Chapter 43

After leaving New Orleans beaten and broken I fought the highway for the first, but of course not the last time. I was heading west, back to California. California kept a continuing, siren-like call to me for many, many years. It was like the women in Greek mythology who lured ships toward them with their beautiful songs, but much too late the sailors realized they were old hags and the ships were headed onto jagged rocks where they would sink to the bottom of the sea.

I had associated California with this mystical feeling ever since I was told that my real mother died in a car wreck going there. I didn't believe the story, it was much too convenient. Somewhere in my thoughts, however, I made myself believe that my mother actually did go to California, and was still living there, waiting for me to find her. Silly? Yes, but there was a great deal of silliness going on in my life in those very unproductive years. Anyway, I kept going back, but never tried to look for my mother. How could I, I didn't know her given name, never mind her last one.

During my little trip across Texas, (that's the reason for the gunslinger graphic) my God that's a huge state, my thoughts rambled around inside my head about everything under the sun. I did a lot of walking, a lot of standing with my thumb out at cars on Interstate 20. After a couple of days of this I was weary, hungry and beat down about as much as I've ever been up until that point. I would find out that there were a few more degrees of being beaten down that I hadn't touched yet, but that was later on in my life. Even so, I was angry at everything. I even picked up rocks and threw them at passing cars who would not stop for me. Late of the first night I was dropped off near some kind of construction site and I saw a Jim Walter model home they use to show prospective buyers. No one was around so I broke a window on the back side so you couldn't see it from the road and slept on the hardwood floor the best I could.

The next day my luck (what luck?) played out when I was walking through Midland, Texas and was stopped and arrested for "no visible means of support," or vagrancy they called it then. Thrown in the clink. They found out about me being wanted in Shreveport, but a miracle happened and, through a mistake, I was sent to the police garage to work as a trusty. Wow! I had leaving on my mind the moment I walked through the door. It seems I would get a little help.

See ya . . .

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