Chapter 2

THE RANCH, THE INITIATION, AND THE DEER SLAYER

I used to hunt on the Ranch with Big Daddy Glutz, my uncle and some of my cousins.  7000 acres of cattle ranch, woods and swamp

that marriage had brought them into.  There was a camp set among oak trees near the entrance with an open wooden building with tables and a wood burning stove, several cabins were scattered through the trees. 

The Ranch was said to have been a wild place at one time.  There was a group that stayed late after hunting and we heard stories of liquor and women, couples in the cabins and even in cars, no wives would come around except on Sunday for the dinner.

Big Daddy and the Puritans were said to be appalled at the late night frolicking, they decided to take over.  Word was put out, some memberships weren't renewed, over a period of time the Puritans eventually got rid of their mortal enemies. 

Thought for the Moment:  Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.                                                                   H L Mencken, A Book                                            of Burlesques

We hunted deer, turkey and squirrel and used the occasional buzzard for target practice.  We used high powered rifles with telescopic sights for deer, .243, .244, 7.62mm; shotguns for turkey and squirrel.

We would set up turkey blinds made of palm fronds with holes cut in them to shoot through, every so often we would stop by and spread a little corn to encourage the turkeys to frequent our blind.  There were those that didn't agree with spreading corn as it was illegal but those that didn't, didn't get as many turkeys.

shooting on the roost conversation at camp on:  Did he bring the moss out with him   You shoot it, you eat it    ?miss deer and hit tree?

Entertainment was sometimes provided by the bulls mounting the cows.  If the cow was not particularly enthralled by that bull they would begin to walk off as the bull mounted.  This caused considerable consternation and awkwardness on the bull's part as the cow could run faster on four legs than he could on two. 

Sometimes Big Daddy and I would go out early in the foggy mornings, slip quietly through the woods and sit and wait in the blinds.  From time to time we would try to talk the turkeys up on the turkey caller.  I killed two turkeys that way.  I missed one when we shot them on the roost, got a clump of moss that looked like a turkey in the early morning darkness. 

In the evenings we would usually go to the towers and sit eating oranges and venison, watching the edge of the field for the deer to come out and eat the clover.  I killed two deer from towers,  one an excellent shot behind the shoulder blades, the deer dropped instantly, the second ran a short distance before dropping, both  were just slightly under the legal limit.  We kept an eye out for the game warden on the way in, on the second deer the horns got accidently broken while being loaded into the truck. 

I missed the only decent rack I had a chance to get, a nice 6 point.  I was shooting over the top of the truck with a lever action rifle and shot just over his back.  The gun jammed when I went to eject for the second shot and the deer trotted off into the woods.  It was a practice at the Ranch to cut off the shirttail of anyone who missed a deer and I lost mine. 

The first deer you killed was always an experience.  You would go back to camp and the deer would be hung by its heels from a board between two trees to be gutted.  The head would be cut off and the muscles cut away so that it could be opened up for the guts to fall out. 

Some would tell stories of kills that they remembered, sometimes a fire would be built by the kids.  Old Jim, who constantly snorted and farted, would sometimes tell of the time had been in a tower and a buck had come into the field chasing a doe.  The buck  mounted her and Jim kept him in his sights until the buck was finished then shot him.  Jim would say that at least we were certain the buck got one piece of pussy while he was here. 

Cousin Stuts would tell of the time that he had shot a deer from a tower but the deer had got back up and started to run.  He had snap fired and hit the deer in the neck killing him instantly.       Someone related how one of the owners sons and a friend had taken a shot at a deer far out of range in a field.  The deer had run in circles and they had reloaded and fired until over twenty rounds had been sent in his direction.  The deer finally ran into the woods.  Some in the club didn't look too highly on this type of excitement.

Some would talk of the time they almost mistook a cow for a deer, and there would be speculation on what would happen to someone that killed a cow or worse yet shot the owners horse out from under him.    "You shoot Robert's horse you better shoot Robert too." was how one put it.       

There was a tradition that the members of your age group that had killed deer would christen you with the blood and organs of your first deer.  If you ran or struggled it just made it worse. Sometimes there would be jokes about taking someone into a cabin and giving them a real initiation. 

