In my last post, I alluded to my cross-country road trip in 2001, when my boyfriend at the time — along with various friends at intervals — spent three months driving through 24 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. I have a few stories I’d like to tell about that journey; the first is about funding the extensive endeavor.
For me, the aughts were a volatile decade that brought major changes to my life every other year. The formula for change was always the same: I realized my life was a mess, decided it was time to finally make responsible adult decisions, and then flipped a complete 180 on whatever my logical brain had determined was the best course of action. Like many 20-somethings, I never failed to follow my heart. And while my 40-something self regrets none of this, I acknowledge that only an extreme amount of luck brought me through this decade mostly unscathed.
In early 2001, my life was a mess. I’d recently graduated from the University of Utah with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, at a time when professors were already warning that the entire industry was failing and journalism was a bad career choice. I took their warnings to heart and thought, “Okay, then, law school.” But I really didn’t want to return to school or do anything that might result in becoming a lawyer, so I dragged my feet through the process. By February, I had a decent LSAT score and good recommendations from professors, but the thought of going through with it filled my young heart with dread.
I also was mired in a swamp of relationship angst, having lost the love of my life to the Peace Corps nearly two years earlier and yet refusing to let him go. I dated a few different men during these years — as best as I can tell from my journals, four of them were named Eric — but I continued to pine for Mike in El Salvador and even procured a passport so I could chase after him as soon as I had enough money to buy a plane ticket.
The funds never materialized, thankfully, because I was also still trying to make journalism work. In January, I landed a role as the managing editor of The Murray Green Sheet, a storied weekly newspaper that had been covering the central Salt Lake Valley since 1891. I threw my whole heart into the role — late nights at city council meetings, attending ribbon cuttings and park service projects, and staying at the office past midnight to write and edit my stories, design ads, layout pages with an out-of-date version of Adobe Pagemaker, copy edit all of that work, and send the files off to the printer. I wasn’t just the editor of the Murray Green Sheet. I filled every position, except for the front office manager — although she was fired within two weeks of my hiring — and a nearly absent “publisher” who told me he was taking over sales after firing her. And sorry, he was low on funds and couldn’t cut paychecks this week, but he had a big customer payment coming and could pay me next week.
Obviously, I should have jumped ship the instant I wasn’t paid, but I was young and naive about the reality that the only reason anyone would hire an inexperienced 21-year-old to run an entire newspaper is to prop up a sinking ship for just long enough to liquidate a 110-year-old newspaper and disappear in the night. After working extremely hard for 12 weeks and only receiving one paycheck during that time, one Monday morning I showed up at the office to find it locked and vacated. A handwritten note on the door indicated the Green Sheet was done.
This is the backstory of why — come April — I was 21 years old and already disillusioned with careers, capitalism, and any semblance of responsible adulthood. I’d received my acceptance to the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law and felt sick about it. I didn’t have the money to pay for law school. I’d have to take out loans. I’d be trapped forever.
This was also the tipping point toward forming a stronger attachment to a new guy in my life. His name was Geoff and we met because on Christmas Day 2000. I decided to take a spontaneous trip to New York to visit my friend Jen and Geoff agreed to pick me — a complete stranger — up at La Guardia … even though, unbeknownst to me, New York City was a full five hours from Syracuse, New York, where Jen and Geoff’s parents lived. Whoops! I blame Priceline.com for selling me a $100 ticket to “anywhere in New York” (remember when you could set your own price on that Web site, and then had to commit to whatever they deigned to sell to you? Those were the days!) Also, I blame a poor understanding of East Coast geography.
I liked Geoff. He embodied this dream of perfect freedom that I both coveted and feared. He didn’t have a job, a home, or a college education. Five years earlier, he logged two semesters at Syracuse University on a cross-country running scholarship before burning out and hitting the road. He’d been traveling ever since, following his favorite bands around the country and selling hemp jewelry to pay for his meager needs. When he had enough cash to survive for a while, he’d drive to the desert to camp alone and read paperback books for two or three weeks at a stretch. I was both intrigued and terrified of someone who could endure that degree of uncertainty and solitude.
