When I was a sophomore in high school, a buddy and I (we'll call him Toby) were sitting in third hour study hall bored out of our minds, so we decided to make an enemies list.
It really was that simple.
Our enumeration was penned on college-ruled notebook paper with a blue Bic, and included the names of our school principal, vice-principal, gym teacher, Algebra teacher and a short list of fellow classmates we felt, after much deliberation, either had wronged us, wronged someone we knew, or who by our best estimation were unlikely to contribute anything meaningful to society in the future.
We titled it: Those Amongst Us Who Must Die Without Mercy.
We must have been laughing about it, or whispering too loudly, making it obvious without meaning to that we weren't getting a lot of studying done. All of a sudden, the study hall teacher (we'll call her Mrs. Thomson), appeared above us, reached down and snatched the notebook off the table. I instinctively tried to hold onto it, and she had to struggle to wrest it free.
But wrest it free she did, and Toby and I glanced at each other with excitable laughter as her eyes tumbled down the length of the page.
Her response? With a loud disapproving huff, a roll of her eyes, she tore the list out of the notebook, tossed the notebook back on our table and sauntered off indignantly.
"This is NOT proper use of study hall time!" she barked. When she reached her desk she crumpled it up, tossed it in her waste basket, sat down and continued whatever it was she did to while away the hour.
That was the end of it. 'Those Amongst Us Who Must Die Without Mercy', and that was the end of it.
Toby and I were just pimply-faced teenagers who thought we were clever or 'edgy', or something or other. Though I have written fiction suggesting otherwise, I bore no serious ill-will toward anyone back then, not beyond the norm anyway. The teenage years are tough for a lot of kids, and while I was not prom king by any stretch of the imagination, I nevertheless basked quite confidently in the splendor (in my mind) of being Jared; and that had a way of getting me through just about any emotional torment teenagehood could throw at me. As for Toby, he was all set to join the Army after graduation. He was kind of a gun nut, come to think of it. But nothing about him lent any significance to that fact. There were teachers we each didn't like, students we didn't get along with, truly didn't think would contribute much to society in the future. We were young, and immature, and our 'enemies list', the humor we derived from it, was a kind of joking pageantry. I did a lot of things for shock value/humor when I was young.
That being said, I am just a little nervous writing these words, uneasy at the prospect of posting this, as if I'm revealing (confessing) some horrible plot.
There's not a goddamn thing funny about it anymore. Maybe there wasn't then either, but there sure as hell isn't now.
If Toby and I were caught with that list these days, we'd be immediately shepherded out of study hall, straight to the office, a host of security personnel and school 'liasions' alerted to the situation. The cops would be called, parents notified, nothing less than a pre-conceived and tightly orchestrated response put into action, the end result very likely involving our suspension, or outright expulsion, from school.
But in 1989, school shootings, as we know them today, were not a ready part of the American dialogue. They were completely unknown to the likes of Toby and me. And Mrs. Thomson, evidently.
Before I go any further, I must express my deepest sympathies and condolences to the families of the victims in Newtown, Connecticut. How awful, how unimaginably awful to have to go through that. It's heartbreaking and shocking enough when it's teenagers. But when it's first graders, truly innocent in the sense of that word that makes us cry, who come to school in 'cute kid stuff', as the Connecticut state medical examiner testily answered a reporter's rather sensational question last week as to what the victims he examined were wearing, it's beyond belief.
Looking back, I can't help wondering if Mrs. Thomson thought for even the briefest of moments that Toby and I posed a threat, that our list might be a very real plot. The gun debate was certainly in full swing then. American gun culture was being blamed for a string of violent incidents that can easily be reviewed on Wikipedia nowadays. And there were school shootings. Bob Geldof's song 'I Don't Like Mondays' is about a 1979 incident. Later, Pearl Jam's 'Jeremy' dealt with the subject. And truth be told, the list of violent incidents on or around educational institutions goes back several decades.
Mrs. Thomson knew Toby and me; she knew our parents; she could remain reasonably assured that we were decent kids all around, which doubtless determined her response. But these days she would not have the luxury of that assumption. If she discovered a list like that, she would absolutely have to take action.
Now is a good time to make clear also that I'm not a gun nut. While I support Second Amendment rights, I don't think they are, or should be, absolute. I don't think ordinary people need automatic weapons or special ammunition. In the words of the great Robin Williams: "How many deer wear a bullet proof vest?" Nor do I think most people need to arm themselves on the street, at least not to paramilitary specs. I can't say I'm comfortable stepping onto a city bus, or into the lobby of a McDonald's, or a bar, thinking that every person in my midst might be packing.
Moreover, it's no secret that our society's fixation with fire power as an extension, or the source, of our influence is out of control. For over one hundred years now we have propagated a gun culture by tying it securely to the hip of our mindset of being the biggest and the baddest and the loudest. We have turned it into a self-fulfilling prophecy, drawing an almost spirituality from a 'guns a-blazin' mentality that may have settled the west, may have won important wars, may make for good cinematic fodder, but cannot be correctly installed in our comfy, 21st century reality. It does not make our malls, movie theaters, coffee shops and cafeterias safe places to be.
And it's hard to ignore the fact that Adam Lanza's mother was reportedly a gun enthusiast herself, impossible to dismiss the sheer folly of her (reportedly) taking her troubled son to the shooting range, or for that matter having a troubled son whom she was (reportedly) prepared to have committed, yet failing to keep her arsenal safely under lock and key.
But the fact that a mere twenty-three years ago, Mrs. Thomson simply crumpled up Toby's and my enemies list - replete as it was with specific names of student and faculty, not to mention that horrific title scrawled across the top - and threw it away, whereas today high schools across the country operate in veritable lockdown - banning book bags and backpacks, certain articles of clothing, installing alarm systems, hiring security guards, 'buzzing' people in and out of the playground through locked doors - tells me it's more than just the guns that has brought us here, suggests that in a relatively short period of time the situation has gotten markedly worse.
I believe there is a profound mental health issue at play, not specifically Lanza, or James Holmes, or any other, but amongst an entire generation. Something is different about kids today, something is contributing to a change in their behavior not seen as readily - if at all - in previous generations, and along with the proliferation of guns, we must address the proliferation of the dead-eyed school shooter amongst the ranks of our young people, and acknowledge that he is unique to the last twenty years, directly related, at least in some measure, to the dramatic change in the manner with which our children are being raised.
We foster a permeating culture of dysfunction in our young people, without realizing it. We raise them on a toxic diet of fatalism mixed with self-indulgence. They are coddled, allowed to grow up in nothing less than a citadel of self-esteem, a practice which leaves them strangely unafraid of anything and at the same time terrified of everything, from germs to pollution to strangers on the street to off-color remarks. They are taught to be snarky and sarcastic as a means of coping, medicated when they act up, and told none of it is their fault. They are physically softer than any generation before, and also rendered mentally weak by the very technology that is supposed to be freeing them, enlightening them (er, so Apple, Verizon, Facebook and Google would have us believe...).
Ironically, the current state of affairs really isn't their fault; they are unwitting victims just as we (i.e., society) are unwitting perpetrators, and I know full well that every old generation says the same thing about every new. But saying that's 'just the way of things' does not change the fact that with the passing of every generation, things seem to get worse and worse.
The dead-eyed school shooter is not a criminal in the traditional sense. His acts do not arise from adversity or hardship, are not spurred by conflict or revolution in the face of injustice, they possess no 'passion' at all, no heat-of-the-moment decision. They are usually discovered to be carefully and exactingly plotted ahead of time, and arise from boredom, alienation and desensitization mixed with an inflated sense of self-importance, a hubris we now hand out as a birthright. It is fueled by a celebrity culture that DOES celebrate - and with relish - a concentrated absorption of violence, slickly packaged in bright celebrity foil. Violent movies and violent video games obviously have the greatest effect on young minds, all minds. They eliminate the very real danger of these weapons from our minds by eliminating their weaponness, while at the same time tweaking in myriad ways the aggression, and the innate desire to use that aggression to influence the world around, that lurks in all of us.
But I'd take it a step further. I think there is a more wide-spread, but not as obvious, poison contributing on a benefactor's scale to the situation we find ourselves in today, hastening the eradication of even our most elemental sense of well-being, peace of mind, and to that end I would reserve my harshest indictment for television, as it remains the single greatest delivery system for information (there's the Internet now, of course, but that just might be a whole other post...).
Television has become a fucking wasteland of baneful imagery and sloganism whose purpose seems to be engendering selfishness, self-absorption and cynicism in the viewer, lately without even bothering to be artful. 'Reality' shows like The Bad Girls Club, Hardcore Pawn, Jersey Shore, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Mob Wives, Basketball Wives, or the upcoming Buckwild (a redneck version of Jersey Shore...*sigh*...) et al., ad infinitum and ad nauseam, are not mere harmless tripe, in fact might be worse than a violent movie or video game, which at least remain, in the eyes of most people, fantasy. These shows purport to be real-life confessionals, and celebrate, literally, the worst of human nature - pettiness, aggression, not 'taking shit' from anyone, lazing in ignorance, gluttony, consumerism, and call it 'living out loud'. And our desire to preserve a free society - as in freedom of speech and freedom of choice - breathes life into each new incarnation, allows each new season to turn our boundaries into oatmeal. People drinking too much, screaming at each other, sweating, farting and fighting, punching each other in the face, pushing each other into fountains, pissing into bushes, puking on boardwalks, gesturing threateningly, swaggering pointlessly...all of this is no longer marginalized behavior. It is celebrity. It is endorsement deals. It is one million Twitter followers.
It is 'brought to you by Pepsi...'
