THE ALL-AMERICAN HITCHHIKER

                              De-criminalize marijuana on a federal level and offer statehood to Mexico  




                        THE ALL-AMERICAN HITCHHIKER




                                                           By



                                                 Max H, Phillips







In 1957, a midwinter storm was shrieking across the small military installation at the end of the Youngstown, Ohio, Municipal Airport runway. Two enlisted men left the warmth of the 79th Fighter Group Headquarters building and dashed towards the base dining hall.
Harson Welsey Kelley skidded and teetered, holding his service cap on his head with one hand and his Ike jacket collar closed against his throat with the other. He squinted from the sting of swirling pellets of snow.
Jordon Elsworth Ramsey was just behind Harson. He carried his cap in one hand and kept his eyes downcast.

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     Gracefully leaping and sidestepping, he avoided the slippery patches of ice and snow. His lean, V-shaped physique gave a tailored look to the same style blue uniform Harson seemed stuffed into.
    “Git up off me, hawk!” Jordon suddenly exclaimed.
     An additional chill went through Harson. “Hawk” was an appellation his grandfather had fashioned for him. He spun around, nearly falling and looked confused as Jordon whipped the air above his head with both hands, as if to affray some invisible attacker.
     “It’s the wind, man, the hawk,” Jordon explained. “Aint’tchu hip to the Almighty Hawk? It’s a bitch, today.”
     Harson had never heard the wind compared to a member of the Accipitridae family. Attempting to assuage his embarrassment, he replied, “HaWK is an acronymical nickname, to me, Airman Ramsey.” 
     Jordon retorted from an ivory-in-ebony smile, “Well, the hawk gonna acronym us, if we don’t get a hat. Like b-a-m, bam, bad ass motherfucker! You can dig that, can’t you Air-man Kelley?”
     He ran ahead, giggling. Harson smiled, shook his head, then followed after his friend.
     Fifteen years later, two of Harson’s younger brothers were providing his initial exposure to marijuana. After first expressing doubts he had never gotten high before, they began kidding him about the nickname his grandfather had given him.

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    “Man, after you toke up, you definitely the HaWK.” Foster observed.
    “Yeah, you ain’t said shit, brother. The HaWK, he flies way up there, don’t he?” Brock agreed. “Go ahead on Mr. HaWK, get lofty.”
     After Harson’s introduction to pot, he became a daily user. In 1979, in California, his childhood dreams of becoming a writer seemed to be squeezed by the reality of his chronological age: he feared there was not enough time left.
     Spiked by infusions of THC, Harson imagined a more creative writing personae which manifested as “Hawk.” Each time he felt the panic to get published, the name Hawk would flash in his mind like a neon sign. He spoke of wanting to be as incognito as God and as quoted as Christ and he wrote The Third Testament.
     In 1981, Harson’s wife convinced him they should move downstate to a city about fifty-miles north of San Francisco. Harson got a part-time job in the automotive department at Sears. A short walk from the apartment, it included commissions on sales and seemed ideal for an aspiring writer. In a short time, he was giving the four full-timers fits with his ability to close sales. After five months, he was transferred to the furniture department. Within hours, he had the tree full-timers there, rolling their eyes as they watched him sell a recliner. A huge lady sat in the chair and counted out the five-hundred

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dollar price onto her lap, in mostly twenties. Before long, Harson became more enthused about making money and less concerned with his writing.
     “Hey Colleen, I think I’ll wear my blue blazer today. I feel like seeing how much business I can write. I’m going to be the only one on the floor until noon. Will you pick out a shirt and tie to go with these slacks?”
     Harson’s wife came into the room and stepped into his closet. She turned to him and proffered a shirt in one hand and a tie in the other.
     “How about these?”
     “Don’t they clash?”
     “No,” she said, mindful of his color-blindness. “They are both plaids. They go great together. Call me, if you’d like me to blow-dry your hair.”
     “How about blow-drying this,” he teased, cupping the pouch of his Munsingwear briefs.
     “Dirty boy!” she said, feigning wide-eyed modesty before covering her view with one hand and turning to leave.
     “Are you going to eat anything, some toast maybe?” she called from the kitchen.
     “No, thanks, just a cup of coffee. Maybe you can bring a couple of those avocado, cheese and tuna sandwiches like you put together, yesterday, and we can have lunch in the store cafeteria?”
    

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     It was Colleen’s day off, so she agreed to the plan. She dried and styled Harson’s hair while he sipped his coffee. Then he finished dressing, brushed his teeth and kissed her good-bye. Just before walking out the door, he critiqued his reflection in a full-length mirror.
     Once outside, he was surprised how fast the morning sun caused the weight of the blazer to warm his underarms. He slowed his pace, trying to calm his glands. Further on, he’d be shaded by an overpass, walnut trees and houses. As he approached the corner where he’d be turning away from the sun’s rays, a young lady came into view.
     “Good-bye trying not to perspire,” he thought.
     She was walking towards him, on the other side of the street. She had long legs, a long stride, long hair and she was long on looks. “Greyhounds,“ Grandpa Kelley had referred to these types. Harson liked the description and he often wondered how the old man would have reacted to the term “fox,” today. To Ed Kelley, fox hunting meant sitting around a campfire with other men, listening to the hounds all night as they followed the trail of a fox. Each man could identify his dog’s bark which would indicate its position in the pack and whether they were running uphill, downhill or on level ground. They knew if the quarry was in sight of the pursuers or being followed via a scented trail. Not until the baying indicated the fox had escaped into a hole or the morning light ended the night, did the hunters call in the dogs with steer horn bugles.


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     Harson felt that tingle in his loins as he watched all of her movements. This fine young thing was stirring his genes. Baby, what I am thinking may be against the pure food and drug laws, so I’ll just feast my eyes. You have any idea how good you look? Let’s both bag our jobs, get a jug and a joint and … man, what the hell are you doing? You have a daughter her age. Or close. Stop putting your eye-prints on that sweet lass and get your old ass to work!
     Obviously hurrying, Harson snatched his time card from the rack and rammed it into the clock slot. The mechanism didn’t trigger. He jammed it in again, pleating the corner. It still didn’t stamp. Removing the card, he smoothed out the wrinkles, then successfully coaxed the machine to record his arrival; one-tenth of an hour late! He sighed deeply, not realizing this was a harbinger of the stress to come.
     The half-hour before the doors would open to the public was allotted for prepping the store. Harson signed for a bag of money, picked up the audit detail envelope from Customer Service, then walked to the Home Furnishings Department. He keyed the cash register on, coded in the date, separated the coins and bills into their compartments, then closed the drawer. He stood before one of the display dresser mirrors and combed his hair. He visualized the number of customers he would greet in the next three hours. When his stomach gurgled, he thought about lunch with his wife.


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     “Say, Kell’….”
     Harson turned to see his department manager, dressed in casual clothes, shuffling papers from hand to hand as he walked. He stopped in front of Harson straightened from his forward leaning, saddle-straddle stride and began to explaining how he’d been working since 7:00, getting ready for a visit from Division Managers. An insulated, red handled plastic cup dangled from two fingers of his left hand.
     “Why hell’s fire, you haven’t even had time to get your morning java, you’re still carrying an empty cup.” Harson needled, refusing to lend any sympathy to the trauma upper management visits elicit from department heads.
     Mr. Phelton was about the same age as Harson and he was having some difficulty adjusting to a subordinate who refuses to defer to titles. He always felt some irritation when Harson would smile and nod after receiving instructions. Paul Phelton wanted respect, sincere or otherwise.
     “Uh, yeah, uh, that’s right, I…was just getting ready to go get some. Uh, what you can do is put that bunk bed together. Down here, follow me, I’ll show you.”
     Harson was assed at being asked to assemble the bunks just because some big shots were coming. He

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knew it was for appearances. The parts had been sitting under another bed for weeks. Without investigating the contents of the plastic package of nuts, bolts and washers, he went to the desk drawer which contained the floor tools and selected a screwdriver and an adjustable wrench.

Mr. Phelton was at the desk and questioned Harson’s choice of tools, suggesting pliers and two socket-head wrenches. Harson complied but had to return for the adjustable wrench as the bolt ends extended past the depth of the sockets. He returned to the far end of the department to begin the task. As soon as he removed his blazer, the phone rang.

Putting the coat back on, he walked to answer the ringing. The call was for Mr. Phelton, now gone and the female caller insisted he be paged. Harson notified the operator, then returned to the bunk beds. He removed his blazer and began again.

The phone began to ring. Then the department’s second number began ringing on the extension. Harson left his blazer draped over a chair and hurried to the phones. On the first line, a male voice asked for Mr. Phelton, still away, so Harson copied a name and number. The second caller hung up just as the receiver was lifted. Harson glanced at the clock and realized nearly an hour of selling time had passed.

Beginning again, he discovered the pre-drilled holes on one side of the headboard and footboard were

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undersized. Consequently, the round-headed bolts had to be hammered and twisted into position before lock washers and nuts could be installed. Harson guessed the rest of the salespeople and Mr. Phelton were aware of these defects and had put off completing the assembly. Just then, Mr. Phelton came by, still shuffling and perusing a sheaf papers.
     “How’s it going?”
     “Lots faster if I didn’t have to keep answering your phone calls.”
     “What, who’s calling me?”
     “A Mr. Wells, his number’s on the desk calender.”
     “Well, why didn’t you put him on hold and have me paged?”
     “I had you paged for the other call.”
     “When? I was in the carpet remnant room. I’ve been on the floor all morning.“
     Harson quietly aligned the bunk beds and Mr. Phelton mumbled something as he walked away.
     An elderly couple approached Harson and the man addressed him, “Hello, uh, are you a sales…uh, do you work here?”
     Harson straightened, clutching a hand tool in each fist and with a sprinkle of sarcasm answered, “Hello, are you…customers? What can I sell you, this morning?”
     The gentleman began to explain that a recently purchased rattan chair was coming apart near the seat. He pointed to the same area on the back of a recliner.

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     “It ain’t this kind of chair but it’s right there. I can fix it but I want you people to look at it, to make sure it won’t happen again. I don’t want to keep fixin’ the damned thing, you understand?”
     “Yes, sir, I certainly do. What’s your name?”
     Harson took a note pad from his pocket and asked for the man’s phone number, then remembered it would be on the sales check copy. The lady confirmed it by saying, “Yes, they called us when the chair came in.”
     “Of course, and somebody will call you, again, probably in a week because the man who takes care of these problems goes out on Thursdays only. So he’ll have to call to make sure you are home, before he visits.”
     The couple answered in unison as they turned to leave, “We’ll be there.”
     Harson proceeded to finish the assembly but once again the phone began to ring. He took his time slipping on the blazer and walking to the phones. Both calls were for information, the first about a mattress seen in Denver and the second about when the saleslady, Mabel Jo, would be in. Harson was feeling friction on his patience threshold.
     Since the corporate visitors weren’t scheduled until noon, the store’s staff personnel were also dressed casually, circulating through different departments, looking for anything out of place. They had brought



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dress clothes to change into just prior to the inspection. Harson was nearly finished with the bunks when he saw the Operations Manager.
     Pandy Metaxes was short and rotund with dark hair and eyes. Harson thought he fit the stereotype of a mafia don. Next to the store manager in importance, Mr. Metaxes was no less feared by most employees. Harson had been a tad concerned when he’d been called to the office to be offered the move to furniture, even though there had been good rapport which Harson sensed was because Pandy recognized his selling ability.
     “How’s it going, Harson? Looks like you’re learning to put furniture together. But, an old ’20’ man like you probably did a lot of assembling and setting up, in your day, huh?”
     He was recalling the late ’60’s when Harson had managed the sewing machine and vacuum cleaner department for Sears in Ohio. Without looking up to make eye-contact, Harson replied in a much too abusive tone, “This place is a joke. I’m going someplace where I can make some money without this bullshit.”
     As soon as he looked up to smile, he wanted to take it back but Pandy stared him off with, “Maybe you should, if you aren’t happy here,” and walked away.
     Harson knew he’d been looking for sympathy at the wrong time. He was certain Mr. Metaxes wouldn’t have

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taken that attitude in one of a hundred instances but the damage was done and the foolishness of it just added to Harson’s frustrations which had been stacking up since he’d first came to work.
     Finally, he completed the assembly of the bunk beds and began looking for his first sale of the day. He approached a couple standing near the flotation mattresses. They seemed interested after he’d explained the benefits and the man asked the price of a queen-sized set. Suddenly, a rude lady stepped in front of Harson and asked directions to the lamp department. He politely directed her down the aisle. Turning back to the prospects, who were smiling, Harson delayed comment on the cost query by answering an earlier question about the need for a heater. Harson owned one and said, “I don’t have a heater.”
     His boss comes straddling by, hears him, stops, walks over and says, “Yes, we do, right there is one with a heater.”
     Harson was shocked that a manager would ever intrude in a sales presentation. He quickly turned Mr. Phelton around to face down the aisle, nudged him along and hissed into his ear, “I’m talking about my personal waterbed.“
     Forcing a smile, he turned back to attempt another close. While awaiting a suggestion they charge it, a disgruntled customer stuck a copy of a sales check beneath Harson’s nose and demanded directions for cancelling it.


