Miami Adventure

       It's Spring of 1970, I'm nineteen years old and hungry and homeless in Miami Beach, running a shoeshine stand making about $5 a day in front of a barbershop near the Fountainbleau Hotel. One day a young black guy comes along and asks me to shine his $100 alligator shoes. He climbs up and sits in the chair and after a couple of minutes he says to me “Haven't you ever shined shoes before?” 

     “No,” I admit to him and he offers to show me how to shine shoes the right way, and we trade places. So I'm sitting there high in the chair, looking out on Collins Avenue, while this guy is shining his own $100 alligator shoes which I'm wearing and I see this big old black Cadillac pull up and double park in front of us. I'm watching the scene unfolding - it seemed like it was happening in slow motion - and I'm thinking 'Oh, this is gonna be good.' A big guy smoking a cigar gets out of the driver's seat and looks over at us and says “Boy, can you tell me where the Fountainbleau Hotel is?” So, this being the Deep South in 1970, I know he's not talking to me and I don't say anything, but the guy who's shining his own shoes says to the guy with the cigar, “Boy?” And the guy with the cigar, caught a little by surprise, says “Man...sir...sir, can you tell me where the Fountainbleau Hotel is?” And the black guy points down the street and says “It's right over there,” and the white guy with the Cadillac says “Thank you, sir,” and gets back in his car and drives away, having no idea what just transpired. After a while, the guy finishes shining his own shoes, then we swap shoes again and he pays me, and even gives me a tip, and I thank him for showing me how to shine shoes the right way. He tells me he's from Montreal and he shined shoes as a kid. He's in Miami Beach on business, and for the rest of the time he's in town he drops off shoes for me to shine and he turns out to be my best customer.

       I've been in Miami for about three months and decide it is time to go home. It's too hot here and I'm homesick. I've been doing alright working as a dishwasher at a restaurant in Miami Beach. I'm eating good and I'm even able to save a little money, about eighty bucks, enough to get me back to New York. I hear there is a truck stop in Pompano Beach where I can probably hitch a ride north. I'm so happy to be getting on the bus in Miami and leaving this place forever. It's only about thirty-five miles from Miami to Pompano Beach, but it seems to take the bus forever as it stops at all the glamorous Florida hot spots that I heard about – Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale, etc. – and we drive through the usual afternoon thunderstorm before arriving in Pompano in the late afternoon.

      At the bus terminal, I get in a cab and ask the driver to take me to the truck stop, which is about a five minute ride from the downtown. When I arrive there, I ask if there are any trucks going to New York that would be interested in taking along a rider.

     “Yeah, Leroy's going to New York,” somebody says. I ask him where I can find Leroy, and a minute later, I’m introducing myself to Leroy D. Honeycutt of Chadbourne, North Carolina. Leroy is a strapping country boy, probably in his fifties, dressed like a truck driver in a tee shirt, jeans, work boots and baseball cap; central casting for a classic American redneck.

     “Yeah, I'm going to New York, but I ain't takin' no goddam hippie,” Leroy announces in his North Carolina drawl. He's talking to me, but he's also providing entertainment for the other truckers gathered around the depot anticipating ol' Leroy taking apart this poor, defenseless Yankee boy. I haven't had a haircut in the three months since I left New York in late March, and I'm probably looking a little shaggy, but I didn't think I was making any particular political statement with the length of my hair. 

     “I wouldn't let my daughter go out with someone who looked like you,” Leroy tells me. The other truckers knew they would get a good show when they put me in Leroy's path. They're enjoying it. I decide to try to reason with Leroy.

     “George Washington had long hair,” I say weakly.

     “George Washington had a horse,” says Leroy. “He wasn't out here hitchin' a ride.” 

     Laughter fills the platform and Leroy is pleased.He did have a point there, but goddammit, I gotta get out of this place and get to New York. I can't give up so easy. I make a calculation.

