ON THE ROAD
by
Alan Brewer

I read On the Road when I was fifteen, and it changed my life. I could finally imagine finding adventure and freedom in this life, not just in science fiction or ancient history. You see, I had never really learned how to live here and now. Jack's Kerouac's narrator, Sal Paradise, dreams, "Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything: somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me."

Five years later I went on the road myself. And indeed many things were handed to me, even my future home.

My first summer in college I worked at a steel mill back home in Pittsburgh, and the next summer I was ready. I would hitchhike to Chicago, then to Colorado and backpack in the Rockies, then out to San Francisco and down the coast, then back across America, all in the steps of Jack in On the Road, in The Dharma Bums. This was 1970, and young people everywhere around the country were hitchhiking, looking for the pearl, Kerouac's dream finally come true.

I was surprised my parents didn't put up more resistance. Maybe they could see how badly I wanted it. Perhaps they would just as soon have me away for the summer after coming home from college, after a delayed adolescence in the midst of the counterculture, a changed person. Changed from that studious, obedient, chronically depressed son. Probably they thought it would knock some of the foolishness out of my head and then I would settle down to real life. But it turned out I never did settle down, at least not in any way they expected.

One June afternoon I finished packing my Army Surplus backpack. I had never hitched more then three miles at a time in my life. I hoisted my bag to my shoulders and adjusted the straps.

My mother stared at me in mild disbelief. "Do you want me to drive you to the freeway?" she offered.

"No thanks, I'm fine." I had to do it all on my own, from the beginning (just with Jack as my guide). We said our good-byes, I promised to call twice a week (my father had at first insisted on once a day, and in the end if called once a week), opened the front door and walked down our sidewalk to the street. I could feel my mother's eyes on my back. Maybe she thought I would be back home by dark.

I felt out of place and alone, free and exhilarated.

I walked down the hill to the highway. In Upper St. Clair, in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, people don't just walk down the street, certainly not with a backpack. It was almost dark already, rush hour was beginning. It would have been prudent to wait until morning, but I needed to get moving now. I would go nonstop all the way to my next destination, no matter how far—and that is how I hitched most of the next six thousand miles.

I got a ride right away with a guy just off work. He asked where I was going, what I was doing, then said wistfully, "Gee, I'd like to know what it's like." Why didn't I get his address? He really wanted to hear, and I would have had stories to tell him.

A few more rides took me to the freeway and then I skipped out of Pennsylvania and into Ohio, as it grew more dark. Late that evening I rode through Gary, Indiana with a steelworker in a new Buick.

"I used to have a motorcycle," Henry mused, looking down at the beer can in his lap. "Now I just drive this damned big car and get fat."

I remembered "Road Through a Small Town," a one-act play I had published in the high school literary magazine. Had I become that young man who hitched through town and reminded the good ole boys sitting on the porch of the general store about their lost dreams? And all in just one day?

I arrived in Chicago's downtown Loop in the middle of the morning. A cop stopped me and poked suspiciously through my backpack, asked if I had any weapons. "Well, a hunting knife"; a comforting thing to have here in the city at 3 A.M. He shrugged and let me go. I caught the L to the North Side to see my tentative girlfriend from sophomore year. It was all over, she had just met and already fallen in love with her future husband.

But it didn't matter any more, I was on the move. In the morning Cindy drove me to the freeway and I was on my way, next stop Boulder, Colorado.

I was blissfully innocent. I hadn't been able to find the right sleeping bag in Pittsburgh due to a trucker's strike. The surplus store clerk mentioned that Gerry, in Boulder, made good bags. Okay, I'll pick up a bag there and then go backpacking in the Rockies.

Once I left Chicago and headed west across the great open spaces toward the Rockies, I got into the rhythm of the road. Catching a ride, saying goodbye, catching another ride, saying Hi. The first real adventure of my life. It was a wonderful feeling -- everything I needed was on my back; anywhere I wanted to go, I just stuck out my thumb, and sooner or later I would get there. I didn't care how long it took, the trip was movement, not the destination.

So many people I met that summer and fell into instant intimacy. Here you are, late at night, riding down a lonely highway with someone who wants company. You have a few hours together, he starts talking and you both end up sharing your life stories, your hopes and dreams. Knowing you will never see each other again, free to tell them anything, compelled to tell everything.

I told people I was heading to Denver, a more common destination. But I certainly didn't want to end up there ("Down in Denver, down in Denver / All I did was die," Sal Paradise laments). I caught a ride with a guy going all the way to Denver. But he was afraid to push his old station wagon past 50 mph and finally stopped for the night. I hitched a ride with another guy going through to Denver. But late that night he too decided to stop for the night.

I pressed on, I didn't dare stop and break the momentum. I didn't know any better, didn't know how hard it is to catch rides late at night. Maybe that's why it was so easy. Later it got hard; a month later I wrote in my journal about being stuck "in the fucking middle of nowhere." This night I found myself standing in the midst of a huge, nightmarishly lit freeway interchange in the middle of Nebraska, I think, at three in the morning with my thumb out.

A pickup stopped and a young bearded face leaned out. "Where you going?"

"Denver."

"That's where we're going. Hop in."

"Far out!" I jumped in back, joining a couple other hitchhikers, and we sped through the night. Around dawn came a tap on the back window of the cab.

"We've decided we're going to Boulder instead. Okay?"

"Far out!"

In the early morning we stopped at the University of Boulder, sneaked into a dorm, showered, and crashed out on couches in the lounge for a few hours until we were thrown out. I said farewell to my traveling companions and walked down to the highway. I stuck out my thumb. The very first car was a VW bug, always a good sign.

The Bug stopped and the driver asked, "Where you going?"

"Do you know where Gerry is?"

"I work there, going to work right now."

"Far out!" I was happy, but not really surprised.

And so I was dropped at the door of my destination, virtually non-stop for a thousand miles. It was never so easy again; a month later I would write, "Hitching is complete insanity."

But in the beginning, everything was pure adventure and magic.