12/28/08 WISCONSIN 3:30 AM
We stopped at a gas station halfway to Chicago. Took a piss. There was a Wendy’s where I yielded to some odd desire to get a burger there. I hadn’t had fast food in months, but these are the kind of desires you have to quell when traveling, so I allowed myself this one.
The Wendy’s depressed me, two old white people, well into their forties, well past the prime of their life. The man seemed hunched over, permanently beat down, long ago succumbed to his bleak existence.
I told him not to give me a bag, waste of paper.
Outside a couple inches of snow had accumulated, its 4am, no plows yet, the snow beneath the gas pumps resembles an arid desert scene, the snow bellows over the ground, blowing this way and that, spinning, dancing for us. We’re off again.
I hadn’t been able to sleep worth a damn on the bus. My flask of whiskey worked, made me drowsy, but I couldn’t find a comfortable way to position my body for the life of me.
Already that feeling of perpetual exhaustion was setting in that will consume Amanda and I for the next three weeks.
8:30 AM
Union Station, Chicago. Exhausted. No sleep on the bus. Its beautiful here, hollow, cavernous. It’s decorated for Christmas, gigantic ornaments twice my size are positioned on the ground like sentinels, three heavily decorated trees in ascending size.
Amanda goes off to find a bathroom. I stretch out on the oak bench, it looks so inviting, so comfortable.
Not more than a minute passes by without some fucking asshole security guard coming by and slamming his baton on the top of the bench and tells me to “wake up, get your feet off there, sit straight.” Looking at me and walking away all cocky like he’s the supreme goddamn ruler being. Extreme feelings of animosity towards that lowly piece of shit course through my body. Oh well I conclude and carry on.
4:12 PM
A French couple sat a couple seats in front of me on the bus stretch from Chicago to Champagne. As I drifted in and out of sleep, finally able to stretch out due to a less occupied bus, I kept taking their phonemes, a language’s smallest unit of sound, and in my sleep warping them to fit my own understanding of language. I heard English words that weren’t there, that upon waking would disassemble as quick as they had materialized.
Amanda and I moved to the very front of the top of the double-decker bus. The sun was beating down heavily on us, producing little ripples of light-pleasure up and down my body. Its funny how traveling really breaks you down, remolds and rewires you to accept and revel in every little pleasure that comes your way.
I manage to sleep a little bit. We make a stop. I got a big nasty chili cheese dog and shitty gas station coffee.
We pass a gigantic, magnificent white cross, towering at least a couple stories high. Amanda snapped a picture of it. I believe it meant we’d entered the bible belt.
I say ‘wow Amanda look at that’ and we both put our books down on our laps, mine Kerouac, hers Krakauer, and the bright, bright orange sun is just dipping below the bare black trees and it casts this incredible orange hue across the right side of our peripherals, and as it crosses over our left it gradually melds into pink and then a deep purple, and the purple fills the pools of water gathered in the fields from previous storms, and we both leave our books lying on our laps in wondered amazement, not speaking, just staring gap-eyed, knowing this was the last bit of light we’ll see for twelve hours. 275 miles to Memphis says the sign.
Amanda turns to me, with a cockeyed little glance and says “Erik, the grass is going to be green down there,” meaning Tennessee and then New Orleans, and suddenly I turn to look out the window and see the brown-brown, grey-grey of the grass and the weeds and I say, “hell yeah. I can’t imagine.”
10:30 PM
A short phone conversation with Lisa our couchsurfer. I scribble down the details.
3 apts. Apt 1 on left.
Key in mailbox.
Midtown.
Intersection of Cooper + Young.
Our very first hitchhiking experience was unconventional to say the least, no busses after 6pm Sunday nights, Memphis calls itself a city. Not willing to phone a taxi, we trudge through the desolate, dead downtown of Memphis, follow along the historic trolley line, wind through town, end up on the other side of downtown, and it begins to meld to something else – not quite residential.
It’s apparently the ghetto, or so we’re told afterwards, I don’t feel for a second threatened, though I hardly ever do anywhere, if you mind your own, you’re generally left alone.
I scramble off to a gas station, making sure we’re on the right track, leaving Amanda hapless, my bag and hers on the corner, looking hopelessly out of place, as for most of our wanderings in Memphis, we’re the only white people in sight, definitely the minority, a feeling I’ve found I tremendously enjoy after Berlin and Romanian solitary rovings. I’m gone, in the gas station no more than thirty seconds when she calls me, “I’ve found a ride!” I think no way, really? I half speed-walk, half trot, as fast as my bum knee will carry me.
