On the Road: Times Square

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

Sal gets the skinny guy starving himself for health to take him all the way to Times Square.  He's almost home, and so are we.  Click the map to see our progress.

Book Quote

"Suddenly I found myself on Times Square. I had traveled eight thousand miles around the American continent and I was back on Times Square; and right in the middle of a rush hour, too, seeing with my innocent road-eyes the absolute madness and fantastic hoorair of New York with its millions and millions hustling forever for a buck among themselves, the mad dream-grabbing, taking, giving, sighing, dying, just so they could be buried in those awful cemetery cities beyond Long Island City. The high towers of the land - the other end of the land, the place where Paper America is born."

On the Road, Chapter 14

Times Square, New York City

I put this video up because I really like the billboard where the guy smokes, and because it was taken in the 1940s about the time Jack Kerouac was in and out of the area.  I can imagine Jack, searching for cigarette butts on the ground to get a puff or two off underneath the billboard as he tries to figure out how to get over to Paterson without any money.

It's hard for me to imagine Times Square as it was, because I only began traveling to New York City in earnest, three times a year, for a job from 1995-2000.  At that time, the transition of Times Square from a seedy place filled with porno shops and cheap sex shows to a clean, family friendly Disney atmosphere was almost complete.  In 1995, you could still find some of the old Times Square off on some of the side streets, but they were fast disappearing under the onslaught of Mickey Mouse.

The interesting thing about Sal's statement above is how he describes being in New York City once again after having been on the road for so many months.  He almost describes the feelings that I have heard some describe after living for a while in a developing country.  The hubbub, the busy-ness and the businesses, the traffic at rush hour (which I'm sure is even worse today than in the late 1940s), the chaotic swirl of life in America's biggest city.  When you've been standing for hours in a place like Shelton, Nebraska, or picking cotton in Selma, California, or even just riding a bus through places and past names that have almost a mystical sound to them, a jolt of New York City can definitely be a shock to the system.  I suppose that in a way, large portions of rural America in the 1940s were akin to a developing country.  Though America had awakened its industrial giant in World War II, there were still large portions of rural America that didn't have running water or electricity.  If you were near a populated area, you most likely had electricity, but the farther away you got from cities or towns, the less chance that power lines extended out to you.

Sal also makes a distinction between "Paper America," or the business and legal America, with the rest of America he has just seen.  In rural America, life must have been even more in stark contrast with the city than it is today.  If one doesn't have electricity or running water, one is forced to live a more simple lifestyle.  The trappings of a modern society are not needed, nor are they missed because they have never been there.  Contracts and stocks, bonds and licenses are not as important.  Most likely, even currency was not as important because more bartering took place, i.e. a couple of dozen eggs in exchange for use of tools to fix the old truck.

For Sal, or actually Jack, stepping back into New York must have been quite a culture shock.  I'd be interested in knowing if, after visiting a more simple and innocent America, whether he saw things like smoking billboards and the hustle and bustle of Times Square as exciting, or overkill?  I know that for me, after spending a month in a developing country, getting used to the hectic pace of my own life back in the states was an adjustment.  The rhythm of the road or trip, replaced by a new beat of life.

If you want to know more about Times Square

42nd Street: At the Crossroads
An Appreciation of the New Times Square (video)
History of Times Square
Seven Decades of Times Square (video)
Times Square Alliance
Times Square: Crossroads of the World
Times Square (short film)
Wikipedia: Times Square

Next up: Paterson, New Jersey and end of trip

On the Road: Allentown, Pennsylvania

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

Where are we now?  Starving, tired, and hoping a crazy man takes us home.  Click on the map and you'll see our current location.

Book Quote

"The ride I proceeded to get was with a skinny, haggard man who believed in controlled starvation for the sake of health.  When I told him I was starving to death as we rolled east he said, 'Fine, fine, there's nothing better for you.  I myself haven't eaten for three days.  I'm going to live to be a hundred and fifty years old.'  He was a bag of bones, a floppy doll, a broken stick, a maniac.  I might have gotten a ride with an affluent fat man who'd say, 'Let's stop at this restaurant and have some pork chops and beans.'  No, I had to get a ride that morning with a maniac who believed in controlled starvation for the sake of health.  After a hundred miles he grew lenient and took out bread-and-butter sandwiches from the back of the car.  They were hidden among his salesman samples.  He was selling plumbing fixtures around Pennsylvania.  I devoured the bread and butter.  Suddenly I began to laugh.  I was all alone in the car, waiting for him as he made business calls in Allentown, and I laughed and laughed.  Gad, I was sick and tired of life."

