Patrick Egan's Blog, page 64

Is This Our Land?

I’m ensconced in Orting, WA. with my daughter, Erin, her husband, Bob, grandson Elias and my wife Mariam.  It’s one big happy family.  We’ve spent only one full day here and already I’ve managed to get caught in a hailstorm while walking across a Safeway parking lot.  We weren’t out in the Plains, facing the desolation while hearing the pelting of the pea-sized hail blast against the Aluminum siding of the R-Pod.  No, I was in a grocery store parking lot.  The only drama was that I was without my cell phone and was separated from Erin, Elias and my wife.  How did I deal with such an edgy experience?  Well, I trotted to the entrance of Safeway that adjoined the Starbucks.  I did what all semi-lost men do…I bought the local paper and ordered a Chai Tea Latte and settled in, waiting to be rescued by my wife. Sure as the snow on Rainier, she had made it back to the car at Erin’s house and returned to get me.  I even got a new tea mug out of the deal. It was on the Starbucks rack where I drank the Latte and it begged to come back to the East Coast with me on our return trip. As I reflect on the final drive to get here two days ago, I recall seeing something that made me think those Woody Guthrie thoughts about whose land this really is.  Passing through western Montana and into eastern Idaho, I saw coal trains that seemed to stretch from there to Detroit.  It would easily take me about 45 minutes to walk the length of these sinuous open cars filled with black chunks of black gold.  And, this was all strip-mined to make matters even worse.  I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as “clean” or “green” coal.  It’s a lie put out there by the Energy Industry to rape what’s left of our resources and get as much money out of pubic lands as they can. My simple question is this:  Who is thinking of the future?  The native americans had it right.  They took the long view and thought about what was to be left for their grandchildren’s grandchildren.  We tend to think about our next credit card purchase. The bill has to be paid in the end, one way or another. My educated guess is that this coal is from leased Federal Lands.  And I can’t get past the gate of Yellowstone National Park to watch Old Faithful. I want my National Parks back!

Travels 10: The Good, The Sad and the Ugly

Venus goddess of love that you are.  Surely the things I ask can’t be too great a task.

–Frankie Avalon

I’ve just walked to the hedge of cedars and watched the sunset.  As usual, Venus is the evening star…leading us westward…like something Biblical.  Our clocks are set to Pacific Time.  We’ve crossed the Great Divide.  We’re camping for the final night in the center of Washington State, in the Columbia Basin (some might say The Palouse).  This is more prairie-like than much of what we drove through in Iowa and Nebraska.  There’s little out here.  Hardly even a grain silo.  It’s lonely and it’s empty.  At least for some people like us who drive, gas up and drive on.

In one sense, our journey is over.  But only the first half.  If you, reader, have enjoyed my posts, I’m happy.  If you didn’t, I’m not so happy.  What I’m really happy about now is getting out of the car for a week or so, or sleeping somewhere different from the tiny space we’ve been using.  No, it’s to hold my grandson, Elias…hug my daughter, Erin and embrace my son-in-law, Bob.  And not doing this after being picked up at the Sea-Tac Airport.  I also wanted to do this under my own steam as it were.

What did I see?  What did I learn?  What was the sum of my experiences thus far?  Remember, I still have to drive back home…more posts from different places.

I met people who didn’t care where you came from…they saw only fellow travelers.  I’ll always be grateful to the man who got us out of a serious jam (and I mean jam) in Stroudsburg, PA.  I felt somehow connected with a drifter only a few days along on the highway.  The wind on the plains blew me off my feet.  The rain fell like a monsoon in Valentine, Nebraska.  A pretty blue-eyed woman struck up a conservation in a town she probably never left, growing up in a house under trees that sheltered her from the intense heat and glare of the rolling prairie.  I was caught by an early winter snowstorm in Bozeman, MT and was forced to stay an extra night.  Next to a spa that had nine heated pools.  I simply had to spend hours in those pools waiting for the snow to stop.

I was locked out of the greatest National Parks of the west.  I couldn’t show Mariam Old Faithful.  The Grand Tetons.  The awesome National Forests…all closed due to the insane demands of the Tea Party.  (That was the ugly part…that was my karmic luck to be out here when the “Shutdown” happened.

Just today I met a young woman.  She ran the register at a gas station in the middle of a gentle pasture that went on for a thousand miles.  She was ebullient.  But she had many reasons not to be.  We spoke.  She had three children she can’t see.  She had been in three psychiatric institutes after three suicide attempts.  She had bad, really bad luck with men.  Yet, she laughed and smiled and spoke freely of her troubles.  (Her main man now was Jesus).  I’m not much of a praying guy, but I muttered a prayer for her continued joy in her otherwise joyless world.