Then I lost a job that never actually paid me. My bank account was nearing zero. One night, while Geoff and I were hiking toward Diamond Fork Hot Springs in the middle of the night, I had a panic attack about the enormous mess my life had become. At least I had law school, I moaned, but even that felt like a fate worse than failure. Geoff comforted me on the side of the trail, asking me in his most deadpan, matter-of-fact way … “Why do you need to law school? Why do you need a job?” As we continued toward the hot spring, I realized I didn’t have great answers for either of those questions.
Over the next few weeks, Geoff worked his natural salesmanship to convince me that everything I’d anchored my self-esteem in thus far — my intelligence, my work ethic, my responsibility, and my independence — was a self-made prison designed to entrap me in an unhappy life. What I needed was freedom from all of that nonsense. Joining him on the road for the summer would be just the ticket.
I reminded him that I didn’t have any money to pay for the trip.
“You don’t need money,” he shrugged. His strategy was simple: We’d live on the cheap — “You only need $10 a day, maybe $15 if you want to splurge on things.” I’d make my own inventory of hemp jewelry on the road. As much as I could make, Geoff assured me, I could sell. And we only needed to attend one concert — a three-day series headlined by Dave Matthews in Camden, New Jersey. Camden, Geoff assured me, was the ultimate cash cow. The venue was well-known for its lawlessness. Camden cops didn’t care and they weren’t around. Because of this, concert-goers gathered in three large parking lots for full days of tailgating. Many were rich kids from Philidelphia who were so high they’d buy anything you held out in front of them, almost didn’t matter what it was, but hemp jewelry was still reasonably popular in 2001. And there was almost no overhead. Geoff purchased huge spools of hemp twine and bags of assorted glass beads directly from a distributor in China. The beads came out to something like a half-cent a piece. The hemp was basically free.
“You can sell bracelets for $5, and necklaces for $7. I like to do three for $20, that’s popular,” Geoff told me. “I can make them pretty fast these days. I do it while I’m driving or sitting around the campfire. I don’t even notice the time anymore.”
The income promise put some of my anxiety at ease — enough to throw caution to the wind, quit the part-time graphic design job I’d landed just weeks earlier, send a letter to my baffled parents (I’m not proud of the way I handled this, something I’ll have to expand on eventually), and hit the road with Geoff. His late-80s Volkswagon Jetta had more than 300,000 miles and questionable reliability, so we took my 1996 Geo Prism.
We’d browse a Rand McNalley atlas and choose the day’s destination. Geoff owned a spiral-bound book published on cheap newsprint that listed all of the known free campsites in the United States — this was before all of that information was available on the internet. It was cherished knowledge. The book was worn and ragged, the print so faint that it was difficult to read, but Geoff had most of its information memorized anyway. We ate pancakes and pasta, took baths in frigid streams, parked my car and bushwacked a mile into the woods to stealth camp when free sites weren’t available. Occasionally we’d splurge on movie matinees to get out of the sweltering Texas sun or the all-you-can-eat buffet at CiCi’s Pizza. In this way, Geoff was right — it was possible to live on $10-15 a day, gas included.
For six weeks, we drove and made jewelry. Geoff pressed pins into the steering wheel so he could braid hemp while driving. I did the same in the passenger seat. We sat by campfires, in Walmart parking lots, on park picnic tables, and at trailheads, always making jewelry. By the concert dates in late June, I’d amassed at least 300 bracelets and necklaces — mostly bracelets, as Geoff told me these were more popular with men, and as a young blond woman, I had a better chance of selling stuff to men. Also, bracelets only required half of the time and materials as necklaces and commanded nearly the same price. I strung my inventory together, clipped a Nalgene bottle to a wallet chain on my corduroy skate pants, and hit the parking lots.
As a 21-year-old Mormon who had lived most of my life in the sheltered confines of Salt Lake City, the Tweeter Center was a surreal dive into a Wonderland of debauchery. Every parking lot was full by 10 a.m., thrumming with loudspeakers playing everything from Dave Matthews to GWAR. People surrounded nearly every vehicle — screaming frat bros, toddlers, 60-something hippies, and everyone in between. Blankets, grills, paraphernalia, and helium canisters were scattered over nearly every square inch of pavement. I learned that the helium canisters actually held nitrous oxide. The purveyors filled balloons and sold a quick hit of laughing gas for $5 a pop. More than I could count offered me a direct trade of a nitrous balloon for a bracelet.
