Asphalt Asylum

Hitchhike 7,0000 miles across America

Kind of scared, kind of excited 

Journal entry, Monday morning,

March 27th, 1978 

pocket knife, wallet, harmonicas, sleeping bag

That morning when waking up I had no special plans for the day. But when I stopped pacing in my basement bedroom, I dumped the binders from my college backpack and filled it with clothes, a Buck knife, and two harmonicas. After cinching a red flannel sleeping bag underneath the pack, it was time to leave.

I took confident strides—until reaching the bedroom door. Its threshold became a one-way passage, that once crossed, would make my commitment final. Looking around: the pale walls and a faded blue rug; my semi-made bed below a poster from the movie Easy Rider with Peter Fonda cruising on his stars and stripes chopper while giving the finger; the dark craftsmen desk made shortly after the Civil War; books heaped on a nightstand. I stood in silence. My breath drew in deep and smooth, filling my nose with that basement smell of unwashed clothes and damp concrete, but when exhaling a wheeze sputtered out. I knew that I’d never view this room the same again.

 

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