Today, the last full day of driving, I saw three mounted cowboys a half-mile from the Interstate.  They were rounding up about fifty head of cattle.  If I ever come through these parts again, I hope their sons and daughters are still in the saddle.

I have no illusions about this trip.  It was too fast.  I didn’t see everything and talk to everyone.  And I didn’t do what a million others have done before me.  Sitting for hours in a car made my leg as painful as I can remember, but I would do it all over again.

This is one amazing, large and wonderful country I was lucky enough to be born in.  I’m not saying America is the fairest and most just land on the planet, but we’ve all tried, haven’t we?  Lewis & Clark wouldn’t know a Red State from a Blue State..but they had formidable courage to explore.

Let’s not stop exploring.  Let’s not lose sight of that Evening Star…the goddess of love.

Something of a photo gallery:

I’m no herpetologist, but I’m pretty sure this is a rattlesnake:

Some forgotten rancher broke sod with this:

Seen alongside the highway.  Lost?  Forgotten?  Thrown out?  The tiny photo on the right ear piece…the owner or a logo?

The obligatory sunset picture:

Happy Trails, friends…and now to watch a Grade B Cowboy Movie “Massacre Time.”

Travels 9: Climb Every Mountain

[NOTE: I am fully aware that you have come to expect the very best Blogs that your server can buy.  Great pride is taken by me, the author of said Blogs (herein referred to as posts) to deliver the best to you, my dear readers, the observations and comments of weary but determined traveler.  Each post is meant to stand on its own...molded with great care from the clay of the litter ridden roadside.  The posts are like small birds, chirping birds, birds with cute little feathers, that are nurtured and cared by me, the artisan.  Each of these bird-posts are then taken by me, protected in my cupped hand, into a carefully chosen place and released...to fly free, to chirp the chirp of the wild untamed skies...and to seek and find your iPad (or heaven-forbid, a PC) where you can read and savor these reflections of the road.

However, the posts are building up in my right brain at a rate that I can't maintain.  Therefore, I am breaking with a long-held family tradition going back many generations, of posting one blog per thought.  So, for the first time ever, I am splitting this blog in two.  That's right.  In two.  Please don't abandon me like a cheap tart on a side street in Liverpool.

And, please forgive me grandma.

A] AN INTRODUCTION TO HAND DRYERS

As a regular visitor to public rest rooms, along this journey, I have become something of an authority on hand dryers.  This interest of mine began several years ago when I began to notice (very little escapes my notice when it comes to public rest rooms) that there were fewer and fewer paper towels machines.  I tried my jeans and sleeves, but nothing worked as well as those brown sheets of scratchy paper.  At least they were better than drying ones hands on those cloth towel thingies that fed you a continuous loop of “clean towel material”.  My God, but the people before me must just have finished changing their motor oil!  After about a year I began to realize that it was en ecology thing.  Paper towels meant trees were being cut down.  Even I could appreciate the waste.  Hence, the hot-air blower came into use, and it still in use today…with some refinements.  As I arrived in Montana, it hit me like a bolt out of the blue.  Almost every hand-dryer (which, by the way doesn’t allow you to dry your sweaty face), was manufactured in Berkeley, Illinois.  I had just driven through Illinois.  So, where was the factory?  Where was the museum? Where were the signs that indicated that Berkeley was the Capital of the Hand Dryers?  I felt bad enough being locked out of the National Parks and Forests because of the Federal Shutdown, so the chance to salvage something uniquely interesting and culturally important as the Hand Dryer factory slipped by me.  Not one sign on any exit ramp.

I’m not done yet with the Hand Dryer situation.  There is a new generation of Dryers that is making its encroachment into public rest rooms across the land (I’ve even spotted them in New York City).  I’m talking here about the EXCELERATOR.  This wall-mounted machine should be licensed.  You wash your hand.  You shake them off.  You approach the EXCELERATOR and you elbow the big round button.  The blast of hot air that comes out is enough to blow your wedding ring across the tiled floor.  If you’re peeling from a sunburn, forget it.  I’ve seen grown men get manicured from the blast.  The air in the room must be filled with bits of human skin.  How sanitary is that?  And the noise.  I’ve walked out of some public rest rooms bleeding from the ears.  I can see citations against these devices filed with the FCC, FDA, OSHA, NASA and NIH.

