Blue Highways: Conquest and Cato, New York

Unfolding the Map

If you're a map lover, or you like stories about where towns get their names, or you are into irony, then there's something of each in this post.  If you love all three, you've hit the jackpot!  We'll pass through Conquest and Cato with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM), and then move on.  But before we do, see where these places are located by referencing the map.

Book Quote

"Off I went, hoping Conquest would find me.  In the dairy country, chewing Holsteins and Guernseys switched their tails and flicked their skins.  On the other side of Johnny Cake Road lay Conquest.  Then I began the game again, looking for Cato.  Along the roads were cottage industries selling clothesline poles, purple martin houses, potted plants, AKC pups."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 8

Sign depicting the intersection of Cato, Ira, Victory and Conquest, New York. Photo by "Dougtone" and hosted at Flickr. Click on photo to go to host page.

Conquest and Cato, New York

Sometimes you wonder how towns got their names, especially if those names are interesting.  Many towns are named in honor of people, some are taken from place names already in the area, some are named after cities of antiquity.  In fact, as we travel with LHM through this area, we'll find cities like Palmyra, New York, named after an ancient city in Syria, and Syracuse, New York, named after a city established by the ancient Greeks on the island of Sicily.

I have two directions that I'm going to go in this post.  One of my previous posts explored city names with an ironic twist.  In the case of Conquest and Cato, there is an irony.  I think that LHM thought he was looking at a little bit of irony when he mentioned in Blue Highways that Conquest is just down the road from Victory.  But there's even more irony here than that, but it's a little convoluted.

First, Cato.  Cato is one of a number of towns established in a large tract of land, called the Central New York Military Tract, that was reserved for ownership and settlement by New York veterans of the Revolutionary War.  The idea of setting land aside was conceived by the U.S. Congress to compensate veterans, and was to consist of 100 acres of land per soldier.  However, New York was slow in getting this land together, so the state legislature set an additional 500 acres per land, for a total of 600 per soldier, in a series of 28 contiguous townships in the middle of the state.

The townships were allegedly named by a clerk in the New York Surveyor General's office, who was an avid reader of classical literature.  Thus, the township name of Cato was joined by other townships named Lysander, Hannibal, Brutus, Camillus, Cicero, Manlius, Aurelius, Marcellus, Pompey, Romulus, Scipio, Sempronius, Tully, Fabius, Ovid, Milton, Locke, Homer, Solon, Hector, Ulysses, Dryden, Virgil, Cincinnatus, Junius, Galen and Sterling.

Conquest was a settlement within the township of Cato, but became independent of Cato after a political dispute.  Upon achieving their desired political aims, Conquest immediately declared victory by starting a new town called Victory, and later giving LHM something to wonder about when he sees the two places on the map.

However, the Cato-Conquest-Victory saga is not free of irony yet.  Cato Township could have been named after Cato the Elder, a Roman military commander and statesman.  If that were the fact, then Cato Township having birthed Conquest and Victory has no irony whatsoever.  However, it is more likely that the township of Cato was named after Cato the Younger, a Roman statesman and philosopher of the school of Stoicism.  As a Stoic, Cato the Younger would have held the belief that emotions can be destructive forces, especially if used to try to control inevitable universal forces, and that reason and ultimate happiness came from keeping oneself under self-control and evincing fortitude.  One cannot control what the universe and should not try, and if one is virtuous and in control, one is immune to misfortune.  The early Greek Stoics even eschewed politics because they believed in cosmopolitanism - that one is a citizen of the greater world and not just of one political entity.  Thus, the irony.  The town of Conquest was born out of political dispute with the township of Cato, complete with the investment of anger on both sides, and is an example of petty and small political concerns over brotherhood and equality that Cato the Younger would have emphasized.

That's an interesting little story, but here's the other point I want to make in this post.  Many place names in the United States are derived from ancient Greece and Rome, or from Europe.  This makes sense, as the U.S. is a nation of immigrants.  Therefore, the first English settlers on the East Coast gave their towns and states and regions names that evoked their homeland, such as Dover (Delaware), Cambridge (Massachusetts), Camden (New Jersey), New York City, and Plymouth (North Carolina).

