There's A Lot of "There" Out There

In January of 1998, I got in my car and drove to Chicago.  I had already dropped out of Wheaton, so the trip was just a formality.  I had things to pick up from my dorm room and a few friends to say goodbye to.  Chicago is pretty cold that time of year, I know from firsthand.  I slept in my car in the smallest of the student parking lots, where I knew I wouldn't be disturbed, and left the engine off for as long as I could stand it.  I was snowed under in no time and had to start the engine up for heat.  Exhaust was pouring out when the snow crew came by in their little snowplow thing to dig me out, but no one tapped on my window to see if I was alright.  I guess that wasn't their job.

I spent two nights in Wheaton pretending to be a student before my friend Dan finally arrived.  He was the only one I cared to tell what was going on.  I spent one night in a movie theater, two in my car, and one in Dan's apartment, then I took off.  Too much post-apocalyptic literature and I had convinced myself that American civilization would crash on the night of December 31 1999.  I was determined to survive the crash and even come out on top.  Also, I was looking for God.

My car was a white Dodge Omni, I forget the year.  It was a gift from my uncle, who used to use it to commute to his job before he retired and he and Aunt Gertrude bought an RV to go on the road with.  My first stop was Cedar Rapids Iowa.  There was a girl I wanted to meet, but she didn't want to meet me.  We had met via an old fashioned dial-up computer bulletin board.  It was her idea to go on the road first, but then she backed out of it and I had to go it alone.  I went to Cedar Rapids to try to run into her anyway, but I had no idea how to locate her and it was probably for the best that we never met in person.  I slept in my car in a church parking lot.

My car took me as far as Iowa City (I wanted to head down south New Orleans way), when I ran over a box in the middle of the road and started leaking fluids.  I managed to get as far as a service station, then a tow to a Dodge dealership, then a bus to St. Louis and I was already running low on cash.  No problem, I thought, I expected this to happen.  Took a Bi-State to my parents house to see if a paycheck I was supposed to receive had come in.  It had.  My mom had hidden it.  By then, they had figured out that I was missing and thought I might come back for it.  I chalked it down as another loss, shouldered my backpack and mail satchel I had picked up from an army surplus store and walked to the interstate offramp.  I expected to do a lot of walking where I was going.

I soon found out why people don't hitchhike anymore.  For one thing, it's illegal to do it on the interstate.  I should have found a state highway instead.  For another thing, once you get out of the city, nobody stops.  I had believed the myth about truck drivers stopping for rides, but they're not allowed to pick up hitchers anymore.

Though I did manage to find a few rides, I walked a long way that day, the coldest day of the year so far.  The first rest stop out of St. Louis is 50 miles south, and that's where I found myself.  I thought it would be a nice, warm place to spend the night, but the only place to sleep was the hard tile floor and it's not well heated at all.  I couldn't stop shivering.  Motorists came and went, but I was mostly too shy to try to bug them for rides.  Shy beggars (that's what I was at this point) don't get very far.

When my dad picked me up he said that I was running from God.  Funny, I thought I was running to Him.  It occurred to me later that this was a dream come true for my parents.  They wanted me to be a prodigal son.  They wanted to go to church the next Sunday and brag about how I had come home and they had taken me in.  But the prodigal son was a sinner.  What had I done wrong?  Separated myself from the hypocrites at church and school?  I had cast myself into the arms of God and relied on Him alone to guide me.  I had committed no crime, save breaking an ordinance.  My only sin was not informing my parents of where I was going.  This led to a new realization about God.  He doesn't exist if other people aren't around to talk to about Him.  He's a god of society, of civilization.  In short, God is a meme.