Hitchhiking in the Great American West

In the summer of 1972 I met Tammy and Carolyn while sunbathing on the campus of Western near the library.  It was in college that I really began to belong to the cult of the sun worshipers.  Throughout the ages civilized man has worshiped the sun as a god and sun bathers have gathered together in a communal oneness to celebrate our natural humanity.  One of my great teachers in this endeavor was a fellow student in my Ancient Egyptian class who dropped out school and spent the next 3 months lying on the roof of his house in Bellingham during which time he turned a toasted brown. 

Tammy and Carolyn were from California and like many other Californians of that time they wandered their way up north to Bellingham.  Bellingham was as far north as you could wander without leaving the country.   Their friendship was based on a love of adventure, a combined California consciousness of rock and roll, heath food, smoking dope and the Grateful Dead.  The two girls were in a life drawing class that was meeting that day in front of the Wilson Library and it wasn’t long before we became the best of friends.  Tammy had a car that ran and a large lunch box full of marijuana that happened to be very strong.  What more could you ask for in a girlfriend. 

I was doing absolutely nothing that summer.  During spring quarter I lost any initiative to think about the future and after 3 years of school I clearly did not know why I was still in college other than it kept me out of the draft.  My lucky draft lottery number was 13 and I was sure to be drafted and sent to Viet Nam as soon as I left school.  Since I was rather accident prone in my youth I was sure that as soon as I arrived in Viet Nam I would be shot dead while still de-boarding from the plane.  This fact of impending doom always left me in such good spirits when I thought about it.  After spring quarter I wanted to slum it for a few weeks until I designed a better plan of action.  I did have a little money left over after school finished and a few weeks turned into a few months and the girls fit right into my plans for having fun in Bellingham. They also had parents supporting them while they were in school and money was never a problem that summer. Tammy and I became close and we spent the days at the beach and the nights drinking wine and reading poetry and yogi’s.  When you are unemployed you have a lot of time on your hands and we were on the go constantly off to Mount Baker, to the San Juan  Islands or just sitting around listening to Miles Davis’ “In a Silent Way” or the Grateful Dead.

 As summer school drew to a close we all hatched this great idea to visit Tammy and Carolyn’s friends from their days at the College of Idaho.  Most of their friends were working in the resort town of McCall, Idaho and in late July we left Bellingham and drove to McCall in Tammy’s Volkswagen station wagon.  When we arrived it seemed as if everyone Tammy and Carolyn knew were bar tenders and we spent the next few days going from tavern to tavern meeting all of their old friends.  Needless to say we became experts on what was on tap in the bars of McCall.  One night we slept outside in the woods and watched the Persiod meteorite showers.  The sky was a brilliantly dark background that we watched the meteorites flash and dance across.  As I lay in my sleeping bag that night I felt like I had known what the ancient sky watchers had known as they charted the night’s activities.  How wonderfully entertaining this display of fire and ice was and how comforting it was to know that it would return for us to view year after year.  The stars were a way for us to keep time and rhythm and to plan our days from week to week and year to year.  Astronomy was a road map to know when to plant and when to sow.  Studying the stars was a continual source for planning and structure in this great vast unknown and dark universe. 

After a few days in McCall I became restless to continue my travels and I decided it was time for me to leave and on the last afternoon I was in Idaho we were out on a lake near town rowing in a canoe and the clouds made a perfect half mandala and the sun sat exactly in the middle of the mandala spokes.  Nature provided us with a moment of perfection and we stared at this perfect image until the dark came and the clouds separated and dispersed. I took this for an omen for a good journey.

That was the last of any sort of perfection I was to see for a long time.  I was off to Colorado to see my close friend from the Okanogan, Doug Woodrow.  Doug was the brilliant one of our crowd in High School.  He was getting straight A’s at Washington State University and then one day he dropped out after some unspoken of event and ended up in Denver working on a massive home development project.  Doug was invaluable to his crew of psychedelic framing contractors because he was the only who could read blue prints due to his training in engineering. 

Douglas and I had been friends from our teen age years.  He had grown up in Okanogan (the city) about 4 miles from Omak.  At the time kids from Okanogan were your hated rivals in life but I get along very well with the enemy and Doug and I especially hit it off because I really enjoyed listening to his long tangents that mixed language, science and homemade wisdom. 

