The Life in My Years

A loose continuation of the post Incidental Notes From the Road – link here.

“I dropped south to New Harmony, Indiana, twelve miles downstream from Grayville, Illinois where I’d spent that first grim night.”
From Blue Highways: A Journey Into America, by William Least Heat-Moon.

October 12, 2021
I’m standing in New Harmony, in front of the now closed bridge that William Least Heat-Moon crossed 43 years ago. He’d stopped for gas in New Harmony, and then drove over the New Harmony Bridge that spans the Wabash River, the border between Illinois and Indiana.

Heat-Moon’s crossing marked the last day of an odyssey; three months and 13,000 miles between “that first grim night” and this old bridge.

At loose ends after separating from his wife and then losing his job as a college professor, Heat-Moon outfitted an old van that he christened Ghost Dancing, and then he took off on a meandering journey through America’s backroads (the roads designated in blue on road maps). Life had offered him the proverbial shit sandwich. Heat-Moon declined the offer, and instead decided to put time and miles between himself and the source of his troubles.

Lemons into lemonaid. Make due with what ya got.

Is it a coincidence that forty-three years after Heat-Moon crossed over the Wabash, I’m standing here in New Harmony, looking through a chain link fence at Illinois on the other side of that river? Not at all. It’s almost as if it were meant to be. It was a labyrinthine string of circumstances that got me here. It all started with my own need to escape.

***

It began last spring when my daughter and I had reached the point at which we didn’t enjoy sharing the same space. She’d been living with us with her two children. She wasn’t unwelcome. In fact it was my idea for her to move in with us.

After a divorce, she’d been living in an apartment in a sketchy complex while trying to balance work and being a single mom. Hard to achieve equilibrium.

An adult mom living with her parents. Hard to maintain constant peace.

The words we exchanged one April morning on the back patio may have been muted, but reserved tones don’t mitigate pain.

After spending the rest of the morning and much of the afternoon staring up at the ceiling, smarting from the argument, I went downstairs and told my wife that I needed to put time and distance between myself and my daughter.

It took a few days to throw together a plan and, since our dog was making the trip, to make advance reservations in dog friendly motels.

We rented a van (which I did not christen), packed a suitcase, a cooler and the dog and hit the road for four weeks. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced. We took the highways and veered off onto the roads less traveled, following signs to places with interesting names. Or we just took an offramp. “I wonder what’s down that road,” I’d remark to my wife.

All told we covered 7500 miles over the course of four weeks.

Our final day, a blistering hot trek from Klamath Falls, Oregon through the frying pan of California’s Central Valley, couldn’t have been less grim than William Heat-Moon’s first grim night. It might have been the most miserable day of our entire trip.

And still, all the way through that slog, through the shimmering haze of heat of the valley, I realized that I was addicted. I needed another fix, another journey. This time I would do the trip solo. It would be a road bound, nowhere bound, improvisation, unhampered by the need to please a traveling companion. The only question was how to present it to a wife who worries whenever I’m out of the house for more than a few hours.

Our spring road trip turned into a series of blog posts that caught the eye of a retired veterinarian living in Vermont. It was Stewart who told me about the book, Blue Highways, and the next day I went out and bought the book.

Took me three days to read it.

Before the three days were done, I’d carved out the skeleton of a trip. The deal was, and being married there would have to be a deal. Yeah, I might have considered William’s three months, but if I wanted to return to a home, a wife and a dog, it would have to be an abridged version of Heat-Moon’s drive.

A skeleton it was. I spread out a map of the United States, located the Midwest, decided to fly into Omaha and then …

And then let the trip define itself. I would avoid highways as much as possible and cities completely. Nights would be spent spreading a roadmap out on the bed, figuring out where to go next and then make a reservation, not at a fancy hotel or a Best Western, but in a cheap family run motel.

***

Now, standing in front of the chain link fence that blocks off the now closed New Harmony Bridge, I realize that this trip makes the most sense of anything I’ve done in my seventy years on this spinning rock.

***

Books.

Blue Highways

I’ve had a love affair with the written word since I was a child, and many of the those childhood books still remain with me. The start? I suppose the old childhood tales and rhymes that are now out of vogue for being inappropriate (seriously, who tosses children in an oven).

My first clear recollection was of my father reading Jack London’s, The Call of the Wild to me. Tucked in bed, wide eyed, I gripped the edge of the green plaid bedspread that, in my memory, still gives me the same sense of comfort that it did when that thin coverlet had substance.

Rapt, I listened to my father, who smelled of Early Times and cigarettes, read the adventures of the kidnapped dog named Buck.

Years later, long past my bedtime, I read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by flashlight, buried beneath the security of that same old green bedspread, trying to stifle my laughter at Twain’s humor.

Much later, I would be captivated by the genius of Cormac McCarthy, brought to tears by Yukio Mishima’s, Spring Snow, carried away to Egypt by Naguib Mahfouz, and absorbed into the unpretentious world of Anthony Bourdain.

