Redundancy And Repetition

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Looking for the truck stops where I spent the night in California proved fruitless. Google Maps even has the name of burger joints at the intersections of InterState 10, but not the truck stops. I searched all the way from where I-10 and I-5 intersect back to Arizona close up, and I never saw it.

The reason I looked was that it was a bad night I spent there. I was huddled up against a wall that separated an apartment complex from the two large truck stops to hide in the tumbleweed there. It was a dirty, mucky place that stunk liked the residents of the apartments had thrown trash over the wall. Besides that, the noise from the hundreds of truck diesels was deafening. It was a lousy night.

There were more lousy nights with dirty places to sleep on that entire trip. I don't remember having to sleep in places like that when I was younger. Maybe that's because I was younger and had more energy to look for better places to lay my head.

This particular sojourn happened when I was 61 years old. I had decided to take one more hitch-hiking trip for old time sake. I got a ride with my brother over to I-95 east of Fayetteville and travel down to Key West, Florida from there. I spent seven years more or less, off and on, in Key West. I have a lot of memories there both good and bad.

It took a couple of days to arrive in Key West. It was good fortune that I made it there at all. The deputy sheriffs are tough there, and they don't allow hitch-hiking in Monroe County anymore. They didn't catch me on the way down, but they did on the way back. I had to spend all the money I had left to get a bus back to Homestead and the mainland. The deputy sheriff told me it was either that or walk a 150 miles or go to jail. I should have gone to jail.

The one night I spent in Key West was as bad or worse than the night I described above in California. I crawled back into some mangrove swamps to get away from some bikers. I didn't sleep well that night. As soon as daylight came, I emerged from the mangroves to get up on the shoulder of the road to hitch-hike toward Miami. That's when the sheriff's deputy caught me.

I didn't do too well even after I got off the bus in Homestead. It took me a long time to get around Miami. I charted a course around Miami because it's a dangerous place to be footloose and fancy free. When I finally did get around Miami and on I-95 the ride I got let me off in a place where I had to walk about five miles to get to where I could stand on an entrance to I-95. It was just across from a house public housing area, and not a very safe place to be when it got dark.

Finding a hiding place to spend the night there was not too hard. It was a bum's place where the trash and the layout told me that many bums had stayed there in the past. I even found an abandoned credit card I left laying there. I was afraid to use it in case it brought me trouble.

The next day I spent nearly all day catching a ride. It was not a good spot for that. One guy did stop way down the road, got out of his car and opened the trunk to get something out. He put it beside the road, waved for me to come and get it, and drove off. I figured I wasn't getting anywhere fast, so I walked the couple of hundred yards up to where it was, and it was a small bible and some tracts. I cursed that fanatic.

On up the road I was picked up by a handyman who said he'd done a lotta hitch-hiking, and now he was making a living by doing work around people's houses. He wanted me to help him, but he seemed a little weird and so I begged off.

The next ride I got was with a truck driver who was driving a rental car in order to go pick up a new truck. The company he drove for gave the new trucks it bought to it's veteran drivers, and he had been with them long enough to warrant a new one. He suggested I think about driving trucks if I wanted to see the country. I probably listened to him, because later on I did just that. I found out by the doing of it that I wasn't hitch-hiking just to see the country.

This guy had to pick up his new truck in Atlanta. When he told me that I figured to ride with him to Atlanta and then hitch a ride from there back to North Carolina, and that would be the end of this trip. I was dirty and tired of being on the road, but as we neared I-10 I changed my mind, and asked him to let me off on I-10, so I could meander my way out to California and back before I quit. I was pretty sure this was going to be my last hitch-hiking adventure.

I got a ride pretty quick once I got on I-10, and it took me to Alabama. The intersection the driver put me off at was a rural intersection, but it had a McDonald's, and it was late in the afternoon. I had bummed enough money to buy a double-cheeseburger, and then looked for a spot to spend the night.

There wasn't a place around that intersection that I felt safe about laying down and going to sleep. Further west about a half mile I saw a bridge that crossed over a creek, and after it got dark so nobody could see me go there I wended my way there to crawl under the bridge to sack out.