I left McCall one sublimely sunny morning with my thumb out and ready to join the gestalt stream of American consciousness in August of 1972.  I had my backpack full of books, clothes, a little food and of course the I-Ching.  For the last few years I had been reading the works of Carl Jung and his studies of the collective unconsciousness of mankind.  His writings gave me strange dreams at night and once when I was home at my parent’s house for Christmas I dreamt the most frightening of all my dreams.  I was sleeping on the floor of my old room, because that is where yogis sleep or so I thought, and as I dreamt I kept drifting lower and lower into my spiritual self.  I had fallen down a shaft of darkness until I landed in a slightly illuminated ruin of a building and I began to search around the place.  I spent a short time picking up old stone tablets and kicking at the rubble in my way when madly, out of the darkness, bolted a florescent green monster with a hulking head with red eyes nearly piercing me in half.  The monster was roaring and raging at me and then reached out and grabbed me.  I started to scream and scream.  My father came running up the stairs asking, “What the hell’s the matter?  Are you on drugs?”  I had to assure him that I was not on drugs and I tried explaining to him Carl Jung’s philosophies but that didn’t go very far.  I was used to speaking to the older generation with my ideas and not getting much of a response since I was usually speaking with my parents.  But for some reason that summer I became the voice of American youth trying to sort things out for older generations. 

Every time I was picked up by drivers on this great tour of the American west each and every driver had a need to speak with “a voice” of the younger generation so they could figure out what was going on.  This was the price I paid for my ride.  It didn’t matter if I was in Oregon, California, Colorado or Idaho.  Everyone who picked me up and gave me a ride needed to be reassured that the youth of America were not going to take the country down a revolutionary path.  These drivers, who had taken the chance to pick up a long haired kid,  all had lives with bills to pay and places to be at a certain time and what’s wrong with America anyway?  What the hell is so wrong with this country that you kids have to protest and grow your hair long and run around the country with no jobs. You are all making fools of the rest of us hard working people. That was most of the mood I got but some of the more creative drivers wanted to know if I could hook them up with some college girls who liked to drink.   

As I said all the drivers in every state were the same except for Utah.  In Utah the driver’s wanted nothing to do with hitch hikers and this was even more so in Salt Lake City.  After a few days of trying to get across Utah via the thumb I just gave up and took a bus to the Colorado border. 

Along the way on my tour of the Great American West I met a lot of characters who were out having the same adventure as I was.  We were all college kids trying to see where life took us on this adventurous summer of 1972.  While Watergate was making the news we standard bearers of American Youth were reading Henry Miller and wearing signs that said take me to OZ.

I arrived in Denver on a Thursday night and found my way to Doug’s house somehow in the impossible mess of Denver pollution and traffic.  Remember there were no cell phones.  Denver was a mean city and Doug was living in a very rough neighborhood with gangs roaming the sidewalks and there were bars on all of the windows of the local stores.  He was living with about 12 room mates and just as I walked in the door they were having a meeting about moving to a new house.  It was decided among themselves that they were going to move and the move would take place that night.  It was unclear as to why they were going to move other than they either had to clean up the house they were in or move to a new place and start over.  Someone in the group had seen another house by a large park in downtown Denver and the group decided it was easier to move than try to make the old house more livable.

After about ten minutes of discussion some of the guys just started to roll up the carpets with pictures and books rolled right in the carpet roll.  I walked into the kitchen for a drink of water and there were scads of cockroaches scattered all over the countertops and shelves.  Maybe it was a good time to move.  In a few hours of great chaos and scattered mayhem the group got everything out of the old house and into the new place.  I’m sure their old landlord really appreciated their spontaneity.   Doug and I stayed up late catching up on the Okanogan and old friends and then we decided to travel out to his job site in the morning and pick up his pay check.     

That travel plan seemed simple enough and in the morning we left the house in search of a paycheck.  Since the move was just the night before Doug had no idea about how to use the bus system from his new house and I’m not sure he had ever ridden the bus in Denver seeing how you had to be at the bus stop at a certain time and all.  We took off walking and we must have looked rather ridiculous.  My hair very long hair and I dressed like a college professor who was hitchhiking his way across the American west.  Doug on the other hand was a sight to behold.  His blond hair was extremely unmanageable and he looked like he should be playing drums in a Scandinavian Rasta band.  He was wearing a torn white T-shirt and a pair of cut off jeans that were split up the side to the rivet just below the pocket.  Speaking of the pockets they had been cut out along the way and Doug was not wearing underwear.  His boys were free and alive.  Doug was intensely radical of mind and body during those days and he was in a rare mood that morning.  As we walked along the streets of Denver he and I were talking about Emerson, Chinese poetry and Carl Jung.  We both had been studying the I-Ching and were consulting the I-Ching on a regular basis.  We were walking along engrossed in a conversation about Confucius and I inadvertently stuck out my thumb to see if we could get a ride and speed up the process of getting Doug’s paycheck.  This was a big mistake on my part.   