On the Road, Chapter 14

If Jack Kerouac had bought a beer in Allentown during his trip, this was the beer he might have ordered, the local brew in the 1940s.

Allentown, Pennsylvania

I've been going through a "why me?" stage lately.  I got a PhD in Political Science, but of course it coincided with a recession so jobs in academia in my field are hard to come by, and I am working in a medical school instead.  Why me, I ask?

My wife and I haven't been able to have any kids.  I always thought I'd be a father, and had visions especially of a daughter.  Why me?

A person that I really enjoyed and wanted to know wants nothing to do with me now.  It was a situation that started out in the wrong way and went very, very badly.  Why me?

I'm not usually a whiner, but sometimes I feel like letting a nice big whine out.  Or even better yet...I love watching very young children in a store at the end of their rope.  You see it coming.  They have this annoyed look in their eyes that slowly turns to anger and which suddenly bursts forth in a screaming fit accompanied by tears, maybe stamping of feet or a throwing of the body on the ground and a refusal to move while the screaming continues unabated.  I've felt like that...it's the ultimate heart-and-eardrum piercing "why me?"  I often wish that I had the freedom of a child to just blow a gasket like that sometimes - it seems so freeing.

The "why me" is usually followed by a "what's the problem with me?"  That usually brings me into dangerous territory.  I don't generally have a positive outlook to begin with (long story) but when I get into that kind of spiral, I can get down very fast.  I can get, as Kerouac writes above, "sick and tired of life."

Which is why I can relate to Sal in Allentown.  You can understand his exhaustion, his worry because he has no money, his desire to just get back home.  But, let's face it, he's whining.  I can hear my voice in that passage -- out of ALL the people I could meet when I'm tired and hungry, I have to meet the one idiot who is not eating.  Why me?

So what do I do in those situations?  Well, often I ride it out, which is what Sal has to do.  If I'm lucky, I'll have a few bread and butter sandwiches to pick me up once in a while until I'm back up to speed.  When I'm in that type of mental space, I often stay there for a while.  I don't like it, and I'd rather be anywhere else, but sometimes it's just where I have to be.

But at other times, and here's where I'm luckier than Sal in this instance, I have friends and a spouse who help pull me out.  Especially if I'm open to being pulled out.  Instead of being in alone in a car in Allentown waiting on someone to get me home, I have people with me on my own personal journey through life.

If you want to know more about Allentown

Allentown Good News (blog)
Beyond Scrapple: A Guide to Lehigh Valley Ethnic Restaurants (blog)
City of Allentown site
Lehigh Valley Convention and Visitor's Bureau
Lehigh Valley Insite (blog)
The Morning Call (newspaper)
Pulse Weekly (alternative newspaper)
Queen City Daily (blog)
Wikipedia: Allentown

Next up: Times Square, New York City

On the Road: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

Sal starts hitching again, trying to make it home on his last dime, facing a kind of judgment day.  Follow along with us by clicking the map.

Book Quote

"I had three hundred and sixty-five miles yet to hitchhike to New York, and a dime in my pocket. I walked five miles to get out of Pittsburgh, and two rides, an apple truck and a big trailer truck, took me to Harrisburg in the soft Indian-summer rainy night. I cut right along. I wanted to get home.

"....That night in Harrisburg I had to sleep in the railroad station on a bench; at dawn the station masters threw me out. Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life. I stumbled haggardly out of the station; I had no more control. All I could see of the morning was a whiteness like the whiteness of the tomb. I was starving to death. All I had left in the form of calories were the last of the cough drops I'd bought in Shelton, Nebraska, months ago; these I sucked for their sugar. I didn't know how to panhandle. I stumbled out of town with barely enough strength to reach the city limits."

On the Road, Chapter 14

Harrisburg in the 1940s as Jack Kerouac might have seen it. Photo on Flickr as part of "kawkawpa's" photostream.Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Who among us hasn't faced our own day of Laodiceans?  Okay, as a Catholic, and as I explained in an earlier post, I don't know the Bible at all so I had to look up Kerouac's reference.  This particular reference comes from the Book of Revelations, in which the Lord instructs John to address the church of the Laodiceans.  The Laodicean church is admonished for being neither "hot" nor "cold," but "lukewarm," meaning that it doesn't lack for faith but it doesn't act upon its faith like it should.  It's tepid fervor makes it unworthy - it has grown rich and does not realize that despite its material wealth, it is "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked."

