On The Road In The 1970's: Part 85

 Standing in the breakdown lane on the Interstate Highway near its Muncie, Indiana entrance, I did not have to wait too long before a white guy in his 20's, who had short brown hair and a mustache and was dressed in a suit and tie, stopped his car in front of me and opened his car's passsenger sidedoor.

And soon after I jumped into the front passenger seat of the car and told him that I was hitching into Michigan, he smiled and replied: "Looks like you're in luck, since I'm going all the way up to Detroit."

The culturally-straight-looking guy was friendly and seemed to have picked me up to break up his boredom of having to drive all alone in his car for most of the time it would take him to reach Detroit.

During the course of our conversing on the road up to Michigan, the culturally-straight-looking guy, while laughing, mentioned that he worked for the FBI and had just busted a student who was a big marijuana dealer in one of the college campus towns in Indiana; but that he, himself, actually liked the way hippie freaks like me were able to live. And once he served his time working for the FBI, which had paid his college tuition, he would likely move to some youth ghetto in some campus town himself, and then live like a hippie-freak for a few years, rather than quickly trying to find some new 9-to-5 government job or job in the corporate business world.

I can't recall much else about what we talked about before the FBI undercover agent eventually dropped me off at the Interstate Highway exit in Michigan, from which I was able to walk with my knapsack into the campus town; and eventually take a brief nap on the town's university campus for a few hours, before walking around and seeing if an old white womanfriend of mine, also in her early 20's, who lived there was at home.

On The Road In The 1970's: Part 84

After leaving the Central Public Library in Indianapolis, when it closed for the evening, I then walked downtown in the direction of Washington Street, which was also U.S. Highway 40, and, carrying my knapsack, began to walk east towards its intersection to the Interstate Highway which would connect to the Interstate 69 or other highway that led northeast through Indiana and up into Michigan.

After walking east for a few hours in the dark, a long-haired white hippie-freak in his 20's, who looked about the same age as me, passed me and then stopped the car he was driving, opened the passenger side door and asked me, with a smile on his face, as I approached the passenger door: "Which way are you heading?"

"The highway towards Michigan," I replied.

Sill smiling, the long-haired white freak then said: "Hop in! I can take you up that direction towards Anderson."

Like me, the long-haired white hippie driver giving me the ride was also unemployed. And, while we shared a joint in the car and listened to the rock music he was playing on his car's tape deck, we conversed with each other for most of the ride, in the early morning darkness.

"They just seem to want to hire the young chicks around here these days, whenever the companies are hiring," the young white freak driver said in the car at one point, with a laugh. And, still chuckling, he added: "That's what women's lib in Indiana means now. But at least being on unemployment for awhile is still more fun than being stuck everyday on the asssembly line, I guess."

 "Yeah. Wage-slavery under capitalism is a real drag for anybody who's hip to the System," I replied. "And being unemployed myself now gave me the freedom to go out to California and then hitch back towards the East like I'm doing."

So many decades later, I no longer recall much else of what we talked about, although I think he pretty much agreed with my rap that the computers and the automation should be used in the 1970's to create an economy in which everybody would only have to work 15 hours a week for 35 hours pay. But by the time he dropped me off by a breakdown lane near an exit on the Interstate around Anderson, the sun was beginning to rise as we said goodbye to each other, with stoned smiles on both our faces before he drove away.

Because there were few cars or trucks yet driving on the Interstate highway so early in the morning and the cars or trucks driving by me at this time did not offer me a ride, I had to wait in the breakdown lane by the highway exit for awhile.

Eventually, though, a car stopped in front of ma after the morning sun had completely risen and I quickly trotted towards the car with my knapsack and hopped in.

The driver was a friendly white guy in his twenties who was then clean-shaven and without long-hair. But he apparently had been a long-haired hippie freak before he had to get a haircut and shave his beard off, in order to get hired for his night-shift job at the automobile factory that he was then returning home from. So he apparently saw me as someone who, by being on the road hitching, was on the philosophical trip similar to the philosophical trip he had been on, before his need for some money forced him to get his night-shift factory job in the automobile manufacturing plant.

The short-haired, clean-shaven guy lived in a rented second-floor apartment in a 1950's built house on the outskirts of Muncie and was friendly. And he pretty much agreed with my rap in the car about our generation having outgrown the materialistic, work ethic-oriented society that the culturally straight work-freak businessmen still wanted to trap us into adjusting to--instead of allowing our generation to create a leisure-oriented society in the USA.

And because he didn't live too far from the Interstate exit near Muncie, rather than just dropping me off on the Interstate breakdown lane near his exit, he invited me to have breakfast with him in his apartment. And then, after he cooked some scrambled eggs for us both to eat while we chatted, and I continued to describe how I had managed to reach Indiana from Los Angeles in so few days despite having to hitchhike back east, he drove the short distance from where he lived back to the Interstate highway later that morning--giving me a lift back to the breakdown lane near the highway exit, where he then dropped me, and my large knapsack, off.