Am I suggesting Adam Lanza watched The Bad Girls Club and was set on a collision course with history? Of course not. Not even close. There were obviously severe mental health issues unique to Lanza that almost certainly weren't curable and may not have been controllable. But nobody should delude themselves into thinking the caustic lifeblood of our society does not corrode its structure from the inside. In an age when corporations spend millions of dollars for thirty seconds of air-time during the Superbowl, nobody should dare be thinking that imagery, even fed in small, regurgitated bites and under the guise of 'entertainment', does not tweak the color, taste and odor of our impulses, and thus behavior. Nor should anyone fail to acknowledge that this is equally true of the well-adjusted and the not so well-adjusted amongst us.
Adam Lanza did not make the choice he made, plan what he did, merely because there were guns in the home. Guns - assault weapons especially - are a big part of the dialogue, but that dialogue will ultimately prove fruitless, and eventually fall silent, if any attempt to remove firearms from the hands of law-abiding citizens or curb their accessibility from same as a result of the Sandy Hook shooting does not dovetail with an earnest reassessment of what we consider worthy of our, and our children's, leisure time and attention.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Road Trip 2011, Part 8 - 'Home'
The Deeper Trench
When I wake up, I don't need road signs, or GPS, or the half-baked input of a cashier behind the counter at a convenience store to tell me where I am. I open my eyes, lift my head, wipe the spittle from my chin and take a groggy look around. Same malodorous car, same road-weary companions contributing to the malodor, same endless highway miles thunking away beneath the tires one crack in the asphalt at a time, but outside, the land has flattened, and widened, to such an extent the edge of the Earth is once again visible in the distance, that arrow-straight demarcation between land and sky punctuated only occasionally by a little cluster of buildings or a water tower - some tiny town's hopes and dreams soaring a whopping 50 feet in the air. The temperature has dropped significantly, the sun wheezing from behind a frosty haze, and snow is a permanent feature on the ground once more, seemingly untouched where we left it a week ago. Winter welcomes us back with her two broken arms halfway across Nebraska.
Yes, two broken arms.
This is no longer a mystery, some undiscovered country full of tantalizing 'other'. This is the Midwest laid out before me...the smalltown Midwest. I grew up here, intimately familiar with the flavor of life, from the politics afoot in even the most fleeting encounter at the Wal-Mart pharmacy to the base level of resignation intrinsic in facing each new day. It can be a tired place, a tiring place, and for anyone given to long thoughts, otherwise benign things - ice-ridden roads, cloudy afternoons that sink thickly into evening, empty buildings that have been that way for years, cracks that form in sidewalks - can engender a sense of despair without warning.
Hell yes, I know exactly what the end of the day looks like around here, how the last gasp of light from the setting sun swells like a big purple bruise, setting the very tops of a row of evergreens ablaze, or illuminates the mysterious little attic window at the apex of the Victorian house across the alley as the streetlight at the end of that alley flickers on and the first few stars become visible in the sky.
Yeah brother, I know the Midwest. It's blazing hot in the summer. God-awful cold in the winter. Miles are long. There is distance everywhere, sometimes as much emptiness between buildings in a town as there is between towns, and for this an unavoidable sense of lonesomeness/alienation that permeates the ground water. Parking lots are deserted after 5 p.m. and all day Sunday, as though a bomb has gone off, except at bars, where a high school reunion is going on any given Friday or Saturday night, classmates turned co-workers, neighbors, trading memories in a bidding war for solace in the face of time's ceaseless debouch.
Small towns are small towns across the land; anywhere where the electric hum of that light shining above the alley is the only sound to be heard can be lonely...but there is something about the Midwest that digs a deeper trench through which despair can flow. It has forever been - in my eyes anyway - the place that either never quite got going or got forgotten along the way. It's in the name, after all: Midwest...the middle, in-between...that place on the way to the west or east coasts, where stuff that matters is really happening. This is surely true of the rural areas, the little towns that popped up on a dime flung into the air by some long-gone entrepreneur, and now eek out an existence, populated by die-hards who simply can't imagine living anywhere else. But even many urban areas in the Midwest have been pegged as 'rust belts' these days, for the same type of phenomenon: industrial decay has replaced a once-grand industry, some big employer of a generation or two that vanished in an instant, leaving behind not only crumbling infrastructure, but vestiges of a high life: city block-sized hotels, opera houses and ornate theaters that now seem morbidly out of place.
Sometimes it seems everything in the Midwest happened yesterday.
The York, Nebraska water tower looms closer.
HAZY SHADE OF WINTER - When I awaken there is little doubt that I am back in the Midwest.
A Good Trip
I-80's methodical chisel of the frozen Nebraska countryside is happily doing more than provoking l-o-n-g thoughts about my existence, it's also providing an opportunity to reflect on this trip, and I take it, if only to rein in those thoughts. 14 states, nearly 5000 miles, changing climates, landscapes, accents, attitudes and altitudes, all in just over a week. No unforeseen tragedy (which is note-worthy at the end of any given day), no car trouble, not even the most minor inconvenience. By that reckoning, it was a good trip. Just about everything I hoped to see I saw, and everything I hoped to feel - mostly the mere excitement of something new - I felt. I am refreshed, invigorated, feel equipped to jump back into the real world.
Here though, I must acknowledge something that didn't occur to me until the very end: in all those miles, most of them empty miles through isolated regions, I saw not one animal or bird. Not so much as a crow dashing off a blob of roadkill on the highway shoulder in the wake of the vehicle in front of us, or tell-tale glint of a deer's eyes watching tentatively from the edge of the woods as our headlights swept past. The more I think about it, the stranger it becomes in my mind. Granted, we've spent a lot of this trip driving on interstates where there isn't always anything to see, but that hasn't been the case entirely, and something about it, in terms of the odds if nothing else (not a single animal in 5,000 miles!), leaves an impression.
Reflections on 'Home'
Though we still have several hundred miles to drive, the trip has pretty much ended. Steinbeck writes of this phenomenon in Travels With Charley, coming home before he's actually there, the last several miles mostly a blur. As the cheerfully decorated York water tower passes, it is clear we've all checked out mentally. I for one am glad to be coming home, glad to be getting out of this car, glad to be released from the responsibility of travel. If a 'good trip' is also one that satiates restlessness, then mission accomplished. I've had my fill, for now.
I'm also anxious to be relieved of my responsibility to my travel companions. In the week we've been living in this Ford Taurus, crammed together like indigents in a stinking flophouse, we have become sensitive to - and increasingly intolerant of - each other's predilections, from the music being played to the temperature controls in the car to our conflicting schedules and priorities. There's been some bickering in this final leg, and this morning one major dust-up about something petty that has cast us all into silence. We are now more or less three strangers on a bus, pecking away at our cell phones, ear buds jammed deep into our heads to block out each other's presence, not merely resigned to the end, but anticipating it.
There are still little glimmers of 'trip' left, however. It occurs to me, with the same type of excitement I felt a week ago when we first set out, that Midwest or not, I'm someplace I've never been before - I'm in Nebraska - and this gets me smiling.
Nebraska is the birthplace of no less an eclectic list of luminaries than Johnny Carson, Malcolm X, Willa Cather, Henry Fonda, Warren Buffet and L Ron Hubbard. The Cornhusker state is the home of Kool-Aid, and the heart of the Great Plains. North Platte, where we stayed overnight, not only gave the world 'Buffalo Bill' Cody, but is the site of the world's largest rail yard - Bailey Yard - which sees traffic from over 130 trains every day.
It was while lying in my hotel room trying to sleep but being drawn out the window by the continuous sound of trains on their way, that I posed the heady question to myself, which I am at the perfect time in life to ask (and hopefully answer...?): we are headed home, but what is home, now?
'Home' has always has been the (aforementioned) Midwest. I spent most of my adult life in my hometown, and all of it - with the exception of eight short months - in Wisconsin. I've traveled of course, but the dairy state has always been the place to come home to, and that has informed in myriad ways any and all traveling I've done.
And truth be told? Home hasn't been all bad; I've known the good aspects of life in the Midwest too. Doom, gloom and alienation are but one piece of the puzzle here, or anywhere else. There's something to be said for the quiet, the cleanliness, the pastoral fields and woodlands and hillsides that at certain times of day, when the light is just right, actually sing. There is something to be said about the easygoingness of small towns, of knowing people, the sense of community that working with people you've known all your life fosters, and surely something to be said for that class reunion that pops up at a bar on Friday night. And there is something to be said for the culture I've known - the Packers, the Badgers, (sometimes) the Vikings, Lutheran this and Swedish that, smelt runs and fish frys and snowmobiling and northwoods, big lakes and wooded lakes and lake effect snow and famous for beer and cheese and world class muskies...that's home and, to some extent anyway, how I've identified myself as I've come and gone. Wherever I visited, however much I enjoyed myself, I could not imagine actually living there, and I was always glad to come back to Wisconsin.
Now, at just about the half-way point in life, I'm not so sure what I consider home. It isn't so much an aversion to the Midwest, I realized lying in that musty smelling hotel room in North Platte, it's more that for the first time I can see myself living somewhere else, and in some instances, want to. Central California, or certain locations in the southwest, have showed up on my radar as places I might want to land, places where I can see myself contentedly becoming a local, identifying myself as one in any conversation with a stranger that lasts more than ten minutes, and talking about things with the same assurance I now speak of Wisconsin. I have a fantasy of living in the Florida Keys one day, at least in the winter months...a fantasy where fresh crab and Corona have replaced turkey and stuffing on the Christmas dinner table.
This trip, if nothing else, made me realize for the first time ever that it needn't remain a fantasy, that 'home' is, or could be, simply where I lay my head at night. This is a liberating concept, revolutionary for the doors it opens; the possibilities, man, the possibilities...!
I'm headed home, and ready to be home, but I have a sense in my heart that my journey has just begun.