It is a challenge, of course, when we realize that we've reached that day, or sometimes days, as I believe that the day of the Laodiceans can happen whenever we move into a comfort zone.  Something happens to jar us out of our sense of complacency.  It can happen when we move to a new place, and need to find new friends and create a new community for ourselves.  It can happen when we take a new job and negotiate our way through the first week of work, wanting to prove that we belong and hoping nothing goes badly.  Sooner or later, we will cease feeling the adrenaline and nervousness and grow into our new communities and jobs, and become complacent again.

It often happens when a love ends or a love is lost.  How many times have I felt the way Kerouac describes?  Too many, and upon realizing that the person loved is gone from my life forever, I have gone out into the world with the "visage of a gruesome, grieving ghost...shuddering through nightmare life."  The blue sky seemed not so blue, the brilliant greens of nature turned a sickly yellow, and my troubles seemed to weigh down upon me like some great mass pressing me from above.  "All I could see of the morning was a whiteness like the whiteness of the tomb."  Eventually the wounds healed, the garish colors of remorse and self-pity morphed back into their natural states, and I moved onward toward my next day of the Laodiceans.

In Harrisburg, Sal reaches his own day of the Laodiceans.  The purpose of the Revelations passage is not to condemn, but to challenge.  The Laodicean church is challenged to take action, to repent, and to let in the Lord.  Similarly, Sal has become complacent in long bus rides across the country. He only has cough drops from another place, Shelton, Nebraska, where he faced uncertainty about his decisions.  It's ironic and poignant that sugar bought in Shelton is nourishing him now.  He is being challenged to draw upon himself to finish his journey, to put aside his romantic fantasies that led him on this adventure, and to begin the next phase of his life.

If you want to know more about Harrisburg

Blog Harrisburg
The Fly Magazine (alternative newsweekly)
Hershey-Harrisburg Welcome Center
Jersey Mike
MidStateMantra
The Patriot-News (Newspaper)
Sara Bozich
Slow Food Harrisburg
Vegetarian Dining in the Harrisburg Area
Wikipedia: Harrisburg

Next up:  Allentown, Pennsylvania

On the Road: Bakersfield, California

Click on Thumbnail for MapNote: First published on Blogger on April 28, 2007

Unfolding the Map

Sal hits what many Californians consider the end of the road. But not for Sal, at least not yet. It's actually the gateway to some love and music, and good times lie beyond. Want to see where we are?  Click the map!

Book Quote

"I had to go south; I got on the road. A man in a brand-new pickup truck picked me up. He was from Lubbock, Texas, and was in the trailer business. 'You want to buy a trailer?' he asked me. 'Any time, look me up.'

"He left me off south of Bakersfield, and then my adventure began. It grew cold. I put on the flimsy Army raincoat I'd bought in Oakland for three dollars and shuddered in the road. I was standing in front of an ornate Spanish-style motel that was lit like a jewel. The cars rushed by, LA-bound. I gestured frantically. It was too cold. I stood there till midnight, two hours straight, and cursed and cursed. It was just like Stuart, Iowa, again. There was nothing to do but spend a little over two dollars for a bus the remaining miles to Los Angeles."

On the Road, Chapter 12

Bakersfield, California

Dwight Yoakam sang a song, The Streets of Bakersfield, which could easily fit Sal's journey. Though Jack wasn't really into country music as far as I can tell, preferring the jazz, bop and jump blues that Sal will discover in Los Angeles, I like to think he would relate to the lyrics:

I came here looking for something
I couldn't find anywhere else
Hey, I'm not trying to be nobody
Just want a chance to be myself

I've done a thousand miles of thumbin'
I've worn blisters on my heels
Trying to find me something better
On the streets of Bakersfield

You don't know me but you don't like me
You say you care less how I feel
But how many of you that sit and judge me
Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

Spent some time in San Francisco
Spent a night there in the can
They threw this drunk man in my jail cell
Took fifteen dollars from that man
Left him my watch and my old house key
Don't want folks thinkin' that I'd steal
Then I thanked him as I was leaving, and
I headed for the streets of Bakersfield

You don't know me but you don't like me
You say you care less how I feel
But how many of you that sit and judge me
Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

You don't know me but you don't like me
You say you care less how I feel
But how many of you that sit and judge me
Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

How many of you that sit and judge me
Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

The fact is, in California terms Bakersfield is kind of like the end of the world. It is a place, like Fresno, that has an undeserved reputation as being the least attractive place in California. However, Bakersfield has contributed an immense amount to American culture by inspiring the Bakersfield sound in country music. At its best, country music calls upon common themes of America which Jack Kerouac claims he is seeking in On the Road: hardship, hard work, the rural experience, pain and suffering followed by joy and redemption. The Bakersfield sound is exemplified in such iconic American artists such as Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.

