On the road we couldn’t make plans because everything was always changing. Everything: where we were, how we felt, what we thought about, the weather. Riding in a car, you’re a passenger. You’re shielded by glass and metal, protected from the elements. On a motorcycle, you feel it all, moment by moment: the soft breeze at dawn, the warmth of the early light, the bugs, the heat, the dust, the thick smell of desert blooms and the scent of dirt after a rain. The road beneath you. The elements. You have to be present so you can react and adapt to whatever you encounter. That felt like freedom.
When we were broke and severe weather made it dangerous or just plain uncomfortable to be outside, we stayed a few times at homeless shelters. One night, as a storm threatened, we sought refuge at the Star of Hope Mission in Houston, Texas. We locked our bikes together to a post and covered them as best we could, hoping the storm wouldn’t drown them.
Inside the shelter we learned that the protocol was to bolt the doors for the night and require all of us homeless men (temporary or otherwise) to listen to some proselytizing. Normally, I was open to those moved to speak about their faith, but the guy at this shelter was a fear-mongering zealot, delivering the news about how God would damn to hell anyone who drank or did drugs. I found his threats offensive and laughable. It was ridiculous that people had to be subjected to this kind of fire-and-brimstone speechifying simply because they needed a place to sleep for the night.
After the dark sermon we were led upstairs in single file and told to strip naked and turn in our clothes for the night. We handed our garments to an attendant, who gave each person a numbered tag to claim them in the morning. The attendant put the clothes of about one hundred transient men into a walk-in closet and locked the door shut. Great. I’d probably never see those pants again.
Next was a parade to the showers. Every man was given a bar of soap—more like a tab—and a hand towel intended to serve as a bath towel. We took turns pulling the chain on a half dozen shower heads. The tepid water drizzled over us, washing our bodies clean of sins, or at least some road grime. Dropping off the towelettes in a drum on our exit and the excess slivers of soap in a bucket, we were shown to a hall where fifty-some-odd bunk beds were arranged in tight rows. It looked like an internment camp. We were assigned our bunks. Younger, able-bodied men on top; older and infirm men got the preferred bottom.
One hundred men sleeping in the same room. One hundred men who happened to have the worst eating and drinking habits in the country. A cacophony of belching and farting. The smell of gas, stale alcohol, fumes from festering wounds left untreated, and years of poor hygiene that no shower could ameliorate. Most were hardcore smokers, with deep hacking coughs to prove it. Decay permeated the room. I thought back to my morgue experience. Which was worse, the smell of formaldehyde or this? I was hard-pressed to say. I looked over several rows of bunks to my brother. The lucky bastard got a bunk by a window, which he’d cracked open just enough for the cool breeze to lull him to sleep.
I tried to sleep with the covers over my head. Good luck. I prayed for dawn to show itself, and when the first signs of light came through Ed’s window I jumped out of bed and was first in line to get my clothes and get the hell out of there. The attendant from the night before sleepily took my chit and opened the vault. He handed me my clothes, and oh God. While I’d awaited the morning, my relatively clean clothes had been wrestling with everyone else’s filthy duds in the sealed enclosure. I had no choice but to put these deliriously toxic things on. I was desperate to get outside to my motorcycle. But not so fast.
First: breakfast. In our putrid state we were marched into the mess hall and seated on long communal benches, a tin plate and cup set before each man. We were served a plop of porridge, a package of melba toast, and coffee. I tasted a speck of porridge. Looked like Spackle—tasted like Spackle. The coffee too matched my expectations. It was the hue of scorched butter. The taste reminded me of my childhood habit of putting coins in my mouth—that slightly bitter, metallic flavor, with an aftertaste of rust.
I looked several feet down the bench to Ed, who was grinning. He’d been watching me from Spackle to rust. His grin made me smile, too. Then I looked across the table and saw a dour face staring back. The fellow leaned forward and whispered, as if we were in a prison movie planning our escape and couldn’t risk drawing the attention of the guards. “Hey, ain’t ya gonna eat that?”
“No,” I whispered back. “You can have it.” I slid my food over to him. His toothless grin said thank you.
