This series is a little bit biographical and a little
bit imaginary about my dad and a road trip he took in the summer of 1946, when
he turned fifteen. He and a friend hitchhiked from Loring Park to Duluth, into
Canada and back again. He was gone from home for a month. I was astonished and
fascinated by the tale. So, I added some speculation about things I've always
wondered about and this series is the result. To read earlier SHORT LONG
JOURNEY NORTH clips, click on the label to the right, scroll down to and click
OLDER ENTRIES seven or eight times. The FIRST entry is on the bottom of the
last page.
“I just want to get home in
time to save my mom from the Socialists,” said Tommy Hastings faintly. The
truck fell into silence again.
Ed said, “Do we want to stop
for breakfast in Page?”
“I wanna get back and save my
mom,” said Tommy.
“She’s not gonna be murdered
in the morning,” said Freddie Merrill from the shadows of the truck. The sun
had just started to color the horizon, and he slumped lower than the bottom of
the window.
“How do you know that?” Tommy
said.
“No one gets murdered in the
morning. Especially normal people.”
“My mom’s not normal! She met
some guys and someone took a picture and now the Socialists don’t want anyone
to know about it!”
“Her boyfriend shook hands
with a communist! What’s the big deal?”
Tommy cocked his fist to slug
Freddie. Ed grabbed it and squeezed. Tommy sat back down as she said, “I ever
tell you what happened to the last hitchhikers who tried to start a fight in my
rig?” Tommy slumped lower, silent. “Did I, young man?” Ed added with a military
snap to her voice neither boy had ever heard before.
Tommy sat up and said, “No,
ma’am, you never did.”
“Both of them ended up with a
case of serious road rash.”
“What’s ‘road rash’,” Freddie
said.
Tommy replied, “When you land
on the tar with bare knees and hands…”
“And face,” Ed added. She
paused as they passed a sign that read ‘Page Town Diner’. “We’ll keep on if it
makes you feel better. But I guarantee you’ll both be hungry by the time we get
to Anoka.”
“That’s where the witch was,”
said Freddie.
"That’s where my cousin
lives,” said Tommy. “At least we passed the mobsters already.”
“Mobsters?”
“Didn’t we tell you what
happened to us when we got picked up by the mobsters?” said Tommy.
Freddie added, “That was
after the witch but before the Socialists.”
Ed laughed, shaking her head.
“You boys have had quite an adventure, I’d say.”
Tommy’s gloomy voice added, “It’s
not over yet.” He pointed. Alongside the road, a truck sat, its hood open, a
cloud of steam boiling around the front of it. Two men stood alongside it,
alternately kicking it and pushing each other. When Ed roared past them without
slowing, the boys caught sight of a bit of fist shaking before they disappeared
into the aurora before dawn. Twenty minutes later, they saw a string of men
walking along the side of the road. They heard the truck.
Three of them turned, waving
their hands in the air and slowly stepping out further and further into the
road. Ed muttered, “They come much farther out, I’ll have to stop or run ‘em
over…”
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