Moving On (an unfinished true story fragment)

Time and Place: Fall 1975 - J'ville, Illinois

We’d see each other in the clubs and she’d laugh at me cause I was still in town. I’d been telling her for weeks how I was moving away for good any day now and wouldn’t be back. And she would see me around and laugh and shake her head. That was fine with me. Her face really lit up when she laughed and I’d take my sunshine wherever I could get it.

And I was the only one who knew my moving plan besides Bill. No one else needed to know. I would tell her, I’ll be a long time leaving but I’ll be a long time gone. I was born in Texas but raised in Illinois. I had enough Texas in me to quote Waylon Jennings, though. And now I was going back to the lone star state to live.

Bob thought we were going south in his 440 Charger. I knew better. This wasn’t another road trip for me. Bob and Chris and I had just got back from one of those; Memphis (trouble with the hotel staff), Texarkana (a good time with Drifter at the Banshee’s bar), Galveston (my old party place), back to the biker bar in Texarkana (to party with our now “old friends”) and back to Illinois.

It was a great time but the purpose of this trip was survival. I had to get out of the Midwest. Illinois was becoming impossible for me. I was constantly being hauled in by the law, either locals or the Illinois Bureau. The IBI guys I could spot a mile away but they were usually right behind me. I don’t know what I’d done to deserve that kind of attention but there it was. Looking back I guess my loose kind of lifestyle caused some kind of conflict of interest between me and the badges. Some people were disappearing mysterious like so I decided to vanish on my own terms.

So this next getaway was for real. This was serious and Bob was anything but real and serious. He was Indian and he came in handy a few times when we needed to find our way home in a snowstorm when you couldn’t see east or west but he was an alcoholic and had his own agenda most of the time. He was also volatile so I felt it best not to tell him I had made other plans.