And that just might be what we should demand of any trip we take, whether it's an African safari, a road trip across America, or just down to the grocery store for milk.
When I wake up, I don't need road signs, or GPS, or the half-baked input of a cashier behind the counter at a convenience store to tell me where I am. I open my eyes, lift my head, wipe the spittle from my chin and take a groggy look around. Same malodorous car, same road-weary companions contributing to the malodor, same endless highway miles thunking away beneath the tires one crack in the asphalt at a time, but outside, the land has flattened, and widened, to such an extent the edge of the Earth is once again visible in the distance, that arrow-straight demarcation between land and sky punctuated only occasionally by a little cluster of buildings or a water tower - some tiny town's hopes and dreams soaring a whopping 50 feet in the air. The temperature has dropped significantly, the sun wheezing from behind a frosty haze, and snow is a permanent feature on the ground once more, seemingly untouched where we left it a week ago. Winter welcomes us back with her two broken arms halfway across Nebraska.
Yes, two broken arms.
This is no longer a mystery, some undiscovered country full of tantalizing 'other'. This is the Midwest laid out before me...the smalltown Midwest. I grew up here, intimately familiar with the flavor of life, from the politics afoot in even the most fleeting encounter at the Wal-Mart pharmacy to the base level of resignation intrinsic in facing each new day. It can be a tired place, a tiring place, and for anyone given to long thoughts, otherwise benign things - ice-ridden roads, cloudy afternoons that sink thickly into evening, empty buildings that have been that way for years, cracks that form in sidewalks - can engender a sense of despair without warning.
Hell yes, I know exactly what the end of the day looks like around here, how the last gasp of light from the setting sun swells like a big purple bruise, setting the very tops of a row of evergreens ablaze, or illuminates the mysterious little attic window at the apex of the Victorian house across the alley as the streetlight at the end of that alley flickers on and the first few stars become visible in the sky.
Yeah brother, I know the Midwest. It's blazing hot in the summer. God-awful cold in the winter. Miles are long. There is distance everywhere, sometimes as much emptiness between buildings in a town as there is between towns, and for this an unavoidable sense of lonesomeness/alienation that permeates the ground water. Parking lots are deserted after 5 p.m. and all day Sunday, as though a bomb has gone off, except at bars, where a high school reunion is going on any given Friday or Saturday night, classmates turned co-workers, neighbors, trading memories in a bidding war for solace in the face of time's ceaseless debouch.
Small towns are small towns across the land; anywhere where the electric hum of that light shining above the alley is the only sound to be heard can be lonely...but there is something about the Midwest that digs a deeper trench through which despair can flow. It has forever been - in my eyes anyway - the place that either never quite got going or got forgotten along the way. It's in the name, after all: Midwest...the middle, in-between...that place on the way to the west or east coasts, where stuff that matters is really happening. This is surely true of the rural areas, the little towns that popped up on a dime flung into the air by some long-gone entrepreneur, and now eek out an existence, populated by die-hards who simply can't imagine living anywhere else. But even many urban areas in the Midwest have been pegged as 'rust belts' these days, for the same type of phenomenon: industrial decay has replaced a once-grand industry, some big employer of a generation or two that vanished in an instant, leaving behind not only crumbling infrastructure, but vestiges of a high life: city block-sized hotels, opera houses and ornate theaters that now seem morbidly out of place.
Sometimes it seems everything in the Midwest happened yesterday.
The York, Nebraska water tower looms closer.
HAZY SHADE OF WINTER - When I awaken there is little doubt that I am back in the Midwest.
A Good Trip
I-80's methodical chisel of the frozen Nebraska countryside is happily doing more than provoking l-o-n-g thoughts about my existence, it's also providing an opportunity to reflect on this trip, and I take it, if only to rein in those thoughts. 14 states, nearly 5000 miles, changing climates, landscapes, accents, attitudes and altitudes, all in just over a week. No unforeseen tragedy (which is note-worthy at the end of any given day), no car trouble, not even the most minor inconvenience. By that reckoning, it was a good trip. Just about everything I hoped to see I saw, and everything I hoped to feel - mostly the mere excitement of something new - I felt. I am refreshed, invigorated, feel equipped to jump back into the real world.
Here though, I must acknowledge something that didn't occur to me until the very end: in all those miles, most of them empty miles through isolated regions, I saw not one animal or bird. Not so much as a crow dashing off a blob of roadkill on the highway shoulder in the wake of the vehicle in front of us, or tell-tale glint of a deer's eyes watching tentatively from the edge of the woods as our headlights swept past. The more I think about it, the stranger it becomes in my mind. Granted, we've spent a lot of this trip driving on interstates where there isn't always anything to see, but that hasn't been the case entirely, and something about it, in terms of the odds if nothing else (not a single animal in 5,000 miles!), leaves an impression.
Reflections on 'Home'
Though we still have several hundred miles to drive, the trip has pretty much ended. Steinbeck writes of this phenomenon in Travels With Charley, coming home before he's actually there, the last several miles mostly a blur. As the cheerfully decorated York water tower passes, it is clear we've all checked out mentally. I for one am glad to be coming home, glad to be getting out of this car, glad to be released from the responsibility of travel. If a 'good trip' is also one that satiates restlessness, then mission accomplished. I've had my fill, for now.
I'm also anxious to be relieved of my responsibility to my travel companions. In the week we've been living in this Ford Taurus, crammed together like indigents in a stinking flophouse, we have become sensitive to - and increasingly intolerant of - each other's predilections, from the music being played to the temperature controls in the car to our conflicting schedules and priorities. There's been some bickering in this final leg, and this morning one major dust-up about something petty that has cast us all into silence. We are now more or less three strangers on a bus, pecking away at our cell phones, ear buds jammed deep into our heads to block out each other's presence, not merely resigned to the end, but anticipating it.
There are still little glimmers of 'trip' left, however. It occurs to me, with the same type of excitement I felt a week ago when we first set out, that Midwest or not, I'm someplace I've never been before - I'm in Nebraska - and this gets me smiling.
Nebraska is the birthplace of no less an eclectic list of luminaries than Johnny Carson, Malcolm X, Willa Cather, Henry Fonda, Warren Buffet and L Ron Hubbard. The Cornhusker state is the home of Kool-Aid, and the heart of the Great Plains. North Platte, where we stayed overnight, not only gave the world 'Buffalo Bill' Cody, but is the site of the world's largest rail yard - Bailey Yard - which sees traffic from over 130 trains every day.
It was while lying in my hotel room trying to sleep but being drawn out the window by the continuous sound of trains on their way, that I posed the heady question to myself, which I am at the perfect time in life to ask (and hopefully answer...?): we are headed home, but what is home, now?
'Home' has always has been the (aforementioned) Midwest. I spent most of my adult life in my hometown, and all of it - with the exception of eight short months - in Wisconsin. I've traveled of course, but the dairy state has always been the place to come home to, and that has informed in myriad ways any and all traveling I've done.
And truth be told? Home hasn't been all bad; I've known the good aspects of life in the Midwest too. Doom, gloom and alienation are but one piece of the puzzle here, or anywhere else. There's something to be said for the quiet, the cleanliness, the pastoral fields and woodlands and hillsides that at certain times of day, when the light is just right, actually sing. There is something to be said about the easygoingness of small towns, of knowing people, the sense of community that working with people you've known all your life fosters, and surely something to be said for that class reunion that pops up at a bar on Friday night. And there is something to be said for the culture I've known - the Packers, the Badgers, (sometimes) the Vikings, Lutheran this and Swedish that, smelt runs and fish frys and snowmobiling and northwoods, big lakes and wooded lakes and lake effect snow and famous for beer and cheese and world class muskies...that's home and, to some extent anyway, how I've identified myself as I've come and gone. Wherever I visited, however much I enjoyed myself, I could not imagine actually living there, and I was always glad to come back to Wisconsin.
Now, at just about the half-way point in life, I'm not so sure what I consider home. It isn't so much an aversion to the Midwest, I realized lying in that musty smelling hotel room in North Platte, it's more that for the first time I can see myself living somewhere else, and in some instances, want to. Central California, or certain locations in the southwest, have showed up on my radar as places I might want to land, places where I can see myself contentedly becoming a local, identifying myself as one in any conversation with a stranger that lasts more than ten minutes, and talking about things with the same assurance I now speak of Wisconsin. I have a fantasy of living in the Florida Keys one day, at least in the winter months...a fantasy where fresh crab and Corona have replaced turkey and stuffing on the Christmas dinner table.
This trip, if nothing else, made me realize for the first time ever that it needn't remain a fantasy, that 'home' is, or could be, simply where I lay my head at night. This is a liberating concept, revolutionary for the doors it opens; the possibilities, man, the possibilities...!
I'm headed home, and ready to be home, but I have a sense in my heart that my journey has just begun.
And that just might be what we should demand of any trip we take, whether it's an African safari, a road trip across America, or just down to the grocery store for milk.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Thoughts on making the bus monitor cry...
The response was predictable, and in its way, reassuring.
Since a video of 68-year-old school bus monitor Karen Klein being harassed by four 7th grade students during a field trip on the last day of classes went viral a week ago, the upstate New York grandmother of eight has received an outpouring of support from the public, which has led to an otherwise horrible story having a (somewhat) happy ending. Klein has not only received a cool half-million from an impromptu donation fund set up on her behalf so she can take a vacation, but apologies have come in from both the parents of the children and at least two of the children themselves. All four of the kids received a year's suspension from school for their behavior, as well as community service sentences.
