It's finally starting to sink in that five days from now, I won't be living in this apartment or this city any more. I'm kind of visually oriented, so what really convinced me was looking around and seeing no books and almost no furniture. The books are packed up or given away, the furniture was sold for cheap (posted an ad on-line and met an interesting variety of neighborhood folks in the process; the guy who bought my bed turned out to live next door). Sold the TV too, but it stays till after the weekend so I can catch Futurama. Address changes are mostly done, and I finally have a good excuse to remove myself from the dozens of local mailing lists I was on.
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Meanwhile, New York is starting to look more and more like a cartoon of New York to me. Everywhere I go it sounds like people talk about nothing but money, jobs, and apartments all the damn time. Maybe sports, too. I mean, I know lots of the country is something like that, but there's a certain special style here. I was especially feeling it when I went to a reunion dinner for my ex-co-workers from a job at a software startup (it didn't quite), and they were all going on about business plans and whether they'd negotiated the right salary deals. Nice people, but I suddenly felt like the world's hippiest hippie.
(This very smart lady—who says she's getting out of programming as soon as possible—just couldn't figure out why I would even consider going back to nursing instead of looking for another programming job. I tried to explain that even though it was a decent job & often an interesting challenge, it was also sort of like solving one crossword puzzle after another for eight hours a day. I got a blank stare & then had to explain that I don't really like doing crossword puzzles, and that I wasn't talking about the easy kind. Then she got it. But, thinking about it now... even if they were easy or I liked doing them, I wouldn't want to do nothing but that full-time. I might change my mind, but given the job market out west these days, I kind of doubt I'll have to.)
The most cheerful and easy-going New Yorker I've seen recently was a crazy man on the L train. It wasn't too crowded, and he was reclining comfortably on a corner seat with his arms out, looking intently up at the top of the opposite wall—where there was a subway safety poster and a podiatrist ad—grinning from ear to ear and chuckling every few seconds, not mechanically, but with childish glee as if someone were telling him funnier and funnier things.
Over on the Comics Journal message board, talking about Waldo the imaginary friend in Kim Deitch's great book Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Kristine from San Francisco had this to say:
I was debating (with my husband, then all by myself, because I'm crazy) the literary device of using crazy people as the voice of Truth (or Art or even Sanity). Mike thinks it's a valid device because 1) it works and 2) it's at least occasionally true. To clinch my thoughts, a deranged woman got on my bus today and muttered down the aisle: "You're ugly", "Green coat", "Big nose", "War's not on the front page today", "I need a hat", "Bad shoes", "Ugly". All spot on. Thank heavens she sat down before she got to me at the back of the bus. I expect to see Waldo any minute now.
Warning: this is a long philosophical digression on Tolkien.
So, like several other people, I recently saw the second Lord of the Rings movie. It's good in a whole lot of ways, and although I remember the discarded parts of the book wistfully, the movie is the closest thing I can imagine to a faithful translation of at least part of Tolkien's spirit. But, given what's going on in the world these days, I had to keep reminding myself that Peter Jackson probably did not make his films three years in advance to provide war propaganda for the cowboys in Washington. It's hard now to see a hero on screen talking about how you have to stop bargaining with the enemy and charge ahead—because don't you know you're already at war, and we mustn't let the enemy get the ultimate weapon, etc.—and not be very aware that we're being told the same kinds of things every day on TV by guys who, if they get their way, will probably kill a whole lot of people soon on our behalf.
My mother had a similar reaction; she writes:
Sheesh. I loved seeing it, and look forward to whenever Part Three comes out, but ... it's such a brilliant evocation of the whole western mythology of the role of male questing power, whose inevitable proving-ground is mortal battle. And god, this film really gets it. And it's so thrilling, and seductive, and wouldn't it be wonderful if it were something that existed just as a storytelling artifact like the Roadrunner cartoons, and we could enjoy the hell out of it as that storytelling artifact. But in actuality, the Orcs do seem to be massing in many waystations. Where are the stories that embody that glorious questing path, the road of strength, in some other way? How can we invent them?
Yeah, it gets it. I mean, I'm a religious pacifist, but I suspect I'm not the only Quaker who really wanted to jump in and pick up a sword during the Helm's Deep scene... and I don't think that's just from the adrenaline rush, or the visual and narrative skill of the movie. The battle scene—which is simultaneously thrilling, depressing, and extremely scary—is really about something that I think most people, if they ever think about it, will connect to as a basic challenge of human history: what if you had to fight in hopeless, bloody insanity all night long to defend everyone you love? What if you all had to place total trust in someone who, as far as you could tell, really absolutely deserved it? The book and the film both bring out some of the true and valuable things that can come from that idea, and make you see it as a necessary part of mature life—metaphorical for most moviegoers, literal for many people in the past.
