“Oh, what the heck!” the boy relented. He had nothing against hard work, but it would be empty manual labor.
So now he had a job in Patchogue, a town about half an hour farther east, in Bill De Bono’s lampshade factory. The boy tried it for a couple of weeks. Old Bill, cigar in hand, stationed him on an assembly line, cutting cardboard forms between two large Italian women, Maria and Cassandra. These were hardworking, salt-of-the-earth women, and the boy got along with them okay; the boy got along with everyone. But the factory did not have air conditioning, so it was hot and sweaty and smelly. And with each passing day he became angrier and more ready to head off to greener pastures in a way that might just declare his total and complete emancipation from his parents’ influence forever and ever.
Dad still had that second-hand gray Mercedes 190 that he had bought to look good when he visited St. Paul’s. One hot, muggy Friday, two weeks into his factory job, the boy drove the 190 to the factory as usual and put in a solid day of hard labor. Then, that evening, he drove out to Westhampton again to spend a few days with friends—good old Livy, a buddy from St. Paul’s, and the boy’s nice blonde girlfriend Lee, whom he liked a lot because he could look into her eyes and see the universe as the waves were crashing into the dunes. The folks were okay with his borrowing the 190 because they could drive the other car. The next night, a Saturday, was the fateful night the boy finally decided to set out on an unspecified quest west.
That evening the boy sat on the bench pondering his favorite book, Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy, about “Ultimate Reality” and dharma, and knew he was worried that everything he was doing was pointless and that at his dying breath he would be filled with regrets over a meaningless life. Putting aside his copy of Huxley, he pulled his heavily underlined copy of Hesse’s Siddhartha out of his backpack. It tells about a young man born into a rich family—a.k.a. the Buddha—who took to the road on a spiritual journey of self-discovery, seeking meaning and authenticity.
At eleven that night, feeling the need to resist the downward vortex of family life, he got into the Mercedes 190 and said goodbye to Lee and Livy without telling them anything about his plans. He just started driving west. He followed the Sunrise Highway (Route 27) to the Long Island Expressway (I-495). He drove through the Midtown Tunnel and up the FDR Drive and over the George Washington Bridge and just followed the signs for Route 80 West. He did not have a road map, but west is west, and the only other sign was for I-95 South. There was nothing about “south” in the dream.
Route 80 runs from the George Washington Bridge in the east to the Bay Bridge in the west. But when you’re following a dream any long highway will do, so you can pick your own.
After a couple of hours on 80, rationality kicked in a bit and the boy began to have real doubts about taking Dad’s car, although he was pissed about the job—and maybe he even lost a little faith in the dream for a few minutes. He decided to turn around and head home, like any respectable kid should, and try to renegotiate things—although communication with his parents had never been good. If he turned back now, no one would ever know that he had even been out on Route 80. That was the boy’s thinking at the time, but the divine Mind had other plans.
Synchronicity intervened, gracefully but with awesome power. The boy was close to making a U-turn across the midway when something totally uncanny and unexpected happened that changed his life forever—and ultimately for the better.
Rather than crossing over the median, the car barely made it to the right shoulder of the highway as the generator failed and the entire engine went dead. It was still dark, but the sun was beginning to rise. The boy had all of fifty dollars in his wallet, no credit cards, and there at the intersection of Route 80 with Route 215 near Milton and Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, there was nothing visible for miles but wheat fields and cornstalks. The boy felt like the generator had broken as an act of God, and for one good reason: the universe was now forcing him to live out his dream. And since he was now pretty far from home, there was no turning back.
So the boy did what only an adolescent male with limited management skills and a typical underdeveloped frontal cortex might do. He took a pencil from the glove compartment and carefully printed in large block letters the following note on a scrap of paper:
To the Pennsylvania State Police:
Please return this car to Henry my dad,
44 Davison Lane East
West Islip, New York
Call 516-669-5655.
—His son, who just quit the lampshade factory for good
Just as the sun was rising, the boy stood on the side of Route 80 with his thumb out, his classical guitar case and backpack full of spiritual books at his side, and prayed for a ride. The very first vehicle that came along, a big white truck, pulled over and the driver yelled out, “Okay, kid, where you headed?”
And the boy responded, “Thanks, sir. Goin’ west, looks like!”
“Well, how far?”
“Far, sir!”
“Well, not sure where far is, but I can get you to Chicago, so jump in. My name is Gary.”
“Okay, I had an uncle named Gary, but his liver failed. He almost drank himself to death in Africa and came home to live in Connecticut. He visited the house once or twice but was falling all over the place. He was too far gone to take any interest in me, even though I got my middle name to honor the guy. Those heavy drinkers give up everything for one thing when they could give up one thing for everything.”
“No drinking here, kid, not on the road.” Gary had a Bible on the seat and a wooden cross hanging from the big mirror in front of him.
“So what are you doing out here, kid?”
And the boy told him about the lampshade factory and then a little about the dream. Gary was very quiet as the boy spoke and looked deeply pensive. He was a good listener, and very present in the moment. After the boy finished, there was a long silence.
“Well, kid, that Mercedes 190 back there and the note, it should make its way back to your dad, but he won’t be happy. That’s a long way from Long Island. You sure you want to head west? You should at least call home.”
As Gary spoke, he pointed to the towering mountains and steep, rocky granite cliffs right at the edge of Route 80 after you pass that Lewisburg/Milton exit.
“Did you ever see mountain cliffs like that, kid?”
“No, but wow! They are amazing,” answered the boy.
“Up on that one over in the distance you can see a big white cross at the top. People along Route 80 have all done things that they probably shouldn’t have. We all do. But down here below the cross we are all still okay, because even when we don’t look up and think about that cross as we drive on by, we are always covered by it. Still, you need to call your mom,” he said, without sounding judgmental.
“Kid,” he continued, “you still have to try to do your best and someday, somehow you will make the most of things.”
“I might have handled this better, Gary,” I replied. “But the car broke down and there was this dream and the world needs dreamers. Plus, I really wanted that tutoring job. Dad, he will get the car back somehow. I should be okay heading west. I will get back at some point, I guess. Anyway, the car breaking when it did was some kind of quantum alchemy. It happened for a reason.
“Well, you never really quite get back to where you left from in the same way. But that’s not too bad, kid,” said Gary. “And your dad will eventually get his car. So let’s head to Chicago. But it’s early morning, so I will say a prayer. Yup, way kind of leads on to way.”
And Gary improvised a prayer out loud for the boy and his journey to the west, ending with, “Now Lord, wherever this boy goes and whatever he does, let your Light shine on