“Portland”

By the time we had gotten to the house and heard Jay’s story, it was after midnight, too late to do anything.  

Clearly a rental, the friend’s house was a large, old, two-story Victorian that had seen better days.  It was also very much a 1960’s crash pad.  I couldn’t tell who was which, but between permanent residents and transient guests (like myself), there were at least ten people staying there, maybe more.  I found a spot on the living room floor, rolled out my sleeping bag and climbed in.  For at least an hour I lay there wondering if I’d ever see Mike and Steve again.  If I didn’t, how would I get back home?         

In the morning I did the only thing I could think of:  I asked to use the telephone and I called Mike’s mother Peg, the one parent of our crew who actually knew we were going to ride trains.   Divorced from Mike’s father, Peg was a single mother who, used to her son’s escapades, was resigned to them and could be taken into confidence.   Upon hearing my voice, she was relieved.   Mike having telephoned her yesterday morning after we were separated, she had been awaiting my call.

Peg reported that Mike and Steve were still in Dunsmuir!  Off the train, they figured they’d wait there for me to come back!  I explained to her I was in Portland and gave her the address of the house.  Did Mike and Steve want to come up to me?  Or did they want me to come back to them?

Having the number for a phone booth near the Dunsmuir train station — which Mike and Steve would be near at the top of each hour — Peg told me she’d try to get hold of them and hung up.  About a half hour later she called back to inform me that Mike and Steve had the address and would hitchhike to Portland. 

Relief washed over me.  I would no longer be alone.

I have absolutely no memory of what I did that day as I waited for Mike and Steve to arrive.  The only thing I recall is new companion Greg, immediately at home in this wannabe commune, attempting to find a cheap dentist to fix his hobo-broken tooth.  By late afternoon Mike and Steve arrived, having had decent luck hitching rides.  

We told our respective stories.   On that fateful night in Dunsmuir, after Mike found Steve, the two of them had walked to the end of the train in search of Jay.  By the time they figured out that he was not on the train, they headed back to get Phil and me.  Only the train started.  They called out.  We didn’t hear them.  They though it best to stay put in case Jay showed up on another train.    

There was some tension between us. Mike didn’t understand why 1) Phil and I didn’t hear him and get off in Dunsmuir, and 2) once we knew he and Steve weren’t on the train (in Klamath Falls), why we didn’t just catch a train back.  

Any rancor, however, quickly faded, especially when we joined everyone in the house on a trip to a Chinese restaurant for dinner.   There was at least fifteen or us around a large table.  It was at that dinner that Mike sprung on Steve and me a plan he had been cooking up with Phil and Jay without our knowledge.   

Mike was attending Georgetown University in Washington DC, and it was nearing time for him to head back there for the start of fall semester.  Rather than go back to Los Angeles and fly back, Mike had gotten it in his mind that he’d head straight there from Portland, accompanying Phil and Jay on their hitchhike back to St. Louis, from there continuing onto DC by himself.  Steve and I were stunned by the proposal, but hardly surprised.  This was typical Mike.   When I asked about the clothes and things he’d need for school, Mike was nonplussed.  He’d have his mother pack up all that stuff and ship it. 

It wasn’t as if we could talk Mike out of this plan.  While acting as if he was debating the idea, he had clearly made up his mind and was going to do it.  We thus had no choice but to accept the fact that we were now splitting up intentionally.  As Phil and Jay were planning to start back home in two days, Mike, Steve and I decided to have one last small adventure together before parting.  The next day we’d hitch to Astoria, where the Columbia River meets the sea, and spend the night.  Then Mike would return to Portland while Steve and I would begin our journey home, hitchhiking down the legendarily beautiful Oregon coast. 

I should note at this point that both Steve and I had reasons to get back to California within the next couple of days.   Steve had a summer job from which he had taken time off.  Having arranged to go camping in Sequoia, I needed to get to Tulare, California to meet Ron, a friend and another high school classmate, for the drive up into the national park.  

Come the next morning, the three of us hitched to Astoria.  I remember nothing of that trip except that, as we waited for a ride at an intersection in Portland, we sang the songs of Cat Stevens, a popular singer/songwriter of the time.  I also don’t remember what we did in Astoria once we got there, except for spending the night on the beach.  It was foggy and cold, and come morning our bags were wet with heavy condensation.  We dried out the best we could, ate some sort of breakfast (donuts from a market?) and made our way back to US 101.  Somewhere along that road, Steve and I bid goodbye to Mike, wishing him well on his hitchhike across America.  Then, while we stuck out our thumbs on the southbound side, Mike crossed the road to hitchhike in the opposite direction back to Portland.

It took multiple rides to work our way down the coast.  Two stand out.  We were picked up by a beautiful young couple in a red, two-door convertible, the best possible vehicle from which to observe the scenic Oregon ocean cliffs and beaches.  The man driving and the woman riding shotgun, they told us to just climb over into the back seat.   The two having just bought some cracked and cleaned crab, the woman was extracting pieces of the white meat from legs and claws, popping them into the mouth of her boyfriend or eating them herself.  When they asked if we’d like some, we said yes.  Never having had crab, I feared I might not like it until the epiphany of that marvelous first bite.  I have to say that, with the sun shining, the wind blowing through our hair, and every turn bringing a fantastic new view of sand and sea, eating crab while driving the Oregon coast remains one of my favorite memories.

It was further down the 101 and getting late when fate provided us with a quintessential – and now clichéd – 1960s experience.   A young hippie family in a VW van decorated with peace signs pulled over for us.  With the long-haired male driver was his pretty, tied-dyed wife, their two-year-old son and a brother (also in his 20s and long-haired) of either driver or wife.    After hearing our tale of where we had been and where we were going, the wife noted the late hour and expressed concern as to where we’d spend the night.  We told her we’d find a place – a park or something – to throw down our sleeping bags.  Not approving, she exchanged a look with her husband and then offered to let us crash at their place in the nearby town of Florence.  Taken aback by this generous offer, Steve and I exchanged a look.  We both thought staying with them would be weird, but knew it would be a hell of a lot better than sleeping on the side of the road.

The hippies’ home turned out to be a modest two-bedroom unit in a small apartment building.  The wife immediately proceeded to lay out a meal for all of us, dismissing Steve’s and my offer of some money for it.  A visitor came by, this being a male cousin.  This man’s story was that, having completed his sentence for some crime or another, he had recently gotten out of prison,.  As this was the first ex-con I had ever met, I remember being both excited and intimidated. 

At one point the conversation turned to us and our plan for resuming our journey.  By now Steve and I had concluded that it could take us a week to continue on the coast and that we’d be better off cutting inland to hitchhike down Interstate 5.  Our hosts informed us that that was imminently doable: less than a mile away was the intersection with Highway 126, which cut east to Eugene.   As it had been a long day – and we were anxious to get an early start – we asked to go to bed.  The 2-year-old son having been put down an hour or so before, we were not only cheerily directed to his room, there was an offer for one of us to join the son on his double bed. 

If anything exemplifies the attitudes of the 1960s – and the hippie mindset – this offer is it.   Nowadays the last thing you’d do is put your child in bed with a complete stranger.  But back then these free-spirited parents were fine with it.  Even then it struck me as wrong and made me uncomfortable.   But as Steve, feeling the same,  quickly claimed the only available spot for a sleeping bag on the floor of the tiny room, it was left to me to awkwardly climb over the sleeping boy and settle in as far away from him as I could…