A Letter
Dear Ruth,
I will try to be very careful with my words. You asked me the other day about the Triangle Ranch that you and I visited (discovered?) last summer. I have completed some initial investigation and I can now pass on what little I know. The original intention of this huge property was that it should be a prosperous ranch, in fact, the largest cattle ranch east of the Mississippi, although the owner and several investors intention was not necessarily noble, unless you consider unfettered capitalism noble in its own right, the results were not only dismal but altogether an utter failure, ending in bankruptcy.
In a dream I had the other night, it came to me that the Triangle Ranch was not what the original owners thought it might be, but was, in my dream a place of peace in the storms of life. The Triangle was the symbolic representation of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I wrote about this in an unpublished novel I have shown you entitled, Wilderness of the Beast, which I still have a copy of. I find this more than mere coincidence, in fact, this whole thing is kind of spooky.
I knew when we took that dirt road back in miles to the Triangle Ranch that I had had one of the Rod Serling type of experiences. I felt it, like shivers up and down my spine.
It was as if my novel somehow got tangled in with my dream in some kind of dimensional shift. Weird, huh? There was something in this large land holding, and abandoned buildings and land gone fallow that spoke to me, an echo almost.
I am certain that the Triangle Ranch will be resurrected, not for profit, but for those suffering from that miserable war in the Middle East. Peace loving souls, of both Israel and Palestine will meet here in an effort for lasting peace, an experimental farm, if you wish. Will Peace ever exist in the Middle East, I doubt it, at least not in the foreseeable future. The hatred and animosity have poisoned the land. While Israel may believe that its war against Palestine is justified, all they have accomplished can be seen in eyes of hatred emanating from Palestinian children, who will be the next batch of terrorists, and so it will go on for decades.
There will never be a justifiable ending and the U.S. (gift?) of armament chokes out any chance for peace. What we should have done, months ago, was to demand that Israel commit to an immediate cease fire or the U.S. would not supply any more military equipment, but we didn’t, and so, the genocide continues. I believe Israel is not on the right side of God, but perhaps that’s my presumption.
What must be done? The U.S. must think outside the box. We must take off most of the visa requirements and immediately bring only peace-loving souls from either side of the equation to Triangle Ranch and demonstrate to the world that peace is possible, and that this is the only reasonable solution at this time. Crazy? I suppose so, but show me another solution quickly, before we end up mired in WWIII.
All refugees willing to sign a 3 year commitment will be considered for the Ranch. Housing, food, medical help will be supplied immediately.
The logistics required will be enormous, but put in God’s hands, solvable.
Peace,
Moab
I will try to be very careful with my words. You asked me the other day about the Triangle Ranch that you and I visited (discovered?) last summer. I have completed some initial investigation and I can now pass on what little I know. The original intention of this huge property was that it should be a prosperous ranch, in fact, the largest cattle ranch east of the Mississippi, although the owner and several investors intention was not necessarily noble, unless you consider unfettered capitalism noble in its own right, the results were not only dismal but altogether an utter failure, ending in bankruptcy.
In a dream I had the other night, it came to me that the Triangle Ranch was not what the original owners thought it might be, but was, in my dream a place of peace in the storms of life. The Triangle was the symbolic representation of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I wrote about this in an unpublished novel I have shown you entitled, Wilderness of the Beast, which I still have a copy of. I find this more than mere coincidence, in fact, this whole thing is kind of spooky.
I knew when we took that dirt road back in miles to the Triangle Ranch that I had had one of the Rod Serling type of experiences. I felt it, like shivers up and down my spine.
It was as if my novel somehow got tangled in with my dream in some kind of dimensional shift. Weird, huh? There was something in this large land holding, and abandoned buildings and land gone fallow that spoke to me, an echo almost.
I am certain that the Triangle Ranch will be resurrected, not for profit, but for those suffering from that miserable war in the Middle East. Peace loving souls, of both Israel and Palestine will meet here in an effort for lasting peace, an experimental farm, if you wish. Will Peace ever exist in the Middle East, I doubt it, at least not in the foreseeable future. The hatred and animosity have poisoned the land. While Israel may believe that its war against Palestine is justified, all they have accomplished can be seen in eyes of hatred emanating from Palestinian children, who will be the next batch of terrorists, and so it will go on for decades.
There will never be a justifiable ending and the U.S. (gift?) of armament chokes out any chance for peace. What we should have done, months ago, was to demand that Israel commit to an immediate cease fire or the U.S. would not supply any more military equipment, but we didn’t, and so, the genocide continues. I believe Israel is not on the right side of God, but perhaps that’s my presumption.
What must be done? The U.S. must think outside the box. We must take off most of the visa requirements and immediately bring only peace-loving souls from either side of the equation to Triangle Ranch and demonstrate to the world that peace is possible, and that this is the only reasonable solution at this time. Crazy? I suppose so, but show me another solution quickly, before we end up mired in WWIII.
All refugees willing to sign a 3 year commitment will be considered for the Ranch. Housing, food, medical help will be supplied immediately.
The logistics required will be enormous, but put in God’s hands, solvable.
Peace,
Moab
The Stargap Chronicles
Chapter One
The name of the long abandoned railroad depot was Stargap as was the former prosperous village of 900 souls, according to the 1920 census. The Great Depression, the tragic event that brought havoc to both the railroad and the village of Stargap, occurred in 1929.
Actually, the name Stargap was more of a sly insult toward the old gent who sold cheap cigars and day old newspapers to departing folks; always departing after 1929, and rarely farmers or businessmen viewing Stargap as a desired destination.
Adrian Stargap was a former friend and business partner of Mereck Novotny. Mr. Novotny, now that the tile business was defunct, treated his former partner with disdain bordering on contempt, blaming Adrian Stargap for the ultimate business failure, despite it being the throat gripping Great Depression that brought the tile business to its knees.
The two of them had once jointly owned the prosperous section of land central to a very large and lucrative clay pit which was used in the production of terracotta drainage pipe. These clay tile pipes, roughly 6 to 8” in diameter and 20 to 24” long, were crucial in draining the muck swamp so common here. The tens of thousands of acres of former swamp in the Saginaw Valley, became a vast and profitable farming area in the central region of Michigan’s lower peninsula. What had once been seen by earlier cartographers and explorers as a totally unthinkable, malaria ridden morass, almost overnight became an area of black dirt wealth.
