Over the Roadie

The last time I saw Mondo he was begging for change on Canal Street in New York, and he had taken his pants off. He swore never to wear pants again—man, that man had it in for pants back then.

It's nights with crescent moons when I remember Mondo most. I could hitchhike up and down the golden coast and have the world as my oyster and I'd still miss Mondo and the East Coast. Unless I was on the East Coast, Mondo riding on the hood as I held my head out the window so I could see the road, and then I would wish I was on the West Coast. The important lesson here is I'm always happiest when wishing I was somewhere else.

I rode across the Midwest on a flatbed truck, which was fitting. That whole section of the world is a desert with green growth, slat flat and full of nothing but hard working rubes that like to give people rides. I met this hulking tall fellow with green skin and purple pants, and we all called him Grumpy. He didn't say much, and when he did it was always not about drugs, so we didn't much listen. After about three states, he got off and rampaged what was left of Missouri. It was another day and half before I was in New York City again. I asked the truck driver what the hell he was doing driving an empty flatbed from California to New York, and he said he was pretty much just a plot device. I thought to myself, wow, that's the deal with all of us.

I found where Mondo was staying, with an old friend of both of ours, Mando. I used to always get the two of them confused, but I can hardly be blamed—they both wore the same kind of cap everywhere. Mondo answered the door, or maybe it was Mando, and threw his big elephant trunk arms around me, then ate my peanuts with them.

"Pol!" he yelled out, waking up the entire building and most of New York City. "Man, oh, man, cat, you are the living end!" And I actually was.

I told him I had been getting bored with being broke and lonely out in L.A., living with my wife and our six kids, working 9-5 in program management at the Dumont Network. I wanted to get out, to live again, which meant bumming my way across America, borrowing money wherever I could, drinking myself stupid, and telling stories about guys we hitchhiked with.

"Man, I thought you'd never come back to NY! You a ghost, my friend," said Mondo. If I had any reflection on that or understanding of what he meant, I didn't bother sharing it with myself.

We set out the next day for the road, with only the clothes on our backs, the beer in our pockets, and the two rich girls we conned into going with us. After twenty minutes of standing around saying "Man," we longed for the brilliant warmth and shining coastlines of L.A. We set out immediately.

"Man, oh, man, this is the crazy time," said Mondo, or now that I think about it, it may have been Mando. And he was right, or he was. They were years we would think back on in our old age, when we were bumming money and getting drunk in some old nasty boarding house somewhere years from now, unable to hitchhike anywhere because we will have big clunky walkers that don't fit so well in backseats. We would remember them as the years we lived off the land, the lean years, the years we had to trip back and forth between New York and L.A. and a few other choice cities, only to learn everything in this country is basically the same these days.

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