Our Horse with No Name

Six thousand miles, five planned stopovers, four weeks, three girls, two bags apiece, and one argument. It was August 1973 when Ann, Mary, and I packed Ann’s four-speed Corolla with bathing suits, jackets, sandals, sneakers, tee shirts, and formal attire (for a show in Vegas, of course) and headed out from western Connecticut on a road trip to see America.

No air conditioning. Just fresh breezes that floated our long hair out the windows. No GPS. Just maps folded and refolded into hand-fans, if needed. And certainly no CDs, 8-tracks, or even FM options. Just an AM radio that incessantly played, “On a Horse with No Name.” It ear-wormed itself into the sound track of our rodeo.

During the previous year, we had established ourselves as single professionals. Ann and Mary worked at an upscale department store; was a teacher. We had shared a bungalow on the shores of Candlewood Lake, and awaiting our return was a two-story flat in Danbury. We got along well—still do. Though Ann and I did have that one argument.

Across Interstate 80 we galloped, our speed increasing as we chased the sun, oohing and aahing at its spectacular show each evening. Paralleling the historic Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States, I-80 passes by or through Cleveland, Chicago, Des Moines, and Omaha. We did the same, switching drivers every 2 or 3 hours.

Boundless raw spaces confounded our green senses and wide open eyes. Lavender and clover drifted through amber waves of grain in their promises of purple-mountained majesties. As we  headed southwest toward Boulder, clouds along the horizon confused themselves with snowcapped mountain peaks.

Oh, the mountains! But no matter how close you get, you can never really touch them. I tried, I really did, when Ann’s friends toured us through the foothills of the Rockies. When we crossed the Continental Divide in Rocky Mountain National Park a few days later, I promised to return, to try again. I did, again and again, but they remain mysteriously intangible.

On to the great expanses of the Great Salt Lake and Salt Lake City we ventured, where the public could not imbibe alcohol or tour the Mormon Temple. But because Ann had a friend there, we had a few drinks at an after-hours club. In Reno, I won $12 in a slot machine—enough to pay for a Mitch Rider and the Detroit Wheels show.

While staying with my bother in Sacramento, we took a few day trips to see northern California. His car broke down on the Golden Gate Bridge, forcing us all—including my pregnant sister-in-law—to admire the view for an hour. Imagine such a travesty. We sampled chocolate at Ghirardelli Square, touched the redwoods of Muir Woods, and peeked at nude sunbathers on Stinson Beach.

Before heading southeast I insisted on a detour to visit my boyfriend Krishna who was studying yoga, of course, in the Napa Valley. Getting there taunted our nerves, with Ann clenching the steering wheel as wind swept us up and down the twisty switchbacks. Each thousand-foot differential make Mary queasier and queasier. By the time we got to the ashram, we needed to leave—we had to get out of the mountains before dark. Krishna asked me to take his hiking boots back with us. A blight they were on an otherwise perfectly organized trunk. Ann was not happy with the boots and Mary was not happy with the mountains.

So we trotted toward the desert on our horse with no name. The heat was hot (remember, no AC) and the ground was dry under a sky with no clouds. After a few days in the desert sun, our skin really did begin to turn red. We gambled in Vegas, absorbed the arid magnificence of the Grand Canyon, marveled at the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest, and ate lots of chili.

After three days in the desert fun, we crossed a river bed—the Rio Grande—then galloped through Gallup, Albuquerque, and Amarillo, before driving clear across Texas to Texarkana, Arkansas, where Ann’s grandparents lived.

In that idiosyncratic city that belongs to Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, Maw Maw and Paw Paw served us the tangiest taste of America. And I’m not talking about the grits and greens at the local cafeteria. After a four-o’clock dinner (that’s when all old people eat, you know), we sat in their lace-dollied parlor with Aunt Alice. The family news that dominated the conversation was that cousin Herman was marrying a Catlick.

Maw Maw shook her head slowly. It would be difficult enough accepting someone of a different religion into the family, but a Catick! Well, she just didn’t know.

“Maw Maw,” Aunt Alice slyly broke into the staid old woman’s lament. “You have two Catlicks sitting right here in your living room.” Maw Maw’s jaw dropped and her gaze settled on each of us in turn. “One’s I-talian, the other’s Irish.” Mary and I exchanged sidelong glances and later pulled Ann aside to suggest we leave this stagecoach stop in the morning.

We scrapped our original plan to swelter our way to New Orleans, opting instead to swing north to the border of Kentucky and Tennessee. There we cooled off—thanks again to the hospitality of Ann’s kith and kin. And in another eye-popping taste of the South, the maid laundered our dirty clothes before we headed home.

Each time we packed the car anew, the argument flickered around the edges of the trunk. “Damned boots,” Ann would swear. I should have left them behind, I smile now in retrospect, for I gave Krishna the boot a few years later.