Hippie Boy: A Girl's Story

by Ingrid Ricks

  Dad’s voice got serious again as he went on with his story. He said the gunman opened the car doors and shoved the handcuffed officer into the front passenger seat. Then he ordered Dad and Rhonda into the backseats; Rhonda behind the police officer, Dad behind the driver’s seat. He then handcuffed Dad’s left hand to the passenger seat headrest and climbed behind the wheel. The gunman headed for the freeway and turned west, toward the desolate Nevada desert.

  Dad watched the man’s eyes dart repeatedly from the road to the rearview mirror.

  “He was clearly nervous and started threatening us. He said, ‘If I even see another police car, all of you are dead! Do you get that? You just better hope like hell I don’t see a police car.’

  “At this point, a voice in my head was screaming, ‘You’re in deep shit, Jerry. Deep shit!’ You want to know the one thought that kept playing over and over in my mind, Ingrid? It was how grateful I was that I had called to say hello to you and the other kids earlier in the evening. That’s all I could think about.”

  Dad’s call from the night before replayed in my mind. It was just a regular call. He and I talked for a few minutes like we always did, and Dad told me he would be coming for a visit in a few days. What if that had been the last time I ever talked with him or heard his voice? What if I never saw him again and was stuck with Earl indefinitely?

  I couldn’t bear to think of it and switched my attention back to Dad, who was continuing on with his story.

  “About fifteen minutes into our drive, the gunman noticed that the car was low on gas and pulled off the freeway into a 7-Eleven to fill up. He grabbed Rhonda and yanked her out of the car, warning me and the police officer that he would blow her brains out if we tried anything. As soon as they were gone, the police officer filled me in on the events leading up to our being taken hostage.”

  Like the news report I had heard, Dad said the officer had told him that the gunman, Reed Williams, had escaped from the mental ward of the Utah State Penitentiary earlier that afternoon, where he had been taken for an evaluation. Williams immediately hotwired a pickup truck and made his escape. Needing cash, he had tried to pawn the truck’s toolbox off to the first man he came across. The man found Williams’s behavior suspicious and called the police.

  The police officer told Dad that when he and his partner were dispatched to check things out, they found themselves in a high-speed freeway chase that ended with Williams crashing the truck into the home of the police chief for Cedar City, a small town about forty miles north of St. George.

  “He said he and his partner arrived on the scene and apprehended Williams, but as he was trying to handcuff him, Williams overpowered him, took his gun, and escaped the scene with him as his hostage. Just imagine it, Ingrid. He took the police officer hostage in his own squad car and drove off! Then Williams got onto the police radio and threatened to kill him if another police car came within sight.

  “He told me Williams decided to ditch the police car in St. George and had just happened to pass the Sand Dune Inn when he spotted me walking the dog. He figured I was good for some money and another means of transportation. When he finished his story, he looked me square in the eye and said, ‘He’s going to kill us.’

  “Before I could say anything, the gunman was back with Rhonda and shoved her into the backseat. I looked over at her, trying to catch her eye. But she wouldn’t look up from her lap. That’s when I noticed she was covered in hives.”

  Dad sounded sad when he said this and I wondered if he and Rhonda were even on speaking terms. Aside from the two weeks she had spent with us in Texas early in the summer, I knew Rhonda and Dad had hardly spent any time together since they were married. Though I hadn’t been around her much, I knew that she was the quiet, nervous type who preferred to stay at home. Dad had probably had to coax her pretty hard to get her to go on the trip with him to Los Angeles. I could see her in my mind, frozen in fear in her seat, covered in hives as she waited for the guy to flip out and kill her.

  Dad continued with his story. “The gunman got back on the freeway, once again heading west toward the Nevada desert. He made constant threats. He’d say things like, ‘My family kills people. My grandfather shot my grandma right through the head and then killed himself’ or ‘I don't have anything to lose by blasting a hole through all of your heads. You just better hope that I don't see a police car. If I even get a glimpse of one, I'm going to shoot a hole through all of your f’king heads!’