Which doesn't mean that's how the world should be. For instance, I happen to think the general direction of Ayn Rand's work, and certainly her influence in modern politics, is pernicious and inhumane; but at her best, she managed to find some of the true and valuable things within the idea of individualism. Both Rand and Tolkien wrote from a personal experience of violence and loss (the Bolshevik Revolution in her case; the trenches of World War One and the industrialization of England in his) and it's possible to explain their work away partly in psychological terms, to say they were projecting their fears onto fantasy villains, simplifying the world into absolute good and evil(*).
(* This article by David Brin, though, is just overblown silliness. According to Brin, Tolkien lacked the imagination or the guts to show how Sauron is really on the side of liberation... because the humans are ruled by, you know, kings. Seems as if Brin now has a regular spot at Salon reserved for ham-handed political readings of works of fantasy: last time, he did an exposé on how Star Wars is fascist because it has heroes—unlike the egalitarian Star Trek, where everyone is in the army.) |
Again, Tolkien knew war, and not the long-distance kind we're contemplating this year. He lost nearly all of his friends in combat, against an enemy that, according to our governments, was intent on conquering the world and committing every atrocity; the "Huns" were described more or less as Orcs. But the reality wasn't Rohan vs. the Orcs, it was Rohan vs. Rohan vs. Rohan vs. Rohan, and no one was unaware of this by the end. World War Two might seem like a much better fit for the same story, based on Hitler's stated goals, the unprecedented attacks on civilians, and the invention of an ultimate weapon. Well... why then did Tolkien so vehemently deny that The Lord of the Rings was in any way about Hitler or the Bomb? Was he just oblivious, indifferent to the world, or unaware of his own motives; didn't he know that the second war would be almost universally regarded as the ultimate just cause; did he not know what was good for him?
Tolkien was a Christian, a linguist, and a student of history—the violent history of the Anglo-Saxons, and the poetry they left behind. He knew that much has changed in our outward lives while in many ways nothing has changed, and he believed that there are spirits of destruction inside and outside of us, which have been around at least as long as we have. A crucial point in that belief is that no person can be entirely identified with evil, and that no person, with one exception, is entirely free of it. The temptation to see our sins in everyone except us is very strong, and someone much worse than us may turn out to have just as important a task—we can see that Frodo and Sam are both right about Gollum, but neither of them knows the part he'll play in the end, and neither does he(**).
(** If you haven't read the third book yet, trust me.) |
So, here's one way to read the author's refusal to identify Sauron with the man who embodied the worst evil so far, or to identify the Ring with the worst weapon so far. He was probably well aware that any story he told would be partly a story of his own times. But he knew history and human nature well enough to know that we will always misread the struggle we happen to be in; we'll always be tempted to apply the stories and lessons of the past selectively, and (as Sam says) we don't know what kind of stories we'll leave behind. We can't say that some other guy is equivalent to someone from the story; that's not what it's for. The Lord of the Rings is partly an allegory, but not in the modern Animal Farm sense where events stand for other events; it's in the Pilgrim's Progress sense where events stand for spirit. We're everywhere in the story: we're the ones who fight for power, and we're the ones who fight off the ones who fight for power; we're the ones who can be twisted by greed and addiction, and we're the ones who hate or pity the twisted ones; we're the ones abandoning a world in decline, and the ones inheriting a world full of potential; very, very rarely, we may be the one who leads others to do the right thing, but not before wandering in the wilderness a long time. It's not the whole truth, but it's true.
So, back to all the running and jumping and stabbing and shooting—what do we make of that? It's clear that Tolkien, like Lewis, saw violence as legitimate in a good cause, but more importantly saw physical courage and engagement in general as the prerequisite for moral courage. I can't argue with the last part. And if, from a distrust of violence and tradition, we dismiss the courage of all the people who have died while stabbing and shooting each other to (as far as they knew) defend their loved ones or just to get out alive—and I don't just mean in the wars of our times, but all the Helm's Deeps of the distant past and the muddy little battles and burned villages of prehistory, which would have been very real to a scholar like Tolkien—then we'll risk dismissing everything that reminds us of it, and eventually lose our ability to look honestly at the past and present conflicts within ourselves. But at the same time, again and again the story reminds us that all of those conflicts are only side effects of a deeper flaw, a pride and desire for power, to which none of us are immune.
And for every militarist lesson you can get from the story, there's an equal and opposite reading. George Bush seems to think America is Theoden, a half-asleep king bewitched by traitors, who has to be shaken awake so he can ride off to war. But even a casual reader or viewer may notice that the awakened Theoden, though vigorous, is far from infallible and immediately leads his people into a trap; the symptoms of the spell he was under were self-involvement, paranoia, and over-reliance on a corrupt advisor who was secretly in cahoots with a leader of industry; and Gandalf broke the spell to restore his free will, but then left the human kings to their own devices. And so on... you can get whatever you're looking for, hawks and hippies alike, if that's how you want to use it. The same is true of history.
