Mountain View

Once upon a time many light years ago I thought of myself as some sort of romantic Dylanesque hipster. I watched the mysterious longhairs on the side of the road with thumb in the air and the cardboard sign saying 'Frisco'.

I wanted that too.

So I sold my broken '57 dodge for $12.00 because Mom had insisted that I get it off the lawn and I took off the next morning toward the west.

There are many stories and many miles of lonely, dirty roads between here and The Haight. Maybe some dayI'll take the time to tell a few. This isn't one of them.

This story is about a short piece of the road that brought me back from one of those trips.

I was heading back to Tulsa from Las Vegas. Hitching alone. An old man from Washington state stopped to let me in. He said that he'd been driving for - how long did he say? - I don't remember. He said that he was tired and wanted me to keep him awake. I tried with boring conversation. Slipped off to sleep somewhere in Arizona.

It was nighttime when I awoke. I distinctly remember looking to my left at the old man. His eyes were wide open and vacant. He was staring into the headlight beams that led us down the highway. He wasn't very aware. Maybe not even there. Scared me. I remember thinking that if I got back to sleep quickly then maybe I wouldn't be hurt so bad when we wrecked.

Woke up again, who knows how long later. Headlights right in my eyes had given me a start. I looked at him. He was still the same. Kind of robotish. Speedometer said 70. More headlights. They came right at us and then veered off to my right. That's where the straightup wall of the mountain was. Seconds later more of them. More headlights that this time jaunted over toward my left, down and off the road, where the downside of the mountain was.

Then I saw the posts. You need to be sort of old to remember the posts. At the side of the road was where they put little brown three foot high posts with a reflective white band painted around them. They were there to show you where not to go if you didn't want to leave the road. We hit one. It uprooted and flew like it was nothing. In that instant I instinctively grabbed the bottom of the car seat where I was sitting. I had reached to grab the door handle but, I didn't realize until a second or two later, that the door had been ripped open by the impact and it had broken forward. It was now going to be more than open until somebody took some time to fix it or throw it away. That's why I grabbed the bottom of the seat. Outta fear.

Then SPLIP, SPLIP, we hit two more little banded poles, sending them after the first. And foom - we went off the road and turned sideways and then WHUMP. We stopped. On our side.

I was still holding the bottom of the seat as I looked to my left to see the old man with blood on his face. He said "I've lived a long life. I'm not afraid to die". I was 18. I was very afraid to die.

I was looking past the old man and down the mountain. We were in convertible car which was on its side on the side of a mountain. I was very concerned that if I let go of the seat that I was holding then I would slide to the driver's side of the car and throw it off balance and send it down the mountain. I remember thinking that I might have time to punch the old man a couple of times before we hit bottom.

We hung there a while. I could hear commotion up on the roadway. Sirens. People talking. For quite a while no one noticed us hanging on the downside of the mountain. I tried to grab the seat with my other hand but couldn't. I was too afraid of upsetting our balance. My right hand and arm started aching with the strain. My arm actually vibrated because it was just about through holding that position. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed and begged to God and demanded my body to cooperate. To hang on.

I don't know if we would have gone down or not but I wasn't going to find out if I could help it.

After what seemed like an hour there were two people who came down the rocks toward our car. "Oh my God". "Is anyone alive in there?" "Yes" I yelled. "We're here".

"DON'T MOVE".

It came from the back of the car. "Don't move until we get a chain on you. Do you hear me?Don't move"."Yea yea, yea. OK. Don't move". I said. If that old man moved I was going to break his nose on the way down.

Still another long time before we heard the sounds of some kind of truck playing out chain."It won't reach. Can you hang on a little longer? We've gotta go into town and get more chain".

Can I hang on longer. Shit.

They did get more chain. Hooked it up to the car. Then somebody climbed on the side of the car and helped me out. They helped the old man out while I climbed up the rocks to the road. There were ambulances and police cars everywhere. Apparently we ran two or three cars off the road and there were people hurt. I stood off to the side out of the way. Lots of stuff was going on. Soon everyone left.

I was standing there on the highway all alone.

I didn't feel like hitchiking. Walked for about an hour to a town called Grants New Mexico. Went to the police station and turned myself in as a transient. They fed me and gave me a place to sleep. Next morning I saw a judge who gave me 24 hoursto get out of town. So I hitched back to Tulsa.

A year or so later a private detective found me. He said that he figured, since I had them put
me in jail that night, it must be me who was the passenger. I said yes, I was. He asked and
asked some questions. I really didn't know what to say. I was asleep for most of it.
I wasn't much help so he left me alone after a while.