  “By this point, I was struggling to come to terms with what I was sure was my impending death. I expected that any minute now, the guy would turn the car off onto one of the narrow dirt roads that headed into the vast, empty desert, shoot us, and leave our bodies there. I just kept thinking about you and the other kids, wondering how you would react to the news that your daddy had been taken hostage and murdered.”

  I was so upset by the thought of this that I couldn’t speak. I just held the phone tight against my ear, waiting for Dad to continue with his story.

  Dad said time seemed to expand and even stop. Every once in a while, he tried to catch Rhonda's eye, but she continued to stare into her lap. Then, about an hour and a half into the ride, Dad remembered that earlier in the day, he had tossed a large wrench into the backseat of the car after tightening a bolt on a loose battery wire.

  “Right then and there, I knew there was hope. I worked my right hand into the crevasse of the seat and locked my fingers around the long metal handle. I can’t tell you the relief that rushed through me, Ingrid. The minute I touched the metal, I knew we were going to live. I knew that if I had to, I could take that wrench and slam it against the gunman’s head. It wasn’t something I wanted to do, because I didn’t want his blood on my hands—plus I didn’t want to get in trouble with the law for killing him. But I knew that if he turned off into the desert, that was exactly what I was going to do. And I was going to finish the job because I wasn’t going to take any chances.”

  Now that he knew they were going to make it out alive, Dad tried to catch Rhonda’s eye again to give her silent assurance that everything was going to be okay. But he said she wouldn’t look at him.

  “Now that I was feeling more in control of the situation, I tried to engage Williams in positive conversation,” Dad explained. “He seemed to calm down a little and eventually he started talking about Las Vegas. He asked me if I knew how to get to Caesar’s Palace and I quickly assured him that I could get him there.

  “I was trying not to let my optimism show but at this point, I was beginning to relax a little. I didn't think he would shoot us under the bright lights of Caesar's Palace, and the closer we got to the city and away from the desert, the less likely death seemed for either him or us.”

  At around 4 a.m., Dad said they reached Las Vegas and he directed Williams to the parking lot behind Caesar's Palace. Without saying a word, Dad said Williams parked the car, got out, opened the passenger door where Dad was sitting, and redid the handcuffs so that he and Rhonda were cuffed together. He then opened the hood of the car and pulled out the battery cables and other wires so the car horn wouldn’t work.

  “He came back to the car and ordered us to stay inside. Then he took the car keys, shut the door and simply walked away, losing himself in the crowd and lights of Vegas. I can’t even tell you what a wave of relief washed over me, Ingrid.

  “We stayed seated for about five minutes to ensure he was gone. Then Rhonda slipped her small hand out of the handcuff and unlocked the doors. The three of us hurried to the security station in Caesar’s Palace to report the incident.

  “You want to know the real ironic thing about all of this?” Dad said, wrapping up his harrowing story. “The police officers at the police station treated me worse than the guy who took us hostage. Think about it, Ingrid. He’s taken all of my money and ruined my car and we’ve just gone through hell for the last four hours. What do the police do? They interrogate us for six hours and then when they are finally done, they just tell us
to go. They captured Williams at a bar within a couple of hours and had retrieved most of my money but they wouldn’t give it to me; they told me they had to keep it for evidence. Rhonda and I were hungry, exhausted, and broke, but they didn’t offer us any food or a place to sleep. If your Uncle Dallas didn’t live down here, I don’t know what I would have done.

  “At least I can understand where Williams was coming from,” Dad added. “I can put myself in his desperate situation and think about what I would have done under those circumstances. But those police officers had no excuse.”

  Dad and I had been talking for nearly an hour and he said he was tired and needed to get some sleep. My head was spinning as I hung up the phone. I couldn’t believe how close he had come to being killed. But that was too hard to process mentally so I shut it out of my mind and instead focused on Dad’s amazing story. I was so proud of him for making it through the situation; I was certain part of it had to do with his incredible sales ability.

  The next day, our local newspaper ran an article. Overnight, Dad became a local hero.

