My Summer of '73

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November 10th 2011

Published: November 11th 2011

My Summer of ‘73

My summer of 1973 was a summer filled with travel and adventure. I had just finished my first year at MIT, and I was full of energy and craving some excitement, so I embarked on two exciting journeys. The first trip was a hitchhiking trip through New England and down the Atlantic coast to Washington, DC. The second trip was a drive around the United States, traveling from Massachusetts to Texas to California and Colorado before I left the guys I was with, and took a bus ride to North Dakota, to work on my cousin Curt’s farm.

Trip #1:

One of my friends at MIT, Alan Shapiro, and I decided to hitchhike around New England and head down to Washington, DC where we would go to the Allman Brothers/Grateful Dead concert at RFK Stadium. We left on a Saturday with my Dad dropping us off on Route 128 just outside of Boston. A few minutes after we stuck out our thumbs, while holding our backpacks and tents, a Massachusetts State Trooper pulled up. Just then we thought the adventure was over. Surely the officer would either arrest us or make us go home. Well, we were pleasantly surprised when he said “hop in”. We told him about our travel plans, and he said “hold on guys” and he put the pedal to the metal and sped off to the New Hampshire state line. He dropped us off in New Hampshire and we were already almost half way to our first destination, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, where we would meet up with my friend Steve Stockwell. We arrived at Steve’s cottage on Lake Crescent and spent several days swimming and hanging out in Wolfeboro, down by the docks at Lake Winnipesaukee. It was fun just roaming around with no particular place to go. One of Steve’s friends had a nice motor boat, and I went water skiing for the first and only time in my life, on Crescent Lake. I made it up on my second try and only fell off when I was through with the ride. Then, after a few days, the three of us decided we would hitchhike up to Burlington, Vermont. One of the rides we got was from a guy who lived in Montpelier, and he let us stay at his cabin by a river. We went swimming and had a nice barbeque there. Then we went to Burlington. I had a friend at MIT who was from Burlington. His name was Paul Graziano. We stayed at Paul’s house for a couple of days, and we went to a club in Burlington where there was some good music. Steve decided to go back to New Hampshire at this point, but Alan and I took a ferry across Lake Champlain to upstate New York. From there we went down New York, stopping in New York City, where Alan was from. We went through the Columbia campus and saw the sights of the city, including going up the Empire State Building. After New York, we went down to Maryland where we stayed with another friend from MIT, Pat. By this time we were almost out of money, so we worked for a couple of days hauling trash for a garbage company. At night, we went to the racetrack and bet on the horses. This was the first time I’d been to a racetrack. It was a lot of fun. Pat’s stepdad came along and I think I remember hearing that he had kind of a gambling problem, and went to the track all the time. Next we went to Washington DC, where we stayed with my brother Jim and his wife Rita, at their apartment. We spent a couple of days there, and then went to the Allman Brothers/Grateful Dead concert. I remember sneaking in a lot of beer in my sleeping bag. It was an all day concert, and I remember falling asleep on the ground before it was over.

Well, that was as far south as we got on our hitch hiking trip. After the concert, Alan decided he had had enough of hitch hiking and traveling, so he bought an airline ticket and flew home to New York.. I didn’t want to give up and fly home, so I hitchhiked home on my own. One of the more memorable parts of the trip was hitchhiking through New York City. I picked up a ride right in the middle of New York City during a traffic jam from a truck driver who was from Texas. After I jumped in the cab, I realized that this guy was a real hick and he hated New Yorkers and the city. He had his stereo blasting and kept cursing the drivers in front of him. He was pretty crazy. Then he turned toward Long Island, and I told him I wanted to get out, but he just kept on driving. It must have been a good 20 miles we went down the highway to the east, before he finally pulled off. I had to go across the freeway, to head back west to get to 95 to go north again. It was just about the worst place to try to get a hitch hike ride. This was a suburban area and there had been some crime along the freeway, and it took me a good 4 hours or more to get a ride. Finally I got one though, and was able to work my way back home. Overall it was a fun two week adventure.. And that was just part one of an interesting summer of travel.

Trip #2:

My friend Chuck Alley had three friends from Eastern Nazarene College who wanted to take a drive around the country. Chuck invited me, and I thought it would be fun to see the USA. I believe the name of the guy who owned the car was Ron, but this was a long time ago, and I’m not sure that I remember his or the other two guys names. Anyway, I’ll call him Ron. Ron had a Ford sedan that was pretty old and it had about 100,000 miles on it before we left Massachusetts. He said it was in good condition, so we decided we’d head out. By this time, my friend Chuck had decided not to go, but I still wanted to go, and the other guys said “fine”. At that point in my life, I wasn’t totally straight laced, and these guys were, at least more than me, as they were all going to a Christian college. Anyway they put up with my long hair, and my Allman Brothers Live at the Fillmore cassette, and we took off to see America. The plan was to drive to Texas to drop off one of the guys, who I believe came from there. So, we headed south and drove down 95. The only eventful thing I remember on the first part of the trip, was going through West Virginia on a Sunday, and the guys thinking that we should go to church. So, we stopped on Sunday evening to attend a Nazarene church, but we were in short pants and weren’t real clean. The church members frowned on us pretty badly, and we got out of there as soon as church ended..

