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22 December 2023
NOW HERE\'S ANOTHER LITTLE KNOWN FACT ABOUT ME...
I guess everyone has a place they worship-- something exotic and romantic that they collect artifacts about, long before they ever hold a plane ticket in their hands. Places like Morocco or Russia, Paris or Vienna. Something they\'ll dream of visiting all their lives long until they\'re about 80-- and when the day actually rolls along, they nearly choke on a celery stick or something because it would be too good to be true if all their suffocating passion should at last be satisfied. People mix fantasy, fact, myth, and personal perversion, and out of some actual place on a map of the world they create an idealism so blinding and exciting that it lives on a pedestal in their heads. All they have to do is think about that place, and they begin to have physical side effects. My little brother, for example, has a Japanese flag covering the only little hole in his dark room that could be referred to as a “window”. There\'s dedication for you-- covering one\'s only source of natural light with a flag like that.
Well, I\'m no different. Just like most people, I have my own obsessions and fantasies all mapped out into monstrous proportions. Only, contrary to most people\'s untouchable dreams, mine was always a little too simple to qualify as exotic: the Midwest, the Mississippi, and the Delta. I\'ve always loved America. I\'ve loved it for its bygone idealism, and the melancholic ruins of its golden age. The age of porch music and mountain ballads, pies cooling in the windows of farmhouses, crossroads at midnight, the mile-wide tide of the Mississippi, and the bad grammar of blues songs,.. and, of course, Jesus Freaks and the Devil. Those things are what really makes this country great, if you wanna know the truth.
People were always telling me, \"Well, you know the South isn\'t like that anymore. It\'s not the Huck Finn ideal you think it is.\" Yeah, I realize that, being that Mark Twain\'s childhood was more than 150 years ago! Do people really think I\'m that disillusioned? Do they really think I\'m going to expect people to be floating down the Mississippi on rafts, playing banjos, and wearing torn straw hats? Jesus Christ. Can\'t I travel to the Midwest to look at the ruins, just like people who visit Rome to look at the crumbled Coliseum?
I first became aware of my odd affections for all this when I was 14. And thanks to years of shattered plans and trips that just evaporated before they ever began, the desire to travel through the country hardened in me, until I was beginning to feel as restless as a 50-year-old housewife, still waiting for her first orgasm. Well, that orgasm finally came nine years later. It didn\'t come easy, but it came about all the same.
TRYING TO GET THE HELL OUT OF BEAUTIFUL LOS ANGELES
I might just mention that it\'s probably easier to find a crowd of people to immigrate with you to Hungary than it is to find three people who want to drive from L.A. to Ohio and back just for the hell of it in the middle of winter. The only person I could find who was uncannily gung-ho about hopping into a car and disappearing into the Midwest for two weeks was my friend Alex. She didn\'t think anything of it at all. As the weeks went by, so did many social events and countless versions of the same question put to \"random dudes\" (as Alex put it): \"Hey, wanna come to Ohio with us?\" Well, fruitless isn\'t even the word to use. Most people thought we were talking another language from a distant planet. “What the hell is ‘Ohio’?” The few people who found this idea truly entertaining couldn’t leave during “pilot season”, or didn\'t have the money. Actually, Alex didn\'t have the money either, which kind of worried me, truth be told. But I didn\'t want to point it out much, because it would have been disheartening to realize that the only person who thinks they\'re coming along has neither a car, nor money, nor even a driver\'s license.
WELL, I GOT RELIGION NOW!
Maybe there is a God. It\'s hard to tell with the way things happen sometimes. All I know is that things fell into place about three seconds before our date of departure. Alex found an unemployment check, I became aware of the miracle of rental cars, and before we knew it, we were packing things into an ugly, bright blue, little Neon.
I don\'t know if there\'s any feeling quite as great as leaving L.A. behind. That\'s not to say that I bear that city any grudge. I\'ve long ago learned to fall in love with that place, and I can say safely that I\'m as fond of Los Angeles as any mother is of her retarded baby. There\'ll never be a freak show as wonderful as L.A., but it sure feels good every time you get in a car and leave the city limits behind in the sunset.
ARIZONA/NEW MEXICO
Well, what do you know? It\'s Slim Harpo!
Two days of desert will thoroughly rid you of any romantic illusions. Sure, the Painted Desert is beautiful and all, but are you seriously expected to notice it after so many hours of nothing else? I was beginning to feel like I was trapped in a never-ending Marlboro commercial. Thank God for blues music.
We listen to everything: Howlin\' Wolf, Memphis Minnie, Slim Harpo, Blind Willie McTell, Walter Roland, Lucille Bogan, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, and Nick Drake.
Alex had a breakthrough and became obsessed with Howlin\' Wolf somewhere along the line, which was alright by me, because I\'ve made it my mission a long time ago to bring a blues revival about. So when she became bored and antsy, she began calling everyone in her phonebook and playing them Howlin\' Wolf songs over the phone. As I said, that was alright by me.
TEXAS
Ah, lay it on me, baby, don\'t stop now.
One morning we woke up in Amarillo, Texas. The desert vanished the night before. In a matter of one day, it\'s snowing, people have accents, and the landscape consists of nothing more than wintry meadows stretching from both sides of the freeway out to the horizon.