When we escaped the clutches of the Star of Hope, Ed and I went straight to a Laundromat to wash the stench from our clothes. I wasn’t sure they could ever be clean again. In spite of our stench, we felt freer than ever after our night in captivity. And more exhausted. Before sunset that night, we pooled our meager funds and got a cheap motel room, somewhere in east Texas, and I collapsed instantly, feeling dead.
After that, we agreed—no more shelters. From then on, we slept at schools, churches, parks, golf courses, and historical sites. Late one night we found a park that seemed remote, tossed our sleeping bags over a fence, and bedded on the grass, faces up to the open sky above. In the morning I awoke to a plop. It was dawn and I didn’t see anyone around so I lay my head back down. Plop. There was another one. I turned my head and saw an egg rolling down a hill toward me. A bird? When it rolled to a stop I saw that it wasn’t an egg: it was a golf ball. In the darkness we had bedded down on a fairway. We grabbed our sleeping bags and waved to the puzzled golfers as we scaled the fence.
We arrived in Little Rock, Arkansas, after dark on a weeknight and set ourselves up on a perfect patch of grass by the back door of a church. We’d be up and out by sunrise before anyone was awake.
In the middle of the night, a car woke us up as it drove onto the loose gravel driveway. Its front tire stopped within an arm’s reach of us. In the pitch black, I could see Ed’s fear. I lay frozen, too. The door creaked open and we saw two black shoes crushing the gravel beneath them. Another man got out of the passenger side and followed the driver into the church. They were murmuring to each other, trying to be stealthy. They didn’t want to get caught. We couldn’t make out a word. Were they there to rob the church? I glanced at Ed. He reached for the all-purpose knife he was carrying, the only weapon we had. It was possible they didn’t see us. We were in dark sleeping bags in the shadows, and we’d parked our bikes elsewhere. We waited in silence. The church’s back doors flung open and we saw one man walking backward. Then we saw that he was pulling something on a flat dolly. A desk? A couch? No. It was a casket! We remained silent, terrified. The men opened the back hatch of the sedan and slid the casket in. Suddenly, they were pulling away; the gravel crackled and popped beneath their tires like gunfire.
Would they come back for us? Should we run? Remain still? Did they need more bodies? We were half asleep and barely sane. We finally calmed down enough to devise a plan: we wouldn’t leave, but we’d stay awake, on guard. We’d remain alert.
We woke at dawn. So much for alert. We looked around and realized that, due to fatigue and darkness, we’d camped behind a mortuary. We hurried to wrap up our sleeping bags, and a few people came out the back door and asked us to come inside for some coffee and donuts. We joined them in the kitchen, and they told us they’d seen us the night before. “We sat in the car for a minute trying to figure out how to make our delivery without waking you guys last night. We whispered so we wouldn’t disturb you.”
Only when we were beyond road-weary did we spring for a dirt-cheap motel. Once, in rural Louisiana, or maybe it was Mississippi, it was pouring, so we drove our bikes right into the room with us. The next day we backed them out. Amazingly, we didn’t draw the ire of the manager. For that matter, our filthy bikes didn’t much affect the general cleanliness of the room. A real five-star situation.
We had no problem finding temporary jobs as we traveled. We’d bus tables at a diner for cash, or we’d get jobs at that venue ever in need of sober wo
rkers: a carnival. When we were living with our grandparents and killing chickens, Ed and I briefly had after-school jobs at a nearby carnival. We worked a game-of-chance “joint” (the carnie name for “booth”). I held a fistful of darts and exhorted passersby, “Hey, come on over and take a chance.” One time I even accidentally punctured my own hand with a dart when a girl I knew from school came over to say hello.
So we sort of knew our way around a carnival, and we got a job during what was called slaw. (I don’t know why exactly—maybe from the word slaughter?) It was how the carnies described closing down the carnival at that location. We dismantled the whole place top to bottom and stacked it on trucks. The Tilt-a-Whirl, the Wild Mouse, the Ferris wheel, and the joints all had to come down. It was hard work, but decent pay. I think we got $8 per hour. Cash. Enough to get us to wherever the road took us next.
