Gypsy Spirit on the Road to Find Out

Brinna J. Adair

Chapter 1

“Well I hit the rowdy road and many kinds I met there

Many stories told me of the way to get there.”

Cat Stevens

It was November 8, 1977 when Mary left Minnesota, the only home she had ever known to test her Gypsy spirit. The morning air was brisk against her face, as she packed her bags into her 1966 Chevy Nova. The north winds were blowing in cold air, a cold that could last until June at times. “Today, is a good morning to head south,” she mused to herself.

Morgan, her bother and roommate, had given her a few tools and directions written in a tablet on how to make simple auto repairs, what to check, and how often to check it. During the summer, he had spent time showing her how to check and change oil and change spark plugs and such, just so she would know. She had made sure that Morgan had a friend moving in the day after she left so he could keep the townhouse that they had been sharing. Kissing her cat Cocoa on the head and stroking his soft fur, Mary left the townhouse with mixed feelings of excitement and adventure, also, with a sadness of the past she was trying to leave behind.

Dark overhead, the clouds were gathering as Mary took the highways through Minnesota and into Iowa that early November morning. She thought, that she was leaving just in time to miss the first big snowfall of the season. She stopped, just over the Iowa border and had lunch at a rest area near a school. It had begun to rain and was dark, making her feel more, blue in her heart. Popping in “Tea for the Tillerman,” she took encouragement, from the words that Cat Stevens was singing, just for her.

Later that day, on a back road in the heart of Iowa's farm country, Mary stopped to check the lug nuts on her car, as Morgan had told her to do. A man on his way to load some corn stopped to help and made sure that everything was all right, before his departure. Leaving there, the sky opened up, and began to rain, sometimes a hard, driving rain and sometimes a gentle mist.

Making it to Davenport, Iowa that night, Mary’s body was screaming for rest. Checking into the Tall Corn Motel, she could see that truck drivers frequented the place, by the many semis parked in the lot there. She struggled with the urge to go to the lounge for a drink and relax. Deciding this would be too risky, she stayed in her room smoked a joint of marijuana and listened to Cat Stevens “Tea for the Tillerman.” Janis Joplin's, “Cheap Thrills,” and Cat Steven's, “Foreigner Suite” while writing in the journal that she would keep of her adventures. "Not much to write, it was raining most of the day." She wrote of the beauty of the hills, in southeastern Minnesota; the stiffness of her right leg, from driving so long that day and the things that happened along her way.

Watching the evening news, she learned that the rain she was driving through had come down in the form of six inches of snow in Minnesota so far. Winter was setting in and she had no regrets, nor thoughts of turning back, now. She was heading south to spend the winter in a warmer climate. Reasoning, if she was going to be miserable, she wanted to be in a warmer climate, to do it. Still feeling the pain of her divorce from Lee and having to break things off with Joe, Mary thought of the heartache she was leaving behind and, where it all began to go wrong.