bioStories
sharing the extraordinary in ordinary lives
The
Old Spiral Highway
by
Liz Olds
A
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t
15 I read On the Road and wanted to
be Jack Kerouac. I wanted to live big and travel far. I wanted to hop on a
freight train and go to the edge, to get picked up hitching by road-crazed
hippies in beater cars going nowhere. I often put on my orange aluminum-frame
backpack and, with nothing in it, walked to the edge of my suburban Maryland
subdivision and imagined I would stick out my thumb and hitch to San Francisco,
land of Ginsberg and Kesey. I had read Howl;
I had read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest. I was well-educated in the ways of the literary travelers, although I
never walked that extra mile to the highway. But I dreamed, despite the
lightness of the empty pack on my shoulders.
At 18, finally free of the constraints
of family and subdivision, I chose Idaho for college. Idaho represented the
frontier and freedom to me. More practically, I picked Idaho because a high
school friend also went there, although I chose Moscow, up in the northern panhandle,
and she chose Pocatello in the south. I had the idea that we would see each
other on the weekends, not realizing that we were actually 700 road miles
apart. On my map Idaho looked like Maryland sitting on its edge. I had no idea
how vast it was.
I had only hitched once, during my
freshman year, down the Old Spiral Highway from Moscow into Lewiston, to
scrounge in the Goodwill for the men’s shirts and pants I felt most comfortable
in. But I had dreamed many times of a longer trip and looked forward to the
time when an opportunity would present itself. How hard could it be? I would
just stick my thumb out and magically a real Kerouac would appear to whisk me
back up the Old Spiral Highway home.
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hanksgiving
weekend of my sophomore year, 1976, I decided to go to Corvallis, Oregon to
visit an old flame I’d met at Girl Scout camp and hadn’t seen or spoken to in
three years. I didn’t call ahead because it would rob the trip of its
Kerouac-ness if I did.
On Wednesday I took the Greyhound to
Corvallis. Dusti, the object of my affection, wasn’t home. Her confused mother
stood with the door slightly open and advised me to come back Saturday. I took
the ‘Hound back to Moscow on Wednesday night, and on Friday night, with only
the price of a one-way ticket left, took the red-eye bus back once again to
Corvallis. My desire for a dramatic reunion replaced whatever common sense my
18-year old self may have possessed. I would trust to the gods of the road to
get me home somehow.
The romance part was a bust. In the
end, Dusti and her mother did put me up for the night, and Dusti agreed, rather
too hastily I thought, to drive me the ten miles from Corvallis to Interstate
5, the inland highway that followed the line of the Oregon Coast. There I could
catch a ride to Portland and then on east to Idaho. Early on the Sunday morning
after Thanksgiving, wisps of fog curled around the pine trees and swaddled the
foothills. I caught a ride after just a few minutes and was in Portland by 9 AM.
I bought a pack of strong,
foul-smelling Egyptian cigarettes in Portland to pass the boring wait between
rides.
Still lucky, I was picked up by a
travelling salesman in a Datsun 240Z and we cruised down Interstate 84 past the
series of Corps of Engineers Dams on the north and the little streaming
waterfalls coming down the high hills on the south. We topped the speedometer
at 90 MPH which made me nervous, but the little sports car was built for speed
and so was the highway.
The salesman was a chatty guy. He
talked about his own life on the road, which was pretty straight and not what I
was dreaming of with my romantic notions. He said he had thought I was a 14
year old boy standing by the side of the road when he picked me up. He bought
me a hamburger and fries and I thought that was nice. Closing in on Walla Walla
he suggested that I spend the night with him in his motel and I wasn’t sure if
that was nice or not but since he didn’t push I didn’t need to know.
We reached Walla Walla, just 2 hours
from Moscow, at 3:00. With plenty of daylight left and a stream of students
heading back to school at the end of the long holiday weekend, I thought for sure
I would get an easy ride and be home by dinner. The salesman dropped me off at
a small strip mall on the outskirts of town. All the stores were closed. There
was a bank with a time/temperature sign in front of it at my end of the mall. When
I got out of the 240Z the sign read 3:00 PM/20 degrees.
I stood under the sign, smoking with
one hand and hanging my thumb out with the other. For warmth I had on an old green
parka with a fake fur hood and an orange lining I had bought at that Goodwill
in Lewiston. It looked warmer than it was.
I measured the wait in cigarette
puffs, drawing the smoke in deep while watching the number in the pack dwindle.
I noticed the temperature numbers gradually going down as well. Apparently a
cold front was coming in. But, not to worry. A ride would surely be along soon.
As time passed, so did the cars. No
one stopped. No one would even meet my eyes as they sped by.
