RoosterBoots Meets Chewing Gum
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08-13-2009 | 07:55 PM
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"Utopian Overlord"
Joined: Jun 2009
Posts: 1,180
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From: Union, Mississippi
RoosterBoots Meets Chewing Gum
(from “RoosterBoots…In My Own Pen”, Random House, 1988)
Chapter 3 –RoosterBoots Meets Chewing Gum
It was the widest road I had ever seen.
Eight lanes of traffic heading South, eight lanes heading North. I couldn’t believe my eyes as I stood there in the breakdown lane, listening to the music of five hundred cars going by every minute. This was the New Jersey Turnpike.
It was 1969. I was 18 and in college and dumb as a brick banana. My final exams were done and I was the proud new owner of a 1.4 GPA and a girlfriend who wanted to marry me before the end of my sophomore year at Chapel Hill. I needed a getaway. I was in the mood for adventure.
So I packed a knapsack with three changes of underwear and some Ovaltine, tied a pup tent across the top, put my dog-eared copy of “On the Road” in the side pocket, and got ready to stand outside my dorm with my thumb stuck out. I was gonna hitch hike to Canada!
My roommate, Robert, decided that he wanted to go to Canada, too. I couldn’t get rid of him and I didn’t want him mad at me for two weeks while I was away. There’s no tellin’ what traps he woulda laid.
By the time the sun went down, we had made it all the way to Elizabeth City…nearly a hundred miles. With progress like that, I calculated that we’d make Canada by the time the war was over.
I pitched my bedroll in a verdant patch of soft leaves, a gift from Mother Nature. I read Jack Kerouack by flashlight until the batteries died a half hour later. I fell asleep and dreamed of adventure.
By the middle of the second day we were in Baltimore and my arms were a mass of blisters and welts, another gift from Mother Nature.
At dusk on the third day, our last ride dropped us off on the Southbound side of the New Jersey Turnpike. There we pondered the problem of navigating to the Northbound side. Alive.
I decided that the best method would be to divide the crossing into two parts, running first across the eight Southbound lanes and taking refuge on the concrete median. It was less than eighteen inches wide, but it was the only spot that seemed safe.
I tightened the straps on my knapsack and limbered my knees. I looked over at Robert to give him the signal…and he wasn’t there!
Looking up, I saw him in a high-stepping sprint to the median, slinging his knapsack around with his right hand like a giant purse, dodging cars and grinning. Astonishing himself, he made it alive. I expected him to turn around and motion me to follow, but he was already halfway across the eight Northbound lanes.
I joined him half an hour later, after rush hour subsided. We traveled a short distance in a red ’63 VW with a hippie who became increasingly stoned and paranoid and changed his mind. Two miles later, he stranded us on the side of the turnpike.
New Jersey seemed to get dark more quickly than North Carolina. Nobody picks up hitchhikers after dark (unless they’re evil and hungry), so I started scouting the ditches for a good place to pitch camp. Robert turned his back on the road for an instant…
I heard the brakes and felt the car’s horn blaring. It was a dark blue Cadillac…last year’s model it looked like...sliding toward us slightly sideways at the end of two rubber streaks. It missed Robert by a tenth of an inch, coming to rest fifteen yards away, half-in and half-out of the breakdown lane. Other cars honked and swerved to miss it.
The passenger door popped open and a short, brown man scrambled out. He was motioning us frantically toward the car. “Come on! Come on! We give ride!” he laughed as he spoke in broken English.
Robert looked at me, seeking wisdom. Finding none, he jogged to the Cadillac. I followed him into the back seat. A tiny brown woman with a shawl over her head sat at the wheel, gripping it tightly and perspiring. The little brown man slid in next to her and spoke in a language I’d never heard.
“G’bal adenamay! Haachi, haachi!” he jabbered.
She slapped both her hands on the wheel, squealed “Naladinabalafai!” and pointed her finger at him. Then she stomped the accelerator.
We merged with the oncoming traffic with the finesse of a professional wrestler. The G forces generated by her right foot pinned us to our seat. I looked around for seat belts. There were none.
The Little Brown Man rested his arm on the back of his seat and introduced himself, “Hello! I am…”
I swear he said his name was “Chewing Gum”, but I’m probably wrong. I wasn’t paying that much attention. I was staring at the driver.
She was yanking the steering wheel back and forth, like a child’s car seat toy. Except this wheel was actually throwing us from lane to lane, making life in the back seat a little like the Mad Hatter ride at Disneyland (but painful). The speedometer hovered around 70.
“This is my wife,” Chewing Gum explained, “Rahina. She is new to America, so I decide to teach her to drive!” He beamed.
