The Open Road

In 1994, after becoming burnt out working at small software company, I decided to travel around the country in my car, The Duck. Perhaps I was running away from difficult problems which I didn’t want to face, or perhaps the time had merely come to explore my fantasies of travelling.

Duct Tape

While travelling through Texas, The Duck began to show signs of trouble. “It’s the heat,” we said, and it was. An unscheduled stop at a Burger King in the middle of Nowhere was for the benefit of The Duck, and that mechanic we saw an hour later was for Ducky, as well.

The mechanic said we didn’t have anything wrong, except that we needed water. So he sold me a new radiator cap anyway. The Duck was happier after that, but I wasn’t. I didn’t mind the radiator cap, as I was thankful for the water in the middle of Nowhere, but I didn’t think that my problems were solved.

The Duck remained quiet, though, until we got to Florida. Florida has these amazingly stark and bleached freeways, like driving to Jones Beach on Long Island. And it was in this setting that The Duck decided to explode with a frightful noise.

I popped open the hood to see what had happened, and discovered that the top radiator hose had split open as if someone had taken a knife to it. “Amazing,” I remarked, because of the precision of the cut. Panic set in, because a broken radiator hose isn’t something that you just easily fix. And I didn’t relish being trapped in the middle of Long Island, or even Florida.

“Duck tape” was what I thought duct tape was, for most of my childhood. A prophetic misnomer, after having seen one too many MacGuyver episodes. I wrapped the hose like a bad ankle, and used my tools to force it to hold a shape while I wrapped it some more. In the end, it looked pretty good, and didn’t even seem to leak. So I filled it up, and we started going again.

All hail the mighty Duck Tape.

Vagrancy in Florida

I ditched my travelling companion while in Sarasota, and ended up touring the Florida peninsula without her. I participated briefly in the Spring Break festivities at Daytona, where I got smashed and slept on the beach. I woke up in the middle of the night with one of those insomnias in which your brain is endlessly tormented by thoughts of regets and should-have-dones. So I drove.

Sometime later I came near St. Augustine, which I had visited years before with a dear friend of mine. Seeing it again would warm my heart and quell my thoughts, I figured, so I drove into town trying to recall the details of where we had been. I located the church parking lot we had parked in, and from there all the memories came flooding back easily.

I wandered onto the main street with my camera, some idea in my mind that I might find something pretty to remind me of the nation’s oldest city. I slowly walked up the street, looking in each window and remembering the shops I had once stepped into long before.

St. Augustine is a lovely city, even at one in the morning, with shops upon shops selling pretty crystals and trinkets. The peace and calm of the night settled over me and I began to relax. It was at this point (and in the process of photographing a store front), that George approached me.

George was a young artist, disenchanted with life (and his parents), who woke up one day and decided to bicycle his way up the Florida coast on the way to Atlanta, where he hoped to discover his artistic fortunes. He invited me to coffee at that most-cherished of East Coast Institutions (right after White Castle), Dunkin Donuts. I accepted, of course, and we ambled over.

It was at the Dunkin Donuts where I learned about George, his ambitions, and his infatuation with the scenic beauty of the quaint tourist town. Finding it very friendly, he had opted to stay for some weeks to enjoy the atmosphere. “You should stay for a while,” he cajoled.

George painted a glamorous picture about the life of the vagrant in St. Augustine, so I decided that I would stay for a while to experience it. There wasn’t much to do at night, beyond hanging out at Dunkin Donuts; Raymond, a house painter horribly afflicted with insomnia (and living in separate quarters from his wife because of it) attested to that. The evening I met Raymond (on the left), he was arguing with a guy who seemed to be tripping; the tripper was convinced that God was a member of the Beatles, and Raymond was taking the matter very seriously. George and I listened for a short while, before taking leave to slumber for the night. We parted ways, and I wandered back to my car to crash.

The next morning came with all the usual fears that shy people have. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to stay anymore, and a subtle but unspeakable fear pervaded my senses momentarily. At the small diner on the main thoroughfare, the feeling was reinforced as I ate alone and felt the questioning stares of the natives probe my form. This seems to happen repeatedly at small towns, I’ve found; no wonder that I prefer to travel with people, eh?

Since I was already somewhat “settled”, I figured that I would at least visit a bookstore to search for the poem on “Prufrock” which had thus far been eluding me on my trip. I found a neat used bookstore where every cranny was stuffed with books, and the proprietor was a talkative woman who had read most of the books in the store. She didn’t have what I was looking for, but we spoke for a while about other books and she made me feel more welcome.

A suitable purchase in hand, I took up a place on the sea wall of the old spanish fort which was a featured attraction, and I alternately read and slept until the afternoon. Wandering back to the string of shops, I ran into George again. George introduced me to some of the local street performers and other homeless people, and I had a good time sitting with them and talking and beating a small drum.

