A Few Days "In The Life"

At 18 and a new high school graduate (’71), I left home with a friend and a backpack to hitchhike to the West Coast to check out what the hippies were up to. While there were many memorable experiences, I’ll just touch on a few here.

Big Sur rolled out its considerable charms for us. West Coast beaches and a gorgeous, sunny day, and we were having a laughing and colorful walk along Highway One when, “Hey!” rang out. We were initially confused but finally saw a guy on the opposite side of the highway, inside the Park’s fence, motioning for us to come over.

We crossed the highway and walked up to the fence just in time to a.) see that he had a small campfire going and b.) have a couple of Park Rangers arrive in a van behind us. They were unhappy with us; extremely so. They did want the fire out, and I volunteered to go fill canteens from the creek for that purpose.

Back at the stranger’s campsite I quickly extinguished the flames with the water from the creek, after which one of the Rangers said, “You think it’s out? Why don’t you stick your hand in the ashes there and tell me it’s out!” So, back to the creek, and another round of putting the fire out. Then they issued us all tickets for an illegal campfire in a State Park. Not my fire, nor my traveling buddy’s, but we figured we’d straighten that out with the judge.

The perp who made the fire tore up his ticket and headed south while I persuaded James to go to court with me in Salinas. That necessitated going north whereas we’d been headed south towards Los Angeles. Hitchhiking north got us a ride with a young woman (~25, we were both 18) who heard our story of why we were going to Salinas, where she lived, and she invited us to camp in her backyard.

Come morning, we got up early and went to the courthouse. Since we had to wait for court to begin after giving the clerk our tickets, we went to a nearby store and I had a Rocky Road candy bar for breakfast. I thought about that candy bar over the next few days.

In court, when they got to us, inexperienced me tried to explain it to the judge, without the desired outcome. “$45 at $10 a day!” was the judgment, so I soon sported “bracelets” and was herded out to the jail bus, along with about a dozen of the day’s miscreants. My buddy belted out, “Just send my mail to Monterey jail!”

I was not upset, not at all. I could not imagine this having much impact on my future, so it was an experience, an adventure…

At the jail, it was off to intake where we smiled for the camera and got fingerprinted. Interestingly, when I got my Texas Handgun license 45 or so years later, I had to supply information on this event, and the Monterey County Sheriff’s Department responded that I had no record in their county.

Then we got our jailhouse duds: beltless, elastic-waisted denims, a denim shirt – no buttons – really a kind of cool shirt, would’ve liked to keep it if it didn’t say something about the county jail on the back, and socks and sandals. We got to keep our underwear. We were issued a really thin mattress, and a packet of Lorilard 1860 rolling tobacco.

We were then led to our accommodations. It was a cell block with 3 or 4 cells and a day room. Each cell had 12 bunks, 6 to a side, with a stainless toilet and sink in the space between the bunks. My top bunk was a decent retreat from the social scene in the middle of the cell. My compadre was in the next cell.

But I had my roommates, aka cellies, to keep me company. There were a couple of young guys that came in on the bus with us. They’d been hitchhiking around and got busted taking a leak behind a dumpster. Pretty low on the master criminal scale.

But others I remember included the three members of the Hamilton Gang, who’d specialized in liquor store holdups. And there was a guy that had murdered his mother and a navy guy nailed in a bar fight.

Nice neighborhood.

Nobody really knew what to make of the campfire kids.

Most of my time was spent on my bunk just listening and periodically rolling a cigarette. They hadn’t given us matches, but somehow I was able to light them. I watched a guy heat up a can of soup by burning a roll of toilet paper.

But the true high point was mealtime. My buddy and I had been hitchhiking for 5 or 6 weeks by this time, so, although it was meant to be punishment, for me it was like a rest and recuperation break. After weeks of sleeping wherever outdoors, here I was sleeping indoors on an – albeit thin – mattress and getting three hot meals a day!

And that was life changing. In a sense. I’d never had bread pudding before, and it was wonderful! To this day, it’s a favorite.

Scuttlebutt was that some evangelical group was going to visit us and bring us books, and I was kind of looking forward to that diversion. But they came and pulled us out of our cells before that – we’d paid our debt to society. So, out in the free world again. Met some locals and had a shower – there was one in jail, but I didn’t see anybody use it – and thus refreshed, we stuck out our thumbs and carried on.