Blue Highways: Grayville, Illinois

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

William Least-Heat Moon stays a night in Grayville, and makes an impression on a farmer in Well's Restaurant at morning breakfast.  Click on the map to locate Grayville, and don't be fooled by the map.  The horseshoe in the river doesn't exist anymore - you can see the actual course of the river in the satellite view.

Book Quote

"[The man] adjusted his cap.  'So what's your line?'

"'Don't have one.'

"'How's that work?'

"'It doesn't and isn't.'

"He grunted and went back to his coffee.  The man took me for a bindlestiff.  Next time I'd say I sold ventilated aluminum awnings or repaired long-rinse cycles on Whirlpools.  Now my presence disturbed him.  After the third tilt of his empty cup, he tried to make sense of me by asking where I was from and why I was so far from home.  I hadn't traveled even three hundred miles yet.  I told him I planned to drive around the country on the smallest roads I could find.

"'Goddamn,' he said, 'if screwball things don't happen every day even in this town.  The country's all alike now.'  On that second day of the new season, I guess I was his screwball thing."

Blue Highways: Part 1, Chapter 5

Hard Times Fish Market in Grayville, Illinois

Grayville, Illinois

Have you ever been looked at as odd by someone, or by a group?  You might be doing something, standing out from the crowd in some way, and you're seen as being different, and different not in an interesting way but in a way that is slightly disturbing?

It's kind of interesting how, when we challenge someone's notion of what is normal versus what they think of as abnormal behavior, that we get that reaction.

Clearly Least-Heat Moon's (LHM) venture around the country on small roads qualifies as being weird, perhaps abnormal, to this farmer he encounters.  Because we don't have much of a backstory on this farmer, it is hard to say what his life was like and whether he did anything that went against the grain in Grayville.  Probably not.  He probably was born and raised to be a farmer.  Perhaps he had his exciting and different moment when he served in the military.  Perhaps that was in World War II or the Korean War, or, if he is young enough, maybe even in Vietnam.  But that was not something that was out of the ordinary, it was expected of a young man of the time.  If he hadn't had that experience, he might have never left Grayville except for the odd trip to St. Louis, which would have made him feel out of place and uncomfortable and therefore he only went once or twice and never went again.

I've not been really wild and crazy, but I have done some things that have been seen as going against the grain, or different.  Right out of college, I joined a volunteer program called JVC.  It was under the auspices of the Jesuits, a Catholic order of priests and brothers, and I left California and went to Milwaukee where I lived with three women and another man in what we called a "community."  We all worked, for what amounted to $75 a month personal spending money, in social service organizations.  I lived in the middle of the inner-city, taught at a school in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods, and suffered through property crime in our house and watched a couple of my housemates get beaten on the street.  As I related these stories to my family and friends, their reactions typically were "and you're doing this because...?"  I was doing it at first because after college, I didn't feel like I had any other options (English majors are great until you need to find a job).  I later did it because I felt like I was doing something socially worthwhile that would help those who were poor.  I finally learned that the end result gave me more than the people I supposedly were helping, but who had more street smarts and common sense than I did.  The kids I taught had grown up before their time, and they were streetwise and in many ways smarter than me.  The end result was I rejoined for another year, and lived for eight years beyond my volunteer experience in the inner-city and continued to work in service positions.  My extended family shook their heads at times, but I came to love it and found a group of like-minded people that I could count on and who could count on me.

In 1998, I went to Bangladesh, where a different manifestation of being different and odd enough to attract attention happened to me.  In a month-long visit, I learned that being whiter and taller than everyone else made me an object of curiousity.  My clothes were different.  I spoke a different language.  I traveled in areas where the appearance of people like me might come once in a generation.  In the town of Rajshahi, a crowd followed me as I looked in store windows, watching me window shop.  Everywhere in Bangladesh that I stopped in a restaurant outside of the capital of Dhaka, crowds would gather to watch me and my Anglo companion eat.  When we stopped to take in the sight of the Bangabandhu Bridge across the Jamuna River, the 5th longest bridge in South Asia, people stood near us to watch us look at the bridge.  It was strange, to say the least, to be such an alien object that just my very presence made me worth watching.  I didn't have to do anything but just stand there, and I was an attraction.  It was both an ego-boost and an unnerving experience.

