"When Empty, Return to Camden, New Jersey"©     "The Ride" a short story set in Camden the night MLK was killed, - By Michael McAteer
I woke up to America when I was fourteen, the morning after my ride with the good souled madman who slept at the wheel of his speeding gasoline truck.

It was a short hitchhike from the southwest corner of Virginia, where I had slept soundly in the woods my first night on the road, to the south-east corner of Tennessee, where Gods best intentions, expressed in natural beauty, met mans worst intentions, in the spring of 1967. The too often ugly nature of man, expressed in the treatment of his fellow man, was staged in force, in the Negro shotgun shack village in the shadow of the grand Chattanooga rail-yard.

As I hitchhiked, I kept my head high and my thumb low, as instructed, and survived the inquisitive glances of a number of police representing all jurisdictions. It took over a dozen rides of a dozen type to get to Chattanooga. I only accepted rides under fifty-miles, based on the last road sign I had seen, always wanting to appear as a local, and not a runaway a thousand miles from home. I tried to imitate the Southern drawl so I would appear as a native to everyone that picked me up. The Southern accent was so thick and differentiated from the Northern in 1967 that they seemed almost like two different languages. I not only couldn't understand what was being said to me, I wasn't even sure of what I was saying back to them, after I added on my own version of their dialect.

I would catch a ride, hop in, the driver would say something that I figured meant, "Hello, where are you going?" and then I would tell him, based on the last road sign I had seen, in my version of the drawl he had used. The first and only reaction I ever got was a perplexed look on the driver's face that said:

"What the fuck?"

I would repeat it in a reworked fashion, receive a variation of the same look with a "huh?" or"come 'agin?" We would go back and forth trying to understand each other. I was intent on getting this Southern thing down. I don't know what confused them more, my Northern accent or my attempt to sound familiar. After awhile I realized most of them thought I was mildly retarded, and this could work to my advantage. After all, if I could communicate I may have said the wrong thing and given myself away. So after that, I practiced seeming retarded along with my Southern accent whenever I got a ride. That would end the talking game, as the driver would quickly conclude: "Oh, I see, you have a problem." And I would nod back dumbly. "Uh-huh." I never thought it was right to make fun of the mentally retarded. After awhile, I felt guilty, as if I was doing exactly that. So I scaled back my act to being an imbecile, which worked just as well.

I knew railyards, having grown up in Cramer Hill, a neighborhood in Camden, New Jersey, sandwiched between a switching yard and the Delaware River. Many a lonesome caboose I did raid, stealing blasting caps, Playboy magazines, and bottles of liquor that I would sell or trade to the older boys. A big event in Cramer Hill was when a "Miller Beer" boxcar would roll through the neighborhood. The Miller beer people, in all their marketing wisdom, had designed their boxcars to look like actual six-packs of beer. They stood out so sharply, you could see them while they were still in Philadelphia, approaching the bridge to New Jersey. They arrived at a somewhat irregular schedule, but a cumulative sixth sense would develop throughout the neighborhood. Someone would say:

"You know, it's been awhile since there was a Miller train around."

Talk like that would increase in frequency until it got to the point where boys would take turns at a post on the thirty-sixth street bridge watching the Philly side of the Delaware. As shifts would change, blasting caps would be handed off. When the squinting lookout spotted the Miller boxcar, he would excitedly race down the tracks toward the approaching train, still a few miles away. He would wrap the blasting caps over the tracks and race back to the Hill. Ten or fifteen minutes later the exploding caps (which were actually quarter sticks of dynamite designed to warn engineers of trouble ahead) boomed through Cramer Hill like thunder, alerting everyone that today was "Miller Day", free beer for all. Young men and boys would race to the tracks and cover the slowing boxcar like monkeys. It became a very highly developed, systematic heist over the years, since the blasting caps notified the authorities also. The boxcar had to be emptied in two minutes or less. A gang of strong boys up top would support a chain of other boys hanging upside down over the door; the last boy had the bolt cutters. Whenever the twisted spikes through the latch got bigger, the bolt cutters just got bigger. No matter what Miller security came up with, the Cramer Hill boys outsmarted them. They would cut the door lock on one side, then hang over the other side and cut that lock. Different monkey teams slid the doors open; others would jump in and feed cases of beer to runners on each side. As much or more beer was dropped and smashed in the process, but there was always enough to go around. More than one Camden cop had been spotted over the years carrying cases of Miller into his house on Miller Day. I don't know how many Miller cars made it through the Hill undetected over the years, but enough didn't that eventually the marketing department at Miller changed their policy, denying future generations of Hill boys the excitement of Miller Day.

