Note: This was May 24-28, 1995

My friend Earl.. yes the same one from the Alligator.. He was in his fifties while I was in my mid-twenties. He was Native American, a Vietnam veteran, and almost always stoned. He lived a life that most people wouldn't dare to live, and he didn't ask permission for much of anything. One Sunday afternoon in May, I went down to visit him. He suggested a road trip to Rome, Georgia to see his sister. I was always down for something entertaining.

"Sure," I said. "Let's go."

Earl packed a small suitcase and a duffel bag full of his "medication"—the drugs that kept him perpetually "sane". I went home, grabbed some clothes, and we headed out in my 1975 MGB convertible, a classic British sports car that couldn't have topped out at much more than sixty miles an hour without rattling, but that wouldn't stop us from trying.

We were heading east on I-10 to I-231 North toward Dothan.

Part 1: White Lies

About two miles outside of Dothan, at two thirty in the morning, I blew a tire. We decided to take the tire off the car and put it inder the frame so nothing got damaged and walk back to Dothan. At three o'clock in the morning on Memorial Day, we wandered down the streets of a sleeping town until we found a repair center with tons of tires, rims, and everything else sitting out front.

"Nobody's open and nobody's gonna be open," Earl said. "Let's just grab a tire and go put it on your car. How many lugs do you have on your tire?"

"It's an MGB," I said. "I'm positive it's four."

"I think it's five," he countered.

"No, sir. I'm positive it's four."

He found a five-lug tire that was roughly the right size. "This'll work. Let's go."

So we stole a tire from a shop in the middle of the night. Earl also stole a hubcap because he thought it was interesting.

By the time we got back to the car, it was about five o'clock in the morning. And my car had four lugs. Not five. So we used the stolen tire to prop up the car frame, took my tire, and started walking back into town with it. Earl threw the hubcap in the backseat. The convertible top was still down. It was daylight now on Memorial Day, and traffic was picking up. So there we were—me and a stoned Vietnam vet Native American walking down the highway with a tire.

A guy in a pickup truck offered us a lift. We hopped in the back with our tire, and he said he knew a place. He took us to a shop and it was closed. so he said don't worry I know a show that was always open. The shop he took us to turned out to be the same one we'd stolen from.

The guy at the shop was as nice as can be. He just found me a used replacement, mounted it up, and balanced it. We paid him and got ready to leave on foot. But he said, "Nope. I'll give you a ride." This man gave us a ride back to our car, where the stolen tire and hubcap were sitting in the backseat. When we got there, I said, "Hey, do we owe you anything extra for the ride?"

"Nope," he said. "Y'all ar good."

Earl said, "Here, I've got something for you," and gave the man the hubcap he'd stolen from the shop.

The guy's face lit up. "Hey, that's cool. I have one of these at the shop. Now I have a matching set."

He drove off. I just glared at Earl.

Earl knew what he was doing. As I was replacing the tire, a police officer pulled up behind us to check on us. Earl walked back to the officer to be cordial and I heard him say "Nope. We didn't have a spare tire" right as I am picking up the stolen tire to put in the backseat.

I got all the lugs tightened down. "Alright, Earl. Come on. Daylight's burning. We gotta go."

"I gotta get something out of the trunk," he said.

"Nope. We're gonna go. We'll stop someplace safe and do it."

"I gotta get something out of the trunk."

"No. We're gonna go."

I realized what he needed was his medication, and I didn't need a police officer asking questions about a duffel bag full of drugs. We thanked the officer, got in the car, and took off for Georgia. Later, I found out Earl had been on probation and wasn't even supposed to leave the state of Florida. I had a long talk with Earl about withholding pertinent information.

Part 2: When in Rome

Through some minor fiascos and a speeding ticket—which didn't make sense because my car couldn't speed—we made it to Rome, Georgia late in the afternoon. A police officer pulled us over.

He walked up to the car and said, "Sir, I don't need your license and registration. I just need to know what you're doing with that asshole in the side seat of your car."

He was pointing at Earl.

Earl stood up and said, "I don't need to take that shit from you," stood up in my car, walked across the backseat, and put a pill in the cop's mouth. Then he said, "Let's go get a beer." The look on my face was unmitigated horror.

So we went to a bar. At the bar, the cop, Earl, and a person who I later found out was the mayor were smoking pot, taking pills, and drinking beer. I was just drinking a Coke, because I didn't have any way to frame this in any kind of sensibility.

After an hour and a half, they all hugged, and we all went our separate ways. We finally got to Earl's sister's house.

We walked inside, and on her kitchen counter was four kilograms of marijuana with a weigh scale. Earl's sister was the pot supplier for all of Rome, Georgia. She sold to everyone—the cops, the judges, the mayor. That explained a lot about the interactions we'd just had.

