In 1973 Mary Ann and I suddenly became very hard to find. It’s hard to know just how many people were actually looking for us, but if any had found us it would have been through sheer, blind luck.
We might have been in Davenport on Monday, South Bend on Tuesday and Buffalo on Thursday night. In fact, we might have been just about anywhere.
All year round, for two years, we traveled coast to coast and border to border in our tan and white VW bus. Eating chili dogs from drive-in restaurants shaped like teepees and bologna sandwiches expertly prepared in the moving bus, we were two kids truly lost in America.
We weren’t hippies, gypsies, commies or crooks. We weren’t affiliated with the Weather Underground or the John Birch Society. We weren’t running from the law, but in a way we were running for our lives.
Never spending more than four or five nights in any town, we traveled by day and by night, sleeping in cut rate motels and often in our bus in roadside parks. It didn’t matter where we spent our nights, just that we spent them all together.
We managed to make a living, such as it was, peddling old pottery, art and jewelry we picked up along our way—a Victorian dinner gong found in New Orleans, handmade leather purses we stockpiled in Juarez, a Galle vase found at a yard sale in Pittsburgh. And fountain pens. Beautiful old fountain pens and ornate ink bottles.
We once traveled 2000 miles without paying for a drop of gas. We traded those Mexican purses to gas station attendants for fill-ups from Juarez to Atlanta to Pittsburgh to Chicago.
I remember traveling through Nashville in January of ’74 with snow piled high along the roadside as we drove throughout the night. We had come from New Mexico, north to Milwaukee, and were headed south to Birmingham, then further south and west to Louisiana. I remember Mary Ann beside me, asleep in the passenger seat.
When she awoke, somewhere just north of the Alabama line, she told me she’d been dreaming about a house, a real house near the university where she dreamed I’d teach one day when the traveling was done and some peace and order would come into our lives. As she told me every small detail, painting the walls of my mind with the scenery of her dream, I remember thinking how dreams do sometimes come true. Against all odds, Mary Ann was there with me. She was my wife, and my fondest dream had already come true.
We had bolted out of the starting gate positioned at the edge of the grownup world with our feet tangled in ropes and netting over our heads. We stumbled and fell, scraped our knees and bruised our hearts. We were flogged by popular opinion that sought to drive us from the race, and dogged by vicious rumors that resembled no facts.
It wasn’t quite the two of us against the world, but it seemed so often like the world against the two of us. In our VW bus, somewhere in America, it could for that time be just the two of us, sheltered by the vast expanse of hills, mountains, plains, forests and deserts in which we were concealed. So, across America we traveled.
Looking back at that unusual time, a time when we chose an unusual course for an unusual reason, I think how our life together has been a seemingly unending series of unusual times. How it’s really always been just the two of us.
Along the way we had a son. We love him and could not be more proud of the young man we raised together. Some years ago he set out to begin his own journey, leaving us to continue ours. Just the two of us, as before.
In our life together we have been so many things, done so many things, explored so many ideas—none of them standard or ordinary, none of them safe or conservative. Not a single orthodox thought, it sometimes seems, has passed through our minds or motivated our actions in all these years.
How did we do? The results have not been posted. The game is not yet over, nor will it ever be. I dream of another place and time in which a new and truly extraordinary landscape will stretch out before us in infinite variety. Together Mary Ann and I will approach the edge, pull cautiously forward with our turn signal flashing, then slowly and joyfully pull our old bus onto the road and be on our way again.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Sleeping at roadside parks must have been dangerous even back in the 70s. What happened when the VW broke down or one of you got sick? It’s not a way that I would want to live or anything I’d ever look forward to doing again. I’ll take the comforts of a normal life!
I don’t understand anything about why you were hiding in America. What were you running/hiding from? It must have been something big to keep you on the road for two years. Are you going to share the secret? It’s a very romantic story and I want to know the rest.
Hm-m-m, I disagree with Leda. I wouldn’t sleep in a roadside park nowadays, but would have back then. I hitchhiked in ’70s, but wouldn’t now. But I second her question, as well as seconding those of Kimberly. You’ve got our curiosity fully aroused, friend! What you’ve shared sounds like part of a great movie plot — a movie Hollywood couldn’t have come up with on its own!
But it needs details and especially a motive — for the beginning of the flight/hiding as well as for its continuance for that long. Particularly since you two weren’t of the Weather Underground or the John Birch Society! That’s a hilarious pairing; talk about opposite ends of the spectrum! Ha, ha!
My additional question: how soon after the son’s birth did you “settle down”, and was it so that he’d have a “normal” life rather than that of a vagabond, rootless child?
Yeah, this could make a terrific set of movies “based on a true story”!
If you are thinking about hitting the road again in a VW bus it is going to cost you. Restored buses from the late sixties and early seventies are going for $25K and up. Out here on the west coast they are the hot collectible. Do you still have yours? Probably not.
Glen, I was their son’s first grade teacher….he was very normal, very bright and stood head and shoulders above the others in his class when it came to many things. Nat was one of my favorites…definitely a well adjusted kid in my never to be humble opinion.
I grew up in the 70′s as well….we camped all the time…my Dad was a KOA member….I miss the days when kids could play outside without fear of harm, because all the other stay at home mom’s were keeping an eye out and quick to tattle on you if you misbehaved.
Well written story……what a fun life you have had.
Thanks, Robin, for the details about the son of the couple “hiding across America”, a.k.a. Mary Ann & Prentice. I didn’t mean to imply that said young son might have been “abnormal”, just that a vagabond, rootless life isn’t the life for a young child. I’m sure Nat is quite normal & bright. The more I read this blog the more I understand how bright his parents are. And here I’d considered them to simply be this nice but rather quiet couple that I see in church every Sunday!
No, there’s a lot more & very interesting facets to their story, as this blog reveals! I’m still toying with how this “hiding across America” would make a terrific plot for a movies or series of movies. If we can just present a motive for its initiation and continuance for such a long time. (And did the birth of the son contribute to its end?) Hm-m-m, perhaps “Weather Underground” or “John Birch” membership wouldn’t be a bad motive, even if fictional! Ha, ha! We all KNOW what Hollywood does with movies “based on a true story”! Ha, ha!
My gosh Prentice, do you see how you have peeked these peoples curiosity. You have a way with words my friend, and I amongst the masses, am excited to read the next installment.
Very soon the whole story will be available for all to read….smiles coyly to herself.