On the Road
Good Blonde
This old Greek reminded me of my Uncle Nick in Brooklyn whoâd spent 50 years of his life there after being born in Crete, and wandered down the gray streets of Wolfe Brooklyn, short, in a gray suit, with a gray hat, gray face, going to his various jobs as elevator operator and apartment janitor summer winter and fall, and was a plain old ordinary man talking about politics but with a Greek accent, and when he died it seemed to me Brooklyn hadnât changed and would never change, there would always be a strange sad Greek going down the gray streets. I could picture this man on the beach wandering around the white streets of San Francisco, looking at girls, âwandering around and looking at things as they areâ as the Chinese say, âpatting his belly,â even, as Chuang-tse says. âI like these shells.â He showed me a few shells heâd picked. âMake nice ashtray, I have lots ashtrays in my house.â
âWhat do you think? You think all this is a dream?â
âWhat?â
âLife.â
âHere? Now? What you mean a dream, weâre awake, we talk, we see, we got eyes for to see the sea and the sand and the sky, if you dream you no see it.â
âHow we know weâre not dreaming?â
âLook my eyes are open ainât they?â He watched me as I washed my dishes and put things away.
âIâm going to try to hitchhike to San Francisco or catch a freight, I donât wanta wait till tonight.â
âYou mens always in a hurry, hey, he he he heâ and he laughed just like Old Uncle Nick, hands clasped behind his back, stooped slightly, standing over sand caves his feet had made, kicking little tufts of sand grass. In his green gray eyes which were just like the green gray sea I saw the yawning eternity not only of Greece but of America and myself.
âWell, I go now,â says I hoisting my pack to my shoulder.
âI walk to the beach.â Long before weâd stopped talking Iâd seen the girl come out of the bushes, shameful and slow, and stroll on back to the bathhouse, then the boy came out, five minutes later. It made me sad I didnât have a girl to meet me in the bushes, in the exciting sand among leaves, to lie there swapping breathless kisses, groping at clothes, squeezing shoulders. Me and the old Greek sighed to see them sneak off. âI was a young man once,â he said. At the bathhouse we shook hands and I went off across the mainline track to the little store on the corner were Iâd bought the wine and where now they were playing a football game from Michigan loud on the radio and just then the sun came out anyway and I saw all the golden wheatfields of America Football Time stretching back to the East Coast.
âDamn,â said I, âIâll just hitchhike on that highwayâ (101) seeing the fast flash of many cars. The old Greek was still wandering on the waterâs edge when I looked back, right on that mystical margin mentioned by Whitman where sea kisses sand in the endless sigh kiss of time. Like the three bos in Lordsburg New Mexico his direction in the void seemed so much sadder than my own, they were going east to hopeless sleeps in burlap in Alabama fields and the eventual Texas chaingang, he was going up and down the beach alone kicking sand ⊠but I knew that in reality my own direction, going up to San Francisco to see the gang and whatever awaited me there, was no higher and no lower than his own humble and unsayable state. The little store had a tree in front, shade, I laid my pack down and went in and came out with a ten-cent ice cream on a stick and sat awhile eating, resting, then combed my hair with water out of an outside faucet and went to the highway all ready to thumb. I walked a few blocks up to the light and got on the far side and stood there, pack at my feet, for a good half hour during which time I got madder and madder and finally I was swearing to myself âI will never hitchhike again, itâs getting worse and worse every goddamn year.â Meanwhile I kept a sharp eye on the rails a block toward the sea watching for convenient freight trains. At the moment when I was the maddest, and was standing there, thumb out, completely infuriated and so much so that (I remember) my eyes were slitted, my teeth clenched, a brand new cinnamon colored Lincoln driven by a beautiful young blonde in a bathingsuit flashed by and suddenly swerved to the right and put to a stop in the side of the road for me. I couldnât believe it. I figured she wanted road information. I picked up my pack and ran. I opened the door and looked in to smile and thank her.
She said âGet in. Can you drive?â She was a gorgeous young blonde girl of about 22 in a pure white bathingsuit, barefooted with a little ankle bracelet around her right ankle. Her bathingsuit was shoulderless and low cut. She sat there in the luxurious cinnamon sea in that white suit like a model. In fact she was a model. Green eyes, from Texas, on her way back to the City.
âSure I can drive but I donât have a license.â
âYou drive all right?â
âI drive as good as anybody.â
âWell Iâm dog tired, Iâve been driving all the way from Texas without sleep, I went to see my family thereâ (by now she had the heap jet gone up the road and went up to 60 and kept it there hard and clean on the line, driving like a good man driver). âBoy,â she said, âI sure wish I had some Benzedrine or sumptin to keep me awake. Iâll have to give you the wheel pretty soon.â
âWell how far you going?â
âFar as you are I think ⊠San Francisco.â
âWow, great.â (To myself: who will ever believe I got a ride like this from a beautiful chick like that practically naked in a bathingsuit, wow, what does she expect me to do next?) âAnd Benzedrine you say?â I said âIâve got some here in my bag, I just got back from Mexico, I got plenty.â
âCrazy!â she yelled. âPull it out. I want some.â
âBaby youâll drive all the way when you get high on that stuff, Mexican you know.â
âMexican Shmexican just give it to me.â
âOK.â Grinning I began dumping all my dirty old unwashed rags and gear and claptraps of cookpot junk and pieces of food in wrapper on the floor of her car searching feverishly for the little tubes of Benny suddenly I couldnât find anymore. I began to panic. I looked in all the flaps and sidepockets. âGoddamnit where is it!â I kept worrying the smell of my old unwashed clothes would be repugnant to her, I wanted to find the stuff as soon as possible and repack everything away.
