Greyhound to Detroit Via Amarillo

In which I avoid getting hitched in Texas

This was Motown, this was New France

Where the Chippewa did the Fire Dance

That was long ago, this is here and now

But the memory still remains somehow

--- Sam Roberts

1975 —

I packed for Detroit two ways. One, like I might be back in two weeks— and the other, like I might settle in for good.

Tracey promised, if I didn’t come back, that she would ship my neatly-packed boxes I stacked in her garage. I noticed she scrawled, “This is a bad idea” and “Come back baby come back” on my record crates.

I was taking only my ruck-sack on the Greyhound. It would be like hiking with my dad, the bare minimum. I decided to bring three paperbacks, that he and I diligently picked out from my favorite bookstore in Los Angeles, Papa Bach’s.

Papa Bach’s was the heart of beatnik Venice, an ocean poet’s diaspora, even if it was on Santa Monica Boulevard in West L.A. The never-scrubbed floors were laid out like a hoarder’s attic, its rat-packed shelves ready to collapse under their own weight. Stream-of-consciousn…