Blue Highways: Lewiston, New York

Unfolding the Map

As we cross over into New York with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM), Lewiston is his first stop in the state.  We are also returning to one of the original thirteen colonies for the first time since we left Georgia many posts ago.  It's hard to imagine a time when western New York was a frontier, and I'll reflect a little on what that meant and how it played out in literature, especially James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans.  If you are lost in New York, get your bearings on the map.

Book Quote

"I was in New York: land of Texas hots, beef-on-a-wick, and Jenny Cream ale, where hamburgers are hamburgs and frankfurters frankfurts.  I was also within minutes of running out of gasoline.  I took a guess that Lewiston would be a left turn; if not, I was in trouble again.  But it was there, looking a century older than the Michigan towns I'd come from.

In fact, Lewiston was two centuries older, although the oldest buildings now standing were ones built just after the British burned the town in 1813.  I filled up next to an old stone hotel where, the gas man told me, James Fenimore Cooper wrote The Spy.  'It's some book, they say.  Understand,' he added, 'our station wasn't here then.'"

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 1

Lewiston Opera House. Photo by "Dougtone" and hosted at Flickr. Click on photo to go to host page.Lewiston, New York

I've only read one book by James Fenimore Cooper - The Last of the Mohicans.   It's amazing how, once LHM (and us, as we read) travel over three-hundred miles of territory, we get into an area of the country that is significantly older than the rest of the United States.  While the Midwest, being a territory and relatively free of European settlement except for trappers and explorers, the state of New York was one of the original thirteen and had been fought over between British and French, British and Americans, and Americans and Natives already.

The book of Cooper's, which he wrote in Lewiston, to which LHM refers in his quote has been unknown to me.  The Spy is set during the Revolutionary War, a time period I have already admitted in a previous post that I know little about beyond what was taught to me in primary school.   The Last of the Mohicans is set in an even more dim historical setting for me, the pre-Revolutionary time of the French and Indian Wars when Britain fought an alliance between France and Natives for control of Canada and the northern colonies.  Cooper's writings fit into the Romantic genre, and The Last of the Mohicans creates a juxtaposition between the might of the armies of Britain and France and the fading and disappearing cultures of the Natives of upper New York.  If you read The Last of the Mohicans, after getting used to the writing you'll find beautiful descriptions of New York as the untamed wilderness it once was.  Of course, this fits into Cooper's Romantic view - the Mohicans are the untamed, noble savages and his main character hero, Natty Bumppo, also known as Hawkeye for his tremendous aim with a flintlock rifle, is a man who is prefers the company of his Mohican companions rather than the French and British settlers and soldiery with whom he has more genetically and culturally in common.  The Indians themselves are being corrupted by contact with the Europeans, dramatically in the person of Magua who, as chief of the Huron tribe has thrown his lot in with the French.  There are also descriptions of the various Native tribes of the area who either side with the French or the British or try to remain neutral.  At the end of the novel, Cooper's Romanticism is completely front and center with a Native Mohican, Uncas, accompanied by his love Cora, killed in battle and then buried together leaving Uncas' father Chingachgook the last Mohican.  A Native wise man then proclaims:

"The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again...."

It's hard to envision New York state as it once was.  It's greatest city, then commanding only the southern part of Manhattan Island, now covers that entire island, Staten Island and the boroughs to its east.  The mighty forests and fearsome wilderness of the area, once full of Natives as well as beasts, ghosts, mysteries and terrors that fueled a generation of early American writers, have been brought to their knees under the axes and industry of the European settlers and have yielded to farmlands growing fruits, vegetables and grains.  In the New York state of 250-300 years ago, the frontier once began right outside the edge of the town or village, and sometimes right outside the front door.  In modern New York state, the frontier is something read about in books, seen on television or in movies, or defined as a different type of frontier - a non-tangible thing whose terrors, treasures and opportunities are more of a financial, business or electronic nature.

We occasionally catch wisps of the old frontier.  Jack Kerouac, in the guise of his avatar Sal Paradise at the Bear Mountain Bridge in On the Road, comes face to face with the loneliness and the fear of the remnants of the old frontier and quails, turning his back on his dream to hitchhike along Route 6.  He instead flees back to New York and catches a bus that takes him all the way to Illinois before he attempts hitchhiking again.  One can probably find echoes of the old frontier in the Adirondacks and perhaps get far enough away from civilization that a small twist of imagination will bring Hawkeye, Chingachgook and Uncas striding around the corner, rifles at the ready.