A police car drove past us in the next few minutes and saw the two of us with our thumbs out and they pulled over to the side of the road and motioned for us to come over to the squad car.  They had just wanted to warn us that it was illegal to hitch hike in Denver but Doug decided to take it upon himself to share his personal angst with the officers.  The next thing I knew Doug stuck his big disheveled blonde Afro through the rolled down driver’s window and started to yell at the Policeman about the war in Viet Nam, the inequities of capitalism and what filthy pigs they were for being policemen.  The next thing I knew we were in the back of the squad car being driven to the local police station. 

I was completely disoriented.  One minute I’m dreaming about ancient China and the next thing I know 
I 'm in the back of the squad car with angry policemen.  “Doug what in the hell are you thinking of?” I tossed off to him angrily.  “I’m making the world a better place wait and see,” he assured me.  We were taken to a local station and put in a small holding cell.  Doug took it upon himself to sing songs of protest and unjust treatment in that holding tank and sang as loud as he could sing them.  I laughed at him and then sang along because we were at least trying to have some fun.  We were in that tank for about an hour until some very rough looking cops showed up and threw us into the back of a paddy wagon and that’s when our adventure turned serious.  The paddy wagon had a bench on either side with no seat belts.  It was covered with puke and blood and excrements and we were thrown in there all by ourselves.  As the officers threw us in they said, “How’s it going now smart asses?”  We rode in the paddy wagon for about twenty minutes and the officers went out of their way to change lanes as quickly as possible so as to send us flying around the cab frantically.  We made it to the downtown police headquarters and were escorted by a rifle toting officer into a caged elevator and we rode it to the top floor.  Once the door opened officers grabbed us and began to search our bodies for weapons and other concealed objects.  I was a simple search.  But Douglas was another matter. 

The officer plunged his hands into the pockets of Doug’s cutoffs but found something other than a weapon.  The officers hands went straight down Doug’s legs and you could see his arms go down and then reach upwards through the split sides of the cut offs.  The officer was completely surprised by this turn of events and Doug started to yell that the officer had rubbed against his genitals and then Doug became extremely loud and difficult for the officer’s to handle. Doug began to scream “Let go of my Balls!” so loud it was deafening even in this room filled with murderers, thieves and petty thugs.  He yelled this over and over and over.   

 I should explain, we are now standing in front a very large intake area for all of the criminals entering the Denver city jail system.  There must have been over 50 people being processed at this time and every type of criminal was on parade and as Doug kept screaming profanities the officers began to drag him down a dark hallway of barred cells away from the rest of us.  I was told to stand in line with the rest of the prisoners and eventually I was processed.  As the line dragged on and we were eventually processed the criminal’s stories were all variations on innocent until proven ridiculous.  “Are these the jeans you stole the clerk asked as he held them up without even looking at the thief.

“No, they are the jeans they said I stole.”  “Fine, lets see you’re ID.  Sir the name on the ID does not match the name you gave us.”  Then the young kid dives into his wallet and pulls out another driver’s license.  “Oh sorry, I gave you the wrong ID”  “Next”

This went on and on and then it was my turn.  I was given the entire interview.  My  picture was taken and thumbprints were laid down.  The whole process was extensive and definitive.  I was now of the criminal element.  After the photographs I was taken down the hall and placed in a large cell with about 25 other criminals.  In the room there were about six picnic tables and many of the inmates were laid out on the tables or just sitting on a bench in various stages of intoxication.  The inmates were bragging among themselves about their crimes.  “I came home man and my wife was in bed with another guy.  What was I supposed to do?  I threw him out the window.  It was his fault for fooling around with my wife.”  “Oh yeah, I live on the 7^th floor.” As the conversation moved around the room I was praying to God that these guys wouldn’t notice I was in that cell with them.  I sat on the edge of the bench closest to the sliding bar door and needless to say I was the only college kid in the room.  These men looked like they ate kids like me for lunch.  Of course the next thing I know these guys are asking me what in the Hell did I do to end up in that cell with them.  I said, Hitch hiking and they all started to laugh and even the drunk out of their mind guys who were laid out flat on the top of the picnic tables lifted up their heads and laughed and laughed at me.   

I was in the cell for about 45 minutes and every once in a while I could hear Doug yelling out my name and asking me to come find him.  It was as if I was in some old 1930’s prison movie.  When the guards came to get me I was relieved that this adventure would finally be over but it was just the beginning.  The guards took me into an office and the clerk said my fine was $11.00 and they wanted Doug and me to get the hell away from there because Doug had become such a nuisance.  I thought fantastic we can get away from here and not have to share this living trauma with the rest of our fellow criminal travelers through life..