  From the rowdier days there was a story of a Yankee guest who killed a deer.  It seems the Yankee had been christened as a child and did not appreciate the attentions that were about to be lauded upon him, it was said he struggled mightily.  His arms were pinned and he was picked up and held before the deer, the cavity of the deer did open.  His head was inserted and the cavity of the deer closed.  It was said that he later related that he smelled the deer for days.    It was difficult to find the exact amount of truth in these stories with each person telling a different version and wanting you to believe them.  My recollection is that he wasn't a Yankee but from a different part of Florida and they didn't close the deer up on him as they were afraid he might suffocate.  As one guy put it,

"What reason could we give the game warden for that man running up there and shoving his head in that deer and suffocating."

"He just loved deer so much that he had to have some!" said another.

My own initiation wasn't that bad.  I was encouraged to run and struggle but as most were faster and all four or five bigger, I decided to submit and hopefully shorten the ordeal.  But when I was approached with the liver (or was it the heart?) and a pan of blood, my legs took me backwards. 

The circle closed.  Hands in my back, arms held, blood running down my arms and chest, I endured.  A couple had thrown up during their initiation which caused great mirth, I was told I was no fun.

There was one who escaped initiation, I shall call her the Deer Slayer.  A relative of mine she had taken a notion to kill herself a deer.  Her husband taught her how to shoot a rifle and took her into the woods until she got a deer, a 6 point with a good rack.  I heard about it.

The Deer Slayer wanted her husband to take her straight home but he said she had to stay for the skinning and gutting, he teased her about the coming initiation.  At camp he took the keys from the pickup, it proved to be a wise move. 

As word spread over the CB's, many headed for camp to see what was going to happen.  She had killed her first deer, there should be an initiation.  Some felt that her family should do it, others said it should be just like anybody else.  Quietly one or two joked that she should be taken to a cabin but such talk was hushed up as no one wanted hard feelings among members and certainly not a fight.  Her sons said they knew who was saying what. 

As talk grew her husband said no one was going to rub things over his wife.  The Deer Slayer stated that if they started to come after her she would get her rifle and shoot and if they kept coming she would shoot to kill.

The camp loved it.  They speculated on what they would give up to see her initiated, old shotguns and other items were mentioned, one even said he would give up an old truck. 

The Deer Slayer escaped.  She later said she had never been so happy to see her home in her life.  There was laughter and talk at the ranch for a week and it was generally agreed that if she killed another deer there would have to be some type of initiation.  Tradition was tradition.  The Deer Slayer didn't do any more hunting, she didn't even show up at the ranch for a while.

They had offered her equal rights and had been threatened with violence for their progressive views.

THE MAJORETTE

I was wearing a plaid shirt when she met me, she remembered this years later.  We were introduced outside the band room, I played drums, she was a majorette and played the trumpet.  Soon we were seeing each other, then we were seeing each other all the time.  She took care of the nursery at the Methodist church we attended, I always sat in the balcony where the spitballs flew, so I could sneak out to see her.  I would get her outside the nursery for a brief moment of kissing, but no touching, not on church property.    Sunday nights after Methodist Youth Fellowship I would try and get her into the shadows for a brief romantic interlude, sometimes while her mother waited.  Still on church property, she wouldn't allow touching, well, not much.

There were several couples in the band that were happy to hear of away games, the further the better. Each couple would snuggle down in the seats on the bus, hands caressing, eyes out for the chaperon.  You weren't allowed to snuggle under a blanket for very long unless it was really cold.  My fingers would struggle through that tight majorette uniform to get inside her, sometimes she would have her hand down my pants, bodies twisting for the best position, we loved bus trips.

When she had a friend over for the night I would pick up her friend's boy friend, a thin longhair called Bones, we'd park a short ways from the house and slip up to their window.  Sometimes they'd sneak out the front door for some making out and talk, the windows were hard to get out of.  We took off in Bones's van once and her father started checking on them when she had someone over.  Her mother tended not to hear them leaving. 

After I got my restricted license I would drive her home from church and stop on the long dirt road that led to her house for a little kiss and fondle.  At times one of her parents would drive down and flash their lights for us to come in. 

Sometimes I would park my car in an orange grove and walk up to the barn where she kept her horse.  I couldn't drive up, her father kept an eye out for cars parked there.  We would go riding through the groves and fields taking an occasional break for making out.

