Editor’s note: Rick McKay, Joe Masonick, and Jack Karolewski, have been annual travel companions for more than 50 years to a variety of sites with many goals. This week’s adventure is the second in the series.
The first part is available at thevoice.us/on-friendships-50-years-of-varied-travel-adventures
By Rick McKay
The 1960s was an era of extraordinary divisiveness in our country, generally along generational lines. It was a decade of unprecedented violence, starting with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 which brought us within a hair’s breadth of nuclear war. That was followed on the heels by the brutal murder of president John Kennedy in Fall 1963, the escalation of the Vietnam War by resident Lyndon Johnson shortly thereafter, the shooting of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, and the assassination of presidential candidate Robert Kennedy less than two months after Dr. King’s fall. In the wake of this violence and civil unrest, Richard Nixon was elected president in fall 1968, with a promise to push on in Vietnam and bring the War to an end with an honorable peace.
But by 1970, the year of our trio’s first adventure, the Vietnam War was still raging with no end in sight and the anti-war movement was on the rise. The legendary music festival called Woodstock was less than a year behind us and the killing of four students at Kent State University by National Guardsmen was still fresh in everyone’s memory.
The ongoing war colored every aspect of our experience, as did the youth culture’s general rejection of the materialistic mindset of our parents’ generation. It seemed we were on the doorstep of a better world. As we embarked on this adventure, we were trying to figure out who we were, what our place in the world would be, and what values would guide us on the road ahead.
At the last minute, my dad, who was quite worried about our hitchhiking, offered us the family station wagon for the journey. And so, early in June, our odyssey began. As we traversed the heartland, we encountered many a variety of individuals: An opinionated farmer in a small-town diner in Minnesota who suggested that all demonstrators should be rounded up and shot; a group of high school teens smoking dope around a campfire in South Dakota, confused about the future; a Boeing employee who approached us while we skipped stones along a rocky beach near Seattle and who ended up inviting us into his house to discuss the issues of the time.
We didn’t make it to Alaska. After struggling in Seattle to earn a little more cash to complete the journey, Jack had enough and chose to hitchhike back to Chicago. Joe and I soldiered on, but due to warnings of the rough conditions on the unpaved Alcan Highway, we decided to leave the family car at Ft. St. John where the highway begins and thumb rides from there.
It became possible only because we picked up a couple of female hitch-hikers who lived there. One offered to ask her parents if we could sleep in their home the night of our arrival. Her family was very nice and so hospitable. They expressed their gratitude for our having given their daughter a safe lift home from Vancouver where she and her friend attended college. They fed us a warm meal and invited us to unroll our sleeping bags on the living room floor for the night. Furthermore, they told us that we were more that welcome to leave our vehicle in their drive, and that they would gladly watch over it until our return.
Before sunrise the next morning, we began thumbing for a ride. However, after reaching Ft. Nelson, several hundred miles north, we were unable to obtain another ride. Cars passed us up all day long and all of the following morning as well. Our prospects looked bleak. Discouraged, and a bit homesick, we decided to cut our losses and return home.
Although we didn’t achieve our original objective, our eyes had been opened in many ways we couldn’t have imagined previously, and the foundation of our 50-year friendship began to take shape.
Why has our friendship endured for so long? There is no doubt that it has maintained its vibrancy and relevance across the decades, due in part to our commitment to share an annual travel adventure with each other, starting a few years after that early endeavor to reach Alaska to our most recent bike trip along the Danube River in Europe last Fall.
These trips became even more important after Jack moved from Illinois to Davis, Calif. in 1988 and we were no longer able to get together on weekends. With marriage and families and busy careers to occupy much of our time, setting aside a week or so in the Summer months to reunite was the best way to stay connected. And so, with a few exceptions, we have done so!
Of course, travel alone does not a friendship make. I have given a good deal of consideration as to aspects of our upbringings or the qualities of our personalities that made our friendships both possible and enduring. I will explore these ideas next week.
Continued at thevoice.us/three-men-in-adventures-50-years-foundation-of-friendship