Of course, other ethnic groups that made up this country named areas that evoked their own homes.  We have many place names in the Southwestern U.S., for instance, that are Spanish.  Germans added places in the U.S., often multiple times, as Berlin, Potsdam, Hamburg and Hanover.  Names that evoke Italy include Milan (multiple states), as well as Rome (multiple states), Naples (Florida), Venice (multiple states), and Florence (multiple states).

New York was New Amsterdam in its early years as a Dutch settlement on Manhattan.  In the middle of Texas, you can find Czech town names.  French place names are found all over the United States, given that much of the middle part of the country was explored by French explorers and trappers.

It all makes me wonder, given that the United States is in a period where it is the preeminent power in the world, if that a thousand years from now the names of our great personages will dot the globe.  Will we see a village, town or city of "Gates" spring up in China, or a "Jobs," India?  Will someone name a town after Jefferson in Africa (the capital city of Liberia, Monrovia, is named after President James Monroe)?  Will the U.S. even have people, academicians or politicians or celebrities or captains of industry, who are deemed important enough to name places after in other parts of the world?

Let's take our query a little further.  Will the U.S. have enough impact on the world that someday we will see a New Chicago spring up in another country?  Will a Houston or Dallas appear in some other region of the world to one day rival the memory of their American forebears, just as New York dwarfs Old York, and Boston, Massachussetts is more well known than its English namesake.  Does the United States have anything to offer the world so that even one day, when our empire crumbles as it will, as it must, some place names will evoke the country that pioneered a working, large scale democracy for the world?  Or will something happen that causes American emigration - a huge diaspora to other regions of the world - so that those peoples, in foreign lands, remember their lost homeland by naming their settlements and towns after the places they left?

We see the remnants and memories of some past great civilizations every day in the names that we have chosen to give to places in the U.S.  When our time is past, will we be worthy of such remembrance, or will we fade into obscurity like other civilizations whose memories are locked in museums and books.  It's interesting to think about and speculate.

Musical Interlude

I'm not sure why I thought of this song, I Don't Wanna by the Asylum Street Spankers, except that it has a lot of place names in it.  It's a catchy tune, though.

How many of the place names in the song do you know or have you been to?  See bottom of page.*

If you want to know more about Conquest and Cato

An 1879 History of Conquest
Town of Conquest
Village of Cato
Wikipedia: Town of Cato
Wikipedia: Village of Cato
Wikipedia: Conquest

Next up: Somewhere on the north side of Oneida Lake

*Place names in song:  Scotland, Wales, England, France, Moscow, Malta, Spain, Cuba, Brooklyn, Paris, Rome, Teapot Dome, Orleans, Cairo, Broadway, 21, India, Georgia, Pismo Beach, Smithfield, China, your house.

Blue Highways: Savannah, New York

Unfolding the Map

We drive through Savannah and a few miles past, eventually coming upon some guys fixing a Trans-Am.  What is it about guys and cars?  I explore why I didn't catch the car bug in high school, and how sometimes I wish I would have.  Get an oil change, then drive over to the map to find Savannah.

Book Quote

"At Savannah, I found the unmarked road to Conquest (down the highway from Victory) easily enough, but staying on it was another matter...After some miles, I had no idea where I was.  I called out to five fellows pouring something into the crankcase of a Trans-Am.  These were the men who believe in the restorative power of STP as the Chinese believe in rhinoceros horn."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 5

Savannah, New York. Photo at the Wayne County Democratic Committee website. Click on photo to go to host site.

Savannah, New York

In my hometown, there were always people my age and older when I was in high school that always worked on cars.  I was not one of them.

In fact, it is still of considerable consternation to me that I did not learn any practical skills in carpentry, plumbing or in the electrical or mechanical arts.  I think to myself now how handy those skills would be and in some senses, I feel robbed that I didn't get any of this type of training.

My classmates in high school got interested in those types of skills because their fathers knew how to do them, and taught them.  They might spend a weekend with their father changing the oil or putting in a rebuilt carburetor in the family car or on their dad's truck.  When they got to the age where they could drive, they'd buy an old car and spend hours getting it into shape.  They'd help their fathers on building projects around the house, or replace some pipe underneath the house.

