So…Why have we moved? The reason is that I have been wanting to do more with my blog than what Blogger offered. I want to move a little more into the present with what is possible for blogs. I am going to give WordPress a shot and see how it works. I want to be able to do more with photos and videos and all sorts of stuff. I hope that things work out well and I need feedback from you readers so that I will know which way to go. Thanks for following my blog. I will try to keep things interesting.
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With the holiday season comes scheduling changes with my business. My schedule has been totally jacked up over the last couple of weeks and I have not had ANY time for this blog. However, this is all about to change. I have been researching ideas and ways to improve this blog for your enjoyment.
If you are a regular visitor here, you will notice that there hasn’t been any new post for a couple of weeks. I apologize for that. I will be taking a short holiday over the next few days and plan to put a considerable amount of time into improvements and ideas here for you…the readers. So…hang in there! More and better “Grumpy Old Farts is on the way…soon!
There was a time in my life when I was around 21 or 22 that I decided that I wanted to go! I wanted to get away from everything and everyone and just go! Wherever, whenever and however. I just wanted to keep moving. Nothing was tying me down and there was really nothing to look forward to. I wanted to go find whatever! I didn’t know what, I didn’t care…I was just ready to get away and find something. I had the traveling Jones, and I needed to feed it!
So, when the opportunity presented itself, that is exactly what I did. I was living in Dallas and just going from day to day. I had recently met a girl from Rochester, New York. My bosses daughter to be precise! Her name was Gia and she was living in Dallas with her father and didn’t like it there. She wanted to go home. And , I wanted to go anywhere! We talked it over, pooled our money, and discovered that we had more than enough for the trip. So we packed up our clothes and we left! I had no idea how it would go or what I would do once we got there…but I was willing to find out! Little did I know that this was to be the beginning of my most excellent adventure!
What followed was a wonderful journey of traveling around these United States, and meeting countless people and learning that, given the chance, most people are good! I was fresh out of the Navy and I guess the traveling bug still had a hold on me. I had no idea that I was about to embark on an adventure that would remain with me for the rest of my life.
Gia said that she had a friend named Kim there in Rochester and she was sure that Kim wouldn’t mind putting us up for a while until we got on our feet. She was right. Kim and her boyfriend had no problem with letting us crash at their place for a while. Little did I know until we got there that “their place” was right smack dab in the middle of Rochester’s version of Harlem. Kim was a “less than attractive” white girl living with an “older black man. They had an upstairs apartment in an old, large house that must have been built back in the 40′s. But it was clean, warm, and comfortable. They were both great people and we got along really well.
I was able to find a job within a couple of days. The problem was that it was working night shift at a Howard Johnson’s Restaurant. It wasn’t long before Gia had hooked up with her old friends and was going out every night while I was working. Needless to say, our “relationship” ended within less than a couple of months after we got there. But that was okay! We both got what we needed out of it, and we had a lot of fun together. She was back home, and I got away from home. It worked out fine for both of us! We both moved on without any bad feelings for each other.
I was soon meeting new people, making new friends and seeing new sights. I saw Niagra Falls, ventured into Canada a couple of times, and experienced winter at its worst and its best. As a Texas boy in New York state, I had a lot of new, fun stuff to try! I sledded, I tried ice skating, and I rode snow mobiles. It seemed that everywhere I went, I was making new friends and having a wonderful time! Once I got out of the city, I discovered that New York state is a beautiful place. And I loved being there and being free! I soon made new friends that offered to let me stay with them in a little town called Warsaw about 30 minutes outside of Rochester. It was a town of about two or three thousand people in beautiful upstate New York. I spent the rest of the winter there, about two or three months. I loved getting out and wandering through the woods in the dead of winter. There were some magnificent sights: waterfalls, hiking trails, and I learned how to make syrup! From tapping the trees, to boiling down the sap, to bottling the syrup. Life was just one wonderful learning adventure after another. And upstate New York is a beautiful place to have them.
I spent the next year just traveling the country. Getting a job here, staying for a while, making new friends and then moving on with someone to someplace else. It was the most wonderful time in my life!
