Look At That Man Down There!

In the summer of 1980 Peggi and I drove down to Steve Hoy’s house in Gulfport Mississippi and got in his pickup truck which was newly outfitted with a camper. It sat three across with the option of crawling through the back window into the camper itself. Peggi practiced her sax back there as we drove through New Orleans, Texas and Arizona where temps were over 100 and there was no AC. We slept in the back, three across in the middle of a heat wave. We stopped in New Mexico where my father was working, on loan from Eastman Kodak, and from there we headed up to the Grand Canyon where Steve Hoy entertained the tourists with his daredevil antics. People standing next to us were wildly exclaiming, “Look at that man down there,” while we acted like we didn’t know him.

We drove into LA and stayed with Peggi’s sister and then got on Highway 1 up to San Francisco where our friends Dave and Kim, Brad, Rich and Andrea lived. We stayed there for a few days and drove back on a more northerly route. We drove through Las Vegas in the middle of the night and limited ourselves to ten bucks in the slot machines. That went fast and we camped in a parking lot near Lake Mead. Eventually we headed south to pick up our car and then back up here.

This summer’s heat has slowed the pace around here and I might be delusional but maybe it’s time to drive across the country again.

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