the road tripp '73...final thoughts

so,it's been a while.real life demanded my limited mental resources.i'm going to re-read all the tripp stuff,then come back and write an epilogue of sorts...

ok,i've re-read the whole thing.twice.i can see there was lots of room for improvement.but thats really not the way i write.so anything i write is going to be imperfect...just like me.

i had a couple of paragraphs written a few days ago,but after looking at it i decided to toss that out and simplify things.so here goes...

a couple of major things really stood out for me.one was the sense that even tho i didn't know it at the time,this trip signified my passage into adulthood.not that i thought i was all "growed up and such",

but i was making my own decisions for better or worse and generally that worked out ok.like not letting bill drive thru the mountains in arizona.that was very wise on my part...although it could have been simple self-preservation,end result being the same.

another thing i didn't realize at the time was that most of the relatives i saw on that trip i never saw again.gramma came out a couple of times after that trip,kathy and jeff and family came out (not to see us,but to go to the olympics in '84).dan and tammy were out here in the 80s,aunt theo came out in the 90s.and dan and tammy again last fall.so,other than the afore mentiond people i never saw any of my relatives again.

bill started junior college right after we got back.didn't see much of him for a couple of months.and when i did,i was surprised as hell.he had fallen in with a group of people who today would be called preppers,the world is ending and you'd better get ready types.discovered right away he was in deep with them and so basically ended a pretty tight relationship. i lost track of him for many years.next time i saw him he called me out of the blue,sometime early 90s.he came ove to see me ,riding a full dress harley and cowboy boots.he was then involed with a "psycic netwok"and was totally enthralled with the medium who he told me was very very powerful.i nodded my head and smiled...a lot,a sure sign that steve is uncomfortable and wants/needs to exit stage right.

fast forword 15 years and my sister sends me his email address.so i figure what the hell,and emailed him.he was very pleasent and seemed glad to hear from me.i dug up and sent him that pic of me getting out of his chevy,he was very happy as he had no other photos of it.he was living in taxas with his 3rd or 4th wife,and had turned into a total texan.i could almost hear the twang in his emails.then a strange thing happened.he started sending me some very,shall we say strange emails concerning gw bush being the second coming of christ on earth stuff.now i can handle views that are fairly opposite of my own.but his stuff was over.the.top.

could not have any kind of discussion with him about anything without him veering off into some dark,very paranoid fantisies.election season 2008 sent him right over the edge,to the point where i,as politely as i could asked him to take me off his blast email address list.haven't head from him since.and,thats ok...just seems weird how people can change to the point that they are totally unrecognizable later in life.and i say that as someone who,for better or worse am pretty much the same guy i was 40 years ago

i also never saw my lady love again.we wrote,sent each other pictures.for several months after my return we wrote 2-3 times a week.then once a week.and then every other week.finally after a while she sent me a kinda sad letter stating that it was obvious i wasn't returning to michigan and that she felt i wasn't really interested in her anymore.i didn't really know how to reply...i had pretty much returned to my life pre-trip,my job and all that.i had thought i was saving money for my return to michigan...but not really.after i read her last letter i copped a 'tude . well fuck it then,why bother ? deep inside though i knew she was right . i wasn't going back anytime soon .

i kept her pictures for almost 18 years,finally losing track of them in one of my moves in las vegas.i used to look at those pictures a lot,always wishing i had done what i'd said i was going to and going back for her.i think of her quite often , even today and wonder what if? i have searched high and low on the internet for her,well except for facebook.after writing that section of my tripp posts i really really got depressed thinking about her and all that.then one day i had a thought...i was making her out to be the biggest lost love of my life,what if she didn't remember me at all ? what if this had been some one way thing from the get-go ? that gave me some comfort and allowed me to come out of that little spell of depression. i realized i was using her memory to put a face on my own general dis-satisfaction with my life . not really unhappy mind you,just didn't think life would still be such a struggle at this point.

i hope that if she does remember me it is fondly,and not with any anger.i hope that her life life turned out happy and filled with joy.and maybe,just maybe she's lucky that i did not return,thereby allowing her to be happy...we will never know now,will we ?