Well, in the end, a "careful reading" may not have much to do with how most people react—if "Born in the USA" could be turned into a Reaganite jingle, then anything can and will be misused. But if fantasy is important, then it's worth entering into on its own terms, and responding to wholeheartedly.
Cranky Mr. Andrew Rilstone, who used to hang out on Usenet talking about C.S. Lewis and now continues to write occasionally on the Web, went to see some conceptual things at the Turner Prize Exhibition and wrote something both funny and insightful about the nature of poo, pointlessness, art, ideas, and other such things. He concludes:
I hate philistinism far more than I hate pretension. I'd sooner look at three naked emperors than miss one really impressive set of coronation robes.
On the way out, William Blake's The Ghost of a Flea reminds the author that "there was a time when artists were relatively sane."
Tomorrow I leave New York. I came here right out of high school in 1990, just a little late for the Tompkins Square riots, but just in time for the first Gulf War. I had sort of an idea of becoming a famous genius or something. I thought everything here was big, crowded, smelly, hostile, and exciting. It still is, I guess.
As if I hadn't talked about this enough, here's a picture of my thoughts on the occasion, which should be worth at least 1000 words more. It's not exactly an accurate picture of New York or San Francisco—and it's not a fair comparison either, since the scene in SF is nearly out of the city, at Land's End, a beautiful spot at the edge of the park with cliffs looking across the water—but you get the idea.
[This is me posting from the future: the next 11 days of entries were written and/or taped by me while driving across the country in a rental truck.]
* * *
It wasn't easy but I did get out of New York...
Yesterday, when I was supposed to depart, was a lost cause with one stupid delay after another. The last of these took 40 minutes at the side of the road for a Jersey cop to write me a ticket. I had forgot I was in a truck, which meant I wasn't supposd to be in the left lane on the Goethals Bridge. (I was driving the truck into Brooklyn from Philly; picking it up out of town was supposed to be a clever way to save money. I saved a little more than what the ticket will cost me, maybe.) Finally got home around 3:30. Got the truck almost all loaded (or so I thought) in about 3 hours and went to sleep for the first time in two days.
When I woke up today with my brain working a little better, it was pretty clear that I had a whole lot more loading to do, including some of the less easy stuff like climbing over the dresser to wedge the bike behind it (and I almost couldn't climb back out). That and a few more rounds of cleaning and throwing away useless things... about 5 hours. So I left just about 24 hours after I said I would. The night before last, I had very sentimentally taken a photo of what I thought was my last sunset in Greenpoint.
My first stop will be State College, PA, to visit Larry and Ina who moved out there to a retirement village a year ago. Unfortunately my delays mean I won't get there before night—maybe I could've made it, but I spent a lot of time stuck in traffic in downtown Manhattan and on the Hudson River Parkway and I-80. Right now I'm at a diner on 15 South near Rockaway, just about exactly halfway across Jersey... and I just realized it took me three hours to get here. I'm less than 30 miles from Brooklyn as the crow flies—that can't possibly be right, but it is.
* * *
I called and told Ina I might not get in till 9, then got back on I-80 determined to leave New Jersey behind (possibly forever—now there's a pleasant thought). It was getting dark and I needed something unfamiliar to keep me awake, so I put on the tapes of E.L. Doctorow's City of God which I had borrowed from the library and copied at the last minute. Good choice—it's partly about the craziness of New York, there's war and romance and theology and it jumps all over the place so I can't get too hypnotized. I'm still not sure who all the narrators are though.
I could tell I was getting into the mountains though it was too dark to see them. Beautiful streamers of fog blowing around on the ground. Oh wait, that's snow. Uh-oh. Soon it was snowing pretty heavily and I had to learn how to handle the truck all over again. If you've never felt anti-lock brakes go into effect in a heavy vehicle on snow, it can be kind of alarming—like the truck is stuttering.
Got a little hypnotized by dark spooky woods, finally got into Foxdale Village at nearly 11. (I walked in through the nursing-home building, which isn't where Larry and Ina live, and when I stopped at the nursing station I had a funny feeling of being on the wrong side of a familiar scene... except the nurses were all cheerful in that sort of dreamy night-shift way, much less busy than any night shift I ever worked, and they look like they come from Pennsylvania.) I got my guest-room key and came up to a comfy though instituional suite which was the largest apartment I've been in for some time. Watched cable TV and went to bed on my first night in between homes.
381 miles.
