The all-time Philly snowfall record was busted Wednesday, February 10. We’re now just shy of six feet of snow for the winter — 70.5 inches and counting.
I spent the day writing blogs for my magazine with the blinds on all four of my home office windows raised so I could watch storm rage on…
My neighbor is shoveling his drive. He’s a somewhat vague, bundled and determined figure with the snow coming down thick and wind-whipped. Often when we get snow around here big flakes float lazily to the ground, like one of those small shake ‘em up snow globes. The air is usually wet and the accumulation civilized.
This is not one of those storms. The snowfall is dense and unrelenting. It began last night and will eventually end a little more than 24 hours later. There’s already about two feet of snow on the ground from a storm last weekend. I see that my neighbor is up on his roof, shoveling off snow. Back on the ground, he then shovels away what he dumped on his front stoop and sidewalk.
Early in the afternoon my kids and I venture out to see what, if anything, is moving — people, snowmobiles, snowplows. We hear strange, muffled explosions. It’s thunder and lightning above the dense cloud cover. Visibility is 100-200 yards. We walk into a driving wind with heads down, trudging as though defying gravity. “Now I know what it’s like to be a Muslim woman,” says my daughter. She’s covered with layers of sweatshirts and scarves, boots, gloves, a wrap-around hood and wool cap. Only her eyes are uncovered. She wishes she had ski goggles, preferably yellow-tinted. With the exception of the howling wind, which reaches 30 to 40 MPH, and the intermittent thunder, it’s quiet. And smells very fresh, clean. A supermarket is open, and a convenience store. The linoleum tiles in both are slick with melted snow and slush. Everybody in line at the convenience store seems to be a snowplow operator holding a large coffee.
As always in these emergency-like circumstances — sirens periodically go off in the distance — some unprepared fools in compact cars too small and light blunder off the road or billow exhaust spinning their wheels on a hill. “What the hell is anybody doing out in this?” demands my daughter. “Where do they think they’re going?”
It’s scary amazing. Here in the mid-Atlantic states, crowded with office towers and strip malls, concrete and asphalt, we rarely see Mother Nature when she really gets it going. Volcanic eruptions, tornados, avalanches, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, monsoons, earthquakes — the power when she unloads is random, merciless and miraculous.
Back in my office I see my neighbor is shoveling his drive again. Taking a broom to his cars again. I watch him as through veils of white gauze. The snow falls almost horizontally. “Falling” is too benign a description. The snow is being driven into the ground. There’s nothing gentle about it. Thin, small trees crack apart under the snow’s weight. Large evergreens sag like the weight of the world is on their branches. I see my neighbor dusting off the bushes he trims so fastidiously every summer.
Around 4:30 in the afternoon the electricity quits on us. I’m thinking it could be out for days. We just don’t have storms like this; Philadelphia Electric Company, PECO, must be overwhelmed. The township snowplows can’t keep up as darkness sets in. My son and I walk our dog, a Husky who frolics in this stuff. Our neighborhood streets haven’t seen a plow in hours. Some of the drifts are shoulder high. Power lines sag so low you can touch them. Don’t do that, I warn my son. A few men are out manning snow blowers. When nature turns nasty like this, it makes us humans nicer. Strangers mumble “hello” to each other. Hold on, this guy fishtailing up the hill needs a push. A neighbor with a wood burning stove calls and invites us over if it gets too cold in our house. My neighbor across the street is digging out a space by the street for the recyclable bin that his wife is holding.
By eight or nine at night, in the blackness, my kids are bored out of their minds. I see my neighbor out shoveling his drive one last time. Even the laptop with wireless Internet connectivity has lost its Facebook allure after three or four hours. The kids blankly text friends on their cells. My daughter reads by flashlight. My son drags our two dogs in bed with him and calls it a day. My wife bunks down in my office, warmer than our freezer-like bedroom. I’m lying on the living room sofa, in a hoodie and long johns and thick thermal socks, a mummy with a large vanilla candle balanced on my stomach. I’m trying to read The New York Times. It’s hell turning the pages without the candle sliding off and starting a house fire. I look out our bay window and see daggers of icicles, up to two feet, hang from the gutter. I think I hear my neighbor across the street scraping ice from his sidewalk.
Around midnight I wake up to the lights and widescreen TV on, the stove clock beeping and the furnace whirring and chugging to life. Homes across the street show signs of life. It has stopped snowing. That shadowy figure is my neighbor salting his drive; he’s the first one out of the neighborhood every morning. The wind rattles branches high in the trees and roars around the corners of our house. Otherwise, the storm has exhausted itself. But is has definitely served notice, putting us in our place.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Dissing the gods
We’re actually all in the house at the same time. Kate, back in the nest after graduating from Delaware, works ‘til seven every night at a KinderCare. Steve, restless high school senior, frequently slips out to the Y, Barnes & Noble, over to a friend’s.
This night, for a few minutes anyway, not only are we all home, but in the same general vicinity. Kate’s watching “E! News,” kicked back in the recliner, doing her nails, the two dogs curled on the couch.
“So,” I ask, “what’s your recommendation for Steve? What college do you think he should go to?”
“Well, I just learned Drexel is $51,000 a year.”
“Next.”
The conversation draws Steve into the living room.
“Wait!” yells Suze. “What time is it? Turn on channel 12.”
“What?”
“Just turn on channel 12. It’s eight o’clock.”
Steve, after years of diligent practice handling the remote like an extension of his arm, flicks to channel 12.
There on the flat screen are John, Paul, George and Ringo, in soft-focus black and white, flickering as though transmitted from a distant planet. They’ve got their matching mop-tops, dark suits with white shirts and thin dark ties. “She loves me, yeah, yeah, yeah,” they sing, with a smiling earnestness seeming to be aimed at earning Establishment Ed’s approval.
“It’s the Ed Sullivan show,” says Suze. “It’s the first time the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“Who’s Ed?” asks Steve.
Steve and Kate start giggling, then laughing. Their parents are taken aback, especially Suze, who one time actually saw the Beatles live in concert. “What’s so funny?”
“They look so corny,” says Kate. “Yeah,” seconds Steve. “Did they really wear their hair like that?” asks Kate.
The kids are disrespecting the gods. Funny thing is, both of them like Beatles’ music off of CDs. But visually you better be styling nowadays: Calvin Klein, Urban Outfitters, The Gap, Banana Republic, New York Connection, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, American Apparel, American Eagle, the brands that Kate (“I am, therefore I shop”) can recite in her sleep. Steve was a late bloomer but is coming on strong — J. Crew, Ralph Lauren, Polo, Nike. Awkward Ed’s show of course never scored any style points. Steve and Kate might as well be watching the Marx Brothers as the Beatles. But the Marx Brothers would be equally baffling and prehistoric. “Who are the Marx Brothers? You mean Karl Marx? Were they a band?”
Anyway, Ed comes out, shakes hands with the Beatles, and the documentary moves to a clip of the Beatles’ archrivals, the Beach Boys, also singing on the Sullivan show. The five boys in the band, barely out of their teens, are scrubbed fresh and wear matching striped shirts and white pants. A couple of hot rods have been rolled on stage for props. They’re sing “I Get Around” by Ed’s rules, like the Beatles, standing in place, smiling and clean. Nothing to unnerve the adults.
“Oh… my… god!” sputters Kate. “They’re even cornier. They’re nerds.”
“What do you think, Steve? Steve?”
Black and white TV was never his world. He’s retreated to his bedroom and his X Box 360 and NCAA Football 2010, with animated players more realistic than 45-year-old clips of the Beatles.
Next up, from 1969, Tommy James and the Shondells singing “Crimson and Clover,” with the Sullivan show now in color, and the camera going psychedelic with tripped out mirror images and dizzying, flashing shots zooming in and out. Scenes from Woodstock follow and Kate groans.
“You gotta be on drugs, then this music would sound OK,” says Kate, staring in befuddlement. “You guys did a lot of drugs back then, right? I mean the hippies. If that’s what drugs make things looks like, I’d completely freak out.”
“Times change,” says Suze.
“I should say,” says Kate, inferring a total understatement. “Can I change the channel?”
This night, for a few minutes anyway, not only are we all home, but in the same general vicinity. Kate’s watching “E! News,” kicked back in the recliner, doing her nails, the two dogs curled on the couch.
“So,” I ask, “what’s your recommendation for Steve? What college do you think he should go to?”
“Well, I just learned Drexel is $51,000 a year.”
“Next.”
The conversation draws Steve into the living room.
“Wait!” yells Suze. “What time is it? Turn on channel 12.”
“What?”
“Just turn on channel 12. It’s eight o’clock.”
Steve, after years of diligent practice handling the remote like an extension of his arm, flicks to channel 12.
There on the flat screen are John, Paul, George and Ringo, in soft-focus black and white, flickering as though transmitted from a distant planet. They’ve got their matching mop-tops, dark suits with white shirts and thin dark ties. “She loves me, yeah, yeah, yeah,” they sing, with a smiling earnestness seeming to be aimed at earning Establishment Ed’s approval.
“It’s the Ed Sullivan show,” says Suze. “It’s the first time the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“Who’s Ed?” asks Steve.
Steve and Kate start giggling, then laughing. Their parents are taken aback, especially Suze, who one time actually saw the Beatles live in concert. “What’s so funny?”
“They look so corny,” says Kate. “Yeah,” seconds Steve. “Did they really wear their hair like that?” asks Kate.
The kids are disrespecting the gods. Funny thing is, both of them like Beatles’ music off of CDs. But visually you better be styling nowadays: Calvin Klein, Urban Outfitters, The Gap, Banana Republic, New York Connection, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, American Apparel, American Eagle, the brands that Kate (“I am, therefore I shop”) can recite in her sleep. Steve was a late bloomer but is coming on strong — J. Crew, Ralph Lauren, Polo, Nike. Awkward Ed’s show of course never scored any style points. Steve and Kate might as well be watching the Marx Brothers as the Beatles. But the Marx Brothers would be equally baffling and prehistoric. “Who are the Marx Brothers? You mean Karl Marx? Were they a band?”
Anyway, Ed comes out, shakes hands with the Beatles, and the documentary moves to a clip of the Beatles’ archrivals, the Beach Boys, also singing on the Sullivan show. The five boys in the band, barely out of their teens, are scrubbed fresh and wear matching striped shirts and white pants. A couple of hot rods have been rolled on stage for props. They’re sing “I Get Around” by Ed’s rules, like the Beatles, standing in place, smiling and clean. Nothing to unnerve the adults.
“Oh… my… god!” sputters Kate. “They’re even cornier. They’re nerds.”
“What do you think, Steve? Steve?”
Black and white TV was never his world. He’s retreated to his bedroom and his X Box 360 and NCAA Football 2010, with animated players more realistic than 45-year-old clips of the Beatles.
Next up, from 1969, Tommy James and the Shondells singing “Crimson and Clover,” with the Sullivan show now in color, and the camera going psychedelic with tripped out mirror images and dizzying, flashing shots zooming in and out. Scenes from Woodstock follow and Kate groans.
“You gotta be on drugs, then this music would sound OK,” says Kate, staring in befuddlement. “You guys did a lot of drugs back then, right? I mean the hippies. If that’s what drugs make things looks like, I’d completely freak out.”
“Times change,” says Suze.
“I should say,” says Kate, inferring a total understatement. “Can I change the channel?”
Monday, January 11, 2010
Only in Ojai
Very freakish, Philadelphia getting bombed with almost two feet of snow less than a week before Christmas. So the first order of business Sunday morning, before I could go anywhere, was grabbing a broom and sweeping snow off our three cars, defrosting the cars, and then shoveling out. Figuring to find mayhem at the airport, I left about four hours before my flight to LA.
Sure enough, flights were canceled all over the departures board. Stranded holiday travelers were sprawled out or slumped over, bleary-eyed zombies at most every gate. My flight got pushed back from 2 to 5 p.m. in a case of a missing pilot. Then his plane landed but could not reach a gate for all the snow plowed into small mountains. Next came the dreaded tarmac delay. We were on board, buckled in and going nowhere. The pilot, with a soothing British accent, explained only one runway was operating, alternating take-offs with landings. Finally we were airborne about 6 p.m. for the 6-hour flight cross country. The plane’s cabin of course was crammed to the max, not an empty seat. Across the entire nation a little dog yapped, yapped and yelped, trapped in a cage stowed in the overhead luggage rack.
The most disorienting and dangerous part of a trip I find is getting a start in an unfamiliar city after the dark, when you’re in a rental car you’ve never driven before, making seat adjustments, mirror adjustments, deciphering the dashboard, trying to follow typed directions handed over by an automaton behind the counter at Avis Rental. I’m leaving LAX, scanning for street and interstate signs, discovering the directions are flat-out ass backwards wrong, and dealing with a zooming flow of traffic to the right and left. I do believe the highest risk for some kind of rental car road collision is always within the first 10-15 minutes when you’re trying to figure out both the car and where the hell you’re heading.
That critical juncture for me came at Sunday night about 9:30 in LA. Of course the freeways are flooded with streams of red and white lights across 12 lanes like rush hour in most towns. I take I-405 to North 101 and try to center myself if you will listening to a CD of raw gut-bucket Clarksdale, Mississippi bottomland blues by Terry “Big T” Williams and Wesley “Junebug” Jefferson. This deep-down thumping blues, totally at odds with the fast LA tempo, is what I need.
An hour and half later around Ventura traffic has thinned way out and I make a right to head up Route 33, which narrows to a twisting two-lane mountain road. It’s nearing 2 a.m. east coast time and a world away from shoveling snow in the driveway this morning. The key to my hotel room is in an envelope taped to the office door at the Blue Iguana Inn. Described by a tourist magazine as “hip and stylish,” the inn is designed in a Mexican motif by a local architect and decorated by his wife, who owns the place. All that matters to me after a day shoveling snow, waiting out a 4-hour delay, then the 6-hour flight and that damn barking mutt, and the 2-hour drive up to Ojai is that a beautiful bed takes up almost my entire room, with giant fluffy pillows and a cushy, soft mattress to die for.
Come 7 in the morning the alarm is beep, beep, beeping away. I set it early to leave sufficient time to chug vast quantities of java, clear my head, and think about what it is that I want to see happen at my 9 a.m. meeting. Also need some extra time to find the meeting place.
It’s an overcast Monday morning driving along Ojai Avenue past a running/bike trail, the town’s Spanish-style arcade, a bell tower supposedly reminiscent of one in Havana, the pergola, which is a walkway beneath a series of connecting arches, a skateboard park, small parks and plazas, small art shops, craft stores, restaurants and bars. Everything in Ojai is on a small scale. The town, two hours north of LA, has only 8,000 residents, most living in tidy cottages and ranchers in leafy blocks off the main drag. There is a lengthy list of Hollywood celebs who’ve retreated here to slum in disguise and hide out — Tim Burton, Julie Christie, Johnny Depp, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anthony Hopkins, Diane Ladd, Malcolm McDowell, Bill Paxton, Ted Danson. Johnny Cash and his wife June Carter had a place up in the hills in nearby Casitas Springs, where every Christmas John would put speakers on his deck and blast the valley with Christmas tunes, until a neighbor finally got him to shut it down. That’s John, sentimental, romantic and a pain in the ass at the same time.
The CEO and the Board Chairman were chatting, waiting for me when I arrived pretty much on the button at 9. The ice was broken by my being completely over-dressed for the occasion; wearing jacket, tie and pullover sweater. The chairman was in sneaks, jeans and a corduroy shirt. The CEO, a Brit, wore business casual shirt and slacks. He had been in Oslo, Norway last Thursday, stopped over in London on Saturday, and was here in the plush and comfy chairman’s office Monday morning. The chairman, an older man, was yawning, complaining he still couldn’t shake off the jet lag after a three-week trip to Taiwan, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Management consultants like these two make their living on the road, flying off to clients, conferences, training seminars and speaking gigs around the globe.
