The Hitchhiker's Guide to Nostalgia

Artwork courtesy Dean Petersen

My friend Dean Petersen in Wyoming is a talented writer and filmmaker. He once joined us at Jeana's Dining Room Table Writers' Group in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He has many stories to tell, as he showed in his novel The Burqa Cave. We critiqued each other's work with other members and sipped tea and gnoshed on baked goods. It was helpful and civilized and almost all of our members, past and present, have multiple published books. 

Dean always has a new project, his latest is an intriguing podcast, "That Doesn't Happen Every Day." He has profiled sand sculptors, Laramie's lone ska band, WYO nukes, and this hitchhiker. I imagine myself as the guy with my thumb out in the illustration, although it's been awhile since I hit the road in the 1970s. Dean is from the generation younger than mine (Gen-X?) and he notes in the episode that in school and at home they were lectured often about not getting into cars with strangers. 

Boomers received the same warnings but thousands of us ignored them as we hit the road to see America and Canada and the rest of the Americas and Europe too. My sister-in-law hitched around Europe with a woman friend in the '70s. My brother Dan hitched around Florida and the East Coast before he got a haircut and joined the USAF. My wife Chris ignored all warnings as a teen and hitched A1A from her house way north in Ormond Beach to party with friends in Ormond and Daytona. 

It was a great way to get around especially if you had no car or motorcycle. Go to Dean's podcast and check it out.

Breaking: Daytona Evening News 08/16/1972: All heck breaks out in Miami

Reading the Daytona Beach Evening News: City Final. Price 10 cents.

Some interesting headlines:

Youthful and Elderly Protesters Join in ‘Gripes’ on Nixon Policies

After Haggling Aplenty, Campsite Finally Slated to Open Thursday

Askew Orders 15 Pct. Increase in Welfare

Argentine Leftists Stage Wild Jailbreak-Hijacking

Speaking of Hijacks…Airlines Find Subject Less Than Amusing

Display ad placed by a consortium of local banks in bottom left corner has an illustration of a man reclining in an easy chair in front of a TV set. He is smoking a cigar and holding a highball. The text: 

Pro and college football, the World Series, coming up. This little guy has it made. How about you? We’ll finance your color TV. Fact is, we’ll finance the adjustable lounge chair. You finance the cool drink. Have a nice day – have a colorful fall.

Dateline: August 16, 1972

It’s going to be hot and sticky with a high temp of 88 and humidity at 82. Ocean temp: 78.

Welcome to Daytona Beach 53 years ago.

The newspaper is yellowed but you can still see the track marks on the margins from the printing press. It’s a big broadsheet, a size you no longer see. Newspapers have downsized and disappeared.

I was 21 and hitching across America with my girlfriend. We were in Utah or Colorado – I didn’t keep a journal then so I can’t be sure. Wherever I was, I probably wasn’t reading the morning or evening papers. I was reading “Travels with Charley” by John Steinbeck who wrote it to reconnect with America. “I did not know my own country,” he wrote.  I was aware that Republicans were conventioneering in Miami and there were protests going on. I didn’t know that Vietnam Veterans Against the War members were there and we would be hearing more from them later. I didn’t know that a gonzo reporter named Hunter S. Thompson was covering the fracas and would be famous for his “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.”

As were so many others, I was out there looking for America. I found it too. It was wonderful and exciting. My favorite summer. I had no clue who Ron Kovic was and what he was experiencing in his heart and on the streets of Miami. I didn’t yet know the name of Scott Camil and the Gainesville Eight were not yet named the Gainesville Eight. I thought I knew a lot but I knew nothing but how much fun it was to be 21 and traveling with a beautiful woman and free of the Selective Service Draft. We met and partied with other young people on the road. It was glorious.

I did read part of this morning’s Daytona Beach News-Journal. I skipped the headlines because I didn’t want to see them. Yes, it’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, a day which I used to spend marching for Martin. It also is another day that I am ignoring. I would rather read above the cute Welsh Corgi named Taco that Palm Coast police take along as a therapy dog. Nice photo – one lovable dog. I did look at the weather. It’s going to be cold, folks, surprisingly cold for Florida. I looked up at my big TV. It’s a nice one, Roku HD4. I am not turning it on today. Not protesting in any park but I’ve done that many times. We put on some fine Inauguration Day protests in 2017 and 2018. More than 1,000 people came to our Jan. 21, 2017, Wyoming Women’s March protest in tiny Cheyenne, Wyoming. People I knew from Laramie and Casper and Fort Collins were there. I made my famous almost-salt-free chili for the post-protest feed. We plugged in so many crockpots at the Cheyenne Historic Depot that the power went out. Despite the downer reason for the protest, a fine time was had by all. Local TV and newspaper covered the event. Lots of photos on our cellphone cameras. I will share one with you if I can find it in my photo cache.

I’m returning to my newspaper. In 1972, Volusia County had six A&P stores and now there are none. In 1972, I could buy a loaf of white bread for 22 cents and a pound of coffee for 69 cents. A pack of frozen waffles was 10 cents and a big box of Sugar Frosted Flakes sold for 55 cents (Everyday Low Price!). No prices are listed for eggs but they were cheap, I know that, maybe as cheap as they’re going to be starting today. I can’t wait.

