Leaving the Ice Age
Back in high school, Florida was the place to be during the traditional March break - if you had the cash! The hot spot was Fort Lauderdale aka Liquordale; rumour had it the beach was long, the sand white, the water blue, the babes bikinied- a place where like-minded students partied all night. As I looked out my window, up to my ass in snow, a trip to Florida was a no-brainer.
There was one small problem: how to procure funds for the journey?
Given my limited resources (and a loathing, inherit in most teenagers, toward work), I examined my meager savings: $50- things did not bode well for a trip to tropical Florida.
Undeterred, my chum Bruce and I hatched a simple plan: we'd hitchhike from Detroit to Fort Lauderdale, figuring to get by on youth and ignorance (both of which we had in abundance). The school break lasted ten days, and the plan was to depart on Friday to be on the beach by Sunday at the latest. Throwing a few things in our oversized backpacks, the quest for golden sands and azure seas began.
On a typically miserable, grey, wind blown Canadian winter day, we set out to conquer our first hurdle- crossing the border from Canada to the USA, snow blowing as boarded the Windsor-Detroit tunnel bus, known to locals as the cheapest ticket out of town. We had already worked out a scheme to get our bags across undetected.
Realizing no sane customs agent was going to allow two skinny seventeen year old, long-haired kids, a) without much cash, and b) hitchhiking to Florida, we engaged my oldest sister to smuggle our gear through customs in her trunk while we crossed the border by bus.
Not surprisingly, we sailed through customs, simply telling the agent we were going shopping in downtown Detroit, a common story. My sister met us on the other side, bags stowed safely in the trunk. Soon, she deposited us on the banks of US Inter-State 75, the southbound pipeline that fed directly to Florida. The anxious look on my sister's face as we disembarked out of the car spoke volumes of our quest ahead: she definitely thought we were out of minds!
While not exactly an expert hitchhiker, I had often thumbed around our county, from our cottage on Lake Erie to Windsor, some 30 miles away. It never seemed intimidating to me, despite the long waits. Sooner or later someone would offer a ride, but timing was the key.
Our first day proceeded well enough, and we made good progress down to Lexington, Kentucky. People along the way were very helpful and often surprised when we explained we were on our way to Florida. We grabbed a cheap roadside motel, happy to have crossed the famous Mason-Dixon line, separating Northern US from the olde south. Many of our "pick-ups" warned about rednecks who equated "long-hairs" with dogs.
Outside Lexington in the pouring rain, we hiked back down to the I-75. Our first ride of the day soon pulled over. The gods must've been smiling as an overpacked VW wagon pulled over to the shoulder. The patrons, a couple of freaks from Kentucky, told us to pile our bags on top of their gear, and we hopped onto of this ubiquitous pile.
When we asked them where they were headed, they replied: St. Petersburg Fla. Well, this had turned out to be a lot easier than we expected. My old Irish grandmother Sarah Lee (really!) lived in Zerphyrhills, and I thought it would be very agreeable to drop in (without prior notice, of course).
We meandered through the rolling half-frozen hills of Kentucky. I thought how beautiful the country must be in the summer, with horses running in huge paddocks and stately manors set among the willows. Those thoughts quickly dissolved to what lay ahead: bars, beaches, babes and bikinis.
Near the Tennessee border, we noticed signs indicating the four-lane freeway was coming to an end, as the 1-75 through the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, under construction for years, still wasn't completed. The region was under a lot of rain that year, and we soon learned the by-pass was washed out. We had to go many miles out of our way through the Smokies, through the old south that cannot be witnessed from the speedy InterState highway.
Old general stores with huge signs announcing FIREWORKS of all shapes and sizes, billboards for Tennessee sippin' whiskey, fried chicken stalls, small towns and shanties along the highway. Since we had gone so far off the beaten track, most of the hamlets we passed through didn't get many tourists. It must have been quite a sight for the locals to witness this gaggle of sun-seeking Northerners streaming past their porches.
Our journey was very long, over 18 hours, and I don't recall that we stopped all that much except for gas and washroom breaks. When we rolled into the confines of St. Petersburg, Florida, it was 3 a.m. We'd sat with gear on our laps the whole way, so we were ready to get out and stretch our legs.