     “If I get a haircut, will you take me to New York?” I ask him. My question seems to take him a little by surprise. He must have thought I would just slink away in defeat and he and his boys would have a good laugh at my expense. He wasn't expecting my challenge, but now he has to answer it.

“     Yeah, I'll take you to New York if you get a haircut,” he says. He couldn't refuse me or he would be exposed as just a simple bully.

     “How short does it have to be?”

     “As short as mine,” he tells me as he takes off his baseball cap, proudly revealing his military style crewcut.

     “OK, I'll be back.”

     Pompano Beach in 1970 is a sleepy town of about 40,000. It will more than double by the end of the century. I make a call at the pay phone at the entrance to the truckstop, and the same driver who brought me out here shows up to take me back into town.

     “I need to go to a barbershop,” I tell him. Talking with him on the trip into town, I learn that he's a retired cop from New Jersey. He knows where the barbershop is, but he thinks it's probably closed because it's now after five o'clock. We get there, and sure enough, what seems to be the only barbershop in town is closed. We try a nearby beauty salon, but they're just closing up too. I'm starting to get that feeling of panic that I got when I was negotiating with Leroy. Then I get another idea.

     “Have you ever cut hair before?” I ask the driver. He looks at me, puzzled.

     “If we go to Woolworth's and I buy a pair of scissors, would you give me a haircut?”

     “No,” he says in a way that I know he's not even open to a discussion. Panic is starting to creep in again.

     “Isn't there any other place in town that I could get my hair cut?” There is a few moments of silence. Then the driver speaks up.

     “There's color town,” he says, a little hesitantly. 

     I'm nineteen years old and I've never been south of Coney Island before making this journey to Florida. I've read some history books in school about the South, and of course, the Civil Rights movement has been big news for the past few years. And here I am in the rural South, and I'm really not sure I'm hearing what I think I'm hearing.

     “Color town?” I say. “What's that?” I'm pretty sure I know what the answer is going to be.

     “That's where the colored folks live,” says the driver, seeming almost a little embarrassed that he neglected to mention it.

     I don't really have time to get into a discussion about racial segregation with the driver, or even express my shock that such a place as 'color town' even exists. I'm kind of on a mission.

     “Do they have a barbershop?” I ask him.

     “Yes,” he says, almost apologizing for not telling me about 'color town' earlier.

     “Well, take me there!” I tell him. I don't think about the possibility that he might be afraid to drive into color town, or that we might not even be allowed to go there. I'm just thinking about getting my hair cut. Without hesitation, the driver heads toward color town.

     The men who are in the color town barbershop are a little surprised to see a shaggy-haired white boy stroll into the shop as if it was nothing unusual. One of the chairs is open, so I sit down in it as any prospective customer would do. There are two barbers, and the younger one, who is probably not much older than me, says to me “You're going to have to wait for Pops. I ain't never cut straight hair before.”

    I  get out of the chair and go take a seat in the waiting section, waiting for the older barber to finish his current customer. I don't feel unwelcome, I just feel like everybody is wondering if I know what I'm doing, or if I accidentally came into the color town barber shop by mistake. But nobody wants to point out how out of place I am. They're kind of in shock about the whole thing. The older barber finishes up his customer and I climb into his chair.

“I'd like to have a crewcut, please,” I tell him.

Leroy was nowhere to be found when I arrived back at the Pompano truck stop. After a while, another trucker came along and told me that Leroy was up the road having dinner before his long haul north, and this guy said he would drive me up to where I was supposed to meet up with Leroy. I was a little nervous that Leroy had left without me, but somewhat hopeful because Leroy had left instructions that I be delivered to him if I ever returned from my haircut adventure. It was a short ride to the restaurant/bar where Leroy was having his dinner and we arrived just as he was leaving the place to begin his trip.

