1969—HITCHHIKING TO FLORIDA—Part 3

Continuation of a tale told here:

1969—HITCHHIKING TO FLORIDA—Part 2—

One daunting thing about looking back 54 years is to see my innocence, before it got mangled. I now know what the future held, but the sixteen-year-old me did not, as he jotted in his journal. In some ways it makes me want to cringe, because the naivete seems so extreme. It is like watching a lamb trot into a pack of wolves. However the thing of it was, I was by no means alone. In some ways the vast majority of the Baby Boom generation was like a huge herd of lambs, and the wolves looked about dumbfounded.

I think Baby Boomers were able to take goodness for granted because America’s founding fathers strove very hard to create laws in harmony with the Law. I’ll leave it to you to define the difference between law and Law, but think I was blessed to grow up in a land where such integration was taken for granted.

However taking such blessings for granted can be another word for “gullible.” You assume others are playing by the same rules, when they are not. They are operating under a different set of savage laws of lust and greed and power, a law of the jungle. Ouch. Time for the School-of-Hard-Knocks. Songs of innocence give way to songs of experience.

As the Baby Boom generation walked blithely into a shredder it is easy to see them, on one hand, as a pack of suckers and chumps, and, on the other hand, as cruising for a bruising. After all, they did a lot of talking about “alternative lifestyles”, and the word “alternative” does not sit well with “taken for granted.” If a generation abandons the tried and true, they have no one but themselves to blame if they wind up with the broken and false.

However such a view fails to fully credit that which was taken for granted with the majesty it possessed. The word “alternative” took things for granted, as did all else, for what was taken for granted was infused with Law. The Law had a majesty that made it unthinkable to break it. That is why the wolves were dumbfounded. For a while they couldn’t remember how to be corrupt.

I like to believe that, in the end, it is the corrupt who are the deluded ones. They think they play the naive for suckers and chumps, and that they are ever so clever, but, as a commenter recently replied to me, “The Law is fully enforced and no one escapes its actions, no one can plead against it, its tenets are unspoken; so speeches are of no use.” Truth will triumph. God will not be mocked.

Some will respond that God will be mocked. Lots of corrupt people mock God every day, with nearly every deed they do, and say, “Neener neener Neee Ner” to the sky, and not a single snap of a thunderbolt ever parts their hair. At worst, a tiny crackle of static electricity an be dimly heard as they comb their magnificent manes. And therefore, if you are awaiting divine retribution, you start to feel a little impatient and even drum your fingers, just a bit. But, as you read on in my 1969 journal, you’ll see a sixteen year old become corrupted, and mock God, and hopefully (if you like me) you’ll be glad the Lord is not quick to anger, or I’d be ashes six times over, long, long ago.

One reason I share these embarrassing records of my past is because I wish people could see, as I have seen, what a delusion corruption is. If we could agree corruption is a bad thing, then maybe we could get back to taking goodness for granted. Call it naivete all you want, it was a very nice state of affairs.

In yellowing pages I meet myself
Aged sixteen: Saint jaw to jaw with heathen.
Begone demons! Let me talk to this elf.
I won't slander a youth's love of freedom.

Around us are chains. Loyal, faithful chains.
Young men want to bust free. To just say fuck
To responsibility. Age explains
Freedom's not free, but youth trusts in luck
And charges ahead into nets and snares
Vowing they will snap ropes with their brute strength.

Old men roll their eyes, but what old man dares
Pursue freedom, and go to such a length
To rock and roll, and have a flag unfurled
Which shrieks, "I won't be slave to this sick world!"

Sunday, April 20, 1969

I got up late and had breakfast. Shit.
It was 11:30. How can I make 400
Miles on six good hours. I want
to make 400 miles today. I'm going
 through small road country too.

South of Richmond I-95 was not completed. There were some big swamps to traverse, and in those places one drove down from the modern highway and entered “small road country.”

Tell me if you don’t think the next two rides seem contrived. I’d not include them side by side, if I were writing a novel, the way they happened in real life.

Ride 10 Richmond to where 301 and 95 split north of emporia how far 21 miles who Sort of a wimp. Sunday School teacher; he had his popcicle stick and pipe cleaner arks and mangers in the back seat.

