Day 9: On the Road

On the Road by Jack Kerourac.  ISBN: 9781415943403 (audiobook).

In the hot, hot Alabama mid-day my fiance and I are hiding out in our bedroom, normally my mother's, and finishing up the last disc of On the Road.  Our own trip is slowly coming to an end.  My nephew, his mother, and my brother left after Easter service and now it is just the three of us in the house.  The house feels quieter, but somehow just as full.

My entire life I have dealt Dean and Sal's drive to travel; to move on; to go, man, go.  I like to call myself a vagabond sometimes.  It makes all the moving seem a little more romantic than it really is, than people think it is; moving sucks.  I haven't been in one place for more than four years.  Ever.  I don't know that I'm even capable of having a face-to-face friendship that lasts more than a year or two.  There's something sad about that.

But I've had opportunities too from all the travel.  I've seen more of the country than most people and I've figured out that despite some scenery and food and a few strange customs, that people are pretty much the same everywhere.  That's not to say that there aren't any differences, just that they are so small and insignificant that I have no fear that I can survive anywhere.  I don't care if I end up in California or Alabama or Montana.  I don't care if I only stay for two years or if I stay there forever.  I think I'm much more flexible than a number of people I've met.

I have itchy feet, but I also have feet that desire familiar ground.  I've been moving so long that I think I'm finally ready to move somewhere and not intend to move somewhere else.  I feel like I've been dragged and pushed across the country and the world my entire life, and in many ways I have.  I am worn thin emotionally from starting over and over and over everytime. 

I have had the fortune of having good friends, and the misfortune of losing them again.  I have had the fortune of seeing wonderful things, only to return and find that they've been torn down.  I have had the most delicious food, only to learn that they closed because a McDonald's moved next doors.  I don't think it's the loss that's so sad; we lose and gain things naturally during our lifetimes.  We outgrow friends, and places have a tendency to come and go, to change; but my losses were so sudden.  I'm a collection of loose ends; some stillness might help me weave them back in.

Day 6: On the Road

On the Road by Jack Kerourac.  ISBN: 9781415943403 (audiobook).

During the first leg of Sal's trip he eats nothing but ice cream and apple pie. Being someone who appreciates food the way I do, I thought this particular quirk had some interesting merits and problems.  On the one hand, eating something as American as apple pie all across the country would give you an excellent way of tasting the delicate differences in spices, crust, and the apples used.  But I wonder if those differences are even present in today's current culture and grocery system.

In the few places lucky enough to have a diner or greasy spoon, most of them still have to rely on chain grocery stores which sell the same varieties of apple across the nation.  This is assuming that they even go to grocery stores and don't receive their apple pie frozen from SysCo.  The very reduction of variety in our diets and our grocery stores, despite the grotesque number products on the shelf, has reduced the ability to create unique local flavors.  You can't find apple pie made with apples that only grow in that region anymore, because we aren't buying regional apples and grocery stores aren't selling them.  And this is the problem with everything, down to the butter, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, and every other single aspect of our lives.

On the other hand of this problem, apple pie isn't necessarily a forte of every state.  I, for one, can't imagine eating apple pie in Hawaii.  By the very act of eating one kind of food you limit your diet to exclude local specialties.  There are foods that you cannot find anywhere else.  I've had pigeon in France, rattlesnake in Oklahoma, and other less exotic but equally delicious meals in my many travels.  Had I limited myself to eating burgers I would have eaten more fast food than I cared to, because let's face it, that's almost all that's left right off the highways these days. 

Instead, my fiance and I bravely forged into Nashville, Tennessee in the search of some local food.  We went to the Travel Channel and scanned a list of restaurants (I was disgusted to see that they actually listed Outback Steakhouses, for shame).  I came across Neely's Bar-be-que and it rang a bell: I had watched a previous episode of something that mentioned it, or overheard it mentioned when I was closer to the area or from someone who visited the area, who knows.  It was well worth putting up with rush hour traffic for, and if we had just stopped when we got hungry we would have missed out on a wonderful opportunity to try something new.  In this day and age that is becoming such a rare feat.

Go out and try something new today.  Let me know how long it takes you to find something truly unique for you to try.

Day 5: On the Road

On the Road by Jack Kerourac.  ISBN: 9781415943403 (audiobook).

