Places I Slept During My Misspent Youth By Greg Clary

 My cousin’s horse barn. They didn’t mind because they knew I didn’t smoke.

The backseat of another cousin’s 1967 ragtop Pontiac GTO, where he kept a wool blanket for reasons I didn’t really understand at the time.

Under interstate bridges while hitching all around the south. Noisy, secure, and dry.

In the drunk tank in Huntington, West Virginia after being arrested by a cop with whom I shared a Sociology class. We never acknowledged each other again

On the couch of a Unification Church (Moonies). Dinner was better than the endless catechism that followed.

In the back of a Greyhound bus traveling from Florida to West Virginia with stops at every crossroad heading north. I finally escaped somewhere in Kentucky and hitched the rest of the way in.

Under an open sided pavilion at an RV campground, then waking up to a crowd of kids on spyder bikes circled around to see if I was alive or dead.

Hidden behind a chaise lounge on the 7th floor swimming pool deck of the Adams Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona, after missing the last bus back to a friend’s college dorm.

In the Tampa Stockade in Tampa, Florida after being jailed for hitchhiking on Interstate-75. The longest night of my life.

In Mrs. Daniels’ 11:00 English class nearly every day of my junior year in high school. It was not her fault.

Cheap motel rooms all around Myrtle Beach. The Pink House, not far from the Pavilion, was a favorite at $ 5.00 per night. 

By my grandpa’s hospital bed as he lay dying.

A horse trailer, with a horse, at Camden Amusement Park.

Now, 50 years later, when I am stopped at a traffic light, I will sometimes look around and think to myself, “I could sleep there if I had to.”

Greg Clary is Professor Emeritus of Rehab and Human Services at Clarion University, Clarion Pa. His poems have appeared in The Watershed Journal and North/South Appalachia.

His photographs have been published in The Sun Magazine, Looking at Appalachia, and The Watershed Journal.

He resides in Sligo, Pennsylvania and is a Son of Turkey Creek, West Virginia