My dad didn't know how to repair cars.  He had some carpentry skills but was too impatient to teach me.  He'd tell me to go do something else until, it just became a matter of course for me to do something else rather than help him.  He thought he had some plumbing skills, but he really didn't have much.  And he didn't know anything about electrical systems.  The one skill he taught me the most? Gardening.

Today, I know people who can do basic things such as change their own oil, saving them a lot of money over the long haul at the service shop.  I know people who have skills in carpentry and use those skills to do everything from make minor repairs to build kitchens to build room additions to even build entire houses.  I know some people who know enough about electricity that they can make repairs to wall outlets and circuit breakers.  I know some people who can fix a drain or get under a house and make repairs to their pipes.

I can't do any of these things, and I wish I could.  When my father would do these things, I remember the camaraderie as the neighbors would come over and check out what we were doing, and sometimes get involved and help out.  Mr. Sindel, Mr. Moser, and a number of other people helped my dad build our deck, dig our well, and build our room addition.  During this time they talked about things that happened in the neighborhood, gossiped and shared stories and jokes.

I observed the same phenomenon with people who worked on cars.  My friends who worked on their own Trans-Ams, Camaros, Corvettes or even less sporty cars such as El Caminos and F-150 pickups always had someone helping them do some sort of repair.  They'd talk and argue about what needed to be done and get closer to each other as they shared tasks and shared their lives.  If one had a problem with his car, the other would come help and vice-versa as the situation required.  It's not as if I didn't have friends, as my previous post made clear.  However, I just didn't have avenues for a project or hobby, such as fixing cars, that might have given me more society.  I didn't even have a car until I was 18, and then I had an accident with my mother's car, a Capri, and had to give up mine to her (which turned out to be a terrible car anyway).

I didn't have any of that, and didn't really find that kind of camaraderie until I left my town, graduated from college and started volunteering in the inner-city, which gave me a community of like-thinking and acting people.  After that, my communities tended to be on the highbrow side, centering around education or social justice.  There was nothing wrong with my communities, but discussions tended to be academic or about what was wrong with the world.  Sometimes, however, one finds oneself wanting connection around less complex issues, where the metaphors of our existence in the universe can be embodied in a busted piston, or in an improperly hung door, or in the electrical mysteries behind a wall.

As I write this post, my neighbors across my street have about four or five vehicles parked in their front yard - projects in various states of completion.  I remember in my hometown similar places, with vehicles and shells of vehicles sitting in people's yards.  Occasionally you might even see a dismantled semi or bus rusting away in the yard.  I remember people talking about making visits to junkyards to see if they could find a working part that they needed for their engine.  And even today, I think to myself how valuable it might be to take a course on basic car repair because, I've learned, there are a lot of people like me.  I used to think that cars were a part of the male genetic makeup, and that somehow I missed out on that gene.  Of course, that's not true.  There are women who spend a lot of time under the hood, and there are men like me who barely know how to find a dipstick, or change a battery.

I realize now that I wasn't necessarily lacking something.  I was just never given the opportunity to find out if I might like using my hands mechanically, or in carpentry or some other skill.  And while I can't complain about my life, I do feel that I missed out on an important opportunity.  In another life, perhaps I might have been bent over a Trans-Am with a couple of other guys, just like LHM happened upon near Savannah, New York, trying to decipher the mystery of life, death and love in the intricacies of a transmission.

Musical Interlude

I found this song, Pretty Good at Drinkin' Beer by Billy Currington, for this post.  I also think I found my new life's ambition.  Just kidding.  I relate to most of the song - the singer tells about how he's not very good at the usual activities that men do, including fixing cars, but he is "pretty good at drinkin' beer."  I actually am pretty good at it too, especially a good hoppy IPA.

And here's Queen with an anthem called I'm in Love with My Car.

If you want to know more about Savannah

Town of Savannah
Wayne County Historian: Savannah
Wikipedia: Savannah

Next up: Conquest and Cato, New York

Blue Highways: Palmyra, New York

Unfolding the Map

We pass through Palmyra, New York and then past mobile homes.  William Leat Heat-Moon (LHM) remarks on the permanence and impermanence encapsulated in these uniquely American creations, and that gets me writing on a subject which seems to be very close to me right now.  Fortunately, Palmyra sits permanently for now on the map - though the ancient city in Syria from which it took its name evidently could be moved at a moment's notice to escape a Roman invasion sent by Mark Antony.  Talk about impermanence!