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     “I was called all the way from Clearlake to pick this up. Then, they tell me that somebody in the central warehouse sent an innerspring instead of foam after I drove all the way over here!”
     The couple edged away with the intention to “keep looking,” so he led the irate customer to the cash register to get the credit check pad. Filling in the necessary information from the original sales check, he recalled the sale.
     When Mr. and Mrs. Crimony Michaels had come into the department, three days before, Harson thought they looked like twins. Mr. Michels was wearing work clothes and his wife was wearing a house dress. Each was about five-feet, five-inches tall and both had gray hair. They quietly chose a foam mattress but were uncertain about the method of payment.
     Mr. Michaels wanted to pay $40 and the rest when the mattress was picked up. Harson convinced them to pay the full amount to avoid the extra paperwork of a COD. Mrs. Michaels took the rest of the cash from her purse. Harson remembered changing the stock numbers to indicate foam after crossing out the ones he’d entered for innerspring.
     Holding ten twenties in one hand and the seven page sales check in the other, Harson had paraded to the cash register. He inserted the sales check into the machine and was an inch away from initiating the transaction when the electricity went out throughout


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the store. Harson stood in the dim auxiliary lighting holding the money and shaking his bowed head. By the time power was restored and the sale competed, his customers were obvious about waiting patiently.
     And now, Crimony was back to get his money back. Small twists of fate’s wrists were wringing the calm from Harson’s attitude. In less than three hours, layers of a positive, polite and pleasant posture had been scraped away. Harson was feeling the peeling of the last veneer. The noise rushing to feed a quick temper was drowning out his silent suffering but he plastered over the vile bile with another smile.
     The credit check was nearly completed and the tension was easing. He was resigning himself to the ridiculousness of the past few hours when his composure was jolted again. Mr. Phelton showed up to take control.
     He suggested Mr. Michaels call Mrs. Michaels, explain the problem and try to convince her to accept the innerspringl. He rambled on about how the price would be the same and that nobody was to blame. Crimony refused by merely looking away.
     Mr. Phelton continued talking while picking up the phone to get an available WATS line. None was free, so he explained the entire situation to the store operator, then told her to call back when a line was open for his salesman to use. He left, after instructing Harson to make the call.
     Almost immediately, the operator rang back.


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     Harson waited for the WATS tone, push-buttoned the number from the sales check and listened to three rings.
     “Hello?”
     “Mrs. Michaels?”
     “Yea-yus?”
     “Harson Kelley at Sears. Your husband is here to get the mattress but we were sent an innerspring instead of the foam.”
     “Oh, no.”
     “That’s what I thought you might say but I’m calling to be certain. Your husband was sure you wouldn’t change your mind.”
     Lowering her voice, Mrs. Michaels said, “Well, he is the one who wanted foam, not me.”
     After hanging up, Harson was anxious to get off the floor. He needed a break. He finished the credit check, asked Crimony to sign it, then directed him to CCC, Customer Convenience Center. The older man’s expression revealed his familiarity with the biggest bottleneck in major retail stores. He looked helpless and pleadingly asked if Harson would “go over there with me?”
     Harson was sympathetic. He knew there would be lines of people waiting to pay a bill, collect a refund, have a gift wrapped, correct a billing error, get change or get confused. He knew there would be some ineptness; part-timers entrusted with the psyche of the patrons. It is small wonder people are sometimes seen


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fleeing, fueled to the point of cussing, especially if they have had to wait to part with their money.
     “Sure, follow me. After I get this authorized, I’ll get it cashed for you.”
     He charged towards the service center with his charge close behind. As they rounded the corner, even Harson was surprised by the large group. Some were standing, some were sitting, some smoking cigarettes; all silent and sullen. Seeing no staff personnel who could authorize the payment, Harson instructed Crimony to wait, as he rushed through the double swinging doors for “Employees Only.”
     He questioned the receptionist and followed her nod but paused before entering Mr. Metaxes’ office. Pandy was tete-a-tete with the Merchandise Manager but he motioned for Harson to enter.
     “What are you giving away, now, Harson?”
     Harson heard it as an extension of the earlier bad vibes but began to explain the mix-up. Mr. Metaxes squinted at the paper and questioned whether or not the stock numbers had been changed after the order had been CRT’d.
     “Look at the printouts, Pandy!” Harson snapped. “How could I have changed that after it had been CRT’d? The incorrect numbers were crossed out before the wrong mattress was sent. It looked obvious, to me, but perhaps I should have black inked it completely over.”
     The authorization was scribbled and the pad

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handed back. Mr. Metaxes neither looked up nor said anything and Harson left immediately.
     Mr. Michaels hadn’t moved an inch. Harson guided him to the counter and directed the first person he saw to “Cash this man’s credit check, please.” She reached for the form and prepared to make the payment. Harson turned and left, waving away Mr. Michaels’ offer of thanks. He glanced at the clock.
     It was ten minutes until noon. Friday. Payday. His check would reflect the biggest net pay since his return to retail sales. Even though Pink Floyd’s MONEY introduction was ringing in his head, he was entertaining thoughts of eliminating this excellent source of income. He picked up a phone and called Colleen. When she answered, he told her not to bother bringing the sandwiches.
     “Why, what’s wrong?”
     “Well, you know how I got as sharp as a muskeeta’s petuh, this morning, coming over here to sell?”
     “Of course, I know.”
     “Well, I’ve been here two-and-half hours and it’s bullshit. I’ve done everything else but sell. I’m leaving it.”
     After hanging up, Harson met the afternoon salesman, greeted him, then told him he was getting his check to leave.
     “You going home for your lunch period?”
     “No, I’m going home. Period.”

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     “You serious, you’re quitting?”
     “Yes.”
     “I don’t blame you.”
     Harson was on his way when Mr. Phelton began to query the other salesman about some mattress banners he wanted put up to announce a sale.
     “I rolled them up and put them on your desk, Paul.”
     Mr. Phelton shouted, “Hey, Kell’, did you see them?”
     He raised his hands in a surrender position, shook his head and kept walking.
     Harson was forced to re-play this day in his mind, many times, and it always amazed him how calmly his wife had accepted his call. Not knowing all the details, she couldn’t have known he meant leaving for good.
Or she thought he meant leaving for another job.
     During the next few weeks after his impulsive exit from Sears, he did try to get psyched about seeking employment. He dyed away the gray that was becoming impossible to cover with a change in hair style. He read the want ads through and through (and my girl never fails to say if there is any work for me? I been runnin’ back through the house, talked to by my spouse, preachin’ and a cryin’, tell me that I’m lyin’ ’bout a job, that I never can find…. )
     Each morning, he had the names of two or three places to try. He filled out applications but became more and more discouraged trying to explain the periods of time he had been writing and the reasons


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he’s quit past jobs. The longer a person has spent with knees under the keys, the less enthused the boss looking for a fit in the steady-worker mold. However, when Colleen returned, she’d find him typing and when asked about his job hunting results, she could see the idea was fading fast from his priorities.
     One morning, he began another attempt to convince her he wasn’t going to be happy doing anything except writing. He spoke of staying home and being a “houseman” to her career aspirations. She figured it was HaWK talk, trying to assure more time to type. He began running down the familiar list of duties he wanted her to allow him to perform, like cooking, cleaning and….
     “And getting high?”
     “What do you mean?”
     “I mean that you get high entirely too often and I don’t like the idea of you not seeming to have the desire or the ability to stop.”
     “I can stop anytime.”
     “But you haven’t and I believe the stuff is a crutch. Besides, I can’t afford a houseman. I need a husband who can contribute to this household some other means than doing domestic chores. Hey, you do a fine job but I don’t want to be concerned you are getting skied, then getting so intense that I have to worry about not being with you.”
     Harson began to protest but Colleen stopped him by


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stating she was having trouble separating his writing from his reality.
     “There are times when you start rambling on with that wild look in your eyes and I truly do not know if it is something that has happened or something from one of your stories. I’m sorry, but when I agreed to work and support your dream, four years ago, I thought you’d be published, or have it out of your system, by now.“
     Harson was hurt by her honesty, plus the fact he had nothing to counter her impression. He felt as if he’d lost the understanding of the most important person in his life. He was ashamed and angry.
     The next day, he got up, prepared breakfast, made the bed, packed her lunch and was doing the dishes when she left for work. When she returned, he had dinner waiting and the floors were vacuumed. He stopped bombarding her with readings from his drafts while insisting on an opinion of his “style.” The arguments stopped which had oftened developed when she analyzed his sentence structure, since the content sometimes puzzled her. The most positive step, to her, was his abstinence from pot.
     About two weeks later, Harson’s brother-in-law, Baux Crouse came around with some KGB-killer green bud. Harson called him Big Box. Big felt obligated to share his dope with Harson, since the Kelley’s had financed his trip to California and kept him supllied with what was left of the harvest from the Shoaitie shake ‘n’ ladies. Big had heard most of Harson’s machine-gun rap and he


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recognized when the HaWK began to squawk. His defense was to always be in a rush to leave as soon as
HaWK began to widen his eyes and swoop with sharp talon-lines of questioning.
     Big was caught up in his own attempt to “make it” in California. He barely had enough time to get sufficient amounts of rest before putting in the long hours necessary to keep afloat. He didn’t have time nor the energy to try to answer queries which came flying out of Harson’s highs.
     Today was no different, except Harson seemed even more anxious about his message in THE POSITIVELY PATRIOTIC MELTING POT. He also seemed more incensed that THE THIRD TESTAMENT had been rejected. Then he stated it may have been for the best.
     “The Third Testament has to be done!” he screeched. “It has to be acted out as a revolutionary revolt against the shackles of the exorbitant military defense budget and the lack of basic capitalistic opportunities for the citizens of America.”
     Baux was backing towards the door, protesting he had to go. He handed HaWK a chunk of bud and did a quick slap-shake before leaving. HaWK followed onto the porch, lecturing even as Baux ran from earshot to catch a bus to The City.
     The next day, a pinch of the California sinsemillan in a rosewood pipe had HaWK in a steep stoop before his shower. After his wife went to work, he began reading a newspaper. An article about President Reagan’s