I get to the corner, she’s vanished, suddenly woosh, a red beat up coup whirls the corner, two mad women shout at me from behind the cracked dashboard window, Amanda sitting in the back seat gives me a half wave, hapless grin, she tells me later she was hesitant to throw our bags in the trunk for fear these mysterious women might woosh, take off with them.
I hop in, it has begun, one of the women looks back at me, chastising me for leaving my female companion alone in this neighborhood, she’s only half kidding though. We roll on, they talk amongst themselves, the talk of the town, who’s fucking who, and what no good sonofabitch ain’t worth their time. I venture small talk, say something about how much warmer it is down here. That kind of flounders, I’m content to just sit back. Finally we end up giving them directions to where we need to go, they swing us into a parking lot at the intersection of Cooper and Young, we hand them a five, they’re poorer than us I’d venture, and thank them profusely. And we’re in Midtown, Memphis.
We arrive at our couchsurfer’s house, she’s left the key in the mailbox, enter her place. We’re greeted by a friendly cat, the warm light of a Christmas tree, a couch, a pile of blankets and an air mattress. Lisa is out at the bar, Amanda isn’t 21, and we’re both so exhausted we pass out soon.
12:00 PM 12/29/08
In the morning we awake after a blissful twelve hours of sleep. I watch the cat eat an entire two foot long piece of plastic confetti off the Christmas tree, and then puke all over Lisa’s shoes. Apparently I was supposed to stop the cat from eating that plastic confetti Amanda tells me later. I’m not a pet owner. Lisa stirs from her bedroom, and we meet her for the first time. She’s 29, wearing pink sweatpants, and tattooed arms and her gut hangs out of her white tank top.
She’s a sweetheart, has hosted thirty-odd surfers before, fell in love with couchsurfing when a friend told her about it. She’s never done it herself though, but she tells us of all the places she wants to go, and later we go out to lunch and she recites tales passed down to her from other surfers, those that have worked on organic farms, from France and Australia. I wonder whether she’ll ever leave the security blanket that the U.S. is for some people, she’s almost thirty and she’s just now leaving Memphis to move to Chicago. I sincerely hope she does and we thank her, hug her, and bid farewell.
Its late now, after 4pm, and with no place to stay in Memphis we must begin our hitchhiking experience for real and head south to New Orleans.
We take one city bus downtown, then another, and we’re wailing through the outskirts of Memphis. Amanda and I once again the minorities, and we pass through quite the rough neighborhood, poverty and grief stricken, everything we see for awhile bleeds of it, liquor stores, boarded up shop windows. Its amusing to think that Graceland, Elvis’ homage is in this neighborhood, him being the king of stolen black music and all. Amanda and I wonder if it has always been this way?
We find the on-ramp listed on the map I printed out from the online hitchhiking forums, but alas its getting dark quick, we have maybe thirty minutes, these minutes dwindle quickly, soon our sign, and thumbs look pitiful and indistinguishable in the waning light, and we move under a lamp. Every couple minutes the light flickers, and seems to dim a bit each time, leaving us more and more in the dark and at the mercy of the hundreds of cars that pass us. Things aren’t looking good, we’re about to pack in and try to figure out where we’ll stay for the night. We have nowhere, and as we discover later, we always get a ride right in the last desperate minutes, suddenly a truck pulls up, a friendly Southern muscular man, tells us he can take us a few miles into Mississippi. I gladly accept, Amanda more hesitant, but we hop in, we’re off.
I break my dad’s first rule of hitchhiking, that its not always efficient to take a short ride. Not realizing we’re so close to the border of Mississippi he takes us maybe fifteen miles down the road. In the meantime he’s friendly, and hopeful, we carry on spirited conversation, and he tells us he makes this jaunt every day on his way to work. I instantly take a liking to him , and as is the rule the rest of the trip, I always take the passenger seat, while Amanda being timid sits in back, often getting some shut eye while I, regardless of my mental state, must forge ahead keeping conversation going.
I discovered early on, that it is only polite that one carries on conversation whilst hitching, because you have to figure that some small part of people willing to pick up strangers is yearning for human contact, for company, in a world that so often discourages random connections.
But alas he drops us near a Waffle House, bids us well, we shake hands, never exchanging names but seemed to relate to each other nonetheless, and Amanda and I are truly without safeguard now in an unfamiliar middle of bum nowhere town in northern Mississippi.