Now we really feel like we\'re out of L.A., especially when we come across a huge-ass cross by the side of the freeway. And by the way, \"huge-ass\" is kind of an understatement. We pull off the road and risk the freezing cold to examine closely the absurdity of human nature. I mean, honestly, it\'s kind of strange to think that someone paid for this, and that someone else actually spent time and energy to create these life-sized, bronze Jesus statues writhing in various positions with large wooden crosses on their backs. At one end there is a gravestone with two bronze hands stretching out of it, and a little bronze fetus lying curled up in them. If that isn\'t fascinating, I don\'t know what is. I would have paid homage to this absurd work of art a lot longer if the icy cold wind wasn\'t stopping the blood circulation from getting into my fingers.
OKLAHOMA
We will Shout Hallelujah on our knees!
After traveling through Texas all day, we are finally lying in bed somewhere in Oklahoma watching the top 30 hip-hop videos countdown, when suddenly I sit up in bed and stare intensely at our food supply in the corner of the room. Seems to me paper bags usually don\'t make that much noise by themselves.
\"Alex, the bag is making noises.\"
\"What do you mean, \'The bag is making noises\'?\"
\"I mean, THE BAG IS MAKING NOISES.\"
Well, there\'s usually a reason why dirt-cheap motels are dirt-cheap. If you\'re lucky, you\'ll never find out that reason; if you\'re less lucky, you\'ll spend a good time balancing on cabinets, beds, and other furniture trying to figure out a way to chase a mouse out the door.
We end up seeking out the Indian front desk guy, who allows us to change rooms. The Indian front desk guy is not amused at all. I don\'t know what he\'s so pissed off about-- we\'re the ones dragging all our luggage through the fucking cold into another room. Asshole.
The next day I have a nauseating headache, and the fact that we went to Tulsa didn\'t much help. We didn\'t drive out here to visit average mid-sized towns. I bought a sketchpad there, and Alex bought a multi-colored coat with a pattern strong enough to give a blind man his sight back.
People sure love Jesus out here. They seriously do. You can\'t escape him. On every radio channel there is some guy giving Jesus advice, or lecturing on how women should support their husbands per the Bible. Not to mention Jesus music-- there\'s everything from Jesus rap to Jesus country music, regularly interspersed by little moral plays.
Kids\' voices:
\"Hey, Bill, wanna come to the game this afternoon? I have a free ticket!\"
\"Wow. I\'d love to. But I promised my aunt I\'d go visit her.\"
\"Fuck that bitch, this is the biggest game of the season!\" (author\'s interpretation)
\"It really does sound super, Fred, but you see I made a promise, and it\'s more important to stick to a promise than go to a game.\"
\"Gee, Bill. I guess you have a point there. I\'m so glad you told me all that. I\'m going to go become a priest right now.\"
I don\'t know how likely the above scenario is, but if it helps people lead upright lives, I guess you gotta have it.
We walk into a local store and our eyes are greeted with the most amazing Jesus merchandise ever. Jesus bumper stickers, miniature Bible key-chains, a porcelain Jesus with red lips, crawling with crosses on their backs-- you name it. There\'s so much it\'s hard to decide what to spend your money on. Personally, I\'m kind of partial to the crawling Jesus, which is what I end up buying.
Even out in the public streets you don\'t have to walk long to find a Jesus image. The murals they have out here beat anything. And if that isn\'t enough, there are always billboards: \"Come on over to my house and bring the kids-- God\".
If you leave your car alone for a matter of minutes, chances are you\'ll find something interesting under your windshield wiper. We were lucky enough to find a fascinating little comic illustrating the ascent of a strange naked man from his coffin to Heaven, where his life is judged by a large faceless giant on a throne. The faceless giant has a sidekick that looks somewhat like a bad comic version of James Bond with wings and a toga. It\'s all very impressive. The story ends with the naked guy being thrown into the Lake of Fire. Honestly? It was kind of disturbing. Alex supplies herself with her own copy of the comic by stealing it off of another car\'s windshield wiper-- always a great way to attain religious material.
I find out that Alex\'s language is easily influenced. It only takes a few hours for her to put \"Lord\" into every second word she uses. She also starts saying \"Ya\'ll\" without noticing.
Meanwhile, the scenery is beautiful and bleak.
Alex and I thoroughly discuss the full meaning of one of her favorite expressions: \"Fuckin-A!\"
ARKANSAS
First thing that morning, while I desperately cling onto the beautiful remnants of sleep, Alex sits up straight in bed and yells out loud enough to uproot all the trees across Arkansas:
\"AIN\'T IT GRAND TO BE A CHRISTIAN! AIN\'T IT GRAND! AIN\'T IT GRAND!\"
And so begins the day. We stumble in and out of the shower, brush our teeth, get dressed, put on make-up for the hillbillies, wrap ourselves up in scarves and make-shift mittens, and begin to load up the car. This routine of loading and unloading everything into motel rooms every day is beginning to suck.
After a few minutes of moaning and blowing into our hands in the car, I start the motor, Alex runs into the office to drop off the keys.
