Coast to Coast—1973
story from memory by James Ross Kelly
AFTER THE ARMY, and college, an affair and an ensuing abortion and divorce, I made my way back home to Oregon—my middle 20s at a self-induced loss for hope. I was the opposite of the short-haired icon of modernity that I had been in the Army and post high school. I had hair to my shoulders and a beard to my chest. I went home even though you are not supposed to go home. I boarded a bus in 1973, a ‘62 GMC school bus driven by a shaggy blonde hippy. He charged $50, coast-to-coast, Boston to San Francisco via New York City, with only gas stops after New York. I had $150 in my pocket and no idea that I would never return.
I met a priest who played a flute, and an anti-war activist who had just got out of federal prison after having burned his draft card on camera and got five years. There were several amazing women, a couple of whom were housewives who had left the reservation and were on the road to look for America; there were hard-core hippies looking beyond to something else. The draft…
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