For The Book!

Omaha Motivations #2 I wasn’t in a blurry haze this time. This time I felt like I’d shifted into another dimension or something. A reality that looked a lot like the one I'd just been in... only in this one, my frantic tizzy was gone. My cool friend Fred had cajoled me out of it. [...]

Omaha Motivations #1 In January of 1978, the minimum wage was raised from $2.30 to $2.65 per hour all over the country. By the second Saturday of that September… after a little over two weeks in this mid-sized Nebraska town, I cashed my first paycheck as a full-time laborer in Norfolk. Nearly two hundred dollars [...]

Norfolk Maneuvers Yes, I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe the promise that I would get to go on the road with cool Fred Berdine's cool band and start living the rock and roll lifestyle he kept talking about. but when I started asking about exactly when all this coolness was going to [...]

Chapter Three Same old Same old... A Special Kind of Liar There's no way Fred was expecting me. He had every reason to think he’d never see me again. More than a week had passed since I’d witnessed the way cool Fred Berdine nearly choked to death in the clutches of his former boss. That was [...]

The Equalizer And then it got weird. The weird thing that happened on this new road (Kansas state highway 160) was that I got a ride like… Like, right away. I mean… I didn’t even have time to walk very far, or sit down or anything. I’d just made it from the access ramp to [...]

The First Ride I throw my battered old suitcase into the back of the pickup truck and move to the side of the cab. A man on the passenger side has stepped out and holds the door. He gestures for me to get in. I do and slide over, next to the man driving. After [...]

Chapter Two Freedom and Lies Along the Road   A Moment Like No Other Walking. And then… Sitting, watching, waiting. Not waiting. Taking in, all that is on this road. And beyond. And then… Walking again. This is much different from the travel bug I got (and still have) from my European adventure while in [...]

Born for Adventure In 1978 Oklahoma was experiencing an oil boom, mostly out on “the pan handle” so Enid was the perfect place for George’s little army of predators and scammers to set up their base. Twice a big as Norfolk and twice as rich, Enid’s predominant culture of newly well-off oil workers was much [...]

Back Seat Story But George didn’t kill Fred. He didn’t even kick the shit outta him like everyone thought George would do. Fred obviously wasn’t the threat he must have thought he was. He was a nuisance and so the great George Heaton threw him out of that Nebraska motel room like yesterdays news and [...]

Not in Kansas Anymore The orientation wasn’t much and only took one day. It basically consisted of showing us all how to fill out the fake paperwork and get us our fake ID cards identifying us as a “Management Trainee” or participants in the big “Win a Trip to Hawaii Contest!” These were our two [...]