From Springfield, MO, Rte. 66 goes through a piece of Kansas, then Oklahoma, then northern Texas. The only thing I remember about Texas was that Dr Pepper was king. In those days soft drinks, soda pop, or whatever you call them, came in little bottles out of a machine. They were each a nickel. The bottle caps were lined with cork, and if you were careful you could pry the cork out intact, put the cap on the outside of your shirt, and press the cork back in on the inside, and it would hold, making a little badge. We kids thought that was cool.
Don't get me wrong, I had no shortage of toys. What my parents lacked in the love and care department, they made up for as best they could by buying me crap. The US jigsaw puzzle map, for instance. But I had at least as much fun with bottle caps, sticks, and rocks, and stuff I found (like the muddy tennis ball) as I did with all the toys they bought me.
As the highway continued on through New Mexico and Arizona, more and more roadside shops, diners, and gas stations carried Native American gift items, such as baskets, blankets, shawls, scarves, beadwork and leathers. Some had abstract Navajo designs. My favorites were decorated with abstract Thunderbirds. My Father said those were junk, that the local natives didn't do thunderbirds, and therefore they were "trash for stupid tourists." I achieved a new insight: My Father always saw the negative of everything. The positives didn't register or weren't important. "Beautiful" couldn't be allowed to outweigh "Inauthentic." But, by the same token, "Authentic" would never outweigh "Ugly." What rose to the top was not any particular quality, but negativeness itself. My Father simply chose to see everything around him in the worst possible light.
I vowed not to be that way, but to look for treasure everywhere. It was another step on the way to becoming as xenomanic as I am today.
Old Route 66 passed through the middle of the Petrified Forest, AKA the Painted Desert. We made a toilet stop and everyone looked for petrified tree trunks high enough to pee behind without alarming other passing motorists. My Mother had Koko on a leash and lost her grip, and Koko raced off into the desert, so we had to sit around for half an hour until he got bored and came back. My Father fumed at my Mother. "We have to get to a motel before dark! Why couldn't you be more careful?" I don't actually think it would have hurt to drive in the dark. He did it deliberately at other times.The next day we took a side trip north and visited the Grand Canyon. Dad wasn't taking chances now. Favorite son Koko was kept in the car except for a brief walk.
Every time we stopped at one of those places, like the Grand Canyon, or the Petrified Forest, the expansiveness of the scenes gave me hope that I might find a way to lose my parents. I began to have fantasies of finding a wilderness Eden of my own with plenty of foragables, living off the land out of a shack or a cave.Probably the persistence of those fantasies contributed to my homelessness later, because I became conditioned to the idea that it was only by such means I could achieve peace. As a social solution seemed impossible since I couldn't even openly discuss the problems I had, the only thing left was to run away and become a hermit. Eventually it became the solution of last resort for everything, always there in the back of my mind.
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