"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." -- Martin Buber
This is a 100% true story.
The Set-Up
Summer of 1971... Igor Stravinsky and Jim Morrison take the Dirt Nap, the Pentagon Papers are published, and 'Brown Sugar' by The Rolling Stones tops the pop charts.
I was 14 years old.
It was also My Summer of Discovery, a.k.a. when I went on a 3-week cross-country station wagon road trip with two adult driver/chaperones and ten other Boy Scouts, rolling from Pasadena to New York City and back, without my parental unit.
See, I was a competitive Indian Dancer during my formative Boy Scout years... a Modern Oklahoma Fancy dancer, to be specific. My indoctrination into the Order of the Arrow (OA, a Scouting honor society based on Indian lore) lead to our Tatanka (Buffalo) Lodge starting an Indian dance troupe. As a result of my success in Local, Divisional and Regional competitions, I qualified for the US Indian Dance Finals at the National OA Conference that summer in Champaign, Illinois.
This was a pretty big deal for our Lodge, which had never sent a competitive dancer to Nationals, so a formal road trip was set up for a group of Scouts to attend the Conference. We'd drive to the week-long Conference, over-nighting at military bases, then head East afterwards to spend a few days touristing in New York City and Washington D.C. before making the long trek back to Cali.
Here are some mental snapshots of that trip that have burned into my memory like a wood-burning tool on a two-by-four.
The Take-Off
On the morning of departure, everyone gathered at the offices of the Boy Scout's San Gabriel Valley headquarters in Pasadena. The anticipation among us Scouts and our families was high while we waited for the adult driver/chaperones to arrive with their sleds.
The first adult (his name was Gene) rolled up in a Baby Blue '68 Ford Fairlane Wagon, not a bad ride for this journey. It was instantly dubbed The Blue Bomb.
We'd already drawn lots and knew who would be riding in this wagon, so you can guess what the rest of us thought when driver/chaperone/Certified Curmudgeon Leon Tomerlin (I will NEVER forget his name) rolled up in his personal car, a worn-out '63 Plymouth Valiant.
This was not the sled that we had in mind! Seems the wagon he was promised for the trip didn't make it to our starting point so we'd have to pile our bodies and gear into his Valiant and hopefully grab the wagon in Las Vegas... IF it was ready and IF the Valiant made it there in one piece. Once the family members heard about Mr. Tomerlin's plan and looked closely at his car, one the of Dads stepped up and offered up his car for the trip:
That's right... a beautiful Green 1970 Mercury Grand Marquis wagon, complete with vinyl wood siding, leather interior, a rear-facing jump seat and room to stretch out. Suddenly everything seemed OK and we were all thankful for that Dad's selfless act of support. We dubbed it The Green Monster... this would be MY Magic Carpet for the entire trip!
Starry Night
The plan was to overnight at military bases during the trip, but by the end of that first travel day we were so late in arriving at our stopover outside of Salt Lake City that the decision was made for us to just pull off the highway and camp out until morning. Hey... we're Boy Scouts, no problem! I don't recall exactly what city's outskirts we stopped at, but we found a small site that perfectly suited our needs, with the lights of the city glittering off in the distance.
It was about midnight when everyone finally crapped out in their sleeping bags, but I lay awake for a long time looking up at the brilliant starry Utah sky. I was overwhelmed by powerful emotions, being away from my family and essentially on my own, beginning a journey of discovery and friendship and adventure. I was awake most of that first night, looking at stars, enthralled by life, breathing it all into my soon-to-be-15-year old soul.
Missouri Breaks
We'd been on the road for a few days by now and were getting punchy, as teenage boys do when caged up in cars on extended road trips. When we reached the outskirts of Joplin, Missouri it was time for another gas station pit stop for fuel, bathroom and snacks... this activity became a running gag during the entire trip because we were always yelling at guys to " HURRY UP AND GET IN THE CAR, MAAAAAN!!!"
While the adults fueled the wagons, we all crowded into the bathroom and discovered (gasp!) CONDOM VENDING MACHINES!!! We'd never seen these before, being from California and all, so naturally we snapped up a bunch of them at $.25 each because... well, who knows why?
Once we'd stocked up on rubbers, sodas and snacks, we were on the road again... but in just a few minutes, we in the Green Monster realized what we MUST do and convinced Mr. Tomerlin to pull over and stop, so the Blue Bomb pulled over right behind us. We jumped out of both cars and did the most important thing in the world: took out several rubbers, blew them up and tied them to the car's antennas.
