Well, I’d finally made it somewhere.
Medicine Hat was seeming pretty friendly already. The fellow who’d dropped me off, a jolly Christian man who resided in the Hat, had left me with 12 dollars and a smile. He’d been fun to talk to - one of the more open-minded religious folk who didn’t let every conversation dwindle into endless preaching.
Sweet. He dropped me off at a Wendy’s and I promptly stuffed my face. Everyone here seemed fascinated by my smelly aura and filthy backpack; their eyes followed me across the room as I set down to devour my burgers. I sensed no condescension though - everyone smiles, a few waved. This place was nice.
I was soon to find out it would get even better! The hitchhiking spot was perfect. The #1 highway faded into a double-lane road as it passed through Medicine Hat, and I chose a spot right before the highway. The speed limit here was 50 clicks, no nobody would be ripping past without at least giving me a glance.
As the sun began to fade into the distance, decorating the sky with brushstrokes of orange and yellow, I realized the spot wasn’t as great as I’d hoped. Next to the highway where I stood was a massive construction zone. The ground was covered in loose sand, and as the wind picked up, the earth began to cast massive tendrils of grit into the air. These sand tornados blew with such freakish force that they obscured my vision, not only by filling my eyes with dirt but because the air was so thick with the shit that I couldn’t even see oncoming traffic. This sucked. I was gonna give it a try tomorrow.
I left the spot, scratching dirt out of my matted hair. I trekked across the highway a few blocks until I found an abandoned Wal-Mart. There was a covered section around back - perfect rain shelter - but it was surrounded by a 15 foot fence that was locked. I fiddle with the lock for a moment before I heard a furious shout.
’’GET AWAY FROM THERE!’’
I turned around to see a piping red, fat face shrieking at me through the window of a blue pickup truck.
’’CALM DOWN,’’ I shouted back, countering his freakish overreaction with my own.
The security guard drove up to me. I explained that I was just trying to find a place to sleep where I could avoid any potential rain, explained where I came from, and explained the shitty situation with the dust. He quickly took pity on me and my instrument, and his rage melted away. While he affirmed that he couldn’t legally let me stay there, he lent me a hand by driving around the parking lot until he found a big blue tarpaulin bag for me to carry my guitar in. He apologized about fifty seven times before I bid him goodbye and went off to find somewhere else to sleep.
There was truly nowhere with shelter. I ended up around a strip mall and checked a half-dozen dumpsters - they were either locked, filled to the brim, or in terrible locations.
I spotted a trailer with a billboard attached to it that was parked on a field a few hundred yards from my latest failed dumpster expedition. I hopped the barbed wire fence and tickled my knees as I strolled through the waist-high grass towards the trailer. Once I got there, I dropped my stuff on the ground and prepared to sleep... until I looked up a final time and found myself staring into the unimpressed eyes of a massive cow. I threw my shit back on and fled the field, not wanting to have another bad experience with cows (I’d once been picking shrooms on the Island when a herd of fifty-plus cows came storming towards me, causing a quick evacuation of the field.)
Well, fuck. I spent the next hour dejectedly wandering around, convinced that there was nowhere to sleep. During this time, I absentmindedly strummed the same dissonant notes on my out-of-tune guitar. These notes aligned perfectly with the repeated thought of ’’nowhere to sleep, nowhere to sleep’’ and by the time I found somewhere I could lay my head, I found myself feeling quite schizophrenic.
The place I found was, most ironically, a cardboard dumpster situated beside a bed and mattress store. I ogled the plush feather beds that lay within the store as I crept into the riveted and tremendously uncomfortable dumpster to hole up for the night.
My dreams were with the memory foam that lay not even a dozen feet from my vestibule.
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