Sadness in the Sumertime

 There are subtle signs in what otherwise appears to be absolutely normal and absolutely in control. Elite model pricey SUV in July with studded tires for example. There is an imbalance in that person’s life. Life isn’t as coherent as it appears at a glance. Then there is indulgence, whether it’s convertible tops, vanity plates, or one of those things that make someone feel like an individual or make someone feel like they belong. Everything comes with a price. It is sacrifice, that is defined by the type of person who makes it.

 Getting out of the car, and walking around. I can see the options that really exist. All of these options come with their own benefits and their own sacrifices. I know that somewhere in here there are answers, and I may come within inches of my solution and yet I may never know that I did. 

Recently traveling with my sons and watching them discover that there is more beyond the 25-mile radius of home and that there is a whole world of infinite possibilities, I realize that my own borders have tightened in on me in a lesser way, but tightened nonetheless.

At what point does what you know become what you used to know? Despite all that you have and know cannot be a match for what is lost.

Dear Sinead, you were a revolutionary of our time. The strength of your voice carried its power in so many ways. You said what had to be said long before people could comprehend. I loved how you looked at your children and the words with which you expressed your love. You could be so delicate, you were almost subliminal. Other times you screamed with a cry of war like thunder itself. In one sentence you started with one and finished with the other. If we were with you we could only be sure that you would be you. Incredibly we had no idea what that would be like. Thank you for the beautiful music that only you could sing to us. I will miss you.

The perimeter

 My sense of it is as sharp as a razor's edge.  It has so many levels and sections to it.  The perimeter is an outer barrier that separates the in from the out, the safe from the danger, the simple from the complex, the loud from the soft.

https://www.vecteezy.com/free-photos  Free Stock photos by Vecteezy

My life has been a nonstop building of this fortification and then sculpting it to make it even more reasonable.  Some walk through a gauntlet of deadly snakes, virtually sporting awareness-canceling earbuds,  never knowing that they smell like a sweet roast beef of prey passing through the valley. 

Perimeters define what is necessary and what does not need to be. Why is this all so clear to me? I have heard that the fastest way to learn who you are is to think about who you are not. In doing this, the clarity of the perimeter is defined.

I am not sure why I am stuck on this nebulous line as if I am staring at the perimeter itself. In these days, everything seems to get put into a predetermined defined package, gets labeled and that’s it. How boring.

As a person who has lived life waking up never knowing where I would be when the sun sets, I feel indifference for the symbolism over substance that is the norm now. 

Sometimes I feel it is me fighting getting older, and I reflect on all that I still want to do while finding that just setting basic goals requires more than it has in the past.

Eighteen years ago, RA set into my life. It redefined the way I do things. It has been proof that I still can do things, and that I just have to approach them differently.

Like the smoke in the sky that has become all too familiar this year, there is a haze. I work each day to see the things that really are there. The perimeter, whether it is safety, knowledge, adventure, or prudence, it is there and I know it.

1984 Chapter 11: Summer, summer, summer

 My days working at A Auto Supply became timeless. I worked on my Dodge, making changes weekly. It looked more like mine than the car passed on from my mother. I really missed the friends I had back home at the campground. I had heard that my cousin Tom bought a camper and he was coming up to East  Canaan regularly. The greatest friends I had ever had, were all up there, having a great time. I lived on a different planet.

I met many people in Port Aransas and they were all great. It was the kind of town that you write a book about, in a Tom Bodette End of the Road sort of way. I loved how people were many times identified by their first names and what they did.  For example, TV Fred was the resident television sales and repairman on the island. Unless you ran a souvenir shop, restaurant, bar, or boat, you had no competition in Port A.

There was a force at play here in Port Aransas. It was known as Island Time. Life north of the ship channel ceased to exist. The South Jetty, the main newspaper in town, did not print news from outside the island, and the sports section was robust in photos of sunburned people standing on the docks, posing next to hanging fish that were often taller than they were. All holding cans of beer in cozies, smiling.

The people who were here had an island-time pace. If Fred fixed your TV, there was an hour or two sipping cold beer and catching up. I began to notice that everyone here seemed to be from somewhere else. There were an unlimited number of reasons why they fled their former lives and came here where time did not move at the same pace. There seemed to be a barrier around this island that appeared to keep it out of time with the rest of the world.

The summer was busy as the beach, which was a drive-on beach, brought so many from north, central, and west Texas. It was incredibly disorienting. With the summer bouncing along like an MTV music video of the day, it was hard to see yourself without the whirlwind around you. Life was an amusement park ride. I woke up never knowing who I would meet that day or what was going to happen. Not every day was like this, but many were.

Island Time was an unseen force, powerful, and like a long hurricane. I was different from my contemporaries, I wore calf-high frye boots with the squared toe, boot-cut jeans, tee shirt. Males here wore shorts, rarely wore shirts, barefoot, or at least wore flaps, slaps, or as they were known in the north, flip flops. You could walk into the grocery stores here even in the nineties without a shirt or shoes, smoking a  cigarette.

My strength to resist was sufficient, or so I thought. After a year of fighting, the force would break me. The island would effect those changes that I never thought possible, the muffler would fall off my car, my hair sun-bleached and grow out, and I would lose the shirt and boots. I only wore shoes and long pants if I was working. Eventually, the island did to me what it did to everyone. The island would eventually teach me to relax, inside and out. I mention this here because I seemed to be fighting it here in my first few months in Port Aransas.

During these summer months, the relationship between Dad and I grew. One of our favorite hobbies was music. We would trek over to Craig’s Record Factory over in Corpus Christie and each come back with a couple of vinyl treasures to go home and play. 

One of the Friday nights late in the summer I decided to head over to Corpus to buy something at Craigs. Dad said he only had $60 on him till payday and felt that he should hold onto it. Later that night, Dad fell asleep with a lit cigarette and dropped it into a stack of wicker paper plate holders that someone had given to us. This resulted in a fire in the early morning hours that I completely slept through. Dad carried pans of water from the kitchen, past my sofa on which I slept, to put out the fire. 

The fire had burned up the wicker holders and the cut-off jean shorts Dad had worn the day before. For the most part, the shorts survived, except the left front pocket, and the $60 inside it. As we sipped coffee the following morning Dad looked at me and laughed. “I wish I went to Corpus with you last night, at least I would have something to show for that $60.”

In late August, Dad and I called up to Connecticut and learned that my Grandmother and my sister Brooke were going to visit next February. We knew that in the little cottage, we were living in, we would absolutely not have room for them whatsoever. We needed to do something else.

More than bliss

 Remember when you were young, and shown like the sun. Shine on you crazy diamond.  -Shine on You Crazy Diamond, Pink Floyd, 1975, Wish You Were Here album.

There was something about naivety that made it work back in the old days. $100 trips across the United States while eating food that was absolutely void of taste and nutrition. The old saying, ignorance is bliss certainly had its benefits back then.

I cannot begin to imagine the things that I have missed out on. I wonder, did they even exist though? We all know that in the last 30 years, food has been an absolute revolution.

The types of food that I long to learn more about did exist. It is traditional foods from around the globe that I find so fascinating. I know that without modern media my learning about these types of culinary discoveries would be restricted to books, and maybe an occasional travel show on PBS.

Donna said to me yesterday, “Oh to be 20 years younger!” It was said in the context of all the creative things that we would do.