Ride 11 where to where end of last ride to Effingham S.C., 10 miles south of Florence at the junction of 52 and 301 How far 248 miles who a carier navy man. Had been in the navy for 19 years. He first talked about girls, "Never pass up a pussy" "Are the girls in your town free with their pussy or do they let it grow together." Then he talked about his wife. He had married twice and had 12 kids altogether. He first said, "never pass up a pussy," then he complained about his wife. A real hypocrit.

He bought me a steak dinner and then offered me a place to sleep in Charlestown. I refused the nights sleep. It was out of my way.                                             

It may be unfair of me, but bells, whistles, sirens, flashing lights and red flags are waving a “sexual predator alert”, now that I’m old and distrustful, when I look back at the “carier navy man.” When someone buys you a meal and offers you a bed, one does not need to be a woman to suspect what is next. However at age sixteen I mention no suspicions; just that “it was out of my way.”

I had to be grateful for a four hour drive south, and for a steak dinner, but my writing disapproves of the guy, though I doubt I had any standards so high for my own behavior. However I wasn’t married, and he was. I did have some sort of half-formed morality in my skull, which makes it ironic that I dismiss the Sunday School Teacher of the ride before as a “wimp”. That dismissal of an apparently kindly person leaps out at me.

Apparently any mention of religion caused all sorts of bells, whistles, flashing lights and sirens to go off in my head. Not that I’d ever had a bad experience in church. I’d only been to church around ten times in my entire life, and nothing bad ever happened. My contempt must have come from my home, but I can’t recall any discussions.

In any case, if God fried people who mock him, there would have been a bit of thunder that Sunday Morning, and a pile of charcoal by a Carolina roadside.

Interstate 95 was only partially completed through the Great Pee Dee River swamps. But it had been completed places where my road atlas said it wasn’t, which I found upsetting, because I had my route very carefully planned out.

I think we left the new superhighway up near Dillon and took U.S. 301, which was the old main route south, and went through the middle of every town on the way.

As we first came down from the elevation of I-95 the sailor pulled into a small gas station in a swamp, and I got out to stretch my legs. I met a sixteen year old white boy, and, try as we would, we could not understand each other, though we both were speaking English. The sailor found it very amusing, but we found it frustrating and a little alarming. Regional differences were far greater back then, and South Carolina was still very undeveloped and poor. I doubt Florence had a structure more than three stories tall.

At Effingham the sailor was taking a fork on US 52 south to Charleston, but I did not dare depart from my carefully mapped-out route, which stayed on US 301. Effingham was south of Florence, but the town was so small I doubted it had a YMCA.

Ride 12 where to where mile north of Efingram 
to Florence. How far 9 miles who truck driver

I tried hichhiking south but it got
dark so I turned back towards florence.
I stoped at a truck stop and got a ride
into florence. nice guy.

Round up   318 miles in 6 hours
63 mph   106 miles per ride
would have been better if I had waken up
In time.

In florence I sat in a drug store
And talked with some people for a
time. The YMCA had closed along
with a charity place so I'm sleeping  on
the front porch of the YMCA

The spacious porch of the boarded-up YMCA was entirely screened in by an overgrowth of Kudzu, but the vines couldn’t keep out the racket of the nearby freight yard. At first the squealing of boxcar’s steel wheels, clashing cars, rumbling locomotives and occasional toot of whistles were very annoying, but gradually the sound seemed to change and to lull me into a strange sort of trance, wherein I was not fully asleep but felt wonderfully rested. I was in a cheap sleeping bag on a hard wooden floor, but felt the comfort of a feather-bed. It was a striking experience, and quite nice.

Four years later I had become far more interested in topics that seemed spiritual, or at least otherworldly, and was on my way to a retreat in Myrtle Beach with a friend who was a follower of Meher Baba. As we passed through Marion I saw a sign pointing the way to Florence, and remembered the experience I had listening to the trains, and after relating the tale to my friend I heard a peculiar explanation.

Apparently, after years of seclusion, Meher Baba had invited his western followers to a “darshan” in India in April of 1969, but then he “dropped his body” on January 31. Somewhat amazingly, the followers went ahead with the darshan without Meher Baba being physically present, and by all accounts the “vibes” were overwhelmingly beautiful. I can’t say, because I wasn’t there. However my friend suggested maybe I was there, unconsciously but in spirit, because I had turned back towards the road to Myrtle Beach and spent the night facing that particular Mecca. Hmm. All I am certain of is the next day began with this entry:

Monday, April 21, 1969   Trains made sweet music last night

(Story is continued here:)

1969 —HITCHHIKING TO FLORIDA—Part 4—