Those Long Strange Trips

Roe and Fred

Greyhound

Freddie and Rae were traveling cross-country from New York as a summer caper and invited me to join them. It was 1974. I had never been further west than Chicago and was eager to see what was out there. I was always certain that my destiny was “elsewhere” but I hadn’t found the location. I sat in the back seat of their VW Bug next to a large cooler, a backpack, a sack of groceries, and a duffel bag or two. We went on a kind of southwest diagonal through Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, stopping at every Howard Johnson's, to indulge a passion for peppermint ice cream cones, and at every Stuckey’s, for Freddie had developed a fondness for pecan rolls.

Somewhere in Texas I began to realize that from my cramped little post in the back I was watching a marriage unravel before my eyes. Rae had discovered a thousand things about Freddie that annoyed her, and she named them like a litany as we careened along an empty highway in the middle of some flat Texas nowhere. She disliked the way he picked his teeth after he ate. She was offended to find his crumpled little tissues in their sleeping bag. His sneezes were unnecessarily loud. It didn't help that it was hot and humid for days on end, the radio wasn't working, and we basically had no plan.We drove through Utah’s red rock lunar landscapes, and in Arizona we made a point of stopping at the Grand Canyon, taking snapshots with our plastic Instamatics.

“Well, we’ve seen the Grand Canyon,” Rae announced, “and it’s a big yawn.”

The seat was littered with soda cans and candy wrappers, like the inescapable debris of our past mistakes. The remnant of a peanut butter sandwich was wedged under my sweaty thigh, and my arm had fallen asleep.I dislodged myself from the vehicle at a gas station to pee, pondering the randomness that deposits us wherever we happen to be. I had never realized how truly vast the distance was from sea to shining sea or contemplated the endurance of those who crossed in covered wagons. I simply hadn’t understood how big the world was. Now the road seemed to shimmer in the afternoon heat and I climbed into my little backseat cage, yearning not so much for home as for freedom.But freedom takes courage that I did not yet possess, and many ties held me to New York, most of them unhealthy. In my own small circle I was already known for false starts, inertia, and potential unmet, having abandoned one perfectly good husband and two universities before I was twenty-one. I wanted to begin a life but so far had succeeded only in spinning my wheels.

A few months later I again traversed the continent, this time on a Greyhound bus. First I met up with my friend Cyd in Madison, Wisconsin; then together we boarded the bus bound for Portland, Oregon where her father lived. This route took us north through Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho…states whose existence held as little reality to me then as the flickering filmstrips we'd watched in elementary school, bright images on celluloid. Cyd and I pictured ourselves as a couple of rambling women in the spirit of hoboes hopping trains or hippies hitching rides, but in truth, there was nothing even remotely cool about two middle class girls munching carrot sticks on a Greyhound bus.

Our fellow passengers were a motley assortment of humanity, a few of whom were willing to share their stories as we drove through the dark: Tina with the joyless laugh was recovering from barbiturates and men, Randy had plans to invest in a filbert farm -- we should look him up in Eugene, and a tearful young girl with the ironic name of Lark was fleeing an abusive boyfriend. We became a sort of transient community, trading snacks and weary wisecracks, gathering together in the chilly air when the bus pulled into rest stops and depots in the God-forsaken corners of places we never dreamed we would be standing. Cyd even let Tina use her Chapstick, which was a little too intimate for me, but Cyd was in a Greyhound state of mind.All of this travel eventually led back home and then the inevitable "I’ve got to get out of here moment". One day I boarded a Greyhound, rode for twenty hours, and got off in Panama City, Florida. It was a fairly random choice, a place an old boyfriend had spoken of fondly, not even a fantasy of my own. I made my way to the beachfront at the Gulf of Mexico -- a silly girl, a backpack and bandana type with long brown hair who stood now on a splintered boardwalk and lifted her scratched sunglasses to better see the view. It was all slow motion and alien silence; the air was humid and smelled like fish. I checked into a motel room at four o’clock in the afternoon, drew the blinds, and sat on the edge of a bed wondering why I was there. The next morning I got back on the bus headed north.

An old man sat down in the seat behind me. I was vaguely aware of the smells of tobacco, wool, and rain. It was comforting and familiar. It didn’t really matter where I was going. I was here, and in this moment all things were possible. The rain had freckled the windows and smeared the passing lights. I leaned my head against the cool glass, feeling the vibration, enjoying the sense of passivity and motion. I was getting drowsy, but I loved the knowledge that even as I rested I was moving. To the mournful beat of the wipers and the timbre of the engine, I gradually slipped into sleep.

One long road trip was yet to come: my migration to California, the one that finally held. I'd been hiding out in Syracuse, working (oddly enough) for the bus company. As I drove away on that last December morning , the Alleluia theme of Handel’s Messiah was playing on the car radio. I took this as a good sign.

And I managed to survive it all: immense loneliness, immense fear, the horror of believing I was nothing. I’m fine now, right here, and it's a wondrous and unlikely place to have disembarked and settled. But sometimes, in my sidetracks and impatience, in my fondness for a wander, in the odd sound of my own laugh and the sense late at night that I am brittle and light and might blow away with the next gust of wind, well, sometimes I still recognize that girl I used to be.