Last  Exit to Nowhere

 "Seeking only workman's wages, I come looking for a job, but I get no offers, just a "come on" from the whores on Seventh Ave." - Simon & Garfunkel

" My thumb goes up, a car passes by, oh won't someone please help a guy, hitchin' a ride, hitchin' a ride" - Vanity Fare

Hitch-hiking and looking for a job. Two pastimes that took up a majority of my time back in the 70s.

The road had a loneliness that appealed to me. It gave me time to think, really think about what might lie at the end of my journey and all that had come before. Introspective demeanor, I guess. There is no shortage of stories in this blog about my hitchhiking adventures. My stab at poetry is littered with them. It was a time that was unique to my early manhood and has not nor cannot ever really come back.

"The Road"

All I have are memories of the greatness that once was, the freedom, the angst, and the fear of tht long ribbon of blacktop heading to far distant places. What might hppen between this point and that was a complete crap shoot. Getting rides from nice families, servicemen on their way home on leave, a van filled with smoke and long hairs pasing the bottle round, even a stolen car with a maniacal sledge hammer head that I was lucky to escape. Then there were the frequent unexpeced thunderstorms, the long line hitchers on an on ramp who arrived before you did and last but not leaset, the odd jobs I would find along the way.

One of the great institutions during the 70s was a company called "Man Power". Almost every town had one. Like WPA and the CCC during the depression, these joints doled out day jobs to willing stewbums where you were promised a day's pay for a day's work. In a pinch it was alright, however, the work could be especially tainted with dollops of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" so you had to be vigilant. You were not guaranteed a job on any particular day, so you had to arrive early to get in line. I'm here to tell you, no matter where you are in the world there is nowhere quite as cold as 5 am in the morning in anytown USA. Having an empty stomach at the same time is no fun as well.

The jobs I performed ran the gambit from carpet installer to book bindery machine operator. The only saving grace was that at the end of the day you could collect your cash and finally get a bite to eat and then head on back down the road. It is the connective tissue of all Americans, the thing that keeps them tethered together, for better or worse. Songs, books, and movies are filled with road stories, there just might be something to it.

 

"It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it"   

- General Robert E. Lee

The Hill

This country celebrates and is based on war. In our short history as a nation, we have either started or gleefully participated in no less than 10 wars. Besides the use of bullets, we have declared war on a myriad of things: The war on drugs, The war on poverty, The war on hunger, The war on equal rights, and a boatload more that don't quickly come to mind. Being a kid in the 60s was to wallow in the celebration of war. It was the Centennial of the American Civil War, with parades and celebrations throughout the country. The media was overloaded with the war in the movies and television. The weekly show "Combat!" on ABC was one of my favorites. A show based on small platoon action mostly in Italy and later France and Germany. Lots of death, lots of "Amerikaner Dog". Is it any wonder that little boys everywhere had all forms of small arms weapons and used them in their everyday adventures?

Little Johnny mowing them down

 

The very mention of "The Hill" fills me with thoughts of warm late summer afternoons when my friends and myself would go on neighborhood patrol looking for the "enemy", might be "Japs", might be "Krauts" whatever our imagination could come up with. Armed to the teeth we began our walk along the well-worn trail in between the houses on the adjoining blocks. It took nerves of steel and the ultimate in stealth to make our way without getting caught as we weaved our way over fences behind garages and lightly traipsed through gardens of begonias and tulips, getting caught and yelled at would abort our mission.

Pausing behind a garage we took a breather and then quietly looked around the corner to see if any old informants might be watering their lawns. The all clear given, off we moved in single file watching out for big piles of branches and other lawn debris that might slow us down. Late afternoon sunshine turned a golden hue as we approached our objective. A cool breeze caught our faces and braced us for the coming fury of battle. Strange, as a child I never remember really sweating, being cold, yes, but not sweating, don't know why this comes to mind it's just a thought to set my mind to a time more than 50 years ago.