I was always able to find a job. It may have been running a coil machine for spring mattresses at a mattress plant in Warsaw, New York, or waiting tables at a steak house in Dodge City, Kansas, or driving a combine or truck for a custom harvesting crew during the harvest season in the mid west, but I always found something! And wherever I went, which was pretty much whichever way the wind blew me, I made friends. It was pretty amazing the way that people always just seemed to come into my life at just the right time and help me along my journey of growing up and learning about life and people. I am extremely glad to have been able to do it. I met some truly amazing and wonderful people in my “travels”! I fell in love with the Phillipines and Hawaii while in the navy. Met some wonderful people in the Mid West, and fell in love again in Colorado! Wherever I went, people just seemed to come into my life and show me that you get back what you put out. Meaning that, if you treat people fairly, most of them will treat you that way. But, as with every rule, there will always be exceptions.
One of those exceptions was a traveling buddy of mine named “Rusty Jones”, whom I thought was a real friend, but was ripping people off everywhere we went. I met Rusty in a bar in Warsaw. He was from Montana. He was a really pleasant guy, tall and broad at the shoulders and was missing one front tooth. He wore boots and a cowboy hat all of the time and fancied himself a cowboy. I met him at a country and western bar in Warsaw and we seemed to hit it off from our first meeting. He too was more or less just wandering the country. I don’t recall what it was that had brought him to New York state. But there we both were, and we quickly became friends. Meeting Rusty came towards the end of my stay in New York. I had been having a great time, but was starting to get antsy and was thinking about coming back to Texas. But, he had a better idea. He wanted to go to Florida! He said that he had a sister there that would put us up for a while. I had never been to Florida and my feet were itching again. So… I had a car and he had the pot! Nearly a quarter pound of it to be exact! But, neither one of us had much money! Looking back, boy was that dumb! But…we headed out for Florida the next day! He had the idea that we could sell pot along the way to pay for gas. I don’t need to tell you how well that worked! It didn’t!
There we were, two young guys in a car with expired Texas tags, a quarter pound of pot, and no money to speak of, heading down the interstate! We had to walk a couple of restaurant tabs in truck stops to eat! Something that I’m not proud of today but, we did it. With what little money we had between us, we had somehow managed to make it to within about six or seven hundred miles of Miami. We were almost out of gas, and totally out of money. We were contemplating our options, which were few, when suddenly there was an angel on the side of the road needing a ride. A hitchhiker. Just hoping for a miracle, we picked him up. The guy that we picked up said that he had just gotten out of prison…and was headed to Florida…Miami to be exact. We informed him about our situation and he said that he had a hundred dollars and would be glad to buy the gas if we would give him a ride all the way! Score!! Another little miracle! Later that day he even bought us a meal!
So…. ya still with me here? Now we have two young guys in a car with expired Texas tags with a quarter pound of pot, who have just picked up a hitchhiker that just happens to be a “fresh” ex-convict, all traveling r down the interstate together heading to Miami, Florida. Had we been pulled over by the Highway Patrol, we would have all ended up under the jail. But we made it ALL the way without a single hitch. Never got pulled over, and made it to Miami safe and sound!
After a two day trip that we never should have finished… we finally got there..and, to say the least, his sister wasn’t exactly “jumping with joy” to see him. It seemed, which I was soon to learn, that he had a “much less than reputable” reputation with most family and friends of the family and she really didn’t want him to hang around long. Much less with me tagging along with him! I guess she figured that if I was with him, I must be bad news too. But…I really didn’t care about all of that at the time as long as we had a place to crash. Within a couple of days I got a job waiting tables someplace…I think an IHop. And, within a couple of weeks we found someone that would rent us rooms in a truck drivers motel at a big truck stop. It wasn’t the Hilton by any means, but it had a bed and a shower. Pretty much all we really needed. We actually lived there for another couple of months just working and partying.
Things were starting to get kinda boring in Miami when one day he said that he had another sister in Missoula, Montana. He called her the next day and I got to talking to her on the phone. We kinda hit it off…so to speak… and she said that she wanted to meet me. That was all the reason we needed! SO…off to Montana. Yep…just like that…we were going to Montana.
