A Thousand Miles from Beantown!

[Teach]

Beantown. December, 1963. I had just dropped out of school. My senior year…no less. No money. I had gambled away most of my tuition. I was about as low as I had felt in my young 21-years on the face of this Earth. My mother’s pissed. My parents had divorced nearly a decade earlier. My father…he’s remarried. I’m as angry and dejected as I can remember. I surmised, years later, that part of my gambling problem was because of my pent-up anger. It was a release. Gambling, that is. A way of getting rid of those pissed-off feelings inside me. Hey, at least it was better than assaulting somebody.

I got get out of here. My mother’s tirades are like a constant headache. “Whada ya gonna do with the rest of your life? You gonna be a bum?” my mother harangued.

I got to go someplace warm. It’s like that dream in the “Midnight Cowboy”. Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo. Dustin Hoffman.

But how do I get South. A plane. Fuhgettabout-tit! Even the train is too much “luchi”. That leaves me with a one alternative: the bus. I gotta choice: Greyhound or Trailways. I choose “Big Red” (not the chewin’ gum). Park Street bus terminal (Copley Square), Boston. Does it get any colder? Snow flurries in the air. I buy a one-way ticket – you heard it right – a one way ticket to Miami. I’m cuttin’ ties. Maybe I’ll become a gigilo. I’ll hang out in front of the Fontaineblow. I’ll put up a sign: “21-year old stud needs work. Experienced with Woman.”

I remember setting off on a weekday afternoon. First, New York, “Phillie,” and D.C., and then south into Virginia and the Carolinas. I’m becoming a zombie. Mile, after mile, after mile. Tedious. Deadly. We reach “South of the Border” in Dillon, S.C. (never heard of it until we passed it). Jerkwater towns. I’m beginning to wonder why I did this.

Now, we’re in Florida. Jacksonville, then Orlando before Disney World. Then south to Miami. It’s about 5 a.m. the next day. At least it’s warm. If I don’t get a hotel room, I’ll fall asleep on the street. Oh, over there, a hotel, the “Ponce de Leon”. Wasn’t he lookin’ for the “fountain of youth” (I thought that was a stakes race as Gulfstream).

Anyway, I check in, get to my room and fall asleep, immediately. The next thing I know it’s close to 11 a.m. Gotta check out.

Now what do I do? I figure I’ll go back to Hollywood. Maybe I can find a motel near the dog track. Screw the bus. I need the money for food and gambling.

I start thumbing. I get a ride. They leave me off in front, by my request, of a motel in Hollywood. There’s a Breeding Drug Store across the street.
“How much?” I ask the motel proprietor. $5 bucks a night, plus .15 tax (remember: this is 1963). I take it. I haven’t eaten since I grabbed a coffee and a donut in the Jacksonville bus terminal the night before. That was over 12 hours ago. I go across the street (It may have been Route #1) to the drug store. I buy a big bottle of Coke and a can of peanuts. That’s lunch. They also have the Hollywood Dog Track form. I buy a program.

Here I am sitting on a bed in a dingy, flea-bitten motel, a thousand miles from Boston (probably closer to 1,400 miles). I’m oblivious to everything. The world has gone away. Actually, I’m shutting it out. It’s a dichotomous feeling. On the one hand, serenity. Peacefulness. Yet, on the other, a touch of anxiety. I got to remember I’m hoping to gamble my way for a bus ticket back to Boston, plus some food. I got about $50.

That afternoon, I’m readin’ the dog program like I was studying for a final exam in college. Come to think of it… That evening, I get over to the Hollywood Dog Track. I recall buying a soda; we Bostonians call it “tonic.” A hamburger and some fries. At this juncture, I should mention I wasn’t a “newbie” when it came to the dogs. I had gambled at Revere, MA’s Wonderland Park and Raynham-Taunton Greyhound Park.

As it turns out, I hit the first race. The bitch paid $7.20. I’m beginning to feel upbeat. But I’m seasoned enough to know that gambling is not an easy game. In fact, my rendition of a dog race is: “Now.., here’s comes ‘Swifty’ (the lure at the now defunct Wonderland Park), ruff, ruff…I lost!”
Everything from there on in went downhill. I let out with an inaudible sigh (sounds like an oxymoron). I head back to the motel with “my tail between my legs”. I dropped about $25 (another sigh).