Book Quote

"Palmyra was a clean town of three-story brick buildings where I turned east on New York 31 and went down along the route of the Erie Canal, through villages, over fields of deep green, under blooming locust trees, and past barns collapsing next to mobile homes that looked depressingly immobile yet also impermanent."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 5

This photo of Main Street in Palmyra, New York is courtesy of TripAdvisor.

Palmyra, New York

Permanence and impermanence is on my mind this a lot as I write this post.  The image that LHM conjures up - the "mobile" homes that look "depressingly immobile" and also "impermanent" is a really wonderful metaphor.

I'm going to digress first on mobile homes.  I've always wondered why we call them mobile when usually they are just parked somewhere on a lot or in a trailer park.  Yes, they seem to serve as housing and some of them are quite nice inside.  Recently, my wife and I stayed in a mobile home at an affordable spa called Riverbend Hot Springs in Truth or Consequences.  The inside was quite nice and comfortable though, to be fair, it was housing just her, me and our dog for an overnight.  Fitting a family of four or more in there might be a different story.

However, most of these mobile homes sit, in their permanent impermanence, like fiberglass magnets for tornadoes during the spring and summer weather seasons.  (I joke, but it seems like every summer the media reports on a mobile home park that has been decimated by a tornado.  I realize that tornadoes aren't really attracted to mobile home parks.  Media tends to report on these instances because the damage is usually extensive and the casualties can be high.  Yet mobile homes, however stationary, are cheap alternative housing for those who cannot afford to buy a more substantial home.)

Once my father and I were leaving our property near Irmulco, California and heading back up the dirt logging road to the highway near the ridge of the mountain.  About a third of the way, we were delayed for two or three hours as a group of men tried to figure out how to maneuver a large mobile home around a sharp corner.  The bank of the roadway eventually had to be dug out in order to create enough clearance for the mobile home.  I was young at the time, but even then it occurred to me that this mobile home wasn't that mobile, and that by going down into the Irmulco Valley, it was heading to its final resting place.  And, because it is made of flimsier materials than a regular home, I wonder if it is still there, some 30 years or more later, or whether it has crumbled into a ruin.

We tend to get involved in things with the illusion that they are permanent and fixed.  Yet most of what we do takes action and attention to remain functional.  An amazing show on the history channel explores Life After People.  There isn't really much hope that what we build will last very long.  I seem to recall that within 50,000 years or so, a period of time that barely even registers in the entire history of the universe and only a blink of an eye in the evolution of the earth, all visible traces of humanity would be gone except to the most discerning eye.  Our bones would last 150 million years or so, but our buildings will crumble in less than 50 years years, though some of our bridges might last for 1000 years if extremely well built.  If you think that the thousand year civilization of the Romans has only left crumbling ruins, or that the Mayan civilization is buried under jungle, and that is only after 2000 years or less, there really isn't much permanence to what we create and erect.

But, that's not the only reason that permanence and impermanence is on my mind.  Even things that we don't physically construct, but build in other ways, are subject to forces of decay and change.  Take marriage, for instance.  Most couples say "I do" with thoughts of building a marriage that will last each partner's lifetime.  Yet in the United States, a large number of marriages end in divorce.  Even with care, cracks and strains can show in relationships.  These can be patched up, but the underlying weaknesses, unless addressed, will undermine the whole structure.  Or, perhaps one partner or the other is neglectful, and weeds will begin to grow.  My wife and I have been working on an essential element of relationships, communication, because we had neglected that aspect in the midst of all the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives and work and eventually, that neglect mushroomed into difficulties.  We are trying to address those issues now, and it's hard work to maintain not only the edifice of a marriage, but also its foundations.