(State College, PA)
Didn't get a whole lot of sleep (confused dreams, something about New York being blown up) but eager for breakfast and didn't want to waste daylight. Met Larry and Ina in the cafeteria and had a fine bunch of food. Most of the people in the cafeteria look pretty frail since it's part of the nursing facility. Larry and Ina live in one of the apartments nearby, but they're very familiar with all the several hundred residents, more or less like when they were the subtle shepherds of the Quaker Meeting in Brooklyn. I took a little tour of the place, then we sat around the house talking and eating through the afternoon.
They've decorated their four-room cottage with care and taste, but it looks like it contains less than half of what I remember from their beautiful place in Brooklyn. Larry says there are always plenty of good things at yard sales here even when no one's died, because everyone always brings too much stuff when they arrive. I thought about my crammed-full little truck waiting in the parking lot. (When I got here I opened up the back to see if everything had fallen all over during the bumpy roads. No, it was just the same.)
I've known them for about ten years, but we've rarely spoken at length. I finally sorted out who and where their three children and eight grandchildren are, as Ina talked me through a long wall of photos.
It was rude of me to leave at 4:30 but I'm nervous about stopping so long at the beginning of my trip, and didn't want to drive in the snow in the dark. But most of the snow had cleared, and I got an eyeful of sunset and mountains on the way out of town.
West on 322, south on 220, which alternates between joining up with big 6-laners and going its own way with two winding lanes. I told myself I should stick to the big roads till I was sure of making good time to Texas... but I missed the turn for 40 a while ago so I guess I'll be on those twisty little ones for most of tonight. Wish there was sunlight so I could see where the hell I am.
(Maryland, on the West Virginia border. Everyone in the diner sounds pretty southern to me. I asked the waitress what the nearest town was. "Oh, I guess McCoole. It sucks. I hate this whole state. Well, Baltimore's okay.")
Full moon. The fortune-telling scale at the diner said "Your lucky stars are inactive today," and then "Watch yourself on days that appear gray and unfavorable," and it added 60 pounds to my weight.
* * *
Lucky stars or not, my brain failed me as I decided to cut across on Route 50. It's not just that it's a little road; it was full of snow and ice, and it goes across mountains. And at 8:30 it already looked and felt like midnight—I'm getting sleepy as soon as it gets dark. I'm glad it was dark enough that I couldn't really see how high up I was, and I'm glad there wasn't some other person with similarly poor judgement coming the other way. One curve after another, marked 20 MPH so I was going at about 4... which would've made me feel safe except that every time I turned away from the mountain, the curve was banked just steeply enough to make me wonder if the truck would just start sliding right off if I stopped. It was one of the least fun things I'd done for a long time, and it went on for a long time. (Funnily enough, one reason I had decided not to go straight across the country on I-80 was that I thought there might be icy mountain roads in Wyoming.)
I had a little break when I saw some flashing lights up ahead and pulled up next to a rescue crew who'd been standing around for probably an hour... no accident, just a guy with an 18-wheeler who thought he could turn onto that little road, didn't have room, and then couldn't figure out how to get back out. We all watched him go back and forth half an inch at a time until they finally got the truck clear (and then a tow truck followed him all the way down the mountain—I guess they didn't trust him not to do it again). Meanwhile one of the road crew guys asked me about the move, and told me how he used to drive those Penske trucks cross-country—"You know you can get 'em up to like 95 miles an hour. I got busted for that once."
Finally got to Route 79, drove till 1 AM (finished the E.L. Doctorow already—hmm. I must read it soon). Thought about being cheap and sleeping in a truck stop parking lot, then remembered it was 5 degrees out. Stayed in a motel.
636 miles.
(Weston, WV)
Called Ellen and figured I'll maybe get to Austin by Monday night. Hoping to get as far as Memphis today.
Much much better driving on a big road in daylight. Route 79 is really pretty: wooded snowy hills, gentle curves, not a lot of cars out. I saw what looked like a shaggy dog romping around on a hillside. Later, a bunch of deer, which looked like six-foot-tall dogs.
The speed limit here is 70 and the truck still handles really well up to 85 or so, and there's no snow on the road, but I'm still a little wary after my nerve-wracking times last night. Besides, whenever I go above 70, there's an uneven place on the door frame that catches the wind and makes such a loud noise I can't stand it.
Listening to the other audio book I brought, The Dark Is Rising one of my childhood fantasy favorites which fortunately I can't remember the plot of at all. What's on the radio is mostly about the upcoming game between Oakland and Tennessee, which seems to be a pretty big deal around here. Sample: "This has been the year of not rushing the passer, but the Eagles are bucking that trend."
Charleston, WV is the first town I stopped and walked around in a little. One of probably many, many small towns that have one large shiny office building, a nice church, a bookstore with a coffee shop. Can't think of anything else to say about it, but I was glad I stopped. Didn't stop in Louisville or Nashville though—too big.