“Which lesson is she on?” Robert asked.
Chewing Gum looked at him, puzzled. “Lesson?” he asked. “Oh! Lesson!” he laughed. “She has never driven before tonight!” he declared proudly, waving the back of his hand as if to brush off the mere suggestion that she might not automatically know how to drive.
Rahina jerked the steering to the right, stomped the brake for no reason, and then accelerated into the left lane (cutting off two cars). Chewing Gum laughed and patted her on the back. She spat words at him, “Naladinabalafai!”
She hit the brakes and swerved right to miss the car in front of her. They never knew how close to Judgment they had come. Rahina never took her eyes off the road. Not for an instant. Not even to look at the speedometer. Not even to blink.
“We are from Delhi!” Chewing Gum announced. Rahina braked. “Ka-HEEL-ah!” she screamed and accelerated. G forces shoved us back.
“She will make a fine driver!” Chewing Gum beamed. “She will improve. It is her first time.”
Robert interrupted, “Mister…WHY are you teaching your wife to drive on the New Jersey Turnpike after dark?”
Chewing Gum grinned and shrugged.
“Can you let me out, please?” he asked.
“Oh, NO!” Chewing Gum objected. “You are our guests! We will take you – where – ever – you - want!” he said, punctuating each word by stabbing his finger stabbing into his wife’s shoulder.
She swerved. Headlights behind us went to bright. Rahina slapped at the rearview mirror, tired of the blinding lights from all the cars behind us. I looked at the speedometer. We were going 35.
“Please?” I asked this time. “Stop?”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha,” Chewing Gum laughed. “You boys are soooo funny!” He turned to Rahina and told her what we had said, “Kalaj-tana azheili yunah. Yunah! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Rahina laughed, too. “Ha ha ha ha!” She turned around and looked me straight in the face. We accelerated past 50. “Anjaanh mahdj,” she said somberly. Then, “Yunah! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…”
She turned back around and pretended to control the car some more.
“She likes you,” Chewing Gum said.
Robert had been very quiet for the past few seconds. I glanced over at his outline, lit from behind by the flickering lights whizzing past his window. His knapsack was between his knees. He didn’t look well.
“Stop the car and let us out,” I pronounced each word succinctly.
Chewing Gum turned around, worried that we weren’t having a good time. He started to say something incomprehensible, but Robert interrupted and threw up.
He missed the knapsack. Most of it went on the back of the seat. From her reaction, some of it hit Rahina.
Negative G forces drove us face-first into the backrest ahead of us, which was severely unpleasant for Robert insomuch as his landing zone was still “hot”. The Cadillac skidded, fishtailed, and came to rest halfway into the breakdown lane. A long-haired dude on a '66 Sportster swerved around the rear bumper.
“THAJ DHA!” she spat, pointing at the door. “NalaDEEna!” We wasted no time extracting ourselves from the Death Caddy. Robert barely got his knapsack out when Rahina slammed her foot on the accelerator. The open car door closed all by itself. Chewing Gum was smiling as they skidded off into the distance.
We were alive! Condemned prisoners who had just been given a last-second pardon by the Governor. Robert broke the silence. “I guess we camp out in the ditch.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m kinda thumbed out.”
He asked, “What was up that little brown guy?”
“Chewing Gum?”
“Yeah! I’ve never seen anybody so close to death, skidding around on the Turnpike, married to such a HARPY, and the whole time he’s grinning and happy? What kind of drug does THAT?” It was a valid question.
“Hindu,” I observed.
“What? Hindu?” Robert didn’t understand.
“Rahina’s a harpy, right? And an insane one! If those guys make it home in one piece, Chewing Gum is gonna catch hell for WEEKS.”
“I suppose so.”
“Well, he’s Hindu!” I explained. “If he dies in that Caddy tonight, he did his best to teach his wife to drive, he tried to help us, and he WAS quite cheerful…so he dies with good Karma.”
“So?”
“So he gets reincarnated as something better.”
Robert suddenly got it. “So he gets a do-over with a better car and WITHOUT RAHINA!”
“Bingo!”
“No wonder the little dude was so happy.”
We laid out the tent on a slope. It would be a little uncomfortable, but the night smelled like rain and I didn’t want to be in a gully when the storm hit. We settled in for a sleepless night, kept awake by the sound of a million cars, each one driven by a crazy little lady. Robert had been thinking about death, which is never a good thing at bedtime.
“What about us?” he asked. “If we died in the car wreck, would we be reincarnated too?”
“Nah, we’re not Hindu,” I said. “We die and go to heaven.”
It got real quiet outside and breeze cooled off the tent.