As I approached Chattanooga, I could sense the big rail junction out there, and homed in on it. It was a bustling one, with trains banging and hooking up all over. The numerous shacks that filled in the unused portions of the rail-yard were constructions of throwaway any material that could be stuck together any somehow. These weren't temporary hovels, but homes, you could tell, that had been lived in for years, and maybe generations. Some had gaps wide enough to see through one side and out the other. Virtually all had hanging cloth for doors, and pot-bellied woodstoves inside. Everything inside was covered with the black stove soot, and everything outside was black from the locomotive soot. I saw the wide-eyed black faces of all ages peering fearfully through the cracks at me. It was a sad, eerie feeling.

I walked between the lines of boxcars and read the shipping instructions posted near the doors: "WHEN EMPTY RETURN TO ALBANY, NY", "WHEN EMPTY RETURN TO CHICAGO" "WHEN EMPTY RETURN TO ROANOKE, VA." No good. I needed an empty going south or west. This was a very active "switching yard" where boxcars are coordinated, integrated and lined up to form trains. Active means a lot of workers and a lot of eyes, and I began to feel watched. So I wandered out of the yard and into downtown. I was starving and feeling desperate anyway, a situation that had to be resolved before all others.

I didn't know whether to beg or steal. I noticed a kid, maybe fifteen or sixteen standing on a corner, the most potentially sympathetic ear around.

"Excuse me," I said, "I'm just travelling through and I was wondering if…"

"Beat it" he snapped at me.

"I'm sorry, I just…"

He looked cross. He was really fidgety, puffing down a cigarette in a hurry and swaying, looking around.

"Boy, you can't be here when the guy gets here. Get the hell out of here."

"Guy? What guy? I'm just…."

He leaned in my face. "Beat it or I'm going to beat the shit out of you." I backed off and walked away.

I was starving and feeling too impatient to beg. Across from the train station was a greasy spoon luncheonette. I went in and ordered three large cheeseburgers with everything and three large fries. The waitress, done up like a little girls doll in high-heels, didn't seem to have a problem understanding me. It was a place where locals and lay-overred train travelers mixed. I approached a man in greasy mechanics coveralls who was leaning on his elbows and taking big bites out of his sandwich. His hair hung down into his face and he needed a shave.

"Excuse me. I was wondering why all the shacks in the railyard don't have doors?"

He looked at me curiously and said, "You talk funny boy. You from up north?"

"Yeah," I answered with nervous honesty.

"What you doing here? Changing trains?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Where up north?"

"Pennsylvania" I lied.

"You got a big Nigger problem in Pennsylvania 'cause you let them live anywhere they want. See, that railroad yard ain't zoned for housing. If we let them Niggers start putting up doors and patchin' up things, they'll get a little too comfortable. And once they got doors and plumbing, they'll think they can live anywhere. And then they'll get uppity, and then they'll get pushy, and then they'll think 'they as good as white people… Well you see all the trouble it could start."

"But they must get awful cold in the winter."

"What are you boy, some kind of Negro loving troublemaking Freedom Rider or something?"

It seemed like a trick question. He looked me over hard as I considered my answer.

"No, you're too little to be a Freedom Rider. What are you fourteen, fifteen?"

This trip was aging me fast. "Fifteen" I said boldly.

A man of a similar type bellowed from the back of the restaurant. "You're lucky you ain't no Freedom Rider or we would have hung you by now. Get your burgers and get your little commie' ass back to Pennsylvania." Everybody laughed.

The waitress returned with my order in a greasy white bag.

"Honey, that will be one dollar and sixty-three cents" she said.