âNever mind man, take your time,â she said looking straight ahead at the road, and in a pause in my search I let my eye wander to her ankle bracelet, as damaging a sight as Cleopatra on her poop of beaten gold, and the sweet little snowy bare foot on the gas pedal, enough to drive a man mad. I kept wondering why sheâd really picked me up.
I asked her âHow come you picked up a guy like me? I never seen a girl alone pick up a guy.â
âWell I tell you I need someone to help me drive to the City and I figured you could drive, you looked like it anyway âŠâ
âO where are those Bennies!â
âTake your time.â
âHere they are!â
âCrazy! Iâll pull into that station up ahead and weâll go in and have a Coke and swallow em down.â She pulled into the station which also had an inside luncheonette. She jumped out of the car barefooted in her low-cut bathingsuit as the attendant stared and ordered a full tank as I went in and bought two bottles of Coke to go out, cold. When I came back she was in the car with her change, ready to go. What a wild chick. I looked at the attendant to see what he was thinking. He was looking at me enviously. I kept having the urge to tell him the true story.
âHere,â and I handed her the tubes, and she took out two. âHey, thatâs too many, your topâll fly out ⊠better take one and a half, or one. I take one myself.â
âI donât want no one and a half, I want two.â
âYouâve had it before?â
âOf course man and everything else.â
âPot too?â
âSure pot ⊠I know all the musicians in L.A. and the City, when I come into the Ramador Shelly Manne sees me coming and stops whatever theyâre playing and they play my theme song which is a little bop arrangement.â
âHow does it go?â
âHa! and it goes: boop boop be doodleya dap.â
âWow, you can sing.â
âI walk in, man, and they play that, and everybody knows Iâm back.â She took her two Bennies and swigged down, and buzzed the car up to a steady 70 as we hit the country north of Santa Barbara, the traffic thinning and the road getting longer and straighter. âLong drive to San Francisco, four hundred miles just about. I hope these Bennies are good, Iâd like to go all the way.â
âWell if youâre tired I can drive,â I said but hoped I wouldnât have to drive, the car was so brand new and beautiful. It was a â55 Lincoln and here it was October 1955. Beautiful, lowslung, sleek. Zip, rich. I leaned back with my Benny in my palm and threw it down with the Coke and felt good. Up ahead suddenly I realized the whole city of San Francisco would be all bright lights and glittering wide open waiting for me this very night, and no strain, no hurt, no pain, no freight train, no sweating on the hitchhike road but up there zip zoom inside about eight hours. She passed cars smoothly and went on. She turned on the radio and began looking for jazz, found rock ânâ roll and left that on, loud. The way she looked straight ahead and drove with no expression and sending no mincing gestures my way or even telepathies of mincingness, youâd never believe she was a lovely little chick in a bathingsuit. I was amazed. And in the bottom of that scheming mind I kept wondering and wondering (dirtily) if she hadnât picked me up because she was secretly a sex-fiend and was waiting for me to say âLetâs park the car somewhere and make itâ but something so inviolately grave about her prevented me from saying this, more than that my own sudden bashfulness (as the holy Benny began taking effect) prevented me from making such an importunate and really insulting proposition seeing Iâd just met the young lady. But the thought stuck and stuck with me. I was afraid to turn and look at her and only occasionally dropped my eyes to that ankle bracelet and the little white lily foot on the gas pedal. And we talked and talked. Finally the Benny began hitting us strong after Los Alamos and we were talking a blue streak, she did most of the talking. Sheâd been a model, she wanted to be an actress, so forth, the usual beautiful-California-blonde designs but finally I said âAs for me I donât want anything ⊠I think life is suffering, a suffering dream, and all I wanta do is rest and be kind somewhere, preferably in the woods, under a tree, live in a shack.â
âAinât you ever gonna get married?â
âBeen married twice and Iâve had it.â
âWell you oughta take a third crack at it, maybe this time youâd hit a homerun.â
âThat ainât the point, in the first place I wouldnât wanta have children, they only born to die.â
âYou better not tell that to my mom and dad, they had eight kids in Texas, I was the second, theyâve had a damn good long life and the kids are great, you know what my youngest brother did when I walked in the house last week and hadnât seen him for a year: he was all grown up tall and put on a rock-ânâ-roll record for me and wanted me to do the lindy with him. O what laughs we had in the old homestead last week. Iâm glad I went.â
âIâll bet when you were a little girl you had a ball there in Texas huh? hunting, wandering around.â
âEverything man, sometimes I think my new life now modeling and acting in cities isnât half as good as that was.â
âAnd there you were on long Texas nights Grandma readin the Bible, right?â
âYeah and all the good food we made, nowadays I have dates in good restaurants and manââ
âDates ⊠you ainât married hey?â
âNot yet, pretty soon.â
âWell what does a beautiful girl like you think about?â This made her turn and look at me with bland frank green eyes.
