In which Marty and XXX, with the help of several patient and generous friends and family members, load a 24-foot Ryder truck, mop and dust their apartment, dismiss their friends and say goodbye to their families, leave Marty's home of seven years and XXX's of two, and move west to their first destination.
Our trip really began in 1803, when Thomas Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana Territory from a cash-strapped France nearly doubled the land holdings of our young nation, inspiring Jefferson, Kennedy's solitary eater, to send Meriwether Lewis and former Red Sox Designated Hitter Jack Clark across the tumescing country to, like, explore it. Following Lewis 'n' Clark's adventures, detailed in Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage and soon in Dr. Castle P.E. McLaughlin's as-yet-unnamed tome, we had Manifest Destiny, Horace Greeley, those breastfeeding Joads and, much later, Led Zeppelin mentioned, along with Gollum, going to California with a certain cardiological achin'. XXX and I felt the weight of history and literature and decided to go west, too.
At Dawn's crack on the eightieth anniversary of my late father's birth, XXX and I picked up our huge Ryder truck on Harvard Ave. in Brookline, just a few blocks not only from where I'd purchased my fabulous green yarmulke for Nili and Todd's wedding but also from where Dossy Peabody taught me to drink coffee like a man. The street held many memories, both Judaic and caffeinated. Our truck was parked behind the dolly which would tow our car, and some friendly but taciturn former member of the Patriarca gang corrected it, teaching us how to hook our car to our truck and advising us to "not back up, for Christ's sake."
We paid $2600, pre-a country's worth of diesel fuel, and drove back to Jamaica Plain, where our landlords, Jan and Fernando, had scrupulously parked two cars in three spaces for us to accommodate our truck. Unloading bagels and doughnuts for the people who would be helping us move, we were surprised by Dave Goodrich, with whom we had an awkward but still more awkward conversation. He left as everybody else started showing up.
The first through the gate was Jason Freimark, who has been the ever-helpful technical director of at least 25 individual shows I've been involved with, ready for work and dripping with tools and threatening to bring in his industrial dolly. He was followed by Dave Bellenoit, Scott Ferguson, John Underkoffler of the Chaeff Group, Todd Bearson of Squeezie Farms, the itinerant Dave Grupper, Mike Hoban, C. Dandridge Henderson, Mary McLaughlin, Holbrook Gracia, and Will Luera who, if it had been a double Saturday night Orange Show, would have missed both of them. We also were visited by my sisters Anne and Margaret and every single child and husband they have, which is five, soon to be six. We were also visited by Nili and her mother, both of whom are allergic to cats, and who stayed outside to root. So we had almost two dozen people helping us.
The big stuff got moved very quickly, and soon people were standing around like Teamsters waiting to be told what to do. Unlike Teamsters, though, they did it. Our friends were so helpful to us in this very stressful time, and we only wish they could have come with us. To help us unpack in Los Angeles. There were goodbyes, and some of them tearful. That sappy Jason.
We had gotten rid of most of our stuff, and had even almost sold our upstairs neighbor's Bible to her, but still our things filled the truck.
When everybody was gone, XXX and I alternately prepared the car for the cats (who, having been released from the bathroom when the furniture had been removed from the apartment and who were now freaking out) and cleaned the apartment in all the spaces our big things had once occupied. While sprinkling Ajax on the floor all around me, I wondered if I was not in fact preparing for some Satanic ritual. I wished Gunther the cat was there.
To be truthful, the cats were pathetic. They didn't know what was going on. Cedric howled from the window, Roswell crawled into the couch, Frampton sat in the bathtub, and Gunther crawled behind a bulletin board. Finally, though, we loaded the cats into the car, and they bleated mournfully at the window. Get used to it.
After hugging my landlady for the first through third time in seven years, at five p.m. we left. The truck rumbled down Forest Hills Street, took a left around the rotary onto 203 (the last rotary I want to see while in that truck), down Gallivan Blvd. as we yelled goodbye to Anne and Phill and Martha, right on Adams Street where we yelled goodbye to Babs, and onto Rt. 93 and then the Mass Pike west.