Our meeting was scheduled for Christmas week for the simple fact it’s one of the few times during the year both of these globe-trotters can be found in the same room at the same time. They’ve scheduled me for two hours and we take it down to the last minute. The casual conversation and open-ended brain-storming is laid back. The one exception to this relaxed atmosphere is the statute of a large, threatening gargoyle that dominates the chairman’s broad, clean desk. “Where’d you get that?” “My wife gave it to me to ward off evil people.” “Does it work?” “Why yes, I believe it does.” Not interested in learning the details, I bring our talk back on track.
We decide on two projects I’ll go forward on, shake hands, and part ways with smiles all around and Merry Christmas send-offs. I lunch for two hours with the communications manager, who fills me in some more about the projects I’ll be working on and the culture of the organization.
By 2 pm I’m a free man, feeling good about making a decent impression after Sunday’s long day and night. I head to Ojai’s public library to use one of its free Internet-connected computers to check emails. My magazine, the editing of which is my occupation aside from independent contracting, is winding down production on the January 2010 issue and there are usually last minute glitches and changes and questions.
The temperature is in the high 50s, the sun finally breaks through, and I get an idea of how the valley, running east-west about ten miles long and three miles wide, traps light all day long, inspiring Ojai’s colony of artists. Nordhoff Ridge, towering over the north side of town at more than 5,000 feet, is now clearly visible and stunning.
Stuart Rupp runs a shop where he makes prints of his wife’s delicate Oriental brush art — depending on the strength and balance of line — coupled with calligraphy and Zen seals ‘Laugher,” “Unique,” “Cherish the Moment” and “No method.” He explains to me how Ojai’s mountains and looming trees humble locals, an odd diversity of Hollywood intelligentsia, redneck farm laborers, retired millionaire industrialists, and new-age spiritualists. The sun’s day-long radiance, the famous pink glowing sunset, the absence of shadows, the mountainous confines and stands of forests put residents in what Stuart describes as a state of “Quiet Excellence.”
My conversation with Stuart, a short, gregarious man with shaggy gray hair who’s got a rep in town as something of a maverick, runs past an hour. He recounts how his wife Nancy’s life was cut all too short at age 57 in 2001 when she was struck in the leg by a car on Ojai’s Main Street, not 50 yards away from the shop. She died when a blood clot broke free in her leg 11 days later. Stuart keeps her spirit alive in the small shop, crammed with prints of Nancy’s art: the Buddha’s 12 barnyard animals printed on cardboard packaging boxes, tee-shirts, sweat shirts, night shirts and “Sanity Bites” framed reprints of mixed Chinese calligraphy and brushpainting. Stuart, who retired as a physicist and oceanographer at 45 to let Nancy do her thing, and I carry on about transcendent physicist Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Obama, the New England Patriots, “global weirding,” health care reform, the computer software and hardware industries, junior chamber of commerce carpetbaggers, the country’s energy oligarchy, the demise of conversation, Johns Hopkins lacrosse, the 57 churches Stuart counted on his paper route as a boy growing up in Ojai, his father the doc who made house calls until he was 80, the orange groves to the north that benefit from the full day of sunlight to deliver product a month after the rest of the state’s groves are harvested. “Embrace life,” Stuart smiles at one point. “It’s all we have. We’re all in this together, after all.” I forget what we were talking about.
I run into a peppy young blonde woman with rosy cheeks sitting behind the counter at the Trowbridge Gallery who says people call her Sunshine because she’s always had a bubbling, giggling energy. She’s from the far northeast of Philadelphia and we talk about places in South Jersey. She looks like a native but has been out here just less than a year. It was time to “gain her footing,” she explains, vague about where her traction will lead. “You’ve got to learn California,” Sunshine says. “It takes a while. You know, it’s the west out here. People think different. More open. In the east people think more in boxes.” As I walk out the door she greets two friends and I hear her talk about “the good energy” to be found in something or somewhere. She’s right: back east you hear little about embracing the good energy.
Another dose of positive energy came my way at dinner Monday night at Azu Mediterranean Restaurant and Bar on East Ojai Avenue. Eric the bartender had set me up with a couple of generous shots of Woodford Reserve bourbon and a draught of something called Wildfire beer. I had retreated from the bar to a couch to talk on the cell to Kate, my daughter who was spending the night at her boyfriend’s in Delaware. No one had picked up when I called home, and son Steve and Kate hadn’t picked up cell calls to them. After 30 years of travel I still get nervous when no one answers the call at home.
“Everything OK?” a fellow asks me when I sign off with Kate. “Sorry, I talked too loud.” “No, not a problem, glad to share a couch with you,” he smiles. Ron is his name. He introduces a cute young blonde woman, Desiree, his best friend, he says. Desiree reminds me of other SoCal girls or women, attractive, fit, and seemingly somewhat bored and weary of it all. Turns out Desiree is 32, doesn’t look it, was born in Ojai, hates LA, there’s no culture there, loves New York but couldn’t live there, might end up in South Carolina, likes the pace, like country music.
Ron says all the money in the world couldn’t buy a friend like Desiree. Ron’s blind in his right eye, going blind in the other one. He’s 62, doesn’t look it, is tanned with his hair parted down the middle and a diamond in his left ear. Ron smiles constantly. He asks Desiree are they OK with time, can he have another 5 minutes? He was born in Manhattan and runs 4 massages parlors in Ventura he bought after getting sick off looking in his mirror each morning hating his work as an account manager for high-end men’s fashion accessories, belt buckles he mentions in particular. It was his father’s business he got into after 7 years working for CBS behind the camera in production, where he tired of kissing ass to get anywhere. “I was making $300,000 a year, now I’m making $35,000. I had a lot of money, I spent a lot of money. My life’s complicated like you wouldn’t want to know. But I can get up in the morning and look myself in the mirror.” As he leaves he shouts across to Eric the bartender, “We’ll be back. This is Desiree. We love this place.”
I’m back at the Blue Iguana by around 10. Read newspapers in bed to decompress and then wake up around 4 a.m., earlier than I wanted and before the alarm goes off. Grab some heavy duty Costa Rican java at a shop, Full of Beans and Fuel, and it’s off to LAX at 6 in the morning darkness to beat the dreaded LA rush hour. To bypass some of it, I take the Pacific Coast Highway outside of Oxnard and watch the sun rise over the Santa Monica Mountains at about 7:15. Make a point to drive to Zuma Beach and wade into the Pacific. A couple of men in sweatshirts walk large dogs. It’s cold and wind, and the sea is churning and roiling.
The security line at LAX three days before Christmas is out the door at 8 a.m. But it moves along. My flight gets delayed an hour — a case of a missing aircraft. Then we’re stuck on the tarmac again when the pilot announces we’ve either got a fuel leak in one of the wings or it’s goo leftover from a de-icing. “Keep your fingers crossed,” he says. He advises passengers who will miss connections to stay on board and hope for the best because there’s not an empty seat on any flight out of LA until Friday.
Holiday time is amateur hour for infrequent flyers. They bombard gate agents with anxious, edgy questions: Is the plane here? The pilot here? I’m going to miss my connection. When will we board? How long is this flight? A cell phone chorus makes the rounds: “We’re delayed, delayed, delayed.” Finally, when we get into Philadelphia at about 8:40 p.m., two hours late, one of the attendants grabs the PA: “Any passengers to Tel Aviv or Madrid, you’ve got to run to your gate. Please make way. The rest of you poor bastards who missed your connections, see the agent at the podium.”
I’m not moving, stuck in the last row by the window, seat 33A. The woman next to me sounds exasperated: “Dad, dad, I just landed. Dad, didn’t you check online to find my terminal. C’mon dad, you can do it.” From another row: “Brendan, did you find what you needed? Is that our bag? Where’s our other bag?” From behind me: “Hi, mom, we’re on the ground. Just getting off the plane. Huh? Huh? Can’t hear you. See you soon.” A small girl wanders off dragging a pink blanket, holding a purple stuffed dragon.
Walking through Terminal B, I see small tight clusters of lost travelers surround besieged gate agents, hands out waiting for hotel vouchers for an unwanted stay-over at the Marriott. Flights to Boston, Tampa, Charlotte, State College, are taking off at 10 and 11 tonight, unusually late for Philadelphia. Passengers, tired and blue, will roll into beds not as comfy as the Blue Iguana’s at 2 or 3 a.m. Adding to the irritation, the muzak in Terminal B’s is playing possibly the most ridiculous holiday songs, “ding-dong, ding-dong, Christmas bells are ringing.” Stressed-out travelers have already been dinged and donged. How about, “God rest ye merry flyers, let no delay dismay, air traffic is our saviour, our only ticket home, just save us all from winter’s power, when plans have gone astray, O tidings of comfort and joy, that’s what we seek, may departure boards bring comfort and joy, on-time flights, may departure boards bring comfort and joy.”
Sure enough, flights were canceled all over the departures board. Stranded holiday travelers were sprawled out or slumped over, bleary-eyed zombies at most every gate. My flight got pushed back from 2 to 5 p.m. in a case of a missing pilot. Then his plane landed but could not reach a gate for all the snow plowed into small mountains. Next came the dreaded tarmac delay. We were on board, buckled in and going nowhere. The pilot, with a soothing British accent, explained only one runway was operating, alternating take-offs with landings. Finally we were airborne about 6 p.m. for the 6-hour flight cross country. The plane’s cabin of course was crammed to the max, not an empty seat. Across the entire nation a little dog yapped, yapped and yelped, trapped in a cage stowed in the overhead luggage rack.
The most disorienting and dangerous part of a trip I find is getting a start in an unfamiliar city after the dark, when you’re in a rental car you’ve never driven before, making seat adjustments, mirror adjustments, deciphering the dashboard, trying to follow typed directions handed over by an automaton behind the counter at Avis Rental. I’m leaving LAX, scanning for street and interstate signs, discovering the directions are flat-out ass backwards wrong, and dealing with a zooming flow of traffic to the right and left. I do believe the highest risk for some kind of rental car road collision is always within the first 10-15 minutes when you’re trying to figure out both the car and where the hell you’re heading.
That critical juncture for me came at Sunday night about 9:30 in LA. Of course the freeways are flooded with streams of red and white lights across 12 lanes like rush hour in most towns. I take I-405 to North 101 and try to center myself if you will listening to a CD of raw gut-bucket Clarksdale, Mississippi bottomland blues by Terry “Big T” Williams and Wesley “Junebug” Jefferson. This deep-down thumping blues, totally at odds with the fast LA tempo, is what I need.
An hour and half later around Ventura traffic has thinned way out and I make a right to head up Route 33, which narrows to a twisting two-lane mountain road. It’s nearing 2 a.m. east coast time and a world away from shoveling snow in the driveway this morning. The key to my hotel room is in an envelope taped to the office door at the Blue Iguana Inn. Described by a tourist magazine as “hip and stylish,” the inn is designed in a Mexican motif by a local architect and decorated by his wife, who owns the place. All that matters to me after a day shoveling snow, waiting out a 4-hour delay, then the 6-hour flight and that damn barking mutt, and the 2-hour drive up to Ojai is that a beautiful bed takes up almost my entire room, with giant fluffy pillows and a cushy, soft mattress to die for.
Come 7 in the morning the alarm is beep, beep, beeping away. I set it early to leave sufficient time to chug vast quantities of java, clear my head, and think about what it is that I want to see happen at my 9 a.m. meeting. Also need some extra time to find the meeting place.
It’s an overcast Monday morning driving along Ojai Avenue past a running/bike trail, the town’s Spanish-style arcade, a bell tower supposedly reminiscent of one in Havana, the pergola, which is a walkway beneath a series of connecting arches, a skateboard park, small parks and plazas, small art shops, craft stores, restaurants and bars. Everything in Ojai is on a small scale. The town, two hours north of LA, has only 8,000 residents, most living in tidy cottages and ranchers in leafy blocks off the main drag. There is a lengthy list of Hollywood celebs who’ve retreated here to slum in disguise and hide out — Tim Burton, Julie Christie, Johnny Depp, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anthony Hopkins, Diane Ladd, Malcolm McDowell, Bill Paxton, Ted Danson. Johnny Cash and his wife June Carter had a place up in the hills in nearby Casitas Springs, where every Christmas John would put speakers on his deck and blast the valley with Christmas tunes, until a neighbor finally got him to shut it down. That’s John, sentimental, romantic and a pain in the ass at the same time.
The CEO and the Board Chairman were chatting, waiting for me when I arrived pretty much on the button at 9. The ice was broken by my being completely over-dressed for the occasion; wearing jacket, tie and pullover sweater. The chairman was in sneaks, jeans and a corduroy shirt. The CEO, a Brit, wore business casual shirt and slacks. He had been in Oslo, Norway last Thursday, stopped over in London on Saturday, and was here in the plush and comfy chairman’s office Monday morning. The chairman, an older man, was yawning, complaining he still couldn’t shake off the jet lag after a three-week trip to Taiwan, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Management consultants like these two make their living on the road, flying off to clients, conferences, training seminars and speaking gigs around the globe.
Our meeting was scheduled for Christmas week for the simple fact it’s one of the few times during the year both of these globe-trotters can be found in the same room at the same time. They’ve scheduled me for two hours and we take it down to the last minute. The casual conversation and open-ended brain-storming is laid back. The one exception to this relaxed atmosphere is the statute of a large, threatening gargoyle that dominates the chairman’s broad, clean desk. “Where’d you get that?” “My wife gave it to me to ward off evil people.” “Does it work?” “Why yes, I believe it does.” Not interested in learning the details, I bring our talk back on track.
We decide on two projects I’ll go forward on, shake hands, and part ways with smiles all around and Merry Christmas send-offs. I lunch for two hours with the communications manager, who fills me in some more about the projects I’ll be working on and the culture of the organization.
By 2 pm I’m a free man, feeling good about making a decent impression after Sunday’s long day and night. I head to Ojai’s public library to use one of its free Internet-connected computers to check emails. My magazine, the editing of which is my occupation aside from independent contracting, is winding down production on the January 2010 issue and there are usually last minute glitches and changes and questions.
The temperature is in the high 50s, the sun finally breaks through, and I get an idea of how the valley, running east-west about ten miles long and three miles wide, traps light all day long, inspiring Ojai’s colony of artists. Nordhoff Ridge, towering over the north side of town at more than 5,000 feet, is now clearly visible and stunning.
Stuart Rupp runs a shop where he makes prints of his wife’s delicate Oriental brush art — depending on the strength and balance of line — coupled with calligraphy and Zen seals ‘Laugher,” “Unique,” “Cherish the Moment” and “No method.” He explains to me how Ojai’s mountains and looming trees humble locals, an odd diversity of Hollywood intelligentsia, redneck farm laborers, retired millionaire industrialists, and new-age spiritualists. The sun’s day-long radiance, the famous pink glowing sunset, the absence of shadows, the mountainous confines and stands of forests put residents in what Stuart describes as a state of “Quiet Excellence.”