I could hear the buzz of the sign and
watched the numbers on the temperature side falling. At first I didn’t feel it
getting colder, but numbers never lie. Then the wind picked up.
My feet numbed. I wore high-top
Chuck Taylors and some wool socks I had stolen from a friend. I hopped from
foot to foot to keep the circulation going. No gloves, I didn’t like gloves. Can’t
hold a damn cigarette with gloves on. The numbers on that temperature sign were
rolling like a pinball score going the wrong way.
So was the sun. I would like to say
at least it was a beautiful sunset, but the outskirts of Walla Walla are flat
and that stretch of road with the little shoe repair shop and H&R Block
office in the strip mall was pretty ugly. The sun just went down.
And the cars kept going by.
By 5:00 it was dark and 6 degrees. I
had to admit to myself I was getting a little afraid. I didn’t really think I
would die out there, but I would be in for a miserable night. I lit my last
cigarette.
I jumped up and down, waving wildly
as the cars passed. I could see into the warm interior of the cars, surprised
at how clear the faces of mostly young students appeared as they averted their
eyes when I tried to implore them with my own.
Now it was dark, a couple of hours
into my wait by the side of U.S. 12 in Walla Walla, Washington. Time slowed, my
blood was slowing, and the only thing going fast was that damn temperature
sign, now at minus 2.
I’ve experienced colder
temperatures, but never for so long and never so exposed. Every breath I took
hurt my lungs and froze my boogers solid. My eyeballs felt like they were freezing.
Shutting them didn’t help, they hurt closed and they hurt open. And I was
getting pissed. There were plenty of cars on that road, occupants ignoring me
as they drove in heated comfort home. Home. Why the hell wouldn’t someone pick
me up and drive me home?
I stood by the side of that road for
6 hours.
Then, over a little rise came an old
white Chevy panel van. I nearly cried when the yellow blinker came on and the
van slowed. The driver reached across the passenger seat and opened the door.
“I’m just going ten miles up the
road but at least you can get in and get warm for a while.”
The man seemed old to me but he
couldn’t have been more than 35. He had a long, slightly disheveled and
thinning blonde ponytail and a big full-faced beard. He asked was I going up to
Moscow and I said yeah and that was the sum total of our conversation. The weak
little heat fan blew on me from the dash and everything tingled.
After 15 minutes he pulled into a
gas station, filled up the tank, went in to pay and came back with two Styrofoam
cups of hot coffee.
“I believe I’ll drive just a little
further up the road.”
We drank the coffee in silence. I
knew I was taking a risk as he drove “a little further up the road.” It
occurred to me that he might be a serial killer. In my young teenage dream I
had not imagined this freezing, lonely trip, nor possible outcomes other than absolute
safety. It was too late for second thoughts now; I was committed to this ride.
But after a moment of doubt I opted for trust. Even though he didn’t say
anything there was no menace in his demeanor. All I knew for sure was that the
coffee was warm and so was I and the miles were rolling by under my butt. There
didn’t seem to be much to say. We didn’t exchange names.
S
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ixty
miles later we reached the bottom of the Old Spiral Highway, the pass from
Lewiston that rose 2000 feet in 9 miles of switchbacks, a two-lane monster road
with 7% grades and no-shoulder drop-offs into thin air. This wasn’t all the way
home, and I had a nasty stretch of road ahead, but it was a major crossroads
with two 24-hour truck stops and plenty of cars and semis, a place to get more
coffee and be inside, warm and safe until I could snag a ride up the pass into
Moscow.
As I was getting out of the van I
calculated the miles and realized his generosity added up to hours rather than
minutes. He still had the ride back. I hoped he had music to keep him company. I
didn’t really know what to think. Both the tough Kerouac part of me and the
little kid who bravely carried an empty backpack to the end of the subdivision
were astounded by his generosity. I didn’t know how to simply be present with
his kindness. For the first time in an hour I felt compelled to say something.
“Thanks, uh, give me your address;
I’ll send you some money.”
“No need. I’ve been where you are
and I know how it feels. Just pass it on, man, pass it on.”
It seems important to me now that he
did not take me all the way home. I noticed it then, but didn’t think about it
much. Who in the world would want to drive up and down that Old Spiral Highway
in the middle of the night? One moment of inattention could send a car over the
side into oblivion.
Now I think that it was more than
self-preservation. He did not patronize me by assuming I couldn’t take care of
myself. I felt welcomed into the brotherhood of the road, the home I wanted at
the time. A home I knew more about when I asked a young couple going up the
hill for my last ride of the night than I had at the beginning of my long, cold
day. Whether he realized it or not, he was treating me not as the fourteen year
old boy I appeared to be, but as a fellow-traveler, and as someone who really
would remember when I got the chance later on in life to “pass it on”.
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