Two cool Mexicans

Two cool Mexicans: I never thought Miguel and TC would pose a threat.  They gave me a night-time adventure and took my knife.  

In 1979 I hitch-hiked for seven weeks around the United States.  What became of the carefree, relaxed young 21 year-old of these pages?  Can I rediscover those qualities?  And what about America itself?  Was it better then, or worse?

This is what happened on the night of 27 July when I met TC and Miguel. If you’re out there, guys, get in touch.

Valley of the Rogue

TC was too young.  Miguel was older, but didn’t like being asked to show his ID.  So when their ancient Chevy had wheezed into the gas station in Crescent City, we pooled six grimy dollars and I went to buy the beer.

Ginny and Tanya near Monterey, 1979 – photo Leigh Turner

In California at 20 you can have sex, smoke dope, and die for your country, or someone else’s; but you can’t get a drink without a friend.  The two cool Mexicans and me, Oregon-bound, were old friends for the night.

Rape, castration and sale for research

In summer 1979 even the most laidback, doped-out, rock-lobotomised New Yorkers said hitch-hiking around the US was too dangerous to contemplate.  When I told them I planned to set off from the Major Deagan Expressway for a seven-week trip, heading south past the Bronx towards the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, they predicted my rape, castration and sale for medical research before I’d crossed the mouth of New York Harbour.

If I made it beyond New Jersey, they said, it would be a miracle.

I tried to explain the intoxicating intimacy and knife-edge mutual trust of hitch-hiking. I mentioned Jack Kerouac’s Sal Paradise.  They said he was a sad sexist creep.

I set off anyhow.

By the time, four weeks later, I’d reached Sebastopol, California, and Miguel and TC slowed their creaking, rusted Chevy to take a look at me, I was used to taking risks.  Dusk was falling, shadows lengthening.  As a hitch-hiker, you had a few seconds to check out a car for dangers. Should you get in, or not?

Miguel, the driver, looked around forty, with  weathered, acne-scarred cheeks, a gold tooth, and a peon’s tranquil calm.  TC was younger than me, with a sense of urgency, a wisp of a moustache and a charming grin that scared me a little.

I figured they looked safe enough.

They were driving all night, to Oregon.

So I climbed into the car and settled thankfully amidst the litter of beer-cans on the back seat.

Had ice needed breaking, the lukewarm Yukon Jack Canadian whiskey (was it really orange-flavoured?) would have done the job.  That and the close, warm darkness as we headed slowly north through Elk, Russian Gulch and the Grizzly Creek Redwoods.

TC was eighteen, a US citizen, Texan-born, and steel-hard.  Miguel was born south of the border and spread his hands helplessly as he wrestled with his English.  But he knew his White Album.  Riding north at a steady forty miles per hour, the three of us chorused verses of Rocky Racoon, The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill, and Happiness is a Warm Gun.  At misty midnight pit-stops we watered redwoods, shouting our songs into the forest.

In Crescent City at 2 a.m. we stopped at the gas station.

‘Can you get us a couple more six-packs?’ TC said.  ‘You’re 21, you’re white, all good.’

‘Yeah,’ said Miguel.  ‘They mostly don’t like my face.’

When I came back to the car with the beer, TC said he’d had enough and should stop driving.  Could I take over?  I had no driving licence, I said, and anyhow had enjoyed the beer and Yukon Jack.  TC and Miguel shook their heads and sighed.  Driving a car was easy!  You put your foot down and turned the steering wheel.  I declined, British, uptight, anxious about sitting behind the wheel of an automobile for the first time in my life on the Pacific coast of California in the small hours of the night.

Maybe I was responsible for their first bust in Oregon.

TC and Miguel said they had committed a string of driving offences in California and had to get out of the state.  I shared a sense of relief as we passed into Oregon on Route 199, heading for Cave Junction and Interstate 5.

We didn’t get far.  At 4.30 a.m. in O’Brien, five miles past the border, a cop pulled out behind and flagged us down on account of a broken tail-light.  He stood at the window, conspicuously friendly, his hand on his hip, and asked whether TC, who was driving, had perhaps been drinking?

TC was deliriously intoxicated.   He admitted to the distant memory of a beer and was invited to step out of the car.  A night ritual followed, lit by the lights of the police cruiser: an officer scrutinising a man on one leg, eyes closed, arms outstretched, touching his nose with one forefinger, then the other.  All this TC did faultlessly.

Back in 1979, the police didn’t seem to have breath tests.  But they did have a computer, somewhere at the end of a radio connection.  The friendly policeman discovered that TC was wanted in four states (not yet including Oregon, in which he had arrived only fifteen minutes earlier) for felonious and criminal offences; and that the car’s licence, issued in Albuquerque New Mexico, had expired four years before.  So he issued a ticket to appear in the settlement of Grant’s Pass – on our route, as it happened – on Monday.  TC and Miguel looked at one other and ground the wreck northwards.

In Wilderville, on the Redwood Highway, we stopped for food.  We were hungry: the guys ordered burgers and fries thrice.  After we had eaten our fill, TC ordered cherry pie.  Miguel’s eye caught mine.

Suddenly as TC munched his cherry pie, his face contorted in a rictus of agony.  I didn’t hear any crack.  But he was hurt, bad.  He let out a long, low moan and a string of oaths.

Only one young waitress was on duty, the night shift.  She heard the commotion and came running.

TC nursed his jaw in his hand.  A shard of cherry stone left in the pie had shattered his tooth, he said.

The waitress shook her head and called the manager, at home in bed.  He provided the name of a local dentist who’d be open in the morning.  TC shook his head and cursed again.  He ran a finger round the inside of his mouth.  Miguel, stony-faced, pushed his fingers through his black hair.  I gazed open-mouthed. I put my wallet back in my pocket.

The meal was on the house.

Dawn broke in Canyonville.  TC and Miguel said they were turning east towards Tiller, to look for work.  Someone’s sister had a place.  I should come and stay awhile.

Did they mean it? I thought I was in a hurry, heading for Seattle, wanting to keep moving, tied to different rhythms.  I said I’d head on north.

As I lifted my rucksack from the back of the car, my knife – a black Kitchen Devils product made in Sheffield – fell to the tarmac.  TC picked it up, tried it, improbably, on his open palm and drew blood with a squeak of delight.  He weighed the knife in his hand, his eyes glinting.

‘Hey, man,’ he said.  ‘Can you turn me on to this knife?’

Miguel was already in the car.  I looked at TC holding the knife, blade towards me.  He looked back, and smiled his charming smile.

‘Sure,’ I said.  ‘It’s already yours.’

Author’s note: this account of “Two cool Mexicans” is entirely factual.  Rogue River, and the Redwood Highway, pass through the Valley of the Rogue just west of Grants Pass, Oregon.

You can read more about this journey on my page, The Americans (links in bold italics are to other posts on this website).

I will explain more about how hitchhiking and diplomacy make good bedfellows in my 2023 book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Diplomacy. For updates on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Diplomacy, subscribe to my newsletter.

P.S. You may also enjoy my piece The Russians: Vladivostok.