On the Road
by Alan Brewer
I read On the Road when I was fifteen and it changed my life. I could finally imagine freedom and adventure in this life, not just in science fiction or ancient history. I had never learned how to live in the here and now. Sal Paradise (Jack Kerouac’s narrator) 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; when I hit San Francisco, I knew this was home. I would find my kind of people, and 45 years later I am still here.
My first summer in college, I stayed in Pittsburgh and worked at the Jones & Laughlin Steel Mill. 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, following in the steps of Jack in On the Road (hitching) and The Dharma Bums (backpacking).
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 I came home from college a bafflingly changed person. As I entered Northwestern in 1968, the counterculture was just hitting the Midwest. From a straight-A student, obedient and chronically depressed, I spent my first year on academic probation. I entered a long-delayed adolescence, drinking and smoking pot and finally trying to make it with girls. (I had one date in high school—with a minister’s daughter.)
Probably they thought it would knock some of the foolishness out of my head and then I would settle down to real life. Turns out my longest full-time job lasted three years, and next longest was nine months. I spent my entire life trying on different careers and different lifestyles.
One June afternoon, I finished packing my Army Surplus backpack. In college I had never hitched more than the three miles to a liquor store in Chicago. 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. We said our goodbyes; I promised to call twice a week. (My father had at first insisted on me calling once a day, then once a week.) I opened the front door and walked down our sidewalk to the street, under the eyes of my mother. Maybe she thought I would be back home by dark.
I felt out of place and alone, but free and exhilarated.
I walked down the hill to the highway. In Upper St. Clair, people didn’t just walk down the street, certainly not with a backpack. Rush hour was beginning. It was almost dark. Prudence would dictate waiting until the next morning, but I needed to get moving now. I would go nonstop all the way to my next destination, no matter how far.
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? I would have had stories to tell him.
A few more rides took me to the freeway and then, as it grew darker, I skipped out of Pennsylvania and into Ohio. A technicolor sunset over Toledo, Ohio, as if El Greco himself had painted it. Late that evening I rode with a steelworker in a new Buick through Gary, Indiana.
“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 already 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?
I arrived in Chicago’s downtown Loop at 3 AM. A cop stopped me and poked suspiciously through my backpack, asked if I had any weapons. “Well, a hunting knife.” He shrugged and let me go. I caught the L to the North Side to see my girlfriend from my sophomore year. It was all over; she had just met and fallen in love with her future husband. But it didn’t matter anymore. 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 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.
I headed west across the great open spaces toward the Rockies, getting into the rhythm of the road. Catching a ride, saying goodbye, catching another ride, saying hi. The first real adventure of my life. A wonderful feeling—everything I needed 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 in the movement itself. It was my best trip until I went backpacking in another world, the Himalayas.
I met so many people that summer, falling 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 say anything, compelled to tell everything.
I told people I was heading to Denver, a bigger 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.
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 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, and not really surprised.
And so I was dropped at the door of my destination, traveling nearly 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.
Five years later I went on the road myself. And indeed many things were handed to me; when I hit San Francisco, I knew this was home. I would find my kind of people, and 45 years later I am still here.
My first summer in college, I stayed in Pittsburgh and worked at the Jones & Laughlin Steel Mill. 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, following in the steps of Jack in On the Road (hitching) and The Dharma Bums (backpacking).
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 I came home from college a bafflingly changed person. As I entered Northwestern in 1968, the counterculture was just hitting the Midwest. From a straight-A student, obedient and chronically depressed, I spent my first year on academic probation. I entered a long-delayed adolescence, drinking and smoking pot and finally trying to make it with girls. (I had one date in high school—with a minister’s daughter.)
Probably they thought it would knock some of the foolishness out of my head and then I would settle down to real life. Turns out my longest full-time job lasted three years, and next longest was nine months. I spent my entire life trying on different careers and different lifestyles.
One June afternoon, I finished packing my Army Surplus backpack. In college I had never hitched more than the three miles to a liquor store in Chicago. 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. We said our goodbyes; I promised to call twice a week. (My father had at first insisted on me calling once a day, then once a week.) I opened the front door and walked down our sidewalk to the street, under the eyes of my mother. Maybe she thought I would be back home by dark.
I felt out of place and alone, but free and exhilarated.
I walked down the hill to the highway. In Upper St. Clair, people didn’t just walk down the street, certainly not with a backpack. Rush hour was beginning. It was almost dark. Prudence would dictate waiting until the next morning, but I needed to get moving now. I would go nonstop all the way to my next destination, no matter how far.
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? I would have had stories to tell him.
A few more rides took me to the freeway and then, as it grew darker, I skipped out of Pennsylvania and into Ohio. A technicolor sunset over Toledo, Ohio, as if El Greco himself had painted it. Late that evening I rode with a steelworker in a new Buick through Gary, Indiana.
“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 already 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?
I arrived in Chicago’s downtown Loop at 3 AM. A cop stopped me and poked suspiciously through my backpack, asked if I had any weapons. “Well, a hunting knife.” He shrugged and let me go. I caught the L to the North Side to see my girlfriend from my sophomore year. It was all over; she had just met and fallen in love with her future husband. But it didn’t matter anymore. 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 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.
I headed west across the great open spaces toward the Rockies, getting into the rhythm of the road. Catching a ride, saying goodbye, catching another ride, saying hi. The first real adventure of my life. A wonderful feeling—everything I needed 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 in the movement itself. It was my best trip until I went backpacking in another world, the Himalayas.
I met so many people that summer, falling 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 say anything, compelled to tell everything.
I told people I was heading to Denver, a bigger 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.
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 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, and not really surprised.
And so I was dropped at the door of my destination, traveling nearly 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.
