OCR Text |
Show RTVER course and condominiums. This upset me. I fantasized about defending Lonestar against bulldozers, highway patrolmen, tanks, sheriffs, and helicopters. Ah, California. In late May I turned twenty-one. The only way I could have had a worse twenty-first year was if I'd died at twenty. In early June, I packed my clothes and tools and struck out for North Carolina with Thor. After getting away from the San Francisco Bay, I got a ride with a college girl who picked me up because I was wearing a cowboy hat. She took me to Reno and I spent the night drinking copious amounts of wine with students from Calcutta who fed me Indian food that would have scorched the palate of the crustiest pachuco in Salinas. The next morning, on the advice of the local gendarmerie, I walked all the way across Reno and finally started hitching where what was finished (and it wasn't much at the time) of Interstate 80 began its long journey across the Nevada badlands. The highway was elevated and down below somebody had tethered an elephant. After eating all those red-hot Indian beans, he hardly seemed out of place. Ah, America. My first ride took me a few miles out of Reno to a long line of hitchhikers. I took my place at the end of the line. After a short wait a new Chevy pickup stopped and began collecting the hitchhikers ahead of me. When he got to me, the cowboy driver leaned out and said, "You're the last of you sons-of-bitches I'm gonna pick up!" and I jumped into the bed of the truck. The cowboy had a cooler full of Coors beer and an amazing ability to drink beer and keep the speedometer above ninety-five miles per hour. The Chevy ate up western Nevada and we were in Winnemucca by twilight. The mosquitoes nearly carried me off, but I bummed a ride out of town. I slept that night on a hill above the -129- |