Day One (Sunday, June 27, 1971)

“Don’t you like the cops?” Otto George fluttered his eyelashes with a smile, his quirky character uncapped for the world to enjoy. “I thought they were buddies of yours.”

I leaned up toward my goldilocks best friend with a chuckle. “I love them as much as you do, man. I just don’t feel so great hitching in a place overlooking bureau headquarters, that’s all.”

We glanced at each other and laughed some more.

I bobbed in the direction of the state troopers’ barracks across the field down the local road. Otto the Outermost perched above me in road preparedness, packed tight as sardines; thumbs extended over Route 22. Wistful yet confident, his angular figure always brought to mind an erector set.

“Hitchhiker’s best friend, ain’t they?”

“Oh, definitely. Never around when you need them. Always there when you don’t.”

A pack of cars sped past, anchored by a mammoth tractor-trailer generating enough tailwind to knock you down. A junker with an electronics freak wearing headphones passed slowly in its wake. Traffic was so heavy that I didn’t curse him out—much.

“Stop worryin’ about them cops, will you?” Otto instructed. “We’re out here to get a job done. Your right hand has a thumb attached to it. Now use it.”

I presumed my own stance for a new series of vehicles but kept a watchful eye out for those white, cherry-topped hornets outside that building. My partner would never admit it, but all the hiking we’d done prior to this was minor leagues. On this level, we were rookies straight off the farm.

“Come on, people, get us out of here!” I yelled. “We don’t need any early foul-ups. Come on, Americans! Show me some red, white, and blue.”

I stepped down and away from a faulty exhaust system’s swirling soot, coughing. I came up with a stone and flung it into a pole. Truck traffic on this stretch was incredible. They were coming in good spurts east and west. Mayflower. Royal Products. Union Carbine. Branch. White Rose Tea. They’d take your thumb off, no questions asked, if you got too close.

This was just west of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Fifty miles from home and already in strange lands. I bounced on the balls of my feet, wiggled my hips, and extended my fingers. No, I wasn’t polishing my hitchhiking stance; I was playing air piano to the song in my head, the new one by Carole King, “I Feel the Earth Move.” I banged those keys hard. Then I switched to air guitar, switched to “Johnny B. Goode,” and pranced up and down the shoulder in a modified Chuck Berry strut.

“Go, hepcat, go,” Otto said.

My statsheet looked like this: Seventeen years old. Curly dark hair on a big-boned frame. Height: 5'10". Weight: 150. Olive eyes. Often mistaken for Greek or Italian, but just your standard everyday WASP. Hailing from a small town in West Jersey named Whitehouse. Away from home only once before, on a hasty family camping trip to New England in 1966. In school I was a content ‘B’ student, bent more on extracurricular activities than hardcore academia. I was president of the service club. Class representative on student council. A bench-sitter on the football and baseball teams. My favorite action star was Simon Templar in The Saint. My favorite movies were Cat Ballou, A Shot In The Dark, Planet Of the Apes, and The Dirty Dozen. I liked blue-eyed soul on my stereo and tall, long-haired brunettes in tight Levis.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I know I’m young and naiive but I’m going to pick up, or else die trying.”

A Schaefer brewery sat on the other side of the highway. You could smell the hops or whatever it is they used to brew it. Haze bleached the rolling hills and extended halfway to the clouds. I tugged my damp teeshirt. That smoky horizon couldn’t be pollution, not way out here in the Lehigh Valley.

“I don’t know about this place, Otto. Too much congestion. If we go much longer, I think we ought to relocate down. Create some breathing room.”

“Sons,” as he called me, “you ain’t been standin’ here long. How long it’s been, fifteen, twenty minutes? Wait’ll you go five or six hours.”

“God, I hope not.”