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plan to dump government surplus cheese into the sea sent HaWK into oxygen debt. He fumed when
considering all the dollars spent subsidizing production of the cheese and the additional funds used to store it, only to have an attempt denied to eat it. Representatives of needy groups were told it wasn’t edible because of green mold which were quashed by offers to “just scrape it off.” The final argument was it would be too difficult to arrange distribution.
     HaWK talked often of an idea to connect computers in D.C. to “800” numbers to implement instant voting procedures by simply dialing “for” or “against.“ He had little doubt, given the choice, most would vote to distribute the surplus cheese.
     Then he remembered a conversation he’d had with Melmire, a splib dude he met in the mountains of Northern California. HaWK had been listing all the things he would do if he was the President.
     “Man, don’t be giving me that ’what if’ shit. You want to tell Carter about your ideas to solve the problems of this country? Then, you got to get the motherfucker’s ear, Jack. You dig? Get the ear of the man himself. Get the ear of the President. Then, my man, you can tell him, if he’ll listen. But first and foremost, above all your fist clenchin’ and boasts - motherfucker, listen to me, now, this ain’t no guinea shit, this is benefit - you got to get the ear of the President.”
     In an attempt to do just that, get the ear of the President, HaWK typed a letter to President Reagan. In


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it, he alluded to the “desperate people” who would raid the warehouses and take the cheese if it was not
released by Christmas. He mailed it to a San Francisco radio station with instructions to relay it to the President. If not, he warned repercussions would be severe enough to “rock the bay windows of the White House,” an allusion to the station’s slogan.
     The cheese was freed by Christmas. At least, it was announced it would go to the poor. The hurried confusion about dispersal led Harson to believe his letter had worked. So he wrote another.
     The second epistle insisted President Reagan release vast amounts of the military defense budget for use in domestic programs via a TV announcement. If not the implied threat was “fuses would be touched to the flame of The Epiphany, closing the Redwood Highway from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Humboldt County line.”
     Exceptionally heavy rainfall caused mud slides which closed highway 101 at Leggett, California, as well as both directions of the freeway near Waldo Grade. On January 6th, 1982, TV scenes of an empty Golden Gate Bridge and the reports of the northern coast highway being closed, raised Harson’s delusion level to near orbit. He saw it as a supernatural interaction with his visualizations.
     Days later, Harson retrieved an official looking envelope from the local post office waste basket. It was from Presidient Reagan but had been tossed


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unopened.  Harson opened it and read the four page letter and The National Legislative Action Survey
request for money. He became truly disheartened and was positive, now, that the President of the United States of America turns a deaf ear to the majority of citizens who have been saying for years, we should be as good as we can to the most numbers of people, starting with ourselves.
     Harson used the free return envelope to send another letter. He enclosed a copy of THE POSITIVELY PATRIOTIC MELTING POT and asked to be considered as the “Presidential Poet.” He challenged the President to point this country in the general direction of “a guaranteed piece of the action for all.”
     He began to be troubled by his outrageous try at becoming a meaningful writer while being glad he couldn’t be connected to the letters. It was then he remembered all three had been typed on the back of pages from a stack of scratch paper his wife had bought home for him to use, when they lived in Eureka. Each was typed on the blank side of real estate listings with the company’s address at the top.
     About three months later, on a Sunday morning, Harson was riding his ten-speed bike to the local juco track for his daily run. At the end of the block, he made eye contact with a couple in a station wagon turning onto his street. They seemed to recognize him to the point he wondered for a split second whether or not he knew them.

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     When he returned, they were parked about twenty-feet from his apartment, on the same side of the street.  They stayed all day. The next day, the man was parked in the same spot. On Tuesday, the same man was there in a sedan. From his second floor vantage, Harson studied the situation.
     The street is only one block long. To his left, it L’s only to the right. To his right, it T’s with another street. There are five residences on each side of his street and the stranger was always parked closest to Harson’s. He was certain he was being watched and angry it had taken so long to locate him.
     A few days later, Harson was standing on his sidewalk, talking to his landlord. They were directly in front of the stakeout. ‘Lord Jack nodded towards the man and said, “I asked that guy what he’s doing?”
     “What did he say?”
     “He said he was a private investigator.”
     “Did he say who hired him?”
     “He said he was working for the county.”
     Harson didn’t continue, not wanting to show any concern, even though he was suffering an attack of piranha paranoia. After ten days, the man was gone.
     Immediately, city crews began to excavate both ends of the street.  Around the corner from the L and near the corners of the T, they dug across the width of the street.  Harson observed that if he attempted to leave in a vehicle, no less than five strangers could watch or detain him. He


p. 26


decided the only way to prove he wasn’t being watched was to leave.
     HaWK was soaring.  Bursts of mental speed trips were urges to prepare for a big swoop and as he considered different sites, Colleen’s grandmother in Ohio came to mind. Once, he had promised the old lady he would return and bring her to California. He had asked if she could handle living in the rustic setting on his eighty-acres of mountain property and she had alluded to her early years in the hills of West Virginia. Some time later, she’d sent word via Harson’s mother-in-law that her bags were still packed.
     Colleen was already upset by her husband’s claim he was being watched and his need to leave to prove it, when he mentioned it may be time to go back and explain his failure to return for her paternal grandmother. She dismissed his intention, then bruised his sense of integrity by reminding him he had said he would not keep that promise.
     “That’s bullshit, baby, I never intended to not keep that promise.”
     “Well, I remember you saying you were never returning to Ohio, so you’d never have bring Grandma here.”
     “But the Shoaitie is gone! I don’t have the land!”
     “A promise is a promise, and you promised.”
     Not realizing how precarious a perch HaWK was on, Colleen had provided the nudge which hastened his

p. 27


need to flee.  Stretched out in the back yard, listening to the stereo the next afternoon, he closed his eyes in the sunshine. A mocking bird was singing backup to Peter Wolf’s FREEZE FRAME. HaWK thought about Dolly Lovett.
     He’d always figured it was their common hillbilly roots which were the basis for the rapport they’d developed when he first dated her grand-daughter. He celebrated her sharp tongue by calling her Dolly Dagger. Sometimes he would imitate Jimi with a cracking refrain, “Dah-lee, Daa-ger….”
     He saw himself in Dolly’s house. He thought about how it would be an excellent place to write, without interruption, while helping her maintain her independent lifestyle. The freeway entry sounds became traffic resonance from the street beside Dolly’s house. The sun felt like Ohio sun. HaWK longed for the werewithal to fly back, get her and return to California. His eyes filled with tears. He felt compelled to make contact with Dolly, so got up and went inside to phone her. When she answered, he poured out an emotional flood over a variety of subjects.
     He spoke of grandchildren, great-grandchildren and genes. He spoke of wanting a “pup’ from Colleen. He asked if he could come to stay with her until he could arrange to have both of them return to California?
HaWK was off to the max and he implored Dolly to use her powers of visualization. She agreed to, even though there was a hint of confusion in her voice. But


p. 28



HaWK felt a flow of understanding, mentioned it to her and she claimed to feel it, too. A chill rushed the length of HaWK’s spine.
     “Oh Dolly, can you feel it, really?”
     “Yes, yes, I do, right through this telephone and I see myself flying like a big bird, to California.”
     “We have the power, Dolly! We can make it happen! I love you.”
     “I love you, too. Good-bye Harson.”
     “Good-bye, Dolly, and thank you.”
     When Dolly told Colleen’s parents about the call, they accused her of being drunk. Her daughter-in-law mocked her, pointing out the fact Harson had no automobile and no job but did have a vasectomy. She told her mother-in-law the only reason Harson would be coming that far to see her would be to ask for money. Poor Dolly began to wonder whether or not she had imagined the call, but blurted, “Well, he told me he’d be here by my next birthday and I believe it!”
      When Colleen received the details in a letter, she didn’t ask Harson if he had made the call. Without admitting he had, he said if Dolly’s wishes were so intense, he was obligated to return to Ohio and, at least, talk to her. He even mentioned staying with her.  Harson envisioned himself walking familiar streets while enjoying one of the grandest springtimes ever recorded in the Buckeye State.  With each passing hour, he was pushed harder and harder to go relieve the ridicule he’d initiated for Dolly. He began to


p. 29


wonder if he was dreaming of some metamorphic change, not unlike the mythical butterfly which dreamed it was a man. The man was planning to be physically able to fly in a moments notice. He did hundreds of sit ups and pushups, miles of running. As soon as the sun was up, he was in its rays. After observing his intensity, for a few days, Colleen agreed to support his efforts to go see her grandmother. However, she stipulated she expected to be paid back.
     When her payday came on Thursday, March 25th, no mention was made of the loan. On Friday morning, John Coleman pointed to a high pressure covering the United States map, from California to Pennsylvania. Harson Lay in bed, watching TV and thought, “The higher the better.”
     At bradkfast, Colleen said she could spare only one-hundred dollars. Harson’s plan to fly faded, so he took the five twenties, then handed one back.
     “Buy a new iron,” he said, smiling, remembering the frayed cord.
     She protested, briefly, but he insisted eighty-dollars was enough to get him across the country via “Shoe-debaker.” He had an idea about getting on an interstate highway and jamming back to Ohio, using his thumb: non-stop, no sleeping, no eating, no baggage.
     Colleen left for work before noon and Harson walked with her. She made suggestions about where he might look for employment after returning from his journey. He


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bristled at her lack of understanding about why he was leaving. He told her this wasn’t just a wild hair he had up his ass and if she expected some change to come over him which would cause him to go looking for a clock to punch, she might not know him at all. Colleen truly didn’t understand why he was reacting so severely, except she was certain her husband may have saturated his tissues with THC and she hoped he’d be able to maintain some normalcy.
     At the next corner, Harson told her he was going to see her brother. Baux’s apartment was in the opposite direction from her bus stop, so Harson kissed her and said, “Later.”
     He walked a few steps passed the intersection, then looked back to see her disappearing around a bend in the street. He’s just missed seeing her last glance back at him.
     Baux was still asleep but his apartment was unlocked, so Harson awakened him. After complaining about having worked a double shift the night before, he sat up and reached for his stash and a plastic mini-bong. After filling the wooden bowl, he fired the green vegetable matter with a butane lighter, took a deep drag, then passed the pipe to Harson. He filled his lungs and the HaWK began to soar.
     He sat in a chair beside the mattress-only bed and poured a torrent of words which made it appear his tongue was loose at both ends. He outlined the route he wanted to take, mentioning Tucson as a possibility.


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Baux expressed a desire to go along just to check out the foxes, filled the bong, hit it, then passed it. Smoke was exuding from its top and ’carb’ hole. HaWK cleared the transparent plastic tube, then torched the remaining herb with the Bic. HaWK’s ribcage expanded as he inhaled another volume of white smoke. He spoke in strained tones as he exhaled a huge cloud.
     “I’m telling’ ya, Big Box, I could get on one-oh-one, right now, with the clothes on my back, the eighty-dollars your sis’ gave me and do it. Hitchhike to Oh-aitch-ten. Of course, I may need to spogue a couple numbers from your righteous stash.”
     “Hey, bro’, you got it. Here, start rolling, you twist ’em better than I can,” Big said, as he handed over the stash tray containing a half-ounce of buds, rolling papers, scissors and a pair of hemostats.
     “Where, exactly, are you going when you get to Ohio?”
     “Well, I been thinking about going to Dolly’s. What do you think?”
     “Wow, man, Grandma’s? You are blowing my shit away.”
     “I have to see her, Big. Got to clear up the confusion I caused with that phone call. She isn’t nuts and she wasn’t drunk. I made the call, stoned to the bone. Besides, her place would be perfect for just lying low. Maybe I can sort some things out and make some adjustments. You dig?”