 20 years ago we did not have this incredible lifeline of information just flooding our senses and lighting all these fires of ideas. YouTube began in 2005 and in the last 18 years, it has really grown up. All of the predictions of Popular Mechanics came true and then some when it came to how the Information Super Highway would change our lives.

Sometimes it is difficult to see beyond the technological forest that we now live in and therefore can squander moments in our lives that we could be using this benefit to better ourselves, whether that is by making a fantastic meal tonight, starting a business, or effecting a successful automotive repair.

There has been an interesting side effect. Learning all of this has raised the bar. A lifeline is lifting me out of my ignorance, especially in culinary horizons. The casualty? The average restaurant is dead to me. The places that 30-plus years ago would have seemed not only acceptable but excellent now fall at my feet, like crashed aircraft, smoldering, disappointing, and leaving me full of remorse.

I am alright with this though, I would rather not know. That is bliss I am grateful that I no longer have. The opportunity to have the unending joy that food brings has been a prize so large I cannot believe it did not tower in my view like Everest, calling me.

COVID changed how I try other people’s food, and for the most part, it was up to me to make the new things I was trying. That is an "up" for me. More than three years after COVID shut it all down, I ventured into corners of empty restaurants to get the full experience.

I found that in the over three years that had passed since sitting in a restaurant, my education of the whole restaurant machine, front end, back end, food safety, school, and veteran storytelling (thank you Tony Bourdain) richly enhanced the experience of now sitting down in a restaurant and enjoying a fantastic meal.

My appreciation for the chef, for the wait-person, for anyone putting their life into this work, I am moved by. When that bite fires so many senses and emotion explodes like fireworks inside you while on the outside, you sigh and smile. It is absolutely moving.

Thanks to my sister and brother-in-law, I recently got to experience a perfect Tex-Mex meal. Yesterday on a date day with Donna, we found a little Japanese restaurant on a side street in Keene, NH. What this sushi-centric restaurant can do with flavors and textures is an emotional experience. 

It is wonderful to ask the server what their favorite choices are, and then wait for the emotion. I have an unfair advantage here. I feel people’s emotions. Nothing weird about it, I just thought everyone could feel it too. Of the hundreds of subliminal signals we as humans put out as we interact, I seem to notice more than the average person. Maybe it is a byproduct of being raised around so many women through my early years. 

When the server emotionally endorses the choice, that is what I want to try. Upon that, a superior dining experience is born. A connection with the staff. Inside I am envious for a moment. They have this chance to make a difference in the lives of others many times. These are the people who know, love, and understand that it is a wonderful responsibility.

The depth of kitchens

 What is it that keeps bringing me back to food? Of course, I love the tastes. I love the opportunity it gives us to create. But there is something so much deeper. Food brings people together. It is marriages, it is births and deaths. It is healing, and not only physically, but socially. In lands where people are polarized due to global labels and perceived imbalances, food brings love unifying those who are separated by their labels.

Estrangement and alienation fall away like autumn leaves when time is taken to be closer to someone that we do not understand. Food is the finest way to bridge the gaps and close the discrepancy. Mothers all over the world call a truce, everyone laying down their weapons of ignorance to show respect and to finally step into the light of finding we have more in common with each other than we do not.

The food placed before me may show me the story of your wars, your famines, your exploration of the seas of the world, your sadness, your joy, your unions, and your losses. It can be such an intimate thing, and when it is, there is no option but to feel and respect and to learn.

When we leave franchise food by the wayside and settle in at the thousands of tables that tell the personal tales of mothers and grandmothers staking their claim on the world by way of an abstract flanking approach because the world was too small-minded to understand their beautiful individuality and mentorship, our existence transforms from 2 dimensions to 3.

Fine dining restaurants feature a dish pioneered by a family on the edge of starvation, and of refugees creating what they can by mixing their heritage and what a land foreign can give them. Take the walk, let no flashy billboards prevent you from making friends, following the food, and tasting the heart and soul of those who gladly give that experience to those who listen to the language that is the food.

1984 Chapter 10: I was wrong

 On the day of my arrival, Dad informed me that if I was interested, he already had a job lined up for me. A  Auto Supply had a tire shop outback. I wasn’t going to get rich here, but the potential to turn into something really great there. At 18 years old, opportunities like this can be right in front of your face and yet impossible to see.

State-mandated tests that were administered to me during high school suggested that I could go for higher-than-average career goals. The guidance counselors did their best to encourage me, to push me, to beat me into submission with constant reasons why it was my duty to do something about my career. If it was only this, that would be fine. But a few years earlier back in 1978 through 1981, I had gone through a barrage of being drilled by my mother's ex-boyfriend Richard. He was full of massive amounts of information, requirements, and rules that said I had no choice but to make a decision now about what I wanted to do with my life. This pressure had a cadence to it. He was a member of the Franco-American club. We would go sit down at a table in these establishments. He loved his wine. He would order that up for him and my mother and order my sisters and me microscopic Gingerale full of ice cubes for way too much money.

While we sat there, he drilled me over and over and over about how I needed to do something with my life. I purposely created a dialogue that worked in opposition to everything he said. I was not going to be told about what I had to do with my life. I never realized how hard I worked at this, but it actually reprogrammed my brain and way of thinking about everything too. Sadly, in Richard’s defense, he was only trying to save me. His life started out OK. He had joined the Navy. Later he became an auxiliary state police officer. I never did hear the story about how he ended up becoming a simple factory worker, no doubt it had something to do with the reasons behind why he drank the wine. In his heart, he wanted to pass on to me that information that is such a treasure, a key to success for a young man, if only I could understand it. Not only did I not understand it, but I built up an incredible fortification to protect me from anybody who wanted to tell me what to do with my life. I had rehearsed words that would not only stop them but discourage them to the point of ultimate frustration. As Richard put it one time, “You sound like you’ve lost already? “ That is somewhat painful to look back on because actually, Richard was right. This alternate training that I created also made it difficult to see opportunities in my path.

The deal my Dad had worked out with Charlie was that Monday through Saturday I would run the tire shop, making $20 a day if nothing happened. Once I had a certain amount of repairs I would make a percentage. This wasn’t a bad deal because the city of Port Aransas had a deal with A  Auto Supply to service their truck tires. My dad took me back into the tire shop and very skillfully and methodically taught me everything that I needed to know. I went with it.

A  Auto Supply was a great place to work. It had a dartboard in one of the aisles. During downtimes, we would all sip on our particular brand of beer and throw darts. We used the Coke machine as a cooler. The Coke machine had six slots in it to dispense different brands of soda. We would put beer into the top end of those slots and you would just have to make sure that you replenished the soda when it was getting low or a customer might actually end up at the Budweiser, Schlitz, Lone Star, or Coors, you get the idea.

I met a lot of really great people working in this tire shop. It was always a wonderful thing to have somebody drive up to the back door and need something. I recall a conversation at our kitchen table months later. My dad was talking about the opportunity that A  Auto Supply really was. He told me, “If I were you Mike, I would own that place. Not literally own it, but I would learn everything I possibly could on the parts counter. I would look up stuff about your car and ask Mike if you could look up things for a customer every now and then. He would show you.“

I never did turn that tire shop in the back of A Auto Supply into anything other than what was initially shown to me by my Dad. The basic skills of mounting tires, balancing tires, and working on split rims became knowledge I will never lose. But this tire shop could’ve been something so much more. Port Aransas was a small island. I could have offered mobile repair services. I could’ve added other simple services for a price. I did the occasional oil change and I could’ve expanded that dramatically from where I was. I just couldn’t see it. If I could go back and be one of those customers who approached that garage door and had my 18-year-old self walk out and greet now, me, all the things I would say. I don’t know if they would make any sort of difference. It is through the mistakes, the struggles, the losses, and the pain that we learn.

