Little Rock

          

     I was on the road again, in the summer of 1973 heading from Seattle to Florida riding my thumb. Rides were okay but I stood a lot and walked a lot, too. I stayed off the Interstates as much as practical. The on ramps in the west coast states were clogged with crowds of hippies and bums hitching rides and the police would arrest folks who tried to hitch on the highway itself. There was a certain social life among the hippies on the entrance ramps but I was not interested in that.          I wanted to get on down the road and one could easily spend several days on a ramp waiting one's turn. So I stayed on the two lanes.
     In those days hitchhiking was fairly easy and not so dangerous as it is now so long as you kept your wits about you and paid attention. Drivers on long rides would usually offer or could be cajoled to part with food or even buy meals in truck stops and cafes.  I always carried some surplus C-rations for when there were long stretches with no rides or less generous drivers.
     At some point I joined with a young fellow, 19 I think, who said he was going to Texas to rejoin his wife but had a loopy sense of direction and didn’t know which way to hold a map. He was not carrying drugs so I encouraged him to stay with me and I would get him a big part of the way okay. Rides were slow in coming and short so it took four days to get over to Colorado. We slept under a couple of highway bridges and on the edge of a KOA commercial campground.   Benny talked a lot and it became apparent that he was not entirely compos mentis, was probably delusional at least a little. His wife had apparently left him and did not want to see him again. He seemed to think she had been taken from him and was waiting longingly for him in Austin. But he also said some things that indicated the situation might be otherwise. 
     I asked Benny questions sometimes while he was rambling about his troubles and determined that he had family in Pennsylvania and got him talking about them from time to time. There were his father and a couple of sisters and he described them in a way that made them seem affluent, big house, a European vacation once and I suggested a couple of times that he needed maybe to go to Pennsylvania. Somewhere in Utah or Colorado he changed his mind and destination and decided to go to Pennsylvania. I could get him perhaps into Missouri before our paths needed to diverge and encouraged him to call his father or sister by then.
    Well, we didn't get into Missouri. We got a long ride in Pueblo from a fellow that offered to take us all the way to Oklahoma City if we could share the driving. I said sure and that I would drive when he got tired. I did not want Benny to drive. He was too flaky for me to trust him at the wheel. It turned out that I didn't drive at all. The fellow stayed awake and competent all the way over to Oklahoma City.
    Benny and I got out on the East side of Oklahoma City and walked a couple of hours due to sparse and indifferent traffic. We camped in some woods by Shawnee. I slept for ten hours or so and woke up to Benny whining that we were lost because there was no big road nearby. Benny had slept while we rode. I never could do that. It is just not safe and one does not know where a driver will decide to go when one is asleep.
     In Oklahoma there is not a horde of hippies trying to hitchhike so I made a sign that said I-40 East and we stood on the little two lane there heading north to that Interstate. Presently a car stopped for us and we were moving again. Four hours later we were in Fort Smith and got off the Interstate there. It is not good to tempt fate in Arkansas. It is always illegall to hitchhike on the Interstate. We got a series of short hops over to a two lane that would take us most of the way to Little Rock.
     Several rides and five hours later we found ourselves stuck on another two lane at night with no traffic. I studied the map and decided that even daytime would not improve it much but I noted that there was a Skelly truck stop almost exactly ten miles up I-40 close to Little Rock and the big road was only a couple of miles north of us so we walked up to it. There was no access so we walked up the embankment and went through a break in the fence and Benny turned to face oncoming and put his thumb out. I told him hell no, we had to walk and if he could keep up with me it would take two and a half hours walking but it was much too dangerous to hitch on the Interstate. He complained but followed my lead over to the path farthest from the pavement and we started double time. I yelled at Benny like a drill sergeant and he got in step with me and stretched his pace and pretty soon we were moving along quickly. The army calls it a forced march at four miles an hour and if you do it with a consistent rhythm you can keep it up for many hours.
     After forty five minutes or so I saw a reflection of flashing blue and turned my head to see a police car light coming up fast in the dark. There was another car in front of it that pulled off the road right beside me and Benny. The cop pulled in behind him. Benny cried out, "We're saved!" and started to run toward the police car I yelled at him to keep walking but Benny was out of his head at the moment. I put my head down and lengthened my stride beyond what I might have thought possible, and kept walking. I did not think we were "saved."
      An authoritative voice called for me to stop. I kept walking. Then, "Stop or I will shoot your ass!" I stopped. The officer ordered Benny and me to sit about 10 feet from where he was writing a ticket for the driver he had pulled. When that business was done he turned to us and demanded identification. I dug my Florida driver's license out of my pocket but Benny was bereft of ID. The cop asked questions and Benny tried to pour out what he imagined was his whole life story. The cop's questions were transparently  aimed at finding out how much money Benny was worth. He had given up on me because I was more reticent.
     Benny said his father  would help him so the officer wrote us tickets with none of the infraction boxes checked. Instead he wrote out "walking on the right-of-way of a public thoroughfare" and put us in the back of his patrol car. I didn't think that sounded like a legitimate charge and putting us in the car after giving us tickets didn't seem normal it but it didn't seem wise to challenge it there and then. At least there were no handcuffs, The tickets indicated $65 fines (think $500 or so in 2010).
   So we got a ride after all, but it was to a substation in an affluent neighborhood in northern Little Rock. There were no police there, just a couple of middle aged ladies and two desks and two holding cells down a narrow hall. The arresting officer told the ladies that Benny needed to make a phone call and waited while Benny did that. He called his father who instantly said he would send the $65 plus bus fare to Pittsburgh. I wondered why I had saddled myself with this loser when all he ever had to do was pick up a phone.
     Officer Friendly then escorted Benny and me to one of the holding cells and one of the ladies locked us in. There were two bunks in there. Benny sat morosely on one and I immediately dropped on the other and went to sleep. When I woke up Benny was gone and a delivery guy was bringing in a big bagful of McDonald's hamburgers for me and the 4 youths in the other cell. During the day I determined that those boys were in there because someone's daddy had called the police and said he thought the kids were smoking marijuana and they needed to throw a scare into them. Benny had been paid out by his father and was presumably on a bus going east if he was able to find his way to the bus station.
     The boys and I stayed in those cells for two days eating out of McDonald's and me catching up on the very minimal sleep of the previous week. Then another police officer came back with one of the ladies and unlocked our cells. They led us out into the main office area and he told the boys to line up to go see the judge. I started to get in line, too, but the other lady motioned me back and then came over and said it's okay, there are no charges and I just needed to sign a paper and I could leave and that she would get my backpack for me. I said, "No way! I want a judge to see the charges I was charged with or explain why I am in jail with no charges!" The lady looked anxious and said I should just be thankful there would be no record and to walk on away from there. The boys were marched out to a police van and I was left inside with the two ladies. They insisted I should just leave. I did not persist in demanding justice because of it being Arkansas. Then I told the lady if I just walked out then I would have to hitchhike in her town and would surely be arrested again and brought right back to her office.
     The ladies finally got the gardener to drive me to the Skelly stop that Benny and I had been aimed at in the first place. So it all worked out. I got fed for free and I caught up on all my missed sleep and got a ride on a semi. The rest of the trip would be easy and fast because I was in the Southland now where people are much more likely to help you out.