrepair. On the way back, I lost my shoe in barnyard muck. Ran through the muck after a goose and sank up to my knees in mud and animal shit. When I got out, I'd lost a shoe. Woman of the house was half an hour retrieving my shoe. She rinsed it off, but the smell never left it.

My mother has a color slide of us outside our Irish relations' house.

They couldn't afford rashers. What's all this shit about Irish novels and rashers?

I wouldn't eat Uncle John's bread, I took a big slice and slathered it with butter and marmalade, but it was real sourdough which I'd never tasted before, and I was afraid to eat it. I was an embarrassment to my family.

This instant breakfast is awful. Have to make coffee. Only good thing about breakfast is coffee.

I kissed the Blarney Stone when I was ten years old. I still don't have the gift of the blab; occasional articulateness, but definitely not the blab. Bitch to kiss that stone, it's on the underside of a parapet, two hundred feet off the ground. You hang onto an iron rail and inch yourself over the drop while someone holds your legs.

What are you eating? Naked Tessa has come in, her eyes still heavy with sleep.

Instant breakfast, but I pretend it's rashers and eggs.

Let me fix you a decent breakfast.

Earth-mother eggs?

OK, but why’d you get up so early

Decided to split town.

What for, we were just getting settled? She puts on an apron and begins preparing breakfast.

I had a Don Quixote dream last night.

Was I in it?

Dulcinea del Toboso you stay home and wait for me.

Big deal, so what's your dream?

"The night was black with a full moon; I sat on a cliff playing guitar to the surf. Moonbeams rode the waves, laughing because I was alone.

"Twenty pipers came up the cliff pitying Dunbarton’s Drums. The moon changed to a motorcycle headlamp and I'm on a motorcycle careening through Berkeley showing off for a chick in white gossamer whose golden hair falls in pipe-curls over her shoulders.

I'm shouting, 'Dulcinea, I write you poems,’ and riding around on this bike.

You're freaking out.

That's not all. Dulcinea, who’s really you, takes the bike in an amorous embrace, mumbling stuff like, 'Take care of him Roscinante, bring him back soon,’ then you cradle the bike like a child and feed it a can of oil.

Keep me out of your perversions.

It's only a dream.

Then what happened?

"I got on the bike and started to ride away, but couldn't get anywhere. I was moving, but stayed the same distance from you.

"A big sign flashed in front of me-

"-DULCINEA ADMITS POET TO KNIGHTHOOD-

-and I am kneeling before you. You touch my white cape with a gold pen and it leaves ink marks, So I comment that it will have to be dry-cleaned and swear eternal love and fidelity to you. You disrobe and stand before me naked.

Interesting.

"Suddenly we're in a regular room with posters and books and things, and I'm wearing faded denim, and your hair is long and straight like I love best.

"You say 'You must rest here tonight before you start your journey.'

This puts me in a bad way because a poet errant’s love is always chaste, so I say I’ll sleep on the floor not test my never spoken vow of chastity.’ Suddenly I’m a green toad at your feet."

Am I still naked?

"Very. You say, 'It's no harm to share a bed, how else can we test your vow?’ I realize that you are out to get my chastity because you are turned on by motorcycles, so I say no. So you get a big sword and put it down the center of the bed. It's so heavy, you can barely lift it, and you snarl, 'Don't worry, I won't hurt your precious chastity.'

"All this while, you are displaying the charms of your flesh in a most provocative manner. But I don't worry because I know I'll keep to my side of the sword.

You aren't so honorable. As soon as the lights go off, you reach over and grab me in an indelicate spot.

Shocking!

Poet errant or not, I couldn't resist.

You never do.

A subtle undercurrent of sarcasm?

Never.

"In the next scene, red lights were swirling all over your downy skin. Then everything was bleached by a strobe light.

I woke up in a hospital room without my beard. The doctor who was working on my leg had it. He said, 'Almost got it that time, sonny, another inch and you would have lost it.

"You come dragging the sword which is bent and broken, 'So much for your vow.' you say, and throw it out the window.

You crawl into my bed. 'I'm sorry,' you say, ‘I don't need a sword to insure my chastity anymore.' But by this time I have changed my opinions about the ways of the flesh, and try to persuade you that you were right to begin with but you pull a Snow White. That's all I remember.

Obviously, you're guilty about taking my virginity.

I didn’t take your virginity.

How do you know?

The rashers are sizzling in the pan, and Tessa is cutting the mushrooms, scallions and parsley. Love earth-mother eggs. I hate eggs, but this way you can't taste the egg.

Why are you splitting?

Sold a lid to a narc,

And he didn't bust you?

No. He didn't want to blow his cover.

Who was it?

Big guy named Moses.

Wears a bobby's helmet?

And comes on real hip, one of the brothers.

That explains it.

What?

I bought a couple of lids from him last month, and we were raided two days later.

