Hitch Hike - Escape to San Francisco

A hitch-hiking trip with my friend. David M.

Hitch Hike - Escape to San Francisco

Of course we were hitch-hiking. 
Us two custodian pals from Utah. We were off on a lark. 

We started out down by the bad side of the tracks in Salt Lake City - our first ride only went that far. 

And next, we spied a coffee shop past the railroad tracks and the freight yard.
We made it to a down & out Mexican restaurant for coffee.
The sun was already low in the sky and it was as bleak as only Utah knows how to bleak - devoid of trees, devoid of buildings with charm.  

It was November and it was Salt Lake City. 
But we were off to San Francisco for Thanksgiving, we were going places. 

We both worked as custodians and were sort of going to school in college, if you know how that is. Anyhow, when you're 20 years old and kind of lost, you can take off on a lark whenever you like.  

So us two custodians from Utah did just that… we were off on a lark. 

And now things looked even bleaker - the world famous Salt Flats.  

But with luck by the highway side, we didn't have to wait long before a snazzy big T-bird pulled over. 

Inside it was cushy and warm, with a cushy expensive upholstery leather and that warmed up car smell.  

Terry was the driver of the T Bird.  He was an Englishman about 35 with large stylish glasses and hair. He was going to Laguna Beach. He had business with art galleries. He needed help with the driving - and that was us.  

So we drove. I remember I took the first shift driving as the sun was going down as over the Salt Flats.  

I'd never seen the Salt Flats before - the landscape was forbidding. The endless white tricks your sense of space. Space becomes strangely flat and grey and white. I remember how the road silt left a dirty white sheen plastered all over the car.

Jump to 3am. 

We arrive in quiet, dark and warm Benicia California, where Terry dropped us off. 

California was exotic!  It was warm to begin with.  The atmosphere was deep, with a funky pungent smell to it. This was the first wonder - the fact that there were green trees and shrubs and an eery warm smell in the air.  I guess it was the sea - it was exotic to me. But our lodgings were not exotic in the least.  

Somehow we wound up with a ride from some big biker dudes in a van - said we could crash at their house.  Jump to 4 am and David and I are in this pitch black basement - I remember the alarm clock had red glowing numerals.  We were supposed to sleep - but could not - with german shepards all around.  I don't remember why, but David was afraid to spend the night there - so after the house was quiet we snuck out the back stairs.  I wasn't going to question David's judgment about why.  He was kind of in charge of the trip since he'd been to San Francisco before.  

We were going to meet up with David's old high school english teacher, Lee.  
That was the invitation to go. When you're 22, anything as flimsy as a distant invitation is enough to set you off cross country.  In Benecia we were supposed to meet a woman named Rita.  About noon made it there.  Rita’s house was one of the first astonishing places on our trip.

Rita was an artist - she was a 'grown up' being 30 something. She was a regal beauty with a tragic air.

Rita's entire house was a work of art, like I'd never seen before or since really.  It was as redone Victorian in a pared down style. Her bedroom was draped in stretched black plastic. Her backyard was a sculpture garden, the fence was made entirely of victorian doors all set side by side.  Inside was a lesson in aesthetics - straight out of Bachelard's 'Poetics of Space' (David and I were big fans of the book).  

I remember Rita’s backyard sculpture of weathered cupboards filled with broken teacups and sea shells and rusted machinery mixed in with rambling plants and ceramics.  To me, a yahoo from Utah, who lived in a dumpy rented room on a drab bleak street, it sure seemed like a magical mystery tour.

Rita wore a long dark dress and drove a luxurious VW bus.  I remember riding in the back of her bus over the Oakland Bridge in the afternoon - amazed by everything.  

I had never seen the Pacific Ocean or been anywhere like San Francisco before.  It was a trip. And the place we were going to was even more amazing than Rita's house.

Somewhere around Telegraph Hill we parked beside a three-story San Francisco gingerbread house - one of those classic houses you see in magazines.  It was owned by Rick & Ron, a couple of trust-fund guys. The day had already been amazing, but now it was considerably more so.  I had never been in a house as luxurious or astonishing.  It was like Alice in Wonderland - and exactly that polite. Obviously Rick & Ron knew how to decorate - and had no budget to constrain them.  

Rick & Ron were exceedingly kind', with perfect manners.  David and I were shown to a well-appointed room up on the 3rd floor, where we crashed.  We had to be exhausted since we hadn't slept an an hour in the last two days.

The next morning, breakfast was in a perfect paneled room that might have been out of the gilded age - I remember the woodwork was so exquisite - crafted cupboard doors with latching hardware and brushed antique lamps.  Breakfast was toast and homemade jam on organic bread and cold brewed coffee (which was all new to me). Even the crumbs were special.

Weirdly I felt liked… for a nearly homeless guy who was used to hard knocks, it felt oddly out of place to experience such good manners.

Then it was time to go out on a very special trip. Lee had a treat in store for us. On the way we walked past the corner of Haight & Ashbury - famed for its location in the Summer of Love. San Francisco was a crowded busy city with exotic smells on every corner.  I liked it but it also seemed a little scary - it was all new.

