Less than ten minutes after the jovial Oklahoma City Hells Angels Club member dropped me off on the breakdown lane near the exit in Oklahoma City, where he was leaving the Interstate 44 highway with his car, a pick-up truck, driven by a white teenage guy, stopped. The passenger sitting next to the pick-up truck driver, another white teenage guy, then called out to me through the open passenger side window: "We're driving up to Illinois through St. Louis, if you think that might help you."
"It sure would, since I'm trying to get to Indianapolis," I replied.
"Then just hop-in outside in the back. And we can drop you off when we turn off in St. Louis," the white teenage passenger said.
After thanking the two teenage guys for offering me the ride, I quickly climbed up onto the back of their pick-up truck with my knapsack and sat outside there, watching the Oklahoma countryside before and after the pick-up truck drove rapidly through Tulsa; and, after the pick-up truck crossed the Oklahoma-Missouri border, watched the rural Missouri landscape alongside Interstate 44 from the pick-up truck, as it moved northeast towards St. Louis, until we finally reached that city in the early evening darkness.
Being outside in the back of the pick-up truck, which stopped neither for refueling at a gas station or at any fast food joint or restaurant before it reached St. Louis, I did not converse at all with either the teenage guy who was driving the pick-up truck or with the teenage guy who was his passenger. So I didn't learn much about where they were at philosophically or exactly where in Illinois they were heading up to.
Both of the white teenage guys looked pretty straight culturally, were beardless and had short-hair. So they apparently were the teenage sons of some white farmers in some rural Illinois area north of St. Louis, who were driving back from either making some delivery they had made in Oklahoma, Arkansas or Texas or from some vacation or weekend trip to ones of these three states.
Since they didn't look like hippies or freaks themselves, in the same way that I looked like a hippie or freak, and didn't appear to be smoking pot when they picked me up, the main reason they probably felt it was their natural role to offer hitchhikers like me who were on the road a free lift was that, in the 1970s, most white people in the USA who grew up or lived on farms in rural areas were generally still socialized to always pick up white hitchhikers they saw on the road.
In rural areas of states like Oklahoma, Missouri and Oklahoma, nearly all teenage guys who grew up on farms in rural areas were driving at 15 or 16 and had their own cars (or access to a car) by that age; and people who grew up on farms in rural areasa of the USA in the 1970s were still generally friendlier, less suspicious and more helpful in relationship to each other than those teenagers who had grown up in urban or suburban areas and not on farms.
In addition, since living without a car in Midwestern rural farming communities was probably still considered to be almost as much of a misfortune as if a person had no access to food, in the 1970s, the teenage white guys who drove me northeast to St. Louis in the early 1970s probably felt that only neurotically cruel or weird teenage drivers who had empty space outside in the back of their pick-up trucks would drive by any individual white hitchhiker on the road, without offering him or her a lift. Because of the racist way the institutionally racist U.S. corporate media newspapers and tv stations stilll generally portrayed African-American people in the 1970s, however, culturally-straight teenage white guys, like the ones who picked me up in Oklahoma, likely would still tend not pick up any individual African-American hitchhiker on the road in the same way in the 1970s; unless the individual African-American hitchhiker on the road was wearing a U.S. military uniform.
By the time we reached St. Louis, the pick-up truck also needed to have its tank filled-up with more gasoline. So before heading further towards Illinois in a more northeastern direction from St. Louis, the teenage guys got off Interstate Highway 44 and drove a few miles east on the St. Louis city streets until they reached the nearest St. Louis gas station. And at the St. Louis gas station, I jumped out of the rear of their pick-up truck, thanked them again for the ride and wished them luck and said "goodbye" to them, just before they started driving their pick-up truck back out of the gas station and resumed their journey back to rural Illinois.
