Love At First Con

Photo by Patrik Storm (Alstra Pictures) on Unsplash

I was a pretty naive kid. At seventeen, I hitch-hiked across the good old US of A. Starting out from a Rainbow Gathering in West Virginia, I headed for my brother in Skykomish, Washington

Every ride was a story, from waking up one morning and catching a ride in the back of pick up for twenty miles before I realized I was going in the wrong direction, to — no, wait a minute, that was a couple of years later, heading north from Laguna Beach. Wow, now I’m not sure where that happened.

Okay, so maybe my memory isn’t so good — but I do remember the last ride I got, from South Dakota to, well, almost to Skykomish.

I was at a truck stop and they pegged me to ride with them, a guy, maybe thirty, tall and lanky, with greasy longish blonde hair, his girlfriend, and their black lab. I climbed into the back seat of the old blue Pontiac — the guy swore by Pontiacs (it turns out he had some mechanic’s tools in the trunk). Anyway, me and the dog shared the back seat, with piles of their clothes and other stuff, including my guitar, in a big old wood case and my big old Kelty backpack — I don’t think they even make wood guitar cases anymore, or Kelty packs.

Now I was small for my age, skinny too, and I know I got a lot of rides from people who just felt protective of me, and sorry for me, lugging around that pack and guitar which, from their perspective, must have made me seem even smaller than I actually was. (I will never forget how big it made me feel, just a year later, when my friend Patrick returned to DC after his first year at University of South Carolina — the first thing he said, looking at me with a Budweiser in his hand, was “Tony! You grew!” Ah, Patrick — now there’s some childhood stories for another day.)

Anyway, I climbed into the backseat with all my stuff, and their stuff, and the dog, and the girl was in the front seat, but the guy had gone into the gas station store to buy something. Suddenly, he came raging back and opened the door, hurriedly digging around under the driver’s seat.

“Where’s the fucking gun?” he yelled, frenetically poking here and there. “I’m gonna kill that mother-fucker!”

My eyes focused in wide-eyed wonder — I wasn’t scared — I was intrigued with boyish innocence. Wow! This was happening.

The lady in the front seat calmed him down — he couldn’t find the gun, and he turned to me and explained it was just a plastic toy gun anyway, and he was just going to scare the guy in the store.

This wasn’t my first ride — I’d gotten out of cars before, drunk people swerving, gay guys groping, even a man who bragged to me about a murder. (I actually got picked up by an off duty police officer the next day after that ride, and I told her about it. She said “I hate it here, everybody is either drunk or they’ve got guns in the car, or both).

(By the way, the names of the reprobate and his girlfriend haven’t been changed to protect the innocent — I was the only innocent one anyway — but I can’t remember what I ate yesterday, much less a name from forty-five years ago. I do remember he had scoliosis, though, and the dog was a good puppy about a year old — and really, what kept me on board was that the girl was nine months pregnant, and that was an event I fully expected to witness in the next few days, since they pretty much said they would take me all the way to Washington state.)

But back to South Dakota. In the afternoon we pulled into a small town and found a church. The three of us went in and found the pastor. My accomplices revealed their hard luck story to him. “You see, sir, she’s going to have her baby any day now and we’re trying to get to Florida before her father, who is very sick, passes.” I was hearing the story for the first time, and, even if she was, obviously, about to burst, well, I was embarrassed at the lie. But I kept my mouth shut.

The pastor told us to come back in two hours, he was going to reach out to some of his parishioners, and he would see what he could do. When we came back he gave us a hundred dollars or something, and he invited us to have dinner with his wife and kids! I wasn’t sure I could keep up the charade, but I was able to keep quiet.

We spent the money on a hotel room and some food, beer, gas, breakfast, etc. Towns of about ten-thousand people have a couple of churches, I found out from them, so you can hit them up more than once.

They put me to the test the next evening in some other town, further west. They sent me into a police station — the same police station they had been in just a few weeks ago — to give them my own hard luck story. I put on my big, Kelty pack and hefted my guitar (god, those wooden cases were heavy!) and I walked down the block and went in.

Yup. I walked in with the same, boyish innocence that showed no fear or common sense when I first accepted this ride — you know, when he came out looking for his gun. This was happening, again! I never thought about it back then so many years ago, but maybe I don’t have much moral high-tone. When I look back over my life, I probably don’t. I’m not a criminal, and I’m not an angel. I’m not particularly courageous but I’m also sort of middle-of-the-road, milk toast, not likely to get overly activated when I see rights and wrongs.

