21st Century Huck Finn
Adventures in Albany, New York (memoir, 2009)
I’d come southwest down from Highway 201 in Central Maine—The Forks—along Highway 7 and then had dipped in Green Island down to Albany, New York. This was summer, 2009. August. I’d been on the road since May. Hitchhiking, that is. I’d started in San Francisco, had made my way across the country, spent a wild few months at a friend’s sheep ranch in Rhode Island, and then had spent days in Boston and Martha’s Vineyard before ending up in Manhattan, New York City. There I’d met a real-life 21st century Neal Cassady to my Sal Paradise. I felt like Huck Finn. Larry—my new buddy—and I had a wild rollicking time in Maine and New York and then split ways, he heading east to the airport and South America, and me heading west towards the rest of the great gargantuan America I’d already once crossed.
And so now here I was in Albany, the capital of New York, and it was August and hot and I was off the freeway having gotten a long ride with an old gray-haired man with copper-toned wrinkled skin and a pint of Jack Daniels in a faded green Toyota truck. The sun was lowering in the sky. It was around 7:30 in the evening, I think. I was in a residential area and there didn’t seem to be anywhere reasonable to camp. I had no money left. My pack was dirty, filthy and heavy on my back, reeking of sweat and the rich aroma of soft earth. I’d camped in dozens of places right off the American highways. I was Jack Kerouac, I thought, only young in contemporary times. I drank too much, just like my literary hero. I was 26. Nothing scared me. Or so I thought.
After walking for an hour I slowed down, set my pack on the narrow sidewalk—I was paralleling a busy, angry street, cars whooshing by me intrepidly—and, feeling happy to have my thick, bulging pack off me for a few minutes, I chugged half-warm water from my purple Nalgene bottle. Glug glug glug. Delicious. I felt satisfied. Young. Rousseau had written, in his memoir Confessions, towards the end of his life in the 1770s, that in his youth there’d been nothing—absolutely nothing—better than the delicious, joyful freedom of traveling, particularly by foot. I relished in this truth. Like Chris McCandless. Kerouac. Jack London. Henry Miller. Freedom, man.
Craning my neck I suddenly heard the loud whir of an engine; not a car but a buzzing, whirring lawnmower. The sound of the wretched, glorious bourgeois. A million images of my father mowing the lawn in Ojai, where I’d been born and raised, flashed through my mind, that red metallic body with the black wide handle, Dad in his white tennis shoes and white shorts and white Wimbledon Tennis shirt and white hat, sweating his face off, Mom inside drinking bubbly water, reading some 19th century novel, oblivious, me, 10, 12, 14, being sensitive and surly alone in my room, plotting escape from Middleclass Horror.
I located the source of the sound, across the busy road. I looked up at the sky. Maybe another 45 minutes of light before darkness would inevitably descend. There was clearly nowhere to camp. I was whipped; totally exhausted. Sighing, chugging the rest of the warm water, sniffling, wiping the water off my bearded chin (my dark red beard was perhaps two inches long now), I made a decision. I scanned around me in a 360. No one was around. Houses everywhere on both sides. The road. The highway close to two miles back in the direction I’d come. What other choice did I have? I was tired from nine hours of thumbing: Most of the rides you got, I’d learned the hard way, were a couple miles, maybe five. It took time. Then you’d get lucky and you’d nail a two-hour haul. But that was less often.
I hauled my pack back on—that nasty, heavy, troublesome thing which carried everything in my life—and, carefully watching, waited and crossed the street in a sort of chicken trot, waddling like a duck, my substantial pack swaying left and right sluggishly as I went. I probably looked ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than walking along the shoulder of the major U.S. highways with my thumb sticking out, in 2009 no less.
The noise of the lawnmower grew louder as I approached. I suddenly craved a cigarette, a cold beer, a woman, company, something. Loneliness clung to me back then like wet boxer briefs and I generally craved it. But sometimes—and there were definite moments—I felt that loneliness like an albatross around my neck, alone at sea, perhaps, like Captain Ahab. I had too strong of an imagination for real life. I was too sensitive. Too angry. Too good. Too corrupt. Too silly. Too serious. I was good and bad and everything else in-between. Weren’t we all like that?
