Tom Conroy #7: Captain Trips .
More hitchhiking memories from Tom Conroy...

Going Down the Road

by Tom Conroy

This is back when I was a teenager living in Arizona. I was 16 and had already dropped out of high school. Actually, they politely asked me to leave. I was so far behind in my grades that I would not graduate until I was 23. This was my first real long trip on the road.

I was coming back from San Diego to Tucson. I was hitching with a cardboard box filled with about 150 old comic books all wrapped in plastic. It was night, and I was in El Centro when a car pulled over. The car jumped the curb, crossed the sidewalk, and when it came to a stop, it was sitting on the grass in a small park. Being that I was young and dumb, I actually got in the car. The driver was a drunk Mexican, and the floor was covered with booze bottles. He told me he also was going to Tucson and off we went.

It was after a couple of miles that I realized I had just made a grave mistake. We were on a four-lane highway with a guardrail down the middle. About 25 miles ahead of us was the small town of Holtville. These four lanes of traffic bottlenecked into two lanes and then crossed over a bridge just before going into town. Now this guy was swerving all over the road and would slow to five mph and then back to 40 mph. A couple times I grabbed the wheel and brought the car back on the road. I knew this guy wasn't going to get across that bridge. I had slept under the bridge with the bullfrogs on the trip into San Diego. The drop-off was at least 60 feet. I told him I wanted to visit my grandmother, so he should let me off on this side of the bridge. He stops, and I get out. I'm standing there watching him go across. I couldn't fucking believe it. The guy went in a perfect straight line with no swerving. He gets on the other side, makes a left turn and drives through town.

A few minutes later the next car to come along gives me a ride. When I get in, the guy says, "Hey, kid. What happened? You’re as pale as a ghost." While we were cruising through to town, I tell him what happened.

A couple miles on the other side of town we come up behind the drunk. He is swerving all over the road, and the guy I'm with makes an instant U-turn back into town. He tells me he is an ex-cop, and he starts doing an SOS with his car horn. Beep, beep beep. Three beeps and then a pause. He tells me if there is a cop out there, he will hear us. Beep, beep, beep, as we go shooting through town. Sure enough, on the other side of town, a cop is standing there waving us down. He pulls up and yells, "Drunk driver. Follow us." We go zooming back through town again. The cop is behind us with all his lights blazing away. It seemed like forever before we caught up with the drunk. All of a sudden we see a huge dirt cloud, and we slow down and stop. Chunks of dirt are still falling down and landing on our car. The drunk guy’s car is on its side about 60 feet off the road. The wheels are still spinning. It must have flipped at least once. All we can see is the bottom of the car and this big dust cloud.

The cop runs up to the car. He shines his flashlight into the front windshield. Then he climbs up on the car and shines the light into the two side windows. I don't know what he saw, but by the look on his face it wasn't very nice. The cop asked us questions, and we talked to him for about five minutes, both of us telling our stories. He thanked us and then said, "I'm sure glad it happened here. We got a bus full of kids coming back from a game." We drove off into the night. About half an hour later we passed the school bus on its way into town.

In the summer of 1961, when I was 18, I had talked Roger Brand into hitching back with me to New York City. We hitched from Pinole, California, down to LA to visit with Joel Beck. Joel was staying at the YMCA in Glendale and could only have one person stay in his room at night. That's where Roger stayed. I stayed in my sleeping bag under the front steps of the Y for a couple nights until somebody ratted me out. Big boss man told me I couldn't sleep there, so I searched for another place to go beddy-bye. Around the corner there is a big fancy church with a nice churchyard. In the yard are four big cement benches. They were just the right size, and at night I would crawl under one of the benches with my sleeping bag and go to sleep.

I awoke one morning with another one of those "Oh, shit" moments. The first thing I see is the back of a woman's legs. She is in stockings and high heel shoes and is about three feet from my nose. Then it hits me. It's Sunday morning, and all the people are hanging out in the churchyard after services. All I'm thinking is, "Now what do I do?" After a minute or so the woman walks away, and I decide it is time for me to get out of there. I crawl out from under the bench dragging my sleeping bag behind me. I don't even look at anybody as I walk through a crowd of at least 25 people with my head hanging down. There is this uncanny dead silence as I walk over to the sidewalk. I roll up the sleeping bag and just keep going. I don't even look back. It was the most embarrassed I had ever been.

