Day Seven (Saturday, July 3, 1971)

Awet film of moisture clung to the windshield as I wriggled out the chills. Through the doorway, if I squinted, I barely made out a sign, ‘NO OVERNIGHT CAMPING.’ We were at a roadside park, tucked at the foot of a steep, thinly vegetated mountain peppered with scrubs and black, pointy rocks. My body felt sore, but I had gone through the process enough to know the aches would wear off as the day progressed.

The morning sun got quite high and bright before Alvah, then Otto, then Natasha, came down off the mountain. Hellos were free and unaccusing. I announced that my slumber did me a world of good, and felt healthy. A big smile was plastered across Otto’s mug. His headband was on, and I thought I noticed a dash of red makeup brushed across his cheeks.

Alvah drove to the University of Colorado campus, parked, and set out alone for a grassy knoll in front of the student union to get more sleep. Natasha did their laundry. Otto and I stationed ourselves on an adjacent lawn in front of a classroom, facing Alvah’s curvaceous form lying face down on her blanket in the distance.

“All you need is a feather for your headband and a bow and arrow across your shoulder.” I tried to sound cranky but my laughter betrayed me. “How’d you sleep, Tonto? Deep? I bet you got as much sleep as she did.”

Otto laughed his high-pitched vampire laugh. A squirrel ran up a tree.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“How was it?”

“How was what?” Otto’s poker face acted as if he didn’t know what I was talking about.

“How was your ballgame?”

He sighed and smiled, reminiscing, greatly enjoying that I had asked. “Pretty good, pretty good.”

“No kidding!” Otto’s evasion of personal questions was famous.

I scanned the campus. “Let me ask you point blank. Did you get laid?”

“He-he-he! He-he-he!”

“Come on, man. Tell me!”

The pitch rose higher and higher, with enough frequency to shatter a glass. “Let the world hear. Did you insert your wanger into that beautiful body over there, or didn’t you?”

“I’ll neither deny nor confirm it.” Otto laughed with glee. “She’s darn nice, I’ll tell you that.”

Any further persistence on my part was greeted by a chain of laughter. I finally gave up.

Boulder was a well-kept, upscale community. Its sturdy stone houses were set geometrically across neat, trimmed lawns. Its streets were scrubbed clean, and there were lots of young, fit, outdoorsy people. People seemed alive and active.

Ahead stood “the truck;” its back doors flung open. Natasha air- dried the wash. Otto and I scoped out the scene from a stone wall.

“Say Roger? What plans do we got for the next couple of days? You’re not pressin’ for nothin’ specific, are you? What do you say we stick with these girls and check out Montana and Idaho? I bet there’s some beautiful country up there, Rog. We ain’t in no rush to get to San Francisco, are we? Why don’t we just take some time off, like that day in Indiana, and follow the girls around? We’re due for another vacation.”

“You want me to run down the list? Number one, I don’t like being paired with Natasha. Number two, that truck lined with drugs is dangerous and corrupt. Number three, I don’t like the thought of surrendering our control to strangers for so long.”

“It wouldn’t be bad,” Otto coaxed. “I was talkin’ with Alvah last night—”

“—Yeah, I bet you were yakking up a storm!”

Otto laughed. “It ain’t nothin’ for them to have hitchhikers stay with them for a couple days at a time, because of all the travelin’ they do. They’re gonna take care of some business in Boulder, then they’re shootin’ straight up north. I say let’s go. It won’t be no skin off our backs.”

“You rat fink. Maybe you don’t remember, but I was there when Alvah turned over to your side!”

Otto laughed. “I been tryin’ to tell you, sons, you can’t mess with ‘The Kid’ when he goes after a woman, because you ain’t gonna be nowhere. The lady showed you last night who she liked best, and it wasn’t you.”