Time stood still. I had not one red cent. I looked at her beehive hairdo with the pink paper tiara and white paper lace trim, fixing my stare on the "Bo's Burgers" logo. Slowly I took the bag from her hand. I looked at the guys eating. I looked up at the light fixtures. I looked out the window. I looked at the door. I looked back at her, and at the precise moment she realized I wasn't going to pay, I turned and ran my ass off down toward the freight yard.

She ran after me on her tiptoes, cursing me and screaming for the cops, and got spun like a turnstile by the guys chasing after me.

Being fourteen, small and agile, I had the advantage. I rolled quickly under and out train after train, whether moving or still, made no difference to me. But the chase did cause a stir, and no sooner would I loose one bunch of guys then another would be on my tail. I kept low, scurrying under and alongside boxcars. I could see the legs of men moving from all directions towards me. I saw their faces peering under, occasionally locating and losing me. They shouted back and forth, like the excited bark of Hell Hounds. I felt the noose tightening around my neck. I rolled out from under a train and right into the heart of the Negro shotgun shack village. It was laid out crazily. I didn't know which way to turn through the maze. I crouched down low and ran the path of least resistance, my sleeping bag dragging and bumping. I stumbled as I began a sprint, tumbling through a rag blanket door, falling over furniture in the middle of a room.

I terrified a poor old man who jumped up and ran backwards into a wall, almost bringing the entire shack down. (That's why they called them "shotgun shacks," because one blast from a shotgun could bring the whole place down.) He held a fireplace poker in his hand, ready to defend himself, and shook like a leaf. I was afraid he was going to have a heart attack. I couldn't go back outside. I tried to calm him.

"It's okay, it's okay. I'm a Freedom Rider!" I assured him.

I gained a little trust. He looked at my greasy sack of burgers. He was at least as hungry as I was. I handed him a burger, as he looked worried through a crack at the posse closing in. The old man got busy. He moved some stuff and ushered me behind it, then covered me up.

"They kill Freedom Riders", I heard the old man say. I thought maybe saying I was a Freedom rider wasn't such a good thing to say after all. Outside a cop sniffed the air and entered.

"Where did you get that burger boy?" I heard him insist with authority.

My protector's voice shook with terror.

"A white boy ran by and dropped it sir."

"Nigger, that's stolen property. You know how long you can go to jail for receiving stolen property?

"Oh, please suh…"

"Give me that" I heard the cop say meanly. "That's evidence." The cop snatched it out of his hand, bruising the old mans spirit.

I heard the paper unraveling and the cops stuffed mouth mumble, "If that white boy comes by here again, you bettah'….mmmmm, this is a good burgah'!"

"Come on out. Big boss is gone," my new friend whispered.

He looked sadly at my burger sack. "Here. Have another. I've got plenty." I gave him French fries too. We relaxed and lunched together.

"So you's a Freedom Rider!" he exclaimed, impressed.

"That's right," I said, wondering what a Freedom Rider was. I didn't want to disappoint him.

"Do you know Martin Luther King?" he asked wishfully.

"Yes, I do!" I said convincingly, suddenly choking on my fries and my lies.

"Lordy, Lordy, Lordy!" he reached around and picked up a framed portrait photograph of Martin Luther King and gazed at it with warm affection and awe.

"What's he like up close?" The old man was energized and full of childlike wonder.

"Well….,well, uh. Well, he's like.., like he's in this world, but, uh, not of this world. Jesus, I don't know, it's kind of hard to…well yes, that's what I mean, he's…he's just like Jesus!" My face grew hot as I realized I would burn in Hell for this one. But oh, I had somehow said the right thing. All the sweetness and hopeful dreams of this kind old man dripped out onto me like chocolate syrup on vanilla ice cream.

"Just like Jesus! I knew it, I knew it!

What a liar I was turning into. I couldn't help but enjoy the pleasurable vision I gave him. He rocked back and forth in pure ecstasy, and held that picture of Martin Luther King close to his heart.

"You stay here tonight. My guest. Its Saturday, that means good times tonight. You'll like the people here. They's never seen a Freedom Rider before, but we pray for y'all all the time."

"I'd love to stay here. I'll stay here as long as you want me to."

He brightened, turned and put the portrait of Martin Luther King back in it's sacred place, next to a picture of John F. Kennedy, turned the other way and picked up a jar of moonshine. He filled two glasses and handed me one. With second thoughts, he took the glass out of my hand.

