On 2005-09-27 20:40:00, dragonfly wrote:
"... sleeping on the shoulder of the 12 lane highway...
"
Reminds me of another time, i fell asleep on the side of the hiway, so it does.
i was comin' East from Californa but was already as far as Missoura or someplace as 'at. i think i hitched thru St. Louis that day and was on the East side of the city when i started thinkin' it was gettin' dark and the drainage ditch along the hiway was lookin' more and more like it was gonna be my bed. i had decided to turn in after a long day, then i suddenly changed my mind. One more ride. So i put my thumb back out and caught a long ride, just before dark. The cat was tall and strong, a former bad-ass drunken fool who was now a sober post-man and a Christian. He told me 'bout his bad-ass days and bein' in the Navy and about his daughter, who he had just dropped off 500 miles away, in some other place. He had a new wife and an infant son in Evansville,IN and that's were he said i could spend the night.
We pulled up to his house and his fat wife was sittin' on the stoop with the babe. He warned me that she might not be happy that he had brought home a stranger again. She was cool though and ever'tin' cool. We talked about stuff for a while then i got a shower and some food and a place to sleep on the floor.
The next day we were up at some God-forsaken hour. He had to be at work at like 5:30am or sumthin'. His wife cooked us a huge breakfast:
Oatmeal, eggs, bacon, oranges, grapes, ba-na-nas toast, milk and juice. Your standard midwestern farmers breakfast. The woman must 'a' growed up on the farm.
Well, after we ate, he dropped me off up on the hiway, what hiway was that ?? interstate 70 i imagine. He gave me a pocket new testament with the good parts(according to him) underlined in different colors.
i stood up there in the mornin' sun tryin' to flag a ride, nobody seem to know me, they all passed me by. i was tired still. It was July and though i was clean and well fed i was tired of the road.
i fuckin' laid down to sleep right on the side of that interstate. i fell asleep with my thumb stickin' out.
i woke up to the sound of a semi trailor slowin' down. This cat had seen me sleepin' and pulled over outta mercy for me. i jumped up, looked around,(find yourself some fun), grabbed my pack and ran up to look in the bottom window of the passenger side door. i climbed into the truck. Normally professional drivers won' pick up hitch-hikers cause of insurance, but this cat was cool. Tol' me about runnin' away from home when he was 14 and how he grew ganja in the woods until he had enough money to buy his first rig. He tol' me i would 'a' never got picked up back there. i tol' him i had some acid and gave him some, never imagining for a second that he would drop it all right then. We drove through downtown Columbus Ohio while the cat was trippin' behind the wheel of his semi. i watched him negociate traffic signals and ol' ladies in crosswalks dosed. He had some issue with the state of Kentucky and wouldn' go there, so he had to get off the interstate and take the 2 lane hiways to the north, that go through Columbus and the towns of Ohio. i hooked him up with some more :wink: (acid) when he finally dropped me off on some back road(hiway 50)
He dropped me off and drove away and i went into the red-neck biker bar. Had a couple o' shots of that sweet whiskey and hitch-hiked down the road...
