Jeff’s Dream of Truckstop Hippies and Night Flying
You know those scary little towns you drive thru at night? Where even the minimart gives you a chill? There’s a crowded bar you wouldn’t dare go into. And a auto shop repair garage that has a bunch of motorcycles parked around it, some trucks, clusters of yahoo teens leaning out of their cars. THEY all seem to be getting along just fine. But you stay away. What are they doing anyway? Do you really know?
I overheard some of these characters talking when I got some gas in the nearby old rustic hometown of some of my highschool buddies I hadn’t seen in ages in my dream last night. They were talking about a party and what people were doing after work.
I asked about my pal and they said he’d just left. I hung around a bit eavesdropping. There was the usual insane banter. “Dude, no way.” “Yes way, we’re going to Detroit, then over to Toronto then back to Grand Rapids and we’ll get back in time for work tomorrow.” “Partay!” There was also fighting talk and wild rough-housing. Even so it seemed like they meant each other no harm. Life was simply desperate, was all. What you did should reflect that. No reason for it not to. But they weren’t mean about it. Even so, how they survived a night was beyond me, I thought.
I watched a slow motion episode of motorbikers racing around town, cutting in front of each other, doing wheelies–it all looked like they should get killed, they defied physics. I guess that’s what those rednecks can do. That’s how they get away with it. When they goose it and pop a wheelie and throw flames and jerk in front of another driver and cut a real hard turn, they don’t skid out like normal people do.
Somehow I ended up getting left behind at the gas station by my ride and needed a ride towards home, which wasn’t far away. People there somehow heard I was a friend of a friend so I got a lift in a van. Those people drove like maniacs. Then crashed the van at the next little town. I stumbled in the woods with some of them kind of in shock. Then I ditched em.
Then I hopped a ride in a moving truck with a variety of hitchhiking characters and a bunch of boxed new BMW motorcycles. Boy, people sure do get around in different ways than you’d imagine, I thought. Then I accidently pushed some boxes over. When we took a stop, the trucker saw what I did and chased me thru the woods. I’d bothered some sacred items. Even if they were meant for rich people. These people didn’t give a rip about anything it seemed, but bump a motorcycle and you’re in trouble. It’s hard to keep up with their value system. It’s different than ours.
I ended up at another minimart near some white trash punk hippy kids. All tattoo’s and acne. Yet they were sweet to each other. They were talking about drugs. And they had some New Age jive going, too. They had a dreamy layed back drug haze over them. “No, really, man, don’t worry. It’ll be cool. Hey, let’s take off.”
How were we going to go anywhere? No one had a ride. We were just schlumpfing from yard to yard, chatting with local kids in the dark.
“Don’t worry. Just relax, and hang on.” Then our little group of hippy kids grabbed some cables and started swinging on them. We went way out over town, then back. We’d travel, then we’d lose our ground. But suddenly they just let go and I with them. We hurtled thru the air, on our trip again. But what about when we fall back down? We were all hanging onto each other. “Hey, man, time isn’t what you think it is. You want to GO, just go, don’t hold back, man. Life’s rockin’. Here, don’t slip off.” Whoa nelly! We whooshed thru the air. How can this be? But I was losing my hold. It was impossible to stay relaxed like they were and I could tell that when I wasn’t relaxed that I couldn’t fly and was dragging them down. “Here, do this,” the young red-headed mohawk hair guy I was hanging onto said. Somehow I was to braid my arms and ankles in with everyone’s long hair and then lay back and straighten out my wrists and ankles and I’d be held in just fine. It worked. We whooshed thru the night sky, over some trashy little towns and neon lights. Rivers reflecting moonlight and bridges. People waved up at us. There were others flying around at various levels as well. People were also driving crazy on the ground. It was snowing, but no one was really crashing. I could see the before, during and after and people were roaring and sliding thru crowded intersections just fine. These rednecks seem to know something we don’t, I guess.
We came in for a landing at a warehouse on the edge of a town and our kid asked someone where the local something was. They pointed down a long loading dock next to some water and I saw a door at the back of a long overhand. We knocked and it opened and there was a Grateful Dead style party going on. “Is Phil coming back?” we were asked. “He never left.” “Cool! C’mon in!” It was a trick question as a password, about Phil Lesh, of the Dead. I didn’t know hick kids were such Dead Heads. “What’ll you have?” a girl asked above the music noise. I saw that she was getting an injection. Oooh, yuck. But then I saw it was a fake injection. Someone was just pushing a ballpoint pen into her side. But she said “Ahh, oh yeah, that feels better.” And really seemed to mean it. “We’re just out cruising around tonight and need some more gas,” we said. “Cool!” “Ya gotta get what you need, right?” she said with a wink. “Well, here’s the place.” Then I realized that the gas we needed was just a refueling of our state of mind. And I started wondering if maybe all the silly Deadheads we’d always poked fun of really had known something we didn’t, even though they were what you’d call ignorant. Then I woke up.
