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CLUE NUMBER SIXTEEN (from Sacramento):


For the Hidden Journey:

True nobility lies in the camaraderie and honor of skilled physical labor.


For the Puzzle:

Here is the sixteenth clue for the puzzle/cryptogram:

The alphabet should be written in one unbroken string.

This is clue 16. The remaining three clues (and bonus clues, if you can find them) will help you solve the puzzle/cryptogram.

                                   


The Story:

I have to take credit for getting us the jobs outside Sacto. By the time we tanked up in Reno we had five bucks left and neither one of us felt like asking for a loan from our parents. We wanted to make enough for gas and food and a few nights in San Francisco before we headed home, not get a real job and find a place to live and all that griff. So I think construction, since I know they hire people just to clean up and we're passing acres of new houses being built.

The first place we stop the guy tells me they don't need any workers, but he was nice enough to tell me to check with small contractors, guys building one or two houses at a time. So we try to find some of these, but we don't see any. Everything is fifty or a hundred houses.

We finally spot a smaller gig, maybe ten houses, out in the middle of nowhere. I find the foreman, a white guy with a gigantia belly flop, and he laughs and says, "One of my Mexicans gets more done than two kids like you, son. Why don't you stick to flipping burgers?" What a diphthong!

That really depresses me, plus it's getting late and we're on the edge of nothing, just barren fields and cars blasting by on I-State 80. Alex thinks we should head back into Sacramento and look for a job washing cars in a dealer's lot. This sounds lame to me and I say so. Then we don't say anything for a while. We split our last can of apple sauce and what's left of our Ritz crackers for dinner, and I'm thinking, "This is griffin spike."

We sleep in the Cruiser, and as usual I wake up with leg cramps every couple hours and then lie awake, listening to the 18-wheelers rumble by.

(continued in Chapter Twenty of I-State Lines)


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