I walked up to the desk and gave the officer my story. It wasn’t a lie, except for the part about being broke. I mean, like I’m not a criminal — I worked at both a pizza restaurant and a book and record store saving money all year, and I probably $800 in travelers checks (do they still exist?) right there in my pocket.

So the officer listened, and he told me to wait a minute, he would ask if anyone could help me out — they didn’t have petty cash at the station for people like me. So I waited like the innocent, responsible boy that I am (was?), and he came back out and told me no luck, so I looked sad and walked out. A few seconds later he came out and handed me a five dollar bill, apologized for it not being more, and told me to be careful out there.

Man, I can’t tell you how many times people were looking out for me. One time an old farmer picked me up in his truck, and he told me I shouldn’t be hitch-hiking. We drove along for a bit and then he pointed to a field and said “that’s where they found my son, after he picked up a hitch hiker, who killed him.” Truth be told, I was more scared then, about him having some revengeful thoughts towards me than I was now, driving with these petty con artists. But he was trying to help, and here I hadn’t given a single thought to what this pair of ne’er-do-wells might have in store for me.

Well, five dollars wasn’t much of a haul, but I guess they felt I’d earned my wings, because they kept on feeding me and taking me further west.

Next stop was Butte, Montana, where the man who came to the door at Evil Knieval’s mansion told us the daredevil wasn’t home. No star-studded handouts from that bend in the Snake River for us.

The next day, in another town, maybe in Idaho, a preacher gave us two-hundred dollars to do some landscaping around his church, in addition to having our “mechanic” do some work on a car, and we got down to it. But a little while later he came out and told us he had to run a few errands, and as soon as he left we split. It was all adventure to this teenaged wanderer, but maybe I should have stayed and done the work; but that was (is?) the milk toast me.

Anyway, that really didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t think they’d rob me, but I did, actually, begin having some thoughts that they might not have qualms about ripping my brother off in Skykomish.

Maybe that same day the dog got sick. Grifter dude came out of of the Veterinarian office claiming that the Vet gave the dog cocaine and also him. Maybe this was another reason not to trust him, because he didn’t include us. I don’t know that pregnant girl wouldn’t have done it — I can’t remember if she drank or smoke. She was real nice though, friendly, but I suppose she just went along with the father of the future criminal waiting to make an entrance into this story. Heck, we were almost to the Cascade mountains and I was still waiting for the little sidekick to show up.

We were on a two lane highway in the flats of eastern Washington when a guy flagged us down. I don’t remember his name, for some reason. He was a hairy, big guy, wearing a black, tee shirt with the sleeves torn off. It said, in white letters, “Bandidos”

“The only reason I pulled over,” said our erstwhile mechanic, was because you’re driving a Pontiac.” Bandido replied, “was driving.“

The mechanic and I hopped out of our car. In the front seat of the other Pontiac was a tough looking girl, and in the back seat was a big old, stand up bass. My heart started to beat faster.

The work on the car began and I wished the hairy big Bandido was less interested in engines and more interested in music. The girl walked over to our car. She was wearing a cowboy hat, pretty cool, and she struck up a conversation with our girl. I was listening to the clank of tools when her boots came up beside me. She smiled at me and all that toughness in her face disintegrated. “You play that thing?” she asked, pointing a sleeveless arm toward our car, where was, of course, my guitar.

Cool me (not) replied, “naw, I just carry it around with me for luck.”

I could see she did not appreciate my wit ’cause she looked me up and down, and her eyes briefly lost their friendly glint. Her hands, though, adjusted the vest she was wearing over nothing, or rather some things, which she saw me glance at. She smiled, a worldly smile upon a hapless virgin. She wasn’t much older than me, but full of the wisdom of her years she tossed off what might have been a line out of an old, Mae West movie: “Well,” she said, “today might be your lucky day. Haul it on out, kid.”

Of course I wobbled over to the car and untangled the case from everything else, thinking maybe hairy Bandido would grab the bass, but when I got the guitar out of the case Tough girl was standing there beside me, slapping’ on those fat strings. She saw my face and asked, with a sarcastic pout, “you never seen a girl bass-player before?”

I think I fell in love then and there. Honest — a dream come true.

So, I was a pretty good guitar player, I mean I could jam a little bit, but I’d recently been chastened back at the Rainbow gathering by a banjo player from New Orleans. “Kids these days,” he said, “don’t know how to play rhythm.”