I stood there a moment watching the man mow his lawn. He was tall, thin, with white hair. Might have been late fifties. Perhaps sixty. His house was small, modest, maybe 800-square feet, possibly 1,000 at most. A little craftsman. I swallowed, feeling my thudding heart echoing in my chest. Well, I thought: This’ll be interesting.
I walked towards the man, slowly, not wanting to scare him. Some random thick 5’7 tattooed dude half-bald with a giant pack on his back, stumbling onto your driveway, by your quarter-manicured lawn, might frighten a man.
The yard was green and nice. There was a silver diamond fence separating the grass from a more wild bushy area and what appeared to be a little creek on the other side of the man’s property. I stepped off the driveway onto the very edge of the grass.
I cleared my throat. “Excuse me?”
The man didn’t hear me; he kept mowing his lawn, his back facing me, nonchalant. He wore blue jeans and tan construction boots and a red striped plaid collared shirt, the top few buttons undone exposing a thin wifebeater. His hair was white and hung down to his ears.
Gulping, I took in a big swallow of air and said it again: “Excuse me.”
Still he didn’t hear me. Or was it possible he was pretending to not hear me? I couldn’t tell for sure. I figured I’d give it one more try, and if it didn’t work I’d leave and figure something else out.
Cupping my palms around my mouth I half yelled: “EXCUSE ME??!”
That got the man’s attention.
The lawnmower swiftly stopped; the engine’s ceasing created a strained, uncomfortable silence. The man eyed me. His eyes were gray-blue and intense. We ogled each other for five, six seconds.
“Yes?” he said, in a deep, guttural tone. His voice was deeper than I’d expected for some reason. Funny how the mind unconsciously creates unrealistic expectations.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” I stammered, nervous now, enveloped in the awkward silence. “Well. Um. You see. The thing is. I don’t know.”
The man looked at me with a confused expression. He crossed his arms. Some cars and an 18-wheeler whooshed past behind me on the busy road. I realized in that moment how hungry I was. I had food in my pack. But where to cook it? I had my little Jetboil stove.
“Let me start over,” I said.
He nodded. “Please.”
I took some air in, breathed, tried to relax, and said, “This is a longshot. But I have to try.”
He nodded again. “Go ahead, boy.”
“Well, I’m hitchhiking across America. Came from Maine. I’ve been on the road about 10 hours now. I’m exhausted and hungry. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to camp around this area. I guess I’m kinda desperate.” I paused, running a warm, sweaty, dirty palm through my greasy, dirty blond hair. “So,” I began, sighing, feeling like I already knew the answer, “I was sorta hoping I guess that…well…” I laughed, knowing the total absurdity of the request, “That maybe you might be sorta willing for some weird reason to…well…to let me camp in your yard for the night.”
I looked down at the driveway, ashamed, embarrassed, averting my eyes from him, feeling the crimson bloom in my cheeks, aware that I was an idiot, a jackass, a weirdo, a loser, a freak. Here I was, a rich boy from Southern California, who’d gone to a Catholic college-prep high school with kids who’d gone on to Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, Harvard, and I’d left all that behind for alcohol, freedom, the open road, community college here and there, and girls. What was wrong with me?
There was a considerable silence for a bit and then the man said, “What’s your name, kid?”
I finally gazed up at him. “Jason. Jason Thomson.”
“How old are ya?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Got any family?”
I thought of my parents who I was estranged from, my older half-sister who I barely knew, my black-sheep uncle who I liked but hadn’t seen in three years.
“Yeah. Back in California. We’re not close.”
“Are you homeless?”
“Well, technically, but not really. I always work for six or eight months, save up and then go on an adventure. I ran out of money for now though.”
“How long you been on the road, kid?”
I shrugged. “Bout three months.”
“Plan on returning?”
“Where? Home? Like my parents home?”
He nodded.
I shook my head. “No. But somewhere eventually. The Bay Area, maybe. Gotta girl back there. Sorta.”
He untied his arms. He walked towards me. “Well, I’m Frank Branson.”
We shook hands. He was four inches taller and his hand was cold and strong and enveloped mine like a father’s.
