ESCAPE FROM MIAMI

PART 1 OF A SERIES – STORIES FROM A LIFE

© PJ Hayward, New York 2008

First Published 2008 by Hold On Publications

Revised © PJ Hayward New York 2013

Miami in 1969 was an unbearable, right-wing, backward and sweltering abyss of darkness. A twist of fate had sent me there unwillingly several years earlier, but I will explain that in a later chapter. For now this is where I will begin.

Like so many young people in those days, I was still on my youthful quest to find the Key of Life. I read everything I could get my hands on and by any and every means available I sought knowledge and understanding of my place in the universe. I would sit in the haze of tiny basement coffee houses and smokey clubs and listen to Beat and Hippie philosophers of the day weave their webs of words and thoughts and my mind would swell with insight, bursting with awareness, ideas and thrilling dreams of life anew.

At a point in this journey, I was introduced to an organization that claimed to have all the answers I was seeking. Their literature alleged they were neither a traditional church nor a temple nor a school – but they could lead me down an enlightened path that would open my spiritual eyes to the secrets of the universe.

While studying there, I met someone destined to cause an irreversible change to the direction and future of my life. I didn’t know it at the time – but this change was the answer I had been seeking all along.

The Someone I met was Mack, a very unique half Cherokee/half Irish 6’6” giant who wore his flaming red hair in a colossal afro. He was spiritually deep and fascinating and he was also a gifted musician who electrified me with his wild guitar. From the day we met we were a pair.

Mack believed that, through our Church, we could find the secrets of life together. In time he came to believe that we could best accomplish that by leaving the stifling atmosphere of Miami and relocating to Los Angeles where our Church had their headquarters. We would get jobs at the main office there he said, become thoroughly enlightened and live happily ever after in spiritual bliss.

There were just two minor problems: 1: neither of us had any money and 2: the only transportation we had was my half dead car.

Now, just to explain, my car was not some old jalopy or junkyard trash. It was in fact a beautiful and very cool looking white Cutlass convertible with bucket seats, tons of chrome and plenty of general sexiness. I had acquired it as the result of some shady deal I had done which I can’t remember anymore at this point in time but anyway, the problem was my continual failure to properly feed and care for it. First, since I had practically starved the poor thing to death it didn’t run very well. Also, since I never had enough money to get my brakes fixed, the only way to actually stop my car was to downshift and then pull up the emergency brake. Still – to us this seemed nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

And so it was that Mack pawned his treasured Fender Strat, we gassed up our half-dead car, stuffed a few clothes into a pillow case, threw our fishing poles into the back seat and, along with our dreams, headed to California and into our future.

Before we rolled onto the highway we made only one stop – to let my soon-to-be hysterical mother know we were leaving.

On the way to California, out of touch with everything but our surroundings of the moment, we missed Woodstock and never heard about the notorious killing spree of the Manson family. Just engulfed in our own visions of adventure and endless mystical exploration, we forged ahead without thinking of all the pitfalls we might be facing ahead.

Florida back in the late ‘60’s was just miles and miles of orange groves and swamps. There was no Disney World yet and the Everglades were still full of alligators, turtles, snakes and all kinds of exotic birds and other wildlife. A narrow and unlit Tamiami Trail was the only road through these swamps, where the Seminole and Miccosukee Nations could still be found living. As you drove along beside the murky canals, every so often you would see a little rickety bridge crossing over the canal and disappearing into the swamps, where visitors were highly UNwelcome. Unless a person was invited, no one I knew would ever venture across them.

As we drove further away from the familiar landscape of Florida and delved deeper and deeper into the Twilight Zone of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, we were often reminded that “our kind” (long-haired flower children, hippies, whatever we were called) were not wanted in those parts – and especially not a white girl and a dark skinned Cherokee giant. A chilling affirmation of this came late one night at a tiny 2 pump gas station sitting way back from a dark and lonely Mississippi road. A stringy haired kid of about 15 or 16 slithered out of the little office with his shotgun raised. Through his snaggly teeth he drawled that we best get our freakish selves out of there if we knew what was good for us. We said nothing but flew out of there without getting any gas.

Undeterred, we rolled on until we reached Texas, a regular Citadel of redneck might and glory. There, in a small dusty town somewhere west of Sweetwater, our car gasped its last breath of fumes and sputtered to an untimely death. So, even though it was more like a tiny village than an actual town, we thought we would try to sell the car there and take a bus the rest of the way to L.A.

