HUMAN RIGHTS FIESTA
BY UZIEGO
It’s always very difficult to remember where I was going to or coming from at this time.
It is however possible to remember the exact spot on the two lane tarmac slicing through the trees where they stopped..
It was damp and bone chilling cold as my left foot slipped in stride behind me and my right hand and thumb popped up like a toll gate, inversely receiving the oncoming vehicle. HITCHHIKING is a strange KARMIC art.
One cannot possibly appreciate getting from point A to B with any certainty having NOT EXPERIENCED utter uncertainty of HITCHHIKING.
Many times I’ve reached with eyes wide shut into the archive of my mind, trying to gently pass through the halls of memory and retrieve the first time I stuck out my thumb and began the walk down the road. Not knowing who would take me or when they would come. The road is very different when you are on it alone on foot.
We travel our whole lives in steel carriages at a mile a minute. Completely oblivious of the world that we pass through. When one is removed from the convenience of a carriage and is left back in the state of nature where your person, the elements and geography become one.
The shoulder can vary in size. On most paved, two lane, rural route roads, the shoulder would typically be 2 ½ feet or 2 cubits.
When walking upon the tarmac it’s quite easy to forget where you are going and melt into the environment through which you step. The guardrail will rise and fall slowly and lonely as you quietly pass by like a thief in the night. The cows will moo and gawk at your foolish plans to be anywhere, anytime specific.
I once walked up a road to my girlfriend’s house in the middle of an afternoon ECLIPSE.
This was in the pre-Internet era where information lived in a very animate and direct manner. People watched the news, read NEWSPAPERS and shared the news of the day directly WORD OF MOUTH. As I reached the fields that lay atop the sizable hill I marched up from the main road, the sun began to change and the sky began to vibrate. The couple dozen heads of cattle started to moo in fear and confusion. The light began to fade and the mooing turned to a roar as I slowly proceeded up the paved path to her crib. The sun would all but disappear and light would decrease to roughly 30% of full daytime light for a few minutes before slowly returning to full brightness.
We would drink pink ZINFANDEL from a jug and have awkward teen relations to ALL APOLOGIES, as KURT COBAIN had died earlier that year.
The morning when they picked me up it was gray and wet, but most likely the same hue as the day the chorus of cows cheered me on through the ECLIPSE to my hot tawdry destination.
The SILVER, two door, FORD FIESTA, signaled as soon as they saw me. This was not uncommon. Many times when you HITCHHIKE, someone will instantly see you and throw the signal to let you know that you are about to get off the tarmac and into a stranger’s car to go to an indeterminate destination.
The car slowed and pulled up next to me. I had a backpack and my skate in my hands. The guy in the front seat practically fell out of the car as a cloud of weed smoke erupted from the tiny compact. He seemed very faded and had his head down, bracing himself with his hand on the roof of the car. He said nothing. The lady in side driving said:
HEY HONEY! POP IN AN GET WARMED UP!
I threw my bag and deck into the tiny back seat and crawled in. We slowly pulled away and she turned up the EDDIE BRACKELL. She was doing this kind of HIPPIE HAND dancing type thing. It was very easy to imagine her making her whole body do the thing she was doing with her hand that wasn’t driving the car careening down the road.
The man in the front seat had his head slumped down. He lit a large spliff and hand took several large blasts from it and passed it to the lady. He coughed a bunch and she took a little baby blast of the jay.
At this time I should probably describe the man in the passenger seat.
The man had a massive head of DREADLOCKS and was wearing an army fatigue jacket. The area of VERMONT I lived in was virtually devoid of non-caucasian folk. There was a small Jamaican community there that had always worked in the many trades and artisanal things produced there.. VERMONT hosted a very large REGGAE festival for over a decade. Many of the biggest legends would come to play the GREEN MOUNTAINS because they loved it so much there. The clean air and generally friendly people appreciated the music.