Good. The video is distressing to say the least: nearly ten minutes of relentless harassment by these four little shits, throughout which it is evident Mrs. Klein wants to explode, to lash out, to put her tormentors in their place, but trembling with rage, hot tears burning their way down her face, she remains composed, stays the course as the resident adult on the bus, the one responsible for the safety of these kids (and that's what they are, no matter how rude and foul-mouthed).
She really does deserve a vacation.
I can't say I never gave teachers grief when I was that age. I'm sure there were plenty of grown-ups working in my school system back then who thought I too was a 'little shit'... I was a showman in my own mind, a clown, delighted in sauntering proudly out the door to the chuckles and chortles of my classmates after some carefully craffted jackass behavior left a flustered (usually substitute, but not always) teacher no alternative other than to command me out of the classroom.
Yes, I was that kid. But I could never have conceived of doing what the kids in this video do to Karen Klein. I never got personal, or cruel, never told a teacher of any kind to 'shut the fuck up' or called anyone fat or threatened to do bodily harm. It never occurred to me that such behavior was possible. It simply wasn't an option.
Karen Klein deserves more than a vacation for how she handled things. Maybe the Nobel Prize, for exhibiting a level of restraint that would make the man of Galilee proud.
But there were kids back in my childhood that would have done that, kids I remember with unsettlingly clarity who had it in them to be that cruel, that obnoxious...the kids that - 'little shit' though I may have been - I crept down back hallways and burst through back doors in a full-tilt run for the woods behind the school in order to avoid when the end of the day came. In other words, there have always been bad kids, 'rotten apples', as Mrs. Klein has described at least two of her tormentors, so although it's an understandable conclusion to draw, I don't believe the incident is endemic to our times, a representation of what our 'children have become.'
What I find disturbing is that amidst all the outrage, which has reached as far up the media ladder as Matt Lauer and Anderson Cooper, nothing has been said - not one word - about the real offense here (what I'd wager was at least part of the reason Karen Klein was as upset as she was): not the cruelty itself so much as the fact that throughout the ordeal a camera was trained on her face, documenting the incident, and that within a day or two it was uploaded and being viewed by thousands or more people - published, for all practical purposes - and that it will remain out there for the world to see whenever someone wants to, as easily accessible to watch on a moment's notice as the flag raising at Iwo Jima, the Beatles arrival in America, the Rodney King beating or myriad other incidents that, unlike this, and for better or worse, warranted some documentation. No matter where she chooses to go for her vacation, Karen Klein has to live with that video being out there. She has to live with her face being the face of an humiliating story for the rest of her days, her pitiable (if understandable) tears exposed to - literally - the entire world.
That is perverse.
Had I been in her predicament, I am pretty sure I could have ignored the rude comments. I like to think I'm mature enough not to let myself get into a verbal pissing match with a middle schooler.
But I'm sorry, that kid would have been eating that fucking phone. Or more realistically, it would have wound up snatched out of his hands and smashed to bits on the booger-smeared floor of that school bus, ground beneath my boot heel.
The implications of this still newfound ability we have to document, capture and archive every living, breathing second of our and everyone else's lives as if there's any reason to - as if we must merely because we can - have not yet been fully realized. I know it's a tall order, but cell phone use should be regulated in public places, at least amongst kids, and surely during school-sanctioned events. Kids cannot fully grasp the power they wield when they throw those phones up, nor conceive of the repercussions that may arise from doing so.
After all, these four kids have to live with their shameful behavior being out there for all the world to see too - now and thirty years from now. When they're middle aged and nothing's as funny as it used to be, when they don't remember half of the stupid crap they did when they were twelve and the stuff that they do remember makes them cringe, that video will still be out there somewhere, being viewed by someone, in world that no longer allows memories to fade.
Since a video of 68-year-old school bus monitor Karen Klein being harassed by four 7th grade students during a field trip on the last day of classes went viral a week ago, the upstate New York grandmother of eight has received an outpouring of support from the public, which has led to an otherwise horrible story having a (somewhat) happy ending. Klein has not only received a cool half-million from an impromptu donation fund set up on her behalf so she can take a vacation, but apologies have come in from both the parents of the children and at least two of the children themselves. All four of the kids received a year's suspension from school for their behavior, as well as community service sentences.
Good. The video is distressing to say the least: nearly ten minutes of relentless harassment by these four little shits, throughout which it is evident Mrs. Klein wants to explode, to lash out, to put her tormentors in their place, but trembling with rage, hot tears burning their way down her face, she remains composed, stays the course as the resident adult on the bus, the one responsible for the safety of these kids (and that's what they are, no matter how rude and foul-mouthed).
She really does deserve a vacation.
I can't say I never gave teachers grief when I was that age. I'm sure there were plenty of grown-ups working in my school system back then who thought I too was a 'little shit'... I was a showman in my own mind, a clown, delighted in sauntering proudly out the door to the chuckles and chortles of my classmates after some carefully craffted jackass behavior left a flustered (usually substitute, but not always) teacher no alternative other than to command me out of the classroom.
Yes, I was that kid. But I could never have conceived of doing what the kids in this video do to Karen Klein. I never got personal, or cruel, never told a teacher of any kind to 'shut the fuck up' or called anyone fat or threatened to do bodily harm. It never occurred to me that such behavior was possible. It simply wasn't an option.
Karen Klein deserves more than a vacation for how she handled things. Maybe the Nobel Prize, for exhibiting a level of restraint that would make the man of Galilee proud.
But there were kids back in my childhood that would have done that, kids I remember with unsettlingly clarity who had it in them to be that cruel, that obnoxious...the kids that - 'little shit' though I may have been - I crept down back hallways and burst through back doors in a full-tilt run for the woods behind the school in order to avoid when the end of the day came. In other words, there have always been bad kids, 'rotten apples', as Mrs. Klein has described at least two of her tormentors, so although it's an understandable conclusion to draw, I don't believe the incident is endemic to our times, a representation of what our 'children have become.'
What I find disturbing is that amidst all the outrage, which has reached as far up the media ladder as Matt Lauer and Anderson Cooper, nothing has been said - not one word - about the real offense here (what I'd wager was at least part of the reason Karen Klein was as upset as she was): not the cruelty itself so much as the fact that throughout the ordeal a camera was trained on her face, documenting the incident, and that within a day or two it was uploaded and being viewed by thousands or more people - published, for all practical purposes - and that it will remain out there for the world to see whenever someone wants to, as easily accessible to watch on a moment's notice as the flag raising at Iwo Jima, the Beatles arrival in America, the Rodney King beating or myriad other incidents that, unlike this, and for better or worse, warranted some documentation. No matter where she chooses to go for her vacation, Karen Klein has to live with that video being out there. She has to live with her face being the face of an humiliating story for the rest of her days, her pitiable (if understandable) tears exposed to - literally - the entire world.
That is perverse.
Had I been in her predicament, I am pretty sure I could have ignored the rude comments. I like to think I'm mature enough not to let myself get into a verbal pissing match with a middle schooler.
But I'm sorry, that kid would have been eating that fucking phone. Or more realistically, it would have wound up snatched out of his hands and smashed to bits on the booger-smeared floor of that school bus, ground beneath my boot heel.
The implications of this still newfound ability we have to document, capture and archive every living, breathing second of our and everyone else's lives as if there's any reason to - as if we must merely because we can - have not yet been fully realized. I know it's a tall order, but cell phone use should be regulated in public places, at least amongst kids, and surely during school-sanctioned events. Kids cannot fully grasp the power they wield when they throw those phones up, nor conceive of the repercussions that may arise from doing so.
After all, these four kids have to live with their shameful behavior being out there for all the world to see too - now and thirty years from now. When they're middle aged and nothing's as funny as it used to be, when they don't remember half of the stupid crap they did when they were twelve and the stuff that they do remember makes them cringe, that video will still be out there somewhere, being viewed by someone, in world that no longer allows memories to fade.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Road Trip 2011, Part 7: 'The Rockies'
Utah is for Loners
The moon is nearly full, sailing alongside our car like a golden retriever giving chase down a driveway. The air is so dry and clear, it shines like a flashlight, illuminating the desert. A dark, gently shifting silhouette at the horizon suggests the presence of mountains west of Highway 15, north of Las Vegas.
For many miles, exhausting what's left of Nevada and a short cut through extreme northwestern Arizona, those mountains keep their distance. Then without warning, as if we are in an airplane that has stalled out and is dropping fast through the clouds and the only thing missing is the ominous pounding of really low piano keys, the hood of our car dips forward and we find ourselves descending, not out of the sky but into the Earth. The moon disappears, and the black monoliths that heretofore bided their time at the horizon swell up on either side, poking at the sky like giant thumbs.
We are on our way home. We are in Utah.
When it comes to scenic beauty, I have never heard anything bad, or indifferent even, about Utah, and I'd give anything not to be driving through it in darkness. I suspect out there in the western night is the scabrous but stunning landscape I've heard tell of, nothing less than deep painted canyons, their age expressed in unfathomable eons, the serrated edges of their faces telling of Earth's angry birth. We aren't even in the Rocky Mountains yet, and I can only hope that after driving all night we still are. I hate the thought of being back in the fruited plain when the world reappears, nothing to look at but the spot where sky meets horizon.
I would never have thought it possible, but there is actually a very small part of me that's relieved to be heading home. A much bigger part wishes I could ditch my companions and disappear into that western night forever, but the small part - sensible, trustworthy, consistent, cautious - is still the predominant force in my life. It is this small portion of my psyche that owns, operates and maintains the boundaries, and it's gotten me thinking of everything I left at home that will need attending when I return, and this has fomented a desire to get back and get to it as soon as possible.
Besides, romantic as it may sound, I'm thinking this might not be the best place to 'disappear'. I took the first shift driving, and over the course of the night, have come to understand what the word desolation really means.