The red tiles provided the necessary element to turn this swampland into fecund farmland for the hordes of Eastern Europeans, Czechs and Poles, among many who bought their wetlands, often from disreputable land agents. The railroad, sometimes in collusion with the land agents, and despite the outright deceit involved provided the transportation of the farmers’ commodities to the large markets of Detroit, Lansing and Chicago, of course, often at egregious costs to the recent immigrant. The boom, roughly 1880 to 1929, helped fuel expansion into the Midwest.
Though small farms had once been the life-blood of the Saginaw Valley, what was left were generally consolidated corporate farm, deserted of mold-board plows and sweaty draft horses, as all gave way to that concept that time call progress. Now all that was left of the depot was the poplar tree pushing through the decayed roof in its struggle for life. The village of Stargap was only a forgotten stop in the middle of Michigan where the highway had by-passed something that had once been, and would forever be, only memories.
The advent of corrugated plastic drain pipe in the 1960’s was not seen as a miracle by the large farms replacing broken and deteriorating tile pipes, though in a sense it was. Most farmers called it just progress. To me, it was a gift to a strong 13 year old boy needing summer employment and necessary school clothes for the upcoming junior year. Besides school clothes, there was an old army surplus jeep that a neighbor had parked behind his barn that I was sweet on.
The old terracotta drain pipe needed to be removed, mostly manually, but with assistance of an old but necessary John Deere backhoe. At this stage, most of the old pipes were causing cave-ins in the fields large enough to sink a snorting tractor, causing planting and harvesting delays. I worked for a local contractor for a couple of summers in the early 60s. I was technically too young for this hard and dangerous work but, you know how it goes. You see, when we dug the old tile out it made for a long unsupported ditch capable of collapsing on the boy at the bottom of the ditch, an unwelcome grave, so to speak. You can guess who got that job. All the tile had to come out as it would eventually just cause more problems in the farm field, so shovel in hand I grunted and groaned, hands blistered, all summer.
I was young, maybe 9 or 10, when my father, a pastor, arrived to Stargap with my younger brother in tow. My father accepted, whether he liked it or not, the three farm parishes, some miles apart, that the Methodist District Superintendent assigned him to. I didn’t find out until years later that it was penance, if you want to call it that, for moral turpitude, involving a young lady, underage I assume. Fortunately my mother had passed shortly before all this misfortune befell my father.
Jumping back, I suppose none of this explains how Stargap got its name. You see Adrian Stargap and Mereck Novotny were business partners in this valuable clay pit which was used to make the tiles. The enormous kilns necessary to fire the tiles were built with large sums of borrowed funds. Mereck, a Czech himself, was ambitious to the point of obsession, and frankly, Adrian was not. In fact, from what my father once told me, one of his old-time parishioners told him the Mereck had told him that Adrian was just plain lazy. Thing is, Adrian owned the land on which the tile factory was built and had no intention of selling any of it to Mereck, although they both jointly owned the factory. As I have aged I have come to understand that a business partner is much like a spouse. Draw your own conclusions.
In 1962, when we arrived, Mereck Novotny was long gone, and old man Stargap was barely hanging on. I remember him, grey and grizzled with a snuff-stained flannel shirt, rocking on his front porch, rocking, always rocking.
I have my own grey hairs now, so I’m relying on my memory for the most part. I really wish to write about the mostly well-intentioned folks here, and by the way, I still live in Stargap.
In its heyday, Stargap had it all: drunks and teetotalers, at least one community pedophile, self-righteous and God fearing good folk, loving families as well as back-stabbing families, bootleggers, farm folk of every type, etc. etc.
Of course, like any down-and-out rural town there were some lazy folk willing to take large blocks of orange cheese, government type commodities and such. I never minded those having it, that really needed it, but I did mind those who swapped it to a neighbor for shine, when their kids were hungry. All of this was rural America in the early 1960s and convinced me that nothing was black and white which was a revelation to a 12 year old boy growing up in the heartland of America.
Back to church. The Methodist Church in Stargap sat forlornly at the curve of the gravel road, a block or so from the parsonage. For those of you with different faiths, the parsonage was owned by the church and given to the pastor for his and his family’s use, rent free. Consequently, my father had no property taxes but also no land. I guess one could view this arrangement as rather feudal and kept the pastors always in a subservient status. Many would claim this arrangement was one of “God’s will”, but I always viewed it as predatory.
The church and the swampy piece of ground the structure was built on were given by Mereck Novotny, and according to my long gone father, it was given to the church not out of magnanimity but rather to assuage Mr. Novotny’s conscience and taxes.
The church itself was a pleasant brick affair but given the swampy nature of the farmland was unsuitable for agricultural use and the soggy footings caused it to sink and heave in the spring melt. Also, the church was given to creeping black mold, not especially inviting to those mainly pious souls who showed up for Sunday services.
I remember my father’s bitter response one particular Sunday after church, “Well Allen, I guess the Lord is speaking to me.”
“Why is that, Father?”
“I suppose you can’t see it, but there are stripes on my back and I damn well know I deserve them.”
This self-reflection I was too young to understand, but I would when I was older. I did not know until much later the monastic definition of stripes.
Father was assigned 2 other churches, miles apart, so Sundays he would preach first in Stargap and then drive to the next church, and finally the last. I have conveniently forgotten much about the other two churches as my brother and I were dismissed from usual attendance there except if it was one of those obligatory church suppers in the basement, usually a couple times a year, when I got to eat one of my favorites, green bean casserole with Campbell’s mushroom soup sprinkled liberally with crispy dried onions. Yum!
As I recall, in my twelfth year, I refused confirmation class and my father was deeply humiliated that his oldest son had embarrassed him, as he saw it, in front of the whole congregation.
Our family feud began; “You know Allen life is already very difficult for me, why are you making it more difficult?”
“I wouldn’t take it personal, Father.”
“Do you know how this looks?”
“I think this is between me and God, not you.”
“If that was the case I wouldn’t care so much. But, this is about church politics. Don’t ever think what you do as a preacher’s kid operates in a vacuum. Jesus,” he fumed.
