A continuation from
The movie “Easy Rider” wouldn’t be released until later in 1969, so I’m not sure where my preconception that southern police were bad people came from. I know it didn’t arise solely from the other hitchhiker, who warned me, during the first ride of my adventure, to “watch out for southern cops.” It now seems like a northern and Hollywood snobbishness, likely partially derived from the civil rights movement and the idea all southern people were racists, which involved hypocrisy. Northerners and Hollywood certainly were not without sin. Boston had its own segregated neighborhoods.
The northern preconception that southern police were bad people may have in part been due to the simple northern sin of driving above the speed limit, which was not a wise thing to do through southern towns. It was said that some southern towns were quite poor, and ticketing northerners was a good source of income.
I was made aware northerners had their own problems by the fact one of my older brothers had a black girlfriend, which was rare in 1969 (or rare if you were white.) One time, while dropping her off at a bus station in Hartford, Connecticut, the police saw the well-dressed white college student with the well-dressed black woman, and immediately assumed she was a prostitute and he was a “John.” My brother did not appreciate their attention and wound up in jail. So I was aware that policemen could make mistakes. However I deemed the event a fluke, likely brought on because I knew that particular brother could be pugnacious, and I persisted with my belief that police, or northern police, were people we hired to take care of us.
Police were basically our employees. Why should southern police be any different? This was the question that apparently ran through my mind as twilight grew in Orlando, and as I discovered the small city had no YMCA. Spotting a policeman, I walked up to him and explained my predicament.
(I didn’t describe the event in my “Private Files”, so I am basing this all on memories 54 years old.)
The officer was immediately concerned and immediately his eyes sought their corners, as he sought his memory for places which might board me overnight for as little as a YMCA charged. ($5.00, back in those days when minimum wage was $1.60/hour.) An idea popped into his head, and he invited me into his police car. I sat in the front, not the back. We drove a dozen blocks down the quiet street and then pulled into a place without neon. He swung from the car, and I followed him across a dark parking lot into a lobby with a thick, stained carpet, where the policeman spoke with a clerk behind a counter, pointing at me often. The clerk nodded and the policeman left.
And that was my experience of southern police.
The clerk then took me to a small bedroom upstairs, pointed at a shared bathroom down the hall, and explained a dinner I could pay for would be served downstairs for another hour, but no later. I took a shower I desperately needed, donned my final clean shirt but kept my grubby jeans, and hurried downstairs to have a bland meal of chicken, tinned beans, and mashed potatoes with gravy, in a dimly lit and half empty dining hall, and then went upstairs to write my entry in my “Private Files”, covering Ride 13 through Ride 18 of my trip, and then concluded:
Round up 439 miles in 10 hours
43.9 miles per hour 73.2 miles per ride.
Pretty good job.
Sleeping tonight in an old persons home.
It is damp with cockroaches and
mildew on the bottom of the rugs.
I really pity the old people here.
wrote poem - in back
In the back of the notebook this appears:
I find the abrupt appearance of poetry interesting, because at this point in my life I had no clear aspirations to become a poet. In fact this abrupt poem suggests “being a poet” is not an occupation one trains for, but rather is an affliction.
The scribbled-out part, and a stanza on the next page (even more heavily scribbled out) rhymingly describes an old man who grabs the arms of his rocking chair, and wonders “does he dare“, and then others turn to see if he’s there, but he has hobbled down the stair. Where is he going? That apparently defeated me; the man’s escape seemed too what I called “corn-ball”, and I scribbled out the sentimental mush. However it indicates I felt the old people were incarcerated, much like I felt incarcerated by high school, and they wanted to seek like I was seeking. But what was I seeking? I couldn’t stretch my mind that far.
Guessing, fifty-four years after the fact, I would say that particular “old person’s home” was eking out an existence by serving those elderly who were reduced to eking out an existence.
The 1969 economy was booming, which allowed President Johnson and Congress to feel free to overspend, which may have not mattered much to the huge numbers of Baby Boomers entering the workforce and both earning and spending, for they could demand raises to their their wages, but did matter to old people on fixed incomes. Since LBJ (President Johnson) had assumed power every dollar an old person had saved had been taxed 15% by inflation, and was worth only 85 cents.