P.S.: You might wonder why I was reading a 1972 newspaper. It was included in a packet of stuff sent to me by my sister who is downsizing and cleaning decades of storage from her house. She knows I’m a history buff who writes about arcane stuff.

Remembering The Great 1972 Rainbow Family Scare in Colorado

The Colorado Sun reposted this piece by Jason Blevins in the Outsider newsletter:

The Rainbow Gathering of the Tribes plans to return to Colorado this summer to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The weeks-long confab that draws tens of thousands of hippie campers to public lands announced this week that the national gathering of possibly 30,000 would be returning to Colorado. 

The group’s national bacchanal was last in Colorado in 2006, with about 10,000 people camping on Forest Service land in north Routt County outside Steamboat Springs. Before that, they were 19,000-strong outside Paonia in 1992. The first national gathering was near Granby in 1972. 

My girlfriend Sharon and I hitched through Colorado during the summer of ’72. We weren’t card-carrying members of the Rainbow Family but your average observer couldn’t tell. My hair was long, my jeans scruffy. Sharon wore braids, a halter top, and jeans that were definitely not scruffy.

We wondered why we got flipped off as we stood with our thumbs out on the side of the road. We were both just good-natured college dropouts on a spree. Why don’t people like us?

You dirty hippies!

I took a shower yesterday.

Me too.

Can’t please some people.

When we arrived in Denver, we found out about the Rainbow Family Gathering of Tribes soon to descend on Colorado. The citizenry was up in arms about hordes of longhairs in scruffy jeans invading their mountains. The interlopers allegedly were going to smoke lots of illegal weed the quality of which would pale in comparison with the mind-blowing cannabis now grown all over Colorado and sold legally at your corner dispensary. Colorado newspapers raised the alarm that Rainbow Family members were going to trip on LSD, now the favorite micro-dosing drug of the techie who built your VR headset. The citizenry feared that Rainbowites on magic mushrooms might swarm their city, recruiting Colorado young people to psilocybin. Thing is, in the last CO election cycle, psilocybin was decriminalized by your grandmother’s pickleball group in Longmont.

My, my.

Colorado was a different place in 1972. My Uncle Bill sold insurance and Aunt Mary played bridge with her pals every week. They voted for Republicans and cursed hippies. Thing is, when Sharon and I turned up on their front porch in Denver, they took us in, fed us, and housed us -- in separate rooms, of course. We hung out with my cousins. Uncle Bill wouldn’t let them go full-hippie but they smoked pot with us anyway. Went with the cousins to Elitch’s Amusement Park, the old one in West Denver. We played miniature golf and drank a lot of 3.2 Coors. Went to a Red Rocks concert. Their friends didn’t care that we were dirty hippies as we were all young together, having fun. On the Fourth of July, we traveled up to Estes Park to watch fireworks from a friend’s lofty cabin.

Sharon and I eventually hit the road for points west. Many adventures along the way. Saw the sights. Swam in the Pacific Ocean. Went to some concerts. Met a lot of cool people. Visited a high school pal at Berkeley. At summer’s end, we hitched to Boston where we lived and worked for awhile. The relationship ended and I headed back to Florida, worked and went back to school.

Never really got close that summer to Strawberry Lake near Granby where the Rainbow Family was rocking out. They were doing their thing. Now their kids and grandkids are coming back to Colorado to rile the populace. I’m old enough now to curse the damn hippies but I know better. Besides, I live in Wyoming, the live-and-let-live-state. The Rainbow Family has gathered three times in Wyoming. Not sure about any casualties. It’s 2022 but all the good drugs are still illegal in The Equality State. While here, you will have to buy your weed from some shady guy on the street corner. Bring your own is the best bet. WYO is flanked by pot-friendly states Colorado and Montana.

According to the Marijuana Policy Project:

Wyoming is one of just a few states that continues to criminalize adults and patients for possessing and using cannabis.

My guess is that the Rainbow Family will choose any one of the weed-friendly states for future get-togethers. Besides the two already mentioned: California, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, Arizona. Millions of acres of forestland await you. Be careful with fires, though, as it doesn’t take much to start a conflagration. Edibles are a better choice.

Happy trails.

Armistice Day 2018

From Metro News in the U.K.:

As we approach the centenary of the Armistice on November 11, the Imperial War Museum has released a recording of the moment the war ended, patched together using recordings from their collections. The artillery activity it illustrates was recorded on the American front near the River Moselle, one minute before and one minute after the war ended. Read more here

My paternal grandparents, Raymond Shay (Big Danny to his grandkids) and Florence Green (Mudder), were both near the action in the closing days of the war. My grandfather was a cavalry officer with the Iowa National Guard and my grandmother was a nurse serving at Evac Hospital No. 8. Several years ago, I printed Mudder's diary (with commentary) on these pages. Here are her entries from Nov. 9-12:

November 9: The Germans have until Monday 11am, am crazy to know how every thing is going to turn out. Am waiting to go on a candy making party but looks like we won’t go tonight as the officers can’t come, such as life, just full of disappointments.
November 10: Busy as could be today, tomorrow is the day which decides about the war, am so anxious to hear the return.
November 11: Am some happy tonight to think the war is really over. I cannot believe it. Haven’t heard a gun since 11am. Great celebrating everywhere. Can almost hear the city hall in Baltimore ringing, and what a wonderful time for Paris.
November 12: Nothing exciting happened, patients coming in slowly. Took a walk. Our orders came. We go Evac to #15, hope from there to #2.