Monday, February 4, 2019
Thursday, December 20, 2018
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 16
The following day the authentically Christian hippie couple and I continued moving east on the Interstate 40 highway, until we reached the Oklahoma City highway interchange where Interstate 44 going northeast crossed the Interstate 40 highway going due east towards the Ozarks in Arkansas. Before dropping me off in the breakdown lane near the interchange ramp in Oklahome City, the authentically Christian hippie couple, individually, each expressed the hope that I would eventually join them in "living like Jesus." And not very long after I had exited their car and thanked them for the ride and their generosity, I was then picked up by a jovial white guy in his 20's, with medium-cut hair, who lived in Oklahoma City. And, in a jovial way, he eagerly invited me to smoke some pot together in his Oklahoma City pad.
The good-natured young Oklahoma City white guy seemed to be high on marijuana when he stopped to pick me up; and, like so many other guys in their 20's in the Southwest who either worked at odd jobs, were students, were unemployed, or just in-between jobs, he liked to spend much of his day spare-time just driving around the town or city in which he lived in his car while stoned--and with the sound of rock music from his car's cassette tape deck or 8-track tape sound system filling up the car as he drove. And like similar pot-smoking guys in their 20s in the Southwest during the 1970s who spent their days driving around and listening to music in their cars while stoned, whenever he saw a long-haired hippie-looking hitchhiker, he always stopped to give that person a lift.
The stoned Oklahoma City guy in his 20s lived in a modest apartment of a few rooms that he didn't keep too neat, which had a lot of vinyl records, a stereo and a TV with a big screen in the living room, that also contained a sofa and a cushioned living room chair, but no books. It turned out out the jovial Oklahoma City white guy was a member of the Oklahoma City Hells Angels Club of stoned young guys who, besides being into driving around locally in their cars while stoned, also owned motorcycles on which they drove around the city as a group, on weekends. Unlike either the West Coast Hells Angels or the Hells Angels who hung around East 3rd Street on the Lower East Side in the early 1970s, Oklahoma City's Hells Angels Club seemed, in the 1970s at least, like it was mainly a group of pot-smoking men in their early 20s who identified more with Abbie Hoffman hippies but who, because they were also into riding motorcycles, decided to call themselves Hells Angels.
Living in Oklahoma City in the 1970s, where you could still see signs of oil drilling wells from the highway during that decade, members of the local Hells Angels Club, like the jovial stoned guy who invited me to crash in his apartment for a few days, felt they were trapped in a conservative place; and felt they were being treated as outlaws by the local Oklahoma City white police who harassed them on a daily basis.
Hence, whenever one of the 1970s "cop show" television series'weekly episodes appeared on the TV screen, the stoned Oklahoma City white guy would laugh, sneer and say: "Yet another Pig show!"; and quickly turn off the TV and put a vinyl record on while starting to smoke another joint. But later in my evening there, the jovial Oklahoma City Hells Angels gang member turned his TV back on to watch the "Johnny Carson/ Tonight" late evening nationally-broadcast 1970s show for awhile; and claimed, as a joke, that Johnny Carson was "his brother." And being very high (and somewhat disoriented) from the pot we had been sharing together during the previous few hours, at first I actually believed him, before he laughed and admitted that he was joking when saying "That's my brother there on the screen. I'm Johnny Carson's brother;" before, soon afterwards, going into his bedroom to sleep, while I soon quickly fell asleep on the couch in his living room.
Not having to work the next morning, the jovial Hells Angels Club member was up cooking breakfast when I awoke and, after sharing a portion of the eggs he had been scrambling with me, turning on some vinyl record to listen to in the morning and smoking more pot with me, he suddenly asked: "I suppose you want to get on the road again, now?"
And after I nodded in agreement, the jovial Oklahoman soon led me and my large knapsack out of his apartment and into his car and drove me back to a break-down lane near the entrance in Oklahoma City to the Interstate 44 highway that led northward towards Missouri, where he dropped me off, after wishing me luck. I then thanked him with a big smile and for his generosity.The jovial Oklahoma City Hells Angeles Club member, still high, seemed to be planning to spend the remaining morning hours driving his car around the streets of Oklahoma City while smoking pot in his car, until he possibly encountered yet another traveling or loal freak or hippie on the road who needed a lift.
