Maboeuf, un flaneur
David 1973 in Wild Weeds Garden, Mulberry Street Waterloo, Iowa
Driving to Minneapolis October 1973
Once upon a time when I had scheduled a Graduate Records Exam in Cedar Falls for October 27, hoping to go to graduate school, I decided to chuck it all and go to California again.
I packed a huge back pack, even had a sleeping bag if I remember and set off hitch hiking. Rides were bad. As far as the weather It was still like late summer and rides should have been good but no. One of my regulars in Cedar Rapids, I hitch hiked so often between Waterloo and Iowa City that I actually had a few regular drivers who would pick me up if they saw me, took me to the interstate but their luck really ran out and it was after dark before I arrived in Iowa City. I almost always found a place to stay but still no luck no one would have me, though a woman on South Clinton who was still renting a room which I had found a year before allowed me to leave my bag there while I hitched back to Waterloo. More bad luck and I found myself going to Des Moines just to be moving. Well perhaps I didn’t need all that stuff; I would just go to California with the clothes on my back. No that didn’t happen. I got stuck in Des Moines. No place to stay. I couldn’t find anywhere that would shelter me so walked into the campus of Drake University so sleep in a lounge as I had done at times in Iowa City security found me and requested my absence. While complying met a student who was friendly but wouldn’t take me to his room. He told me about all the LSD he was taking. He would set his alarm clock for a half hour before he was to rise so he could take a tab, then go back to sleep so that when he awoke, he would be tripping and ready for attending his classes.
It was now after midnight and I put the thumb out trying to get back on the Interstate to return to Iowa City by morning, but then here came a man a dog a bottle of booze in a black Cadillac coup de Ville. The man wore a tuxedo, the dog wore a collar, and the bottle of booze wore a brown paper bag. The Cadillac might have been nude, can one really tell with an automobile? The driver told me he was a concert pianist and that he had been at school with the man who was now the Catholic Bishop of Minneapolis. He was from Missouri and his wife had just died there. Her children took everything she owned even their little dog, Charlie. After the funeral my driver had scooped Charlie up and taken off in his car for Minneapolis to stay with another friend, a brain surgeon. He said he would let me out at the interstate. But his conversation (between drinks) was so interesting to me, that at the interstate I said I would stay on to Ames, at Ames I could take Highway 30 and from there return to Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. Shortly we were outside of Ames and my driver said he could go no further so I took the wheel to drive on to Highway 20 where I could get out and return to Waterloo, but I ended by driving him to Minneapolis. Now at this time I did not have a license, had never been license and didn’t even have a learner’s permit but the car had a stick shift and the traffic was light so if there was a problem. I didn’t see it.
By morning we were in Minneapolis driving north and farther north to the home of the brain surgeon, who was living with his girlfriend in a rundown trailer court. No one was home when we found the trailer. So, we turned south perhaps to see the bishop. That would have been a good one. But my benefactor grew so tired that he only wanted to sleep. He instructed me to stop in a factory (it appeared abandoned) parking lot at a place he called Sheep’s Head Hill. A place important to his youth.
I locked him and Charlie in his car so no one could get at them and left, walking across the street to put out my thumb. A young folk singer with a guitar gave me a ride, the first of several which got me out of town where a man who could have been the original model for Uncle Fester picked me up in his blue Chrysler New Yorker. Its interior was a rather unnatural tone of blue and had a hand hold formed into its’ dashboard on the passenger’s side. This hand grip was occupied by a nude Barbie Doll. The floor was covered in porn magazines. This driver was very friendly and full of advice, he and his father had made a million and lost a million and gone cross the nation by boxcar. He told me that I should get newspapers to wrap around myself under my clothes to stay warm, a technique he had learnt on the trains.