The trail ended at an expansive area between two garages, our jumping-off point. Upon a short column of concrete and brick, it is here that another twisted saga of boyhood took place. Conveniently and cleverly called "The Worm Torture Factory". It was here that we turned the compost and found large, juicy worms and decided to pounce upon them with reckless abandon. To my knowledge, none that were involved ever became serial killers, that's as far as we took our baby boomer dementia. Looking back I can only feel disgusted that I would have the temerity to look upon a living creature with such callousness, my cross to bear.

As we peered through the smoke and "fog of war" we saw a small ridge known to all kid-dom as "The Hill". In reality, it was about 1 to 1 1/2 feet high, some hill, huh? It sat at the far side of an expansive suburban lawn, the owners of which, we had no idea. In our minds, it was shortly after D-Day1944 and our small platoon was slowly making our way inland from the beachhead looking for machine gun nests and enemy activity in general.

The late afternoon sun ducked behind a small cloud, giving us a moment's chance to dash down the driveway to "The Hill". We hit the dirt just as the Vickers Machine Gun opened up on us, shooting clumps of dirt just above our heads. Our boys responded with shots from their M1s and our Sergeant gave the krauts a short burst of his Tommy gun. We were pinned down. We needed to eliminate this installation before the main body came up. We all turned our heads to look at ol' Greenie, as he was the best crawler in the platoon. Slowly John edged his way to the end of the hill and as we kept up covering fire he made his way around until he was close enough to lobe a grenade into the midst of the enemy. The ensuing explosion showered us with dirt and bits of metal. We peered over the top. There stood ol' Greenie grinning from ear to ear looking down at the dead Krauts. We had lived to continue our patrol.

I had probably the best of childhoods. my friends and I could conjure up any one of a multitude of games just using our surroundings and the things we had at hand. Life has held many treacherous turns in the ensuing 60 years. No matter what may happen, I have these memories that warm my heart and reminds me how wonderful it was to live my best life.

"Cryin' won't help you. prayin' won't do you no good 

When the levee breaks, mama you got to move" - Kansas City Joe McCoy

It's hard to know what I'm talking about if you didn't live through it. Sure there is no shortage of print and other media explaining the times, probably one of the most famous episodes in American History, certainly the most flamboyant, until now.

We were all dancing on a warm summer breeze with nothing but a nice fat joint to pass the time with. Underneath, however, everyone had a gut-wrenching fear that the whole thing could explode any minute. Then Viet Nam ended, Nixon resigned, Manson was behind bars and everything settled back into a tense but placid normalcy. Most everyone I knew felt that we had dodged a bullet, we took the worst that could be thrown at us and come away somewhat unscathed. But the fear was still there and it crept along a little bit each day. Politicians regained control and oh so slowly began to tighten their grip.

 The "Free Love" generation was dead and buried, what's worse is that many of these same idealists switched sides, secretly they thought that they could change things from the inside. It seemed plausible, it might even work, but, and this is a biggie, they had no clue that a leather-chaired, wood-paneled boardroom at a prestigious law firm could twist you into a mold of their choosing, or the easy money that could be made after the super tight grip of the weasel special interest groups, lobbyists, sunk their fangs in deep. They thought "What the heck, I lived on alfalfa sprouts and yeast for two years in a commune, I've done my comeuppance". The only problem was that by the time they got chewed up and then spat into the halls of Congress, they became far worse than any of their predecessors.

So that brings us to the here and now. My innards are tied up into knots and I don't think I've felt any emptier than I do now. The media and their belching screaming heads have compressed my world into this tiny area, and even here I feel that unless we get some help, and fast, we might be headed down a treacherous path where child molesters and flagrant liars rule the day. No t for me, uh uh. 