Jobs, also, are fleeting.  One might take a new job that one likes very much, only to find in two years that everything about it has changed.  A supervisor leaves and another takes her place, and suddenly everything is affected.  Sometimes the change is for the better, a lot of times it can be for the worse.  Soon, that job that you thought you'd be at for 10 years or more, or even until you retire, becomes intolerable and your whole life is thrown into flux.  My wife is in the middle of this.  Her career landscape, once so full of opportunity and very clear paths, has become muddled and frightening.  Yet even in the midst of uncertainty, there is hope that she can open new pathways and build new bridges and roadways to a modified or even new career.

Civilization, as Life After People tells us, needs attention if its structures and institutions are to be maintained.  So do our own structures - those constructs of relationships and identities that we build. We put a lot of emphasis on the physical things - our mighty architecture and our creations in arts and sciences.  Ultimately, though, we are nothing if we cannot maintain our own internal constructs that define our identities - our sense of purpose, our knowledge of ourselves and our needs, and our self-esteem.  Collectively, each persons attention or lack of attention to our internal identities work on a micro and macro level to either fight or hasten .  We can give the illusion of permanence to those things we want and care about.   I write "illusion" because eventually, all things will fade and go but the illusion allows us to feel, to know, that in this time and place we matter.  Just like we build bridges, roads, skyscrapers, institutions, and countries with the expectation that they will last, we must constantly maintaining the structure and meaning of our lives.  Our lives are all we have and, if we, like all other things, are impermanent in an unforgiving universe, we can still construct our temporary mobile homes where we are and turn them into shelter and our own stationary place where we can feel safe and secure in time and space.

Musical Interlude

A double shot for this post.  I love the idea of Airstreams, and I'd love to own an Airstream - they seem to tap into the impermanence that is part and parcel of our lives, for those who are willing to accept it.  Miranda Lambert, in Airstream Song, wishes to be a gypsy moving from place to place and never putting down roots.  Fastball, in Airstream, wants to "leave the world behind."  Impermanence isn't a bad thing - one just needs to embrace it because ultimately, we're always fighting against it and it's a losing battle.  Sometimes it's good to just give into it.

If you want to know more about Palmyra

Historic Palmyra
History of Palmyra
Official Palmyra Home Page
Wikipedia: Town of Palmyra
Wikipedia: Village of Palmyra

Next up: Savannah, New York

Blue Highways: Hill Cumorah, New York

Unfolding the Map

This post is about some Mormons in my life.  I'm not concerned here with questions about Mormonism as a faith or religion.  I am writing about a friend, who happened to be Mormon, and the profound effect he and his family had on my life at a time when I needed a sense of normalcy and stability.  William Least Heat-Moon's (LHM) visit to Hill Cumorah, where the Mormon faith began, is what occasions this recollection.  See where Joseph Smith found the golden plates on the map.

Book Quote

"Joseph Smith, an eighteen-year-old with small hands and big feet, a quiet and 'unlaughing' boy, encountered the Angel Moroni, son of Mormon, on a drumlin alongside a litle road south of Palmyra in 1827.  The road is now New York 21 and the drumlin, a streamlined hump of glacially drifted soil, they call Hill Cumorah.  It is not a Mount Sinai or an Ararat, but rather a much humbler thing, yet apparently of sufficient majesty for angels and God to have chosen it as the place to speak to Smith.  There he unearthed the golden plates that he said were the source of the Book of Mormon.  With the aid of an ancient pair of optical instruments, the Urim and Thummin, which Smith found with the plates, he was able to translate the 'revised' Egyptian hieroglyphics, although he insisted on dictating his translation to scribes from behind a curtain."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 5

Photo of Hill Cumorah, New York by Tabitha on her blog From Single to Married (to Baby). Click on photo to go to host page.Hill Cumorah, New York

In this presidential election season, where the nation's first black president will be squaring off against the nation's first Mormon presidential nominee, a lot of questions are being asked about Mormonism.  The questioning isn't as bad or as pointed, it seems to me, as the questioning that occurred when the Catholic John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960.  But you occasionally see media reporting on attitudes toward a possible Mormon nominee and president, and more articles about the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-Day Saints.  Some people will most likely always have an underlying fear of Mormonism and the Mormon Church.

My exposure to Mormons was much simpler and more profound than politics, and convinced me that a needless fear of Mormons is unjustified.  I'll put it out there - I disagree with Mitt Romney's politics and am quite sure I won't vote for him, but my choice will be based on his politics alone, and not his religious beliefs.

