Runnin' Free.

The truck stop was off the last exit in Georgia. We were northbound heading up to Chattanooga, just over the state line. The sun quietly descended over the southern Appalachians and the heat dissipated but the humidity did not. We were all either shirtless or sleeveless. A month on the road, five fuck ups from California, playing loud music in basements and bars, drunk and high and ready for the next deal.

We got gas and wandered around the truck stop. Many southern travelers, clerks and parking lot drifters looked at us like we were some strange plague growing along the banks of the Chattahoochee, emerging now in the evening to de-virginize their daughters and take the sheriff hostage. Our ’89 Econoline van that rollicked into the lot was a sweaty mess of beards, tattoos, bandanas, bug bites, beer cans and a large cloud of California Chronic smoke that we had miraculously conserved to this point. But we were running low.
What amazed me, when I went in to buy a t-shirt and a beverage, were the people who were not disgusted by us but rather intrigued and curious and ultimately envious at our self-imposed freedom and insanity. I talked to a man in a camouflaged hat who said,
“Well shit, brother, you gotta get this shirt right here, this one’ll fit ya, hell yeah.”
He was browsing through and saw it. It was black and it had a picture of a deer, a large and impressive buck coinciding with an equally reverent semi truck. A deer and a diesel and the green script above it read, Runnin’ Free. I thanked him kindly and bought the shirt, cutting the sleeves off with a pocket knife as soon as I got back into the van.

It was still hot out but the southern dusk and its softest breeze found us as we drove north into Tennessee. And Chattanooga right away, first town over the line and our destination for the night. We found the place and parked outside. It was an infamous punk house adorned with the decorations you might expect. Misfits posters and a stuffed warthog’s head. It smelled like sweat and stale beer and it lacked furniture. It was our kind of place. We were nomadic and poised for early death. This was where we wanted to be. There was a makeshift bar in a bedroom and a basement for bands. There were a lot of people there, kids and old punks and few random street people. We took in our equipment and smoked a blunt inside the living room. It was still early so we went to this bar across the street and down a hill. Some kind of cockroach flew into my head real hard when I went outside. We found the bar and drank Budweiser and smoked cigarettes inside and watched Nascar. We were a quintet of assholes, mid to late 20s, with a semi-responsible 19 year old roadie wandering around the south after a month in the Midwest and on the East coast. It had been something. We were still weeks away from home and had barely directed our ship west. The beers were real cold and the fan inside the bar felt ok. And night was now falling fast.

We played with a band I don’t remember, from Cleveland, and two local punk bands. The basement was a Southern sweat lodge. The night air stuck to my bare chest like a magnet as I walked through the room to set up my drums. When we were ready to play we decided on doing so naked. It was feasible because of the humidity but necessary because of the mood. It was a crowd of goofballs and knuckleheads, people swinging from the ceiling and lighting firecrackers. So we played naked. Sergio, on vocals, came to me and said, “Hey this isn’t cool. Everyone else has an instrument to protect them from the fireworks.”
I was drunk already and delirious from the heat. I had no advice or consolations.
I said, “Just burn your dick off, dude.”

We played a decent set. The crowd was wild and that was cool. The bottle rockets flying around the room amazingly did not cause injury to anyone. We played for about 12 minutes and a lot of people bought records and t-shirts. We were invited to hang out and party at the house all night. And one of the local bands, who all lived in a house twenty miles outside of Chattanooga, offered us a place to rest our heads. We were grateful for the hospitality but were unsure of what our night would entail.

Many more 12 packs of cheap domestic beer were purchased and put to use. On guitar, Tommy Teeterz along with Sergio got so wasted that they were asking around for hard drugs like the couple of sketch balls they truly are. Anthony, on bass, smoked a lot of weed and wanted to drive to New Orleans that night, where we planned to be the next day. It was a long and humid drive so the idea of doing it at once and at night sounded good to me. Foose, the roadie, was sober and willing to drive. We all kept it in mind and I drank some more beer.

At some point, an older dude with long hair and a good beard approached me and asked, “Hey man, did you put this sticker on my van?”
I didn’t know what to say, figuring he was pissed off about it.
“Mother Speed,” he said, “Is that you guys or what? Somebody put this on my van, it says” and he read, “’Let Your Dork Hang Out.’ Was that you dudes?”
I was the only one around so feeling somewhat responsible, I told him.
“Yeah man, I think someone in my band put that on there,” and I was on the verge of apologizing when he said, “You got any more, man? These stickers are…fuckin’ awesome!”
And so we had beers and joints and exchanged music outside our van. His story was that he had been on tour with a blues duo in England and just moved back to Chattanooga where his buddy had a recording studio. His name was Jules and he was from Port Arthur, Texas. He said places like Beaumont and Port Arthur and even Huntsville kicked Austin’s ass, as far as Texas was concerned. He liked playing gigs out there but said he hadn’t been back to live and wasn’t going to for a long while. Jules had been a traveling preacher and then a heroin addict and went to jail, laid railroad track, played guitar with obscure bluesmen and checked out house shows in Chattanooga when he had the time. There was something about the man that was honest and unpretentious. And he couldn’t have been older than 35. It was a good time.

At some point, after Jules had gone to buy “just some shitty coke,” things changed, shit went down at the house. There was a fight, a Russian punk calling some other kid a cunt, a matriarch of sorts apprehending a culprit for stealing something and a rumor about the cops being called. We all said fuck it. Tommy and Sergio passed out in the back of the van. The rest of us got our equipment, our share of gas money, said thank you and hit the road. We still had a 12 pack of Busch and 2 joints rolled and ready. We never saw our friend from Port Arthur, Texas again.

Heading south, out of Tennessee, through a mile or two of Georgia and then Welcome to Alabama. It was three in the morning. After the joints, Anthony fell asleep and it was just Foose driving and myself sitting shotgun. It was quiet. We didn’t see another car on the interstate for at least an hour. I drank nearly 12 beers and we talked about ex-girlfriends and other scattered memories of ours. It was one of those rare moments on tour when things are still and talking moves the hours along. I looked out the window and saw the dark flatlands of Alabama. We passed a civil war battlefield, an abandoned plantation house and a murky river named after a forgotten Choctaw warrior. We drove into the dawn and stopped at a rest area where we opened the van door and rolled down the windows. We slept in the parking lot until the sun was unbearable. Our stomachs and our heads were sour and stale. And it was late August in Alabama. We drove on.

Later that day, after driving through Mississippi, we reached Louisiana where even stranger insects mated and flew and attacked me simultaneously. Then New Orleans emerged from the ocean and the river and the swamp. And we were once again, temporarily home. And once again, runnin’ free.