I hadn’t ever seen this person before. He seemed to be in another place. I could understand being quite stoned as we drove into WOODBURY and they dropped me off at CHIAM’S house. I thanked them both and stumbled out of the car with my bag and waved. As I went into CHAIM’s house it dawned on me that I had left my skate in the car! I was really bummed. It was a junk CREATURE deck, with whatever BS wheels and trucks someone broke me off with, but it was my whip and it was now GONE.
It’s also of relevance to note that I did not live in a house at this time. Myself and my buddies lived in tents at the end of BARRE st in MONTPELIER. Squatting in a forest on town property. We decided to live as LORD OF THE FLIES people due to a variety of sad and difficult circumstances too morose to mention in this context. But it was filthy and fabulous. We would steal stuff constantly and pay to take showers at the gym downtown several times a week. This was all by choice. We were not living on the streets, begging out of some sense of teen rebellion. We lived in tents like HOBO’s because that’s what we chose to do. This of course represents an issue if someone needed to contact you because you don’t have a phone or a home to pop in and find you. Such was the way of the world in 1995.
I would hitchhike back to town from CHAIM’s house the next day, defeated.
I had lost the most important single possession in the world. My skateboard was not just an object to stand on and move from point A to B. It was a weapon I could defend myself from anyone with. It was a seat to ponder the next nefarious move. It was the friend who always wanted to hang out and do that thing over and over out of the pure joy of the pavement chatting us both up.
In the next couple of days I would continue my aimless existence of reading, eating, sleeping in the woods and hollering at the young ladies.
We did get ladies to come back to our CAMP as we preferred to call it. My mate once got down with a young lady on the hood of her car on the road below our camp. I was not around, but our slightly OFF buddy was. When our frisky friend returned to camp, head high like a goddamn stallion,,our OFF MATE said:
OH MY GOD!! I’M SO GLAD THAT YOU’RE HERE! I THINK THAT SOMEONE WAS GETTING RAPED DOWN ON THE ROAD!!!
My other mate stepped back and lit a cigarette in his long boney digits.
NO JIMMY. NO ONE WAS GETTING RAPED ON THE ROAD. THAT WAS JUST ME AND MY FRIEND.
The days were getting warmer and I was restless without my skate instantly. It was one of the first times I learned to put away a feeling of regret so that it didn’t consume me.
But then the magic thing happened…
I was standing in the sunshine in front of the library. I heard a voice call out something,
RUDE BWOY!!!
I saw a blur of someone running toward me.
The DREADY man approached me with a huge smile and my skate in his hands. He spoke to me in a stew-like accent that crackled and popped.
RUDE BWOY! YOU DONE FURGOT YA SKATE!!! BLESS UP INTO THE LIGHT YOUTH!!!!
And just like that we hugged and he walked away. I remember the smell but I cannot describe it. I was so blown away that I had lost and then found my skate. I was so thankful to the kind stranger and his lady for seeing me and returning it. It felt like good karma. Much like the good karma one feels when the silver FORD FIESTA signals and pulls over on a cool gray morning..
I was awestruck by this that I simply pushed this moment into the ether of memory.
I had a thought while I was in the back seat of the car with the couple who returned my skate. I wondered ever so briefly before completely dismissing the notion, that the man reminded me of HR, HUMAN RIGHTS, the iconic frontman of the BAD BRAINS. Even as I sat in the back seat it seemed completely impossible and I dismissed this idea almost instantly. Surely the man was just another fellow who happened to have huge DREADS, many of the men from JAMAICA in VT had huge dreads.
I would watch the doc about JOSEF, HR many years later and have a shocking revelation. In a key moment in the story, after things went into a bad direction with HR and the band, he took a hiatus. He went and hid out in VERMONT.
I’ve never verified this with JOSEF himself, but it seemed that even through the fog of memory and the many many times I’ve smashed my head into the pavement that I am certain.
We all lose things and find things sometimes. We all move from point A to B and usually know roughly when we will get there. I know many people in my life who are not capable of stepping out of the shower let alone the front door with such uncertainty.
But in my heart of hearts, with great certainty that JOSEF HR returned my skateboard to me on a sunny day in 1995.