“This is my personal right, besides if there is a God, he can wait until I’m ready. As for Jesus, don’t get me started.”
“God, you can be impudent!”
I suppose he thought I didn’t know what that word meant, as was often the case, he was wrong.
“Well Allen, if you refuse to go to confirmation class, I guess you shouldn’t go to any of the youth groups activities either.”
I sensed the lever. One of my favorite activities was the monthly rollerskating outing at a rink some 40 odd miles away where I sometimes held hands with Jeana in the dark back seat of our old Rambler station wagon that father drove to our rendezvous. I knew I was trapped but refused to submit to his pressure. “O.K. I guess I will stay home then. Screw it,” I shouted as I banged the screen door of the parsonage.
God, my father, and I were often in a combat mode, and would be for years.
Actually, the name Stargap was more of a sly insult toward the old gent who sold cheap cigars and day old newspapers to departing folks; always departing after 1929, and rarely farmers or businessmen viewing Stargap as a desired destination.
Adrian Stargap was a former friend and business partner of Mereck Novotny. Mr. Novotny, now that the tile business was defunct, treated his former partner with disdain bordering on contempt, blaming Adrian Stargap for the ultimate business failure, despite it being the throat gripping Great Depression that brought the tile business to its knees.
The two of them had once jointly owned the prosperous section of land central to a very large and lucrative clay pit which was used in the production of terracotta drainage pipe. These clay tile pipes, roughly 6 to 8” in diameter and 20 to 24” long, were crucial in draining the muck swamp so common here. The tens of thousands of acres of former swamp in the Saginaw Valley, became a vast and profitable farming area in the central region of Michigan’s lower peninsula. What had once been seen by earlier cartographers and explorers as a totally unthinkable, malaria ridden morass, almost overnight became an area of black dirt wealth.
The red tiles provided the necessary element to turn this swampland into fecund farmland for the hordes of Eastern Europeans, Czechs and Poles, among many who bought their wetlands, often from disreputable land agents. The railroad, sometimes in collusion with the land agents, and despite the outright deceit involved provided the transportation of the farmers’ commodities to the large markets of Detroit, Lansing and Chicago, of course, often at egregious costs to the recent immigrant. The boom, roughly 1880 to 1929, helped fuel expansion into the Midwest.
Though small farms had once been the life-blood of the Saginaw Valley, what was left were generally consolidated corporate farm, deserted of mold-board plows and sweaty draft horses, as all gave way to that concept that time call progress. Now all that was left of the depot was the poplar tree pushing through the decayed roof in its struggle for life. The village of Stargap was only a forgotten stop in the middle of Michigan where the highway had by-passed something that had once been, and would forever be, only memories.
The advent of corrugated plastic drain pipe in the 1960’s was not seen as a miracle by the large farms replacing broken and deteriorating tile pipes, though in a sense it was. Most farmers called it just progress. To me, it was a gift to a strong 13 year old boy needing summer employment and necessary school clothes for the upcoming junior year. Besides school clothes, there was an old army surplus jeep that a neighbor had parked behind his barn that I was sweet on.
The old terracotta drain pipe needed to be removed, mostly manually, but with assistance of an old but necessary John Deere backhoe. At this stage, most of the old pipes were causing cave-ins in the fields large enough to sink a snorting tractor, causing planting and harvesting delays. I worked for a local contractor for a couple of summers in the early 60s. I was technically too young for this hard and dangerous work but, you know how it goes. You see, when we dug the old tile out it made for a long unsupported ditch capable of collapsing on the boy at the bottom of the ditch, an unwelcome grave, so to speak. You can guess who got that job. All the tile had to come out as it would eventually just cause more problems in the farm field, so shovel in hand I grunted and groaned, hands blistered, all summer.
I was young, maybe 9 or 10, when my father, a pastor, arrived to Stargap with my younger brother in tow. My father accepted, whether he liked it or not, the three farm parishes, some miles apart, that the Methodist District Superintendent assigned him to. I didn’t find out until years later that it was penance, if you want to call it that, for moral turpitude, involving a young lady, underage I assume. Fortunately my mother had passed shortly before all this misfortune befell my father.
Jumping back, I suppose none of this explains how Stargap got its name. You see Adrian Stargap and Mereck Novotny were business partners in this valuable clay pit which was used to make the tiles. The enormous kilns necessary to fire the tiles were built with large sums of borrowed funds. Mereck, a Czech himself, was ambitious to the point of obsession, and frankly, Adrian was not. In fact, from what my father once told me, one of his old-time parishioners told him the Mereck had told him that Adrian was just plain lazy. Thing is, Adrian owned the land on which the tile factory was built and had no intention of selling any of it to Mereck, although they both jointly owned the factory. As I have aged I have come to understand that a business partner is much like a spouse. Draw your own conclusions.
In 1962, when we arrived, Mereck Novotny was long gone, and old man Stargap was barely hanging on. I remember him, grey and grizzled with a snuff-stained flannel shirt, rocking on his front porch, rocking, always rocking.
I have my own grey hairs now, so I’m relying on my memory for the most part. I really wish to write about the mostly well-intentioned folks here, and by the way, I still live in Stargap.
In its heyday, Stargap had it all: drunks and teetotalers, at least one community pedophile, self-righteous and God fearing good folk, loving families as well as back-stabbing families, bootleggers, farm folk of every type, etc. etc.
Of course, like any down-and-out rural town there were some lazy folk willing to take large blocks of orange cheese, government type commodities and such. I never minded those having it, that really needed it, but I did mind those who swapped it to a neighbor for shine, when their kids were hungry. All of this was rural America in the early 1960s and convinced me that nothing was black and white which was a revelation to a 12 year old boy growing up in the heartland of America.
Back to church. The Methodist Church in Stargap sat forlornly at the curve of the gravel road, a block or so from the parsonage. For those of you with different faiths, the parsonage was owned by the church and given to the pastor for his and his family’s use, rent free. Consequently, my father had no property taxes but also no land. I guess one could view this arrangement as rather feudal and kept the pastors always in a subservient status. Many would claim this arrangement was one of “God’s will”, but I always viewed it as predatory.
The church and the swampy piece of ground the structure was built on were given by Mereck Novotny, and according to my long gone father, it was given to the church not out of magnanimity but rather to assuage Mr. Novotny’s conscience and taxes.