Yes, as we move into the original thirteen colonies one can find history.  One can also find titanic struggle as settlers fight against the elements, the Natives, other Europeans and their own fears and shortcomings.  When you step foot into New York, you can see this history and even feel the difference of this colonial and revolutionary past and, let's say, the Midwest, Old West, South and other areas that would eventually become the United States.  It's a history that, except for some limited exposure, I am not familiar with and therefore, when I read about it or have experienced it in my own travels through the region, it impresses itself upon me in a powerful way.

Musical Interlude

I'm putting up some music from the 1992 movie version of The Last of the Mohicans.  I guess that because they got a younger Daniel Day-Lewis to play Hawkeye, he had to have a love interest (Cora), so they switched things around a bit from the book.  While Uncas still dies at the end, in the movie Cora lives.  Instead in the movie, the younger blonde sister dies for love of Uncas.  In the book, the younger sister lives and marries the gallant American officer.  So, if you watch the movie, you should know that it is not completely the story that Cooper told in his novel.

That being written, it is good music and the theme was composed by Dougie MacLean.

If you want to know more about Lewiston

Historic Lewiston
Lewiston Art Festival
Lewiston Jazz Festival
Niagara County Peach Festival
Niagara River Region Chamber of Commerce
Wikipedia: Lewiston

Next up: Cheshire, New York

Blue Highways: Queenston-Lewiston Bridge, New York

Unfolding the Map

We're ending our brief foreign excursion with William Least Heat-Moon and about to enter into the state of New York.  I've been thinking a bit lately about why and how I entered this world in the United States, instead of someplace else.  In this post, we'll ponder a variation of the question "why am I here?"  If you wonder not only why, but also where, consult the map.

Book Quote

"....By the time I reached U.S. Customs, the rain had stopped and, as I crossed the bridge over the Niagara River north of the falls, with quite unbelievable timing, the Canadian sun turned the eastern cliffs orange."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 1

The Queenston-Lewiston Bridge crossing the Niagara River between Canada and the United States. Photo at HighestBridges.com. Click on photo to go to host site.

Queenston-Lewiston Bridge, New York

The other day I had a thought run through my head.  This particular thought has happened before, but I was surprised by it again because I haven't given any serious consideration of it for a while.  It's kind of a chip off of the block the usual philosophical question "Why am I here?"  My question is "Why am I a U.S. citizen?"

One can only really examine this question truly when one steps outside of the U.S.  The more foreign the culture, the more perspective it gives upon one's place within their own.  Luckily, I've been able to travel and gain a little perspective.  I don't think LHM really was able to examine his U.S.-ness or his citizenship from a brief travel through lower Ontario and a cross over the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge, but it gives me the opportunity to do so in this post.

I think it's important that all Americans consider why they were born an American citizen.  I feel this is critical especially now as we very noisily and politically debate what the true meaning of citizenship is.  After 9/11, very many people and politicians concluded that the outside world was a dangerous place.  Many advocated for the U.S. to retreat inward and disengage.  Others, particularly prominent politicians at the time, put in place a policy of unilateralism and preemption.  The U.S. would strike, unprovoked if need be, wherever it felt it must to ensure its security and its own interests.  In the process, we not only alienated many other countries, peoples and cultures, but internally we began to classify those who were us, and those who were not.

Yet, a vast majority of the American people have not stepped foot outside the borders of the U.S.  According to CNN, only 30% of the U.S. public has a passport.  They have never gotten that experience of seeing what it's like to be a "citizen of the world."  They have never had to confront that, in the absence of a happy accident, they might have been born in Africa, or North Korea.  They might have lived in squalor in a Calcutta slum, or been kidnapped and thrown out of an airplane over the ocean in an Argentine "disappearance."  They might have had to contend with hunger and poverty, sickness and disease, war, violence, famine, despotic governments and everything that a majority of the world's population has had to deal with.

So, why am I U.S. citizen?

I've been dabbling, a mere amateur really, into some classical philosophy.  I'm not sure that philosophy can answer my question, but I will try, though I'm not a philosopher and am probably completely off-base.  It is possible, in a Platonic sense, that we can accept the idea of the United States as a form of something deeper and more fundamental to our existence.  Therefore, I can accept the idea that I am a U.S. citizen, but that is only how I can understand a much more abstract concept - by making it part of the real world.

In an Aristotelian sense, the idea of being a U.S. citizen is associated in my mind with goodness and virtue through my political socialization.  Since I was young the importance of my citizenship has been reinforced.  Therefore, I strive to be a good citizen in the cause of attaining a most virtuous status of citizenship.

