Hearing from Bobby Hodge is like going for a long run with a world-class talker. I struggle to breathe, hopelessly hoping to keep up barely and he’s just jabbering away like we’re not even running hard. – JDW
Cutting loose.
In 1977 I quit college and got a job in a supermarket, bagging groceries. I was living with my parents in Lowell, Massachusetts, and saving as much as I could for a planned summer or longer journey across country.
I was reading Lonesome Traveler by hometown Lowell author Jack Kerouac and I was quite taken with it. The view of the world one has while passing through places is something that resonated with me.
While I hoped to save enough to travel for many months, I also hoped to stay a few places where I could find a job, any job and earn more. I definitely romanticized this entire plan but thinking about it kept me feeling worthwhile. Maybe I felt even a bit superior to my contemporaries who followed convention and toed the line, too afraid or unimaginative to defy what they thought was everyone’s expectations for them.
A self-righteous friend said, “Bobby, you are so apathetic.”
“Who cares,” said I.
My friend Ronnie had a solid good job at Raytheon and he was gonna quit to make this trip with me. On Friday nights we would go to the bars in Lowell, drink the cheapest beer and make plans for the summer. Other times we would buy bags of beer and stand inside the canal gatehouse on Broadway Street with others from the ‘hood.
Sometimes we would raise our youthful drunken voices in song, the Beatles, Stones and Dylan and we butchered them all. I knew all the words to “Like a Rolling Stone,” which was cool enough for a while that nobody picked a fight or beat me up. Of course, the violence was mostly boredom and I had long outrun any problems.
I was also training for what would be my first Boston Marathon. My Lowell friends I hung with mostly knew nothing about the running. I would have to say, they could not relate.
Ronnie traded in his car for a Dodge Van and we began working on the inside to make it into a tiny house. Ronnie and his brother did most of the work. I just handed them stuff and tried to be otherwise helpful, going out to get them coffee and sandwiches.
When I could, I travelled to Boston to run with my teammates in the Greater Boston Track Club at Boston College Track and over the Boston Marathon route. We would go to the Eliot Lounge afterward and wolf down pizza and beer and other training table favorites.
Usually I took the train back to Lowell and was up early the next morning to run and then go work at the supermarket. One older woman, a cashier I worked with regularly, was unfriendly and always talked to me in some superior tone. She spoke French with her friends, once even pointing at me – “espèce d’idiot.” I just smiled and bagged really really slow so she had to help. Was she really so special banging away on her cash register? I felt sorry for her.
Ronnie and I inspected maps of all sorts and planned to head out across the northern part of the country in the summer and potentially back through the south in the winter and springtime.
The winter months passed in a solid routine of ritual. Run, work, home for lunch of leftovers or cans of soup, work more some days after lunch, run again, as the sun was setting in late afternoon along the Merrimack where the water is “broken at the falls to make frothy havoc on the rocks.” Kerouac.
Bed early after dinner and a television show with the parents, Sanford & Son or The Waltons.
I ran my first BAA Marathon in April.
Boston was a learning experience where I finished 46th place in 2:28. Back at the supermarket, no one was impressed In fact, they laughed, watching me limp and hobble around. I was anxious to quit and start our journey, but I needed to work at least one more month.
I quit at the end of June having saved $909.00. Unfortunately, we did not leave until the end of July for reasons all and sundry. I spent my time helping get our ride/home ready and making lists. I also started a travel journal I would keep for the entire journey.
We made a few warm-up trips to the White Mountains and the coast of Maine. We also took on a fellow traveler Dusty who worked with Ronnie and was ready for an adventure.
To quote Mark Twain, “I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”
We celebrated my birthday on August 3rd, went to a going-away party for Dusty and then travelled back to Lowell to do some banking, cashing checks, getting travelers checks, clearing out every red cent in my account.
August 5th, we were off. We had a huge box of 8-tracks, the soundtrack for our journey.
Into the great wide open
under them skies of blue
out in the great wide open
a rebel without a clue.
– Tom Petty
Cutting loose. Vagabond journey. 1977/78.
San Antonio—Galveston—Louisiana
San Antonio meant the Alamo. Remember the Alamo? When I was a kid, I wanted to be Davy Crockett. The Fess Parker guy on the television show portrayed him and with the popularity of the show came a slew of products – powder horns, muskets, coonskin caps. I had all that shit.
I wanted to move to Kentucky and be Daniel Boone or any of those mountain men living with squaws, killing bears – pronounced “bar” in western drawl – and always discovering something. In other words, a reject of polite society.
I almost attained my goal when I became a long distance running competitor.
Well, we visited the Alamo and heard a version of the history that unfolded there in 1836. I was left wondering about Texas independence and vexed by the history of these recent events. Conquistadores, Natives, Mexico Republic of, United States. Los Estados Unidos. Actually, quite a sordid history.
Galveston meant a Glen Campbell song to me and Ronnie and I soaked up the warm temperatures and the beach there for a few days, while blizzards piled up record snow back in Lowell, Massachusetts.
“I still see her standing by the water,
Standing there looking out to sea.
And is she waiting there for me,
On the beach where we used to run?
Galveston, oh, Galveston!”– Jimmy Webb
Next up we took the free ferry from Galveston Island to Point Bolivar, named for General Simon Bolivar who fought for Latin American independence from Spain. Then we drove onward to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where we parked near the LSU campus for the night.
In the morning we found a nearby park and went for a run. The park had a golf course, where I played through, so to speak. I went into the office at the park to use the facilities and chatted with the man behind the counter. Talked about our being two weary travelers from Massachusetts and wondered if I might use the water hose outside to clean myself. He laughed and said “Well, Okay, I guess, is that what you genteel folk in Massachusetts normally do? Because we do have showers here.” Downright hospitable, he was.
