On the Road: Leaving the Midwest’s gloomy grey for Southwestern red dirt

By Jacob R. Wheeler
Sun editor
The American boy’s passport is his driver’s license, and a fortuneteller’s reading of his future spells itself out on a Rand McNally road atlas of the United States. Tiny county roads flow into highways like tributaries driven by fate towards the roaring river, and, in turn, the highways are engulfed by massive expressways that crisscross the country and introduce major cities, thousands of miles apart, to each other in a linear fashion. This is the America of constant open pavement and exit ramps that mirror each other from coast to coast. The coffee at the rest area in Muskegon, Michigan tastes just as watered down as it does in Eugene, Oregon, just as the same engineers must have designed the overpasses in Missouri and in California.

But there is variation between points on the map, as long as the traveler pulls off the Interstate, leaves his guidebook on the passenger’s seat and turns off his compact disc player, occasionally. In his book “Travels with Charlie” about traveling the country with his dog in 1960, John Steinbeck lamented that American micro-cultures were disappearing and cashing in their local dialects whenever they turned on the television. His statement wasn’t entirely false, but even today the attitudes of the population still differ from state to state, and from plateau to mountain range. In a country this large, this writer opines, the people will never completely forget what sets them apart from their neighbors two exits away on the expressway. And that is comforting, even as the specter of suburbia suffocates the imagination of the wanderer who tries to find something unique about every American city he visits.
With this as my mission I embark in mid-January on a three-and-a-half month journey that will take me hurtling towards the warm Southwest, then inching my way up the Pacific coast to the Columbia River, and braving the Rocky Mountains in early spring as my automobile prepares for another yawn across the Great Plains to arrive back home before the Great Lake sstates warm to a boil. My trusty companion is a 1989 manual transmission Honda Accord with 170,000 miles on its odometer and rust creeping up the sides. My baby makes an awful rattling sound when I throw her into first gear, but that subsides when I make my first turn. She’s not glamorous, but she’ll do. If my car were a human, she’d be an old farm hand, sagging and wrinkling in some places, but always able to milk the cows early in the morning. As soon as I leave the snowy roads of the Midwest, I figure, she’ll hum like spring is on its way.
The timing of my trip across America has to do with my longing for space, both physical and psychological. Until recently I lived in a tiny apartment in the middle of Copenhagen, Denmark, where cars, bicycles and pedestrians share the same narrow alleys and stringent governmental policies try to mold everyone into one colorless class. It is against the custom to stick out as being unique in Denmark; Salmon Rushdie once half-jokingly called it the most boring country on Earth. There are no endless highways there. If you seek therapy by losing yourself in open spaces, you’d better dive into the North Sea and swim toward the Arctic.
Thus begins my quest for personal freedom in the automobile – the symbol that defines us Americans above all else. Gasoline prices are on the rise as a war in Iraq looms, and preparing to spend hundreds of dollars to burn fossil fuels is not the act of a saint, but I figure the angry mobs in Paris and Karachi have more against the man in the Humvee than they do with my clonking Honda that gets nearly 30 miles to the gallon. So off we go.
Fresh off a whirlwind, 36-hour Greyhound bus trip to Washington D.C. to protest the oncoming war, I am prepared to sit long hours in a car seat and focus just enough on the road ahead. As any wanderer should, I will let my mind drift occasionally but snap back into form like a military cadet if ever the tires veer off onto the shoulder. I have an extensive CD collection next to me, and a laptop computer for writing at rest stops. A tape recorder in my pocket may come in handy, too, if my solitude induces a poem or speech. By the time I’ve reached US-31, heading south of Benzonia on Day One, January 20, I can already control the steering wheel with my knees, change the music with my right hand and grab a handful of granola with my left hand, concentrating on all three actions at once. Children, do not try this juggling act at home.
South, to Shelby, Michigan
In Shelby I turn off the expressway at the exit ramp where my father’s boyhood home used to be – marked by a mere boulder today – and visit my grandparents for a night. Like anyone with a fixed daily rhythm they envy the trek that awaits me, especially when I tell them I’ll arrive in sunny New Mexico within two weeks. From the kitchen we look out the window at a good foot-and-a-half of snow in the front yard. Old Man Winter has reclaimed his estate in the Midwest this season. Like any small town this far north, the gossip at the local bakery always focuses on when spring will arrive, in this case over the local sticky buns. But in wintry Shelby, the surge of Mexican immigrants over the past few decades provides an interesting counterpoint to the whites that who lived here for generations and are more adept with their snow shovels as a result. A fine Mexican grocery store opened up recently on Main Street, where one can buy a dozen different types of salsa, or even cassette tapes en espanol, behind the counter. Meanwhile, the locals are still mourning the Congregational Church, which nearly burned down just before Christmas.