Virtue has long been associated in American history with hard work.  But here the American ideal strays from some of the classical philosophies such as Cynicism which reject the ideas of wealth, fame, power and possessions.  In fact, sometimes the U.S. has been associated with hedonism in the pursuit of gratification and pleasure.

Most of us, however, probably take a less gratuitous approach.  In an Epicurean sense, we would allow ourselves only moderate pleasures and we would wish for a freedom from fear.  In this sense, the promise of the U.S. is very important because our political system was created to give us freedoms from what the Founders believe was the biggest potential source of fear, the national government.  Classical liberalism advocates individual freedoms as the most important goal for us.   Indeed, we could take this farther into a Stoic view of citizenship, where the best life in the U.S. is one of reason, virtue and in line with the harmony inherent in the universal order.  Thus, being a good citizen would consist of the exercise of restraint, self-control, logic, reason and wisdom.

I could take these exercises even farther, but they don't bring me any closer to knowing why I am here in this country, and as I wrote earlier, I'm just an amateur at this.

What I keep coming back to is a sense of the meaninglessness of borders that we have demarcated.  If I were to look at the globe from space, I would not see large lines that would indicate where one country ends and the other begins.  What I would see is land masses with people on them.  Any barriers outside geological or natural ones are completely arbitrary.  There would be nothing separating me from Canadians or Mexicans.

Of course, there are borders, and they are reinforced by our acceptance of them.  And our acceptance of those borders leads us to believe that as Americans, we are different than Canadians and Mexicans.  We separate and classify but really, that's absurd.  Recounting looking back on Earth from the moon, astronaut Frank Borman writes:

The view of the Earth from the Moon fascinated me—a small disk, 240,000 miles away. It was hard to think that that little thing held so many problems, so many frustrations. Raging nationalistic interests, famines, wars, pestilence don't show from that distance.

Life Magazine, January 17th, 1969

So why am I a U.S. citizen?  I was born in the U.S., and I attach meaning to it.  But I have been outside the U.S. and have been able to see and hear how others perceive us, and many times in a very unflattering light.  That has affected my view, as made me less U.S.-centric and has made me want to use the luck of being a U.S. citizen to promote good in the world.  I could not help but feel how privileged I've been in the presence of the poor of Bangladesh, prostitutes trying to survive in Thailand, the oppressed of Central America striving to gain political and social equality and that I owed it to myself and them to have a wider view of what my citizenship means and how I can use my influence to push my country toward actions that better the world.  The freedoms that I have allow me to think about such problems and potential solutions, where, as a citizen of someplace else, I might just be trying to survive.

So, I am a U.S. citizen because a random roll of the dice put me here.  But, I am also a U.S. citizen because from here, I can affect tremendous good if I so choose.  And I so choose.

Musical Interlude

Wow, I just discovered this song.  I like it!  The song was written by the American band Flying Machines and includes four other world musicians: Kailash Kher from India, King Sunny Ade from Nigeria, Cheng Lin from China, and Khaled from Algeria.

If you want to know more about the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge

Niagara Falls Bridge Commission
Wikipedia: Queenston-Lewiston Bridge

Next up: Lewiston, New York

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: Newburgh, NY

Click on thumbnail for mapNote:  Posted on Blogger June 6, 2006

Unfolding the Map

The On the Road map has gotten another little facelift. The markers have been color-coded -- green means that Sal stopped in the location briefly, blue means that Sal mentioned the place in connection with his trip but did not stop, and red means that Sal made an extended stay. You'll find a legend down below the map. You can click the image at right to get to the map.

Book Quote

"Finally a car stopped at the empty filling station...I stepped right up and gestured in the rain...I looked like a maniac, of course...But the people let me in and rode me north to Newburgh. In Newburgh it had stopped raining. I walked down to the river, and I had to ride back to New York in a bus with a delegation of schoolteachers coming back from a weekend in the mountains - chatter-chatter blah-blah, and me swearing for all the time and the money I'd wasted..."

On the Road: Chapter 2.