We went on a picnic one day under a large oak in the middle of a field.  The horse kept pulling loose and walking off and we chased it and laughed about it.  We almost made love that day and came close again in the hay barn but pulled back. 

We should have consummated that relationship.  Eventually we drifted apart as our views changed and they next guy in line got her.  The next girl in my life would have to wait until after I had met Jesus.

MAD DOG IS SAVED

My headlong plunge into organized religion made the charge of the Light Brigade look like old men walking in the park.  It started with a group of Methodist students doing Bible study, we became more and more serious.  We were sinners, we were lost and facing eternal damnation.  It was around this time that the majorette and I drifted apart, she always treated religion with a wary eye. 

Our parents were glad we were taking an interest in the church and hoped it would settle us down as good members of the community.  Some in the community expressed hope that we would not get too deeply involved and would take the middle road, but there were those of us who were doing a high dive into the pool and these can only be done safely in the deep end. 

The day I walked down the aisle and knelt at the alter when the preacher gave the call, my parents were proud.  In the group I was now with people would talk of the day and even of the hour they had given their life to Jesus. 

We were saved.  Saved from our sins and eternal damnation.  Then some of us began to associate with the Mission, a training camp for missionaries going into the jungle to preach to the  heathen.  They talked of our duty to help save those who had not given their life to the Lord. 

We started going to bible study at the Mission and several of us decided on total immersion baptism.  I chose the Baptists for this event as my parents weren't comfortable with the Mission and the Methodists don't believe in total immersion, they're afraid they might drown.  So one afternoon a group of Baptists and one lone Methodist went to a place I shall call the Cabin on the Lake and got ourselves dunked.  Some joked that I was kind of brave going out there with all those Baptists, they might not let a Methodist up out of the water until it was too late.

We studied the Bible hard in our little group.  Each of us started underlining the passages that meant something to us and discussing them  (after the obligatory debate on whether we were defacing the Word of God).  Soon some of us had three different colors of ink to underline in and sometimes virtually whole pages were underlined. 

Often I would catch a ride to the Mission with an extrovert I will call the Salesman.  He had engaged in some shenanigans with his own in his youth and our reputations had preceded us.  We were shocked, shocked that they knew and shocked they would mention it.  We wondered how this information could have preceded us.  The Salesman refused to talk about it and I never tried to find out who his partner(s) were.  We were told no sin of any type at the Mission. 

I later discovered that in my case the information probably came from a few visits to the Mission by the Football Player.  He had not come to worship in the conventional sense.  There was a girl he would take riding on his scooter but as this girl didn't like driving he was reduced to making his attack with one hand and steering with the other.  This approach caused a few close calls.  He later claimed to have almost seduced her after parking to make a safer approach.   

He apparently made a reputation there in other ways as well.  He was rumored to have gone with the older brother of our group leader, something which the older brother had supposedly confessed forfeiting any chance of leading the group for quite some time.  The younger brother had assumed the leadership and there was some rivalry between them, whenever the younger brother referred to the Football Player in a round about way the older one would make reference to something that would force a truce.  We never found out what that something was.  The Football Player was not welcome on Mission property, period, even if he became saved which many doubted was possible. 

We went out on occasion and passed out tracts leaving some in phone booths and wherever we thought someone might read the Word, it grow in their heart and they be saved.  Some would stop people on the streets and tell them "Jesus loves you" hand them a tract and try and start a conversation.  We generally made nuisances of ourselves.   We even went to the county jail, gave out tracts and talked with the prisoners.  The missionaries were amazed that the cops checked inside the Bibles before they let us in.

I didn't stay in religion very long, first I stopped going to the Mission, then the church, then I put it down and walked away.  People tried to get me back into the faith over a period of time but I had taken a good, long, hard look at it and wanted nothing to do with it.  There is too much that offends the mind.

Thoughts for the Moment:  Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

John Morley, Voltaire,                                         1872 

The God of the Christians is a father who is a great deal more concerned about his apples than he is about his children. 

Diderot, Addition aux                                          Pensees phillosophiques

c. 1762                

If you don't count some of Jehovah's injunctions there are no humorists in the Bible.