This is not about a tire shop. This is not about the loss of opportunity. The building where A Auto Supply stood does not even exist anymore. Hurricane Harvey obliterated Mustang Island five years ago. This is about all the opportunities that we’ve had and taken for granted. It’s about having people in your life that you appreciate and remembering that you thought that they would just always be there. It’s about people who made efforts on your behalf and you did not recognize them. Most of all this is about pausing in the cyclonic turmoil that daily life is now, and asking myself if is there something that I can show appreciation for right now. Is there someone that needs to hear it from me right now? If I can do that then maybe all the missed opportunities to do so, hundreds of thousands of them, will not be for nothing.

1984 Chapter 9: I want my MTV

 “You’re going to be introduced to a few bugs you have never seen before.” Dad pointed up at a spider web in the corner of the kitchen. “I decided to leave this one there so you could see it.” There was a water bug, dead now, caught in a spider web. It was one of those large bugs that were in the cockroach family but you did not get them from being dirty, they just coexisted with us, especially in a place where humidity was so ridiculously high. “They are harmless. Well, they fly when it’s a full moon, that’s pretty freaky.”

“When you wake up in the morning, shake out your boots.” He looked down at my Frye boots. “We do have scorpions down here. If one stings you, you probably won’t die.” Dad smiled. “But you’ll get pretty sick.” Man did I miss him! He was standing at the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room in his cottage. He was heating up a wok with oil. In another bowl, mix a batter. I was about to experience his famous shark McNuggets. 

Rick the shark hunter had given us a black tip shark when we went down to Woody’s boat basin earlier and met him on the dock. Rick filleted that shark on the dock so quickly, with such skill and precision. Nothing was wasted. Rick was about 5’6”. He wore a ragged old Lone Star cap, and his wrap-around sunglasses sat on the hat bill. He had smiling eyes and hair that was browning but sun-bleached and fell to his collarbone. He had lots of stories and was always so dramatic at telling them. He drove a 74 Plymouth Satellite, that was a cream color and just as loud as all the rest of the island cars. Most noteworthy about Rick was his shark tooth necklace. It had many rows of chains with many many shark teeth set into it.

I liked Rick. He was one of those friends you could feel fortunate to run into. He was dramatic about everything. He made you feel important, and made everything he said feel important. His wife Janice stopped down at the boat basin. After they headed back to the car. As she fired up the engine and stepped on the gas, Rick swore, “She is gonna tear that thing up” he exclaimed shaking his head. For some reason, I could not figure out what Janice had done to receive that reaction. I felt like he said this more for us in a primal male ritual and the Plymouth was never really in any danger.

Rick offered to take us out for a ride on the Orca. I figured a little trip around the marina, right? Perfect. Well, that is not how it went. Around here, you go for a ride on a boat, you go for a ride on a boat, like miles away from the island, by which I mean land. 

As a child, I nearly drowned. I do not even have a memory of this event, but it has manifested itself as a strong aversion to vast amounts of water. With our 3 beers on the dashboard of the Orca, we sped southeast, passed the jetties, and out into the Gulf of Mexico. Port Aransas, which is on Mustang Island, shrank behind us by the second.  Once we got out there, the swells were running like 4 feet, then 6 feet. And so it continued, 4, 6, 4, 6, 4, 6…..16, 18…..4! I knew I would be ok, but I was still terrified. After the 18-foot swell, the Orca seemed to sit midair until she plummeted downward to greet the 4-footer. Our 3 cans of beer took off like missiles and flew past our heads on their way out into the ocean while the boat nose-dived. I held on tight like I could be flung out into the gulf like those cans of beer, while Rick, ran all over the place on the upper parts of the Orca in bare feet like he was wearing magnetic feet that held him to the boat. It was remarkable. He moved with the boat that moved with the sea. It was amazing and for me incomprehensible. The erratic rhythm of the gulf continued to heave us up and then down at unpredictable intervals.

I was happy when Port Aransas grew into view again and we docked at Woody's. We thanked Rick for the tour and gratefully took our black tip shark home for dinner. We talked a little about the water on the way home. I had heard from Dad's cousin Dave that my Dad was not exactly crazy about the water.  But my issue with was certainly much more severe. I could keep myself alive in a lake or a pool, but miles from land, my lack of water confidence would be my undoing.

As Dad made the shark, we talked and talked. He put on Billy Joel’s Glass Houses album. The shark McNuggets were fantastic. I loved how he cooked. There was a subliminal mad scientist feel to the things he did.  I loved that. I listened to him talk. My eyes watched as he moved, tattoos that I had not seen for years that were so familiar to me, two of which I watched him get at Bob’s cabin in Strong, Maine back in July of 1979. It felt like we had been together for the last 4 years. It all felt like home.

 In this little cottage, there was one bedroom. Dad had a queen-sized water bed in the bedroom and two sofas in the living room. The sofa against the front wall became my bed. The television was to stay on ALL OF THE TIME. Port Aransas is extremely humid with salt in said humidity. If you foolishly shut your television off, condensation would build on the circuit boards inside the television and should you turn it on before the condensation cleared, BOOM! No more TV. So, I slept with the TV on all night every night. It was 1984, so our TV was playing MTV 24 hours a day. It was fantastic.

The art of letting go

It is a far greater thing to truly find where it goes than to hold on tight to everything you think you have acquired. I feel like it is a broken record of words that we hear on the radio, that we sing in the car, that we wake up and realize. Something so obvious, yet something so obscure. 

I saw the sun setting behind me and I stopped trying to steer everything. The world did not stop, it did not fall, and not only that but it flourished and thrived. The sun rose and I watched, and things grew, in ways that I never experienced exactly. I could see myself in the reflections, and I know that somehow, even when I was doing everything and thinking that I was not paying attention, I was on a deeper level.

When I find that this discovery means so much to me, I find that it means so much to them too. Ultimately the mission we are given is to make ourselves obsolete and I guess that is happening. I am overwhelmed with gratitude, pride, and love. It has been such a beautiful thing to watch and to live. On sunny days, in thunderstorms, and in rising waters, my sons not only know what to do, but they show others the way. There is no finer thing. 

I am starting to see that this means new hills await to be climbed. I never thought I could contemplate these, but here I am. Now, all those who pass by me on the trail, I want to know about. I know that I can learn from them and the possibilities are limitless. Letting go is not easy, but I keep finding all the gifts that my children have. Letting go is not really letting go. It is listening. It is respect. It is acknowledgment, it is love.

1984 Chapter 8: A Sweet Little Texas Bar

I remember the chart room in Port Aransas, this was a bar. There was a guy named Joe who was a mechanic sometimes, a politician sometimes, and a guitarist and lead singer in a band sometimes. He used to play there. 

I remember Dad dancing with a woman there. I usually did not see him without a ponytail or his hair stuffed up under his hat, but tonight, that blonde hair flowed down most of his back. I thought he would be with us forever. It felt that night like this life would just never end.  The band was on the stage playing Proud Mary. Things were perfect.

 I was working at A Auto Supply earlier that day.  I had put battery acid in someone’s battery. I was drinking a beer in the Chart Room on Saturday night and noticed my jeans were disintegrating. I’ve never seen anything quite like it! 

