Bob Bell - Hitching Across USA Circa 1980 - Part 6
Cookie & the Cupcakes - heard in a big truck trundling thro the desert
Twenty miles and we were across the state-line, and on the outskirts Las Cruces, New Mexico, where 10 shot westward, and we parted ways. My driver, a florid and cheerful Texan from Houston, took 25 north to Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was on his way to visit relatives in Albuquerque. I was sorry to see him go - he had been fun to talk with and seemed to know so much about the history of the south west, its geography and culture.
The distance to Phoenix was only around 400 miles, so it seemed that with a bit of luck, I would make it before sundown. Heck, sundown. I didn’t even think of sunset anymore… I was a westerner now. The sun don’t set in these parts, it gets down, like some prop in a vast James Brown stage production, spreading its orange and crimson cape over the distant mountains while the rushing traffic on the highway sets polyrhythms for us hitch hikers to dance to.
But that sundown was a ways off. It was still morning, I was still to the south of Las Cruces, and the traffic was sparse. Hitching is a lonely business. A lot of waiting, a lot of time to reflect, a lot of immediate surroundings to gaze at, examine at great length and generally reconnoitre ones position. Take, for instance, this particular on-ramp. Now the best place is close to the beginning of it, where it peels off from the feeder road and heads towards the interstate. Traffic is at is slowest right there, and there is plenty of room for a car or a truck to pull over to let a poor soul board. On the other hand, there is no shade, and the sun doth blaze. Just a ways up the ramp there are two large oaks, with lots of shade. But at that point trucks would be winding up second gear, getting ready to make third and power up the incline to the highway, and once those gears are whirring, frothing up the gear oil with urgent whines, that old truck is far less likely to stop. Now of course, if one is unlucky enough to be sharing that ramp with another traveller, it is only good manners to spread out and let the first comer have the primo spot.
But I was here alone, and so stood in the glare of the mid morning sun, knowing that the temperature was going to keep rising as the day wore on. Although it was the edge of town, there was little in the way of industry, a smattering of new buildings emerged from the desert. Dry and dusty. Litter blew up against the ubiquitous wire fences. I kicked a beer can back and forth, waiting for a ride. A few pick ups passed by, all seemingly driven by a series of folks from central casting, white with cowboy hats and rifles setting in racks at the back of the cabs. They studiously ignored my theatrical knee dropping mugging with solemn straight ahead gazes.
After reading all the Burger King wrappings, and the Kentucky Fried Chicken bags, and counting beer bottle tops, I was beginning to think I was going to be here forever. I moved up to the shade of the oaks. A series of long buses rumbled by, the sides emblazoned with the names of some local school sports team, eager teenagers looking out the windows, off to a flag waving crowd cheering big clincher of a game that would go down in local history. And still I had no ride.
Finally, deliverance! A ragged old station wagon pulled over, filled with Latinos. Mum and dad in the front, three kids in the back, and I was gestured to the way back, where I was able to lay cross wise, crunched up with my green bag and a couple of lumpy earthen smelling hessian sacks. They plied me with water, and asked me about England, and then translated parts of my answers to one another in Spanish, all accompanied with peals of laughter, the children quickly overcoming their initial shyness, playing peek a boo over the back seat. It all made me very lonesome for my own children back in the UK, and once again made me question the purpose of this insane journey I was on.
The radio was tuned to a Spanish speaking station, and mum squealed with delight at the sound of a beautiful tenor voice.
“Ah, Freddie! Freddie! Freddie!’. ‘Wow, who is this Freddie?” I asked, and dad laughed and said: “Freddie Brown - my wife is in love with him. He comes from her hometown, and she dreams he will come and take her away to… Where? California? Hollywood? Away from the desert anyway…” and leaned over and ruffled her hair, eyes all a twinkling, and she laughing with her husband at the fantasy of it all.
And so Freddie and others serenaded us along this long and straight and endless interstate, perfect New Mexican music on a perfect New Mexican afternoon.
We were in real high desert country now, big mountain ranges in the distance, vast wide sweeps of dry land either side of the road, with huge funnel shaped levees stretching miles from the lower slopes of one range of hills to the next, shielding the road below, with dry washes tunnelled under the highway.
The harmonica guy in El Paso had made a big point of warning me not to sleep in any of these washes, telling me that distant but violent rain storms in far off mountains often create flash floods that are big, sudden and very dangerous. It was hard to really comprehend this, looking out over those parched vistas. Every now and then, upon passing over a dry wash, one could see the sandy banks, washed smooth by a long gone rush of water. From my cramped position in the back of the car I marvelled at the immense labours involved in shaping those levees, and tried to imagine the mad rush of a flood upon the land. It all seemed such a fairy tale given the current high temperatures, but really, those great mountains were not in fact that far away, and despite the cloudless skies above us, over those mountains weather systems marshalled themselves like outriders of an invading army, biding their time, biding their time, biding their time.