Mordecai Richler

Faith n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

Ambroce Bierce, The Devils

Dictionary  1906

Manna, n. A food miraculously given to the Israelites in the wilderness.  When it was no longer supplied to them they settled down and tilled the soil, fertilizing it, as a rule, with the bodies of the original inhabitants.

Ambroce Bierce, The Devils

                                        Dictionary  1906

I had taken a high dive into the deep end of the pool, it was time to come to the surface and find another pool.  I had gotten into religion in the 11th grade and gotten out sometime in the 12th.  A whole lifetime of religion gotten rid of in less than a year. 

When I walked up to get my diploma the principle called me a fine Christian.  I was anything but fine and anything but Christian.

THE EXCESSES OF YOUTH

I soon began experimenting with drugs, the first drug I tried being speed (amphetamine sulfate), I liked it.  I first took it in the Hut, Bones was with me, I was up all night talking, my mind racing around.  From time to time several of us would do two hits and ride around all night talking and visiting then go to the Hut to crash, sleeping most of the next day. 

I didn't try pot at first but one night riding around with Cousin Gizz I smoked a joint during a rain storm, I liked it too.  Some went on to try LSD-25 and various other drugs available but I stuck to pot and speed for the most part,  using them separately though many enjoyed the mixture.

During this time many of those who remembered the young boy who had gone to the alter tried to get me back into the church.  When it became apparent that I wasn't to return some called me an backslider and eventually, when some of my exploits became known, infidel.

Thoughts for the Moment:  Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.  A kind of scoundrel imperfectly reverent of, and niggardly contributory to, divines, ecclesiastics, popes, parsons, cannons, monks, mollahs, voodoos, presbyters, hierophants, prelates, obeah-men, abbes, nuns, missionaries, exhorters, deacons, friars, hadjis, high-priests, muezzins, brahmins, medicine-men, confessors, eminences, elders, primates, pre-bendaries, pilgrims, prophets, imaums, beneficiaries, clerks, vicars-choral, arch-bishops, bishops, abbots, priors, preachers, padres, abbotesses, caloyers, palmers, curates, patriarchs, bonezs, santons, beadsman, canonesses, residentiaries, diocesans, deans, subdeans, rural deans, abdals, charm-sellers, archdeacons, hierarchs, class-leaders, incumbents, capitulars, sheiks, talapoins, postulants, scribes, gooroos, precentors, beadles, fakeers, sextons, reverences, revivalists, cenobites, perpetual curates, chaplains, mudjoes, readers, novices, vicars, pastors, rabbis, ulemas, lamas, sacristans, vergers, dervishes, lectors, church wardens, cardinals, prioresses, suffragans, acolytes, rectors, cures, sophis, mutifs, and pumpums.

Ambroce Bierce, The                                            Devils Dictionary, 1906

Near the stop light there was a Pure gas station that was the meeting place on Friday and Saturday night.  The young crowd would assemble there from wherever they had been, sip beer, keep an eye out for the cop, trade stories and tall talk, and listen to music.

There were stories of close calls with parents and the law, the experiences they had on drugs, of riding around on LSD-25 with the world going backwards.  Stories of escapades, of girls almost seduced and the ones we wanted badly, speculation on the best and worse approach. 

I would sometimes tell the story of the night Chew, Stuts and I were riding around one night in Chew's pickup in the nearby city when he spied two girls in their front yard.  Chew, with his usual wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth, pulled up on the wrong side of the street and stopped, looked at them for a moment and said,

"Wanta fuck."

Cousin Stuts and I were trying to disappear.  Chew sat there for what seemed like a long time, the girls didn't know what to say.

Chew finally said, "Guess not," and drove off.

The Church Pounder once debated on whether he had the courage to try the direct approach and divided it into two categories:

the first approach being three progressive questions at three stop signs, want a drink, want a cigarette, want to screw;  the second and braver approach consisted of pulling up at a stop sign and plunging his head between the girls legs.  He never tried either though many encouraged him to.

Sooner or later there was always a debate about the Viederville lights.  There was a bridge on Slow Hill road where lights were said to come out of the woods and float over the bridge, sometimes they would chase cars.  Some would go out and sit on the weekends and wait to see them.  I went there once or twice but didn't see anything, one of my cousins was in a car that was chased on one occasion.  There were believers and disbelievers.