When on the road just finding a place to sleep can be an adventure. A couple years later I was heading East on old Route 66. I was at this tourist trap in New Mexico. The place was all fixed up to look like the street of an old Western town. They had a stagecoach out in front that would give the tourists a ride. It took them around a quarter-mile circle and then brought them back to the front. Across the highway were a bunch of old buckboards and wagons. I'm there late one night and decide the best place to sleep was inside an old covered wagon. Not bad. It was nice and cozy.

I woke up in the morning when I heard people outside the wagon talking. I stuck my head out and scared the shit out of two little kids and their father. Daddy was taking photos of little Johnny and Suzy standing next to the wagon. This is when I first had long hair and a beard. I freaked the shit out of all three of them. The kids were yelling and screaming and daddy grabbed them and ran across the highway. They jumped in their car and locked the doors.

I'm heading East on Route 66 and this guy picks me up somewhere outside of LA and gives me a ride to Barstow. He was driving this big fancy new car. Maybe a Lincoln or Cadillac. A real nice car. He was about ten years older than me and talked about how he had hitched around the country when he was my age. How when he ran out of money he would get some two-bit job for a couple weeks. Then take off again when he had a few bucks saved up. He said he traveled with the wind for four or five years and had a great time. Then he got married and had kids. Now he had a good job and was making lots of money. We swapped road stories until he dropped me off. He even took me a few extra miles out of town and left me at a good place for hitching.

It was now nighttime, and the place had a lot of good lights and a place to eat. When I got out of the car he offered me some money. He took a $20 bill out of his wallet, and when I reached in through the open window he grabbed my hand. He started crying like a baby. He said, "Hey, kid. Don't let them do to you what they did to me. Keep traveling. Don't sell out. Stay free as long as you can. The only time I was really happy was when I was on the road. The one thing you can't buy is freedom." Then he drove off into the night. A weird feeling came over me. Like I had just received some kind of sacred knowledge from a holy man. I ate good all the way to New York.

What I liked about the road was the people you would meet. A lot were guys who had hitched around during the Depression and also combat veterans from World War II and Korea. One vet picked me up in Missouri. He had hitched around after the war because he said he "couldn't go home". He was bored. This was the guy who had been at Camp Roberts when my dad had died saving a bunch of guys that were drowning during a training exercise. They were caught on barbed wire under the water. He asked, "Was that your dad who was on the baseball team?" When I said, "Yes", he said he was there that day. The first thing he did when I got in the car was he bought me a meal. Afterwards he gave me a couple bucks. He said he does that with everybody he gives a ride to because he remembers all the times he went hungry. This guy repaired vacuum cleaners for a couple of motel chains and traveled though about six or seven states.

Another veteran was a guy who traveled around inspecting and repairing billboards for a billboard company. The same story I heard so many times before. "After the war I found it hard to settle down. I bummed around for years. Now I'm getting paid to bum around."

This was another trip to see Roger Brand. I was still 18. Walking across a freight yard in New Jersey I saw a piece of steel on the ground. The voice in my head told me to take it with me. It was about an inch wide, a 1/4-inch thick and about a foot long. I was carrying a small canvas overnight bag and put it on top between the two handles.

A couple of days later I'm on Highway 40 in Indiana. It's about nine at night, and I'm by this gas station and restaurant. The place is well lit and was a perfect place for hitching. This lady come out of the cafe and brings me a slice of pie. She tells me she has a boy who is also out hitchhiking around the country. She was the night manager. She tells me if I want more pie or coffee, just come on in. No charge. "I hope somebody out there will feed my boy if he gets hungry." Wow. Another encounter with an Earth Angel.

A few minutes after eating the pie I get a ride. The guy tells me he is going to St. Louis to visit an old Army buddy. He gives me a bullshit story about him being an auto mechanic and a racecar driver in the Indy 500. I knew it was all BS because his car was too clean. I never ever knew a mechanic who drove around in a clean car. Even to this day any mechanic I know has his car filled with junk. He says, "When me and my buddy were in the Army we shared everything. You know what I mean. Even when we slept in a foxhole together, we shared everything. You know what I mean. He was the best buddy a guy could have. You know what I mean. We still share things together. You know what I mean." After about a half an hour of you know what I mean stories there was a few minutes of silence. Then out of the blue he says, "When was the last time you got your nuts off?" He reaches over and grabs my crotch. I leaned down and picked up the piece of steel. I hit him on the hand so hard I even hurt my leg. He lets out a yell and slams on the brakes. He starts screaming, "Get out of my car. Get out." I grab my bag and bedroll and bail out. He almost drove the car off the road when he made a U-turn to go back.