Suspect
We arrived in Daytona Beach just in time for a Thanksgiving feast with our maternal cousins the Tafts. They lived in a big house at 715 North Halifax Avenue; the intracoastal waterway was basically their backyard. Of the seven Taft kids, Ed and I felt the most kinship with Fredrick—Freddie—a handsome, skinny, blond, girl-crazed, fun-loving knucklehead, and a local man-about-town. He convinced Ed and me to sing at a local nightclub for fun. We actually won a few first-place prizes. Mine came for singing Elvis tunes. Freddie pushed me out of my shell. Before him, I don’t think you’d have seen me on stage singing “Heartbreak Hotel.”
Our cousins were gracious hosts, but Ed and I didn’t want to overstay our welcome, so we found a cheap place not too far away from them on Oleander Avenue, conveniently located next door to a 7-Eleven. During the day we picked up odd jobs. We worked at a co-op natural-foods store, dividing up bulk food like honey, peanut butter, and oats to be sold. We didn’t get paid, but we got food at cost. And we got jobs at the local minor league stadium for the Montreal Expos’ spring training, selling programs and hats and pictures and stuff that people didn’t want. On hot days Ed and I would get at the top of the stairs and yell “ICE COLD HATS!” We had a routine, and we’d have ballplayers turning around and watching us in the stands as if they were a stage.
At night, we easily found jobs as waiters at the Hawaiian Inn Polynesian Restaurant and Showroom. It was there we met Peter Wong, a man we would come to hate.
A little man in every sense, in stature and in spirit, Peter was incongruously loud. His screaming went on without end. He was the Hawaiian Inn chef, and if an order came out wrong from the kitchen, he’d go crazy on the servers. Loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear, he would bitch and shriek about your complete worthlessness and stupidity. He was a culinary dictator, ruling his kitchen with an iron wok.
Except with women. Around women he blushed like a schoolboy. The male waiters came to an understanding with their female shift partners each night: I’ll do any other dirty work, so long as you deal with Peter.
Imagining all the different ways we might murder Peter Wong became a group pastime. Personally, I thought it would be fitting to create a new dish in his honor, made with savory spices, fresh vegetables, and slow-cooked, thinly sliced chef. I’d call it Moo Goo Gai Peter.
Other than Peter, life at the Hawaiian Inn was good, profitable, and spicy. It was the 1970s, pre-AIDS; if you caught something, you could easily get penicillin. So the consequences of sexual liberty seemed minimal. Practically everyone you met had had crabs at some point. It was almost a badge of pride. Wild parties and drunken sexual encounters were common.
We spent many nights gathered in a large booth at the ABC bar just down the street from the inn. We played liar’s poker and drank, and were cavalier with our tip money. Still, Ed and I saved most of what we made, and planned to soon get back on the road. When the season was over, the restaurant scaled back to fewer hours and fewer workers, and we took off.
Once we were gone, something happened. Peter Wong, the chef that everyone wanted to kill? Someone did.
Just days after Ed and I left on our trip up the East Coast, Peter disappeared. Vanished. He’d been gone a week when the police came in to talk to the few remaining waitstaff. Did anyone know where Peter might have gone? Check the dog track or jai alai pavilion, everyone said. He was an inveterate gambler. No one socialized with that creep. The cops pressed on. “Did anyone ever mention a desire to harm or kill Mr. Wong?”
Everyone went silent.
Finally, a waiter raised his hand and said yes.
The cops asked, “Who?”
“Everyone.”
Our coworkers at the restaurant regaled the officers with tales of the man’s repugnant personality in vivid detail. We all thought about how we’d kill him. Why were they asking?
“Because,” the detective said, “he was found dead. Murdered.”
Silence.
Then came the second bombshell question: “Is there anyone no longer employed here who also talked about killing Mr. Wong?”
Some in the group exchanged looks. “Yeah, the, uh, well, the Cranston brothers. They took off on their motorcycles last week.”
“That’s right around the estimated time of death of Mr. Wong,” one officer said. The officer took descriptions of our persons, our bikes, our approximate destination. Everyone cooperated.