The times I wasn’t with George I spent wandering the town and reading about its history. I learned that the site which was now St. Augustine was first sighted by ship on March 27th (my birthday), and how a railroad baron named Flagler made a fortune and founded a college in town. I wandered past the dormitories and into the residential section where I admired the large East Coast homes with affordable prices.

The most memorable pair I met were Victor, a homeless Vietnam war veteran, and his dog Ewok, who was locally famous for wearing sunglasses and doing a fabulous simulation of a stuffed animal. Victor told me some about the Vietnam war, in between trying to convince me that Ewok was almost in the movies and lots of comments about how the government won’t help vets like him.

When it finally came time for me to leave, I came to learn that I had touched Victor rather deeply. He made a speech to me on several ideas which all revolved around the central theme of “love”, and then (after verifying that there were no witnesses in sight) he kissed my hand.

Mistaken in Kansas

I went to a topless bar in Topeka, once. There was only a single girl dancing in a far away corner, and lots of big biker-type fellows. I sat at the bar drinking my beer, and a topless girl came over collecting tips after her dance. This made me sad, because up close and in focus you could see that she wasn’t especially old, but her features made her seem very old – a phenomenon I had observed previously in prostitutes, who always seem prematurely aged to me.

After the topless girl left, to finish the story, the bikers surrounded me. That was a little odd, and I wondered what I was about to get into, but it turned out alright. The biggest biker asked me if I was a certain fellow (whose name escapes me) who was in the Navy with this biker. I wondered for a moment whether I should tell the truth and perhaps get beat up (they were still seeming a bit ominous to me), or lie over my beer and bullshit my way out of the bar.

I don’t like to lie, though I sometimes do it. In this instance, it seemed like a sure way to end up in the gutter, so I told the truth. And then the bikers got surreal, which I had never previously imagined. They asked me if I was sure that I wasn’t this guy. Uh huh, and then they asked me if I was from some Kansas town not far away. They seemed unbelieving that I wasn’t this guy or some close relative, but not as unbelieving as I that this was happening to me.

They left me alone after that, but you could tell that they weren’t exactly pleased that I wasn’t this guy, whom I gathered they would’ve been happy to see. So, being depressed over premature aging and mistaken identity, I walked out of the bar and began playing my harmonica as I walked back to my car.

Halfway there, and in front of a motel, this guy stops me and starts talking to me. I lied and told him that I was hitch-hiking around, because he seemed a bit creepy. He invited me to crash in his room, where he had a buddy, but I declined and said I was happy just walking up the street. Then he got mean and tried to tell me I was strung out on drugs and that he was going to make me stay in his room. Weirdly, I told him that I wasn’t strung out and I didn’t want to stay in his room and walked away, and he just stood there yelling at me.

Topeka isn’t so dangerous, really, but they ask tough questions. Who am I, and what am I looking for? Where am I going, and can I afford the price? I am happy to be alive, falling in love at the movies and thinking about all these things. And maybe I’ll find the answers in Egypt, buried in the sand. Or not.

An Incident by Mt Rushmore

Mt. Rushmore is an awesomely inspiring sight. I don’t believe any picture can do justice to this momument, or the feelings of patriotism which course through the blood as you read about these Presidents of stone and their place in history.

It drizzled and rained in this remote region of South Dakota, so apropos for the argument I was having with my travelling companion. The nearby town was a quaint mid-western metropolis, with interesting shops and store fronts. A lovely example of middle America, so similar to so many other towns I had passed through.

America by freeway is pretty much the same anywhere, although you can see the largest McDonalds in the world (or, at least the US) in the exact middle of the Will Rogers Turnpike (near Tulsa). In search of scenery, we decided upon the smaller highways which rolled towards Wyoming.

A mere ten miles from the state line, we passed a South Dakota state trooper ticketing some sap going the other way. Three minutes later I was the sap, when the trooper made a bee line for me. “Are you speeding,” asked my companion. “Uh… I don’t know, since the speed limit hasn’t been posted in a while.”

I pulled over, as The Duck had already proven near Daytona that it wasn’t going anywhere in a big hurry. I harbored the secret hope that the trooper wanted to pass me on the way to some great South Dakotan Emergency, but that was quickly dispelled when he tailed me onto the shoulder. I went through my mental checklist on meeting police: kiss their butt, smile through it, and apologize profusely. I was even dressed reasonably, ditching my California-wear for warmer clothing.

“Good morning, officer. Is there a problem?” I had on my most winning smile and everything, but this copper wasn’t buying. Maybe it was the rain, or my long hair, or perhaps my smile was too winning. Whatever the problem, Mr. Trooper was intent on making it mine as well.