So, if you have to releave yourself and there no tree around, don’t say you weren’t warned.

B]–THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE

We had expected to spend tonight, Oct. 2, here in Bozeman, Montana…we didn’t expect to spend tomorrow night here as well.  I like the place, but we were planning on getting to Missoula tonight but our bones told us to stop in Bozeman.  Missoula is where we make the Continental Divide.  We knew our gas mileage was going to drop into the negative numbers as we climbed the grade to the high crest of this part of America.  Years ago, I came through that area.  I remember feeling a little dizzy and my heart was pounding.  But I was only seventeen and healthy.  This time, I was a little wary.  With one foot in the eastern drainage and other in the Pacific drainage…which way would my blood flow?  If I slipped and fell, where would I end up: In New Orleans or somewhere on the Northwest Pacific coast, tossed out of the mouth of the Columbia River and washed along the shore like a Japanese glass net float, or other piece of flotsam or jetsam,  (I never could get the two straight.)

The weather made the decision for us.  At least for my wife.  My Continental dilemma would have to wait.  There was an early winter storm in the mountains ahead of us.  We were told that some roads of the passes may be closed.  My wife didn’t want to take any chances.  As for me, I was controlling a Ford with 4-wheel drive.  And we had an R-Pod behind us.  We could make it for as long as it took for the roads to clear.  I wasn’t worried about a thing (I began reading a history of the Donner Party but never finished it) but hey, what could go wrong?

I’m older now.  I’ll never be challenging the mountains again as I did as a young man.

As Gordon Lightfoot sings: Like brave mountaineers, we weren’t bothered much by time.

Travels 8: A Land Of Ironies

I am entering a time and a place of strange ironies.

I am warm and dusty…sneezing, really, on the Interstate, yet the snow of the eastern slopes of the Rockies are facing me.  I’m having trouble making a legal u-turn to get the R-Pod facing in the right directions, yet I can park IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET in Sundance.

Sundance! The very name brings to mind Robert Redford and the famed Film Festival.  I embarrassed myself in a coffee shop yesterday asking about it and was told the Festival was actually held in Utah.  I tried to explain that I really knew that..but was just askin’.

After the darkness of Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee, I walked the circuit around Devil’s Tower and found dozens of “prayer bags” and “prayer scarves” placed by the Native Americans who consider the Tower a very spiritual place.  I’m not a huge believer, myself, but I was honored and impressed by the deep souls of these tragic people.  I felt like I was trespassing on sacred ground.  I was.

A small dog barked only a few yards from our camper last night.  I don’t mind animals, but do they have to be so territorial when they are enclosed inside a chain-link fence?

Yes, ironies abound.

As I stood this morning in the mens room of the KOA campground where we stayed, I was forced to hear piped in music, a little too loudly.

My sub conscience kicked in when I began to listen to the lyrics.  I was hearing, for the first time, a cowboy rap song.  This really went beyond irony into, rather boldly I must say, a major oxymoron.  The very concept challenges the imagination.

What was the country music drummer thinking as he (or she) tried to lay down a rap beat to back up the male singer lamenting:

Right now girl, we should drink on it.

Put our hips together and sit on it…then think on it.

Later, we can sleep on it.

[I'm paraphrasing.]

Then, the most bitter irony of all.

I wanted to take Mariam to Old Faithful, Yellowstone Falls, Little Big Horn Battle Site and any other National Park or site.  We had just obtained our Golden Pass that would allow us free entrance to all of these and more.  But at midnight last night, the Federal Government shut down…that includes the Parks.  So, now we drive past these places and stay on the Interstate.

Thank you Tea Party, for making our trip something of a failure.  At least they can’t keep me from my grandson, my daughter and my son-in-law.

I hear there’s snow in the mountains that we have to cross.

That’s nature.  Not irony.

Travels 7: Somewhere in the Black Mining Hills of Dakota

My lands are where my dead lie buried.

–Chief Crazy Horse

My last post was written with a sad heart.  Pine Ridge Reservation will bring down even the most optimistic of people.  I have to say that I slept well and was not delivered of dreams, either of blue-eyed prairie women or sad-eyed Sioux.  I needed the rest.  It had been a grueling day.

Today we went north to visit two sights that are perhaps some of the most popular in the region.  Our first stop was Crazy Horse Mountain.  Now, when I came through here in 1964, this attraction did not exist.  The big draw then was a few miles further north, Mt. Rushmore.

