The Road to Schenectady (Part Two in the "On The Road" Series)
This is the second in my "On the Road" series. The first, which you can find on this site, is called "Heading East Head." These are stories from the late 1970's and early 1980's, when a young guy who was clean, dressed respectably and looked "normal" could hitchhike across the United States. It wasn't the fastest mode of transportation. It wasn't the safest, either. But it sure was fun and if you did it right you could get to where you wanted to go for next to nothing and meet some interesting people along the way. Of course, you could meet some people who were a little too interesting (read: scary), but I was fortunate enough to have met only a few of them and to have come out of that stage of my live alive and relatively unscathed.
But these On the Road stories are not about the scary people who picked me up. These stories, as you likely know because you're at this site, are about sexual adventures and fun. All of the stories in this series are based on real-life occurrences but I've taken the author's privilege of embellishing when I want to and filling in the blanks when memory fails. And at this point in my life the latter happens all too frequently.
I had dropped out of college for a semester. The history professor who brought his German shepherd to class and issued commands to "Adolph" (the dog's name, no lie) in German--and who was a clear fascist who gave me a B for the course because I finished his tests too quickly (even though I wrote A's on every one); the English writing professor who seemed to like my work but didn't have an original thought in his head; the girls who I liked but who didn't like me and the girls who liked me but I didn't like; in short, the game of college just wasn't doing it for me. So, I packed up my belongings at the end of the spring semester and left Keene, NH, never (to this day) to return again.
I was at home, living with my parents and my youngest sister, outside of Boston, and working for minimum wage at a job I neither loved nor hated. Bored. I received a letter from my boyhood friend, John, who was in his sophomore year at Union College, in Schenectady, New York. "Come and visit me," he wrote, "you can get a minimum wage job out here and you can live with me. I've got a spare room in the house I'm renting. Chip in on the food and utilities and we'll have ourselves a time."
Unlike me, John was from an upper-middle-class (or lower upper-class?) family. He had one brother and his mother was a lawyer and his father was a doctor. They paid for all of his college costs, including his housing, thus he was renting a house, alone, and he had more than enough room for me to visit. His parents both liked me and when I ran into his father once at the convenience store, he told me that I should go and stay with John. It will be good for both of you, he said.
So, sometime in mid-October I packed up everything I owned and cared about into a backpack and hit the road. My parents and my sister were sad to see me go but they too supported this move. The one thing my parents definitely did not like was my transportation plans. "Why not get a bus out of Boston," my dad asked. "I'll give you the money. It will be faster." He didn't add safer, but I knew that was what he was thinking. I also knew that the cost of a bus ticket, while not much of an extravagance for some families, would be a hit to the budget. And I didn't like that. Instead of talking about the money, I just responded that it was more fun to hitchhike and that I would be fine.
So, he drove me out to Rte. 128 (that's as far as I would let him take me) and he dropped me off at the exit. I waved to him and headed down the ramp. Within five minutes of putting out my thumb, I was picked up by a guy in a late-model Buick. He was probably in his 50's. I jumped in and he asked me where I was going. I told him Schenectady or as far west as he was going. "You're in luck," he said, "I'm heading to Albany." We chatted a bit. He told me he was salesman for an insurance company and was going to Albany for a company meeting. His son, he said, was about my age and living on the West Coast, where he hitched when he needed to get around. "I would hope," he said, "that someone like me would pick him up and give him a lift if he saw him on the side of the road."
I had scored big time. Schenectady is just a little north of Albany. We chatted a little bit and then I dozed off. When I woke up we were crossing over the Massachusetts state line into New York. I apologized for sleeping for most of the 3 hours we had been in the car, but he just laughed and said it was nice to have the company anyway.
While I think it was a bit out of his way, he dropped me off at the Rte. 9 exit and wished me luck getting to Union College.
I got two more short rides and was beginning to think it was going to take most of the rest of the day to go the 20 or 30 miles up to Union. Just as I was thinking that a beat up late 60's or early 70's Oldsmobile rolled up beside me. The passenger window was down and when the car came to stop, I looked in. A guy who looked to be in his twenties was driving. He looked to be about the same height and build as me (about 5'8" and around 130 pounds). But he looked a bit like a Hobbit behind the Olds' big ass steering wheel. He asked me where I was headed. When I told him Union College he said: "you're in luck. That's exactly where I'm going. Jump in."
So, I climbed in. I put my backpack at my feet, as I always did. "Why not throw it in the back," he asked. "I like to keep it close," I replied. He just nodded his head.
The car smelled faintly of pot. It had a big bench seat and a massive interior. I felt like I was also a Hobbit sitting in it. He had a cassette deck mounted below the original equipment on the dashboard. Canned Heat's "Going Up the Country" was playing through the speakers. He turned it down just a bit but left the cassette running. It turned out it was a mix tape he had created. As each song played, I marveled at how similar our tastes were. He laughed at that and said something about us being "fellow travelers."
He told me that he was from Albany but was a junior at Union. He had run down to help his mother move some things, he explained, and now he was on his way back to college. He lived alone, he told me, in an apartment looking over the Mohawk River. "Must be nice," I said. "It's a bit of a dump," he replied, "but it's clean and safe and I like looking at the river."
We drove on and as we approached Schenectady he asked me if I felt like getting high. Sure, I said, it was just barely noon and I knew John wouldn't be back from classes until after 2, so I had time to kill. "I have some back at my place," he said. "You ok if we go there?" "Sure," I said.
In less than about 10 minutes we were at his place. As promised, it wasn't much. A triple decker. He said each floor had two apartments. His was on the top floor on the right side. We went up and went in. His door opened up to a hallway. Looking down the left side, I could see a couple of doors and the hallway ended in a kitchen. I assumed the doors were his bedroom and bathroom. To the right was a good sized living room. He had a couch and two chairs and in the corner his stereo system sat on an old chest. His vinyl collection filled a five-shelf bookcase, that sat beside the chest.