About an hour and fifty miles later my New Mexican friends let me off at a big truck stop, as they turned off to go south to wherever it was in that dusty land they called home, and I hit the diner for coffee and a bite to eat. The counters and tables were mobbed with a mixture of truckers, in overalls and t-shirts, plaid shirts and jeans, traveling salesmen in slacks and open necked shirts, jackets draped across the backs of their chairs, excited kids hanging onto tired parents, their eyes weary with the travelling and the parenting, the constant cost of gas, the food and keeping the kids smiling, for what else can they do, but keep on juggler like, maintaining the spinning plates of all their existences, letting nothing fall and pretending it can all go on forever.
Outside rows of semis idled, big diesels keeping the a/c running to keep those big old cabs cool. Kenworths, Whites, Freightliners, Peterbilts, Internationals, Volvos, some with fancy paint jobs, most all of them glistening with chrome, the names of their operators writ large upon their sides. Owner operators sat beside members of big fleets such as J. B. Hunt, England, Rodeway Express, all pulling 48 foot trailers. If American roads are the veins of the country, these trucks make up the lifeblood, delivering all that makes America whir and hum, eat and digest, laugh and cry and sometimes just weep and moan.
Walking across the tarmac back towards the highway, past the dozens of idling trucks, past the rows of tandem diesel pumps - these trucks have tanks on either side, and fuel up both simultaneously from pumps either side of the vehicle - and out of the shade of the canopies spread across the fuel areas, and out into the relentless heat of the New Mexican afternoon and to the foot of yet another ramp, I dropped my bag to my feet, and readied my sign.
A semi entered the ramp, the driver's eyes met mine and he motioned his arm as he passed, indicating for for me to run up the road a way. I grabbed my bag and ran towards the semi that with a hiss of airbrakes, had pulled over. Woowee I thought as I climbed up into the cab, I’m getting the panoramic ride this time, several feet up from the road, and settled into the air cushioned passenger seat, into the air conditioned coolness, and the sheer sheer luxury of the ride.
The driver, a grinning side-burned baseball hatted denim overalled gum chewing man in his forties, saw my astonishment and wonderment at my surroundings and said, “Yeah, sure beats bein’ out dere in dat damned heat huh?” and slapped his thigh, emphatically agreeing with himself.
And of course, he was right, oh so right. This was paradise, pure and simple. Sitting up there, in my comfortable seat, looking down at cars and trucks zipping along the highway, I was on top of the world. We settled into an easy camaraderie, he had a country station on that was mixing up Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn with Lefty Frizell and Hank Williams, and together we’d break into roars of appreciation at tunes picked, notes hit, and emotions wrought.
Left Frizzell
Turned out he played bass in a country band back in Oklahoma City, where he was from, and so we talked back and forth about Ernest Tubb, Hank, Floyd Tillman and then onto swamp pop. He dug the likes of Cookie and the Cupcakes, Joe Barry and all those soulful Louisiana cats that had blues, R & B, country and soul all mixed up in a delicious southern sauce.
The miles flew by, Cochise, Benson, Mescal flew by, the Coronado National Forest flew by and then Tuscon loomed and that was it. Time for another goodbye, and back into the heat, that unrelenting desert air. He disappeared down a wide industrial road, and I pulled my sign from my bag once again.
And waited. Patience is the lot of the hitch hiker. Patience and more patience. You can be standing around in one spot for hours. Sometimes you just figure that that particular spot is cursed, and if you are able, as on smaller roads, you just hike on to a better spot. Got to be a place where cars can safely pull over, where you can be seen, and out here in these lands, hopefully where there is shade. But when you are travelling the interstates, where foot traffic is forbidden, you are stuck with the ramp you are on. Next one might be twenty, thirty miles down the road. So you summon your patience mojo, your buddha being and wait.
Got a short ride, and then another wait. But I needed more than patience this time. I needed a ride, and quick. Off to the south a huge black cloud filled the horizon, and looked to be coming my way. The wind started to rise, and the temperature dropped. Sure was a weird looking cloud, it just didn’t look like rain, and it was getting closer.
A car pulled up, and the guy shouted, with urgency, “Get in! Quick!” Which I did, and he cut out, tires squealing down the road. “That’s a sand storm coming… no way you wanna be out in that shit…”
And we were off, outta there. I shuddered to think what might have happened had he not come along, and thanked my saviour. “Aw shit man, that’s no problem, no way a man should left out in that…” and the storm was left behind us.
It was dark by the time we got to Phoenix and he dropped me off downtown. It was all city blocks, very corporate, and nowhere looked like a place where a vagabond might safely sleep. I was tired, very dusty, and it seemed a lifetime since I had last slept between sheets, for even though I had slept indoors the night before outside of El Paso, it had still been a sleeping bag kip on a living room floor.
I saw the neon of a motel in the distance, and for the first time since I had landed in the US a couple of months before, paid forty bucks for a motel room. It was living money for two days, but every now and then you just gotta splurge.