Another long series of vehicles passed. I waved to one P-I-E truck, which stood for Pacific Intermountain Express. That’s the kind of ride we wanted. I nudged toward the pavement, daring the drivers to react. Someone, sooner or later, would be willing. Of course many of these trucks, luxury sedans, delivery vans, station wagons, and commercial cars were a poor percentage to “help the cause.” But Otto taught me long ago it pays to solicit everybody. Take our first ride out of Whitehouse, for example: An off-duty taxicab driver.

“Okay, ride number three, where art thou? I’m ready whenever you are, so let’s blow this joint! Come on, Miss Hairdo! Look at all the room!”

“A princess in her daddy’s Benz? Are you kiddin’? She was scared stiff.”

“No reason to feel that way at all. Is there, Otto? We’re respectable citizens. Girl, you have no idea how respectable we are. She lost her chance to participate in the great undertaking.”

Who cares if it was Otto or me who hatched the original idea for “The Trip?” Since last Christmas that’s all it needed to be called. We roughed out a basic concept based on “Forty Days and Forty Nights.” We designed a flexible, 7,500-mile loop. We even had a motto borrowed from the post office: “Neither rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night is going to prevent these two thumbs from acing this trip!”

Call it what you want—sowing our oats, testing the waters, going for the gold, letting it all hang out, whatever. We wanted to do something big, and it had to be now—in this lifetime.

We were more than team; we were one empowered. Born in the same hospital only a few days apart, unacquainted sons of “white flight” parents who both moved from Plainfield to Whitehouse in the mid-60’s. In sixth, we rode the same school bus and were spirited competitors on rival Little League teams. We bonded in seventh and eighth, helped by the same homeroom teacher and many of the same classes. By ninth we rode bicycles on weekends, packing a lunch and ‘talking life’ next to a river lookout or Jersey landmark. By tenth we chewed over girls and teachers; acting as each other’s nerve center and laugh box. This year, as juniors, we hitchhiked to Flemington on Sunday afternoons, competing in tennis.

Between jokes and ideas, we eventually cultivated the specifics of a grand long distance venture.
This was that now. The Trip. It was on. As we speak.

“. . . yeah, and I’m gonna tell you again, sons. We oughta carry a sign that says where we’re goin’. All professional hitchhikers use one. First chance we get. Are you a pro, or are you a pretender?”

We snapped our heads. A tractor-trailer, one we hadn’t even tried to snag, changed gears or something as it passed. It came to a halt on the shoulder about a hundred yards up.

“Holy cow, Phil Rizzuto!”

The door on the passenger’s side opened in a cloud of dust. A man with glasses leaned out and waved for us to come on. We stopped looking dumbfounded and ran up with our stuff.

The door was about five feet off the ground. In a slurry, fast-talking gobble, the man said, “Where you goddamn motherlovin’ whores headed?”

“California,” I said.

He was neither surprised nor skeptical. “Well, I’m goin’ all the way to Nebraska, so hop up ’fore I get my hind quarters rammed.”

Halfway across the country on one pickup! I never dreamed cross-country hitchhiking would be this easy. At this rate, we’d be in California in two days.

The guy got up to full speed after about ten gear changes.

“Name’s Tom,” he shouted. “Tom Pavallow.” He pointed to an identification card of himself taped to the dashboard. Staticky country- western music droned out the AM.

You know how they say everybody resembles an animal? Tom looked like a bird—small and weightless. He seemed about sixty—kind of old to be doing this type of thing for a living. He had short, graying hair, thick-lensed glasses, and a scraggly Bob Dylan beard. He had short arms and discolored skin. His ribs poked out from his yellow teeshirt.

We shook hands. We told him our names, but with the deafening engine it was evident you had to keep conversation brief and general as possible.

“Where you from?” he yelled.

“Newark,” I said.

“What?!”

Otto added, “We’re cousins.”

“Cousins?! You goddamn motherlovin’ whores don’t look like cousins to me. You sure as hell ain’t from Newark, I damn well know that.”