The church itself was a pleasant brick affair but given the swampy nature of the farmland was unsuitable for agricultural use and the soggy footings caused it to sink and heave in the spring melt. Also, the church was given to creeping black mold, not especially inviting to those mainly pious souls who showed up for Sunday services.
I remember my father’s bitter response one particular Sunday after church, “Well Allen, I guess the Lord is speaking to me.”
“Why is that, Father?”
“I suppose you can’t see it, but there are stripes on my back and I damn well know I deserve them.”
This self-reflection I was too young to understand, but I would when I was older. I did not know until much later the monastic definition of stripes.
Father was assigned 2 other churches, miles apart, so Sundays he would preach first in Stargap and then drive to the next church, and finally the last. I have conveniently forgotten much about the other two churches as my brother and I were dismissed from usual attendance there except if it was one of those obligatory church suppers in the basement, usually a couple times a year, when I got to eat one of my favorites, green bean casserole with Campbell’s mushroom soup sprinkled liberally with crispy dried onions. Yum!
As I recall, in my twelfth year, I refused confirmation class and my father was deeply humiliated that his oldest son had embarrassed him, as he saw it, in front of the whole congregation.
Our family feud began; “You know Allen life is already very difficult for me, why are you making it more difficult?”
“I wouldn’t take it personal, Father.”
“Do you know how this looks?”
“I think this is between me and God, not you.”
“If that was the case I wouldn’t care so much. But, this is about church politics. Don’t ever think what you do as a preacher’s kid operates in a vacuum. Jesus,” he fumed.
“This is my personal right, besides if there is a God, he can wait until I’m ready. As for Jesus, don’t get me started.”
“God, you can be impudent!”
I suppose he thought I didn’t know what that word meant, as was often the case, he was wrong.
“Well Allen, if you refuse to go to confirmation class, I guess you shouldn’t go to any of the youth groups activities either.”
I sensed the lever. One of my favorite activities was the monthly rollerskating outing at a rink some 40 odd miles away where I sometimes held hands with Jeana in the dark back seat of our old Rambler station wagon that father drove to our rendezvous. I knew I was trapped but refused to submit to his pressure. “O.K. I guess I will stay home then. Screw it,” I shouted as I banged the screen door of the parsonage.
God, my father, and I were often in a combat mode, and would be for years.
Chapter Two
I attended a 3 room school in Stargap, this was prior to the consolidation with a larger school system. Many rural areas of the country have followed suit. I received an excellent education there as I was placed in the 6, 7, and 8 grade classroom. This classroom was almost a godsend as I was always able to hear the lessons prior to my actual placement. Thus, in the sixth grade I was hearing both the 7th grade and 8th grade material, in a sense I was getting an educational boost without suffering too much boredom. I was always ahead of game, and I suppose it is fair to say it was much like the current system advanced classroom setting in suburban school systems now.
An example. Mrs. Johnson was aware that I was generally farther ahead of most students and on one particular day as I rolled my pencil down the sloping old scarred desk, I didn’t realize until later, that I was disturbing the 7th grade class she had at the front table. I suppose this finally caused her to snap, “Allen, library!” She pointed her arm menacingly at the 8 or 10 shelves at the back of the classroom which were rarely used by any students, except maybe Jill Christian, the smartest kid in the school.
I slunk to the back of class and picked up a well-worn copy of The Hardy Boys, a boy’s classic I would later learn. Before the day was over I had devoured it and never looked back. Other days, she would just point to the “library” and I would almost bound to the shelves, after that first day no other verbal communication was necessary.
I find it rather sad that these gifted school marms and the rural school systems have virtually disappeared. What a loss. These teachers knew their students and their families well, mostly I suppose, because they knew what was going on in the backwoods areas. They knew which kid was coming to school hungry and she always had snacks in her purse that she gave out freely. She also knew, for better or worse, whose mother or father was sleeping at someone else’s place, if you know what I mean. Stuff like that matters. There were no school counselors, and bus drivers were often more like surrogate parents. Despite inadequate incomes and low wages, these schools functioned well. But America is all about perceived economies of scale — and so these rural schools faltered for awhile and then died.
I remember the snapshots in my head. Like, the week the Jimmy got the new Beatle Boots. He was in the seventh grade and the Beatles had just come to Ed Sullivan’s America, long hair and screeching female teenagers. Well, they wore these shiny, black, just-over-the-ankle boots and Jimmy must have convinced his mother that he should have a pair. The first day he wore them to school, Mrs. Johnson tried to ignore the purposeful way he strutted, clomp, clomp, clomp, down the worn and weathered wooden aisle, but the second day, she’d had enough of this noise, and reprimanded him in front of all the students. That was it. She demanded he remove the boots and he walked stocking-footed for the rest of the day.
It didn’t occur to me until I was a college students at MSU why this particular event upset her so, the boots were symbolic to her of a changing America she did not want to see. Lyndon Baines Johnson was president after the terrible assassination of JFK and America was deeply divided by the Vietnam War. My generation was taking to the streets in angry protests, and if there was one thing this lovely old school marm hated it was disorder. Like so many conservative folks, she thought the world was changing, and not necessarily for the better.
When Mrs. Johnson snapped that fateful day it was as if the country snapped too. In some ways, when I look back and I write my weekly editorial, I can plainly see how interconnected even the smallest thing can be to the whole. Jimmy’s mother showed up at the school threatening to get her fired. This parental rant, which all the students witnessed, was the last straw for Mrs. Johnson. Exhaustion and grief overwhelmed her and she left the classroom in tears. She submitted her resignation the very next day. I never saw her again but heard through the grapevine that her husband sold the family farm and they bought a brightly colored bungalow in central Florida, complete with an obligatory pink flamingo in the small yard.
As the august editor of a small town newspaper, just barely hanging on, I have seen much over the years, some good and some not so good. I guess part of my job here is to sort out the gossip from the news. So be it.
An example. Mrs. Johnson was aware that I was generally farther ahead of most students and on one particular day as I rolled my pencil down the sloping old scarred desk, I didn’t realize until later, that I was disturbing the 7th grade class she had at the front table. I suppose this finally caused her to snap, “Allen, library!” She pointed her arm menacingly at the 8 or 10 shelves at the back of the classroom which were rarely used by any students, except maybe Jill Christian, the smartest kid in the school.
