Easy Riders

by Vern Fein

Back in the Day, traveling on old Route 45 on our way to Florida to see our mom: two brothers, a wife and girlfriend, and a brother-in-law. Hippies all, at the height of the Revolution: beads, colorful rags, no bras, holey jeans, long unruly hair. Hunger stopped us at 3:00 a.m. at a truck stop in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Famished, we barely noticed the packed parking lot as we trundled into the garishly lit diner, the Formica tables full. And we stood waiting to be seated.

No one seated us, but everyone stared at us, a palpable tension in the room. There were few empty seats, but we espied an open booth near the back corner and, eyes down, we headed for that haven. All the clinking sounds of a restaurant stopped as did all the talking. Just as we reached the booth, a sharp, distinct wolf whistle sliced the air.

We huddled down and barely looked at each other, hoping a waitress would rescue us. The eyes around us felt hostile, but a kind of mocking hostility, as if some kind of bad joke had entered the room.

It took our waitress, a middle-aged woman in a pink uniform, a bit to get there, but she finally came over with a big smile on her face. We all wanted to kiss her. She simply asked: “What do y’all need?” Oh yes, menus. But David, the brother-in-law, said: “Help.” He tried to laugh.

Saying she would return, she left us to figure out the unappealing food. Our hunger had vanished. If you ask me now what we ordered, I could not tell you one item, but I am sure the kind waitress brought us water glasses.

David figured out what to say, and we agreed; we would have agreed to anything to cut the tension that still hung like a shroud over the crowded room. “I know what we should tell her and ask her to let this place know! Let’s tell them we are in a Shakespeare play and have to wear our long hair and clothes as our costumes and didn’t change them because we just had a rehearsal early tonight.” If he had suggested that we were undercover agents to track down anti-War demonstrators, we’d have agreed.

When our server came back, David launched into his rap with a lot of head nodding and semi-chuckles from the rest of us. But just after he started explaining our situation in a please-be-sympathetic-way, the song on the juke box changed, the one sound that was always there even when the room began to talk again and the clang of silverware resumed. Out of that multi-colored box came the distinct and chilling sound of Merle Haggard wailing: An Okie From Muskogee, which was busting the charts in certain areas of the country, such as Bowling Green in south-central Kentucky.

The lyrics convicted us. We did smoke Mary Jane, drop acid, embrace free love, sport long, shaggy hair, wear sandals and beads. We were not proud to be Okies, wave Old Glory, or think white lightning the best thing to quaff.

And that song did not play once. It played again and again and again, as we sat there trying to decide when to run. Finally, one of us stood up and all of us strode, eyes down, toward the door, the cat-calls rising right as we headed in the direction of the blaring juke box, near the exit area. Quickly, we threw two twenties down by the register, plenty enough to pay with a tip, the change irrelevant.

In the moment we stood there, a large man with a matching belly, rose up in front of the juke box and begin doing the hoochie coochie.

We plunged into the even darker night, startling after the fluorescent bath we just left. Hustled to our car, started the engine, and crept out onto the road. That nothing bad had happened punctuated our sighs of relief, but that was short-lived,

As soon as we pulled out on the highway, a car, its bright lights beaming, followed us as close as you can get without crashing. My brother was driving, but we were all fantasizing on the same thing. That past week the movie Easy Rider had come out, and every hippie in the nation must have seen it. We had watched in horror as two hippies in the movie were traveling on motorcycles down a Louisiana highway, when a couple of locals in a pickup pulled alongside them and mocked them, eventually pulling out a shotgun and riddling their bodies with vengeance.

The car began to follow us even more closely. Ginger, my girlfriend, was the only one who spoke: “I think there’s four men in there.” No one replied. We were all wondering what we were going to do if they pulled out guns after they ran us off the road.

Our only hope was the next town, but we were in a rural world and had no idea if there was a next town. But maybe there was and maybe a friendly police station to duck into?

The car kept following. At any time, we expected to be run off the road.

But a next town did appear. Heaven! Nirvana! Paradise! Just as we saw the town sign, our would-be assailants pulled off the road, turned around and, we guessed, headed back to report their fun scare.

Sixty years later, sitting around, long hair now gray, listening to light jazz, sipping wine, all still alive except David, with my wife, Lisa replacing my girlfriend Ginger, we reminisced, recalling how even back then our country was badly divided.