I watched myself on TV today, stammering, the camera catching each bit of egg as it leaked from the
corner of my mouth. In case you haven’t seen the clip yet, I was eating
breakfast in Washington
when a reporter approached the table. “Excuse me, Mr. Maxwell. In 1974, you lived at Yellow Springs.” I waited for
his question. “How much did you know about the drug dealing?”
My handlers have prepared
me for the question, my campaign may hinge on the answer, but how can I reduce the events of that extraordinary year to a
sound bite?
It was May 1974, three
months before Richard Nixon would resign in disgrace, but the outcome that spring was still very much in doubt and I was living,
thumb outstretched, on the shoulder of Interstate 40.
In 1974, I lived out of
my backpack and inside my head and, after a few weeks on the road, both were in need of light cleaning. Standing at the side of the road, baking in the Arizona sun,
I rummaged through the backpack, dividing my estate into piles, measuring value by the simple equation of function divided
by weight.
The pile of necessities
grows quickly – my Svea camping stove, hatchet, flashlight, band-aids. I
select the first item destined for disposal – Learn to Play Harmonica in a Week.
I come across a deck of playing cards – count ‘em forty-seven and a joker – and start a third pile
for maybes. My Swiss army knife and sleeping bag join the pile of necessities. Soggy matches and a badly scratched copy of the Workingman’s Dead join the maybes
and, on the advice of my spiritual side (don’t be a slave to your possessions, it advises), the maybes soon join the
garbage.
Having rearranged the pack
to my satisfaction, I turn my attention to the mess that I carry around inside my head.
I believe that the human body is an amazingly forgiving machine designed to run on grains and vegetables, but able
to derive necessary and sufficient fuel from my diet of Twinkies and tequila. I
believe that anarchy is a viable political system. I believe that God doesn’t
mind when I pray to the Buddha.
I barely have time to complete
my spring cleaning when a truck pulls to a stop, some twenty feet up the road. Moving
quickly, I throw my pack in the back, hop in front and once again I’m off, in a brilliant red pick-up truck, fire engine
red, brand new, red inside too, an automatic Chevy truck. And I’m several
miles down the road to new adventures before I realize that I left my pot at the side of Interstate 40.
