Two Thumbs Up

This is an unbelievable true story of a time when I was in my younger years. I drove out to California with a buddy of mine to spend some time with my brother. To make a long story short, we ended up living there for almost a year. We had met some people that we became pretty close to while we spent time away from our homes in New Jersey. Mark and I were the adventurous type of kids as we did a lot of hitch-hiking all over the place. When we finally came back from California, we decided to go camping and to hitch a ride up to the mountains in Pennsylvania which was a few hours away from where we lived. We were thumbing on this back street that had very little traffic when someone passed us by in a Winnebago. Shortly after passing us, they did a U-turn and came back around to pick us up and to give us a ride. Well, it turns out that the people who picked us up were actually two of the performers in a play that we worked at in California. It's a 3000-mile journey from N.J. to Ca. So, it was a trip to see those people. They were actually heading back to California because they had just come back from New York where they were married. Unfortunately for us, they couldn't give us a ride because they were heading west, and we were heading east. But it was great to see them. I have never seen them again. I left my home when I was twenty-one And I left my folks behind A friend and I left for the west To see what we could find I found a job working the spotlights In this well-known musical play Way out in California Three thousand miles away My friend Mark, was in the show Because he could sing very well Me, I tried to sing, but I was awful And gees, everyone could tell We got to know the cast very well And we got to know all their names The two of whom we liked the best Were "Mary-Lou and James" When the show stopped playing Mark and I... we drove back home I had to recite this unbelievable story So, I wrote it in this poem When we got back to New Jersey Hitch hiking, we would go Someone saw us with our thumbs up And drove up to us; slow They were driving in a Winnebago With "Just Married" on the back When they opened the door to let us in We nearly had a heart attack You won't believe who picked us up It was two people whom we knew I couldn't believe who picked us up It was "James and Mary-Lou"