Jaunt with John

April 8, 2022 Dear Sarah, Your father was quite a mensch to step up the way he did, the only friend to say “yeah, that’s a great idea, we hitchhike across the country and go scare the shit out of some guy we never met in Los Angeles—great fun to be had there.”  He had a crazy edge to him that was very comforting when things took a turn, which they frequently did on the road.  I just remember the idea was born when a friend of ours whose dealer regularly sent him pounds of marijuana from the west coast suddenly stopped answering the phone and he was into Tom for three or four hundred dollars, so why not Tom sends two angels of revenge from one coast to the other to collect?  The element of surprise would certainly be on our side.  To put a date on our first trip together the damn reference for me is Charles Manson.  I know this because we ran into a dude, a Jesus freak on the boardwalk of Redondo Beach, whose Jesus spiel included the fact that he had been a membe...