It's interesting that I find it easier to think about books when I'm reading versus listening to them. Part of the reason is probably due to my tendency to multitask or, as the case may be with this novel, dodge crazy traffic from Cincinnati, Ohio to Franklin, Tennessee, where we finally stopped for the evening. Somehow though I feel that reading from the page just lends itself better to thinking and mulling ideas over. The ocular nerve and the brain are so close together that I can't help but think that the very process of moving one's eyes back and forth across a page sparks neurons that are otherwise left unsparked.
The thing that I noticed about On the Road was the very carelessness with which Sal and friends chose their destinations. While they may have had a general goal in mind, if something else came up, an opportunity or sight to see, they took it. Their revelry in the country and its people is something I think America has lost over the past twenty years, and certainly within the last five. Gas prices are obviously a major culprit as well as the increased cost of living, but I wonder if maybe there's not more to it than that.
Consider the last ten years. Travel has become so much more difficult and restricted, especially for anyone of certain backgrounds or perceived backgrounds. We've also become more conscious of where we travel and how we travel. We no longer hitch hike or ride the rails, most of us can't even pay to ride the trains because they don't go where we want them to. Americans are stuck, they're stuck in the same place and the same life, even when they go to different cities.

We take our own little travel bubbles with us, we pack our cars with things and people from home so that we don't have to deal with other people from different towns or regions. We eat at McDonald's and BurgerKing so that we don't have to risk not liking some local delicacy and so we never really experience the things that make our country so great, the fact that we. are. all. different. from. each. other. We are nation of States that are United despite our differences in the ideal of democratic freedoms.

My fiance and I were able to revel and hate some of those differences on our trip today, and I wonder how much more we might have enjoyed if we had started our lives and our trip half a century earlier. On the Road is about characters more than plot, and we definitely saw some characters on our roads.

Perhaps my favorite exchange, however brief, so far was with an Amish gentleman and his young daughter. The child was maybe two years old and had the most striking blue eyes and blonde hair. I smiled at both of them and made eye contact, which is something that's normally very difficult for me to do, but they both smiled at me, and I found that simple exchange to be one of the most rewarding I've had in the past few months. Some of that may be from being a near complete shut-in due to my lack of job, but somehow I don't think it's anywhere close to being the only reason.

The next interaction was a lot less pleasant and I think very shows a lot of the character of Kentucky, sadly not a very good one. I'm sure there are wonderful people in Kentucky, but well, I'm a little biased against you people because your highway system and how you deal with construction is completely ridiculous. My fiance and I stopped at a Carrollton, Kentucky BurgerKing for lunch (yeah I know I was complaining about that earlier but we made up for it by going to Neely's Barbeque in Nashville for dinner). When we were leaving, a man in a green pick up truck and basball hat was pulling out ahead of us. Since I had finished pulling out of my parking space before him I had the right of way. I drove around to the exit only drive and prepared to make a left turn when he came by to my right, blocked my view of traffic, AND TURNED LEFT FROM MY RIGHT HAND SIDE. I can't help but wonder if maybe, just maybe if he interacted with someone outside of his tiny, tiny, tiny state of mind if he would have had a little more consideration.

It's funny that my fiance and I were actually listening to this novel because as we were leaving Dinosaur World in Cave City Kentucky we noticed a couple of hitch hikers, an older man and a female of indeterminate age. They had a pet carrier or two with them, and unfortunately I couldn't tell you what their signs said. Obviously you won't see hitch hikers on the actual highway anymore since it's illegal, but we were just remarking at their rarity when we saw these two. It made me wonder about their intentions, where they were going and why, and why they couldn't take the Greyhound or other transportation.
I won't say I've never been tempted to pick up hitch hikers before. There's something very appealing about someone who has enough faith in their fellow humans to trust that once they are in a small metal can traveling at speeds of over 50 mph that they will not be injured somehow. And what an act of faith it must be to actually pick up one of those individuals who is so open and vulnerable in their need, especially given willingness to put yourself in a position of vulnerability by providing a complete stranger with something you are in no way obligated to provide for them.
 
 
And since it's April Fool's Day, here's a picture of my head inside a Dinosaur.  Yeah, flattering I know.