My conversation with Stuart, a short, gregarious man with shaggy gray hair who’s got a rep in town as something of a maverick, runs past an hour. He recounts how his wife Nancy’s life was cut all too short at age 57 in 2001 when she was struck in the leg by a car on Ojai’s Main Street, not 50 yards away from the shop. She died when a blood clot broke free in her leg 11 days later. Stuart keeps her spirit alive in the small shop, crammed with prints of Nancy’s art: the Buddha’s 12 barnyard animals printed on cardboard packaging boxes, tee-shirts, sweat shirts, night shirts and “Sanity Bites” framed reprints of mixed Chinese calligraphy and brushpainting. Stuart, who retired as a physicist and oceanographer at 45 to let Nancy do her thing, and I carry on about transcendent physicist Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Obama, the New England Patriots, “global weirding,” health care reform, the computer software and hardware industries, junior chamber of commerce carpetbaggers, the country’s energy oligarchy, the demise of conversation, Johns Hopkins lacrosse, the 57 churches Stuart counted on his paper route as a boy growing up in Ojai, his father the doc who made house calls until he was 80, the orange groves to the north that benefit from the full day of sunlight to deliver product a month after the rest of the state’s groves are harvested. “Embrace life,” Stuart smiles at one point. “It’s all we have. We’re all in this together, after all.” I forget what we were talking about.
I run into a peppy young blonde woman with rosy cheeks sitting behind the counter at the Trowbridge Gallery who says people call her Sunshine because she’s always had a bubbling, giggling energy. She’s from the far northeast of Philadelphia and we talk about places in South Jersey. She looks like a native but has been out here just less than a year. It was time to “gain her footing,” she explains, vague about where her traction will lead. “You’ve got to learn California,” Sunshine says. “It takes a while. You know, it’s the west out here. People think different. More open. In the east people think more in boxes.” As I walk out the door she greets two friends and I hear her talk about “the good energy” to be found in something or somewhere. She’s right: back east you hear little about embracing the good energy.
Another dose of positive energy came my way at dinner Monday night at Azu Mediterranean Restaurant and Bar on East Ojai Avenue. Eric the bartender had set me up with a couple of generous shots of Woodford Reserve bourbon and a draught of something called Wildfire beer. I had retreated from the bar to a couch to talk on the cell to Kate, my daughter who was spending the night at her boyfriend’s in Delaware. No one had picked up when I called home, and son Steve and Kate hadn’t picked up cell calls to them. After 30 years of travel I still get nervous when no one answers the call at home.
“Everything OK?” a fellow asks me when I sign off with Kate. “Sorry, I talked too loud.” “No, not a problem, glad to share a couch with you,” he smiles. Ron is his name. He introduces a cute young blonde woman, Desiree, his best friend, he says. Desiree reminds me of other SoCal girls or women, attractive, fit, and seemingly somewhat bored and weary of it all. Turns out Desiree is 32, doesn’t look it, was born in Ojai, hates LA, there’s no culture there, loves New York but couldn’t live there, might end up in South Carolina, likes the pace, like country music.
Ron says all the money in the world couldn’t buy a friend like Desiree. Ron’s blind in his right eye, going blind in the other one. He’s 62, doesn’t look it, is tanned with his hair parted down the middle and a diamond in his left ear. Ron smiles constantly. He asks Desiree are they OK with time, can he have another 5 minutes? He was born in Manhattan and runs 4 massages parlors in Ventura he bought after getting sick off looking in his mirror each morning hating his work as an account manager for high-end men’s fashion accessories, belt buckles he mentions in particular. It was his father’s business he got into after 7 years working for CBS behind the camera in production, where he tired of kissing ass to get anywhere. “I was making $300,000 a year, now I’m making $35,000. I had a lot of money, I spent a lot of money. My life’s complicated like you wouldn’t want to know. But I can get up in the morning and look myself in the mirror.” As he leaves he shouts across to Eric the bartender, “We’ll be back. This is Desiree. We love this place.”
I’m back at the Blue Iguana by around 10. Read newspapers in bed to decompress and then wake up around 4 a.m., earlier than I wanted and before the alarm goes off. Grab some heavy duty Costa Rican java at a shop, Full of Beans and Fuel, and it’s off to LAX at 6 in the morning darkness to beat the dreaded LA rush hour. To bypass some of it, I take the Pacific Coast Highway outside of Oxnard and watch the sun rise over the Santa Monica Mountains at about 7:15. Make a point to drive to Zuma Beach and wade into the Pacific. A couple of men in sweatshirts walk large dogs. It’s cold and wind, and the sea is churning and roiling.
The security line at LAX three days before Christmas is out the door at 8 a.m. But it moves along. My flight gets delayed an hour — a case of a missing aircraft. Then we’re stuck on the tarmac again when the pilot announces we’ve either got a fuel leak in one of the wings or it’s goo leftover from a de-icing. “Keep your fingers crossed,” he says. He advises passengers who will miss connections to stay on board and hope for the best because there’s not an empty seat on any flight out of LA until Friday.
Holiday time is amateur hour for infrequent flyers. They bombard gate agents with anxious, edgy questions: Is the plane here? The pilot here? I’m going to miss my connection. When will we board? How long is this flight? A cell phone chorus makes the rounds: “We’re delayed, delayed, delayed.” Finally, when we get into Philadelphia at about 8:40 p.m., two hours late, one of the attendants grabs the PA: “Any passengers to Tel Aviv or Madrid, you’ve got to run to your gate. Please make way. The rest of you poor bastards who missed your connections, see the agent at the podium.”
I’m not moving, stuck in the last row by the window, seat 33A. The woman next to me sounds exasperated: “Dad, dad, I just landed. Dad, didn’t you check online to find my terminal. C’mon dad, you can do it.” From another row: “Brendan, did you find what you needed? Is that our bag? Where’s our other bag?” From behind me: “Hi, mom, we’re on the ground. Just getting off the plane. Huh? Huh? Can’t hear you. See you soon.” A small girl wanders off dragging a pink blanket, holding a purple stuffed dragon.
Walking through Terminal B, I see small tight clusters of lost travelers surround besieged gate agents, hands out waiting for hotel vouchers for an unwanted stay-over at the Marriott. Flights to Boston, Tampa, Charlotte, State College, are taking off at 10 and 11 tonight, unusually late for Philadelphia. Passengers, tired and blue, will roll into beds not as comfy as the Blue Iguana’s at 2 or 3 a.m. Adding to the irritation, the muzak in Terminal B’s is playing possibly the most ridiculous holiday songs, “ding-dong, ding-dong, Christmas bells are ringing.” Stressed-out travelers have already been dinged and donged. How about, “God rest ye merry flyers, let no delay dismay, air traffic is our saviour, our only ticket home, just save us all from winter’s power, when plans have gone astray, O tidings of comfort and joy, that’s what we seek, may departure boards bring comfort and joy, on-time flights, may departure boards bring comfort and joy.”
Dusseldorf divas and Bonnie’s delta dudes
I imagine rounding up the noontime patrons at Bonnie’s Café for a group photo on the front porch. It’d be a challenge to break up the half-dozen or so conversations buzzing inside Bonnie’s. To pull these boys, 12 to 15 I reckon, away from their heaping hot supper plates of chicken and gravy and dumplings. Fact is, I seriously doubt some of these boys are ready to take directions from a Yankee photographer. “Squeeze in on the left over there, just a little bit more, little more. Now everybody say, ‘gravy’.”
It’d be hard to fit all the fellows in one frame. Bonnie’s regulars are big boys. Broad shoulders. Large hands. Mostly heavyset dudes. They clomp into Bonnie’s looking like they’ve wrestled in mud trenches all morning. Before they grab a seat they head straight back to the kitchen to wash up over the sinks. It’s a gray raw November day out and the boys wear layers of clothing, plaid shirts, overalls, Carhartt outer jackets, work boots or knee high rubber boots. Every one of them wears some kind of ball cap, skull cap or wool knit cap. They pull up chairs that scrape across Bonnie’s plain wooden floor and huddle around square pedestal tables by two’s and four’s; a long table by the front window seats a half dozen. They’re all chowing down.
There is nothing fancy in the least about Bonnie’s Café. Function trumps form. Work crews don’t lounge about, they’re fed and out in 25 minutes. The cafe butts up against an abandoned general store with a sagging red rusted roof and has two plump and torn old sofas on its porch. Train tracks run in front of Bonnie’s, on the other side of a gravel-strewn street where the boys park hulking, mud-splattered Ford and Chevy, red and black, pickups. You won’t find a minivan, an SUV, or any foreign made car parked anywhere near Bonnie’s. Not down in these parts. A white water tower standing on three steel legs and rising above bare trees has “Watson” spelled out in black letters. Watson sits on Arkansas Route 1 about 8 miles west of the Mississippi River, a little more than 100 miles southwest of Memphis.
The town is but a speck on the map, taking up 0.2 square miles and home to 288 residents, according to the 2000 census. Bonnie’s is where the action is at lunch hour during the week. The waitresses work fast and talk like they know every customer, which they do. Everyone gets a large round jar, no handles, of iced tea. Some of the boys bullshit, joke and laugh, talk about the weather or the morning’s work, or equipment problems or what they’ll be doing this afternoon. Others sit and shovel down the chicken and dumplings. Three teenage Mexicans sit by themselves wearing hoodies. One fellow sits down, he’s lost every one of his fingers and his two thumbs jut out from club-like hands. A young boy hardly out of his teens if he is at all drags his limp right leg from table to table, shooting barbs, and taking some himself. A couple of large men wear big bushy beards, other have sideburns from another century. All have weathered, creased and lined dirty faces. Definitely lived in. “Those fried taters are good with catsup, let me tell you.” “What d’ya have coveralls on for, it ain’t winter yet?”
A couple of Bonnie’s boys yell goodbye to the women working the grills and the other fellows, and shove open the creaking screen door. A few minutes later they’re sitting in the cabs of huge green and yellow combines, metallic monsters as wide as the street that roar past Bonnie’s and slowly lumber up and over the train tracks.
Watson, Arkansas is 4,644 miles from Dusseldorf, Germany. After a day making sales calls in Memphis, I passed through Watson on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 out of Clarksdale, Mississippi, spiritual home of American blues music, by way of Marvell, Arkansas (population 1,395 and birthplace of Levon Helm, The Band’s drummer), heading down to Vicksburg, Mississippi across miles and miles of bottom land cotton fields. Exactly two weeks earlier, Wednesday, November 4, I was sitting in Frank Gehry’s restaurant and bar downing a couple of shots of Noah’s Mill bourbon in what’s called Dusseldorf’s Media Harbour, by the Rhine River.
Absolutely the one and only common thread connecting Dusseldorf with Watson, Arkansas half a world away is beer. In Dusseldorf it is Altbier, an “old beer” amber lager poured into tall thin glasses with three-inch foam heads. And the waiters keep pouring, refilling, until you say, “no mas.” Down in the delta the beer flows easy, too. Liquor stores, shacks or huts still stand in the smallest, poorest of towns. A Miller Lite “Welcome Hunters” orange banner hangs on fence next to the F&L Liquor Store outside Watson. At Monsour’s at the Biscuit Company in Vicksburg I downed dark bottles of Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan and Lazy Magnolia Indian Summer Spiced Ale, brewed in Kiln, Mississippi. That happens to be where future NFL Hall of Famer Brett Favre played quarterback for his dad, Irvin, who coached Kiln’s Hancock High.
In all other ways of life, culture and values, Watson and Dusseldorf trace extremely different orbits. Watson is rusted-out, dirt farmer poor. Dusseldorf, as Ibrahim, my Senegalese cabbie pointed out driving me in from the airport, is the most expensive city in Germany, the country’s center for advertising and fashion. Ibrahim confided in me his vision. After somehow enduring 28 years in Dusseldorf, where people of color are invisible, Ibrahim was finally plotting his return to Senegal, to build a home from scratch and bake all day. “If you are black, you get nowhere in Dusseldorf. No jobs, no opportunities, nothing,” he said.
In the delta you get stories, lots of stories. Just ask a question or two. I spent two hours jawing with a businessman named John at the bar in Vicksburg after the sun went down. According to John, who’s the only man in the bar wearing a jacket and tie — “It’s been a long day; I’m kinda tired — three times he sat down with old Irvin Favre for beers. “He was tough on the outside but a softie, really.”
Neil the bartender served up shots of Old Charter and kept the chatter going about Southeast Conference football, predictions, opinions and his supposedly inside information. Mark in a tie-dyed tee shirt and flowing locks walked past offering chocolate pecans. “Pass ‘em around. They don’t get getter than this. You OK, bud? Keepin’ the chill out?”
These conversations with John, Neil and Mark ran longer and deeper, far longer and deeper, than any conversation I had in Dusseldorf in the four days I was there, save for a dinner with the trade fair sponsor who paid my way over to write up the show. And that was the kind of shallow business lite talk you could have in your sleep. Dusseldorf is all business, no small talk. Germans I’m convinced don’t do small talk. Especially with foreigners. Especially in Dusseldorf, ranked by the Mercer 2009 Quality of Living survey of cities as possessing the sixth highest quality of living in the world and first in Germany. In Dusseldorf it’s about making money and spending money. Office lights are on until 7 or 8 at night at banking institutions, publishing houses, telecommunications giants, insurers, ad agencies and internet companies.
As I sat at world renown architect Frank Gehry’s stylishly hip, amber-lit woodsy bar rest assured no one came up and asked if I was OK or passed around chocolate pecans. The after-work crowd started filtering in around 8 and all went straight to dinner tables. No raucous laughs and ribbing like you got with Bonnie’s boys; no barstool philosophizing like at the biscuit company in Vicksburg — “It’s laid back here. It’s beautiful on these bluffs overlooking the river. People here, like the owner over there, they put up with me; they’ve shoveled me out of here more than once, I can tell you,” said John.
Image is paramount, image is everywhere in an ad agency and media capital like Dusseldorf. Nature is buried beneath late 20th century architecture, save for several parks. History is difficult to find, too. The RAF firebombed the city repeatedly in 1942, destroying 80 percent of it. More than 700 British bombers would crowd the night skies over Dusseldorf, igniting hundreds of fires, killing thousands, and making 140,000 homeless. “A pity,” said a middle-aged well-to-do investor, shaking his head, as I walked through the faux old town cobblestone streets taking photos. One was of a bright, shining red metallic front door of an office the man had rehabbed and was now looking to lease. He had rushed out to greet me like I was a potential leaser, scouting locations with my camera. It’s all about business in Dusseldorf.
And it’s about the fruits of a workaholic life. Black and silver BMWs, Mercedes, Audis, and Opels are tightly parked on “Queen Street,” the KÖ shopping district. Not a single minivan, SUV or pickup will you find. No U.S. or Japanese cars. And strangely, there is little sign of family life. No college stickers on rear windows. No “Proud parent of an all-star honor student” bumper stickers. “All this, too expensive, very expensive, for you and me,” smiled Ibrahim on the way to my hotel in the cab. Women in tight black skirts, with black stockings or black stretch leggings, maneuver atop black leather boots with spiked heels, balancing shopping bags from Gucci, Chanel, Prada, Boss, Sacha, Espirit, Tiffany and Company, Goex, Feel Good, Elena, Franzen, Kult, Villa Happ, Bvlgari, Louis Vitton. Men wear black, black ties, black scarves, black overcoats, and particularly hip black-framed thick, rectangular glasses that make them look like professors or scientists.
“Dusseldorf denizens thumb their noses at the rest of Germany,” I recall Ibrahim warning me. “But the German character is strong. No dancing about. You get straight talk. Yes is yes and no is no. That’s OK. But Germans, they are not warm and open like the Dutch. The time is come. I must live my vision. Make my home in Senegal.”
Down in the delta, folks of course are too damn poor to thumb their noses at anyone. Red Roof Inns don’t have portraits of Audrey Hepburn and Jackie O, like were hanging in the lobby at my Dusseldorf Hotel Carat. Red Roof rooms are twice the size of my spartan Carat closet, too. It is the world of dirt farmers, combine drivers, ditch diggers, machinists, blue collars versus Dusseldorf’s world architects, psychiatrists, fashion designers, lawyers, accountants, consultants and gallery owners.
