Daugherty residence, Nevada, 1981. Arden can be seen from the last downhill grade into the Las Vegas Strip. Take the Blue Diamond exit, just past a sign that reads: “Don’t Bring Drugs Into Nevada. Life Imprisonment.”

And what in the fuck is it with me that I can’t roll a straight joint?

Todd snorts. “The one from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. The one that’s gonna hire 20,000 people. The one that’s gonna pay you $1000 a week.”

Daugherty in Las Vegas, 1968. On August 24, 1968, Abby Pizer and I stood outside Hawthorne, Nevada, She was 17. I was 24. We were in love.

But I could never have become a pipeline laborer had I not begun, at age 18, my collegiate pro tour, attending 11 colleges before capturing the bachelor of arts trophy 19 years after my first, charmingly informative, junior-college orientation class.

This glory run occurred back in the days when they paid you to go to university. Oh, let us all gather ’round the camp fire and recount heroic tales of Pell Grants, NDSL loans, tuition waivers, and work-study programs. College was a national youth stipend made available by an enlightened nation to those young seekers who wished to explore our great land.

The gig went like this: show up in a town, sign up at the local university, college, or junior college, apply for every student loan, grant, and award available, circle back two months later, collect the checks, and move on. Yes, there was more to it than that — the sending of transcripts, filling out paperwork, rapt attention to application deadlines, chit and chat with university loan officers — but the guts were: show up, sign up, come back, cash in. Ultimately, I graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, on my birthday, cast out at 37 into an uncaring world.

The college I liked best and attended the longest was the above-mentioned UNLV, which, at the time of my first induction, was known as Nevada Southern University, a modest outpost of the University of Nevada, Reno. When you said NSU (go, Rebels!), it meant two classroom buildings and an administration center with the heart-tugging name of Maude Frazier Hall. The student population was 3650; the school mascot was a wolf garbed in a Confederate field jacket, the wolf wearing a military cap with a Confederate battle flag sewn on its front. More disturbing, the nearest cup of coffee was off-campus, across Maryland Parkway, in an outdoor vending machine located on the grounds of a sleazy apartment complex called Longacres.

I wound up at NSU in this way:

On August 24, 1968, Abby Pizer and I stood outside Hawthorne, Nevada, a redneck desert colony overrun with trailer-court Americana. Hawthorne is on Highway 95, part of that big empty space between Reno and Las Vegas. It was 108 degrees, and we hadn’t eaten in a day or had a change of clothes in two. She was 17. I was 24. We were in love.

Abby grew up in Columbia, a California town of 4000 in the Sierra Nevada. She was tall, 5'10", and had fire-red hair falling to the middle of her firm ass. Additional attractions included green eyes, thin, wide lips, long legs, and large breasts. These delights came with a sweet disposition and significant talents in art and piano.

We’d met the preceding spring in Los Altos Hills, California. Mom (Dad was dead), though wealthy by way of inheritance, had declined to pay tuition to a four-year college, but Abby had an aunt living in Sunnyvale, down the street from Foothill JC. Match Abby with aunt and dirt-cheap tuition, throw in a political science class, add your servant, stir, and, voilà, supremo young love.

I was then living in a $75-a-month hovel, which became, within a week, a $75-a-month hovel/love nest. At the end of spring semester, Abby, at her mother’s insistence, went home to work in a photographer’s shop, a job Mom arranged the moment she heard from the aunt that Abby was off the leash. Meanwhile, I summered on the coast of Washington, with side trips to British Columbia and Montana.

We set an August rendezvous for the Fresno airport, chosen because it was convenient to Ms. Pizer. The plan was for Abby to pick me up in her 1958 Ford Fairlane at 8:00 p.m. We’d drive to the Bay Area, where she would resume her studies, and I, reformed by the love of a good woman, would begin the epic trek to a PhD, followed by a tenured life of piano recitals and faculty barbecues.

The Fresno airport closed at midnight, and at midnight I was patrolling the empty terminal under the visual custody of two janitors. Showing the kind of initiative that, 30 years later, would find her as sole owner of rare-book bookbinding company, living in an honest-to-god Southern plantation on the shores of the Sucarnoochee River, Abby got through via telephone to one of the janitors, who walked the length of the terminal, tapped me on the shoulder, and led me into his office.