On my back patio sits a large styrofoam cooler that contains a copious amount of bottled beer, long necks only, please. Digging in I pull out a new flavor Sam Adams. It goes well with how I feel and the time of year, I think it's called "Banshee Blue", guess I'll find out why. Taking a deep drink I walk into my living room and head up the stairs to the bedroom. There, in the top right corner drawer is Dad's sock drawer. The same place where my father hid all his illicit and fun shit, even the girlie mags he swiped from me vowing to chuck 'em but never did. Guess we had the same taste in smut. With the advent and advancement of the internet, there is no more need to hide mags in the drawer. Now the contents reside in a hidden folder deep within the dark confines of my own personal dark web. Dark indeed, I frighten myself with how far down the corridor my depravity has taken me. The brain, being the erogenous organ, happily views this nonsense even if nothing else twitched much anymore, "Big Lou's like you, he's on meds too"

The great bandaid of this world, medication keeps most everything in check, but there is no telling when the dam might burst and Redeeming Love would be all but lost by the fury of the flood waters. I crave redemption from my stupid life, from this stupid existence filled with trivial crap day in and day out, waiting for the other shoe to fall. One of my friends on Facebook posted a cartoon after one of my particularly vile venom-spewing whining outbursts, they seem to come more frequently these days. Anyway, he posted a cartoon of Homer Simpson's father saying nothing but shaking his fist at a passing fluffy cumulous cloud. Very apropos, Bravo!

I seem to have strayed a bit. Actually, I might be able to answer my own musing about yesteryear and now. There, in my sock drawer is a complete set of "Heroes of the Blues" cards drawn by that master complainer, Robert Crumb. They pretty much contain the answer to everything or at least point in a good direction. Produced by the Yazoo Recording Company, these cards are what I refer to when I think of "Make America Great Again". They were produced at a time when the Arts seemed to be having a revival and good old times recorded music was resurfacing thanks to the CD. Many hate the format but so much has become obtainable that was not earlier with vinyl, So, praise the Lord, I have been saved! Sometimes all it takes is an old sock drawer.

While I am at a high point on this emotional roller coaster, I'm going to cut and run and save the rest for another day, enough spewing for the moment. Adios.

 

 Journalism 101

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastical universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle–that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting–on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark–that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. ~Hunter S. Thompson

(Book: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)

 Kansas

 There is something I just can't put my finger on when it comes to my thoughts about Kansas. Kansas, all of it. From the beautiful hill country of the east to the flatter than flat sublime beauty of the west. 

I spent some of the best years of my life there. There are plenty of stories about how I wound up there, they are sprinkled throughout this blog, seek 'em out if and when you find the time. I was blessed when there was no reason on earth that I deserved a blessing, from anywhere or anyone. 

There is a FaceBook Group "Kansas Sunrises and Sunsets" that features amazing photography from its members. Seek them out for a treasure trove of beauty.

 

Sharon Springs, Kansas

Downtown Marion, Kansas

 January 6th

I sent a Tweet to Officer Harry Dunn of the Capitol Police:

"Watching your comments MSNBC leads me to believe that no matter how hateful and vile "They" are, "We" are larger in numbers and stronger than any of

"Them" could ever be. Thank you for being an inspiring voice."

Justice and accountability are all that I want. I want to be freed of the gut-wrenching hatred that I have for the former president, members of the far-right congress, and the thugs not yet rounded up. The poor hapless bastards languishing in jail right now are the tiniest of fish in a huge cesspool pond. Trump continues to spout lies and has and will continue to abandon those who have been rounded up.

Jefferson Davis spent 2 years in a cell in Fortress Monroe, in a small room with an armed guard and a candle that continually burned. At the very least Trump and his minions deserve a similar fate.

It's ironic that those wishing to "Drain the Swamp" have created a far more toxic and fetid waste dump. The conspiring senators and congressmen who whispered in the back halls of congress like pox-spreading lepers will be caught and prosecuted then be summarily stomped on by the Capitol Police and the millions of idiots who have finally seen the light. And please, sweet Jesus, throw in Rudy, Sidney, Pillow Guy, and anyone else you deem fit to feel the wrath of your terrible swift sword.