At Gehry’s on the Rhine no one asked if I was OK to get home. John at the bar in Vicksburg leaned over at one point and strongly suggested in friendly manner, “You don’t wanna drive back up to Clarksdale tonight. That’s three hours. You don’t wanna do that. Tell you what, you go down the street to Harrah’s and get yourself a room for $31. Then come back and stay with us for a few more pops. Then you can just walk back to your room.”
I walked along the Rhine back to my hotel from Gehry’s. It was chilly and spitting rain. Couples walked arm in arm in wool caps, scarves, driver’s gloves, berets, those studious rectangular glasses, carrying umbrellas. Some jogged in running suits. Cars suddenly pulled out of side alleys, crossed walkways, wheeled and circled like in a Bourne movie. Silent cyclists occasionally zoomed up on you out of the dark, without warning, no bells or horns or “hallo,” seemingly intent on seeing how close they could come to clipping you.
A few times in Dusseldorf I chanced upon old white-haired Germans, stout, stone-faced husbands and wives, standing shoulder to shoulder, bundled up, like squat statutes waiting for a bus or the tram. I wonder if a wailing Little Walter harmonica solo would make them flinch, or wince.
It’d be hard to fit all the fellows in one frame. Bonnie’s regulars are big boys. Broad shoulders. Large hands. Mostly heavyset dudes. They clomp into Bonnie’s looking like they’ve wrestled in mud trenches all morning. Before they grab a seat they head straight back to the kitchen to wash up over the sinks. It’s a gray raw November day out and the boys wear layers of clothing, plaid shirts, overalls, Carhartt outer jackets, work boots or knee high rubber boots. Every one of them wears some kind of ball cap, skull cap or wool knit cap. They pull up chairs that scrape across Bonnie’s plain wooden floor and huddle around square pedestal tables by two’s and four’s; a long table by the front window seats a half dozen. They’re all chowing down.
There is nothing fancy in the least about Bonnie’s Café. Function trumps form. Work crews don’t lounge about, they’re fed and out in 25 minutes. The cafe butts up against an abandoned general store with a sagging red rusted roof and has two plump and torn old sofas on its porch. Train tracks run in front of Bonnie’s, on the other side of a gravel-strewn street where the boys park hulking, mud-splattered Ford and Chevy, red and black, pickups. You won’t find a minivan, an SUV, or any foreign made car parked anywhere near Bonnie’s. Not down in these parts. A white water tower standing on three steel legs and rising above bare trees has “Watson” spelled out in black letters. Watson sits on Arkansas Route 1 about 8 miles west of the Mississippi River, a little more than 100 miles southwest of Memphis.
The town is but a speck on the map, taking up 0.2 square miles and home to 288 residents, according to the 2000 census. Bonnie’s is where the action is at lunch hour during the week. The waitresses work fast and talk like they know every customer, which they do. Everyone gets a large round jar, no handles, of iced tea. Some of the boys bullshit, joke and laugh, talk about the weather or the morning’s work, or equipment problems or what they’ll be doing this afternoon. Others sit and shovel down the chicken and dumplings. Three teenage Mexicans sit by themselves wearing hoodies. One fellow sits down, he’s lost every one of his fingers and his two thumbs jut out from club-like hands. A young boy hardly out of his teens if he is at all drags his limp right leg from table to table, shooting barbs, and taking some himself. A couple of large men wear big bushy beards, other have sideburns from another century. All have weathered, creased and lined dirty faces. Definitely lived in. “Those fried taters are good with catsup, let me tell you.” “What d’ya have coveralls on for, it ain’t winter yet?”
A couple of Bonnie’s boys yell goodbye to the women working the grills and the other fellows, and shove open the creaking screen door. A few minutes later they’re sitting in the cabs of huge green and yellow combines, metallic monsters as wide as the street that roar past Bonnie’s and slowly lumber up and over the train tracks.
Watson, Arkansas is 4,644 miles from Dusseldorf, Germany. After a day making sales calls in Memphis, I passed through Watson on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 out of Clarksdale, Mississippi, spiritual home of American blues music, by way of Marvell, Arkansas (population 1,395 and birthplace of Levon Helm, The Band’s drummer), heading down to Vicksburg, Mississippi across miles and miles of bottom land cotton fields. Exactly two weeks earlier, Wednesday, November 4, I was sitting in Frank Gehry’s restaurant and bar downing a couple of shots of Noah’s Mill bourbon in what’s called Dusseldorf’s Media Harbour, by the Rhine River.
Absolutely the one and only common thread connecting Dusseldorf with Watson, Arkansas half a world away is beer. In Dusseldorf it is Altbier, an “old beer” amber lager poured into tall thin glasses with three-inch foam heads. And the waiters keep pouring, refilling, until you say, “no mas.” Down in the delta the beer flows easy, too. Liquor stores, shacks or huts still stand in the smallest, poorest of towns. A Miller Lite “Welcome Hunters” orange banner hangs on fence next to the F&L Liquor Store outside Watson. At Monsour’s at the Biscuit Company in Vicksburg I downed dark bottles of Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan and Lazy Magnolia Indian Summer Spiced Ale, brewed in Kiln, Mississippi. That happens to be where future NFL Hall of Famer Brett Favre played quarterback for his dad, Irvin, who coached Kiln’s Hancock High.
In all other ways of life, culture and values, Watson and Dusseldorf trace extremely different orbits. Watson is rusted-out, dirt farmer poor. Dusseldorf, as Ibrahim, my Senegalese cabbie pointed out driving me in from the airport, is the most expensive city in Germany, the country’s center for advertising and fashion. Ibrahim confided in me his vision. After somehow enduring 28 years in Dusseldorf, where people of color are invisible, Ibrahim was finally plotting his return to Senegal, to build a home from scratch and bake all day. “If you are black, you get nowhere in Dusseldorf. No jobs, no opportunities, nothing,” he said.
In the delta you get stories, lots of stories. Just ask a question or two. I spent two hours jawing with a businessman named John at the bar in Vicksburg after the sun went down. According to John, who’s the only man in the bar wearing a jacket and tie — “It’s been a long day; I’m kinda tired — three times he sat down with old Irvin Favre for beers. “He was tough on the outside but a softie, really.”
Neil the bartender served up shots of Old Charter and kept the chatter going about Southeast Conference football, predictions, opinions and his supposedly inside information. Mark in a tie-dyed tee shirt and flowing locks walked past offering chocolate pecans. “Pass ‘em around. They don’t get getter than this. You OK, bud? Keepin’ the chill out?”
These conversations with John, Neil and Mark ran longer and deeper, far longer and deeper, than any conversation I had in Dusseldorf in the four days I was there, save for a dinner with the trade fair sponsor who paid my way over to write up the show. And that was the kind of shallow business lite talk you could have in your sleep. Dusseldorf is all business, no small talk. Germans I’m convinced don’t do small talk. Especially with foreigners. Especially in Dusseldorf, ranked by the Mercer 2009 Quality of Living survey of cities as possessing the sixth highest quality of living in the world and first in Germany. In Dusseldorf it’s about making money and spending money. Office lights are on until 7 or 8 at night at banking institutions, publishing houses, telecommunications giants, insurers, ad agencies and internet companies.
As I sat at world renown architect Frank Gehry’s stylishly hip, amber-lit woodsy bar rest assured no one came up and asked if I was OK or passed around chocolate pecans. The after-work crowd started filtering in around 8 and all went straight to dinner tables. No raucous laughs and ribbing like you got with Bonnie’s boys; no barstool philosophizing like at the biscuit company in Vicksburg — “It’s laid back here. It’s beautiful on these bluffs overlooking the river. People here, like the owner over there, they put up with me; they’ve shoveled me out of here more than once, I can tell you,” said John.
Image is paramount, image is everywhere in an ad agency and media capital like Dusseldorf. Nature is buried beneath late 20th century architecture, save for several parks. History is difficult to find, too. The RAF firebombed the city repeatedly in 1942, destroying 80 percent of it. More than 700 British bombers would crowd the night skies over Dusseldorf, igniting hundreds of fires, killing thousands, and making 140,000 homeless. “A pity,” said a middle-aged well-to-do investor, shaking his head, as I walked through the faux old town cobblestone streets taking photos. One was of a bright, shining red metallic front door of an office the man had rehabbed and was now looking to lease. He had rushed out to greet me like I was a potential leaser, scouting locations with my camera. It’s all about business in Dusseldorf.
And it’s about the fruits of a workaholic life. Black and silver BMWs, Mercedes, Audis, and Opels are tightly parked on “Queen Street,” the KÖ shopping district. Not a single minivan, SUV or pickup will you find. No U.S. or Japanese cars. And strangely, there is little sign of family life. No college stickers on rear windows. No “Proud parent of an all-star honor student” bumper stickers. “All this, too expensive, very expensive, for you and me,” smiled Ibrahim on the way to my hotel in the cab. Women in tight black skirts, with black stockings or black stretch leggings, maneuver atop black leather boots with spiked heels, balancing shopping bags from Gucci, Chanel, Prada, Boss, Sacha, Espirit, Tiffany and Company, Goex, Feel Good, Elena, Franzen, Kult, Villa Happ, Bvlgari, Louis Vitton. Men wear black, black ties, black scarves, black overcoats, and particularly hip black-framed thick, rectangular glasses that make them look like professors or scientists.
“Dusseldorf denizens thumb their noses at the rest of Germany,” I recall Ibrahim warning me. “But the German character is strong. No dancing about. You get straight talk. Yes is yes and no is no. That’s OK. But Germans, they are not warm and open like the Dutch. The time is come. I must live my vision. Make my home in Senegal.”
Down in the delta, folks of course are too damn poor to thumb their noses at anyone. Red Roof Inns don’t have portraits of Audrey Hepburn and Jackie O, like were hanging in the lobby at my Dusseldorf Hotel Carat. Red Roof rooms are twice the size of my spartan Carat closet, too. It is the world of dirt farmers, combine drivers, ditch diggers, machinists, blue collars versus Dusseldorf’s world architects, psychiatrists, fashion designers, lawyers, accountants, consultants and gallery owners.
At Gehry’s on the Rhine no one asked if I was OK to get home. John at the bar in Vicksburg leaned over at one point and strongly suggested in friendly manner, “You don’t wanna drive back up to Clarksdale tonight. That’s three hours. You don’t wanna do that. Tell you what, you go down the street to Harrah’s and get yourself a room for $31. Then come back and stay with us for a few more pops. Then you can just walk back to your room.”
I walked along the Rhine back to my hotel from Gehry’s. It was chilly and spitting rain. Couples walked arm in arm in wool caps, scarves, driver’s gloves, berets, those studious rectangular glasses, carrying umbrellas. Some jogged in running suits. Cars suddenly pulled out of side alleys, crossed walkways, wheeled and circled like in a Bourne movie. Silent cyclists occasionally zoomed up on you out of the dark, without warning, no bells or horns or “hallo,” seemingly intent on seeing how close they could come to clipping you.
A few times in Dusseldorf I chanced upon old white-haired Germans, stout, stone-faced husbands and wives, standing shoulder to shoulder, bundled up, like squat statutes waiting for a bus or the tram. I wonder if a wailing Little Walter harmonica solo would make them flinch, or wince.
Bourbon, break-ins and flashing blue lights
on the road to father and bonding
Otto stared down at the phone he had just hung up. He paused. “Well, that’s a revolting development.”
I had hired Otto, a portly attorney and friend of my wife’s father, to find me another attorney who would handle my case in Virginia — site of the “revolting development.” He found Ms. Stacy Slatterhouse, with an office across from the Halifax County Courthouse, and we had just debriefed her on the details of my case.
“I can’t promise anything,” said Ms. Slatterhouse.
Days before, Virginia state troopers snared me racing 94 MPH under clear skies and with little traffic on Route 58E along the Virginia-North Carolina border. I was in a 60 MPH zone. They swooped in and nailed me roughly halfway between Roanoke and Richmond, about 400 miles from home near Philadelphia.
94 MPH is double reckless driving, Ms. Slatterhouse informed us. The judge conceivably could reduce the charge to defective equipment. Then again, “94 is a high number, very aggressive driving,” said Ms. Slatterhouse. Ms. Slatterhouse also brought up the touchy business of my son, Steve, being with me when I sprung the trap. “The judge might take into account, how can I put it, some egregious parental role modeling,” said Ms. Slatterhouse. But Steve was sound asleep in the shotgun seat when the blue lights lined up behind us. “What? What’s going on?” he asked groggily, realizing we were boxed in by three brown and tan state patrol cars. His first question was the same one the trooper asked me as he leaned into front seat: “What on earth are you doing going this fast?”
“When you come down for your court date, and make no mistake, you must appear,” said Ms Slatterhouse, “bring along your toothbrush. Just a heads up. You just might spend some nights across the street from the court house in the county jail.”
“You know, I was up your way not long ago,” said one of the troopers after studying my driver’s license. I know. Everybody drives fast up there. It’s different down here. It’s a different world. Why don’t you let your son slide over and drive for a while? He’s driving age, isn’t he?”
Sure he is, we’re out here hunting for a college, after all. That’s what Steve and I had been doing for eight days. I told one of the troopers we were tired and just wanted to get home. A plea he has heard, oh, possibly thousands of times. My bad. I should have stuck with the “different world” rationale. Steve slid behind the wheel and locked in a steady 60 MPH. We said nothing. Hell, we were out of cell phone range and I couldn’t even phone home and freak out on my wife.
I wouldn’t say Steve and I committed to this trip with a high sense of purpose, like actually finding a school for Steve. No, we didn’t drill down too deep. My wife Suze suspected all along we had other plans, other goals for this summertime road trip. To be sure, we stayed away from anything organized, organized campus tours, orientations, interviews, print propaganda handouts. We breezed through campuses, sometimes not even getting out of the car, and went with first impressions and gut feelings:
Penn State — 41,700 students, almost all white. Sprawling vanilla campus without discernable personality. At least the massive football stadium is a walk away from the dorms. A steady rain while we were there left a bland impression.
Indiana University of Pennsylvania — Workable size, 14,310 students. IUP wasn’t on the initial itinerary, but like many decisions on this trip, we improvised on the move. Old projects-like dorms are being demolished for new two- and four-person suites with private baths. This is a trend all across campus America. Kids coddled at home want to bring as much comfort and privacy with them to college as they can. The campus lifestyle factor can be a significant determinant.
University of Pittsburgh — Probably too urban for Steve. Petersen Events Center, where the Pitt Panthers basketball team plays, is a NBA-worthy glass and steel palace. It also houses the student fitness center. Rec centers and student centers are other major “lifestyle” draws on college tours. A classroom is a classroom, a commodity when college shopping, but student centers with multiple flat screen monitors and food courts, and gyms with rock climbing walls, this is part and parcel of creating brand reputations and positioning schools competitively. After 18 years of training, our kids know what to look for when they shop.
University of West Virginia — Confusing campus layout. The school loses points as we lose patience trying to find the football stadium. We find it, it’s locked up, we climb over the gate and stroll the astroturf field. You’ve noted no doubt the emphasis we put on athletic facilities. Colleges pour millions into their athletic budgets every year; athletics is part of the lifestyle equation and brand building; so we feel obligated to check out their investments. Of course that’s horeshit. Steve and I are serious sports fans, have been all our lives, and we’ll take every opportunity (or risk) to walk the fields we see on TV. Beyond sportsdom, Morgantown has too much weedy, ramshackle off-campus housing winding up into the hills. I heard someone once say WVU is too “trailer park.” That’s a helluva image problem for the admissions people to deal with. They’ve got to free the state university from the baggage of the state.