I loved the Chart Room. It is one of the places that I think reminds me of the year I reunited with my Dad. It did not make it out of 1984, so that is probably why. The Chart Room was one of two bars we went to the day I turned 19. I thought it was a bad idea to make the establishments aware that I had been drinking in know that only today was I finally legal to do so. Of course, this is Texas, a child could drink with a parent or legal guardian in bars. That was a real law. 

That night, much to my embarrassment, my Dad had figured out a cheat code for making fried dough.  He actually brought them to the chart room and the Gaff with us to offer to others.  At 19, I guess that is weird.  Decades later, I think the idea is actually quite cool.  Looking back, I love it. 

I loved the Station Street Pub. All of our crew would go there to have a couple of beers and some pickle chip appetizers after a long day at the parts store drinking beer and throwing darts. The porch area was screened in, ceiling fans spun hard above us and the front grilles of all of our cars faced us from the other side of the screens. Charlie was there drinking Lone Star.  He was a wonderful old guy who owned the parts store.  A long lanky man whose face just seemed to smile all of the time.  Mike, who worked the counter for Charlie, Budweiser, was always full of stories.  Tom from Canada, Schlitz was his beer.  Ended most sentences in 'eh".  Rick, the shark hunter, captain of the charter boat Orca. It was a nice stop before heading home for dinner.

We would sometimes go to the Sail Club. It was more expensive than the rest, it was more trendy than the rest. It was one of the few on the island that regularly featured live bands. It was also nicknamed the Jail Club because rumor had it that if you stayed till closing, you were going to jail. I always played the song Leila from ZZ Tops El Loco album when I arrived there.

I loved all these places. I think the Gaff was my favorite and the most controversial for me in a coming-of-age sort of way. We would walk into the Gaff and order up a couple of long-neck Lone Stars and Dad would walk over to the jukebox, drop a quarter in and BB King's The Thrill is Gone would start playing.  He would gesture to me and I would walk over and play Betty Lou's Getting Out Tonight.  It was on the B-side of  Bob Seger‘s You’ll Accompany Me.  

I met a girl named Sylvia there. She worked at Whataburger. We became friends. Before the night was over someone would play Seven Spanish Angels. It was inevitable.  On December 23 Dad and I went and we took the Dodge. Sylvia wanted her keys and I got them for her. Dad came out into the parking lot and tried to get me. Without warning, some strange unresolved anger in me came forward and pushed him away. I do know that it surprised him. I can only briefly remember screaming at him on the way home that night for being so absent in my life. A moment later I woke up on the floor of our living room with a blanket over me. It was the next day. I asked Dad what I was doing on the floor as he was sitting at the kitchen table contemplating something deep. “Between words of suicide, you passed out there.” He then told me that I drove home so badly that it scared him which was not an easy thing to do. The bad thing about getting that drunk and then having somebody tell you something about your life that is so deep is they may not remember the next morning so unfortunately my dad had to reveal a secret to me again this morning as well. I felt bad that he had to say it twice.

It would seem that I would learn a lot about myself in all of these bars. Many of the most defining moments came from lessons learned or experiences that happened in the smoky dimness of these places. In a way, my heart will always exist in them. 

When my father turned 39, we had some friends over and it was going pretty well, but I did not pace myself. I ended up out in my room in the late afternoon. Dad and our friend Nancy’s boyfriend somehow ended up in a very physical fight. The fight woke me up. When I walked out into the living room, there were so many things knocked over the TV was barely teetering off the end of its stand. Dad and Nancy’s boyfriend were bleeding and now sitting on the couches with little energy to move. They soon were passed out and I asked Nancy if she wanted to go to the Gaff. She did and so we went. Once we got there we sort of mingled independently. 

I saw a young woman sitting at a long table. I was at the other end, she was just looking around. So I said hello and we began to talk. I learned that her name was Sandy, she was 15 and lived on the island. I told her that my sister who is also 15 was coming for a visit in less than 2 months. What neither of us knew at that moment was that in 3 months, my sister would actually move to Port Aransas, start school there, and become Sandy’s best friend. 

Her stepfather saw me talking with her and clearly got the wrong idea. He challenged me with a choice of leaving the table or things were going to get nasty. It was funny. For the first time, I did not have my father with me. It made me realize that with him, I had this incredible force field with me because no one would ever mess with him. I gave the guy a purposeful look like I was trying to decide between a vanilla or a chocolate ice cream cone, which made him angrier. I just wanted him to know, he did not scare me, but at the same time, there was a 15-year-old kid sitting here. She certainly did not need anything like that. I respectfully excused myself and told Sandy, it was nice to meet her.

One thing is for sure about the Gaff. Over the years I had good moments and other times disastrous ones.  I did stake my claim years later, however. In 1989, when I quit drinking, I walked back into the Gaff, only weeks after my lowest night ever there. This time, I had a 32-ounce Ice Box coffee with me. Dad and I played darts. I needed to do this. Like the song says, if I can make it here I’m gonna make it anywhere. This was particularly true of the Gaff and Port Aransas. I know some may look at my life and wonder how I could be content with my long string of random chaos, but it is how I learned and grew. It taught me that I can still make choices.

All those times in the bars with Dad, people thought we were best friends and not father and son. They would marvel at our relationship when we told them he was my Dad.  I am so grateful that I had these times with him. It was a crash course into who I was to become. I was mostly raised around a large number of women, so it helped me understand them more than the average male, but something was missing. Here in Port Aransas, I was being fire tested because you know, I never do anything nice and easy.

1984 Chapter 7 2279: Part 8 - It’s the end of the world as I know it

I woke up at the Giddings Sands around 8. The journey was now different. It was this morning that I believe my Connecticut life ended and my Texas life began. I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew. I was out of the room, gassed up, coffee down, and hammered down toward the coastal bend.

La Grange. Yes, I drove through it. I also may have played the song while doing so. Texas looked relatively the same as it had until I arrived in Tivoli. The intercostal waterway began to permeate my life. As I moved south on 35, futures yet to come showed sites of incredible events. I wish I could say they will be good.

Rockport, Aransas Pass, left turn onto 361 then 8 miles out to the ferry landing. It was a hot late June Friday afternoon. I knew that when my ferry ride ended, I had no idea where to go after that. My Dad had no phone, and I had no address because everyone uses PO Boxes on the island. Was I just going to put myself in the middle of town and just start saying my Dad’s name?

When the ferry gate dropped and we drove off the little 9-car ferry, and as I drove onto Cotter St, Port Aransas exploded before my eyes. It was crowded and busy. It was flashy. The salt air was everywhere. The salt would become a permanent part of my life, in my clothes, my bed, my dreams. Everywhere. 

I made a right turn onto Cut Off Road and followed that down until I found a 7-Eleven at the corner. I walked in and got a cold drink. It was really hot. While I was in there, I ran into a very short man, who was a pint-size David Caradine, with longer hair and a thin headband. His skin was very leathery and brown, but the thing that really caught my attention was he was wearing a blue City of Port A shirt. I guessed this would be the uniform that my Dad wears too. I introduced myself. He told me his name was Jimmy. He told me to follow him.

He first led me to 11th Street where Dad lived. He told me he did not see Dad’s car, so I followed him to the city maintenance shop. It was 12:35, and Dad would be back from lunch at 1. Jimmy talked and talked and talked and I could not understand but maybe 10% of what he was saying. It got to the point where it just got easier to nod my head and say yeah after he talked for a spell. I realized that was not the best practice when it was evident that I said yes to him asking if I would sell him my CAR! I had to backpedal on that. It was the longest 20 minutes of my life up to this point in my life.