Now this banjo player was only playing with me because he was friends with a guitar player, also from New Orleans, who my buddy and I, driving in our car to the gathering, picked up on the side of the road coming in. Now this guitar player had something I wanted, which over-ruled any worries I might have had about my rhythm. You see, I followed him around Rainbow as he sat in, and played in, and sang in, at least a dozen song circles, and, I swear to god at every one he disappeared into the trees with girls.

That’s what I wanted. And at the time I remembered not long before my older brother and his friend commenting loudly so I could hear (as I was trying to be Jerry Garcia in my bedroom), that “if I was in a band I’d want to be thing singer — they get all the chicks.”

So, I had already been learning some songs (a kid has to do what he’s got to do at this time of life), but holy cow, that guy at Rainbow was the real proof that I had taken the right course!

So, I knew some songs, but still shy with Tough Girl there before me, I noodled and played a blues riff that an old black man in a lavender suit and bowler hat once showed me at a music store. I don’t know why he decided to bless me, but maybe I’ll get to thank him in the next life.

And Tough Girl, why she just chimed right in on the bass, and then the words just sang themselves right out of me, “Good mornin’ little schoolgirl, can I come a home with you…” And we jammed. When we were done everybody was listening and nobody was clanging on the engine.

So it turns out they were on their way to little motorcycle gathering in Wenatchee, and so, the two Pontiacs headed up into the Cascades.

We arrived at a park in town about six in the evening. First thing I did was call my brother from a pay phone and told him to come on over, since he was just a couple of towns up highway two.

There were plenty of bikers there, engines rumbling, and when tough girl got out of her car she was welcomed with shouts of “Annabel Lee, Annabel Lee is home!” A little crowd gathered round her until a pick up truck pulled up, filled with ice and beer, and some of the guys were drawn off to drink. Bandido sidled over to our car and explained us that he drove her here all the way from Texas, but he was a little hesitant to mix in until she introduced him. “I wear different colors,” he said, pointing to his shirt.

Mechanic went over and grabbed us all some beers. Almost Momma declined, and Mechanic asked me if I was old enough to drink, smirking, dangling my beer in front of me before letting me have it. “The kid is alright,” he said to Bandido before handing him one. All the while more bikes were pulling in, and meat was cooking on the grills.

Eventually, Annabel Lee came over with a guy who had a mandolin. She introduced him to us — to me, really — as an old friend she used to play in a band with. “Why don’t you two bang out a few tunes together, see what you can come up with.” She then walked Bandido and Mechanic over to meet the locals.

Mandolin liked bluegrass, and I knew a few tunes, and he had country songs too, which I could play over pretty good. I knew some Dead, some blues, and some other random songs. People were already kind of moving in on us when Annabel Lee showed up with her bass.

We weren’t the center of attention by any stretch. There must have been at least a hundred bikers, and there were loggers and hippies too. Everybody was getting high and drunk and eating barbecue.

The evening sun was going down behind the mountains as we got into our songs. Annabel Lee was the draw — she sang a lot of rockabilly — but mandolin and I weren’t bad, and we were having fun.

Then some guy told us that we sucked and Bandido got in his face and told him to shut up, and some others too, said “we like it” and then the guy shoved Bandido and someone slugged that guy and the next thing you know we were in the middle of huge brawl.

Mandolin grabbed my shirt, said “thanks,” and high-tailed it out of there. Annabel Lee said “follow me” and she picked up her bass and I went after her. The sea of fisticuffs parted for her and she led me out to some trees at the edge of the park where we stopped and turned to watch the melee. We couldn’t really see much ’cause the sun was down now, so we listened. And then a he stepped in front of me, looking directly into my eyes, her hand on my chest, and said, “I wish I wasn’t with Harry” (that was Bandido’s real name I guess). She was close, so I said “me too,” and, just like how she brought that song right out of me earlier in the day, I kissed her. Heaven.

Then, right at the same time we heard someone shout out “this lady is having a baby!” We didn’t want to stop kissing — I’m sure I didn’t, at least, I’d been waiting days for the baby, but my whole life for that kiss, but then we heard police sirens coming and motorcycle engines starting and, well, we were kind of stuck there and it turned out she didn’t want to stop kissing either.

A little while later, after everybody went home or to jail or the hospital (I assume there were more than just mother and babe), a white dodge van drove up. It was my brother. Annabel Lee and I walked over and I gave him a big hug.

“Where’s the party?” he asked. And that’s pretty much the story I had to tell today.

(P.S. Now, if this little story worked, then you don’t really care whether the baby was a boy or a girl, or what happened to Mechanic, or how I avoided being stomped out of existence by Bandido, because you have fallen in love before, and that’s all that matters, right?)