On the Road: Indianapolis, Indiana

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Back across the heartland goes Sal, making out as he makes his way to Indianapolis.  Click on the map to travel with him.

Book Quote

"The bus roared through Indiana cornfields that night; the moon illuminated the ghostly gathered husks; it was almost Halloween. I made the acquaintance of a girl and we necked all the way to Indianapolis. She was nearsighted. When we got off to eat I had to lead her by the hand to the lunch counter. She bought my meals; my sandwiches were all gone. In exchange I told her long stories."

LS Ayres Department Store lunch crowd in 1940s Indianapolis

Indianapolis, Indiana

I've never been one to take the straightest and quickest route to where I'm going unless I absolutely have to be someplace and I only have a certain amount of time to get there.  Nor do I like taking routes around cities, the loops that allow motorists to avoid the downtowns and their traffic just like one might take a circular path around a person one doesn't really wish to see at a party or gathering.  So, while on a road trip one day approaching Indianapolis from the east and faced with the choice of taking I-465, the loop around to the north of the city that eventually joins with I-65 on the northwest, and shaving a few minutes off my trip back to Milwaukee, or heading into downtown Indianapolis, I aimed my bumper straight toward the downtown and didn't look back.  After all, I'd never seen Indianapolis.

I find the interstates to be another manifestation of our "Bowling Alone" syndrome in the United States.  Where once motorists, pre-interstate system, had no choice but to brave the unknowns of a city or town because the road would take them right through the center of it, now we have interstates looping us around towns and cities and even when we go through, we zip past at 55-65 miles per hour and barely register what we see.  We miss all the businesses flashing their products and services and are unhindered by stoplights making us take a moment to see place and surroundings.  We might get into a traffic jam that slows us down, but then our glimpse of where we are is spoiled by our anger and frustration at not being able to get up to speed and get the hell out.  We never get the tenor of a place because we don't have to stop and eat at a local establishment or converse with local people.  If we do stop to dine, it is at fast food chains that look the same wherever we are along the highway.

Personally, as I'm driving toward a city, especially an unknown one, I have a thrill as I see the buildings rise higher on the horizon.  I think it might remind me of a favorite movie when I was a child, The Wizard of Oz, where in later scenes the Emerald City shone in the background, full of mystery, adventure and hope for Dorothy.  As I enter a city, it feels like I'm privy to something special, and the way I enter a city makes a big difference.  Entering by the interstate, I see the city in all of its finery.  The glittering buildings proudly stand with erect postures almost as if they have been coached in charm school.  If I look carefully, sometimes I can see that all the glitz is really makeup caked over blemishes, or false elegance on a faded beauty.  Entering by a back road, I often see a more intimate portrait of the city, sometimes one that perhaps the city doesn't really want me to see - the tattered hem or the ragged holes concealed behind the glittery curtain.  Either way, it is more interesting to me to see these aspects of a place than to avoid them altogether.

I sometimes wonder whether, in our country's increasing polarization, our avoidance of place and of each other degrades our sense of community and country.  I wonder if the interstates were torn down and the fast food chains went belly up, and we went back to a simpler age where once again our travels made us wander into the hearts of strange towns and cities, and we had to interact, however briefly with local people, if we might once again find our sense of national community and solidarity?  Whenever I approach Indianapolis, or any other city for that matter, I will always try my best to take the road through, not around, and I will even try to stop awhile, just as Sal gets off the bus and heads with his female acquaintance to the local lunch counter.  After writing all this, I almost feel like I owe it to my country.

If you want to know more about Indianapolis

Indianapolis Bloggers Ring
Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Association
Indianapolis Star (Newspaper)
Indy Social Media
Nuvo Newsweekly
Star Neighbors
Wikipedia: Indianapolis

Next up:  Columbus, Ohio

On the Road: St. Louis, Missouri

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Sal hits the Gateway City, before the Gateway Arch was built, but for him the gateway points east.  Click on the map to see his progress.

Book Quote

"We arrived in St. Louis at noon. I took a walk down by the Mississippi River and watched the logs that came floating from Montana in the north-grand Odyssean logs of our continental dream. Old steamboats with their scrollwork more scrolled and withered by weathers sat in the mud inhabited by rats. Great clouds of afternoon overtopped the Mississippi Valley."