I thought I knew. I grew up in northern Wisconsin, a geographic region off the beaten path, removed from the rest of the world, at least I thought so when I was a kid. But nothing I grew up with, no long, lonesome thoughts broadcasting from what I heartily believed to be the very ends of the Earth, contends with what I see - or don't see - driving through Utah in the dead of night.
I was raised in a bustling metropolis at the center of the galaxy, compared to this.
We get onto Interstate 70 at its western terminus near Cove Fort, established in 1867 as a Mormon Corridor way station by Brigham Young himself (this fact establishing in no uncertain terms that we are in Utah). I-70 is a major highway, the first of the Interstate projects back in 1956, and reportedly one of the last of the originals to be completed, as recently as 1992, running clear through to Baltimore, Maryland. But unlike Interstate 35, running north-south from Minnesota to Mexico, Interstate 40 (which we drove out here on), or the old grande dames 80 and 90, which swagger their way through regions with a certain command presence, along this stretch at least, I-70 hardly seems like an Interstate, to the point of being not a little unnerving. There's hardly any of the usual nighttime truck traffic. The occasional big rig roars past in the opposite direction, but there are no convoys, no need to fear being run off the road by a formation of semi trailers passing on the left, no rest stop communities of Peterbilts or Kenworths. Precious little traffic of any kind, as a matter of fact; no RVs or pickups, no fuel efficient Mazdas with funny stickers on the bumpers and locals behind the wheel, swishing on and off via exits to nearby towns.
There are no nearby towns.
No locals.
This is definitely not the place you want to get lost, or have someone chasing you. The roller coaster geography, up and down and in and out of canyons, prevents a visual contact with the horizon, which is almost as disorienting not to have while driving as it is for airplane pilots (if not as critical). There's nothing to gain your bearings here at night, no distant city lights, no airport towers winking at you, no visual punctuation to the land whatsoever. Only those big black thumbs poking into the sky on either side, seeming to grow blacker and more swollen with every mile. There aren't even any radio stations available (normally a reliable method of quelling alienation in a new area), just a dusting of white static where stations would otherwise be, but whose signals cannot muscle their way in-between the mountains.
I-70 goes on and on like this through central Utah, dark and forlorn. The only place I've seen any comparable desolation is driving through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan late at night. But at least there are frequent towns in the U.P., they just tend to be sewn up tight after 9 p.m. Nothing's open.
Here's, there's just nothing.
It shouldn't be too surprising. Most of Utah's population is centered around Salt Lake City, leaving the rest of the state among the most sparsely populated in the lower 48. Vast areas remain entirely uninhabited, and like a lot of western states, it possesses its share of ghost towns - communities cobbled together in an hour to facilitate some opportunity or boom that lasted maybe two.
"No Services"
Contributing mightily to the already trippy sense of desolation here is the not infrequent exit sign for some phantasmal community with a name like Cisco, or Yellow Cat (suggesting a dismally by-gone era of wagons, mules, miners and Indians). For a moment you're led to believe you've found that cherished place to shake off the road, grab some coffee or a slushy, reaffirm the world has not disappeared. But beneath the huge sign is a smaller one, often the same highway green but sometimes blue in color, as if put in place as an afterthought (or postmortem), that in either case declares ominously: "No Services."
It's like something from a Stephen King novel: a community that in name only deserves mention on a gigantic highway sign, warrants its own exit off a major Interstate, but possesses 'no services', no actual reason to stop, and the suggestion, in my mind anyway, that it might not be such a good idea to.
It is so desolate here, there is actually a sign along the way that reads, "No Services On I-70, Next 100 Miles."
Clipped and Fearful
We spot a convenience center/truck stop that proves to be - literally - a last chance for services of any kind. We breeze past at first, but then we see the 'No services next hundred miles...' sign, and facing the gaping maw of the Rocky Mountains, wisely turn back to fortify ourselves, and the car, just in case.
Inside, we find a woman sitting on a stool behind the counter, watching an 11 p.m. episode of Family Guy on an old television with rabbit ear antenna.
This young lady acts just as she might on a television sitcom, some Must-See-TV juggernaut where a van load of droll urbanites find themselves stuck in a tiny town, a place where the back-assward locals speak with a 'Southern' accent intended to reveal some universal truth. Surrounded by nothing but buffoonery, the snarky comments start to fly and 'fish out of water' hilarity ensues...or is meant to.
I've always bristled a little at this catch-all representation of rural America. I grew up in a small town, and have never thought it was fair or (entirely) accurate to paint all small-towners, even in jest, as either bumbling Barney Fife rubes, or wary of outsiders to the point of being destructively close-minded. Nor has seeing urban dwellers portrayed as the always reliable antidote to such character flaws ever done anything but annoy me.
But this girl is perpetuating the stereotype, setting small towners back a hundred years. She stares distrustfully - and at the same time contemptuously - at us when we walk in, stands up from her stool not to greet us, but as though she thinks some shit's about to go down. Her leery gaze is a fortress, and I get the feeling that somewhere unseen behind the counter she has a finger or a foot poised over a panic button.
I'm not sure exactly where we are, and ask if we're still in Utah. Her eyes widen with terror, as though I've brandished a knife.
No verbal response, just a clipped and fearful (defiant) nod of her head.
"Do you know how far it is to the Colorado border from here?"
Now she shrugs, an elaborate (and indignant) upheaval of her shoulders, as if, with that knife clutched menacingly over my head, I've asked her to empty the cash register. On the TV, Peter Griffin says something about his wife's flatulence and breaks into song...er, something or other...as the compressor of a little stand-alone freezer full of ice cream bars near the counter clicks to life.
I don't think there's any one thing she finds intimidating about us. That's not really possible. We are three of the least threatening MF's to ever walk into a convenience store late at night, and too tired and road weary to even act silly, as we might under better circumstances. My flat-footed shuffle to the bathroom, then the coffee machine, then down the dilapidated chip aisle for a bag of Funyuns (since they're out of cheese and cracker Combos), plays out without words, and with eyes like Jughead Jones.
It must simply be a natural distrust of people on her part, distrust and/or dislike of strangers, of 'outsiders', not unlike what gets depicted on TV (much as I hate to admit it). I would not otherwise think to mention it, except it's palpable, and begs the question: why in the world is this individual working an overnight shift at a truck stop on a major east-west thoroughfare?
Not that I'm indicting her, exactly. I understand her behavior. If I lived in the middle of nowhere, this deep up the bowel of the Beehive (or any other) State, with only a snowy-screened Peter Griffin to distract me from the painfully slow passing of overnight hours, perhaps I'd be distrustful too. And I suspect there aren't a lot of jobs to go around in these parts. To that end, it can be said that I not only understand her behavior, but can relate to it: I have worked my share of overnights at convenience stores in the past, simply because I couldn't find anything else, and it can be pretty brutal.
I coped by sleeping a lot.
Maybe she's annoyed because we woke her up.
Rocky Mountain High
The terrain has been mountainous the whole way, but there is a moment after we cross the border into Colorado some hour and a half later, when it's clear beyond a shadow of a doubt where we are, and what we're getting ourselves into. We reach the apex of some long rising slope. The car tips forward and begins its descent down the other side as it has numerous times already tonight, but this time, hits a patch of snow and ice and begins to slide sideways.
I keep calm, turn into the skid, pump the brake a little. The tires manages to grab some dry pavement and with a lurch the car rights itself, thank God. It's either that, or go skidding through the all-too-flimsy guardrail and plunge into the featureless (and bottomless, I imagine) black abyss that has surrounded us. We carry on, but from that point forward everything is overwhelmingly daunting in terms of distance, elevation, grade, size and weather. The roads are snow covered and slippery, and remain so until we reach Denver.
The Rockies have become The Rockies. The maw has closed behind us.
The sign a while back said 'Welcome to Colorful Colorado'...I have no doubt this is true, but most of it passes in darkness. During this overnight stretch, my companions fall asleep. I am left driving alone, guzzling my coffee, managing my vertigo, watching for black ice, navigating the odd snow squall by dimming my headlights, and combing through the years of my life.
I think again about the bratty shit fit I threw a couple of days ago in a convenience store in California, a tantrum better suited to a three year old, and over something ridiculous to boot, something so not worth my - or anyone's - time. I've said it many times, in moments when I felt I needed to ground myself, and it has remained true (knock on wood): I have no reason, or right, to be throwing a fit about anything, must less something petty.
I have lived, all things considered, a charmed life.
Not a life of privilege or luxury, surely, but of ability and opportunity, or at least spotting and availing myself of opportunity. Sometimes that 'opportunity' has bore sweet fruit, sometimes nothing but twigs breaking my teeth and scraping the inside of my throat as I swallow. And I have known my fair share of hardship. I have loved and not been loved back. I've been cheated, cheated on, laughed at and laughed about. I've been flat broke without resource, recourse or sympathy. My actions have been scorned, my methods and motives - however altruistic I believed them to be - brought into question. The things I've chosen to consider my 'talents' have been scrutinized, and summarily dismissed, many times. And still, still, that there should be anything that angers me beyond petty annoyance in this life that I've led is laughable.
What was it that angered me in Cali? To get right down to the psychological bone, what was it precisely that set me off? Nobody was doing anything, or saying anything, that should have bothered me! There was that sign hanging on the wall, yes...that attempt by store owners to rationalize their price gouging. Annoying, but hardly worth the expenditure of energy my outburst required.
The highway whines hypnotically, thunks rhythmically as my tires pass over breaks in the pavement. There are more towns now, sliding by in the 20 and 30 mile increments that I am used to, but the weather is starting to get dicey as our elevation increases. There are stretches of white-out conditions here and there, and moments when patches of snow require me to slow down, when I feel myself losing control of the vehicle for one white-knuckle second.
