OK, this is a weird one that I'm trying to make a little less weird by giving you the complicated back-story.
Christmas of '77 was roaring at me like a visit from a herd of stomping riendeer, and not the friendly Donner and Vixen kind. First one in my life where I'd be truely alone.
A few months earlier my forever-more had taught me that forever can be pretty damn short as she carried her bags out the door and drove off in our only car! And now I was sitting there in Pascagoula Mississippi, 1000 miles from family. On the outside looking in, apart from all the twinkling festivity round me.
Used to working long hours, actually embracing working 12 hours 6 and 7 days a week at the shipyard at this point in my life, suddenly I was looking at two full days off. Two and a half if you factor in that I was working swing-shift and didn't have to clock in untill late-afternoon the day after Christmas.
Now I was staring at 56 hours alone in a tiny, newly bachelorized apartment (my bed was a sleeping bag on an air-mattress that doubled as my lounge-chair) staring out at a sun-burned, broken asphalt parking lot while being reminded of what could have been by sappy old Christmas movies on my 9" portable black & white TV. And I didn't like what I saw.
So at first-light Christmas Eve morning I threw the handfull of still-wrapped presents sent from home, along with a spare set of clothes (except socks. I forgot socks), and a map into my practicly brand new, bright yellow (only came in red or yellow in those days) Honda Civic CVCC 5-speed manual that cost me $3000, $300 down, and headed for Key West.
Why Key West? Why not? I could make it there and back before my next shift and it seemed about as far from Christmas pity as I could get. - Which wasn't very far at all since I apparently packed that in the car right along with my spare underwear.
That night I found myself in a cinder-block motel in Homestead Florida with a leathery 7-11 hotdog on a glue-like bun waiting on a corner of the TV stand with one packet of soup-like ketchup, one packet of watery mustard, and a bag of chips, while I opened Christmas gifts on the bed in my underwear. (Mom, up there in Michigan, had sewn me a big puffy-coat winter jacket - hint, hint - which I wore over my tighty-whities for a few minutes but it was too warm for too much of that sort of nonsense!)
Before dawn on Christmas morning I was out of that souless, puke-green and perpetually musty room and back on the road.
An old friend, the road. Just me alone in the car observing the world go about its business from the solitary safety of my personal cocoon.
In fact I was so solitary and unwilling to face the real world that day that when I got to Key West I drove a few loops through town and turned back north again without even parking, let alone getting out of my tiny yellow fortress of solitude.
Stopping only for gas-n-snacks, which wasn't very often since that 1.5 liter, 55 hp engine got just shy of 50 MPG and it had a 12 gallon tank, I drove almost around the clock, straight through. Not that I was in any rush to get back to that souless apartment in Pascagoula, but what else was there to do?
I had the radio playing just loud enough to almost hear over the open window wind-noise, and sometime in the wee-hours someplace in the sparsely populated (in those days) hinterlands of the Florida/Alabama panhandle somewhere inside my road-tranced head, I thought I heard, in that quinticencial, low, buttery-smooth voice of late-night 70's DJ's everywhere, something said about Alabama thighs.
I'm sure I miss-heard. It was probably something more along the lines of Alabama skys, or something like that, but in my trip-addled state of mind, out there sharing the road with pretty much nothing but a few lonely comercial trucks and the occasional dimmly lit yellow window off in the woods, I latched onto Alabama thighs and spent the rest of the drive writing the following in my head. Clearly a self-indulgent exercise in wallowing pity and wishful thinking.
But while you're judging, remember that this was written in the 70's by bruised and bleeding 23 year old boy.
Alabama thighs
A lifetime of watching this flashing white line.
Of wind slashing through the window whipping my ears raw
My hands numb from the incessant road whine
I’m into my second logbook and still down to just one hour
Yesterday’s shirt is crusty around the collar, my butt heavy and sore
My eyes burn with miles of relentless interstate grime
I’m three long days and two hard loads from my last shower
Too many lonely hours listening to this staticy old radio
Fading in, fading out, as I slip unseen around the edges
An accusatory glimpse of lives lived in the real world
Unwanted reminders of what was, and what could have been
But that’s alright, because up ahead, where the swamp mist hangs low
Just over the jagged spikes of jet-black pines, I can see the Biloxi glow
I rumble on by the rest stop at marker sixty-four
Only a few more miles ‘till I can shut her down
Redemption lies just three blocks in from the inky shore
On a quiet, cracked street in that seaside town
You see there’s a woman in Biloxi, an angel really, that can blow this diesel stink from my lungs
And ease the midnight-headlight burn from toasted eyes, before I lay my head down.
She drives a trailer park Ford,
She has a kitchen table perm,
She wears a truck stop tank top,
- And she’s got Alabama thighs.
She’s got a gap-tooth smile
Wrapped around an M&M heart
She bakes a mean peach pie
- And she’s got Alabama thighs
She has hard, honest hands
Her kitchen smells like warm
Her bedroom like salvation
- And she’s got Alabama thighs
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