There was always a story at the Pure station.  I knew a drummer who had been hooked up with a blind date by a friend.  They had gone to a drive in-movie and he had not been exceptionally impressed with the young lady.  He told them he was going to the concession stand for drinks and took their orders and then walked out of the drive-in and hitchhiked home.  That one was always good for discussion.

There would sometimes be jokes that they had better drugs at the Pure station than at the corner drug store just across the street.  The corner drug store, we talked about all that had happened there.  There was the time Gizzard and I had slipped Sexology and two other magazines in our pants and taken them out in the woods to examine, savoring every picture and word, we later felt guilty and snuck them back in.

The best story was the day the blacks had surprised everyone and come in and sat in the booths and demanded to be served instead of getting their orders to go like they were supposed to.  People stopped and looked in through the window to see what was going to happen. 

The barber, who was nicknamed after a planet, had come from two doors down in such a hurry that as he came in the door he tripped and fell flat on his face breaking his nose.  Some said it was worth an integrated drug store to have that story to tell. 

I had started seeing a girl just before I graduated from high school, I will call her Sweet Thing.  She and I soon were seeing each other on a regular basis, occasionally going to the Hut for some heavy petting.  We had fixed it up with sheets of plywood with carpet padding and carpet for beds. 

Then one hot and heavy night we made love, it took us both by surprise and she cried briefly.  Riding her home that night she said we had made a mistake and that we wouldn't do it again.  I knew that wasn't so.  I went out and bought a package of rubbers the next day and it was no time at all before her body brought that girl's head around.

Soon we couldn't get enough of each other, once made we made love in the front seat of my Pontiac le Mans in her parents driveway.  We almost got caught the time Chew and I took our girls to my parent's house while they were out.  We each picked a spot in the living room and began making out.

My parents came home early, just as things were getting good, we vacated the premises so fast we had to finish dressing in the yard.  The Hut became a regular stop for Sweet Thing and I,  sometimes going for seconds, on occasions there were thirds, one week we chalked up about a dozen sessions.  She said she liked making love to me but couldn't we do something else for a change.  We used rhythm and rubbers but I once sweated a period for over a week and I mean sweated.  I'm not the family type.       

The Hut soon became a popular place.  Most of our friends used it at one time or another.  At one point we had to make appointments and use it in shifts on Friday and Saturday nights.  We were usually careful to clean out beer cans, rubbers and rolling papers before leaving as Big Daddy sometimes inspected it or so we thought.  We could have had some free drugs if we had charged for the use of the Hut but being the laid back type just settled for first dibs.

Cousin Stuts took his girl there, she was a progressive young

lady and Stuts later bragged in over a year of going with her he had only bought her a coke.

The Bushman, a young hippie, had banged his girl there one night on LSD, when they opened their eyes he saw a witch, she saw an ape, scared both of them pretty bad. 

Chew and I had taken our girls in together one night, strung a sheet between us and had at it, each checking out the other's lady when it came time to get dressed and leave.  At times there were two cars outside among the orange trees, waiting for their appointment, sometimes they couldn't wait.  The Bushman would pull up in his van, hop in the back with his girl, then take off for some beer. 

We heard stories of other rendezvous points.  The Cabin at the Lake had been used by the two Church Pounders and their friends and there were a lot of stories circulating about the events going on out there.  There were stories of parties with boys and girls, boys and boys, girls and girls and at least one group or so it was said.      The owners had placed the Cabin on the Lake off limits when they discovered the cause of a clogged drain to be a wad of condemns.  It is surprising how many of Viederville's future conservatives had a rather liberal youth, sexually speaking.

Po Boy, Bushman and one or two others were working with me on my uncles farm at the time.  Sometimes were would stay out till three or four in the morning then show up for work in sad condition, some having smoked a joint on the forty minute van ride to the farm. 

We worked six to seven days a week depending on the weather and if the corn was ready, sometimes up to twelve hours a day. Bushman and I were assigned to hooking up corn wagons to an armature that unloaded them, all we had to do was keep a slow moving bin full.  After a rough night the Bushman fell asleep and slid into the bin which brought us a lecture on late night hours.   

