This is a special edition of my vlog for my nephew, Will Carter, whose birthday I missed while out on the road.
The week of work in Redding was nice, with beautiful weather and uneventful events. I have some photos of the Sundial Bridge in Redding that I will post to flickr soon. Here are three:
I am on my way back to Alabama this week. I still owe you a post on the last and most treacherous part of the drive to California. There is already a video up on my vlog at YouTube.
One of the disadvantages to sleeping in the car is that I tend to wake up pretty early - because I am cold, because my back aches, or because the sun makes me rise. In this case, it was a combination of all three that got me on the road to Denver around 6:30 in the morning on day 2. I had breakfast at a Holiday Inn Express west of town. I hear that people who eat there can do pretty phenomenal things. Since I was trying to drive 850 miles in one day, I thought it was an apt choice.
The day was going to be divided into three parts - I-70 from Saint Louis to Kansas City; the drive clear across Kansas, and the shorter drive from the Colorado state line to Denver. During the first part of the trip, there was not much of interest to see. I spent most of the time thinking about baseball, actually.
The 1985 World Series was the I-70 series: the Kansas City Royals against the Saint Louis Cardinals. I knew I was mesmerized by sports from an early age, but this is my youngest and most vivid childhood sports memory. See, there was a time when World Series games were broadcast on weeknights at a time that kids could stay up and watch them, when games were played much closer together to keep the interest and drama high. I sat in the living room of our home every game night of that seven-game series, with Dad's ottoman over my legs. On top of the ottoman, I had the lineups for each team written in pencil on notebook paper, and I would compute and update in real time the players World Series batting averages. This should have been a sign that I needed to go into sabermetrics when I was older, but the 1994 strike, and canceling the World Series that year on my 21st birthday, forever ended my love affair with baseball. I remember being thrilled that Kansas City (controversially) won game six, and how they blew out the Cards in game seven so badly that both Whitey Herzog and Joaquin Andujar got tossed from the contest. Sadly, now, I can't even watch baseball. Even the playoff fail to excite me like once when I was young.
Perhaps because of the daydreaming, I cannot remember much about the drive across Missouri. But when I got to Kansas City, I needed a rest. I decided to visit the international headquarters of the Order of DeMolay, a Masonic-sponsored youth organization that I participated in until I was 21. Someday I'll tell more stories, but for now I will just say that DeMolay helped me come out of my shell, and gave me the confidence to speak in front of people, to seek elected office, and to become a professional sports official. The tour was interesting, and it refreshed a lot of memories that had collected dust since my majority. I don't think it stimulated me to go back and serve as an adviser, or to become a Master Mason like I promised. But who knows?
Rested and refreshed, it was time to tackle Kansas. Ah, yes - 450 miles of unbridled mediocrity. But Kansas was also where a lot of the fun began. Once it was finished, I realized that I could have easily spent a couple of days stopping and enjoying all the kitsch along I-70. But with the long day ahead, I just did not have the time. At first - hell, for the first 200 miles - Kansas is not as flat as you would believe. In fact, there were large swaths of the drive that significantly resembled north Alabama, save for the fact that the dominant color was yellow-brown, not green.
Shortly after leaving Kansas City, I-70 becomes the Kansas Turnpike. At the entrance, you get a time-stamped ticket. You pay when you get off the turnpike. This ticket-taking made me think of a problem I faced in high school calculus. We had to prove, using calculus, that if a driver averaged 60 miles per hour for a three-hour drive, at some point during the drive he must have been traveling exactly 60 miles per hour. My teacher Mrs. Jones said that if the speed limit on a section of toll road was 65, and the time stamp when you entered and when you left computed to show that you averaged 66 miles per hour, then one could prove that at one point, you must have been speeding. The toll booth operator would collect your toll money, and then hand you a speeding ticket and tell you to have a nice day. I drove one mile per hour under the speed limit all the way to Topeka.
Before the next major bout of fun, some random things happened. A tumbleweed actually rolled onto the interstate in front of the car, and I struck it with the right front fender. From where I sat, it looked like it exploded into hundreds of shards. When I stopped an hour later at a rest area, the bulk of it was still lodged in the front of the car. I passed the Oz Museum and winery, and I really wanted to stop there for mom's friend Kay, but it was too far off the interstate, and I did not want to take that big of a detour. And looking at the map of Kansas, I understand now why meteorologists and experts tell you that if you are caught in a tornado while driving, you should drive in right angles away from the funnel. Kansas roads only intersect at right angles, so it is the only way you can flee. Moreover, it might not be as dangerous to fall asleep while driving in Kansas as elsewhere I have been. There's nothing to run into. Finally, when trucks and farm vehicles sprint down the dirt roads that gird the interstate, they resemble terrestrial comets, with long tails stretching behind them.