The College of Wooster — Classy, leafy, brick-lined liberal arts campus. Immediately out of our price range. And as Steve asks, “What good does a liberal arts degree do for you?” “It’s your ticket to keep studying a few more years in a grad program,” I explain.
Ohio State University — OSU suffers from bad timing on this trip. Columbus is hot and crowded and we’re hot and tired. Still, we push on to locate the famed Horseshoe, Ohio Stadium, “one of the most recognizable landmarks in all of sports” according to the Buckeye web site. Colleges love to tout recognizable landmarks, and of course most of them are the towering football stadiums. After all, ESPN, CBS Sports, ABC Sports et al don’t come to campuses to photograph the library or the physics lab.
Ohio University — Steve would be a legacy kid here, with both his mom and I OU alumni. “It’s a party school isn’t it?” he asked. “Aren’t they all?” I answer. I think he’s looking to escape his legacy, and more important, that zoombifying eight-hour drive from Philadelphia. OU is in fact a perennial top five finisher in annaul national collegiate party power rankings. The admissions folks grit their teeth and prepare their spin every year the rankings come out. “Oh, that’s such an old story by now…”
Virginia Tech — Steve likes the slate stone architecture of the buildings circling the expansive grass drill field, the heart of the campus has a military feel like West Point. Va Tech is another school standing in the shadows of an enormous football stadium. As mentioned, Steve’s not one for long windshield time, and Va Tech, like OU, is a drive too far.
Actually Steve and I didn’t talk about specific colleges on this tour as much as we went back and forth on areas of study. Steve is taking a shotgun approach to what major to pursue, and I can’t keep up with the rounds of questions. “What do you do with a sports administration major? What if you combined it with journalism? Is journalism dead? What’s a sports information director do? ESPN did a show about them. Seems there is a lot of pressure to those jobs. How much do they get paid. What do you do with a general business degree? What’s business administration? What kind of job could I get in TV production? How do you a get a job with NFL Films or ESPN or The Speed Channel?”
“Wanna see Applachian Bible College?”
“What?”
“Just messin’ with you. You don’t have to figure out the entire arc of your career when you’re 17.”
“But if I don’t know what I want to do, maybe I shouldn’t go to college for a year. Maybe community college. It’s expensive. Give you and mom a break. I know we don’t have a lot of money now.”
As you can see, there are no secrets, financial or otherwise, in our small ranch house. But the boy is prone to thinking too much. Just like his mom, dad and sister. We all need to chill a little more. Of course the stakes of finding an affordable four-year college experience don’t lend themselves to chillin’.
Our road trip talk becomes much easier to handle when music is the topic, which happens at some point every day on this trip. In the back seat sits a cooler packed full of CDs. Steve’s a particular fan of what’s called “Brit Pop,” the wave of British rock and roll bands from the ‘90s. He started listening to The Clash and took it from there. Oasis. Blur. Pulp. Coldplay and Radiohead, the Libertines, Keane. Back to Led Zep, the Beatles, the Stones, the Who. Throw in a lot of Marley, a bit of Dylan and The Band. I don’t want to lay my musical prejudices on him. Pick out another CD, Steve. But what’s most annoying is the iPod generation’s itchy trigger finger that keeps pushing the damn forward button searching for another single track. They’re “single minded,” no different than the transitor radio craze in the ‘60s.
A more complicated topic that often comes up has to do with what I’d call “cultures,” for lack of anything more descriptive. Steve doesn’t use the word per se, but he’s something of an anthropologist. Now how do you make money out of that? For years he’s followed the NASCAR culture and the Formula One racing culture. College football cultures and traditions, especially the hardcore southern schools and midwest Big Ten schools in towns and states without professional teams. Texas and Ohio high school football cultures. Books like “Friday Night Lights,” and “It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium.”
Steve talks some on this trip about the rust belt culture we’ve been driving through.Pittsburgh. Cleveland. Akron. Canton. He finds something interesting in the decay and the people and the towns hanging on. He zeroes in on the tortured history of the Cleveland Browns. Something about the old school plain orange helmet he likes. And the Browns’ history of Hall of Famers, die-hard fans, the Dawg Pound, and never being in a Super Bowl.
Dipping into NASCAR culture was a main attraction of this road trip. We aimed to see the Bristol (Tennessee) and Martinsville (Virginia) tracks. The Martinsville track is the smallest NASCAR races on the circuit. Bristol, aka “Thunder Valley,” is a pilgrimmage shrine. If you took the grandstands at Daytona International Speedway, which stretch for miles, wrapped those stands around and around, coiled them tight as a drum, higher and higher around a half-mile oval, until you had a ten-story coliseum, that’s Bristol Motor Speeday. The “world’s fastest half-mile,” with 160,000 seats.
Twice a year NASCAR races at Bristol, on a spring Sunday and an August Saturday night. In mid-July, when we drove up to the track, it was after hours and the tours were done for the day. The museum was closed. We pretty much had the place to ourselves, with a few other straggler fans.
Damn if a gate to the track was open and some fans were wandering in. We walked down the rows of seat, slipped through an opening in the chain-link fence circling the tracks, and ran laughing up and down the steep raceway banks like concrete sand dunes. Suddenly a red pickup flies by us on the track. “Isn’t that the guys who were out here taking pictures?” asks Steve. Hmmm. Sure enough, track workers left open a drive-in gate down by turn one. Steve and I hurried back to our car.
“You drive,” I told Steve.
“Why?”
“You wanted to see Bristol. Well, nobody’s here and the track’s open. Take a few spins around.”
“Really?”
“Hell, yes. Who wouldn’t want to take their car out on Bristol and turn a couple laps. Damn straight.”
Steve guns our Mazda and its puny put-put engine around the high banks, once, twice, three, four times. That’s two miles. Then it’s my turn. Twice around for a mile. We laughed our asses off.
We weren’t laughing several days later when a patrolman caught us trespassing inside the Martinsville track. The thing is shaped like a paper clip, track walls are scarred and gouged by metal and rubber, with the stands sunk low in a valley, hard to see from the highway.
“Can’t you read? Read the signs?” an old, leathery guard asked me. “I could arrest you for being out here.” Of course two “No trespassing” signs hung on the fence right above where I had slid on my back to wriggle my way on to the track. “Come on, Steve,” I yelled. He was wandering the far end of the paper clip. “Sorry sir,” I said to the guard.
Before the old boy had more time to consider our fate, we were in the Mazda heading east on Highway 58. We were leaving behind the old south culture and heading toward home, to Philadelphia. “Racin’ the way it oughta be!” as the Bristol Motor Speedway motto says. Leaving behind strip malls and Hardees, Long John Silver, Arby’s, Subway, Wendy’s, Burger King, Sam’s Club, Daylight Doughnuts, Doggy Bakery, General Tire, Auto Zone, K Mart, CVS, Lowe’s, Kohl’s, Food City, Walgreens. Cash Now. Cash 1. Bristol Cash. Gun’s ‘n Pawn.
Bristol is the “Birthplace of Country Music,” where the Carter Family came out of Poor Valley to first record here in ’27. Where hell-bent Saturday nights turn into solemn Sunday mornings. “Speak something worth hearing or be silent” commands one church message board. It’s not a long walk from the State Line Bar & Grille, Logan’s Roadhouse, Borderline Billiards to that Sunday morning coming down feeling at the Sacred Cross Church, Volunteer Baptist Church, the Faith Community Fellowship.
Bristol, the Carter Family, old time music, old time racing, they all were part of my romantic reflection until we were about two hours down the road on 58E and the blue lights came out of hiding.
It was a damn good ride while it lasted. Steve and I hit many of our targets. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a subterranean collection of musical misfits, outcasts and geniuses. The Pro Football Hall of Fame. A World War II sub. The Pittsburgh Vintage Car Grand Prix in rainy Schenley Park — MGs, Austin Healys, Jags, Rolls Royces, Lotuses. A 14-inning Pirates game after a torrential rain delay to see ace Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum, thin as a reed, hair like a surfer’s, last year’s Cy Young winner. An Indians game viewed from scorching left-field bleachers, with a clown in the top row pounding on a tom-tom drum that just made you sweat more.
We drove through mountains and hollows in West Virginia. Where the Ghent Fire Department features Mountain State wrestling. Where in White Sulphur Springs, Mud Bogs are organized on city property. Whoever can drive an ATV, 4x4 truck and/or SUVs the furthest distance in the mud pit in the shortest time wins.
One afternoon we drove 40 miles south on Ohio Route 3 from Wooster to Mount Vernon, a rich green stretch of farms, hay fields, pastures, soft hills and a hot haze out on the horizon. Classic Ohio Gothic. I counted 93 barns during that stretch of road. Small, large, aluminum, tin, wooden, brand new and rusted ruins.
We had buffet dinners at Iron Skillets and Golden Corrals. Load the plates high and come back for seconds and thirds. Our minor contribution in the nation’s obesity crisis.
There was that Blacksburg pub where a spunky waitress described what it was to be a Hokie, the Va Tech mascot. “Soon as you get here, the first day, you buy your Hokie tee shirt and from then on you’re a Hokie. It is a family. Especially after the killings.”
“Were you on campus?” I asked.
“Yes. You had to stay wherever you were. Sirens went off and the school sent everyone an email saying there had been a shooting and to stay where you are. We all spent the rest of the day texting and emailing our friends to make sure they were all right.”
“Did you know anyone who was shot?”
“Yeah, my friend Michael was killed, shot in the back.”
There was one night in Athens, Ohio, when Steve and I had dinner at The Oak Room, serenaded by one sorry out-of-tune townie singer-guitarist-harmonica player, trying to win the crowd with ‘70s chestnuts by the Eagles, James Taylor, Pure Prairie League, the Beach Boys. Reminded me how fortune we are that it isn’t the ‘70s anymore, and never will be again.
Another night in Athens I left Steve to ESPN’s Sportscenter in our room at the OU Inn and traipsed up a bluff overlooking the Hocking River and the OU campus. Up there sits what once was the Athens Lunatic Asylum, dark and menacing, with more than 1,800 patients at its peak in the ‘50s. Behind barred windows patients had a panoramic view of the Hocking Valley. Plenty of sunlight and fresh air was the prescription for improved health. Of course some bizarre behaviors and procedures went on behind the barred windows. The focal point of the sprawling complex, spread over hundreds of acres, is a four-story fortress-like intimidating institution. It still stands, a series of set-back wings extending from the main entrance for a total 853 foot length. More than 18 million bricks, all manufactured on the grounds, went into construction of the rock solid building, along with concrete and a tin roof.
What was I doing up there in my bare feet alone with the ghosts?
Three shots of bourbon and a beer at dinner helped lubricate my way. Steve and I had been on the road five days at this point and needed some separation time. I needed a break from the steady rotation of ESPN updates that Steve never tires of. And it’s not all that ghostly up on the old asylum grounds. The hospital had been extensively renovated by OU’s Board of Trustees in the mid-‘90s, renamed The Ridges, and at the cost of four-million dollars turned into an art museum. The refurbished, stately central administration building was named Lin Hall in honor of former Dean of Fine Arts Henry H. Lin, the father of Maya Lin, architect of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. Now it’s one of those recognizable campus landmarks.
I spent the evening sitting up there on The Ridges working the right side of my brain. Call it a baby boomer’s fantasy guilt trip. Fantasizing about hardships we never had to face.
I thought back to our walk through the World War II submarine U.S.S. COD, docked next to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the shores of Lake Erie. “Find them, Chase them, Sink them” was the COD’s motto, accompanied by a graphic of a topedo smashing through the skull of the enemy. So damn cramped and confined. A city 312 feet long. Mess hall/movie theatre. Sleeping berths stacked four high in spots. Mini toilets, showers, washrooms, a laundry, a galley, They stayed trapped idown there up to 74 days on patrol. Twenty-two percent of all U.S. Navy subsmariners were killed in action in World War II. Death, how’d they live with it?
And I imagined what went on behind the dark brick walls of the asylum. Another self-contained city, with a dairy, a farm, a water system. Numb days and nights. Frozen stares. Music and dance shows were put on by patients. Lobotomies peeled back facial skin to run a spike up through the brain, sometimes successful, sometimes not. Screams. Shouts. Howls. Sobs. Most patients remained until they died, and were buried out back if not claimed by families. Rumors of chains on walls. False. Rumors of ghosts, of course. A dark, dank medieval basement for the craziest. An attic full of tight passageways. Lost patients. In the ‘50s and ‘60s the medication revolution commenced and mass institutionalization was out. Soon patients were out on the streets.
Yeah, it had been a damn good trip. There was the afternoon Steve displayed admirable patience, typically not found in large reserves in 17-year-old boys. After getting lost time and again, I finally found the Carter Family Fold and A.P. Carter’s log cabin birthplace and the general store he owned next door. We were in far southwest Virginia in Poor Valley, up against the Clinch Mountain. Steve fiddled with his iPod in the car for a half hour or more while I roamed around shooting pictures. Then I struck up a conversation with a couple inside the Fold. The Carter Fold is a sort of micro-Opry, a barn with a wood-beamed ceiling, ceiling fans, 850 hard-back seats, and a stage with a wooden bench, room for a dozen musicians, and framed photos of the Carter kin and various guest musicians. Off to the left on a podium is an open Bible.
“Of the sisters, Anita had the best voice, that high soprano. June (Johnny Cash’s second wife) was the best entertainer and personality, but she wasn’t the best singer. And then there was Helen,” says Paul, a slight, retired U.S. Department of Agriculture attorney. Faith Collins, a volunteer at the Fold, has talked Hal into staying over another night so he can make the Saturday night show, this one featuring the old-time band Wayne Henderson & Friends. I don’t think I’d have that kind of luck convincing Steve. He’s not much for songs about lost loves, buried lovers, foggy mountain tops, wrecks on the highway.
“It’s in my genes to love music,” says Faith. “I was born dancin’. My dad sang gospel. Sang in quartets. People who don’t have no music in their cars, it’s like a morgue. I don’t understand. Soon as I get in a car I turn on the music. I always have music on in my house. You come here tomorrow night, you’ll be up dancin’. Two years up to 90 years old you’ll see them dancin’. The three of us come out of the kitchen dancin’.”
“I owe you big time,” I said to Steve when I had heard enough and finally returned to the car.
“No problem,” he said. “How’d you find this place?”
“You don’t unless you really want to.”
It’s like finding Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana’s home, which we did courtesy of the Dawg.
Dawg and I have known each other for at least 15 years, with him writing a number of short articles for my magazine. The Dawg played football at West Virginia University, and before that with Joe Montana for a season. Dawg was a skinny sophomore at Ringgold High School, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh. Montana was the senior starting quarterback.
The Montana tour doubles as a tour of Pittsburgh’s destitute Mon Valley. Donora, the Dawg’s hometown, has lost about two-thirds of its population since the mills’ belched and boomed in the ‘20s, 30s and ‘40s. Monongahela, Montana’s hometown, also has dropped two-thirds of its population since the 1970s. Both towns stretch up hills rising from the Monongahela River; both are faded blue-collar capitals with largely empty downtowns and blank, boarded up storefronts. A male resident of Donora today brings home an average salary of about $33,000.
“There’s nothing to do here. No jobs,” says the Dawg. “Used to be a bar on every corner. Millworkers would work all day, stop at the bar after work for shots and beers, get home for dinner, go to bed, get up and do it again and again every day. My dad worked one of the mills for 30 years. Never got sick. Now you gotta get out of here when you’re young or drugs will get you,” says Dawg. “It’s bad.”
