Tilted Planet Press

It was the year of the Bicentennial, and I wanted to be in New England for it, but I was lingering in Austin.  My saving of traveling money was running low.  I was driving for Roy’s Taxi then, and business was slow.

The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, and the whole idea of the American revolution enthralled me.  I wanted to see the scene of the Boston Tea Party.

I wrote the words,

“For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill.”
the words uttered
into the westward wind,
‘neath fluttering sails…
“The eyes of all people are upon us…”

Diverging, Robin Cravey, Tilted Planet Press (1983, Austin, Texas), p. 15

July fourth, I spent writing in my journal.  Under the heading ‘More Projects and Alternatives’ my pen wrote a numbered list of such items, some items two lines, some ten.  Next, I made a bullet list of ‘Decision Deadlines Approaching.’  I considered at length whether I should leave Austin or stay, but reached no decision that day.

Mostly, I was driving my cab, learning every corner and every denizen of the city.  Many of the denizens, it seemed, were pretty girls.  I paid special attention to them.  Then, the yearning for solitude would come on.

The National Party Conventions began, and I contented myself with watching gavel-to-gavel coverage.  Morris Udall was my favorite, but Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination.  He was a good man.

Finally, in September, I hit the road and stuck my thumb out.  A shiny new pickup pulled over, and I climbed in.  Edwardo, a middle-aged Chicano from the valley, was driving north to Blissfield, Michigan, where he would work as a crew leader.  I decided to go along with him to work in the tomato fields.  He agreed to take me on.

But I didn’t last long picking tomatoes.  It’s hot work under the hot sun, stooped over or on your knees.  One time a jerk in a cropduster buzzed us and sprayed us.  A few guys were quick enough to throw tomatoes into the propeller and spray red tomatoes across his windshield. Ha!

I hitched on, heading for Boston, where I walked the Freedom Trail.  My mind filled with the heroic events of those days.

Roaming Brookline Avenue, I took a fourth-floor room in a red brick four-story walk-up.  On the ground floor, at the back of the hall, under the first riser of the stairs, stood a bookshelf.  Standing under the landing, I looked at the books.

In that bookshelf, I found a slim volume, Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.  He spoke to me in simple practical terms.  It was as if he were anticipating my thoughts.  The fact that he was a philosopher king was somehow beside the point.  He was a man doing his best.  I say he was ‘a’ philosopher king.  Was there ever another?

‘Keep saying to yourself,’ he told me, ‘It lies with me to see the world as it is.  Remember this authority, which is nature’s gift to you.’

He knew my mind.  I have kept the book ever since, read it and referred to it, and  given copies to dozens of friends.

From Boston, I hitched up to Maine, Sebago Lake, and a campsite there.  Finally, I made my way to Bridgton, where I took a knotty pine room at the Top Hill Inn, and got a job picking apples at Five Fields Farm.  I loved it.  

Dawn found me in the back of pickup truck with the crew.  We rode up through the trees, then topped a ridge and the truck pointed down, descending into a bowl of cold air.  At the field we took our ladders and climbed and picked the round red fruit.  From the top of a tree, the view across the color-splashed valley was glorious, with the line of sunlight slowly descending the opposite hillside.

By chance, Jimmy Carter was scheduled to speak to a public rally in Portland.  I went to hear him.  He spoke to America’s craving for moral rectitude.  He promised never to lie to us.  Could he become a philosopher president?  Maybe.

After the apple harvest ended, I rode my thumb down to Boston, then up to Montreal and Toronto.  As fall wore on, I hitched back to Texas, to Austin, to vote for Jimmy Carter.