I have for many years thought that huge roads like Rt. 90 should begin and end with impressive signs like You Are About to Embark on a Road That Travels All the Way to Seattle, 3000 Miles Away. You Can Just Forget About Framingham - Why Not Go to Bozeman?
Driving the truck was not too difficult, but it was also not too fast. Driving was frustratingly slow. The truck only hit 65 mph three times and, when going up hills, sometimes went down to 19. We had a lot of pissed off people behind us (including the cats) for most of the trip. But our destination today was Worcester, New York, home of XXX's aunt, uncle, and cousins. We would be saying goodbye to them as well as resting for the night and picking up and dropping off some furniture. What is normally (by car) a four-hour trip took 5.5 hours, and we rolled into Worcester at 10:30, where all the cats were finally let out. All were not dead. In fact, they seemed overjoyed that we let them out, and were very affectionate, as if they thought that the worst was over. Not by a god-damned long shot.
I was rewarded with a huge plate of barbecued meat, and I ate the fuck out of it. We retired with the cats to the library and went to a much-needed sleep. Evening was here, and morning followed. The first day.
In which we sleep off our three weeks' exhaustion until noon, XXX takes a bath, I eat more meat, and we spend the day going to Wal-Mart to buy cat food.
The Orientalist movement in American art revolved around the often-fantastic depiction of Middle Eastern and North African subjects, often in languorous poses in dark-tapestried locales. I have often thought of XXX's relatives' house in mid-state New York as the perfect place to relax. We eat, read, eat, read, and drink while we're there. Then we'll take food which we would eat, put it in a blender, and drink it. Her relatives are so generous, hospitable, and attentive that I think they must have this sort of fun all year long. They don't, really, but as I sit over some tastefully prepared carcass with a magazine open on the table beside me, I can't help but think of some painting of a sheik reclining on a divan with a huge opium pipe.
Last night we had decided to spend the day here. We have been packing for weeks and we needed some sleep before we cut the country in half. We woke at noon and XXX took a bath with some ginger snaps or something and I lay in bed reading old New Yorkers. I learned that the Defense of the Realm Act in 1917 mandated that Great Britain's pubs be closed for several hours during the afternoon, thus preventing war workers from getting soused between shifts. The DORA is still in effect today. You'd think those guys would make use of that extra time and go to the dentist or something.
We went off to Oneonta to get some supplies. We needed a padlock for the truck, cat food for the cats, and something called a Dobb Kit for my beauty supplies. I had asked XXX's aunt Katherine where I could get a bag for my razor and toothbrush, and she said that I could probably get a Dobb Kit at Wal-Mart.
"What's a Dobb Kit?" I asked.
Apparently everybody knew but me.
Katherine made a meatloaf of ground beef and ground pork. She usually puts in some ground veal, too. XXX cooked some broccoli. We drank a lot of wine and we're well fed and rested.
Tomorrow we're leaving early. It's supposed to rain and I'm worried about the truck. We'll either be in Ohio or Indiana by the end of the day if things go well, in our graves if they don't. Stay tuned!
In which our heroes spend their first full day on the road and learn about life, truck stop showers, and each other.
Every time I see a sign by the road that says "Bump" I am really disappointed with the payoff. Unadvertised bumps have been, in every circumstance, much more terrifying and deserving of signage. I wish highway departments would either note every bump or none of them.
We left Worcester, NY, today at about 9:15. It was drizzly and cold. Our breath hung in the air and smoked cigarettes, taunting smart kids as they passed. The cats felt betrayed as we harnessed them up and carried them to the car. Surely they would stay in that tiny building for the rest of their lives? Tough luck. We piled them into the car and Gunther promptly spent the rest of the journey inside the litterbox. Stupid cat.
We gave Dave Bellenoit a call because it was his anniversary, and we soon crossed into Pennsylvania. I'm glad the state's namesake was not named William Cleara (or Will Luera), as that would have sparked an injunction many years later.