“Tell you what, Jason. You stay right here and I’ll get my wife. Be back in a few minutes.”
He left and I stood on his lawn, waiting. I took my pack off and sat it beside me, like some kind of witness. I heard not a peep from the house. All was very quiet. The only thing I heard was the now-soft rumbling of cars swishing back and forth along the road behind me. I couldn’t even hear the freeway traffic anymore and for that I was glad. It was just about dark, or very close. I felt like taking my old tight boots off, feeling the cool air on my bare feet. Eating. Jerking off. And sleeping. They all sounded glorious.
Minutes passed. I heard some voices. More minutes. And then probably twenty minutes after he’d left me there he and his wife emerged. By now it was finally dark and a street light as well as house lights flipped on and lighted the back yard quite well.
His wife was beautiful, with silvery gray hair down to her shoulders, a big bust, green eyes and a mischievous smile. She looked ten years younger than him, maybe mid-forties. She wore a light black summer dress and was barefoot. Her cheekbones were sharp and angular. Her nose was small and cute.
“Hi there,” she said. “Frank tells me you’re in need of a place to sleep.” Her voice was buttery and light, like a bird. Feminine but strong. Commanding but lucid and kind.
“Yes, ma’am. Just the backyard.”
She looked me over then, up and down in a quick, hungry glance. “I’m Vivian.”
“Jason.”
“Well, we’d like to help you. We have a son who hitchhiked across the country once, about five years ago. He joined the Army after that, went to Iraq and was killed in active duty.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay,” she said. “He served his country well. Luckily we have two surviving daughters, both away in college in other states now. But Jake would have liked you. You remind me of him. He’d want us to help you.”
“Yes. He would,” piped in Frank.
“Well. Thank you very much,” I said.
*
I placed my pack against their back wooden stairs which led to a low little porch and then we got into Vivian’s nice sparkling new-looking (and new-smelling) Ford Chrysler. She drove the three of us to a bar/restaurant about a mile away. We sat and talked and ate burgers with fries and shakes. They paid for everything. They told me all about their son Jake and his solo thumbing trip and how they’d warned him against doing it but he always did things his way (I related) and then his tragic tour of duty in Iraq and the Never Ending War and how it’d had such a massive psychological impact on “your generation.” They were beyond kind. I imagined Vivian with no clothes on. I imagined Frank gone, out of the picture. I imagined sneaking into the house in the middle of the night, down the hallway, into bed with her.
But of course none of that happened.
She drove us back. They said goodnight and I thanked them profusely again. What a profoundly lucky strike for me. Right down the middle into the catcher’s mitt. I grabbed my pack, pulled out my tent and sleeping bag and got in and passed out quickly and easily.
*
When I woke it was early morning. A rooster crowed loudly somewhere nearby. I checked my old flip cell phone and saw it was 5:43am. I stretched and yawned. I quietly unzipped my tent and looked at the lawn around me and the house. Everything was silent. Not even a car on the road. Just that occasional rooster crow. I pulled out my Jetboil and boiled water and then made hot Irish Breakfast tea. I drank, happily. Then I made instant oatmeal. I ate, greedily. Already it must have been 65 degrees. It’d be hotter than Hell in a couple hours. Vivian had said she’d drive me in the morning to an 18-wheeler truck stop. I’d ridden in a few of those before; they were glorious and they took you far.
But by 6:30am I was raring to go. I felt ready. Everything was packed. The house was still silent but cars were now moving along the busy road.
I said Screw It and waddled across the driveway, saying a silent Thank You as I moved. I blew a kiss to the house, and to Vivian. All the random lives you intersect with and encounter on the road. Loves missed, opportunities almost taken advantage of but not.
Then I was walking along the road, thumb out. Fifteen minutes later, to my surprise and joy, a man in a big green truck picked me up.
“Where ya headin?”
“Far West as you can get me.”
“I’m goin ta Buffalo in the Western part of New York on I-90.”
“Works for me,” I said.
He nodded. And I jumped in, placing my heavy pack at my feet. I closed the thick metal door and we rumbled on, heading to I-90 and going west.