On The Road In The 1970's: Part 12

Despite being culturally straight and a man out of the 1950's in his looks, the white guy who drove me past San Bernardino onto Interstate 40 and further eastward in California and closer to the Arizona border was a friendly guy. He was some kind of a civilian worker who was employed at one of the military bases in eastern California or western Arizona. But he wasn't gung-ho military or right-wing extremist politically; and he seemed to be working at the military base as a civilian mainly because it was just the highest-paying job around that he could find.

Since he didn't live in any of the towns right near the military base on which he worked, each weekday he had to commute back and forth to his job by driving on interstate and state highways for an hour and a half to get to work and for an hour and a half to get back home from work. So before we reached the exit on Interstate 40 that crossed the state highway which led to the military base where he worked, we had an interesting and friendly conversation.

I no longer can recall exactly what we talked about, although I suspect that my rap around that time about how the computer technology should be used to create a leisure-oriented society in which all of us in the USA would only have to work a few days a week at boring jobs, without any cut in our current pay, appealed to him. And I think he saw me as living in a way that was less enslaving than his current job situation at the military base enabled him to live, yet living in a way that he was fearful of, himself, living in the same way. And, when he realized that, like him, I wasn't married or interested in being married, he seemed to understand why I did not wish to be tied down to one person romantically for life.

But I was still somewhat surprised, since he still looked so culturally straight in a 1950's way, when, a few miles before his car reached his exit on Interstate 40, he suddenly asked in a serious tone: "Have you ever had sex with a man?"

In the 1970's, despite the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion and the rapid growth and visibility of the Gay Liberation Movement in cities like New York City and San Francisco and in many U.S. university campus towns, in more socially conservative parts of the United States and at most culturally straight workplaces, like in military bases, corporate offices and factories, homophobia was still widespread; and, if you were a gay man trapped economically in some socially conservative area of the USA, there was often not enough of a gay bar scene around where you lived and worked to make it easy for you to find men who shared your sexual orientation that you could hook up with easily locally. Nor was there any computer-based internet, facebook or gay singles website way of meeting potential sexual partners in the 1970's. So checking out whether the hitchhiker he picked up might be interested in having sex with him, in the socially conservative region where the driver who picked me up lived, was probably not an anymore unusual thing for a culturally straight gay male driver to do than it was for a culturally straight heterosexual man who picked up a woman hitchhiker to check out whether she might be interested in having sex with him, in that same socially conservative region.

"No, I'm more into just getting back to New York City now," I replied in a matter-of-fact and good-natured, friendly way. And although the driver looked a bit disappointed, he didn't try to verbally or physically pressure me to stay in his car and have sex with him during the remaining few minutes before we reached the Interstate 40 exit where he dropped me off, wished me "good luck" and continued driving on a state highway that led to the military base where he worked--after I thanked him for the ride and also wished him luck. (end of part 12)








 

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On The Road In The 1970's: Part 11

I can't recall much of what I did after the first driver who picked me up in Los Angeles dropped me off next to a beach in Orange County in the early evening before sunset, where I figured I would sleep for the night before hitching another ride eastward after the sun reappeared the next day. But what I still recall is that, within a short time, a young white guy in his late teens or early 20's approached me and began chatting with me in a friendly way, as we both sat on the beach sand. To my surprise, once he realized I didn't have a place to stay for the night in that particular Orange County town and planned to to stay on the beach for the night, he invited me to stay for the night in the house where he lived with other "people like us;" rather than spending it on the beach "where the local cops might kick you off the beach or arrest you for loitering if they notice you," before I hitched a ride out of the town the next morning.

Since the young guy seemed cool and friendly, I decided to accept his generous offer. And as the sun was setting, we walked together for a few blocks from the beach to where the house that he lived in was located.  Once in the house, I was invited to put my knapsack down in the living room and join two other young white guys and an older white man, who looked to be in his early 30's, for a spaghetti dinner. After dinner, however, the older guy began to start talking religion with me, and I realized that the house was being used as a recruitment place for some kind of "born-again Christian" or "children of God"-type sect, that especially hoped to recruit runaway teenagers and hippie street people in their late teens or in their 20's.

Once the liberal ideology that the U.S. corporate mass media/tv and the U.S. public, private or prep school system pushed into the brains of post-1945-born baby-boomers no longer seemed to explain accurately why U.S. society and the world in the late 1960's and early 1970's seemed fucked-up morally and enslaving personally to most baby-boomers in their late teens and 20's, large numbers of U.S. young people in the 1970's seemed to look again for religious explanations for the state of the world; and for religion-related ways to obtain personal freedom, personal and collective salvation and personal fulfillment. And the same corporate mass media that had publicized New Left political activism in the late 1960's, seemed to start providing less daily tv time news coverage to Black Liberation Movement political activists and white New Left political activists and more mass media publicity and promotion to less politically threatening religious groups, sects, or cults in the 1970's.