I was also offered marijuana, cocaine, concert tickets, cunnilingus, grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza, beer, pop, candy, whiskey shots, LSD, shrooms, and cheap Dave Matthews Band or Grateful Dead knock-off T-shirts. Having never even tried drugs or oral sex and feeling indifferent to most of the other offerings, I turned down most trades but did take the occasional sandwich and absolutely the concert tickets. As I made the rounds through miles of parked cars, I tried to keep it together but I was straight-up terrified — lost in Mad-Max-like corridors of lawlessness with large hacky-sack-playing bros dropping everything to sprint toward me while yelling, “Hippy Lady! Hippy Lady!”
I did not think of myself as Hippy Lady. I was far too young and — I thought — skater-chick cool to be Hippy Lady. But in Camden, New Jersey, with the skyscrapers of Philidelphia sparkling across the waterfront, I could be anything the universe wanted me to be. I could be anything I wanted to be. I could be Hippy Lady with cash flying at me from all directions. I could travel the world.
Over just two days, I sold every strand of jewelry I’d made, just as Geoff had promised. Even my early creations that had weird knots and ugly bead combinations drew buyers. I’d amassed more than $1,500 cash, mostly in $1’s and $5’s, stuffed in both shoes, my bra, and a zip-lock bag in my pants that I’d haplessly clipped to the wallet chain. Toward the end of day two, I’d started taking more trades as well, and also had an assortment of clothing articles, handmade dolls, and other things I’d stuff in a corner and never see again because I had to go through gates to attend that evening’s Dave Matthews show.
On day three, Geoff still had jewelry to sell, so my friend Jen and I slipped into the concert early and found a quiet space next to the river. The first two concerts had gone as expected, but that night Dave surprised the crowd with a cover of “Long Black Veil” by Johnny Cash. Jen and I stood and swayed and sang along, lifted to that level of sublime one can only find when they’re young and free and the entire future is theirs to mold.
We had taken Jen’s car to the concert venue and left mine at a campground about an hour east of Camden since we couldn’t afford to stay in the city. When we returned to the campground that night, we found my Geo Prism surrounded by yellow tape and tree branches. Right around the time Jen and I were riding the “Long Black Veil” into Nirvana, a windstorm ripped through the state park and toppled a sycamore tree directly onto my car. The damage wasn’t catastrophic, but it did badly dent the roof, leave dings in the trunk, and broke one of the rear windows. Rangers at the campground assured me the state of New Jersey would pay for the damage, so we taped up the window and continued on our way.
Of course, New Jersey never paid. I filled out at least 70 pages of forms and wasted an entire disposable film camera on evidence photos only to have the incident be ruled “an act of God” … which, well, what isn’t an act of God? But I did eventually get my car fixed. The $1,000 insurance deductible cut heavily into the profits I’d earned lawlessly from the state of New Jersey.
All in all, though, I came out ahead … so much further ahead than I could have ever imagined when failed journalist and law school candidate were the only qualifications I could put on a resume. “Hippy Lady” was now part of that list, and no one could ever take that away from me.
Jill, It’s so good to see you posting semi-regularly again. I’m so much older than you and the vast majority of your followers, (72), but, I’ve been a fan ever since your first books. It was fascinating hearing of your adventures in Camden at the Dave Matthews concerts. Living not 10 miles from there, I’m sure both my sons were in attendance. Not surprised to see the culture shock you experienced coming from Utah to the East Coast Urban settings. Looking forward to your future posts and hopefully there is a new book in the works. Take care.
Hippy Lady! (LOL, nobody feels like a "lady" of any kind at 21!) As soon as I saw the bridge on your first photo, I thought, "They're in CAMDEN!" (I live on the other side of Philly.) Then I thought, there must be 100 bridges that look like ours. So, retroactively, welcome to the Greater Philadelphia Area!
I've read all your books and loved hearing a new story! Thanks!