  Mom was as excited as the rest of us were. She spread the front page of the newspaper across the kitchen table so we could all read it together. When we were finished, she retrieved a pair of scissors from her sewing room and began cutting out the article.

  When Earl saw what she was doing, the blood vessels on the side of his face puffed up so big I thought they were going to burst.

  “I think you need to remember who your husband is,” he seethed at Mom. “And right now I’m hungry and need some breakfast.”

  Mom shot him an annoyed look. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she said quietly.

  Earl glared at her.

  “Well, just make it fast,” he bellowed as he stomped out of the room.

  I loved it that Mom wasn’t putting up with his crap for once. I felt like high-fiving her.

  I took the newspaper clipping to my social studies class that morning and shared the article as my current news event.

  “My Dad, Jerry Ricks, was taken hostage by an escaped prison convict,” I started out, my voice full of pride. “But he managed to get free and everything’s fine.”

  My classmates listened with awe as I recounted the story as Dad had told it to me. I even detected a little envy in their voices when they asked me questions. None of them had a parent who had been taken hostage. For the next few days, I was a celebrity at school.

  CHAPTER 13

  CONNIE GRADUATED FROM high school the same day I wrapped up ninth grade, and wasted no time making her escape.

  She walked across the auditorium stage to receive her diploma, dropped by a few graduation parties to say her goodbyes, and then headed home to pack. A week earlier, she had run a stop sign and crashed into another car, totaling the Honda that Dad had given her. But neither lack of transportation―nor the fact that Earl forbade Mom to help her by giving her a ride―was going to stop her from getting out of our house.

  At eight o’clock the next morning, her friend Liz arrived in her Chevy Luv pickup to take Connie to her new life in Jackson, Wyoming, where she had signed on as a motel maid for the summer. A few days earlier, Liz had stood by Connie’s side as she went through the wrenching agony of saying goodbye to her dog, Abbey, and finding a new home for her. Now, Liz helped my sister carry her suitcase and a couple of boxes of belongings out to the Chevy. Against Earl’s orders, Mom ran out to say goodbye and snuck Liz some gas money. Then Liz and Connie drove away.

  Connie’s exit from my life didn’t fully sink in because I was focused on my own escape. A few hours after her departure, Mom drove me to the airport to catch a plane to Dallas so I could be with Dad.

  I had been counting down the hours until our reunion ever since my plane ticket had arrived in the mail the week before. The minute my plane parked at the gate, I elbowed my way into the aisle and impatiently waited for the throng of passengers in front of me to move. Relief washed over me as soon as I saw Dad.

  “Hey Dad!” I yelled, running into his open arms for a hug. “Finally!”

  I wrapped my arms tight around his waist and breathed in his Old Spice aftershave. It felt so good to be with him that I didn’t want to let go.

  “How’s my girl?” he asked, pulling away from me so he could take a good look. “I think you’re getting more beautiful every time I see you. How is that possible?”

  I felt calm and relaxed as we walked hand in hand to collect my suitcase at baggage claim and then headed to where Dad had parked. Every year his vehicle changed―this time it was a white van, which Dad had outfitted with shelves to organize his tool merchandise. I noticed a sleeping bag, pillow, and foam mattress stuffed in the back when Dad opened it to toss in my suitcase.

  I climbed into the passenger seat, leaned back, and took a deep breath. I was free.

  I didn’t consider how Mom must have felt about losing two daughters within a few hours of each other until the next day, when Dad called home to check in with the other kids. Instead of their usual bickering over child support, Mom confided to Dad that she had just had a fight with Earl and had become so angry she had thrown some of his things out onto the sidewalk.

  “Why don’t you just get rid of him?” I heard him say into the phone. “You know I never put you through this kind of misery.”

  When he hung up, he looked upset and I asked him what she had said.

  “She said she’s trying to get rid of him, really trying.”

  I wanted to feel hopeful that Mom might actually follow through with her threat, but knowing Mom and the whole temple marriage situation, it didn’t seem likely.