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     “Yeah, man, I hear you. Maybe I should call her and tell her you are coming.”
     “Do it, Big, that’s an excellent idea.”
     “No, rappin’ to her would be like…I don’t know….”
     “Man, it would be just like talking to me, cause me and Dolly are tuned to the same cornbread channel. You dig? She’s common country people, just like me. She digs you, too. She asked how you are doing and all.”
     “Yeah, Grandma,” Baux said quietly, then was silent.
     HaWk rolled four joints while the pipe was being filled and emptied two more times. He began to get psyched to leave. He asked to borrow a baggie from the kitchen, inserted the joints into one corner and wrapped the rest of the plastic around them, before slipping the parcel into his right pants pocket. In the other pocket, along with the eighty-dollars, he put half-a-pack of matches he found on the kitchen range.
He went back to Baux’s bed, reached to shake his hand, then pulled him to his feet.
     “Ain’tchu gonna tell me good-bye?”
     Baux had a look of disbelief, realizing HaWK was really going. After a hug, HaWK told him he appreciated the help and to not look for him to return anytime soon.
     HaWK walked out of the small apartment and headed down Dutton Avenue. He was wearing a straw hat his wife had discarded, ski shades his daughter had given up, a pair of light blue jeans and a tan, 10-k race



p. 33


award t-shirt with a huge red rose on the front. He noticed he was wearing a pair of third-hand Addidas basketball shoes which he’d vowed never again to wear outdoors. The soles were slipper thin.
When he failed to notice he’d passed Barham Street, it was obvious he wasn’t returning to his apartment. He was enjoying the high, the high pressure temperature and the high blue sky. As he reached the end of Dutton, he turned left towards route 101. Within minutes, he was near the on ramp to San Francisco, imploring people to give him a ride.
     He thought about the time he, Colleen and Eure, their cat had gone cross-country in a Datsun station wagon, fifty-seven hours from Eureka to Ohio. There were times in the middle of the night when two or three massive semis would light up the inside of the car and roar past with the speed and vibration of freight trains.
     He figured a series of lifts with some long distance drivers would transport him across the nation faster than he could drive it. However, he spoke to a farmer in a red Ford F-150, “Hey, how ’bout ’er there, my man?” and the driver stopped.

     “Where ya going?”
     “Ohio.”
     “Ohio?”
     “Yeah, it’s blue sky all the way across, according to the weatherman on the TODAY show.”
     “Well, I’ll take ya down aways, not going very far.”
     "Any amount will count, put me closer than I am, now."



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     The farmer let HaWK out on the freeway, just prior to exiting. Walking and hitchhiking, HaWK was surprised by the variety of debris this closer view revealed. A Lincoln Continental pulled over. The driver was an ex-Buckeye who had retired from a job close to Teaton.  He lifted HaWK’s hopes when he spoke of returning soon. However, He said he was going by plane.  HaWK was let out on the freeway, again, and got a ride in an older Toyota staton wagon.
     As soon as the door was closed, the man handed HaWK a joint rolled with black paper. HaWK lit it, using the car’s lighter, hit it, then passed it back. The driver claimed seven years in San Quentin for “taking care of a man who was messin’ with my old lady.“ The car was “borrowed,” the driver wasn’t licensed but on probation. Plus he’d just finished a six-pack of beer. But he informed his passenger it was against the law to hitchhike on the freeway.
     The driver began talking about a stray cat he’d adopted. Named him Beamer. Gave the cat a bath with the assistance of his girlfriend who won his admiration for helping. Beamer was described as being mostly white with a black ring around one eye. HaWK thought of Barnacle Bill, a white cat in San Diego. John-boy and Tyler had circled one of its eyes with a ball point pen.
     The driver inserted a cassette into the auto’s player. The sounds of a meowing puss filled the car. The caterwauling was was punctuated with licking sounds,



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the result of the cat being enticed with peanut butter smeared on the microphone. The tape reminded HaWK of the time the two guys had taken turns using Barnacle Bill to “vacuum’ fleas from their bedroom carpet. The feline had wailed at the injustice of being used as a live magnet to extract the black specks of saw-toothed blood suckers.
     HaWK was let out but didn’t realize he was passed where he intended to get off route 101. Not until he was chased off the freeway by a highway patrolman, got another ride and traveled further south, was he informed route 37 was behind him. He asked to be let out, ran across four lanes of traffic and began hitchhiking in the opposite direction.
     There was a constant line of commuters leaving San Rafael, but none were slowing. HaWK removed one of the joints from the packet, tucked the remaining three into his pocket and began thumbing with the joint exposed between his second and third fingers. One woman slowed, gasped into her hand, then drove on. The driver who did stop, never mentioned the doobie. He took HaWK back to SR 37.
     The sun was sinking to horizon level and HaWK had descended, too. He wandered away from the entry ramp searching for a secluded spot to take a leak. He found a hard plastic strip which had printing announcing, BERNARD J. GILSON, SANTA ROSA, ALL-AMERICAN DODGE. He broke off everything except the ALL-AMERICAN part and wired it to the straw hat



p. 36


with a discarded length of copper wire. He found a gray and white feather, about ten-inches long, and stuck it into the newly fashioned hat band. Then he lit the joint and smoked it to a one-inch length. He found a place where the roadway was wide enough for traffic to pull over.
     “I’m the All-American Hitchhiker!” he shouted to approaching motorists. “How can you refuse to give me a ride?”
     He did pushups alongside the pavement until a vehicle came into view. Then he would stand and hitchhike with the roach between his lips. HaWK was high and sure to get attention. Another ex-con offered a ride in his van, after noticing the marijuana stub. He gave HaWK a can of Budweiser but refused to share in the reefer since he claimed to have been awake for fourteen hours and was fighting sleep.
     He’d put in the long day dyeing carpet in Sausalito. Said he’d met his financial backer in prison where he’d done two years for retaliating against someone who had “messed around with my old lady.” HaWK did not mention his puzzlement at the ignorance of going to prison because of a female when prison meant isolation from women.
     He did express his outrage at being chased off the freeway by cops and alluded to the ride he’d gotten with an unlicensed, toking beer drinker. “About as illegal as possible,” HaWK moaned.
     “Ain’t no justice,” the driver answered, smiling, after



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taking another swallow of beer.
     HaWK was let out on I-80, near Sacramento. He was anxious to find a truck going cross-country. Instead, he was informed by a young motorcycle cop to leave the freeway.  Following a Sacramento street which ran parallel to I-80, he became aware of the lack of protection provided by his shoes. He took them off and carried them. The sun was nearly set and the cooling air reminded him that he needed to get into a vehicle soon, or get into something warmer than a t-shirt.
     Just ahead, he noticed an oddly attired couple. They wore long coats and the man had a hat which seemed to indicate some sort of Jewish sect. The tag attached to the man’s lapel indicated some FBI connection. HaWK paused and the man began reading his description into a small tape recorder. This off-the-wall bit may stimulate caution from someone on the run or someone who thinks they are on the run. HaWK hurried on.
     After a couple miles, he saw the street dead-ending at a river. He put his shoes back on, hobbled up a ramp and began walking across the river. There was little room between the heavy traffic and the bridge’s side. He was showered with dust, debris and diesel fumes. Just as he got to the other side of The American River, another CHP stopped him.
     “Weren’t you told earlier to stay off this freeway?”
     “Yes, sir, but how else was I going to get across that



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river and still keep this eastbound lane in sight?”
     “Why didn’t you get off after you got to this side?”
     “You watched me step off the bridge, just this second.”
     “ Let me see some identification.”
     “I have none.”
     “You don’t have any ID?”
     “No, I don’t. I knew I wouldn’t be driving….”
     “Git off this freeway, right now! And if I see you again, it is jail!”
     Harson half slid down the steep bank to the five-feet tall “limited access” fence. Just before climbing over it, he looked back. The cop was standing, hands on hips, silhouetted against the dim skyline.
     “You won’t see me again, Sarge,” Harson called up to the motionless figure, as he dropped to the other side of the barrier.
     He walked along the enclosure, through high weeds and plowed ground, cussing the fact he’d been forced to climb three more fences, one with a string of barbed wire, so he would be away from a public “free”way and he wasn’t even out of California, yet.
     In order to keep the interstate in sight, he had to go over three more fences, one ten-feet high. His hands were scratched, his feet were blistered and it was dark. He hadn’t even reached the mountains, which he had to get over before he’d be satisfied his trip was fully launched.
     In the distance, he saw a familiar sign. It was like a



p. 39

beacon. Once beneath it, he went into the Sears store.  Memories buoyed him.  He quenched his thirst at a water fountain, then asked directions to the rest rooms.  After emptying his bladder, he washed his face and hands, then looked for the shoe department.
     The smell of fresh popcorn drew him to a counter where he purchased a large box, sans butter. He told the salesgirl he was The All-American Hitchhiker. She was momentarily enthused after checking out his hat.
     After buying a pair of athletic socks in sporting goods, he went to the shoe department and chose a pair of sneakers, on sale for twenty-dollars. He tossed the Addidas into a cash/wrap island wastebasket.
     In men’s wear. He picked out a hooded sweatshirt with zipper front. It was 40% off the regular price. The clerk, who said she was from Toledo, Ohio, re-figured the discount because she couldn’t believe the low cost.
     Reluctantly, Harson left the bright lights and walked back into the darkness. He paused in the parking lot, removed another joint from his pocket and lit it before walking the short distance to the I-80 entry ramp. He stood with his hood up and his new white shoes reflecting the headlight beams.
     After three short rides, he was still within sight of Sacramento. As he walked across a street from an off ramp to an on ramp, he watched as a pickup truck stopped for a hiker with a large cowboy hat. HaWK assumed it was a good spot, but after an hour, he thought differently. His headgear wasn’t working as



p. 40

well as the cowboy’s had. Another hiker approached.  The young man moved into what HaWK considered his space.  HaWK ignored the stranger’s idle chatter until he asked how long before “we’ll get a ride?” HaWK changed from taciturn tack to brass tacks tactics.
     “The ride that begins here,” he said, pointing to the pavement, “is mine. That will be one ride and there will be one rider and that will be me.”
     “I don’t even know where I’m going,” the kid said apologetically, even though he had a full backpack.
     “Well, I’m going to Ohio. I know where I’m going and I intend to stay here, alone, until I hitch a ride in that direction. East to Ohio,” HaWK declared.
     “I’m just traveling around California,” was the reply.
     HaWK softened and asked, “Have you seen the redwoods, yet?”
     “No.”
     “Well, hell’s fire, you can’t see California without seeing the redwoods. Why not go in that direction?”
     “How do I get to the red woods?” the kid asked, as if color was the main attraction.
     “Just take I-80 back to route 37, take 37 to 101, then go north. It’s simple. I just came from there.”
     “Hey, I should do that, but I’d have to have it written down.”
     “What? Write it down my ass. I just told you, you can’t miss it. I-80 west to 37, turn right, go to 101, turn right, go to the redwoods, no way to mess up.”



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HaWK watched the young vagabond go across to the westbound lanes of I-80, apparently to begin hitchhiking in the opposite direction from where he was headed moments before.
     Within an hour, two more fully back-packed males approached. They were a “Mutt and Jeff” pair, eating and drinking as they walked towards HaWK. The shorter one tossed a plastic container of orange juice, splashing half the contents as it tumbled down an embankment. HaWK cringed at the flagrant trashing of the landscape.
     “Fucking litterbugs,” he thought. “You can always tell where they’ve been fucking around because they like to leave their pecker tracks.”
     “Where ya goin’?” asked the Mutt.
     “Ohio.’
     “Oh yeah? We’re going to Rhode Island.”
     “Bullshittin” liar,” HaWK assumed, silently.
     “Lost a feather like that, once,” Mutt muttered, while looking at HaWK’s hat.
     “Are you a bird? A bird lost this feather.”
     “No, I meant that I lost the feather after a bird had lost it, first. And then I found it.”
     "You think this might be the same feather? How’d you like to have this feather, fella?”
     “Jeff” turned and walked back to a nearby service station. “Mutt” wondered aloud about whether or not his friend was trying to tell him something, then followed. Soon they returned with sugar fixes.



