Part VI: New York City, Stamford and Boston

 

(Part VI of my series on a hitchhiking trip from CA to VT and the Bread Loaf Writers' Workshop back in 1982. Chronicled here before I forget it entirely.)

New York City was a blur of late nights and waking to 90 degree/90% humidity afternoons. I slept on Kevin's couch. He went by Kevin Calhoun at the time and had a band called The Neighborhood. I went to several of their practices during my week-long stay.

The Neighborhood had a gig the last night I was to be in town, so I was given a task of handing out free tickets for the show. As I recall, the band got $1 for every freebie used. I handed out hundreds as I walked the streets. For my efforts, I got free drink tickets.

One night while Kevin worked, I decided to splurge and take in a show at the Peppermint Lounge. The Undertones, I think, or maybe Split Enz. Easy to mix up 40 years later but, either way, it was sold out and I stopped into a bar next door. There was hardly anyone in the place, just a lovely, young woman and a drunk guy harassing her. She beseeched me to pretend to be her boyfriend. We kept the charade up till morning. 😱

Tim Carr, A&R guy and so much more, got us into Danceteria for free one night-to-morning. That was wild—and very hazy by now. I'd last seen Tim when he was caddymaster and gave me good loops back in 1975.

A good crowd showed up for The Neighborhood's gig. My effort with the freebies was appreciated. The band was great. I played roadie after the show, loading their gear onto a flatbed truck—no sides, just flat. I spent a terrifying ride back to their practice space trying to keep their gear—and myself—from sliding off while a crazed saxophone player drove like a maniac through whatever neighborhood we were in.

Next stop: a train station to meet a friend of my brother's, Jerry Parker. The drinking started at the station, continued on a train, and I remember waking up on the floor of a Stamford, CT motel. From there we drove to Boston to meet up with Jerry's boss and attend some sort of festival on the street. It turned out to be a contest between Jerry and his boss on who could spend the most money—and who could drink the most. I woke up the next morning on the boss's floor.

Jerry dropped me on a highway destined for Vermont, Boston at my back and NYC already a fuzzy memory. Ahead was a “working scholarship” at Bread Loaf—waiting tables—and finding out what John Gardner thought of my work. Gardner, eminent teacher and author of Grendel, had received three of my stories and we would have an hour-long meeting during the conference.

I waited on a highway that no one seemed to travel. We of the wait staff were required to be there a day early, checking in at 4pm. I began to fear I'd be late. Finally, a car pulled over. A traveling salesman, just beginning his vacation. His son had attended Middlebury College, where Bread Loaf was held. He had fond memories of fishing the streams in the mountains south of Middlebury with his boy. I had the unsuspecting man just where I wanted him.

If I got him waxing nostalgic about the boy and the fishing, I could get him to detour through the mountains and maybe I'd get to the college on time. I had him point out the location of their favorite spot on my map. What kinda fish ya catch? How old was your boy? Gee, that musta been great!

He fell for it. We took a nice ride through the mountains. He pointed out this stream and that cabin. “Heck,” he said finally. “We're not far from Middlebury now. I wouldn't mind taking another look at the campus.”

He knew exactly where I needed to go and dropped my there at 4 o'clock sharp. A fellow waitperson came down off the porch to help with my pack. “Nice of your dad to drive you here,” he said. “Where you from?”

“San Jose,” I said. “Not my dad. Just some stranger.”

Part V: Nine-Hour Trip from Philly to NYC

 

(I prefaced Part I of this series by saying I may not get this done before the 40^th anniversary of my hitchhiking trip from San Jose to Bread Loaf in Vermont, which I'm chronicling here. That anniversary has arrived. My last installment was over 16 months ago. Hey, I had a novel to write.)

Okay, now it gets weird. I'm on a roadway with no shoulder, behind me is a strip mall that seems to run all the way to New York City, across the road is a beautiful, hilly, wooded area. I'm in PA or NJ. Who knows, for sure? I'm standing on a sidewalk with my thumb out trying to get the attention of rush-hour traffic commuters who have nowhere to pull over even if they want to pick me up. I've been standing here for hours with my chances of making New York City by nightfall slipping away.

Behind me, I hear the crunching of tires stopping in a parking lot. A fat man's sweaty face shows in the driver side window. “Nowhere to pull over on this road,” he says. I don't know if he somehow saw me from a distance or passed me earlier and doubled back. I didn't much care.

“It's the only road I got,” I said, climbing in. He immediately starts in on his own hitchhiking story—they all got 'em—only his is different. He's twelve and a station wagon full of guys pick him up and ultimately gang rape him. He tells it vividly. They leave him in his shame and the next morning he's hitchhiking again and the same station wagon pulls over. They apologize and promise to not do it again. He accepts the ride and gets raped again. Fool me once...

Of course, I'm feeling pretty sorry for this poor sap, though his tales of subsequent therapy sessions grow tiresome. Suddenly he swings a left up into the picturesque hills. “I have to take a leak,” he says after I question the detour.

Now, short of jumping from a moving vehicle, I have no escape. He turns up a path and further back into the woods. He finally parks. I don't mind saying, I'm scared. “This is where the gays hang out,” he says and exits the car. There's a shack—outhouse—but he walks past it and out of sight. He's fat and, at 25, I'm still in pretty good shape, so I'm not too worried about him—unless he returns with others set on retribution for the gang rape twenty-some years earlier. I'm checking the door handles as he returns, having taken longer than one would to piss, though not long enough to establish any sort of romantic relationship back there. And, thankfully, alone.

That's his story. Here my memory fails, but somehow I end up on a ramp to nowhere overlooking the Holland Tunnel with the sun beginning to set.

 

“What the hell're you doin' up here? Nobody gonna pick you up here!” a man calls out, pulling over to pick me up.