I’m hungry now, as I always seem to be, we enter the Waffle House, and for those that have never entered the confines of one of these, they are truly a Southern institution. They line the roadways of every major highway, there is damn near one on every exit, which I commented on to a later driver and he chuckled and said yes there are. They are the coziest little respites for weary travelers, almost always open 24 hours, and are always equipped with jovial cooks, and that bright, smiley, middle-aged Southern woman whom you think only exists in movies, but she’s truly right there in front of you and she leads you to a table and calls you sweetheart, and honey, and doll, and seems to end every sentence with ya’ll. You could walk into one of these Waffle House’s after your house burnt down with your whole family inside, and this angelic woman could give you eggs and sausages and grits, and treat you like you’re the only person in the whole state of Mississippi, and you’d walk out refreshed and ready to face the world again.
Conversation went something like this-
“Now I don’t mean to be nosy, but where ya’ll heading?”
Because as I forgot to mention our entrance created quite a stir, like we weren’t truckers, and we certainly didn’t look like locals, and what were we possibly doing with enormous packs on our backs?
“Well we’re heading to New Orleans.”
“Oh well what ya’ll doing down there?”
“Oh well we’re volunteering.”
“Well ain’t that sweet”
And later, after I had scarfed down three over-easy eggs, and dipped my biscuit in the yolk, and after I had consumed my bowl of grits, which she as well as other customers sitting at the bar top were pleased to know I was trying for the first time, and in fact they all gave me tips on how best to eat them (lots of butter and sugar) she returns to fill my coffee cup and says,
“Now again I don’t mean to be nosy, but are ya’ll hitchhiking?”
And upon informing her that indeed we were, we had the whole restaurant pondering this, and giving us advice, and to watch out for shady characters, and the man at the bar top shouted to us that he was hitchhiking too, however North, and he made necklaces too, out of hemp, and he held one up to us, and I hoped he wasn’t going to attempt to persuade us to buy one, and then he promptly turned to an old man that had just entered, and inquired as to if he was heading North, and soon I could see that this was his scheme, he just hung around Waffle Houses, all up and down the highways of Mississippi, and Louisiana, and Tennessee, and tried to make friends at bar-tops, and didn’t subscribe to our sign waving, thumb-pointing style, and I wondered who was more efficient? And soon we were shouting back and forth to this man, and others, and I listened to one man smoking a cigarette and saying to another man “shrimp and grits. You ever heard of that? I don’t think I could eat shrimp and grits.”
Soon it was time to go, I washed down my third cup of coffee, and we trekked out, had to climb over a fence, and found a rather excellent on-ramp, long, long straightaway, but yet too late, after an hour or so, and two worrisome cop spottings across the street at a hotel parking lot, we decided we weren’t getting anywhere that night, and for the first time, perhaps since my cold unforgiving, cement night in Bulgaria, I as well as Amanda were truly homeless. We walked the highway, rather the grassy shoulder of it, and came upon a little creek, tall grass, and some tree cover. We could trudge no farther, the water impeded our advance, and to attempt to cross the highway would be certain death, to turn back seemed fruitless. This was where we were supposed to be. We threw our sleeping bags down in the tall grass, by this time maybe 45° out, not terribly cold, but not warm either. I pulled out what remained of my bottle of whiskey, maybe a little over one-half from periodic flask nippings, and we took swigs, and looked at the stars, as a city boy not used to seeing stars, and contemplated many things, got drunker and shared things we hadn’t with others, we figured we had achieved a certain level of closeness upon laying down side by side in a ditch. The pulls continued until the bottle finished, by now both pretty drunk, I get up to piss, staggering, needing to avoid logs and branches and things. Its getting cold now, I’ve got two T-shirts on, a sweatshirt, a thin jacket, a hat, my hood up, and silly enough my pajama pants pulled on over my corduroys. The whiskey is fueling us though, warming our bellies and our throats, and numbing our heads, we make silly calls, asking of our friends right away to guess where we were? Sleeping in a ditch! Ah, the era of cell phones, in which you can call and tell someone that, kind of takes away from the rawness and bareness of the moment, but we’re doing our best in the 21st century. We comment that if we make it through the night out here, you could say we will have achieved a certain level of freedom, we’d no longer be prisoners of the mentality that one must always have a warm bed to return to, we can do exactly this now, whether we have a place to stay matters little. We’re nomads for the time being.