“Except you,” I added. “You’re goin’ to Hell for pukin’ in a Caddy!”
Chapter 3 –RoosterBoots Meets Chewing Gum
It was the widest road I had ever seen.
Eight lanes of traffic heading South, eight lanes heading North. I couldn’t believe my eyes as I stood there in the breakdown lane, listening to the music of five hundred cars going by every minute. This was the New Jersey Turnpike.
It was 1969. I was 18 and in college and dumb as a brick banana. My final exams were done and I was the proud new owner of a 1.4 GPA and a girlfriend who wanted to marry me before the end of my sophomore year at Chapel Hill. I needed a getaway. I was in the mood for adventure.
So I packed a knapsack with three changes of underwear and some Ovaltine, tied a pup tent across the top, put my dog-eared copy of “On the Road” in the side pocket, and got ready to stand outside my dorm with my thumb stuck out. I was gonna hitch hike to Canada!
My roommate, Robert, decided that he wanted to go to Canada, too. I couldn’t get rid of him and I didn’t want him mad at me for two weeks while I was away. There’s no tellin’ what traps he woulda laid.
By the time the sun went down, we had made it all the way to Elizabeth City…nearly a hundred miles. With progress like that, I calculated that we’d make Canada by the time the war was over.
I pitched my bedroll in a verdant patch of soft leaves, a gift from Mother Nature. I read Jack Kerouack by flashlight until the batteries died a half hour later. I fell asleep and dreamed of adventure.
By the middle of the second day we were in Baltimore and my arms were a mass of blisters and welts, another gift from Mother Nature.
At dusk on the third day, our last ride dropped us off on the Southbound side of the New Jersey Turnpike. There we pondered the problem of navigating to the Northbound side. Alive.
I decided that the best method would be to divide the crossing into two parts, running first across the eight Southbound lanes and taking refuge on the concrete median. It was less than eighteen inches wide, but it was the only spot that seemed safe.
I tightened the straps on my knapsack and limbered my knees. I looked over at Robert to give him the signal…and he wasn’t there!
Looking up, I saw him in a high-stepping sprint to the median, slinging his knapsack around with his right hand like a giant purse, dodging cars and grinning. Astonishing himself, he made it alive. I expected him to turn around and motion me to follow, but he was already halfway across the eight Northbound lanes.
I joined him half an hour later, after rush hour subsided. We traveled a short distance in a red ’63 VW with a hippie who became increasingly stoned and paranoid and changed his mind. Two miles later, he stranded us on the side of the turnpike.
New Jersey seemed to get dark more quickly than North Carolina. Nobody picks up hitchhikers after dark (unless they’re evil and hungry), so I started scouting the ditches for a good place to pitch camp. Robert turned his back on the road for an instant…
I heard the brakes and felt the car’s horn blaring. It was a dark blue Cadillac…last year’s model it looked like...sliding toward us slightly sideways at the end of two rubber streaks. It missed Robert by a tenth of an inch, coming to rest fifteen yards away, half-in and half-out of the breakdown lane. Other cars honked and swerved to miss it.
The passenger door popped open and a short, brown man scrambled out. He was motioning us frantically toward the car. “Come on! Come on! We give ride!” he laughed as he spoke in broken English.
Robert looked at me, seeking wisdom. Finding none, he jogged to the Cadillac. I followed him into the back seat. A tiny brown woman with a shawl over her head sat at the wheel, gripping it tightly and perspiring. The little brown man slid in next to her and spoke in a language I’d never heard.
“G’bal adenamay! Haachi, haachi!” he jabbered.
She slapped both her hands on the wheel, squealed “Naladinabalafai!” and pointed her finger at him. Then she stomped the accelerator.
We merged with the oncoming traffic with the finesse of a professional wrestler. The G forces generated by her right foot pinned us to our seat. I looked around for seat belts. There were none.
The Little Brown Man rested his arm on the back of his seat and introduced himself, “Hello! I am…”
I swear he said his name was “Chewing Gum”, but I’m probably wrong. I wasn’t paying that much attention. I was staring at the driver.
She was yanking the steering wheel back and forth, like a child’s car seat toy. Except this wheel was actually throwing us from lane to lane, making life in the back seat a little like the Mad Hatter ride at Disneyland (but painful). The speedometer hovered around 70.
“This is my wife,” Chewing Gum explained, “Rahina. She is new to America, so I decide to teach her to drive!” He beamed.
“Which lesson is she on?” Robert asked.
Chewing Gum looked at him, puzzled. “Lesson?” he asked. “Oh! Lesson!” he laughed. “She has never driven before tonight!” he declared proudly, waving the back of his hand as if to brush off the mere suggestion that she might not automatically know how to drive.