A few weeks after our trip came to its abrupt conclusion, I was getting my hair cut, preparing for the court date in Virginia. Rose, who has cut my hair ever since I got out of college, had some muse-like advice. “You know, I know your back story well enough to know this about you. And your son should know this too, if he doesn’t. You’re a romantic.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“An imaginative romantic.”
“Guilty.”
“A bourbon romantic.”
“Guilty.”
“A mandolin romantic.”
“Guilty.”
“You live in the moment”
“Guilty.”
“You’re about experiences.”
“Guilty.”
“And you were on a mission on this trip.”
Rose has more insights than my shrink, and is of course a helluva lot cheaper.
“Yeah? What was that?”
“You wanted to give your son the experience you never were able to have with your dad.”
“Yeah, maybe it was a major ‘make-good.’ Making up for what I didn’t get to do since my dad died when I was 12. But my dad wasn’t a bourban man at all, never drank in front of me, didn’t know anything about NASCAR, and never would have taken me on a trespassing after-hours spin around one of the country’s most famous race tracks.”
“How do you know what crimes your dad might have had in mind? He was an artist, a romantic, he would’ve taken chances somewhere.”
The judge seemed in good spirits the afternoon he was to hear my case in the Halifax County Courthouse. “Let’s get these cases moving,” he said. “There are a lot of people here who don’t want to see me, and I don’t want to see them.”
He had no time for me, that’s for certain. “First thing here I want to say is that the state of Virginia law requires jail time for any speed over 90 miles an hour. The man was going 95. My god, I can land my plane going slower than that,” said the judge.
“I’m not going to touch this case. The law stands as is.”
Ms. Slatterhouse was caught by surprise, then jumped in: “Your honor, the defendant has driven 400 miles to appear here. He has completed an eight-hour driving course, and an orientation session for Habitat for Humanity.”
“I don’t care. Unless you can get the commonwealth attorney to advise against sending this man to jail…”
“When? Now?”
“Yes.”
A few sweaty minutes later my attorney reappeared with the smiling commonwealth attorney.
“I was going out to lunch when I was grabbed to hear this case, your honor,” said the commonwealth attorney. “The trooper says the gentleman was very cooperative when arrested. Given his clean record, the commonwealth does not advise jail time.”
The judge took a breath and looked me over. Maybe he saw another carpetbagging Yankee in a nice jacket and tie, fresh hair cut, trying to squeeze his way out of a tight spot with courtesy and remorse. Hell, all the locals in the room wore flip-flops and shorts. I was over-dressed. The judge wasn’t having any of it.
“I will reserve my comments on what I think of driving 95 miles an hour and keep them to myself. Since no one else here seems interested in this case except me, and the commonwealth has advised against jail…pause…$1250 fine. That’s it. Guilty as charged. I’ve traded you money for jail time,” he said to me.
Ms. Slatterhouse immediately advised me to appeal. That would require another trek down here. No, I was out of my element. A local got caught speeding at 92 MPH and the same judge dismissed his case completely this morning. No jail time. No fine. No nothing. Dismissed. I’ll pay the damn fine in full and hope Steve finds a college that gives him aid money.
Otto stared down at the phone he had just hung up. He paused. “Well, that’s a revolting development.”
I had hired Otto, a portly attorney and friend of my wife’s father, to find me another attorney who would handle my case in Virginia — site of the “revolting development.” He found Ms. Stacy Slatterhouse, with an office across from the Halifax County Courthouse, and we had just debriefed her on the details of my case.
“I can’t promise anything,” said Ms. Slatterhouse.
Days before, Virginia state troopers snared me racing 94 MPH under clear skies and with little traffic on Route 58E along the Virginia-North Carolina border. I was in a 60 MPH zone. They swooped in and nailed me roughly halfway between Roanoke and Richmond, about 400 miles from home near Philadelphia.
94 MPH is double reckless driving, Ms. Slatterhouse informed us. The judge conceivably could reduce the charge to defective equipment. Then again, “94 is a high number, very aggressive driving,” said Ms. Slatterhouse. Ms. Slatterhouse also brought up the touchy business of my son, Steve, being with me when I sprung the trap. “The judge might take into account, how can I put it, some egregious parental role modeling,” said Ms. Slatterhouse. But Steve was sound asleep in the shotgun seat when the blue lights lined up behind us. “What? What’s going on?” he asked groggily, realizing we were boxed in by three brown and tan state patrol cars. His first question was the same one the trooper asked me as he leaned into front seat: “What on earth are you doing going this fast?”
“When you come down for your court date, and make no mistake, you must appear,” said Ms Slatterhouse, “bring along your toothbrush. Just a heads up. You just might spend some nights across the street from the court house in the county jail.”
“You know, I was up your way not long ago,” said one of the troopers after studying my driver’s license. I know. Everybody drives fast up there. It’s different down here. It’s a different world. Why don’t you let your son slide over and drive for a while? He’s driving age, isn’t he?”
Sure he is, we’re out here hunting for a college, after all. That’s what Steve and I had been doing for eight days. I told one of the troopers we were tired and just wanted to get home. A plea he has heard, oh, possibly thousands of times. My bad. I should have stuck with the “different world” rationale. Steve slid behind the wheel and locked in a steady 60 MPH. We said nothing. Hell, we were out of cell phone range and I couldn’t even phone home and freak out on my wife.
I wouldn’t say Steve and I committed to this trip with a high sense of purpose, like actually finding a school for Steve. No, we didn’t drill down too deep. My wife Suze suspected all along we had other plans, other goals for this summertime road trip. To be sure, we stayed away from anything organized, organized campus tours, orientations, interviews, print propaganda handouts. We breezed through campuses, sometimes not even getting out of the car, and went with first impressions and gut feelings:
Penn State — 41,700 students, almost all white. Sprawling vanilla campus without discernable personality. At least the massive football stadium is a walk away from the dorms. A steady rain while we were there left a bland impression.
Indiana University of Pennsylvania — Workable size, 14,310 students. IUP wasn’t on the initial itinerary, but like many decisions on this trip, we improvised on the move. Old projects-like dorms are being demolished for new two- and four-person suites with private baths. This is a trend all across campus America. Kids coddled at home want to bring as much comfort and privacy with them to college as they can. The campus lifestyle factor can be a significant determinant.
University of Pittsburgh — Probably too urban for Steve. Petersen Events Center, where the Pitt Panthers basketball team plays, is a NBA-worthy glass and steel palace. It also houses the student fitness center. Rec centers and student centers are other major “lifestyle” draws on college tours. A classroom is a classroom, a commodity when college shopping, but student centers with multiple flat screen monitors and food courts, and gyms with rock climbing walls, this is part and parcel of creating brand reputations and positioning schools competitively. After 18 years of training, our kids know what to look for when they shop.
University of West Virginia — Confusing campus layout. The school loses points as we lose patience trying to find the football stadium. We find it, it’s locked up, we climb over the gate and stroll the astroturf field. You’ve noted no doubt the emphasis we put on athletic facilities. Colleges pour millions into their athletic budgets every year; athletics is part of the lifestyle equation and brand building; so we feel obligated to check out their investments. Of course that’s horeshit. Steve and I are serious sports fans, have been all our lives, and we’ll take every opportunity (or risk) to walk the fields we see on TV. Beyond sportsdom, Morgantown has too much weedy, ramshackle off-campus housing winding up into the hills. I heard someone once say WVU is too “trailer park.” That’s a helluva image problem for the admissions people to deal with. They’ve got to free the state university from the baggage of the state.
The College of Wooster — Classy, leafy, brick-lined liberal arts campus. Immediately out of our price range. And as Steve asks, “What good does a liberal arts degree do for you?” “It’s your ticket to keep studying a few more years in a grad program,” I explain.
Ohio State University — OSU suffers from bad timing on this trip. Columbus is hot and crowded and we’re hot and tired. Still, we push on to locate the famed Horseshoe, Ohio Stadium, “one of the most recognizable landmarks in all of sports” according to the Buckeye web site. Colleges love to tout recognizable landmarks, and of course most of them are the towering football stadiums. After all, ESPN, CBS Sports, ABC Sports et al don’t come to campuses to photograph the library or the physics lab.
Ohio University — Steve would be a legacy kid here, with both his mom and I OU alumni. “It’s a party school isn’t it?” he asked. “Aren’t they all?” I answer. I think he’s looking to escape his legacy, and more important, that zoombifying eight-hour drive from Philadelphia. OU is in fact a perennial top five finisher in annaul national collegiate party power rankings. The admissions folks grit their teeth and prepare their spin every year the rankings come out. “Oh, that’s such an old story by now…”
Virginia Tech — Steve likes the slate stone architecture of the buildings circling the expansive grass drill field, the heart of the campus has a military feel like West Point. Va Tech is another school standing in the shadows of an enormous football stadium. As mentioned, Steve’s not one for long windshield time, and Va Tech, like OU, is a drive too far.
Actually Steve and I didn’t talk about specific colleges on this tour as much as we went back and forth on areas of study. Steve is taking a shotgun approach to what major to pursue, and I can’t keep up with the rounds of questions. “What do you do with a sports administration major? What if you combined it with journalism? Is journalism dead? What’s a sports information director do? ESPN did a show about them. Seems there is a lot of pressure to those jobs. How much do they get paid. What do you do with a general business degree? What’s business administration? What kind of job could I get in TV production? How do you a get a job with NFL Films or ESPN or The Speed Channel?”
“Wanna see Applachian Bible College?”
“What?”
“Just messin’ with you. You don’t have to figure out the entire arc of your career when you’re 17.”
“But if I don’t know what I want to do, maybe I shouldn’t go to college for a year. Maybe community college. It’s expensive. Give you and mom a break. I know we don’t have a lot of money now.”
As you can see, there are no secrets, financial or otherwise, in our small ranch house. But the boy is prone to thinking too much. Just like his mom, dad and sister. We all need to chill a little more. Of course the stakes of finding an affordable four-year college experience don’t lend themselves to chillin’.
Our road trip talk becomes much easier to handle when music is the topic, which happens at some point every day on this trip. In the back seat sits a cooler packed full of CDs. Steve’s a particular fan of what’s called “Brit Pop,” the wave of British rock and roll bands from the ‘90s. He started listening to The Clash and took it from there. Oasis. Blur. Pulp. Coldplay and Radiohead, the Libertines, Keane. Back to Led Zep, the Beatles, the Stones, the Who. Throw in a lot of Marley, a bit of Dylan and The Band. I don’t want to lay my musical prejudices on him. Pick out another CD, Steve. But what’s most annoying is the iPod generation’s itchy trigger finger that keeps pushing the damn forward button searching for another single track. They’re “single minded,” no different than the transitor radio craze in the ‘60s.
A more complicated topic that often comes up has to do with what I’d call “cultures,” for lack of anything more descriptive. Steve doesn’t use the word per se, but he’s something of an anthropologist. Now how do you make money out of that? For years he’s followed the NASCAR culture and the Formula One racing culture. College football cultures and traditions, especially the hardcore southern schools and midwest Big Ten schools in towns and states without professional teams. Texas and Ohio high school football cultures. Books like “Friday Night Lights,” and “It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium.”
Steve talks some on this trip about the rust belt culture we’ve been driving through.Pittsburgh. Cleveland. Akron. Canton. He finds something interesting in the decay and the people and the towns hanging on. He zeroes in on the tortured history of the Cleveland Browns. Something about the old school plain orange helmet he likes. And the Browns’ history of Hall of Famers, die-hard fans, the Dawg Pound, and never being in a Super Bowl.
Dipping into NASCAR culture was a main attraction of this road trip. We aimed to see the Bristol (Tennessee) and Martinsville (Virginia) tracks. The Martinsville track is the smallest NASCAR races on the circuit. Bristol, aka “Thunder Valley,” is a pilgrimmage shrine. If you took the grandstands at Daytona International Speedway, which stretch for miles, wrapped those stands around and around, coiled them tight as a drum, higher and higher around a half-mile oval, until you had a ten-story coliseum, that’s Bristol Motor Speeday. The “world’s fastest half-mile,” with 160,000 seats.
Twice a year NASCAR races at Bristol, on a spring Sunday and an August Saturday night. In mid-July, when we drove up to the track, it was after hours and the tours were done for the day. The museum was closed. We pretty much had the place to ourselves, with a few other straggler fans.
Damn if a gate to the track was open and some fans were wandering in. We walked down the rows of seat, slipped through an opening in the chain-link fence circling the tracks, and ran laughing up and down the steep raceway banks like concrete sand dunes. Suddenly a red pickup flies by us on the track. “Isn’t that the guys who were out here taking pictures?” asks Steve. Hmmm. Sure enough, track workers left open a drive-in gate down by turn one. Steve and I hurried back to our car.
“You drive,” I told Steve.
“Why?”
“You wanted to see Bristol. Well, nobody’s here and the track’s open. Take a few spins around.”
“Really?”
“Hell, yes. Who wouldn’t want to take their car out on Bristol and turn a couple laps. Damn straight.”
Steve guns our Mazda and its puny put-put engine around the high banks, once, twice, three, four times. That’s two miles. Then it’s my turn. Twice around for a mile. We laughed our asses off.
We weren’t laughing several days later when a patrolman caught us trespassing inside the Martinsville track. The thing is shaped like a paper clip, track walls are scarred and gouged by metal and rubber, with the stands sunk low in a valley, hard to see from the highway.
“Can’t you read? Read the signs?” an old, leathery guard asked me. “I could arrest you for being out here.” Of course two “No trespassing” signs hung on the fence right above where I had slid on my back to wriggle my way on to the track. “Come on, Steve,” I yelled. He was wandering the far end of the paper clip. “Sorry sir,” I said to the guard.
Before the old boy had more time to consider our fate, we were in the Mazda heading east on Highway 58. We were leaving behind the old south culture and heading toward home, to Philadelphia. “Racin’ the way it oughta be!” as the Bristol Motor Speedway motto says. Leaving behind strip malls and Hardees, Long John Silver, Arby’s, Subway, Wendy’s, Burger King, Sam’s Club, Daylight Doughnuts, Doggy Bakery, General Tire, Auto Zone, K Mart, CVS, Lowe’s, Kohl’s, Food City, Walgreens. Cash Now. Cash 1. Bristol Cash. Gun’s ‘n Pawn.
Bristol is the “Birthplace of Country Music,” where the Carter Family came out of Poor Valley to first record here in ’27. Where hell-bent Saturday nights turn into solemn Sunday mornings. “Speak something worth hearing or be silent” commands one church message board. It’s not a long walk from the State Line Bar & Grille, Logan’s Roadhouse, Borderline Billiards to that Sunday morning coming down feeling at the Sacred Cross Church, Volunteer Baptist Church, the Faith Community Fellowship.
Bristol, the Carter Family, old time music, old time racing, they all were part of my romantic reflection until we were about two hours down the road on 58E and the blue lights came out of hiding.
It was a damn good ride while it lasted. Steve and I hit many of our targets. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a subterranean collection of musical misfits, outcasts and geniuses. The Pro Football Hall of Fame. A World War II sub. The Pittsburgh Vintage Car Grand Prix in rainy Schenley Park — MGs, Austin Healys, Jags, Rolls Royces, Lotuses. A 14-inning Pirates game after a torrential rain delay to see ace Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum, thin as a reed, hair like a surfer’s, last year’s Cy Young winner. An Indians game viewed from scorching left-field bleachers, with a clown in the top row pounding on a tom-tom drum that just made you sweat more.
We drove through mountains and hollows in West Virginia. Where the Ghent Fire Department features Mountain State wrestling. Where in White Sulphur Springs, Mud Bogs are organized on city property. Whoever can drive an ATV, 4x4 truck and/or SUVs the furthest distance in the mud pit in the shortest time wins.