"Dear Lord, hear my prayer. May the enemies of this great nation flee before your righteousness and retribution, may they be rounded up and soundly stomped and their pulverized remains be spread like dead and decayed seeds to the four corners of the globe. Let your Kingdom bring forth a new age of prosperity, love, and forgiveness for all time, and please cast into hellfire and damnation Donald J. Trump. Dear Lord, hear my prayer"

 Fearless

The summer of '72 was a watershed moment for me. I, among millions of other baby boomers, would be heading to the polls for the first time for a Presidential election. People who claim to have info on such things said that, as a group, we could actually elect the next president, IF we got our collective act together. Like countless others, I was a long-haired wasteoid with about as much interest in politics as I was interested in calculus.  They were both loosely concerned with ways of crunching numbers, and they both lay inside the realm of total button-down types, whom I didn't understand at all. My father was a Nixon man, had always been. He believed wholeheartedly in the "Dominoe Theory", And why not? The collection of hacks who were pushing this shit down their throats scared the bejabbers out of them. They were of the generation who fought Fascism and won. But they also knew something far more insidious was on the horizon, Communism. So it's natural that they wanted to hold close to their bosom all they had fought for, suburbia, baseball, shopping malls, middle-class splendor, and Fizzies instant bubbling soft drink. 

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but don't these "Tabs" kinda look like they might have a drop of something on them. That, if ingested, and with the right brainwashing might lead you in a horrific way of voting for the Nixon/Agnew ticket. The Army had been experimenting with this for years. Isn't it just quite possible that they were targeting me and thousands like me? My father worked on Madison Ave. in an advertising firm. Remember the series "Ad Men" well, that slimy shit was pretty much true. Anyway, one of his clients were the treacherous bastards who manufacture Fizzies and I remember a kitchen drawer jam-packed with these mind-altering tablets. He encouraged my friends to try 'em. WTF! was my old man really trying to spike my generation into voting Republican? It was a place I would revisit many times while on wild drunken binges and sacred Peyote sabbaticals.

Summer of '72. Going to summer school as I didn't graduate due to flunking Political Science, which was a BS course as I was supposed to be taking US History II. They brought some hot-shot college professor in and he did the big switcheroo and delved into politics and the primaries that were underway. Naturally, I didn't give a hangman's damn about politics and promptly cut most of the classes, so I wound up in a nearby college taking the summer school US History II course. I was certainly more than qualified for the course and wound up giving lectures on mid-nineteenth-century stuff. The professor finally asked what the hell was I doing in this makeup class, so I told him.

So I spent my summer in school a couple of days a week. The rest of the time I was apprenticing in a film development company in mid-town Manhatten which specialized in putting together the final touches on the commercials for the fat cats on Madison Ave. I can thank dear old Dad for this job. Honestly, it was an ok job, the folks were nice and a couple of gorgeous young women worked there, not to mention all the tail-walking down the street during lunch hour. It was during one of these lunch hours that I met Kathleen. She was on 5th Ave passing out flyers and stuff for George McGovern.  With my libido in full gear, I approached her, struck up a conversation, and before you could say "Bob's yer Uncle" I was a member of the team and spent my lunch hours hanging out with Kathleen. I had just turned 18 and I believe she was 21. Actually fooled her into thinking I was some sort of hot shot playing in a band and all. Total crap. But I had a couple of dates with hr during the course of the summer and got a real treat when she allowed my perverted ass to enter her apartment. She lived in Fort Lee, NJ, and the mess she and I made of her pad when we "got it on", well, it looked like a couple of feral cats had escaped being tied up in a gunny sack and had run amok. 