After Uncle Fester dropped me off a young man who couldn’t go through Faribault, because the cops there were still looking for him as he had eluded them a year ago in a high-speed chase, took us on a long round about to avoid that town, to let me out again south. All I remember of that was farmland and then standing on highway 69 waiting for another stranger. He was an air force serviceman in a camper who gave me caffeine tablets (I hadn’t even heard of them) before stopping in Blairsburg for lunch, I bought a malted milk, the first food since starting from Waterloo. He left me there to continue his way south and I began hitching west by accident but after the first ride crossed the road where a corn salesman who gave me a paper clip, a yellow and green corn paperclip took me on pass the north terminus of the Interstate to Williams. At the gas station there, a young farmer and his wife and their child took me to Iowa Falls. They were playing a rolling stones tape all the way to, livable, happy, Iowa Falls (if only it were as free as Iowa City) where there was a five-block ride from Washington St/highway 20 and highway 65 at Rocksylvaina Avenue and a long wait and me so tired, and two school girls from the elementary grades who walked by eating milk duds and spontaneously gave me some of, a handful because they thought I needed them. Two hippies drove by, I cursed them for not stopping, I shouldn’t have, a semi was fast behind them and they came back for me. But they had a reason, they were an advance man for a band and a member of that band and they wanted a native guide to Cedar Falls. They had very bad dope. They took me to cedar Falls asking me about venues, about which I knew nothing as they drove to the Annex, a bar or club, downtown from where I either hitched or walked to Greg and Pepper’s attic apartment on Seerley Boulevard, a block away from the university campus where I had been scheduled to take the Graduate Record Examination the next day. I slept on their floor and in the morning decided to take advantages of fate so took the Graduate Exam that I had decided to forgo for California and did very well, very well indeed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our disputes become inconsequential
When Deaths' fingertips
Have brushed across your fingertips
As it looked Into your eyes with love
Then turned away - for now...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pigeon Holes are for Pigeons.
A nice thing about autobiography is that you get to strip away all the labels other persons slap onto you.
Sometimes a boy gets to feeling like something from a mummy movie...walking along all covered in labels your eyes the only thing that shows. Worst part is when they try to put them on over your eyes.
David 1973 in Wild Weeds Garden, Mulberry Street Waterloo, Iowa
Driving to Minneapolis October 1973
Once upon a time when I had scheduled a Graduate Records Exam in Cedar Falls for October 27, hoping to go to graduate school, I decided to chuck it all and go to California again.
I packed a huge back pack, even had a sleeping bag if I remember and set off hitch hiking. Rides were bad. As far as the weather It was still like late summer and rides should have been good but no. One of my regulars in Cedar Rapids, I hitch hiked so often between Waterloo and Iowa City that I actually had a few regular drivers who would pick me up if they saw me, took me to the interstate but their luck really ran out and it was after dark before I arrived in Iowa City. I almost always found a place to stay but still no luck no one would have me, though a woman on South Clinton who was still renting a room which I had found a year before allowed me to leave my bag there while I hitched back to Waterloo. More bad luck and I found myself going to Des Moines just to be moving. Well perhaps I didn’t need all that stuff; I would just go to California with the clothes on my back. No that didn’t happen. I got stuck in Des Moines. No place to stay. I couldn’t find anywhere that would shelter me so walked into the campus of Drake University so sleep in a lounge as I had done at times in Iowa City security found me and requested my absence. While complying met a student who was friendly but wouldn’t take me to his room. He told me about all the LSD he was taking. He would set his alarm clock for a half hour before he was to rise so he could take a tab, then go back to sleep so that when he awoke, he would be tripping and ready for attending his classes.