In the 21st-century, young men in their 20's who drive around Oklahoma City during the day in their cars are probably more likely to be Uber drivers; and more into making money from giving people lifts to people they pick up on the road than into being high-on-pot drivers who give people lift to people they pick up on the road for free, just for the fun of it, I imagine. Yet some techie capitalists of the 21st-century seem to think that turning lots of young people into economically exploited Uber drivers rather than just being drivers who spontaneously give free lifts to people who need rides represents "progress" and an advance in human civilization and Western culture. (end of part 16)
The good-natured young Oklahoma City white guy seemed to be high on marijuana when he stopped to pick me up; and, like so many other guys in their 20's in the Southwest who either worked at odd jobs, were students, were unemployed, or just in-between jobs, he liked to spend much of his day spare-time just driving around the town or city in which he lived in his car while stoned--and with the sound of rock music from his car's cassette tape deck or 8-track tape sound system filling up the car as he drove. And like similar pot-smoking guys in their 20s in the Southwest during the 1970s who spent their days driving around and listening to music in their cars while stoned, whenever he saw a long-haired hippie-looking hitchhiker, he always stopped to give that person a lift.
The stoned Oklahoma City guy in his 20s lived in a modest apartment of a few rooms that he didn't keep too neat, which had a lot of vinyl records, a stereo and a TV with a big screen in the living room, that also contained a sofa and a cushioned living room chair, but no books. It turned out out the jovial Oklahoma City white guy was a member of the Oklahoma City Hells Angels Club of stoned young guys who, besides being into driving around locally in their cars while stoned, also owned motorcycles on which they drove around the city as a group, on weekends. Unlike either the West Coast Hells Angels or the Hells Angels who hung around East 3rd Street on the Lower East Side in the early 1970s, Oklahoma City's Hells Angels Club seemed, in the 1970s at least, like it was mainly a group of pot-smoking men in their early 20s who identified more with Abbie Hoffman hippies but who, because they were also into riding motorcycles, decided to call themselves Hells Angels.
Living in Oklahoma City in the 1970s, where you could still see signs of oil drilling wells from the highway during that decade, members of the local Hells Angels Club, like the jovial stoned guy who invited me to crash in his apartment for a few days, felt they were trapped in a conservative place; and felt they were being treated as outlaws by the local Oklahoma City white police who harassed them on a daily basis.
Hence, whenever one of the 1970s "cop show" television series'weekly episodes appeared on the TV screen, the stoned Oklahoma City white guy would laugh, sneer and say: "Yet another Pig show!"; and quickly turn off the TV and put a vinyl record on while starting to smoke another joint. But later in my evening there, the jovial Oklahoma City Hells Angels gang member turned his TV back on to watch the "Johnny Carson/ Tonight" late evening nationally-broadcast 1970s show for awhile; and claimed, as a joke, that Johnny Carson was "his brother." And being very high (and somewhat disoriented) from the pot we had been sharing together during the previous few hours, at first I actually believed him, before he laughed and admitted that he was joking when saying "That's my brother there on the screen. I'm Johnny Carson's brother;" before, soon afterwards, going into his bedroom to sleep, while I soon quickly fell asleep on the couch in his living room.
Not having to work the next morning, the jovial Hells Angels Club member was up cooking breakfast when I awoke and, after sharing a portion of the eggs he had been scrambling with me, turning on some vinyl record to listen to in the morning and smoking more pot with me, he suddenly asked: "I suppose you want to get on the road again, now?"
And after I nodded in agreement, the jovial Oklahoman soon led me and my large knapsack out of his apartment and into his car and drove me back to a break-down lane near the entrance in Oklahoma City to the Interstate 44 highway that led northward towards Missouri, where he dropped me off, after wishing me luck. I then thanked him with a big smile and for his generosity.The jovial Oklahoma City Hells Angeles Club member, still high, seemed to be planning to spend the remaining morning hours driving his car around the streets of Oklahoma City while smoking pot in his car, until he possibly encountered yet another traveling or loal freak or hippie on the road who needed a lift.