I was in a bit of a hurry the night before I left when I tried to recalibrate my iPod to work with my laptop. As a result, I allowed the computer to decide which songs fill on my iPod. When I started using it during the drive, I had to skip five to ten tracks each time to get to a track I wanted to hear. The automatic upload had included podcasts, audio books (but only selected chapters - no complete books), songs I didn't know I had, too many classical works, and Christmas music. I'll be fixing that when I stop for a few days in Golden.
On a political aside, I heard the following factoid on CNN: Hillary Clinton is more likely than Barack Obama to be supported by "lower income white rural working-class voters". Tell me if that stilted description does not also sound like the voters who are most likely to be racist.
About halfway across Kansas, I began to see the wind turbines I was expecting. Here, let me allow the video to tell the story.
[I had to climb a steep embankment and slither through a well-constructed barbed wire fence to bring this story to you.]
As I passed through the tiny towns that randomly dotted the interstate in western Kansas and eastern Colorado, I tried to imagine what life was like for teens on the High Plains. There can be an Abercrombie or Old Navy for a hundred miles. What sets the tone for fashion, for coolness out here? How do they react to seeing styles in movies and on MTV that they cannot replicate where they live? And what in the world do they do when they are not in school? For some reason, the only thing I can visualize is the John Deere chicken fight scene from "Footloose".
Once I survived Kansas - which, by the way, was not bleeding anywhere - the last part of the trip through Colorado was survivable. Even as early as I left, I had to drive straight into the setting sun for a couple of hours. The sky was so clear and bright that I could see several jets flying in several directions, condensation trails giving them away. It was as if some giant force used Q-tips to write in the sky.
About 75 miles from Denver I was finally able to spy the Rocky Mountains. They helped shield the sun, but they also made it too dark as I drove into the Denver metro area for me to look around. The last (and only) time I was in Denver previously was in the summer of 1992 for a DeMolay convention. We stayed on campus at the Colorado School for Mines, where my friend Ryan is a graduate student, and the rest of the time I stayed with a friend in Aurora. It was so dark, and I was so tired when I arrived, that I did not even notice the huge Coors factory on the left as I drove into Golden. I hoped I would recognize more from sixteen years ago, but I didn't.
Ryan lives in a bachelor apartment about three blocks from his campus building. It was really great to see him after the insanely long drive. We went to dinner at a new Mexican restaurant in town, and after he had one margarita, I had to drive us home. I am looking forward to the stay here, and when I get some time, I will take some photos and edit and upload them for you to see.
So today I embarked on my insanely ambitious cross-country drive from Huntsville, Alabama to Redding, California, for a week-long professional tennis tournament that I am umpiring. At least at the start of the trip, the plan was to drive from home to Saint Louis for the night, then to Golden, Colorado to visit my friend Ryan for three days, and then on to Salt Lake City and finally Redding on Saturday night. (The tournament begins on Sunday.) We will see if the weather and my plans hold.
I have driven most of this route before a number of times - especially in Tennessee - so there wasn't that much surprising to see. I got bored in Kentucky, so I put some random thoughts down on film.
It wasn't until I arrived in southern Illinois that things got interesting. And, unfortunately, it was the only interesting thing until I reached Saint Louis after dark. Seeing the Arch, lit only by ambient light from the city, is an impressive sight at night.
One thing you should understand about me is that I enjoy kitsch and Americana. (Some might say to this, "what's the difference?") I stop for quilting museums and the largest ball of twine and the potato chip that looks like the Virgin Mary. I find that local cultural icons such as these help me get a better understanding of the values and norms of different parts of America. And in my travels, I have gotten pretty good at distinguishing the genuine from the tourist trap.
So we return to the story in southern Illinois - Massac County, to be exact. There is a rest area just off the interstate interchange as soon as you cross from Kentucky into Illinois. I remember stopping at it once before, when I drove to the Chicago suburbs in 2003 for the U.S. Open golf tournament with my brother-in-law. When you exit the rest area and get back on the local highway that takes you to the interstate, there is a blue sign with Superman's shield on it, reading "Giant Superman Statue". I am intrigued. So, instead of getting back on the interstate, I follow the signs.
One mile passes, and then another and another. Periodically, there is another blue sign that says "Giant Superman Statue - straight ahead". I have faith and persist. Finally, I enter the nearest city. It is fairly flat out here, save for the grain elevators, so I figure that I won't have much trouble finding this giant statue. And right when I enter town and am welcomed by the Chamber of Commerce's sign, I see something that makes me groan and wonder if I ever should have exited the interstate in the first place. More on that in a minute.
Finally, the signs direct me to the town square, site of the county courthouse. This is what I find:
Here is a still photo:
There is a post script to this story, the thing I mentioned that I would come back to at the end. As soon as you enter Metropolis, Illinois, there is a Big John grocery store on the left hand side of the road. This is what I saw as soon as I came into town:
Now, here is my first thought - Superman got purchased by this grocery store and converted into a bag boy. I was thisclose to turning around and leaving Metropolis in a cloud of angry regret. But then I saw another sign ahead for the Superman statue, so I continued. When I stopped to take this photo, another car was also stopped taking a picture of Big John. I am sure I was not the only one fooled by this inconvenient placement of a grocer's statue.