One afternoon we drove 40 miles south on Ohio Route 3 from Wooster to Mount Vernon, a rich green stretch of farms, hay fields, pastures, soft hills and a hot haze out on the horizon. Classic Ohio Gothic. I counted 93 barns during that stretch of road. Small, large, aluminum, tin, wooden, brand new and rusted ruins.
We had buffet dinners at Iron Skillets and Golden Corrals. Load the plates high and come back for seconds and thirds. Our minor contribution in the nation’s obesity crisis.
There was that Blacksburg pub where a spunky waitress described what it was to be a Hokie, the Va Tech mascot. “Soon as you get here, the first day, you buy your Hokie tee shirt and from then on you’re a Hokie. It is a family. Especially after the killings.”
“Were you on campus?” I asked.
“Yes. You had to stay wherever you were. Sirens went off and the school sent everyone an email saying there had been a shooting and to stay where you are. We all spent the rest of the day texting and emailing our friends to make sure they were all right.”
“Did you know anyone who was shot?”
“Yeah, my friend Michael was killed, shot in the back.”
There was one night in Athens, Ohio, when Steve and I had dinner at The Oak Room, serenaded by one sorry out-of-tune townie singer-guitarist-harmonica player, trying to win the crowd with ‘70s chestnuts by the Eagles, James Taylor, Pure Prairie League, the Beach Boys. Reminded me how fortune we are that it isn’t the ‘70s anymore, and never will be again.
Another night in Athens I left Steve to ESPN’s Sportscenter in our room at the OU Inn and traipsed up a bluff overlooking the Hocking River and the OU campus. Up there sits what once was the Athens Lunatic Asylum, dark and menacing, with more than 1,800 patients at its peak in the ‘50s. Behind barred windows patients had a panoramic view of the Hocking Valley. Plenty of sunlight and fresh air was the prescription for improved health. Of course some bizarre behaviors and procedures went on behind the barred windows. The focal point of the sprawling complex, spread over hundreds of acres, is a four-story fortress-like intimidating institution. It still stands, a series of set-back wings extending from the main entrance for a total 853 foot length. More than 18 million bricks, all manufactured on the grounds, went into construction of the rock solid building, along with concrete and a tin roof.
What was I doing up there in my bare feet alone with the ghosts?
Three shots of bourbon and a beer at dinner helped lubricate my way. Steve and I had been on the road five days at this point and needed some separation time. I needed a break from the steady rotation of ESPN updates that Steve never tires of. And it’s not all that ghostly up on the old asylum grounds. The hospital had been extensively renovated by OU’s Board of Trustees in the mid-‘90s, renamed The Ridges, and at the cost of four-million dollars turned into an art museum. The refurbished, stately central administration building was named Lin Hall in honor of former Dean of Fine Arts Henry H. Lin, the father of Maya Lin, architect of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. Now it’s one of those recognizable campus landmarks.
I spent the evening sitting up there on The Ridges working the right side of my brain. Call it a baby boomer’s fantasy guilt trip. Fantasizing about hardships we never had to face.
I thought back to our walk through the World War II submarine U.S.S. COD, docked next to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the shores of Lake Erie. “Find them, Chase them, Sink them” was the COD’s motto, accompanied by a graphic of a topedo smashing through the skull of the enemy. So damn cramped and confined. A city 312 feet long. Mess hall/movie theatre. Sleeping berths stacked four high in spots. Mini toilets, showers, washrooms, a laundry, a galley, They stayed trapped idown there up to 74 days on patrol. Twenty-two percent of all U.S. Navy subsmariners were killed in action in World War II. Death, how’d they live with it?
And I imagined what went on behind the dark brick walls of the asylum. Another self-contained city, with a dairy, a farm, a water system. Numb days and nights. Frozen stares. Music and dance shows were put on by patients. Lobotomies peeled back facial skin to run a spike up through the brain, sometimes successful, sometimes not. Screams. Shouts. Howls. Sobs. Most patients remained until they died, and were buried out back if not claimed by families. Rumors of chains on walls. False. Rumors of ghosts, of course. A dark, dank medieval basement for the craziest. An attic full of tight passageways. Lost patients. In the ‘50s and ‘60s the medication revolution commenced and mass institutionalization was out. Soon patients were out on the streets.
Yeah, it had been a damn good trip. There was the afternoon Steve displayed admirable patience, typically not found in large reserves in 17-year-old boys. After getting lost time and again, I finally found the Carter Family Fold and A.P. Carter’s log cabin birthplace and the general store he owned next door. We were in far southwest Virginia in Poor Valley, up against the Clinch Mountain. Steve fiddled with his iPod in the car for a half hour or more while I roamed around shooting pictures. Then I struck up a conversation with a couple inside the Fold. The Carter Fold is a sort of micro-Opry, a barn with a wood-beamed ceiling, ceiling fans, 850 hard-back seats, and a stage with a wooden bench, room for a dozen musicians, and framed photos of the Carter kin and various guest musicians. Off to the left on a podium is an open Bible.
“Of the sisters, Anita had the best voice, that high soprano. June (Johnny Cash’s second wife) was the best entertainer and personality, but she wasn’t the best singer. And then there was Helen,” says Paul, a slight, retired U.S. Department of Agriculture attorney. Faith Collins, a volunteer at the Fold, has talked Hal into staying over another night so he can make the Saturday night show, this one featuring the old-time band Wayne Henderson & Friends. I don’t think I’d have that kind of luck convincing Steve. He’s not much for songs about lost loves, buried lovers, foggy mountain tops, wrecks on the highway.
“It’s in my genes to love music,” says Faith. “I was born dancin’. My dad sang gospel. Sang in quartets. People who don’t have no music in their cars, it’s like a morgue. I don’t understand. Soon as I get in a car I turn on the music. I always have music on in my house. You come here tomorrow night, you’ll be up dancin’. Two years up to 90 years old you’ll see them dancin’. The three of us come out of the kitchen dancin’.”
“I owe you big time,” I said to Steve when I had heard enough and finally returned to the car.
“No problem,” he said. “How’d you find this place?”
“You don’t unless you really want to.”
It’s like finding Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana’s home, which we did courtesy of the Dawg.
Dawg and I have known each other for at least 15 years, with him writing a number of short articles for my magazine. The Dawg played football at West Virginia University, and before that with Joe Montana for a season. Dawg was a skinny sophomore at Ringgold High School, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh. Montana was the senior starting quarterback.
The Montana tour doubles as a tour of Pittsburgh’s destitute Mon Valley. Donora, the Dawg’s hometown, has lost about two-thirds of its population since the mills’ belched and boomed in the ‘20s, 30s and ‘40s. Monongahela, Montana’s hometown, also has dropped two-thirds of its population since the 1970s. Both towns stretch up hills rising from the Monongahela River; both are faded blue-collar capitals with largely empty downtowns and blank, boarded up storefronts. A male resident of Donora today brings home an average salary of about $33,000.
“There’s nothing to do here. No jobs,” says the Dawg. “Used to be a bar on every corner. Millworkers would work all day, stop at the bar after work for shots and beers, get home for dinner, go to bed, get up and do it again and again every day. My dad worked one of the mills for 30 years. Never got sick. Now you gotta get out of here when you’re young or drugs will get you,” says Dawg. “It’s bad.”
A few weeks after our trip came to its abrupt conclusion, I was getting my hair cut, preparing for the court date in Virginia. Rose, who has cut my hair ever since I got out of college, had some muse-like advice. “You know, I know your back story well enough to know this about you. And your son should know this too, if he doesn’t. You’re a romantic.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“An imaginative romantic.”
“Guilty.”
“A bourbon romantic.”
“Guilty.”
“A mandolin romantic.”
“Guilty.”
“You live in the moment”
“Guilty.”
“You’re about experiences.”
“Guilty.”
“And you were on a mission on this trip.”
Rose has more insights than my shrink, and is of course a helluva lot cheaper.
“Yeah? What was that?”
“You wanted to give your son the experience you never were able to have with your dad.”
“Yeah, maybe it was a major ‘make-good.’ Making up for what I didn’t get to do since my dad died when I was 12. But my dad wasn’t a bourban man at all, never drank in front of me, didn’t know anything about NASCAR, and never would have taken me on a trespassing after-hours spin around one of the country’s most famous race tracks.”
“How do you know what crimes your dad might have had in mind? He was an artist, a romantic, he would’ve taken chances somewhere.”
The judge seemed in good spirits the afternoon he was to hear my case in the Halifax County Courthouse. “Let’s get these cases moving,” he said. “There are a lot of people here who don’t want to see me, and I don’t want to see them.”
He had no time for me, that’s for certain. “First thing here I want to say is that the state of Virginia law requires jail time for any speed over 90 miles an hour. The man was going 95. My god, I can land my plane going slower than that,” said the judge.
“I’m not going to touch this case. The law stands as is.”
Ms. Slatterhouse was caught by surprise, then jumped in: “Your honor, the defendant has driven 400 miles to appear here. He has completed an eight-hour driving course, and an orientation session for Habitat for Humanity.”
“I don’t care. Unless you can get the commonwealth attorney to advise against sending this man to jail…”
“When? Now?”
“Yes.”
A few sweaty minutes later my attorney reappeared with the smiling commonwealth attorney.
“I was going out to lunch when I was grabbed to hear this case, your honor,” said the commonwealth attorney. “The trooper says the gentleman was very cooperative when arrested. Given his clean record, the commonwealth does not advise jail time.”
The judge took a breath and looked me over. Maybe he saw another carpetbagging Yankee in a nice jacket and tie, fresh hair cut, trying to squeeze his way out of a tight spot with courtesy and remorse. Hell, all the locals in the room wore flip-flops and shorts. I was over-dressed. The judge wasn’t having any of it.
“I will reserve my comments on what I think of driving 95 miles an hour and keep them to myself. Since no one else here seems interested in this case except me, and the commonwealth has advised against jail…pause…$1250 fine. That’s it. Guilty as charged. I’ve traded you money for jail time,” he said to me.
Ms. Slatterhouse immediately advised me to appeal. That would require another trek down here. No, I was out of my element. A local got caught speeding at 92 MPH and the same judge dismissed his case completely this morning. No jail time. No fine. No nothing. Dismissed. I’ll pay the damn fine in full and hope Steve finds a college that gives him aid money.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Knockin’ on Johnny Cash’s door
I pulled up in front of Johnny Cash’s boyhood home and couldn’t tell if anyone was home or not. A rusted old car sat in the gravel driveway, but the beaten-down wood frame shack, white with red trim around the windows, with a sloped roof jutting out over a small front porch, appeared empty. Johnny lived here from age three, in 1935, until graduating from high school in 1950. This is where he picked cotton, learned to play guitar and write songs, lost his brother Jack in a saw mill accident, listened to gospel music on the radio, and sang on a local radio station in high school
You pass just one other home on Arkansas West County Road 924 before reaching the Cash place. West County Road 924 is nothing more than a narrow dirt lane with potholes and mud puddles that just about swallowed up my tiny Ford Focus rental. Lined by tilting, wind-whipped wooden telephone poles and sagging wires, it cuts through miles of flat rice and bean farmland outside of Dyess, Arkansas, population 515, about 38 miles northwest of Memphis. The 2006 Cash biopic, “Walk the Line,” has overhead crane shots of young Johnny walking alone on barren and desolate 924. When I stopped by wearing a tweed jacket and tie after making sales calls in Memphis, the late afternoon chill, spitting rain and low clouds of November cast the bottomland in black and gray. A perfect day for the man in black.
In Philadelphia, where I’m from, you don’t just walk up to a stranger’s house and knock to see if anyone’s home. My internet research said the Cash place was owned and occupied by a William Stegall. Supposedly, he allows photographs for a donation, and there is a donation box out front so you don’t have to bother him.
I didn’t see any box as I slowly drove past, snapping photos from my open window. I did see a large hand-scrawled “Welcome” sign, which was enough encouragement for me to stop, take a chance, and knock on the front door.
“Come on in,” I was surprised to hear. Again, where I come from you don’t let strangers in your house, sight unseen. Let alone in the rural hinterlands at the isolated iconic home of one of the 20th century’s most influential musicians. Anyone from anywhere could be at the door. I pushed the creaking door open and there sat Willie in a recliner, watching a game show on a small TV with rabbit ears sitting on a stand.
I introduced myself and thanked him for inviting me in. The last thing I expected. Willie, short, on the hefty side, wearing several layers of worn t-shirts and sweaters and a day’s stubble of whiskers, said he’ll be 75 years old on April 14, 2010. He bought the Cash home “34 years ago, 35 in 2010, for $4,500,” he said, “from an old boy from Tupelo who got in trouble drinking, lost his wife, so he sold it to me. It’s home. It’s peaceful here, I enjoy it, but I’m getting’ old.”
I sat down on one of two ripped sofas in the living room. Willie’s cat jumped from one to the other. A rusted wood stove sat in the room, unused. The walls were peeling white-painted wooden planks with the wallpaper stripped away. A single bare bulb screwed into the ceiling cast a hard light on the wooden parquet floor.
“I just got in,” Willie said, motioning to the two electric heaters warming up. This was a world away from the “Blingdom” promoting Elvis’s Graceland on Memphis billboards.
“It’s nice meetin’ people,” said Willie. “I can’t keep up with ‘em all.” He had a way of immediately putting you at ease. “It’s better to be a good person than a mean person,” he said at one point. “People come from all over, across the water (the Atlantic Ocean), they know more about Johnny Cash than I do. Tour buses run out here from Memphis and Little Rock. One time a fella was selling bags of dirt from the yard for a dollar. The producer of that movie, he came in one time with Cuban cigars, said he wanted to sit around and get a feel for the place. Wanted me to show him how to pick cotton. Here, let me show you around.”
The kitchen sink was piled and jammed with a couple of week’s worth of dirty plates, pots and pans. The dining room table was piled with papers. Seven Cash children lived in this five-room house. Willie, walking with his cane, took me out back through sliding glass doors to show me where he planned to fix up a shed and clear out a small junkyard. That’s if he stays around. “I’ll have it fixed up by April if I’m still here,” he said. On Friday Willie said he was meeting with a banker from Little Rock who wanted to buy the property. “The state wants to buy it too, and pave the road. My ex-wife wants me to sell it. I want the cash in hand. You can’t believe half of what you hear.” Willie lives by himself. One of his sons comes over regularly to help him out. He still works, operating Caterpillar backhoes and excavators.
“I gotta quit,” he said. “But you get used to working and it’s hard to sit down and quit. You know what I mean.” I took it he was referring to my jacket and tie. “If they buy it, I might move to Wilson (a town to the east on the Mississippi River). Nice folks there. I don’t want a place in town. Want to be out where I’m by myself.”
Willie walked me out to the front yard and saw my mud-splattered Ford Focus parked down the road. “What’d ya park way down there for? You come back anytime. And park in the driveway, not way out there.”
I bounced along West County Road 924, looking at the empty land where Willie said “a lot of people just moved off,” thinking if I ever came back the road would be paved, Willie’s driveway too. There would be no pots and pans in the sink. The Cash place would be as clean as Elvis’s pristine birthplace in Tupelo. Thy “Blingdom” come.
You pass just one other home on Arkansas West County Road 924 before reaching the Cash place. West County Road 924 is nothing more than a narrow dirt lane with potholes and mud puddles that just about swallowed up my tiny Ford Focus rental. Lined by tilting, wind-whipped wooden telephone poles and sagging wires, it cuts through miles of flat rice and bean farmland outside of Dyess, Arkansas, population 515, about 38 miles northwest of Memphis. The 2006 Cash biopic, “Walk the Line,” has overhead crane shots of young Johnny walking alone on barren and desolate 924. When I stopped by wearing a tweed jacket and tie after making sales calls in Memphis, the late afternoon chill, spitting rain and low clouds of November cast the bottomland in black and gray. A perfect day for the man in black.