At this point, I must say that by nature, I am not a fan of denuding an entire mountain with thousands of tons of dynamite.  I rather see the world as nature intended–the more untouched and disturbed, the better.  But, now I was faced with not one, but two mountains that have been carved like a half-ton of Carrera Marble.  And to make the situation even more puzzling to me was that each site represented two very different cultures.  History on a collision course.  History going 90 mph down a dead-end street.  (I had to find a place to slip in a Dylan quote somewhere.)

On Rushmore, there are the heads of four white Presidents.  The Father of Our Nation, an early President who owned slaves, had children with one of them–and still went on to write the Declaration of Independence, a Trust Busting National Leader who set in place the National Park System, and of course, the Liberator of slaves (who never could admit the actual human equality of the African-Americans).  Yes, these gentlemen put together a great nation and yes, they were extraordinary individuals by any standards, but they were white men and their faces were to reflect a new nation.  But, where were the women? the blacks? and the others that built the nation with their backs, their sweat, there tears and their lives?

Ok, a monument to a nation with four symbolic figures to stand in for the masses.  I can deal.  One mountain gone–one monument raised.  This one is done for all practical purposes.  As much as the Right would like it, I doubt that Ronald Reagan will ever adorn the facade, joining his fellow Chief Executives (most of whom he would argue with under the moon of the Black Hills).

A few miles south is another project all together.  This one, dedicated to Crazy Horse is not nearly finished.  This figure is intended to dwarf all others.  It will be the largest sculpture in the world.  It was begun decades ago by an assistant to the guy who carved Rushmore.  The figure will be of a mounted Crazy Horse with his arm outstretched over his horse’s head.  He will be pointing to the distant horizon…where his dead lie buried.  It’s worth noting that Crazy Horse, the Noble Chief of the Plains, was stabbed in the back and killed by an American soldier in September, 1877,  (only twelve years after the North defeated the South in a struggle for, in part, the freedom of men).

When we entered the Crazy Horse Mountain visiting center, it would cost me $20.00.  I was a bit miffed at the fact that this fee was charged.  Only later did I find out that it is privately owned and operated.  When finished, it will be a huge complex dedicated to the education, arts and cultural of the American Indian.  The people in charge wanted no government money.

After returning to Custer, S. Dakota, where we were camping, I took a walk through the woods to reflect on what I had seen today.

Here we had not one, but two, TNT blasted mountains.  I thought about this.  Actually, this was not without precedent.  After all, there were gigantic Buddhas carved in a mountainside in Afghanistan (that the Taliban blew up a few years ago). I’m sure there are more examples throughout the world, I just can’t think of them right now.

I’m leaving South Dakota tomorrow for Devil’s Tower, Wyoming.  Now here’s a mountain that nobody has touched, yet.

It’s a mystical place, I hear.  Spielberg used it as the site of the landing of the Mother Ship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

I’ve seen the Tower before.  The only human interaction there was the rock-climbing.

I don’t know.  Maybe more is less–or less is more.

Who am I to judge?

Look close and you can see Crazy Horse:

Travels 6: Catching a Dream at Wounded Knee

Yesterday, I told a woman she had very pretty blue eyes.

We stopped for gas in Laurel, Nebraska, and within thirty minutes, half the town knew we were there.  I was stopped at a light and a guy in a black pick-up Ford asked if I was on the way to the classic car auction.  I said no.  Mariam went into a bar to order our lunch.  I wanted a “real cheeseburger” this time and not another McDonald’s salad.  I triple parked with the R-Pod and headed for the little Post Office across the street.  I lucked out.  They had an international stamp that would allow me to mail a post card to a friend in Australia.  On the way out of the P.O. door, a woman–a complete stranger–asked if that cute little trailer was mine.  I said yes.  She said she had seen it at the gas station a few minutes ago and wanted to know if I was going to the classic car auction.  I said no.  We talked.  I asked her what it was like to grow up in the Nebraska prairie.  She said it didn’t snow as much as it used to do when she was a little girl.  In those few minutes, she described a life that could have been lived in many places.

As she headed for her car, I told her she had very pretty blue eyes.  She blushed and said thank you for the compliment.

Mariam emerged from the bar with the sandwiches.  We headed west on Route 20, again, but this time I bit into a 4-star burger that had it all.  It was a long way to Valentine, Nebraska, but I was a contented driver now.