What does such inflation mean? In cases where the elderly had planned to spend 90% of their money getting by with 10% left over as “disposable income”, inflation’s cruel and secret government tax left the elderly 5% short of having enough to “get by”, with no “disposable income” to spend having fun. Retirement was ruined. And I was staying at a sort of flop house for these ruined retirees.
As I came down for breakfast I had no such economic awareness. Two years later, as I passed my “A-level” exam for Economics in Great Britain, I had a better idea of what a scam inflation is for unscrupulous politicians, but at age sixteen I was still innocent. Furthermore, I wanted a coffee. Once again I had stayed up too late writing, the night before.
In 1969 coffee cost ten cents a cup. Think of that. A person could make money charging you a dime for a coffee.
I hope the proprietor also made money on the two eggs, two strips of bacon, and two toasted slices of bread, with some butter and jam, which I had for breakfast. I would like to believe harboring a sixteen-year-old for a night helped that place stay solvent. However I wouldn’t recommend eating there. The old folk were certainly not looking “out the window”. I had the distinct impression that every eye was looking inward, at me. However they were all too polite to bother me, except for a lone old man, who shuffled over to ask me for my story.
I basically gave him my spiel by rote. I was writing a report for my English Class, “What I Did On My Vacation”, by hitchhiking down to see my Grandparents in Florida. I expected to get there by that afternoon. And that was all the information I chose to offer.
Now I kick myself a bit. I should have asked the old man for his story. I might have learned something. However I think in some ways I was suffering a sort of overload. I had too much information already, and didn’t want any more.
It is wonderful, looking back, that I should stay in such a place of incarceration on my final night on the road, because my journey was an escape from a place of incarceration called “high school”. In some vague way my mind was being forced to concentrate on what I was escaping, and what I was seeking. (I get no credit for this; it was the angels guiding me, and the Lord commanding those angels.)
It only took me three rides to arrive at my grandparents, but even these three rides seem strangely choreographed.
Tuesday April 22, 1969 Up late - at breakfast with all the old folk staring at me. God, do they want to go with me! I feel like I'm leaving them behind to die. Ride 19 where to where Orlando to intercection of 4 and 27 How far 26 miles who truck driver who used to be a race car driver but he hurt his back in a acident (he showed me scars)
What are the odds that the very first person I meet, after leaving people stuck in a room, is a person who was paid to go as fast as possible? True, he went fast in a circle, but he seldom went less than 100 mph.
I remember something he said about “hitting the wall”, which, (to define it), was a crash that tended to occur at the end of a straightaway, as cars went into a curve. He said something along the lines of, “At first you are scared of hitting the wall, but after the first few times it gets so that you think nothing of it.” However apparently he got a little too careless, and “hit the wall” in a way that caused his car to tumble, and he was seriously hurt. His scars were impressive. And now he was driving a dump truck.
Ride 20 4 and us 27 to Bradenton How far 86 miles who fatish kid who talked about football and how easy school was in florida.
This is a rather short entry for a long ride.
I already had a sense Florida was a watered-down version of the south. It was not so hard to understand the southern accents.
I remember now, with all the distortions memory produces in 54 years, that this fellow was enjoying a time in life where things go well. Good Karma. His parents had moved to Florida, and his life had become abruptly more enjoyable. The fact Florida schools were “easy” suggested it was not so “easy” where he had come from, which would be further north. In other words, where I came from.
As he described the fun of football I could not help but compare it with my own experience, which was not so fun. However I kept quiet, because for the most part the fellow was rejoicing, and my envy should be wise enough to avoid attempting to stick a finger in a fireworks display.
Ride 21 Bradenton to Longboat Key how far 15 who crippled man with special car friendly but I felt sorry. Gave me ride right up to door of resort
What are the odds that the last ride of my adventure would be “a man with a special car.” A man who was rebounding from some sort of Bad Karma. A man venturing back into life, just as I was venturing out into the real world.
I definitely did not give the man the attention he deserved. To be honest, I was more concerned with how my grandparents would receive my venturing than in a fellow adventurer.