I slunk to the back of class and picked up a well-worn copy of The Hardy Boys, a boy’s classic I would later learn. Before the day was over I had devoured it and never looked back. Other days, she would just point to the “library” and I would almost bound to the shelves, after that first day no other verbal communication was necessary.
I find it rather sad that these gifted school marms and the rural school systems have virtually disappeared. What a loss. These teachers knew their students and their families well, mostly I suppose, because they knew what was going on in the backwoods areas. They knew which kid was coming to school hungry and she always had snacks in her purse that she gave out freely. She also knew, for better or worse, whose mother or father was sleeping at someone else’s place, if you know what I mean. Stuff like that matters. There were no school counselors, and bus drivers were often more like surrogate parents. Despite inadequate incomes and low wages, these schools functioned well. But America is all about perceived economies of scale — and so these rural schools faltered for awhile and then died.
I remember the snapshots in my head. Like, the week the Jimmy got the new Beatle Boots. He was in the seventh grade and the Beatles had just come to Ed Sullivan’s America, long hair and screeching female teenagers. Well, they wore these shiny, black, just-over-the-ankle boots and Jimmy must have convinced his mother that he should have a pair. The first day he wore them to school, Mrs. Johnson tried to ignore the purposeful way he strutted, clomp, clomp, clomp, down the worn and weathered wooden aisle, but the second day, she’d had enough of this noise, and reprimanded him in front of all the students. That was it. She demanded he remove the boots and he walked stocking-footed for the rest of the day.
It didn’t occur to me until I was a college students at MSU why this particular event upset her so, the boots were symbolic to her of a changing America she did not want to see. Lyndon Baines Johnson was president after the terrible assassination of JFK and America was deeply divided by the Vietnam War. My generation was taking to the streets in angry protests, and if there was one thing this lovely old school marm hated it was disorder. Like so many conservative folks, she thought the world was changing, and not necessarily for the better.
When Mrs. Johnson snapped that fateful day it was as if the country snapped too. In some ways, when I look back and I write my weekly editorial, I can plainly see how interconnected even the smallest thing can be to the whole. Jimmy’s mother showed up at the school threatening to get her fired. This parental rant, which all the students witnessed, was the last straw for Mrs. Johnson. Exhaustion and grief overwhelmed her and she left the classroom in tears. She submitted her resignation the very next day. I never saw her again but heard through the grapevine that her husband sold the family farm and they bought a brightly colored bungalow in central Florida, complete with an obligatory pink flamingo in the small yard.
As the august editor of a small town newspaper, just barely hanging on, I have seen much over the years, some good and some not so good. I guess part of my job here is to sort out the gossip from the news. So be it.
Hitchhiking on God's Highway
Chapter One
1971; Route 66, somewhere between Los Angeles and Tuba Arizona.
Hitchhiking with my 17 year old younger brother back to Michigan, after a failed attempt at being one of the “flower children”. Like many of my kindred brothers and sisters we were on a dismal quest to find the answers we so desperately wanted. My brother, Bill and I, like so many others, had taken to the road by the hundreds, perhaps even thousands in our quixotic need to understand ourselves.
It is important to note that this quest which was fueled mainly by college educated youth was tied to a nascent philosophical and economic tide that had its origin in the New England of the 1830s to the 1860s - the emerging Transcendentalist movement, Thoreau and Emerson included.
This flood tide advanced slowly over the course of the 20th century and despite two world wars and many conflicts blossomed in places like Harlem, California, and to some extent the country of France, where the disaffected fled to in increasing numbers.
By the 1950s, a fringe society painfully coexisted with the economic and social status quo in the states. This status quo could not withstand the building pressure and societal eruption seemed inevitable. Jack Keroac and Allen Ginsburg, among many others, stretched the rubber band until it snapped. And the Flower Children, a predictable product of the times erupted.
I don’t want to suggest that there weren’t also significant women, i.e. feminists, propelling the movement. The metaphorical wind that swept into the Cleaver household, where spotless kitchen counters and proverbial 2-room bungalows, blew out windows. The mythical June Cleaver might have found LSD and free sex were not only available, but to some, desirable as well. All the while, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell picked out tunes of protest and indignation. Please note, that many men and women chose the traditional route and did not follow the path so many of us were on. This is not a condemnation of those who chose the static state, it could be argued that they were perhaps wiser, or perhaps more comfortable with the status quo. While significant social change is traumatic to many, it is ignored by others, either by choice, or by a myopic need to wear sunglasses even when society is being blasted by harsh bright light.
One aspect of this revelation became apparent over time and that was, to many, the formal rejection of the Christian religion by a growing number of my generation. To more traditional Christians, this was akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but more of that later.
Many youth adopted religious alternatives, such as Buddhism, or in some cases what is considered the occult. Others glommed onto psychological prophets like L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology, or Werner Erhard (the developer of Erhard’s Seminar Training). Frankly, some of us were just confused, myself included. I slipped into the confusion and downward spiral of agnosticism to atheism. At the time, my belief was that the expansion of human consciousness could be aided by the use of psychedelic drugs and to this I became a ready convert. This conversion assisted me in adopting “new prophets” like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and other self-destructive souls. In the end, most of us were just plain disillusioned.
Now, where does this preamble end and the soul of this discourse arrive? Clearly, I have a message that extends beyond a flawed, drug induced history. Yes, I will get there. In California after a disastrous series of events, which some I may reveal in later episodes my brother and I, along with at least a hundred hitchhikers were stranded in a southwestern city, with little funds left for our trip back to the perceived safety of Michigan. It was at that point that an older woman, dressed poorly, because of her lack of wealth, I now suspect, began preaching to my brother as we sat along the cement curb in the blazing sun.
My brother, aged 17, seemed intent on hearing her preach the gospel, while I, aged 19, sat with disdain, perhaps aloof in my sense of her ignorance, and my own arrogance that she was intellectually not my equal. It would be interesting, and not authentic, if I declared at this juncture that my brother was “saved” and found his god at that moment but he did not find his faith. What does remain of this encounter, now in 2024, and 53 years later, is I recall this incident as if it were yesterday. When one remembers how many thoughts are resigned to dismissal or just fade away, it becomes remarkable, maybe even miraculous, that such a poignant memory remains.
