I've just finished eating the most
scrumptious meal of my young life with my father and one of my sisters. We're in
the parking lot of the exclusive Old Mill Restaurant in Toronto and my sister Marta
is crying as she hugs me and says "Goodbye". I get in my father's car
and she drives off in hers. He and I head over to the main highway on the western
edge of town.
We drive in silence for twenty
minutes and finally come to a cut off on the highway where my dad pulls over
and stops the car. We both get out and he goes around the back and takes my
knapsack out of the trunk. As he hands it to me he shakes my hand and says
"Good luck." Without hesitation he quickly gets back in the car and driving
off, leaves me at the side of the road. No embrace or show of emotion from him,
no dramatic look back, he just gets in the car and leaves. I am now more alone
than I had ever been in my life.
My father always felt that any
sign of emotion was weak and unthinkable so I guess he thought there was hardly
any point to change his stance now. Actually, I should amend this part of my little
tale. He was deeply connected to one emotion that was never far from his side
and that was rage. He lived his life constantly at war with himself, his family
and everything else in the Universe. He spent all his days tilting at windmills
until he died at ninety-six, forever ready to do battle with real or imagined
ferocious beasts.
He was extremely confrontational
and never capable of conversation in a normal tone of voice. Every sentence he
spoke seemed to be expressed as though the person he was talking to had already
contradicted him. As far as he was concerned, all mankind and every piece of machinery
ever invented were in a personal collective conspiracy against him. He constantly
went out of his way to make life choices that would help support this theory. Even
at my young age it was obvious to everybody that I was temperamentally and
emotionally vastly different than him. I had little doubt that I was, and would
forever be, a thorn in my father's side. I just assumed he felt that getting
rid of me would mean one less battle to deal with.
As for my mother, I had sat on the
edge of her hospital bed just a few days earlier saying my final goodbye to
her, as she was dying. Oh please, relax already! I had said my final goodbye to
her because of her impending death probably a dozen times by then, so it was pretty
old hat, even for a seventeen year old. My mother was a martyr and among her
other quirks she was repeatedly at death's door. Seeing as her god kept refusing to take
her she eventually became a nun so she could live her life of martyrdom in a
convent. See my story; My
Mother, the Sister © by adrian. That didn't work as planned though and she
eventually left the convent and went on to marry a defrocked Jesuit Priest...
I swear, I'm not making any of this up.
I was desperate to flee my dysfunctional
family but for the past few weeks and certainly today I had hoped someone would
stop me. All I wanted was one simple "Don't go". At this point even a
casually mumbled or accidental "Are you sure you want to do this?"
would have been enough to save me. But no, it was not to be. Not one of my
three sisters, father or mother said a word. At that moment I hated every one
of them for not trying to stop me. I was seventeen years old and had never
travelled anywhere outside Toronto in my life. I had forty-three dollars in my
pocket and was alone and utterly terrified.
It was by my own hand I had
arrived at this place and I knew my own hand was the only thing that would free
me from standing still. I rested my knapsack on the ground and as cars roared
past me, put my thumb up and began my journey into the unknown.
During the next three years I was totally
dependent on my own wits and the kindness of strangers. I also spent a lot of my
journey learning how to avoid the malevolence of others.
As I stood on the side of the road
hoping for a car to stop and pick me up, I let my mind wander over my reasons
for being there.
From my earliest days I had
constantly been in search of every possible answer to the meaning of life. In
that respect I guess my dad's complete lack of ability to navigate the world with
any comfort helped make me determined to learn how to survive on my own terms. When
I was young I was also convinced I had been dropped on the wrong planet and was
sure that if I could find out why I would be able to make my escape back to
wherever I rightly belonged (I still believe I was dropped on the wrong planet,
but no longer have the desire to escape).
One night I struck up a friendship
with a fellow my age named Keith Irving who was at an introductory seminar I
was attending about a new (at the time) philosophy called Concept-Therapy. It's
one of those power of positive thinking things that purportedly also helps
teach a person how to adapt themselves constructively to the environment in
which they work and live.
It was founded in San Antonio by a
fellow named Dr. Thurman Fleet and at that time his course was only available to be taken in
the States.
Keith and I became instant friends
and walked around all night talking about the possibilities of this new
philosophy. Two days later Keith announced he and a friend were hitch-hiking
out west at the end of the week and that he planned on going to Texas on his
own to take the course. He said they were planning on roughing it by sleeping
out on the side of the highway because they didn't have much money. I got the
address of the Vancouver rooming house where they planned to stay and it was
agreed I would meet him there and he and I would hitch-hike to Texas together
to take the course. How we could afford to do this was not considered. In what
a lot of us oldsters now refer to as "The good old days" finding work
and getting a job was never an issue. You went anywhere and said you were
available and as long as you could walk and chew gum at the same time, you'd
get a job.
