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Well, my friends, a road trip slowly comes to its inevitable end. I’m in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Yes. You heard right. Yesterday was a 12-hour ass-kicker of a journey from Memphis, Tennessee, through Arkansas (a la Little Rock), Oklahoma via Oklahoma City, and what I call the “penis head” of Texas a la Amarillo, all along U.S. Highway 40 west, terminating in Santa Fe, NM, off Highway 84.
Memphis was madness, as I more or less expected. Not compared to New Orleans, though, which had been like a jolt of cosmic heroin to the metaphorical veins. NOLA was fun: Live jazz outside on the streets; old French colonial buildings; narrow, bumpy roads with cracks and broken, chipped sections wherein I almost fell face-flat several times; blasts of cold A/C gloriously smacking you briefly in the face until you finally gave in and, covered in sweat from the 97-degree humid weather, you gave up the ghost and entered one of those coffee shops and sat down.
And this I did several times, at one point writing for four hours. Had I lived in that town in my alcoholic tortured, tumultuous twenties I’d have died, no question in my mind. You can feel the grotesque, hyperactive, alcoholic/drug-addict energy wafting through NOLA like a gang of thugs looking for prey at 3am in East L.A. It’s simply that old familiar wild urban cowboy energy.
But anyway I didn’t die, because I’m 40 and sober and on a road trip by car, versus thumb, and because all I wanted to do this time around was to see it all, the circus, the whirling anarchy that is NOLA. Like a she-wolf you can’t ever tame and don’t even want to.
The following day (I’d been in NOLA two days, staying at a spectacular, spacious, cheap Air BnB) I hit I-55 North aiming for St. Louis. But the day felt long, hot and slow. I took my time, going 70 in the slow-lane much of the time, listening to my audiobook of Rousseau’s Confessions (I read the physical copy at night when off the road), as well as The 5th Column podcast. In the end I decided to quit in Memphis. I paid for parking. It was around 7pm when I got in. I was right by Beale Street, the famous, popular downtown area. Just what you’d expect: Divey blues bars reeking of piss (B.B. King and Elvis related, of course), historic signs about the town (Ida B. Wells, Jerry Lee Lewis), etc. I walked up and down and then looked up a coffee shop (most were closed), got lost, and then found one inside the Hyatt Hotel called Talk Shop. It was perfect. I ordered a Chai tea latte, grabbed a table, set up my computer and everything I needed, and wrote.
I had no idea what I’d do for sleeping. I like traveling this way: The mystery; the unknown. Unplanned. Or vaguely delineated. I looked up camping spots. Everything, of course, was closed. That didn’t matter. I’d camped after hours several times already on this trip, most recently south of Richmond, Virginia. I located a spot which was only six miles away. I walked back to the car, getting some stunning iPhone shots of the downtown area at dusk.
I considered it. Man: What thoughtfulness; what kindness. From a total stranger. Look at that. All this supposed political and cultural and racial division and here’re two strangers in Memphis acting like humans. I think this is the real universal American Truth. We’re all brothers and sisters. Don’t let the media lead you astray. Choose love, not false, manufactured hatred.
Memphis looked different physically and culturally than I’d ignorantly expected. I’d thought of semi-white trash ex-rockers, old farmers, cowboys. And for all I know those people are there. But what I saw were… Black people. A lot of them. Black cops strolling the streets. Black musicians. Black restaurant employees and bartenders. Black homeless. Etc. And a speckling of white overweight tourists. The city itself was small and mostly rundown, it seemed. I saw old abandoned buildings, windows cracked out and boarded up. Graffiti. Hoods eyeing the weird wide-brim-hat-wearing pale White Boy who clearly wasn’t from around here. Crumbling, bumpy streets.
Getting to the camp was…interesting. It felt like going through “The Ghetto” and ending up in Yosemite. Ok. Not really. It wasn’t exactly “the ghetto” and the camping area was no Yosemite. But getting there did have a sort of North Oakland feel, and the camping area was quite lovely. It was closed and half empty. By the looks of it as I drove slowly around looking for the right spot I was one of the only white people around. Right on. Why not?