In the 21st-century, young men in their 20's who drive around Oklahoma City during the day in their cars are probably more likely to be Uber drivers; and more into making money from giving people lifts to people they pick up on the road than into being high-on-pot drivers who give people lift to people they pick up on the road for free, just for the fun of it, I imagine. Yet some techie capitalists of the 21st-century seem to think that turning lots of young people into economically exploited Uber drivers rather than just being drivers who spontaneously give free lifts to people who need rides represents "progress" and an advance in human civilization and Western culture. (end of part 16)
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 15
I did not have to wait too long in Downtown Albuquerque with my hitchhiking thumb out before I was offered a backseat ride east by a white couple in their early or mid-20s, in a car whose male driver had a dark beard and long hair and looked like he was some kind of a freak or hippie, in the same way that I did at that time; which was one reason he probably felt safe picking me up. Sitting next to the bearded man was his young wife, a hippie-looking white woman with long brown hair, who looked slightly younger than her husband; and who was a woman that most men would have regarded as quite pretty.
I no longer recall where this young couple was from, but I do recall that they were driving east into the Ozarks in Arkansas, to spend some time camping there. Instead of spending a lot of money by staying at motels near the Interstate 40 highway exits each night on their way to Arkansas, they just stopped at some KOA campgrounds, pitched their tent and cooked their own dinner around a campfire. So after spending most of the day having long philosophical discussions with the couple as we moved east on the highway, I also ended up sleeping in the same tent with them that night, after they shared their cooked-out dinner with me at the KOA campground site where they ended up stopping for the night.
Most of the philosophical discussion in the car related to their eagerness to persuade me that I should get into the variant of Christianity that they had both been raised in and continued to live by, as a happily married young couple. Since they pretty much agreed with that portion of my rap which asserted that money-making should not be the goal of life for members of our generation, and that the materialistic and militaristic U.S. society and the government politicians and corporate business leaders who controlled U.S. society were morally backward, their main point of philosophical debate with me in their car was whether or not members of our generation should just try to live simply in a genuinely Christian anti-materialistic way. So that we only would need to hustle for some kind of not morally comprising skilled blue collar job (like carpentry, for example) when we really needed survival money; and would just focus mainly on relating to all the people in the USA we encountered in a loving Christian and non-exploitative way. And not even attempt generationally to gain control of the computer technology, so that we could use it to both liberate people in the USA from 9-to-5 slavery and quickly abolish poverty on earth.
I no longer recall where this young couple was from, but I do recall that they were driving east into the Ozarks in Arkansas, to spend some time camping there. Instead of spending a lot of money by staying at motels near the Interstate 40 highway exits each night on their way to Arkansas, they just stopped at some KOA campgrounds, pitched their tent and cooked their own dinner around a campfire. So after spending most of the day having long philosophical discussions with the couple as we moved east on the highway, I also ended up sleeping in the same tent with them that night, after they shared their cooked-out dinner with me at the KOA campground site where they ended up stopping for the night.
Most of the philosophical discussion in the car related to their eagerness to persuade me that I should get into the variant of Christianity that they had both been raised in and continued to live by, as a happily married young couple. Since they pretty much agreed with that portion of my rap which asserted that money-making should not be the goal of life for members of our generation, and that the materialistic and militaristic U.S. society and the government politicians and corporate business leaders who controlled U.S. society were morally backward, their main point of philosophical debate with me in their car was whether or not members of our generation should just try to live simply in a genuinely Christian anti-materialistic way. So that we only would need to hustle for some kind of not morally comprising skilled blue collar job (like carpentry, for example) when we really needed survival money; and would just focus mainly on relating to all the people in the USA we encountered in a loving Christian and non-exploitative way. And not even attempt generationally to gain control of the computer technology, so that we could use it to both liberate people in the USA from 9-to-5 slavery and quickly abolish poverty on earth.
Sunday, November 25, 2018
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 14
How I spent the remainder of the day in Albuquerque is now a completely faded memory, although, since I had been awake all night as the jeep in which I had been given a ride drove eastward, I probably found some deserted spot on the University of New Mexico's campus space, after using a bathroom in one of its campus buildings, and slept there for a few hours; and then blended into the campus scene and streets and neighborhood in the afternoon. And it could be that I spent the late afternoon and most of the evening browsing inside Albuquerque bookstores or checking out whether there was much of a visible 1970s freak counter-cultural off-campus or on-campus scene.
