When I hitchhiked from L.A. to Alaska, I ended up in Texas, part 1

(My Life Story, continued) 

The airport was just one little building, with two or three ticket counters along one wall then a waiting area that was one room. So I did not blend in as I thought I would when I decided to spend the night there.  I tromped in through the automatic glass door, dust in a cloud around me from head to toe and tried to act like I belonged there, was just waiting for a later flight. As I entered, the noise of people talking became noticeably less noisy, to my left and right people who looked foreign to me stared at me while trying not to stare.

This was my first encounter with the population of humans just north of Los Angeles. The glares coming at me from the sprinkling of humans in the Santa Maria Airport in 1970 were not welcoming. It was also one of my first encounters with humans who hated people like me on sight, our long untended hair- me now showing up with a backpack almost as big as me and bedraggled.  
All eyes were on me once I entered the waiting area. I curled up on a plastic chair, pulled out a book, and made myself comfortable. It did seem, though, that there was less and less activity in the area. Then the PA voice announced the arrival of last flight of the night, after which the airport would be closing. I popped back up, said to whoever was near me, "What? The airport is closing?"

A woman with a hairstyle she must have gotten in the same beauty shop for 25 years was very close to me and said, yes, this airport closes at 11 PM. Her tone told me it was something she'd been wanting to say to me for the past hour. She eyed me up and down, all my gear. The few people left in the little airport. all seemed to be trying to tell me, there's no more flights and the doors are about to lock. 
I think I mumbled, "whoever heard of an airport that closes at night" as I gathered myself up and left.

Out the door, now where was I going to sleep.  In front of me was a vast flat field. Looking on Google Maps today, I can see it was about 1.5 miles back to the highway where the 1 branches off from the 101 and heads to Big Sur. When I left the Integral Yoga Institute in Burbank earlier that day and started my trip to Alaska at the Barham onramp getting in and out of cars heading North, I thought I'd get to Big Sur in time to set up a campsite. I had pans and water containers and bags of food along with many changes of clothes and even a portable typewriter jammed into the monstrosity on my back that I'd bought at an Army Navy Surplus store on Western Avenue just days earlier. 

Little development had taken place yet in Santa Maria in 1970, so from the airport back to the highway it was all open space. I ended up sleeping in a pipe that night.  Walking back toward the highway, I came to a strip where massive pipes lay waiting to be placed underground as humans began to build the miasma of suburbs you see there today, where houses and elementary schools and animal clinics fill the land today between the municipal airport and the 135.  I don't think there was even a 135 then, it was all open space, nothing but these massive pipes for future construction, maybe of the 135.

I crawled into one and could finally relax, pulled out my sleeping bag, a radio and food from my pack and waited for sunrise.  

For hours, I chewed on raw cashew nuts and raisins, organic, in little bags from one of the early organic grocers in L.A.  If you chew raw cashews and raisins together, the flavors and textures blend in such a satisfying way, I realized, as I sat up in my sleeping bag, dry mud beneath me, no humans for miles around, chewing. Then I slept and was up at sunrise on my way to Big Sur.