We eventually arrived in Laredo, Texas where one of the guys left Ron, Dave (the other remaining guy) and me. I remember going across the border into Laredo Nuevo, Mexico. We felt a little uneasy while we were there, as there were Mexican police with rifles on what seemed like, every corner. We decided to leave quickly, and head back to the US, and when we crossed the border, the border police made us empty the car completely. I guess my long hair was a magnet for trouble.. 

Once we got to Texas, we started the most interesting part of the trip. The plan was to camp out in many National Parks. First, we went to Big Bend National Park, where it was unbearably hot during the day and cool at night. I remember seeing huge vultures flying around. I had bought a cowboy hat somewhere along the way in Texas, and I recall going up to a store in Big Bend park and finding it to be closed when we were extremely hot and thirsty. I got so mad I took off my hat and threw it at the door. I actually cracked the front of the hat. You can see if hanging in my Dad’s garage in New Hampshire, next to his chaps and spurs, with a large crack right in the front of the hat.

From there we traveled on towards New Mexico. We went to Carlsbad Caverns, which was probably the most interesting National Park that we stopped at. Each evening at dusk, park visitors sit in an amphitheater and watch thousands of bats come flying out of the cave. They fly right over your head. It looks like a big black cloud as they fly out. While we were there we went into the cavern, which was very cool. They turned the lights out when we were near the bottom. That was kind of creepy.

Next we headed to Arizona, where we went to Flagstaff and camped over night. We were all trying to think of the name of the town that the Eagles sing about in “Take it Easy”, that is in Arizona. Finally someone remembered that it is Winslow, Arizona. We went there too.. Didn’t see any of the Eagles standing on the corner, though..

Next we continued heading west on Highway 40 and sped on to Los Angeles…I was at the wheel of the old Ford, with Ron and Dave sleeping as we came into Los Angeles late one night. I remember being extremely tired, and if it weren’t for the raised buttons on the freeway (something we had never experienced before California) we may have ended up in the ditch.

The lights and the sheer size of the city were overwhelming. We stayed with a friend of Dave and Ron’s in Los Angeles for a day, and then headed up the coast of California. We alternated between driving on Highway 101 and the coastal road, Highway 1. We saw Big Sur, Carmel, Monterey and the beautiful, rugged beaches of the central coast of California. We managed to veer to the east and go to the Sequoias National Park and then Yosemite for a day. We camped at both parks. The Sequoias are huge. And Yosemite is probably the most beautiful park I have ever seen. The Bridalveil waterfall was full and breathtaking.

After staying at the parks, we headed back to the west and went to San Francisco. San Francisco was just beautiful. We went over the Golden Gate Bridge and looked back at the City. The hills and the bay along with the bridges and buildings, make for a perfect city. We were all impressed with the beauty of California. I remember thinking that if I ever left New England, I would like to live in Northern California.

Next we headed up the coast to Point Reyes where we watched the sunset. It was a beautiful clear night. The red color of the sunset was fantastic. We camped along the coast and I recall just about freezing to death. It was a lot windier and cold on the coast, than I had imagined.

So, we continued up the coast through the redwoods and on into Oregon. We then headed to Crater Lake, which is also an unbelievable work of nature. At this point we were heading towards the east, and had reached the more than halfway point of the trip. We continued on through Idaho and down to Utah were we saw the great salt flats. What a contrast to the trees and mountains of California to be on the huge, flat, sandy surface of the salt flats. Now it was time to zip over to Colorado. We spent a quite a bit of time in Colorado, as we wanted to go into the Rocky Mountain National Park in Boulder and also go to Aspen. So, we made our way north to Boulder, and just as we drove into the Rocky Mountain Park, we put in a cassette of John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High. Both Ron and Dave liked this song, and were excited to be in the midst of such beauty, while listening to the song. I have to admit, although I didn’t care for John Denver at the time, it was pretty awesome!