Goodrich and I kept getting lost around Orbisonia in this state eight years ago, but this trip through PA wasn't as tough. We were curious about the exit marked "Endless Mountains Region", wondering how endless could these mountains be if they only had one exit devoted to them? Maybe they were invisible underground mountains made of acne.
One thing endless about Pennsylvania is Pennsylvania. As ouir truck lumbered on, being passed every now and then by a glacier, we wondered when we could finally get to Ohio, which neither of us had visited. But plucky Pennsylvania persevered.
One high point about Pennsylvania was the Diamond J's Truck Stop we pulled into. It had everything that truckers like us could want: vittles, showers, and hard lovin'. In fact, the novelties on sale in the men's bathroom would erase the hair from Dave Bellenoit's back. Throughout western history, we have been told, "Go where the truckers go." So we go to strip clubs, Patrick Swayze roadhouses, and places like Diamond J's, where there's plenty of room to rest your rig and it looks like Custer could have a last stand or two with all his friends in the parking lot.
I had the delicious chicken-fried steak and XXX had something she hated. I fear that the South will be like that for her. Again, why do waitresses in Pennsylvania have southern accents? It is a puzzlement. As we paid the bill, we noticed a sign that mentioned two for one showers for an extra three bucks, paid or free. I asked the cashier what that meant, if in fact Diamond J's provided prostitutes, but she replied that with the purchase of a tank of gas a trucker got a free shower and he or she could get his/her tomato in there for an extra three dollars. Oh.
We made it into Ohio at about 7 pm. We had listened to The Who's Tommy, Dar Williams, Cat Stevens, and Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. I was happy to pass through Lodi, the subject of the saddest of all Creedence classics, without getting stuck there while people sat there drunk. Pennsylvania and Ohio were pretty lousy with highway construction, making for some white knuckle driving for several dozen miles, but we finally got to Mansfield, OH, at nine, rolling through a strip of Super 8 Motels, Cracker Barrels (there's even one in New Hampshire now, in Londonderry), and Big Boys. The only thing that distinguished this place from anywhere else south and west of Albany was that the McDonalds was selling bratwurst. No kidding.
We unloaded the cats in fifteen minutes and walked the half mile to the Cracker Barrel. It was late but they grudgingly let us in, making sure that we weren't gay. Bad country music was on the radio but the food was good. As we left, Kenny Rogers was singing "Lucille (You Picked A Fine Time To Leave Me)" and we both agreed that Lucille knew what she was doing.
Since we were in Ohio, I thought I'd call Bruce and Anita Freimark and tell them what a fine son they had in Jason. Bruce answered the phone and listened patiently as I spoke quickly, not wanting the Freimark pere to think I was a state trooper informing him of his son's death at a Bible study class. I also told him to give Jason a truck for Rosh Hashana.
September 27
We find our friends well rested at the end of the day in southwestern Illinois, on the brink of the wide Missouri.
Late last night, when I finished the previous evening's epistle, frankly exhausted and not looking forward to the next day's driving, I was further disappointed to find XXX asleep. I went to bed and had a dream that I'd written something fantastic and it was being celebrated in a combination of Mortal Kombat World and St. Paul's Cathedral. The choir sang a song they called "Bethlehem" but it was actually the song "Jerusalem". I'll have my sister Anne and my post-Freudian ex-landlord figure that out.
This morning XXX made like the tin soldiers and we both made like Nixon, adding Ohio to our list, and we set off, a little later than we'd wanted to, at 9:30. We stopped at a truck place and I poured diesel fuel all over my hand and pants (the post-Freudians again). We'd had a quarter tank and it cost $75 to fill. So far we've spent $145 on two tanks of gas. The heroin was even more expensive, and we didn't even get a receipt.
There's not much to say about our trip today other than Road Construction Bothers Us Truckers. After passing through Columbus (birthplace of James Thurber and J. Freimark) and moving into Indiana, we encountered nothing but half roads, lost shoulders, and orange cones. I am happy to say that I passed six vehicles, three of them 18-wheelers, today, and the truck, which I now call Shaq Diesel, held solid at a good 60 mph for most of the day.