I’ve never let myself be caught without a book. I’ve been inspired, educated, entertained, moved, saddened and uplifted. But no book ever moved me like Blue Highways.

William Least Heat-Moon kicked me down the roads. Farm roads. Lonely roads. City roads. Highways and roads less traveled. He sat me at formica tables in out of the way diners and on the cracked upholstered stools in country dive bars. Heat-Moon grabbed me by the collar and screamed into my face, “Are you going to get off your ass or just be one of those pussies who just talks about all the things he’d like to do but can’t because, boo-hoo, there’s nobody to water the plants while I’m away?”

***

I’ve always avoided mixing with people when I travel. I had my own agenda, and I stuck rigidly to my agenda I’m busy, places to go and things to see and I don’t have time to waste on people who want to engage in conversation.

What a fool.

William and Anthony presented me with a new perspective on travel.

Heat-Moon and Bourdain inspired me to seek out locals and fellow travelers and to learn their stories. Don’t just sit in a diner or a bar huffing down breakfast or staring down at your beer, confined in your own personal shell. Go find a stool next to a person who has a story. Everyone has a story and if you listen, that story is usually compelling. After all, isn’t that what captivates us about Bourdain’s travel shows?

A living person can be a damn sight more interesting than a statue of some famous guy who’s been dead for two hundred years.

September 20, 2021
September waning and I’m parked in the shadow of an imposing brick church. A looming, hand of a commanding God block of a building, its stern face is in stark contrast with the bright, gay autumn of somewhere in rural Wisconsin. It’s a weekday and the lot is empty. Just me and God …

… And my wife on the phone.

I’m not quite sure if I’m more fearful of the wrathful old guy who calls this brick blockhouse home or the little Filipina some two thousand miles away.

It’s a negotiating session. Not with God. Rumor has it that he’s not the negotiating type – especially in this King James world of the rural Midwest. It’s his way (and make no mistake, out here God is a he) or the highway – to Hell. I’m looking for Cora’s okie dokie for another two weeks on the road. I’ll be gone on my birthday but I promise I’ll be back by her birthday – on Halloween. She doesn’t hesitate to green light my request but the disappointment in her voice is unmistakable.

God what a shit heel I am.

Go home.

No.

***

New Harmony Bridge. Middle of a dead end street, in a town, the site of two failed utopias, staring at an old steel bridge that crosses a river . A river that I guess, maybe, I’d read about in some history book.

Three months ago I didn’t know that New Harmony was a place. There’s a galaxy’s worth of little places that I haven’t known or will ever know. There’s a sub-galaxy of little places that are designated “new.” New Harmony, New Bedford, New Orleans. Are any of them really new anymore? Oh yeah, there’s also a place called New York.

When I first arrived in New Harmony, It hadn’t dawned on me that the author of Blue Highways was near the end of his trek – right fucking here at the New Harmony Bridge.

***

It was Jim Stinson who guided me to this bridge. Jim is the proprietor of the Old Rooming House, where I’m staying in New Harmony. Jim, who looks like a cross between Santa Claus and an old hippie, but is far more interesting than either of those, is something of an eccentric. Eccentric maybe, but given the chance I’d spend days listening to him.

Sitting on the porch of his place, staring out at a raging thunder storm.

It should be hot and humid but a brisk yet gentle mist wafting off the torrent keeps us cool. We talk in strong tones in order to be heard over the tempest and the thunderclaps.

Jim gestures to our right and tells me that “just a mile or so down the road from here,” William’s journey ended. The New Harmony Bridge. That’s why I’m here, gawking at that thing like it’s the Taj Mahal.

Jim is one of those rare travel rewards. He’s a living storybook, more captivating than a statue of some guy, long dead, sitting in a cobblestone paved plaza. At some point the cobblestone plaza and the dead guy crumble from memory while the whimsical old guy with the white beard and the singular cackle never fades.

***

So here I am standing in front of this old bridge, warded off by signs and a chain link fence. I’d like to get onto that bridge. In some regards this is a shrine for me. Heat-Moon showed me the way.

Had it not been for William Least Heat-Moon I wouldn’t have been here. Wouldn’t have met Jim. Wouldn’t have stressed over the tornado warning in Wisconsin or seen the blazing fire of autumn colors outside Copper Harbor, Michigan. Wouldn’t have tried cheese curds or pizza with dill pickles. Wouldn’t have gotten lost in the hollers of West Virginia.

I’ve been driving for over a month and only God and the odometer know how many thousands of miles trail behind me. I certainly don’t know. Guess I could cheat and check the starting odometer reading on the car rental contract.

To be honest I’d have to say that I’m pretty fucking tired. But not tired enough to stop. Not yet.

There’s one other thing that I have to admit. I enjoy the envious, marveled, open mouthed, eyes wide looks that I get from people who I meet, when I tell them I’m just driving around the middle of America on my own little voyage of discovery.

“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. Walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food. It’s a plus for everybody.” ~ Anthony Bourdain