Southeast, to Ann Arbor, Michigantwo introduces me to the first of many stretches of expressway, but only for a few hours. I-96 is an aberration, as it stretches only across one state, from Muskegon, near picturesque Lake Michigan, to Detroit, on industrial Lake St. Clair. This expressway is well-kept and full of state troopers since it passes through Lansing, the state capital. Adhering to the popular motorist rule, I set my cruise control at 79 miles per hour in a 70-mile zone, avoiding any problems. I sleep that evening in Ann Arbor and spend the next three days wandering around my old college haunts, visiting with old friends who opted to stay around and manage a deli counter or tend bar instead of going off to law- or medical school. They thrived more from the town’s atmosphere, itself, than they did from the cutthroat, competitive University of Michigan, which occasionally spits out students onto the Diagonal in the center of campus who are gasping for breath.
Ann Arbor is a town for young, idealists, much like Berkeley or Madison. It is an island of artists and writers surrounded by working-class southeast Michigan. A hard day at the plant for an Ann Arborite would be interpreting a chapter of Kant while sitting in a café. I once worked for an environmental action campaign for a month while studying at U-M. We went door-to-door to collect money, first in Ann Arbor, where I would regularly haul in $500 in only a few hours, then in the farming towns nearby, which often yielded nothing. One day I knocked on doors for eight hours straight, and collected nothing but a shot of Jaegermeister.
South, to Columbus, Ohio
As college towns go, Columbus is the opposite of Ann Arbor. In the latter, you should give the homeless man on the park bench a dollar because he might pull a harmonica out of his parka and play you the blues. In the former, you better do it to avoid being shot. Columbus and Ann Arbor are often mentioned in the same sentence when talk of college sports arises. The Buckeyes and Wolverines are archrivals on the football field and meet every year in November as the regular season reaches its climax. The coaches, players and fans from each university hate the other, but in a different nature altogether. U-M students often refer to Ohio State University as the largest, and best, community college in the nation. OSU fans are more primal in their hatred, sporting obscenity-laced t-shirts that question the manhood of the linebackers wearing the Maize and Blue colors.
I had attended a basketball game in Ann Arbor against the Minnesota Golden Gophers, that was clinched in the final seconds by a group of upstart young Wolverines – their eighth victory in a row even though the program is suspended and won’t play in the postseason this year. But the fans’ reaction, as always, was muted. They cheered a little, threw a little popcorn, and then returned to the Undergraduate Library to resume studying. Not so in Columbus. My friend the psychologist is still at the office when I arrive, so I cover my Michigan license plate with snow and sneak down to a neighborhood bar for a cold beer. It’s 4 in the afternoon, and this dive is miles from campus, but the bartender Charlie is offering free shots to anyone who remembers the number of rushing yards former OSU running back Eddie George racked up during the year he won the Heisman Trophy. I quickly remember that Ohio State won the national championship in football just two weeks before and respectfully congratulate Charlie without revealing too much about myself.
Before the psychologist returns, I walk down the railroad tracks near his house, then think better of it after being approached by an intimidating, large man who insists he missed his train to Toledo, and that I should offer him a ride there so that I “sleep better that night”. Typical story, says my friend, who opens his doors to a warm house filled with books and ferrets he keeps as pets. In his job he counsels unemployed people, and tries motivating them to initiate the hunt for jobs, while taking graduate classes at the university. So the plight of the Columbus working class is nothing new to him. We dine on shepherd’s pie and Guinness at an Irish Pub that evening, and make a meal of pizza and potato chips the next while watching the Superbowl at his grandfather’s house on the city’s outskirts. Grandpa Lloyd is in his ‘90s but owns the memory of a 15 year old. He is sad tonight because he will soon make the move to a room in a nursing home and say goodbye to this grand old house. Stick pads label every piece of furniture, silverware and hardware, to aid the moving men when they clear out Lloyd’s home. He says to me, “this place feels like a museum” and I contemplate. His life possessions have turned to artifacts, measured by the ripeness of their age, and some day when he passes on they will be referred to as history.