We saw corn fields, wheat fields, and fields of brown stuff, which I can only assume were Ovaltine fields. I did not meet any corn-fed girls on my travels, only Slim Jim-fed ones, unfortunately. If you're Illinois, do you need kosher medicine? It's amazing how most of Illinois resembles the South and Midwest and how Chicago is a complete and utter aberration. I'm surprised there isn't a movement to have Chicago secede.
XXX chose fine music for today's listening allotment out of the 20 CDs we'd brought: Stevie Wonder, Midnight Oil, Merrie Amsterburg, and Sgt. Pepper. I was struck again by how crappy a song "She's Leaving Home" is, and how it gave birth to such pap as "Biker Like an Icon (She Loved Her)" and "Ebony And Ivory". Paul, whom I doubt was beat up in the recess yard much, seems to have longed for that experience by writing those songs.
We landed in Collinsville, Illinois, at a Motel 6, about six miles from the Missouri border, where we'll probably (unless we die) spend tomorrow on Rt. 44 W and then meet Rt. 40, which we'll stay on until California. We were on Rt. 70 most of today.
Tonight we walked a mile or so to a Mexican restaurant - it looked like a chain restaurant, and there weren't any actual Mexicans (you can check because they have a thing on the back of their necks just below the hairline) - and had a fine dinner. I also ordered a $12 margarita that came in what looked like a desk and got nicely stewed. XXX carried me home through the blighted landscape of what passes for Middle America these days, just a widening of the road with places for diesel fuel, a bunch of motels with high signs that can be seen from the highway, and no sidewalks whatsoever.
One interesting thing was that, when we opened the car to get the cats out, we could not find Frampton, the best cat. It turned out she had crawled into the trunk of the car, like Dennis Farina in his last scene in GoodFellas. She was OK, though, and XXX didn't shoot her.
In which our friends, Marty and XXX, slip the surly bonds of the East and touch the face of ubiquitous Jesus billboards.
I guess the main trap for someone like me to fall into is the idea that people who wear feed caps, speak like banjos tuning up, and start sentences with "Well, hell;" are stupid. From the gas station this morning, XXX walked across the highway to the Burger King to get a little snack for us. She returned saying this was the second Burger King in as many days staffed entirely by people who appeared retarded. XXX, as you know, is not a bad person, the way her husband is, so she was legitimately of the impression, and it was only a casual, non-judgmental observation, that the staff of Burger Kings down here are retarded. I of course laughed, until I realized that Burger Kings in Boston are staffed by college graduates. So who's pathetic?
Nine miles out of Collinsville we breached the West. Let me tell you, the West was asking for it, with its inviting, come-hither arch in St. Louis and its Missouri stretched wide. It was sick. I felt an ache in my Sacagawea.
We were very happy to finally be in St. Louis, Kevin McKeever's home town, even if St. Louis is far more East than West. I mean, really. Lewis 'n' Clark might as well have started out in North Adams, MA.
One thing we noticed while traveling thus far is the dramatic change in roads immediately upon enhtering a state. Nowhere was it more dramatic than at the Illinois/ Missouri crossing, where the road actually gave way, plunging us to our deaths in the river below.
Missouri was long, and strong, and bound to get the friction on. It was also the first state where it seemed we were West. The land got flatter, the sky got bigger, the trees got smaller, and there were patches of scrub. The land seemed to open up a little. That's not to say that Missouri was interesting, but it was a neat change. We started seeing signs for Branson way off and, though we wouldn't be going through it, we saw the canniness of Branson's decade-long Country Music Mecca buildup. How to convince people that Missouri isn't just St. Louis' CFM arch and Richard Gephardt? Build Branson, a Nashville-meets-Vegas type of place, and shore up each end of the state.
We listened to the final CD of our Paul Simon collection, not my favorite because he had to get all South American and middle-aged (Sorry, Pele), and then we listened to the White Album.
