FFXIAH Linkshell Ni

The '88 Rainbow Gathering of the Children of the something or other.... was winding down and several of the soup kitchens were closing up shop. It had been a blurry peyote fueled week or two of merriment but with food becoming scarce it was clearly time to hit the road.

Adventure Mickey was in the parking area trying to secure us a ride headed anywhere...just so long as we didn't have to stick our thumbs out in Texas again. The horror of hitchhiking across Texas was still fresh in our minds having narrowly survived Texas hospitality on the way down.

Jim Dandy said that he and his faithful mutt carbon monoxide brain damage where headed towards Michigan... eventually. After driving some others in our new group to Florida.

So we tagged along. We weren't in any hurry to get anywhere in particular and the idea of hitching a single ride all the way to Cincinnati was very appealing. Adventure Mickey had a friend in Cinci that we had stayed with on another trip that we could certainly cage a room and a little food from.

Jim Dandy's panel van was an ancient rusting hunk of junk. With it's top cruising speed of 50mph and steady exhaust and radiator leaks. But we didn't care.

Traveling with us were a young hippy couple, who paid Jim Dandy to take them to Florida (in advance), two gypsies who were also headed that direction, Jim Dandy and his faithful mutt carbon monoxide brain damage, Adventure Mickey and me.

Unbeknownst to the couple who had paid to be taken to Florida we managed to spend most of their money stocking up on gas, radiator fluid, oil, beer, beef jerky and other essentials at the first gas station we came to.

We headed south down 96 through Jasper to catch US10 and then began limping east towards new orleans... the purple haze from the exhaust leak filled the van immediately on departure and hung in the back of the van with us the entire trip...

Let's just linger there for a several hours while the passengers get to know each other and our brains slowly turn to mush from the fumes...

typical fifth grade typing test pounded out in record time by improperly using my two index fingers and thumb JKJ KJK JJK KKJ JJJ KKK JKJ KJK JJK KKJ etc....

Call me Ishmael

Mos' karmic reference triggered memories of the "Karma Ran Over My Dogma Tour '88" an epic hitchhiking adventure which spanned most of north america from june - september 1988.

When last we left our adventures they were wallowing helplessly in a fog of exhaust fumes somewhere near galveston having gone several miles in the wrong direction... morale is growing queasy as a five hour trip to new orleans seems to drag on forever... supplies are already running low and we are no closer to our destination.

Jim Dandy has pulled over at every rest stop, exit, beer store, wide berm etc. to allow the motor to cool off enough to put more pepper into the radiator to slow the leak...

time begins to loose all meaning and there is already dissent among the crew...

We had our very own Captain Ahab aka Jim Dandy, who was an aging grifter, drifter and alcoholic that claimed (among many many things) to be a vietnem war veteran. But he lied so constantly I quickly began to question his very existence. It's unclear how he happened upon the Rainbow Gathering or why and I soon gave up trying to decipher any truth from the waves of gibberish and conflicting stories. The male of the young hippy couple was forced by us to ride shotgun for much of the journey and bear the brunt of the endless maelstrom of lies and weirdness from Jim Dandy.

Like many college hippy types they were shocked and still reeling from the horror of the "real" hippy culture on display at the Rainbow Gathering. They were far more used to the crass commercial quasi hippy greatful dead hack sacks and hotdogs type experience with plenty of concession stands and services..They had "come unprepared" on about the same scale as Custer did to Little big Horn and their minds had been raped repeatedly. And now all they wanted to do was go home, Unfortunately for them, Jim Dandy had conned them out of their remaining money and they were now hopeless prisoners trapped on a strange van ride to nowhere with a motley crew of weirdos they had nothing in common with other than our current experience...

We may as well been in a boat as we trolled slowly along the coast (headed east now at least) Our Moby *** was a great white sucker Jim Dandy was constantly looking out for at every rest stop, Someone with a huge wallet naive enough to believe his wild lies... At the rest areas we would all pile out of that death trap of a van like clowns out of a circus car, gasping for oxygen and stretching our legs.. Jim Dandy and the Gypsies would fan out to try to fleece fellow motorists for a few bucks while we waited for the car to cool off.

We stopped mostly. We stopped We stopped We stopped We stopped. We stopped everywhere. We stopped more than we went. We stopped so often we seemed to be traveling backwards as if the ocean's current was so strong it was pushing our ship further and further away from our destination.. But we were in a van and the hippy guy who was paying for this never ending nightmare was unraveling quickly.....

Since the gypsies, Adventure Mickey and I couldn't care less where we were, where we were headed or when we got there it was hard for us to appreciate the hippy couple's dilemma. They wanted to be HOME very desperately, their pride, their sanity, their faith in humainty were all hopelessly lost. All that mattered, was getting home..... But the devil is in the details, Jim Dandy had promised he would take them to Florida and we were headed in that general direction.... But during negotiations they failed to nail down one tiny little detail..... WHEN they would get there.







Several days later.....