Journal #9
ON the BUS
| Looming large in American popular culture and folklife is that stalwart of travel in the age of internal combustion, what the French call Le AutoBus...read on as I recount my experience of nearly 30,000 miles about this continent leaving the driving to Greyhound and Trailways. |
Never Rode No Freight Train
| First of all, I have never hung a ride on a freight train...too dangerous! I have known people to lose a foot, 'larking it', as my informant called riding a box car for kicks between Bloomington and Lafayette, Indiana on the old Monon line. He threw his pack into the car before he lept up and then didn't make it and had his foot severed by a wheel...He was one of the lucky ones to survive and tell the tale. I always felt that I'd reserve hobo-ing for necessity, and I have never absolutely needed to jump a freight. I don't recommend anyone try it either. |
VW Microbus...
| Was it because of the Arlo Guthrie song Alice's Restaurant that
"everybody" had to have a microbus? They had trouble climbing even slight
inclines, and one had better be a motor-monkey to fix the engine...but this page
wouldn't be complete without me recounting my MicroBUS adventures. Two trips are
worth mentioning, and in a few days, they will appear here. As for Alice's
Restaurant, here's Arlo Guthrie's web
site. My first memorable experience with a microbus was a very eventful choice in my life. A fellow had come from Bloomington, Indiana - which I had never yet heard of - to visit people I was staying with in the spring of 1969. When a young woman I had met that month chose to return to Bloomington, which she had left under sad circumstances - the firebombing, in December 1968, of a store front of the building in which she was a guest dweller - she decided to invite me to ride along with her. I had performed a few mimes I made up and my first 2 songs for her and our friends. This was enough for her to talk the driver of the microbus, whom she knew from her previous visit to Bloomington, into giving me a ride to the midwest. Little did I know Bloomington would prove to be my major base for the all these years. Alpha base is what I call it, with Berkeley coming in second as Beta base...Home? For me, HOME is where the heart is... I have recounted tales of an ex-seminary student elsewhere, Legendary Luke, who was an inspiration to me in so many ways during my early days on the "road". For the interested reader, these entries will give you a sense of my mindset in the spring of 1969...The whole time I was in Tucson that month, I had heard of Luke being back in southern Arizona too, but had not succeeded in finding him...Then, just after I decided to except the invitation to move to Bloomington, in southern Indiana's limestone Uplands, I heard that Luke was living in the very same cabin at the foot of Mount Lemmon northeast of Tucson in which we had briefly resided the spring previous...I told the fellow with the microbus that I wanted to see my friend and would remain in Tucson. His response was a turning point in my young man's adventure! What he said was this, "Well, you've got a ride all the way to the mid-west, and you are going to come to Bloomington anyway, sooner or later, so why not just go with us now?" Such positive confidence about the special nature of a place I'd not encountered before, and so I said, "Since you've put it like that, ok, sure, let's get on the road!" The funny thing is, I would meet Luke again, anyway, and he'd have a big surprise for me. Gentle reader, you may read about his surprise by visiting the tales of Legendary Luke that I have hyperlinked for you a bit above, on this page. Or, jump directly to When I Paint my Masterpiece. You'll find a BACK button there, at the end of the account... I met some remarkable people in Bloomington that spring, some of whom I still know...went skinny dipping in limestone quarries for the first time, and had my first exposure to college town bohemian culture...yet I was restless, and when things slowed down after the spring semester at IU was over I chanced to accept another ride in another VW Microbus...the story has its own page |
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