* * *
Didn't make it to Memphis yet—kind of wanted to do more driving tonight, but it's probably better to sleep and get up early.
I went to Shoney's and ate some "American food." There were two waitresses and each one had a big pink balloon attached to her butt. I asked one of them, "Do you always have balloons on?"
"Oh, me and her, we just like to wear them. It makes us feel good."
1187 miles.
(Weston, WV) (photos, page 2)
I haven't picked up any hitchhikers but I did give a guy at the motel a 5-minute lift to the convenience store up the road. He'd somehow managed to leave his car keys there—the story didn't make any sense, but I've done equally dumb things so far (including this morning: put a cup of coffee on top of the truck while opening the door—got the coffee back in my face) so I didn't press the issue.
Uneventful driving to Memphis—I did take a few detours off the main road to see the woods in Loretta Lynn territory. I was determined to go to Graceland. First I thought I'd take a look at the downtown since Route 40 seemed to go right through the city. After half an hour I hadn't found anything like a downtown, just a lot of strips and threadbare suburbs, like Lancaster but a little sadder.
Graceland, which I always pictured as being in its own realm (maybe at the top of a big green hill, to be approached by a mile-long staircase) is just in the middle of the shopping strip, among motels and gas stations. From the front, it looks like a modestly big stone house—there are some upscale houses like that in Lancaster which have been surrounded by cheesy sprawl in the same way. But across the road there's this big glitzy tourist headquarters, with the ticket office, parking, car collection, and Lisa Marie's airplane. You get a shuttle bus to go across the street to the mansion.
It's pretty big, and I liked some of it (especially the pool table room) and felt like I missed Elvis—someone I really never gave a thought to. They've got his songs playing all over the place—spooky—sure did have a pretty voice. I took a bunch of random pictures and ran out of film just before the grave. Decided not to take the tour of cars, etc., just bought some postcards, and had fun signing up various unsuspecting friends to be on the Graceland visitors mailing list.
On the way out of town I was detoured by a huge truck wreck. Went down to the river and finally found the downtown. It was deserted. A guy at a sandwich shop told me it was Sunday and there's a big football game on, plus "Memphians don't like to go out in the freezing cold." (Felt like about 60 degrees.) About four people were out, including a big fat young woman in goth makeup and spiked hair waiting at the bus stop. Classy old buildings next to burned-out ruins; a couple of shiny office towers; angry flyers on lampposts. They have this crazy big pyramid down by the water, named "The Pyramid."
Had good luck with the radio today—"A Prairie Home Companion" with some great music and a good Keillor story—then leaving Memphis, I got some Scottish folk music show, hosted by a very cute lady who really did say "yüe" for "you."
Arkansas was a bunch of nearly flat hills and marshy stuff at sunset, then after the sun went down it was just endless highway which only varied when it became frighteningly compressed by roadwork about half the time.
Camped out at a Flying J truck stop near Texarkana. Felt a little silly parking my little truck among all the giant beasts.
1711 miles.
(Texarkana, TX) (photos, page 3)
Woke up at the truck stop—planned to shower there, but then in order to use the showers you have to subscribe, get a membership card and actually be a trucker. (I did get mistaken for a trucker by a trucker the other day... he asked me what my route was and I had to admit I didn't really have one at the moment. I'm pretty scruffy-looking these days and he looked more or less like me, just about 100 pounds heavier.) So I just hit the road early and drove more or less non-stop to Austin.
Northeast Texas is flat, flat, flat, though it gets a little hilly right around Austin. Had an unpleasant time coming into town on Route 35—boy do I hate elevated 8-lane highways—but I got to Ellen's with much relief around 3:30.
Spent the day hanging out, eating Tex-Mex food, drinking beer, driving around with Ellen and her friend Patrick. E. is my friend from a silly office job in New York—she'd been living there about 20 years and talking constantly about going back to Texas, and finally did so a few years ago. She still likes it here, unlike P. who has nothing good to say about Austin—it's too hot, the yuppies ruined everything (computer companies moved here during the boom), etc. (The new developments do look pretty bad. Huge empty office towers, super-tacky expensive houses in boxy limestone and glass—what P. calls "New Texas Architecture.") But he does know some very nifty-looking places between the city and the lake, so we all drove around a while. Hills, scrub, river... I didn't get any pictures of this because I was tired of lugging the camera around. Stopping at one of the dams, we saw a small gang of feral cats hanging around with dozens of buzzards.
P. also wants to move to California and has strong opinions about the right way to get there from here; he said more than once that under no circumstances should I stop in El Paso. Okay.
Slept on the couch surrounded by cats, with a train going by outside.
2098 miles.