Today, however, didn’t play out the way yesterday did.  In fact, when I turn this iMac off in a little while, I will probably have trouble sleeping.  My heart is sad tonight, and my sleep may deliver dark dreams.

I hope this isn’t true, because I bought a dream-catcher.  They’re supposed to deny bad dreams from disturbing one’s sleep.

The day began to slide south when we entered Pine Ridge, South Dakota.  You may know that this is arguably the most distressed Indian Reservation in the “system.”  The unemployment rate is said to be around 92%!  When we pulled into a Shell station, I was being stared at by most of the Lakota Sioux townsfolk that were sitting on curbs and doorways.  Small bottles poked out of small brown paper bags.  I, who was wearing expensive sunglasses, could stare back without it being noticed.  I felt awkward.  I felt like some preppy kid on a “slumming” field trip to see how the other half lives.  The junction of Pine Ridge was in the center of a vast failed experiment on the part of the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) to offer the Native Americans a slice of the pie–their pie–that we (white Americans) had taken from them.

We not only took the land, we stole their spirit, their nobility, their honor, their history and their lives.

I was on my way to visit Wounded Knee, the site of a savage massacre that effectively ended the Native American resistance to our greed.

The backstory is long and complicated so I won’t go into it here.  I recommend Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart in Wounded Knee, if you want a complete history of what Manifest Destiny meant to the original owners of this land.

I read the book over thirty years ago and now it was time for me to make a pilgrimage to this awful site and pay my respects.  What I found was not what I expected.

There were no U. S. Government historical markers (at least none that I could find). There was some signage but it looked hand painted and homemade.  I took the left turn and drove the nine miles or so to where this massacre took place.  But I was having trouble finding the exact site.  Now, I realize, that armed with a proper history book and maps, I could probably have found it, but like so much else on this trip, I simply didn’t have the time to spend.  Because of that fact, I felt callous and rushed about the visit.

So, after a few wrong turns (I’ve made a few) I found the general location of the killing.  I say “general” because it wasn’t in just one spot where the bodies of over 150 Lakota men, women and children were found.  Indeed, they were found along the Wounded Knee Creek–for miles!

The reason for the tragedy?  Accounts differ, but it boils down to a major portion of the 7th U. S. Cavalry were on hand to keep an eye on the Sioux.  A string of events unfolded quickly.  Chaos abounded.  Soldiers fell, some it is said, was by friendly fire during the ensuing riot of guns and blood.

This took place on December 29, 1890.  The Sioux were gathered for a Ghost Dance.  It was to be their final Ghost Dance.  It was the end of hostilities.  The various tribes were rounded up.  Some of their descendants still live in and around Pine Ridge.

I stopped at a small and shaded souvenir stand near the Wounded Knee Creek.  The items for sale numbered only a few.  There were three families using the stalls to sell their things.  I bought a dream catcher from a woman.  She looked at me and thanked me for buying from her.

She didn’t have bright blue eyes.  She had sad brown eyes that told me of a hard life spent in that God-forsaken town.

She didn’t have to say a word to me.  I could see her soul through her eyes.  These moist dark brown orbs were her portal to the times when her people rode with pride and grace and without fear across the endless prairie.

So, now I sit in my R-Pod, one hundred miles to the north and think of things that are and of things that once were.

I’m looking at the dark-skinned woman’s dream catcher and I pray that it catches the dreams I don’t want to have this night…or any night.

Tomorrow, I’ll stand and stare at four white Presidents carved like gods into the rock edifice of a mountain.  Later, I will stare at a mythic figure of Crazy Horse carved into a nearby mountain.

Who really belongs here?

The landscape around Wounded Knee:

Travels 5: Oh, Pioneers!

The great American Poet and Literary Goddess of the Prairie, Willa Cather, once said:  “I was raised by a tooth-less bearded hag…I was schooled with a black strap across my back…but it’s alright now, in fact it’s a gas.”  Hold on, I don’t think that was Willa Cather.  No, after rechecking my sources, I find that Cather wanna-be named Mick Jagger was the author of that famous American line.

Here it is, Willa Cather actually said: “Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.”

I’m beginning to understand her meaning.

We’re getting deep into the very edge of the center of the Great American Prairie.  With each day that passes, as I watch this world go by from the driver’s window of our Ford Escape, I sense that I am delving deeper and deeper into the shallow soil that covers these vast ranchlands.  Yes, I am becoming part of the very geography itself.  My left arm is getting brown.  My gray hair is dry and wind-tossed into a teasingly innocent thatch of salt.  Just enough of my well-tanned neck is seductively visible beneath my tussled hair and my Wrangler shirt collar.  Yes, I gain insight every second I exist in this amazing place.

