What a Long Strange Trip - July 1974

In the summer of 1974, a school mate of mine, Milton Lee and I decided to take a road trip to Los Angeles. We had the whole thing planned out - stay about every other night in a motel, and the other nights camp out somewhere in my tent. We left St. Louis and headed southwest on I-44. I forget how much cash we took with us, but it wasn't really all that much - when you think about being on the road for two weeks. We drove through Oklahoma and part of Texas that first night on the road. We ended up staying in a motel about every two nights, and the other nights we either camped out somewhere or slept in the car. We went through New Mexico and Arizona, actually staying one night in the not so big town of Winslow, Arizona - which had already been memorialized in the Eagles tune Take It Easy. Then to LA. After a few days in LA we headed back east through Nevada, Utah and Colorado.

While it was an interesting road trip, Milton and I never saw each other after that summer. We literally got sick of each other on that two week trek. We went in his Volkswagen, an automatic stick shift model, which locked up in reverse somewhere near Grand Junction, Colorado on the return from LA to St. Louis. Spent a night in Grand Junction, found a garage that could fix the car for something like $800 - but it would take a week and we were running low on cash. That wasn't the first time the VW had been trouble - it was running rough and you had to jiggle the ignition key just right or it would stop running. When I asked him if he'd gotten the car tuned up before we left St. Louis - he said no, because he knew it would need a tune up when we got back.

So Milton and I left the car, which would be retrieved by his mother the following the week and we hitch hiked back to St. Louis. Neither of us had enough for bus fare. It seemed to take forever going from Grand Junction to the eastern edge of Colorado. Each ride took us only a dozen miles or so down Highway 70.

We ran into another hitch hiker, who was headed to somewhere in Illinois and saw him a couple of times in Colorado. Then a big white Cadillac stopped to give us a ride. Inside was a businessman from Detroit, driving through St. Louis to Detroit and the other hitch hiker. He offered to take us all the way to St. Louis. It got late that night and the businessman wanted to stop and get a motel room. Although he offered to pay for a room for the three of us hitch hikers, we declined and said we'd wait at the truck stop all night. I had fears of the businessman leaving with our gear and not stopping at the truck stop to get us, but after a night of the three of us hitch hikers drinking coffee and getting silly, he showed up bright and early and we were off toward St. Louis.

Milton and I stayed a couple of days in Los Angeles at some really cheap motel. But a highlight of the trip was seeing Eric Clapton play at the Forum in Los Angeles on July 14, 1974. The Who and Clapton crossed paths a few times on tour that summer, and that night at the Forum, Keith Moon, wildman drummer for The Who, would play drums for Eric Clapton. Doing an Internet search now I actually ran across some photos of Keith Moon from that night. I remember he was wearing a hockey jersey, shorts and had athletic socks on. When he got finished drumming that night, he took the socks off one at a time and threw them into the audience.

It's a shame Milton and I never saw each other after that trip - but at the time I was pretty miffed at him for taking a half broken down VW on the road. The week his mother picked his car up, he stopped by my house with my dad's Coleman cooler and the tent, which we had been using on the trip. And that was the last time I saw Milton Lee. I had gone all through grade school and most of high school with him in the same class - but two weeks on the road killed whatever friendship we had.

I hope life has been good for Milton. I think he had a rough childhood. After July of 1974 we never crossed paths again. We made it back to St. Louis just in time for me to register for some classes at Forest Park Community College that fall. But I still remember that long strange trip from the summer of 1974. Such is life.

So it goes.