Courtesy of my personal collection

There was another gal I met on the commuter bus I took every day to the city. She lived in Hackensack, was 23, beautiful,  and just over a tough breakup from her then-fiance. Wouldn't you just bet that ol' Trouser packing Pud, the cute long-haired freak took advantage of that situation?  Thinking back, I cannot realize how the hell I pulled this shit off, I had zero experience with doing this kind of demented and lascivious tap dance around women. I can only chalk it up to the alignment of the stars, planets, and whatever else you want to throw in there. Indeed, I was a reckless, devil may care miscreant humping anything including cored apples and fresh liver. This reckless abandon would serve me well later on in this decade. I was attending my own brand of summer school and I was the teacher, student, and curriculum master all rolled up into a neat little unstoppable package, roaring down the highway with a joint, a can of cheap beer, and an 8 Track blasting Ten Years After in my father's early 60s Volkwagon 3-speed Bug.  This was the real American dream and the window for grabbing it with all your might was getting ready to close.

How come my parents let this crap slide on by? Well, for one thing, my Mother and Sister were at the shore house for the summer and my father worked all day, played golf, and spent a 3 day weekend, every week, "down the shore".

This summer seemed to last forever, so much more was in store.

Sunday nights were reserved for friends coming over and hanging out. I loved my early 70s/ late 60s music. Cool nights in the backyard with fellow denizens of the deep and their girls, all friends. I had met a girl a couple of blocks over, her name was Betsy, long dark hair in pigtails and a smile that could melt the coldest heart. This one particular Sunday I was standing in my driveway conversing with some friends, music blaring.

Up the driveway walked Betsy. Regardless of all the luck, I had had that summer, she lit me up like a champion pinball player hitting special after special. I don't believe we ever made love, she was so much better than that. She was for hanging out with, talking with, holding hands, and kissing. Some of my closest friends hung with me that night. One, in particular, my closest friend, Ralph, had a shell of a VW Bus that he was installing a new engine in and redoing the insides to make it a sweet magic carpet ride on the road. He had plans to finish it up by mid-August and then head to the environs of Montreal where a camping ground existed by a flowing river. Supposedly the hash and wine flowed from on high like a gift from the Gods.

The summer was winding down. Summer school was over and my apprenticeship had ended So I bid farewell to Kathleen and my bus buddy, Linda. If you want to know the truth, I think they welcomed the short interlude but were just as pleased to be shed of me. I would see more of Linda, Kathleen is just a fond whisper of long ago. I don't seem to forget women I have cared for in the past. I recently got back in touch with a gal I had met in Kansas and she was floored by the fact that I even remembered her, much less took the time to track her down. I had to remind her that my heart is permanently tattooed on my sleeve. It's just another facet of my mania. I'm an absolute psychotic when it comes to women, all it takes is one little thing to knock me out. I told a story somewhere on this blog about how I was being treated by a female physician, not much older than me, and just as sweet and caring as all get out. Anyway, when she would enter the examing room, instead of closing the door with her hand, she would lift her leg and close the door with her booted foot. Sounds like no big deal, right? That sent me into delirium! I thought it was so fucking cute I had to take a firm grip on myself to keep from grabbing her and kissing her. I could see the headline "Middle-aged maniac runs amok in Medical Office. Tazed to bring him down, more at 6." I swear I'm fucking nuts. I've been addicted to a few bad things in my life, smokes, and barbituates, but the worst is women. I know it's immature and I should keep it in its proper place, especially due to the fact that I now look like the incarnation of Aqualung.

See? I can't even write a story without going off on some drug-addled tangent about women and door closings and all the other shit clouding my mind. 

Summer was winding down and thus far it had been as memorable as any I had ever experienced. I now spent most of my time at Ralph's house down in Scotch Plains. Ralph was a master woodworker, having learned from his grandfather who was amazingly skilled. Along with Ralph was his buddy, Fred. Fred was a few years older than us but knew how to put cars together. So the two of them labored over the microbus for a week, full time. I was like the quintessential bag boy getting coffee and food at various times and keeping the joints going. We smoked a powerful amount of grass, one of Fred's other talents, a master procurer of weed. It was also at this time that I became a true, dyed-in-the-wool California cowboy. Ralph and Fred both were both Hank Williams freaks like no other and they also played a steady diet of the Grateful Dead's "Working Man Dead". Those, mixed with Dead offshoot "New Riders of the Purple Sage" was like a gigantic whiff of amyl nitrate, roaring up my back and instantly transforming me into an early version of the molted slimy individual I am now.