I re-establish my grip on the wheel, hands at 10 and 2, eyes open and focused straight ahead. I turn into the skid, pray for dry pavement, and with a profoundly forlorn sense of disbelief, realize (acknowledge):
I am at mid-life.
In less than two years, I turn forty.
Though I don't feel middle-aged (meaning, don't feel like I should be), it nevertheless feels like I have been here forever, living my 'charmed life' in very important times, though that is a laughable notion. Our individual lives, and even the times in which we live them, warrant barely a mention (if that) in the annals of history. The Rockies were here long before I came into the world and they will be here, mostly unchanged, long, long after I've returned to the wind. And as hard as it is for me to believe I was seven years old once, it will one day be hard for me to believe I was thirty, or about to turn forty.
And yet, sequestering oneself in that kind of thinking, hiding behind a sense of smallness and irrelevance in that 'great cosmic all', can lead to people acting the way I did in that California truck stop. If I'm to believe that in the end I'm not all that relevant to the unfolding of the universe, then who gives a shit, really, if - occasionally (or all the time) - I act like an asshole to strangers.
Right?
I don't buy that. Those folks at that convenience store probably remember the incident - if not the details of my face, or what the weather looked like outside, or exactly what the date or year was, or exactly what I was pissed off about, then surely my sauntering outside and kicking dirt on their garbage can. And at odd, random moments in the future, over a dinner, or with drinks with friends, they will likely recall the incident. "Oh, I remember that guy," they'll say with a chuckle. "Man, he was an asshole, huh?"
That gnaws at me. Strangers are the ones we should be on our best behavior around. Friends and family members we can apologize to, or make amends with, at any time in the future. But strangers, with whom it is not so easy to go back and fix our mistakes, carry with them the writable hard drive of the universe, which they allow every other person they meet to download.
I come out of a snow squall and spot a town in the distance; a wide pool of lights sliding gently past us on the right. I've driven so far through emptiness, and so much of that alone, my heart leaps at the sight of each new civilization. I feel obligated to stop, as though each town itself is a new opportunity I dare not miss. But there is no need to. We are fed, I've got plenty of coffee, and three-quarters of a tank of gas still. Gotta keep going, gotta make time, gotta face another stretch through the night with my thoughts, and memories.
Up and down through the Rockies we go. My companions sleep on. The midnight hour becomes 1 a.m., then 2 a.m.
It's the petty things that set me off. I have a remarkable tolerance for tragedy (such as I've known it): in the face of lost jobs, lost love, lost innocence and big life changes, I generally find it easy to be philosophical, to maintain my composure so as to ensure both an appropriate response and smooth transition.
Tra-la, la...
Lost car keys, lost cell phones, lost wallet, lost directions (i.e., my way) on the other hand, quite a different story.
Games, board games in particular, forget it...I am sickly competitive. Sorry!, Frustration, any of those kiddie games where players find themselves at the mercy of dumb fricking luck I can't play, unless it's agreed upon that everyone at the table will let me win. That's why I don't like to gamble; I'm too poor of a sport to endure the overwhelmingly futile odds of any casino game. I'm a bad sport when someone else wins a gigantic lottery jackpot, too. It's childish, it's selfish, asinine...but I can't control it. I can't lose petty things. I'm okay losing the big stuff...in other words, I'm okay failing.
I am not okay losing.
Maybe control, more specifically, is the issue...
Whoops...a short slip-side on the ice. I let up on the accelerator, hands steady on the wheel. My MP3 player blows through one of the road trip mixes I carefully (and eclectically) cobbled together in anticipation of this drive. Ventura Highway by America becomes New Year's Day by U2, then Lodi Dodi by Snoop Dogg...
In the end, the reasons don't matter. I do not want it to be part of me, don't want anybody rolling their eyes and saying that's 'just me being an asshole', and being comfortable with that because everyone's an asshole once in a while...er, right? I'm too old for that. It's not only embarrassing, but could prove detrimental to my health to allow myself to get wound up.
I'm at mid-life now. Taking stock of one's existence at this age should engender wanting to get through the third act a better person.
Or at least, at the very least, a better actor.
Sunrise Snow Flies
As it turns out, by the time the sun starts to rise the next morning, we are still west of Denver, creeping our way through what has become the snow-blown Rockies. I suspect there's always some kind of squall going on up here this time of year, but about 4 a.m. the snow started really falling and sticking, and it has impeded our progress tremendously. At the same time, it's given us a glimpse of the Rockies as we imagine them, as they might appear on the cover of an old John Denver album - snow-dusted pine trees growing proud and pristine out of thousand-foot mountain faces. I understand Denver's love of this place, actually, his feeling that it deserved to be lauded in song. We don't ever get off the Interstate, and yet even from this relatively inadequate vantage point, there's something primordial about this place, something humbling - to say the least - about the way the mountains dwarf everything.
It is equally amazing that humanity has put a foot down here at all, really. In the gray light, I-70 in Colorado, specifically Glenwood Canyon, reveals itself to be a marvel of engineering, a sometimes mind-boggling assemblage of tunnels, viaducts and multi-level lanes running parallel to train tracks that themselves run - in some places literally - along the side of mountains.
We are still ascending in altitude when I wearily (but gratefully) give up driving and slouch into the shotgun seat, and will cap off at about 8,500 feet before all is said and done. I've driven for 10 hours straight, and though I'm exhausted, I'm in that strange psychological netherworld that comes from being too exhausted to sleep, and the Rockies are not a terrible place for this to happen, to be awake and lucid, yet floating in a dream-like state. Everything about this larger than life landscape becomes enhanced - and not unpleasantly - when you're half-delirious with exhaustion.
There's plenty of big truck traffic on I-70 now, and it's clear the weather is hampering their progress as well. Bright, blinking road signs caution motorists about the unstable conditions, and remind big rig drivers to pull over and put chains on their tires. This is apparently enforced, as well. We slink slowly past a line of big rigs that have been stopped along the side of the road and are being inspected by the Colorado State Patrol. Looks like a major pain in the ass for the truckers; none of them look too happy to be wasting time doing it, but man, I would not want to jack-knife in one of those things going down through a pass. Or be the one driving a little tin can in the midst of such a mishap, for that matter.
Rocky Mountain Bye
Before we know it, the Rockies are in our rear-view mirror. The snow stops. The clouds break up. The temperature rises into the 20s. Denver passes without incident. I sleep through a lot of it, or stare glassy-eyed out at the flurry of traffic, exits and strip malls visible from the Interstate.
I intend to hit all of the lower 48 states over the course of six months; at least, that's the plan. But the overwhelming nature of this initiative, appealing though it may seem in my mind, becomes apparent coming off the front range of the Rockies. It's a simple matter of logistics, really. I'm not entirely sure it's possible to hit all 48 states in six months driving solo. We have been on the road non-stop for 24 hours straight, and we have only gotten (barely) through the Rockies, and that's ONLY because there are other drivers along with me.
If I go alone, I will have to keep a much more regular schedule. I won't be able to sleep while someone else carries on driving; I'll have to pull in somewhere, get a hotel room, stop, which brings up another issue: the logistics of hotel stays. I understand now Steinbeck's need for Rocinante in Travels With Charley, the need to be, at least most of the time, a self-sustaining entity. Six months worth of hotel stays would run into obscene amounts of money, and would not always be the most savory option, even if it were something I could afford.
Steinbeck cobbled together a customized camper truck for his journey. For me, an RV is the logical answer, but do I want to go there...?
Not to mention I will be older than I am now when I go, and that will make a difference. I'm still in decent shape physically, but I do understand more than I ever thought I would the little aches and pains grown-ups were always grunting and griping about when I was a kid, the groans that serenaded something as seemingly simple as getting up, and the descending sigh of relief that accompanied sitting down.
But hell, Steinbeck was almost 60 when he did it. If he hacked it, I certainly can!
I just think I better make it 50.
I know I'd rather make it 50.
By the time Colorado becomes Nebraska, I am fast asleep, and already taking that road trip in my dreams.
Of course, in the dream, as in all dreams, I'm 25 forever.
The moon is nearly full, sailing alongside our car like a golden retriever giving chase down a driveway. The air is so dry and clear, it shines like a flashlight, illuminating the desert. A dark, gently shifting silhouette at the horizon suggests the presence of mountains west of Highway 15, north of Las Vegas.
For many miles, exhausting what's left of Nevada and a short cut through extreme northwestern Arizona, those mountains keep their distance. Then without warning, as if we are in an airplane that has stalled out and is dropping fast through the clouds and the only thing missing is the ominous pounding of really low piano keys, the hood of our car dips forward and we find ourselves descending, not out of the sky but into the Earth. The moon disappears, and the black monoliths that heretofore bided their time at the horizon swell up on either side, poking at the sky like giant thumbs.
We are on our way home. We are in Utah.
When it comes to scenic beauty, I have never heard anything bad, or indifferent even, about Utah, and I'd give anything not to be driving through it in darkness. I suspect out there in the western night is the scabrous but stunning landscape I've heard tell of, nothing less than deep painted canyons, their age expressed in unfathomable eons, the serrated edges of their faces telling of Earth's angry birth. We aren't even in the Rocky Mountains yet, and I can only hope that after driving all night we still are. I hate the thought of being back in the fruited plain when the world reappears, nothing to look at but the spot where sky meets horizon.
I would never have thought it possible, but there is actually a very small part of me that's relieved to be heading home. A much bigger part wishes I could ditch my companions and disappear into that western night forever, but the small part - sensible, trustworthy, consistent, cautious - is still the predominant force in my life. It is this small portion of my psyche that owns, operates and maintains the boundaries, and it's gotten me thinking of everything I left at home that will need attending when I return, and this has fomented a desire to get back and get to it as soon as possible.