  “Yeah, right,” I muttered. “That’s wishful thinking.”

  Dad and I spent our first few days together making the rounds to tool wholesalers in Dallas and Fort Worth to load up on merchandise. We also spent a couple of days with Rhonda, who had flown out for a quick visit. Since the hostage incident, she preferred to stay in Utah and Dad told me they rarely saw each other anymore. Within a week of my arrival, she was gone and Dad and I were back on the road selling.

  Our life picked up where we’d left off nine months earlier, only this time Dad had a more organized sales crew who worked the highways alongside us and met up with us every night at a pre-designated Motel 6 in one of the hundreds of towns that dotted the Midwest.

  The guys in Dad’s sales crew―whom I secretly nicknamed “the leech mobile”―seemed more interested in having a good time than actually making any money. I couldn’t wait to get going in the morning so that we could get away from them. Once on the road, I had Dad to myself for at least the next twelve hours.

  Dad and I had a lot of downtime while driving around searching for prospects, and when we weren’t kicking back listening to Kenny Rogers, Waylon Jennings, or other country singers crooning on the radio, we spent our time debating current issues, sharing dreams, and swapping stories about our lives.

  Dad filled me with tales of growing up on a farm in rural northern Utah. His parents, Hazel and Joel, were just out of high school when they married. Grandpa Joel, who had grown up working on his parents’ farm, had no money to purchase a home for himself and his teenage bride so they moved into a dilapidated, four-room shack situated on fifty acres of farmland that his parents owned. Dad spent the first few years of his life there, sharing the tiny space with his parents, his older sister, his younger brother, his uncle, his aunt, and their two kids.

  “Our little shack didn’t have any indoor plumbing or electricity, so when we needed water, your grandma would have to pump it from the backyard well―even when the snow was piled three feet high outside,” Dad recalled as we drove the highway. “To keep us warm at night, your grandma would heat bricks in our coal-burning stove, wrap them in newspaper, and put them at the foot of our beds. Can you imagine having to do that, Ingrid? And every time one of us needed to use the restroom, we had to trek a hundred feet to the outhouse. I think that was the worst part. I was just a little boy and I was petrifie
d of getting locked in there.”

  As the second child and first-born son in a family that would eventually swell to eleven children, Dad told me he had to start working as soon as he could understand what was being asked of him. By the time he was four, he was already helping Grandpa Joel milk the cows and make the rounds to feed the animals. And he said his workload skyrocketed just after his sixth birthday, when Grandpa Joel was forced to take on a second full-time job to support his growing family.

  “My dad―your grandpa―got me out of bed at 4 a.m. every morning so we could make the two hour rounds with the animals. Then he would drive the eight-mile journey to Logan and hop a bus for another fifty-mile ride to Ogden, where he worked a construction job. He couldn’t make it back in time for the afternoon rounds with the animals, so that became my job. Every day after school I raced home to feed the pigs, milk the cows, and clean the barn.

  “I was good at math. I could do my times tables when I was four years old because my grandpa would always quiz me,” Dad added. “But I wasn’t a good student. I was always so tired from having to get up before the crack of dawn to milk the cows and take care of the animals that I sometimes fell asleep at my desk. Just imagine it, Ingrid. I was only six years old when I started doing that, and the work continued all the way through school. I know I could have done well at school. But I never had any time to do homework because as soon as I arrived home each day, I worked until it was time to eat. Then I was so tired I usually just went to sleep.”

  I felt bad for Dad when he told me these stories. I could imagine him as a little boy, having to work all the time and never having any time for fun. And I knew the pain he felt at never being able to join in with other kids to play arcade games or go to the movies. Dad told me he would go to scouting events sometimes but always had to cut out early when they went for an ice cream or a hamburger because he didn’t have the money to cover it.

  In the winter months, Dad said Grandpa was laid off from his construction job, forcing his family to survive on his forty-five dollar monthly unemployment check. For Dad and his brothers, this meant two pair of jeans and a pair of shoes to get them through the entire school year.