Abby was calling from her mother’s house. She reported that, on the way to Fresno, on the zigzag portion of Highway 49, a turkey had sprung onto the highway, causing her to make a violent right turn, which caused the automobile to make an abrupt acquaintance with a large oak tree. Although uninjured, she was halfway in shock. She climbed out of the car to clear her head. This was fortunate, because the Ford exploded, a hell of a fire, the police said, which reduced to ashes not only upholstery and such, but all Abby’s money, clothes, luggage, purse, and ID. Our net worth now consisted of everything in my backpack, plus the $7 and change in my pocket.

The janitors let me sleep in the terminal. I hitched a ride the next morning and made Columbia by noon.

Abby’s mother hated me. Completely understandable. If that evil strumpet were alive today, I’d tell her exactly that. I was halfway through my earnest-hippie period, with black hair flowing from my skull like a hairy waterfall. Worse, I arrived in Columbia dressed in ceremonial apparel: my patched traveling jeans. These splendid dungarees had been hand-embroidered by hippie women I’d met over the years. Regard the left knee patch and its colorful sunburst from Lawrence, Kansas. Inspect the right thigh patch and its nature scene that starred a bull moose grazing beneath snow-capped mountains of Dillon, Montana. Do not overlook the backside, particularly the right cheek area featuring an enormous full moon from Gainesville, Florida. Plus, hem to waist, a collection of mystical emblems copied from cultures either extinct or powerless.

When Mom realized I had come for her daughter, she did the motherly thing and called the California Highway Patrol, demanding my arrest on the grounds of transporting a minor for immoral purposes. Meanwhile, Abby and I slid out the front door and began a promenade, which turned into a hitchhike over the Sierra Nevada, figuring, correctly, that the Bay Area was blown. We crossed into Nevada at Devil’s Gate, which turned the crime into transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes.

My $7 was spent by nightfall. It was cold. We camped at 6500 feet, used newspapers, dirty clothes, and leaves as blankets, fed the fire, and told each other that everything was going to be all right.

It took two days to travel the 151 miles from Columbia to Hawthorne, Nevada. This was 1968, which meant we were exotica to locals. For this reason, we set up our hitchhiking post one mile south of town. I told Abby, “On all accounts, let us not excite the natives.” Aside from the odd beer can thrown from passing pickup trucks, and the deputy sheriff, who drove by every hour to order us out of town, our deployment was a diplomatic triumph.

But, the heat! Motherfucker! No shade, no wind, no trees, shrubs, or flowers. I found out later that it takes living in the desert for an entire year before you see what’s in front of you, instead of the absence of yellows, reds, blues, and greens.

That day, the universe was pancake brown, occasionally relieved by motley mesquite trees and balls of dead, dirt-gray sagebrush. Adding another layer of discomfort was the silence. No breeze blowing. No birds squawking. No water rushing. No squirrels running along tree branches or dogs walking over dry leaves. Just…nothing.

Two, three, four, five, six hours. On average, one car every 19 minutes. An automobile emerges, a black beetle on the northern horizon, then grows to the size of a child’s toy. Due to the pavement’s reflected heat, the child’s toy takes on a shimmering, liquid form. Lastly, comes the horror as that shimmering vision mutates into a gigantic, straight-from-the-magazine-ads, ugly-piece-of-shit American automobile. Often — with husband driving and wife riding shotgun — a Chrysler or Buick or Mercury would slow as it approached our redoubt, causing an explosion of hope in our hearts. We jumped up and down, like children unable to contain their ecstasy. The vehicle would crawl along at ten mph, as if entering an animal park, and, drawing alongside us, windows rolled up, air-conditioner on high, we’d witness a woman’s clean white hand reach toward the passenger door, find its lock, and ram the knob down while hubby hit the accelerator.

So, you understand why we froze when the big, black Caddy stopped. The Caddy was a hearse, with purple window curtains drawn around sides and rear, and it stood at rest 20 feet from our backpacks.

“All, fucking right!”

