Chapter Seven. Such a Strange Vibration!

Having camped out on many of their adventures, Flint and Chip were no strangers to the art of “roughing it.” As their motor bikes could only accommodate so much baggage and, furthermore, as they had to leave room for Jelly Roll to ride behind Chip, they had no choice but to travel light. In the end, they made do with their bedrolls, cooking utensils, extra slacks and v-neck sweaters, assorted toiletries, a picnic hamper and a freshly baked peach pie (both courtesy of the indefatigable Aunt Hortense), their schoolbooks and homework assignments, and their portable crime lab. By seven in the morning they had finished loading the bikes and the time had come to say goodbye.

The night before they had informed Mrs. Diamond that they were taking her case, and so grateful was she that she hugged them both, kissed the cheeks of each, and made them sit on her sofa while she baked them a tray of brownies. She was unable to give them any more information about Lucy that might be of use, but she did provide them with her school picture. It wasn’t quite the Lucy they’d be looking for—the perfectly crafted flip hairdo and frosted pink lipstick in the photo were poignant reminders of a girl now lost to braids and naked lips—but it was the best they had.

From Mrs. Diamond’s they’d ridden to say their farewells to their girlfriends, starting at the Snow residence. Pixie was accustomed to her boyfriend taking off on action-packed adventures, but she wasn’t too happy about the timing of this particular outing.

“You better be back in time for the sock hop!” she admonished.

Her brother Buff was there to see them off as well. He had accompanied them on many past adventures, on which his large frame and athleticism had often proved useful in tangling with ne’er-do-wells, but his parents were sticklers about his not missing school. “I sure do envy you fellas,” he said as he shook hands with Flint. “Jeepers, I’ve heard they’ve got a bunch of crazy new dances in San Francisco!”

Their last stop was at the Horton farm just outside of town. While Jelly Roll gathered his things (the boys had decided that Jelly should spend the night at the Burly residence so that they could wake him up in time for their early departure), Flint clinched with Candy.

“Don’t forget to do your homework!” she said. “It would be a shame to end your streak of straight A’s!”

And then, much to the boy’s surprise, Jelly Roll’s usually phlegmatic parents had gotten into the act. Speaking slowly around his corncob pipe, Mr. Horton drawled, “Now listen up, boys. If you should encounter any of that there free love they’ve been talkin’ about, remember this: Ain’t no such thing as a free lunch!”

Giving the boys no time to decipher that cryptic remark, Mrs. Horton patted their shoulders and charged them with looking after Jelly Roll, who tended to be rather impressionable. “Promise me that he won’t get into none of that loco weed,” she concluded.

Mystified, the boys simply nodded their heads is if in compliance, while inwardly wondering just what it was they’d promised to do.

Now, on a bright June morning, they faced Aunt Hortense and their father for their final farewells.

“Make sure to brush your teeth after meals,” Aunt Hortense said as she crushed Flint to her matronly bosom.

“I promise, Aunt Hortense,” Flint gasped.

Enfolding Chip in her work-toughened arms she exhorted, “And don’t forget to change your socks every day.”

“Yes, Aunty,” Chip squeaked.

Finally they turned to their father, who had been uncharacteristically pensive all morning, even when he’d checked over their portable crime lab to make certain all their forensic equipment was present and accounted for. Usually he had a suggestion or two to make about the fingerprint kit, microscope slides, chemical test powders or other contents, but today he’d not uttered a word.

“I expect you boys to write every day,” he said. “I want to be kept apprised of every development in this case.”

“Yes, sir,” the brothers said.

“And the moment you feel any strange influence pervading your minds—any at all—you are immediately to contact local enforcement agencies and seek their help. Do you understand me?"


 “Yes, sir!”

Solemnly, they shook hands. Then they were sitting on their bikes and waving goodbye. Then they were passing the Colgate boy, Skip, who was starting his paper route, and only the open road beckoned ahead.

* * *

Jelly Roll wanted to stop for lunch at a quarter to ten, but the boys ignored him and pushed on. They soon crossed into Pennsylvania, where there were lots of barns.

“There sure are a lot of barns in Pennsylvania,” Flint noted.

A little later they saw their first hitchhiker, but they didn’t think anything of it. It wasn’t until they passed their fifth in just over an hour that they recalled their dad’s words about young people abandoning everything they held dear and striking out for who knew where. All the hitchhikers had been young, and they’d all carried bedrolls slung on their backs, as if they weren’t planning on returning any time soon. One of them, the trio noticed, was even wearing some buttercups in his hair.

Finally they stopped for lunch outside a little town called Pleasant Gap. They pulled off the road and sat under the shade of a tree next to an abandoned farm. Soon they were tearing into a roast chicken that they found in the picnic hamper.

“Oh, God,” Jelly Roll said, gnawing on a leg, “I thought I was going to starve to death!”

Flint was chewing absently on a thigh, a quizzical frown on his face. “Tell me something, Jelly,” he said. “What did your dad mean by ‘free love’?”

“Hey, I was wondering the same thing!” Chip cried.

Jelly Roll was now attacking a breast. “Beats the hell out of me,” he admitted.

“And what was that ‘loco weed’ your mom mentioned?”

“I wish I knew, Flint.”

“Well, let’s examine the phrase for a moment. Loco—if I remember correctly from our trip to Mexico in The Clue of the Stinking Badges—means crazy. And weed means, well, weed. So what in the world is a crazy weed?”

“I don’t know, I tell you! The old folks just say weird things sometimes. Can’t we leave it at that?”