In Philadelphia, where I’m from, you don’t just walk up to a stranger’s house and knock to see if anyone’s home. My internet research said the Cash place was owned and occupied by a William Stegall. Supposedly, he allows photographs for a donation, and there is a donation box out front so you don’t have to bother him.
I didn’t see any box as I slowly drove past, snapping photos from my open window. I did see a large hand-scrawled “Welcome” sign, which was enough encouragement for me to stop, take a chance, and knock on the front door.
“Come on in,” I was surprised to hear. Again, where I come from you don’t let strangers in your house, sight unseen. Let alone in the rural hinterlands at the isolated iconic home of one of the 20th century’s most influential musicians. Anyone from anywhere could be at the door. I pushed the creaking door open and there sat Willie in a recliner, watching a game show on a small TV with rabbit ears sitting on a stand.
I introduced myself and thanked him for inviting me in. The last thing I expected. Willie, short, on the hefty side, wearing several layers of worn t-shirts and sweaters and a day’s stubble of whiskers, said he’ll be 75 years old on April 14, 2010. He bought the Cash home “34 years ago, 35 in 2010, for $4,500,” he said, “from an old boy from Tupelo who got in trouble drinking, lost his wife, so he sold it to me. It’s home. It’s peaceful here, I enjoy it, but I’m getting’ old.”
I sat down on one of two ripped sofas in the living room. Willie’s cat jumped from one to the other. A rusted wood stove sat in the room, unused. The walls were peeling white-painted wooden planks with the wallpaper stripped away. A single bare bulb screwed into the ceiling cast a hard light on the wooden parquet floor.
“I just got in,” Willie said, motioning to the two electric heaters warming up. This was a world away from the “Blingdom” promoting Elvis’s Graceland on Memphis billboards.
“It’s nice meetin’ people,” said Willie. “I can’t keep up with ‘em all.” He had a way of immediately putting you at ease. “It’s better to be a good person than a mean person,” he said at one point. “People come from all over, across the water (the Atlantic Ocean), they know more about Johnny Cash than I do. Tour buses run out here from Memphis and Little Rock. One time a fella was selling bags of dirt from the yard for a dollar. The producer of that movie, he came in one time with Cuban cigars, said he wanted to sit around and get a feel for the place. Wanted me to show him how to pick cotton. Here, let me show you around.”
The kitchen sink was piled and jammed with a couple of week’s worth of dirty plates, pots and pans. The dining room table was piled with papers. Seven Cash children lived in this five-room house. Willie, walking with his cane, took me out back through sliding glass doors to show me where he planned to fix up a shed and clear out a small junkyard. That’s if he stays around. “I’ll have it fixed up by April if I’m still here,” he said. On Friday Willie said he was meeting with a banker from Little Rock who wanted to buy the property. “The state wants to buy it too, and pave the road. My ex-wife wants me to sell it. I want the cash in hand. You can’t believe half of what you hear.” Willie lives by himself. One of his sons comes over regularly to help him out. He still works, operating Caterpillar backhoes and excavators.
“I gotta quit,” he said. “But you get used to working and it’s hard to sit down and quit. You know what I mean.” I took it he was referring to my jacket and tie. “If they buy it, I might move to Wilson (a town to the east on the Mississippi River). Nice folks there. I don’t want a place in town. Want to be out where I’m by myself.”
Willie walked me out to the front yard and saw my mud-splattered Ford Focus parked down the road. “What’d ya park way down there for? You come back anytime. And park in the driveway, not way out there.”
I bounced along West County Road 924, looking at the empty land where Willie said “a lot of people just moved off,” thinking if I ever came back the road would be paved, Willie’s driveway too. There would be no pots and pans in the sink. The Cash place would be as clean as Elvis’s pristine birthplace in Tupelo. Thy “Blingdom” come.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Update from Owl Road
Previously on Owl Road, when I last wrote about it, back in 1986, we had freshly emigrated from center city Philadelphia, Fitler Square. I was nursing a sick lawn mower, we were weighing gutter guard options, sizing up storm doors, and propping up a sagging carport. Kids were a consideration, but not a reality. I was unaware of the BK/EC great divide: Before Kids and Ensuing Chaos.
A couple of nights ago, Monday night, about seven, I was heading out to take son Steve for a lesson in the lost art of driving stick shift. Something seriously more harrowing than teaching him to drive automatic a year or so ago. If Steve stops for any reason on a hill while driving stick, we’re roadkill.
I’m coming out of the house and down the street a mammoth white tractor-trailer is attempting to squeeze onto Owl Road. Must be 30-40 feet long, high enough to break tree limbs. Owl Road has no sidewalks and is probably 30 feet wide, enough for two cars to pass. This massive tractor-trailer is like some spaceship gliding through the neighborhood. Completely alien.
What the hell? Is someone moving? No. Furniture being delivered? There’s a round fellow in a white tee shirt going door to door. Maybe he can’t find the address. I motion him over. “I’ve got a permit,” he yells, waving a laminated piece of something or other. “From the township. So we can go trying to sell this furniture.” He points back at the truck. “We got stuck with this load. Came up from North Carolina and the place we were to drop it at is out of business.” He’s got thick southern drawl. The tired eyes of a long distance hauler. “We’re selling High Point, North Carolina furniture right off the truck. Go see for yourself. Side doors are open.”
This guy is lost in more ways than one. First, he fails to realize in our little neighborhood any stranger coming a knocking at your door will scare the shit out of folks. That southern accent just makes matters worse. You simply don’t come across southern accents on Owl Road. In fact, Owl Road is absent of accents. Neighbors are peering out their windows, drawing the blinds, locking doors. What kind of con is this?
One neighbor down the street is out in his driveway when one of the good old boys approaches him. “Got real good furniture here. Sofas. Take a look.” My neighbor, a Long Island transplant and inherently suspicious New Yorker, keeps his distance like the guy’s carrying the H1N1 virus. “No, no, no thanks, not for me,” he shakes his head. Is this stuff hot? Possibly, but doubtful. This is a pretty damn clumsy scam if that’s what it’s about
I hop up to take a look inside the trailer. Steve is back in the house. So is everyone else. Batten down the hatches. No one ventures out to see what’s up. Sure as hell isn’t the ice cream man. There is some fine High Point wood furniture packed tight inside the trailer. Large, over-stuffed sofas and leather chairs. A grandfather clock. Some elegant wood carving. “This stuff is nice but too damn big for my house,” I tell a guy who says he’s from Winston-Salem. “We got another truck,” he says. “Selling it wholesale. Spread the word.”
How this whale of a trailer ever got from the turnpike to little old Owl Road I’ll never tell you. But they picked the wrong neighborhood for peddling, that’s for certain. Owl Road homes are tidy stucco ranchers from the mid-‘50s. You’d never get their big-ticket furniture through a front door. They should be up in one of the new developments with all the sprawling decks and cathedral ceilings. First came the pharmaceutical companies out this way, then the old farming families around Valley Forge sold out to the developers. Next came scientists and engineers from around the world. Accents abound up in the developments.
In contrast, Old Road is a throwback neighborhood. It’s proven to be sturdy and resilient in the 23 years we’ve been here. The neighbors on either side of us moved in more than 50 years ago, original settlers when this old pig farm was bulldozed into Birdland. It’s Birdland because the short, curvy streets have names like Owl, Sparrow, Thrush, Cardinal, Lark, Pheasant. You see, the first American home of John James Audubon, built in 1763, sits only a mile down the road.
Ten homes sit along Owl Road, each on a half-acre lot. Developers today would put 20 or 30 up. Of course right now nothing is going up anywhere, except “For Sale” signs. Not on Owl Road, though. Like I said, folks here are resilient. It’s probably 17, 18 years since someone new moved to Owl Road. That’s not counting the very quiet, almost invisible black man, Ben, who rents at one end of the street. A Mexican family moved in around the corner a couple of years ago. A small shrine to the Virgin Mary, with a mound of stones, pinwheels and a concrete statue sits square in the middle of their front yard, lit at night by two small spotlights. Soon as they moved in with their flaming red pickup the guy to their left planted a “For Sale” sign in the middle of his front yard.
On Owl Road today live a couple of widows, couple of grandparents, a divorced fortysomething father, a husband and wife who own a barbershop in the mall, an office products sales manager, a programmer for a defense contractor. Then there’s me. I write and edit from my home office, that sagging carport long ago enclosed. Right off of the kitchen, the office has been operational since 2002.
Owl Road provides the solitude for sustained concentration. Neighbors keep to themselves. If a police car drives by it’s unusual. Houses are sealed tight, central air in the summer, so you hear nothing, really. Even the youngest kids are in middle school or high school now.
One topic that does draw the neighbors out some, at least the moms, has to do with the notion of how much damage has been inflicted on the kids by growing up in the dwarf houses of Owl Road. Any number of their friends in this sprawling school district of ours live up in the developments where the sidewalks have no end, and no purpose, really. In the far reaches of the district, there are brick castles that would not be out of place in Beverly Hills or Bel Air.
It can be tricky talking to eight-year-olds about materialism. They are already consumers, of course, they just don't know it. Only a few times over the years have I heard Kate and Steve complain about living in confined quarters. Mostly when they were denied a sleepover because “there’s just not enough room; we’re all on the same floor and the TV will be too loud.”
Somehow they’ve managed. How their parents did is another story.
Now after 23 years the kids are pretty much up and out. That storm door has been replaced once. Maybe. Gutter guards never have been replaced. Never worked in the first place. I planted a pine sapling out back that Osborne gave me; the thing is now a good 30 feet high. Got two dogs, a five-pound thing with one eye, and a 50-pound cross between a polar bear with white fur and black, blank eyes, and a wolf. Don’t believe it’s a dog at all. We keep the grounds trim enough to avoid being shunned by the neighbors.
A couple of nights ago, Monday night, about seven, I was heading out to take son Steve for a lesson in the lost art of driving stick shift. Something seriously more harrowing than teaching him to drive automatic a year or so ago. If Steve stops for any reason on a hill while driving stick, we’re roadkill.
I’m coming out of the house and down the street a mammoth white tractor-trailer is attempting to squeeze onto Owl Road. Must be 30-40 feet long, high enough to break tree limbs. Owl Road has no sidewalks and is probably 30 feet wide, enough for two cars to pass. This massive tractor-trailer is like some spaceship gliding through the neighborhood. Completely alien.
What the hell? Is someone moving? No. Furniture being delivered? There’s a round fellow in a white tee shirt going door to door. Maybe he can’t find the address. I motion him over. “I’ve got a permit,” he yells, waving a laminated piece of something or other. “From the township. So we can go trying to sell this furniture.” He points back at the truck. “We got stuck with this load. Came up from North Carolina and the place we were to drop it at is out of business.” He’s got thick southern drawl. The tired eyes of a long distance hauler. “We’re selling High Point, North Carolina furniture right off the truck. Go see for yourself. Side doors are open.”
This guy is lost in more ways than one. First, he fails to realize in our little neighborhood any stranger coming a knocking at your door will scare the shit out of folks. That southern accent just makes matters worse. You simply don’t come across southern accents on Owl Road. In fact, Owl Road is absent of accents. Neighbors are peering out their windows, drawing the blinds, locking doors. What kind of con is this?
One neighbor down the street is out in his driveway when one of the good old boys approaches him. “Got real good furniture here. Sofas. Take a look.” My neighbor, a Long Island transplant and inherently suspicious New Yorker, keeps his distance like the guy’s carrying the H1N1 virus. “No, no, no thanks, not for me,” he shakes his head. Is this stuff hot? Possibly, but doubtful. This is a pretty damn clumsy scam if that’s what it’s about
I hop up to take a look inside the trailer. Steve is back in the house. So is everyone else. Batten down the hatches. No one ventures out to see what’s up. Sure as hell isn’t the ice cream man. There is some fine High Point wood furniture packed tight inside the trailer. Large, over-stuffed sofas and leather chairs. A grandfather clock. Some elegant wood carving. “This stuff is nice but too damn big for my house,” I tell a guy who says he’s from Winston-Salem. “We got another truck,” he says. “Selling it wholesale. Spread the word.”
How this whale of a trailer ever got from the turnpike to little old Owl Road I’ll never tell you. But they picked the wrong neighborhood for peddling, that’s for certain. Owl Road homes are tidy stucco ranchers from the mid-‘50s. You’d never get their big-ticket furniture through a front door. They should be up in one of the new developments with all the sprawling decks and cathedral ceilings. First came the pharmaceutical companies out this way, then the old farming families around Valley Forge sold out to the developers. Next came scientists and engineers from around the world. Accents abound up in the developments.
In contrast, Old Road is a throwback neighborhood. It’s proven to be sturdy and resilient in the 23 years we’ve been here. The neighbors on either side of us moved in more than 50 years ago, original settlers when this old pig farm was bulldozed into Birdland. It’s Birdland because the short, curvy streets have names like Owl, Sparrow, Thrush, Cardinal, Lark, Pheasant. You see, the first American home of John James Audubon, built in 1763, sits only a mile down the road.
Ten homes sit along Owl Road, each on a half-acre lot. Developers today would put 20 or 30 up. Of course right now nothing is going up anywhere, except “For Sale” signs. Not on Owl Road, though. Like I said, folks here are resilient. It’s probably 17, 18 years since someone new moved to Owl Road. That’s not counting the very quiet, almost invisible black man, Ben, who rents at one end of the street. A Mexican family moved in around the corner a couple of years ago. A small shrine to the Virgin Mary, with a mound of stones, pinwheels and a concrete statue sits square in the middle of their front yard, lit at night by two small spotlights. Soon as they moved in with their flaming red pickup the guy to their left planted a “For Sale” sign in the middle of his front yard.
On Owl Road today live a couple of widows, couple of grandparents, a divorced fortysomething father, a husband and wife who own a barbershop in the mall, an office products sales manager, a programmer for a defense contractor. Then there’s me. I write and edit from my home office, that sagging carport long ago enclosed. Right off of the kitchen, the office has been operational since 2002.
Owl Road provides the solitude for sustained concentration. Neighbors keep to themselves. If a police car drives by it’s unusual. Houses are sealed tight, central air in the summer, so you hear nothing, really. Even the youngest kids are in middle school or high school now.
One topic that does draw the neighbors out some, at least the moms, has to do with the notion of how much damage has been inflicted on the kids by growing up in the dwarf houses of Owl Road. Any number of their friends in this sprawling school district of ours live up in the developments where the sidewalks have no end, and no purpose, really. In the far reaches of the district, there are brick castles that would not be out of place in Beverly Hills or Bel Air.
It can be tricky talking to eight-year-olds about materialism. They are already consumers, of course, they just don't know it. Only a few times over the years have I heard Kate and Steve complain about living in confined quarters. Mostly when they were denied a sleepover because “there’s just not enough room; we’re all on the same floor and the TV will be too loud.”
Somehow they’ve managed. How their parents did is another story.
Now after 23 years the kids are pretty much up and out. That storm door has been replaced once. Maybe. Gutter guards never have been replaced. Never worked in the first place. I planted a pine sapling out back that Osborne gave me; the thing is now a good 30 feet high. Got two dogs, a five-pound thing with one eye, and a 50-pound cross between a polar bear with white fur and black, blank eyes, and a wolf. Don’t believe it’s a dog at all. We keep the grounds trim enough to avoid being shunned by the neighbors.
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