On the Road, Chapter 14

Littourati Intersection

Blue Highways: St. Louis, Missouri

Quiet downtown St. Louis street, 1940 (at Shorpy.com)St. Louis, Missouri

Once, while flying over St. Louis on a cloudless day, I looked down from my window seat and saw the Gateway Arch from about 30,000 feet.  Even from that height, it was clearly visible as a landmark at the edge of the Mississippi River.  I vowed to myself that I would see the Arch someday from ground level.

In spring of 1993, I got my chance.  I had to drive to St. Louis for business, and after 8 hours from Milwaukee I could see the Arch, it's magnificent metallic parabola beckoning travelers to pass through it to the wide open spaces of the West.  Unfortunately, you can't drive underneath its span, but the symbolism is very clear.

I don't know of any other landmark in any large cities where I've been that so captures a spirit of exploration and discovery.  Most landmarks are some form of large, upthrusting buildings that attempt to touch the clouds.  Even though the Arch is high, it doesn't point anywhere.  It's simplicity belies its amazing architectural and engineering accomplishment.  One's eye travels from base upward but is then led back down to its base again.  The sun's rays do not bounce off it in angles like they do off large skyscrapers, but instead seem to play around and glint in different directions.  And the Arch's unique design is visible from practically everywhere in the downtown, where it frames most buildings within its arc.

I took the opportunity to take the clunking little cars, themselves an engineering marvel, up to the top of the Arch.  There, in the little viewing area, I looked out across the country but, it wasn't the same as actually looking at the Arch itself from the ground.  From up there, it was like looking out of any other tall building, except that I knew that instead of 50 floors stacked below me, there was nothing but air underneath the thin skin of metal holding the arch in place.

And then, I was brought back to reality as I looked down toward the river and noticed my car, which I parked in a parking area that gently sloped to the water.  When I parked there, the river was some way away, but in the intervening time that I took in the museum below the arch, and then the trip up into the arch itself, the river had somehow risen and its waters were lapping at the passenger side wheels.  I got on the next car down, and by the time I got to the car, water was up to the passenger door and the car was slightly bobbing on the right side.  I barely got it out of there before it was claimed by the great Mississippi floods of 1993, which actually flooded the basement museum and closed the Arch.

Of course there was no Gateway Arch when Jack Kerouac came through St. Louis.  But even then, St. Louis has always been seen as a gateway to the West.  While much of its architecture and culture is influenced by the East Coast, it still has a Westward lean and was the last stop where travelers from the East Coast would find things that were still familiar.  From there, they traveled into alien and hostile lands.  The Arch, to me, is a fitting and elegant monument to this reputation as a portal to someplace different.  In their travel back from the West, Jack and Sal probably found that in St. Louis, they passed through the portal back into the familiar.

If you want to know more about St. Louis

Commonspace Blog
Explore St. Louis
Gateway Arch website
Pretty War STL
The Riverfront Times Blog
St. Louis Beacon (Online newspaper)
St, Louis Daily Photo
St. Louis Places to See
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Newspaper)
STL A La Mode
Urban Review STL
Wikipedia: St. Louis

Next up: Indianapolis, Indiana

On the Road: Dalhart, Texas

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Sal lists a number of non-descript places in this passage.  He glosses over New Mexico, though he most likely passed through Gallup and my current home of Albuquerque on Route 66.  He then mentions Dalhart as his only place-name in Texas, followed by a bunch of nameless towns in Oklahoma and Kansas.  It is 1940s America in its most mysterious, faceless immensity.  Since Sal points out Dalhart, we will too.  Click the map to join us there.

Book Quote

"In inky night we crossed New Mexico; at gray dawn it was Dalhart, Texas; in the bleak Sunday afternoon we rode through one Oklahoma flat-town after another; at nightfall it was Kansas. The bus roared on. I was going home in October. Everybody goes home in October."

On the Road, Chapter 14

Dalhart in the 1950sDalhart, Texas

From 2008-09, I lived in Lubbock, Texas.  I had accepted a position as a visiting professor of political science at Texas Tech University, and I left my wife and dog in Albuquerque, New Mexico and rented a house in Lubbock.  From there, I made the five hour drive back to Albuquerque every weekend except for the one weekend per month that my wife came to visit me.

Lubbock is about 3½ hours drive from Dalhart, which lies situated at the northern end of the Texas Panhandle.  Both are roughly similar in elevation.  Lubbock is much larger, with about 200,000 people and a very large university (about 40,000 students) compared to under 10,000 people for Dalhart, but both are very much agricultural towns.