Southwest, to St. Louis, Missouri
On January 28 I put the pedal to the medal and kick this journey into high gear. A carwash and tune-up in downtown Columbus and three cups of genuine coffee at the bistro across the street prepare me to lay waste to I-70 and drive through three different states – Ohio, Indiana and Illinois – before crossing the Mississippi River and shaking hands with the West. This major interstate unites Washington D.C.’s marble boulevards with Utah’s Mormon temples, passing through nine states along the way. I vaguely remember downtown Columbus’ grey skyline and catch a glimpse of Indianapolis while zooming by like a roadrunner. The skyscrapers looming in the distance somehow look sad and lonely to me against the backdrop of endless cornfields: giants out of a C.S. Lewis novel wandering over the tundra looking for signs of life. Of course, I would find life if I pulled off the expressway and stuck to the “blue highways” that are William Least Heat-Moon’s medium in his excellent book of the same name. Least Heat-Moon drives the back roads, called blue highways on the old maps, as he journeys through small towns in America and strikes up conversations with every carpenter, blueberry farmer and diner waitress he can find. But I’ve had enough of winter and already know these states well from my days on the U-M Men’s Basketball beat, when we traveled from one Big Ten city to the next, chronicling America’s best sharpshooters who always seem to hail from the heartland. Level ground aids the jump shot? Read Larry Bird. Plus, my online translating job for a Danish newspaper requires me to set camp in a town of some size every weeknight evening. And tonight I want to pass the Gateway Arch for the first time.
The St. Louis Arch is immense, and does its part to overshadow the industrial Mississippi River’s sludge color. But my eyes also fixate on a gigantic cross that looms just before East St. Louis, in Illinois. I am passing through one of the most predominantly Christian areas of the United States, jokingly referred to as the “Bible Belt”, and there is no end to the eloquent, passionate preaching I hear on AM radio: poetry in its own right. What surprises me is the number of billboards in southern Illinois advertising God. Many believe the mighty force is everywhere, touching the grand cathedrals of yesteryear as well as man’s more dubious architectural distinction – the super highway. I am not a deeply religious man, but witnessing this culture’s great commitment to faith is a powerful experience. With the help of a different time zone I set my car’s dashboard clock back an hour and arrive at the suburban home of a distant relative by 4 p.m. She takes me up in the Arch the following morning and we marvel at how an object this narrow at the top can remain standing. The secret: the structure is buried several stories deep at its two base points. A museum located underground, in the womb of the Arch exhibits the Lewis and Clark expedition, appropriate because they embarked from this area 200 years ago on their journey to explore the Wild West. This was the fruition of architect, and this nation’s third president, Thomas Jefferson’s dream, and he would grin with pride at the Gateway Arch today.
Southwest, to Norman, Oklahoma
I am an adventurer, too. I come within a heartbeat of ditching I-44 west of St. Louis in the mysterious Ozark Mountains for a dusty dirt road that leads to some sketchy shack, where I would dismount and amble up to the bar for a little homegrown “moonshine” and strike up a conversation with Billy from the Hills while two old men without any teeth play their fiddles in the distance. But I might never find my way out again, and think better of it. I make due with a good pickin’ music station on AM radio and hum along to a tune called Ozark Memories, then later insert a Greg Brown CD. Brown is a folksinger from these parts, his father was a Baptist Minister, and one can wander off and get lost in his throaty voice, just as I suppose one could in these hills. The religious billboards persist, and soon I pass into Oklahoma, the state that was ushered into the union with a Land Rush – still one of the best examples of the reckless pace at which this nation was founded.
After rounding the bend in Oklahoma City I hug I-35 south in rush-hour traffic for one hour, en route to the college town of Norman. This Interstate stretches all the way from Duluth, Minnesota to Laredo, Texas, nearly introducing Canada to Mexico with a handshake and a trade, a Cornish pasty for a tortilla. Oklahoma has uncovered spring, which pleases my white hide. I step out of the Honda into red dirt, and immediately rub some into my pale cheeks. This is the ritual I recommend for travelers: when you come to a spot that you deem sacred, or at least noteworthy, bend down and touch the earth, become one with the ground, if only for a moment. Then go out and find the local cuisine – in this case a meal of barbecued ribs, cornbread and potato salad to satisfy your palate. For beef is a way of life here. In the way that we Michiganders take pride in our Great Lakes, folks in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas or Nebraska boast their cattle. They even have their own stock exchange for trading cattle shares. So even if I were a vegetarian, I would be remiss not to try their prideful offerings on a plate, smothered in a dark red sauce. Mmmm.
My hosts in Norman are theater directors at Oklahoma University, and relish the opportunity to introduce their students to the acting world, which is much more predominant on either the east or west coast than it is in Oklahoma or Texas, from where many of their students hail. I tag along for a dress rehearsal of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and giggle with delight at the local dialects which occasionally slip through Tennessee Williams’ script. My stay in Norman lasts three days, ample time to bask in the sunlight, walk barefoot for the first time this year and kick the remaining clumps of snow out from under my tires. I have arrived!
On my way out of town I stop in Oklahoma City at the memorial where the Murrah Federal Building once stood. There, next to a reflecting pool and gravestones for the hundreds of people who perished in the Timothy McVey bombing, there is a museum dedicated to the history of terrorism, or almost lack thereof, in the United States before this tragedy. Yet in the ever-present wake of September 11, and Bush’s rallying cry for war in his State of the Union address on January 29, this museum seems a precursor of things to come. I drive away in the Honda, shuddering.