"How old are you anyway?"

"Old enough!" I said.

"You sure don't look it."

"I know. I got a glandular problem. Its called…delayed puberty. I know I look like I'm fourteen don't I? Ha! Ain't that funny?" I laughed and snatched the glass out of his hand.

He seemed doubtful but raised his glass: "To the Promised Land!"

"To the Promised Land!" I responded. I couldn't get past the smell and pretended to take a sip. He chugged his down. I had tried to drink whiskey before, tapping my father's bottles, but found it too harsh. But I was determined to find out what it was like to get drunk. I figured it must be worth getting past the taste, since every man I ever knew got drunk every chance he got.

"Ahhhhhh…." He moaned, savoring his drink and poured himself another. The sun was going down and lovely orange streaks of sunbeams cut across the room. One crossed his face and for a second he looked like gold. I became increasingly aware of Saturday night coming to life, with neighborly conversation and music. Just like home, Cramer Hill. I realized this was the first black person I had ever had a conversation with. In Cramer Hill, blacks were talked about like a plague. Not a single Black person ever lived in the Hill, or ever even dared enter it, so vehemently repugnant were they viewed. "What was the fuss?" I wondered, mystified.

He told me his story. His name was Morgan. When he was a young man, in Alabama, he was accused of whistling at a white girl in town. A lynch mob formed. He went wild, fought his way out with his sledge-hammer like fists before the crowd got too big, and fled into the Talahachi woods, where he fished and lived off the land for eleven years. He tried to make it north several times, but always got picked up and jailed on some trumped up thing or another, from vagrancy to robbery. But they never found out his real name, and that he had supposedly whistled at a white girl, or he would have been hung. For a Black man in the South, that was a capital offense.

"That poor Emmett Till, he didn't know the ways of the South. If he did, he would never have whistled at that white girl."

"That's right," I said.

" After they did what they did to Emmett Till, I was afraid to be anywhere except where a black person was allowed to be. I was right here in this Chattanooga freight yard when I heard about Emmett, saw the picture of his body, and I've been afraid to leave ever since.

While playing like I knew about Emmett Till, I found out that Emmett Till was a black teenager from Chicago who whistled at a white girl while visiting his aunt in Mississippi for the first time. A white mob took him prisoner and he was beaten to death. The boy's uncle managed to get the body out of Mississippi before the Sheriff could have it and the evidence destroyed. He took it back to Chicago where his mother gave him an open coffin funeral. He had been beaten so badly he was not recognizable as human. She displayed the cruelty of what was done to him for the entire world to see. Six hundred thousand people viewed his body. After international publicity, the two principal killers were put on trial. They attempted to justify the murder to the court by saying they only wanted to scare Emmett Till when they took him away, but after he refused to repent for whistling at a white girl they had no choice but to kill him.

"What else could we do?" said one of the killers during the trial. "Till was hopeless. I'm no bully; I've never hurt a nigger in my life. I like niggers in their place. I know how to work'em. But I just decided it was time for a few people to get put on notice".

The jury agreed and set the men free.

"Oh yeah. I thought about trying to get up North many times. I would see these open boxcars rolling by saying, "WHEN EMPTY RETURN TO CINNCINATTI" "WHEN EMPTY RETURN TO BOSTON", but then I thought about Emmett."

The good-time din of partying was rising over the shacks. Morgan rose.

"I'm going to tell everyone we got a Freedom Rider here."

"No don't!" I tried to stop him but he just went on. It was tough enough keeping a tale straight for one person.

"Damn it!"

I looked at the glass of moonshine. "Well, here goes!" I put it to my mouth, pinched my nose and swallowed it in one Olympian gulp. I caught fire inside then out, gagged and jumped around in a St. Vitas dance. "Arrrggghhhh! Yuk! I swore I would never do that again. After awhile I started to feel pretty good and had another. I heard giggles and saw the faces of curious children spying on me. The word was out: There was a Freedom Rider in town. I staggered out to find my friend, and headed for the glow of a bonfire, where people danced, sang and played music.