The trouble was that under the bridge was rough concrete that hadn't been smoothed. It was only there to protect the bridge from being undercut if the creek flooded. this was another of the rough places I slept on this trip. It was like I got no sleep or any rest at all.

The next day I got rides to Louisiana, where I had more trouble finding a place to sleep. I ended up hiking back along the edge of a canal far enough away from the road and back into some thorny bushes to find a level place to lay down. I didn't have a sleeping bag or any extra clothes on this trip. This place was about two weeks into the trip without a bath or clean clothes, and sleeping in swamps had me smelling ripe.

After a couple of short rides I finally got a ride with a retired tug boat captain who had to quit working because he had been hurt by a cable that snapped on the barge his tug was pushing. He was going to West Texas, but told me he was going to stop in western Louisiana to visit his brother. His brother and extended family lived in a trailer house off on a side road, and it made me a little nervous to spend the night with them, but it turned out okay.

The place in West Texas he was going to was located just on the other side of Fort Worth. It's called Abilene, and it's apparently famous as a cattle drive town. He had a sister who lived there with her family, and I got a shower and she washed the clothes I had on my back. The next morning he took me to a crossing on the west side of Abilene to "help" me catch a ride, and that was a big mistake.

I didn't catch a ride from there for a day and a half, and as it turned out I spent the night under an overpass over I-20 soaked to the skin from a huge storm that I saw coming from probably a hundred miles away. A body can see a long way out on the great plains, and as soon as I saw the lightening over in the northwest I knew with absolute certainty that this storm was headed straight for me. I was right.

I thought I'd be alright and stay fairly dry under the overpass bridge, but I was wrong. The wind blew 40-50 miles per hour, the bridge leaked through the cracks, and the rain got blown up under the bridge and wet me from head to toe. I also lost my eye glasses there at that intersection, and it was just another sleeping place from hell that this trip seemed to specialize in.

The next morning I walked about three miles back to Abilene where there was a truck stop at the other intersection there. I had no money so I couldn't buy any food or even a cup of coffee. Enduring that storm had worn me out, but at least I was at an inside place to be.

I sat on a stool next to where the drivers came in from the parking lot, but a fellow told me that the hired help would run me off if I kept sitting there, and he directed me toward a movie room the truck stop provided for the drivers. He said I might be able to rest in there.

He was right about that, at least for a while, but after an hour or two I was told it was time for me to leave. The movie room was just for truck drivers, and I was obviously a vagrant. Beggars can't be choosers, so I headed on out to the onramp to I-20.

Oddly enow, I wasn't out there for more than a few minutes when a semi-truck stopped and picked me up. When I got inside, the driver told me that he had been watching me from inside the truck stop, and figured it would be safe to give me a ride.

It's always been safe for people to give me a ride. I've had to defend myself on occasion when it wasn't safe for me. I've had several drivers pull guns on me and threaten to hurt me. It didn't work out for them.

This guy was a Mormon and married with kids. He owned his own truck, but barely, according to him, and the Mormons were not too happy with him either. They hadn't exactly kicked him out, he said, but he would have to prove himself in some way before he would be a member in good standing again. I rode with him from Abilene to the truck stops I wrote about looking for in California.

I spent two nights sleeping on the floor of his truck. It wasn't exactly a pleasant place to sleep. I couldn't stretch out completely, and he had a little dog with him who had obviously pissed on the floor I slept on, but at least I felt safe there. Besides, the guy bought me a meal every time he ate, so putting up with the smell of dog piss was the price I had to pay.

Riding with the Mormon was my chance to ask questions about the Mormon Church. I was completely ignorant except for the historical facts I'd learned over the years in school. He was not all that forthcoming about it, and he explained that since he had never been all that devout, his reticence was due to his own ignorance, and not his unwillingness to share.

I don't think he had gone on the mandatory missionary trip, and that needs to be there for the Mormons to trust you with the intricacies of their trade. He said that being born into a Mormon family gave him no real insight. As it turned out, I probably knew more about what it's like to be a Mormon than him. That's the way it is with cults.