Newburgh, New York

Schoolteachers on vacation are a sight to behold. One year when we lived in San Antonio some friends, one of whom was a schoolteacher, invited us to accompany her and her husband and two other friends down to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico for a day of shopping and fun. Of course, you can't go to Nuevo Laredo now because it is so dangerous there, but then there were a lot of people going back and forth and over to shop. We met at about 7:00 in the morning in a parking lot at a Wal-Mart. I knew it was going to be a long day when some of the gym teachers pulled in with a cooler full of beer, and began drinking it. One guy seemed to be stuck on the old commercial where the guy keeps saying "Whazzzzzzupppppppp!!!!!!!!" It got annoying fast. Despite that, we had a good time in Nuevo Laredo, though by the time we got back on the bus all, and I mean all, the teachers were trashed.

I've never been to Newburgh, though I did make a trip up part of the Hudson. For Sal, I imagine getting a ride back to New York seemed like a retreat, and perhaps he felt it put his whole trip in jeopardy. And I've certainly been in that place for one reason or another.

For more information on Newburgh

City of Newburgh website
Newburgh Revealed
Wikipedia: Newburgh
Wikipedia: Town of Newburgh

On the Road: New York and Yonkers

Click the Thumbnail to go to MapNote:  Originally posted on Blogger on May 31, 2006

Unfolding the Map

Hello, Littourati! Two new points have been added to the virtual tour of Kerouac's On the Road. As usual, you can click on the map at left to go to the full Google Map.

Book Quote

"Filled with dreams of what I'd do in Chicago, in Denver, and then finally in San Fran, I took the Seventh Avenue subway to the end of the line at 242nd Street, and there took a trolley into Yonkers."

On the Road: Chapter 2

End of 7th Avenue Subway, New York City

I remember the first time I went to New York for business on a regular basis. It was around 1995, and I had just taken a job as director of an organization that promoted corporated responsibility. I stayed at a guest house in Chelsea, which was the section of Manhattan that was just north of The Village, in the streets numbered in the 20s, and every day I had to get on the subway to go to the Columbia University stop, and walk from there to the building where I had my meetings. I made this trip each day for three or four days, three times a year until I left the position in 2000. I remember the first time, though, catching the 1/9 train, learning the difference between the local and express, passing by stops that had names that resonated from all that I read and knew. Penn Station, Times Square -- and the first time I rode that train, I was excited, a little nervous, and really open to the experience of the people around me, the sound and sway of the cars, the unintelligible electronic gibberish of the driver over the intercom as he implored people to not block the doors so the train could move.

Later, I became more inured. As I became an "experienced" rider, I read the paper on the train, ignoring the sales pitch of the guys panhandling on the train. I learned how to wait for the express, and transfer at the last possible station to the local so I could hit my stop. Ultimately, I became less open to the subway experience. And that's too bad. I don't know what Sal thought about on his subway ride, but I can only guess by the shortness of Kerouac's description that when Sal caught the train, most likely at Penn Station, and took it to the end of the line, he was already an "experienced" subway rider as well.

For more information on the New York City subway:

Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA)
nycsubway.org
New York Subway on Wikipedia
Abandoned parts of the New York City Subway
New York City Subway Historical Timeline

Book Quote

"In downtown Yonkers I transferred to an outgoing trolley and went to the city limits on the east bank of the Hudson River."

On the Road: Chapter 2

Yonkers

Yonkers is another place where Sal briefly stops in his hurry to get out of town, mainly to transfer to another form of transportation, a trolley. I have only been to Yonkers once. In the early 1990s, I was working for a Catholic order of priests and nuns called the Pallotines, and the order had a number of Italian priests based in a parish at Yonkers. In an effort to do some in-house promotion of the the program I was running, I visited and stayed with them an evening. The head priest of the parish took me out to dinner that night, and it was about as close to The Godfather as I will ever get. Don't get me wrong, the priest was not into organized crime as far as I could tell. However, as a priest in what was essentially an Italian town, he carried a lot of weight. As he took me to dinner, almost everyone on the street knew who he was and said "Hello Father," in English or Italian, depending on their first language. When we went into the restaurant, we got the royal treatment, and our meal was, of course, on the house. It was a truly impressive display of the power and respect a priest still carried in a religious society, and slightly depressing as well because it was not the Catholic Church that I knew or grew up in but had only read about.

Of course, this account does not truly relate to Sal's experience there, which was only fleeting. But Sal meets interesting characters all along his trip, and in my travels, when I'm open to the experience, so do I.

More information on Yonkers

Official site of the City of Yonkers
Yonkers Chamber of Commerce
Wikipedia Entry on Yonkers
Downtown Tour of Yonkers: Yonkers Trolley Car Barn

Until next time, Littourati, happy travels! As always, your comments, stories, reflections on any of the above are appreciated and encouraged.