AN EAR FOR THE MUSIC is a tale of hitchhiking from the winter of 1975. I was heading out to Santa Barbara to see a girl on my mind. The weather across the Great Plains was too brutal to attempt a crossing and I sought refuge in Miami Beach. At the Sea Breeze Hotel on Collins Avenue I met Old Bill, who was a blind piano tuner. He saw things better and worse than sighted people. After a month we drove from Florida to Texas, where he left me on the highway and headed north on a dirt road reading the bumps like Braille. I learned a little about love from him and a little is a lot when it comes to love.
Here's an excerpt from AN EAR FOR MUSIC
AN EAR FOR MUSIC
by
Peter Nolan Smith
A dawn of rain, drizzle, snow, and ice pellets greeted Boston on the first day of 1975. The weather on the second day of January was equally miserable, but by late morning the temperature had risen into the 40s and I walked from my Beacon Hill apartment to Chinatown.
The Mass Pike onramp was the good place to start a trip across America. The highway went in every direction, except east into the Atlantic.
Dropping my bag on a patch of dry pavement, I tucked my newly shorn hair under a watch cap and stuck out my thumb.
The silent majority was in their seventh year of ruling America. They hated the counter-culture, so getting rides was easier without long hair reminding the squares of LSD and anti-war demonstrations. In their mind we had been supporting revolution and the Viet Cong.
A hippie in a VW van stopped within two minutes.
Cary was headed to Ohio.
“I’m going to California.”
“Vacation?”
“Sort of.” I had saved almost a thousand dollars over the autumn.
“How you crossing the country?”
I thought I-90 to I-80.” The Interstates provided almost a straight line from Boston to San Francisco.
“My girlfriend told me Cleveland was freezing this morning and a blizzard was on the way.”
“That’s not good news.” Hitchhiking through snowstorms was not an option and I took out a map of the USA to plotted out a southern route to LA.
“Guess I’ll head south on I-95.”
“Sounds like a smart move.”
“More like the only move.”
The hippie dropped me at Sturbridge and I caught a long ride to Washington DC.
Earle was a sailor returning to duty in Newport VA. We listened to soul music and discussed race.
“I’m from Roxbury. People in Boston are just as racist as the crackers down South.”
I agreed, since I was employed as a substitute teacher at South Boston High School.
My hometown was on the verge of a race war and that school was the flashpoint for battles between black and white teens. I needed out, because I was a race traitor and hell had a special place for my kind in South Boston and even worse for people like Earle.
South of DC Earle said, “I’m turning east.”
The radio had warned of deep snow in Tennessee.
“I’m heading south to Florida.” I-10 from Jacksonville was the warmest course across America.
“You’re right about that, but better I leave you here. Them peckerwoods don’t like white and blacks together.”
“I understand. They don’t like it in Boston.”
“Good luck.”
"I'll need it. We aren't fighting the Cong no more, but there's always the Russkis."
Some things never change."
My next lift went as far as Richmond.
Virginia was the Deep South, but rides came easy on the interstate. Truckers wanted company on the long stretches of highway and salesmen needed someone to keep them awake between cities.
I hid my Boston accent with a broad drawl.
The Civil War was not forgotten south of the Potomac.
Twenty-two hours after leaving Boston I crossed from Georgia into Florida.
The palm trees swayed in the balmy breeze, as I drank a complimentary orange juice at the Welcome Center. I stuck my leather jacket in the canvas bag. A tee-shirt and jeans was a welcome change from heavy winter clothing. After finishing my OJ I stood on the highway with my thumb in the air.
A Chevy SS stopped on the shoulder. The big V8 throbbed with power. I jumped in the passenger side.
“Name’s JJ. Where you going?” The longhaired redneck was wearing a Lynard Skynard shirt. The residue of reefer smoke mingled with fuel fumes. JJ was my kind of people.
“California.”
“What for?” He stomped on the gas.
“To see a girl.” I adjusted my glasses on my nose.
“Long way to see a girl.” JJ gripped the wheel with a stranglehold.
“I know.” Over three thousand miles from coast to coast and even more with my detour from winter.
Diana was studying film at UC Santa Barbara. We had spent our Christmas holiday together. The blonde athlete was the kind of girl who slept around with men and women, but six days and nights in my cold-water apartment on Beacon Hill had calmed the wanderlust in her heart. When I had called to tell about my coming out west, Diana had said it was a good career move for a writer.
“LA’s west, not south.” JJ pointed to the right.
“There’s ice storms and snow in Iowa. The passes through the Rockies are snow-packed, plus I’m a little too white for LA.”
“You’re never too white.” JJ was a die-hard cracker.
“Yeah, I need color before I hit Hollywood.”
“If you mean sun, then the Sunshine State is the right place to pick up a tan.” He stuck in the Allman Brothers in his 8-track.
“Newcomers are easy to spot in Southern California.” They had no color.
“You lay out for five days in Miami Beach and you’ll be browner than George Hamilton and he’s the blackest white man I ever seen.” JJ wasn’t saying anything bad about the star of WHERE THE BOYS ARE, the ultimate Florida beach movie.
“I don’t know if I want to go that far.” The Hollywood playboy was darker than a leather coach.
“LA is like Miami. Only undertakers don’t have a tan.” The hippie cracker turned up the MIDNIGHT RIDER on the stereo.
“I have no intention of becoming a zombie in California.” Prescription sunglasses, a haircut, a convertible car, and a movie studio job would complete my metamorphosis from substitute teacher to screenwriter.
Fame and fortune were within my grasp.
“I’m going to write movies.”
“Does being a writer get you chicks? Because movie stars sure as hell get girls.” JJ shifted into a higher gear. We were rolling at 100.
“Maybe I will to.”
“I don’t know any writers getting girls. Most of them are fags like that Truman Capote.”
“Do you read?”
“Only Playboys and then I looked at the pictures.”
“Me too.” Bebe Buell had been a satanic goddess as the cover-girl for the November issue and I had scanned every inch of the centerfold more than a hundred times.
“Where you thinking of hitting the beach?”
“I’ve already been to Fort Lauderdale. I had stayed across from the Elbow Room during Easter Break in 1971.”
“George Hamilton had hung out there in WHERE THE BOYS ARE.”
“Yeah, we thought that we would meet Yvette Mimieux.”
“Fat chance of a movie star hanging around that dump.”
“You got that right. My friends and I drank beer the entire week. None of us got a tan or kissed a blonde.”
“You should check out Miami Beach. Good town. Cheap hotels. Try the Sea Breeze.” Speed ate up the road paced by Dicky Betts’ blistering guitar on IN MEMORY OF ELIZABETH REED.
There wasn’t much to see from the highway at night. Florida was mostly swamp.
Around midnight he turned off the highway and stopped on an empty road.
“Goin’ see my baby too. You have a good trip.” The muscle car was aimed into the swamps.
“You too.” I got out of the car and the Chevy SS thundered away from the highway.
This exit was about 100 miles short of Miami. I didn’t like hitchhiking in the dark. After midnight drunk crackers got mean.
A golf course lay across the highway. I walked over to the row of scrubs at the 17th green. I had cash in my pocket. Thieves preyed on hitchhikers. I crouched behind the bushes. No one could see me from the road. I almost felt safe and lay down with my bag as a pillow. The Milky Way burst with more stars this far south and I counted a hundred galaxies before falling asleep.
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