I found a good spot and parked. I’d already eaten so I wasn’t hungry. I kept the engine on a while and blasted the A/C. The heat wasn’t too bad by then: Low 80s and medium humidity. But the cool air felt good. The engine does an auto-turn off after a half hour. So I didn’t even have to worry about it. I could just lay down in the back of the Kia and read. I did just that, this time reading my new book I’d bought in NOLA, a brilliant collection of essays from 1950 by Lionel Trilling, the professor at Columbia (and author/critic) who’d inspired the Beat poets back in the 1940s when they went there (Kerouac, Ginsberg, etc). It was an essay about the connection between Freud’s psychoanalytic method and literature. (The connection between the two, and how the former helps one understand on a deeper level the latter.)
After a half hour I closed my eyes and passed out.
*
I woke in the morning a little before 7am. It was very quiet. Green surrounded me, thick forest. I got up, yawned, threw my shoes on, sniffled, got out of the back of the car. I stretched a minute, gazing around, seeing RVs everywhere. It was sunny and still relatively cool out, probably low 70s. I wanted to make green tea using the Jetboil stove, and then I figured I’d head out, paying at the admin office and then finding a local coffee shop before hitting I-40 west towards Arkansas.
But first I wanted to turn the car on and feel some A/C. Just for a moment. And maybe splash some cold water on my face. I opened the driver’s side door, sat down and flipped the engine on. Only the engine didn’t turn on. I tried again. And again. And again. Nothing. Zero. Negative. Nada. Finally I sat back in the seat, frustrated and confused. Glancing around I searched for lights on, anything on. Nothing was on. I thought back to last night: I’d had the engine on for a half an hour with the auto-turn-off thing. For light to read I’d used my backpacking headlamp. It didn’t make sense. I pushed the button again, and then five more times. Zilch.
I got out and stood there. Then I looked across the little paved campground road and saw a man standing by his RV. He saw me and waved. I waved back. Then I said “Hey” and started walking towards him. The man started coming towards me as well. He was tall, Black, bald. He looked friendly. We met in the middle of the road.
“What’s up?” he said. Then, looking me up and down, he smiled and tilted his head and said, “What’re you from Canada or some shit?”
I laughed. “Canada? Naw. California. Born and raised. I’m on a cross-country road trip. Ended up here. Anyway my car isn’t starting.”
“Road trip, huh? Cool.” He glanced over my shoulder at the Kia Sorrento. “Well. Tell you what. I don’t have jumper cables. But my buddy has a jumpbox. He’s down the way. I’ll let him know.”
“Thanks, man. I appreciate that.”
He smiled wide. “Sure thing, Boss. You want some coffee?”
I considered it. Man: What thoughtfulness; what kindness. From a total stranger. Look at that. All this supposed political and cultural and racial division and here’re two strangers in Memphis acting like humans. I think this is the real universal American Truth. We’re all brothers and sisters. Don’t let the media lead you astray. Choose love, not false, manufactured hatred.
“Thanks for the offer,” I said. “I have tea.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself, Boss.”
“Thanks again, man.”
“You bet.”
He turned and walked off. I did too.
*
I’d been sitting on top of the little bent green picnic bench by the car in my camping spot, reading Trilling (and loving it), when another Black men in a big white van pulled up slowly to my spot, rolled his window down, and said, “You Canada?”
I smiled. He cut the engine and got out and had a little “jumpbox,” a small, thick iPhone-sized thing with mini-cables. Brilliant, I thought. I needed one of those. Very wise.
I had already popped open the hood and removed the battery cover. He clipped the cables and turned the thing on and I pressed the button and this time ZA-ZOOOOOOM; it started!!!! What a gorgeous mechanical purring sound.
“There you go, buddy,” he said.
“Thanks, man. I really appreciate that. By the way: How much does one of those things cost?”
