The Walls are Closing In

Have you ever had that feeling like the walls are closing in around you? Makes you feel like you are trapped with no way out. I’m always on the lookout for the walls closing in. The more aware you are, the better your chances are of positioning yourself to deal with it, as you can’t usually stop the walls closing in.

To continue my story from yesterday, I should have been more aware back then. The walls were closing in on me, and I walked right into the trap like a blind man. I doubt that I could have done anything different at the time. It turned out to be a very awareness expanding experience for me in the long run. But it was a hard path.

After correcting the fuel problem with the van, we took to the road again. Back then you could go to car parts stores and find recycled oil in 2 gallon cans. Yesterday, I incorrectly reported we were losing a gallon of oil every hundred miles, but I meant to say a quart. Our rendezvous point with K. was Fair Haven, New York, which was about 1,400 miles. So that was about 4 gallons of oil. It took awhile, our top speed was 55 mph, and we had to stop regularly to top off the oil.

There was no such thing as cell phones in 1972, and we had absolutely no way of contacting K. We had no idea if he was successful and if or when he would arrive at the rendezvous. We spent the days on the shores of Lake Ontario. At night we found a little rest area off the side of a county road. It had a picnic table and a place to park the van. Things weren’t going too badly, but food and money supplies were low and the locals were taking notice of the ‘hippies’ that seemed to have moved into their neighborhood. Unbeknownst to us the walls were closing in on us.

It was the third day, and we were becoming bored and frustrated at the indefinite wait we faced. In desperation the three of us made a vow not to sleep until K. showed up. Some how we thought that would make him show up or something. So that night we went to our usual spot and hung out in the van, waiting for K. to arrive. We didn’t find out until the next day that K. had arrived that night, but chose to stop just a couple of miles down the road from us.

The night dragged on to the early morning and we tried to keep ourselves entertained. B. was hungry and about the only thing we had in the cupboard was a can of sauerkraut. I don’t know where that came from since everyone except B. hated the stuff. He cooked up the can and had it for a snack. The foul odor was more than the rest of us could bear, so we got some incense sticks we had lying around and smoked up the place with that.

At 3:30 that morning there commenced a loud pounding on our back door. We opened the door and the sweet smelling hippie smoke wafted out into the faces of Good Cop and Bad Cop. Talk about the walls closing in, we were in for it now.