While VW buses painted with gaudy psychedelic colors headed west, some youth fled to remote areas of the country and raised chickens beside mostly ill-built cabins. These folks whom I would join later were simply referred to as back-to-landers.
My brother and I hitchhiked up Highway 101, which now seems to be slipping into the ocean, to a northern Californian commune where we stayed until the sesame butter, the only thing in the refrigerator, ran out. With no money and no future except selling high-priced fire alarms door-to-door, we headed back to L.A. and then returned east on Highway 66 to Michigan.
My quest, not necessarily my brother’s quest, was an incremental search for meaning. Many of us pursued a new paradigm. I was not alone, by any means. Droves of us fled to Hari Krisna, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Timothy Leary’s psychedelic trips. Looking back now, it was both legendary and perhaps, somewhat misguided. Woodstock remains a high note and the beginning of much turmoil, though I was never there. I’m laughing, partly because I have met many of my peers over the years, who have claimed that the were at Woodstock but my best guess is that the closest they ever got to Woodstock was a filthy gas station restroom somewhere near Buffalo.
There was so much more that this trip influenced. The trip preceded later events equally charged with doubts and troubles. Now I see clearly in retrospection that everything happens for a reason, and in time, if we have the power of discernment, lead us to our path. In all of this I found God, who I must admit eventually found me.
In my next column I hope to give the reader clarity about the life and times of a hitch hiker, riding the roads of his life. I will introduce you to an overreaching cop on the infamous Route 66 and a loaf of white bread. You might call this a bread sacrament of sorts, though this bread was not unleavened and probably cost less than a buck at a convenience store, but like I said, more of this later.
Hitchhiking with my 17 year old younger brother back to Michigan, after a failed attempt at being one of the “flower children”. Like many of my kindred brothers and sisters we were on a dismal quest to find the answers we so desperately wanted. My brother, Bill and I, like so many others, had taken to the road by the hundreds, perhaps even thousands in our quixotic need to understand ourselves.
It is important to note that this quest which was fueled mainly by college educated youth was tied to a nascent philosophical and economic tide that had its origin in the New England of the 1830s to the 1860s - the emerging Transcendentalist movement, Thoreau and Emerson included.
This flood tide advanced slowly over the course of the 20th century and despite two world wars and many conflicts blossomed in places like Harlem, California, and to some extent the country of France, where the disaffected fled to in increasing numbers.
By the 1950s, a fringe society painfully coexisted with the economic and social status quo in the states. This status quo could not withstand the building pressure and societal eruption seemed inevitable. Jack Keroac and Allen Ginsburg, among many others, stretched the rubber band until it snapped. And the Flower Children, a predictable product of the times erupted.
I don’t want to suggest that there weren’t also significant women, i.e. feminists, propelling the movement. The metaphorical wind that swept into the Cleaver household, where spotless kitchen counters and proverbial 2-room bungalows, blew out windows. The mythical June Cleaver might have found LSD and free sex were not only available, but to some, desirable as well. All the while, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell picked out tunes of protest and indignation. Please note, that many men and women chose the traditional route and did not follow the path so many of us were on. This is not a condemnation of those who chose the static state, it could be argued that they were perhaps wiser, or perhaps more comfortable with the status quo. While significant social change is traumatic to many, it is ignored by others, either by choice, or by a myopic need to wear sunglasses even when society is being blasted by harsh bright light.
One aspect of this revelation became apparent over time and that was, to many, the formal rejection of the Christian religion by a growing number of my generation. To more traditional Christians, this was akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but more of that later.
Many youth adopted religious alternatives, such as Buddhism, or in some cases what is considered the occult. Others glommed onto psychological prophets like L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology, or Werner Erhard (the developer of Erhard’s Seminar Training). Frankly, some of us were just confused, myself included. I slipped into the confusion and downward spiral of agnosticism to atheism. At the time, my belief was that the expansion of human consciousness could be aided by the use of psychedelic drugs and to this I became a ready convert. This conversion assisted me in adopting “new prophets” like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and other self-destructive souls. In the end, most of us were just plain disillusioned.
Now, where does this preamble end and the soul of this discourse arrive? Clearly, I have a message that extends beyond a flawed, drug induced history. Yes, I will get there. In California after a disastrous series of events, which some I may reveal in later episodes my brother and I, along with at least a hundred hitchhikers were stranded in a southwestern city, with little funds left for our trip back to the perceived safety of Michigan. It was at that point that an older woman, dressed poorly, because of her lack of wealth, I now suspect, began preaching to my brother as we sat along the cement curb in the blazing sun.
My brother, aged 17, seemed intent on hearing her preach the gospel, while I, aged 19, sat with disdain, perhaps aloof in my sense of her ignorance, and my own arrogance that she was intellectually not my equal. It would be interesting, and not authentic, if I declared at this juncture that my brother was “saved” and found his god at that moment but he did not find his faith. What does remain of this encounter, now in 2024, and 53 years later, is I recall this incident as if it were yesterday. When one remembers how many thoughts are resigned to dismissal or just fade away, it becomes remarkable, maybe even miraculous, that such a poignant memory remains.
While VW buses painted with gaudy psychedelic colors headed west, some youth fled to remote areas of the country and raised chickens beside mostly ill-built cabins. These folks whom I would join later were simply referred to as back-to-landers.
My brother and I hitchhiked up Highway 101, which now seems to be slipping into the ocean, to a northern Californian commune where we stayed until the sesame butter, the only thing in the refrigerator, ran out. With no money and no future except selling high-priced fire alarms door-to-door, we headed back to L.A. and then returned east on Highway 66 to Michigan.
My quest, not necessarily my brother’s quest, was an incremental search for meaning. Many of us pursued a new paradigm. I was not alone, by any means. Droves of us fled to Hari Krisna, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Timothy Leary’s psychedelic trips. Looking back now, it was both legendary and perhaps, somewhat misguided. Woodstock remains a high note and the beginning of much turmoil, though I was never there. I’m laughing, partly because I have met many of my peers over the years, who have claimed that the were at Woodstock but my best guess is that the closest they ever got to Woodstock was a filthy gas station restroom somewhere near Buffalo.
