Part Nine...

Soon after returning to Maryland form home, one of the friends I made at the motel was killed on the job at the powerhouse. He was a steamfitter welder, and a pipe they were testing under high pressure air burst and knocked him off the ladder and his neck was broken. The reality of heavy construction work hit me hard. He wouldn't be the last friend or acquaintance I'd lose to vagaries of the tramping live.*

The overtime was gradually being cut out, and I was no longer working weekends, but was still getting four ten hour days and one eight. Being very lonely and homesick led to drinking whiskey, something I hadn't done before. Other than rot-gut wine, I had never consumed alcohol in any form, including beer. My life was about to hit the fast lane.

The first weekend off, I went to the liquor store and bought a bottle of peppermint schnapps. I got sick and puked all over everything and everybody. My "he's a good guy to be around" ranking went to hell in a hand basket. I was a married man with children and responsibilities, but I was a virgin in so many ways. That was on Friday night. Saturday was a day of recovery and apologizing, but Sunday I was at it again with some Tennessee sour mash whiskey. Nope, not ol' Jack, but George Dickel... a half gallon jug that set me back $15.

Also on Saturday, I bought a Hibachi and thick Porterhouse steak for Sunday cooking. The motel had a small refrigerator in a maintenance room where they allowed us to keep sandwich meat, etc. The Lilly boys and some of the other guys also bought steaks, and we had a very good lunch. After dining, I started drinking again, got drunk, dropped and busted my whiskey jug, and decided to puke some more. My friends saw the whole affair coming, and retreated to their rooms.

I stayed 10 weeks in Maryland without going home. On a Friday morning I had the Bird packed with dirty clothes, more root beer, a bottle of George Dickel shaped like a powder horn, along with two miniatures just like it. If you ever watched the tv series Star Trek, Captain Kirk entertained special guests on the Enterprise with a "nectar" from one of these bottles.

Just before turning into the job parking lot, I felt the steering wheel jerk just a tiny bit. Usually a sign of a wheel bearing expiring, or disk brakes worn completely out. When I applied the brakes, the right front squealed with the protest of metal rubbing metal. I was doomed, I thought. I planned on going to the Esso station and getting the car fixed and delay my journey home until the next weekend.

Even as I was leaving the parking lot, it was my plan. But instead of turning right on 301, I turned left, went across the toll bridge into Virginia, and set my eyes toward Tennessee. To say I drove slowly was an understatement. I got off work at 4:30pm, and nearly four hours later I was at I-81 in Staunton. By then. most of the rubbing metal had disappeared behind me in a shower of sparks. No one tailgated me that trip. The journey south on I-81 was a piece of cake, although I did drive much slower than usual because I had little braking of any kind except for the emergency brake. Somewhere around midnight and after hours sweet talking the Thunderbird, I rolled in home.

Next day I went to a brake shop and had the calipers and rotors replaced on the front of the car, and new shoes put on the back. I was ready for the next phase of my tramping experience, one that would soon lead me into the Ohio Valley.

*In 1964, J.L. Pierce—Carolyn's dad—had been seriously injured and his tramping buddy killed in a car wreck near Culpepper, VA. They were traveling the same route I used to get home from Maryland. Another auto accident in 1966 compounded his earlier head injuries, and just after Carolyn's 22nd birthday in 1968, his heart finally failed.

Part Eight...

The next Friday, I collected a full paycheck, which came to well less than $500 after state and federal taxes, dues, and assessments. But that wasn't the big thing for that day; my family was waiting on me when I got to the motel from work and the bank. My dad and mom loaded up the Chevy and brought my two (at the time) kids and Carolyn to visit. They even smelled like home, and that was a very pleasant scent for my senses. We knew I wouldn't have much time to spend with them, because of the hours I was working, and I couldn't afford to miss a minute.

Saturday morning the Bird wouldn't start. My dad hauled me to work, went back to the motel and finally got it started. He took it across the street to the Esso station, where they replaced the spark plugs that had been in it since it was bought new.

My folks and kids left for the hills on Sunday and left Carolyn with me to stay a week as I was to go home myself the following weekend. It may have been for Easter, but my memory fails me here. We spent my off hours exploring around La Plata and vicinity, finding the best homemade root beer I ever tasted, even better than my grandma's. It came in gallon jugs, and a couple of them returned to Tennessee with us.

The Lilly brothers from around Beckley, WV were staying at the same motel as I, and they told me of a shortcut through Virginia that would bring me to I-81 near Staunton. The route took me through Fredricksberg, Orange and several Civil War battlefields, and finally to Charlottesville and across the Blue Ridge mountains, saving more than an hour of driving time.

It would be an understatement to say I was happy when I crossed the Tennessee state line.
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Left photo is the Morgantown powerhouse
Right photo is the White House Motel
Ariel photos from and © by Google Maps.

Part Five...