A double-time jog to the hearse’s front door. Stow gear and climb in, remembering to observe hitchhiking etiquette, female in the center seat, male by the passenger door. Happiness, thy name is Jarrod.

Jarrod Pridham: a blocky, blond-headed 26-year-old, 5'10" of farm boy, born and raised in Valentine, Nebraska. His dad grew corn, soybeans, sorghum, and winter wheat. Jarrod had two brothers and one sister, didn’t care for the sister much, which didn’t matter as she’d died of bone cancer six years ago. Jarrod dropped out of high school. He wanted to join the Navy but was turned down, didn’t know why, but it was all for the good, because his uncle then invited him to Las Vegas. His uncle was a cement foreman at a big construction company and said there was plenty of work and to come on out. So, Jarrod moved to Las Vegas. He never did work for his uncle, but drove a taxi for a while, went to LA and stayed with a cousin, moved back to Vegas, didn’t like sports, but occasionally followed baseball on the radio because he liked the announcer’s voice. ’Course, it was traveling that he loved. He was a traveling kind of guy, which “is why this job is so goddamn bitchin’.”

We learned the foregoing within five minutes, three minutes past the moment we understood that Jarrod was wrecked, fucked-up on speed.

At present, Jarrod worked for a Las Vegas mortuary: when a wealthy Las Vegan died out of state, he was dispatched to haul the carcass home. The carcass currently resting in the back had been retrieved from Seattle two days ago. We pieced this morsel of information together between Jarrod’s relentless monologues celebrating life on the road. “HEEEEY! You look like party people. YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE HOW MUCH PUSSY I GET IN THIS THING! I’ve partied all the way from Seattle. PARTY-FUCKING-PARTY-FUCKING- PARTY-PARTY. FUCK-FUCK!”

It’s 315 miles from Hawthorne to Las Vegas, and Abby and I counted off every one of them. We were inside a steel holding tank with a guy who’d been alone for the last 50 hours, downing speed and communing with the dead.

At the first red light in downtown Las Vegas, I flung open the passenger door, yanked Abby into daylight, likewise our backpacks, and fled across Fremont Street.

Great balls of fire! Free in downtown Las Vegas, in front of Benny Binion’s Horseshoe Casino. In the mid-’60s, you could always rake in a few bucks by spare-changing, with the caveat that such activity must occur within designated areas. Begging was a picturesque novelty in collegiate America, but get yourself 30 miles from either ocean, or four city blocks from a university, and panhandling was on a par with selling babies door-to-door.

It took 35 minutes to hustle that first bit of change. Christ, where could we find a nest of liberals in casino world? A phone booth beckoned. I picked up the directory, began turning pages and muttering, “Liberals, liberals. Where are you? There’s got to be one.” I leafed past bakers, cocktail lounges, hardware stores, optometrists, and then, “Whoa, here’s a university.”

Ring, ring, ring. A woman’s voice: “Nevada Southern University.”

Quick, what’s the most liberal department in a college? “Ah, Sociology Department, please.”

Ring, ring, ring. “Sociology Department.”

“I’d like to speak to a sociologist.”

“One moment.”

Bruce Burger came to the telephone. “Hello.”

“You don’t know me, but…” I ran down current events, and Bruce invited us to his office.

We wound up staying six weeks in his apartment in Longacres, six doors down from the coffee, tea, or bouillon vending machine. Bruce got us into school and lined up a magnificent package of NDSL loans, Pell Grants, student loans, and work-study jobs. Soon Abby and I were pulling down more money as students than we’d ever made working in the hive.

We did a couple years at UNLV, née NSU. When the first checks arrived, Abby and I moved into a cabin on Mt. Charleston. Yup, they got a mountain there. We lived at 7200 feet, saw snow from November to March, watched elk strut through stands of aspen. We bought a lumbering, underpowered, post office step-van at auction, installed a lounge chair, bookcases, books, bed, and floor rugs. We carpeted the walls. We’d drive 38 miles and descend 5180 feet to sage brush and campus in the morning, then drive 38 miles and climb 5180 feet to ponderosa pine and snow in the late afternoon. This was our desert-avoidance phase.

