L'enfer c'est
la haine qui luit
dans ton oeil.
Oswald Mbuyiseni MTSHALI

Day 65

am (HOT)

pm (Like an Hurricane)

Rides = 4
Arrival = On the road - South Carolina
KM travelled = ?
$ spent = $5.00
Time passed on the road = 6 am ---
km walked = 8

With the money I made yesterday I was able to buy myself a bus ticket for Brunswick in Georgia, a small town about 50 miles north of Jacksonville. When I arrived there I thought that it was such a beautiful place with lots of old buildings. It seemed like the kind of place where it is possible to live a good life in a nice house surrounded by family and friends. The reality was otherwise. I went into a quaint store to buy a loaf of bread but I was 36 cents short. The clerk said I did not have enough money. Fair enough, I went outside and played music. After 30 minutes a man dropped some coins into my hat. I thanked him and looked at my fortune: 33 cents. I thought that it was close enough to buy me that bread. I honestly thought that the clerk was going to say that it was fine. I went back to the store. The clerk said that I was still three cents short. I went back outside to ask a passersby for the 3 cents. That became a harder task than expected. Near the store, 3 old men were sitting on the porch swing of another quaint home with nice white columns. One asked what I was doing. I told them that I was hitchhiking and that I needed 3 little pennies to buy a bread. I was out of luck, none of these men liked hitchhikers or 'longhairs' or bums or young people or blacks or foreigners or strangers, and so forth. The list of what they hated was a long one. They looked so pathetic and wizening, almost rotting before my eyes. The one in the middle kept making lewd gestures. He said, "They gonna cut your #%@!@*" I thought that he meant my penis. I looked at the three monkeys and before moving on I said: "God Bless You." They stood up at once, holding the railing of the porch and shouted insults at me. After almost one hour of begging I collected 1 cent, and that was the one I had found on the sidewalk. I was so discouraged. I went back to the store almost in tears and asked the clerk for mercy. He hesitated a long time and finally agreed to take a loss. I ate half of the bread right away and managed somehow to lose the remaining half on my way out of town. I don't know how it happened but the bread was gone. Maybe the whole town got together in one of those quaint churches and send their vibes for the bread to vanish from the earth.

I was not too excited by the idea of hitchhiking. I was kind of nervous. My first lift in Georgia turned out to be a driver who asked to have a blow job right away. His right hand was like a tourniquet on his organ. I asked to get out immediately. He stopped the car and I was out on the highway, in the middle of nowhere shaking in my boots. There was a restaurant nearby and I walked to it. It was one of those roadside-disaster-take-out type of places. I asked the waitress if I could have a glass of water. She recognized that I had a French accent and said: "I am French too, from France. What are you doing here?" She said that she had met her husband in France, they got married and moved here. She said that she hated the place, but that she was trapped there. She also warned me about the danger of hitchhiking 'in these parts.' I told her that I did not have a choice at this point. She gave me 6 dollars. I drank my water and went back outside into the three ring circus hoping that the lions would keep their mouths closed.

I got a short ride soon after being back on the highway. The driver was nice. It was late in the afternoon and the weather had changed dramatically. A storm* was coming on fast. The wind was blowing everything sideways and the rain was starting to fall. I walked toward the overpass for shelter. That is where I met Byron and Theresa two other hitchhikers. The storm was now big. There was a lot of thunder and lightning. One bolt hit something on the side of the road about 100 feet from us. The light from it was the most bright thing that I had ever seen. It was a rod of light that looked about 1 foot in diameter. As soon as we saw it, we heard this loud bang. The overpass was now offering only slight protection from the rain. They were going back to New York after running away to Miami to get married. Byron's father was in the Mafia and did not want his son to marry Theresa. They figured that after the 'fait accompli', Theresa would be accepted into the clan and all would be "A-OK" as Byron put it. The rain had forced us to hitchhike together which was fine as we were good buddies right away. The sky was getting darker when a big transport truck stopped for us. We ran to it. Dale was going to New York! We had hit the jackpot.

Dale was like a brother to us. He provided the ride, the food, the beers and the cigarettes. We were around Richmond, Virginia when we stopped in the biggest, the largest truck stop in America. Dale wanted to refuel his truck and to buy cartons of cheap cigarettes. There were hundreds of trucks parked everywhere. It was like a city away from civilization. The storm* was behind us and the wonderful world of trucking was all laid out for us to experience. There was a lot of actions going on, prostitutes roaming and many trucks were 'shaking.'

- Daniel

*That storm must have been a precursor to the dreadful Hurricane David which hit the area on September 3, 1979.



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