I went to a small-town's schools, where each year the class was small enough so that everyone knew each other.  Therefore I knew John, but I really didn't get close to him until high school.  We were both members of our school's storied cross-country team that dominated the north coast of California's small schools and a few larger schools throughout the 70s and 80s.  At the time we had similar builds, though he was a little more husky than I was, we were both smart enough to put us at the top of our class, and despite the fact that he was an extravert and I an introvert, we seemed to connect pretty well.  We quickly began spending a lot of time together.

At the time, the dysfunction in my family was becoming terrible.  At 15, I had stood up to my alcoholic father and ended my sexual abuse at his hands.  However, I kept silent about it, and his alcoholism degraded him further and further.  By then, my sister was well into her long and ongoing struggle with anorexia-bulimia.  My mother, desperately trying to keep control over an uncontrollable situation, was at the end of her rope and manifested an obsessiveness with order and cleanliness and trying to help my sister.  My youngest sister did as well as she could under such circumstances.  We all did.

It was at this time that John strode into my life.  He seemed confident, assured, and willing to have a lot of good, clean fun.  Of course, he was restricted by his religion in what he could or couldn't do, but in hindsight these restrictions on him were really good for me.  Because I hung out a lot with someone who was religiously barred from drinking, I really didn't get too involved with drinking myself - I did drink and got intoxicated a couple of times, but not to the extent that a lot of my fellow high school classmates did.  After all, I lived in a small town far from any metropolitan areas.  There wasn't a lot to do and, unfortunately as I have discovered after the fact, a lot of my fellow classmates were dealing with similar dynamics in their own households.

John drove an orange VW bug and I spent a lot of time with him in that thing, often listening to early 80s rock.  He became almost a part of my family.  My mother loved him, and his personality tended to drive my dad into the corners when he was at my house.  What John did best for me was serve as a reminder that there was a normal life out there.  His family was very gracious in welcoming me into their home.  His father was a biology teacher at our high school, and his mother was a sixth grade teacher at a local grammar school.  Their household modeled to me what a normal household looked like.  His mom always apologized for a messy house, but I relished the disorder in their house because my mom's control issues meant that I had the most spotless teenage room in town, perhaps in history.

John's religion rarely played any influence in our friendship other than superficial issues, like drinking. We talked about our churches once in awhile.  I was Catholic and enlightened him a little on my church, and I learned a little about his.  His church responsibilities occasionally got in the way of activities we wanted to do, but his church was also a source of fun.  It was built around a large multipurpose room which served as the community gathering and service area, but it also had an indoor basketball court on it, and John would often invite a group of us to come and play basketball there in the evenings.

John also had a way with the ladies, and I believe that it was his innate self-confidence that allowed him to date some very sought-after girls in our class and in the classes behind us in high school.  We often talked about dating and the mysteries associated with girls.  While I didn't have a lot of self-confidence and my dates tended to be disasters, John was always there to give me some gentle ribbing and then help me to move on.

Some things eventually happened that caused us to part ways, though I often think of him now.  We went away to different colleges, he to Utah State and I to Santa Clara, but we saw each other in the summers.  One summer, however, he seemed to grow distant.  He was planning to go on his mission, which he did in Brazil, and he seemed to draw apart from me and others.  I didn't understand at first, but now I think it had to do with the preparation he was undergoing for this combination of church duty and spiritual quest - this was a journey I couldn't do with him.  When he came back, we picked up our friendship again.  He soon found the woman he wanted to marry, a Mormon girl from northern Wyoming, and he settled there.  I was asked to be best man, but as a non-Mormon I could not attend the ceremony so someone served as my proxy when he was married at the LDS temple in Salt Lake City.  I lived in Milwaukee at the time, and took a long Greyhound trip to attend the reception.

We keep in touch via Facebook now.  John has a large family with children who are all in their teens or older.  I don't really know any of them.  I saw John a few years ago when he came to Albuquerque for a work trip and we relived some old times.  I was a little nervous because I had grown more liberal and I worried that we wouldn't agree on a lot of things.  As I danced around what I thought might be prickly issues, John, as forthright as ever, said "You know, Mike, I don't think we're as far apart as you might think we are."