It didn't take long for the first
of what would turn out to be hundreds of cars over a three year odyssey to stop
and I was offered a ride. Fortunately it also didn't take long to learn the
science of hitch-hiking. Where to stand on the road so cars could easily
stop... At night when sleeping, to always fold my pants under my knapsack so in
the morning they would have a nice sharp crease so I would look (by those days
standards) presentable. To always carry a pack of cigarettes and offer one to
the driver as soon as I got in the car. From that point on they would insist I
smoke theirs for the rest of the trip. If we stopped at a truck stop for food I
always said I wasn't hungry and just wanted coffee. Sooner, rather than later,
the driver would quickly say they realized I was probably broke and insisting I
had to eat, they would buy me a meal. In those day as well, most of the people
who stopped were truckers or travelling salesmen who wanted someone to talk to
so they could stay awake on their long drives.
I don't want to harp on it, but
those truly were different times. Cars with families and full of kids would
stop and from inside someone would ask if I was a criminal or had a gun and as
soon as I answered I was unarmed and not a criminal the door would fly open and
I would be invited in. Sometimes I would also end up being invited into their
home to eat and/or sleep over. I quickly became an amateur psychologist and reasonably
adept at listening to people's life stories and then offering my seventeen years
old view on what they should do. Even as a child, I was received as an Elder
and now as an Elder I'm comfortable being received as a child.
I eventually arrived in Vancouver
to discover that Keith and his friend had left Toronto with hundreds of dollars
between them and although they'd hitch-hiked, they slept in motels every night
rather than outdoors beside the highway as I mostly did. They had rented a room
in a large rooming house with thirty or so other tenants and every night around
midnight I would climb in the window they left open for me and sleep in their
closet. In the morning I would shuffle downstairs with the rest of the throng
and have breakfast, just like I belonged there. Only twice in the three weeks I
stayed was I challenged by one of the
owners at breakfast about whether I lived there or not but they couldn't keep
track of who was in each room so they accepted that if I was in the building it
must be okay.
Keith and I never did make it to
Texas. We got as far as California but had to turn back after finding that
hitch-hiking as a pair was a lot harder than going solo. Keith went back to
Toronto by train and I was now consumed by wanderlust. I spent the next six
months hitch-hiking around British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, the
Yukon and then up to Alaska. I slept in various missions or on the roadside. Occasionally
people would let me stay at their house for a day or two. Back then you could also
walk into any police station and they would put you up for the night and give
you food chits you could spend at the local diner. If they didn't have a setup
for that they would inevitably take up a collection amongst themselves and give
me a few dollars for food. Restaurants would also always feed you if you washed
dishes or helped out somehow. Long distance hitch-hikers were usually
respected, regarded as adventurers and generally treated well.
By the time I got back to Toronto
the Concept-Therapy course was being held here, so I took it. I suppose a
normal person would have felt "mission accomplished" at that point,
but normal never did do much for me.
Now that I was a convert I wanted
to meet the man who started it all, so I went to the closest highway and started
hitch-hiking to San Antonio to meet Dr. Thurman Fleet. I had no idea where he
lived but I had a San Antonio postal box number. What more could I possibly
need? I had the world by the tail so I took the scenic route and went by way of
Florida. A few weeks later I arrived at the San Antonio Post office but they couldn't
(or wouldn't) give me the home address of the box office holder. Eventually
they did tell me someone came to pick up the mail around two o'clock most days.
Next day I slid in beside the post box and started my vigil. On the second day
around two I watched as someone finally slid a key into the box. I announced my
presence and said I had come from Canada to meet Dr. Fleet. He was surprised,
but after thinking about it for a moment he said "Sure, why not?" I
got in his car and he drove me over to the house. It's hard not to consider how
any of that would be handled in today's neurotic world. I suppose I would be
arrested for stalking or something. Hanging around a post office for hours
would be utterly impossible, but in 1957 nobody gave stuff like that a thought
and anyway, I was just a harmless kid.
I was invited in and Thurman and I
chatted for over an hour. I have no idea what we talked about, but knowing what
I was like at eighteen, I guess I was there to let him know I felt he was
definitely on the right track and he should keep up the good work. Eventually
Dr. Fleet wrapped it up and I left. As I walked down the driveway his assistant
ran after me and told me Thurman wanted me to have the crisp twenty dollar bill
he was waving at me. He had spent over an hour with some kid that showed up out
of thin air and he had just slipped me a hundred dollars, by today's standards.
A rich man now, I aimed for the highway.
During the next two years I
continued to travel non stop back and forth across the States and finally
settled in Toronto again. Those three years of travel gave me more schooling and
wisdom than I had in all my prior years.
Naturally, there are untold miles
of individual stories about my travels which I will explore at other times. For
now though, I'm sure you and I have had enough.