What I next remember is being approached by a uniformed Albuquerque white cop or uniformed white campus cop in his late 20s or early 30s, in the late evening, as I was sitting on the University of Albuquerque lawn with my large knapsack (that I had used for overnight hikes during my years as a boy scout), preparing to sleep that night on the campus lawn, before waking up early the next morning and walking back downtown to hitch another ride and continue further east towards Indianapolis; where I had decided, by then, I had wanted to revisit, since I had lived there in the early 1960s and hadn't returned to in a decade, on my way back to New York City.
"Let me see your student I.D.!," the uniformed white cop ordered.
"I don't have a student I.D., but I've just been hanging around the campus," I replied.
"Well, let me see some other kind of I.D.," the white cop ordered.
After I handed him a copy of my New York Public Library borrowing card, the cop walked back to where he had parked his cop car, checked out my name with whatever data access system he used in his car to see if there was some kind of warrant for the arrest of me that might require him to stop me from being on the road. Then he walked back to me and warned me not to still be hanging out on the campus later in the night when he returned to patrol that part of the campus grounds again.
But right after the white cop again walked back to his patrol car, a hippie-looking, University of New Mexico white woman student who, while walking back to her dormitory had noticed that a hippie-looking guy with a large knapsack, like me, was being harassed by the cop, approached me, laughed and said to me: "You can crash in my dorm room floor for the night, if you need to get away from that pig."
"That would be greatly appreciated," I replied with a smile.
"Then follow me. My dorm is over there."
By the 1970s, there were co-ed dorms on most state university campuses and it was no longer prohibited for women or men or to invite people of a different gender to their dorm rooms at night. And, in most hippie or freak youth student campus circles, the fear didn't then exist among most hippy women that if you invited a hippie or freak long-haired or bearded man in his 20s to crash in your apartment or dorm room, who was drifting around the country, that there was any particular risk that the guy would see it as some kind of rape opportunity, or automatically assume that he was being invited to your room or apartment for a sexual encounter.
So once we entered her dorm and walked up the stairs to her dorm room, she, matter-of-factly, pointed to some empty space on the floor and said, "You can sleep there" in a friendly way; not too long before she turned off the lights in her dorm room and stretched out alone on the sole single bed in the dorm room.
I don't remember now what we discussed on our short walk from the campus lawn where the cop had been harassing me to her dorm room. But, since I didn't feel any vibes from her which indicated that she was interested in me particularly on a sexual level and was just letting me crash in her dorm room for the night as an act of hippie kindness and freak solidarity, I probably mentioned to her that I would be going back on the road to continue hitching east early in the morning, before she woke up; and I probably said "goodbye" to her and thanked her again right before she turned of the lights for the night in her dorm room. And after awaking early the next morning, while she was still asleep, I quietly picked up my knapsack, after having slept in my clothes on the dorm room floor, quietly opened the dorm dorm room door, and quietly walked out of the dorm room to walk back to downtown Albuquerque and try to get another ride further east.
As I've noted previously, one thing you'll generally discover, if you hitchhike across the United States on the road from coast to coast with not much money in your pocket, is that, although the political and corporate leaders of the U.S.A. might be a corrupt and selfish group of people, the vast majority of the people who live within the U.S.A. who aren't in positions of power are, individually, friendly and good-natured; and generally willing to help out other people most of the time.
Occasionally, you'll bump into drivers on the road who might have a cut-throat personality or who will try to exploit you in some way. And, occasionally, you might bump into someone who--unlike this University of New Mexico woman student in the 1970s--offers you a place to crash only in order to either push their religious beliefs on you or take advantage of you in some way. But, at least in the 1970s, whenever you might need a helping hand at any point on the road from one coast to the other, you usually would always find some friendly, kind soul in the U.S.A., like the University of New Mexico woman student who let me crash in her dorm room, to both help you and remind you why--despite the horrible political and economic system and corrupt elite rulers that exploit them--the majority of people living in the U.S.A. are friendly people who, individually, deserve your individual love whenever you relate to them.