Rahina jerked the steering to the right, stomped the brake for no reason, and then accelerated into the left lane (cutting off two cars). Chewing Gum laughed and patted her on the back. She spat words at him, “Naladinabalafai!”
She hit the brakes and swerved right to miss the car in front of her. They never knew how close to Judgment they had come. Rahina never took her eyes off the road. Not for an instant. Not even to look at the speedometer. Not even to blink.
“We are from Delhi!” Chewing Gum announced. Rahina braked. “Ka-HEEL-ah!” she screamed and accelerated. G forces shoved us back.
“She will make a fine driver!” Chewing Gum beamed. “She will improve. It is her first time.”
Robert interrupted, “Mister…WHY are you teaching your wife to drive on the New Jersey Turnpike after dark?”
Chewing Gum grinned and shrugged.
“Can you let me out, please?” he asked.
“Oh, NO!” Chewing Gum objected. “You are our guests! We will take you – where – ever – you - want!” he said, punctuating each word by stabbing his finger stabbing into his wife’s shoulder.
She swerved. Headlights behind us went to bright. Rahina slapped at the rearview mirror, tired of the blinding lights from all the cars behind us. I looked at the speedometer. We were going 35.
“Please?” I asked this time. “Stop?”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha,” Chewing Gum laughed. “You boys are soooo funny!” He turned to Rahina and told her what we had said, “Kalaj-tana azheili yunah. Yunah! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Rahina laughed, too. “Ha ha ha ha!” She turned around and looked me straight in the face. We accelerated past 50. “Anjaanh mahdj,” she said somberly. Then, “Yunah! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…”
She turned back around and pretended to control the car some more.
“She likes you,” Chewing Gum said.
Robert had been very quiet for the past few seconds. I glanced over at his outline, lit from behind by the flickering lights whizzing past his window. His knapsack was between his knees. He didn’t look well.
“Stop the car and let us out,” I pronounced each word succinctly.
Chewing Gum turned around, worried that we weren’t having a good time. He started to say something incomprehensible, but Robert interrupted and threw up.
He missed the knapsack. Most of it went on the back of the seat. From her reaction, some of it hit Rahina.
Negative G forces drove us face-first into the backrest ahead of us, which was severely unpleasant for Robert insomuch as his landing zone was still “hot”. The Cadillac skidded, fishtailed, and came to rest halfway into the breakdown lane. A long-haired dude on a '66 Sportster swerved around the rear bumper.
“THAJ DHA!” she spat, pointing at the door. “NalaDEEna!” We wasted no time extracting ourselves from the Death Caddy. Robert barely got his knapsack out when Rahina slammed her foot on the accelerator. The open car door closed all by itself. Chewing Gum was smiling as they skidded off into the distance.
We were alive! Condemned prisoners who had just been given a last-second pardon by the Governor. Robert broke the silence. “I guess we camp out in the ditch.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m kinda thumbed out.”
He asked, “What was up that little brown guy?”
“Chewing Gum?”
“Yeah! I’ve never seen anybody so close to death, skidding around on the Turnpike, married to such a HARPY, and the whole time he’s grinning and happy? What kind of drug does THAT?” It was a valid question.
“Hindu,” I observed.
“What? Hindu?” Robert didn’t understand.
“Rahina’s a harpy, right? And an insane one! If those guys make it home in one piece, Chewing Gum is gonna catch hell for WEEKS.”
“I suppose so.”
“Well, he’s Hindu!” I explained. “If he dies in that Caddy tonight, he did his best to teach his wife to drive, he tried to help us, and he WAS quite cheerful…so he dies with good Karma.”
“So?”
“So he gets reincarnated as something better.”
Robert suddenly got it. “So he gets a do-over with a better car and WITHOUT RAHINA!”
“Bingo!”
“No wonder the little dude was so happy.”
We laid out the tent on a slope. It would be a little uncomfortable, but the night smelled like rain and I didn’t want to be in a gully when the storm hit. We settled in for a sleepless night, kept awake by the sound of a million cars, each one driven by a crazy little lady. Robert had been thinking about death, which is never a good thing at bedtime.
“What about us?” he asked. “If we died in the car wreck, would we be reincarnated too?”
“Nah, we’re not Hindu,” I said. “We die and go to heaven.”
It got real quiet outside and breeze cooled off the tent.
“Except you,” I added. “You’re goin’ to Hell for pukin’ in a Caddy!”
Last edited by Roosterboots; 08-13-2009 at 09:40 PM. Reason: Miz Roo sez I gotta have Harleys in the story.
:icon_pla ying:
