A Trip to California (Part Six)

There was one thing we did on the road that still surprises me. The white nurse in our van was sitting in the front passenger side and noticed a black hitchhiker. This was in the Midwest and it made me wonder how he ended up in an area where he could have been picked up and jailed as a vagrant. There was some argument about stopping the car for him (not a general vote, but not much support on the nay side). There were six of us, if I consider myself as a potential combatant (Natalie alone could have talked him to death), and that was also on mind. But we still wondered about what would happen for the rest of our trip.

He was very dark, thin, and tall and had a friendly and open look. He told us that he was trying to reconnect with family (or friends; he was not precise about this). He had spent some time in the Midwest with people he did not know very well. Stuck without any money – he had been dropped off by another car a few hours earlier – he was tired but not worried or stressed out. I do not remember talking to him for too long or too often – he napped in the flat area at the back of the van with his small satchel around his chest – and I realized just how silly my concerns for our safety were. He was exhausted and, as my mother discovered, very hungry. She told me later that she had seen him take a doughnut from a box of them that we had with us (I never saw this happen, but I would not have blamed him if I did). I liked having him there. He seemed to be another sign of America’s greatness for me: we trusted him and he trusted us; and we were both on this journey to the West. He only stayed with us up to Nevada (Las Vegas or Reno was his stop), and I regret now that I have no photograph of him (even his name has stepped out of my memory). I hope that he is well and living with a real roof over his head.

A Trip to California (Part Five)

That was a lesson. I would see beautiful wheat fields in the Midwest, but I would also eat the worst Chinese food of my young life in the same setting. I would see Salt Lake City at night from a high mountain pass (easily one of the most beautiful sights in the world; those salt rings in the moonlight are remarkable), and I would pass through Las Vegas in the daytime (the ugliest sight for a dreamer of casino fortunes and stage shows). This was right and fair. Whenever I hear a critic of America preach in Europe, Asia or Africa, I have to wonder and ask out loud: Have these people ever visited and travelled across that land? Do they know what America is really like when they step away from its movies, music and other advertising? It is a country that does not deserve the criticism it receives from total strangers. We slept in that open space when we could have stayed in an inn or a motel and I never lost the feeling that we were like the original pioneers who had to risk our lives to see what that great bulge of land - Jack Kerouac’s wonderful phrase - had to offer. Of course, the internal combustion system and A/C did not hurt either. But we were still out in the rough and raw places of a great and frightening place.