On the Road: Part 1, Chapter 13 Summary & Analysis

Sal stayed at the hotel with Teresa for the next fifteen days. They planned to hitchhike to New York together. One night, Sal heard a police car across the street and sobbing coming from a rooming house. He says that “LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities.”

Nonetheless, L.A. was full of “the beatest characters,” marijuana, jazz, and “long-haired brokendown hipsters.” Sal “wanted to meet them all,” but he and Teresa were busy looking for work, so they could save money to go to New York. Sal looked at all the different people in L.A., all of whom had “come to LA to make the movies.”

Sal went with Teresa as she got her things from her sister and a friend who lived on “the colored main drag of LA.” Sal bought some marijuana, but when he and Teresa smoked it, it turned out to be just tobacco. Sal and Teresa decided to leave for New York. They went east to Arcadia, California, “pointed toward the American continent.”

As Sal and Teresa walked along the road, cars full of high-school kids sped by, the kids jeering at Sal and Teresa. They went into a soda fountain, but encountered the same kids, and left. That night, they stayed in a motel room, “held each other tight,” and “had long, serious talks.” Sal says that they made a kind of “pact.”

The next morning, Sal and Teresa decided to go to Bakersfield and work picking grapes until they had enough money to go to New York by bus. When they got to Bakersfield, though, they couldn’t find jobs. They went into “Mexican town,” and Teresa asked people about jobs. Sal describes the “Mextown” as “one blazing bulb of lights,” with “movie marquees, fruit stands, penny arcades, five-and-tens, and hundreds of rickety trucks and mud-spattered jalopies.”

Sal and Teresa bought a bottle of wine that night and after drinking they decided to hitchhike to Teresa’s hometown and live in her brother’s garage. They got to the town and stayed in a hotel room. The next morning, Teresa went to find her brother. She came back with her brother, her son, and her brother’s friend Ponzo.

Teresa’s brother, Rickey, sold manure to farmers. He drove Sal and Teresa to “see some farmers about manure.” They drove around and talked to some farmers, but nothing came of it, so they went to a saloon to drink. Sal says that “Americans are always drinking in crossroads saloons on Sunday afternoon.” Rickey assured Sal that they’d make money the next day.

Sal got drunk with Rickey and Ponzo, and then they ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant with Teresa. Teresa and Sal didn’t have a plan for where they would sleep, so they ended up staying in a motel room with Teresa’s child. Teresa said that everything would be fine mañana (tomorrow). Sal says that for the next week all he heard was “mañana.”

The next day, Sal found a tent in the “cotton fields and grape vineyards,” where he could stay with Teresa and her kid. Rickey and Ponzo arrived with beer and started drinking. Rickey assured Sal that they would make lots of money selling manure the next day. Sal realized that these plans would never really happen, so he went around looking for “cotton-picking work.”

Sal found a job picking cotton. It was difficult work, but “it was beautiful kneeling and hiding in that earth.” He describes a black couple who “picked cotton with the same God-blessed patience their grandfathers had practiced in ante-bellum Alabama.” Sal earned about $1.50 per day picking cotton. He “forgot all about the East and all about Dean and Carlo and the bloody road.”

When winter came around, Teresa and Sal decided they had to leave their tent. Teresa and Sal went back with Ponzo to Teresa’s hometown, so she could see her family, but Ponzo’s truck broke down. They all went to a bar and drank. Sal felt “the pull of my own life calling me back,” and wrote to his aunt for fifty more dollars.

Sal went with Teresa back to her family, but he waited a quarter-mile away, so her parents wouldn’t see him. He heard her family arguing and yelling at Teresa for leaving her husband, but they eventually welcomed her back home. Sal had a Billie Holiday song stuck in his head as he waited outside in the cold.

Not wanting Sal to leave, Teresa told him that he could stay in a nearby farmer’s barn, and she would pick grapes to earn enough money for both of them. Sal moved into the barn. He accompanied Teresa to her family’s house again, and again waited outside, unseen. He heard Teresa and her father argue and fight.

Teresa didn’t want Sal to leave, but he told her that he had to. He had sex with Teresa in the barn his last night in the area, and the next morning Teresa brought him breakfast. They agreed to meet in New York whenever Teresa could get there, though Sal says they both knew this wouldn’t happen. Sal left and hitchhiked back to L.A., arriving in the early morning. There, he bought a bus ticket to Pittsburgh and spent most of his remaining money on food for the trip.