It was so much fun riding in a tractor-trailer. It was like the Spider Dragon ride at Seaside Heights, only better. You were high off the ground, going fast, barreling ahead with so much power underneath that you felt unconquerable. Out of habit only did I locate—for emergency—the door handle.

The noise didn’t bother Tom. He babbled on in such a way that all you had to do was say “yeah” every minute or so and that was enough to keep him going. He was the type whose hygiene, language, and lifestyle you might not agree with, but he wasn’t about to harm us and he was supplying a ride. So I didn’t care what he yammered about.

From what I understood (confirmed by Otto at later points), Tom was a company man, a career trucker who shuttled raw beef from Omaha to New York twice a week, and that a one-way trip took a day and a half. “I don’t sleep,” he said, “I drink coffee.” From time to time he brought down a vial of pills from under the sun visor and popped them in his mouth. Home was Omaha. He spent every Sunday at home with his wife and two kids. He pulled out his wallet and flipped through the leaves. He pointed to a photo of a beast of a woman.

“Hell, you think that stops me?” He grinned with brown and missing teeth. “I’ve corn-holed every waitress at the Zanesville truck stop. Ever’ damn one.”

I was introduced to this phenomenon, “truck stops,” before long, and had the grim obligation of visiting several before the night was over. I never knew they existed. They were like a combination gas station / restaurant / store for truck drivers, always open twenty-four hours, where all these gritty people who look like they haven’t slept or washed recently gather about and stock up on their needs.

Tom fit right in. He slid his rig into the gigantic parking lot, idling the engine instead of turning it off, and the three of us walked in. Tom made believe he didn’t know us, and went to sit with a bunch of his truck-driving buddies in a special section marked ‘RESERVED FOR PROFESSIONAL TRUCKERS. THEY OPERATE ON A TIME SCHEDULE AND THIS AREA IS RESERVED TO ASSURE THEY ARE NOT DELAYED.’

The walls were muddy brown; the tables and booths were thin as balsa. A smell of grease and rubber permeated the air. The store sold just about everything a trucker would need, like baseball caps, wind- breakers, sunglasses, eight-track tapes, watches, decals, and maintenance supplies. A combination salt and pepper shaker was on special, ‘For The Little Lady At Home,’ and was selling briskly.

An additional truckers’ lounge was off-limits to anyone not a trucker, as were laundry and showers. A long row of telephones in the corridor was a busy area. Tom made at least five phone calls, lasting a good half hour.

Not one attractive girl was in there, nor were many of the feminine sex available to begin with. The waitresses were a bunch of dogs who derived their pleasure from flirting with the drivers.

“I’d rather masturbate,” I told Otto. We laughed for twenty minutes.

Outside it was dark. A large chunk of Pennsylvania was already knocked. Already I was a lot further west than I ever was before. My old record was Hershey, Pennsylvania, to visit the chocolate factory. That was three summers earlier, August, 1968, on a day trip with my Uncle Merv, brother Willis, and two sisters. Otto’s furthest point out was the Pocono Mountains, where he once went to a basketball camp.

Adding to our roll call of states was major. Otto rang in with a measly three. I had ten, so at least my disappointing camping trip to New England was worth something. My bro Willis had eleven states and I had ten—always a sore point for me since I was two years older!

Inside the truck behind the grimy curtain was a small, box-like compartment, which explained where truck drivers catch up on their sleep and carry on their sexual activities. It was fun to scan across the scores of shining, stately trucks, picture the compartments, and speculate about the number of bare waitresses.

Tom finally came back and we got rolling again. It had been some kind of busy week since school let out. Tuesday I went to Yankee Stadium to see Roy White and Thurman Munson in a doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers. Wednesday I was at the shore with the student council—a thank you party from our faculty advisors. Thursday I hitchhiked to White Plains, New York, to see my favorite group in concert, the Rascals. Friday, Otto and I attended a Round Valley Reservoir camp-out as stealthy adjuncts of a church youth group, where I drank half a bottle of Boone’s Farm and threw up. Saturday I had a wonderful midnight picnic with my girlfriend, Amy. We ate grapes and cheese doodles under a tree near the Raritan River, punctuated by juicy necking.