We scraped together what money we had and I traded my 76 Cutlass for a 69 VW beetle. We figured that we would need a lot less gas driving it and we could get there with what little money we had. We loaded what few belongings we had between us, and off we went. Just like that! I don’t think we had more than $150 between us. Probably just enough for gas if we didn’t eat! But that wasn’t to be the case! About half way there…the VW broke down. To this day I don’t know what happened to it. It just stopped going. Right in the middle of nowhere. Rusty and I hiked it a few miles and we came across this little service station at a state highway intersection. We told them what happened and they took all but a few dollars of the money that we had and agreed to go tow it in and take a look at it for us. They did. And then told us that it would more-than-likely take a couple of hundred dollars to fix it. Of course we didn’t have that much money, and they knew it. So they graciously offered us $100 for the “piece of junk” so that we could continue on our journey. What choice did we have? We took the money, got light, and started walking. We got back up on the interstate and started thumbing! To this day I have visions of one of those guys walking over and plugging in a wire that came loose and cranking that VW up right after we left. I know that we really got screwed on that deal. But…there are always those people lurking around just waiting to screw someone!
We had been thumbing it for a couple of days. We were into Wyoming, down to our last few dollars again, and we were sleeping on the side of the road. We would wander a couple dozen feet off the highway, roll out our bed roles and go to sleep. We woke up one morning, rolled up, and started thumbing and, it wasn’t too long before a four-door pickup pulled over and asked us where we were headed. We told him, and he said that he was going almost half the distance that we had left to travel. Man…what a break! We jumped in!
We started talking and the driver told us that he was the “tail truck” in a convoy of a “custom harvester crew.” They travel around the four corner region and harvest wheat crops for big farmers that need the help. They are on the road for nearly three months of the year when harvest time comes to that area. But, most important was the fact that they were short handed and wanted to know if we wanted to work for a week or so as they traveled further north. We could jump off at Cheyenne, I think, and finish our journey.
How lucky can two guys get? What a break! Angels had intervened again! We get a motel room and two hot meals a day, plus they will pay us for working! AND, we get closer to our destination. We, as you have probably already guessed, didn’t have a time issue here. We would get there when we got there!
Are you starting to see what I mean about people just coming into my life and helping me whenever I was in a bind or a tight spot. Some might think of it as blind luck, or whatever, but I like to think of them as angels. And they were there to help me. Always watching over me.
The next week or so was truly and adventure. I ended up learning how to drive a big truck along side the combine while it harvested and separated the grain and shot it into the bed of the truck. This is a little more difficult than it sounds as you have to make sure that the truck is loaded evenly. So you have to know when to move forward or slow down so that the truck isn’t loaded to heavily in the front or back and that you aren’t spilling the grain out from being overloaded. The land owner gets a little upset when he sees his grain being spilled on the ground cause the truck driver isn’t paying attention. It took me a little practice…but I finally mastered it. Then I would take it to the silo where it would be augured up into the grain bins. I even learned how to operate a combine. Now THAT is something that takes some practice!! Its one of those things that looks easy, but isn’t as easy as it looks!
This is where I started to learn that the guy I was traveling with was, indeed, a thief and a liar. We had worked for the crew almost a week and we were getting close to our jumping off spot. All-of-the-sudden the guys with the crew started coming to me and telling me that Rusty was a thief. He was actually getting up in the middle of the night, in their shared motel room, and taking money out of their wallets. Stealing from the very guys that had helped us out. They picked us up off the road, gave us a job, fed us and provided us with a warm motel room every night! And he is going to steal from them. Blatantly and right under their noses. And then, of course, deny it. We jumped off the very next day. They were glad to see Rusty go, but they told me that they wished I would stay with them and let him go. They said that I didn’t need to be running with him and not to trust him. My eyes were opening. Little things that had happened along our travels were starting to make sense to me now. They told me that I had a job if I wanted it and one of the guys, named Cannonball, yep…really…, told me that if I was ever around Dodge City, Kansas, to look him up. They dropped us off at the bus station where we caught a bus for Missoula. It wasn’t but a couple hundred miles up the road from where we were. So the rest of the trip was short.
