When I got close to Jackson I adjusted my speed so I wouldn’t have to use my feet as brakes. I rode into town just as it was becoming dusk. I decided to stop and get a room at a cheap motel. Stopping was still the problem, down with the foot brakes. My feet heated up again. If I kept this up I wouldn’t have any of my Chuck Taylor’s left. The bottoms were melting. I made it into the motel without incident.
It was barely light out when I checked in. It cost me $20.00 for the motel room. It was just off the highway and had its own diner. I went to my room. It had a large bed and a television. I was hungry so I bought a burger and a pop and ate it in the room. I decided that I needed a shower after being on the road all day. I took off my clothes and noticed that they were covered with bugs. Yuk! They really looked nasty but what could I expect. I had been wearing them for almost two days. They smelled bad too and they were all I had. After all I didn’t take time to pack any extra things. I hung the clothes up and tried brushing them off, it worked to a point. I suppose that they looked a little better.
After my shower I got dressed and stepped out of my room for a smoke and to look around. I was standing outside smoking and thinking about what I had gotten myself into. I knew that the money I had left wasn’t going to get me far. I remembered the t.v. show Route 66. They would go from town to town and stay a while and do odd jobs. That’s it! I'd find a job and work a couple weeks to get some money for brakes for the bike and and some more for the rest of the trip. So what if it was going to take me a little longer to get to Texas.
I had just finished the smoke and was thinking of going back to the room and watch to television, when I saw the maid. She was an older, heavy set, black woman. I heard her talking to another person staying at the motel. She was laughing and shaking her head at something the man had said. As she approached me I could see the lines on her face the showed from the times of her past. She had a tissue that she was using to wipe the sweat from her forehead. She wore a blue outfit that looked as it were the uniform of her life. As she approached me she smiled and asked me how I was doing? I said that I was doing fine. She asked me if I was with someone else. I told her that I was all alone and making a trip to Texas to see my grandmother. She asked me how old I was and I told her that I was eighteen. I wanted her to believe me. I was afraid that I would get into trouble for leaving home at a younger age. I thought that eighteen would work for me as I thought I looked older anyway.
Her name was Sara. She told me that I looked younger than eighteen. For some reason I trusted her. I felt that everything would be okay. She asked if I had eaten anything? I told her that I had a sandwich from the diner out front. She asked if I had any other clothes, because the ones I was wearing certainly looked dirty and had bugs all over them.