And they didn't bust you?

We'd smoked it all by then; there wasn't even a roach left.

They probably figured you'd still have it after two days.

Narcs are a bad trip.

A piss of an excuse for a human being to live so low,

Moses is lower than most. He's been going around being peoples' friend for the last four months. You have a problem, talk to old Moses about it. You need a lid, ask old Moses.

I bet he makes more money dealing than he does as a pig.

So you sold him some lids?

Yup, I say, I also need a change of scene.

How?

In the birthplace of modern hip, people are no longer happening- they come to watch. Maybe somewhere else the scene is bursting forth, bubbling and happy to have discovered itself. Here the scene is already cross-referenced, Do your thing and someone will tell you it's not a thing at all.

How are you going?

Hitch hike to the Pacific Northwest. I used to live up there.

Are you packed?

Yeah, I borrowed a pack from Steve,

She takes off the apron and I follow her back to bed where we entwine like two boa constrictors. Hin! I intone, struggling through her thick perfumed hair to nibble her earlobe.

Who?

Ping!

All right, whose Hin Ping ? she asks, twisting my arm into a half nelson.

Mysterious girl from the east.

What's she like?

Reserved.

How so?

You have to make reservations weeks in advance. My face is covered with a pillow.

When we were finished, we lay together, almost asleep.

I've got to go, I said, I was supposed to leave at the crack of dawn.

Will you come back?

It was eleven before I got my faded denim on the road. Tessa stuffed a red bandanna in my back pocket, and with pack on my back, I walked down Grove, past the high school, past the park, past the police station, and came to University where I stuck out my thumb.

Hurry up, said the driver.

My pack's stuck.

Let me help you, he said, pulling me, pack and all into the front seat. In a scream of tires and a frenzy of gearshifts one would not expect of a Volkswagen, we bolted down University Ave. toward the freeway.

Where are you going? He asked as I struggled to get out of my pack.

Portland.

Groovy.

I have it off but for the buckle round my waist which seems to be jammed. I am sitting with my pack on the seat, and me hanging to the edge of the seat by the lip of my posterior,

Why are you in such a hurry? I ask.

My chick left for Sacramento ten minutes ago.

Oh- and you want to catch her? My arse has lost its grip. The buckle will not come undone.

She just came to Berkeley a few days ago. My finger has become wedged in the buckle. "I'd been making it with this other chick, casually, sort of an I Ching affair."

She found out?

She found a letter in my drawer. My roomate found her crying and writing 'Paul is a basturd' on my mattress with gold spray paint, B-A-S-T-U.R-D.

How do you know she went to Sacramento?

She told him. She was pulling out of the driveway when I drove up

The buckle on my pack gave way and I got up on the seat.

What kind of car does she have? I ask, thinking I might be useful as a lookout, now that my head is above the dashboard.

Red Mustang, She drives pretty fast, We are not in competition, never having quite broken the speed limit.

You know where she lives?

Next to my parents.

Should query him as to what he'll say when he finds her- better just mutter something about the hassles and changes love puts us through.

We cross the Carquinez Straits and the freeway cuts through historic Vallejo. In most cities the freeway skims over the top, or perhaps around the edge, but in Vallejo, the freeway is at ground level, and the city is built up to the edge, You almost expect to pass through a building, half on one side, half on the other.

On the other side of Vallejo, Interstate 80 expands to twelve lanes gently sweeping up a hill. Heavy trucks strain in the right hand lanes. Teenagers with chromed exhaust headers scream past on the left.

Beyond the hill, the road narrows again, and the illusion of flight is replaced by the prospect of another thousand miles of this dreary road.

We pass American Canyon Road.

What's so American about American Canyon Road?

What's so American about America? Caught up in the race for the girl next door, he doesn't want to talk, just imagine his hands in Italian racing gloves, gripped tight to the wheel in this earnest race.

What is American about America? I only feel American outside the country; when I come back, I don't quite know how to be American. Everything I do is an imitation, like early American furniture. Real America is somewhere I will never travel, like a dimension that precedes us, almost within our grasp, but never so much in sight that you could really say it exists—a phantom of previous generations.

I hope he gets his girl.

It is almost noon and the Woodland exit is bleak and hot, I prop up my pack and make a sign from a piece of cardboard.

It reads; PORTLAND

Playing the harmonica for company; I blow a few bars, lose the rhythm to stick out my thumb, then take the red bandanna from my back pocket and wipe my brow.

Nearby in a sign which reads, BEGIN FREEWAY. The back is scribbled with notes left by hitch hikers before me.

I'm adding the finishing touches to my own when a ride pulls up. I got in the back, and a cadaverous negro woman in the front spits what looks like prune juice out the door before closing it, and turns a vacant scowl toward me.

Where are you going? asks her husband, a kind man, less blasé about the world than his wife. Or more curious for company.

