It was the summer of 1973; what most folks really mean when they say “the ‘60s.”
Inflation was rampant, the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade, Nixon told the world — with a straight face — that he was “not a crook.” I wasn’t paying attention to any of it.
I was just a kid, 17, and world events played little part in my daily life. My girlfriend, Dianne, had dumped me a couple months earlier (yes, it was happening even then!) and I was waiting for my broken heart to mend. I had too much time on my hands and too little to do.
Which is why sunrise on the Fourth of July found me sitting on my guitar case by the Leonard Street on-ramp. Two dollars and 39 cents nestled lonely in my pocket, my battered backpack — containing only a box of Rye Crisp crackers and three pieces of beef jerky — leaned against the guard rail. I raised my thumb in the direction I wanted to go: south and west.
The second car to roll past, a Country Squire station wagon just like the one my parents owned and driven by a little old lady, picked me up. She took me most of the way through Indiana.
She was a sweet old gal who said I reminded her of her son, who had died a few years earlier in Vietnam. She slipped twenty bucks in my backpack when she finally dropped me off just outside Terre Haute.
From there, a series of cars and trucks — driven by hippies, gay guys, old couples, cute girls — moved me along as far as Hodgeman County, Kansas. An inebriated guy in a pickup let me out just outside a mid-sized city with the improbable name of Jetmore.
It was there I sat for 18 hours straight without getting a lift. Back then, it seemed everyone was willing to pick up a hitch-hiker, even one as scruffy and (probably) smelly as I was after a week on the road. But not in Jetmore. Eighteen hours, man; that’s a long time to sit by a freeway on-ramp.
When the rain started, I was not surprised.
Eventually, a rusted out Chevy van eased to the shoulder and honked. A girl about my age hopped out the passenger door, lifted the back hatch and loaded in my guitar case while I grabbed my pack.
The first question was always the same: “Where you headed?”
“Phoenix,” I said.
“Oh, we’re just going 20 miles down the road, but at least that’ll give you a chance to dry off.”
I thanked her and closed the hatch. Twenty miles was 20 miles. Not far, but better than nothing.
Instead of smelling like pot (a lot of Chevy vans did back then) getting into this one I was greeted with the good earth smell of potatoes, though none were in evidence.
“How ya doing, man?” said Jesus, the van’s driver. He wasn’t really Jesus, but he did look exactly like him, assuming the real Jesus looked exactly like the guy who played him in that “Superstar” movie.
“You look like Jesus,” I said.
He laughed. “Yeah, I get that a lot, man.”
The driver’s was Dave, not Jesus, but it turned out he and the girl — I forget her name — were Jesus freaks. That’s what people called them at the time; it wasn’t derogatory.
They were very nice, though they both did their best to redeem my misbegotten soul in the half-hour it took to get to the commune where they lived with a dozen other 20-something hippies.
The rain had not abated and when they asked me to stay the night, I gratefully accepted. The night turned into a week, the week into two weeks, two weeks into three.
My “job” was to feed the chickens, shovel out coops, and gather eggs. In exchange, I received a bed, organic (and lousy) food, and more prayer meetings than Mother Theresa would have been able to handle comfortably. It didn’t take me long to fall into the rhythm of the place.
I got to know Sandy, one of the girls who lived there. We shared a brief romance and when she announced she was moving back to her folk’s house in Los Angeles, I talked her into dropping me in Glendale, near Phoenix, even though it was a couple hours out her way.
I didn’t get back to Michigan until summer was well over and autumn begun. I learned a lot that summer, about chickens, Jesus, and guys who only look like Jesus.
I can’t honestly say I’d like to do it all again. But like almost everything I’ve done in this life, I’m glad I did it once.
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