Found Writing, 2007.
So I decided to hitchhike when I was seventeen and I met this old woman in a navy blue pickup truck. I had no place else to go but north because I was done with the South. The Carolinas did me over in more ways than I care to share. Bobby didn’t make matters any better for me when I found him kissing with Charlene in the back alley behind the restaurant-that low, loose blonde from Kentucky. And here I traveled all that way to see him thinking we were in love. He took me behind a synagogue though and tried to put the moves on me, placed his arm around my shoulder and said these very words, “Kathy, I’m not attracted to you anymore, but I’m a man, see. You can’t control certain things and I’m horny as hell right now, so what do you say?” I said I needed to go, but my heart was still a heart, so of course, I stayed.
So there I was on the side of the road standing in gravel, carrying a bag, the sun lying high in the sky, cornfield surrounding, my thumb sticking out. I thought it would have been easier for a girl to find a ride, but I cut my hair off, and well, things just haven’t been working out. Well, working, just not in the way I planned.
Betty Carpenter though, I expected her to be all man rolling along in that truck. She saved me. And boy did she make the best apple pie I ever did taste. She lived at home just a few towns north of where I stood in a small one-level ranch. Her son, Charlie, raised family cattle. Pigs too. There were enough pigs to supply the world a slice of bacon. Her house smelt of damp rags and dog. I drank tea ten times a day, the coffee was always on. Betty-she woke me up, put me to work-run the cows, learn your song, feed the dogs, put the kettle on.
So there I was on the side of the road standing in gravel, carrying a bag, the sun lying high in the sky, cornfield surrounding, my thumb sticking out. I thought it would have been easier for a girl to find a ride, but I cut my hair off, and well, things just haven’t been working out. Well, working, just not in the way I planned.
Betty Carpenter though, I expected her to be all man rolling along in that truck. She saved me. And boy did she make the best apple pie I ever did taste. She lived at home just a few towns north of where I stood in a small one-level ranch. Her son, Charlie, raised family cattle. Pigs too. There were enough pigs to supply the world a slice of bacon. Her house smelt of damp rags and dog. I drank tea ten times a day, the coffee was always on. Betty-she woke me up, put me to work-run the cows, learn your song, feed the dogs, put the kettle on.