Friday, December 27, 2013
went all the way down and I was standing in the purple darkness. Now I
was scared. There weren’t even any lights in the Iowa countryside; in a
minute nobody would be able to see me. Luckily a man going back to
Davenport gave me a lift downtown. But I was right where I started from.
I went to sit in a bus station and think this over. I ate another apple
pie and ice cream; that’s practically all I ate all the way across the
country; I knew it was nutritious and of course it was delicious. I
decided to gamble. I took a bus in downtown Davenport after spending a
half hour watching a waitress in the bus station café, and rode to the
city limits, but this time near the gas stations. Here the big trucks
roared, wham, and inside two minutes one of them cranked to a stop for
me. I ran for it with my soul whoopeeing. And what a driver…a great big
tough truckdriver with popping eyes and a hoarse raspy voice who just
slammed and kicked at everything and got his rig underway and paid
hardly any attention to me so I could rest my tired soul a little…for
one of the biggest troubles hitchhiking is having to talk to innumerable
people, make them feel that they didn’t make a mistake picking you up,
even go so far as to entertain them almost, all of which is a great
strain when you’re going all the way and don’t plan to sleep in hotels.
The guy just yelled above the roar and all I had to do was yell back,
and we relaxed. And he balled that thing clear to Rapid City, Iowa, and
yelled me the funniest stories about how he got around the law in every
town that had an unfair speed-limit, reiterating over and over again
“Them goddam cops can’t put no flies on my ass.” And he was wonderful.
And he did a wonderful thing for me. Just as we rolled into Rapid City
he saw another truck coming behind us, and because he had to turn off at
Rapid City he blinked his tail lights at the other guy and slowed down
for me to jump out, which I did with my bag, and the other truck,
acknowledging this exchange, stopped for me, and once again, in the
twink of nothing, I was in another big high cab all set to go hundreds
of miles across the night, and was I happy! And the new truckdriver was
as crazy as the other one and yelled just as much and all I had to do
was lean back and relax my soul and roll on. Now I could see
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment