Repost:The Kid That Became A Guy Part VIII: Arkansas And Beyond

[Like the other chapters, it's hard to tell just how much detail to go into... I don't want to write so much that the readers lose interest... on the other hand, I could almost make a book out of each chapter.]

Having left Austin, Rodney and I headed North, hitchhiking toward Dallas for one of the most interesting travelling experiences of my life. Our first ride was from two of the biggest Mexican guys I had ever seen. They drove an old Buick Electra and they sat shoulder to shoulder, that's how big they were- they took up the whole front seat. And, they didn't speak a word of English...they just nodded and smiled with big gold teeth. They kept saying something that sounded like "Horton." Rodney and I looked at each other in puzzlement and nodded and smiled. There was no way I wanted to piss these guys off. As it turned out, they were heading to Georgetown, which is a ways north of Austin and when we got there, they shook hands, smiled and away they went. With more than a little relief, Rodney and I continued on our journey.

A ride or two later, put us in the company of a car full of black guys, who were nice but dropped us off in the black part of Dallas. Hitchhiking by that time was getting to be dangerous, you can never tell... seems like there's crazies hitching and driving- you just never know and rides were hard to get. After a few hours, you're ready to throw caution to the wind. We walked along trying to look as inconspicuous as possible carrying backpacks and walking past groups of black guys hanging out on street corners eyeing us suspiciously. We walked past projects with little kids standing there looking at us like we were from Mars, or something. There were rows of boarded up stores. It looked almost like a war zone there. Anyways, we were pretty uncomfortable walking along there... I think I learned how a turkey feels just before Thanksgiving. Finally, after about three miles (and no incidents, thankfully) we began to see white people. Some guy in a pickup picked us up and took us to Ft. Worth where we spent the night under a bridge before hitching out in the morning. We made it to Texarkana the next day.

We pulled into Texarkana around dinner time and went to the Sally, The Salvation Army. I only mention this because of one oddity- before you could eat or stay there, you had to go to the Police Station and get run through NCIC (the National Crime Computer) to make sure you weren't wanted anywhere. The next morning we headed toward Ft Smith. The road was a secondary one not a highway and we walked for miles. It was April and hot already and we were tired and thirsty. We came up on an old farm house, run down with peeling paint. But it had a faucet on the outside. Seeing how we were in unfamiliar territory and not wanting to get shot or anything, I knocked on the door to ask permission to get a drink. An elderly woman came to the door. Now we were a pretty rough looking pair, having been on the road for a while. The old lady looked at me and said: "You boys must be hungry. Go around and wash up and I'll be right back." She came out with sandwiches, cold fried chicken and a pitcher of cold iced tea. We said grace and dug in. When we were done that woman handed me a bag full of food and a$20 bill. I tried to refuse, we would have just bought beer and cigarettes, but she said: "The Lord would never forgive me if I didn't." That's real Christianity.

When we hit Mena it was pouring down rain so we waited it out in a laundromat. After it quit we headed out. It was getting dark and a couple of miles out of town a couple of guys in a pickup stopped and chased us into the woods with pistols. Rodney was kind of a pussy so I told him to stay behind a tree and shut up. I found a rock and whacked one of the guys in the head. I took his gun and when the other guy came toward Rodney, I whacked him too with the gun. I had to hit him three or four times before he quit struggling- he had a hard head. I thought about shooting them, just in case, but that would have been a pretty bad idea. I was going to take the truck, but being in a strange place and not knowing what went on there, I figured walking was the best option. Being in an Arkansas prison didn't sound too attractive- those old South chain-gang movies went through my head. I would say that I hope they're ok now, but I really don't give a fuck. Some chick picked us up a mile or two later and dropped us off near a construction site. We slept in a house that was being built and took off at dawn. We got to Ft Smith that day.

We hit the mission and got a place to stay. The next day I went to a couple of job sites and got hired on at one. The drywall contractor told me I could sub a bunch of apartments to do in an old schoolhouse they were redoing... I figured I could use Rodney as an assistant- humping stuff, spotting nails and saving me from having to do a bunch of grunt work. Now here's something that makes no sense. If you have a job, you can't stay at the mission. So, it was either have a job and no place to stay, ot a place to stay but no job. Luckily, the mission was looking for a cook, so I was in luck. I got them to let Rodney stay as my assistant. As it turned out, it was probably just as well that Rodney didn't help do the drywall job- he turned out to be about as useful as a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest. After a couple of months, some guy brought in some plums that were starting to get too ripe. So I made some plum jack and one of the other bums turned me in. I was banned from the mission for life! Rodney and I decided to head for Denver.