West, to Albuquerque, New Mexico
Somewhere along I-40 my mind begins to drift. Mirages rise up out of the ground, and an oil refinery in the distance turns into an angry demon throwing boulders at my car. I change lanes and swerve from left to right, narrowly avoiding being squashed. What’s going on? Can this be real? Then I remember a companion in the Southwest once telling me to keep my focus in Texas: avoid letting my imagination wander, or bad things will happen. She told of visitors she had expected recently who forgot to screw the gas cap back on the tank after filling up in Amarillo, then panicked as venomous fumes destroyed their car and subjected it to a dishonorable burial on the side of the road in the Lone Star State. Dehydrated and disoriented, they passed out in a nearby field and somehow made it to Phoenix on a Greyhound Bus three days later. One thing is for certain: I will not let my trusty Honda fail me in Texas, a setting as hostile and foreign as Timbuktu. And so I focus my eyes on a point several miles ahead on the road to nowhere, for what seems like hours, days, even months. A shrub may be only a shrub, but it could be the difference between life and death in this climate. My radio picks up no channels out here, so I play compact discs with plenty of lyrics, anything to keep me focused. Listening to Beethoven would be a recipe for suicide in these parts. I survive Texas.
Suddenly I come over a little ridge and the tundra has given way to tabletop mesas, interspersed as far west as the eye can see. Gone is the occasional green shrub, and replacing it are red rock faces that make me want to get out of my car, put on my shorts and climb. Hallelujah, I have reached New Mexico! This land of contour and change, shaped and molded and beaten by oceans that receded a long time ago, cursed the peoples here by never satisfying their instinctual longing for water. I pull over for gasoline in Cuervo, a couple hours east of Albuquerque, and wonder in amazement at the station attendant who speaks only Spanish, a beautiful language I do not know yet, but will some day. ¿Veinte dolares? Si senor, gracias. To spend time in New Mexico as one who speaks only English is to be a cripple in an able-bodied man’s marathon.
I climb the Sandia mountains and descend into Albuquerque after dark, my first true nighttime driving experience on this trip into the unknown. No matter, the directions are on target, and have been at every point of the journey so far. I pull up to my friends’ adobe hut after dinnertime, though time is an abstract word in these parts. They are happy to serve me warm lentils, rice and bread and a glass of white wine at 9 in the evening. Then we take in a gala of Hispanic-American art at a local museum sponsored, or inspired by the movie star Cheech Marin. The paintings and sculptures are strikingly colorful and hot-blooded, featuring everyday scenes of curvaceous women and men with a lacquer shine to their hair: at the beach, the ice cream parlor, the car wash or the bodega. This art introduces a vibrance and will to stand out that I think is common among ethnic minority groups. It’s also evident in jazz clubs or Baptist churches frequented mostly by African Americans.
I spoil myself, physically, within two days of arriving in New Mexico. My hosts take me to the Ghost Ranch, where part of “City Slickers” was filmed, and we engage in a semi-strenuous hike up to Chimney Rock. I order the spiciest item on the menu and throw down a couple margaritas in lieu of water at a picante restaurant in Santa Fe that evening. The next day I explore the Jemez Springs on my own and spend two hours too many in a bubbly aquifer nearly hidden on the side of a mountain. Drinking the hot chocolate made with spring water given to me by another tourist was probably a mistake too. By Tuesday evening I am bed-ridden with a nasty fever and no desire to travel any further. I was ignorant of my own limitations, having forgotten about the dramatic change in elevation: Albuquerque is thousands of feet above sea level, and my stomach is apparently still in Columbus.
But onwards I must go. Instead of driving I explore Route 66, which passes through the downtown, on foot. This must be the longest strip of greasy-spoon diners, cheap motels and tattoo parlors in the world, and yet somehow Route 66 has become a cliché to the extent that businesses up and down Central Avenue make money off motorists cruising the great American artery. I duck into Busters Route 66 Café one morning for some heavy scrambled eggs and a cup of coffee and people-watch through the window. But the absurdity suddenly dawns on me. In cities with narrow walking streets and an eclectic, hip crowd is where one people-watches: Liberty Street in Ann Arbor, Greenwich Village in New York City, the Bastille district in Paris. This drag is not for people-watching, but car-watching, for that is the true American status symbol. An old Volkswagen bus rolls by, its long-haired driver puffing on a long cigar; a tough-looking cowboy in a red pickup truck changes lanes, his left hand hanging out the window bares a “Kiss of Death” tattoo. My frustrations fade now that I know what to look for around here.
To be continued in the next issue of the Glen Arbor Sun