Yes, I think Bakersfield was a perfect stop for Sal -- and as we'll see later, he makes a return trip. While this stop in Bakersfield is not the proverbial end of the road for Sal at this point in time, it does serve as a gateway to the end of his trip later. Fortunately, he has more adventures ahead!

If you want to know more about Bakersfield

Bakersfield Californian
Bakersfield Convention and Visitor's Bureau
California State University at Bakersfield
City of Bakersfield
Wikipedia: Bakersfield
Wikipedia: Bakersfield sound
Wikipedia: Buck Owens
Wikipedia: Merle Haggard

Next up: South Main Street, Los Angeles, California

On the Road: Fresno, California

Click on Thumbnail for MapNote: First published on Blogger on April 27, 2007

Unfolding the Map

We're in the heart of California's Central Valley, moving on down toward LA. Click the map!

Book Quote

"He drove me into buzzing Fresno and let me off by the south side of town. I went for a quick Coke in a little grocery by the tracks, and here came a melancholy Armenian youth along the red boxcars, and just at that moment a locomotive howled, and I said to myself, yes, yes Saroyan's town."

On the Road, Chapter 12

Fresno, California

Californians can be very provincial. I'm not sure this isn't like other parts of the United States, and we certainly know that provincialism on a larger scale is known as nationalism and has caused many problems on the international stage. When I write "provincial," I mean an attitude that not only is the place where one is the best place, but also that one has a lack of interest in other places.

I will provide my own mother as an example, who has been a place or two, but who really never left my hometown except for some temporary trips, and who doesn't seem to have a great curiousity about the outside world. But I have more as well. There seems to be a reluctance among many New Orleanians, and having lived there I have found this to be true in many cases, to leave their home and settle in any other place. This can be summed up for two reasons -- one is that New Orleans was and still is a very unique place in our country, but the other is that New Orleanians feel this uniqueness and cannot see themselves in any other place, despite the problems and the difficulties that come with living in New Orleans. This is why post-Katrina, the diaspora was so difficult for many New Orleanians -- they have difficulty adjusting to life outside of New Orleans because of their attitudes, their rootedness to the place and to their social environment.

So, in California, the Bay Area thinks it is THE place to live. All of Northern California is very resentful of Southern California, and Southern Californians feel pretty superior to everyone else.
About the only thing that urban dwellers in California can agree upon is that they can look down upon more rural areas of California, and when I was growing up, going to or living in Fresno (or Bakersfield, which will be considered in the next post) was considered to be a karmic punishment.

Why this is, I don't know. I haven't been to Fresno. But I heard about the blazing hot summers, the thick tule (pronounced too-lee) fog in the mornings that made driving hazardous. The lack of things to do. I bought into these attitudes, but have since learned in my life that making pronouncements about places not only does an injustice to them, but also limits one from ever exploring what they may have to offer. I offer as an example Houston. When I lived in Texas and in New Orleans, everyone pretty much put down Houston. It was hot and humid, it was a concrete jungle, it was too big, you had to drive long distances to do anything. Yes, Houston was these things and more, but we found by exploring it that there are fantastic things in Houston that make some of the inconveniences worth negotiating, like the Art Car Parade, or the Rothko Chapel.

So I try not to bias myself against Fresno or any other place any more. Sure I have my favorites, but everything seems to have at least something to offer. And it is notable that in this particular Kerouac passage, Sal acknowledges that Fresno is the hometown of William Saroyan, who wrote optimistic tales set in some of America's darkest times. If Fresno was such a terrible place, then wouldn't it have made a worse impression on Saroyan? Wouldn't Saroyan's stories and plays be darker?

If you want to learn more about Fresno

California State University - Fresno
City of Fresno
Fresno Bee
Fresno City and County Historical Society
Fresno Convention and Visitor's Bureau
Wikipedia: Fresno
Wikipedia: William Saroyan
William Saroyan Society

Next up: Bakersfield, California