We then headed southwest on what I believe was route 55.  We traveled about an hour when, once again, we experienced car troubles.  Once again we could only drive about 20 miles an hour.  We stopped at the next town, Gardner, Illinois, which at that time was a two bar, one main street town.  We found a repair shop who looked at the car and after inspecting it told us it would take a couple of days to get parts and repair.  We then proceeded to look for  a place to stay for the two nights.  We found Mrs. Ashes boarding house;  one room, double bed, bathroom in the hallway and four dollars a person per night.  That would be our home for the next  two nights.  That evening we walked from one end of the main street to the other end, found a bar,  and had dinner.  The next day we toured the town, which took about an hour and hung out at the boarding house with Mrs. Ash.  Mrs. Ash told us they didn’t get many visitors from back east; we were only the second eastern guest since the beginning of the year.

When we went to pick up the car the auto mechanic told us the vehicle wasn’t in good shape and probably couldn’t make it across country.  We called the agency that acquired the car for us and we agreed we would drop it off at their representative in St. Louis because we didn’t want to take a chance of breaking down again.   We drove along Route 55 to St. Louis, a trip of about 230 miles, without incident.  We found the agencies representative and dropped off the car.  The representative drove us to the highway where we could hitch a ride.  As we exited  his car he told us too bad about the troubles with the car we were driving but you just can’t trust those New York Jews.  For some reason Bill got upset at that and, in so many words, we told him he could bleep himself.  Welcome to the Midwest in 1968.  We would get several rides on our cross country journey and end up  hitching  from St. Louis to Flagstaff, Arizona, a trip of about 1360 miles.

Our first ride was in an old 1949 Ford coupe driven by someone who would be considered a hillbilly by us New York folks.  We agreed to share the cost of gas and oil.  He had to add a quart of oil about every 100 miles.  We drove through the Ozark mountains at night.  I slept in the back and Bill slept in the front seat next to the driver.  It was an uneventful trip of about 400 miles  and sometime in the late afternoon of the next day we would stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma where we had made plans to stay with our friend from DSS, Walter Harris, and his beautiful wife Sharon.  Walter was going to law school at the University of Oklahoma in Tulsa.  I had visited Walter and Sharon when I traveled across country with Jeff Coles the previous August and September.  We spent 3-4 uneventful days with them.  The day before we left Walter called a local radio disk jockey he knew and the disk jockey broadcast that two cool fellows from New York were looking for a ride to Albuquerque.  The next morning we were picked up by this girl in a late model convertible and were on our way to Albuquerque.  It was about an 11 hour trip, including a couple of stops to eat, and we got to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque around 8pm.  Bill and I paid about five dollars each to sleep in a dorm.

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