But we were coming to see Art. We marched on through the giant conifers of Golden Gate Park to the DeYoung Museum. Lee insisted that first we had to stop and smoke a joint behind a tree before going in.  I can now see the logic of his thinking.  Lee was late 30's, balding, had a wispy blonde beard and of course he was gay and intellectual. He was polite and articulate with a quiet sense of humor that made for an easy traveling companion.  

Enter the DeYoung Museum and the main show - Tululah. 

Inside the museum an intimate crowd had gathered for Tululah's show.  
I suppose she had built a following known only to discrete art connoisseurs.  
San Francisco was earning its keep as the city of sinful delights. 

Tululah was an heiress who began life as a belly dancer somewhere in europe.
That's where she'd caught the eye of her ancient plutocrat husband who died and left her a colossal fortune. Tululah spoke in a strong accent that added to her charms.
The crowd assembled quietly, standing around a room of Renoirs and Monets waiting for the lecture to begin.  

The deal was that Tululah was allowed to perform her lecture in return for the many paintings she had loaned out to the museum. And Tululah did love to perform!  

And so she began... striking a bold pose directly in front of a  Cezanne… and a flourish of her tambourine. Her act was direct. To accentuate her talk she progressed through various paintings, playing her tambourine… and removed an item of clothing at each stop, strewn onto the planked floor.  

As I recall she had strong opinions about every painter - mostly to do with their sex lives and how much they might be 'getting any' and its influence on their creativity. Tululah was smart - but her main focus was not painting.  

It's hard to argue with her line of thought as she twirled around into extreme poses to display her ample embonpoint.  Oh my!… this was something I had never seen in an art gallery before!  

I wouldn't have thought it was legal!  It was just San Francisco.

On and on the program continued for an hour. Tululah had lots of art but was running out of clothes.  

Finally, at the end, we were standing in front of a VanGogh. By now Tululah was down to only a G-string and tassels. Her act was nearing it's finish too.  She had slid down to the floor where she defiantly lifted her sculpted dancer's legs into a symbolic V shape to stand as ‘Tululah's Peace Sign’.  This was the right after the 60's and a peace sign meant a lot then. 

She pronounced her final defiant note: "Well darlings, if you don't like my lecture or paintings... at least the view is good! No?".  

A polite round of applause spattered through the room... and the show was over. Whew!

Back to the gingerbread mansion… our temporary home.  It was coming on dinnertime and this Thanksgiving had been laid out regally.  The perfect dining room had been perfectly served up with a perfect thanksgiving turkey on perfect china.  I guess I wasn't used to things being so expensive with a sense of preciousness about them.  

Odd new guests began to arrive - weird guys in all sorts of overdone wardrobes.  I seem to remember a velvet cape and a joker hat and some kind of jester's slippers. The party talk was polite and I remember some party game I'd never heard of.  And then there was a party raffle - with the prize being the wire sculpture that I had made and brought along from Salt Lake City.  I was pleased when Rita won it and I got to present the wire artwork to her.  

Dinner began and somewhere in all the chatter there were rumors about LSD in the turkey - and that scared me.  I wasn't ready for that - all the other weird stuff had pushed me far enough out of my little pauper's comfort zone.  So I just had pecan pie instead of turkey.  

And then after dinner the dancing started.. some of it seemed especially like something out of Alice in Wonderland.  
So I left and retired upstairs - I didn't fit into the party.  

Did I mention I’m not gay?  I don’t even know how to dance. lol!

So I crept upstairs and quietly retreated to the amazing 'trip room'. This was the very top garret on the 4th floor. It was an open patio deck with a covered alcove and a fabulous view of San Francisco - peaceful and breathtaking.

A collection of mirrors and prisms had been hung like mobiles over the well-planted deck.  I thought it unreal that plants could still be thriving in November. I quite enjoyed the quiet of the skyline more than the party.  

So I sat for a long time on the pile of pillows and admired the view as the sun set - the mirrors spun - with that exquisite smell in the air that might have been eucalyptus or something.  It was all like a wonderland. But of course it wouldn't last. I guess one thing I've learned in life is that wonderland never does last.

The next morning Thanksgiving was done. It was time to head back to Salt Lake - back to the dismal, bleak, cold, colorless world.  And so we traveled. The rest of the trip was mundane… just hours of driving down a long cold highway.  

All I can remember about that trip is we lucked out.  We were picked up on a dark off ramp in Sacramento by a VW bus filled with hippies... all of us bound for SLC.  

So it was a one-stop shot all the way back.  And en-route there were jugs of wine in back and we met Rosie, a sweet flush-faced girl who we later became friends with. People used to hitch hike back then.

I guess that trip was one of my more colorful hitch-hiking adventures. This trip had no cowboys with rifles - no weirdo drivers - no sleeping in cornfields - just one amazing thing after the other, which how life should be when you’re 20 and lost and curious and looking to find things out.

But those stories come in another new chapter… so like we say in the covid epidemic… ‘hang in there!’