Winter Wander Part I: Chicago

It was the month of January, and the frenetic buzzing of the holiday season had just ceased abruptly as the calendar turned and the year became 2-0-0-8. I was facing the beginning of my final semester in college, but this did little to focus my attention or settle my restlessness. Rather, it only served to bolster my typically manic desires to be on the move.

The month of December was filled with band practices and high-profile shows, and it was impossible for me to get away for any sort of trip during the winter break. But my best friend Adam, in town from Chicago, told me that in early January he'd be driving a car from Chicago to Miami for some rich old lady. He'd be getting paid a ridiculous amount of money for his troubles, not to mention money for meals, lodging, and a plane ticket back to Chicago. He said he could use a traveling companion, and I was a willing volunteer.

I told my boss that I had to make an emergency trip, that I'd have to explain later, but I needed a couple weeks off urgently. He submitted to my deception readily, and the next day I was standing on Interstate 30 with my thumb in the air, headed for Chicago.

This trip would be the most substantial in terms of distance covered by hitchhiking. I'd hitched around the state of Texas quite a bit but had never undertaken a journey of 1,000 miles before. But the weather smiled on me, unseasonably warm for January and dry.

After a couple rides that got me from DFW to Texarkana, I walked across the Arkansas border and waited. It didn't take long for an 18-wheeler to put on his airbrakes and come to a loud halt. I had never ridden in an 18-wheeler, and I stepped up into the high cab eagerly. A buck-toothed, ponytailed, overweight and pale trucker greeted me as I put on my seatbelt. This man, Fritz:

I would spend most of the day in the company of Fritz. I would soon find that he was from upstate New York, drove a truck over the road for 25 days of each month, and was in the habit of picking up "pretty boys" from truckstops, bars and rest areas for manly encounters in the sleeper cab of his truck.

Fritz was heartbroken over his lost lover, Rodney, who he had met at a Petro station in San Antonio. Rodney was from Guam but worked in Texas as an attendant at a truckstop. When he met Fritz, he quit his job, hopped into the truck, and they rode off together into America. They traveled all over the country, celebrating their love at every stop. Their relationship quickly accelerated to include other participants, as Fritz related to me in his rural New England accent:

"We'd be stopped for the night and drinking at a bar, and I'd see a boy and say to Rodney, 'How much you wanna bet I can get that pretty boy?' And Rodney'd say, 'No way, you can't get him.' And so I'd walk over and start talking to the pretty boy. Later, Rodney would come back to the truck and I'd have a bandana tied to the door handle, and that truck would just be rockin', and later I'd tell Rodney, 'Told you I could get him', haha ha ha har har hahaha haha!"

I'd smile and giggle politely at the story, like I was really amused. I didn't want to offend Fritz, since he was giving me a ride all the way across the state of Arkansas. I could see him stare at me in my peripheral vision as we moved down the highway. He told all sorts of stories, about how everybody has a price and he'd be able to find the price of any pretty boy he wanted to buy. I thought he was suggesting to me that I give him a quote on my ass, but I wasn't interested.

Finally, our time together expired. I felt bad for Fritz. He talked about Rodney constantly, and everything was a reminder of what they had shared but could no longer be. Fritz was creepy, but harmless and a lonely man. As I was getting out of the truck at a West Memphis truck stop, he said to me, "I'm sure you've heard this before, but you've got a really great body." "Thanks Fritz," I said. "A guy can't hear that too many times."

By this time, it was dark and I was in West Memphis, Arkansas, just across the Mississippi River from Memphis. As I left the lights of the truck stop complex, I couldn't help but think about the story of the West Memphis 3 and the violent murders of little boys that had taken place in this small town. The wooded areas that surrounded me seemed especially dark and hostile as I searched for a safe spot to sleep. Off the interstate, there was an abandoned apartment complex that looked like a suitable squat. But when I approached, I found that it had been completely fenced off with barbed wire topped fencing, and it looked less than inviting. (That perception was probably due to my uneasiness and fear of walking in on a satanic ritual in progress.) So I opted to set up my little tent in a dark plot of land adjacent to the complex. Every sound startled me and it took me a long time to fall asleep. The West Memphis 3 story had really gotten in my head, apparently.

The next morning, I grabbed a cup of coffee from the Waffle House and was on my way again. My first ride of the day offered me a beer, as had my first ride the day before, and I accepted gratefully and we drank together driving down the highway at 8 in the morning. Soon, I was in southeast Missouri, near the Mississippi River towns of New Madrid, Cairo, Cape Girardeau...Mark Twain's turf. I looked eastward and envisioned a land far less spoiled by the encroachment of industry, commerce, colonization. I saw an infinitely fertile Mississippi River valley, the rolling hills of Missouri plunging in rocky bluffs toward the river banks. And Huck Finn paddling dutifully downriver and camping comfortably on the virginal banks with a steadily smoldering fire and looking westward and imagining the frontier when the west was still empty.

