Strange Sands

Two weeks in the summer of 2002 evoke more memories for me than any other fort night in my life. At the time, it seemed like a horror movie, but staring back through the fog of time, I now see it as an exciting adventure. At 15 years old I stared down a gun barrel, rode with psychopathic cult members, got deported and nearly died of thirst in the desert of the American south west. I don’t expect you to believe what I’m about to tell you and I can’t blame you. My tale is one fit for the pages of a Hunter Thompson article or a Tim Burton film and if I had not experienced every minute of it, I wouldn’t put much faith in it either.

The story really starts two months earlier. I was too young to go where I wanted. So, when my dad decided we were moving to Myrtle Beach to live closer to my sister, I didn’t really have a choice. By this point, my father had been practically broke for years, but still entertained the idea that he could travel where ever he wanted. We arrived in North Carolina via greyhound. It was the middle of spring break and having no where to stay we camped on the beach for the duration of our time in the city. The camp ground was cheap but we had only brought $1,000 or so with us and the local stores, relying heavily on tourist dollars, jacked their prices up for the season. We stayed through bike week, but my dad was the only one able to find work, my brother Adam and I were to young and my brother Henry had too many tattoos and piercings to find employment in the deep south community. This led us to realize we couldn’t afford to stay in the Carolinas .

You would think at this point we would head back to Massachusetts. (By all right, we should have. Back home we had family. Dad had job prospects. Henry had an art company and Adam and me had school.) You would think wrong. It may sound mean, but my dad was never what you would call smart. A fact I’d realized years before that this trip re-enforced. He decided to take us to New Orleans, because he had never been there. I knew this was a bad idea, but I’d always wanted to see the city, so I went along with it. After a day long bus drive, we crossed the mouth of the Mississippi and soon found ourselves in the oldest city in the south. All around, I could see above ground cemeteries, voodoo shops and abandoned mansions. Again, my fathers “keen” mind came into play. Instead of taking what money we had and renting out one of the many inexpensive apartments in the city where more people were dead than alive, dad asked around for the cheapest hotel in New Orleans. I’ll say this again “THE CHEAPEST HOTEL IN NEW ORLEANS!!” the cab ride there was cool. The old, Creole cabby drove a vintage Cadillac with a cushy, red exterior. The interior was all beaded seats and fuzzy dash. The smell of marijuana and incense floated on air and the aging driver told us on the way, “ya’ll can gets whateva’ yous need in naw-lans.” I thought to myself, oh great, what are we getting into?

The Cinema hotel was an ancient French mansion converted into a sleazy inn. It was literally under a freeway and the railings of the courtyard stairs were rusted to look like coral growing on a ship wreck. The office under a big sign that stated “WE HAVE PORN!” housed a mean looking Korean woman with the personality of a hornet. She grumbled like we were bothering her by renting a room. The room was something out of a slasher flick. It was great foreshadowing for the weeks ahead. The walls were spattered in dried blood from some junkie’s needle. The sheets were covered in worse. The ceiling sported mirrors above the two beds and we had to buy cleaning products before we could even go near the shower and toilet. It’s a small wonder I didn’t catch a std just by staying in the room. The strangest thing we found was a large piece of tin foil full of what I think was angel dust in the dresser, next to Gideon’s bible. What followed was a solid week of hearing gun fights in the streets, trucks over head and the occasional sight of a police raid at a neighboring room. In one such raid the police were supposed to pick up a dead hooker the cleaning lady had found two rooms down from ours but instead busted in the next door and found a crack dealer, forgetting the body for another three days.

My father had found work a few days after we came to the city, but the wicked tempered land lady had no intention of letting us slide for a half a week. So, we had to leave.

My brother Henry and I suggested that we camp out in an abandoned building for the three days until my dads first check came in, but he said, “We’re not living like bums for three days!” and decided we would hitch hike to my great aunt’s house in Phoenix, Arizona. I think if he had realized just how long we would spend on the road, how large the four states were we were crossing really were, he would have changed his mind.

We took a bus to Baten Rouge. We split up there. It was decided that I would go with my father and Henry would take Adam. We knew it wouldn’t work any other way because Dad was stupid and Adam was spineless. Baten Rouge was a strange place. The sun was going down when we arrived and in the pools of shadow lying across the road I could see hundreds of palmetto bugs. It was during the height of the West Nile epidemic and the streets were littered with the dead cats and birds felled by it. we walked from the bus station in the center of town to the highway on ramps heading over a delta to the west. For the most part, people left us alone. The only people that stopped to talk with us were a group of crack heads that bought a lighter off of us and a Cajun hooker that tried to proposition us while we were walking under a freeway bridge.