Just traveling around, going up to Portland now.

I used to travel some myself, no direction in particular. For an instant, his eyes have a far away look. Things have changed some, didn't have freeways. I used to ride trains, went all the way to Texas. His voice trails off and he declines to continue.

There's much new construction at UC Davis. We are passing it. I went there once. I drove up to see a girl I scarcely knew, and she proved undesirous of furthering our acquaintance even slightly. I should have told her I'd crawled on my knees from Berkeley. sThe day had not been lost. I ran into a girl from my high school who lived in a nearby apartment. Though we had nothing in common in high school, and less in common then, it was a pleasant afternoon.

I'm going to let you out here, you want to just keep on going on this road.

I thanked them and got out. She spit the same prune juice spit and they drove off.

It is almost one o’clock, and I am still on the near side of Woodland. A switch engine moves noisily past on the tracks which parallel the road. It delivers railroad cars to the grain elevator. I stood where they left me for forty-five minutes, it being too hot to walk anywhere else. I felt it prudent to move on, however, when the nearby hornets' nest resumed activities.

A bit up the road I passed a withered old man who was not sure what to do about me, but who was positive that he should be doing something other than what he was doing, which was gawking. He was walking into SmorgaBob’s cafe and I beamed goodwill his way and said hello.

He caught his breath and asked me where I was headed. I said Portland, and asked him where he was from.

Alabama, finest state in the union.

I'd once been to Alabama and told him so.

Did you got by Bessemer, that's my home town?

Yeah, I remember Bessemer, Impressed, he forced a quarter on me while wishing me luck on my journey, I bade him the same and continued up the road.

The switch engine grinds back and forth, and a long freight train passes. I come to a classic green railroad station.

Is this real America? A look around shows that it isn’t; the sign says Woodland, and it is indeed Woodland. The railroad station is a relic, a monument to real America placed in the Central Valley of California.

At a busy cross road, where my road turns left, I doff my pack and again put out my thumb.

Many cars pass; I drink half the contents of my canteen. Two cars going in the wrong direction called out encouragement. Hey, where are you going?

Portland.

We're going to Big Sur,

Have fun.

Yeah, good luck.

Three police cars, going my direction were kind enough not to notice me. Perhaps Woodland is not entirely bad. I keep swilling at my canteen because it is getting hotter.

An old camper slows down so a shave-headed low brow, sick with illegitimate concern, can stick his head out and intone in a fatherly drawl, Get a shave and a haircut and maybe someone'll give you a ride. I feel naked.

Two hours seemed a long time to spend on the outskirts of Woodland. Thinking there would be better luck on the other side, I started walking through town.

I'd not gone far when I came to the village green whereon were strewn a score of men. The green grass and ample shade set a scene well known to devotees of real America. This obviously was not real America, however, because the men were Mexican, and the trees were not elm. Two men in dirty undershirts approached me. They seemed hostile at first, but that was only their manner. Hey, where are you going?

To Portland.

And you think you're going to get there hitching?

It doesn't look like it from the luck I've had so far.

Where you from?

Berkeley.

I'd take the bus.

They invited me to join them under a luxuriant tree where we said little, but passed around a quart of beer in a brown paper bag. They were farm workers who had worked all morning, and now it was lunch. A big man whose teeth appeared to have been lost fighting, came up to the group and asked me where I was going and why.

I meet new people and do things I haven't done before.

Like what?

Like talking to you, having a beer in Woodland. He smiled as he thought about it, and broke into a laugh that showed all his missing teeth. When I got up, he shook my hand.

I smiled and with a jaunty gait, continued down the endless Mainstreet, I'd not gone far when a shiny jeep pulled up and offered a ride to the edge of town.

It was two boys about to go away to college and they asked me many questions about grades and tests which would be irrelevant the moment they got there.

The far side of town was more desolate then the near, I stood in front of a pipe factory with the John Deer Tractor Co. dealer across the road. A tractor plowed in ever narrowing circles. When the wind was right, I could see the driver sweating under a straw hat. Mostly the wind was wrong and tractor and driver were hidden in the dust they raised.

The road passes the place I stood in such a way that one can see the cars coming from a long way off. But the road dips, and the cars are lost to view for a minute, only to lob over a rise and pass by. I almost finished the contents of my canteen in the first four and a half hours on the road. An old blue Chevy surprised me. I almost got in without my pack. As we pulled away, I glanced back at the tractor and wondered if it was a John Deer.

My driver was a young man who asked me the inevitable questions of destination and intent. I replied to his queries and asked him how far he was going.

Up the road a piece. Do all you guys in Berkeley have so much hair?

A lot of people do.

I guess it's sort of the style there.

More or less.

I don't know, I guess you get used to it.

I don't like to shave myself.

You can get a barber to shave you.

We talked about school and demonstrations, and since he had a marked fixation