We leave the main highway for the first time on the trip and make our way down winding country roads, where cops apparently wait in the bushes to tackle anyone who speeds. At least that\'s what we\'re told at a gas station.
That day we meet Elvin, who hauls frozen chicken to Missouri. He dissects our road atlas and gives us intricate directions of how to avoid traffic in Arkansas. Traffic in Arkansas? Does that even exist?
Other people we meet that day: Pumphrey, Gladys, and a man with a beard and a tear in his pants. I can\'t express enough how sweet these people are.
TENNESSEE
Don\'t the moon look good, mama, shining down through the tree?
Finally, after nine years of ardent obsession with the Mississippi river, I finally cross it-- and of course I utterly fail to even notice it. Only once we are hours into the blackness of Tennessee, something occurs to me.
\"Shouldn\'t we have crossed the Mississippi by now?\"
\"Uh,...\"
Instantly I remember the large bridge we entered Memphis by, and, needless to say, I feel a little awkward-- like a girl who\'s lost her virginity without noticing.
We really don\'t see anything of Tennessee because we drive right through the entirety of it in the dark. This is the only state so far I have had little interest in seeing. The only stops we make here are to buy hot chocolate, fuel up the car, and for bathroom breaks. Alex is like a little kid in that respect.
Meanwhile, the backseat of the car is gradually turning into a stew-- or a modern work of art, depending on how one chooses to look at it.
KENTUCKY
Mr. Mac won\'t you be my man?
It\'s hard to believe that it gets any better than Arkansas. But it does. There\'s just no human explanation for the perfection that is Kentucky.
It\'s Sunday, and the wind sweeps quietly over the empty country roads. Everything seems so beautiful, uninhabited, and dead quiet. We pass old farm houses, bare trees, red barns, and little villages that the Sunday has turned into ghost towns. We stop by a church, where a few Christians are still standing around in their best clothes, discussing the sermon. They invite us to join them next Sunday, and we\'re not kidding when we say we\'d love to. God, if only we would have gotten out of bed earlier that day,.. what can be greater than sitting in some country church in the hills of Kentucky on a Sunday morning? Probably nothing-- except meeting Tom Waits or seeing Robert Johnson perform live or sitting on Howlin\' Wolf\'s lap.
We run into a bunch of Amish people and feel like illegal aliens from another century.
We pull up in front of a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Inside, the whole village seems to have met for lunch. Alex immediately asks a large bearded man if she can take his picture. He\'s a little shy and taken aback, but agrees with a sweet smile.
That\'s when we meet the legendary Bill. As soon as we sit down, he looks over from the table next to us and asks when we\'re going to take pictures of him. Bill is the kind of person who doesn\'t run out of things to say very easily, and while we cover a large variety of subject matters, the whole restaurant looks on. He gives me a quiz on Mark Twain which I pass, and then we talk about the weather. He says he better come with us to Ohio since we\'re so inexperienced with driving in the snow. He tells us that he builds log cabins and his friend. He tells us how he lived in Las Vegas for 30 years and hated it. Long live Kentucky! Later, Bill records a new answering machine message on Alex\'s cell phone. In exchange we promise to send him a picture of us in bikinis at the beach.
Bill pays for our lunch and then says he\'ll show us a scenic view if we follow him down the road a few miles. I can think of a number of people who would shake their heads mournfully at our eagerness to follow random hillbillies out into the middle of nowhere. But we follow Bill and his friend all the same, and there was never anything more kosher than their intentions.
On our way out of Kentucky Alex has a true hippie moment: \"People in the Midwest are just really beautiful-- in the inside.\"
Isn\'t that kind of talk illegal?
We drive on listening to Blind Willie McTell.
\"I can\'t be trusted and I can\'t be satisfied. When the men see me comin\' they go to pinnin\' their womans to their side. And I\'m crazy about my lovin\'-- I can take it any time of day,...\"
OHIO
Our stay in Ohio is strictly divided between a Starbucks and the house of these weird people who have a paper called tastes like chicken (my son lives there, too). We stay with them for three days-- drinking their beer, using their beds, and making them burn fifty-million CDs for us. We feel like bums \'cause everyone there gets up at the crack of dawn, and we\'re glued to our bed until around noon. But they all put up with us really well.
INDIANA/ILLINOIS
We drive straight through these two states listening to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Finally, I hear this story in the right accents. I remember reading Huck Finn for the first time when I was 14 and having a hell of a time with Jim\'s accent: \"But de trouble all done, ef de snake bite me while I\'s a tryin\' him. Mars Tom, I\'s willing\' to tackle mos\' anything \'at ain\'t unreasonable, but ef you en Huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for me to tame, I\'s gwyne to leave, dat\'s shore.\"
God, I can\'t express in any human language how much I love Huck and Jim. It might be a disease.
MISSOURI
\"The great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun.\" - Mark Twain
Sigh.
One of the greatest moments of the trip was driving over the Mississippi River from the Illinois shore to Missouri, and encountering a sign late at night that read Pike County. My stomach gave a jolt as we entered the legendary Missouri of Mark Twain\'s childhood.
The next day I feel sick; like every pore in my body needs to be drained. My eyes are watering all day, my nose is blocked, my ears are blocked, my throat hurts.