Due to a miscalculation in August of 1968, by 1970 I was driving a 1966 T-Bird Landau with the sequential turn lights all the way across the back. It is now a classic. The miscalculation was that I thought I would celebrate my 24th birthday by pitching my first drunk... and driving. My uncle Fred, my first cousin Jerry, and I went to the liquor store and and bought a bottle of Mad Dog (cheap Mogen David 20/20 wine for you that have never partaken) and drove back home and drank it. Of course, we had to have more, so off we went in my pride and joy, a 1966 Chevelle SS 396 with 360+ hosses awaiting my command. I had weaseled around and talked my wife into letting me trade a perfectly good '63 Impala convertible which I had bought new for the brand new hotrod Chevelle. Needless to say I totaled the Chevelle that night. I was able to get it home, but I couldn't turn the steering wheel to the right. It was an interesting and sobering little journey. I ended up buying a 1955 Chevy two door sedan with a bored 283 engine that had a wrist pin slapping just to have transportation. Every two or so months, I had to pull the tranny and replace the throwout bearing because it somehow was working its way up on the snout of the input shaft cover. I finally sold it and bought the T-Bird with a 390 engine that seemingly would not top out. It was to carry me into the world of trampdom.

In March, 1970, I went over to the union hall (in Kingsport, of course) to see about finding work after having been fired from the Eastman. All the trade Locals in the Ohio Valley were on strike, and the closest work I could get was through Local 26 in Washington DC. They had a powerhouse job down on Hwy 301 in Maryland, along the Potomac river. Fortunately, they were working a lot of overtime at double-time pay, so I looked to make some big bucks. I left a scale of $4.25/hr at Eastman and went to a scale of $6.90 in DC.

The BA gave me a referral to DC, called and told them I was coming (and no telling what else) and sent me on my way. He failed to tell me others were going there and I could arrange to ride and share living expenses with one or more of them. The following Sunday and with one hundred borrowed dollars in my pocket, I said my goodbyes at about noon and hit the road. I arrived just outside DC in Virginia just before dark, found a motel room and a place to eat, called home, and went to bed, tired and anxious about what would happen the next day.

I got up the next morning and the T-Bird wouldn't start... dead battery. Luckily, I quickly located a used one that wasn't quite as dead as mine, put it in and went to seek my fortune in a place I had no business being.

I crossed the river into DC. Take into account I had never driven in a town bigger than Knoxville, except for a straight-through drive in Baltimore several years earlier. I had no idea where Kansas Avenue NE was except for a road map I bought for the occasion, but I was determined to get there. DC streets are laid out like a bunch of wheels inside a big wheel, at least that is how it seemed to me. I was driving eastward on Pennsylvania Avenue with the Capitol dome in my sights, and I wanted to get on Georgia Ave. heading north, but to my consternation, no left turns were allowed at that time of rush hour. Somehow I missed the turning place anyway, so I drove to the Capitol and around it and was headed in the direction of the White House with my own house beckoning me. I finally made a turn somewhere and drove in circles for a half hour or so, somehow passing the Capitol again, and getting back in Virginia (I think) at Arlington Cemetery. I got turned back around, once again drove by the Capitol building, and ended up on Tennessee Ave., which I thought was a good omen. It was a ghetto. All over everything in those neighborhoods was spray painted the figure of a black panther. They were painting even as I passed by. Was I scared? You couldn't have driven a hat pin in my asshole with a sledge hammer! Here is a car with tags from a southern state driving around in circles in a place where people are very pissed about their lot in life, and are known to distrust anyone white and especially anyone white and from the south. If looks could have killed, 365 days from that Monday, I would have been dead one year.

Somewhere in this wandering I passed near something called the National Arboretum. Didn't have a hillbilly clue as to what that was. Finally I spied the capitol dome once more, and once again kept it in my sights. At a big intersection, I spied a cop car and figured they would be able to point me to my destination. They were pretty far away, so to get their attention, I ran the red light and blew the horn. It didn't take them a minute to have me pulled over. Two very large and very black cops got out. I thought, 'Oh shit, I'm dead meat now or sure'. Actually they were very nice, but neither of them had a clue as to where Kansas Ave, NE was, but one of them did know about Georgia Avenue. It was only about a block or so away, and I felt relieved to get on it and drive northward to see what I could find. It was now 10:00 am, and I was supposed to be at the hiring hall at 7:30 am. Not good. Finally I saw the sign... KANSAS AVENUE NE. In about ten minutes, I was at the union hall.

Their BA wanted to send me downtown on an "assholes and elbows" job for 40 hrs/week. The definition of that is a job where one is bent over all day long running conduit where a floor is about to be poured. You walk by and see nothing but assess in the air and elbows flying, hard at work. I told him no thank you, and if he would be kind enough to point me in the general direction of south, I would be on my way. He got pissed and I got out. Before I could leave the parking lot, he flagged me down and threw a job referral through the window. It was for the Morgantown Maryland powerhouse, the place I wanted from the beginning. Again, I had to find my own way.