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    Highway Sailor: A Rollicking American Journey
    Highway Sailor: A Rollicking American Journey
    Highway Sailor: A Rollicking American Journey
    Ebook245 pages2 hours

    Highway Sailor: A Rollicking American Journey

    By Joseph Sutton

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    About this ebook

    When the woman Jake Massry lives with leaves him for another man because he can't succeed as a writer, and his old world father, on his deathbed, orders him to get a "real" job, Jake, to get his head straight, hits the highways of America in his worn-out VW bus Old Bones in search of himself and his country. It's spring1974—prices of goods are spiraling upward and President Nixon is embroiled in the Watergate fiasco. As he travels from place to place in Old Bones (or rather pushes him), Jake meets a colorful cast of characters: sexy women, gays, born-again Christians, philosophers, racists, bullies and Gary Morse, a 19-year-old hitchhiker who possesses a large "red ruby" given to him by a young heiress.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJoseph Sutton
    Release dateApr 21, 2011
    ISBN9781458104052
    Highway Sailor: A Rollicking American Journey
    Author

    Joseph Sutton

    Joseph Sutton was born in Brooklyn and raised in Hollywood. He played football at the University of Oregon and graduated with a degree in philosophy. He earned a teaching credential and a degree in history at Cal State University Los Angeles and taught high school history and English for many years. Sutton, who has been writing for more than 50 years, has published over two dozen books. His essays and short stories have appeared in numerous national magazines and journals. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Joan.

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      Book preview

      Highway Sailor - Joseph Sutton

      It was hard getting out of Berkeley on New Year’s Day 1974—it was very hard. Old Bones, my 1964 VW bus, was loaded down with all my possessions. Plus, the elements were against us. The wind and rain were saying, You two aren’t leaving this town today because we want to hold you to the past.

      Old Bones and I were on the Nimitz Freeway heading south for Los Angeles. The wind was so violent that it was preventing the already less than powerful Bones from going over 25 miles an hour. And the rain, oh the rain, it was coming down in sheets, buckets, torrents.

      Come on, Old Bones! I was shouting at the top of my lungs. Don’t give up now! We’re going to get out of here if it’s the last thing we do! Nothing’s going to hold us to the past! Do you hear? Nothing!"

      The past. 1969. Summer. I had quit teaching social studies at Fremont High in Los Angeles to move up to Berkeley to begin a new life as a writer. I had saved enough money, $6000, to last me at least three or four years without doing anything else but write. While strolling the tree-lined streets of my new neighborhood, I came across a small public library. A writer should go into every library he passes, I said to myself, because books are his life, they’re his inspiration.

      I moseyed on in and headed for the fiction shelves. I was standing in the J section. James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man came to mind. I searched every book in the Js and couldn’t find it. Down the aisle, about ten feet from me, my eyes latched onto an extremely attractive redheaded librarian wearing black boots and a mini-dress, a cart stacked with books by her side. She was standing on the tip of her toes reaching high to put a book back on the top shelf. The sight of those well-proportioned legs and seeing a part of her pink panties pulled me toward this red-headed magnet and made me say, "I’ve checked every book in the Js and can’t find Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist. Do you think it could be somewhere else in the library?"

      She checked the book’s record and found that it hadn’t been checked out. She searched through a large pile of returned books. No go. She looked at the books left on every table but it wasn’t there. Forget the book, I was in the presence of a persistent and an extremely attractive librarian. During her search, I found out a little about her. Maggie Brennan was her name. She was single, twenty-three and we lived only two blocks from one another.

      I hope I’m not being too forward, I said, but would you like to have dinner with me some night? Like tomorrow night?

      That’s so nice of you to ask, she said. I can’t have dinner tomorrow—I’m working late. How about Thursday night?

      I picked up Maggie at her studio apartment and drove to a small vegetarian restaurant on University Avenue, about a half mile from the University of California campus where she had graduated. As we were eating our brown rice and stir-fried vegetables, Maggie asked, What made you quit teaching to become a writer?

      My oldest brother is a friend of the novelist Clancy Sigal. Have you heard of him?

      No, she said.