Besides, romantic as it may sound, I'm thinking this might not be the best place to 'disappear'. I took the first shift driving, and over the course of the night, have come to understand what the word desolation really means.
I thought I knew. I grew up in northern Wisconsin, a geographic region off the beaten path, removed from the rest of the world, at least I thought so when I was a kid. But nothing I grew up with, no long, lonesome thoughts broadcasting from what I heartily believed to be the very ends of the Earth, contends with what I see - or don't see - driving through Utah in the dead of night.
I was raised in a bustling metropolis at the center of the galaxy, compared to this.
We get onto Interstate 70 at its western terminus near Cove Fort, established in 1867 as a Mormon Corridor way station by Brigham Young himself (this fact establishing in no uncertain terms that we are in Utah). I-70 is a major highway, the first of the Interstate projects back in 1956, and reportedly one of the last of the originals to be completed, as recently as 1992, running clear through to Baltimore, Maryland. But unlike Interstate 35, running north-south from Minnesota to Mexico, Interstate 40 (which we drove out here on), or the old grande dames 80 and 90, which swagger their way through regions with a certain command presence, along this stretch at least, I-70 hardly seems like an Interstate, to the point of being not a little unnerving. There's hardly any of the usual nighttime truck traffic. The occasional big rig roars past in the opposite direction, but there are no convoys, no need to fear being run off the road by a formation of semi trailers passing on the left, no rest stop communities of Peterbilts or Kenworths. Precious little traffic of any kind, as a matter of fact; no RVs or pickups, no fuel efficient Mazdas with funny stickers on the bumpers and locals behind the wheel, swishing on and off via exits to nearby towns.
There are no nearby towns.
No locals.
This is definitely not the place you want to get lost, or have someone chasing you. The roller coaster geography, up and down and in and out of canyons, prevents a visual contact with the horizon, which is almost as disorienting not to have while driving as it is for airplane pilots (if not as critical). There's nothing to gain your bearings here at night, no distant city lights, no airport towers winking at you, no visual punctuation to the land whatsoever. Only those big black thumbs poking into the sky on either side, seeming to grow blacker and more swollen with every mile. There aren't even any radio stations available (normally a reliable method of quelling alienation in a new area), just a dusting of white static where stations would otherwise be, but whose signals cannot muscle their way in-between the mountains.
I-70 goes on and on like this through central Utah, dark and forlorn. The only place I've seen any comparable desolation is driving through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan late at night. But at least there are frequent towns in the U.P., they just tend to be sewn up tight after 9 p.m. Nothing's open.
Here's, there's just nothing.
It shouldn't be too surprising. Most of Utah's population is centered around Salt Lake City, leaving the rest of the state among the most sparsely populated in the lower 48. Vast areas remain entirely uninhabited, and like a lot of western states, it possesses its share of ghost towns - communities cobbled together in an hour to facilitate some opportunity or boom that lasted maybe two.
"No Services"
Contributing mightily to the already trippy sense of desolation here is the not infrequent exit sign for some phantasmal community with a name like Cisco, or Yellow Cat (suggesting a dismally by-gone era of wagons, mules, miners and Indians). For a moment you're led to believe you've found that cherished place to shake off the road, grab some coffee or a slushy, reaffirm the world has not disappeared. But beneath the huge sign is a smaller one, often the same highway green but sometimes blue in color, as if put in place as an afterthought (or postmortem), that in either case declares ominously: "No Services."
It's like something from a Stephen King novel: a community that in name only deserves mention on a gigantic highway sign, warrants its own exit off a major Interstate, but possesses 'no services', no actual reason to stop, and the suggestion, in my mind anyway, that it might not be such a good idea to.
It is so desolate here, there is actually a sign along the way that reads, "No Services On I-70, Next 100 Miles."
Clipped and Fearful
We spot a convenience center/truck stop that proves to be - literally - a last chance for services of any kind. We breeze past at first, but then we see the 'No services next hundred miles...' sign, and facing the gaping maw of the Rocky Mountains, wisely turn back to fortify ourselves, and the car, just in case.
Inside, we find a woman sitting on a stool behind the counter, watching an 11 p.m. episode of Family Guy on an old television with rabbit ear antenna.
This young lady acts just as she might on a television sitcom, some Must-See-TV juggernaut where a van load of droll urbanites find themselves stuck in a tiny town, a place where the back-assward locals speak with a 'Southern' accent intended to reveal some universal truth. Surrounded by nothing but buffoonery, the snarky comments start to fly and 'fish out of water' hilarity ensues...or is meant to.
I've always bristled a little at this catch-all representation of rural America. I grew up in a small town, and have never thought it was fair or (entirely) accurate to paint all small-towners, even in jest, as either bumbling Barney Fife rubes, or wary of outsiders to the point of being destructively close-minded. Nor has seeing urban dwellers portrayed as the always reliable antidote to such character flaws ever done anything but annoy me.
But this girl is perpetuating the stereotype, setting small towners back a hundred years. She stares distrustfully - and at the same time contemptuously - at us when we walk in, stands up from her stool not to greet us, but as though she thinks some shit's about to go down. Her leery gaze is a fortress, and I get the feeling that somewhere unseen behind the counter she has a finger or a foot poised over a panic button.
I'm not sure exactly where we are, and ask if we're still in Utah. Her eyes widen with terror, as though I've brandished a knife.
No verbal response, just a clipped and fearful (defiant) nod of her head.
"Do you know how far it is to the Colorado border from here?"
Now she shrugs, an elaborate (and indignant) upheaval of her shoulders, as if, with that knife clutched menacingly over my head, I've asked her to empty the cash register. On the TV, Peter Griffin says something about his wife's flatulence and breaks into song...er, something or other...as the compressor of a little stand-alone freezer full of ice cream bars near the counter clicks to life.
I don't think there's any one thing she finds intimidating about us. That's not really possible. We are three of the least threatening MF's to ever walk into a convenience store late at night, and too tired and road weary to even act silly, as we might under better circumstances. My flat-footed shuffle to the bathroom, then the coffee machine, then down the dilapidated chip aisle for a bag of Funyuns (since they're out of cheese and cracker Combos), plays out without words, and with eyes like Jughead Jones.
It must simply be a natural distrust of people on her part, distrust and/or dislike of strangers, of 'outsiders', not unlike what gets depicted on TV (much as I hate to admit it). I would not otherwise think to mention it, except it's palpable, and begs the question: why in the world is this individual working an overnight shift at a truck stop on a major east-west thoroughfare?
Not that I'm indicting her, exactly. I understand her behavior. If I lived in the middle of nowhere, this deep up the bowel of the Beehive (or any other) State, with only a snowy-screened Peter Griffin to distract me from the painfully slow passing of overnight hours, perhaps I'd be distrustful too. And I suspect there aren't a lot of jobs to go around in these parts. To that end, it can be said that I not only understand her behavior, but can relate to it: I have worked my share of overnights at convenience stores in the past, simply because I couldn't find anything else, and it can be pretty brutal.
I coped by sleeping a lot.
Maybe she's annoyed because we woke her up.
Rocky Mountain High
The terrain has been mountainous the whole way, but there is a moment after we cross the border into Colorado some hour and a half later, when it's clear beyond a shadow of a doubt where we are, and what we're getting ourselves into. We reach the apex of some long rising slope. The car tips forward and begins its descent down the other side as it has numerous times already tonight, but this time, hits a patch of snow and ice and begins to slide sideways.
I keep calm, turn into the skid, pump the brake a little. The tires manages to grab some dry pavement and with a lurch the car rights itself, thank God. It's either that, or go skidding through the all-too-flimsy guardrail and plunge into the featureless (and bottomless, I imagine) black abyss that has surrounded us. We carry on, but from that point forward everything is overwhelmingly daunting in terms of distance, elevation, grade, size and weather. The roads are snow covered and slippery, and remain so until we reach Denver.
The Rockies have become The Rockies. The maw has closed behind us.
The sign a while back said 'Welcome to Colorful Colorado'...I have no doubt this is true, but most of it passes in darkness. During this overnight stretch, my companions fall asleep. I am left driving alone, guzzling my coffee, managing my vertigo, watching for black ice, navigating the odd snow squall by dimming my headlights, and combing through the years of my life.
I think again about the bratty shit fit I threw a couple of days ago in a convenience store in California, a tantrum better suited to a three year old, and over something ridiculous to boot, something so not worth my - or anyone's - time. I've said it many times, in moments when I felt I needed to ground myself, and it has remained true (knock on wood): I have no reason, or right, to be throwing a fit about anything, must less something petty.
I have lived, all things considered, a charmed life.
Not a life of privilege or luxury, surely, but of ability and opportunity, or at least spotting and availing myself of opportunity. Sometimes that 'opportunity' has bore sweet fruit, sometimes nothing but twigs breaking my teeth and scraping the inside of my throat as I swallow. And I have known my fair share of hardship. I have loved and not been loved back. I've been cheated, cheated on, laughed at and laughed about. I've been flat broke without resource, recourse or sympathy. My actions have been scorned, my methods and motives - however altruistic I believed them to be - brought into question. The things I've chosen to consider my 'talents' have been scrutinized, and summarily dismissed, many times. And still, still, that there should be anything that angers me beyond petty annoyance in this life that I've led is laughable.
What was it that angered me in Cali? To get right down to the psychological bone, what was it precisely that set me off? Nobody was doing anything, or saying anything, that should have bothered me! There was that sign hanging on the wall, yes...that attempt by store owners to rationalize their price gouging. Annoying, but hardly worth the expenditure of energy my outburst required.