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     “Mutt” began questioning HaWK, by asking what the “All-American” stood for?
     HaWK began slowly and distinctly. “I am The All-American Hitchhiker. I am hitchhiking to Ohio.”
     The volume increased and the words came faster. “I know where I’m going and the next ride that leaves from this spot is taking me. In the meantime, I do no intend to stand here and shoot the shit with you two dudes.”
     The pair decided to take their chances a little further up the ramp. Seconds later, HaWK was offered a ride on a Honda 750. He straddled the seat and shoved the rolled up straw hat into his sweatshirt pocket, opposite the one which contained the ski glasses. He was tying the strings of the hood when the bike passed the backpackers. Mutt held a small sign which read “Fresno,” and smiled at HaWK.
     HaWK bent his head down to avoid the chill wind planing over the biker. As he jammed his hands into his pockets, the hat flew away. Listening to the pulsating buzzer and seeing the flash of turn signal lights caused him to believe the motorcycle was passing everything on the highway.
     The ride ended quickly. As he un-straddled, HaWK exclaimed, “What a rush! Thanks a lot.”
     The biker nodded, then was gone, leaving HaWK in the silence and darkness of an on ramp, high above the traffic on I-80.
     It was early Saturday morning before he got a short



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ride with a guy in a Buick. He was driving around, getting drunk, after dropping off his girlfriend. He gave Harson a Bud. After being let out, he burned his third number and began walking and visualizing a long ride in another plush sedan or a big wide semi. What he got was an offer from a fat motorcyclist.
     HaWK became concerned about the amount of control a biker with a passenger has and if it is easier when a rider holds on.  When he was about nine-years old, the uncle of a peer had given him a ride on a huge Harley-Davidson. The man had instructed Harson to hold him tightly around the waist. The motorcycle had fancy fenders and large leather saddlebags. He remembered the feel of the thick lamb’s wool seat cover and the rocket-fast ride.
     His next fast ride on the back of a motorcycle had been in Teaton. He had been partying with some members of The Avengers Motorcycle Club and the president of the club had asked him to go along on a beer run. Before returning to the party, Zoobah had headed out onto route 224 with HaWK holding a 12-pack. Zoobah tuned his head and shouted, “That’s a hundred, right there.”
     For an instant, HaWK had realized the absolute freedom of movement gained on a motorcycle. He had witnessed the attentive looks from pedestrians and drivers of other vehicles, certain these glances, gazes and grim expressions from other citizens are part of the attraction for bikers. Especially, those who sit astride the



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big ones. The ones which require leather protection against the sheer speed and openness. The ones that growl while idling and roar when accelerated; the lions of the two-wheeled world. The riders of these, alone, know.
     “Should I hold on to you?” HaWK asked, as if expecting an answer to quell his anxiety.
     “If you want to.“
     “Well, I probably won’t, he answered, feeling foolish.
     HaWK struggled to tighten the hood strings. By the time he got his hands into his pockets, the ski shades had blown free. Trying to remain motionless, he settled into the seat, bracing himself with his legs.
     The shifting and changing speeds had a tendency to force his pelvis against the larger man’s back. Although the seat had two levels, HaWK wondered about the driver’s sensitivity. He could feel enough to know that holding on, now, would be obvious. It may be a misinterpreted action. What about the combination of vibrations and closeness which may develop an erection? And be huggin’ on the dude, too? Holy shit, the motherfucker just might do something crazy if he even thought his passenger was considering a hard-on!
     At that moment, HaWK felt a gloved hand brush against his right calf. It was fleeting and could have been a request to move his leg, which he did. Not long afterwards, the ride ended. As HaWK dismounted, he asked the man how long he’d been riding?



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     “About three months.”
     “Well, I felt completely safe, you do a good job.”
     “Do you need a place to stay for the night?”
     “No,” HaWK replied, after a courteous pause, “I have to keep moving. Thanks for the offer, though, and thanks for the ride.”
     “Good-by,” sounded cheerless.
     “Later on.”
     It was 2:00 AM and Harson was tired, hungry and coming down from his last buzz. He could feel the beginnings of blisters from the new shoes. The heels, toes and pads of skin on the balls of his feet were trying to raise transparent, water-filled mounds.
     A 1956 Volkswagan stopped.  After Harson got inside, the car pulled away and it sounded like an earthquake in a second-hand store. Things rattled and rolled around as the car shuddered. The glove box dropped open, spilling items onto the floor.
     The driver was ahuge hunk of bulk who covered the seat and drove with a heavy hand and leaden foot. After introductions, Larry suggested Harson feel around on the floor. “If you pick up that Sucrets can, there is a joint in it.”
     Harson grabbed and discarded articles and debris from beneath and beside the seat. When he found the can, he opened it and took out the rather fat joint. He lit it, hit it, handed it to Larry who took a short toke and handed it back. Harson took a larger hit and held it for a full thirty-seconds. After exhaling, HaWK inquired,



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     “What is this?”
     “Just some ragweed.”
     After five more tokes, HaWK decided one man’s rags are another man’s silk threads. He was buzzing like a bandsaw and complained about the pervasiveness of patrolmen who kept chasing him off the freeway.
     “Just tell them you got picked up by a queer and had to get rough with him. Tell them you threatened to beat him up, so he let you out in the middle of the freeway. Cops love that sort of macho shit and they will usually give you a ride to the next on-ramp.”
     HaWK was uneasy with this and said, “Wow, man, I don’t know….”
     “Hey, I’ve done it, it works.l Cops go for that sort of story. It turns them on.”
     HaWK felt a twinge of tintillation, which alerted him to be wary of being experimented with while getting high with a stranger. The big sloppy driver of the junky VW continued with the line about police getting off on tales of mistreatment of homosexuals, until HaWK felt it may have been a means for Larry to excite himself. HaWK decided if he were to agree, the driver may become more intense, possibly violent, and turn it towards his passenger. HaWK remained silent. The car was suddenly steered off the freeway, onto a country road.
      “Hey, man, where are you going? Why’re you leaving the freeway?”
     “Oh, I go this way all the time. This road winds back



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and forth across the highway. You see, it’s right over there?”
     “O.K., man,” HaWK said, calmly. “What did you say your name is?”
     “Larry.“
     “O.K., Larry, as long as I am still headed east.”
     HaWK’s high was full of anxiety but he tried to allay any suspicion by alluding to Larry’s underestimation of the “ragweed.“ He was sure he’d been driven off the main road as an attempt by Larry to expose him to the fear of a scenario similar to the earlier rhetoric about having to defend himself from homosexujal advances. He forced himself to remain calm and not be obvious about noticing the distance from the freeway.
     Just as Larry had said, the road wound back to and across I-80. Larry spoke of having to go another twenty-eight miles but stated he wasn’t taking his passenger any further because he’d questioned leaving the freeway. HaWK wasn’t about to lock himself into another mind game with this dude, so he began opening the door as soon as the car was slowed and said, “That’s O.K.”
     After getting out, he thanked Larry for the lift and the high. His next three rides were from Mark, Andy and Al. After crossing into Nevada, Al exited, although he said he wished he was going further, since he’d enjoyed talking to Harson. Harson wished he was going further, also, because it was dark, cold and he was kicked-ass tired.



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     Harson went down into a gully, off the shoulder of the road and prepared to rest.  He built a small fire and lay down on a section of cardboard.  He dozed and awakened, periodically, to feed the flames paper and sticks. When the Nevada State Patrolman stopped along the berm, about fifteen-feet above Harson, neither said anything.
     Harson sat up and moved back from the fire, all the time looking up at the cop’s outline in the dim fire light. After what seemed a long time in which Harson dazedly believed the policeman was not going to hassle him, he heard the command, “Put it out!”
     He stood and began tossing dirt onto the fire. It startled him when the chicory-colored Chicano ran down the embankment and began to shovel huge amounts of sand with the inside surface of his right boot. The flames were smothered in two seconds.
     “No need to get excited, Sarge, I was going to extinguish it.”
     The short public servant gave Harson a disdainful appraisal. His cold countenance stared a message that he may be entertaining the notion to draw his pistol. Instead, he scurried back up to his cruiser and peeled rubber to leave. Harson removed the last joint from his pocket, lit it, then began walking to ward off the chill.
     After a few miles, he got a ride into Reno. He asked to be let out before the driver exited, then ran across to the westbound side and walked into the wide front



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entrance of a casino. He went to the blackjack table and began winning. He brazenly told the dealer he felt he could beat him all night. The dealer excused it as due to the fact he, himself, was tired. HaWK’s confidence turned to compassion and he took his winnings to the slots. Minutes later, he left with the same amount of money he’d come in with, plus two silver dollars for Dolly.
     He walked to Sierra Sid’s, in hopes of talking to a truck driver. The parking lot was edge to edge with idling rigs. Inside was more truck driver décor than imaginable, including a full-sized shiny new Kenworth. It was a drawing prize, announced by many signs. Everyone appeared to be a driver, but nobody admitted to it when HaWK inquired.
     He dropped the two silver dollars into a slot, then asked for one in exchange for a paper one so he’d have one for Dolly. He didn’t know, until much later, he was given a souvenir from Sid’s.
     On the road again, HaWK jogged to keep warm. Traffic was sparse. By daybreak, he was still on the eastern perimeter of Reno. An hour or so, later, he was surrounded by automobiles. Every one seemed to be driven by a beautiful young lady. It was like a parade of the area’s prettiest females. Harson walked beside them as they moved slowly or came to a stop. He talked to each one he made eye-contact with, telling her how good she looked or asking if she wanted to forget this mess and give him a ride into the desert.



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Within a few minutes, they were all gone, as the jam cleared.  Harson kept walking and hitchhiking.  After two short rides, he was away from any signs of civilization. The sun was warming which invigorated him. Then Mike and Lu pulled alongside in their red Courier.
     The attractive young lady asked Harson where he was headed. After he replied, she told him to get in. He asked if he should get into the back and she said he should. He climbed over the side of the small bed. The corrugated floor was sprinkled with spilled dog food pellets but Harson didn’t bother to move them.  He sat with his back against the passenger side of the cab.  Soon, he moved the sack of dog food to the corner and used it as an armrest. Then he removed the pellets from beneath his legs and buttocks.
     As Harson watched I-80 reel from beneath the rear-end of the pickup and felt the sun’s intensity, he was thankful for his good fortune. He took the sweatshirt and t-shirt off to use as a pillow and went to sleep, sitting upright. Nothing disturbed him all the way to Elko, Nevada.
     “The truck is overheating,” Lu informed him, “So we are going to work on it. You can wait and then ride on with us, or you can try somebody else.”
     “Thank you, it’s nice to have a choice,” Harson said, hoping it didn’t sound flippant.
“Hey, I appreciate the offer, really. By the way, where are you two headed?”