      "In my senior year in college I read Clancy’s novel, Going Away, about a man driving across the country who’s fed up with the promise of America and then sails away to England. I can’t tell you what a thrill it was for me to read a novel by someone I actually knew. Then, in 1966, when I took a trip to Europe after my first year of teaching, I looked up Clancy in London. We spent many hours talking about writing and American politics. It was during that trip that I decided I wanted to be a writer. For the past few years, whenever I could find the time, I wrote a bunch of poems and started a couple of short stories that I never finished. Early this year I made up my mind I was going to quit teaching and start writing full-time. I even knew what I was going to write about—my last semester at Fremont High School, an all black school in South Central L.A. That’s what I’m working on now. What about you, Maggie? Why did you choose to be a librarian?"

      I’ve always loved reading and being around books. I hope to be around books for the rest of my life.

      Do you have any brothers or sisters?

      I have two brothers and two sisters. I’m the eldest in our crazy Irish brood.

      Why crazy?

      Well, she said, my mother left my father a few years ago because of his drinking. About a year ago she started living with another man. My sisters are living with her. My brothers live with my father. As you can see, we’re a very fractured family. What about your family.

      I’m the fifth son of six boys in a Syrian Jewish family.

      She was surprised. You’re Syrian Jewish? What does that mean—that you born in Syria?

      No, no. It means my father was born in Syria of Jewish parents. He came to the United States after the First World War. My mother’s parents, also Syrian Jews, came in 1905. My mother was born in Brooklyn. That’s where my parents met and married and where four of my brothers and I were born. We moved to Hollywood when I was a year old.

      What was it like to be a Syrian Jew growing up in Hollywood?

      I don’t think it was much different than anyone else growing up there. When I was a boy, we lived a few blocks from Hollywood Boulevard. I remember going to the movies with my brothers almost every Saturday. All of us went to Hollywood’s public schools and played sports. No one ever asked us if we were Jewish, much less what kind of Jew we were. A Syrian Jew is a little different than a European Jew. My parents spoke Arabic at home, not Yiddish like the European Jews speak. And on Friday nights, the Sabbath, my mother would cook a big Arabic meal. Tell me, where did you grow up?

      In Santa Rosa, where Luther Burbank did his horticultural experiments.

      The soil must be very rich there.

      Burbank said it was probably the most fertile soil in all the world.

      After dinner we drove a short distance to the Albatross Pub on San Pablo Avenue and ordered a large pitcher of beer and a bowl of popcorn.

      Did you ever get drafted into the Army? Maggie asked.

      Instead of being drafted, I joined the Coast Guard reserve. I went to meetings one weekend a month for six years. I did my basic training just a few miles down the road from here in Alameda. That’s how I found out about the Bay Area.

      What do you think of the war in Vietnam? she asked.

      I took a sip of beer before saying, I’m totally against it. We’re sending more and more troops there when they should be coming home right now. It’s an unjust war. I can’t think of one good reason why we’re there.

      Exactly, she said. We’re not there to save South Vietnam from North Vietnam or to prevent communism from spreading in Asia. I think we’re there to test our weapons against a country that isn’t a threat to us.

      This woman was not only beautiful with her flowing red hair, we were on the same political wavelength as well.

      We drove back to her studio apartment. We were standing on the front porch. I was dying to give her a goodnight kiss, but was hesitant about it. She helped me out by saying, Would you like to come in for some coffee?

      We sat on the floor leaning against her couch, listening to the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album, sipping coffee and finding out more about each other. I took a chance and put my arm around her. She didn’t flinch or push me away. We kissed, a regular kiss at first, then a more passionate kiss. Her tongue was telling me I could do anything I wanted with her. Our clothes were off and we made wonderful love on the carpeted floor.

      It wasn’t long till we sublet a small two-bedroom house from one of Maggie’s friends for $125 a month. It came with two female cats: Birdie and Pupik. Birdie was always bringing home dead birds. And Pupik, she was a whore. I saw her getting fucked outside our bedroom window one night. Shoo! Get away from here, I barked at a big male cat humping her from behind. It was as if my own daughter was getting it on right in front of me.

      Every three months Birdie and Pupik would each give birth to a litter of kittens. And every three months Maggie and I could be found standing outside the entrance of the Co-op Market on Shattuck and Cedar trying to give away the kittens. This unending flow got to be too much for me. If Maggie’s friend, the one who was subletting the house to us while she was away in Europe, hadn’t given us strict instructions not to spay the cats, I would have spayed them and been a very happy man. I didn’t need frisky little kittens running around the house distracting me from my work. I needed peace and quiet.

