At the Kit Carson County jail, the sheriff had me empty my pockets ( I suppose I could have hidden the joint in my dirty handkerchief, but hey, let’s not screw around with hitchhiking rule number 2) and went through my back pack. He pulled out a poetry anthology I was carrying with me. Great, I thought, now I’m going to take some shit from a redneck about “faggot poetry.” As he flipped through the pages he stopped and said, “Ah, Ferlinghetti . . . .”

It was explained to me that I was being held unless I could post bond to ensure that I would appear before the judge, just as with out-of-state speeders. Well, I had about five dollars for my cross-country trip. I tried calling my family to wire me money - Hurry, Western Union closes at four o’clock. I knew my family was in Syracuse at my brother’s, and I couldn’t get an answer. They were out to dinner, and, I learned later, joking “Where do you suppose Don is right now? Probably in jail somewhere.” Ha. Ha.

To this point, I had maintained a bit of detachment from what was going on. After all, a part of hitchhiking was the uncertainty of what happened next, the excitement of the unplanned. However, having my freedom taken away, the right to come and go as I pleased, reattached me to what was going on quite profoundly. I stood holding the bars, squeezing with all of my strength. If it were humanly possible, I would bend those bars.

My time passed fairly uneventfully, got two dinners and two breakfasts from the restaurant next door, not fancy -- open faced roast beef sandwich, peas, mashed potatoes, fried eggs and toast for breakfast -- but filling. The cell could hold six or eight, with third-tier bunks that were welded up out of use. I shared it with a quiet, lanky, mild-mannered older man with short dark hair and dark-rimmed glasses, wearing a white tee-shirt, who rested his hands inside his faded overalls, folded across his stomach. There were some magazines, books and a small black and white portable television with rabbit ear antenna, that recieved one or two channels, one out of Goodland, Kansas. I read an article in a local publication that had one of the best arguments I've seen to become a vegetarian, detailing the immense amount of acreage necessary to produce a pound of beef in Colorado, and the increasing acreage required as you head north. Saturday night I woke up when someone new entered the cell, but he was gone by morning. When I felt comfortable I asked my cellmate what he was in for. He looked down with a subdued, far-off gaze and quietly said that he had killed someone. How nice.