Should I Pick Up Hitchhikers?
People have been asking that I put up more history on this site, so here’s one day for the end of the year. Now you must understand that this took place in 1972 and it was a different world. I am not condoning the use of any substance abuses here, I’m just telling you what happened that fateful twenty four hours. Well, it actually started a few days before that. Back when, as Austin Powers says, there was sexual freedom with no responsibilities and drug experimentation with no consequences. 
Through the machinations of the late great Jonnie Barnett, I had been offered a recording contract from Jim Golden of Wooden Nickel Records (I know…”don’t take any wooden nickels…” no one did). I accepted and once the contracts were finalized, I went to Beverly Hills and signed them. The next day I had planned to make my move to Santa Cruz. The woman I had been living with was going to college up there, so I had decided to move up there with her. Probably quite detrimental to my “career”, but who can say?
In any event, after signing the contracts, I went home and started packing up a two bedroom’s house worth of furniture, instruments and stereo system. Then I called up a truck rental place to rent a moving truck. That’s when the problems began. I was told that in order to rent a one way moving truck, you had to schedule it at least a week in advance. My lease was up the next day, so I needed a truck now. No one would rent me a truck to leave in Santa Cruz, so I lied to the next rental agency and told them I was moving to Glendale, a mere five miles away. They rented me a no mileage charge moving van for twenty four hours for fifty bucks, which I now had thanks to my tiny advance from Wooden Nickel.
So here was the moving deal. Go pick up the truck. Drive it back to my house. Load up the house full of all the belongings we had. Drive the truck 400 miles to Santa Cruz. Unload the entire truck full of belongings. Get back in the truck and drive it back to Los Angeles. All within a twenty four hour period. I was 26. I figured I could do it, particularly if I had a little help from my friends.
I called upon my friend Don Dunn, then of Dunn&McCashen a duo recording for Capitol. Don agreed in a heartbeat to help, but he thought we would need some chemical inspiration to complete the entire ordeal in twenty four hours. He had a friend who had a friend…
Three hours later, as we were loading the last of the belongings in the truck, his friend of a friend showed up with some cocaine to keep us awake and some pot to take the edge off. We promptly burned one and did a line and took off for Santa Cruz.
Once on the freeway, we discovered that the truck had a governor on the throttle and would not do over 48 mile per hour. Well, that certainly added a little kink to our schedule and time to the trip. And the fact that it was the middle of August in Los Angeles and we had no air conditioning in the house or the car in L.A. or the truck we were using to for the move, only made things a little more tedious. So with open windows, driving in the slow lane at 48 mph, we decided to break out a guitar and burn another one and started singing to while away the hours. We sang every song we knew and even tried to write one, but anyone who has ever altered themselves like we were knows we had no chance of either writing a great song or remembering it if we did.
The trip was uneventful, if long and not a little tedious. We arrived in Santa Cruz about nine hours later; unloaded the entire truck in no time (as it’s much easier to unpack a truck then to pack it); took a one hour nap and then burned another joint, did a line for each nostril and started our trip back to Los Angeles, buzzing and exhausted, but joyous, enormously confident and full of hail fellow well met.
When we got to Salinas and approached the on ramp of the southbound 101, I saw a guy hitching by the side of the road. What the hell?, I thought. We had this huge empty truck, so we picked him up. He seemed enormously grateful and offered us some of his stash, which we accepted so as not to hurt his feelings. We were now close to hallucinating, but somehow very calm about the 360 miles ahead of us.
We had gone no more than twenty miles, when I saw a couple of hippies hitching a ride. How could I refuse. They hopped in the back and managed to pass us a couple of oranges thru the window before we started off again. That’s when I got the grand idea to pick up every single hitchhiker between Salinas and Los Angeles and if there was time, take them where they were going.
Every time we stopped one got off and two got on and they all brought something to the party. Soon the truck was full of hippies in outrageous clothes, dogs, cats, children, more guitars, beers, pot, flags, fringe, backpacks and more people. All doing 48 mph in the slow lane all the way to Los Angeles. Other people were going by giving us the peace sign and smiling and the feeling of peace, love and brotherhood was overwhelming. We felt like we were in exactly the right time and place in the universe. Before we knew it, Santa Barbara was looming before us.
Now before the 101 was a freeway thru S.B. the road actually turned into city streets and red lights for about a mile or so. In that section, there were always at least fifteen people trying to get a ride. It was very difficult to do so, because a driver would or could normally only pick up one or two people …if they liked the look of them. It was a tough place to get picked up and every corner was crowded with folks needing rides.
