The next morning Bill got up about 8am to talk with someone in the Sociology department at the university. I continued to sleep and would do so until Bill got back around noon. In the four hours he was gone he initiated a major change to his life that is still going on to this day. Bill did not have an appointment with anyone but he did have an introductory letter to the head of the Sociology department from someone at his undergraduate college, Lake Forest. In the four hours he was gone Bill managed to arrange for a free ride for graduate studies and get a teaching fellowship for the Sociology department. Bill would remain in Albuquerque until today, 47+ years as I write this, except for about an 8 year stretch where he went back and forth to Tucson, Arizona. Bill’s life has been mostly good, but that is better covered in a book written by him. He has had a colorful life, reflective of the times he lived in and the people he had relationships with. I love him today as I did 48 years ago. We left Albuquerque soon after noon, taking a city bus to get to the outskirts of town where would hitchhike for the last time as we were on our way to Tucson, Arizona.
We got picked up by a diaper delivery truck that was on its way to Las Vegas from Kentucky. We would be dropped off in Flagstaff, Arizona and intended to then hitchhike to Tucson. The trip to Flagstaff was about 325 miles. The vehicle looked something like this except there was no front door on the front passengers side. There also may not have been a door on the driver’s side either. The truck was pretty beat up.
The first thing the driver did was to stop at a liquor store to buy a cheap bottle of booze. He then proceeded to pour some alcohol into a paper cup and would sip from it as he was driving. Get the picture? Within in a half-hour the driver spotted 3 teenage boys hitching and offered them a ride, which they gladly accepted. We were now riding in a beat-up, open door, diaper delivery truck with a driver who was drinking booze and we were accompanied by three teenage runaways. Sounds like a great plan, huh? Further proof that it is better to be lucky than smart.
I’ll never understand why Bill and I didn’t bail from that truck. I know I thought of it many times. The remainder of the trip ended up being uneventful in spite of the boozing driver and our three young companions. We ended up being dropped off in Flagstaff in the early evening. We had been driving 7-8 hours. We didn’t know it at the time but that would be the last time we would hitch a ride.
On June 5, Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated in California. Bill was a Eugene McCarthy supporter and I was a Kennedy supporter. The assassination was a shocking event, one of several shocking events that took place in 1968. Although we rarely argued politics we, along with cousin Steve, did frequently discuss the subject. Bill thought the event was representative of our country; I thought it was more an aberration. Both of us were unhappy about the event as we continued on our trip.
It was now around June 10. We had been gone since May 27. We needed to get to Tucson, Arizona, a trip of about 270 miles. The police in Flagstaff would not let us hitch a ride. The stopped us 3 different times at 3 different highway locations. Finally we decided to take a bus to Tucson, at a cost of no more than ten dollar each. In Tucson we met up with my friend Terry Graham who was the girlfriend of my friend Jeff Coles. I had previously taken my first cross country trip with Jeff Coles last August. Jeff and Terry were both attending the University of Arizona graduate school in Tucson. They had separate apartments. Jeff was attending his annual two weeks army reserve training so we were able to use his apartment and his vehicle for the 5-6 days we would be spending there. We did not see Jeff during this visit and I never saw him again. Terry would later break up with Jeff and their 4 year romance would be over. Kat and I would remain friends with Terry. We drove around Tucson and went down to Nogales, Mexico a couple of times. We also spent some time visiting with Terry. I vaguely recall a beautiful Mexican American girl befriending us at the bus station in Tucson. She had no place to live and I think we hooked her up with Terry who put her up for a few days. I can’t speak for Bill, but there was no hanky-panky between Maria(?) and I. Up until that time I had called Kat on the phone once or twice and sent her a couple of postcards. I did not think of her often but that would change as the trip lengthened.
The one inaccuracy is that Jeff did not break up with me. I broke up with him. When he returned to NY while I was still in Tucson, I started dating someone else because I felt he and I would never get married. We had been going out for something like 4 years. My dating someone else really shook him up. To make a long story short when I graduated from UA and returned to NY, he asked me to marry him. Unfortunately, I had fallen out of love with him and could not get back into the old emotions I once had for him. It was shortly after my calling it quits that I think he left NY.