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     “Salt Lake City.
     “Oh, for sure, I’ll probably want to tag along. I’ll just get a bite to eat while we’re here.”
     Harson went across the street and devoured a “special” turkey dinner, remembering the times he and Colleen had eaten pie and drunk too many cups of coffee at this same restaurant on the corner. He watched the couple as he ate.
     They were well matched. He seemed to be deliberate, optimistic and quick to smile. About 140 lbs. of blond good looks which cause cheerleaders to turn cartwheels and coaches to turn gay. She was a cheerleader type with quick, darting motions and a sexy little frame.
     While flushing the radiator with water from a hose, they had a short discussion and she went down the street to an automotive parts store. Harson finished and walked over to offer his meager mechanical knowledge.
     Lu returned with a can of radiator flush and a can of radiator additive. Mike chastised her, mildly, about being gullible but she protested they were both sensible purchases. Harson asked about the thermostat. Mike told him it had been removed. The crankcase cap was also missing. The station attendent told them the cap could be purchased at the other end of town, then reminded them to turn off the water streaming into the gutter.  Lu told Harson they were going to get the cap and



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he could come along or stay. She added they were returning to fill up with gas, so he remained. He removed his shoes and socks, at curbside, and inspected his sore feet. No blisters had broken. Mike and Lu came back with a pressure plug closing the opening to the 1.6 liter engine. After the gas tank was filled, they were on the road again.
     One-hundred miles later, they pulled into a roadside rest because the water was boiling to steam. After parking near a 1970 Ford with a camper top that seemed to be straining the limits of the truck, Lu introduced herself to the couple. They were headed to California with a dog, a cat and all their possessions. The crosswinds concerned them but they were happy with the way the pets had adapted to traveling. Lu returned to get Mike and Harson when the couple offered to share a joint and some beer.
     Inside the camper, the man eyed Harson and said, “You look like Howard Hughes.”
     Remembering the scruffy appearance that Howard depicted in his later years, Harson said, “I feel like Howard Hughes.”
     Mike remembered the story about Howard being picked up while hitchhiking in Nevada and said, “I feel like Melvin Dumar.” Everyone laughed.
     Just before leaving trhe rest stop, Lu offered HaWK the use of a cassette player with headphones. The batteries seemed strong and the selection of tapes




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matched his taste in music. He sat in the back of the truck and sang aloud to some lyrics. His audience was the drivers who drew near prior to passing. He waved to some and wanted to tell them to CB his presence to all east bounders, so they could offer him a ride after the one in the Courier ended.
     The friendly smiles from most of the truck drivers led him to believe they are bonded by some common camaraderie. He would come to believe their only connection is the barely decipherable citizens band bullshit. Once out of the rigs, they are close only in small circles. Nobody is any friendlier to his neighbor in a truckstop, than anyplace else. In fact, truck drivers may be less tolerant of non-truckers than any other professional group towards outsiders. His wish to get an interconnecting series of truck rides in order to make a fast trip across the United States would prove to be a fool’s futile dream.
     HaWK was peaking when he inserted a BLONDIE tape. It blasted into his skull and seemed written for the moment. “11:59” began as he watched a huge 18-wheeler gaining fast, some miles behind. As the driver came to the space directly in back of the pickup, HaWK saw she was an attractive blond.
     Her makeup looked professionally done and her short hairdo showed off dazzling earrings. A high-necked blouse appeared to be pure white silk. As she dieseled the shining mass of chrome and polished paint close enough for HaWK to smile up at her, she shot




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back a friendly thirty-two flash. He read the name  “Rene” on the door.
     “Rene,” HaWK shouted, “You are a star 18-wheelin’ stone fox. I’d ride to anywhere with you.“
     Rene was into the passing lane and gone, within seconds, as BLONDIE kept jamming’ in HaWK’s ears.
Later, on a long upgrade, Mike passed Rene’s rig. They smiled at each other as HaWK checked her out, again. Soon afterwards, the Courier overheated. This time, Mike had left the radiator cap lying loose under the hood. Rene rushed by. It was a brief smile that passed between them as HaWK ached to be sitting beside her, riding high.
     In the hottest heat of the day, Mike and Lu stopped for lunch. Inside the restaurant, Harson felt grimy and obvious about his road-weariness. He ordered coffee and pie and paid for all three lunches. Afterwards, he was invited to ride inside the cab but opted for the bed.
     He listened to the cassette player until the batteries weakened and the tapes slowed. As the sun set, he pulled his hood strings tight. When the last remnants of the orange sky over the Nevada range gave way to dusk, he tapped on the cab window and offered to drive.
     Inside was dozens of degrees warmer. The heater was kept full blast to aid the parched engine. Mike told him to keep it around sixty miles per hour so the temperature guage didn’t go all the way to “H.“ After



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airing out in the back, Harson was rendering in the cab and wondered if his presence was offensive.
     Before entering Utah, they stopped at State Line Casino. Lu was excited about playing the slots. She was attempting to get Mike to free some additional travel funds for gambling. Harson smiled as they bickered pleasantly. Mike decided in Lu’s favor.
     Harson hesitated about going inside, feeling even more self-conscious about his funkiness. The exuberance of his young travelers tugged him along and he reasoned that he needn’t be concerned it they weren’t. They led the way to a line waiting for a seat in the restaurant.
     The line moved fast but remained long. In the booth, Harson ordered dessert. Lu alluded to his diet of “home-cooked kinds of stuff.“
     “Home-cooked?” he asked.
     Mike looked at her, expecting some explanation, and she said she realized it was all sweet stuff like pie and cake, but it was “like Mom makes.”
     Harson explained he had been consuming the quick burning calories for the speed effect, so he could stay awake while trying to hitchhike non-stop. Both seemed to doubt him when he said his nutritional habits were usually different.
     Lu was anxious to gamble and was about to leave three large slices of onion and a leaf of lettuce. Harson asked for it, devoured it, and the three of them left the booth.




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Harson meandered, keeping one or both of them in sight, while drinking straight shots of bourbon.  Lu went “tap city” quickly. Mike called his parents in Salt Lake.
     When they left, Mike drove and Lu sat next to him. Everyone was fighting sleep but their conversation continued. Harson nodded out a couple times and Lu was mute for a few brief moments. When I-80 made a 90-degrees right turn, just inside the Salt Lake City limits, Mike and Lu bade Harson ado.
     They gave him most of a pound of California sunflower seeds and insisted he take a light blue V-necked sweater to help him stay warm. Lu also handed him a handful of kitchen matches. Harson thanked them and felt some sadness as they drove away.
     He put the sweater on beneath the hooded sweatshirt and put the package of seeds into the left pocket. For about an hour, he tried hitching. It was a temporary, dim, narrow entrance to the freeway. Another hitchhiker came from the opposite direction and told Harson it was a dark and lonely stretch of road, but Harson began walking.
     When he reached the main part of I-80, he kept walking. A car backed up to him. He was surprised after opening the door to see a smiling, cigarette smoking female. She put the cigareete into the ashtray and asked, “Need a lift?”
     Her smile evaporated after Harson pulled his hood back and said, “Sure do, thank you, I’m hitchhiking to



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Ohio.”
     “Uh, I’m sorry, I’m not going that far, uh, not very far at all. I can’t take you.”
     “O.K.,” Harson said, as he stepped back and closed the door.
     He tried to figure the sudden change of heart. Had it been the whiskey and onions on his breath? Or had she first thought he was a she?  Harson had to smile at the prospect of almost being picked up by a single female; a hitchhiker’s fantasy.
     Another car slowed and pulled up, following just behind Harson. He glanced back to see a state cruiser stopping. He turned around and stood still. One patrolman got out of the driver’s side and another stayed inside on the passenger side.
     “Where are you going?”
     “Ohio”
     “You have any ID?”
     “No, I’m going to see my grandmaother-in-law, and I knew I wouldn’t be driving, so….”
     “Where do you live?”
     “California.”
     “Are you carrying a weapon?”
     “No, sir.”
     “Lean over and put your hands on the hood, palms first,” the cop directed, motioning towards the squad car. Harson moved carefully, then hesitated. The cop forced a knee between Harson’s legs, pushed them apart, then shoved him across the hood. The other patrolman shined a spotlight into Harson’s eyes. Then



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the first patrolman began frisking.
     “Hey, careful of my sunflower seeds,” Harson protested as they sprinkled from his pocket.
     “Don’t you worry about the sunflower seeds, just keep still,” the cop ordered with an impatient edge to his voice.
     Harson froze. After allowing him to stand, the cop lectured, “I don’t want any cars stopping because of you. You can’t hitchhike up here.”
     He pointed and ordered, “Git off the freeway, it is for your own protection and if I see you up here, again, you will go to jail.”
     “You won’t see me, again,” Harson replied as he moved to leave.
     The darkness was an instant contrast to the well lit roadway and the footing on the wet grass slope was unsure. Cautiously, Harson went down, then climbed the bordering fence. He scratched his wrist on the top wire. Silently, he cussed the cop.
     “You sunuvabitch! Safer my ass. You come down that bank, climb that fence, then walk the streets under the freeway without benefit of your gun and nightstick, then tell me about ‘safe,’ asshole.”
     While attempting to keep I-80 in sight, Harson had to go over fences, follow railroad tracks, and walk along dimly lit, litter strewn streets. He found a roll of masking tape and put it into the pocket of his sweatshirt. After some miles, he stopped at a lighted on-ramp and fashioned a sign. Using the tape and a large piece of



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discarded cardboard, he blocked big letters spelling “OHIO.”  The truck traffic barely slowed and the automobiles speeded by. After an hour, he had to move on because it was too cold to stand still. At daybreak, he stopped at an on-ramp across the freeway from a DENNY’s
     As the morning sun illuminated the montains, he saw why the air was so chilled. It appeared he was standing inside an enormous snow-rimmed cup. He could almost see the frigid change taking place as the currents spilled over the white-capped peaks to Salt Lake City below.
     When full daylight arrived, Harson went up the embankment onto the freeway, to try his luck with the volume of Sunday morning traffic. Just as he backed to the ramp, a cop pulled up. Harson smiled.
     The cop smiled and said, “You can’t hitchhike up there.”
     “I know,” Harson replied.
     Soon after the policeman left, Harson slipped back onto the freeway and waved his sign, in vain. He watched a Jeep CJ-5 with a military motif paint job, stop and let two young girls out onto the street below. Each was carrying a suitcase. With some amount of struggle, they came up the ramp. Harson guessed they were fourteen or fifteen years old, perhaps younger.
     “Where are you two going?” he called down to them.




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     “South Carolina,” one answered back with a proper accent to match.
     “Who let you out this early in the day?” he kidded.
     The answer wasn’t clear but obviously flippant.  A car entering the ramp had to be stopped, tires squealing, because one of the young damsels had stepped in front of it. The girls continued up onto the main part of the freeway and kept walking, hauling the suitcases. After they were about fifty-yards away, the Jeep they’d been in was driven up the ramp. The vehicle had clear plastic insets in the front of its canvas top. The male driver and his female passenger raised up in their seats so they could watch the girls.  Harson looked back at the girls and saw them climbing into a semi’s cab. The fact he’d spent ten hours trying to get a ride out of this city, only to see the girls get picked up within ten minutes, infuriated him.
     He cussed the truckers and had a few choice thoughts for the couple who’d encouraged the delinquency. Harson was having a Sunday-in-Salt-Lake-City-shit-fit. He returned to the legal hitchhiking area and held up his sign. Then he pitched it aside.
     An older sedan stopped. The driver was a young Chicano and Harson figured him as trouble. Immediately, he spoke of the short distance he was going because of a lack of money for gas. Harson offered none and was let out at the next ramp.
     It was wider and more heavily used, plus it merged more gradually, so it was easier to be seen from the



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freeway. Harson walked to the top section of the ramp and got a thumb up for all to see. Hundreds drove past as Harson talked to them.
     “Come on, baby, pull it over, I have a long way to go, just get me started again…eat some shit then. Hey, partner, how ‘boutcha there, give an old dude a lift…fuck ya then. Come on people, get my tired ass out of Salt Lake City.”
     Finally, a small yellow car stopped and Harson sat in.
     “Where ya going.?”
     “Ohio.”
     “Whoa, that’s a long way to be going.”
     “You ain’t said shit and I been trying to escape the confines of this town all night. I’m forty-three years old and I’m running away from home. Must be some kinda plumb damned fool! Just jumped onto the freeway with the clothes on my back and few bucks. Left Friday afternoon from Santa Rosa, California. Must be crazy.”
     “Well. a man has to do what he has to do. You’re making pretty fair time, though,” the young driver said, sympathetically.
     “Yeah, you know what I planned to do was to hitch a series of rides with big trucks and really make time, but those bastards won’t pick anybody up. Not a hard-leg, anyway. I just watched a rig uncrank off the fast lane and load up two really young chicks. Guess you have to be fuckable to get a ride with a trucker. Well, if one will break down like a shotgun and take it in the




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ass, I might consider a fuckin’ for a ride to buckeye land.”
     “Wow, man, you are really pit city! But you will have better luck out here where I’m turning off.”
     Harson glanced back at the snow covered mountains he’d had such a difficult time getting on the east side of and felt better. Now he would get a chance to thumb every car and truck headed his way.
     As soon as he was let out of the car, he raced to a spot which was the beginning of a level stretch, just before a long downhill section of the freeway. He found a piece of asphalt shingle and blocked in OHIO in half-inch wide strips from the roll of masking tape. He held up the sign to three cars, then saw a truck. “There is what I need,” he muttered.
     When the big relic stopped about fifty yards past him, Harson was into an all-out sprint . When he reached the side of the truck, he noticed the door was not securely latched. He stepped up, opened it, then bounded into the cab.
     The original seats were missing. A packing mat atop a milk bottle case was the passenger seat. As Harson leaned over to prepare to sit, he bumped heads with the driver, who was reaching to pull an old cushion from behind the makeshift stool.
     Harson sat gaping through the wide expanse of glass. He never realized how big the cab of a long-haul commercial truck is and he was ecstatic about finally getting invited into one.