The next day, I take the bus down Route #1. I get off at route #934. I walk – my feet are killing me from new shoes that are too narrow – about three miles to Hialeah. My luck. It’s freezing in Miami. Mid-50s. I reach Hialeah. I can’t remember much, but I lost again. I recall “The Flight of the Flamingoes.” All those long-legged pink birds flyin’ around the infield. Oh, and that I bet on a horse named Cooperstown (I’m a big baseball fan). He lost.

After the races, I catch a bus that takes me and a bunch of others back to Hollywood dogs (I’m on non-stop gambling mission, but I haven’t converted anybody, especially myself). I play the dogs. I lose. I’ve now got between $5 and $10 in my pocket. No source of income. I’m literally “stranded on an island” in the middle of Hollywood, FL.

I go back to my motel which is diagonally across the street. What do I do? I deliberate. Time to “saddle up”. I put on my heavy winter Loden coat and starting thumbing north on route #1 (I threw the room key in the mail box). One short ride. Another short ride. Then, a Delray Beach cop pulls up alongside. “Get in,” he says. I tell him my name. I say, “I’m heading back to Boston.” He calls in to see if there’s an APB out on me (I feel like tellin’ him that the only thing I ever did was that I once cheated on an English test when I was in elementary school; I didn’t know how to spell the word “embarrass.” Two “r’s” or one.

I’m clear. No one’s lookin’ for me. The cop tells me that he’s from Providence, RI. He adds he headed south for the warmer weather. I said, “…that I couldn’t stand the New England winters, either. I hear ya,” I conclude. He ends up taking me the length of Delray Beach; he then leaves me off.
I then run into some good luck. This guy in a Cadillac picks me up and takes me all the way to Jacksonville. I believe he’s an ex-prize fighter. We talk about boxing. “Sugar Ray” Robinson. Joe Louis. Jake LaMotta. Willie Pep. Etc. I tell him I live in the same apartment building where an ex-prize fighter, Abe Denner, lives. They called him the “Boston Stringbean”.

We make it to Jacksonville. He leaves me off at the bus terminal. But how do I get home? I grab a cup of coffee and a donut. I did that same thing a few days earlier.

Then, it dawns on me. My father’s wife has a sister who lives outside Jacksonville. I call my father, collect. “Will you accept a collect call from Walter?” The voice at the other end says, “Yes.” It’s my father’s wife.” She hands the phone to my father. “Hi Dad, it’s your son. I’m in Jacksonville.” “What are you doing there?” he asks. “It’s a long story, Dad.” I then say, “Doesn’t Sue (my father’s wife) have a sister (I remember Sue talking about her) who lives near Jacksonville?” My father replies, “Yes”. Seconds later, he reads me her telephone number. I call her (my father’s wife had called her first to alert her sister). I describe myself. I tell her that I’m wearing a heavy winter green coat (actually, it was quite appropriate; the temperature on the clock in front of the bank read 32 degrees).

About fifteen minutes later, she picks me up. She, her husband, and two children, live in a modest ranch-home. We talk. She serves me lunch. I take a nap. I look at my feet. There’s blood on my socks. That evening, I have supper with the family. The next morning, “Bunny,” her nickname, gives me $40 for my trip back to Boston. She drives me to the bus terminal.

The bus ride back to Boston is uneventful. I guess the only exciting thing is that I see slot machines for the first time in one of the places we stopped at in Maryland. Finally, back in Boston. The “T,” public transportation, takes me to my apartment building. I figured, later in life, that you don’t have to do waterboarding, just put them on a bus for 35 hours.

As a postscript, I go back to school nights and summers. I work during the day. I get my degree. I get a master’s degree. I teach high school history for the next 35 years.

Finally, if I learned anything from all this, it was the fact that I have never ridden in a bus for my than a half-hour. Yet, I still gamble.

In conclusion, there are things in life you remember, and things in life you forget. I'd like to forget, but I'll always remember, the time I was over a thousand miles from Beantown.

[FakeNameChanged]

Mom's always know how things will turn out.