Our foreman was a tall, cowboy type who used to tell us some tales of some of his sexual exploits and how God had given him his long nose to part the pubic hairs of the women he had.  He had been the first guy to nail my middle sister from everything I gathered.  He never fully admitted it but never denied it, just smiled when I asked him about what she was like and wouldn't talk about it.  Years later after they both had families he would ask about her with interest.  I still was never able to get him to confess but he was always interested in what she was up to and if she was coming back to town to visit. 

He had been wild in his younger days and once during a drunken night of carousing had banged a girl a little too hard resulting in internal hemorrhaging and a hospital visit.  He was lectured by his daddy for that.  I can remember the hushed conversations that went around our house, that he had never mistreated my sister.

I eventually broke up with Sweet Thing.  She had started thinking about settling down and starting a family and I was into freedom, booze and drugs, and we drifted apart.  She had started seeing Bushman before our final split in her parents's driveway, a painful night. 

In a short time she married the Bushman, she was pregnant at the wedding.  I heard later that she had several kids and a nervous breakdown and then another kid.

HITCHHIKING ACROSS THE USA

I had met a guy while playing in the band I shall call the Brain.  Tall with a great deal of smarts, during the era of the Hut he had asked several times about smoking pot.  He didn't really fit in with us, we turned him down at first but he persisted and one day we took him inside and smoked a little refer.  He liked it and soon  was a regular user. 

During the early days Brain, Cousin Stuts and I had smoked a few joints and were riding skateboards in the street one night.  If I remember correctly the police had warned us about skateboarding in the street.  A cop turned the corner and we took off, he rode by looking for us with his searchlight then disappeared.  We waited a while and then slipped back up to Brain's VW Beetle. 

Brain reached into the glove compartment to get the pot and I heard a noise in the bushes, I told them I thought I heard the pig.  A split second later a beam of light hit Brain right in his eyes and he threw both of his long arms straight up the air and said,

"Don't Shoot, Don't Shoot, I surrender!"

We kidded him about that for quite a while.  We got a lecture from the cop that he didn't care who our parents were he'd take us in if we did it any more.   

The Hut was eventually closed by the new police chief.  He had come slipping up there one afternoon to check on the place and

had given a warning.  Later he closed it down, citing underage girls as the reason.  At the time I think it was technically illegal for some of us to be making love to our girls.  Statutory rape?  Up to 10 years and up to $2000!  We didn't think that was fair.

We were always looking for things to do.  Bones and I had taken off on a hitchhiking trip to Atlanta for three days once.  We got up there the first evening and hooked up with a hippie on Peachtree Street who let us stay at his place.  He took off on business and left us there with his girl with whom he had an open arrangement.

We smoked a joint treated with something and I lay down in a fetal position and went to sleep.  The last thing I remembered seeing was Bones getting ready to make it with the girl.  He said he tried to wake me so that I could have some but I was gone. 

The next day I got a one day job across the street cleaning a construction remodeling job.  We spent one more night at the apartment, the guy was there, then hitchhiked back to Viederville.

                             ****

After Brain graduated we decided to take off hitchhiking and see the country.  I had grown my hair long and he was starting to do the same.  Our parents were against both the hair and the travelling but we were determined.  We finally got our bags and gear together and took off with about $150 each for what turned out to be a month and a half trip.

We headed for Atlanta and made it the first day, spending two nights with the girl that Bones and I had stayed with.   We pushed on and that night made it to a religious  university run by the Baptists, a vocal and excitable sub-tribe of the Hypocrites, where Big Boy's family had sent him away to school to toughen him up.  He was a rotund individual who had never been out of Viederville and he hadn't quite gotten used to his new surroundings. 

When we walked into his room he started thanking us repeatedly for stopping by to see him, telling us how glad he was to see us,  he couldn't thank us enough.  He didn't like the place, he had called his mother and said he wanted to come home but his parents wouldn't let him, these people just weren't like people from Viederville, he wanted to go home.  He was so glad to see someone from Viederville he broke down and cried uncontrollably for a minute before regaining his self-control.  We reminded him that it could have been worse, they could have sent him up north with the Yankees, he said he would have run away from home.

We stayed for two nights and a day helping him adjust then we decided to push on despite his pleas for us to stay.  We spent a night up under an overpass with enough room to stretch out at a right angle to the highway instead of sleeping parallel, we later said we had been spoiled by that overpass. 

We used those ledges on several occasions, it's difficult to see someone sleeping up there and you can be relatively comfortable as long as you aren't they type who rolls around a lot, walks in his sleep or has bad nightmares.