As the debates go on about the impact of a Mormon candidate and possible president, I know that John and his Mormon family helped make my difficult teenage life a lot easier.  If religion had anything to do with their kindness to me, then I am grateful to them for acting out of their faith.  But I know that my friendship with John went beyond religion.  I was a troubled kid, and John was my friend, and he acted just as he would have acted regardless of his religious beliefs.

I'm not Mormon, nor do I plan to become one.  But I'm very thankful for a Mormon family who probably doesn't realize just how much they helped a young man's difficult teenage life.  Thank you, John.

Musical Interlude

Here's a non-musical clip from The Simpsons that I always laughed at:

John and I used to cruise Main Street in Fort Bragg in his VW during our senior year of high school.  We listened to this song by Aldo Nova a lot while we drove up and down the length of the town, talking and looking for something to do.  I doubt the Pope and the College of Cardinals or the LDS President and his Quorum of Twelve would have approved, and I don't really care.

If you want to know more about Hill Cumorah

Hill Cumorah and Historic Sites
JosephSmith.net: Hill Cumorah
Wikipedia: Cumorah
Wikipedia: Hill Cumorah Pageant

Next up: Palmyra, New York

Blue Highways: Cheshire, New York

Unfolding the Map

We head into the Finger Lakes region - a beautiful region that I was lucky to visit in years past.  William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) makes a longer stop here to recharge with an old friend.  He feels like he needs it in order to continue onto the remainder of his trip.  I envy his ability to reconnect with his friend, as you'll read below.  Greg Brown provides a musical interlude.  To reconnect with where we are on the journey, get back in touch with the map.

Book Quote

"Chisholm rolled a fat round stone out of the trees.  I grabbed and pulled.  I was capable of lifting it, but it was so close to the limits of my strength, I didn't want to try.  Working with someone I knew less well, I would have picked it up, but with this old friend I could concede my limit and let the boulder take my measure.  Nothing showed our friendship better than that rock I walked away from."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 2

"We passed a foundation of a barn that had collapsed, a toppled chimney, and a weedy depression where an icehouse had stood.  'These are all dreams we're walking over,' I said.

"Chisholm looked at me strangely and went quiet for some time.  When he spoke again it was about the dogs.  Afterward, I thought I understood his silence:  I had undercut the stone wall we had built, our accomplishment.  The wall looked enduring, and it would serve for a while, but there would come a time when it would be a pile of rock to no end.  I had undercut the biggest dream of all - the one for permanence...."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 4

Hamlet of Cheshire sign in Cheshire, New York. Photo hosted at the Cheshire Canning blogsite. Click on photo to go to host page.

Cheshire, New York

Recently I have been examining my friendships.  I am a naturally introverted person, so making friendships in the usual places people make friends outside of institutional settings, such as school, churches, or other settings where one is forced to get to know people, is very difficult for me.  I can't just walk into a bar, approach someone and strike up a conversation.  That's not in my nature.  Nor do I like to draw attention to myself though I do like good attention when I get it.

Making friends, therefore, has been for me a painstaking process built over years, and I often wish that once the friendships are cemented they can remain static.  I sometimes wish time and distance didn't matter in friendships, and I used to think they wouldn't.  A friend for life is a friend for life, I believed.

But time and distance do matter, as does the effort and energy each friend puts into the friendship.  I was naive to think that all my friendships would remain the same.  Of course they've changed over the years.  I've made new friends, I've lost track of some friends.  I haven't put the energy into some friendships when I should, and they have drifted away.  I have put energy into other friendships where my level of commitment wasn't returned, and the friendships gradually became more superficial, shallow and in the case of some, eventually faded.

This is on my mind now because I am negotiating my way through what feels like immense personal change - change that will make me a better person.  My world feels like it is transforming around me and even people who I considered longtime and very close friends seem to be drifting away and new ones are starting to come in.  I have been very nervous about change throughout my life, and very hesitant to let it happen, so my instinct is to try to fight and hang on to what I had with dear life.  And I'm combating this instinct very hard.