Right now, that amazing place is central Iowa.  We speed along Highway 20.  I am becoming one with the land.  With my increasingly keen eyesight, I see something in the road, ahead.  There goes one, across the pavement, from brush into brush.  I know immediately it’s a “side-winder” snake.  Like the ones you seen in the cowboy movies.  There’s another.  Can it be?  Can it be that we are driving Highway 20 at the exact time of the Great Side-Winder Migration?  It can’t be.  This occurs only once every quarter of a century.  God has granted me this sight.  This was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness the Great Migration of these rare snakes.  There’s more in the road in front of us.  I slow.  I don’t to kill any of these innocent creations of God as they make their way to the Breeding Grounds north of Iowa.  No one is behind me.  I slow to a stop, pulling over on the gravel shoulder, pebbles clicking against my R-Pod.  I reach behind me to take hold of my new Nikon D3200.  I need a shot of this!

It’s then that I realize that the strong breeze is actually blowing strips of dried packaging from a Chinese Take-Out back in Waterloo.

I get out and pretend to check my tires, just in case someone is watching.  Checking my tires is something I REALLY intended to do right now.  I even snapped a few pictures of the tires to drive home the point…just in case someone is watching.

I want to see the endlessness of these infinite lands.  At a rest stop (boy, there aren’t many of these around).  There is a hill.  I climb to the top and read a sign about the Grasslands that are now almost gone.  I wanted to see the Empty Quarter.  The lack of human landmarks that Willa Cather spoke about.  I wanted to get depressed looking at this forbidding landscape.

And, there it was!  Gently rolling hills that disappeared into the haze of distance.  What’s that?  It’s a cell phone tower.  Over there?  It’s a mega-farm with silos as tall as the Empire Building.

I got back into the car and headed to North Sioux Falls in South Dakota.  I was hoping not to get it confused with Sioux Falls, Iowa or South Sioux City in Nebraska.

We parked in a KOA RV site.

The guy that rode a golf cart and led us to our site lost no time in noticing the bikes atop our car.  Hey, he said, you can bike about three miles on the bike path by the entrance and see a herd of Buffalo.  I thanked him, and looked at the bikes.  Just then I felt a familiar stabbing pain in my lower back.  There’ll be plenty of Buffalo to look at in the days ahead.  I headed to the picnic table.

I stretched my legs and then turned through the pages of the Sioux City Journal.  I saw a help wanted ad for the position of Corn Receiving Specialist.  I wondered if that was entry level or management.

While Mariam began dinner (hey, I drove) I decided to walk over to the office to buy a pint of ice cream.  As I strolled down the lane, I passed a guy with a hand-held iPad type of thing.  I told him that I loved having my iPad Mini along to help in Google searches.  I asked what he had.  A Kindle Fire, he said.  A reader, I thought.  Yup, he said, this the only way my wife allows me to gamble.

On the way back, I had to walk around a few times because I couldn’t find our R-Pod among the gigundo RV trailers that surrounded me.

But, I found our little trailer.

I am getting to be so good at being in this amazing country.

Travels 4: Blue Highways

Someone I’ve been searching for appeared before my eyes today and it wasn’t very far from Herbert Hoover’s grave.

We had just crossed the Mississippi River.  The Mother of North America Rivers.  Say what you want about the Hudson, Rio Grande or the Missouri; Big Muddy is what rivers are all about.   Yes, the mighty Mississippi…Old Man River…the Aorta of America…the Main Drain…separator of a continent…where the Eastern Dandy leaves his top hat behind and dons a Stetson and hip-straps a Colt.  St. Louis, Vicksburg and the Big Easy, New Orleans all feed at the shores of this legendary waterway.  Yes, we crossed it today.  It took about forty-five seconds…but it was toll-free.  Not bad considering you’ve entered another world.

We pulled up at the first Welcome Center Rest Stop.  I stretched my legs even though we had not gone that far.  It doesn’t take many miles for my legs to get crampy and stiff.  This was the Salt Kettle Rest Stop.  It seems salt was discovered in the area in the early 19th century.  The rusted salting kettle was on display near the parking lot.  I read the historical marker about a nearby town, where Herbert Hoover was born.