I got furious at Otto for treating me like a child. Likewise, he accused me of lacking spontaneity and being unable to take a risk. He petitioned doggedly to stay with these girls. He emphasized that we’d get into a lot of new states. The girls would supply food in exchange for us cooking and keeping things tidy. It would be like the YMCA. We could listen to Indian stories and learn native culture. He promised not to flaunt Alvah when I was around, nor to always leave me struggling with Natasha.

“Ah shit, all right. Let’s go. But no more than a few days. Please. Alvah’s beauty is evil.”

To kill time I went to the truck and read Natasha’s copy of Steal This Book. The inside front cover touted how Abbie, a political revolutionary, submitted the manuscript to over thirty publishers, all of whom rejected it, until the present “Pirate Editions” agreed. I was shocked at some of the capers he advocated for plundering the depths of “Amerika.” But strange, a lot of it was plausible.

Pretty Alvah came padding down the steep sidewalk, breasts jiggling under her turquoise blouse and necklaces. A team of three male students, carrying backpacks and travel gear, strutted behind. Otto stood up and stared. Alvah began conducting a tour of the truck.

It turned out that these three guys were going to be part of the expedition up north. I wiped excess oil from my nose. Three extra guys!

That made the male-female ratio even worse. From their fraternity teeshirts to their conservative demeanor, these guys were neither my type nor Otto’s. They sure didn’t seem like Alvah’s taste, either. Something was afoot.

Meanwhile, Steal This Book lay at my side. In a sudden moment of inspiration, I buried it inside my red duffel bag. Yes, I stole it! I quickly opened my diary as Otto peered around the corner of the truck.

“There’s been a change of plans around here.” He hip-hopped toward me affably. “I decided to scrap goin’ up north. It would be too lousy hitchhikin’ up there after we got back out on our own. No cars. One of those guys said it once took him seven hours to get out of this one national forest in Montana. I ain’t in favor of that, not in this heat. Plus we don’t know about the bears up there, or the cops. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know. One of them guys has got some cabin on a lake they’re gonna stay at. Let’s just head on; get back to 80.”

“Well well well.” I smiled with sunlight breaking across my face. “That’s a change in your tune. Too much competition?”

“Nah, it ain’t that. Those guys are blockheads. It’s just I wanna get to California before we start branchin’ off to all these other places. You’re gung ho about gettin’ to California, ain’t that so?”

“Yes, you’ve known that out of the starting gate. California needs to be framed in our sight. I want to touch California soil. I want California’s vibe to run through my veins. That’s what I’m aiming for.”

Otto broke the news to Alvah. Everyone was puzzled. “I said you were invited,” she kept insisting, to which Otto turned her down all the more. Once his mind was set, Otto the Ox was tough to budge.

The girls discarded us like Kleenex. Goodbyes were curt; Otto didn’t even share a private farewell with his purebred Navajo babe. The reinforcement jock crew puttered down the street in the truck and turned a corner, declining even to wave.

“That’s life.” Otto took off his headband. “They used us for their own amusement.”

“From now on I guess we gotta stand clear of the Indians as well as the cowboys.”

“Neither group is our demographic.”

“It boils my blood, Roger, to think about those three dolts showin’ up when they did.”

“Cheer up. You got your licks in. Besides, you’re on your way to San Francisco.” I spoke from a Hardee’s Hamburger stand across the street from the Crossroads Mall.

“I ain’t never been as exhausted as I am now. I feel like Rip VanWinkle getting’ ready for twenty years of slumber.” His normal luminous hazel eyes were glazed with red.

Despite his melancholy, Otto spawned yet another idea involving “time off.” Being the cusp of Independence Day, why not cut through lots of small towns on our way to Wyoming, using back roads? Little towns were always having parades, community gatherings, and celebrations in honor of the Fourth. Otto’s plan was to arrive in one of these towns and anchor for the night. That would position us for a full day of patriotic fun tomorrow, attending a festival, filling up on free food, watching a parade and fireworks display, and hopefully spending the night telling a couple of girls hitchhiking adventures.

