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Hitch hiking, meeting an elderly Native American gentleman
I have my life through admired the Native American and have been outraged that encroaching whites committed their crimes against them. Naively, perhaps, I reverenced a vision of the wise old Indian, a man in tune with the Earth and his past and felt I had perchance met one that day in New Mexico, when I the hitcher got let out at a restaurant. He was standing beside the door, his greeting scarcely a grunt. I felt honored that he followed me in and sat next to me at the counter.
"Give my friend a hamburger," he told the waitress, who frowned and turned away.
"Give my friend a hamburger," he repeated.
She scolded the old Indian, who broke into a fit of coughing.
I got a cup of coffee.
As I sipped the tepid liquid, the Indian decided to impart a great wisdom upon me. "Don't ball up," he said between fits of coughing. "Don't ball up. Don't ball up. Don't ball up."
I gulped my coffee, paid hurriedly, and got out of there.
Hiking with my thumb again, I felt sad for the old man and hoped he had somebody to go home to. I had a mother and several siblings at the end of my journey.
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I was driving through Alberta near Medicine Hat when I saw an old man walking beside the road. I hesitated at first, but then took a chance and pulled over to see if he wanted a ride. He did, and got in.
He had a paper bag with "his lunch." He said he was going to the "Indian Doings" (I learned later when we got there, a rodeo) up ahead and was grateful for the ride. He told me one story before we got there.
He and other members of his tribe were hired to do a movie one time. They were supposed to get into canoes and paddle as part of the scene. They thought it quite funny because, while they felt like they were born on horses, they had never been in canoes. Still, he said, that they learned how to paddle and made good money playing like Indians they never were.
He begged me to join him at the, "Doings," but I had planned to make about 300 miles more that day and had to decline.
Ron