Now, you probably won’t believe this but you really just can’t make this stuff up. Somehow we managed to push and roll our car into the local truck stop. We were trying to figure out what to do next when this drunk, one-armed guy started teetering around the car, scrutinizing it. I noticed that even more than the car, the guy was admiring our fishing poles lying on the back seat. He said he only had a little cash but what he did have was a huge bag of weed to trade. So he said he would give us whatever cash he had plus the weed – but only if we threw in the fishing poles AND when he noticed our high-top roller skates in the trunk – he made us throw them into the deal too!

Not really being in much of a position to haggle, we ended up making a deal with the guy. On top of that, he said he knew of an old abandoned house where we could crash and no one would bother us. This was good since we didn’t make enough from the sale of the car to buy our bus tickets.

The tiny house was a clone of many similar houses lining the barely paved and mostly dirt roads running all through the little village, which was populated mostly by American born Mexicans who worked the land for very little pay. There was a terrible drought in play at that time. I don’t know how long it had been since the last rain but all the crops were failing.

There was no work to be had because there were no longer any crops to be farmed. Consequently, all along the narrow back roads, out-of-work farm workers filled the yards and porches of tiny houses similar to ours, passing the days talking, playing cards and occasionally drinking beer.

Surprisingly, although born in the US, most of the people we met only spoke Spanish. Next door to our little house lived a Chicano family who were among the farmhands out of work due to the drought. They didn’t speak any English, but I spoke a bit of Spanish so we managed to get by. Whatever food they had was shared with us (pretty much only rice and beans – but they shared it with us.) This was my first introduction to the Chicano culture I would come to know and love so dearly in the years to come.

We used to sit and talk and laugh for hours. Neither Emilio, the guy next door, nor his friends spoke any English and I spoke only broken Spanish, but somehow we all understood one another. We also somehow seemed to keep a constant supply of beer which, although I didn’t drink, still kept Mack and Emilio cheerful. I now had all the weed anyone could possibly ever want so that kept me happy. So we passed some of the happiest months I can remember, there on that dirt road in that little falling down house in the middle of a parched Texas desert village.

Just on a chance before publishing this I went to Google Street View to see if I could still find the little village and lo and behold, look what I found – what is still left of our little house. Incredibly, here it is:

Eventually our new friends discovered the village Sheriff was keeping his eye on us. I mostly stayed in the little house but Mack used to go prowl around to see what was what and maybe he had cheated somebody at pool or something – I never really asked. Anyway, learning that we were being watched kind of squashed our hopes of selling our weed. So instead, we decided to cut out as soon as possible and just hitchhike to L.A.

Emilio couldn’t understand why we couldn’t just stay – still he gathered his whole family around to say goodbye. He disappeared into his house and with great fanfare, re-emerged with one of those old fashioned black cameras with the top that flipped up where you would look into it to see your subject. He made us stand in front of this huge tree in his yard where he posed us for 2 pictures – one of just us and one with us and himself. It was really hard to say goodbye because we had grown close by that time – but say goodbye we did.

Emilio drove us to the highway in his truck and we said our really final goodbyes.

We had a cardboard sign that said “L.A.”, our pillowcase with our clothes and we had each other – that was about it.

So we stood there on the highway under the blazing Texas sun with our sign and watched as Emilio drove out of our lives, leaving us on our own again.

We got a few rides and settled in to a new routine of taking in the changing landscape and making conversation with whoever was giving us a ride.

One night when I guess we were between rides – we laid down in a field near the road to get some sleep. But instead of falling asleep we were stupefied by the spectacular night sky. Being a city girl I had never seen anything like it. The sky out there was just immense – even beyond description really. It was like some deep, still, black ocean – so deep and vast that if you fell in you would just keep twirling and falling and spinning – but never reaching the bottom. All throughout that ocean blackness thousands upon thousands of massive stars flashed and throbbed like some dazzling diamond dome. Those shimmering diamonds seemed so close you could just reach out and grab one with your bare hand.

If ever I felt close to God it was there in that Texas field under that overwhelming, glittering canopy of stars that night.

“Reality” ** https://lawdymissclawdy.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/reality/