“Ingenious,” I admitted. “We’ll be out-of-town celebrities.”

“We’ll be signing autographs.”

“Another Paula will put us up for the night.”

“They’ll have us in front of the microphones.”

Even though the minutes piled up to two full hours, I couldn’t quarrel with my elevation at 5,400 feet; nor with the snow-capped Eldora Mountain range to the west, cast in deep, purple hues; nor with the broad Rocky Mountain breeze. This, my friends, was “west.” My tan was deepening by the hour. I liked the simple green and white design of Colorado license plates, subtly depicting mountains.

A pretty girl—prettier than Alvah and a whole lot more honest—gave us a ride. I had dibs on the front and climbed aboard as if I owned the situation. The girl was an outdoors natural, slim and well-exercised, with long blond hair, no make up, and wore durable clothes and heavy hiking boots.

“I’m driving around with a full tank of gas,” she said with smiling freckles. “I’ve got a whole weekend with nothing to do.”

Her family was originally from back East and moved to Colorado to run a ski business. She was enthusiastic about finding a community celebration. “You just might get lucky. Tell me where to go. I’ll follow your instructions. I’m game.”

Otto tumbled into the back and was dead asleep after two minutes.

The wilderness was thick, green, and lush. Yellow and orange wildflowers dotted the roadside. The girl pointed out various mountain peaks and species of trees. I reminisced with her about my 1966 camping trip to New England. That was with my father, William Winans; my Uncle Merv, and brother. It always seemed like a wasted opportunity because it was too short and we never engaged nature much. The girl convinced me that any travel was worth it no matter what the specifics. Her optimism and generous nature turned me around.

“Don’t bust on your father too much. He’s trying his best.”

“He’s the ultimate hands-off dad. He offers only criticism, never support or advice.”

“Even so, you responded by being a leader. So it all worked out anyway, didn’t it?”

But—there were no banners strung across the highway announcing Uncle Sam celebrations. In fact, we barely passed through anything qualifying as a town.

The girl drove on, cheerfully thinking we might stumble onto something, until she said her parents were expecting her home for dinner. Even then, she drove an extra ten miles, debating where to let us out. The ride ended at an ice cream stand on a winding stretch of road in a deep grove of trees, isolated from everything.

“Thank You Girl” by the Beatles.

Much as I liked our peaceful, shady spot from a picnic table near a rushing creek, I ate my vanilla twirl ice cream cone with rainbow sprinkles in anxiety. We seemed tucked away, concealed from civilization, on an orbit removed even from “off the beaten path.”

“Talk about isolation, man.”

“As long as I see cars, I see hope.”

“Our options, Our Otto, look limited.” I peered across the treetops.

“One way in, one way out.”

“We can beat this, Roger.”

“I’m willing to stand on my head if that’s what it takes.”

Thumbing was excruciating. Our presence surprised drivers. We were a roadside attraction, nothing more than a diversion, a point of interest for dad, mom, and the kids on their way to the nearest KOA.

“Right here, mister dope, right here!”

“Say folks—where you goin’ so fast?”

“Vacation cars suck.”

“We got no other choice.”

“Up yours, too!”

“That guy belonged to the anti-hitchhiker’s club.”

“Scheist, Otto. I thought that last couple was in the bag. They were in their twenties.”

“The girlfriend was itchin’ to stop, but the boyfriend said no.”

“Damn it, George. All I want is a ride. Come on, Colorado! We’re not going to assault you! Take a chance, take a chance.”

Travel By Thumb attempted everything to bring about a change in its luck—new clothes, adjusting our location, rearranging our gear, switching positions, putting away ‘CALIF.’, taking it out again. It brought false alarms: phantom decelerations, fake blinker lights, deceitful change of gears, unrelated horn honking.

“Two hours, five minutes is a lot of thumb time.”

“We might as well be a couple of trees.”