Jimmy had told me that Dad’s car was loud and I was very happy when that loud 74 Chrysler Town and Country wagon came down the road. 5100 pounds plus a couple hundred worth of Port Aransas sand and salt. I heard the engine stop on the side of the building. Anticipation built within me as I knew he was walking toward the entry door of the shop. He walked in. He looked right at me.  “You took my parking place,” he said. I was so happy to see him. He quickly explained to his boss that I just arrived and asked for the remainder of the day off.

It was June 29, 1984. I followed Dad over to his small cottage-style house that sits a stone’s throw away from the dune line of the county beach. After brief introductions to the animals, we each grabbed a cold Milwaukee’s Best (he promised me Lone Star on the phone!) and headed out to his 1974 yellow and wood grain Chrysler wagon. The car was a 5,100-pound monster. It’s heartbeat with a mean 440 cubic inch engine that could power an ocean liner. It was loud. There was little exhaust left on this car. But this was Port Aransas. Geographical hazard. The salt content in the air made me wonder if humans could possibly rust.

The car, in its day, was a beauty. Leather, power seats, cruise, motorized-self tuning radio, power windows, tilt, a/c, and size to beat all. Today it was an obscenity compared to its once magnificent self. The windows did not all work so some were down. Didn’t matter Dad told me. It hadn’t rained in Port A in months. The interior was now embedded with the sand and salt that is so much a part of life in Port A. I could feel its grit everywhere I touched and everywhere on me. The A/C in the Chrysler did not work. The salt air was blissfully hot. Dad sat next to me driving. I thought. Life will never be the same. My life has taken a different turn and I will be someone else.

Although I could see out the windshield, it was definitely carrying with it a glaze of salt. It amazed me how thoroughly this place can consume everything, including Dad. He looked so good. He had put on a little weight and it looked good on him. He was laid back. He of course was my Father. But as we drove down the beach, the hot Texas sea breeze breathing in through the left windows of the car, I knew that the twenty years between us were really not there. We were the best of friends. I knew it would be this way forever.

This afternoon, we drove down the beach. It was constantly hot, yet the sea breeze off the gulf was forgiving. There were girls and cars and I was eighteen. Dad and I were reunited. We have all the time in the world now.

Bitter, bad

 Rain falls from the sky, it makes me contemplate all of those things that do not need to exist. There is great ignorance around us, like a storm it can choose to be unrelenting. Yes you and your bad self, promising all that you know nothing about. Your lies and efforts to force the image you have of yourself upon others will see the same fate as the dirigible at Lakehurst. Down you go, your words will become nothing.

The parrots, what do they have at the end of the day? It is nothing more than the latter. All of this mixing of calm in the chaos and for nothing is crime itself. It comes and goes and you rejoice? Pathetic.

Bitter, bad. Bitter, bad. Bitter, bad. That is all you are. Ironically it goes on. Playing it safe can be such a sweet victory until it isn’t. 

I laugh because I teach that this is all fortification, but Johnny, you said it best. “Say you’re looking for some peace and love, the leader of a big old band….You wanna save humanity, but it’s people that you just can’t stand.  I don’t wanna face it, no, no.”

1984 Chapter 7 2279: Part 7 - Sometimes you just need to draw the line

 I woke up, obviously due to some proximity alarm inside me that was going off because some guy was walking around my car looking through the windows of my Dodge. I sat up, turned the key, and backed out away from the outdoor swimming pool I was parked in front of. The man's disapproving glare followed me out as I turned back into the road. 

I found a place for coffee and gas and continued down the road. I thought about last night. That alternator discharge thing was concerning, yet today, it seemed like it never even happened, which made it even more strange. This made me just want to drive straight on to Port Aransas, lessening the chance that I would have another occurrence.

I thought about all of the stupid decisions I made yesterday. I put unnecessary stress on myself and my car, I deprived myself of so much sleep, and in doing so, I deprived myself of any ability to take in what I was seeing. After close to three hours of driving down, I-35 and then down US Highway 77, I realized that I was seeing absolutely nothing.  I could not be sure if that meant that there was nothing to see, or if I was just not seeing what was there.

In the town of Giddings Texas, there was a place called the Giddings Sands Motel. I pulled in around 1:30 and got a room. My big worry was that I would arrive at Dad’s tonight and be so tired and burned out that our reunion would be overshadowed by my fatigue.

I was a zombie. I decided that the furthest I was going today for dinner was going to be a vending machine down the hall for snack food and nothing else. I showered, ate, put an old movie on television, and drifted off to sleep. I don’t think I ever slept this many consecutive hours in a row in my life. This was needed, it was what had to happen for me to return to the land of the living. Tomorrow was Friday and day six on the road. Sometimes, you just need to draw the line.

Years later, just off to the west in Bastrop, a young man will sit in the passenger seat of his 76 Chevy Van and feel that he betrayed all of this.  If you could fold time like a piece of paper, those two men, the one here in Giddings and that one in Bastrop could momentarily catch a glimpse of each other and never understand why the latter was even happening.

1984 chapter 7: Part 6 - A nice little motel room in Chouteau, Oklahoma

 Route 69 was very southeast Oklahoma, there was no other way to describe it. I pulled off the road and got a room at the 69 Motel in Chouteau, OK. After checking in I called my Grandmother from a pay phone out front. It was nice to hear her voice and she was happy that I called. 

There was an old roadside truckstop diner across the road. I walked in and sat at the counter. The place was pretty quiet. There was a cook in the back. A fifty-something waitress and 3 patrons that I could see from my seat at the counter. The one guy at the counter a few stools down from me was familiar with the waitress and she was with him. You could easily tell her life was a hard one. She derived brief pleasures from the overworked drivers who stopped in and made her feel like a little something special with their admiration.

She seemed annoyed that I was there, I clearly did not fit in.  That was ok, I just wanted my fried chicken plate and to go to my room so I could sleep. This was one of those off days for me. What I needed was to hang at this nice little country motel till tomorrow morning, but that is not what I did. 

I couldn’t sleep so I watched a show called The Lone Star Bar and Grill. I was addicted, further prompting sleeplessness. 

I was from Connecticut, and severe thunderstorms would prompt a message to scroll across the bottom of the screen every few minutes, but here in southeast Oklahoma when there was a severe thunderstorm warning, a solid warning stayed in the right bottom of the screen. This was tornado alley and I was inexperienced.

I was anxious.  My plan was to take this room, get some sleep then leave at midnight...again. So when at 7:30 the television had a steady overlay on the lower right corner of the screen, on every channel that said "severe storm warning".  Brilliant me decides, “I better leave now and beat the storm!” Stupid little Connecticut boy, you cannot outrun a thunderstorm in southeast Oklahoma! I was so clueless. 

I hit the road, without sleep, and drove right into the biggest storm I had ever seen. I could see it for 50 miles and was right in the thick of it for over 30 miles. The wind and lightning were serious business. My wiper blades were worn and the wiper motor could not run the wipers fast enough to keep up with rain like this car has never seen. There was a section of Highway 69 where a row of trees on the side of the road was on fire. The violence of this storm felt like a tornado was imminent.

While I gripped the steering wheel of my 72 Dodge, all I could think about it that I STILL HAD THAT MOTEL ROOM RENTED TILL NOON THE NEXT DAY! What an idiot! The storm seemed to take forever to go away.  It finally did and I was running out of road in Oklahoma and I knew Texas was coming.