I think LHM describes a bit of both in this passage.  He is an object of curiousity to the farmer, who recognizes that he is not local, and a bit odd because of what he is planning to do.  LHM finds it unnerving enough to think about saying something that will make him seem more "normal" in the future, as he doesn't want to be a "screwball thing."  But sometimes, we just don't have that option.  I had a choice to go back to whatever a normal life is when I lived in Milwaukee, but in Bangladesh, there was no way I would ever be normal in that society.  We do what what we can with what we have, and live with whatever people think of us otherwise.

If you want to know more about Grayville

City of Grayville
Topix.com/Grayville
Wikipedia: Grayville

Next up: Tell City, Indiana

Blue Highways: Lebanon, Illinois

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

Heading into Illinois, we follow William Least-Heat Moon and Ghost Dancing as they continue their 13,000 mile trek around America.  As always, Littourati, your comments are welcome!  Click the map to check our progress - we've got a long way to go!

Book Quote

"In the approaching car beams, raindrops spattering the road became little beacons.  I bent over the wheel to steer along divider stripes.  A frog, long-leggedy and green, belly flopped across the road to the side where the puddles would be better.  The land, still cold and wintery, was alive with creatures that trusted in the coming of spring.

"On through Lebanon, a brick-street village where Charles Dickens spent a night in the Mermaid Inn; on down the Illinois roads - roads that leave you ill and annoyed, the joke went - all the way dodging chuckholes that Time magazine said Americans would spend 626 million dollars in extra fuel swerving around."

Blue Highways: Part 1, Chapter 4

Street in Lebanon, Illinois

Lebanon, Illinois

When I was young, some of my most vivid memories occurred when we had to drive on rainy nights.  I grew up on the North Coast of California, and rainy nights were always very wet, very aromatic of the redwoods, firs and pines of the area, and particularly on a stretch of Pudding Creek Road which headed toward my house, full of frogs.

On rainy nights, there were hundreds of them, jumping across the road to get from one side to the other.  There wasn't a lot of traffic on Pudding Creek Road, but the occasional car would cause a veritable frog massacre.  The next morning, all kinds of crushed frogs lay bloody and eviscerated on the road.  It looked pretty cool when I was a kid, but now as an older and environmentally conscious and conscientious adult, I hate to think how much we contributed to the planet's steadily eroding population of frogs and other amphibians by driving over so many of them.

Least-Heat Moon's (LHM) vivid picture of the frog really brings that memory back to me, along with his description of the raindrops on the road.  In really hard rains, the raindrops splashed on the road and at night, in the car headlights, it is a virtual explosion of light on the dark surface.  When the rain was coming down hard, and I've had more than a few experiences of these kinds, I've had to bend my body into all kinds of contortions to be able to see center divider stripes, or side stripes marking the blacktop boundary of the road, to be able to steer effectively.

I also remember riding over roads that would put LHM's saying about Illinois roads to shame.  In our car, every time we went on a trip we had to take "the can."  The can was dreaded by all of us.  If we could get through a trip without having to resort to the can, we were all happy.  The can was basically a Folgers or some other coffee can, lined with a plastic baggy and covered with a plastic lid, which sat at the ready.  The roads out of my town were all windy, twisty, up and down affairs.  The can was for us kids, who got carsick a lot.  One of us might get carsick and vomit in the bag in the can, and then the plastic lid would cover it and it would stay in the car for the rest of the ride until we got where we were going and the gastric contents could be put in the trash or dumped in the toilet.  Usually our car had a nasty, vomity smell in it for a while when we were on these trips.  If someone else got sick, then the can would be used again...in which case the newly sick person would be staring into and getting a whiff of the previous sick person's puke.  Needless to say, that usually helped the newly sick person let loose his or her own load of puke.  I don't know why we just couldn't pull over and let people puke on the side of the road, like everyone else.  What can I say?  Our trips were kind of disgusting at times.  One issue for my youngest sister in her therapy as an adult revolved around traveling on windy roads precisely for this reason, and both she and I have not vomited in decades because of our disgust of it.

Mermaid House Hotel: Lebanon, Illinois

Enough about puke.  I'd like to know how the Mermaid Inn in Lebanon became so called, because it is nowhere near a body of water where a mermaid might be.  Charles Dickens did stay there a night and used the opportunity to visit the Looking Glass Prairie, and legend has it he might have based A Christmas Carol on his stay, though I would find that hard to believe given that to me, A Christmas Carol is decidedly English.  If he based it on an American stay, wouldn't he have set the story in the United States?  He did have his character Martin Chuzzlewit from the novel of the same name come to America, so he did use material in America for his novels, but I just can't see it in The Christmas Carol.  I hope in his carriage and wagon rides through the United States, he brought a can for the twisty sections of the trail.