Hence, when the apparently politically burn-out, former New Left SDS activist and U.S. anti-war movement activist (who had been a member of the Chicago 8 Conspiracy trial defendants charged with conspiring to cross state lines to incite a riot in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention), Rennie Davis, joined an Eastern religious group like Divine Light Mission in the 1970's, a lot of mass media publicity was given to his conversion from being a New Left anti-war politico to now being a religious cult member.

Within the religious cult house in southern California that I now started to feel trapped in for the night while on the road, the older white guy, who seemed to be the manager of the religious cult members who lived in the house (who seemed to be mostly runaway white male youth in their late teens or early 20's) debated with me for a few hours after dinner, before it came time to go to sleep. After I responded to his attempts to get me to promise to "accept Jesus Christ as the savior," with some of my political arguments that explained why having religious debates related to whether Jesus actually existed or not "wasn't my thing" and didn't interest me, he still continued to express concern that I would "end up in hell" unless I accepted Jesus Christ and religion. And after everybody in the house had awoken the next morning and I ate breakfast with the cult members, the older guy declared that he would not let me leave the house and go back on the road again, unless I first swore that I now "accepted Jesus Christ as my savior" and now believed in the religious views he had been trying to push on me.

Feeling now that I might end up now being held a hostage in the house by the religious cult members, unless I could convince them that the older guy had really converted me by his religious arguments and preaching to me, I then felt I had to start quickly pretending that, after a night's sleep, I now "accepted Jesus Christ as my savior," as I stood next to the cult members in a circle in the the living room, while the older guy who managed the cult members in the house asked:  "And do you now, Bob, believe in Jesus Christ?"

"I do believe in Jesus Christ," I replied piously with as much religious fervor as I could then fake.

"Then let us pray that when Bob resumes his journey, Jesus Christ, our savior, will watch over him until he reaches the end of his journey," the older, culturally straight-looking white guy then said, while closing his eyes and praying with us for about a minute more.

Once the minute of praying had ended, the cult manager of the house no longer seemed interested in keeping me hostage in his house. So I then quickly picked up my large knapsack, thanked everybody for their hospitality and for helping me "see the truth of Jesus" and hurried out of house to a spot near the a road that eventually connected to an interstate highway east, stuck out my finger and waited util I was picked up by another culturally-straight-looking white guy with short hair and glasses, who looked like he was in his mid-to-late 30's.

On The Road In The 1970's: Part 10

Sticking out my thumb at one of the entrances to a freeway that was heading southeast out of Los Angeles, I did not have to wait too long before a car driven by a young white guy who looked like he was in his late 20's stopped and invited me to "hop in."

"How far are you going?" he asked in a curious way.

"To New York City," I replied.

The driver laughed and said:  "Well, I'm going to San Diego, so my ride won't help that much. But at least I can get you out of Los Angeles and into Orange County, where you can catch one of the freeways that meets up with I-40 going east."

"That sounds like it would help me a lot."

The driver had apparently done a lot of hitchhiking during the years of his early 20's, when he had served in the U.S. military and had, himself, been given rides by many U.S. drivers when he needed to save money by traveling on the road. So, lucky for me, he apparently felt morally obligated, himself, now, to offer a ride and pick-up any hitchhiker in his 20's that he, himself, passed while driving; as a kind of repayment for the free rides other drivers had given him, whenever he had been on the road during his younger years coming home from leave when in the U.S. military.

In addition, from the conversation I had with him in his car, before he dropped me off near one of the beaches in Orange County in the early evening before the sun had set, the driver--now approaching 30 and no longer having the free time to travel around much, himself--seemed to feel some nostalgia for his more youthful days when he had hitchhiked, which seeing me with my thumb out reminded him of.

"You can probably stay around the beach here for the night and then go to one of the freeway entrances and hitch a ride up towards San Bernardino that gets you near to I-40 east," the first driver who picked me up advised, before I thanked him with  a smile, we both wished each other "good luck," I got out of the car with my large knapsack and his car returned to the highway that would take him to San Diego. 

On The Road In The 1970's: Part 9

As Abbie Hoffman once indicated in one of his late 1960's or early 1970's books, when a driver picked a hitchhiker up in the 1960's and 1970's (decades before the 21st-century "gig economy' era of cellphones, smartphones, Uber and Lyft, etc.), one reason might be that the driver just wished to acquire a temporary companion for part of his or her drive to converse with, in order to reduce the boredom of a long drive alone. And having acquired a lot of experience in speaking with a lot of different types of people spontaneously in the USA about their personal lives as a New Left activist/organizer in the 1960's, I found it fairly easy in the 1970's to get a good conversation started and kept going with most any driver who might pick me up when I was hitchhiking on the road in the 1970's.

