Running with Wild Horses

Running with Wild Horses The buzz about the movie "Into the Wild" had not eluded me; so on a drearily rainy Saturday I decided to invest some time in viewing it. I am glad I did. If you have not seen it feel free to read on, the ending or even a significant portion of its contents will not be divulged in this piece, although I intend to reference a brief scene from this emotionally explosive movie. It involves a scene where the lead character or really person, since the film is based on the life of a real person, finds himself running beside a herd of wild mustangs. Viewing his gleeful abandonment evoked a memory from my own boyhood. Coming of age in the catalytic sixties and turbulent seventies, and the major and minor events that defined those decades, had a profound effect on my development as a young man. Like many of that generation of baby boomers, I came to reject all authority and question all prior wisdom, unless it was written in the lyrics of a favored rock ballad. My parents were clueless and backward, my teachers were buffoons and worse, the police were knuckle-dragging Nazis, and all other adults were, in the mind of at least one sixteen year old teenager, brain dead robots bent on blowing each other up in the Cold War. In the midst of these chaotic times I decided to do the only thing that made logical sense, split to California and join the revolution (the one the Beatles sang about)! I made it as far as Amarillo. Running away was often my answer during that tumultuous time of my life. Every adult in my life wanted me to toe some line that seemed to be always moving. Make the grades; make the team; make the right friends; make your bed; etc., you get the picture. All I wanted to do was have fun and be liked by my peers but pressure from my parents and other authority figures made me want to run. Run to a place where MY agenda was paramount and where the party never ended. Most runaways never get too far from home. That is why Law Enforcement is hesitant to get involved unless some time has elapsed since the disappearance or some sign(s) of foul play are obvious. Reality, in the form of hunger, homelessness, or fear, makes the home and family they leave less reprehensible. Swallowing pride and tongue, many slink home midst tears and apologies. I know this because that was exactly the state in which I found myself every time rebellion led me to leave hearth and home for the illusory "greener grass". Amarillo is not even halfway to California from my little hometown in North Texas. However, to this teenaged boy it may as well have been China. Why I stopped there, if memory serves me correctly, was for at least two reasons. The first was because that was where the ride I had hitched dropped me on the first night of my trek to the Golden State. Secondly, I was already out of money and short on ideas on how to get more cash quickly. A truck stop with a "Help Wanted" sign seemed like a match made, well somewhere, so my mobile benefactor let me out there. The truck stop manager skeptically scrutinized the skinny runaway requesting employment, not believing for one second that he was seventeen and thus able to work without parental permission. The fact that I looked fourteen, despite being a full two years older, did not help my cause. He hired me anyway, the reason becoming quickly apparent after starting my new career washing the grease and grime off of eighteen-wheelers, by hand! Who else would do it? My dreams of revolution in the streets of Berkley, sweet southern California girls, and blissful parties on the beach (hey, I grew up watching Frankie and Annette), quickly vanished in the muck and mire of my personal truck stop purgatory. Bone-wearying, mundane work followed by infinitely lonely nights came with drumbeat regularity, to the point that California may as well have been New Zealand. That was the sad reality to a discouraged and disillusioned young man from Denton, Texas. Big adventure it turned out to be, Thoreau found his Walden Pond, I found an Amarillo truck stop. Somehow the irony failed to escape me. Fast forward to the present (with technology moving at warp speed is that phrase already archaic?) and to the purpose of this piece. Remember when you were young and almost anything seemed possible? What was your California? Were you, like me, shipwrecked in Amarillo on your way there? At a truck stop? Hopefully you were not relegated to the truck wash shop as penance for your dreams. No, I never made it to California, at least on that attempt. Yes, I have been there many times in my adult life. Whatever your dreams were; whatever nirvana looks like to you today; whether it is to swim with the dolphins; climb Mount Everest; or run with wild horses; in the words of another dreamer across the sea; "never, never, never, never, give up!" ~ Michael Edward Clearman vp