“You just did,” I say, throwing my pack in the backseat and climbing in.

Dismissing that, he asks: “Where you headed?”

I point to the NYC skyline and say: “There. Specifically St. Mark's Place.” I mention the name of the restaurant my friend Kevin Hazlett works at.

                                                    © photo by Paul Wright This is Saint Marks Place as it looked in November 1982.

He puts it in gear. “I'm gonna take you to Staten Island,” he says. I protest. He goes on: “I'm gonna drop you at a bus stop that goes directly to the Ferry, which is free going into the city. Get off the Ferry and there's a subway station right there. Take the subway to Sheridan Station, walk up the steps and you'll see your buddy's bar right across the street.”

Again, jumping from a moving vehicle is not an option. The fellow drives like a madman to Staten Island, telling me all the way about the two women he was with the night before, how much coke they did, how much liquor they drank, and how much sex—and at what angles—they enjoyed.

He was wrong about the bus and I had no change. Driver drops me at a stop with a bodega for change and the correct bus heading for the Staten Island Ferry. I enjoy a nice boat ride, get off and buy a token, next train's mine. I jump off at Sheridan Station, walk up to the street and before I can sit at a sidewalk table, Kevin is out the door with a Beck's Beer on his tray.

“How was your trip?” he asks.

Part IV: Chicago & Philadelphia via Green Bay

 

(Part IV of my series on a hitchhiking trip from CA to VT and the Bread Loaf Writers' Workshop back in 1982. Chronicled here before I forget it entirely.)

Don't recall many specifics about my stay in Minneapolis—just another trip back home. I did run in an old friend, John Hazlett, who mentioned that his brother Kevin was living in New York City. He sets things up so that I could spend a week on Kevin's couch. This was significant since I had a place to stay near Chicago and a place to stay in Stamford, CT, which would be my last stop before reaching Bread Loaf. A week in NY made my schedule complete.

While home, there was a letter from Bread Loaf informing me that my first two choices to read my work, John Irving and Erica Jong, had to cancel. (Irving had to shoot the Garp movie.) I opted for John Gardner or Tim O'Brien, who I had been reading on the trip.

I made Chicago in less time than you could drive it as every ride happened before I could even set my pack down, none of the drivers stopped for gas or food, and next thing I knew I was in Glen Ellyn—a suburb right on the train tracks where Din Din had relatives who had stayed with us in San Jose.

I stayed with them over the weekend. Took the train into Chicago on Saturday, wandered around and was surprised to find a massive beach. Of course I knew the city was on Lake Michigan but I just didn't associate Chicago with beaches. There, I sat in the sand near a lovely young woman in a remarkably skimpy bikini. In time, I mustered up the courage to speak with her.

I asked her a stupid question as to the whereabouts of a street that turned out to be the very one I'd crossed to get there. She pointed out her boyfriend, shamelessly flirting with another woman at the water's edge. My new friend claimed to be a model and a fledgling actress, and offered to show me around town—to get even with her boyfriend, no doubt.

As we prepared to sneak away, the boyfriend returned, nixing that plan. I wandered aimless about town and took the 6:00 train rather than the one at midnight.

Monday morning, the woman of the house had to go into Chicago and offered me a ride. A bit unnerved by the rush-hour traffic, she ended up dumping me smack in the middle of a snarl of highways—forcing me to make a dash for the nearest ramp and legal hitchhiking ground.

A car pulled in front of me. “We gotta get you off this road, bub,” the guy said as I climbed in. “Cop just pulled someone over back there and you'd be next.”

I thanked him for looking out for me, and he left me at the top of a ramp. A more legal place to be—or so I thought. Some time passed before a police car pulled over. “You gotta be thirty feet off the road's shoulder,” the cop said.

I peered down into the ditch—some twenty feet deep—at the ramp's edge. “Nobody'll see me down there,” I said. He said he'd be back in a half-hour and I better be gone. I wasn't.

Upon his return, he pointed down the highway. “There's an oasis about a mile down the road,” he lied. Five miles, easy. Maybe closer to ten. I had to ask directions several times. I recall climbing a fence and wading through a small stream.

Finally the oasis came in sight: a huge truck stop with restaurants and always a Howard Johnson. While sizing up the trucks parked there as possible rides, I spotted a guy exiting the Howard Johnson restaurant and walking toward me. “How far are you goin'?” he asked.

“New York City,” I said.

He stopped in his tracks. “Oh, sorry,” he said and turned back.

“How far are you goin'?” I called after him.

“Atlantic City,” he replied. I kid you not.

“I think we can work something out,” I said, picking up my pack and following him to his car. He was from Green Bay and wanted to spend his 21^st birthday gambling in Atlantic City. Alone. His first trip out of Green Bay. Good luck...

Most people picking up hitchhikers are looking for someone to talk to or someone to listen to. Not this guy. Not Green Bay. I started out telling him about my run-in with the cop and my trek to the oasis. Didn't even get a smile or a shake of the head. I told him of the guy with the machete and the limo ride. T thought playing poker on a Nevada highway might spark a gambling conversation. Nothing. Green Bay never said a word that didn't pertain to the business at hand. I guess I must've driven some, we never stopped except for gas.

Somewhere in Pennsylvania, Green Bay declared: “I want to see the Liberty Bell.” He had maps and guidebooks and I tried to navigate us there. At least we were talking. But we never found it. Drove round and round Philadelphia but couldn't find the damn bell. He was dejected but I had to tell him I really needed to reach New York before it got dark.

Green Bay had no business alone in Atlantic City. I could only hope—for his sake—that he couldn't find a casino either and turned back for home.

Next up: My Nine Hour Trip from Philly to NYC