Friends of the Devil, Part 3

(Hitchhiking sign from a comp notebook. On the way to see Tony in Ithaca, NY, Summer 1978. I used the Greek spelling of Odysseus’s hometown.)

To reset the scene: It’s a couple days after Christmas, 1975, and I’m hitching back east, from Phoenix to New Orleans, to hang out with my friend Tony Hoagland before heading back to Iowa City to start my second semester at the university. This was not the most thoughtfully planned trip – getting turned away at the Mexican border threw a monkey wrench into whatever itinerary I’d envisioned. But a true vagabond rolls with those punches. I would often use a sign when hitchhiking to suggest that I had a destination in mind, to give the appearance of being goal-oriented, but whenever an interesting detour presented itself, I almost always took it. 

Somewhere in the middle of West Texas, a Volkswagen van pulled off the road to pick me up. The sight of that blocky two-tone body rolling to a stop was always a good omen. Two long-haired brothers from Oregon were on their way to New Orleans – it’s hard to imagine a more perfect ride. To add some frosting to that carrot cake, after we’d gotten to know each other and gone a few miles down the road, they pulled out a big bag of weed and tossed it to me, along with a pack of Zig-Zags, and asked me to roll some joints. I should point out that besides being able to fill the miles with conversation, a good hitchhiker should be able to read a map and navigate and to roll a big tight doobie, both valuable life skills. (And yes, I know that GPS, Google Maps, and the “pre-rolls” at the pot dispensaries now make those skills superfluous.) As we passed around the jay and rolled through the bleak West Texas landscape, I was feeling mellow and decided to share with the brothers my “getting high is an act of consciousness-raising” rap – that pot enables one to see the world and the people who live in it with more insight and compassion. This got no response from the brothers; I assumed they were just taking it in, mulling over the ramifications. But about fifteen miles down the road, they pulled off and told me this was as far as they were going … with me. I was flabbergasted, and obviously disappointed. I guess they weren’t ready for that message.

One of the challenges of hitchhiking was dealing with the occasional unwanted sexual advance. I caught a ride from a traveling salesman somewhere between San Antonio and Houston. Into my second day on the road by then, I grabbed a nap whenever I could, and warmed by the winter sun slanting in through the passenger side window, I dozed off. But I soon woke with a start to find the driver reaching over and fondling my genitals. I quickly disabused him of the notion that I’d be okay with that. It was a gentle rebuff – I still wanted the ride and had no problem with him as long as he understood my lack of interest. It was a bit awkward after that – he was clearly self-conscious about my refusal – and that ride also ended sooner than expected. Oh well.

Getting through Houston was a drag, as it so often was in a big city – dealing with heavy traffic and lots of short rides – but by early afternoon, I was in Baytown, just east of Houston, feeling the warm breezes from the Gulf of Mexico and realizing I might just make it to Tony’s that day. Passing north of Port Arthur, I said a little prayer for Janis Joplin, who grew up there and hated it for how she was treated in high school. Janis, who sang with so much heart and soul, who had died five years before that, who if there’s any justice in the world is somewhere finally being loved by some good man or woman. Just listen to her bluesy rendition of “Cry Baby.” In the adlib solo of an alternate recording of the song (in the “legacy edition” of her posthumous Pearl on Spotify) she says, “There’s this dude, man, walking around the fucking highways of America with a pack on his back, looking for his identity, right? But I wanna say, baby, don’t you know you left your momma here at home – you left your good-loving momma right here at home.” He sure did, Janis.

Late that night I was heading down Louisiana Highway 1. Dropped off at Boogie’s Bar, a roadhouse between Larose and Cut Off (“No Parking on the Shoulder”), about ten miles from Tony’s, I walked in to use a payphone to call him, realizing that everyone in the place was speaking French, more precisely the Louisiana French dialect. I immediately dug the scene. Tony showed up twenty minutes later, and we commenced to hug and spout poetry: “Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, / Healthy, free, the world before me.” We regaled each other with stories of what we’ve been doing since we last saw each other in Iowa City, maybe two weeks before.

For the next week we kicked back. I caught up on that sleep I missed on the road. Tony would get up and meditate and I would take the family’s Great Dane for long walks down to the edge of the bayou to watch the shrimpers unload their catch. We wrote poems and read them to each other, and those of the poets we were into at the moment – César Vallejo, Anna Akhmatova, Gary Snyder, Robert Bly, Adrienne Rich, Tomas Tranströmer. We listened to The Basement Tapes and talked about Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, which had just finished its crazy tour. On New Year’s Eve, we hung out in his backyard, sharing a bottle of prosecco, gazing up at the flood of stars and random fireworks in the Mississippi River Delta night.

Over those next couple of years, Tony became one of my most steadfast friends. After he graduated and moved on, we stayed in touch. In February 1980, I connected up with him in Tucson. One night, he and I dropped acid and got lost among the saguaro and cholla in the Sonoran Desert. Slowly coming down later, back at his apartment, we found ourselves gazing deeply into each other’s eyes. It was the closest I ever came to physically loving a man, and some part of me regrets not finding out how that would’ve felt. 

A week before classes would start up again, Tony gave me a lift to New Orleans so I could pick up I-55 and follow the Mississippi, against the current, toward Iowa City. As we were about to part company, we started singing “Friend of the Devil,” trading off Robert Hunter’s verses, joining on the chorus: “Set out runnin’ but I take me time. A friend of the Devil is a friend of mine. If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight.” All told, it would take almost four week and just under five thousand miles to get home to my furnished room above the Montessori School on Reno Street.

And on October 23, 2018, Tony passed away. I still miss his sweet brilliance...

(Tony from the mid-1980s. On the back of the photo: “what I look like now”.)

To My Friend Tony

who passed from this world yesterday.

You are already missed, my brother.

I count myself lucky to have known you, to have 

picked the winning Lotto numbers of our lifelong friendship.

I hung out with you when we were young in Iowa City.

Remember walking into Gabe's one night?

A jazz band was playing on the little stage.

You and I seized the opportunity of the empty dance floor

and tore it up – two live wires ricocheting around the room

until there was only room for us,

two unknown poets making up new moves as we went,

unaware of anything else except the sacred chords

vibrating through our bodies.

Every time we crossed paths over the years – New 

Orleans, Ithaca, Tucson, Santa Fe – was a blessing.

And now I’m letting out the dog and standing in the darkness, 

thinking about you and your poetry and your life.

The moon is full of you tonight, Tony.