My intention was to at least go to the Pacific ocean and dip my toes in it as symbolic of my visit to the west coast, but even though I got to within a couple hundred yards of the ocean near Laguna Beach I didn't actually do that. It's not like I haven't sailed completely across it several times when I was in the Navy. What I didn't realize in real time on this trip was that my natal Sun had progressed into Cancer, the sign of the home, and that when and if I ever did get back to North Carolina I might not ever leave again for lack of inspiration.

There were moments when I thought I'd never get out of the city limits of Los Angeles after I headed back east. East L.A. has a reputation for violence, and I had to walk through a lot of it to get back on I-10. The night I spent there in the underbrush between the noisy lanes of the InterState was uneventful because I had walked to a fairly remote area.

The next morning I got a ride with an Indian who was in charge of the maintenance on the first Indian Casino east of Los Angeles. He lived off the reservation because he had married a non-Indian. When we got to the Casino he drove me around the reservation to show it to me, and then bought me breakfast at one of the franchise restaurants the tribe owned.

When he took me out to the intersection of I-10 he asked me to pray to Jesus with him, which I did (I got saved five times on this one trip), and then he tried to give me $18 to help me along the way. I left it tucked in the seat of his car. When he saw it he tried to get me to take it again, but since he had treated me kindly and bought me breakfast I figured that was enough.

The drunk who picked me up at the Casino intersection informed me that I was going to spend the night at his house just north of Wilcox, Arizona. I knew for certain that I wasn't. This wasn't my first rodeo, and all that jazz. He just wanted somebody to protect him from his wife when he got home drunk. That wasn't gonna be me.

When he stopped to the convenience store at Wilcox to buy another six pack, I got out of his car and hid behind the store. He drove around looking for me, but I was too quick getting around the corners. Finally when he took the road north, I got back on I-10 to continue east.

At that intersection I eventually got a ride with a Mexican who was taking a white woman to a place south of Benson, Texas to visit her brother in a prison down there. The driver was a rough looking dude who told me he had spent most of his life in prison himself, and understood why this woman wanted to visit her brother. I think his telling me that was a warning, but it was unneeded. I'm no threat to anybody.

When we got to where they were turning off to go south from Benson, I had another rough night sleeping on the hard ground under the sign that proclaimed the truck stop/convenience store there. It was a perfect place for rattlesnakes, and wetbacks from Mexico. The border was less than twenty miles away, and I saw lots of Border Patrol vehicles. I expected trouble, but didn't get any. The wind was blowing cold, and without any covers it was not a pleasant visit near Benson, Texas.

The next ride I got was with another semi truck. I reckon I rode about two or three hundred miles with him. He too was married with kids, but he lived on some lake in California in a recreational area, and had two pleasure boats he worked to maintain. He was not at all impressed with the way I smelled, and paid for me to take a shower at a truck stop, but my clothes still stunk even after that, and when he stopped, he had me sleep on the trailer between the four huge, really big tires he was hauling.

I don't remember much about the rides I got for most of the way back to North Carolina. I do remember that just before I got to the end of I-20 near Florence, South Carolina, where I-20 joins I-95 I had to walk nearly ten miles to get on I-95, and then another five miles to get to Florence walking on the InterState. I was curious that the cops never stopped me.

At Florence, I was around a hundred miles from where I started this journey. I was excited to be getting near my house, because I was very, very tired. Chronic fatigue makes me hallucinate, and I was certainly "seeing things", and had been for a thousand miles. That's why I probably don't remember the last part of the trip.

Getting home from Florence, the last hundred miles, took nearly two days. Two crazy days, but at least I felt safe back in my home territory. I also knew it was the end of my hitch-hiking adventures. Sure, I think about going out again often, but I also know I ain't gwine nowhere unless I win the lottery and go in a luxurious style. That pretty much means I'm here to stay except for astral traveling. Which is, by the way, a wonderful way to fly. '-)

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