I used ‘CALIF.’ like a matador. I held it over the asphalt as each car drove past, dangling it in temptation. I withdrew it at the last second. Otto, without his shirt, thumbed twenty yards ahead.

A bleeping, cherry-topped car ended the spree.

“You guys are breaking three laws,” barked the two cops after examining our i.d.’s. “Hitchhiking on a public highway, obstructing traffic, and being in the state without a parent or guardian. If we catch you soliciting again, we’re going to drive you to Stapleton Airport, put you on a plane back home, and send the bill to your parents. Understand? You guys want an airplane ride back to New Jersey?”

“No.” I lowered my head.

As ordered, Otto and I moved to the left side of the roadway, off the pavement, single file, and began tramping, thumbs down, toward I-25, which lie an indeterminable distance to the east. Had Alvah and Natasha fleeced those fraternity guys yet? Did that outdoors girl make it back home for dinner? How was Amy faring in Flemington without my companionship? My bad left knee, which I injured the previous year in a football game, ached and swelled.

“We’re in tourist heaven and hitchhiker’s hell.” Dirt etched across Otto’s forehead.

“My next letter to my brother Willis will say, ‘Yeah bro, I walked a hundred miles to Wyoming.’”

Was I dreaming? After a mile or so, one of those very same vacation cars, pointed in the same direction, a station wagon with a family inside and suitcases strapped onto the luggage rack, stopped. A guy rolled down the window. In a British accent he said, “’Allo chaps! It appears you need a lift.”

“That is so jolly well correct!” We hustled over in humble appreciation. The network was still alive.

Our new focal point was the Golden Grille Canteen, a standard, modern restaurant grouped in with a gas station and convenience store on top of a hill overlooking I-25. Was this what they called the Continental Divide? We were exactly between the mountains and the great prairie. I was pooped. We may have dodged a bullet with the cops, but our situation was no picnic.

Fourth of July Eve was spent sitting on the curb all night talking with two older hitchhikers who had just come in off the interstate. They were brothers in their thirties, born in Delaware, but coming via South Carolina, and they had Southern accents. Both were filthy, smelled like grease, and appeared delirious. One guy had the shakes. The other guy’s eyeballs rolled loosely in his head. They didn’t carry baggage, just the shirts on their backs. My heart leapt out to them as I realized our differences.
They were heading to North Dakota, to start a new life for themselves.

“How long you guys been traveling?” I asked innocently.

“Since the first of May.” One of them pulled up his dirty pant cuffs. “Times’d be I never thought we’d get to Dakota, but she’s seeming purty close tonight.”

They were flabbergasted when I told them Otto and I covered the same distance—about two thousand miles—in one week.

“Gawddamn Stanley, how’d they do that?” one of them exclaimed. “Shoot, if we’d gotten to North Dakota that fast, I’d a had me my cabin built by now. How’d ya do it?”

I was thankful how much more we had going for ourselves than these characters. Still, they weren’t complainers and possessed a sense of self-sufficiency I hadn’t seen much in other people.

“Jesus God, whatever ya do, don’t ever try to hitch a ride in Kentucky. Don’t matter where ya are or how much ya walk. They don’t stop fer nothin’,” the other partner, Arthur, said. “We dern near walked across that entire state without gettin’ one ride.”

“My feets knows that.”

They left to get a cup of coffee with twenty-nine cents between them. I felt affluent in comparison and pulled out my wallet. But they refused, saying they didn’t accept handouts.

“Those guys probably scare more drivers than they attract,” Otto said later.

When the restaurant shut its lights for the night, Otto and I gathered our two worlds and hiked over a hill to a dusty, private campground. Only we didn’t pay. He and I sacked out in the weeds just outside the campground’s boundary fence. It was a good spot—we could see out but nobody could see in. The only annoyance was listening to my partner fret about his two favorite topics, cops and cowboys. Then he added a third—bears. Then a fourth, snakes. Then a fifth, red ants.

Z-time was divine, once I got there.