Eighteen wheelers were parked along the mid section of the pavement.  It was cool and cloudless; perfect conditions for a sunburn of my left arm as we headed west.  We started down the ramp to access the Interstate…that’s when I saw him.

He stood there near the end of the driveway.  There was a small bundle at his feet.  He looked me in the eye as we drove past him.  I returned his gaze.

This was a drifter…a modern day Oakie…a Hobo…a Loner on his way to a million somewheres.  He didn’t have his thumb in the air, he didn’t need to.  Any driver who took the time to see him, really see him, would know that he was waiting for a ride…any ride.

I can’t say the guy was homeless, at least not in the sense of how we’ve come to think of homelessness.  No, I think he had a place…or did once.  Perhaps he was going back.  Maybe he was leaving.  Did he just leave a job in the wheat fields?  Was he looking for the job in the wheat fields?

There was not time for me to stop and speak with him.  I couldn’t get a photo so you’ll have to use your imagination.  There was no time for anything except a moment of eye-to-eye contact.  I’d like to say that he smiled ever so slightly from his unshaven face, but I can’t say that.  His expression was one of…of no expression.  Just a direct, unapologetic momentary stare.  His head turned slightly as we passed him.  I hope he could see that we had no room for another person.

I’ve been waiting, watching and hoping for over a thousand miles, to see a man of the heartland…a Woody Guthrie, a Tom Joad, a specter from a Dorothea Lange photograph standing by the Blue Highway, a mute shade of a largely forgotten subculture of America.

I hope he could see that I wasn’t judging him.   In those few moments, I saw a lifetime…not mine, but his.  I had everything, a wife, a place to sleep, a car and a plan.  Part of me can’t help but think that he lacked some of what I claimed as mine.

It shamed me to think this way.  I knew nothing about this guy.  No, I wasn’t judging him, I didn’t know a thing about him.

But, in some odd way, in some strange inexplicable way, I liked him.

Travels 3: The Rock Island Line is a Mighty Fine Line

I was heading down the road, trying to loosen my load…

We were on our way to Rock Island.

When you’re busy doing hard traveling, like me, you can get caught up in the “hypnosis of the highway”.  I know I do.  You watch the road ahead.  All safety alerts are on, but your mind can begin to wander.

We had just crossed the Illinois state line.  I was staring at the thread of pavement in front of me; I-74…and I started to think about stuff.

My wife was sitting shotgun quietly calculating our gas mileage.

How we doing? I said.

We’re getting about nine mpg, she replied.

I laughed.  No really, what are we getting?

About nine, she said again.

Nine what? I asked.

Nine mpg, she said.

What do you mean by nine? I said.

We’re getting about nine miles a gallon, she said once again.

I’m asking about mpg, I said, this time with a manly voice.  How many miles per gallon are we getting?  No joking, ok?

Nine, she said, yet again.

I dropped the subject.  Clearly she didn’t understand what I was asking.  I turned my attention to the road.  My mind began to drift about.  I tried to figure out if you’re really supposed to pronounce the “s’s” in Des Moines.  Either way, it sounded funny.

I looked about me as I clipped along at 62 mph (in a 70 zone) and noticed something very unusual.  Most of you know (or should) that I’m a retired earth science teacher.  I’ve been trained to look deep and hard at the landscape.  With my expert eye, I was startled to notice the nearly complete lack of hills or mountains out here on the edges of the Great Prairie.  Basically, I was looking at flat land.  Really flat land.  Most of it was also being farmed.  Crops I knew well like corn covered endless acres.  There were also little brown plants, all dried up from late summer.  These too were crops, I surmised with an expertise that surprised even me.  I just wonder what they were.  No little small white things on them so that ruled out cotton.  I guess it’s all pretty much corn country out here.  Yes! Out here!  Where men had sunburns and the women hung clothes on lines in their backyards.  These were real people here, unlike some places I’ve been.

Then my visual scan changed to focus on the windshield.  I didn’t realize that the bugs that smashed against the glass were made of so many interesting colors.  I counted about a dozen yellow smears, about six greenish ones and several dull white ones…well, sort of off-white if you wanted an exact description.  One was actually bluish.

I began to take notice of the many signs for colleges and universities that were located in nearly all the little towns.  Lord, there were plenty of them.  So this is where all the farm kids got educated.  I saw a sign for Jubilee College.  I mean I never heard of Jubilee College.  I never knew anyone who actually went to Jubilee College.