I finally drove into Texas, my final state, but I was still a day away from Port Aransas. I stopped at this dark little convenience store and grabbed a coffee. I had to ask the woman to repeat what she said three times.  Oh boy, I was going to really need to listen to people down here.  I was not accustomed to the dialect and I was the outsider. 

Things were pretty calm until I made it to Dallas around 2 AM. The traffic patterns were foreign and it blew my concentration. Yet, I could still be sleeping in my Chouteau, Oklahoma motel room that was still paid for. Dallas was in my rearview finally. I decided that I was very tired and at this point, I thought just pulling into a rest area and laying down on the front seat to sleep was welcome, despite the motel room in Chouteau.

All the rest areas were full. I began to worry that the full rest areas were warning that storms were further south. I got off the interstate in Hillsboro and took route 22 west toward Lake Whitney State Park. The sky opened up and again, the wipers were no match for the deluge. I drove a long way out to the state park on back roads and there was a tree across the road. I turned around, I had seen a small motel on 22 on my way out to Whitney. When I got there it was actually not open anymore. The rain pounded down, wipers slamming up and down, defroster full speed, lights on full, and of course, the alternator gauge started to pull down toward the low side, it was not charging. Remembering that morning back in northeast Ohio, yep there it was. I backed the defroster down to conserve battery power, as well as dim the brights, and wipers down 1 speed. The headlights grew dimmer all the time. It was getting dangerously low. My car would run without power, it was a 72 with breaker point ignition, but I still needed lights and wipers. When it got down as low as I thought it possibly could and would have to stop driving, the needle jumped over to the overcharge side with a vengeance. It overcharged all the way back to the interstate. 

I had enough! I pulled up to the swimming pool of a larger hotel parked, laid down on the front seat, and went to sleep. As I slept, a nice little motel room in Chouteau, Oklahoma sat quietly across the road from an old truck stop diner empty and mine, where I should have stayed until the next day.

1984 Chapter 7: 2279 Part 5 The old man is down the road

I awoke in the rest area and went into the bathroom to clean up.  I then checked the oil in the Dodge and headed back out onto the highway. The first exit with coffee and gas got me off the highway, but it seemed the closer I got to Texas the more serious the gravitational pull was on me. My driving was becoming more dedicated than it was at the beginning of the trip. Oddly I felt like I had been traveling for weeks.

Around noon I crossed the Oklahoma state line.  Just as I crossed into my second-to-last state, I heard a horrible grinding coming from the front end of my car. I was devastated. I wondered if I should just ignore this. Could I possibly make it worse by driving on it? I debated for much longer than I should have.

 I was sure now that in light of this new development, I would not be stopping in Oklahoma City to see Kathy.  Even if I was not having car troubles, I did not seem to be in the headspace for a detour like that. I wanted to see my Father.

 I seriously considered running it all the way to Port Aransas like this.  I feared because, at this point in my life, I could not even guess what was going wrong with my car.  In high school, I took auto shop, but it really gave me no instincts about anything. I would grow talents far beyond my wildest dreams of automotive whispering. I actually allowed this to continue down the Will Rogers Turnpike and then onto Oklahoma Route 69 which runs southeast right through Tornado Alley.  Little did I know that there were some of the most awesome storms  I'd ever seen just down the roadways.  I did not have to face them, yet I would. Ignorance is bliss.  

I could not stand it any longer.  I was passing through the town of Pryor, Oklahoma and I finally gave in and pulled into a very small service station.  The old fella there was very slowly working on something else.  But he dropped what he was doing and attended to me and my injured Victoria-Lynn.  

"Well son", said the mechanic wiping the sweat from his grease-stained forehead.  "It's a good thing you shutter' down. This car would've blown up any second. Nope, I'm sorry. This is the end of the line for your Dodge."

That's not what he said, but believe it or not, I was worried that it might come to this! This would have actually been a great time for a “me” from the future to suddenly appear and smack me upside the head for being such a dumbass about cars. Fortunately, that did not happen.

He took the left front brake drum off. There were torn twisted chunks of steel inside that I'd been grinding since Joplin, Missouri.  He asked me to hop into his truck and we drove to a Chrysler dealership and found a brake adjuster cable. We went back, and he talked a little.  Me not understanding a damn word this guy was saying.  

Within an hour and a half from the time I stopped, I was on the road again for a mere 11 dollars.  He could have charged me fifty and I would not have questioned it, but this gentleman in Pryor Oklahoma was an honest working man. He restored my vehicle’s good running condition and I was southbound and down on US 69 again. That was how I was first received by the Will Rogers Turnpike. We were good for now, but Will Rogers and I were far from finished.

1984 Chapter 7: 2279 Part 4 -Attention Klingon Commander

I woke up at 10:40 AM and I was not happy.   I showered very quickly and vacated the room feeling rushed and not ready to move on yet. The sun was harsh the day was turning out to be a hot one. What day was it even? Tuesday.  In one way they all feel the same now and in other ways they are complete opposites of other days.  One thing is for sure, Tuesdays never felt like this.

There was a desire in me to take it in today and my rush from the motel room did not accommodate that.  East St Louis Illinois was down the road today.  It would be just before I crossed the Mississippi River into St Louis Missouri.  I could find a waterfront park or something and take pictures of the Gateway from across the river.  This plan made me feel better.  It was going to be a good day.

I stopped and got gas, coffee, and a muffin and hit I 70 West again. All I needed to do was to drive a couple of hours then I could chill by the Mississippi, which I was really looking forward to.  The symbolism that this river held, the history.  The terrain is different on either side of it.  The historical significance. Radio station call letters begin with a W east of it and on the west side of it the station call letters start with a K. There are 2 exceptions to this; the first station in the US, KDKA is in Pittsburgh, PA, and WFAA in Dallas, Texas. 

 I was beginning to think that East St Louis must be coming up, but before I knew it the highway opened right up and suddenly I was on a bridge over the Mississippi River. The bridge dropped me hard into the biggest city I have ever driven through. No mercy. The afternoon rush was brutal! I spotted the arch in the sea of the sprawling city that seemed to go on for light years.  I laughed at my lack of experience and planning. "oh, I'll just find a nice riverfront park and take pictures." What an idiot!

Photo by Tiffany Cade on Unsplash

St Louis for my inexperienced self felt like piloting a plane through an asteroid belt.  It seemed to take an hour to get through the chaos. The hot afternoon air blasted through the windows.  It is 1984, and AC is for rich people. I held the steering wheel hard with a white knuckle grip, fearing taking a wrong turn. At one point I did stay in a lane that took me off the highway that I needed to stay on.  Shaking, I found my way onto I-44 West, my new roadway that would now carry me all the way into northeast Oklahoma.

When the Ion storm was over. I felt like I had been dropped into a pot of hot oil.  I needed a break, but I waited until St Louis was 20 miles behind me before I took in some healing McDonald's therapy to soothe.

I noticed, that once you get out of St. Louis, the terrain opens up in a dramatic way.  Even though southern Illinois was flat, this was different.  It made me feel small, a speck under an infinite sky.

I had been noticing this cloud hanging over me recently.  It was guilt.  At 18 you do not understand what it is like to be a parent.  So I stopped in Eureka, where they have Six Flags Over America.  I called my mother from a shopping center payphone.  She was glad that I had checked in with her. I noticed after hanging up the phone that this shopping center also had a movie theater. This gave me an idea......."Attention Klingon commander, this is Admiral James T Kirk, I'm alive and well on the planet's surface.  I'm sorry about your crew but as they say on earth, 'cest la vie!"