As I scanned the road ahead I was looking down a very different Longboat Key than it now has become. Now it resembles Miami Beach, but back then it only held single story units like small motels, only on the ocean side of the road. Even in the winter there wasn’t much traffic. Finally I saw the sign for their place ahead.
I remember that, as I disembarked from this good fellow’s car, the person who appeared in charge of my grandparent’s place rushed up looking extremely alarmed and disapproving. I obviously didn’t fit the norm of ordinary arrivals. I was some punk with a knapsack. Yet, so cozy was the place that news spread fast, and, down at the seaside end of a long corridor formed by two rows of comfortable units, my grandparent’s faces appeared, his happily beaming and hers enormously relieved. The person-in-charge collapsed from indignation to ingratiation, like a tire on a nail, or perhaps like a good dog.
I can’t think of a better bookend to a day that began with me at a far less pleasant “old person’s home.” Such bookends would seem contrived in a novel, but were real in my life. At the time I didn’t even notice the coincidence, but after 54 years I do, and it adds to a sense I have I that I was coddled by higher powers throughout my adventure.
But at this point my grandmother became a problem. She was a powerful woman, at times making my grandfather appear meek, though he was also strong, and quietly held the ropes even when she was the mainsail.
How did she become a problem?
My original plan was to only visit for a night or two; Thursday morning at the latest I should start back north to be in time for school the following Monday. However, as my grandmother prepared dinner in the unit’s small kitchenette, my grandfather drew me aside and informed me my grandmother had been sick with worry the entire time I was hitchhiking south, and he wondered if I could spare her further worry by allowing him purchase an airplane ticket and fly me back north.
In a sense this was cramping my style, and represented a sort of censorship, but I was tired after four days on the road, and he got me at a weak moment. I overheard him tell her I had acquiesced as they did dishes together after dinner, and he murmured, “I didn’t have to twist his arm very hard.” This was true. Just because a man finds hardship appealing doesn’t mean the same man can’t find voluptuously sprawling on a warm beach appealing as well.
Yet, considering she objected to my adventure, my grandmother was also very interested in it. She noticed me briefly scribbling into my “private files” after dinner, with my road atlas in front of me, and said she could hardly wait to see the paper I wrote for English class.
This brought me up short. It confronted me with the fact I never intended to write a paper for English class. The idea I was hitchhiking to write a paper was a ruse, to gain permission to go on my adventure. I never intended to write a paper, but now it looked a little like I might have to.
This immediately confronted me with the fact I’d have to censor parts, or imagined I would. Actually my grandmother was very down to earth, and likely could have laughed at even the “carier Navy man’s” crude comments about a woman’s “pussy”, however I couldn’t bear the thought of talking so freely. Much of the “Cancel Culture” I was running up against was self-imposed. However not all. My favorite TV show, “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour”, had crashed into a wall like a race car, and had been cancelled only two weeks earlier.
This in turn confronted me with a stranger question: If I didn’t want people to see my notes, who was I writing to? What was I writing for? This same question has reoccurred, in various forms at various times, for fifty-four years now.
However at age sixteen I had different concerns. I needed to work on my tan. To have a tan in April was a definite status symbol, back north in Weston. Keeping a diary was not. At some point I scrawled a brief, standardized, sort of false conclusion to my adventure, and then the “private files” goes silent.
Silence descended until May 6, when there is a prolonged wail of adolescent suffering. Apparently having a tan wasn’t enough.
1969 was going to proceed, and perhaps I’ll someday write more of what my “private files” reveal, but this work is about hitchhiking to Florida, so I’ll conclude it.
Besides describing an America far more safe and friendly than it has become, another thing this tale exposes is that, at least at the beginning, 1969’s search for freedom and its Summer of Love did not involve promiscuous sex or drugs, despite talk of such things. This surprises people. (I myself was surprised to learn some of Jimi Hendrix’s most “psychedelic” music (including “Are You Experienced”) was written before he ever tried “psychedelic” drugs.)
As a sort of postscript I should add my grandparents lived another ten years, and my grandmother never stopped saying how much she’d like to see my English paper. I hemmed and hawed and said I’d see if I could find it, though I knew damn well I’d never written it. Now at long last it has been written, and I dedicate it to her.
Sunrise's Swansong 