Hannibal is a beautiful, small town. In the middle of winter it looks dead, and the banks of the Mississippi are crowded with large floats of ice. Standing on the Hannibal shore looking out at Jackson Island in the freezing silence is breathtaking. Alex is listening to Elvis Presley in the car while I wander around the banks, thinking to myself, \"That\'s the island where Huck meets up with Jim, before they left on a raft down the river. Jesus Christ.\"
The annoying aspect of the town? Well, it feels like fucking Disney World at times. How can you exploit literature to such an embarrassing extent? I wish the town was as cozy and innocent as back in the days when the name \"Mark Twain\" hadn\'t yet been claimed by Sam Clemens. I get back in the car and ask Alex to change the music as we drive slowly through the wet streets.
\"The last kind words that I heard my daddy say-- Lord, the last kind words I heard my daddy say: If I die, if I die,...\"
Now I feel properly depressed and sentimental.
\"What you do to me, baby, it never gets out of me,...\"
KANSAS
It\'s dreamy weather,...
This state has a whole new feel to it. It\'s the last place we\'re actually going to bother about. After this, it\'s straight home.
We drive off the main highway and soon find ourselves lost in a hauntingly desolate nothingness. Lost isn\'t even the word for it. We\'re beyond lost. We stop the car and get out. The winter grass has an orange tint to it, and stretches out to the horizon in every direction. Far off, the meadows meet the dark sky. The trees look dead. We haven\'t seen a human being nor a farm nor a barn or even a goddamn cow for over an hour. At this point, we\'d have an easier time telling you how to go about a heart transplant than how to get back to the freeway.
We\'re so lost that there\'s nothing other to do than step on the brakes and try to stop laughing. Everywhere we look there\'s nothing. We\'ve switched from John Lee Hooker to Tom Waits ( \"...take every dream that\'s breathing,..\" ), and the eerie crowing of the rooster backing up his voice makes us feel right at home in farm country. It\'s hard to understand how we ever got into this. Getting this lost takes true talent.
We take out a compass and pretend like it\'s helping us navigate our car through the ocean of yellow meadows.
Suddenly, Alex points into the distance.
\"Civilization!\"
Then she pauses and adds, \"It\'s a bad sign when you start calling one house \'civilization\'.\"
\"It\'s a bad sign when you start calling one barn \'civilization\',\" I correct her.
THE PERVERT DOG
Eventually, we come to a solitary farmhouse. Alex gets out to knock on the door and ask for directions. She backs off a little when a large, unusually skinny, spotted dog comes trotting up to her from the porch. I tell her just to make friends with the goddamn dog so that we can knock on the door and don\'t have to starve out here.
The dog seems friendly enough. Looking into the car, he suddenly jumps up onto the seat and climbs over everything into my lap, so that I have to throw my door open and fall out the other end. I coax the dog out, and he immediately presses his butt onto my legs with great fervor. I\'m laughing pretty hard by now and push him away. He trots over to Alex and does the same. Needless to say, we\'d rather starve and be lost forever than hang around that weird farmyard any longer.
At this point the clouds part, a large glowing hand reaches down for our car, picks it up and puts it down on the freeway.
\"You two lunatics were driving me insane down there!\" a voice grumbles as the hand disappears back into the clouds, leaving us safely deposited on the right track.
DESERT
Everybody Row!
We listen to the Rolling Stones (Sticky Fingers) for two days straight. I fucking can\'t stand driving anymore by this time, so I let Alex take over for a few hours. We also start saying \"fuck\" every second word.
\"Oh my fucking God!\"
\"You wanna fuckin\' write something down?\"
\"Fucking Fuck!\"
Ah, the variety of subtle emotions this word has the ability to express! It\'s a pure pleasure. I don\'t think I\'ve ever sworn so much in my life.
We pass everything we\'ve already passed on the way out to the Midwest: the Painted Desert, the dinosaur statues at the side of the freeway, the billboards advertising petrified free wood.
Driving is so goddamn boring.
LOS FUCKING ANGELES
It\'s night by the time we arrive back. We look so horrific at this point that my friend Vivian who comes to pick us up doesn\'t even recognize us. We give up our car (sob), and pile into a vehicle so rundown that it should be illegal-- mainly it should be illegal because the only radio station that works in it is soft rock.
Oh, I miss the Midwest. I already missed it before we were ever out of it. We\'ve had a good time. We\'ve had some bizarre conversations during the long dark nights on empty highways. We\'ve dealt with some real asshole truck drivers. We\'ve promised half-naked pictures of ourselves to random hillbillies. We\'ve had bad food. We\'ve had bad tea. We\'ve seen every aspect of Jesus you can possibly want to see (or not see). We\'ve nearly run out of fuel in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere twice (\'cause once just isn\'t good enough). And we\'ve met people with names like \"Elmer\" who invite you to stay with them for however long you want. We\'ve had it all-- and if it didn\'t happen to us, it NEARLY did, which is good enough.