Duly cleaned and refreshed, we were ready for Bourbon Street and the French Quarter.
New Orleans. Onward. February/March 1977.
Journal – February 26th.
Drove to New Orleans after morning run on golf course and an actual shower in the club house! Went directly to the French Quarter and found a parking spot for our Dodge campervan on Dauphine Street. We went for a walk and bought some Dixie Beer and sat by the Mississippi, watching the moonrise over it and the tankers and tugboats steam by. We talked to a couple of Navy guys who sang us some sea shanties. Later, went to the Famous Door to hear Dixieland Jazz. Went back to the van at midnight and slept soundly. A Great Day.
Woke up the next morning and it was a pouring down rain storm. I felt lazy, so I didn’t go for a run. We bought coffee and biscuits and headed out of town and passed right through Mississippi toward Montgomery, Alabama. We went for a short walk around the city and then for a run in Oak Park.
We just hung out at the van and went to sleep early after deciding to head for Atlanta the next day. I went for a run in Oak Park in the morning, then washed my hair in the park’s rest room. We bought some supplies and coffee and hit the road.
We reached Atlanta in the afternoon and went to visit the state capital building, where we picked up visitor information. Later, we headed to Piedmont Park and went for a run there. In the evening, we explored the Underground City area and heard some good bands.
We parked overnight at Piedmont and went for a run there in the morning. Afterwards, I washed and shaved in the van, using a bucket of water and the rear view mirror. We went to a market and when I came out I noticed the Pheidippides Running Store across the street, owned by Olympian Jeff Galloway.
I went in to say ‘hello’ and chatted with Lee Fidler, whom I had met in Boston the previous year. We planned to go for a run together with Galloway later in the day. While at the store I poured over Track & Field News with Bill Rodgers on the cover and a story about my teammates Randy Thomas and Danny Dillon at the Cross-Country Trials. I was getting psyched to get back into competitive mode and quit “picking daisies,” as Coach Squires had referred to my travels.
Next day we headed onward to Nashville after getting gas and oil and changing out a balding tire. It was now early March but as we headed north it began to get much colder. Down to the teens in Nashville overnight, so we got a hotel room.
We went to visit the Grand Ole Opry, which was only open for tours. We took some pictures and then went to visit Printers Alley. Ronnie and I were losing steam, knowing our travels would soon be coming to an end. We stayed another night in the hotel and just enjoyed being in that relative luxury, feeling lazy with some road fatigue.
The next day we traveled to Great Smoky Mountain National Park. At the visitors’ center we got information and maps and found that Skyline Drive was closed due to the snowy conditions. We went hiking on the Gatlinburg Trail for a couple of hours and then headed further north, stopping in Bristol, Virginia, for the night. I went for a run and then we made some rice and tea on my camp stove and crawled into our sleeping bags for another cold night in the van.
We got up early the next day and went for a stiff-legged run after the hiking and running the previous day. We decided to skip the Skyline Drive which was now open but even with chains on our tires it still would have been a slow treacherous drive.
We drove to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and went for a run when we got there. Then we hit a pub, where we sipped beer in the warmth before heading to the van to curl up in our bags and sleep. Next day we awoke to fresh snow and icy conditions. It was a difficult decision but we did not go to DC where we had planned to spend a few days. We both figured we would have other opportunities to get there.
It was a long grueling day, driving north in the snowy conditions. We stopped and got a hotel in Belmar, New Jersey. I went for a run and then came back and sat in a hot bath. Ronnie brought back some pizza and beer.
I sat in bed with the television tuned to some sports and read my dog-eared copy of Thoreau’s Walden. It was a copy I got when it was assigned reading in high school and has all of my underlinings and written notes in the margins. I felt at peace, a tired and weary peace with our entire lives ahead of us and this adventure mostly in the rear view mirror. In a few days we would be back in Lowell.
Our plan was to meet our Lowell friend Stevie in Falmouth and spend a few days touring around Cape Cod. I also got in touch with Greater Boston teammates Vin Fleming and Dan Dillon and they were coming down from Boston to meet us for a planned run on the dunes in Truro.
It made for a memorable ending.
Philosophy of a Cross Country Travel Adventure
Moments
I took a course in Philosophy in College and I enjoyed the professor’s lectures though I barely could grasp a thing he said. I got a D. I was a seeker for the meaning of life – my mother died when I was ten and my brother, in a ghastly war, four years later.
I began to think there had to be more to life than what I witnessed daily in Lowell. Sometimes you need to go somewhere, anywhere different from what you know to understand where you are from and where you came of age.
As long as you are open to it, of course.
The expansive nature of America, the sublime wonders and myriad environments to get lost in. In the cities and small towns where I sometimes felt like a stranger in a strange land, a suspicious person to the locals and the authorities. The police. We met many friendly helpful people as well. At times, I actually missed Lowell, which surprised me.
The Grand Canyon was where I had my epiphany, my Forrest Gump moment. “I just felt like running” Forrest said, when he finally stopped… Simply staring out into that expanse timelessness, the void. I felt emptied out, ready to start here and follow my bliss.
When I did go back to school in the fall of 1986 at the University of Lowell, it would be to major in American Studies. The pursuit of the social and intellectual history of America made sense to me now, as a way of discovering how we all got here and became Americans.
I know there is good fortune and lost causes and mostly what we worry over never comes to pass.
So, I did my best and I’m thankful for what I’ve found.