As I walked, people sized me up and mumbled about the credibility of my story, relevant to my age, which was obvious to many. As I wandered high on moonshine, I stopped dead in my tracks:

"Wow! What the hell kind of music is this?" It was the first time I had ever heard Blues music. It was a religious revelation; an epiphany. It just grabbed me and sounded so good it gave me goose bumps on my arms and ran chills up and down my spine. I impulsively went into a spontaneous moonshine fueled dance, and Blues waltzed my way to the band. The crowd, many of whom had their own jars of moonshine, parted for me, and yelled "Go Freedom Rider, Go!" I would never dance at a party before, but I was liquored up and loose as a goose.

The band was a group of wise looking, big strong men, made of rocks instead of flesh and bone. They sang about good-looking women, ugly women, hard work and low pay, and how they expected to be free of one thing or another someday. They did it with a rhythm and beat that made suffering sound worth it if it made music this sweet. The next song was about women bringing their shoes to a particular shoemaker to have them stretched for a better fit. It was loaded with sexual innuendo; in fact, it didn't take me long to figure out the song had nothing to do with shoes at all. The next song was about a dog crossing the tracks. A train came along and cut off a piece of his tail. He turned around to look for it and another train came by and cut off his head. He was just one more fool who lost his head while looking for a piece of tail.

During a break in the music, the harmonica player looked at me while he was saying something to the band. They all studied me and nodded slowly in agreement. With a serious look on his face, the harmonica player, "Howlin' Jack" they called him, fingered me ominously and said, "Come here boy." I approached this Herculean circle with trepidation. He grabbed my forearm and rubbed it hard with his other hand.

"You sure you ain't Black under there?'

Everybody laughed. "No I ain't sure," I said.

"I want you to try something," he said. He handed me a harmonica and walked me over to Big Joe Fishman, the lead guitar player.

"Tap the beat of the last song we just played with your finger on Big Joe's guitar".

I did it, exactly as they played it.

"Now blow in the third hole of that harp, that same beat with your breath, just like you tapped it on the guitar".

I did it; just like they played it, the crowd howled, and man I thought I was pretty cool. Howlin' Jack turned to the band with delight and said, "See, what I tell you. The boy's a natural!"

I beamed proudly.

"Whoa now, whoa now. There's more to it than that. Blow air into the third hole, suck air out the third hole, blow in the fourth and draw in the fourth, and tap your foot as you go," instructed Howlin' Jack.

I did it.

"Yeah, alright, alright. Now do it again, but blow out the fifth hole, hold it, then do it over and over again, third to fifth, third to fifth, up and down backwards and forwards, tap that foot and hang with us. Hit it boys".

They went into a straight Blues and damn if it didn't sound like I was playing it too!

We went at it, and I noticed I was making an impression on some of the teenage girls, some were giving me "the look". I didn't need any Blues song with sexual innuendo to fill my head with erotic visions. I had been having "wet dreams" for almost a year now, and just seeing the word "girl" printed on a piece of paper was enough to give me an erection. I was inexperienced, but yearning always for a girl. I went back into the crowd, took a sip of somebody's moonshine and started dancing with one girl named Tina, about sixteen, whose curvy body and sweet big eyes had been distracting me since I came on the scene. I tried to lead her away but she was resistant.

"You're just a young boy. I can't be with no little kid," she laughed.

She was hitting the moonshine herself. "Please, I just want to kiss you, that's all," I begged. With every sip of the liquor her resistance to me lowered. Eventually we wound up lying on the floor together in somebody's empty shack. She let me kiss her; she kissed me back. Our kissing became heated, and I reflexively started to hump her leg and grind myself into her. "Stop that!" she would say, less irritated every time.

My excitement was ruined momentarily when I thought of my neighbor Patty's little dog back home that would hump on everybody's leg and pant like a furry little maniac. I hated that dog.

