The Hitchhiker

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I never told you did I about my adventures hitchhiking back in the day, back in the days when you could do such an activity and expect to come out alive. Now, really ever since Charley Manson and his gang screwed it up for everybody out in the high desert of California, a few years back, back in the early1970s you would be taking your life in your hands and would get no sympathy from anyone, even your mother who warned you of such a fate when you were nothing but a punk kid, if you wound up face down in some god forsaken ditch and everybody would just say“well, he knew the score, knew the crazies were out there and what did he expect.” And maybe a RIP. But back before then thumbing a ride, hitchhiking across this great open country was pure adventure. No question.

In the early 1960s, the time before the stuff I want to speak of, I was just fooling around thumbing, a quick jaunt to Maine, up to Bar Harbor maybe, to see my old pal Josh Breslin and see what oddball tales he was writing about then for the Bar Harbor News or whatever Podunk newspaper he was writing for or maybe down to Washington to see what was what with the government (I never did find out, find out what was what). Mainly it was lonesome truckers who picked a guy up, maybe high on benny, no, high on benny in order to face that long haul white-line stretch, maybe had a spat with the wife, or the girlfriend, or the wife about a girlfriend, and wanted to blow off steam about it with a stranger for a few miles down the line. Or maybe you reminded him of some wayward son that he never was home long enough to quite understand, some son growing his hair too long, hanging around with beatniks or something, and maybe get your perspective on the matter, and gave you a ride, gave you a ride as far as he were going. Some guys might offer you a desperate cigarette, keep the pack, might stake you to a meal at some trucker stop (avoid, as I found out later, the one in Winnemucca out in the Nevadas, Millie’s I think it was called, that was awful. Christ they even screwed up the meatloaf, the trucker’s road staple), or a cup of joe along the way.

Sometimes it was a stray guy, maybe an insurance salesman or government bureaucrat, in some sedan who was trying to make time to some destination and wanted you to help make sure he got there in one piece by sharing the driving for a spell. Or maybe it some damn pervert who wanted to show you his thing or something like that and left you off in some desolate farmland when you said no, or worst between stops on the interstate and you were just a sitting duck for some state trooper trying to make his monthly quota. (Funny girls, eh, women never stopped, or if they did it wasn’t for them to show you their thing, which might have been interesting.) Oh yah, speaking of worst, state trooper worst, was if you were “holding,”holding some dope to help make your ride smoother. You learn fast just not to do such a foolhardy thing.

That was early though and not really the time of the time of the great American hitchhike night when you could just stick out your thumb on say the Pacific Coast Highway (California Route 1 for the squares) or Route 66 in say Arizona (although you still had to be careful in that goofy state where the six-shooter and the rope spoke) or back East on most of Interstate 95 from say Boston to Washington (except Connecticut, another no-no) and get a ride at the snap of your fingers. And depending on the composition of the parties in the vehicle that picked you up you may, or may not, care whether the ride was long or short.

And that brings up the greatest ride I ever got, although some of the stuff was a little close after I thought about it later, later when the dust settled. I was thumbing by myself (mostly I travelled alone, although a couple of times I had my honey of the moment along to ease the time, and act as “bait” for quick rides if necessary) on the Pacific Coast Highway around Carlsbad down in Southern California, down toward San Diego, heading north, trying to make Frisco (and a honey/drug connection, they went together which never happened as it turned out), around Golden Gate Park then the Mecca of the summer of love scene (although not the “official”summer of love, that was the year before, this was in the late spring of 1968). About ten minutes, maybe less, after I put out the thumb a late model Volkswagen minibus stopped along the road and backed up, the driver, whom I later learned went by the moniker Captain Max, a bearded guy with long hair and wearing a red bandana around his forehead, not an uncommon sight in those days, asked where I was going and without giving an answer to my question where they were going I told him Frisco and he said “hop in, I guess we are going to San Francisco. ” Yah, it was that kind of time, a time when time and distance was just a construct on the road of life.