In that part of Texas, the immensity of the state really impresses itself upon one.  One may drive for hours through the Llano Estacado passing through small towns such as Shallowater, Anton, Littlefield, Sudan, Muleshoe, and Farwell that retreat indoors around their grain elevators around 7:00 p.m.  Texas high school football crackles through the radio on practically every station on Friday nights, as portrayed in Friday Night Lights.  I think that Texas high school football would take precedence over a nuclear attack.  "Well, they got Washington, New York, L.A. and Houston, but hey, Muleshoe is up by 10 over Levelland with 6:05 to go in the 4th quarter, and since they just nuked Dallas, we can make a real run for state champs!"

Of course, part of the mystique of Texas was encapsulated in the 1980s television show, Dallas.  This show was partly set on the fictional Southfork Ranch.  The historic XIT Ranch in Dalhart fully connects this region with its cattle ranching past and present.  At one time, the XIT was the largest ranch in the United States with nearly 3 million acres under fence - that's bigger than many U.S. states.

The amazing thing about West Texas, however, is how its music has stamped itself on the American scene.  Some of the most incredible musicians have come out of West Texas and the Panhandle.  Bob Wills, Joe Ely, Lloyd Maines, Butch Hancock, Terry Allen, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Waylon Jennings, Guy Clark, Mac Davis, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, and Buddy Knox, among others, were raised and first formed their musical careers in under the vast open skies of West Texas.  When in Lubbock, I was privileged with my wife to see Joe Ely perform with flamenco guitarist Teye.  It was a fantastic show.  Ely told the story of how he performed a show early in his career in a town outside of Lubbock, and the Baptist preachers the next day preached fire and brimstone against his music from the pulpit, calling it depraved and the devil's music.  He figured his career was through, only to discover that people were lining up to get in to the next show!

While I am happy to be back with my wife in Albuquerque, my stint living in West Texas reinforced to me that you can't always judge a book by its cover.  West Texas, at least musically, is vibrant and alive and this creativity is nourished under Texas' wide, dusty skies.  Maybe as he drives through Dalhart in the "gray dawn," Sal sees Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys loading their gear into a bus in front of a honkytonk outside of town.  It's too bad he missed that show.  He might have found something beat in the jazz and blues influenced Western swing.

Here is a song by James McMurtry, 60 Acres, that speaks of West Texas.  Enjoy!

If you want to know more about Dalhart

Dalhart Chamber of Commerce
The Dalhart Texan (Newspaper)
The Handbook of Texas Online: Dalhart
Wikipedia: Dalhart
Wikipedia: XIT Ranch
XIT Ranch Museum

Next up: St. Louis, Missouri

On the Road: Flagstaff, Arizona

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I'm back.  After a year and a half since the last post, I'm finally set about finishing this trip and making this blog a regular occurrence.  First, it's exciting to be on Squarespace where I can host my maps as well as the blog.  Second, I'm excited about what this blog will be.  Littourati is not supposed to be academic criticism.  The blog's subtitle is "Life, literature and maps."  That's what it is.  The life is mine; it is what the literature evokes in me.  It is my points of reference on my own inner map, revealed by the physical map that is referenced in the work I'm reading.  You are all free to add your own points of reference; in fact I encourage it.  It is my hope that the melding of all of our inner and geographical points of reference will enrich our understanding of the literature we read.  After all, what is literature unless we can connect and relate it to our experiences?

So, strap in for the bus ride back to Paterson, New Jersey, and to whatever literary works, points in our imagination and points on the map this blog takes us!  And if you haven't figured it out by now, click on the map to see where we've been and where we are.

Book Quote

"Then we swung north to the Arizona mountains, Flagstaff, clifftowns. I had a book with me I stole from a Hollywood stall, Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier, but I preferred reading the American landscape as we went along. Every bump, rise, and stretch in it mystified my longing."

On the Road, Chapter 14

Postcard of 1940s FlagstaffFlagstaff, Arizona

Flagstaff lies at the base of the San Francisco Peaks in Northern Arizona.  When I think of it, I think of it in an alpine setting, surrounded by mountain meadows in the midst of pine woods.  At least, that's how I remember Flagstaff on my four or so times visiting or passing through the area.