There was so much more that this trip influenced. The trip preceded later events equally charged with doubts and troubles. Now I see clearly in retrospection that everything happens for a reason, and in time, if we have the power of discernment, lead us to our path. In all of this I found God, who I must admit eventually found me.
In my next column I hope to give the reader clarity about the life and times of a hitch hiker, riding the roads of his life. I will introduce you to an overreaching cop on the infamous Route 66 and a loaf of white bread. You might call this a bread sacrament of sorts, though this bread was not unleavened and probably cost less than a buck at a convenience store, but like I said, more of this later.
Chapter Two
Looking back at my hitchhiking in 1971 or so, I recall my memories without the pleasant scent of reminiscing. Let me explain.
With memories which flow in the mind like a canoe in a swift river there is no adequate control, the memories, both good and bad resist our efforts to direct our (my) course. Try to control the memory in your head at this very moment and most likely you will find it is nearly impossible. Perhaps if one has the mind of a guru or a meditating monk, one may be successful at this endeavor. However, I generally fail at my meager attempts.
With the act of reminiscing, there is a pleasant sense that obscures the hardships of earlier time, or an earlier experience. So is reminiscing a memory or is it an emotion which provokes a memory. I think the latter. In this case a positive emotion. OK, what difference does it make?
Well, like a moth in a cocoon, perhaps our physical body entraps all memories, though we may not be aware of this process. Thus, a particular emotion, at a specific point of time forces the body to create a memory.
I envision this in an almost linear fashion: Thus an emotion provokes a memory. E = M. And certainly not the other way around.
Our actual body then becomes the chrysalis of all memories, an unseen arbitrator of all emotions. Without the underlying emotional context there are no memories. This is not a simple, did the chicken or the egg come first as I will try to demonstrate in the following paragraphs.
I am suggesting that we, as humans, often turn this all around believing that our emotions are a process of thought rather than emotions wrapped tightly like a silkworm within our body, read, soul. The human mind is capable of making unusual and mistaken gyrations as it justifies to make sense of the stimuli that enters our system as emotional content. It seem clear to me now that many of the memories I have of these earlier events when I was hitchhiking, though stored in my brain as memories, are really disguised emotions that hid out as memories and that truly “feeling” these emotions was a slick protective device of my brain. I am reminded of that simplistic but truthful comment that, “no pain, no gain.” It is only through hitchhiking through my brain and discovering the emotional journey, not the mental one, that I can achieve any sense of what happened as memories are mostly fallible while emotions are rarely infallible. We truly remember through our emotions and not our memories, therefore to remember we must walk through our emotions, both the positive ones as well as the negative ones, to have any sense of clarity.
So what, I hear some say and perhaps rightly so.
Well, let me try and bring forth what I mean in a way that is not so esoteric.
I feel the cold rain running down the back of my shirt and I shivered as my brother and I stood on the major freeway in Kansas City. We knew we were not supposed to hitchhike on the freeway itself, but only on the entrance to the freeway. We were desperate for a ride, cold and very hungry we made a decision to violate the “code” known by all knowledgable hitchhikers that if you didn’t want troubles from the cops don’t venture onto the freeway. I suppose this unwritten (or perhaps it was a legal fact) was supposed to stop us hitchhikers from fouling up the snarl of city traffic and perhaps causing an accident. While this was appropriate and we, Bill and I, knew better we had been stuck on an inner-city entrance ramp for hours in the midst of a frigid rain with little hope that anyone would stop and pick up a pair of wet hitchhikers on a very dark and stormy night, in other words, “we were fucked.”
At the height of the storm a police car, I don’t recall whether it was a sheriff or state police car, and it doesn’t really matter now, slowed down and I had a sinking feeling (remember what I said about emotional recall) and from his intercom a sonorous voice floated out, like a protective angel and the voice said calmly, “God bless you boys,” with that he accelerated and disappeared into the rainy night. I didn’t know at the time, whether to whisper a “thank-you” for not arresting me, or cursing the cop for leaving us in our wet miserable condition. Now I suppose this is where a nicely tied-up ending to this story would conclude but the visceral ending was just starting.
Shortly, and I mean very shortly, after the police cruiser left us shivering in the rain, a car pulled over and thrilled, we piled in, wet, cold, and hungry. It only took me moments to check out the situation. The two self-described brothers, were either high or drunk, and maybe both. It’s fair to say that they were unsavory. I had a feeling of great unease, bordering on fear. The two quizzed me about where we were from, etc, which is standard hitchhiking dialogue between the hitchhiker and the vehicle occupants. I was asked about our trip from California and where we were headed, which was Northern Michigan. After some strained banter, the brother sitting in the passenger seat asked me if we had had any problems along the way. Without giving this question the seriousness it deserved before answering, my gut screamed, “tell them about your knife.”
Nervously, I told them that we had been shaken down by a plain clothes cop in a dirty western town in New Mexico. There were many hitchhikers coursing through his city, and I suppose he saw himself as a crusader of purity, or some damn thing, cleaning up his city from the long-haired commies, like fleas on a dog invading his self-perceived Camelot. He stopped the car we were in and forced the young woman, our ride, to dump us unceremoniously in a bank parking lot where he rifled through our packs looking for whatever, maybe sub machine guns or a small fighter jet. What he didn’t find was my bowie knife, stashed down deeply in my grimy sleeping bag. He forced us to walk to the end of the city in the wretched heat and that if we stuck out our thumb to hitchhike we would immediately be thrown in jail. Nice guy, eh?
Do you feel what I was going through? Or, does all of this just register in your mind as someone else’s memory of events, just wondering.
Back to Kansas City. It stumbled out of my mouth, “I’ve got a knife here in my sleeping bag, just in case.”
The brother said snarling, “Well, I got a loaded pistol in the glove compartment.” There was a menacing tone to his voice as the other brother, the driver, slammed on the brakes and ordered us to get out.
The rain had stopped and we did exactly as we were told. The two sped away and a shiver of relief shuddered throughout my body.
Yes, I remember this memory but I especially feel my body tense as I recall this situation. Was my body telling me something at the time, my mind could not fathom? Was my emotional state giving me a premonition of some sort that I reacted to, something that was subliminal?
