On The Road

Yeah, this chapter is the continuation of the education of one Jerry Pat Bolton I will include in Misdemeanors & Felonies: A Memoir. I have left Taylor, Arkansas far behind, and with a slight stop in Dallas I began hitchhiking west toward California. Was given a ride to El Paso, where I stopped long enough to check out Juarez, but the magic just wasn't there for me like it used to be when I was stationed at Biggs AFB and I only stayed there a couple of days. And to think, at one point in time I thought I could walk across that International Bridge and never come back to America, I was so enthralled. It is strange what a couple of years can bring.

So! Here I am, on my way to California, with both my parents -- the original ones -- in my thoughts. What would I do when I arrived there, I had no idea and really didn't spend much time worrying about it. Such is the optimism of youth. I only knew it was important that I set foot in California, the reason did not matter. It was a mental picture of walking up to my mother -- my adopted one told me she was killed in a car wreck going to California, but I didn't believe she was dead -- like Cal, played by James Dean did his own mother in East of Eden. A fantasy and I knew it was a fantasy, but the mind will play strange things on you if you will allow it. I have allowed my mind to entertain strange things most of my life. It is called self-preservation, because if things turned out wrong I could always say, it was just something I had to do, to get it behind me.

This chapter, Chapter 33 is also important in that I am quickly picking up the "way of the road." In the years onward I would learn a great deal more about the "way of the road," this was only my first venture into the underbelly of America and I would find that I liked it, no desired it, much more than living as a straight, uptight suburbanite. I was James Dean, but in my way of thinking I was a rebel with a cause. The paths I would take in pursuit of my soul (for want of a better word) would truly be diverse and many. It would both energize my soul, or it would flame it out. I would search for the elusive answers billions and billions of youth have searched throughout the ages. I would find answers, only to rebuff them. I went from a searching young man into my middle thirties, and even beyond a time or two, looking for a way to settle my parnornea and destructive bent, only to finally understand, as so many other had, that what I was running from stared at me each time I looked into a mirror.

Looking forward to Chaper 34. It will lead me to a place I really didn't want to go.

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742