I turned the radio on hoping to hear some Mozart or perhaps some John Coltrane.  Instead, I was blasted by the most insipid music I ever heard.  Station after station played songs with lyrics like: “I want to, I want to, I want to, but I can’t”.  As I spun the digital dial, the rest of the stations played songs, most of which had lyrics with the words Lord, hand, mission, love, pray, walking, joy and sin.  This is a God-fearing country out here.

Then a strange thing happened.  I caught a glimpse of a milepost sign that read: 137 Miles.  But, 137 miles to what?  From what?  I began to feel better when I realized that I had seen a sign like that before.  Basically, from just about anywhere you are, it’s 137 miles to someplace.  Maybe a few exits down the road and I would find out.

So, here we are sitting in our cozy little R-Pod.  I just heard a train whistle, then the bells indicating a hook-up or track change.

That train whistles.  That lonesome sound.  It calls ramblin’ guys like me.  Time to move on…time to hop the dusty boxcar.  Time to put some miles between you and that floozy back at the bar.  Her name is Wanda, and she’s got more miles in her eyes than a Rand McNally.  It’s the call of the road…. wait a minute…I’m already on the road.  I’m already traveling.  I’m already a pavement-pounding gentleman of the highway.    I don’t have any place to go in a boxcar.  That’s good because I get hay fever really bad and need a hankie when I’m around dust.

Gordon Lightfoot sang about being “Alberta Bound”.  I’d like to sing that too, but we’re not going to Alberta…we’re going to Orting, WA.

As I wind up this post, I think about the day I just had.  I saw through the front windshield the places I was going to…but what about where I’ve been?  I looked out of the rearview mirror to see my recent experiences fade.

All I saw were the bugs smashed against the front of the R-Pod.

Travels: Part 2 Stuck Inside of Stroudsburg With the Orting Blues Again

The question is quite simple.

Were you ever stuck in a small Sunoco station in a town in Pennsylvania, after filling up the tank of a car that was drinking petrol like a politician during Prohibition, while pulling a trailer that you, for a moment forgot you were pulling, with only .8mm of space between the fuel pumps and the side of your RV, and your tires wedged against a curb-like thingy, so hard pressed that you could not move forward or backward…at all?

Well, I have.

A black sedan was parked against the stone wall.  I couldn’t make a forward-and-to-the-left move, so I cut too sharp and found myself unable to go anywhere.  I stood in the parking lot and stared at the fuel pumps, trying to use my telekinetic powers to will them away when a kindly gentleman with a soft mid-southern accent came up and asked if I needed help.  I nearly dropped to my knees while wiping sweat and tears away.  There is a God.  He’s six feet tall and from South Carolina.  He knew the obscure ways to make a car and trailer move as one.  It must be some sort of Secret Brotherhood of Travelers.  He possessed the key and he made it happen (along with three guys who looked like they were fullbacks for Penn State).  We had to disengage the car and RV and these guys, these supermen, these regular Joe’s rolled up their sleeves and MOVED AN RV THREE FEET TO THE RIGHT.  They may as well have displaced the orbital path of the planet.  I felt guilty about leaving that extra box of Facial Tissues in the R-Pod.  That kind of extra weight can be a killer.  I reconnected and moved away from the pumps.  I prayed again after decades of feeling sure God wanted no part of my life on His earth.  I was free.  I wanted to ask the guys if they wanted to join me at the bowling alley down the road later…for a game and a beer…on me,  of course,  but they were gone before I could shift into neutral and get out of the car.  Were they even real?  And where was the gentleman from South Carolina?  He had driven off with his wife in a car, just a car without a trailer.  I could just hear this God telling Mrs. God that gray-haired guy was never going to make it to Tacoma.

So, off we drove…westward and deeper into the Keystone State.  The urban scape of New Jersey got smaller through the rear-view mirror.  Now we’re talking.  Countryside.  Dried cornfields and real barns and tall silos, with plenty of split-rail fences.  But no farm girls were sitting on those fences.

But, not to worry.  It’s the Autumnal Equinox today.  The first day of Fall.  People say that the red-cheeked farm girls drop like leaves from oak trees, like acorns onto the fences of their farms…this time of year, and sit and watch the migration of the gray-haired guys heading west.  They’ll giggle and say: Now there’s a guy who’ll never make it to Orting…not the way he’s looking at us all, as we line the fences across the fly over states.

Well, they’re going to be wrong.  I can multi-task.

Are these the rail fence goddesses that will monitor my westward odyssey?  Are these the sirens of the corn mazes?

Are they?

To be continued.