Our cousin Freddie later told us that the authorities put an all points bulletin out on us—but then canceled it two days later when they found out what had really happened.
Peter always carried a thick wad of cash. Apparently he was flashing it at the dog track and he showed it to the wrong hooker. She lured him to a house where he was jumped and killed. His body was found in the trunk of an abandoned car, bludgeoned to death, cashless.
A gruesome way to die, and I felt awful . . . that I didn’t feel awful.
Vagabond
We made plans to rendezvous with girls. We even pinpointed and triangulated the locations of our recent paramours on a map for maximum efficiency. The little dots represented free places to stay, eat, and rekindle relations. We called it the GIDGT, the Geographically Incredibly Desirable Girlfriend Tour.
We rode through Georgia and the Carolinas up to the northeastern states, headed for Maine. We were happy to be traveling again, happy to be unmoored from the encumbrances and worries of humdrum, normal life.
Being on the road simplified things in some ways, but complicated them in others. There’s no complacency on the road. We always had to be aware. We became experts at recognizing potentially dangerous situations. Still, for every danger, there was a delight. Every face you see is a new one. Adventure and surprise are right around the next corner.
Around the Carolinas, we encountered a group of bikers at a truck-stop diner. They were doing the same kind of aimless, indefinitely long trip as we were—they were just a lot dirtier. Their hogs rattled and spewed choking exhaust out of the tailpipes they’d modified to ensure maximum decibels as they twisted their throttles. We rode dependable Hondas that comparatively made no sound. They sat back in their seats, while we sat upright. They had “ape bars” reaching for the sky to hold on, we had our arms at a comfortable horizontal level. We rode with windscreens—they had to pick the bugs out of their teeth; we did Coke and Sanka while they did pot and cocaine.
So when their leader came over to inspect our bikes, we were a little . . . nervous. We could tell right away he was a ball-buster. And his look was so on the nose that if you were to cast him in a movie, people would say: too cliché. Torn leather pants, thick leather belt with a skull buckle, leather vest and jacket, leather bracelets and necklaces. The man liked his leather. He had the hair of a rock-and-roll wannabe. He reeked of the road and snickered at our bikes and packs. Snickering was acceptable—much better than a fist to the throat. He gained instant, albeit measured respect for us when he noticed our California plates. “Whoa. You ride all the way from Cali?” Yep, we said proudly. He nodded his approval. The interview portion of our introduction was going surprisingly well. Then our rough-and-tumble f
riend asked, “You got bitches?”
A pause. Had I heard him wrong? “What’s that?” I said.
He repeated, “You got bitches?”
Ah ha, I didn’t hear him wrong, he just asked us if we had bitches.
My uneasiness made me get risky with my new friend. “Well, my brother and I argued about this . . . I thought he was responsible for bringing the bitches, but he insists it was my mistake . . . so, here we are on the road with no bitches.”
He stared at me blankly, no inkling that I was fucking with him. It was a stupid move on my part. He took his time and assessed our situation . . . just stared. Did I screw up? Were he and his posse about to beat us to a pulp? He got real serious and hyperfocused, despite his obvious inebriation, in order to bestow upon us a valuable life lesson. He said, “You gotta get yourselves some bitches. My bitch is in there right now.” He pointed to the truck-stop diner. “She’s making cash giving head to truckers, while I just had me some steak and eggs . . . steak and eggs!”
She sounded like a keeper. I turned to Ed and he said, “We gotta get us some bitches.”
“Right away,” I replied. “Like in the next town!” We thanked the motorcycle Zen master, hopped on our bikes, and left quickly. We were on the road, living wild—for us. But compared to other anarchic road warriors, we were squares, and always would be.
• • •
Our GIDGT was going according to plan, sort of. We were making our way up the Eastern Seaboard, but as per our habit, we were running behind schedule. Our aim was to make it out of New England by late summer. The fall in New England is beautiful if you’re by the fireside sipping apple cider. Not so great on a motorcycle. We didn’t make it to New York until October.
A Life in Parts Page 7