The Big Stuff

All right, now I will reveal what stuff is made up. There are more “big’s” than “small’s.”  I’ve already said I added a day at Hearst Castle.  That never happened on the original trip, but my wife and I had a great time there in about 1998.  My mind quickly deduced that the experience needed to find its way into the book. Backtracking into Hollywood (Day 31) never happened, either. But it DID happen to me on a second solo hitchhiking trip I took to California in 1975. Again, I inserted it later—seeing the need for its presence. Spending a day unloading furniture (pages 225-227) also happened to me by myself long after the trip, in Michigan, during a summer vacation from college. The biggest thing that never happened (drum roll) was the side trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (starting at page 300 and extending into all of Day 34). This includes the entire relationship with 'Gwen.' The character is based on a cute waitress I once worked with in the 1980’s, named Gwen, from Manville, N.J. with whom I had an acquaintanceship, nothing more. The whole part at the Grand Canyon is just my imagination running wild . . . maybe fulfilling a decades-old fantasy about Gwen. You know how Milt pulls down Gwen’s pants in the van on page 302 for Roger’s viewing pleasure, and he lays mute in the back of the truck enjoying Gwen’s bare butt? That happened to me on yet another solo hitchhiking venture in Minnesota in 1973. It was with a group of traveling hippies. Right next to me in the back of a van, in the middle of the night, a girl’s pants were taken down. I silently soaked it up.