My first visit was when I met my wife in Sedona after a conference she was attending.  I drove past the outskirts of Flagstaff on I-40 and picked up my wife.  We wandered around the vortices and red rocks, and then camped in Slide Rock State Park in Oak Creek Canyon.  We visited Flagstaff, and then made a stop at some of the cliff dwellings that Jack speaks of in the quote at Walnut Canyon National Monument.  The other times I've been to Flagstaff, it has been mostly passing through.

Flagstaff is, I believe (but I don't know for sure), the highest point along I-40.  Route 66 traveled through here - the route that Jack's (and Sal's) bus probably traveled as it made it's way east.  To the north, past the mountains, lies the Grand Canyon and this juxtaposition of high points and deep chasms offers an interesting landscape of contrasts.  To the south, one descends toward Phoenix and its present air-conditioned, rip-away-the-desert life.  To the east, one marches along a plateau through Albuquerque until making a long, slow descent into Texas.  To the west, the road descends into California and eventually, the LA area.

Flagstaff is also a city of trains.  Sal does not mention the trains, but Flagstaff is a major railroad crossing point, with anywhere from 75-85 trains a day passing through.  When we got a motel room there, we made sure to stay away from the railroad tracks so that we could get some sleep.  I'm sure that when Jack passed through, the trains paralleling his bus had the assortment of down-and-outs hiding in boxcars, ready to jump off before they hit the Flagstaff railyards so they wouldn't get beaten and arrested by the railroad bulls.  I wonder if Jack ever rode the rails?  When I lived in Milwaukee in the 80s, I knew a modern day hobo, who would hop freight trains every so often to get to another place, and once I saw, standing on an overpass while a freight train passed underneath, a small group of people riding in an open car.  They waved up at me as they went past.

I see Flagstaff as a high point, where depending on one's perspective and direction, they can stop and take a look at the possible directions they can travel.  However, Sal's mind is set directly on East.  The book he mentions, but is not interested in, tells the story of a hopeless romantic at the crossroads of childhood and adulthood.  Perhaps Sal is at his own crossroads, passing from his previously romantic dream of the West, tarnished a little by his experiences and his lost love, and longing for that simpler worldview represented by the American landscape as his bus hurtles east, toward adult responsibility and the comfort of the familiar.

If you want to know more about Flagstaff

Arizona Daily Sun (Flagstaff newspaper)
City of Flagstaff
City of Flagstaff Blog
Flagstaff Convention and Visitors Bureau
Flagstaff Daily Photo Blog
Northern Arizona University
Wikipedia: Flagstaff

Next up: Dalhart, Texas

On the Road: Salome, Arizona

Click on Thumbnail for MapNote: First published on Blogger on October 20, 2008

Unfolding the Map

Hello again. We are continuing the zoom with Sal Paradise back across the country to New Jersey. Today he goes through Salome, Arizona. Click the map to see our progress.

Book Quote

...Salome (where she danced); the great dry stretches leading to Mexican mountains in the south."

On the Road, Chapter 14

Salome, Arizona

Before I met my wife, I had never been to nor seen an opera. Wasn't interested. But when we first lived in Texas, she signed us up for season tickets to the opera in Austin. Every month in the opera season we would make the hour and a half trip up to the opera, and watch something by Puccini, Verdi, Mozart, and other composers.

One opera that made a huge impact on me was Salome, by Richard Strauss. Some operas I could take, some I could leave, but this had me riveted. I found that I liked the tragic operas best. The comic ones were okay, but to me you needed a good tragedy in an opera. That's what all those booming voices were for. To weep, and cry and gnash their teeth and die tragic deaths from consumption or something.

I was raised Catholic, and Catholics don't know the Bible for anything. We are all in to community and common good, but I think the many centuries of priests translating the Bible for us and telling us that we will get our reward by coming to Church on Sunday, not eating meat on Friday, and giving to the collection plate means that, compared to fundamentalists and evangelicals, we know next to nothing about the Bible which serves as the basis of our faith. Evangelicals can quote the Bible. Catholics might be able to recognize the Bible in a stack of books. So, that long evocation was simply to let you know that I really did not know the story of Salome very well.

Well, along comes Strauss and his opera. And at the end, when Salome dances the Dance of the Seven Veils for Herod, and produces the bloody head of John the Baptist, well, that's when I really decided that opera was all right. There was just such a sexiness, yet horrifying aspect to it that I found myself thinking that I wouldn't really mind getting beheaded by a woman like that.

If you want to know more about Salome

The Arizona Outback Online
Salome, Arizona
Wikipedia: Salome