Wishful thinking however as I wake up, violently cold, 2am, shaking, stirring, trying to wake Amanda up but to no avail. I roll back and forth, I have to be strong I tell myself. By this time its below freezing, I throw my head under my sleeping bag letting my warm breath sooth my body, but constantly aware of the danger of suffocating. After two hours of this I again try to wake Amanda, shake her over and over, finally she wakes, I tell her I’ve got to get somewhere warm. She tells me to go right ahead, she’s cozy, still warm and drunk, I tell her fine, pack up my stuff, throw my sleeping bag on top of her, and now 4am head back into the little town.
I find a sad, desolate grocery store still open, wanting at first to go back to the Waffle House with its homely demeanor but notice that the other hitchhiker is still there at the bar top, evidently neither of our methods working better than the other’s tonight at least, and not wanting to cause a scene, as it surely will to return without my female companion and shaming questions that would follow, I choose the supermarket. I wander the aisles, delirious, needing to buy something in order to have the right to stay there for awhile, I settle on a bottle of chocolate milk, and sit at the deli table for two hours reading the USA Today cover to cover, a depressing enough act in itself, feeling entirely awkward and out of place as all the sad workers seem to stare at me. Sad workers being the ones forced, by the necessity of sustaining ones self, to be stacking produce, and soup cans and such, at this ungodly hour, all the while only a handful of lights are even on, making the place all the more harrowing. At 6am the supermarket starts to wake up, lights switched on now, new workers arrive filling coffee jugs and stepping behind the deli counter, and finally, still tremendously tired and delirious, I no longer want to stay there, as the awkwardness and the stares begin to become too much. I buy a big fat permanent marker, realizing how this makes me look, eyes puffed and red, like a junky looking for a sad fix, huffing a permanent marker at 6am in Mississippi. The marker of course being for letterings on our new bigger piece of cardboard, and I trek back to Amanda just as the sun begins to rear its enormous head at us, and I enjoy a splendid sunrise, and Amanda is awakening just as I get to her, and we head back to the on-ramp.
6 AM 12/30/08
Two hours pass by as we get bitter, and begin to cast angry glances at passing vehicles, creating stereotypes to appease our bitterness. There went another goddamn middle-aged white woman in a giant SUV, much, much too big and spacious for her, why does she need that? That absurd American dream of having a big absurd car as your safety blanket.
But alas, again just as we were about to give up, another truck pulls up, tells us he can take us 30 miles, okay we accept, just to get us anywhere, however at this point doubting how realistic our trek is, as moving at this pace will take us two weeks.
This man is crazy, he’s a paramedic, a firefighter, and has arresting powers as a policeman. He works in Memphis as well, tells us horror stories about what he sees. He always carries a gun he tells me, and goes on to do ridiculous impressions of black people, imitating the vernacular, and telling us that black people down in these parts are different than the ones we have up in Minnesota. I politely smile and chuckle when its appropriate, all the time remembering that he’s doing us a favor, and I must be agreeable. However I don’t feel as if he’s racist, I think he just recounts the realities he sees in his daily life. The man does the world a lot of good in what he does, a job that requires much strength and courage and above all heart. He tells us the biggest woman he ever saw was 700 pounds, and four months pregnant, and it took twelve men to haul her up in a tarp into the back of the ambulance. Madness I think, and he caps of the ridiculousness by recounting a story about a woman who called him because she had a boil on her ass, which he told her he cared not to see, and it was hurting her, and ca’ ching, $500 ambulance ride later, he brought her to a hospital waiting room, and informed her that she’d have to sit on her ass for 14 hours to get seen. Then he tells us that black women love him, and makes a crazy face, and I can’t help but like him.
Soon we were as far as he’d take us, Bentonville, Mississippi if I remember correctly. We get out and walk to a Hardees, eating lunch, and at the same time feeling out of place and as if all eyes are on us, magnetically almost. There was an old-boys-club sort of feel to the place, ten or so odd older gentleman, fishing hats adorned, sat around drinking coffee and complaining about their wives. Soon the eyes became too much, and we rolled out of there and hiked to the next on-ramp.