It was now after midnight and I put the thumb out trying to get back on the Interstate to return to Iowa City by morning, but then here came a man a dog a bottle of booze in a black Cadillac coup de Ville. The man wore a tuxedo, the dog wore a collar, and the bottle of booze wore a brown paper bag. The Cadillac might have been nude, can one really tell with an automobile? The driver told me he was a concert pianist and that he had been at school with the man who was now the Catholic Bishop of Minneapolis. He was from Missouri and his wife had just died there. Her children took everything she owned even their little dog, Charlie. After the funeral my driver had scooped Charlie up and taken off in his car for Minneapolis to stay with another friend, a brain surgeon. He said he would let me out at the interstate. But his conversation (between drinks) was so interesting to me, that at the interstate I said I would stay on to Ames, at Ames I could take Highway 30 and from there return to Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. Shortly we were outside of Ames and my driver said he could go no further so I took the wheel to drive on to Highway 20 where I could get out and return to Waterloo, but I ended by driving him to Minneapolis. Now at this time I did not have a license, had never been license and didn’t even have a learner’s permit but the car had a stick shift and the traffic was light so if there was a problem. I didn’t see it.
By morning we were in Minneapolis driving north and farther north to the home of the brain surgeon, who was living with his girlfriend in a rundown trailer court. No one was home when we found the trailer. So, we turned south perhaps to see the bishop. That would have been a good one. But my benefactor grew so tired that he only wanted to sleep. He instructed me to stop in a factory (it appeared abandoned) parking lot at a place he called Sheep’s Head Hill. A place important to his youth.
I locked him and Charlie in his car so no one could get at them and left, walking across the street to put out my thumb. A young folk singer with a guitar gave me a ride, the first of several which got me out of town where a man who could have been the original model for Uncle Fester picked me up in his blue Chrysler New Yorker. Its interior was a rather unnatural tone of blue and had a hand hold formed into its’ dashboard on the passenger’s side. This hand grip was occupied by a nude Barbie Doll. The floor was covered in porn magazines. This driver was very friendly and full of advice, he and his father had made a million and lost a million and gone cross the nation by boxcar. He told me that I should get newspapers to wrap around myself under my clothes to stay warm, a technique he had learnt on the trains.
After Uncle Fester dropped me off a young man who couldn’t go through Faribault, because the cops there were still looking for him as he had eluded them a year ago in a high-speed chase, took us on a long round about to avoid that town, to let me out again south. All I remember of that was farmland and then standing on highway 69 waiting for another stranger. He was an air force serviceman in a camper who gave me caffeine tablets (I hadn’t even heard of them) before stopping in Blairsburg for lunch, I bought a malted milk, the first food since starting from Waterloo. He left me there to continue his way south and I began hitching west by accident but after the first ride crossed the road where a corn salesman who gave me a paper clip, a yellow and green corn paperclip took me on pass the north terminus of the Interstate to Williams. At the gas station there, a young farmer and his wife and their child took me to Iowa Falls. They were playing a rolling stones tape all the way to, livable, happy, Iowa Falls (if only it were as free as Iowa City) where there was a five-block ride from Washington St/highway 20 and highway 65 at Rocksylvaina Avenue and a long wait and me so tired, and two school girls from the elementary grades who walked by eating milk duds and spontaneously gave me some of, a handful because they thought I needed them. Two hippies drove by, I cursed them for not stopping, I shouldn’t have, a semi was fast behind them and they came back for me. But they had a reason, they were an advance man for a band and a member of that band and they wanted a native guide to Cedar Falls. They had very bad dope. They took me to cedar Falls asking me about venues, about which I knew nothing as they drove to the Annex, a bar or club, downtown from where I either hitched or walked to Greg and Pepper’s attic apartment on Seerley Boulevard, a block away from the university campus where I had been scheduled to take the Graduate Record Examination the next day. I slept on their floor and in the morning decided to take advantages of fate so took the Graduate Exam that I had decided to forgo for California and did very well, very well indeed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our disputes become inconsequential
When Deaths' fingertips
Have brushed across your fingertips
As it looked Into your eyes with love
Then turned away - for now...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pigeon Holes are for Pigeons.
A nice thing about autobiography is that you get to strip away all the labels other persons slap onto you.
Sometimes a boy gets to feeling like something from a mummy movie...walking along all covered in labels your eyes the only thing that shows. Worst part is when they try to put them on over your eyes.