No thing can compare
Not who, what or where
Direction given
Dreamed and driven
Walking without wonder
Without qualm
Without care
——————————–
Walking.
And then…
Sitting, watching, waiting. Not waiting.
Taking in, all that was on that road.
And beyond.
And then…
Walking again.
This was much different from the travel bug I’d gotten (and still have) from my European adventure while in high school. This was my first experience with true hitchhiking.
Oh, I’d hitched rides before. But that was not at all the same. That was something people do to go from one part of their neighborhood to another. As a farm kid I didn’t have much experience with that either though. I was used to having my own car already and I was only just turning nineteen.
Nineteen years old and I was on the road for the first time. My first road… for real. With no one to answer to. No one to wait for, and no one expecting me. Well… I’d told Fred to expect me and my excited young mind was hoping he was. But the truth was something completely different than these exciting expectations my excited and creative young mind had made up stories to fill it with.
Oh and the big whopper was the one that had put me on this road in the first place.
It was the kind of story any nineteen year old with some talent and a little stage experience would gladly glom onto. With gusto. I was going to get myself to Norfolk and hook up with my pal, the cool Fred Berdine and join his cool rock band. I was going to be a rodie or do anything else they wanted me to do so I could go on the rock and roll road with them and perhaps get to eventually sing back up. Then…
Then who knows what kind of coolness I might be in for?
My excited young mind had all kinds of ideas about that. And sitting on that road (US 64 just north of Enid, Oklahoma) I had all kinds of of time.
Walking some more, I didn’t really care if someone stopped to give me a ride or not. I was fine just walking. Feeling the total freedom that is the real unfettered travel that is true hitchhiking. There’s nothing like it. It was a weekday and early in the afternoon so there were few cars anyway.
I stuck out my thumb, nonchalantly. Not expecting anything. A car sped by without notice. No matter. I kept walking. The walking became rhythmic, almost hypnotic. I started humming to myself as the whooshing sound of the car’s tires rolling on that road changed pitch and faded into the distance. Hmmm… Perhaps I started making up a song… I have no idea now. I was so free, I could have been thinking anything in that moment.
It was a moment in my life I will never have again. Nor do I wish to. But I’m so glad I did. Perhaps I should have even been grateful to the “great George Heaton” for facilitating that moment.
Perhaps…
Nah…. George was an asshole and the only thing I had to be glad about when it came to him was that I’d never again have to deal with his shit.
EVER!
Sitting on my suitcase that George had tossed out of that motel in Enid just half a day ago (yet half a lifetime now it seemed)… I hardly noticed the beat up old ford pickup truck that had passed and was now slowing down to a stop.
A ride? Cool!
Now I was really on my way.