This on-ramp was particularly awful, it was one long sharp curve, connecting two highways, which meant cars coming on were going fast, and seemed to be few and far between. To top it off, there were metal posts every few feet, so it felt like there wasn’t a chance in hell we were going to find someone willing to pull over. Within not too long however someone stopped. He got out and walked around to his trunk, we were elated, grabbed our bags and started moving as fast as we could towards him. Shutting his trunk, and not looking at us once, he hopped back in and drove away, leaving us deflated and upset. He had to have seen us, why would he pick that particular on-ramp to tease us? As self-doubt really began to set in, and the reality of the situation that being outside of the greyhound bus lines, we really were dependent upon the rides we got, a truck pulled up right next to us. Amanda jubilantly trotted up to him, “Where ya headin?” and he responded “Well I can take you all the way to Baton Rouge” And I immediately pipe in “oh that would be amazing.” and he says, “Now hold on ya’ll first off I’ve got two questions,” of which he only ever asked us one, “Now are ya’ll carrying anything on you, you shouldn’t be?” And my first thought was guns, but later marijuana made more sense in that context as we’d feel downright awful and criminal if he got pulled over, and we got him arrested for possession, but before I could muster an answer Amanda shouted out “no sir, we’re volunteering, so we couldn’t be,” of which his reply was “well you never know…well alright then hop in.” And Amanda says, “where should we put our bags?” an he, “wherever you feel comfortable,” at which we tossed them in the bed of the truck, and hopped in, feeling too good to be true, and on top of the world, and as if we were actually rightfully and truly on our way, and I couldn’t wait to proudly exclaim to people that we really did it.
Our driver was a clean-cut Southern boy, with a light accent, one in which Amanda would describe as a cute Southern accent, not too overwhelming. He had to have been in his early thirties, driving a nice new truck, as he later told me he had traded with a friend for. He introduced himself right away and shook our hands, name was Justin, the first driver that had done just that, much more than a formality in this instance, more a comforting familiar touch as we were road buddies for the next five hours.
We rolled on through the crazy swamplands of Mississippi, watching the miles tick to Jackson, the halfway point. I sat up front again, Amanda behind. Justin first asked us what we were doing, and we said volunteering, which gives further evidence to our later theory that we don’t think anyone was actually reading our sign (“Volunteers to New Orleans”) this gave me hope that we’ll make it back okay without the aid of our message and semi-saintly behavior, or at least well-appreciated actions in this part of the country. We passed the hours with idle conversation, at time uproarious and clever, at other times merely remarking on the weather or the passing landscape. The conversation would die down, for quite awhile sometimes, and I always felt a particular obligation to sit at attention, and attempt to re-spark thoughtful dialogue. As I mentioned earlier, I felt it was sort of my job to keep him entertained as he had been so gracious in taking us such an awful long way, and had entrusted us. My Kerouac book seemed to scream at me from the bag at my feet, and at times I just wanted to be my introverted self and bury my head in it. But in one intense moment I realized I was doing this because of Kerouac, because he had ignited in me such an overwhelming and meaningful desire to travel the way he did, to live just a fraction of what he lived, and to truly appreciate life the way he did.
At that moment I started truly digging everything around me, the mossy tree coverings, of which name I enquired and have now forgotten, the beautiful tortured landscape all around me, the temperature gauge above his rear-view mirror steadily rising, his short cropped hair and his sweet music to my ears Southern accent, the fact that right away he gave me full reigns to his ipod, which I later gratefully relinquished to him to serenade us with local Louisiana blues and jazz, stuff I instantly took a liking to. He was in the middle of telling me about the crazy critters running around his house, his wife (whom I missed the cue to say I’m sorry, the only thing I regret thus far on the trip, but solely because I misheard him at first and only realized it later in recollection) his wife was taken away in a tragic accident, but before that she used to take in all sorts of crazy animals, the only one now sticking in my mind (and damn you Kerouac for having such a remarkable vocal memory, in which you can hardly read a page of his without seeing long near-direct quotes) but they had a flying squirrel running around his house at one point. She had a big heart and couldn’t resist sheltering unfortunate beings. And then he was explaining that he was making the trip to Baton Rouge to visit friends, stay at a cabin, and chop big logs for a later bonfire, at which point he called his friend and told him to get him a fifth of Jack Daniels and a bottle of coke and he’ll be good all weekend, evidently a light drinker, and this of course was all in preparation for New Years Eve which was right around the corner. He gave us advice on all sorts of things to dig in New Orleans, the jazz bands, the food, red beans and rice.
We made a much needed gas and coffee break just before getting into town, as I was nearly falling asleep sitting up, kept rolling my head forward, at which the snapping motion of my neck would awaken me, and as I still felt an obligation to carry forth conversation, even though Amanda was asleep sound in the back seat. I offered him gas money, which he refused and I knew he would, “no way will I take money, I was heading down this way anyway,” yet we bought him a Coke at the gas station because I knew that was all we could do to thank him.