We spent part of a day in Gatlingburg Tenn. and then hitchhiked through a portion of the Smokey Mountains, where we almost slipped into a church to spend the night one night just before we got a ride. Later we switched back to the Interstates.  We kept moving north along the Interstates for the most part, going through Washington DC, having an argument over where to camp on an Ivy League campus, renting a motel room in Delaware one rainy night. 

We stayed with a distant friend of Brain's family near New York, a homosexual and his lover, and went in on the bus and spent the next day in the city.  From there we pushed on to Buffalo, Niagara Falls, then to Toronto where we got a student room at the University.   From there through Sudburry to Sult Ste. Marie.

We got picked up one afternoon by a kindly old gentleman who said we could camp with him at his campsite and have a hot meal.  He let us sleep in the tent because of the mosquitoes and we left the next day. 

It wasn't until later that Brain told me he awoke during the night with the old man trying to reach inside his sleeping bag and fondle him.  I resolved that if we camped with anyone else Brain would always be the one to sleep next to them.

We came down Interstate 35 to Minneapolis where we stayed with friends of his family for about two weeks.  They had a daughter about Brains age and there were several parties with booze and dope.  A nursery gave us a job for a short time that helped replenish our money supply. 

There was one disagreement between us about pushing on.  I wanted to stay a while longer and enjoy the hot food and bed, Brain wanted to leave; it finally got physical with Brain trying to kick me down a staircase after we argued about it and traded threats.  The perils of being small. 

We finally left and took Interstate 90 across a hot South Dakota  where an Indian gave us a ride for a good distance and three dollars to help us on our way.  We went through Sioux Falls, Rapid City and the Black Hills and kept going west.

We headed towards Yellowstone National Forest and got picked up by a couple of long hairs called Bitson and Rumble who were going to California in their van.  Bitson was a stocky bearded Viet Nam vet who refused to talk about his experiences saying only that he had done what he had to do and didn't want to talk about it.  Rumble was bearded, thinner and taller and the wilder of the two.  We camped with them and their cat along a stream that night and there was plenty of refer.  They said that we could ride along with them as long as we pay our way and everybody got along.

Rumble had a few disagreements with our feline companion, during the ride he would play rough with the cat, throwing it around until it scratched him then get mad and slam the cat on the floor.  It scratched him bad once and the cat went sailing through the air  and hit the rear window of the van, just missing Brain's head.  The cat was temporarily stunned but eventually regained it's composure.  Bitson kept telling him that he deserved to be scratched and Rumble kept playing rough with the cat.  They had a argument about it on at least one occasion.  

The next day we rode through Yellowstone smoking hashish and had a great time then on through Idaho Falls to the Craters of the Moon National Monument.  We stayed at a commune for a couple of nights and then pushed on. 

When they let us off in California they gave us a joint and two tabs of LSD to help us on our way. Brain kept wanting to do the LSD but I kept refusing. 

We hitchhiked our way down to San Francisco and were thumbing on an entrance ramp in the early evening when a cop turned the corner and gunned the engine.  I threw the drugs in the bushes.  The cop sped right past us and out on the freeway, we immediately started looking for the drugs.  We looked for half an hour I would imagine, Brain getting hotter and hotter, he told me later he came close to hitting me.  No drugs, not even the joint.     

Had a bad argument about that. 

We ate at an Arby's Roast Beef and tried to decide what we wanted to do next.  Going to the Haight Asbury area, hopping a freight train and other options were looked at, finally we decided on heading in the general direction of home.  We settled on flying across the desert as neither one of us had ever flown and we wanted to avoid hitchhiking in the heat.  We took a bus to the airport and figured how far the money we were willing to spend would take us.  The plane landed in Salt Lake City, Utah.

We set out on the road and crossed over into Wyoming.  We were standing along the Interstate just past Green River when a highway patrolman pulled up, opened up the passenger door and said,

"Hop in, your under arrest."

I got in the front and Brain got in the back, we were a pretty glum pair. 

"I'm not going to take you to the Rock Springs jail, it's a real dungeon." he said.  "I'll take you back down the road to the new county jail."