THE END
APPENDIX:
My brother, Ali: \"I can\'t believe you drove to fucking Ohio.\"
Me: \"I drove to fucking Ohio, and BACK.\"
I guess everyone has a place they worship-- something exotic and romantic that they collect artifacts about, long before they ever hold a plane ticket in their hands. Places like Morocco or Russia, Paris or Vienna. Something they\'ll dream of visiting all their lives long until they\'re about 80-- and when the day actually rolls along, they nearly choke on a celery stick or something because it would be too good to be true if all their suffocating passion should at last be satisfied. People mix fantasy, fact, myth, and personal perversion, and out of some actual place on a map of the world they create an idealism so blinding and exciting that it lives on a pedestal in their heads. All they have to do is think about that place, and they begin to have physical side effects. My little brother, for example, has a Japanese flag covering the only little hole in his dark room that could be referred to as a “window”. There\'s dedication for you-- covering one\'s only source of natural light with a flag like that.
Well, I\'m no different. Just like most people, I have my own obsessions and fantasies all mapped out into monstrous proportions. Only, contrary to most people\'s untouchable dreams, mine was always a little too simple to qualify as exotic: the Midwest, the Mississippi, and the Delta. I\'ve always loved America. I\'ve loved it for its bygone idealism, and the melancholic ruins of its golden age. The age of porch music and mountain ballads, pies cooling in the windows of farmhouses, crossroads at midnight, the mile-wide tide of the Mississippi, and the bad grammar of blues songs,.. and, of course, Jesus Freaks and the Devil. Those things are what really makes this country great, if you wanna know the truth.
People were always telling me, \"Well, you know the South isn\'t like that anymore. It\'s not the Huck Finn ideal you think it is.\" Yeah, I realize that, being that Mark Twain\'s childhood was more than 150 years ago! Do people really think I\'m that disillusioned? Do they really think I\'m going to expect people to be floating down the Mississippi on rafts, playing banjos, and wearing torn straw hats? Jesus Christ. Can\'t I travel to the Midwest to look at the ruins, just like people who visit Rome to look at the crumbled Coliseum?
I first became aware of my odd affections for all this when I was 14. And thanks to years of shattered plans and trips that just evaporated before they ever began, the desire to travel through the country hardened in me, until I was beginning to feel as restless as a 50-year-old housewife, still waiting for her first orgasm. Well, that orgasm finally came nine years later. It didn\'t come easy, but it came about all the same.
TRYING TO GET THE HELL OUT OF BEAUTIFUL LOS ANGELES
I might just mention that it\'s probably easier to find a crowd of people to immigrate with you to Hungary than it is to find three people who want to drive from L.A. to Ohio and back just for the hell of it in the middle of winter. The only person I could find who was uncannily gung-ho about hopping into a car and disappearing into the Midwest for two weeks was my friend Alex. She didn\'t think anything of it at all. As the weeks went by, so did many social events and countless versions of the same question put to \"random dudes\" (as Alex put it): \"Hey, wanna come to Ohio with us?\" Well, fruitless isn\'t even the word to use. Most people thought we were talking another language from a distant planet. “What the hell is ‘Ohio’?” The few people who found this idea truly entertaining couldn’t leave during “pilot season”, or didn\'t have the money. Actually, Alex didn\'t have the money either, which kind of worried me, truth be told. But I didn\'t want to point it out much, because it would have been disheartening to realize that the only person who thinks they\'re coming along has neither a car, nor money, nor even a driver\'s license.
WELL, I GOT RELIGION NOW!
Maybe there is a God. It\'s hard to tell with the way things happen sometimes. All I know is that things fell into place about three seconds before our date of departure. Alex found an unemployment check, I became aware of the miracle of rental cars, and before we knew it, we were packing things into an ugly, bright blue, little Neon.
I don\'t know if there\'s any feeling quite as great as leaving L.A. behind. That\'s not to say that I bear that city any grudge. I\'ve long ago learned to fall in love with that place, and I can say safely that I\'m as fond of Los Angeles as any mother is of her retarded baby. There\'ll never be a freak show as wonderful as L.A., but it sure feels good every time you get in a car and leave the city limits behind in the sunset.
ARIZONA/NEW MEXICO
Well, what do you know? It\'s Slim Harpo!
Two days of desert will thoroughly rid you of any romantic illusions. Sure, the Painted Desert is beautiful and all, but are you seriously expected to notice it after so many hours of nothing else? I was beginning to feel like I was trapped in a never-ending Marlboro commercial. Thank God for blues music.
We listen to everything: Howlin\' Wolf, Memphis Minnie, Slim Harpo, Blind Willie McTell, Walter Roland, Lucille Bogan, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, and Nick Drake.
Alex had a breakthrough and became obsessed with Howlin\' Wolf somewhere along the line, which was alright by me, because I\'ve made it my mission a long time ago to bring a blues revival about. So when she became bored and antsy, she began calling everyone in her phonebook and playing them Howlin\' Wolf songs over the phone. As I said, that was alright by me.
TEXAS
Ah, lay it on me, baby, don\'t stop now.
One morning we woke up in Amarillo, Texas. The desert vanished the night before. In a matter of one day, it\'s snowing, people have accents, and the landscape consists of nothing more than wintry meadows stretching from both sides of the freeway out to the horizon.