When he first spotted me, Leroy’s face lit up. I think he was just surprised to ever see me again. And when he saw my new crewcut, you would think that he had just single-handedly won the Civil War, and the South had indeed risen again. I was immediately no longer a ‘goddam hippie’, but had transformed myself into a worthy travel companion, a fellow road warrior, maybe even a potential adopted son. Leroy had had probably a couple of shots of whiskey with dinner to prepare him for the long road ahead, so he was especially cheerful that this usually ordinary trip was turning into such a momentous occasion. We jumped into his big, beautiful cab and we were on our way. 

“New York, here we come!” I thought.

It was after dark when we finally hit the road, probably nine or ten o’clock. I was bone tired from my long day of bus travel and quickly started to nod off as we headed north. Despite Leroy having had a couple of drinks with dinner, I wasn’t worried about his driving. He had made this trip so many times that he could probably drive it in his sleep. He told me that the plan was to pick up a couple of loads of corn somewhere in northern Florida. Forty thousand pounds of corn! When we hit the weigh scales at the Florida-Georgia border, we’d be weighing in at somewhere around 70,000 pounds. I woke up from the slowing down of the truck at our first stop and watched groggily as a team of men worked hurriedly to load enough corn into the trailer to bring it to about half-full. And again, at our second stop in the middle of the night, I watched another crew fill the truck to the brim. 

We were on the road a while longer when Leroy pulled off on the berm. I could see just ahead the state weigh station, and just beyond that, the bridge to what I assumed was the State of Georgia. Leroy told me that with me in the truck, along with my suitcase, the truck would be over the state’s weight limit. He instructed me to take my suitcase and walk over the bridge and he would pick me up on the other side. I was somehow impressed that Leroy had planned this journey so tightly that my 140 pounds (including suitcase) had been accounted for. But part of me was warding off a fear that I was about to become the victim of some sick joke that would leave me and all my earthly belongings, almost penniless, in a strange and probably hostile state, in the middle of the night. 

With no alternative, I started trudging slowly across the bridge into the darkness. I should have known this was too easy. I got across the bridge and walked a bit longer along the road as Leroy had instructed, then I put down my suitcase and waited. I don’t know how long it was. The minutes felt like hours. I started feeling cold even though it was summer in the Deep South. I couldn’t start thinking about what my next step would be. I was pretty much at the mercy of whatever came next. Then I saw a set of headlights coming slowly across the bridge. As they drew near, I could see that it was a tractor-trailer. I couldn’t tell if it was Leroy’s rig, and if it was, I didn’t know if he could see me, or if he would stop and pick me up. It didn’t pick up speed. It slowed down. And then it pulled over and Leroy climbed out. He grabbed my suitcase and stashed it into the little side compartment of the trailer. He told me to climb in, and we were on our way.

After a while, Leroy could see that I was nodding off again and he said I could climb into the sleeping compartment in the back of the cab if I wanted to. It was actually more like a little living space, complete with mini-fridge, couch, and a full-sized bed tucked off to the side. I crawled into the bed, and the next thing I knew, Leroy was telling me to get up and come in for breakfast. The night had flown by, along with Georgia and South Carolina, and we were at his home in Chadbourne, North Carolina. Mrs. Honeycutt prepared some fried pork chops for us and I wasn’t shy about eating more than my share of them. After a brief stay, we hit the road again.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. North Carolina, Virginia, Washington DC, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey. I only had about three dollars in my pocket when we left Pompano Beach, and all along the way Leroy paid for my meals, bought me cigarettes, and even paid for a truckstop shower. At one point along the road, I saw a long-haired kid hitchhiking and I yelled out the window “Get a hair cut, you goddam hippie!” I wasn’t proud of that, but it cemented my friendship with Leroy. Just before we got to the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge, Leroy pulled over and told me that this was where we were parting company. He grabbed my cardboard suitcase out of the side compartment of the trailer. It was a little soggy from spending too much time in the refrigerator. He gave me four dollar bills and wished me good luck, and I never saw him again. I made my way the last few miles into the city. It was good to be home. I didn’t need another haircut for about three or four years.

-Ed King