6506 - The Summer I Lost my Love for New York - Part I

 

Santa Fe was undeniably a beautiful space of vast ocre and terra-cotta expanses and majestically spacious skies. In the first year we studied Greek astronomy and Ptolemy's Dome of the Sphere made perfect sense. Once from my bird's nest room on Monte Sol I saw a thunderbolt -- a genuine Jupiterian thunderbolt -- strike the ground in the plane below. I understood at that moment that we mortals, as much as the stars and the clouds and the gods were creatures under the dome of the universe.

Nevertheless, as much as I had enjoyed my first year “out west” as a fresh adult in an equally fresh college, I could not wait to get back to New York -- to a place that, goddamit, didn't close up at eight o'clock and where they had underground monsters called subways and where I could get a decent “roast beef with russian” on real rye bread. (And pickle.) In spite of everything... of years in the eternal spring of Mexico, where “the song of pheasant resounded from within the waters,” and of summers or semesters in the French provinces, I still held a boyhood hankering for the excitement, noises, grime and bustle of the one and only real city in the world. Or so I thought.

So at the end of the school year, I decided to hitch-hike back east. Thumbing, far more than the bus ride out west, got me to “see the country.” I already had some experience hitching up north to Denver or down south to El Paso, so the idea was not entirely daunting. Someone at the college had hitch-hiked to California, so 2,000 miles was not that much farther.

Next to meditation, hitch-hiking is the next best thing, only one does it on one's feet. One has plenty of time to think of nothing in particular while watching vehicles and clouds pass by. One has plenty of time to hope... to despair... and to just give up until for some reason that moment of joy arrives when a car stops 20 or so yards ahead and you run up to an open window to ask him (it's always a him) where he's headed.

“I'm headed up two miles to the turn off onto Road 48...”

“Great! thanks.”

I had plenty of time to contemplate the desolateness of what is called America, a solitude at once monotonous, depressing and somehow appealing in its own way. There were of course the harsh-bright colours of gas-stations and blinking motel signs that, just around that time, became their own genre of photography. There were the dingy truck stops offering something that might be called haute repas au grasse and cowboy bars with prophylactic dispensers in the men's room.

Again, what I remember most is space. Standing, in the pitch black dark at the junction of two roads in the middle of nowhere and staring at some twinkling lights far, far off in the distance past the undulating shades of deep brown-black, lights which went by the names of “Alamogordo” or “Truth or Consequences” or "Vaughn" and which represented a main street, a bar,  a few closed shops and maybe a motel which was tonight's El Dorado, if one could get there. 


Sometimes, one had the foreboding sense that it might be better not to get there.

Once, when standing on such a strip of asphalt in the middle of nowhere it occurred to me that if I took two steps backwards on to the high-desert ground I would be fully and entirely in the complete state of nature, sharing endless scrub with jackals, coyote, desert rodents and snakes; the noble savage on his own in the great no-name of nature.   On the other foot, if I stayed on the asphalt, I was -- although I sometimes doubted it -- connected to somewhere and, at the end of the road, to New York!  It was a Kandinsky Moment.

Alone and insecure as I might be on the road, I was not a tenth alone and helpless as I would be off it. I could imagine the feeling of those first caravans of settlers “whose stern, impassioned stress, a thoroughfare for freedom beat, across the wilderness!” Out west, in the empty dark, civilization was very much on the edge of wildness.  Eventually, my impassioned importuning brought me to Sayre, Oklahoma, home of Bell's Café where America's Best Apple Pie is made.

Bell's Cafe was the proverbial, narrow “hole in the wall” in a non-descript brick building on Sayre's “East Main Street” which, together with “West Main Street,” doubled as the erstwhile Route 66 of national, historical fame. The café served the usual mid-west/semi-southern fare of burgers, fried chicken, and the like. But the pie was out of this world, a crust that was at once fluffy and thick without being greasy, apples that were hot but crisp with just a hint a tartness to accent their sweetness, juices that held in place and didn't immediately turn the crust soggy. It is God's Truth in your ear that people made a stop in Sayre for this pie.

But I didn't at this time stop to eat at Bell's. I either arrived too late or was too rushed to make some progress before it became too late. So, I stood a block or two up before a bend in East Main Street that led out of town... and stood, and stood, and stood.... The reason Bell's closed early is because no one in Sayre stays up late which meant that no one was driving anywhere either. Finally, around one or two a.m., a sheriff's vehicle pulled up. Oh shit.

“What are we doing son?”

“Nothing Officer; trying to hitch back east.”

“You a college boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

He paused for a moment, looked me up and down and said,

“The jail's empty and we've got some spare bunks, if you'd like to get some sleep.”

I was mighty tired and I really could have used some sleep. But the thought of bedding down in a jail cell that could be locked shut at whim and will was just too uncertain. I looked the sheriff up and down. He seemed like a nice enough guy. He was probably just being kind.

“Oh, gee, thanks, officer but I think I'll take my chances here.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Well, good luck to you then.”

It never occurred to me at the time that I had just passed up the all time gay fantasy and, if I had, it was probably just as well. I continued on my stationary journey, almost immediately regretting my having turned down the cop's offer until finally at 5:30 a.m. I got a lift three of four miles down the road ....

Somewhere along that road, which now undulated over endless rolling hills, I got picked up by some college guy from Denver in a two-tone coupe, not quite a jalopy. I ran up to his side door and with as much uplifted tone as I could manage asked, “Where ya' headed.” “New York” came the flat reply. I swallowed my Adam's apple. “...City?” “Yes.” “Me too” I replied trying to make it not sound like “Please too.” “Are you a good talker,” he asked? “Oh yes,” I said assured of the fact that this was the case. “Well, get on in; I need someone to keep me awake.” Oh happy day!

I forget my pick up's name, but he struck me as much more grown up (and hence manly) than anyone at St. John's except, John Fritz, our ex-Green Beret freshman who had thrown me over the staircase railing on the first day and had quit after the first semester. My pick up was studying at the University of Colorado and started talking about sports. Being from St. John's I knew nothing of those sorts of things but was quite ready to talk about philosophy, history and that sort of stuff. We struggled to find some common ground which ended up being politics and the pending “situation” in Vietnam. My dim recollection is that he would be graduating soon and would loose his deferment. Although our “involvement” was nothing he was enthusiastic about he was not going to make an issue out of it and either was in ROTC or would seek to “go OCS” in order to avoid being drafted. The divisions that would soon rift the country were just appearing and neither of us (least of all me) wanted to antagonize one another, so we more or less agreed on the issues and left it at that, at which point, I am ashamed to say, I fell asleep.

I struggled mightily to stay awake through Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania and to bring up things to talk about. He wasn't in much better shape but had to focus on driving and by this time had just turned on the radio. As we turned north onto the New Jersey turnpike, I got something of a fifth wind and started chatting pointlessly. He ignored whatever conversation I tried to provoke and grimly focused on seeing this trip through to the end. At long last we saw light at the end of the tunnel. He was headed further uptown where he would stay with friends over the summer. I told him I was headed for Forest Hills and could get out at Eighth Avenue and either 14th or 22nd street.

“Listen, thanks very much.”

“Sure.”

“Have a nice summer.”

“Thanks.”