If you want to learn more about Lebanon

Chamber of Commerce: Lebanon
Fezziwig's Market
Historic Lebanon
Language of Landscape: Looking Glass Prairie
McKendree University (oldest university in Illinois)
Mermaid House Hotel
Wikipedia: Lebanon

Next up: Grayville, Illinois

On the Road: Joliet, Illinois

Click on the Thumbnail for the Map

Note:  First published on Blogger on June 13, 2006

Unfolding the Map

In this post, Sal's hitchhiking begins in earnest, and we will look at some reflections it stirs in yours truly. So stick your thumb out and get ready to catch a ride across the plains with Sal Paradise. As usual, click on the image to get the updated map!

Book Quote

"...I took a bus to Joliet, Illinois, went by the Joliet pen, stationed myself just outside town after a walk through its leafy rickety streets behind, and pointed my way."

On the Road: Chapter 3

Joliet, Illinois

After a false start back in New York, Sal finds himself standing on the the side of the road, his thumb pointing the way west. I'm sure that Sal would have preferred to do this long before, and not have spent most of his $50 on a bus ticket to Chicago, but a lot of times one has to ease into something new.

Hitchhiking, of course was a lot more common in 1947 than it is now. I'm not sure about the statistics of hitchhiking, and how much crime occurs to the unwary motorist who decides to pick up a hitchhiker or the unwary hitchhiker who jumps in a car with a psychopath, but the way it was always explained to me, if I ever picked up a hitchhiker I would end up being slowly dismembered somewhere in a dirty warehouse or an out of the way collapsing barn. If I ever hitchhiked, I would meet the same fate. Nobody would ever find me, and my fate would become another horrible story that parents would use to scare their driving-age children out of ever thinking of picking up a hitchhiker, or scare their kids out of ever thinking of hitchhiking.

Okay, so now I've tried to look up hitchhiking and statistics, and I can't find any, and from various posts on various groups, I see that other people haven't found any either.

The sad thing is that these types of stories make me pass people by, without picking them up. It seems to be a double edged sword on both sides of the road. How many drivers might that perfectly nice but somewhat scary looking hairy guy on the side of the road see pass by before he gets a ride? How many hitchhikers might the motorist who has a seat or two for room in the back of his or her car pass by? Who might I meet if I just took the time to pull over and open a friendly door when I see someone by the side of the road? What new relationships might open up as a result. I'll never know because I'm sure (thanks society!) that the ONE time I do I will pick up a psycho and I'll end up as cat food somewhere.

But in 1947, crime didn't seem to be a problem. Today, hitchhiking is much less common, and urban legend and the wider availability of cars probably has a lot to do with it. Back in 1947, I'm sure that a lot of people didn't pick up hitchhikers, but it seems that many more people did than today. You had a lot of people who didn't have cars and didn't have a lot of money to travel, and hit the road with their thumb out, and they got rides! Just follow along with these posts and see how many people picked up Sal, often because they needed an extra driver. They don't even know if he can drive (and because he's from New York and doesn't have to rely on a car that much, he fully admits that he's not a good driver!). They don't know him from Adam, but he gets rides and even some responsibility in the process! And since this trip is based on a trip Jack Kerouac took himself, it is not necessarily all fiction -- Jack himself hitchhiked across the country and neither he nor the motorists he rides with seem to have much of a problem with it.

So where does this leave us? I don't know if I'll pick up a hitchhiker, especially if they are male, seem to need a bath/shave/haircut and I have a feeling that deodorant has never touched their body. I just have too many common misconceptions running around in my brain that are really hard for me to let go. But I would love to see some statistics about hitchhiking and crime. And I would love to know what drives people today to get out on the road and stand for long periods, waiting for that ride even though they know that most motorists will scream on by. I think it is the same motivation that Jack and his alter-ego Sal Paradise both have -- the call of the open road and the new vistas ahead, and the hope that America is still a land that believes in helping out its fellow citizens get to where they need to go.

For more information on Joliet and hitchhiking:

Can Hitchhiking Save the Country? (interview on Alternet)
DigiHitch
Hitchhiking Tips
What Killed Hitchhiking? (on MSNBC.com)

City of Joliet
Joliet Penitentiary
Wikipedia: Joliet

Next up: Mississippi River and Davenport, Iowa

On the Road: Chicago

Click on Thumbnail for MapNote:  First published on Blogger on June 10, 2006.