We finally got a ride over the bridge and had to walk a few more miles before we could get another ride. We stood with our thumbs out for several hours before a sketchy, white van pulled over. The back windshield was plywood and the side windows were painted on the outside. As we entered the vehicle, the passenger, a scruffy Mexican man, said, “ hop on in, but if we see any women, you have to get out.” I thought that was a little weird but I just shrugged it off. It didn’t take long to realize we were riding with two cult members. They were heading to a commune in California and kept saying really creepy things like, “if I crashed into that car in front of us, god would forgive me.” The mattress I was laying on was folded over something that smelled dead and the inside of the painted windows were covered in decals. One sided read ‘Live with God or die with Satan.’ The other side said ‘Die slut die.’ I was really freaked out by this point and I should’ve known better but I was thirsty and I drank some of the water they offered me. I was lucky that I used to go to a lot of raves and my tolerance to the date rape drugs people sometimes put in drinks they thought were the girl’s I was with, was strong. I became unnaturally tired and things became distorted. At the next gas station, we grabbed our bags and ran.

We couldn’t find another ride and I was in no condition to stand for the rest of the night. We slept in shifts outside of an abandoned gas station down the road. In the morning a local gave us a ride to the middle of no where. We were stuck for most of the morning on a ramp outside of a big southern house. The place was falling apart and surrounded by cars from all over the place. I was reminded of Texas chainsaw massacre.

The next ride was more memorable. A crusty, old Nam vet in a beat up pickup pulled over. “Get in.” he called to us. We threw our heavy duffle bags in the back and climbed in.

“Thanks for the ride.” I said.

“Oh, I don’t mind giving rides.” He told us in a west Louisianan accent, “but…” he added as he pulled the biggest revolver I’ve ever seen from under his seat, “… I’ve been mugged by hitch hikers before an’ if you reach over here I’ll shoot you in the face.”

“Ummm… fair enough.” I choked out, a little nervous.

“The gun toting red neck actually turned out to be an interesting guy. In the two hours we spent in his truck he told us about his years at war in the Fareast, his love of bar fights and his career drilling for oil. He dropped us in Lake Charles .

It was afternoon and proving to be a hot day. I decided to dump my 90 pound duffle bag outside of a Mcdonalds, after we spent the last of our money on breakfast. We walked along the high way for the rest of the day. Lake Charles was a casino town and when the sun went down, we walked under the bright, neon lights of the roadside hotels. I was just thinking about how hungry I was when a car pulled up. It was a new Benz with New York plates. A black man with expensive jewelry and dressed in gang colors called me over to the side road.

“What you doing?” he asked.

“Hitch hiking.” I told him.

“Damn. Ya’ll white boys are crazy. I wouldn’t want to ride with no random rednecks.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but I don’t really have a choice.”

“I hear that.” He said. “Listen. I’m headed the other way but here’s some thing for you.” He gave me fifty dollars. “Good luck.”

I thanked him for his help and we moved farther down the road. We spent the night between the highway and a swamp. I slept in a ditch that looked something like a freshly filled grave. This became even more unsettling the next day when a convenience store worker told us that some one had been going up and down route ten, killing female hitch hikers. I thought back to the psychos in the van and shuddered. Not long after, we were picked up by another van. This one was driven by a drunk old man. I was a little skeptical about riding with some one that inebriated but we had been stuck in the town awhile and the only way out was a huge bridge with no side walks. Before leaving town, the driver stopped for a few tall boys at a liquor store. When he backed out, I heard the scrape of metal on metal. ‘Oh, great’, I thought as I chucked my beer out the window. The driver got out and found a car parked behind him. It was a brand new sports car without any plates. When its owner came out of the store, he seemed distraught but insisted that we leave without worrying about it.

The booze hound dropped us in east Texas . Outside of a truck stop we found our next ride. I climbed in and couldn’t believe my eyes. Driving the king cab tractor was none other than the professional wrestler, Stone Cold Steve Austin. I never expected to travel with a celebrity but there I was. He told us about taking time off for an injured knee and blared ACDC while smoking like Tommy Chong. He dropped us near Houston and we road the rest of the way to the city with a drunken couple. I was beginning to realize that almost every one on this highway was intoxicated.