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     “Wow, I’m amazed.”
     “I ain’t going all the way to Iowa, but I’ll take you a ways.”
     “It’s Ohio and I’ll take whatever you got to offer,” Harson said while still taking in the view through the picture window windshield.
     “You shouldn’t stop a truck going downhill,” the driver complained, even though it was obvious the grade was closer to level.
     Harson apologized and exclaimed, “That amazes me even moreso.”
     The driver smiled through a short red beard. His hair was darker and oily and thinning, combed straight back and in need of a trim.
     “I thought you was a nigger, at first, but then I saw that blond hair.”
     “Well, actually, it’s gray but I dyed it last month to try to get a job.”
     The driver made some comment about hair color or coloring, but the noise inside the cab was deafening. The door on the passenger side wasn’t tight and the latch rattled against the edge of the loose catch. It had to be opened from the outside.  The headliner was detached from its molding as if someone had lain across the seats and kicked upwards. The dashboard switches were set in a background of dust and dark paint, a camouflage of different shades.  The driver was dressed in dark blue matching pants



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and shirt. The nametag sewn over one pocket read “VAN.” He wore Wellington boots. Harson guessed his age at near fifty.  There was a chromed bulldog hood ornament attached to the top of the dashboard.  Harson asked how old the Mack was, but Van corrected his ignorance.
     “This is a Kenworth, a 1957,” Van said. “I’m not a truck driver, I’m a mechanic. I rescued this wreck and turned it into a truck.”
     Harson questioned the two gearshift levers and Van said, “Not many of these on the road, today they use a power shift control - all on one stick - any man can drive one of those.”
     “Even chicks,” Harson smailed, thinking of Rene.
     “Yeah, even chicks,” Van agreed, his smile a stained teeth split in lined skin.
     Van was hauling 500 eighty-pound bags of salt, forty-one inches deep throughout the entire floor of the trailer. He was taking the load to Lincoln, Nebraska.  He seemed to feel the need to race with every other truck, scraping and raking gears frequently, while constantly firing the tip of one Benson and Hedges 100’s from the butt of another. A large coffee cup sat on the floor and Van drank from it after pouring it full from a giant-sized silver thermos, while sneaking peeks at the highway.
     Harson used his sweatshirt as additional padding for his back and braced himself by flexing the muscles of



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his legs. He wasn’t actually taking a ride, he was riding the temporary seat like a saddle. He decided he was in a unique, if not anachronistic, setting.
     Van is a free-wheeling rebel, making his own deals for the loads he hauls. His machine is bare bones, no frills. He is lean and rugged and knowledgeable enough to quote some classics while double-clutching across America. He keeps going on coffee and chokes, doing it all by himself. Harson figured neither the truck nor the man would last much longer and that neither would likely be replaced.
     Van pulled away from the Wyoming Port of Entry at the same time as a fat trucker and his lady. Van crushed home lots of shifting to win the first hill but the newer rig passed him back. Later, while the other truck was slowed for a brake check, Van blasted by the flashing red lights.
     The first time Van stopped to eat, he parked the truck at the end of the dustiest, ruttiest excuse for a driveway one can imagine. The looks of the eatery matched the rugged ride to reach it. Van ordered steak and eggs, Harson ate a piece of pecan pie.
     The waitress smiled and traded comments with the customers. The regulars were probably used to her cleft lip, but it saddened Harson. He knew that a girl her age could have been made completely free of the birth defect, if she’d had access to corrective facilities and surgeons. This isolated location in the Wyoming wastelands may as well have been in a third world nation, or back in a time prior to modern plastic surgery




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techniques.
     The bear of a man at the next table spoke of his previous evening. He’d fallen off the wagon after weeks without a drink, blacked out and lost his car. He claimed every bone and muscle in his body was sore as hell. He lamented he couldn’t believe how fast it had happened. Van assured the man he could believe it because he, himself, was an alcoholic and was finally dry, for good.
     Not surprisingly, the restrooms were not functioning. As Van and Harson left, a young dude behind the counter suggested they go outside and pick a tree. There were only three trees in sight.
     Inside the cab, Harson put on his sweatshirt. The air was cooling quickly and the truck had no heater. On the horizen, to the left, a wall of dark purple clouds began to form. It grew to block more and more of the sky. Rain began to sprinkle. Harson watched with fascination as the cloud bank seemed about to tumble over the freeway in a mass of moisture. But the deluge never took place. Instead, the giant storm seemed to stop and go back from where it originated. Harson and Van agreed some part of the state received copious amounts of rainfall.
     Van stopped for oil. He discussed the good price with another trucker and his partner. Harson talked to the same two men in the restroom. He commented about how dirty his hands were and recalled an incident that had taken place in 1958.




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     He had been showing movies to a family gathering at the officer’s club. One of the old cartoons showed a black child leaving a black handprint on a white wall, as if to suggest the color would rub off. Harson had not previewed the films, so he had no advance warning of the racist nature of this one. But a negro captain and his children were present.
     After the incident, the captain was a bitch-kitty in his dealing with Harson. One time, he chewed his ass for not saluting, even though the distance between them was further than military custom dictated.
     It was nightfall when the old Kenworth was stopped for refueling. Van had a sandwich. Harson had a slice of pie. While Van was paying for the thankful, the same two truckers entered and commented on the good time Harson was making.
     When they told him they were going to New Jersey, he asked if he could accompany them as far as Ohio, since his ride was ending in Lincoln. They looked at one another without answering just as Van came back and said it was time to go.
     Hours later, since it was too late to get unloaded, Van decided to stop and sleep before going on to Lincoln. After parking, he wished Harson good luck but invited him to come back and crawl into the cab if he failed to hitch another ride.
     The air was frigid, due to a stiff wind, as Harson took his sign and walked down to the freeway, beneath a crossover. It was a terrible place to hitchhike. He was




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blown backwards by the draft from speeding semis. No traffic even slowed. He started walking but away from the concrete pillars, the hawk screamed down on him. It pierced the hooded sweatshirt and chilled the dew moistened sneakers.
     Harson returned to the truck stop and made a collect call to Colleen.  He alluded to turning back but she was only concerned he not go see her grandmother. She had called her parents and they were appalled that their son-in-law was coming east. Without specifics, Colleen sounded adament about him cancelling the intended visit.
     After hanging up, Harson went inside the restaurant, had a cup of coffee, then went back to the Kenworth. He climbed inside and slept, sitting upright on the boxy seat, until awakened by Van rustling around in the sleeper.
     “Hey, Van, I’m back, man, it’s a motherfucker out there.”
     Van was not enthused about Harson’s return and said, “I wish some people knew what they can do and what they can’t do!”
     Then he began to cough. Harson recognized the grating sound. It would continue until the first coating of smoke from that first morning cigarette. Thus would begin the layering of tars and other waste products over the previous day’s abrasions. Harson’s father had continued this process until it killed him at age fifty. Van was aware it was killing him, too.




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     “Man, you going to live?”
     “It is just the price you have to pay to continue smoking,” was the wheezing reply.
     Van wormed his way from the sleeper and sat on the bucket seat he had bolted to the floor to replace the original bench seat. He handed Harson a can of starting fluid and directed him to spray into the air intake assembly outside the passenger side window. As Harson directed the spray, Van keyed the ignition and the old engine started.
     Van drove away and didn’t stop until he was near the unloading site, in Lincoln. Harson jumped out to relieve himself as Van checked the load. When they were on the way again, Harson tried to explain why he’d decided not to go to Ohio. He mentioned the phone call to his wife and about how his in-laws were so set against him coming to get Dolly.
     “Can I ride to K.C., then back to Salt Lake with you?”
     “I just wish more people would find out what the things are they can do and what the things are they can’t, “ Van repeated.
     Within minutes, however, he’d softened a bit and suggested Harson climb into the sleeper, since he was nodding out while trying to maintain his balance on the milk crate seat. Harson objected but Van insisted. As soon as Harson was horizontal, he was falling asleep. The last sounds he heard was the truck trailer bump into the loading dock and the towmoter forks scraping the wall of the trailer as the last pallet of salt was removed.



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By the time he was fully awake, Van was looking for a place to phone brokers. He parked and they went inside a restaurant. When he returned from making calls, he seemed edgy. He complained about the waitress, voiced his dislike of the other truck drivers and truck stops in general. As if to distance himself from them, he said, “I’m a mechanic.”
     After finishing his coffee, Van decided to go someplace else for breakfast. He pulled into a small restaurant lot across the road from a prison. As Van ate a large breakfast and Harson drank a beer, they talked.
     “So, you’re going to turn around, huh, and give it up?”
     “Yeah, I guess I have learned what I’m capable of and what I’m not capable of,” Harson ventured.
     “Well, you can help me load pop bottles in Kansas City.”
     “And if something does change, I’ll still be closer to Ohio than I am here, in Nebaska.”
     “That’s right, and the rides may even be better on I-70.” Van said, seeming to encourage Harson to finish what he’d started.
     The route taken to reach I-70 was narrow and rough. Even the hands of the old watch hanging from one of the unused switches of the dash, seemed to be holding on tightly. Van spoke of getting into Kansas sans the transportation department slip.