It is easy to just brush this whole thing off as a pure coincidence, after all the cop’s blessing, the sonorous voice that echoed in the bone-chilling rain, occurred just prior to our doubtful ride with the mysterious brothers.
Could that voice in the pitch black rainy night been the voice of an angel, a gift from God? I really can’t say for certain but I choose to believe it was.;
Peace,
Hilton
With memories which flow in the mind like a canoe in a swift river there is no adequate control, the memories, both good and bad resist our efforts to direct our (my) course. Try to control the memory in your head at this very moment and most likely you will find it is nearly impossible. Perhaps if one has the mind of a guru or a meditating monk, one may be successful at this endeavor. However, I generally fail at my meager attempts.
With the act of reminiscing, there is a pleasant sense that obscures the hardships of earlier time, or an earlier experience. So is reminiscing a memory or is it an emotion which provokes a memory. I think the latter. In this case a positive emotion. OK, what difference does it make?
Well, like a moth in a cocoon, perhaps our physical body entraps all memories, though we may not be aware of this process. Thus, a particular emotion, at a specific point of time forces the body to create a memory.
I envision this in an almost linear fashion: Thus an emotion provokes a memory. E = M. And certainly not the other way around.
Our actual body then becomes the chrysalis of all memories, an unseen arbitrator of all emotions. Without the underlying emotional context there are no memories. This is not a simple, did the chicken or the egg come first as I will try to demonstrate in the following paragraphs.
I am suggesting that we, as humans, often turn this all around believing that our emotions are a process of thought rather than emotions wrapped tightly like a silkworm within our body, read, soul. The human mind is capable of making unusual and mistaken gyrations as it justifies to make sense of the stimuli that enters our system as emotional content. It seem clear to me now that many of the memories I have of these earlier events when I was hitchhiking, though stored in my brain as memories, are really disguised emotions that hid out as memories and that truly “feeling” these emotions was a slick protective device of my brain. I am reminded of that simplistic but truthful comment that, “no pain, no gain.” It is only through hitchhiking through my brain and discovering the emotional journey, not the mental one, that I can achieve any sense of what happened as memories are mostly fallible while emotions are rarely infallible. We truly remember through our emotions and not our memories, therefore to remember we must walk through our emotions, both the positive ones as well as the negative ones, to have any sense of clarity.
So what, I hear some say and perhaps rightly so.
Well, let me try and bring forth what I mean in a way that is not so esoteric.
I feel the cold rain running down the back of my shirt and I shivered as my brother and I stood on the major freeway in Kansas City. We knew we were not supposed to hitchhike on the freeway itself, but only on the entrance to the freeway. We were desperate for a ride, cold and very hungry we made a decision to violate the “code” known by all knowledgable hitchhikers that if you didn’t want troubles from the cops don’t venture onto the freeway. I suppose this unwritten (or perhaps it was a legal fact) was supposed to stop us hitchhikers from fouling up the snarl of city traffic and perhaps causing an accident. While this was appropriate and we, Bill and I, knew better we had been stuck on an inner-city entrance ramp for hours in the midst of a frigid rain with little hope that anyone would stop and pick up a pair of wet hitchhikers on a very dark and stormy night, in other words, “we were fucked.”
At the height of the storm a police car, I don’t recall whether it was a sheriff or state police car, and it doesn’t really matter now, slowed down and I had a sinking feeling (remember what I said about emotional recall) and from his intercom a sonorous voice floated out, like a protective angel and the voice said calmly, “God bless you boys,” with that he accelerated and disappeared into the rainy night. I didn’t know at the time, whether to whisper a “thank-you” for not arresting me, or cursing the cop for leaving us in our wet miserable condition. Now I suppose this is where a nicely tied-up ending to this story would conclude but the visceral ending was just starting.
Shortly, and I mean very shortly, after the police cruiser left us shivering in the rain, a car pulled over and thrilled, we piled in, wet, cold, and hungry. It only took me moments to check out the situation. The two self-described brothers, were either high or drunk, and maybe both. It’s fair to say that they were unsavory. I had a feeling of great unease, bordering on fear. The two quizzed me about where we were from, etc, which is standard hitchhiking dialogue between the hitchhiker and the vehicle occupants. I was asked about our trip from California and where we were headed, which was Northern Michigan. After some strained banter, the brother sitting in the passenger seat asked me if we had had any problems along the way. Without giving this question the seriousness it deserved before answering, my gut screamed, “tell them about your knife.”
Nervously, I told them that we had been shaken down by a plain clothes cop in a dirty western town in New Mexico. There were many hitchhikers coursing through his city, and I suppose he saw himself as a crusader of purity, or some damn thing, cleaning up his city from the long-haired commies, like fleas on a dog invading his self-perceived Camelot. He stopped the car we were in and forced the young woman, our ride, to dump us unceremoniously in a bank parking lot where he rifled through our packs looking for whatever, maybe sub machine guns or a small fighter jet. What he didn’t find was my bowie knife, stashed down deeply in my grimy sleeping bag. He forced us to walk to the end of the city in the wretched heat and that if we stuck out our thumb to hitchhike we would immediately be thrown in jail. Nice guy, eh?
Do you feel what I was going through? Or, does all of this just register in your mind as someone else’s memory of events, just wondering.
Back to Kansas City. It stumbled out of my mouth, “I’ve got a knife here in my sleeping bag, just in case.”
The brother said snarling, “Well, I got a loaded pistol in the glove compartment.” There was a menacing tone to his voice as the other brother, the driver, slammed on the brakes and ordered us to get out.
The rain had stopped and we did exactly as we were told. The two sped away and a shiver of relief shuddered throughout my body.
Yes, I remember this memory but I especially feel my body tense as I recall this situation. Was my body telling me something at the time, my mind could not fathom? Was my emotional state giving me a premonition of some sort that I reacted to, something that was subliminal?
It is easy to just brush this whole thing off as a pure coincidence, after all the cop’s blessing, the sonorous voice that echoed in the bone-chilling rain, occurred just prior to our doubtful ride with the mysterious brothers.
Could that voice in the pitch black rainy night been the voice of an angel, a gift from God? I really can’t say for certain but I choose to believe it was.;
Peace,
Hilton