For example, I have two friends, one on each coast.  One is a friend from my undergraduate institution.  I have always felt very attuned to this friend.  To me, it was as if we had a window into each other.  We are both introverted, thoughtful, curious about the world, willing to examine tough questions, and open to exploration.  Yet I found that to maintain the friendship, I had to make most of the effort.  Many phone calls I made would go unanswered.  His response to my annoyance was that he felt that at whatever time and whenever place we connected, we just always picked up comfortably.  To him it didn't matter when or where.  However for me, I wanted that connection and I wanted it more often, and I wanted him to show some commitment to our friendship.  I have given up complaining, given up making efforts, and I am letting that friendship drift.  It is sad to me.  I like him a lot, and have always felt more than friend with him, almost as if we were two spiritual mates seeking answers to similar questions.  But I can't wait any longer for him to share my commitment, and will let him seek me out if he wishes.  I just cannot put extra effort into the friendship any more because I just get too disappointed.

Another friend is very similar.  We are of different temperament.  He's a bit more extraverted than me.  We were thrown together in a community setting, and we became close.  We are both very competitive in our own ways, and occasionally clashed on that score.  I was best man at his wedding, and am godfather to his daughter.  I saw him often when I went to the East Coast for business.  However, since I've gotten farther from the East Coast, and my visits there far less frequent, I've seen him less.  I made efforts over the distance to maintain the friendship, and he has too though his family commitments made it more difficult for him.  In the past year, since I stopped being as proactive as I used to be in communicating, we have had only one exchange by e-mail.  Some actions, bad choices, in my personal life a couple of years ago, perhaps disappointed him in me but I don't know.  Part of my personal growth has been to try to rectify those personal issues that led me down paths that were destructive but I haven't been able to share that with him.  That friendship, one that was very important to me, seems adrift now and I don't know what to do about it except let it go where it will.

I'm not trying to make myself out as a good friend all the time.  I have two people that I was getting to know and that I like very much that moved away and I haven't been proactive in contacting them.  I have not kept up with some other people that are important to me.  Perhaps the disappointment I feel in my other friends are something that these other people feel with me.

I've also made some new friends who have become close.  I've learned that friendships are not static as much as I would like them to be.  They change, they grow, they fall apart.

But I'm struck by LHM's quotes, above, where he just enjoys a friend's company and the easy way they have with each other.  He makes it very clear that they have no need to impress each other, but are just fine being themselves in each other's company.  To me, those kinds of friendships have been inestimable gifts, and is at the root of why I'm sad they are changing.  LHM underscores change by using the metaphor of a wall to show the different perspectives that can be taken by each party in a friendship.  LHM marks the impermanence of what humans construct, include friendships that once seemed as solid as bedrock.  He acknowledges change, based on the changes in his own life.  His friend is troubled by that notion, rooted in the solidity of his lifestyle as it is now.  In the midst of my change, I am more willing to notice and acknowledge change around me.  I am at once filled with hope and terror at the same time.  I don't want to lose the friendships I have built over time, but my own growth might make it inevitable.  I love my friends, but I can't imprison them, nor myself, in my past if I am to move forward.  Maybe the love I have for them is the only thing that I can hold permanently, even as they slowly disappear into the distance.

Musical Interlude

One of my favorite songs, a bit melancholy, is Greg Brown's The Poet Game.  It is an acknowledgment of our own choices, life's changes and a reminiscence of people who made a mark on our lives and for whatever reason have moved on.  One lyric which right now is especially poignant to me is the following:

I had a friend who drank too much
and played too much guitar -
and we sure got along.
Reel-to-reels rolled across
the country near and far
with letters poems and songs..
but these days he don't talk to me
and he won't tell me why.
I miss him every time i say his name.
I don't know what he's doing
or why our friendship died
while we played the poet game.

And this:

Sirens wail above the fields -
another soul gone down -
another Sun about to rise.
I've lost track of my mistakes,
like birds they fly around
and darken half of my skies.
To all of those I've hurt -
I pray you'll forgive me.
I to you will freely do the same.
So many things I didn't see,
with my eyes turned inside,
playing the poet game.

Lyrics from Greg Brown's The Poet Game
off of his album of the same name

If you want to know more about Cheshire

This is about the only thing I could find remotely connected to Cheshire:

Cheshire Community Action Team

Next up: Hill Cumorah, New York