In the 1970's, if you were still in your 20's and looked like a long-haired freak or hippy, whether bearded or not bearded, a  white man hitching alone could still hook-up with highway drivers who would not be reluctant--and who were often eager--to stop and invite him to "hop in." If the driver who offered you a ride in the 1970's was also a freak or hippy in his 20's like you were, then you would often be seen as a brother or a fellow member of an underground Woodstock nation of outlaws, that the culturally  straight local cops, local authorities, local establishments and "suits", who continued to dress straight and go to barbers who cut their hair shirt, were still trying to suppress around the United States.

And if the driver who offered you a ride in the 1970's wasn't a freak or hippy and looked like one of the culturally straight folks, you often sometimes felt that, in some ways, he or she saw you as a symbol of the freedom that he or she maybe once had or dreamed of having, but lacked now because of things like family economic support pressures and kid-raising or 9-to-5 job responsibilities.

Either type of drivers who picked you up on the road in the 1970's were usually personally generous and personally friendly. Although, if the driver who picked you up wasn't also a freak or hippy long-haired person, you usually had to be more cautious about what you said (especially about saying anything political or anything about religion) until you got a sense from the conversation in the car where he or she was coming from philosophically; and had determined whether he or she might be some kind of right-wing type person. But, of course, if you looked like a freak/hippy in the 1970's, most of the right-wing types who were still gung-ho about the System would generally not be willing to pick you up on the highway.

What you felt from hitching on the road in the 1970's, was that, however morally obnoxious were the businessmen, generals, politicians and super-rich white folks who ruled the USA, the vast majority of people in the United States who you met while on the road, regardless of which state you were traveling through, were still quite friendly, generous, good-natured, kind and often verbally witty and hip on a personal level in the 1970's; and many of the folks you met while on the road who picked you up in the 1970's were also still great and interesting oral storytellers when you conversed with them. You felt that the militaristic dog-eat-dog System and institutions that people who were born in the USA were supposed to accept passively and adjust to living under, while they were alive, did not really reflect the humanistic national character of most people who were born in the 20th-century in the USA or who then lived in the USA in the 1970's.

On The Road In The 1970's: Part 8

Back in Los Angeles in the late afternoon, after returning from Disneyland in Anaheim, I was ready to go on the road again. So, with less than $20 in my pocket, I began hitching back from the West Coast to the East Coast.

Strangely, I felt I was absolutely free on a certain level, having no job, no place inside where I was sure I would be able to sleep that night, practically no money left, and no one in the whole world whom I felt both loved the person I had become in the 1970's or cared whether I lived or died; and I, myself, on a certain level no longer cared whether I lived or died, given my conclusion, at this time, that for working-class people in the USA, in the 1970's, life after leaving college was a meaningless one of spiritual, intellectual, emotional, philosophical, political, moral, artistic and sexual death and economic enslavement, within a morally degenerate, imperialist economic system of corporate totalitarianism. I felt that I had made the good fight in the 1960's and early 1970's. But given how bleak the future looked for me personally, even if I didn't make it back East, I then felt I had already experienced the best of what life in the USA would ever offer a working-class person in the way of relative personal freedom, during my years as a college undergraduate; and I then felt post-college/post-campus life in "real world" would continue to be a downhill, deadening experience compared to what life had been like when in college, until the day I died.

But despite these kind of thoughts, I had never been much of a suicidal person, no matter how miserable I felt my personal economic life situation might be or how personally unloved or lonely I felt. Maybe because I had always been blessed and lucky in my personal physical health situation no matter how impoverished I had become in the 1970's. Or maybe because I had always been able to channel any of my personal blues feelings, that might have pushed me into a suicidal mindset, into a source of artistic inspiration for the folk song lyrics, poems, plays, stories and folk song tunes that I had always found it easy to write, since my teenage years in high school.

On The Road In The 1970's: Part 7

I no longer remember much about my night bus ride down the highway from `Frisco to L.A., probably because I must have fallen asleep on the bus and slept through much of the ride before the bus pulled into the Greyhound station in Los Angeles, just a few hours after sunrise, but an hour or two before the Monday morning commuter rush hour into Los Angeles had begun. I vaguely remember that the seat next to me on the bus had been occupied by a culturally straight-looking white guy in his 20's, who didn't seem particularly unfriendly or reactionary, but who, like me, had been more into trying to get some sleep on the bus during the trip to L.A., rather than having any kind of a long, spontaneous conversation between "fellow-travelers."