This was interrupted by the roaring blast of an air horn, and a great yellow 18-wheeler veered off the road and onto the narrow shoulder. I ran to meet the truck and found one of the more captivating characters I've ever met clearing a spot for me inside.

The first thing I noticed was his single glove, wrapped perpetually around the wheel. But then he spoke, or rather spewed, great streams of words that ran unintelligibly together, punctuated only by excited chuckles and erratic shouts. He introduced himself as Sipio Woods, S-I-P-I-O, Sipee-yoh. "Chicago?" he asked incredulous. And then, with stern thoughtfullness, "Hmmm, Chi-ka-go. Well I kin getcha far down the road, I can getcha to Effin'ham 'cause Ima headin' out to Dee-troit way, hmmm Chicago, so howsa bout I getcha to Effin'ham and then I'll cut east out on 70 an' you'll be bout 200 mile southa Chicago, howsa bout dat?"

It sounded fine to me. I had intended on going through St. Louis on 55, but his route made more sense and I was happy to get as close as 200 miles from my destination.

Sipio was an impassioned orator, though it took about an hour of his constant soliloquy for me to understand all of what he said. He was born and raised outside of Little Rock, Arkansas, and was mostly illiterate. I had to help him forge his trucking log, spelling out words for him as he carefully penned them. He spoke loudly and would emphatically wave one hand about in the air, occasionally yelling about things that got under his skin. It seemed the world had conspired to keep him down all his life, from the trucking company that wouldn't hire him because he was illiterate, to the Arkansas police who had jailed him in the '60s just for "peddlin' a little reefer." He had proudly helped build the roads of Little Rock, toiled in manufacturing plants to build the cars people drove on those roads, and driven trucks cross country to deliver goods and materials that kept the country going. And how was he repaid? Prejudice, disrespect and ingratitude. He spoke with such indignation at those who intentionally kept him marginal, regardless of all the work he had done in his long life, that I began to get mad too, mad on behalf of Sipio who was powerless to fight his oppressors that held him down because he was black, poor and uneducated. Sipio was a hard working man.

We passed through Effingham, and he decided he'd take me as far as I-80, about 25 miles south of downtown Chicago. I got the feeling he didn't want to dispose of my good company quite yet, so we kept driving north as the sun sank. It was dark when we reached I-80, and he changed his route again to get me just a little closer to town. He was afraid to go too far out of the way because his company was tracking him with GPS and could see his every move, but he continued on anyway, only to get me just a little bit closer to where I was headed. Finally, he could go no further and dropped me off in Calumet Park on the southside. I shook his hand and thanked him for going so far out of his way to help me along mine.

But I wasn't there yet. Calumet Park is a downtrodden urban village 20 miles south of downtown. Very much what you'd think of as the notorious "Southside of Chicago," I felt like a piece of fresh fish as I got out of Sipio's truck and stepped onto the dark street with my pack on my back and began walking aimlessly, searching for a train station. What amazed me was that it was January in Chicago, and it was no less than 55 degrees. Feeling lucky, I walked haphazardly away from the protective lights of the interstate and followed signs pointing the way to the Metra station. A couple miles later, I reached the station which was no more than an enclosed wooden platform elevated above the tracks. I rolled a cigarette and was examining the schedules on the wall when a voice from above rang out into the empty and silent room.

"Sir, the Metra does not operate from this station on Sundays, and also, you are not permitted to smoke in the station." Startled, I looked around for the source of the voice, and it spoke again. "You can pick up the phone if you'd like to speak." It was like a scene from 1984, that really awful one where the dissidents-in-love are caught in the act by the eye of the telescreen that appears from behind a painting on the wall. At least, that was the thought that came to my head as I walked toward the telephone. I picked up the receiver. "Sorry about the cigarette." "It's alright. The station you are at is out of service on Sundays, where are you trying to go?" "Chicago." "Well, you can call this toll free number and maybe they can help you design a route to get you there." "Thanks."

So I called the number and there was no answer. I walked out into the night and finally decided to give up the ideal of strolling triumphantly into Adam's apartment. In spite of the help I'd received on the phone from my friend in town, Jamie, it seemed impossible to procure public transportation at this time of night on this day this far out of the city. I called Adam and had him come pick me up in a friend's car. As I waited on a busstop bench, a guy named Jackal told me how many hos he had across Chicago, and how much money he made in the porn industry. "Lemme tell ya, bra, you gotta get down to Australia, they let you film hos fuckin dogs there, son. Foreal, they ain't got no laws against it. Shit, you like to travel all 'round, you should come wit' me and a few of my hos, I jus bought up a van and we're takin' it cross country, stoppin at truck stops and shit, pimpin hos out at the rest stops, we be makin' fifteen-hunnid a night, son. That's wey da money at." He gave me his card and I thanked him, telling him I'd give him a call while I was in Chicago, and that I'd love to meet one of his ladies. Then Adam pulled up and I was out of Calumet Park, off the road, and in Chicago.