Sunday, August 26, 2018
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 13
At this Interstate 40 exit in eastern California in the late morning, I only had to wait about 10 minutes before a jeep with a canvas roof that was driven by a beardless white hippie-looking freak guy with long light brown hair slowed down and stopped in the break-down lane, about 10 yards in front of the spot near the exit where I had been standing. After seeing him stopped, I quickly ran with my knapsack toward the jeep at the same time the white hippie-looking guy, who looked like he was in his late teens or early 20's, bent over and pushed the passenger side door of his jeep open.
"Hop in," the young hippie/freak driver said, before then pointing to the back of the jeep and adding, "you can just throw your backpack back there."
Then, almost as soon as I was in the car and had closed the jeep's passenger door, the white hippie long-haired youth pulled out of the break-down land and onto the right lane of the Interstate 40 highway again.
"How long you been waiting?"
"Not too long. Maybe 10 minutes."
"How far you going?"
"New York City."
The young hippie-freak driver smiled. "I can get you to Albuquerque, where I'm going.
"That helps a lot."
Still smiling, the young long-haired and beardless hippie -freak driver shoved a new cassette tape into his car's tape deck system and then passed me the joint of pot he had been in the middle of smoking before he stopped to pick me up. And, after I inhaled, I passed the joint back to him and we continued to share the joint during the next 15 or 20 minutes as he drove the jeep eastward towards Arizona and New Mexico in light traffic.
By the time it began getting dark in the evening in Arizona, I was about as stoned as the hippie brother had been when he picked me up, and he seemed to pretty much agree with the basic rap I presented, that freaks around the USA in the early 1970s were, like Abbie Hoffman had asserted, part of a separate underground nation in the USA, Woodstock Nation; and, as A.J. Weberman was then still asserting, a kind of underground counter-cultural ethnic community.
He also seemed to agree with my basic rap that just as it was absurd for the straights who controlled the U.S. government to still be into busting people for smoking or selling pot in the early 1970s, it was also still crazy for the government to still be so into militarism; and that it was still ridiculous for our generation in the USA to be expected to work at 9-to-5 jobs for 40 years, like our parents had had to do, when the advanced technology of even the early stages of computerization made it now possible to reduce the workweek for everybody to 2 days a week, yet still produce enough food and necessity goods for everybody in the USA (and eventually everybody in the whole world) and create a leisure-oriented society.
By midnight I was pretty much talked out and, still in a stoned state from the joints I had been sharing with the brother freak, felt I could just sit back with him quietly and just enjoy listening to the 1970s rock music that his car's music set-up was filling the inside of the car with, since I had by then provided enough conversation and company to "pay" for my free hitched ride to Albuquerque. So for the next few hours only music, not words, could be heard inside the jeep as it moved east before dawn on the deserted Interstate Highway 40, encountering few cars or trucks either in front of us or behind us who were heading east through Arizona and western New Mexico in the hours after midnight on a weekday.
The freak brother had apparently assumed when he picked me up that I would be able to relieve him at the steering wheel of the jeep and drive a few hours in the pre-dawn hours if he felt he needed a few hours of sleep. Because, after all, out West, especially outside New York City, the assumption in the early 1970s was that everybody in the USA over 16 years of age knew how to drive and had a license, no matter how hip or straight or how rich or poor. But, despite being surprised that a fellow hippie in his 20s like me hadn't learned to drive or hadn't ever had a license, he did not seem overly disappointed after he asked me if I wanted to relieve him as a driver for awhile, when I replied, while stoned: "Wish I could, but I don't have a license and I never learned how to drive, since you don't really need a car to get around in New York City. And everyone I know outside of Manhattan usually just gives me a lift when we need to go anywhere together by car."
The freak brother laughed. But when he reached the next Interstate 40 exit in western New Mexico with his jeep, he drove off the interstate highway and pulled his jeep into the first 24-hour restaurant that catered to long-distance truck drivers, where he ordered some breakfast and coffee and, having very little money left in my pocket, I just ordered an English muffin. We took our time eating and didn't leave the restaurant and return to the road until the sun had risen, it was no longer dark outside and the coffee caffeine had re-charged the freak brother.