I am now out in the middle of nowhere. It is wet and drizzling. I hardly had any shoulder to stand on and any time a truck would go by I got hit with spray and almost blown into the ditch. What a mess. I walked for hours hoping to find a bridge to get under. Nothing. I got hungry and tried to eat some corn from a cornfield. Gag. Yuk. All I kept thinking about was that lady with the slices of pie I could be eating. Way down the road I saw a light. When I finally got there it was a gas station. It was closed. I went to sleep sitting on the toilet in the men's room. All night long a dog barked. This was a bad ride.

A few days later I'm out in Wyoming on Highway 30. I'm a little ways out of town when a cowboy and his girlfriend go by in a pick-up truck. When he passes me he honks his horn and flips me the bone. I also flip him the bone. He hits the brakes and backs up to where I'm standing. I grab my bag so it doesn't get run over. He and the girl get out of the truck, and he starts cussing me. Then he punches me so hard I fall back into the bed of the truck. The steel bar slides across the bed and stops in the corner. He starts to climb into the truck. I jump up and grab the steel bar. Ka-boom. I hit him over the head with it. He just stops. He freezes. He steps back and pushes his hat up. He says, "Get out of my truck." I grab my bag and get out. He and the girl get back in the truck and drive away. I'm standing there scratching my head, wondering what the fuck just happened.

A year or so later I was 100% into the beatnik thing. At this time I had long hair and beard. It was 1962 and the start of winter. I'm hitching from New York to Frisco with my girlfriend Donna. She was a real looker. We brought her cat with us in a cat carrier. It is nighttime, and we are in Indiana on Highway 40 and had just eaten some shitty 15-cent hamburgers. We were both wearing two old Army P coats with hoods. A car pulls over, and we get in. Our plan was for Donna to always get in the back. The guy tells us he is going to St Louis to see an old Army buddy. He also tells us he is a race car driver in the Indy 500. He starts talking about how him and his buddy would share everything. "You know what I mean."

My ears are starting to curl, and I'm thinking, "Oh, shit. Not again." At this point, Donna says something and then lets down her hood. She shakes out her long brown hair. The guy says, "Oh. She’s a girl. I thought you were two guys." There wasn't much conversation after that. On the other side of the highway, we saw a guy hitching in an Air Force uniform. At the next town he pulls over to get gas. I see a two-inch scar on his right hand as he fills the tank. I tell Donna this is where the ride ends. She says, "He's going to St Louis." I said "No way. He's turning around. I'll explain to you later." That's just what he did. I forgot the excuse he used. I know he wanted to pick up the Air Force guy so he could tell him all about his old Army buddy. You know what I mean.

Labels: joel beck, roger brand, tom conroy

  ¶ 7:18 PM 2 comments

  Tom Conroy #2: Portfolio .
A selection of artwork by Tom Conroy, who recalls,"I turned 18 in 1960, so most of this stuff is when I was around 20 to 23, a lot of it when I was staying in Berkeley with Roger and Joel. I lost a lot of my old art work over the years."

Labels: joel beck, roger brand, tom conroy

  ¶ 6:24 PM 0 comments

 

The cartoonist Joel Beck (1943-1999) was one of the founders of underground comics, having created Lenny of Laredo in 1965, followed by Marching Marvin and The Profit. In 1962, he was in New York, staying in Larry Ivie’s apartment, but Larry was out of town one week. In the Lower East Side, the Charles Theater on Avenue B was a neighborhood movie theater dating back to 1926. It became a focal point for underground films in the early 1960s because it ran Filmmaker’s Night once a week. I had been contacting filmmakers such as Ed Emshwiller and suggesting they bring in their 16mm films. I knew that Larry Ivie had been running around Central Park in a Superman costume for a short movie starring himself as Superman.

I spoke to Joel on the phone and told him to bring Larry’s film to the Charles. Joel was very reluctant to do this and said, “The splices are all Scotch tape.” Finally I talked him into it, and he turned up that evening with the film. When Walter Langsford, who owned the Charles, saw the Scotch tape splices, he was fearful of running it through the projector and did not put it on the program. However, later that night, after the audience had left, Langsford took the film up to the projection booth. I sat with Joel, Tom and a few others as we watched Larry’s film on the giant theater screen. The special effects involved a plastic Superman toy sliding down a wire attached to a tree. I can’t remember if Joel ever told Larry about the clandestine screening, but I somehow doubt it.