I had $21.00 in my wallet.  Surely Doug had $1.00.     The officer took me to where Doug was imprisoned.  Doug was sharing a cell with a young Latino male who had been severely beaten by the guards and Doug was consoling his cell mate on his constitutional rights while putting a band-aid over the kid’s right eye.  I’m not sure if the cell mate spoke English.  I told Doug we were out of jail if he had $1.00 and he laughed.  Doug didn’t even have 10 cents on his self let alone $1.00.  I then told Doug that I would bail him out and then he could go back home and acquire the money to come back and get me.  Doug stared at me point blank and told me his work was not through in the jail.  He felt he could do some good by staying in jail and I should go get the cash needed to bail him out.  I was dumbfounded, how was I going to find the new house and besides I don’t know anyone in Denver in case I get lost.  Doug was willing to take those chances and told me to get going.

I left the jail $11.00 poorer.  I couldn’t believe that the police department and spent all of this time today incarcerating me and then only charging me $11.00 for the experience.  I walked out to the street from the steps of the jail and tried to decide which way to turn.  Right took me South and Left went straight north.  I am a pretty good guesser but when I am confronted with an either or choice I usually chose wrong. I just took a chance and went south.  As I traveled on by foot I came across a pay phone and decided to call my father in Omak and see if he would wire me some money.  Ironically my father sold bail bonds in Okanogan County and the first thing he asked me was if I needed the money because I was in jail.  Since I was already out of jail and not technically in jail I assured him that I was not in trouble and I was running low on funds because of my travel costs.  He laughed and said he’d wire me money but it wouldn’t be there until Monday.  It was starting to become late afternoon and I was worried that I wouldn’t get back to Doug in jail until late that night if I had trouble finding Doug’s roommates. 

I trudged on until I saw a street sign that I remembered from riding in the first squad car and little by little I put the puzzle of finding Doug’s house together and arrived on the front step around 5pm.  There were a few roommates unpacking carpets and bicycles and I was really glad to see them until I asked them for some money to spring Doug.  “Doug who?”,  was their answer at first but I convinced them to pool their money together and come up with the entire $11.00 to bail Doug out and they even decided to drive me back to the police station.  When we got back to the Downtown police station Doug was excited to see us and said his work was done there.  He might have made a few parting remarks to the policeman on duty as we scurried out but I don’t think the guards heard his well wishes as I put my hand over his mouth. 

We went back to the house and then decided to check out the park near the new house and as we sat on the lawn and listened to one of Doug’s famous “Geography of the Mind” lectures a slender black man emerged from the shadows and told us he was in the traveling production of Hair.  We got out the guitars and sang some songs from the show and then we all trundled back to the house.  The actor from the show spent the entire rest of the evening putting the make on any male or female who would feed his sexual needs and after I got tired of watching him hustle everyone I went to sleep and decided it was time to leave Denver. I wanted to go back to Bellingham I’d had enough of the Great American West.   I wanted to go home, as soon as possible,  but first I wanted to visit my old girlfriend Susan Farley who lived in Colorado Springs.  She had been married for about a year or so and I had never really had a chance to say goodbye to her.  We had been so close during high school and then she was married and off to Colorado before I could process the change. I really needed to see her to say goodbye.  Doug said he and a friend would drive me there as we were wary of any more hitchhiking in Colorado for a while. 

While we were waiting for my money to be wired in to Western Union we went rock climbing at Red Rock National Monument and as we came to a rather large gap in the rock path Doug, the friend with the car and myself stood on one side of the rock ravine and realized that we either had to jump about 5 or 6 feet to the other side with the possibility of falling 100 feet to our death or climb down and walk around to the other side which would take about 45 minutes.  Doug and his friend jumped across the gap while I decided to walk around.  Tells you something about me right there.

When we got to Susan’s it was awkward to say the least.  Her husband wasn’t home yet and I could tell she liked the idea of me arriving to visit and process but the reality was we were both very uncomfortable with the situation.  Doug just decided to take off suddenly sensing the tension in the room and I had no choice but to make myself become ever so charming to get through the evening.  Eventually Susan’s husband Tom came home and he stared at me the whole night silently raging that I had decided to show up on his turf.  Or, maybe, he just didn’t like me.  I think we got our good bye in but it took me longer to get over losing the friend than the lover.  

I left in the morning headed for Bellingham with my thumb out all of the way.  It was a non-stop marathon of having to talk about the values of American youth until I could hardly take it any more.  A Christian evangelical minister who picked me up in Seattle was the final straw on that trip.  He dropped me off in Burlington and I called Tammy and asked her to come pick me up.  She arrived in about an half an hour and opened the car door and then opened the lunch box.  It was smooth sailing all the way home.