The highway whines hypnotically, thunks rhythmically as my tires pass over breaks in the pavement. There are more towns now, sliding by in the 20 and 30 mile increments that I am used to, but the weather is starting to get dicey as our elevation increases. There are stretches of white-out conditions here and there, and moments when patches of snow require me to slow down, when I feel myself losing control of the vehicle for one white-knuckle second.
I re-establish my grip on the wheel, hands at 10 and 2, eyes open and focused straight ahead. I turn into the skid, pray for dry pavement, and with a profoundly forlorn sense of disbelief, realize (acknowledge):
I am at mid-life.
In less than two years, I turn forty.
Though I don't feel middle-aged (meaning, don't feel like I should be), it nevertheless feels like I have been here forever, living my 'charmed life' in very important times, though that is a laughable notion. Our individual lives, and even the times in which we live them, warrant barely a mention (if that) in the annals of history. The Rockies were here long before I came into the world and they will be here, mostly unchanged, long, long after I've returned to the wind. And as hard as it is for me to believe I was seven years old once, it will one day be hard for me to believe I was thirty, or about to turn forty.
And yet, sequestering oneself in that kind of thinking, hiding behind a sense of smallness and irrelevance in that 'great cosmic all', can lead to people acting the way I did in that California truck stop. If I'm to believe that in the end I'm not all that relevant to the unfolding of the universe, then who gives a shit, really, if - occasionally (or all the time) - I act like an asshole to strangers.
Right?
I don't buy that. Those folks at that convenience store probably remember the incident - if not the details of my face, or what the weather looked like outside, or exactly what the date or year was, or exactly what I was pissed off about, then surely my sauntering outside and kicking dirt on their garbage can. And at odd, random moments in the future, over a dinner, or with drinks with friends, they will likely recall the incident. "Oh, I remember that guy," they'll say with a chuckle. "Man, he was an asshole, huh?"
That gnaws at me. Strangers are the ones we should be on our best behavior around. Friends and family members we can apologize to, or make amends with, at any time in the future. But strangers, with whom it is not so easy to go back and fix our mistakes, carry with them the writable hard drive of the universe, which they allow every other person they meet to download.
I come out of a snow squall and spot a town in the distance; a wide pool of lights sliding gently past us on the right. I've driven so far through emptiness, and so much of that alone, my heart leaps at the sight of each new civilization. I feel obligated to stop, as though each town itself is a new opportunity I dare not miss. But there is no need to. We are fed, I've got plenty of coffee, and three-quarters of a tank of gas still. Gotta keep going, gotta make time, gotta face another stretch through the night with my thoughts, and memories.
Up and down through the Rockies we go. My companions sleep on. The midnight hour becomes 1 a.m., then 2 a.m.
It's the petty things that set me off. I have a remarkable tolerance for tragedy (such as I've known it): in the face of lost jobs, lost love, lost innocence and big life changes, I generally find it easy to be philosophical, to maintain my composure so as to ensure both an appropriate response and smooth transition.
Tra-la, la...
Lost car keys, lost cell phones, lost wallet, lost directions (i.e., my way) on the other hand, quite a different story.
Games, board games in particular, forget it...I am sickly competitive. Sorry!, Frustration, any of those kiddie games where players find themselves at the mercy of dumb fricking luck I can't play, unless it's agreed upon that everyone at the table will let me win. That's why I don't like to gamble; I'm too poor of a sport to endure the overwhelmingly futile odds of any casino game. I'm a bad sport when someone else wins a gigantic lottery jackpot, too. It's childish, it's selfish, asinine...but I can't control it. I can't lose petty things. I'm okay losing the big stuff...in other words, I'm okay failing.
I am not okay losing.
Maybe control, more specifically, is the issue...
Whoops...a short slip-side on the ice. I let up on the accelerator, hands steady on the wheel. My MP3 player blows through one of the road trip mixes I carefully (and eclectically) cobbled together in anticipation of this drive. Ventura Highway by America becomes New Year's Day by U2, then Lodi Dodi by Snoop Dogg...
In the end, the reasons don't matter. I do not want it to be part of me, don't want anybody rolling their eyes and saying that's 'just me being an asshole', and being comfortable with that because everyone's an asshole once in a while...er, right? I'm too old for that. It's not only embarrassing, but could prove detrimental to my health to allow myself to get wound up.
I'm at mid-life now. Taking stock of one's existence at this age should engender wanting to get through the third act a better person.
Or at least, at the very least, a better actor.
Sunrise Snow Flies
As it turns out, by the time the sun starts to rise the next morning, we are still west of Denver, creeping our way through what has become the snow-blown Rockies. I suspect there's always some kind of squall going on up here this time of year, but about 4 a.m. the snow started really falling and sticking, and it has impeded our progress tremendously. At the same time, it's given us a glimpse of the Rockies as we imagine them, as they might appear on the cover of an old John Denver album - snow-dusted pine trees growing proud and pristine out of thousand-foot mountain faces. I understand Denver's love of this place, actually, his feeling that it deserved to be lauded in song. We don't ever get off the Interstate, and yet even from this relatively inadequate vantage point, there's something primordial about this place, something humbling - to say the least - about the way the mountains dwarf everything.
It is equally amazing that humanity has put a foot down here at all, really. In the gray light, I-70 in Colorado, specifically Glenwood Canyon, reveals itself to be a marvel of engineering, a sometimes mind-boggling assemblage of tunnels, viaducts and multi-level lanes running parallel to train tracks that themselves run - in some places literally - along the side of mountains.
LARGER THAN LIFE - It is astonishing and humbling how the Rocky Mountains dwarf everything.
We are still ascending in altitude when I wearily (but gratefully) give up driving and slouch into the shotgun seat, and will cap off at about 8,500 feet before all is said and done. I've driven for 10 hours straight, and though I'm exhausted, I'm in that strange psychological netherworld that comes from being too exhausted to sleep, and the Rockies are not a terrible place for this to happen, to be awake and lucid, yet floating in a dream-like state. Everything about this larger than life landscape becomes enhanced - and not unpleasantly - when you're half-delirious with exhaustion.
There's plenty of big truck traffic on I-70 now, and it's clear the weather is hampering their progress as well. Bright, blinking road signs caution motorists about the unstable conditions, and remind big rig drivers to pull over and put chains on their tires. This is apparently enforced, as well. We slink slowly past a line of big rigs that have been stopped along the side of the road and are being inspected by the Colorado State Patrol. Looks like a major pain in the ass for the truckers; none of them look too happy to be wasting time doing it, but man, I would not want to jack-knife in one of those things going down through a pass. Or be the one driving a little tin can in the midst of such a mishap, for that matter.
SLOW GOING - High mountain snow squalls throughout the night make for treacherous morning driving along Interstate 70 in central Colorado.We have breakfast in Eagle, Colorado, without realizing that Vail is just a few miles further east. Had we known, we'd have eaten there, merely for the novelty. As it turns out, we don't stop in Vail. We're fed (again) and have miles to go as usual. But I do catch a quick glimpse of skiers making their way down the slopes in a synchronized back and forth slalom in the very momen we happen to be passing by.
IN FORMATION - Zipping past a Vail ski lodge as skiers zip their way down the slopes. Vail Mountain rises to 11,000 feet and is reportedly the second largest ski slope in North America.To be in that place at that time, whizzing past at 60 miles per hour just as those three skiers happened to be going down that slope in that formation, remains one of the highlights of this road trip.
Rocky Mountain Bye
Before we know it, the Rockies are in our rear-view mirror. The snow stops. The clouds break up. The temperature rises into the 20s. Denver passes without incident. I sleep through a lot of it, or stare glassy-eyed out at the flurry of traffic, exits and strip malls visible from the Interstate.
SMOOTH SAILING - Before we know it, the elevation drops, the snow stops, the sun comes out.East of Denver, we enter the magnificent Colorado high plains, where one's spirit cannot help but soar. It's the very definition of 'big sky country', and it is out here, where the land sweeps the eye (as opposed to the eye sweeping the land), having been on the road for nearly 24 hours straight, that the big trip I want to one day take comes into consideration, and under regrettable, but unavoidable, scrutiny.
HOW CAN ONE NOT SMILE - The fabulous open spaces of the Colorado high plains rejuvenate the spirit, but put the logistics of a solo cross-country drive in perspective.
I intend to hit all of the lower 48 states over the course of six months; at least, that's the plan. But the overwhelming nature of this initiative, appealing though it may seem in my mind, becomes apparent coming off the front range of the Rockies. It's a simple matter of logistics, really. I'm not entirely sure it's possible to hit all 48 states in six months driving solo. We have been on the road non-stop for 24 hours straight, and we have only gotten (barely) through the Rockies, and that's ONLY because there are other drivers along with me.
If I go alone, I will have to keep a much more regular schedule. I won't be able to sleep while someone else carries on driving; I'll have to pull in somewhere, get a hotel room, stop, which brings up another issue: the logistics of hotel stays. I understand now Steinbeck's need for Rocinante in Travels With Charley, the need to be, at least most of the time, a self-sustaining entity. Six months worth of hotel stays would run into obscene amounts of money, and would not always be the most savory option, even if it were something I could afford.
Steinbeck cobbled together a customized camper truck for his journey. For me, an RV is the logical answer, but do I want to go there...?
Not to mention I will be older than I am now when I go, and that will make a difference. I'm still in decent shape physically, but I do understand more than I ever thought I would the little aches and pains grown-ups were always grunting and griping about when I was a kid, the groans that serenaded something as seemingly simple as getting up, and the descending sigh of relief that accompanied sitting down.
But hell, Steinbeck was almost 60 when he did it. If he hacked it, I certainly can!
I just think I better make it 50.
I know I'd rather make it 50.
By the time Colorado becomes Nebraska, I am fast asleep, and already taking that road trip in my dreams.
Of course, in the dream, as in all dreams, I'm 25 forever.
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