I went to see "Star Trek III The Search for Spock" again for the second time in 3 days.  Just could not help myself.  It was relaxing.  I got out of the theater and it was getting dark.  I got onto the highway and headed southwest on Interstate 44.  The movie was a great destresser and I was moving right along for a few hours. Around 1 AM in Conway Missouri, a rest area beckoned me to pull in, I turned off the engine, pulled the armrest up on the front seat lay down, and was asleep in minutes. 

1984 Chapter 7: 2279 Part 3 - A Red 64 Chevelle

 Evening came and I pulled out of the campground around 8:pm.  It really amazes me now that if only I had just stayed the night I would have eventually fallen asleep and actually got some rest, instead I was working on an ever-increasing sleep deficit.  I was just a kid and I wanted more, I wanted to see more and although my focus was more on the trip itself at this point, deep down inside, I knew that I was going to see my father within a few days and that had this great invisible pull on me. 

He had left in September of 1980, now nearly four years ago. We had periodic phone calls once every few months and this generally left me trying to extract more meaning from words by replaying these conversations back in my head over and over again. I do remember though, there was nothing like the feeling of being around him. 

When I think about the different times I had with him I always had to span years of visits. It has been a choppy timeline. The idea of having him in my everyday life was so foreign because, with a small exception of 3 months at the end of 1974, I did not have him in my everyday life since the spring of 1973. Even then, he worked two jobs and I barely saw him. From 73 through 74, he would take my sisters Brooke and Amy and me from 1 PM till 7 PM on Sundays. We always did things that required no money at all for the most part. He would take us to post-fishing derby bonfires where entire families cooked fish on long sticks and played summer games outside. He took us to fish hatcheries and we talked all day. There was a motor cross set up at New Departure Hyatt, a giant factory in Bristol Connecticut that my Grandfather and my cousin worked at. It featured a parking lot so big that you could probably land a commuter jet there. 

My Dad brought a social light everywhere he went. You could have the most boring people assembled, trying to socialize using awkward small talk, but have my Father in the picture, and that visit became so warm and exciting, creating a memory to never be forgotten. This was an anomaly with him because, inside he was somewhat tortured. He drank to be more social, and that worked. The flip side was it could go too far. I recall one of those visits on Sunday, he stayed at our house outside socializing and had too much. My Mom and a friend drove him and his twenty-dollar 64 Chevelle home. A little while later, I saw the Chevelle coming back down Lillian Road, but with the police right behind him. I think it was experiences like being 8 years old and watching your Dad being cuffed and taken away that forced you to let no chaos stumble you, at least on the outside. You want to know why the world can burn around me, with meteors falling from the sky and I act like it’s an everyday occurrence? It was forged right there on Lillian Road in 1974, for the sake of me and especially the sake of my father's image in my mind.

My 18-year-old limited palate and I found a McDonald's that had a girl with the same accent as my friend Denise at Toys R Us where I had worked this past year.  This was a time in my existence when I could still overnotice everything out loud. Later in life, everything, no matter how insignificant will get noticed and used to navigate stealthily in a dangerous world. 

From McDonald's, I stopped at a Phillips 66 filling station. I was filling the Dodge when this young guy ran outside and commented on my Lone Star Beer shirt. It was a t-shirt Dad had mailed to me back in 1981 for the 8th Annual Port Aransas Barroom Bicycle Race.  This was a race on bicycles in which enrollees would pedal from one bar (and there are so many) on the island to the next, stop, down a plastic cup of beer, and then pedal onto the next one.  If this did not provide a profile of where I decided to start my life as an adult, nothing else would!

 The guy said "I love Texas! I"'m going there soon!" and he went on and on. That boy just loved Texas and in a way, he made me look forward even more to what lay ahead for me.  The truth was that this was no ordinary journey. On a normal journey, you return to where you came from. But this time was to begin an all-new life at the other end.  And even better, I was taking the trip in stride on the way there. My enthusiastic new friend, he was headed to Lackland to start his career with the Air Force.

On the highway again, I began to see the signs for Columbus.  I began to debate whether or not I should go through Columbus or bypass it as I had with the city of Cleveland. Once again I chose the easy way by bypassing the city. I scorned myself. All of America's great cities and I bypass them.  I told myself, no more. The next one I drive right into. Next would be Indianapolis.

Ohio was very nice.  And excitement grew as I headed for the next midwestern state.  I was happy now to be able to cover all this new ground.  The sunset on the western Ohio terrain was a mirror reflection of the one that I had watched rise on the northeastern terrain this morning.  Darkness and the highway. Route I-70 West. Now I was moving definitely west. "Till you learn to laugh you'll never come to any parties at my house...And if go on like this the only house you're gonna visit is the nuthouse. Oh! You're such a misery, why don't you learn to laugh...." Ray Davies of the Kinks shouted from my tape deck.

I drove across the Indiana border and then continued till I hit Indianapolis.  This time I did not turn the steering wheel either way. Straight on this time. Indianapolis at 1:am looked pristine, modern and clean, and beautiful I loved it! And I left Indianapolis feeling very good.  Headed this time for the great gateway to the west, St. Louis, Missouri.  But first I had to go through Illinois. Not too hard. 

The lack of sleep was wearing hard on me. Fortunately, I had the good sense to stop around 3 AM in Greenup Illinois, and get a motel room.  I cannot remember if they told me that this meant that I only had till 11 AM in the room due to the weird arrival time, but that was what I was going by. I was so exhausted since my last real sleep had been in Alfred NY nearly 2 days ago. I never thought to ask for a wake-up call.

1984 Chapter 7: 2279 Part 2-Wide open spaces

It was like waking up in the Twilight Zone. The sunlight shone through the window this morning, just as bright as can be. Nothing beats an early summer morning.

7:29 P.M. (Or one second later)

You know a great mission is underway when you wake up to begin day two. It is a sealing of the deal.  The sun was shining through the windows of my room this evening as though it were morning. I got up, showered, and plotted supper ( or breakfast or whatever I was about to eat). Peculier, just as I drove into the super small Alfred village the sun began to set. So ended the shortest day of my life.

I got a grinder from a local pizza place and brought it back to the room. As I put this to words I am marveling at how simple my meal tastes were at 18. That was such a good and easy thing. Later in life if I had done this trip, I would have been scouring the countryside of western New York for something that bends the rules! The contrast is fascinating. Let’s face it too, in 1984, there was a lot less rule-bending in the culinary world, at least for the average person. Alfred Village did not appear to be a place that bends rules no matter what decade or millennium it is. The biggest dares I saw back in this era were actually made in my father’s kitchen.

Since it was 1984 I watched Scarecrow and Mrs. King on television. After this, I saw Knightrider. This was an episode that has Michael against the ever-evil twin Garth Knight and the infallible Goliath the killer truck. The episode turned out to be a two-parter that ended just after the Knight Industries Two-Thousand plunged off a 500-foot cliff to meet its supposed demise. Unfortunately, this was a two-part episode and it took me 37 years to finally watch part 2!

11 o’clock arrived and I packed up my Dodge. I am excited. I watched the weather and found that it appears that I will see some rain through the rest of western New York on my path to northwest Pennsylvania.

By 11:45 I had little patience left, so I decided to leave the Squirrels Nest Motel and continue west on Route 17. Working my way back toward 17 lightning flashed on the northern horizon. The car engine, for the second night in a row, just purred along nicely.