Six months and three blown transmissions later, we moved into an apartment a few blocks from the Tropicana Casino, and then on to Arden, a ghost town I came upon while driving through the trackless wasteland 20 minutes south of Vegas.

If you’re coming in from L.A. on I-15, Arden can be seen from the last downhill grade into the Las Vegas Strip. Take the Blue Diamond exit, just past a sign that reads: “Don’t Bring Drugs Into Nevada. Life Imprisonment.” Drive three miles west and make a left turn onto a nameless dirt road.

Arden was built in 1905 next to the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad Line. It was a railroad siding, then a railroad siding with a post office, which bloomed into a railroad siding with a post office that was also home of the Arden Plaster Company. When the plaster company shut down in 1919, Arden resumed life as a respectable railroad siding.

On the Tuesday I arrived, downtown Arden consisted of a double-wide dirt street one block long. On the east side was a crumbling warehouse with an office in front. The office provided a huge partner desk, perfect except for one missing drawer. Across the street were two dilapidated one-story wooden buildings; I guessed they’d been offices, too. One had a crushed roof, the other had no roof. In the center of town were three four-room foremen’s shacks.

Abby and I moved into the best shack, the one in the middle. I tacked clear Visqueen over window frames, installed new hinges on doors, built an outhouse, bought kerosene lamps, and rescued a wood-burning stove from a relic of a cabin 50 miles and 50 years south.

Arden was ours. At sundown, I’d stroll Main Street wearing trainman’s gray-and-white-striped bib overalls, no shirt, and Frye boots, the ensemble accessorized by an authentic Searchlight, Nevada, sheriff’s badge pinned over my chest. I’d walk to where Main Street curved into a dirt trail and watch the sun set behind the Spring Mountain Range, then follow its shadow as it raced 28 miles across the valley floor to the base of Frenchman Mountain, there to work its way upward until the last pink of sunlight shining on mountain’s peak went dark. A riveting performance made boffo when accompanied by Ms. Pizer, who practiced Debussy or Chopin or Bach six days a week on a rented piano.

Our nearest neighbor was Ralph Robson, a black-haired prune-faced man in his 60s who lived one-half mile distant in a lumber-and-tin shanty that he’d built, one scavenged board at a time, from materials retrieved from the desert. It was a peculiar, personal-looking domicile. I enjoyed the Christian exhortations spray-painted on his roof and outside walls: “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper.” “Ye Must Be Born Again.” “Repent ye, and believe the gospel.”

Our relationship was limited to a nod of the head as we drove past each other on the dirt road into Arden, and my shouts of praise when Ralph painted another burn-in-hell slogan. I’d say to Abby, “Baby, Ralph’s having himself a good day.”

So, I was surprised, on a particularly cold, windy morning in January, to see Ralph at my front door. I invited him into the kitchen and poured coffee. Ralph announced that his mother had died. I’d heard he lived with his mother.

“I’m sorry. Has it been difficult for you?”

“No, not too difficult.” Ralph explained that he’d been expecting his mother’s death and that she had passed quietly.

“Well, you must be comforted by your religious beliefs.” I studied the coffeepot and reflected on what a pompous, hack little sentence that was. “When did she die?”

“Last night.”

“Ah, nighttime.” Spoken as if nighttime was the cause of death. “I suppose you sat by her bed and prayed.”

Ralph replied that the first thing he did after his mother died was to remove her dress and cut it into neat, three-inch squares.

One heartbeat. Two heartbeats, three. “Ralph, why did you cut your mother’s dress into squares?”

“I needed toilet tissue.”

And a damn fine bit of frugal homemaking that was. But — and again, here’s the point — I could never have achieved my bachelor of arts degree had I not hitchhiked for five years.

On a hot May morning in 1970, I set sail from Arden. I’d planned a hitchhike over to Berkeley to visit friends. I kissed Abby goodbye, accepted a sack lunch of two meat-loaf sandwiches, homemade coleslaw, paper napkins, and a dozen marijuana-laced oatmeal cookies. I swung the big green Kelty backpack over my shoulders and walked out the door.

Go to Part One

Go to Part Three