(Austin, TX)
I'll be staying here today and tomorrow. Ellen's working, but Michael (the relocated New Yorker who does construction work, map paintings, and rock sculptures) isn't, so we spent much of the day biking around the neighborhood—a challenge for me since I haven't really used my legs in the last five days and hadn't been doing much bike riding this winter in NY. But I kept up with him okay and saw some good parks and cool little houses and so on. Tex-Mex food again, more beer. We visited a gallery where M. has some art, then another gallery where there was just about nothing of interest (except some movie projectors which would've projected onto a moving train, if it was night and if there was a train) where the gallery owner seemed very glad to see anyone at all—she talked non-stop for about 20 minutes, and tried to persuade M. to do some of his sculptures (he builds stone towers near water) in a big empty lot nearby, but there's no water there and no rocks.
Out in E.'s long-suffering Chevy Impala to see a country band with an old yodeler, Don Walser, but he didn't show so we just sat there a long time eating nachos while the band went through the motions. Then went to see Toni Price at the Continental; she's a local blues singer with a justifiably large following. There's a ton of live music in Austin, lots of good shows I'll be missing next week.
Stayed up reminiscing about New York, that crazy job we had, etc.
Lazy. Did laundry in the morning, got photos developed, then caught a bus to the UT campus to meet E. for lunch. She works at the office of a famous historian whose room is crammed with books, files, and weird kitsch items (C3PO pool chair, Dueling Banjo Hamsters, etc.). More Tex-Mex food. Brief tour of the UT neighborhood, impossible really since it's (she says) the largest campus in the US. Swarms of teenagers everywhere. Also, on the shopping streets, some older kids panhandling with their dogs, Avenue A style.
Went to see the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. First floor, colonial history—not bad; second floor, revolution and independence, and here their heart was really in it. Vivid stories with a pretty clear point of view: Sam Houston and Stephen Austin are the heroes, the Tejanos and Indians come off pretty well, and Mirabeau Lamar was to blame for all the most evil shenanigans later... seems fair enough but what do I know. Third floor, a mishmash of stuff about industry—very oil-positive.
Out to the club again, for a big benefit concert for Kinky Friedman's animal rescue program. KF (who's looking a little like Charles Bronson with an unlikely hairdo these days) introduced and joked around but didn't perform—instead we saw an old guy with eight fingers doing pretty good a-cappella country, then an interminable set by some aggressively skilled rockers.
In Texas if you order a Dos Equis, you get Dos Equis lager (green bottle). Picking the other one (brown bottle) marks me as a Yankee.
Memorable guacamole omelet, then left town. (photos, page 4)
Rolled across west Texas in more or less a straight line. Stops are few and far between. Lots and lots of just highway, burrowing straight through everything—even the little hills got dug through; maybe they just liked the look of those limestone cuts.
I had used up all my audio entertainment. Out here you're lucky if there's even one radio station. I turned on my little tape recorder and complained to myself.
Stopped for a little while in Van Horn, a tiny town near the Carlsbad Caverns, just to see what was there. Not much, but there is a dusty yet colorful store full of used books and paintings. The paintings are by one of the owners, who calls himself Ran Horn (I didn't find out which one of the two grizzled guys he was); they're mostly cheerfully bad copies of Van Gogh. I bought a couple of science fiction and horror paperbacks.
Patrick had said not to try stopping in El Paso and I saw why—it's real big. About 30 exits... malls, endless hills full of little glowing lights. Somewhere on the other side of that was Ciudad Juarez. I kept going, past Las Cruces (where a border guard asked me what was in the truck—"my apartment") and then stayed in a cheap motel. Meant to go right to sleep and wake early, but I got mesmerized by a goofy Stallone movie on TV.
2796 miles.
(Williamsburg, NM)
Driving into New Mexico in the dark, I figured it probably looked beautiful but I didn't know the half of it. Damn. Hard to keep my eyes on the road, always rubbernecking at some outrageous canyon or tree or something.
I started thinking things like, "Who could fail to be inspired by this? And wouldn't you have to be a real terrible jerk to even think about crapping up this landscape in any way?" Right as that last noble thought was crossing my mind, I rolled down my window to get some fresh air, and right away a big plastic shopping bag flew out of my truck into the desert.
Drove past Truth or Consequences, the spa town formerly known as Hot Springs; they thought their name wasn't unique enough to attract tourists, so they changed it to a game show, and now no one knows that there are hot springs there. I knew, but it didn't occur to me to stop and check them out—after yesterday's dash across Texas, I was still greedy for distance. But at least that way I got to Albuquerque in time to eat lunch and walk around the cute little downtown, and then head out to Petroglyph National Monument.
I did the two-and-a-half-mile hike around Rinconada Canyon. Sand, scrub, and heaps of big black basalt rocks with 50-to-500-year-old graffitti here and there. It was the most silent place I'd been to in a long time, with a bird or two and very distant cars and planes. I saw a lizard, which for me is a big deal, and two butterflies.