He had earlier informed me that we were only the third hitchhikers he had ever picked up, and the first in something like five years. The first, a couple if I recollect correctly, weren’t too bad, just brought them part way to New Orleans as well. The second however, again on his same route to visit friends, scared him half to death, or more accurately creeped him out, as I guess the hitchhiker went off on a tangent, as Justin put it, “that he didn’t even seem conscious of doing” and began ranting about his ex-wife, and got some evil, menacing, glazed over look in his eyes, and Justin scared, “I’m pulling over right ahead, you’ve got to go,” so the whole rest of the ride I was conscious of this comparison, and thought that even if I read or slept the whole time, I couldn’t appear any nuttier than that guy. So when he finally dropped us off near the on-ramp for Highway 10 to New Orleans, I remarked that I hoped we improved his image of hitchhikers, and he said we certainly did, and it was a mutually fulfilling and pleasurable excursion for both parties involved, and we thanked him, and I was sad to leave him, as I started getting attached to each driver, but that’s the nature of this mode of travel, and we bid our adieus and good lucks, and Amanda and I were 75 miles from New Orleans, about an hour or so before dusk.
The next on-ramp was even worse, as it seems each was getting progressively – or perhaps digressively less ideal. It was just a tiny, maybe 20-30 foot turn and then cars were blaring on their way, nowhere else for them to stop off and retrieve us. Luckily, it was right next to a major intersection and a constant flow of vehicles passed us. We didn’t have to wait long.
A white van pulled up, with no windows, in fact it matched the description in every way that Amanda had announced at the start of the trip was just about the only ride she’d turn down. Admittedly, it looked like a kidnapper van, and thus Amanda was hesitant, but I rushed up to the man, and asked if he was heading to New Orleans, and he said, “yes, yes, get in and I’ll explain,” and I was sold at that, tossing my bag behind the only row of seats in the back, the rest torn out and the space filled with tools, and ladders, and such, and I hopped shotgun, and Amanda warily hopped in back. He was a short, middle-aged Mexican man, a construction worker, a builder of hotels, and apartments, and a builder of peace and justice, a beacon of hope and a symbol of all that is right with the world. He fascinated, more like enthralled me with his very being, I had to hunch over to hear him speak, his accent strong but easy to understand, but something kept rattling in the back, and combined with the age of the vehicle, and its poor operating at such a late stage in its life, created the atmosphere of not driving down a highway, but perhaps leading a rancorous horseback ride chase through the mountains.
He said he had to pick up a friend who he also was going to bring to New Orleans, but he was hungry, and every single time he made this trip, which he did frequently, he stopped at his favorite burrito place, an authentic Mexican place, which was run solely by a close knit Mexican family, but more on them later. I inquired as to whether the food was anything like the stuff one could actually get in Mexico, as he was born there, and not like our Tex-Mex Taco Bell garbage, and he said indeed it was, the best place he knew of this side of the border. He asked Amanda and I if we were hungry, and we both answered, “well we could eat,” and secretly hoping the place was cheap, as we’d almost entirely lived off the bag of assorted goodies Amanda had brought, chocolate, nuts, fruit, chips. But I decided that whether it was expensive or not, eating there simply had to be done, as we were being escorted along to one of those relatively rare completely random experiences.
We rolled into the parking lot, in a sort of strip-mall looking facility, and walk out. Completely to our surprise, right before we arrived there, he told us he’d buy us our dinner. I in shock, and Amanda not hearing, were pleasantly stuffed to the brim with enormous burritos. These burritos dwarfed Chipotle’s and were not naturally spicy, as I’d always heard that genuine Mexican food was spiced differently. Amanda pointed to a drink machine, one of those that are constantly mixing and turning over the liquid, and asked what was contained inside it. Abel, (our drivers name) said she must try it of course, and ordered one for her, and we were both, as I was sipping from her straw, in love with this strange and delicious beverage.
The family that owned the restaurant was Abel’s family, as he described earlier, or at least he knew and loved them as such. They exchanged warm conversation in Spanish, and everyone in the place seemed to smile warmly at us, and dig the only white people in the joint, with enormous backpacking bags to boot. He told us he’d go get his friend now, and we should stay and eat, which we did, so appreciative of the filling and free meal we’d received by the kindness of this lonely Mexican saint. Amanda sat at the table, and I walked around and dug the place, feeling out of place and loving it. Attached to the restaurant was a Mexican food store, and an adorable little Mexican boy, no older than three, walked the aisles with his mother, and kept pointing up and saying “look mamma, it’s a piñaaata, it’s a piñaaata,” as indeed there were piñatas hanging from the ceiling every few feet , and he always seemed to emphasize the first a, producing a sound so lovely and cheerful that I don’t believe could ever be replicated again. I wandered back to the table and waited, we both waited, in love with the memory of Abel, and the place, but at the same time cautious travelers, and hoping he really would return, as we were truly stuck this time, in the middle of nowhere and it being well dark by now.