“It just makes you wonder,” Flint said thoughtfully. “I mean, it seems like our folks hear about things that never reach our ears. All that stuff dad seemed to know about today’s youth, and then Jelly’s parents warning us about things they seem to except us to run up against. Sometimes I wonder why they don’t let us kids in on this stuff. Do they think we’re too young to take it?”

Jelly Roll was tearing off a huge chunk of the peach pie with his fingers. “Of course that’s why,” he said. “Just like I’ve been telling you. Everybody treats us like brats. It’s as if they expect us to go on being boy shamuses forever. Like in the comic books. Batman and Robin are the same age today that they were thirty years ago! Jefferson W. Fairchild may have acknowledged over the years that we’ve aged from thirteen and fourteen years of age to seventeen and eighteen, respectively, but sometimes I get the feeling that we’re supposed to get stuck at this age forever!”

“How old is that Travis McGee?” Chip asked.

“I’m not sure. Pretty old, though. At least twenty-five. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Chip said, with a wistful look on his face.

“Hey,” Jelly Roll said. “Do we have time for a nap?”

Jelly Roll grumbled when they hit the road five minutes later, but he managed to doze off against Chip’s shoulder. He slept through most of Ohio, and missed the amber waves of grain, which Chip noted were amber. He also missed the hitchhikers. They passed a good twenty more in that state alone. But he snapped to attention when, just across the border into Indiana, they stopped at a little grocery store and bought a gallon of milk to wash down the rest of the pie. After a brief rest they crossed miles and miles of fruited plains, but they were all too tired to note them. Nobody even remarked on all the hitchhikers they passed, whose numbers were now becoming legion. Finally, as they neared Portage, they decided to call it quits for the day.

They found a place to camp in a little arroyo off the highway and Jelly Roll soon had a fire going. They fried up the bacon Aunt Hortense had packed away in the hamper and with the tomatoes she’d also included made bacon and tomato sandwiches with the bread she’d thought to add. They washed the sandwiches down with milk and after brushing their teeth, doing their homework (Civics for Chip, Trigonometry for Jelly, and a Literature report on the works of Elbert Hubbard for Flint), and dashing off a letter to Slate, climbed into the bedrolls they’d unfurled beside the waning fire.

“Ah, ain’t this the life?” Chip said.

“It would be if we had another of Aunt Hortense’s pies!” Jelly Roll said.

“Did you guys notice all the hitchhikers?” Flint asked.

“Sure did!” Chip said. “Some of them even had flowers in their hair!”

“And they all had that scruffy look,” Flint said. “Like that boy Siddhartha is supposed to have.”

“It’s a whole generation,” Jelly Roll said.

“Huh?” Flint said.

“They have a new explanation,” Jelly Roll said.

“An explanation for what?” Chip asked.

“They’re people in motion,” Jelly Roll said.

“Piping polliwogs!” Chip cried. “Make sense, will you?”

“Jeez, guys,” Jelly Roll said. “Get with it, will you? I was just quoting from that song Lucy was listening to before she disappeared. You know, the one about wearing flowers in your hair if you’re going to San Francisco.”

“You mean you know the lyrics?” Flint demanded.

“Sure. Peanuts Salter has the record. He’s working out how to play it on the tuba.”

“Then give us the whole thing, not just fragments!”

“Sure!” Chip cried. “Maybe there’s a clue in it!”

Jelly Roll screwed up his face in concentration and was soon intoning the words.

If you’re going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
If you’re going to San Francisco
You’re going to meet some gentle people there.

For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there.
In the Streets of San Francisco
Gentle people with flowers in their hair.

All across the nation, such a strange vibration.
People in motion.
There’s a whole generation with a new explanation.
People in motion, people in motion.

“Well, don’t stop there,” Flint demanded, when Jelly Roll had trailed off.

“That’s all there is,” Jelly Roll said. “After that he just repeats the same stuff.”

“But what does it mean?” Flint said.

“How the hell should I know?”

“Why would a nation vibrate?” Flint pressed.

“And what the heck is a love-in?” Chip cried.

But Jelly Roll had no answers. By and by, listening to the wind sigh through the leaves overhead, they drifted off to sleep.

* * *

The next day saw Illinois and Iowa and half of Nebraska dwindle into their rearview mirrors, along with a veritable army of flower-bedecked hitchhikers. They spent the night outside a little town called Ogallala and on the morning of the third day they allowed themselves an extra half hour of sleep and didn’t get started until seven-thirty. But even at such an early hour the highway was already festooned with scruffy youths holding their thumbs out. When they stopped for lunch somewhere between Laramie and Rawlins and polished off the rest of the ham Aunt Hortense had included in the hamper Flint said, “I think I’m starting to understand that song. A new generation really is in motion!”

“Leaping lemmings!” Chip cried. “They’re just like…like lemmings!”

“But I still don’t get the part about a new explanation,” Flint admitted.

“Or the love-in!” Chip said. “That’s the part that’s driving me crazy!”

The spent the early part of the afternoon scaling the Rockies and the latter part descending them. They were exhausted when they reached Salt Lake City but they hurried through the town regardless. They remembered all too well their adventure there in The Mystery of the Scarlet Purple Sage, and none wanted to linger. Soon they passed into the salt flats beyond and, exhausted as they were, elected as one to push on into Nevada rather than spend the night amidst such desolation. Just shy of the town of Elko they spotted a sign that said a campground was coming up and decided they’d had enough for the day. It wasn’t until they had turned off onto a dirt road that led to a copse of trees that Chip noted they hadn’t seen any hitchhikers for the last half hour.

“What do you think happened to them?” he called to them above the roar of the motor bike engines.

“Maybe we could deduce the answer if we know why they were out here in the first place,” Flint said.

But the conversation went no further, for as they braked to a stop under the trees they found that they weren’t alone.