Dashed west on route 40 to Flagstaff but got tired early, and didn't want to miss too much of Arizona in the dark. Nice little campground just outside town, why not sleep in the truck again.
3282 miles.
(Flagstaff, AZ) (photos, page 5)
Why not sleep in the truck? Because it's colder here than in Texas, that's why. Flagstaff is after all on top of a mountain. I froze my ass off... stopped trying to sleep at dawn, then had to sit around a couple hours for the camp office to open so I could check out. Hot shower was good though, and it's better to wake up among pine trees instead of 18-wheelers.
I headed north into the Navajo reservation, toward the Grand Canyon. (No, I didn't exactly see it. Read on.) The land here is crazily diverse: from pine trees and snow, suddenly you're in yellow scrubland, then red desert, then gray rocks... growing up in the Midwest and East where you can drive for a day and things look pretty much the same, you can sort of think land only behaves this way in fantasy stories (the five colors of Oz... over the mountains into Mordor... etc.). Tiny settlements very far apart, and lots of little Navajo stores for tourist stuff. (Series of signs: "Friendly Indians ahead! - Chief Yellowhorse. - Turn around, you passed it! - Friendly Indians behind you.")
On the western edge of the reservation, there's a winding road that follows the Little Colorado gorge to where the small canyons start heading into the grand one. Confusing hills on one side of the road, huge open spaces on the other. I stopped at a half-empty roadside market where I bought a couple of trinkets from "Begay's Indian Jewelry," which looked like a family operation. While showing me a few dozen different dreamcatchers, Mr. Begay(?) told me about the great view down the road, which was also where "they were making a movie with what's his name, Charlie Sheen; they dropped a car into the canyon and it exploded right over there." No explosions today, things were pretty slow by the roadside. Overheard the young guy in the next booth: "Yeah, when we were heading down there last night, I couldn't hardly see the road—my eyes were shot, after making dreamcatchers all day."
The view down the road was pretty great indeed. This may not have been the Grand Canyon but it was the biggest bunch of cliffs I've seen. I don't know what to say about it. I took some pictures... passed some other tourists... found my own place and sat around for a while. Prayed on the cliff. Then it seemed like I should move on.
Well, I should know by now to watch out whenever I'm in a contemplative mood: I went back to where I had parked, started pulling out, and immediately bashed into a parked car. It was the one those tourists I had passed were just coming back to. Fortunately I just put a little dent in the door, but considering (a) I've never had any kind of accident and (b) I don't have insurance except for whatever was on the rental... of which I had only the vaguest idea... and (c) I had had a few cups of coffee and not really eaten for most of the day... this pushed me right over the edge into nervous nellie land; I hopped around fretting and apologizing while these very nice folks swapped insurance information and took some evidence pictures of their dented car. They were heading back toward Flagstaff and I had to follow them back to the last stop, to call Penske and figure out what I was supposed to do. This took a long time. So much for the Grand Canyon. I didn't mind taking long detours, but I just didn't have it in me to retrace my steps twice. So I went back around Flagstaff and turned due west.
By late afternoon I was in Kingman, equally close to California and Nevada. I'd figured on heading over on 40 through the Mojave, avoiding L.A. and heading up to the Bay, which looked like it would take about a day but I couldn't get my mind around the bigness of California. So I called my folks for a reality check. I forgot that according to my folks, southern California (where I've never been) is boring—at least on the interstate—and my mother urged me to go through Nevada instead; she'd just driven across it recently and said it was an easy drive and I had to see it. I resisted changing my plans, until I realized that it seemed kind of wrong for me to favor a more boring course of action than my mom did. (That kind of logic could get me in trouble since my mom is a little wild... but you see the principle.)
The thing is, the route that my mother knew started on Route 375—up past Vegas, way up north of where I was. I didn't understand how much mountain driving was in between here and there. So all I got to see before it got dark was the Colorado River and then a big wall of mountains... then the scary lights of Mordor, I mean Vegas, for the next 1000 exits.
As soon as I got out of that crazy glow, I was in the darkest place I'd ever been. Curvy roads... a car every 20 minutes... no exits, no stops at all... my headlights not showing me much except the side of a hill or a vague dropoff. Besides the frustration of not being able to see what Nevada looked like, I was getting pretty bored and a little frightened by this routine; with the road curving back and forth randomly and the occasional blurry lights coming out of the black, it looked like nothing so much as an old and not very fun videogame.
When I finally found a spot to pull over for a while and turned off my lights, I saw what the stars look like when you're in a dark place. I don't know when I last saw this. Well... ah. I stayed there a while. The radio started working again, and I got Garrison Keillor's deep voice telling a story, but he sort of let the story go and talked for a while about death instead... then some music started playing... I turned on the lights and drove a little further, then pulled over and looked at the sky some more. Tried to gimmick the camera to take a picture, but couldn't make it work.
