I drive alone. Friday, May 25, 2007 I turned onto Woodward Avenue northbound by turning right off of Eleven Mile in Royal Oak. At the bus sign, a woman stood waiting, a guitar out of a case in her hands. She was holding it by the fingerboard, both hand clasped around it. A drizzle had begun to fall, and she made eye contact with me. This was a story I had to investigate. I drove around the small block, and I pulled up behind her. Woodward is lined with small parking lots between the roadway and storefronts. I asked her if she needed a lift. Few women say yes right away for good reason. I guy offering a ride often has bad intent, and most women associate a free lift with free cheese in a mousetrap. I don't look like an ax murdered, and she asked, "Do you promise to let me out?" "Of course, I answered". So she got in, I asked her name, and she asked me to take her up to Junkyard Guitars, where she was planning on selling her only guitar, one she called junky, for cash. She didn't have much cash, and at least I saved her one to two dollars in bus fare. It was only a two mile drive, from eleven mile to thirteen mile. I imagine she got a better price for her guitar because she didn't arrive at the shop with a wet guitar. A few people rung her cellphone as we made our short drive, and she answered, "Can't talk to you now. A weird guy is giving me a ride." It's funny how the word weird shows up in my world. I took a class in large group awareness therapy, and I discovered that I show up weird in the world of many other people. She laughed when I shared this story with her, and she explained she meant 'weird' as in stranger. I show up as the stranger in the world of many other people, too. Which strikes me as odd because I am so familiar to myself.
Construction on Woodward has lined the curbs with orange and white striped barrels, hollow and plastic. She wanted me to drop her off in the curb, requiring me to stop the traffic behind me. I found a path through the barrels, and I gave her curbside service at Junkyard Guitars. She thanked me and got out. It is always a good thing with a hitcher gets out of the car. And then I turn on the radio for further entertainment.
In Oklahoma, it is legal to drive a truck with passengers in the bed of the truck. I was hanging out at the Choctaw Casino in Durant, Oklahoma. I'm out driving alone in June 2006, and so I was talking to people casually, just to keep my English fresh. A man and a woman were leaving the Casino at the same time, and I was congratulating them for winning money from the slot machines. They asked me if I had a car, and I asked them if they minded riding in the bed of a truck. They lived across from a beer and shot bar called Tiny's Bar on southwest Ninth Avenue, close to Durant's border, and I drove with them in the payload, keeping the window rolled down in case someone screamed. It was a dark road and I couldn't see the young woman or middle-aged man, both a little overweight. I dropped them off in Tiny's grass parking lot out front. They pointed at a row of low roofed efficiency apartments to show me where they lived with their new baby. I didn't ask, but she gave me a five-dollar bill, and I didn't refuse it. The two went into Tiny's instead of going home. I later spent the five to buy beer for a woman named Samantha who had been dumped by a previous boyfriend.
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