I had never hopped a freight train in my life, but we decided to give it a try. In Van Buren, across the river was a freight yard and we caught a train for Nebraska. In Nebraska we had to switch trains for Denver. It's funny, the railroad bums know the train routes as good as I knew the subways in Boston. Where ever you wanted to go, just ask a bum and he could tell you what train to catch, when they run and where to switch trains. The first train was stopped and easy to get on, we had some beer with us and we climbed into one of those open cars they put grain in. We just sat and drank our beer and hoped it didn't rain. We didn't know shit about trains and didn't think about it- we just looked for something we could get into easy. As it turned out Rodney didn't know shit about much of anything. When we switched it was to one that was moving. I had two shoulder bags, one with clothes, one with my tools. My hands slipped and I fell over a bridge. Rodney jumped off. I fell, I guess about 20 or 25 feet and landed on my back on some big boulders... these things were huge anywhere from 8-12 feet around. Rodney said I jumped up and started running in circles like a chicken after you snap it's neck yelling holy fucking shit over and over again. I just remember it hurt like hell. The guy stopped the train and let us ride in one of the engines. I never been in so much pain in my life. To tell the truth, after I hit them rocks, I thought I might be dead and just not know it yet... it was pretty scary as well as painful.

When we got to Denver, I could barely walk. We found some other bums and found out where the hospital was. They had a walk-in clinic. The first doctor was an intern and said he had to get his boss. This other doctor came in with my x-ray and said: "It's no wonder your back hurts, it's broken." I had ridden all the way from Nebraska on a freight train with a broken back. Well here I was, stuck in Denver with a broken back, no money, no job, I was pretty well fucked. The doctor, Alex, was an orthopedic surgeon and was a pretty cool guy. He gave a script for oxycodone which kept the pain manageable. We tried staying at a mission the first night which proved more dangerous than staying on the streets. Some Mexican guy tried talking Spanish to me- which I don't understand. When I didn't talk back, he got pissed and wanted to fight. I don't know why... I never thought I looked like a Mexican. Anyways, across the street from the hospital was a bridge and we took up residence there. It wasn't actually that bad, you could crawl up inside the bridge and get out of sight. We actually had it fixed up pretty nice. We went to the Denver Mattress Company and got a bunch of big scraps of foam rubber and covered ot with a big carpet we found. The carpet was clean, I don't even know why anybody would want to throw it away. So we had comfort... We bought a bunch of candles so we had light to read by. There was a used book store nearby and a McDonalds where we went dumpster diving. If you time it right, you can get stuff that's pretty fresh. There was a stream there where we could wash and it was handy to the hospital where I had to go every week to see Alex. Denver isn't that bad of a place to be homeless. If you don't mind walking, you can eat steady from about 9:00 in the morning until about 8:00 at night. Rodney got a job telemarketing so he took off, maybe he could manage that without fucking it up... but by that time we had a colony of about five guys under the bridge.

I asked Alex when I could get back to work. He told me whenever I felt up to it, just be ready for the pain. He said I would probably wind up in a wheelchair within 5-10 years. He asked what I did and I told him carpentry, drywall and remodeling. He told me he and his girlfriend had just bought a house and he needed help remodeling it. I had a job. Alex made sure I had plenty of pain pills (he kinda liked them himself) and between the pills and the beer I was doing ok. I lived under the bridge and brought a bunch of bricks from Alex and Barb's house to build a bbq. Barb, Alex's girlfriend, was a psychiatrist. We all got to be good friends. One day Alex and I went car shopping. He had finished his residency and wanted to celebrate by getting a really nice car. He got a Maserati touring sedan. When he had to do overnighters, he let me borrow it. I'm pretty sure I was the only homeless guy in Denver driving a Maserati.

As it turned out Alex was screwing about half of the nurses at the hospital and Barb wasn't having it. Alex moved out and Barb kept me on to finish the house. By now it was late September and getting too cold to stay outside. Barb invited me to move into the guest bedroom. This lasted about a week before she came calling one night. After that I was a resident of the master bedroom. Barb was nice and nice looking as well... and rich. It turns out she had been married to some guy that invented non-alcoholic wine (don't ask me why anybody would want non-alcoholic wine). Anyways, I guess when they got divorced, he got the non-alcoholic wine and she got the cash. Maybe that's why she saw a shrink herself... she felt bad for taking the guy's money- yeah, right! Her shrink was a chick and really hot. She came over for a party when Barb and Alex were still together. I wound up going home with her... she said I was "interesting." When we got to her house, I found out what she was interested in- she was a freak! One day I told Barb that she wasn't crazy, her problem was too much money and too much time on her hands. If she had to worry about where her next meal was coming from, she wouldn't have time for all the bullshit. She said I was the most sickeningly sane person she had ever met. Shows what shrinks know. By April the house was finished and I was finished with the neurotic shrink, so I decided to head for Phoenix.

Next: Phoenix I