I pointed to the jumpbox.
He shrugged. “Eighty bucks.”
“Serious? That’s all?”
“That’s all, my man.”
We shook hands and he took off. I broke camp, packed the car, and left. Soon I was on I-40, plowing west.
*
I pushed hard through Arkansas, passing Little Rock in no time. My goal had been Oklahoma City, but then I realized my dates. The car was due back by 11:30am August 4. I’d discussed extending. I called Enterprise and they said I’d have to pay $390 to extend it through the weekend because my return date was Friday and they weren’t open on the weekend, therefore I’d have to extend until Monday. Unless I returned it to Santa Maria instead of Lompoc, in which case Saturday worked. By 11:30am. So I did that. But that still meant I couldn’t stay in Oklahoma City.
I needed to cover more ground. I looked at the mileage on the car: 24,500. It had been 18,000 when I picked it up on July 20. I’d put more than 6,000 miles on her. And by the time I returned it’d be closer to 7,500. Incredible. Wow. In that time I’d grown “close” to the Kia, as if she were my road wife. We had a sort of spiritual connection, a kind of latent love. She was symbolic, as was the road, of my transmogrification from human into Road Warrior.
And then suddenly bam, it hits like a hammer to the gut. A swinging sledge-hammer. I grasped that for my mom the process had been a hard, ruthless letting go, a harsh acceptance of losing the man she’d loved for half a century. But she’d known him intimately for all those years. I had not. I had only shared that honest, true intimacy with him during those 23 months. Ironically, after a lifetime of yearning to be close to my father, it had ultimately happened only when he had been forced to let go of the one thing he had: His life. And that sacred, sorrowful connection had brought us close together. I got to know him in order to let him go.
So I passed Oklahoma City like it was nothing. I kept moving. I listened to Rousseau. The 5th Column. Tim Dillon. I called a good friend from the Bay Area and we talked for an hour and a half. Then I called another friend. I played music. Stopped at gas stations. Peeing in American gas stations is itself a way of life. I snapped shots of the state signs when I passed. Streams, rivers and creeks rushed under bridges; green forest surrounded everything. I’d been surprised at how beautiful the landscape in Arkansas had been. Not what I’d expected. (But then: What ever is?) The gray and black and sometimes clay-red American highway pulsed out before me, out my bug-splattered windshield. It just kept coming.
That morning, after leaving the campground in Memphis, with the kind men who’d helped me on my mind, and A.A. Bondy’s song American Heart playing somewhat loudly on my stereo, I suddenly thought of my father, his weak, emaciated body towards the end of his life, the love and tenderness I’d felt for him during those 23 months, the love of a son for his dying father. Something tight and tense and vulnerable deep inside me—some emotional violent string—snapped in that moment and I started bawling on the road, almost pulling off the highway due to blurry vision from the staggering tears. I realized Mom still felt his loss every single minute of every single hour of every single day. I missed him wildly, but I could go days without thinking much about it.
And then suddenly bam, it hits like a hammer to the gut. A swinging sledge-hammer. I grasped that for my mom the process had been a hard, ruthless letting go, a harsh acceptance of losing the man she’d loved for half a century. But she’d known him intimately for all those years. I had not. I had only shared that honest, true intimacy with him during those 23 months. Ironically, after a lifetime of yearning to be close to my father, it had ultimately happened only when he had been forced to let go of the one thing he had: His life. And that sacred, sorrowful connection had brought us close together. I got to know him in order to let him go.
*
As I moved further west in Oklahoma, I figured I’d make it to Amarillo, Texas, in “the penis head” section, that brief, northern, narrow band of Texas between Oklahoma and New Mexico. When Britney and I talked on the phone at 5pm her time (when she got off work), 7pm my time (Mountain, still) I told her, half-jokingly, I might shoot for Albuquerque, NM that night, she suggested I choose Santa Fe instead. I vaguely sensed that my ex and I’d been in Santa Fe in 2017 but wasn’t certain. We’d definitely spent a few nights in New Mexico but I couldn’t recall exactly where now. But Britney also said she was worried about me sleeping somewhere unsafe. I told her I might just pull off the highway somewhere, onto some back road, pull off and sleep. She worried some Texas rancher would find me and shoot me in the face.