Now we really feel like we\'re out of L.A., especially when we come across a huge-ass cross by the side of the freeway. And by the way, \"huge-ass\" is kind of an understatement. We pull off the road and risk the freezing cold to examine closely the absurdity of human nature. I mean, honestly, it\'s kind of strange to think that someone paid for this, and that someone else actually spent time and energy to create these life-sized, bronze Jesus statues writhing in various positions with large wooden crosses on their backs. At one end there is a gravestone with two bronze hands stretching out of it, and a little bronze fetus lying curled up in them. If that isn\'t fascinating, I don\'t know what is. I would have paid homage to this absurd work of art a lot longer if the icy cold wind wasn\'t stopping the blood circulation from getting into my fingers.
OKLAHOMA
We will Shout Hallelujah on our knees!
After traveling through Texas all day, we are finally lying in bed somewhere in Oklahoma watching the top 30 hip-hop videos countdown, when suddenly I sit up in bed and stare intensely at our food supply in the corner of the room. Seems to me paper bags usually don\'t make that much noise by themselves.
\"Alex, the bag is making noises.\"
\"What do you mean, \'The bag is making noises\'?\"
\"I mean, THE BAG IS MAKING NOISES.\"
Well, there\'s usually a reason why dirt-cheap motels are dirt-cheap. If you\'re lucky, you\'ll never find out that reason; if you\'re less lucky, you\'ll spend a good time balancing on cabinets, beds, and other furniture trying to figure out a way to chase a mouse out the door.
We end up seeking out the Indian front desk guy, who allows us to change rooms. The Indian front desk guy is not amused at all. I don\'t know what he\'s so pissed off about-- we\'re the ones dragging all our luggage through the fucking cold into another room. Asshole.
The next day I have a nauseating headache, and the fact that we went to Tulsa didn\'t much help. We didn\'t drive out here to visit average mid-sized towns. I bought a sketchpad there, and Alex bought a multi-colored coat with a pattern strong enough to give a blind man his sight back.
People sure love Jesus out here. They seriously do. You can\'t escape him. On every radio channel there is some guy giving Jesus advice, or lecturing on how women should support their husbands per the Bible. Not to mention Jesus music-- there\'s everything from Jesus rap to Jesus country music, regularly interspersed by little moral plays.
Kids\' voices:
\"Hey, Bill, wanna come to the game this afternoon? I have a free ticket!\"
\"Wow. I\'d love to. But I promised my aunt I\'d go visit her.\"
\"Fuck that bitch, this is the biggest game of the season!\" (author\'s interpretation)
\"It really does sound super, Fred, but you see I made a promise, and it\'s more important to stick to a promise than go to a game.\"
\"Gee, Bill. I guess you have a point there. I\'m so glad you told me all that. I\'m going to go become a priest right now.\"
I don\'t know how likely the above scenario is, but if it helps people lead upright lives, I guess you gotta have it.
We walk into a local store and our eyes are greeted with the most amazing Jesus merchandise ever. Jesus bumper stickers, miniature Bible key-chains, a porcelain Jesus with red lips, crawling with crosses on their backs-- you name it. There\'s so much it\'s hard to decide what to spend your money on. Personally, I\'m kind of partial to the crawling Jesus, which is what I end up buying.
Even out in the public streets you don\'t have to walk long to find a Jesus image. The murals they have out here beat anything. And if that isn\'t enough, there are always billboards: \"Come on over to my house and bring the kids-- God\".
If you leave your car alone for a matter of minutes, chances are you\'ll find something interesting under your windshield wiper. We were lucky enough to find a fascinating little comic illustrating the ascent of a strange naked man from his coffin to Heaven, where his life is judged by a large faceless giant on a throne. The faceless giant has a sidekick that looks somewhat like a bad comic version of James Bond with wings and a toga. It\'s all very impressive. The story ends with the naked guy being thrown into the Lake of Fire. Honestly? It was kind of disturbing. Alex supplies herself with her own copy of the comic by stealing it off of another car\'s windshield wiper-- always a great way to attain religious material.
I find out that Alex\'s language is easily influenced. It only takes a few hours for her to put \"Lord\" into every second word she uses. She also starts saying \"Ya\'ll\" without noticing.
Meanwhile, the scenery is beautiful and bleak.
Alex and I thoroughly discuss the full meaning of one of her favorite expressions: \"Fuckin-A!\"
ARKANSAS
First thing that morning, while I desperately cling onto the beautiful remnants of sleep, Alex sits up straight in bed and yells out loud enough to uproot all the trees across Arkansas:
\"AIN\'T IT GRAND TO BE A CHRISTIAN! AIN\'T IT GRAND! AIN\'T IT GRAND!\"
And so begins the day. We stumble in and out of the shower, brush our teeth, get dressed, put on make-up for the hillbillies, wrap ourselves up in scarves and make-shift mittens, and begin to load up the car. This routine of loading and unloading everything into motel rooms every day is beginning to suck.
After a few minutes of moaning and blowing into our hands in the car, I start the motor, Alex runs into the office to drop off the keys.
We leave the main highway for the first time on the trip and make our way down winding country roads, where cops apparently wait in the bushes to tackle anyone who speeds. At least that\'s what we\'re told at a gas station.