On occasion, whether for the change in scenery or to avoid cold or inclement weather, I will walk at the local mall, Parkway Place. It's less than a mile from the house; on simply cold days, I will walk to the mall and do several laps inside before coming home. I see many other people walking there, especially a lot of seniors. What I have yet to see, however, is a bona fide mall-walker - fast pace, swinging hips and arms. I tend to walk pretty fast by dint of the music in my ears. But I don't mall-walk either.
Tonight was a very visually potent night at the mall. I had not walked there on a Saturday night before, and I left with several scenes in my head.
One The mall might as well have been a farmer's market, for all the obvious county folks who had made the once-a-week trip into the city to sample the exciting sights, sounds and tastes of Parkway Place. The boys had poorly dyed blond hair, heavy work boots and dinner plate belt buckles. The girls mostly holding hands with the boys, were also invariably larger than the boys, with flat, limp, uninteresting hair. The only stores that seemed to interest them were GNC (boys acting butch for the girls), Brookstone (shiny things) and the Cookie Company (of course).
Two I walked past one woman and her two small children several times. She was seated in a bench near an exit with a stroller and several bags of merchandise. Her nonchalant posture implied that she was waiting for something - a spouse? a ride? They two children each had a drink and a cookie from the Cookie Company. The drink cups were on the ground, and one had already spilled some brown soda on the floor. I wondered after each circuit passed her whether she would exhibit good parenting and citizenship by cleaning up after her children, or (gasp!) having them clean up after themselves. Finally, on the next lap, she was gone. So were the drinks. Well, at least the cups were gone. The drinks were dripped and splashed all over the walkway, with pieces of cookie randomly scattered and smashed into the tile throughout.
Three I passed the central intersection of the mall, and from my left side I saw a woman and a man walking down the adjacent way. She was carrying a white and black Williams-Sonoma bag. But not for long. The bottom fell out of the bag, and out tumbled a sterling silver cylinder that looked like a coffee carafe, and its mated lid. I had the ear buds in ("High School Never Ends," Bowling for Soup), so I didn't hear anything, which was remarkable. Most of the heads I passed for the next several seconds were turned in that direction, often murmuring something to the other nearby heads.
Four Weekends usually bring out the young people. Parkway Place has a policy prohibiting unescorted minors during evening and weekend hours. Teen and early-20s adults come there, too, and this includes the urbanites from the north part of town. Many times at the mall I have seen pairs and small groups of young men that are mixed race groups - blacks and whites, for the sake of simplicity. Never have I seen the men in the group all dressed like the whites. They are always all dressed like the blacks.
Five Near the end of my walk, I was following two adults, with two boys and five or six small girls. The group seemed too large and the adults seemed too happy for them to have all been related. And then I noticed the shortest girl in the group, a blonde whose height would imply she was four or five, but whose behavior would make you think she was double that age. She looked remarkably like my eldest niece Maddie. But she wasn't looking at or noticing me. I kept watching her, but not for too long, because I didn't want anyone who saw me to think I was some lecherous man. So I called my brother-in-law, and he confirmed that Maddie and Jessie were both out with friends. So I called her by her full name, and she turned around and saw me, and ran to give me a hug. She pointed me out to her younger sister, and said, rather demandingly, "Give Uncle Frankie a kiss!". Jessie kissed me, too, and I introduced myself to the adults, apologetically. I told them that I had seen Maddie, but not Jay or Lena, and that it had just surprised me. (I did not tell them that I had called Jay to make sure it was Maddie I had seen.)
Six When I see seniors walking in the mall, especially alone, I wonder if that will be me someday. Without a spouse or children, it is easy for bachelor, single, or gay men to be forgotten in the older age. It is a platitude to say that it couldn't happen, or that it couldn't happen to me, because I can see it has happened to some of them. I have plenty of time to avert it. But then again, when I broke up with Joe Little, I certainly did not think at that time that I would still be single now, eight years later.
Seven Near the central intersection of the mall - where the woman's bag broke - is a sunglasses kiosk. For almost the entire hour that I was walking at the mall, this attractive man was shopping there. Each time I walked past, he was trying on a different pair of sunglasses. Tragically, he did not have anyone to provide him advice aside from the salesperson, which was to his detriment. Each look he proffered was out of reach for him, an unusual state of affairs for a handsome man. On some laps, I speculated that he might have noticed my passing frequently, and he was trying to choose frames that were more and more outrageous each time. When I saw him last, he had walked away from the kiosk, empty-handed.
It snowed in Atlanta on my visit there. I am about to start on my 5,000-mile trek to northern California and back. This is just a short update on what is up, and a quick view of the snow.