I first heard the White Album when I was seven, in 1976. My two eldest sisters weren't around much at that time, my sister Margaret, who was only seven years older, was about to enter Lowell High, and I was living in the same room with one of my two older brothers. I don't know which one owned the White Album (both of them, probably - XXX and her sister both had two of the same album while they were growing up, and my brothers were similar in age), but I found it one day after I listened to some Roxy Music with a racy cover. I didn't know who the Beatles were, I hadn't even heard Yellow Submarine. I saw this white record and put it on and it blew me away. Later, when I bought albums of my own, I got the White Album and promptly scratched the shit out of it by playing it backwards. That was rewarding in its own way because not only did I find out what had killed Paul, but I also heard about the lighter side of Satan and got a recipe for spanikopita.
Things the White Album taught me:
Half of what I say: meaningless
The Walrus: was Paul
Don't you know that you can count me out: in
Paul likes: "that kind of music"
It is important to know that one of the prettiest songs on the WA, Martha My Dear, was written by Paul for his dog, and that Everybody's Got Something To Hide 'Cept for Me And My Monkey was written about John and Joko.
Late in Missouri, we saw a sign for a restaurant in Amarillo called the Big Texan. My friend Utah told me about this place: they give you a 72-ounce steak and if you can eat it in an hour, you get it for free. I ate a 16-ounce steak tonight at Bennigan's (yes, I admit it - I've only driven to the theatre district) and it felt like a hearty snack. I still don't think I can eat 4.5 lbs. of prime carcass, though. Unless it's Commie carcass.
As we rolled into Oklahoma on a bad road, we decided to try to make it all the way to OK City for the night. We feel confident that we can make it to LA by Sunday. Oklahoma got even Westier, with "Got Jesus?" and anti-porn signs all over the place, and even two for vasectomy reversals. I certainly don't know what to make of that. My high school history teacher, Dr. Nutter, always used to say that anytime one saw a sign or a written law, from "Thou Shalt Not Kill" to "Keep Off the Grass", one should assume that, prior to the law being written or the sign being erected, there was some killing done. On the grass. Very basic stuff, but eye-opening to a high school kid. Anyway, I wondered what sort of state was Oklahoma where men first had vasectomies, and then thought better of it, and in such numbers that it warranted two billboards? Cracker Barrel only got one.
Oklahoma City did not look oh so pretty because, as soon as we crossed its threshold, our truck began to quake. We got to our Motel 15 minutes later, but we'd had to stop twice to check for flats. It turned out that it was the interaction of the right lane of concrete road and our tow dolly. Apparently that type of road ends 20 miles out of Oklahoma City. We'd had to call the Ryder mechanic to come out and tell us that, though, and he said that he gets fifteen calls a month from people whose rental trucks are disliked by Oklahoma City. It figures, though, since it was a Ryder truck that rolled the bomb here.
In which our protagonists deal strenuously with the increasing agitation of their cats, fall out of love with Cracker Barrel, and make it 520 miles to the Albuquerque Denny's.
Remember our surprise with how good the cats were being? The honeymoon ended this morning, as we had to pull our hotel bed from its frame to extricate three cats from the box spring. Roswell was the worst, digging her claws into the carpet, and not for the first time did I consider leaving her by the side of the road in Texas, which we'd soon be entering, to fend for herself against the death penalty.
In the end we got them. While they immediately calm down upon getting thrown into the car, the cats yell a lot in transit to and from the hotel room.
We got out of OK City at 8:30 and got into Texas at about 11. Somewhere around Amarillo I started feeling like I wanted to leave Texas. All my exes live in Texas. Everything looked the same and, though the roads were good, I felt uneasy about it. Seven years ago I went to Paris, Dallas, Temple, and Austin, and loved it, but the panhandle was not fun to drive through.