      I also needed peace and quiet from all the people who wanted to use our house as a crash pad. Maggie’s friends, my friends up from L.A., and even the woman we were subletting from, her friends, many of them would knock on our door without warning. There was a visitor in our house at least once a week.

      One evening I said to Maggie, Birdie, Pupik and the kittens are driving me up the wall. Plus, our house is becoming Hotel Berkeley. All these interruptions are making it hard for me to concentrate on my book. Something has to change.

      What do you want to do, Jake? Do you want to move to another place in Berkeley? Or do you want to move to another city?

      Let’s get out of Berkeley, Maggie. How about Oregon? Or even New York City? Where would you like to go?

      Oregon sounds great to me. Let’s do it.

      We packed what we could into Old Bones, left Birdie and Pupik and all future visitors to drive the next tenants insane and headed north for Eugene, where my alma mater, the University of Oregon, was located.

      For $85 a month, we rented a small one-bedroom house. We adopted a female cat named Hero from a neighbor who moved back east. Thank goodness Hero was already fixed.

      Finally, after spending three years on my novel, I finished it. I made six copies and started sending them out to publishing houses. A few editors wrote back and said they liked the book but that it just wasn’t for them. Most of the time my manuscript came back with a form rejection: We regret that the material you have sent us does not meet our present needs.

      I didn’t know what to think about all the rejections I was receiving. Was I a poor writer? Was the subject matter of a white teacher relinquishing his authority and joining his black students in running a democratic classroom too radical of an idea? Every time I received a rejection, my self-esteem plummeted. Within a day or two, I picked myself up and sent my manuscript to another publisher.

      One night, after dinner, a fire going in the fireplace, a cold rain outside, both of us reading a book—Maggie brought up the big question.

      Jake, she said, let’s get married.

      We’re already married, Maggie—we’re living together, aren’t we?

      Marriage is a commitment, Jake. Don’t you want to be committed to me like I am to you?

      I’m already committed to you. I don’t need a marriage license to tell me that.

      I still think we should get married. We can have kids and bring them up to be good, decent people. Don’t you want to have kids?

      I would love to have kids. But how can we even think of kids when I haven’t even made a penny as a writer? When I get my book published, I promise, Maggie, we’ll talk kids.

      After Richard Nixon trounced George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election, Maggie and I had an urge to move back to Berkeley. We left Hero with the next tenant and moved south to where there was much less rain.

      I don’t know what it was—routine, restlessness, rejections, not getting married, not having a child—but something was off kilter between us. Near the end, Maggie and I were so unsure of our relationship that one night we were afraid to take in a lonely little kitten meowing outside our front door.

      On a gray December evening in 1973, after I had prepared dinner, Maggie didn’t come home. She didn’t even call to let me know where she was. All I could do was wait and worry. When she finally did come home around eleven, I burst out with, Where the hell have you been, Maggie?

      I had dinner with a friend, she said.

      What friend?

      A male friend.

      What’s going on? We never agreed to that!

      We just had dinner, Jake. Nothing happened.

      Where did you go?

      We ate dinner at Spenger’s and had drinks on his boat.

      I was going out of my mind, Maggie! I didn’t know whether you got into an accident, got raped, or what! And now you tell me you had dinner and drinks with another man when I prepared dinner for us and worried every second about you. Why didn’t you call?

      I didn’t think it would bother you.

      Fuck you! It surely did bother me.

      I’m sorry, Jake.

      Did you have sex with him?

      No.

      Bullshit. Who has dinner and drinks and doesn’t have sex?

      Me, she said.

      Who’s this friend of yours?

      His name is Todd Olson. He lives on his boat in the Berkeley Marina. He comes into the library on a regular basis. We’ve become good friends. Believe me, there’s nothing going on between us.

      I could tell, from the way she was standing up for her friend, that this was the end.

      We slept in separate rooms that night.

      We continued argue the next morning. It got to the point where she even told me I was a failed writer.

      I hastily gathered a few of my belongings and stood at the front door. I really didn’t want to leave, but something—fate? necessity? sanity?—was telling me it was time to go. I was

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