Summer of '65 I hitchhiked with a friend from Aspen throughout the West (Grand Canyon, etc.) and then to Detroit. it got really scary around Four Corners, where we asked a native if there was a good place to crash. he said "nowhere safe." so we said "but, but..." and pointed to these towns on a map. he laughed and said "those ain't …
Summer of '65 I hitchhiked with a friend from Aspen throughout the West (Grand Canyon, etc.) and then to Detroit. it got really scary around Four Corners, where we asked a native if there was a good place to crash. he said "nowhere safe." so we said "but, but..." and pointed to these towns on a map. he laughed and said "those ain't towns, those are just trading posts. he told us to buy some rope to encircle our sleeping bags because "rattlers won't cross a rope," which sounded really, really iffy. we found ourselves in Gallup and met a guy who was there to pick up his Caddy and drive to NYC. we stayed with him till St. Louis and the ride was great, but he spewed the most stereotyped racist insanity I'd ever heard. finally Howie, my friend, decided to end it by telling the guy that he was active member of SNCC and didn't appreciate that talk (he obviously had the cojones I lacked). it was a very hairy two minutes but the sonofabitch actually cooled it.
there were two other great parts of the story: at the beginning, we crept out of Aspen on the back of a pick-up truck and the guy blasted his radio which was playing a wild, very long record I'd never heard before, so I asked what it was. the answer was, I would realize years later, too perfect to be true but perfect enough to be true at the same time. it was "Like a Rolling Stone." swear to god.
the other "great thing" (actually a real bummer) was being laid up for two days in Grand Canyon National Park with a nasty case of epididymitis. god knows why. I blamed the usual tendency of a sixteen-year-old to practice what the old Boy Scout Manual warned about till sometime later in that storied decade.
it's possible I'm trying to cheer people up. I even found myself giggling for a half second in fond remembrance.
I just watched a new HBO documentary about the automat. so beautiful, I was crying at the end, which was also about the death of another beautiful, vanished thing about this town. and this country, even if the automats were purely a NYC/Philly thing.
and since this desk chair is kicking up my sciatica....
Summer of '65 I hitchhiked with a friend from Aspen throughout the West (Grand Canyon, etc.) and then to Detroit. it got really scary around Four Corners, where we asked a native if there was a good place to crash. he said "nowhere safe." so we said "but, but..." and pointed to these towns on a map. he laughed and said "those ain't towns, those are just trading posts. he told us to buy some rope to encircle our sleeping bags because "rattlers won't cross a rope," which sounded really, really iffy. we found ourselves in Gallup and met a guy who was there to pick up his Caddy and drive to NYC. we stayed with him till St. Louis and the ride was great, but he spewed the most stereotyped racist insanity I'd ever heard. finally Howie, my friend, decided to end it by telling the guy that he was active member of SNCC and didn't appreciate that talk (he obviously had the cojones I lacked). it was a very hairy two minutes but the sonofabitch actually cooled it.
there were two other great parts of the story: at the beginning, we crept out of Aspen on the back of a pick-up truck and the guy blasted his radio which was playing a wild, very long record I'd never heard before, so I asked what it was. the answer was, I would realize years later, too perfect to be true but perfect enough to be true at the same time. it was "Like a Rolling Stone." swear to god.
the other "great thing" (actually a real bummer) was being laid up for two days in Grand Canyon National Park with a nasty case of epididymitis. god knows why. I blamed the usual tendency of a sixteen-year-old to practice what the old Boy Scout Manual warned about till sometime later in that storied decade.
it's possible I'm trying to cheer people up. I even found myself giggling for a half second in fond remembrance.
I just watched a new HBO documentary about the automat. so beautiful, I was crying at the end, which was also about the death of another beautiful, vanished thing about this town. and this country, even if the automats were purely a NYC/Philly thing.
and since this desk chair is kicking up my sciatica....
Half a second of fond remembrance, hahahaha.