Spring Break Adventures: On the Road in ’61
It’s 1961. Lewy, Larry, Gene and I are leaving Illinois for Florida. Maybe we’ll get to Fort Lauderdale where we imagine the beaches are lined with bikini-clad coeds.
We will travel in Lewy’s well-primered ’52 Plymouth, which runs fine but needs regular refills of oil. We have virtually no money. We’ll be sleeping on the ground at rest stops, living off lunchmeat and white bread, washing ourselves in service station restrooms. Every night, for inspiration, Larry will read aloud from Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.”
He and I are twenty-one, Lewy and Gene twenty. None of us has ever seen an ocean or been south of the Mason-Dixon line; it will be an adventure!
And it is. In Tennessee we are introduced to public restrooms divided not just male-female, but also colored-white. At a gas station in northern Mississippi a young black man fills our tank but can’t take our money. “No, sir, you must pay the man inside.” He means three old white guys in bib overalls sitting next to the potbellied stove chewing tobacco and taking sporadic shots at the spittoon.
Back in the car, Larry says, “Well, that was straight out of Faulkner.”
In Vicksburg, a trio of Scarlett O’Haras take us on a tour of a magnificent antebellum mansion above the wide and mighty Mississippi. In New Orleans, we buy a sixpack of cheap beer so we can get a buzz before heading into the Latin Quarter. Parked by the docks drinking the beer, suddenly the Plymouth is surrounded by police. We’re ordered out, patted down and the car is thoroughly searched. When they finally decide on our innocence, we get advice I had not previously heard from a police officer: “If you boys are gonna drink, drive! Drive around.”
The beer was the first I ever had, which is my excuse when, a couple of hours later and much to the amusement of my buddies, I fall asleep at a strip show on Bourbon Street.
The next afternoon, I’m driving when we enter a small town in the Florida Panhandle; a police car is following us. The speed limit is 25, so I slow to a crawl, but the officer does not pass or turn off. Finally, at the far edge of town, the siren burps and I pull over. The officer comes up, puts his head through the window and takes a good look at each of us. “I was just curious,” he says. “Do all you Illinois boys wear those Abe Lincoln-type beards?”
A couple of days later, when we’re parked on the sand at Daytona Beach, we learn about tides. Lewy sees it coming in, jumps into the car, revs the engine and pops the clutch. Soon the rear bumper is buried and the tires are spinning uselessly, and the ocean continues its steady approach. The towtruck driver gives us some good advice: “Driving on sand’s not like driving on snow, boys. Slow and easy does the trick.”
We never made it to the fabled Spring Break at Fort Lauderdale, but we did see the splendid Atlantic, and Lewy’s Plymouth got us safely home.
Doug Ingold is a novelist living in Arcata. Visit dougingold.com.
