THE HIGHWAY DIED LIKE JAMES DEAN OUTSIDE PASO ROBLES
True story we were alive back then we were lovers in the tall grass outside Paso Robles where California meets the golden sky, cattle grazing and I got the pictures to prove it. We were legal back then that’s what the draft card said, we were perishable young hipsters of the 60s, wet behind the ears, back then I mean her hair was black, her skin porcelain and we hitch-hiked across America, left Bronxville with 38 bucks between us that didn’t matter, I had never fallen for a girl like that and we were on the trance road to our own true selves.
It was the western trail to smoky paradise and we were holy brave and new and the miles passed by like a poem, we crossed the big river in Iowa, caught the long ride out of Davenport, 6 a.m.
The big rigs were flying and she sat between me and a trucker named Mel, from Laramie to Salt Lake City we listened to West Texas junkie tunes on the tape deck and slept in ditches and when we woke up there was prairie dogs and the horizon was diamonds and the western sky turned purple, and there was prisms of light in the shot glass, and the waitress was kind to us at Jack’s Cafe I guess the radioactive soup of the American west hadn’t gotten to her yet why you’re just a couple of kids she said fancy that!
On the sixth day out she left me sleeping in the middle of the night and never said goodbye.