For the next few hours we rolled Eastward at speed, the condom balloons whipping around on the antennas of both cars while making a loud "WHOMPWHOMPWHOMPWHOMPWHOMP" sound, much to the shock and surprise of every other driver on the road who looked around to see where that unholy noise was coming from. We were laughing hysterically, and to their credit our chaperones were absolutely magnificent by letting us be weirdos. It was a great day.
Conference Confidential
During the conference we stayed in the empty dormitories at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the dorms were all connected via underground walkways that also featured small cafes, game rooms and laundromats. Each night after our group dinners, dozens of Scouts would gather in the laundromats to engage in 'Dryer Bronco Busting'. A Scout would crawl inside one the the large industrial dryers and, with the temperature turned waaay down, would brace himself inside and try not to throw up once we'd dropped in quarters and started the tumbler spinning. Much laughter and vomiting ensued.
I made it to the Semi-Finals in the Modern Oklahoma Fancy Dance Competition. Even though I was only 14 years old and dancing against Scouts who were older and more seasoned than me, I placed a very respectable 12th Overall. Here's an example of that style of dancing, performed by the Real Thing... the dancer in black & white is amazing:
Dorm room shenanigans were the order of the week for everyone, from short-sheeting beds to noisy late-night room break-ins to drag a naked half-awake Scout into the hall and locking him out. The shower rooms were witness to many vicious towel-snapping incidents, and huge food fights were known to break out in the underground cafes over the smallest incident. It was AWESOME.
Her name was Patti, she was 16 and worked in the underground cafe right below our dorm. She liked my taste in jukebox music (Rod Stewart's 'Maggie May' was my fave), that I was an Indian Dancer, and even came to see me compete. One evening while everyone was out at a stupid bonfire, Patti and I walked around the darkened campus, went up to my dorm room to make out and wound up 'doing it'... my very first time! It was nerve-wracking and crazy, and luckily I still had a Joplin gas station rubber (surprise!) and figured out how to actually use it. I will NEVER forget snuggling with her in that dorm room bed, and we hung out for the rest of the week until the conference ended. We traded a few steamy letters later that summer but eventually lost touch. So it goes.
New York/DC Shuffle
During our time in New York, we stayed at the Fort Wadsworth Army Base, located on Staten Island directly below the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. We ate at the base Mess most mornings and evenings and even bought snacks and souvenirs in the PX. One evening we went to the Base theater to see the film 'Woodstock', which was in theaters all over the country. We sat there watching this really cool film and then began to smell something. After a few minutes, we realized the theater was filling up with pot smoke... ON AN ARMY BASE. I don't remember if we got a contact high, but it was still an amazing thing to experience... ON AN ARMY BASE.
While taking one of our many rides on the Staten Island Ferry, we were all sitting on an upper-deck bench watching the glorious sunset when a very attractive woman sat down next to Mr. Tomerlin. At first we just ignored it until we realized... SHE WAS A HOOKER. She tried for about 5 minutes to get him to go below-deck with her (heh heh heh), and we were loudly egging him on to go for it! He was so nervous and flustered that while he was stammering a refusal to her offer, his dentures fell out of his mouth and right into his lap. Much howling laughter ensued, the hooker split and we all congratulated him for being such a hunky target.
I'd been looking forward to visiting Ellis Island and especially the Statue of Liberty, which I'd been told was a pretty amazing place. I wanted to climb up into her head, grab a snack and a souvenir up there and look out over the New York skyline. It was a stifling hot day when we started climbing the steep spiral stairway inside the Statue, and the going was tedious and slow because tourists. After what seemed like an eternity, we made it up to her head... but I was shocked to see how tiny the space inside was! There was only one platform to view out of the ports in her crown, and because of the lineup of people behind us, we had to keep moving. We were in her head all of maybe 2 or 3 minutes before we started the long downward climb. There was no restaurant or gift shop in Lady Liberty's head. I'd been HAD.
Our stay in Washington D.C. was filled with visits to the National Mall, the Capitol and all the museums, including a full day at the Smithsonian which was incredible. The place that really stood out for me was the U.S. Mint, where the tour included a glassed-in walkway directly above an open area where they were printing paper currency. I was amazed at what I saw right below me: a huge rectangular stack of freshly-printed $20 bills, easily 5 feet high and 20 feet long. They were in giant sheets that were waiting to be cut and I was speechless at the sight of all that money, right there, less than 20 feet away from me. The image of that stack of money is still vivid in my ancient hard drive.