Now the “hop in” part on a minibus, a ubiquitous hippie minibus in those days was to open the sliding side door and find a mattress or maybe two with anywhere from two to ten people on it, doing, well, doing whatever. In this case there were one guy and three women sitting in the lotus position and working off a huge bong pipe of hash. I got a blast high just opening the door. Their first response to my presence, even before what’s your name, where you from, that nine to five stuff, they passed me the pipe. Good stuff, very good stuff. And that started something that did wind up in Frisco about three weeks later.

See the odd woman out in the ménage, Queen Jane was looking for company (one woman, who called herself Princess Xenia, was “with” Captain Max. the other, Belle Starr, was with Chief Nana. Don’t laugh I was going by the moniker Be-Bop Benny. Sometime when I have more time, and maybe think about it some, I will give you the “skinny” on that moniker stuff. In any case don’t believe that academic sociology stuff that people who were not even there, who were probably working on their doctorates, try to run by you. ). She found it, found it for the three weeks it took us to get to Frisco and we stayed together another few months as we headed to camp out in Mendocino for a while. But she had to get back home, to do some at home thing, it was never clear what, but she just split, and I wasn’t tired enough of the road just then to follow her.

And while it might sound silly now, now that I am telling you the story long after, and you have looked at me askance when I even mention the word hitchhiking like it was something done in prehistoric times, that little space of time, those few weeks were very heaven. Remind me to tell you about the time we almost went off a cliff at Big Sur and wound up staying on the side of the road for three days, not because we couldn’t get out of the spot we were in but because we thought it was a groovy spot to camp. And also about how we hit Carmel and “did the did” (you don’t know what “did the did” is, well you will have to wait until I tell you that story sometime too) on the tourists and made about two hundred bucks (which we immediately turned into hash, hash for the bong that is). But that was all sideshow stuff compared to the vision, Queen Jane’s vision.

After those first few hits on the bong I was totally stoned. Totally. I was used to some high-grade weed through righteous connections from Mexico, some good Columbian and Acapulco Gold but that hash blew me away. And I think Queen Jane knew it had that effect, and so later that night as we camped out on the beach at Point Magoo above Los Angeles after we had kind of coupled off around the campfire as the sun was setting over the Pacific she began to tell in her singsong voice the story of the group’s (the five of them and a couple of other guys and another women) “night of the ghost dance” over in Joshua Tree out in the high desert (not all that far from where lots of people, young people dropped off the face of the earth and built a new life, and maybe they are still out there).

This story naturally entailed a good amount of dope done beforehand, that same hash that had me in its thrall. That’s not the important part, the important part is that this whole area was the stomping grounds for one of the branches of the Apaches and other tribes before the white man put his scourge on the thing. And that is why they were there, there in a way. See Chief Nana (real name Sam Wallace) was actually from Arizona and one quarter Apache and so he was the reason they were out there in the high desert that night. Looking, well looking for something, roots, or meaning, or something that would not let him be. In any case that night, doped up, camp fire burning brightly against the canyon walls, flickering in odd ways a couple of the guys that afterward left the group in Needles to head north decided to play their guitar and flute, respectively. Low at first, just another set of noises in the night, the moon-filled night.

Then from a distance they all could heard the faint sound of drums, the Chief claimed war drums. Then it came on louder and the guitar player and flutist adjusted their music to the beat of those drums, at first out of synch, but eventually in step. As that mesh of musics became louder the walls of the canyons came alive with the shapes of ancient warriors, warriors ready to avenge some wrong. And just as quickly as those drums ceased, the shadows on walls faded and the each member of the group collapsed as if coming out of a trance. Chief Nana took it for a sign, a sign that some new age was coming when the warrior-kings (and queens) would again speak to the earth. Powerful stuff.

I begged Queen Jane to try to recollect that experience during my time with her, to reenact it. She promised that she would try, would get the Chief to act as a medium again, but she split before that ever happened. So let’s just leave it as I hope Queen Jane survived, survived to tell whoever she wanted to tell about her days picking up hitchhikers and about how for just one moment, she, I, we, had the bad karma of those days on the run.