Tom Conroy picks up the story:



I was the one who bought that plastic airplane in a toy store and rigged it all up with the pulleys so it would fly. I hooked it up with a string and it flew over one of the small coves of the Central Park Lake with rocks in the background while Larry filmed it. It was a seaplane with pontoons, and it had a cardboard cut out of Superman taped on one of the wings. It worked great and we only did one shot. I think it looked as good as anything Sam Katzman did. I remember jumping around on the rocks to set it all up, and Larry asked me if I would dress up in tights so I could star in his John Carter of Mars film. Bhob, Joel and I stood out there on Avenue B and laughed about it for at least an hour.

A little bit about Joel Beck when he came to NYC in 1962. This was my first year of doing my “beatnik thing”, so we would hang out all night long in Greenwich Village. Joel really liked the beat scene. and we both did a lot of artwork for some of the coffee houses. I still have a menu that he drew for the Cafe Wha on MacDougal Street. So one day I’m at Larry Ivie’s pad, and Joel was getting dressed so he could take his art portfolio around to the magazines hoping to get work. He had a suit jacket, vest, white shirt and a necktie, and he had them all pinned together with safety pins. These four items were now one solid piece all pinned together. He laid them on the bed with the necktie facing down, and then he crawled into them like a snake slithering into a rabbit hole. His arms went into the sleeves first, and then his head popped out at the top. He flipped over and sat up, buttoned the collar and tucked in the shirt tails, and he was now dressed. It was an amazing thing to see. “Well… I’m ready to go into the big city”. Joel considered Madison Avenue the “big city”. God made only one Joel Beck, and after that he threw away the mold.

Joel got kicked out of school when he was about 10 or 11 years old. Being a artist he was using the walls of the boys’ bathroom as his canvas. He was doing drawings of Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Daisy fucking. They let him back into school when he promised to not do any more artwork on school property.

When Roger Brand (1943-1985) and Joel were in high school they were “teenage drunks”. Joel had a car, and they did a lot of driving and drinking. I can’t even remember some of the stories he told me. Where did they get the booze? Was it from their dad? It seems even as a kid the booze was always a part of his life.

A story Roger told me about him and Joel when they were still in high school: Joel is going to pick up his girlfriend Carol Verlinden for a date. It is night time, and Roger hides in the back seat of the car. He lies down on the floor so that he can’t be seen. Joel picks up Carol, and they are cruising along, and Joel reaches his right arm around and puts it on Carol’s right shoulder. He squeezes her shoulder for a little bit and then drops his hand behind the seat and taps Roger. Roger then lifts his hand up and puts it on Carol’s shoulder. Joel then brings his hand back around and puts it on the steering wheel. He is now driving with both hands on the wheel, and Roger is squeezing Carol’s shoulder. After a block or two, it dawns on Carol that Joel now has three hands, and she flips out. This is why I liked these two guys. Their brains operated at a different frequency than most people.

This is another story Roger told me. It is the early 1960s, and he and Joel are at a beer bash in Berkeley. It gets loud so someone calls the cops. The police give Roger and Joel a quick pat down and put them in the back of a police car. At this time Joel had this huge Jerry Lee Lewis pompadour hairdo. They had some Dexadrine pills on them and didn’t know what to do with them. Joel takes the pills and starts sticking them in his hair. When the cops get them and the other partygoers to the police station they strip search everybody and throw them all into this big jail cell. Joel sits down and starts shaking out his hair. The pills all land on the floor. They pass out the pills to their friends, and everyone sits there all night stoned on speed. The cops let them go the next day.

This is the early years… 1963-64. Through some strange chain of events, Roger and Joel ended up living in a garage. You know, like where you keep your car in the suburbs. Of course, there was no toilet. They had this huge vase that they used as a urinal. It was about four or five feet tall. Thin at the top and round at the bottom like a turnip. When they needed to take a leak they would climb up on a footstool and pee into the vase.