That day we meet Elvin, who hauls frozen chicken to Missouri. He dissects our road atlas and gives us intricate directions of how to avoid traffic in Arkansas. Traffic in Arkansas? Does that even exist?
Other people we meet that day: Pumphrey, Gladys, and a man with a beard and a tear in his pants. I can\'t express enough how sweet these people are.
TENNESSEE
Don\'t the moon look good, mama, shining down through the tree?
Finally, after nine years of ardent obsession with the Mississippi river, I finally cross it-- and of course I utterly fail to even notice it. Only once we are hours into the blackness of Tennessee, something occurs to me.
\"Shouldn\'t we have crossed the Mississippi by now?\"
\"Uh,...\"
Instantly I remember the large bridge we entered Memphis by, and, needless to say, I feel a little awkward-- like a girl who\'s lost her virginity without noticing.
We really don\'t see anything of Tennessee because we drive right through the entirety of it in the dark. This is the only state so far I have had little interest in seeing. The only stops we make here are to buy hot chocolate, fuel up the car, and for bathroom breaks. Alex is like a little kid in that respect.
Meanwhile, the backseat of the car is gradually turning into a stew-- or a modern work of art, depending on how one chooses to look at it.
KENTUCKY
Mr. Mac won\'t you be my man?
It\'s hard to believe that it gets any better than Arkansas. But it does. There\'s just no human explanation for the perfection that is Kentucky.
It\'s Sunday, and the wind sweeps quietly over the empty country roads. Everything seems so beautiful, uninhabited, and dead quiet. We pass old farm houses, bare trees, red barns, and little villages that the Sunday has turned into ghost towns. We stop by a church, where a few Christians are still standing around in their best clothes, discussing the sermon. They invite us to join them next Sunday, and we\'re not kidding when we say we\'d love to. God, if only we would have gotten out of bed earlier that day,.. what can be greater than sitting in some country church in the hills of Kentucky on a Sunday morning? Probably nothing-- except meeting Tom Waits or seeing Robert Johnson perform live or sitting on Howlin\' Wolf\'s lap.
We run into a bunch of Amish people and feel like illegal aliens from another century.
We pull up in front of a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Inside, the whole village seems to have met for lunch. Alex immediately asks a large bearded man if she can take his picture. He\'s a little shy and taken aback, but agrees with a sweet smile.
That\'s when we meet the legendary Bill. As soon as we sit down, he looks over from the table next to us and asks when we\'re going to take pictures of him. Bill is the kind of person who doesn\'t run out of things to say very easily, and while we cover a large variety of subject matters, the whole restaurant looks on. He gives me a quiz on Mark Twain which I pass, and then we talk about the weather. He says he better come with us to Ohio since we\'re so inexperienced with driving in the snow. He tells us that he builds log cabins and his friend. He tells us how he lived in Las Vegas for 30 years and hated it. Long live Kentucky! Later, Bill records a new answering machine message on Alex\'s cell phone. In exchange we promise to send him a picture of us in bikinis at the beach.
Bill pays for our lunch and then says he\'ll show us a scenic view if we follow him down the road a few miles. I can think of a number of people who would shake their heads mournfully at our eagerness to follow random hillbillies out into the middle of nowhere. But we follow Bill and his friend all the same, and there was never anything more kosher than their intentions.
On our way out of Kentucky Alex has a true hippie moment: \"People in the Midwest are just really beautiful-- in the inside.\"
Isn\'t that kind of talk illegal?
We drive on listening to Blind Willie McTell.
\"I can\'t be trusted and I can\'t be satisfied. When the men see me comin\' they go to pinnin\' their womans to their side. And I\'m crazy about my lovin\'-- I can take it any time of day,...\"
OHIO
Our stay in Ohio is strictly divided between a Starbucks and the house of these weird people who have a paper called tastes like chicken (my son lives there, too). We stay with them for three days-- drinking their beer, using their beds, and making them burn fifty-million CDs for us. We feel like bums \'cause everyone there gets up at the crack of dawn, and we\'re glued to our bed until around noon. But they all put up with us really well.
INDIANA/ILLINOIS
We drive straight through these two states listening to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Finally, I hear this story in the right accents. I remember reading Huck Finn for the first time when I was 14 and having a hell of a time with Jim\'s accent: \"But de trouble all done, ef de snake bite me while I\'s a tryin\' him. Mars Tom, I\'s willing\' to tackle mos\' anything \'at ain\'t unreasonable, but ef you en Huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for me to tame, I\'s gwyne to leave, dat\'s shore.\"
God, I can\'t express in any human language how much I love Huck and Jim. It might be a disease.
MISSOURI
\"The great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun.\" - Mark Twain
Sigh.
One of the greatest moments of the trip was driving over the Mississippi River from the Illinois shore to Missouri, and encountering a sign late at night that read Pike County. My stomach gave a jolt as we entered the legendary Missouri of Mark Twain\'s childhood.
The next day I feel sick; like every pore in my body needs to be drained. My eyes are watering all day, my nose is blocked, my ears are blocked, my throat hurts.