Unfolding the Map

In this post, Sal gets to Chicago. I'll reflect on Chicago mostly and whatever else comes to mind. As usual, click the image at left to get to the updated map.

Book Quote

"I arrived in Chi quite early in the morning.... I dug Chicago after a good day's sleep. The wind from Lake Michigan, bop at the Loop, long walks around South Halsted and North Clark, and one long walk after midnight into the jungles, where a cruising car followed me as a suspicious character.... The fellows at the Loop blew, but with a tired air, because bop was somewhere between its Charlie Parker ornithology period and another period that began with Miles Davis. And as I sat there listening to that sound of the night which bop has come to represent for all of us, I thought of all my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were really all in the same backyard doing something so frantic and rushing about. And for the first time in my life, the following afternoon, I went into the West."

On the Road: Chapter 3

Chicago

The first time I ever saw Chicago, it was from the air. What a lucky way to see it! I had flown into O'Hare from California on the first flight I ever took. I transferred to a small plane run by Air Wisconsin -- I later learned it was commonly called "Scare Wisconsin" -- and the small, 10 passenger or so prop plane took off. We flew up and over the city, straight past the shore and out over Lake Michigan, on our way to Benton Harbor, Michigan. Seeing the city from the air was magnificent. I had never seen a city so huge, with so many buildings that were that tall. Unfortunately, I don't remember picking the Sears Tower out of the bunch, but I do remember the John Hancock building off to the left side, the side I was sitting on.

When I next saw Chicago, it was on the trip from Benton Harbor to Milwaukee, my new home, by car. However, we took the loop around the city, not the freeway through, and it sat on the horizon, a bunch of tall buildings framed only by my imagination. Later that year, I made my first trip to Chicago, but didn't see much of it. I was headed down for a party and had visions of getting lucky with a young lady I thought highly of. Alas, that didn't happen.

When I finally got to know Chicago better, I liked it immensely. New York likes to consider itself a tough and gritty place, and I suppose it is in various sections. Chicago just seemed to be tough and gritty place all around, even within the Loop. It's where the beef of the heartland hits the china of the chic urban landscape. Don't get me wrong -- Chicago has everything you could want in a city. If you want to be a hip highrise dweller in a condo overlooking Lakeshore Drive, you can. And if you want to live on the Southside, eat polish sausage (that's pronounced sassage) and get in evening fights in the bars, you can do that too. But you have to be willing to brave brutal winters, ungodly hot summers, and perpetual highway construction. Those things, and the Chicago Bears, bring everyone together. Chicagoans will bitch about their city but they will defend their Chicago against outsiders at a drop of a hat.

Sal wanders around this landscape, most likely after arriving at Union Station or in that general area, which was probably even more tough and gritty in 1947. He makes mention of bop and jazz, which is interesting because I consider Chicago more of a blues city than a jazz city though it has both. The blues, as in those electric blues that developed out of the influx of all the Delta bluesmen riding the rails into Chicago looking for a place to live and places to play their music.

My sister Pauline's friend (and hopeful "more than that"), Ernest, just moved to Chicago to take a job at the Apple store (he's one of the Apple genius's). I don't know if he'll delve much into the gritty Chicago, but it always lurks there just below the surface. Literally. There is a pub on Lower Wacker Drive, the multilevel street that runs through the heart of Chicago's Loop, called the Billy Goat Tavern. On Lower Wacker, it exists in almost perpetual twilight. The tavern is famous for a couple of reasons. First, it was THE place, and may still be, for Chicago journalists to hang out and rub elbows with the politicians and other glitterati of the Chicago scene. Second, it was the inspiration for John Belushi's repeating sketch on Saturday Night Live, Cheezborger, Cheezborger, No Coke, Pepsi. It is the only place I've ever been that served Schlitz Dark on tap. In fact, before I went there, I didn't even know there was a Schlitz Dark. It is an easy place to spend an hour and find that you've spent six. Perhaps Sal looked into that subsurface Chicago. I'm sure Jack Kerouac did.

If you want to know more about Chicago and the jazz and blues of the times:

Billy Goat Tavern
Bop Jazz
Chicago Loop
City of Chicago.org
Schlitz Dark
Wikipedia: Chicago blues
Wikipedia: Schlitz Beer
Wikipedia: Union Station

Next Stop: Joliet, Illinois and Davenport, Iowa