Homeward Bound
After an event and memory-filled trip from West to East Coast, the roll back to Cali was blur of highway travel with stopovers only for fuel, food and sleep. For some reason, we cruised on I-80 back through Chicagoland and the states of Iowa and Nebraska, maybe due to weather issues as we had a deadline for our return to Pasadena.
The only vivid memory I have of the ride home was that the entire time we rolled through Iowa and Nebraska, all we saw were miles and miles and miles of cornfields. Coupled with the hot and humid weather, the heavy aroma of fresh corn filled every square inch of The Green Monster. Unfortunately, my buddy Duck was allergic to corn and was horribly ill during our transit of those two corn-filled states. He was puking and shitting like crazy, which caused us several unplanned stops for emergency cleanups, for which he felt doubly-awful. Once we left Nebraska and the Cornfields of Death, Duck came around and The Green Monster stopped smelling like an outhouse. WHEW.
Why This Matters
This past summer, my 17-year-old Grandson Ben embarked on a 6-week musical adventure, playing the Contrabass tuba for the Jersey Surf Marching Band in the 2019 DCI Drum Corps and Marching Band Competition Series. It was his first extended time being away from home, and while he was on the road all over the Eastern and Southern US, I told his Mom that Ben would come back changed in ways seen and unseen. The visible changes he experienced are obvious in the image below... the left side when he arrived at Band Camp, the right side near the end of the competition journey:
That right there is one hell of a visible change, and I'm so damned proud of him!! Naturally, his mental and emotional changes were less noticeable upon his return home but his Mom knew right away when those changes manifested themselves in words and deeds that were... different.
Ben's Big Adventure was a catalyst for this essay about one of my youthful Big Adventures, one that (obviously!) saw me return home as a wholly different person. Although I'd had the chance to spend many weeks at Boy Scout summer camps, that trip to New York and back... that one was special for a lot of different reasons.
I'd already been a pretty responsible teenager to that point, mostly staying out of trouble and earning my weekly $5 allowance by washing dishes, cleaning house, mowing the yards and washing Dad's truck. This New York trip forced me to draw on the tools Dad had burned into my head and behave like (gasp!) a responsible adult. I kept myself and my clothes clean and neat, helped the drivers out at pit stops all the time, mediated personality clashes that happened during those loooooong highway jaunts, and generally did everything I could to enjoy this singular adventure without muss or fuss.
Initially, several of the other Scouts struggled with the personal responsibility an extended road trip without parental units requires, and we saw more than a few emotional breakdowns, jags of open hostility and the need for adult disciplinary measures that were embarrassing but warranted and necessary. However, by the end of the trip we were all Road Warriors -- self-sufficient, congenial and adherents to pretty much all twelve of The Scout Laws.
Thanks to my love of science fiction, the summer of 1970 was an introduction to a more expansive universal understanding than my Catholic upbringing could ever have accomplished. Thanks to Boy Scouting and my Awesome Dad, the summer of 1971 was a first peek into the World of Responsibility, regardless of how it may have seemed at the time. I learned a lot about myself, about other guys my age and how adults can interact with teenagers without losing their shit every 5 minutes.
I also learned how a condom works, so there's that.
I can only imagine the fun-yet-shall-never-be-spoken-of adventures that happened during Ben's Big Musical Adventure, and maybe someday he'll be willing and able to share some stories with me. I know he's created memories that will last a lifetime, and has already stated his intention to re-join his Jersey Surf band mates in the summer of 2020 for another Summer of Discovery.
I know this much: the searing memories of our youth are the ones that add context and contrast to the rest of our lives. We never really know which ones will be the stickiest, which will evaporate forever into the cerebral ether, or which will jump into conscious thought keyed only by a word, a song, a story... or a Grandson.
"Life isn't about the number of breaths you take... it's about the moments that take your breath away." -- George Carlin
Post Script: Awesome Dad recently informed me he has boxes filled with 35mm slides of photos that I took during this trip, stashed somewhere in his pile of belongings now being moved to his new home in Emmett, Idaho. You can bet your ass that I'll get my paws on those slides and do the Time Warp... Again.
Lead and station wagon images, Gracias de Google Images; 'Mens Fancy Dance Suite' and Steppenwolf 'Magic Carpet Ride' videos, Gracias de Youtube; Awesome Ben Before and After image, Muchismas Gracias de Rebecca Loren Macias