Knowing how much drinking they were doing, they probably were doing a lot of pissing. Somebody ratted them out, so after a while the city served them with an eviction notice. Be out by so and so day. So they call some friends to help them move. On moving day, a cop car is there, and their friends show up with a pick-up truck and another car. The street is lined with all the neighbors watching the event. You know, these are all straight clean-cut citizen types. One of their buddies who is this big strong joke football-type guy picks up the piss vase and carries it out to the street. Roger and Joel start saying to the guy “Easy. Easy. Careful. Watch out. Take it easy”. The guy sets it down on the street. and the bottom breaks out. Now this is on an incline, and the piss starts flowing down the street. All the citizens start gagging and wretching… end of story.

In 1983, I was 40 years old. Carole came to NY to run the photo agency. I hitched out to New Mexico to team up with my friend Milt, who I knew from my old beatnik days. Milt was the guy that Janis Joplin shared an apartment with the first month she was in San Francisco. They were not lovers. Milt and I jumped a freight train that took us into Barstow, California. From there we hitched up to see Roger and also an old friend of Milt’s.
A friend of Carole’s loaned us a car, and we headed over to Point Richmond to find Roger. We went from bar to bar until we found Joel. He made a couple of phone calls, and about ten minutes later Roger showed up. He looked a little worse for wear, but it was really good to see him.

When Joel saw that we had some wheels it was decided that we all would go on a mission. That mission was a trip to Rip Off Press so Joel could deliver some pages of artwork. At this time, Milt and I both had cameras, so I took some photos.

I remember so well the drive across the Bay Bridge and us just doing nothing but laughing and laughing. Roger was funny, but Joel was even funnier. It was a great trip. When Joel was outside of Point Richmond he was like a fish out of water, so we headed back. We dropped him off and came back into town with Roger and stayed at Carole’s pad with her brother. The next day we’re driving around, and a cop pulled Milt over for an “illegal lane change”. He searches the car and checks our ID and finds out that Roger has an arrest warrant for “failure to appear”. It was for some two-bit thing like jaywalking, open container or farting in an elevator. Roger gets handcuffed and hauled off to jail.

This was one of the few times I was on the road and had a lot of money on me. This was the weekend, and it took a day or two of running around to get Roger bailed out. The fine was $100, which we paid, and they cut him loose. I have never seen Roger more happy than that day when he came walking out of the slammer. We hung out in Point Richmond for a few more days, then headed up to the Russian River to see Milt’s friend. We hung there for awhile and then came back to Point Richmond. Milt really liked being with Roger and Joel. Milt was also a drinker.

Roger knew this old couple that we visited with. They were old beatniks from the 1950s and had great stories to tell about Frisco in the days before me and Milt made the scene. They had a Robert Crumb drawing that was framed and hanging on the wall. They liked underground comics, and Roger was like a guest of honor whenever he stopped in. One of the local bars still had an old faded poster of the nude Daisy Duck painting that Joel had done. He pointed at it and said, “Do you remember that one?” Then he chuckled, “The money I made off that paid my rent for three years”.

About a year earlier, Joel had gotten mugged one night and had his head split open with a lead pipe. He stumbled around town for a few hours before somebody took him to a hospital. Because of the injury, a lot of his memories were a little scrambled. He would talk about stuff we had done when he came to New York in 1962, and he had a lot of stuff mixed up. Also his memories of the time in LA with him and Roger were jumbled. I know it was head injury, not the booze.

I’m not sure who Roger was staying with, but he was homeless. Some chick said she would rent him a room at her place for $40.00 a month, so before we left I gave her the bucks for two months. I sent her money for a couple months after I got back to New York, but I think it was Joel or Paul that called and said she threw him out, so I stopped sending money. Even the sad shape Roger was in, he had not changed. His essence, his inner being was still the same as when he was young. Any time I spent with Roger was a good time, and Joel being there made it even better. Those guys were two of the best people I have ever known. I did the “Live fast and die young” thing for 20 years. I failed at it. Roger succeeded.

                                                                  --Article and photos © 2011 Tom Conroy



Above is a page from the Phil Howe/Joel Beck children's book Spouts, created 20 years ago but finally published last year. For much more about Joel and his artwork, go here. The San Francisco Chronicle ran this Kevin Fagan article about the search for Joel Beck's daughter.


Since the 1960s, Tom Conroy has run a picture rental agency, Movie Still Archives.

Labels: charles theatre, joel beck, roger brand, tom conroy

  ¶ 10:10 AM 1 comments