It seemed ages that I split home. That had been some dreadful spectacle. My mom, crying, dropped me off with my two duffel bags at the George’s house at noon (my father said goodbye from home). I got perturbed at Otto for having all his trip items sprawled across the living room and bedroom, not even organized. He brought so much extra crap—flares, rope, a rain slicker, searchlight, metal jungle hat, shampoo, even an athletic supporter. All to load in a single, metal- framed knapsack.

“Hey man, I thought we were going to show the world what roughing it really means.”

“Don’t worry, it’s gonna be on my back, not yours,” he smiled.

For good measure, his whole family was staring like owls. I had to answer the dumb questions of his twin sisters, refuse his step-mom’s offers for lunch, and politely laugh at Mr. George’s jokes about “the call of the wild.” Finally we got out of there at one-thirty p.m.

Ride number two had been interesting. That was with a Jewish family named the Silvermans. They were friendly and talkative. The parents took us quite seriously when we explained we were hitchhiking from New Jersey to California and back. They said upon our arrival in San Francisco, there was some author, Alan Watts, who lived on a yacht in the bay north of the city. He was known as a “friend of hippies,” and let people bunk on his boat. I jotted down that item in my pocket notebook.

I didn’t realize Tom’s route of travel along the Pennsylvania Turnpike would get me into West Virginia, but there we were—Wheeling, West Virginia. State number eleven. That tied me with my brother Willis for the lead of the Winans family siblings. Then we hit Ohio and I jumped into the undisputed lead. Otto’s state total skyrocketed to five.

I couldn’t understand why Tom had to stop at every truck stop on the road. After the third or fourth one we ceased going in with him. He’d only get a cup of coffee anyway; that, and make a few phone calls.
At one truck stop in Ohio in the dead of night, he came back to the cab gobbling, “Well boys, we’re on our way to Chicago. We’ll make it by tomorrow afternoon.”

What? Anguish tore through my soul. I couldn’t help but cry out: “What happened to Nebraska?”

Tom replied with some slurry answer I couldn’t understand, though he tacked on at the end, “We’ll have a ball up there in Chicago. There ain’t nothin’ but whores!”

Otto took it in stride, as usual. He rarely got rattled. His complacency smoothed over my outbursts. I was demonstrative and he was meditative. We complemented each other completely. That’s why we did everything as one—sneaking into movies; hitchhiking to Princeton University on a snowy night to see a wrestling match; sitting together on field trips to the Trenton rock station and state museum, counseling each other for hours over milkshakes at Dairy Queen. Our mutual trust ran deep. I knew he watched out for me. In return, I put up with his mysterious nature. That’s to say: Sometimes he did things outside the realm of logic.

This became one of those times. With our ride cut down to Chicago, my morale crashed and burned. I felt drained and could see myself snoozing in that portable sleeping compartment of Tom’s. Otto, though, felt the need to keep himself awake the whole night. When Tom hinted that one of us could grab some shut-eye if we wanted, I took him up on the offer. I climbed over the seat and tumbled inside. Ugh. It was an uncovered box springs with a greasy sheen and moldy smell. Just enough room existed to stretch your legs.

“The young’un needs his rest for the night,” Otto joked to Tom, loudly.

I ignored him and recited my bedtime prayer, with one obvious modification:

Dear God, Please guide me safely through the night.
And forgive me for all the bad things I did during the day.
This goes for everyone in my family,
Including my relatives and friends,
And please guide this house—er, I mean, this 18-wheeler
Safely through the night, too. Amen.
Dear God, that was a special prayer. Amen.
Dear God, THAT was a special prayer, too. Amen.