We found ourselves walking through the middle of Houston ’s roughest neighborhoods. The walls of buildings were marked with gang graffiti and the city’s homeless eyed us like potential sources of easy cash. I thanked my sense of style and natural, large build for making people think twice before the messed with me. Not a lot of people would start a fight with a 200 pound teen ager with a spiked green Mohawk and a giant nose ring.

On accident, we found a grey hound station and had some money wired to us. We took a bus as far west as we could go. I fell asleep on the bus and woke to a bus driver standing over me saying, “Sadona. Sadona.”

“What?” I said.

“Sadona” he repeated, “This is your stop.”

I woke my father and we stepped out into the dusty street. For the first time in my life, I found myself in the desert. Sadona was a dust bowl. The tiny town had dirt roads, a single store and houses that screamed Middle America . We walked by a high school and a down a road with cacti and tumble weeds to either side. People who had probably never left their home town stared at us as they drove by. From their looks, they must have thought we looked fairly alien.

If I learned anything in Texas , it’s this; white Texans are the least helpful people in the world. We didn’t find any rides until a group of immigrant workers drove by. We loaded into an SUV with the back seats torn out, so a dozen people could fit in the cramped space. Our next ride was from a preacher. He didn’t trust us enough to let us sit in the cab with him and let us sit in the bed of his truck. We rode for hours. We passed ghost towns, Anasazi ruins and miles upon miles of wind mills. I enjoyed the ride until we headed up a winding stretch of road on the side of a giant plateau. I read a sign that stated ‘warning! 90 mph winds. Tie down cargo.’ We had to flatten ourselves to the bottom of the truck bed and hook our hands and feet to holes in the corners to keep from flying off out of the truck and into the chasm between mesas.

The preacher dropped us in Fort Stockton . He gave me twenty dollars and said, “My generosity is nothing compared to the generosity of Jesus. Look in your hearts and see if he’s there.”

I was never a religious guy but I didn’t want the preacher to think his help was for nothing so I said something I’ve never said before and will never say again, “God bless you.”

We slept in the desert that night. We only had one sleeping bag and slept on top of it. We were dirty, sun burnt and starting to become delirious from exposure to the sun and lack of food and water. Dad’s feet were sore and he removed his shoes before passing out. After seeing a scorpion walk close by, I slept light. Several times I was awoken by passing coyotes, snakes and birds. At one point, I felt something at the far end of the bag. It was probably just one of the vultures that had been circling us since we entered Texas but that’s not was my tired mind saw. I stared down at a Chupacabra , picking at my fathers bare feet. I shoed the creature off and it flew straight into the sky like a bat. The next day, we found a ride from a Mexican trucker. He fed us burritos his wife made. He dropped us around the south western edge of Texas . As I said, we were right on the edge of madness. The brain can only boil in the sun so long before it stops working. I now know how the natives felt on spirit quests. I only vaguely remember the next week. I came back to myself in a strange situation. We were being deported. My father is half Mohawk Indian and the immigration officers didn’t think his ID was real and I was only fifteen and didn’t have any ID. We were both sun burned and very dark. So the ignorant Texans automatically assumed we were Mexican. We spent about two days trying to find a good spot to sneak back over the Rio Grande . When we did find our way across the dirty water and over the tall, barb wire fence, I made my father go to a hospital and have his now infected feet taken care of. The Mexican doctors rubbed his feet down with herbs and gave him antibiotics.

I’d had enough of hitch hiking for a life time. We found our way to a bus station, stopping only to argue with hobos who thought our hitch hiking near their bridge was an attempt to usurp their pan handling turf. When we told them we were just trying to get out of town one said, “Why would you want to leave? Don’t you want to have a drink?”

A pretty, young Latina drove us to the bus station. I got on the phone with my grandmother and had her wire us enough money to take us to Phoenix. The next day, after a circuitous ride across New Mexico we arrived in Arizona and finally got some rest. My great aunt had an air conditioned house, an in ground pool and a grille full of wracks of ribs. We were reunited with my brothers and almost as importantly, with a shower. I’d lost 40 pounds in two weeks and my feet were sore. I’d been burnt so long my skin was peeling and I hadn’t slept in a bed in what seemed like ages. After eating four wracks of ribs, I slept until noon the next day.

I walked countless miles. I faced death and bizarre situations again and again. I cook my mind in the sun and went days without food, but looking back the summer of 2002 wasn’t just an agonizing ordeal. It was my odyssey. Magellan had Africa, Luis and Clark had the Oregon trail (which has its own story for me) and I had Route 10.