Big Sur/Chapter 10
With my mind even and upright and abiding nowhere, as Hui Neng would say, I go dancing off like a fool from my sweet retreat, rucksack on back, after only three weeks and really after only 3 or 4 days of boredom, and go hankering back for the city—“You go out in joy and in sadness you return,” says Thomas à Kempis talking about all the fools who go forth for pleasure like highschool boys on Saturday night hurrying clacking down the sidewalk to the car adjusting their ties and rubbing their hands with anticipatory zeal, only to end up Sunday morning groaning in bleary beds that Mother has to make anyway—It’s a beautiful day as I come out of that ghostly canyon road and step out on the coast highway, just this side of Raton Canyon bridge, and there they are, thousands and thousands of tourists driving by slowly on the high curves all oo ing and aa ing at all that vast blue panorama of seas washing and raiding at the coast of California—I figure I’ll get a ride into Monterey real easy and take the bus there and be in Frisco by nightfall for a big ball of wino yelling with the gang, I feel in fact Dave Wain oughta be back by now, or Cody will be ready for a ball, and there’ll be girls, and such and such, forgetting entirely that only three weeks previous I’d been sent fleeing from that gooky city by the horrors—But hadnt the sea told me to flee back to my own reality?
But it is beautiful especially to see up ahead north a vast expanse of curving seacoast with inland mountains dreaming under slow clouds, like a scene of ancient Spain, or properly really like a scene of the real essentially Spanish California, the old Monterey pirate coast right there, you can see what the Spaniards must’ve thought when they came around the bend in their magnificent sloopies and saw all that dreaming fatland beyond the seashore whitecap doormat—Like the land of gold—The old Monterey and Big Sur and Santa Cruz magic—So I confidently adjust my pack straps and start trudging down the road looking back over my shoulder to thumb.
This is the first time I’ve hitch hiked in years and I soon begin to see that things have changed in America, you cant get a ride any more (but of course especially on a strictly tourist road like this coast highway with no trucks or business)—Sleek long stationwagon after wagon comes sleering by smoothly, all colors of the rainbow and pastel at that, pink, blue, white, the husband is in the driver’s seat with a long ridiculous vacationist hat with a long baseball visor making him look witless and idiot—Beside him sits wifey, the boss of America, wearing dark glasses and sneering, even if he wanted to pick me up or anybody up she wouldn’t let him—But in the two deep backseats are children, children, millions of children, all ages, they’re fighting and screaming over ice cream, they’re spilling vanilla all over the Tartan seatcovers—There’s no room anymore anyway for a hitch hiker, tho conceivably the poor bastard might be allowed to ride like a meek gunman or silent murderer in the very back platform of the wagon, but here no, alas! here is ten thousand racks of drycleaned and perfectly pressed suits and dresses of all sizes for the family to look like millionaires every time they stop at a roadside dive for bacon and eggs—Every time the old man’s trousers start to get creased a little in the front he’s made to take down a fresh pair of slacks from the back rack and go on, like that, bleakly, tho he might have secretly wished just a good oldtime fishing trip alone or with his buddies for this year’s vacation—But the P.T.A. has prevailed over every one of his desires by now, 1960’s, it’s no time for him to yearn for Big Two Hearted River and the old sloppy pants and the string of fish in the tent, or the woodfire with Bourbon at night—It’s time for motels, roadside driveins, bringing napkins to the gang in the car, having the car washed before the return trip—And if he thinks he wants to explore any of the silent secret roads of America it’s no go, the lady in the sneering dark glasses has now become the navigator and sits there sneering over her previously printed blue-lined roadmap distributed by happy executives in neckties to the vacationists of America who would also wear neckties (after having come along so far) but the vacation fashion is sports shirts, long visored hats, dark glasses, pressed slacks and baby’s first shoes dipped in gold oil dangling from the dashboard—So here I am standing in that road with that big woeful rucksack but also probably with that expression of horror on my face after all those nights sitting in the seashore under giant black cliffs, they see in me the very apotheosical opposite of their every vacation dream and of course drive on—That afternoon I say about 5 thousand cars or probably 3 thousand passed me not one of them ever dreamed of stopping—Which didnt bother me anyway because at first seeing that gorgeous long coast up to Monterey I thought “Well I’ll just hike right in, it’s only 14 miles, I oughta do that easy”—And on the way there's all kindsa interesting things to see anyway like the seals barking on rocks below, or quiet old farms made of logs on the hills across the highway, or sudden upstretches that go along dreamy seaside meadows where cows grace and graze in full sight of endless blue Pacific—But because I’m wearing desert boots with their fairly thin soles, and the sun is beating hot on the tar road, the heat finally gets through the soles and I begin to deliver heat blisters in my sockiboos—I’m limping along wondering what’s the matter with me when I realize I’ve got blisters—I sit by the side of the road and look—I take out my first aid kit from the pack and apply unguents and put on corn-pads and carry on—But the combination of the heavy pack and the heat of the road increases the pain of the blisters until finally I realize I’ve got to hitch hike a ride or never make it to Monterey at all.
But the tourists bless their hearts after all, they couldnt know, only think I’m having a big happy hike with my rucksack and they drive on, even tho I stick out my thumb—I’m in despair because I’m really stranded now, and by the time I’ve walked seven miles I still have seven to go but I cant go on another step—I’m also thirsty and there are absolutely no filling stations or anything along the way—My feet are ruined and burned, it develops now into a day of complete torture, from nine o’clock in the morning till four in the afternoon I negotiate those nine or so miles when I finally have to stop and sit down and wipe the blood off my feet—And then when I fix the feet and put the shoes on again, to hike on, I can only do it mincingly with little twinkletoe steps like Babe Ruth, twisting footsteps every way I can think of not to press too hard on any particular blister—So that the tourists (lessening now as the sun starts to go down) can now plainly see that there’s a man on the highway limping under a huge pack and asking for a ride, but still they’re afraid he may be the Hollywood hitch hiker with the hidden gun and besides he’s got a rucksack on his back as tho he’d just escaped from the war in Cuba—Or’s got dismembered bodies in the bag anyway—But as I say I dont blame them.
The only car that passes that might have given me a ride is going in the wrong direction, down to Sur, and it’s a rattly old car of some kind with a big bearded “South Coast Is the Lonely Coast” folksinger in it waving at me but finally a little truck pulls up and waits for me 50 yards ahead and I limprun that distance on daggers in my feet—It’s a guy with a dog—He’ll drive me to the next gas station, then he turns off—But when he learns about my feet he takes me clear to the bus station in Monterey—Just as a gesture of kindness—No particular reason, and I’ve made no particular plea about my feet, just mentioned it.
I offer to buy him a beer but he’s going on home for supper so I go into the bus station and clean up and change and pack things away, stow the bag in the locker, buy the bus ticket, and go limping quietly in the blue fog streets of Monterey evening feeling light as feather and happy as a millionaire—The last time I ever hitch hiked—And NO RIDES a sign.