After more driving with no exits in sight, I pulled off onto a little path with a sign that said it led to a campground... found myself going very slowly on lots of gravel for a long time. Finally found a little parking lot and thought I saw someone's green tent nearby. Bundled up as warm as I could and stayed the night.
Lost track of the miles.
(Ash Springs, NV)
That truck really wasn't made for sleeping. I slept a little, froze a little, saw the sun coming up. That green tent turned out to be a trash bin, and I was parked at the end of a path that said NO MOTOR VEHICLES.
The scenery I'd been missing in the night turned out to be, as the lady in the gas station said (there was an exit with a gas station and a motel about two miles past where I'd given up), "hills and dust." I could see why my mother said it was a good drive though—there was a pure sameness and emptiness about it that I guess I like better than the average interstate, the silvery scrub was something I'd never seen, and there sure wasn't any traffic to worry about. But it sure was boring too. Little gradual hills, like the world's most timid roller-coaster. Radio: forget it.
At a little rest stop near Saulsbury Summit, I had to get out and touch down for a while, and got barefoot; then, as it was sunny and temperate and there wasn't anyone around for 100 miles, I dressed down a little further and stood around enjoying the breeze. Then I looked around where I was standing and saw lots of little holes, the kind where creepy crawlies live, so I dusted off my socks and shook out my shoes real carefully and got back in the car.
The rest of the way across Nevada wasn't all featureless—a couple odd little functional towns, the salt marshes look pretty startling, and there's a big gray lake where I didn't expect one—but it took a real long time and then I was facing another wall of mountains.
Not that I know anything anyway, but I sure didn't know how much mountain there is between Reno and Sacramento. Up up up up. The truck seemed to be moving more reluctantly than before. Up up up up up up up. Round and round. It got very green and pretty.
Stopped at the checkpoint where they ask you if you're carrying animals or vegetables. While the government lady watched patiently, I tried to unlock the back of the truck and realized the padlock was sort of frozen shut with desert dust—I hadn't opened it since Texas. When I finally got it open (and had to borrow some window cleaner from the agent to spray into the lock, before I could get it to close again), I did a double take because everything inside the back was covered with a fine layer of desert dust. The agent wasn't surprised: "Yeah, it gets in."
Around Lake Tahoe... down... down down down. I started seeing signs like "Trucks, Use Caution" and "Downgrade, advise 45 MPH" and "Advise 35 MPH" and "Trucks, Check Brakes." I was obeying all these signs, and thinking a lot about my brakes (since I was never very far from a big cliff), and then I started to notice that every time I nudged my brakes... there was a sort of... burny smell.
Well, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing: the day before, I had picked up the manual for the truck and started reading it for the first time, and noticed a thing about the automatic transmission and how to use gears other than "D." It mentioned something along these lines: "when driving down mountain roads, shifting from Drive to 3 or 2 can reduce stress on your brakes."
So, when I started to smell something burning, I figured it would be a good idea to reduce stress on my brakes. I started down-shifting. Right away the engine revved like crazy, the truck started going a lot slower, and the burny smell got much, much worse.
There was an exit right there and I pulled into a rest stop and sat there a while trying to calm down. Nothing blew up... but when I got out of the truck, I saw a little pool of fluid coming from underneath. I got back in, closed the door and did some fast loud concentrated swearing. After I ran through lots of unpleasant scenarios in my head (spending a week stuck up here on the mountain, vs. spending my last cash to get the truck fixed, vs. flying off a cliff and dying) I realized I could just call Penske, and it turned out they had a mechanic about 5 minutes from me.
This guy was a good guy. He walked around looking at the truck, politely not noticing my hysteria, and asked me to tell him again what I had done. He said:
"Oh yeah. Well, the thing is... on those automatic transmissions, when you're driving down mountain roads, you should never shift down. You can blow out the transmission that way. To stop that from happening, it vents out some transmission fluid."
Oh. So then it's... okay. But then why did the book say... never mind. So it's okay?
"Yeah, you didn't blow out the trans yet and your brakes look okay. Lemme look on this side... yeah, no burning here. Hold on... oh. Your problem's right here. Take a look."
He pointed to a little curled-up cable behind the right rear wheel.
"See that? Parking brake cable. Something hit this and it got kinked. So the emergency brake was on all the time."
The what was what when? I mean... since when has my emergency brake always been on?
"Who knows. Yeah, this can happen real easy... run over a rock or a pine cone or whatever, that'll do it."
After that, nothing much happened, the sun went down so I couldn't see anything, and I was very very tired till I pulled into my parents' driveway in Sebastopol, California.
4211 miles. Done.