Similarly, our visit to the Amarillo Cracker Barrel (I'd foregone the vasectomy reversal) was a disappointment. Every Cracker Barrel looks the same, right down to the klan rallies in the potpourri section. I know that that similarity makes Cracker Barrel a hit with senior bus tours and provides some feeling of consistency, especially in long trips, but it's eerie how even the waitresses seem squeezed from the same tube.
We got out of Texas, but not before glimpsing the mountains in the distance. That was great. New Mexico, my second favorite state, opened up with a spectacular afternoon sky and the sacred Navajo mountains around us. As you know, I am 95% Navajo. We made it to Albuquerque at 7:30 and we unpacked the cats. Frampton, normally the best cat, ran away and almost escaped. We decided that if the hotel bed resembled the bed last night, we would put the cats in the bathroom for the night (despite the very real possibility that they'd flush each other down the toilet). Luckily, the bed was cat proof.
We walked across the road to Denny's. While it wasn't good, the waitress gave me a very cold milk.
In which our travelers start late and finish early, and pass the point where rivers roll, like boats against the current, inexorably to the Mar Pacifica.
My friend Judi, whom I'd met when we were park rangers in Ohwell, Mass., in 1989, lives in Albuquerque, and it was her wedding to the courtly Herb three years ago that first brought me here, where I instantly fell in love with the idea of being so small under the sky and with my Anasazi heritage.
We met the two of them for breakfast at a place called the Frontier, right across from UNM, and caught up over tasty burritos and cinnamon rolls. The coffee came in glass cups. To paraphrase Stephen King, it was hot and sweet and good. After saying goodbye and loading up the truck with cats again, we headed out on 40 towards Flagstaff.
It was easily the best travelling day we've had. There was less traffic on the road, being the weekend, and there was almost no roadwork being done. The wind blew the truck around as if it was a sail, though, and our mileage suffered.
We had also gotten to the end of our CDs. Before the trip, XXX and I had selected 20 CDs for our voyage, and today we made it back to Cat Stevens again. Two of my favorite movies, Harold and Maude and Rushmore, feature Cat Stevens music, and I kept thinking of the scene in Harold and Maude where Maude has just been rushed to the hospital after her suicide attempt, which is intercut with scenes of Harold racing around twisty upstate NY roads in his souped-up Jaguar/hearse as "Trouble" plays underneath. I can't hear that song anymore without thinking of the hearse racing by, just as I can't think of that Green Day song from Godzilla without the voice of Godzooky's uncle.
Today we saw mile-long trains passing below us, forked lightning in the distance, the coyote being beaned with an anvil after one of his crazy schemes backfired, and sky. The clouds were of the variety that one could easily discern shapes and images. I saw a flying frog, a bird, what looked like a baby climbing a tree sideways and, though I'm not sure about it, Kevin Spacey getting halfway up Mena Suvari before he thought better of it, then crediting Sam Mendes with writing American Beauty at the Oscars, then starring in The Big Kahuna, which wasn't very good. There was a lot of sky to interpret.
One thing that confused us recently was the curious rotation of the Earth. We both thought it was a day earlier. So we're arriving in LA on Monday, not Sunday. If ever we needed a certain quadriplegic to fly backwards around the planet to turn back time, it's now.
Just before we left New Mexico, we crossed the Continental Divide. Not choosing to break our trip into the days we've travelled, I've thought of the journey in three stages: Boston to St. Louis, St. Louis to the Divide, and everything after. Now everything empties into the Pacific, including us, and maybe two of our cats.
We started seeing South of the Border-esque signs for all manner of "Indian" handiwork just prior to Arizona. Fireworks, moccasins, Indian drums, free arrowheads with every purchase (I'm not making that up), and rugs for $4.95. I felt sad that we could travel for hundreds of miles through barren country, dotted with rundown trailer homes, to which my government has exiled a nation of people, forcing them to sell this stuff to the Cracker Barrel and reverse-vasectomy crowd. My mood only heightened when I thought how many crackers are blowing their pension and SSI checks at reservation casinos.