The day dawned hot and sticky. Fred, in his Cadillac, Ralph, a friend, and I piled into the microbus and headed to Canada. This was long before you needed a passport to go into Canada. However, the agents guarding the back to the USA side were notoriously rough on longhairs in their zeal to find illicit drugs. Knowing full well of this, Ralph had built a secret compartment in the van to hold our pound of weed, it seemed impregnable. We boiled on over the border and straight into the hinterland. There was no turning back now. The van was a dense cloud of  Mexican weed, I rolled down the window, and Fred, tailing us, blasted his horn and motioned to pull over. "You fucking moron, what's wrong with you!" Fred had jumped out of the caddy and came running at us. We stood with a look of bewilderment. "You're getting half the Province of Quebec wrecked! They'll lock us up for God knows how long!" We stood still not uttering a sound, though I thought I heard a bit of weeping coming from our third guy, Pete. I'd have to keep my eye on him, if things got bad he might cave, I had to be ready for that eventuality.  

The next couple of weeks were a blazing blur of miles on the road, bummer hash deals gone bad, gangs of French-speaking Quebec City toughs trying to rip us off and dump our bodies on the side of the road. I remember bits and pieces. For instance, hanging around the old Expo World's Fair Park, drinking high-power Canadian lager. That coupled with the black tar hash we did score turned us into a pack of howling desperate ugly Americans who were shunned at every turn of the corner. I had peeled off from the group and entered what I thought was an eatery. In actuality it was a barber shop, I thought the barber pole looked like a candy cane. I stumbled in, hair to my shoulders wearing a cowboy hat. Two men were clipping hair, All four stopped and stared at me. Did I drag something in behind me? They began to babble at me incoherently and I turned and ran for my life, I forgot to open the door and slammed into it, fell back, and desperately tried to regain composure. I saw myself doing hard time up on the Great Slave Lake building dams and cataloging walruses. I scrambled to my feet, smiled, mumbled something about the evils of socialism, and high-tailed it out of there. "Where were you, we thought you'd been dragged away to jail or something?" Pete inquired. "We've got to get the hell out of here", I whispered, "There's a couple of Sweeny Todd bastards hot on my trail, if they get us, we're toast."

After that, all I remember is that we were speeding down a four-lane highway singing loudly to Hank Williams songs on the 8-track. In the back of the bus was a framed photo of Hank himself. He was smiling as if he approved of our reckless behavior. The next few days were filled with camping fun in various locales with various Canadian characters. All were treated to real American madness as the smoke and beer flowed freely. Many a night I crawled back to my tent twisted and totally spent. We limped back to the border and made it across with little incident. The officers gave us a bored look and waved us through.

Yea, it had been a mighty enjoyable summer, from beginning to end. Even McGovern got the Democratic nod at their convention. This was in spite of that old hack, Humphrey trying to throw a wrench into the proceedings by g attempting to go back on the "winner take all delegates in California" deal. His troubles came to naught and he was stomped out of existence by the McGovern juggernaut. However, there was a foul stench in the corner of the auditorium. A vision of things to come, the spawn of Satan, George Wallace was busy making deals with Prince of Darkness. A deal was struck and the fruits would be seen on into the future. Wallace had awakened a truly sick and demented "Populist Movement" in America. These were the working men of the country who didn't like the government and surely didn't trust them worth a tinkers damn. Within this disgruntled mass were shreds of conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, Hell's Angel's dropouts, and maybe even a couple of old ballplayers from the "Dead Ball Era".  We would all get a taste of this rancid cookie soon enough.