We were fingerprinted, photographed and booked and put in separate holding cells until they called the police chief of Viederville and made sure we weren't on the run.  Once this was determined we were put in a six man cell by ourselves. 

Brain stalked back and forth cussing and muttering that we were just trying to get down the road.  I, being a more laid back type, flopped on a mattress and read a book whose cover had been torn off; any book they gave us had the cover removed.  Bed and a few hot meals wouldn't kill me.  There was a brief discussion of  how lucky I was that I had thrown away the drugs and then I let it slide, wasn't much you could say.

There was a solid wall between us and the next cell but we got to know the guy there though we never saw him.  A black guy, he had been hitchhiking and stabbed someone who had given him a ride claiming that the driver had tried to rob him. 

He told us we would have to work in the kitchen but that we wouldn't see him as he had told them if they wanted him to work they better bring the man with the stick.  He knew he was going to do time and wasn't about to do anything for the state. 

They came and got us to wash dishes each day and jail got to be boring fairly fast once the novelty had worn off.  The food wasn't that bad but the beds left something to be desired, thin mattress on metal, but certainly better than a place a cop describes as a dungeon.

Toward the end of our stay they put two youths in our cell that had been picked up for car theft.  They, of course, were innocent, claimed they had permission from the girl to borrow her father's car.  They had been in trouble with the law before and would be in trouble again as far as Brain and I could see. 

After four days we finally went to court, we had to wait as the judge had been on a fishing trip.  We pleaded no contest to the charges, I think Brain put his as nolo contendo, we weren't about to plead guilty to anything.  The fine was 15 dollars a piece but as we had only 28 or 29 dollars between us and weren't going to call home for money we decided to take the time.  The judge sentenced us to time already served and said since it was late afternoon he would have us released the next day.  

They released us the next morning and since they had told us there was no hitchhiking we stood around at a station asking for rides until the manager ran us off.  It wasn't the best time to be hitchhiking as someone giving a hitchhiker a ride had been killed and partially cannibalized in the state a short time before.  We shouldered our packs and started walking, eventually a pickup stopped and gave us a ride.  We got back to the Interstate staying on the ramp at first but soon returned to the highway.

We had been standing for a while when a  station wagon pulled over and the driver asked if either had a license, we did, and I started driving.  He crawled in the back seat, incapacitated from a large quantity of Vodka and orange juice that he had been drinking from a plastic bottle.

A salesman, he was heading home to Rapid City South Dakota to see his family.  That sounded like a good place to go even if we had already been through there.  We stopped in a small town and he bought us a late lunch in a bar and called home.  Back on the road he kept drinking.  The more he drank the more he told us about his life; he didn't like his job, his family didn't like him, nothing was going right.

"One day I'll just go to Florida and start walking out in the ocean." he said.  He seemed to have a thing about that, said it several times. 

As it got dark he kept drinking and we had to pull over once or twice to let him throw up, finally he fell asleep.  We were barreling down some two lane country road with ditches on either side when three antelope spread across the highway.  I had no choice but to hit one.  I was probably doing sixty five or so and didn't put on the brakes as I didn't want to skid on the narrow road so hopefully the antelope didn't suffer too much.

I don't remember if the impact woke the salesman or we had to do it ourselves when we pulled over but it did mess up the front of the car and one headlight.  All of us got out and examined the damage.  We talked about it for a minute, decided the antelope was dead, the salesman said we could fix the headlight somewhere down the road and returned to the back seat.

Just don't hit any buffalo," said the Salesman.

Brain and I laughed about it for a long time.  We got back in and off we went again, the headlight going on and off.  We pulled over at a station that was closed and looked for a telephone number to call but there wasn't any.  Finally the headlight went off completely.

Coming in to Rapid City we woke him up and he told us there was a hill outside the city we could camp on.  He dropped us off, speculated briefly on giving us some money, decided against it and disappeared down the road.  We spent the night on the hill and headed back down Interstate 35 towards Minneapolis the next day.

We stayed there for a couple of days and then headed back to Florida.  We got one excellent ride that saved us a great deal of time, stopped off and saw Big Boy, then went on down to Florida.  It took us four days on the Interstates.

Chapter 1   Chapter 2   Chapter 3   Chapter 4   Chapter 5   Chapter 6 Adventures in Belize   Chapter 7   Chapter 8   Chapter 9   Chapter 10

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