When XXX and I visited New Mexico two years ago, XXX was enchanted by the abundance of prairie dogs in the scrub around gas stations and highways. She would get out of the car, lean her head forward, clasp her hands behind her, and slowly bob over to the scabied little rodents, intending to fondle them. I have seen her do this with all sorts of animals, and there is nothing more annoying to me, laden down with groceries, than watching XXX do her little animal-molestation walk toward a kitten on a porch somewhere.
Anyway, we zipped past several prairie dogs today, though we weren't in a position where we could stop and XXX could go out and stalk them, unfortunately. Soon enough, though, we started seeing signs for elk, and I could see XXX's eyes brighten as she dreamed of caressing some hapless Arizona elk.
So we are now in Flagstaff, Arizona (don't forget Dave Pirner), home of Lt. Joe Leaphorn, Mel Sharples, and Geronimo. We passed through Winslow, where a pre-Miami Vice Glenn Frey once stood on a corner, taking it easy, like the Desperado he is. As today's short trip drew to a close, we saw the most amazing lightning in the distance, no doubt frying up whole herds of elk and prairie dogs. We pulled in to our Red Roof Inn in Flagstaff and were delighted to find a hot tub and a first floor room. We walked into the room and it was enormous. Why was this room better? BECAUSE THE RESERVATIONIST THOUGHT WE WERE SENIOR CITIZENS. XXX will make a reservation for a motel in the AAA book about 150 miles from our destination, and she has, up until now, told the desk person that we are toting cats. We'll arrive at our motel and find our room somewhere in Rhode Island. Tonight XXX didn't mention the cats and asked for a first floor room because, she said, her husband was on crutches. We showed up and the room was right in front of us. Small victories.
I just got out of the hot tub. I'm going to put some pants on and we'll go to the Outback Steak House, right next to the Cracker Barrel. Tomorrow, Barstow. Monday, Culver City, right next to Dr. Demento.
In which our exhausted narrator and his main squeeze embark on what they think will be an easy travelling day, get in many adventures, and finally wind up at a Days Inn by a strip club in California.
"In the desert, you can remember your name, for there ain't no one for to give you no pain."
That is so true, so true.
We left Flagstaff late today onaccounta the cats, again. Roswell and Gunther had managed to crawl into the bed and, when we lifted the boxspring, Roswell was dangling from it like a booger from the nose of my junior high school band instructor, Vito Selvaggio.
We finally got the cats loaded and I pulled the truck up by a McDonalds. With just seconds to spare before breakfast ended, XXX managed to get food to start our trip. I have always said, and will say it again, that McMuffins are better than Croissanwiches. It was 10:30 this morning, and who was on the radio but Dr. Demento, sounding a little bit older. Dr. Demento was once the mainstay of my Sunday nights when I was a kid. He came on at 10 pm on the late, lamented WCOZ (now Jammin' 94.5, a Big Pimpin' station that nevertheless bleeps out everything) and was followed by Dr. Ruth.
wE SAW OUR FIRST SIGN FOR lOS aNGELES (492 MILES) AS WE LEFT fLAGSTAFF.
I'm not going to correct that.
We refueled in Kingman, the antepenultimate Route 66 location, and it was boring. We left quickly.
I had the White Album song "Sexy Sadie" in my head for a while today, because I kept thinking, as I was in Arizona, "Linda Lavin, what have you done?" and I remembered that that song was originally going to be called "Maharishi" after John's disenchantment with that cat-bearded fruitcake. It is a little-known fact that several other musical works were written about the Maharishi, including the Rolling Stones' "Angie", Lou Bega's "Mambo #5", and all of "Frampton Comes Alive".
At 1:16 pm, PST (our new time zone), we entered a blushing California, jumping the Colorado like the General Lee. Soon after, about a mile past Needles, we saw a beige '34 Ford rush by us. I knew who it was: ZZ Top. They were in disguise. "ZZ Top is here!" I cried, "where have they been?"
XXX replied: "They have always been here; you just didn't believe in them enough."
