Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 21a  Hitchhike to New Orleans

At the end of the school year, my girlfriend went home to New Orleans for the summer.
She was a junior and there were stories.
She wasn’t the purebread sweetheart she represented to me ... but neither of us was straight with the other.
I wasn’t open about the crap that Bones and I were doing, and when she was gone I made my own way around, and that made her mad. It embarrassed her except she didn’t know those girls or see them hanging around.

She and I were like magnets when we were together, and it was just us. But the rest of the time was hers, and I didn’t ask.
The problem was boiling up because she was involved with some of my friends, and that’s too close to home. Her friend told me later, maybe it was a ‘message.’ But hell, I don't need a message, you got something to say then say it.

So what, she probably wanted to do it and so she fucked them.

Around mid-to-late summer that year she wanted me to come down to New Orleans. I’m not sure why because she already made up her mind.
I had no money for a ticket, but I knew how to hitchhike, and so I did.

It was quite a trip, literally because the second day out of Nashville, I dropped some acid.
It was my first time with the drug, and ill-advised, particularly out on the road ... in 1971 ... long hair and all, hitchhiking trough the south with the whole nation divided over hippies and racially charged and fomented up over busing and civil rights.

I didn't drop the acid until the second day.

The first day was pretty uneventful, the last ride leaving me off on one side of Nashville. It was nighttime. I walked completely across the city, but it was a lot smaller back then, and quiet. Some old man on the other side of the street yelled across and said, 'hey big man.'
I waved back, never broke stride and kept walking.
After an hour or so, I got to a gas station next to the highway leaving out of town. I sat in a dark corner and can't remember whether I went to sleep or stayed awake all night. Dawn broke and I got out to the road and caught a ride. Must have gotten something to eat somewhere. Maybe I had food with me, but I don't remember eating much back then.

By this time, age 21, I was still green as a pear but a pretty good judge about what car to get into. I looked them over, and let them see me too.
Sometime that morning I took the acid, not knowing what was going to happen. But then I guess that's what hitchhiking is all about isn't it?

I caught a ride on the freeway going to Memphis. It was three hippies coming back from some sort of event out east.
The fellows kept referring to the guy sleeping in the backseat. It was more like they were kind of afraid of him, and advising me ... yet they invited me to continue riding with them after I told them about dropping acid.
I made up a story that somebody put the acid in my coke.

I wasn't scared ... oh sure I didn't want to meet the fellow in the backseat once he woke up.
My mind wasn't drained so much that those signals were missed, but when I got out of the car at the intersection where the highway headed South through Mississippi, I said, 'I'm so wrecked that it won't matter anyway.' They pointed the right direction.
I appreciated that and walked down the ramp.

So there I was hitchhiking down through Mississippi with long hair and tripping on acid. The situation was ludicrous if not downright dangerous if you think about it. And even worse when you consider it was my first time dropping acid. Oh well, reckless is as reckless lives.
I remember a couple rides especially when the cars started looking like cartoons and the whole thing was getting surrealistic.
One fellow was angrily rattling on about Black people and how they were all on welfare yet had TV antennas on their roofs.

At some point, I started thinking maybe it would be better to crawl over a fence and settle down hidden behind some trees or something until all this passed. But the voice in my head said keep going. It was my determination speaking, not an hallucination, and I knew the difference. In fact I was quite aware of what was happening and where my location was.
It was a hot day with the sun beating down when the sensation came over me that I was under a giant dome with me right in the middle, impossibly standing along a highway with my thumb up, while the faces of people in passing cars were turning into screaming skulls.

And then a slick blue car passed and came to a halt on the side of the road. I ran up and inside was a smallish young man and I looked him over and he looked at me.
I got in and put my canvas bag between my shoes.
We exchanged stories, he was coming back from college and going home, and I was on my way to New Orleans to see my girlfriend. I kept looking at him and it seemed like he had blue eye shadow above his eyes. I couldn't tell if it was real or in my head. I was pretty sure it was real.

For some reason our conversations turned to our fathers, with each sharing the same troubles.
Right away, I knew I could trust this fellow, and I told him about the acid in my coke. I pulled a map out of my bag, and he got nervous and pulled off on the shoulder real quick, and said how about we put that bag in the trunk? Yeah, ok.
He came around got the bag and put it in the trunk, and probably looked through it a bit, I don't know. He was a confidant and worldly fellow for his age.

It boiled down to this, I needed help and his fellow understood and said why don't you come stay at our house tonight.
The idea was instantly comforting ... the same as I felt about this guy. His family lived in Yazoo City, west of Jacksonville. Sounded real good to me.

He must've sensed that I knew he was wearing eyeliner and that it was OK ... and for some reason he trusted me the same as I trusted him ... even though he told me later, he thought I was gonna pull a big knife out of the bag and that's why he put it in the trunk.

Later I figured out that he needed help as much as I did. He was cowered by his father, and I was a perfect buffer, but why would that be? I was just an stray hitchhiker out of Indiana.

After passing through Jackson and heading west toward Yahoo City, he told me that his father owned half the county and they were big cotton farmers. I got a picture that his father was intimidating, and my new friend really feared going home. Amazing that even in that semi lucid state I understood the situation clearly.

 ... but in retrospect, what were the odds that two people in need would find each other out on the highway. I believe my friend must have been very intuitive, except I  don't remember his name.

We stopped at their guesthouse, and that's where he and I were going to stay. The plan was, we'd join his parents for dinner.
At some point he confided that he was gay. He told me a story that he'd gone to a gay bar in New Orleans. Then he challenged me, and asked, what would you do if a doctor came up to you?
I said nothing, but might have shrugged, I don't remember. The image he gave me was clear in my mind, and perhaps moreso given my point in the acid trip.
The hallucinations were gone, but I was unsteady. Based on acid trips I took later, the last stage is usually very peaceful and soothing, so I was flowing along with my new friend. I remember thinking that he must have had sex with the doctor, but didn't ask.

Probably the main point was my reaction didn't vibrate negativity, so my friend was reassured by that.

We drove out to the cotton fields and stood at the end of a road overlooking a massive field of white that seemed to have no end. The cotton was full bloom so I estimate this was near July-August.

There were two Black people fishing in the neary drainage or irrigation channel.
My friend said something about having a gun and shooting Niggers. It was loud enough the two Black men to hear. Then we turned and left.
His words betrayed fear, but said mountains about race relations in Jackson County.

Chapter 22) I became a-bicyclist 1973
Chapter 23    James and a full-blown felony from a bike infraction
Index of chapters