The U.S.-led Meuse-Argonne offensive was still in process, with nurses at Evac #8 working around the clock. Researcher Dr. Marian Moser Jones of the University of Maryland read Mudder's diary and had this response:

As she notes in her diary, Florence was sent to evacuation Hospital number 8 during the end of the Meuse Argonne Offensive in late October, after stints at Evacuation Hospitals 1 and 4. Evacuation Hospitals were nearer the front than base hospitals. Green served near the front during the final push of the war and was part of a group regularly exposed to large artillery fire and aerial bombardments.

University of Maryland Professor of Surgery Dr. Arthur Shipley served at Evac #8. He wrote about his experiences after the war. Here are some of his observations about evacuation hospitals:

The Evacuation Hospitals were usually up to 10 miles from the front. They were well out of reach of the light artillery but within the range of the "heavies" and, of course, were subject to bombing. The difficult thing was to place them along the lines of communication, and at the same time far enough away from ammunition dumps and rail heads not to invite shelling or bombing. They were plainly marked with big crosses made of different colored stone laid out on clear space, so as to be easily seen from the observation planes and to show up in photographs. If there were buildings in the hospital group, red crosses were often painted on the roofs. This was most important, as wounded men in large numbers could not be moved into dugouts if the hospitals were subjected to much shelling. During the Argonne offensive, we were at the top of our strength. We had about 1000 beds for patients, 410 enlisted personnel, 65 medical officers and 75 nurses.

My grandfather also kept a diary but he wrote only short, officious entries. We do know he was involved in the Meuse-Argonne offensive but lack any details. I can only guess his feelings on Armistice Day. He told stories about his role in the war but none about the final bloody days when U.S. troopers suffered massive casualties. The Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery holds 14,246 headstones for the U.S. casualties of the final 47 days of the war.

I am writing a novel set in post-war Colorado. During my research, I learned a few things. The war set people in motion. An Iowa farm boy and a middle-class Baltimorean ended up in Europe during one of the globe's most savage moments. As the song goes: "How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?"

All four of my grandparents moved to Denver in 1919-1920. I always wondered why. That's the theme I explore in my novel. What caused my relatives to slip the bonds of their homes and venture West? The frontier was closed, Frederick Jackson Turner said after the 1890 census revealed that the Wild West was wild no more. Maybe my grandparents didn't see a frontier but they saw something. What was that thing?

The more I read about the war, the better I understand the era and the less I understand humankind. I hope to bring some shape to the shapeless.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the West

As of July 1, hitchhiking is legal in Wyoming.

And just in time for the summer travel season.

This new law came out of a need for skiers and kayakers and backpackers to hitch rides back to the place they've left their vehicles. This is especially true in Teton County where people are recreating all over the place. Skiers often park their Subarus at the top of Teton Pass and, when they reach the bottom, hitch a ride back to the pass.They then drive down to Jackson and spend good money shoring up the Wyoming economy.

Rep. Keith Gingery of Teton County was behind the bill. He told the Casper Star-Tribune:

“That was a fun bill because so many people do it and now it’s legal,” he said. “A kayaker is just trying to get back to their kayak.”

Not sure exactly what Rep. Gingery means by this. If a kayaker is trying to get back to his kayak, that means he got to the end of the run without it. Now he's in trouble, and no amount of ticket-free hitchhiking is going to find his kayak for him.

My hitchhiking days were in the 1970s. I did a fair amount of hitchhiking as a backpacker, although a usually planned a long loop into the wilderness and then back along the trail to my car.  It was easier that way.

Most of my hitching was to get from Point A to Point B. I hitchhiked to work. I hitched rides to college classes. I hitched to the beach and to the mountains. I hitched rides from Daytona Beach, Fla., to Storrs, Conn. I hitched from Houston to Denver. I hitched from San Francisco to Boston. I hitched all over the West in the glory days of the hitchhiker, the late '60s into the 1970s.

It was a young person's pursuit. It was a necessity, as often I didn't have my own car. It was also an adventure.

This takes us back to Colorado. In the summer of 1972, everyone seemed bound for the Centennial State. The mountains beckoned. The Rainbow Gathering was on in Granby. It was the home of Coors which, for some mysterious reason, had attained mythic status on the coasts. It wasn't unusual for a friend to make a pot run from Florida to Boulder just to snag a couple cases of Coors. Even more puzzling is the fact that there was always some pretty amazing marijuana on hand in Florida. And cold beer.

I was on the road that summer along with about a million of my closest friends. This was before I started keeping a journal so I have only my imperfect memory to remember it. I don't have any slides but, if I did, I could bore the heck out of you with a series of scenes.

Instead, I'll do it with words...

--To be continued--