In the end I blazed right on through Texas, all those pretty flat plains and green fields and deep green low crops, seeing dark clouds and thick rain in the distance and wild, spectacular, shocking lighting strikes. It was fun to watch, driving safely by it maybe 25 miles south of it. It made me think of growing up in Ojai, when I was a kid and my mom and dad and I’d watch the rain out the French doors in our house during a bad rain storm, seeing the lightning in the distance and counting down to the loud, deep, guttural crack of thunder.
In darkness—exhausted—Britney asleep in California, me going 85, no one around, listening to Sam Harris’s latest podcast about health and wellness (fascinating), I crossed the state line into New Mexico. Their sign was great: “Land of Enchantment.” Some of the state slogans had been silly and meaningless, and Oklahoma, I believe, didn’t have a slogan at all. (Or had that been Arkansas?) Land of Enchantment. I liked that. And soon I was passing the brown low adobe houses, seeing the light green brush and cacti and the desert. Yes. It felt familiar. Then I remembered I’d been with my ex to Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos; all three. In 2017. Yes. It was coming back to my memory. The yellow license plates with red letters and numbers. I liked it.
My iPhone GPS told me to take I-84. It was 11:30pm. The road was narrow and abandoned; empty. Darkness. I was very tired. Not nodding off or anything, but exhausted. When I got to the spot for the 25 South, about 15 minutes outside downtown Santa Fe, I skipped the highway and looked around there for a spot to sleep. It was perfect. Ideal. I took a random nearby road and about a mile down I found a smaller road and turned off on that. It led to a dead-end where there was circular gravel surrounded by forest. I stopped the car there. Stars were out. I saw the outline of a flat-top mountain nearby. I got out and stretched. It was silent. I peed. Then I climbed into the back of the car, locked the doors from the inside, and passed out.
*
I woke up around 5:30am. For a while I just laid there. No one was around. The sky slowly lightened into a gauzy coal gray. I jumped into the driver’s seat, chugged some water, and then got onto I-25 South. Fifteen minutes later I was in downtown Santa Fe. I parked and paid. I found a little crepe spot, a French Bakery that was open. I sat down and ordered a ham and cheese crepe and hot black tea. Then I left and went to a coffee shop called 35 Degrees North, where I am now. I started writing.
Today is my final “real” day of travel. My adventure is nearly over. Two weeks on the road across the USA twice. Tonight I’ll stay here in Santa Fe (probably Air BnB) and then tomorrow I’ll either 1. Drive the grueling 15 hours west back to Lompoc in one long ass day, or 2. Drive a big chunk of that and stay somewhere 4-6 hours away from Lompoc. I have to drop the car in Santa Maria (half hour drive from Lompoc) which means I first have to go to the house in Lompoc, drop all the stuff off, then head to Santa Maria, hand the car over by 11:30am, and then wait at a coffee shop for Britney to pick me up hours later after she gets off work. Unless I want to get a Lyft. We’ll see. That was the sacrifice I had to make in order to extend the trip one day.
And then it’s back to “Reality,” that cold hard bitch. Just kidding. It’s not that bad. Actually it’s pretty damn good. I have plenty to look forward to, like marrying the love of my life, going with her to Morocco, etc. Plans. Routine. The stuff of life.
Road Dog
My wife and I were rescued by a young man with one of those jump boxes. He was driving his grandfather's car, an old sedan that he said had just passed 300,000 miles. The car was immaculate. We thanked the guy and offered him twenty bucks. He declined a few times. Then I said, "That's for great coffee somewhere." He smiled abd accepted the money. He drove away. So did we. We'll never see him again. His kindness will always be remembered.
Sweet