Hannibal is a beautiful, small town. In the middle of winter it looks dead, and the banks of the Mississippi are crowded with large floats of ice. Standing on the Hannibal shore looking out at Jackson Island in the freezing silence is breathtaking. Alex is listening to Elvis Presley in the car while I wander around the banks, thinking to myself, \"That\'s the island where Huck meets up with Jim, before they left on a raft down the river. Jesus Christ.\"
The annoying aspect of the town? Well, it feels like fucking Disney World at times. How can you exploit literature to such an embarrassing extent? I wish the town was as cozy and innocent as back in the days when the name \"Mark Twain\" hadn\'t yet been claimed by Sam Clemens. I get back in the car and ask Alex to change the music as we drive slowly through the wet streets.
\"The last kind words that I heard my daddy say-- Lord, the last kind words I heard my daddy say: If I die, if I die,...\"
Now I feel properly depressed and sentimental.
\"What you do to me, baby, it never gets out of me,...\"
KANSAS
It\'s dreamy weather,...
This state has a whole new feel to it. It\'s the last place we\'re actually going to bother about. After this, it\'s straight home.
We drive off the main highway and soon find ourselves lost in a hauntingly desolate nothingness. Lost isn\'t even the word for it. We\'re beyond lost. We stop the car and get out. The winter grass has an orange tint to it, and stretches out to the horizon in every direction. Far off, the meadows meet the dark sky. The trees look dead. We haven\'t seen a human being nor a farm nor a barn or even a goddamn cow for over an hour. At this point, we\'d have an easier time telling you how to go about a heart transplant than how to get back to the freeway.
We\'re so lost that there\'s nothing other to do than step on the brakes and try to stop laughing. Everywhere we look there\'s nothing. We\'ve switched from John Lee Hooker to Tom Waits ( \"...take every dream that\'s breathing,..\" ), and the eerie crowing of the rooster backing up his voice makes us feel right at home in farm country. It\'s hard to understand how we ever got into this. Getting this lost takes true talent.
We take out a compass and pretend like it\'s helping us navigate our car through the ocean of yellow meadows.
Suddenly, Alex points into the distance.
\"Civilization!\"
Then she pauses and adds, \"It\'s a bad sign when you start calling one house \'civilization\'.\"
\"It\'s a bad sign when you start calling one barn \'civilization\',\" I correct her.
THE PERVERT DOG
Eventually, we come to a solitary farmhouse. Alex gets out to knock on the door and ask for directions. She backs off a little when a large, unusually skinny, spotted dog comes trotting up to her from the porch. I tell her just to make friends with the goddamn dog so that we can knock on the door and don\'t have to starve out here.
The dog seems friendly enough. Looking into the car, he suddenly jumps up onto the seat and climbs over everything into my lap, so that I have to throw my door open and fall out the other end. I coax the dog out, and he immediately presses his butt onto my legs with great fervor. I\'m laughing pretty hard by now and push him away. He trots over to Alex and does the same. Needless to say, we\'d rather starve and be lost forever than hang around that weird farmyard any longer.
At this point the clouds part, a large glowing hand reaches down for our car, picks it up and puts it down on the freeway.
\"You two lunatics were driving me insane down there!\" a voice grumbles as the hand disappears back into the clouds, leaving us safely deposited on the right track.
DESERT
Everybody Row!
We listen to the Rolling Stones (Sticky Fingers) for two days straight. I fucking can\'t stand driving anymore by this time, so I let Alex take over for a few hours. We also start saying \"fuck\" every second word.
\"Oh my fucking God!\"
\"You wanna fuckin\' write something down?\"
\"Fucking Fuck!\"
Ah, the variety of subtle emotions this word has the ability to express! It\'s a pure pleasure. I don\'t think I\'ve ever sworn so much in my life.
We pass everything we\'ve already passed on the way out to the Midwest: the Painted Desert, the dinosaur statues at the side of the freeway, the billboards advertising petrified free wood.
Driving is so goddamn boring.
LOS FUCKING ANGELES
It\'s night by the time we arrive back. We look so horrific at this point that my friend Vivian who comes to pick us up doesn\'t even recognize us. We give up our car (sob), and pile into a vehicle so rundown that it should be illegal-- mainly it should be illegal because the only radio station that works in it is soft rock.
Oh, I miss the Midwest. I already missed it before we were ever out of it. We\'ve had a good time. We\'ve had some bizarre conversations during the long dark nights on empty highways. We\'ve dealt with some real asshole truck drivers. We\'ve promised half-naked pictures of ourselves to random hillbillies. We\'ve had bad food. We\'ve had bad tea. We\'ve seen every aspect of Jesus you can possibly want to see (or not see). We\'ve nearly run out of fuel in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere twice (\'cause once just isn\'t good enough). And we\'ve met people with names like \"Elmer\" who invite you to stay with them for however long you want. We\'ve had it all-- and if it didn\'t happen to us, it NEARLY did, which is good enough.
THE END
APPENDIX:
My brother, Ali: \"I can\'t believe you drove to fucking Ohio.\"
Me: \"I drove to fucking Ohio, and BACK.\"
artid
1222
Old Image
5_7_mercedes.jpg
issue
vol 5 - issue 07 (mar 2003)
section
pen_think