Anyway, That Isn’t Really What I Meant To Say I Meant To Tell A Story I Live From Day To Day
The Tunnel Looked Like A Sewer
Digging post-holes was hard work, but after my hands calloused and my
muscles hardened, I could just about keep up with my boss. I took a
couple of days off to go see my best friend, Mike, who was on his
way Vietnam. He was finishing up his boot camp in Kentucky, so
early one morning, I clutched my sleeping bag, stuck out my thumb
and headed south. It felt good to be on the move again. My rides
were pretty good also; I left Lansing at 9 a.m. and arrived in
Louisville just after 5 p.m., but that's when my luck ran out.
It was raining when I arrived, so I stayed in the car as the
driver made his way through the city. I thought, as I watched the
dirty buildings pass by, that even if the sun were shinning I
wouldn't want to live in this city. In rush hour traffic, we were
barely moving. The driver didn't want to drop me off just anywhere,
so I asked if there was a university close by. "No problem," came
the reply and a couple of turns and six or seven streetlights down
the road, I said goodbye to him from an underground walkway used by
students to get across an eight-lane highway. It wasn't cold, and I
was already under a roof, so I figured I would wait out the storm.
Sitting on the ledge, I watched the never-ending stream of
traffic start and stop in the continuing downpour. After reading my
book for almost four hours, I wondered if the rain would ever stop.
Even my book, Hesse's, Steppenwolf, was a disappointment. It was a
story about an old man with a lot of questions and no answers.
Questions without answers, for me, came in droves! By 9 p.m. the
daylight was gone, and I was beginning to think people in Louisville
hibernated during bad weather because not a soul happened past me
the whole time I was sitting there. After 10 p.m., I began to look
at the walkway as a possible place to crash. The tunnel, though,
looked like a sewer. Little rivers ran along the walls and lakes
were popping up everywhere. If the water didn't drive me out, the
smell was sure to. I reached for a cigarette and found a joint that
I had totally forgotten about. One of my rides laid it on me; it was
my salvation.
Leaning against the graffiti blackened wall, I struck a
match and lit the joint. Breathing the smoke out slowly, the place
looked less threatening. Upon taking in another hit, I spread my
sleeping bag down on the cold cement, sat down, and proceeded to
smoke the rest of the joint. Supremely stoned, I let my eyes close
until the sound of muffled voices brought me back to consciousness.
Arching my head off the sleeping bag, I found myself staring into
three startled faces. When I tried to speak, I couldn't. The sight
of an immobilized body, groping for coherent speech, at an hour past
midnight, was too much for the female of the group. Screaming, she
and her two male companions ran for the exit. I was pretty shaken up
myself, as I grabbed my things and hurried out the opposite exit.
Outside the tunnel, the thought of walking all night was a
foreboding one. After a couple of blocks of enduring a constant
drizzle, I became painfully aware of my jacket's increasing wetness.
I was cold and it was after 1 a.m.; there wasn't even a comfortable
tree to crawl under. I was just about to give in to total despair
when I came upon an overpass. Looking up at the concrete structure,
I saw a flat space stretching the length of the overpass. Climbing
up to the flat surface, I found it covered in about three-inches of
mud. Water was trickling from the metal supports, insuring that the
mud remained mud. Looking for a spot to roll out my sleeping bag, I
smiled at the thought that Louisville, even in its hospitality, was
consistent; I would find no free lunch here. Surrounded by a wetter
mud than what lay directly beneath me, I was careful to keep my head
and hands tucked in as I crawled into my sleeping bag. Just when I
was beginning to feel comfortable, a sixteen wheeler vibrated a
clump of dirt lose from the metal beam above my face and it hit me
in the eye. I pulled myself up to a sitting position, removed the
dirt from my eye, and spent the rest of the night with my face
pressed firmly against my up-raised knees.
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