One of the amazing things about our trip through the Rocky Mountain Park was how hot it was at the entrance and how cold it was at the top of the mountain in the park. I think it was around 80 degrees at the entrance, and down near freezing at the top. What a beautiful park of hardwood trees, waterfalls and streams, along with majestic mountains. Colorado was as beautiful as I had imagined. But what a contrast in the kinds of terrain in Colorado. The eastern part of the state is flat and dry, and the western part is nothing but beautiful mountains and scenery. So, after camping and spending time in Rocky Mountain National Park, we headed south to see Aspen. Here again, we were in an amazingly beautiful area. The town of Aspen was quaint and pretty, and the mountains were breathtaking. So, now we had been through a dozen or so national parks, and had camped out for over two weeks. At this point I decided I would leave Ron and Dave and take a Greyhound bus from Denver to Belfield, North Dakota, as I wasn’t quite yet done with this exciting summer. Ron and Dave were going to head back directly to the east, so I decided to catch the bus in Denver. It took about a day and half to get to North Dakota. There I met up with my aunt Marvel and uncle Chester and my cousin Curt.

I stayed on the farm with the Molms for several weeks. I wanted to see what it was like to farm. And I wasn’t the typical farm boy. I had long hair, was more liberal than most cowboys, and I was from a nice suburb of Boston and was living in the city of Cambridge at the time. So, being out on the plains, and having to work hard each day, was a big change for me. Heck, we got up every morning around 5:30 AM, had as many fritters as we could force down, and then headed out to the fields to work. Curt had many acres of farmland that needed plowing. My first job was to plow the fields. I drove their tractor, pulling a rake behind all day long. Curt would come get me in his Chevy pickup at lunch time, so I could eat with the family. Then I would drive the pickup back to the field to finish the plowing. I remember getting his pickup up to 130 miles per hour going back and forth. The thing was, the roads were straight, and there wasn’t much traffic, so you didn’t even feel like you were going fast… Well I plowed for several days, and at one point I drove down the embankment on the side of the road with the plow behind me, and cut too sharply, and one of the hydraulic lines was pulled too hard and broke. Consequently I had to go back to the farm house and get Curt to come help. He wasn’t real thrilled about fixing the lines.. There was another time when I was helping him with his old car, that it slipped off the blocks, and he had to do more repair work. It really helps if you are a mechanic as well as a farmer.

After doing the plowing for several days, I helped one of the other farmer families with some hauling of the old style, rectangular bales of hay. The nearest farming family to the Molms was the Oes. Nick Oe was the patriarch. He had several sons that worked on the farm with him. I remember eating with them, and then working in the fields with them. I don’t think they particularly liked me, as I was the city kid with long hair, and they were the tough cowboys. One day, my job was to stand on top of the bales of hay on the wagon that we stacked the bales on. One of Nick’s sons, who had had a lot to drink that day, was operating the tractor that picked up the bales. He would scoop up a bale and then lift it up and drop it on top of the wagon. My job was to guide it on the wagon, and then stack it on the other bales. The wagon wasn’t very wide, so I didn’t have a lot of standing room on top. We had gotten about 5 or 6 levels high of bales stacked up and I was up pretty high. I swear that this guy was taking the bales and trying to knock me off the wagon. I had to keep firm footing and avoid getting knocked off when he unloaded them. Needless to say, I was glad when we finished the job of stacking and hauling bales that day. No one got hurt, but I know it was just good fortune that I didn’t end up falling and hurting myself. I think I liked plowing by myself better than working with the Oe boys…

So, after a couple of weeks of back breaking work, I decided to head back home. Working in North Dakota was an experience that exhausted me. I realized just how hard the farmers work in the summer. (But I also know that the winters can be relatively easy, where you feed the animals, and stay in side and read books and take long naps for a good part of the day..)

Oh, one other thing. While I was in North Dakota, I took a trip over to New Leipzig, where my grandmother and grandfather Rieger lived. At that time, Grandpa Rieger had recently had a stroke, and was not his regular perky self. Normally Grandpa Rieger was very talkative and friendly and wanted to play games, or go fishing. This time, he was resting mostly. I think we did get a few games of carom in though. Grandpa loved that game. Anyway, while telling grandma and grandpa about my escapades, Grandpa said that he wished he could go along with me around the country. He said that if he weren’t sick, he would have me take him around so he could see the country and have some fun. Grandpa Rieger was a fun loving guy and was well liked.

So, I said goodbye to Curt, who was a great teacher and friend, and Marvel and Chester drove me off to the Greyhound bus terminal in Dickinson. They gave me $20 for my trip back home. I thanked them for an incredible farming experience, and made my way through the Midwest, back home. I remember stopping in Minneapolis to change buses. I met some interesting people on the ride. Some were young people out to see America and others were on their way to visit families. People, like me, are on the move, and love to travel and experience an adventure. The uncertainty of knowing what you are going to see, contribute to the fun. Sometimes you just want to be quiet and observe those around you, and other times you want to speak up and get to know people and learn about them. Mostly it is an eye opening experience to see the beauty and contrasts of America and watch the ways that people live, from working in the city to running a farm business. All in all, this was the most interesting summer of my life. 38 years later, it is still vivid in my memory.

Dave

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