The bus literally dropped us off right in front of his sisters house. She lived just out of Missoula right on the interstate. So we got the bus driver to pull over, got off, walked across the access road and right to her front door. She lived right next door to where she worked. It was little joint that was a combination general store/bar. In front, by the highway, was the store that carried a little bit of everything. From bread and milk to baling wire and shovels. You could go through a little entry way in the back of it and walk into the bar. Or, you could come in through the back door which was the main entrance to the bar. His sister lived in a little mobile home about 50 yards from the back door of the place. Her mobile home was one of several that were a part of a small mobile home park right there on the side of the interstate. I don’t remember her name these days, but she worked as a bartender/waitress there in the bar. I believe that she had a young child at the time whom her parents, that also lived in the trailer park, watched for her while she worked.
When we arrived there, both Rusty and I had a couple hundred dollars on us from our paycheck with the crew, plus whatever he had stolen. We stayed there for a couple or three days and it was becoming obvious that his sister and I were NOT going to become an item. We became friends, but the sparks weren’t flying. He and I spent most or our money in the bar over those few days, and I had decided to leave the next day. I decided to head on down to Dodge City and see what I might find there. I would call Cannonball up and see if I could crash there for a while. We all hung out at the bar that last night. When we finally stumbled back to his sisters house to crash, I was pretty drunk! But not so drunk as to not know that I had $53 in my wallet when I left the bar. I had decided that I better save at least $50 for my journey to Dodge. When I woke up the next morning…I slowly started getting my things together for my ride. I knew that I had just enough for a bus ticket and a few dollars to spare. I opened my wallet to be sure. There was three dollars in it! When I approached Rusty about it…he, of course, denied it.
His sister immediately started shaking him down. She liked me and I liked her…it just wasn’t love. She agreed with me that she thought Rusty had done it. She knew her brother. She also knew that there was nothing short of tackling him and strip searching him that was going to get him to admit it. It was at that moment that I was done with him. I knew for a fact now that he was, nothing but, a liar and thief. I packed up my gear, told his parents and sister good bye, and walked out to the interstate. I had half a pack of cigarettes, three one dollar bills and my pack on my back. And I was out of there. Thus ended a friendship that otherwise could have been a good one. He and I got along great. He was really a likable person. But there was that side of him that would never change. He was…an exception to the rule.
Rusty taught me a good lesson. I learned that not everyone was a friend just because I liked them. After a couple of lessons that were similar, I soon learned to be a lot more selective about who I became friends with. And as a result, as I have gotten older, I seem to have fewer and fewer friends.
There are a lot of lessons in life that we have to learn the hard way. That was a long and lonely journey to Dodge City. I made it safely. Had it not been for the “angels” there is no telling what might have happened. I have never been more scared or lonely than when I was walking alone along the side of the interstate in the middle of the night through the forest of northern Wyoming. But, on the lighter side, I did something that not many people ever get to do. I literally bathed in a crystal clear creek under an overpass in the mountains of southern Montana. Just me and my birthday suite on a beautiful sunny day in the splendid wilderness that is Montana! I will have to say that “exhilarating” doesn’t quite describe the feeling that I felt. Even though I was broke, alone, and over a thousand miles away from home…I still found something wonderful to revel in. Never once did I doubt that I would make it to Dodge! And when I got there, which took about three days of hitching, eating out of garbage cans at roadside parks, sleeping on the side of the road, and accepting the generosity of those that offered it, Cannonball welcomed me with a big smile and open arms.
Its hard to find out that someone that you thought was a friend is only there for their own personal gain, or only there when times are good. I call these “bar friends”! They love to get together in the bar, but when you are broke down on the side of the road, they drive right past you! There are a lot of variations of “friends” out there. The only way to learn who is what is by time and experience. But don’t be discouraged. There are good friends to be had. It just takes some time to find them. And, when you do, its worth it.
Nuff said!
I have noticed, through checking my stats page for my blog, that I have been getting an increasing number of readers from Europe. Russia, the UK, and Amsterdam seem to be the most frequent visitors here. I was wondering if perhaps, those of you from abroad that do read it, would mind posting a few comments and/or suggestions as to what you are finding interesting on here. I would love to be able to have your opinions about what you read and to be able to comment on things that are happening in your part of the world.
The stats tell me WHAT you are reading, but that is about it. I would love to know what you think and feel about what you read. This would open up a whole new world of topics for me to write about. Currently, almost half of my readership is coming from abroad. I am flattered by those of you that find this little blog interesting enough to read. But, I sure would appreciate some feedback.
Thank you and, as always, happy reading!
Nuff said!