We got a good afternoon's sleep. Late that night, we headed to Atlanta. We cruised around the city and somehow wandered into the red light district where there were prostitutes everywhere. Earl took me down a side street where there were male prostitutes. They started approaching my car. One of them put his hands on my vehicle, at which point I pulled a butterfly knife and put the blade between his hands.

"Take your hands off my car before you lose a finger," I said.

Earl thought this was incredibly entertaining.

We left that night, went back, and rested. The next evening—Tuesday—Earl said we were going to have dinner with some friends.

Part 3: A Trip Down the Rabbit Hole and the Mad Hatter's Tea Party

We went to a person's house. The table was large. Earl was there with his daughter. There were three or four other gentlemen there with different family members, and we had a full home cooked southern meal.

After the meal was done, all of the women left, except for Earl's daughter. The gentlemen started asking me about college. I told them I was studying computer and information science.

"Have you ever thought about going for a law degree?" one of them asked.

"No," I said. "Not really. Why?"

"What if we were to pay for your law degree?" another said. "All expenses paid. Either Georgia State or Georgia Tech. We'd help you pass the bar exam to become a licensed lawyer."

There's always a catch. "What's the catch?" I asked.

They explained their philosophy. They believed people should be treated equitably based on the merit of what they're capable of doing, not based on some predetermined factor or some hiring practice. They were looking for lawyers they could trust—lawyers who would defend their rights and fight for equal opportunity based on merit.

Then I found out they were all members of the Ku Klux Klan. They wanted me to defend them in legal suits and help them fight against Equal Employment Opportunity laws.

I didn't say no to their faces. It didn't seem like a safe thing to do in that environment, in a place I wasn't in control of. I said I would have to think about it. I told them I still had to figure out how I was going to survive, and they said they would put me up in a house, make sure it stayed clean, and provide meals. Earl's daughter, who was very pretty, offered to help me take care of the house and cook meals.

I grabbed a roll and looked at Earl. "Seriously... the next time we go on a trip," I said, "you have to stop withholding information."

He said that was fair.

Part 4: We're Not in Kansas Anymore

The next day was Wednesday, and we were leaving. We decided to take a different back road through Alabama to get home.

I told Earl that I wasn't interested in being a lawyer, and that the whole thing didn't feel good to me under those circumstances.

"That's ok," he said. "No pressure. Thank you for considering it."

We were driving down some hilly roads on a downhill stretch when I said, "Can we get this tire out of the backseat of the car?" I was talking about the stolen tire from two days earlier.

"Sure," Earl said.

He grabbed it out of the car and put it on the side of the road. Then he gave it a push, and it started rolling down the road. So we followed this tire in my convertible as it rolled down the asphalt for about a mile until the road turned right. The tire went off the road into the woods. We were finally safe from the cursed thing.

We turned right, went down the hill, came back to the left, and what do you think we saw? The same damn tire. It was on the road in front of us again. Eventually it went into a ditch and fell over.

"Let's get out of here," I said. "This whole trip is cursed."

We got through that mountainous stretch and ended up in a flat plains area of Alabama. We came to a four-way intersection with a stop light. There was a large tractor trailer on our left and a cop car behind us.

I heard what sounded like a train.

"Do you hear that?" I asked Earl.

"Yeah," he said.

"I think that's a train."

I looked around. "I don't see any train tracks."

I inched the car forward to look out in front of the tractor trailer, and I saw a tornado. It was on the road, heading straight toward this intersection.

I did what any reasonable man would do in a convertible with the top down. I punched the gas, ran the red light, and hauled ass through that intersection toward a gas station where I could pull under the service and repair area to try to be safe.

The cop immediately cut his lights on and chased us.

We parked the car at the gas station and walked inside. I immediately put my hands up and put them on the back of my head. When the cop walked in, he said, "Put your hands down. I didn't wanna be in that intersection either with a tornado coming. You're fine."

The tornado passed. Everything seemed okay. We continued south toward Florida.

We got through that and continued south. About midnight, we rolled into Auburn, Alabama hungry. The only place to eat was Tiger Time Cafe, a college hangout. We sat down and got some food. I started flirting with the waitress.

"What time do you get off?" I asked her.

"Six o'clock," she said.

"That's a shame," I said. "I could really use a place to take a nap and a cuddle. I'm exhausted."

She looked at me and said, "You can hang out until six and come crash at my place."

"Yeah," I said. "It's a shame you can't get off any earlier."

She paused and said, "The only way we could get off early is if the power went out."

Earl and I looked at each other. Let's just say we found a way to blow a grid breaker. The power went out at Tiger Time Cafe, they had to close early, and I went to sleep at that girl's house while Earl crashed on her couch.

Some trips change you. Some trips haunt you. Some trips you can't quite explain to anyone else. This was all three.