âWhat do you mean?â
âI donât know ⊠Iâd say, for a man, like me, what I say is best for him ⊠but for a beautiful girl like you I guess what youâre doing is best.â I wasnât going to say get thee to a nunnery, she was too gone, too pretty too, besides she wouldnât have done it by a long shot, she just didnât care. In no time at all we were way up north of Los Alamos and coming into a little bumper to bumper traffic outside Santa Maria where she pulled up at a gas station and said:
âSay do you happen to have a little change?â
âAbout a dollar and a half.â
âHmmmm ⊠I want to call longdistance to South City and tell my man Iâll be in at eight or so.â
âCall him collect if heâs your man.â
âNow youâre talkin like a manâ she said and went trottin barefoot to the phone booth in the driveway and got in and made a call with a dime. I got out of the car to stretch out, high and dizzy and pale and sweating and excited from the Benzedrine, I could see she was the same way in the phone booth, chewing vigorously on a wad of gum. She got her call and talked while I picked up an orange from the ground and wound up and did the pitcher-on-the-mound bit to stretch my muscles. I felt good. A cool wind was blowing across Santa Maria, with a smell of the sea in it somehow. The palm trees waved in a cooler wind than the one in Barbara and L.A. Tonight it would be the cool fogs of Frisco again! After all these years! She came out and we got in.
âWhoâs the guy.â
âHeâs my man, Joey King, he runs a bar in South City ⊠on Main Street.â
âSay I used to be a yardclerk in the yards there and Iâd go to some of those bars on Main Street for a beer ⊠with a little cocktail glass neon in front, with a stick in it?â
âAll the bars have that around here,â she laughed and gunned on up the road fast. Pretty soon, yakking happily about jazz and even singing a lot of jazz, we got to San Luis Obispo, went through town, and started up the pass to Santa Margarita.
âThere you see it,â I said, âsee where the railroad track winds around to go up the pass, I was a brakeman on that for years, on drizzly nights Iâd be squattin under lumber boards ridin up that pass and when Iâd go through the tunnels Iâd hold my bandanna over my nose not to suffocate.â
âWhy were you riding on the outside of the engine.â
âBecause I was the guy assigned to puttin pops up and down, air valves, for mountain brakes, all that crap ⊠I donât think it would interest you.â
âSure, my brotherâs a brakeman in Texas. Heâs about your age.â
âIâm thirty-three.â
âWell heâs a little younger but his eyes are greener than yours, yours are blue.â
âYours are green.â
âNo, mine are hazel.â
âWell thatâs what green-eyed girls always say.â
âWhat do hazel-eyed girls always say?â
âThey say, hey now.â We were (as you see) talking like two kids and completely unself-conscious and by this time Iâd quite forgotten the lurking thought of us sexing together in some bushes by the side of the road, though I kept smelling her, the Benny sweat, which is abundant, and perfumy in the way it works, it filled the car with a sweet perfume, mingled with my own sweat, in our noses if not in our minds there was a thought of sweating love ⊠at least in my mind. Sometimes I felt the urge to just lay my head in her lap as she drove but then I got mad and thought âAh hell itâs all a dream including beauty, leave the Angel Alone you dirty old foney Duluozâ which I did. To this day I never know what she wanted, I mean, what she really secretly thought of me, of picking me up, and she got so high on the Benny she drove all the way anyway, or perhaps she woulda drove all the way anyway, I donât know. She balled up over the pass in the gathering late afternoon golden shadows of California and came out on the flats of the Margarita plateau, where we stopped for gas, where in the rather cool mountain wind she got out and ran to the ladies room and the gas attendant said to me:
âWhereâd you pick her up?â thinking the car was mine.
âShe picked me up, pops.â
âWell I oughta be glad if I was you.â
âI ainât unglad.â
âSure is a nice little bundle.â
âSheâs been wearing that bathingsuit clear from Texas.â
âGeez.â She came out and we went up the Salinas valley as it got dark slowly with old orange sunsets behind the rim where Iâd seen bears as a brakeman, at night, standing by the track as weâd in the Diesel ball by with a hundred-car freight behind us, and one time a cougar. Wild country. And the floor of the dry Salinas riverbottom is all clean white sand and bushes, ideal for bhikkuing (outdoor camping where nobody bothers you) because you can hide good and hide your camp-fire and the only people to bother you are cattle, and snakes I guess, and beautiful dry climate with stars, even now at dusk, I could see flashing in the pale plank of heaven, like bhaghavat nails. I told Pretty about it:
âSomeday Iâm gonna bring my pack and a monthâs essential groceries right down to that riverbottom and build a little shelter with twigs and stuff and a tarpaulin or a poncho and lay up and do nothing for a month.â
âWhat you wanta do that for? Thereâs no fun in that.â
âSure there is.â
âWell I canât figure all this out but ⊠itâs all right I guess.â At times I didnât like her, at one point I de...