I have two music-related stories from my 1978 hitchhiking travels. I've already written
about
Baker Street, and I said that when Annalisa played a certain song I'd write about it.
Today she played it, and here's the story.
Few people know that aluminum can be written on with a pencil. Fewer know that
impromptu messages, similar to those scribbled on bathroom walls, can also be found
on the aluminum light poles illuminating the many interchanges of the U.S. highway
system. I discovered these facts in Western Wyoming during my epic hitchhiking journey
from New England to the West Coast and back in the summer of 1978.
Location is a big factor in how long it takes to get a ride. I always asked the drivers who
stopped for me how far and where they were going. Sometimes the lift being offered was
short and would leave me in a worse postion, and I would decline. But chance plays a
large role as well, since I didn't always know exactly where they were going.
Where chance had left me this sunny summer day in Western Wyoming was at an
interchange on Route 80 that epitomized the cliche of a lonely crossroads. If you look
up the phrase "in the middle of nowhere," there is a picture of this interchange. No doubt
it was built solely because there simply weren't any other road crossings for miles in either
direction. Not only were there no services available, there were barely even any signs of
human habitation.
The reason location matters, even when hitchhiking on interstate highways, is that you
are more likely to get picked up by drivers who are entering on the ramp than by drivers
who are zipping by at highway speed. Drivers on the ramp are moving more slowly and
are better positioned to look you over. So good ramp traffic is one of the keys to getting
a ride more quickly.
It's clear that there was going to be literally no ramp traffic at all, so I walk down the ramp
to the merge point and pick a spot that I think offers the best visibility to drivers on the
highway. I'm optimistic, because up to this point in my travels the longest I've had to wait
for a ride is about an hour and a half. Most of the time the waits have been much shorter,
perhaps only twenty or thirty minutes.
This day would be different. The cars stream by without a moment's hesitation. Thirty
minutes, sixty minutes, ninty minutes, two hours. The time crawls by, seemingly in inverse
proportion to the speed of passing vehicles. I take a break and retreat off the roadway to
make a new sign. It's then that I make my discovery about the penciled palimpsests on the
light standards that line our nation's roadways. "This place SUCKS!" proclaims one. "Waited
here 24 hours without a ride" reads another. I traipse over to a second pole, where I find
similar dismal messages. In retrospect, only people who don't get a quick ride take the time
to write on the streetlamps, but it was a clear warning that I might be in for a long wait.
And wait I did. Over six hours pass, and finally late in the afternoon, someone pulls over
to give me a lift. He's driving an American pickup truck, and dressed kind of like a cowboy
-- jeans, boots, etc. Characteristics that are so widespread in Wyoming that you couldn't be
faulted if you concluded they must be mandated by some local ordinance. As we get underway
he reachs for a music tape to play, then pauses to apologize for what I'm about to hear.
"It's kind of different," he says. Of course, at this point I'm so happy to get away from that
miserable interchange that I'd gladly listen to Yoko Ono singing mariachi opera, and even say I
liked it.
"It's jazz," he continues. Ah, jazz. As a boy I played my parent's Dave Brubeck and Ramsey
Lewis Trio records, and I was exposed to other classic varieties like Dixieland. In high school
I discovered jazz fusion, and I added Weather Report, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock
records to my collection. Yes, I knew something about jazz. And then he plays... Chuck
Mangione's
Feels So Good, perhaps one of the blandest, most milquetoast examples of the
genre, and one which presages Kenny G and the whole "smooth jazz" category. (Don't get me
wrong. I enjoy the song. But contrast it with anything from Miles Davis'
Bitches Brew, for
example.)
So there we are, riding along the Wyoming highway, listening to the tape, and this fellow,
who, as surely as he is surrounded by other pickup-truck-driving cowboys, must also be
swimming in an ocean of hardcore country music -- and so he is concerned that I, who
happens to be a long-time jazz listener raised in the true Northeastern liberal tradition,
will find Chuck Mangione "kind of different."
I still laugh when I think about it.