Now here I was, peach-fuzzed little dog, humping on somebody's leg. And I couldn't stop. I didn't care if she discovered I hadn't developed yet. Every time I tried moving my hand under her blouse or up her dress she would stop me cold. Since she restricted me to kissing, I kissed her every place I could. When I started kissing her ear, everything changed. The pace of her breath quickened, she moaned and arched her back. I knew I was onto something, and I intensified my attention to her ears, with proportional results. I stroked her belly gently, then surreptitiously slipped my hand under her blouse and over her breasts. I shuddered with sensual delight. She was writhing every which way, and I sensed the tide had turned in my favor. But I paced my moves, checking her reactions to each one, as I determinedly worked my way toward the magical, delicious prize that had monopolized so much of my waking and sleeping moments for almost a year now. When I slowly slid my hand up her thighs and found it, the sensation that rippled through me surpassed my greatest expectations. She taught me how to make love, and then we both fell asleep, in each other's arms, to the smoky slow Blues music that had brought us together.

In the morning when I awoke, Tina was gone. It was Sunday morning and I awoke to a chorus of angels; a makeshift open-air church was set up near where the band had been. I wandered out to find over a hundred dignified churchgoers, in their Sunday best, singing old spirituals with all their hearts. I felt good, and wanted to give praise too, especially for the wonderful previous evening. As I approached the gathering, many eyed me suspiciously. A couple of elders stopped me before I could get too close.

"Look at yourself boy. You slept in those clothes, you need a bath and you've got liquor on your breath! I don't care if you are white; you can't approach the Lord's House in such filthy condition. Go On!'

Embarrassed, I staggered on to Morgan's shack. He had grits and biscuits on the stove.

"You sure had yourself a good-time last night!" he laughed.

I surely did. Yessir, I surely did."

I stayed on at Morgan's for another three weeks, mostly to take daily harmonica lessons from Howlin' Jack. I found out that the moonshine drinking, Blues loving residents of this shantytown were really a tiny minority of the population. The churchgoers were the majority. It was a community of temperate, hard working people. There were rules of conduct. Tina was forbidden by her parents to come near me; she was being punished. Oh how I ached for Tina.

No one but Morgan believed me about being a Freedom Rider. To him Martin Luther King was the Messiah, and I was one of his prophets, and no one had the heart to tell him any differently. No one challenged me; everyone remained friendly.

As I got to know the place better, I became aware of the many beautiful handcrafted objects of art; quilts, wood carvings, fancy walking sticks, clay sculpture, paintings, ornamental iron work and basket weaving. Most of the raw material was throwaways found in the freight yard. There was a large community of craftsmen who seemed to have a knack for bringing the novel out of the ordinary. Spontaneous creativity continually combusted, from the music, to the art objects, and within the speech and dance of everyone. The black soot that seemed to cover everything when I first arrived melted from my perceptions like snow in the sun. All was color.

I watched in amazement as circles of industrious women wove baskets from pine needles, swamp cane and corn husk. No two were the same; each piece represented the feelings of the creator at the moment. They created all shapes and sizes: round, oval, scalloped, bowl, and gourd, dyed in different colors to create intricate patterns. When I was curious about where an artist got the idea for a piece, often the answer was something like:

"In a dream I had last night."

"I played with it until what was inside came out."

"The spirit moved me that way"

Cramer Hill seemed drab in comparison. But I knew I couldn't stay here. It was just a matter of time before my presence caused a problem, either with the cops or within the community. The night before I decided to leave I heard a heated argument break out amongst a group of young men, that wasn't about me, but might have consequences for me later if I stayed:

"Fuck Martin Luther King and his love thy enemy bullshit. I'm gonna hop a train to Oakland and join the Panther's. I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees."

Yes, it was time to leave. When I told Howlin' Jack this would be my last lesson, he was sad about it, but he knew it was coming. He had a present for me, a "special" harmonica. "I had a witchy woman in Mississippi put a spell on this harp for me. It will play out of tune if there's a cop on the train. I want you to have it. When you get out there and them white boys ask, you tell them Howlin Jack taught you to blow." We shook on it and I headed over to Morgans.

Morgan tried to talk me out of leaving. The old man and me took a true liking to each other. I said the only thing I knew that would get him to give up.

"Morgan, I'm a Freedom Rider. I've got to ride."

"I guess you do, I guess you do" he quietly, sadly, agreed. "Is Dr. King gonna come to Tennessee soon?" he wanted to know.

"I don't know exactly where or when, but I did hear him say he's just got to get to Tennessee" I lied.

Morgan pondered.