ZZ Top will erase my despair and get me new clothes and also get me out of that dead end shoe store job I have. "Why is there only one set of footprints, ZZ Top?" I queried. "Because," the brothers and Billy Gibbons replied, twirling a golden keychain, "that was when we were carrying you."
"Oh."
Well, it went downhill from there. As we crossed gradually into the Mojave, baking in the sun, taking way too long to get up the many hills, and going from zero to sixty in about the time it took to make Eyes Wide Shut, XXX began worrying about the cats. We pulled over and she went back to the car to turn on the air conditioning to cool the little darlings off.
As you know, my Navajo kinsmen and I are all for cruelty to animals, but eventually the sight of our panting cats was too much to bear. XXX took Frampton up into the cab with us for the remainder of the low desert.
Since I have never driven cats across the country before, I didn't have anything with which to justify my gut desire to fly them rather than drive them. We had both heard good and bad things about both driving and flying, and my reasoning was, if the cats are horrified for seven hours on a plane with bad air conditioning, it's better than 168 hours of low-level driving panic with three hours of the Mojave Desert at the end of it. Even our veterinarian recommended flying. Still, we probably should have driven the desert at night. Add to that the daily 45 minutes of packing and unpacking them, town to town, up and down the dial, pulling them from box springs and declawing them from the rug; it's not worth it. Either way - if you're going to abandon Boston as it should be abandoned for not nurturing creative types like yourself and you plan to motor west, fly your cats. If Los Angeles breaks you and you crawl back east, defeated, to a life of community theatre and one woman shows about how you once stood in the same Walgreen's line with George Clooney or Kenneth Branagh because you're a celebrity if you know celebrities, fly your cats.
Just out of Barstow, we hit Sunday-night-returning-from-Vegas traffic. It was our first California traffic jam. It lasted 90 minutes and the novelty wore off quickly. At 5:30, we rolled into Dario Argento's Hesperia, CA, with music by The Goblin. Our Days Inn is right next door to a strip club that advertises pool and darts. Yikes.
We walked up the road to a Chuck E. Cheese's-type place that had Bible verses on its billboard. Still, the pizza was Christeriffic.
If you want to help us move in tomorrow, be at XXXXXX at 1 pm. We'll be right next to the sign that says FREE LIVE CATS.
In which the journey ends, another one begins, and another one stops about halfway through, and another one isn't started due to budget concerns, and another one is almost finished but is shelved because someone got sick.
Because I'm not writing this down somewhere else, and because I only remember the stupid things, I will say for posterity that our real estate agent, Iris, is dumber than a bag of doorknobs.
Regardless (or, as she'd say, irregardless), we drove with our signed lease over to XXXXXX, where we met our building supervisor, Camilla, on whom XXX now has a crush, and we saw our new apartment for the first time. Lovely. Someday, when we've unpacked, I'll put up pictures.
Kevin McKeever came by to help unload the truck, and did a fantastic and lifesaving job. The cats were put in the upstairs bathroom to reflect on their misdeeds. The truck is parked outside, half empty. The big stuff is done, the bed is rebuilt, and I could really care less where Roswell has hidden herself. We might not find her until we're ready to move again.
My sister-in-law, YYY, and my boyfriend-in-law, Ron, came by later to help unload, and we all went out to dinner. By that point I was incoherent, rambling on about my plans to kill everyone and eat their pizza. My broken wrist was throbbing under my fashionable teal cast. I was getting aneurysms in my myelin sheath. I just drove that truck across the country after packing my life in it (save for the trunk which my Lowell High School letter jacket was in, which I left in Lowell, but I'll take back eventually) and now I'm sitting in my favorite chair, one of the ones my brother Billy swiped from the Lowell Memorial Auditorium, and here it is.
The cats' long national nightmare is ended. Thanks to everyone who wrote to us, and for those who didn't, I'm sure you had better things to do. Tonight I will think of Dean Moriarty.
Epilogue
Most of the houses around our little duplex mysteriously burned down within a year, and my relationship with XXX fared a little worse. California is still great fun; just remember to fly your cats.