An hour passed, and he triumphantly returned, without his friend who had decided not to make the journey after all. I picked up my bag, almost skipping to him at his car, we threw everything back in, he went inside the store for minute, producing three popsicles and giving us each one, I getting walnut and Amada cantaloupe, was this man really real? Did people this kind really exist in the world? We carried on our way, the 75 miles ticking away slowly, not really wanting it to end, his conversation continuing to enchant, and the thing in the back rattling, until about midway when Amanda investigated, and found a toolbox hitting the back door and removed it, him thanking her repeatedly, and us finally able to hear our thoughts batting around in our heads. The man had been through nearly every crisis and lived to tell about it, his wife left him and ran off with his only living son to California, his first-born son dead at 10 years old, a tragedy I couldn’t comprehend. He was a true nomad, constantly on the move, working, had lived in nearly every continental state, found himself lonely and having a hard time making good permanent friends, which he readily admitted. But as he put it “what am I going to do, kill myself?” And he was strong, real strong, and he said we’re all put on this earth to work, work all day every day, and our reward will be later, and let his voice trail off.
Conversation then turned to the Mexican family that ran the burrito place. The owner and father and grandfather of the family didn’t speak a lick of English, something Abel himself didn’t understand as the man had lived in the States for a long, long time. On top of that, the man’s daughters, and his daughter’s children didn’t speak any Spanish, and he said he couldn’t understand how they could communicate? And often when Abel visited the restaurant he would take the grandfather out to Home Depot because the grandfather would ask him and only him to escort him there. And Abel inquired once how come he always asked him, and not one of his sons, and the grandfather said that they didn’t know anything about tools and mechanics. And I remarked “oh how sad, an entire family that doesn’t understand one another” and Abel said, “yes sad indeed,” and my heart broke a little bit right there pondering that American undream.
The most ironic part of our ride with Abel was that all the while he was chatting us up, and making me feel redeemed, and restoring my faith in humanity word by precious word, he kept telling us how dangerous hitchhiking was, and that we should never do it again. In fact he said he’d live happy if we told him that we’d stop right then and there, and of course we couldn’t promise it, which he seemed genuinely saddened by, and kept saying that people that pick up hitchhikers are a little bit crazy in the head, at which point he’d tap his temple and give me a playful menacing look, (and he did this several times). But I emphasized that hey you picked us up, and you’re alright, in fact you’re a swell guy, and we’ve had nothing but positive life-affirming experiences. But he kept insisting that all it takes is one guy that is dangerous. And he told me of his nephew, who used to be another true nomad, and would go to gas stations with a gas can asking people, with desperate eyes, to lend him cash to fill the bottle, all the while insisting his car was down the road, (and he owned no such car) and would instead live off that slighted money, and would hitchhike all over the country, until one day a driver tried to kill him.
This was a somber story, and perhaps should have given me pause for introspection, but all I could think of while he was telling me this was that Abel couldn’t have been a better reason to continue hitchhiking. But alas, our ride ended, and he swerved in to “the safest place he knew in town,” as he put it, and had kept insisting was the only place he’d bring us, “near the cruise boats, and the hotels,” which turned out to be the place we needed to be anyway.
We thanked him wholeheartedly, and of course I was sad to see him go. We exchanged numbers, and as he was in town often, promised that we’d catch lunch sometime in the next two weeks. And there we were, we’d made it to New Orleans the unconventional way.
just a few ramblings of New Orleans
We had no couchsurfers to stay with in New Orleans. Which we were supposed to and it was probably mostly my fault for tardily getting requests sent in. We stomped into the Hilton Hotel, hoping to stay there with my employee discount (stemming from my respectable but oh so uninspiring hotel restaurant serving job in Minneapolis) and finding out that we were required to have a room booked at least 7-days in advance, sigh. We eventually made our way to the Hampton Inn (again part of the umbrella Hilton Corp that owns the world), begged the manager, pleaded looking ridiculous and dirty and smelly like we’d just slept in a ditch, which we had, and saying I had no idea whatsoever that I needed a reservation, which I truthfully didn’t, and that if he couldn’t hook us up, we had nowhere to stay, and the guilt-trip worked, which in essence wasn’t really one because it was the truth, and there we were, staying for six nights, the time we had to wait before our booking at the volunteer house, at $30 a night, $15 each for Amanda and I, cheaper than the cheapest hostel in town, and as we slid the key in the door, we had literally gone rags to riches, and the warm shower and clean clothes soothed our aching bones.