"I'll bet he won't come to Chattanooga before he goes to Nashville. No, he wouldn't go to Nashville before he goes to Memphis. Yep, that's where I'll bet he'll go, to Memphis! I would hop a train to see Dr. King in Memphis!" Morgan declared. "Are you going to be there too Colm?"

"You betcha I'll be there."

"Well, then Colm, look for me when Dr. King comes to Memphis"

"You know I will." I thanked him for everything and headed into the freight yard, looking for my next south or westbound. I had no luck, so I started hitchhiking again.

The next morning I woke up in a tool shed on the edge of a Georgia farm. It was a lovely morning and my spirits were high, but I was hungry. I walked up to the farmhouse and tried to look as hungry as possible. I knocked on the door, and a kindly white lady in an apron answered.

"Excuse me miss. Is there a restaurant around here? I'm huunnnngry!

She flicked her hand at me as if to say, "What a stupid question!"

"Honey, there ain't no restaurants around here. Set down right here on the porch, I'll feed ya'"

Just like that. It was that easy. Southern hospitality for real. I had eggs, pancakes, sausage, bacon, potatoes, milk, toast and orange juice. Before I left she packed a sack of sandwiches and banana's for me and sent me on my way, no questions asked.

In Alabama I pulled my thumb in as I walked by a chain gang covered by shotgun wielding prison guards on horseback. It was a sorry sight. The chained men looked at me with pleading eyes. I looked back at them in a way I hoped would tell them my heart was with them, and that I knew most, if not all of them, were guilty of nothing except being born black in the south, as they labored under the hateful eyes of the palace guards.

I sneaked through Mississippi uneventfully.

Outside of Ruston, Louisiana, a group of rich white boys cruising the back roads and sipping wine from wineglasses (instead of passing the bottle around like normal people) gave me a ride. They were so enthralled and intrigued by my situation that they sort of adopted me and let me live in their frat house at Louisiana Technical Institute, where they were taking summer classes.

They let me have the run of the place. Even gave me my own room. They took me everywhere: to parties, fishing with them, sporting events.

One Saturday night four of them let me come to a poker game with some locals in a house out in the boonies'. There were four rough looking characters completing the game. Everyone, even the college boys, had a pistol packed in their belt. The room was thick with cigarette and cigar smoke. The drunker everyone got, the more frequently they accused each other of cheating.

Every now and then someone would get pissed off at someone, aim their gun and threaten to shoot the person. Then everyone would talk the gunman down, tensions would ease and they would resume playing.

At one point everyone was up at the same time, and each was pointing a gun at someone while someone was pointing a gun at him. They were screaming in each other's faces. I tried to slip out the door. One of the grizzly locals said, "Sit down pipsqueak or I'll shoot you too."

Eventually everyone calmed down and the game resumed. It went on until sunrise and then just fizzled out, with everybody parting as friends.

The guys at the frat house said I could stay there until regular classes started up again in September. I was delighted. But after a few weeks everything broke down. During a party one night, a couple of engineering students loaded the civil war cannons on the lawn with cement filled beer cans and started blasting holes in the wall of the gymnasium three-hundred yards away. I fled out the back door just as the campus cops were raiding the place and I never came back.

I made my way down to New Orleans and blended in with the always-accepting low-lifes. A couple of skanky but kindhearted hookers developed a maternal concern for me and let me stay with them. They themselves had run away at a tender age.

But this world was more seediness than I could stand. It only took a week for wicked old New Orleans, with its hustlers and con-artists, some younger than I, to wear me out. I went to the railyard to look for a westbound, for I had run completely out of south. I was happy to be getting out of the south, and the subterranean world I had managed to slither my way through.

I walked between a long row of trains, reading the labels for something west. Nothing. I walked on and on. I was feeling beat and drained from being on the run. I was lonesome and missing my brother and sisters. I dragged my tired lonesome self on, checking boxcar after boxcar. It was all starting to catch up with me now. One label caught my eye and stopped me dead in my tracks. I thought about it, but knew I had to get in. I had nothing left inside me, I was spent. I climbed in, lay down on my back, closed my eyes, and waited for the train to roll. Outside the door the label read: "WHEN EMPTY RETURN TO CAMDEN, N.J."