Last drop left him in Grand Fork, N.D. It was a strange scene at least by today’s standards. He stood there with his pack, wearing a white t-shirt, jeans worn and torn in all the right places, and sticking out the only appendage that would likely get him a lift. A warm summer evening in 78’, and the cars full of sweaty bored teenagers roaring up and down the street, and circling in front of the Tasty Freeze, where he later learned is the wrong place to get a ride. Some slowed and gawked, and others stopped and talked to this restless peer. He was offered a lick from a cone which he skipped, and a bottle of beer which he drank right there on the side of the road with the sun settling in and kids moving on. And just as quick as all the fun started it became quiet and he stood alone in the dark for a long while.
Always a friendly sign at least in those days, a priest reached across the front seat to fondle the window handle. “Driving west on Rt. 2 to Glendive all night if you need a ride” the collared man asked. “How far is that,” he responded. “Well it’s in Montana.” And into the mobile confessional he jumped. What followed was an all night conversation on many topics, but none more interesting to the holy man driving than the relationship of this young drifter to his alcoholic mother.
Always walk way out of town in order to catch a good long ride. His father told him that less rides limited his risk of a problem driver. Adding that, he should be sure to assess the character of the driver early. He walked the stripe between the asphalt lanes out of Glendive with the sun just beginning to rise at his back. The roar of the engine could be heard for miles it seemed. A black 57’ Chevy slowed and stopped in the middle of the road. Two smiling country boys gaped out the window, brothers actually, “where to amigo”? One got out and ran to the shrubs to pee. The other said that yes this in fact was the famous 57’, and that they were headed for Missoula to see Willie Nelson at a big-time outdoor shin-dig. Once in the back, he saw that they were half way through a cooler of Bud. They enthusiastically encouraged him to join. Swilling one down, he wondered if he had ever started drinking so early in a day. But then again, when he was on the road he never knew where one day ends and another begins.