The next memory I still have of this particular ride is of the jeep entering downtown Albuquerque, where I was dropped off and where I watched the jeep drive north from Albuquerque, perhaps in the direction of Santa Fe or Colorado. (end of part 13)
"Hop in," the young hippie/freak driver said, before then pointing to the back of the jeep and adding, "you can just throw your backpack back there."
Then, almost as soon as I was in the car and had closed the jeep's passenger door, the white hippie long-haired youth pulled out of the break-down land and onto the right lane of the Interstate 40 highway again.
"How long you been waiting?"
"Not too long. Maybe 10 minutes."
"How far you going?"
"New York City."
The young hippie-freak driver smiled. "I can get you to Albuquerque, where I'm going.
"That helps a lot."
Still smiling, the young long-haired and beardless hippie -freak driver shoved a new cassette tape into his car's tape deck system and then passed me the joint of pot he had been in the middle of smoking before he stopped to pick me up. And, after I inhaled, I passed the joint back to him and we continued to share the joint during the next 15 or 20 minutes as he drove the jeep eastward towards Arizona and New Mexico in light traffic.
By the time it began getting dark in the evening in Arizona, I was about as stoned as the hippie brother had been when he picked me up, and he seemed to pretty much agree with the basic rap I presented, that freaks around the USA in the early 1970s were, like Abbie Hoffman had asserted, part of a separate underground nation in the USA, Woodstock Nation; and, as A.J. Weberman was then still asserting, a kind of underground counter-cultural ethnic community.
He also seemed to agree with my basic rap that just as it was absurd for the straights who controlled the U.S. government to still be into busting people for smoking or selling pot in the early 1970s, it was also still crazy for the government to still be so into militarism; and that it was still ridiculous for our generation in the USA to be expected to work at 9-to-5 jobs for 40 years, like our parents had had to do, when the advanced technology of even the early stages of computerization made it now possible to reduce the workweek for everybody to 2 days a week, yet still produce enough food and necessity goods for everybody in the USA (and eventually everybody in the whole world) and create a leisure-oriented society.
By midnight I was pretty much talked out and, still in a stoned state from the joints I had been sharing with the brother freak, felt I could just sit back with him quietly and just enjoy listening to the 1970s rock music that his car's music set-up was filling the inside of the car with, since I had by then provided enough conversation and company to "pay" for my free hitched ride to Albuquerque. So for the next few hours only music, not words, could be heard inside the jeep as it moved east before dawn on the deserted Interstate Highway 40, encountering few cars or trucks either in front of us or behind us who were heading east through Arizona and western New Mexico in the hours after midnight on a weekday.
The freak brother had apparently assumed when he picked me up that I would be able to relieve him at the steering wheel of the jeep and drive a few hours in the pre-dawn hours if he felt he needed a few hours of sleep. Because, after all, out West, especially outside New York City, the assumption in the early 1970s was that everybody in the USA over 16 years of age knew how to drive and had a license, no matter how hip or straight or how rich or poor. But, despite being surprised that a fellow hippie in his 20s like me hadn't learned to drive or hadn't ever had a license, he did not seem overly disappointed after he asked me if I wanted to relieve him as a driver for awhile, when I replied, while stoned: "Wish I could, but I don't have a license and I never learned how to drive, since you don't really need a car to get around in New York City. And everyone I know outside of Manhattan usually just gives me a lift when we need to go anywhere together by car."
The freak brother laughed. But when he reached the next Interstate 40 exit in western New Mexico with his jeep, he drove off the interstate highway and pulled his jeep into the first 24-hour restaurant that catered to long-distance truck drivers, where he ordered some breakfast and coffee and, having very little money left in my pocket, I just ordered an English muffin. We took our time eating and didn't leave the restaurant and return to the road until the sun had risen, it was no longer dark outside and the coffee caffeine had re-charged the freak brother.
The next memory I still have of this particular ride is of the jeep entering downtown Albuquerque, where I was dropped off and where I watched the jeep drive north from Albuquerque, perhaps in the direction of Santa Fe or Colorado. (end of part 13)
Friday, July 27, 2018
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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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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Thursday, November 30, 2017
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.
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.
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