As we rolled into the area, I felt we were like a vacuum cleaner of good vibes. I pulled the truck out of the lane and driving on the edge of the road at about four miles an hour, picked up every single person going south. I mean every single person hitchhiking. I picked up twenty two people in Santa Barbara. Karmically, we were invincible. We pushed that truck as hard as we could and once in LA county made stops in Sherman Oaks, Glendale, Hollywood and Silverlake depositing those forty some people and making it back to the truck rental place with twenty three minutes, four joints and about four lines to spare.
I don’t know whether this was actually instructive …or entertaining, but it is certainly true.
james lee stanley
in Random Thoughts
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Reader Comments (12)
drugs and rocknroll. where's the sex? 8^)
James Lee...GREAT post, I really enjoyed it and I could clearly picture every scene. I think entertaining posts can be as beneficial as instructional posts in their own way. In 72’ I was playing the local steakhouse & club circuit in Hawaii along with Cecilio and Kapono and Kalapana. Picking up hitchhikers was a “low risk” activity at that time--chances were you ended up either knowing the person, or they knew of you from gigging somewhere on a very tiny Island. Today, however, it’s a different story regardless of where you are. Sadly, the mellow population seems to have given way to the “angry population” and picking up a hitcher could prove to be a dangerous game Russian roulette. Nonetheless, thanks again and I hope you have more stories to share.
Happy New Year,
Max
James, thanks for another great story. I might be getting my stories mixed up, but didn't you have a another experience involving a female hitchhiker with a shaved head and something about coming upon a row of telephone booths in the middle of the interstate? I'd love to hear that one again sometime.
Liza Jane
max and liza jane, thanks for the positive input regarding these "road tales", i will try to put up a few each month, so as not to always be in the mentor/chela mode. and yes, there was a very exotic nearly naked and quite lovely black woman hitchhiking out of st louis and i did drive across five lanes of downtown traffic to pick her up and yes, there were phone booths and more pot and more toll booths. i will see if i can find that story on tape somewhere and listen to it. i remember it being a very funny story. and i don't want to lose any of the funny stuff.
and max, you know i also worked with c&k a bunch of times and with kalapana at least once. their manager brought me to hawaii to work for a month once. fantastic.
james
fran, this is a family site, i had to leave the sex on the cutting room floor.
james
James Lee….I didn’t know you were in Hawaii via the C&K/Kalapana management team. Ed Guy was the manager at the time and brought B&R over to play the Waikiki Shell (Circa 74’). I moonlighted as C&K’s bass player/backing vocalist in between lulls in my restaurant/club circuit. At the time, bassists were a premium and a highly sought after commodity. Kalapana are good friends of mine and I sat in with them on bass often. I remember Batdorf and Rodney coming in a few times . Those were fun and exciting days. I don’t know how I missed you---perhaps I was too busy picking up hitchhikers. Anyway, keep up the great work and we’ll be seeing you and John soon.
Max
max, ed guy was the guy. wow, i haven't heard his name in i don't know how many years. and you played with c&k. i never knew that. see you in feb at the boulevard?
james lee
James Lee---I played with C&K for about 3 months in preparation for their warm up spot for Rare Earth at the Blasdell Arena in Waikiki (74’). At the time, I was doing a duo with Cindy Combs (www.slackkeylady.com). We played on their off nights at a club called “The Rainbow Villa”. Cecilio walked in one night and offered me the gig (even though I wasn’t a bass player). He was primarily interested in my high harmonies, and they didn’t need a third guitarist. It was great—“my 15 minutes”. I really learned a lot from those guys and I didn’t mind Cecilio’s Gestapo-like tactics in the pursuit of super tight harmonies—he knew precisely what he wanted. Shortly after the concert, they were off to LA to record their first album. I thought I was going also, but was later advised that “The Section” (James Taylor’s back up band) was doing all the studio work.
Initially, Ed Guy managed C&K; however, they changed management. I believe their new manager was Bruce Thompson. Ed then took on Kalapana and a trio I formed called Kainahe. He suddenly disappeared and no one has any idea where may have gone. There was so much musical energy and excitement in the Islands at that time. There was a need for new music, and that need was being answered by a host of artists.
Take care,
Max
Good story, but I can't help but think about how that person in the plane was mere inches away from doing Pressed Ham On The Windshield.
sheila, good taste and breeding kept him from departing from social standards.
james
Perfect story taking advantage of all the things that are out of the question to do today...but it sounds fun...particularily to someone who in 1972 wasnt even a twinkle in my parents eye
bobby, i suspect you were always twinkling in you parents eyes. thanks for the post and the support. it was really like that then. innocent and full of kindness for each other, ...initially. there was a playboy post about hipness and how it actually starts out like that, but by the time it makes it out to the awareness of every single individual, it stops being hip and simply becomes another form of abuse. sad journey. but it started out fANTASTIC.
james