Here’s where my tale goes into a long period of unremarkableness, where for a week we were common tourists, and in reality little sticks in my mind from those six days, and at times I felt I was doing a tremendous disservice to our previous three days of travel.
Where we differed from every other yokum who walks the streets of the French Quarter, who bobs in and out of every godforsaken knick-knack shop; that must number in the thousands and line nearly every street, can be summed up in these six words – we were still bums at heart. There was a tremendous breakfast included every morning at the hotel, in which I’d heartily stuff my face, and consume numerous cups of coffee, and then I’d pillage the counter for one more plate, usually consisting of two bagels as well as their counterpart cream cheese containers, a yogurt, a donut, possibly a piece of fruit, as well as one or two muffins, and this of course would be my lunch for every one of those 6 days. This thriftiness I’d learned from just plain common sense evaluations of the state of my bank account, as well as from the tremendous upbringing received from my parents, in which I can of course only appreciate now in my adulthood, as they used to reminisce on the days of wrapping up bread rolls, or the tortilla chips on the restaurant table during their youthly travails, and stashing them away for later consumption, and this habit I picked up with much fondness.
The whole week I never got sick of my bagel meal, as the seasoned traveler knows, the best meal is a free one. Now as promised I won’t bore the reader with mundane day in and day out details, but one particular highlight I must mention. We spent New Years Eve frolicking the French Quarter, and as if every day and night there isn’t a large enough party, the city and it’s inpouring of tourists really put on quite a show that evening. The streets, in specific Bourbon Street, looked like a ridiculous sea of undulating shoulder to shoulder people, and just when I was beginning to want to hurl, not from the tremendous amount of liquor I’d consumed, but from the sickening feeling that was starting to develop in the very pit of my gut when one too many drunk frat boys, and strands of mardi-gras beads, and just general ridiculous and in the grand scheme of things pointless behavior started to cloud my vision, I came to the corner of Bourbon and Canal Street, and this tremendous 20-person jazz band were there wailing away, blocking the whole intersection with the crowd of people gathered around in awe, and this is jazz I might have paid good money to see elsewhere, but instead they seem to be serenading me and the whole sweet country in that one act. And right there two slim hipster black girls were dancing frantically and purposefully, weaving in and out of the crowd, and I watched two old Alabaman white guys grin gleefully, and one walked up to one of these spiritual girls and stood behind her, and the other old white guy produced a camera and hollered “hey dance with that old crazy white guy behind you so I can take a picture” and there was no malice or clowning present in his tone of voice, just three people from very different backgrounds digging the same music and the same beautiful moment, and for that flash of time, in my mind at least, the memory of Jim Crow was washed down the New Orleans streets in horns and jazz and grandeur.
And the rest of that night produced the same magic, we poured along in streams of people, and there was an epic concert in Jackson Square, a huge stage had been rolled out, and some of the best jazz musicians, who you’d be hard pressed to find in any other city, but who seem to be in every little bar and club, and recess of the city, were booming away. And I called my girlfriend at midnight and issued a resounding ‘Happy New Years!’ with the music all around me, and Amanda and I raged up over the grassy hill behind the stage, that led to the banks of the Mississippi and watched the fireworks fizzle, and the fleur de le drop, and in that very moment all was well in the Crescent City that had suffered so much.
Oh and all that other stuff
So this was really just the beginning of our trip, and much, much occurred. We saw splendid art exhibits, and heard even more incredible jazz, and volunteered, drywalling a house to be precise, and wandered the ninth ward. I dreamt one night that mother nature was once again at war with the compassionate city of New Orleans, and I was in a phone booth and a tremendous wave came over the tops of the buildings and tore into me and my phone booth with terrifying force and all I could do was hang on, and I awoke shaking.
We met so many other beautiful people, and had magnificent talks over huge glasses of wine and pulls of rum. And I saw my gorgeous baby daughter in Texas, and I haven’t been able to put those stirring four days into words just yet. And as it was my first time in Texas, I looked out the bus window, and it was gray and bleak, and in Houston I could see the remains of Hurricane Ike’s wrath. But these are different tales for different times and I won’t belittle the reader by trying to tack on some moralizing message at the end here either.