Inside the bus terminal in Los Angeles, I found an empty bus station locker to store my large knapsack bag for most of the day and then found out from the information desk which commuter bus would take me to where Disneyland was located in Anaheim and bought myself a round-trip ticket for the bus to and from Anaheim. Since I now had much less money in my pocket than the $100 I would need at that time to buy the Greyhound bus ticket that would take me back to New York City, I realized that I was now going to have to hitchhike back from the West Coast to the East Coast. But rather than spending a day checking out Hollywood, Santa Monica or Los Angeles' street life before heading back to New York City on the road, I somehow felt that before I headed back East I wanted to visit Disneyland.

As a child growing up in New York City, I had always wanted to visit Disneyland but had never done so. And, not knowing in the 1970's if I was going to survive economically or physically much longer, I somehow still felt that I wanted to see Disneyland before I died.

Arriving in Anaheim by an outgoing commuter bus later in the morning, I can recall walking down a road from the bus station to the Disneyland entrance and then spending much of my remaining money on the fee that was required in order to enter through the gates of Disneyland.

Once inside Disneyland, I was surprised to see that the rides and structures in Fantasyland, Frontierland, Adventureland, and Tomorrowland seemed much smaller than I had imagined them to be when, as a child, I watched film of them on the 1950s Disneyland tv show. And after maybe spending 2 or 3 hours walking around Disneyland and checking out the 1970s Disnelyand scene, I started to get bored. So I got on a commuter bus that was returning from Anaheim to Los Angeles.

On The Road In The 1970's: Part 6

Only a few hours before I was to leave Berkeley to catch the Alameda County bus that would take me back over the bridge to S.F., where I would then wait inside the Greyhound station until I could board the bus to L.A., a friendly blond-haired, blue-eyed, hip-looking white woman, looking like she was in her 20's, who had a California regional accent, suddenly approached me on the sidewalk of Telegraph Avenue, about three or four blocks away from the campus, while I was standing there with my large knapsack. The young white woman was someone that most men in the 1970's would likely have characterized as a "California beauty."

"Hi!  Did you just arrive here in Berkeley?" she asked, with a friendly smile.

"Actually, I'm planning to leave Berkeley tonight?"

"Why are you leaving?"

"I'm running out of money and I have to hitch back to New York City soon."

Continuing to smile in a friendly way, the young white woman then asked:  "Maybe you'd like to stay around for a few more days and visit the Ashram where I live?"

"You live in an Ashram?" I replied with surprise. And we then got into a 10-minute philosophical/political discussion in which I explained why I probably wouldn't fit in philosophically with the spiritual community that she had found now fulfilled her spiritual needs in the 1970's.

By the 1970's the liberal ideology that the U.S. Establishment's corporate mass media and U.S. public and private school educational/political indoctrination system disseminated did not provide an accurate explanation for why the Civil Rights and anti-war movement of the 1960's could not win its demands for racial equality in the USA and peace in Vietnam. Or why many young people in the USA were brutalized by U.S. police when they protested on campus and in the streets in the 1960's and early 1970's. So many young people in the USA became political radicalized and, for a while, felt that the New Left's neo-Marxist ideology propagated less myths about U.S. society than did the U.S. Establishment's corporate liberal ideology.

The Kent State and Jackson State massacres and U.S. government and local police harassment, imprisonment and even killings of Black Panther Party activists and other Movement activists convinced, however, many "stage-in-life" radical youths that changing the world by means of New Left movement political action was not possible; and the U.S. women's liberation movement of the late 1960's and early 1970's convinced large numbers of young U.S. women that the New Left political movement was too patriarchal and male chauvinist to ever create a new world in which all women were free and equal. As a result, large numbers of these dissident and politically alienated "stage-in-life" politically radical youth seemed to get into some form of New Age spiritualism, East Asian religions or some hippie variation of a religiously Christian sect, like "Children of God" or "Jews for Jesus."

Hence, even on a previously politicized campus like UC-Berkeley or on streets like Telegraph Avenue, by the 1970's you were just as likely to be handed a flyer that attempted to recruit you to some New Age, Eastern religious or hippie Christian sect as you were to be handed a flyer for some local protest, that would generally attract fewer supporters than the same political group's previous monthly demo.

Once the young white woman concluded that I was either too intellectual or still too philosophically New Leftist a street person/nomad to be a potential recruit for her Ashram, she soon lost interest in continuing our discussion on the street; and, still smiling and friendly, wished me well, before she headed back to eat her evening dinner at her Ashram. I then started walking down to Shattuck Avenue to catch the Alameda Country Transit bus that would take me into San Francisco; where I would then walk to the Greyhound bus station and wait there for the late evening bus that would take me down to Los Angeles.,