“What was that?”
“Wha--- uh-oh…”
“What?”
Barbara asked.
I
had been in a deep reverie as we zoomed down the road across the Sonora Desert
about 50 miles from Tucson in our VW van.
Barbara’s question jerked me to a more practical state of brain, just
prior to that moment when the flat tire itself would have been all the alert
that I would need.
Remarkably
for a trip that would last 12 full months, we had been on the whole trouble
free. But those moments when car trouble
did occur were dramatic:
One
autumnal evening at approximately 7:15 PM, just outside of Danbury,
Connecticut, we heard an awful scraping noise, not exactly like anything I had
personally heard before, yelling at us from the engine. Remembering that the engine of the classic VW
van was an air-cooled marvel with horsepower just a bit greater than a large
riding lawn mower and placed at the rear, envision my stroll to the back of the
vehicle as that very conveyor of Gary and Barbara came to a halt on this very
quiet road in rural New England. I
opened the back door to peer at the engine but inasmuch as there was no word
from same as to what was ailing, I had no idea of what was wrong with the
inarticulate motor.
I
had managed to pull the van over to the side of the road, so that we proceeded just
as we did for most of those ethereal days stretching from June 1975 to June
1976: settled in for the night. I retrieved the air mattresses from the rear
end over the motor and blew them up with the air from my very lungs: There being good exercise in that exercise, I
never bought a pump. We let the back
seat down and spread our sleeping blankets over the mattresses. We got back up front for a while, took a
short stroll, talking all the while the way we loved to do, and quite nonplussed
just went to sleep before seeing what the morrow would bring.
Next
morn we arose, had our granola and breakfast bars, drank our powdered Tang (of
astronaut fame, you know) grape juice, and then walked into Danbury. Amazingly, the first sight we saw as we
approached the town was an independent auto mechanic’s garage. He got in his tow truck, brought the van back
to his shop, analyzed the problem and reported to us that we had a blown
piston:
“I’ll
need to get the part and rebuild the engine--- I cannot touch it for a week.” He estimated the repair (remember this was
autumn 1975) at $500.
That
was sustainable. We had saved $5,000
during our two years at Palm Gardens, I teaching both years and Barbara
generating tax calculation programs for Fast-Tax. This was our first mishap, five months into
the trip. We checked out the bus
schedules and took a very scenic, circuitous route through Poughkeepsie,
Albany, and many other towns to our next big stop:
New
York City.
………………………………………………………………………
We
made a two-week adventure of the unexpected, with a full week spent in the
USA’s premier Metropolis.
Barbara
and I had consulted our trusty Triple A guide and located a three-star hotel
named, of all appellations, the “Dixie.”
After the bus had pulled into a station along Broadway near Times Square,
we retrieved our slimly packed bags and made our way to the Dixie.
The
Dixie was an event in and of itself:
We
happened to stroll down the street to the hotel’s south, just outside of which
were people who looked mighty like pimps, prostitutes, and purveyors of illegal
chemicals. We looked at each other and
strolled on around to the north side and there viewed a very different
scene: Here, a very middle class looking
family was emerging from a taxi and pulling their bags through the entrance
door. We followed. We checked in just after the family from
Middle America. When I insisted that I
would carry our bags, I got my first dramatic experience with the unionization
so absent from my Texas upbringing:
“Sir,
it’s union rules. This gentleman will
carry your bags.”
Operating
as ever from the strict logic of the moment and my full ability to carry the
bags myself, I was peeved. In the
elevator the baggage handler tried to make conversation but got little from me. He pulled the bags on a cart oversized for
the meager load, opened our door, showed us our humbly furnished but commodious
room, and asked if everything was okay.
I said yes. He asked again. I was aware of his provision of an
opportunity to tip him for his services, but after all I could have handled
these bags. I said, yes, assuredly,
everything appeared to be fine. He
glared at me and said,
“Well,
okay, thank-youououou--- so much!” and stomped out with a slam of the
door. Barbara allowed that a tip might
have been prudent. Nothing came of my
social faux pax, excepting a few mean
looks when we ran into the intendant in the elevator. I had, though, gotten an excellent
introduction to the very different conditions and expectations of the unionized
worker of the North.
……………………………………………………………………………………….
Our
visit to New York City was radiantly joyful.
We did some of the usual and those things on our personal list: visits to the Statue of Liberty, the Empire
State Building, Rockefeller Center, and the Guggenheim Museum; a tour of NBC studios, compete with a stint
as part of the audience for the game show, To
Tell the Truth; an evening at the
Broadway Production of Sherlocke Holmes and
dinner afterward at Sardis, the famous
haunt of the stars.
One
afternoon while Barbara read and rested in our room, I took a stroll of lifelong
impact: I walked all the way northward on
Fifth Avenue, past the ritzy apartments and condo complexes, then on to Harlem,
through the campus of Columbia University, to Central Park, and back to the
Dixie.
The
two sides of the Dixie presented a microcosm of the scenes that I had just
witnessed, contrasting universes of glamour and squalor, enormous wealth and
wrenching poverty, within a few steps of each other. The Dixie seemed an establishment in transition
from middle class comfort to the seedy life. In the lobby we saw mostly middle class, familial
benignity; but in the elevators we saw a
much greater cross-section of the life that New York--- and the USA--- projected into the social
ether.
………………………………………………………………………………………..
After
our super week, we took the bus ride back through the Lincoln Tunnel and
northward through suburban New York and then on into that wide expanse of
territory bundled together as “Upstate.”
We retrieved our car for the 500 bucks and went forth on our trip across
New England, New York State, and on southward along the Atlantic coast.
Although
our Danbury mechanic did a good job, he had not expected that we would be
traveling soon through the Florida heat and had failed to encase the offending
piston and rebuilt engine with a heat shield.
As we drove through Miami one evening, very close to a General Motors dealership,
we heard the same sort of sound that had clamored for our attention outside of
Danbury. We pulled into the parking lot
of the dealership and spent the night.
As occasionally happened when we had to spend the night at some unusual
urban venue for camping, police arrived at one point to disturb our slumber
with inquiries as to what the Sam Hill we were doing. We described our predicament. The cops just shook their heads, laughed, and
left. The next morning we had the car
towed to a VW dealer and had our second rebuild at a price very near the same $500
we had paid a few weeks before.
Those
were our only two major car expenses for the entire journey. I eventually phoned the Danbury dealer to
request compensation, given the heat shield omission. He graciously agreed to partial repayment. Barbara and I thereupon spent a delightful
two months in Florida, the states of the Deep South, then on for the Christmas holidays
and Jan’s wedding in Dallas, thence to Albuquerque for a two-week visit.
From
Albuquerque we traversed western New Mexico and eastern Arizona before heading
to Tucson.
By
the time the tire blew a few miles from that city, Barbara and I were on our
last $250. I changed the exhausted tire
with a spare and many times have wondered what would have ensued if the spare
did not hold up into the city.
In
Tucson, we found our way to some shabby apartments that went by the collective
name of “The Alamo”--- not to be
confused with the famous fort of San Antonio, Tejas. We paid a $100 deposit and our first month’s
rent at that same $100 rate.
At
that point we aspired to get back on the road for at least six weeks along the
West Coast.
We
had $50 to our names.
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