After evading my questions about stopping me, I was asked to accompany the officer to his patrol car. I hopped out of The Duck and led the way, at his insistence. (Suzanne said that the trooper was checking me out the whole way, which was creepy in retrospect.) Inside the comfy confines of the trooper-mobile, Dr. Copper interrogated me with all the usual stuff. And then some:

"Where a you from?"
    "California." 
"Where are you going?"
    "No where in particular. I'm just driving around the country on a vacation. I suppose that technically I'll eventually be going back to California, so I guess I'd have to say that I'm going to California." 
"What are you doing here in South Dakota?"
    "Uh... I went to go see Mt. Rushmore?" 
blank stare
    "You know... it's only a few miles from here."
    (Amazing powers of understatement fully engaged.) 

The interrogation went on a while after that. He even asked if the woman in the car was my wife, which seemed surprising to me. At this point, my arrest record (or lack thereof) blared on the radio, and the cop seemed to ease up. Mr. Trooper then began to inform me that it was illegal to drive with a scented pine tree dangling from my rear view mirror (You find one in every car!).

It would have been nice if I had merely said, “Boy, that’s rather unexpected,” but I didn’t. Instead, I laughed at the irony of such a long, suspenseful, interrogation ending in such a minor infraction; the trooper didn’t see it quite the same way. I tried to explain to him that everyone in California has one, and it’s rather legal there (it’s not, I found out), and that I was merely surprised. The cop played it real cool, and gave me my warning. And I thanked him for it, and for his help and everything, and I began to get out of the car and say good bye.

Cops are like actors, I think. Or maybe like therapists. Either way, they are very sly and sneaky, and this cop got me real good. Just as I was closing the door, the officer says to me, real casual-like, “By the way, do you happen to have any drugs, weapons, or alcohol in your vehicle?” As if he were supposed to ask, and had almost forgotten in my case.

“Nnn… oh wait, I bought a six-pack of beer in Ohio which I never finished, but it’s way in the back.” Damn Isuzu, for leaving out the trunk when they designed The Duck! Needless to say, the officer asked if he could search my car, and I complied since I figured it was much too likely that those TV portrayals of small towns where everyone is related were truer than not. Jail was not a part of the country I had hoped to see.

I opened the back and tried to find the beer, but failed miserably. And Suzanne was giving me funny looks from her seat, so I tried to yell through the car that the officer just wanted to see the beer. The drizzle and wind and large trucks driving by made everything loud and complicated. So I left the cop to look for the beer and went around to speak with Suzanne and let her know what was going on.

Smokey followed me, which was weird, and interrupted our conversation. “Please step out of the car.” Confusion on our part made us both go “huh?”, and bad weather (or a bad attitude) transformed my country trooper into RoboCop. His voice got all metallic and edgy, and he repeated his instruction, but he was clearly annoyed.

Suzanne got out, and we watched as the cop began to climb in through the passenger door. A moment into it and he stepped out, looked at us with his RoboEye, and then stunned us with, “Please step in front of the car.” We moved when he put his hand on his gun and said it again. I thought it would be smart to put my hands on the hood, to keep them visible and all, and so we did.

“Please step away from the car.” I can’t describe what this sounds like in the middle of wind and rain and trucks driving by (the storm was clearly approaching), but it doesn’t sound like anything you’d expect a policeman to say. We made our puzzled faces and asked, “what?” The cop was clearly annoyed, and repeated himself, to which we began to step back ten feet or so.

I thought the cop was satisfied with this, as he began to enter The Duck again. Psych. He stepped out once more and RoboVoice instructed us to “Face away from the car.” It had been hard to hear when we were ten feet closer, and now it seemed neigh impossible. Hand on gun, the trooper repeated the command, but with no effect. Once more, and I finally pieced together the words, but my companion had failed.

“What??” I thought for sure I would die, as the trooper started to pull his gun out and syllabalized his order a third time. I grabbed my friend and spun her around; terror gripped my brain with the fear of dying in South Dakota.

Behind us, RoboCop seemed to have resheathed his pistol, and finally began to search The Duck in earnest. Oddly enough, after all our problems with hearing his instructions, we could hear him pawing through Suzanne’s purse and going through all our belongings. He even opened up my portable radio to check the batteries.

Twenty minutes after I was first pulled over, the trooper emerged from my vehicle with nothing to show for it. He came over and asked me to show him the alcohol, which he had not found in his detailed investigation of The Duck’s internals. We walked around to the back where I poked around and finally turned up three bottles of liquid gold.

Alcohol does funny things to people, and this trooper was no different. When I showed him the beer, RoboCop vanished and Mr. Good Cop was my buddy. Technically, a diminished six-pack qualifies as an “open container” but I was told that I would escape with only a warning. And then, I was told that they are pretty laid back in South Dakota, so it wasn’t such a big deal, but I better drink it before I got to Wyoming, because Wyoming wasn’t so lenient. Yeah.

Reprinted from the original UGCS site.