When I wasn’t listening to the radio I was playing tapes. I bought two new tapes the week before I left, which I absolutely loved. John Cougar Mellencamp’s Uh Huh and the Kinks, Low Budget. I could not get enough of these on this trip. JCM was burning up the charts in 1984 with Crumblin’ Down and Pink Houses in which MTV, which was in its blowtorching heyday, was promoting JCM's new album seemingly every 10 minutes. The promotion, in which they would give away a house to the grand prize winner and there JCM stood in front of the camera, drawling, “We’re gonna paint the mother pink!”

But now the chart-topper was "The Authority Song". But I have a lot of appreciation for the overall LP.  "Golden Gates" shows a person with his faith shaken and trusting no one. A song that shows the singer understands that people are really not looking out for your best interests.  Especially the government.  This is no surprise to me when you look at the timeline.  John's next album the following year in 1985 was clearly activism, in support of all of the American farmers who were losing their farms in record foreclosures.  "Jezebel" shows a moral and decent man trading in all his goodness not because he is running to badness, but because he is tired and worn down and thus trading principles for a warmer place to sleep.  "Play Guitar," the name says it all. But then again this next line really adds the topping: "Forget all about that macho shit and learn how to play guitar." This held a special place in my heart having served four years in Waterbury (which I used to write as "Mortarbury." My readers always got it too, they often said, "it sounds like morbid." Intent understood: Check!) Waterbury had a group of people who were styling their hair with all that flammable stuff, wearing the bright red shiny jacket and the stupid parachute pants so they could imitate Michael @#$%^!^&^&!! Jackson! BLLLLLEEEEECCCCCKKKKKK! 

OK, breathe....just let the blood pressure return to normal.  Back to JCM.  "Jacki O" is a very strange song but you like it.  It's one of those songs that you would never tell anyone you liked, at least while you were 18.

Route 17 finally ended and I felt like I had left an old friend.  I followed long dark back roads to lead me to Interstate 90 in Westfield.  It was like I had been in a different world before. I had pretty much traveled 400 miles with minimal interstate exposure, that is until now.

The interstate suddenly brought me back into the twentieth century.  Life! Once again! Cars screaming down the highway! What a change of pace! Kind of welcomed after the years of peaceful gliding I had done across the not-so-empire state of New York.  This sudden change of surroundings signified to me that my journey was in fact being accomplished. Here in the wee hours of Monday morning, I knew the great Lake Erie was within eyesight if not for the dark of night. Alright Tom, maybe you have a point?

I was headed for Cleveland, Ohio. This would be my first time in Ohio. This was also my first time in Pennsylvania. After only one hour spent in the usually much bigger state of Pennsylvania, I crossed into Ohio.  Because I was traveling that northwest little tab that sticks up out of PA between NY State to the east and Ohio to the west, my time in PA was brief. Ohio is the Midwest as it is known.  I learned this from family ties, a show that at the time of this trip was doing very well.

I saw my first interstate bypass loop sign and I took it up on its offer to go around a major city rather than go through it. I did have to change to I-71 south anyway so I took bypass I-271 south. This was yet somewhat busy, but nothing like going right into the city. So here I was traveling at night, so I did not get to see a great lake.  Now, taking the bypass loop, I do not get to see my first major city.  I was still OK with it as I was getting used to traveling, but it would start eating away at me.

Sohio is a word I shall never forget.  Sohio stations were conveniently splattered all over Ohio.  Everywhere you looked, there they were.  I remember these fondly.  Why?  They are only gas stations.  I love anything that is unique and has a local flavor.  I loved being in Maine in 1979 because they had a bottle bill. They had Staff brand pancakes.  They talked differently from “normal” people.  Sohios were only in Ohio and that to me made them special. In 1984 I was pretty sure that all the local individuality had been forcefully extracted from local areas thanks to television and syndicated radio watering down accents and local folklore.  I was keenly aware of this having read John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley in the weeks before I left for this trip.  If Mr. Steinbeck could identify it in 1960, how much more so could I see it in 84?  This 24-year gap may suggest that it is all gone by 1984, but that is not true. Decades later the losses of everything local could almost be classified as cultural genocide. Sadly the Standard Oil Company of Ohio would cease to exist in 1987 with the last sign coming down in 1991 exactly 80 years after the company was started. Globalization now makes 1984 look like the 1930s. At least I can say I knew these places at one time, it is sad they are now gone.

I played tapes all night with the exception of listening to WKBW in Buffalo and trying out WLW in Cincinnati.  Last winter I listened to WLW Cincinnati to a woman psychic doing a show called "Beyond the Norm". What a cheezy thing it was, but it got listeners. WLW was a powerful 50,000-watt giant like KB that could be heard on certain nights even thousands of miles away.  I was very good about watching the fuel gauge and other gauges for that matter.  I promised myself I would refuel every time the needle hit the halfway mark. I noticed the alternator gauge was reading a bit under. Like as if gravity were pulling it over to the minus side of the "0".  It was one of those things. You know it is not an issue but somehow, you just know it will be.

Yesterday I was in western New York as a dreary day slowly changed from black to gray.  But this morning was the opposite. Gradually the daylight revealed a spread open wide Ohio terrain. Beautiful! Yet the flattest state I had ever seen. Flat means tornados. I know. I watched The Wizard of Oz. The sun came into view. A beautiful sunrise.

I enjoyed the sights then decided it was time to refuel. Of course, I chose a Sohio to stop at. Gas, coffee, and a pastry, and back to the car. Turned the key. Very slow crank, but she started. That's why my turn signals interfered with the radio.  I headed north on the highway from the way I came to go to a rest area I had just seen.  All the way to the rest area the alternator gauge read way over on the overcharging side.  Good old girl, she was not one to let me down. I got back onto the southbound lane and found my rest area. The bathrooms were something of the 1890s. Yet outside was so well groomed.  I got into the car, closed the windows, and went to sleep...

When I had gone to sleep the day was new and the temperature was not very hot. It's 1984 and you have to lock your car if you're going to sleep in it in a rest area. But man was it hot.  I headed down the highway south on I-71.  It's nearly July and this is Ohio. I drove through the wide-open Ohio terrain enjoying the spectacular expanse. How beautiful. Around 11 am I pulled off the highway to find a campground that highway billboards warned of. Sunbury, Ohio. Understand that since this was the flattest land I had yet seen to date, the word Ohio may have well been "Tornado". So this was Sunbury, Tornado. Stupid? Probably. But youth has its ignorance.

I pulled into the campground and there was a lady in her 50s there. She was not very social and looked like she expected trouble rather than business. I really did not like this place as a result. Nor did it have much to offer. Looking back it was hard to believe that at this time yesterday, I was tucked into a nice warm bed on a dreary Sunday afternoon in the village of Alfred, NY. Seemed like a million years ago. 

I lay down on the front seat of the Dodge and turned on the radio. Yes. To WLW Cincinnati.  I had trouble going to sleep today. This is because every jet I heard in the sky I thought could be a tornado. This made me uneasy. But after a while, I began to laugh. How silly for me to think that "A tornado can just come out of nowhere without warning." my new sensible approach relaxed me. WLW played quietly in the background. Then one line that they said just stood out...And it went as follows..."This is WLW Cincinnati, your tornado information center...That's right because we know that a tornado can come out of nowhere without warning". Needless to say, after this I did not sleep.