Our kind chauffeurs couldn't offer us a place to sleep, and we didn't want to deplete our funds by taking out another motel. But the good news was the weather: it was sublime. How peacefully uplifting to be outdoors at 70 degrees after being below freezing for 3 months. We decided to lay down in a quiet park for a few hours rest, until dawn crept up, bright and golden.
Back on the highway, we hitched the short 50 miles to Zephyrhills, again we hooked up fairly quickly with rides. We surfaced in Zephyrhills right at breakfast, as my grandmother was taking her coffee on the back porch. She was very surprised to see these two scruffy looking characters appear at her doorstep on a bright Florida morning (I think her first reaction was to call the cops!).
Here's a picture of my grandmother Sarah Lee. A sweet soul who had a pretty good old Irish temper if you crossed her. Red hair gone blue grey, bright, beautiful blue eyes, cheeks all done up in blush, the perfect picture of dignity. She had her opinions, and I'm sure she must have thought my hitchhiking to Florida more than a little strange.
Her husband "Red Roy" (a good ole boy), who was her third and no kin to me, purchased a 10 acre orange and grapefruit orchard on the outskirts of town in 1950. Recently, they had parcelled off all but an acre where a cozy cottage was situated, surrounded by about six of the fruit trees.
Do you ever forget the first time you pick fresh citrus for immediate consumption.
Coming from one of the main agricultural counties in Canada, we munched lots of fresh picked fruit, but never anything tropical. It was a rare treat to first experience sitting on the back porch with my grandmother, Red Roy, and Bruce enjoying a well-deserved breakfast featuring home-growwn grapefrut and fresh-squeezed orange juice after a journey of 1,300 miles in 48 hours.
This would not be the first time I would be reminded that the harder the journey, the more enjoyable the fruits at the end of the trail.
Up With the Sun, Gone With the Wind
Bright and early the next day, we hit the highway to cross the state to the Florida’s Gold Coast. Hitching was relatively easy, but often bizarre. Rednecks passed in their pick-up trucks with their “Easy Rider” rifle racks, stocked with three or four guns. Their bumper stickers were very amusing: “Hippies are What You Get When a Nigger Screws A Dog”, was one.
We crossed the great Florida swampland known as Alligator Alley, which covered almost the entire bottom half of Florida. Miles and miles of water, full of gators and reeds. One driver told us a tale of a fisherman who was fishing by the side of the road, when his hook got caught on something, As he was so cheap, he dove in to try to free it. His hook had caught on a car that had flipped and gone off the road. When they pulled the car up, it contained three passengers.
We hit the coast at Vero Beach, and our good luck continued as we made our way south to our mecca, Ft. Liquordale. Most of our rides were with great people. One freak in an old Jalopy invited to his pad to have a drink and a smoke. Another character, Andrew, took us down old A1A, through some dreamy estates, evoking images of the old south. He gave us his address and told us to come down to Miami- we took him up on much later that night
Storming Fort Liquordale
Soon, we were deposited on the golden beach at Ft. Lauderdale. My goodness, it was nice to set down on the beach, have a swim, lie in the sun (no worries about the sun and skin cancer in those days) and unwind.
Lauderdale certainly lived up to its reputation in those days. Packed with students from every imaginable university and high school, a fair proportion from Canada, it was party time- drinking everywhere, with the usual accompaniment of controlled substances. The strip was a parade of people walking up and down, strutting their stuff, y’all.
About the only thing I can remember about the whole affair is meeting some girls, buying some beer and sitting on the beach partying. At some point we realized we didn't really have anywhere to sleep. The jeep patrol went up and down the beach at night to keep people from bunking down, so that was out of the question.
We remembered Andrew, who invited us to his house in Miami. Hell, we thought, how far can it be to Miami? We decided to hitch there at round midnight. Well, the rides weren't good that night, especially as we had added two more characters to our entourage, but we did notice a slow-moving train that looked like it might be headed south.
So we hopped on the side of the freight train and it soon picked up speed. I can still visualize us sitting on a carriage between two box cars, rolling through the southern Florida night. It was dangerous, it was crazy, but when you are young and on the road, it is easy to throw caution to the wind.
A most amazing thing happened- the train came to a stop some three blocks from the street we were looking for- no lie. We jumped off, and strolled over to Andrew’s house at 2 a.m. waking up his roommate.
We were offered a place to crash in the living room and thus, we ended our first day on the gold coast of Florida, and the full extent of our time on the beach!
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