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Harson figured he was going to by-pass the port of entry, like he’d done when he entered Nebraska, but he stopped and paid the thirty-five dollar fee. After arriving and turning onto I-70, the truck was weighed on a Kansas scale.
     After passing the clean-up of a dumped load in the westbound lane on the overpass near Garretts Truck Stop, Van pulled off I-70 and parked. He told Harson to just act like he was helping drive, so they both could shower and use the trucker facilities. After refueling and paying, Van backed the truck into a space.
Harson asked to use the CB so Van set it up for him then went inside the restaurant. After attempting to contact some eastbound truckers, Harson decided the signal wasn’t getting out very far. He left the cab and walked up a hill, away from the freeway. He purchased a pack of Mickey’s Wide Mouths and took them back to the truck.
     After quickly downing two bottles of the malt liquor, he got out and tore the closing flap from a cardbord box that was inside a dumpster. Using the masking tape to spell “OHIO”, again, he took the sign to the truck and got on the CB. He made contact with a driver going to Findlay, Ohio, next morning, then drank another Mickey’s.
     Leaving the truck, he walked into the restaurant, found Van in a booth, scarfing down a meal, and told him he’d decided to get back on the road.
     “Thanks a ton, Van,” he said as he shook the



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rawboned hand. “I know I’m hot and I’ll be back on my five-day schedule in no time.”
     A waitress was pouring coffee and sort of got between the final good-bye, but Van seemed delighted Harson was going for it.
     He thumbed two vehicles, while standing near the bottom of an entry ramp. He watched the second car make the slow right-hand circle up to the freeway. He raced up the steep bank, pulled up his hood, set the sack of brew down and began waving his sign. Within minutes, he was climbing aboard a ’56 Chevy pickup.
The driver was young and tough looking, but he smiled and offered to share a joint, after commenting, “Hey, you’re sort of an older dude, aren’t you?”
     “Forty-four on the 4th of July. It’ll take two twenty-two-year olds to replace me.”
     Laughing, the lad fired the number and passed it to Harson. He hit it in volumes of toke which joined the alcohol bath he’d just given his brain.
     HaWK opened to more bottles and handed one to the driver. After a short ride, the hearty party was over and HaWK was let out, just before the driver exited.
     A cruiser went by, so HaWK raced across to the medium strip and stayed low. The cruiser returned and passed. HaWK crossed the westbound lanes and began jogging towards traffic. As soon as he was even with the exit on the eastbound side, he crossed over four lanes of traffic and waved the sign, after chugging another Mickey’s.




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     Carl stopped and offered a ride in his Cougar. He shared his joint and HaWK uncapped the last two green bottles. When Carl hinted he needed gas to go much further, HaWK squawked, “Ah, man, you know I figured the last dude that talked that shit wanted to burn me for the few bucks I do have.”
     He was let out near the entry ramp across from the Kansas City East Union 76 Auto/Truck Stop.
By now, HaWK was fully launched; high-skied by pot with a jungle juice push. He met Don, sitting on a guard rail, with his head down. HaWK began a shower of machine-gun rap and asked Don about getting rides with truck drivers, then began to give them hell.
     “They are fat, out of shape asses. They sit so fucking smugly, up in their fucking luxed-out liners and pretend what they do is hard work. Fuck ‘em, who needs their fucking cheap seats? Who needs to breathe their fucking cigarette smoke? Who needs to hear their fractured grammer and bullshit CB ramblings? I am physically able to fucking walk to Ohio!”
     HaWK landed on the asphalt and assumed a pushup position. “Hey, Don, I am going to do some truck driver pushups. One truck driver, two truck driver, three truck driver…can you hear me, Don?’
     When he reached twenty-four, he could see Don was smiling, so he stood and preached.
      “Don, the only person in the whole damned world that can change your life, is you. When the shit comes down and something has to give, or go, you and you




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alone are in charge of the show. If you don’t make the move to make the different direction a possibility, there is no possibility, no probability, no chance for change. I’m ready to do it and I’m going to do it. I’m doing it. You can be ready, too. Do you hear me, Don?”
     “I’m listening, ain’t I”
     HaWK walked down to the freeway, shouting for all cops to go take a coffee break. He returned to where Don had been sitting under a light, but he was gone. He took out the roll of tape and printed “SEX” on the other side of OHIO. He walked across the overpass to the restaurant and ordered coffee. It was the waitress’s first night. After paying her, Harson laid his last twenty on his thigh.
     Two truckers came in and sat at the end of the horseshoe-shaped counter. Harson walked over and asked them about picking up hitchhikers.
     “I’d lose my job, period,” said the first.
     “Me, too,” answered the second, “I don’t pick up anybody.”
     Harson took his sign into the Professional Driver’s Only reserved section. He posed the same question to a thickset, mustachioed, Broderick Crawford look-alike with billed cap and wide belt. He admitted to giving an occasional lift. Harson showed him the two-sided sign and the man smiled which seemed to indicate Harson may have found an edge in the battle to will somebody to pick him up. He left the restaurant to look for more beer.



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He searched for the twenty and ran back inside to find the money on the floor next to the stool. He snatched it up and left. He asked a pump attendent where he could buy some sauce. Mentioning the name of a woman and pointing, Harson followed the instruction, but after a short walk in the darkness, he returned to the spot where he’d met Don.
    Following a road south to a small village, he went into a bar, near Mac’s, drank a draught and got a six-pack to go.  When he arrived back to I-70, a pickup load of youths offered him a ride in the bed. They took him along the freeway to a point where he could hitchhike sans the confinement of an on-ramp. He flashed both sides of his sign but the traffic whizzed by.
     About an hour later, an older Mercury sedan braked to a stop about sixty yards passed. Harson sprinted with the beers and the sign. Two young men were in the front and the driver offered Harson the back seat.
He dropped the sign and climbed inside, becoming immediately aware of his difference. Early in the conversation, the swarthy, dark-eyed, curly-haired driver announced they’d done time together.  Pat was larger, fairer complexioned and seemed uneasy.
     Harson handed them each a beer, opened one for himself and began a non-stop stream of verbiage. Pat spoke a few words but Mike, the driver, seemed to interpret his mood.  Pat rolled down the window and tossed out the nearly full can of beer. Mike asked if he’d rather sit in the back?



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Pat grunted and moved to crawl over the front seat. As soon as he was part-way over, Harson climbed into the space just vacated and kept talking.  Mike said he and Pat had been cellmates, very tight partners.  He’d been locked up because he’d tied a guy’s cock and balls to an automobile bumper, with a nylon rope, then drove away.
     “Man, that is hard-fucking core!”
     “He did wrong messin’ with my woman. He won’t ever do it again,” Mike said.
     Throughout the rest of the night time, Harson and Mike talked about everything, from children to personal philosophies, as Pat slept in the back. When the sun came up, the world’s largest “McDonald’s arch” shone in the distance. Mike began to turn off I-70 and Harson asked to be let out.
     He hitched and walked in the morning sunshine until he found a piece of lumber and fashioned another “OHIO” sign with the tape.
     Warming up, he felt refreshed and began talking to the traffic. After a few short rides, Harson stood on a wide uphill grade. Jim brock stopped.
     “You got a good one, now, I’m going to Cincinnati.”
     “All right!”
     Harson couldn’t relate to this chronological peer as well as Jim understood being on the road with minimum bucks and no baggage. But he’d driven all night from Oklahoma and was glad for some company to help him stay awake.



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     It was nearly four days, to the hour, since Harson’s journey began, when they reached Cincinnati. He smiled when he read the corporation sign announcing it as “The All-American City.” In his heart, he considered “The All-American City” to be the one he’d left in California. He decided to continue east to Jackson County. Shortly after Jim pointed out the location of “the workhouse,” Harson asked to be let out on the western fringe of The Queen City.
     Harson spent so many hours traversing the width of the city, it was nearly dark by the time he got another ride. After making a “Jackson” sign, he got another two-mile ride to I-275.
    When a Lincoln Continental slowed but stalled before reaching him, Harson walked back to it. The driver told him to get inside and after some waiting, the engine started.  Harson told his story of how he’d run away because of paranoia the letters to the President had caused. The young driver never questioned Harson’s rationale and even agreed that everything may be as Harson had determined. But his agreeable attitude didn’t help Harson’s immediate need, since he exited 275 after a few miles.
     His next ride was in a van going to Minford. He asked to ride along, then ignorantly changed his mind when the driver informed him SR 32, which exited I-275 had a Jackson arrow sign.  Rides were infrequent. A beer distributor driving a VW Rabbit went a few miles. A young man in an older Plymouth, gave him a short, speedy ride while



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reminding Harson of the recent murders of hitchhikers.
     Then he climbed into the back seat of a car which was ankle-deep in Bud cans. The driver and passenger were intoxicated. They apologized for not being able to take Harson further but they were going to see a female, so they could both tell her off.
     After miles of walking, Harson was driven to “Dagoville,” by two chrome mill workers.  From there, he was transported to the intersection of routes 23 and 124.  He got a wild ride in a GTE van. Harson was so tired, the heat inside made him drowsy, but the driver was bringing it up the road and the curves and roller-coaster dips kept him wide-eyed.
      It was daybreak before Harson got another ride to the outskirts of Jackson. He discarded the sign just before a baby-faced Ohio State Patrolman stopped. Harson was refused a ride because he didn’t have a disabled vehicle. He was asked for a social security number and the cop copied it onto the palm of his hand with a pen.
     Two short rides later, Harson was sitting in a pickup truck in front of his former high school as the driver awaited a red light. He thanked him, got out, then began walking towards the center of town where it is always 8:18 on the jewelry store watch. It was the first time in twenty-seven years since he’d been here without a wife or children. It was the last day of March. He still had to go see Dolly.
     It was early June, the day before her birthday, when




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Harson knocked on her door. As soon as she opened it, he felt the mistrust. After entering her kitchen, he was instantly aware why her peple had not wanted him to come back and see her. Neither Dolly nor her home had been cared for in months.
     Everything was filthy, in layers; one unwashed article piled atop another. Harson tried to ignore the mess and smiled as he said he’d made it by her birthday. She was not impressed and sat at the table.
     When she offered to fix him something to eat, he cleaned a skillet and stir-fried some limp vegetables. She got up and took some mixture of fruit and whipped cream from the ice-coated freezer of her fridge and spooned some into a plastic container. He refused and she questioned his lack of taste for sweets, then sloppily spilled some onto herself and began spitting bits of hard to chew pieces onto the floor. Harson nearly became nauseous.  He could barely believe how badly the woman had deteriorated from her personal hygiene habits. It was as if she was trying her best to dissuade him from any ideas about staying with her or taking her anyplace.
     She cruelly told him he had no business marrying her granddaughter, in the first place, since he was so much older and already had four children. She offered to go withdraw some money from the bank and Harson realized his mother-in-law had convinced Dolly it was the only reason he would come to see her.
     He began to cry and Dolly embraced him so he




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could hide his sadness from her unsympathetic eyes.  As he turned to leave, she mentioned the money, again, telling him to return the next day to get it.  Harson never saw Dolly again.
     Three months after leaving, Harson hitchhiked back to California in the same number of days it took him to reach Ohio.  Afterwards, whenever HaWK heard The Pretenders’ MY CITY WAS GONE, it held special meaning.
     In 1985, after hearing Roger Waters’ THE PROS AND CONS OF HITCHHIKING, he sadly remembered Dolly, who died in a nursing home within months of Harson’s visit.
     She’d told him about the first time she ever left home.  A huge policeman had returned to the mountains for a vacation and visited her parents. He’d fallen for Dolly upon first sight of her helping his hostess prepare supper. Later that evening, the guest and the host shook hands and exchanged more money than Dolly had ever seen.
     “When he took me from my home and put me on a train, with him, to so far away from that little hollow in
West Virginia, I cried the whole way to O-hi-o. Ohio! I hated it!” she shouted. Then her voice trailed, as she explained, “Away from my mother for the first time…I never saw her again. When she died, I had six kids and couldn’t go back to the funeral.”
     She'd reminisced  how upset she’d been, not having the kind of stove she had been taught to cook on.




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The combination of sadness and anger gave her courage to make life so miserable for her new husband, that he finally sent her to town to buy one.
     It was a huge double-oven style with warming bins. Dolly said she could act happy in Ohio if she could have that fancy wood burner. The salesman tried to change her mind, knowing her husband would balk at the cost, then told her she would have to bring him into the store.
     When the couple returned, Dolly stood firm. She told her husband, in front of the salesman, he could just put her in the box it came in and put her on the train back to West Virginia.
     She got the stove and even after all the years that passed, she was still amazed by how much she’d had to learn about life.  She admitted she was “barely twelve years old.”