On the Road: Allentown, Pennsylvania

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

Book Quote

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

On the Road, Chapter 14

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

Allentown, Pennsylvania

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you want to know more about Allentown

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

Next up: Times Square, New York City

On the Road: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

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

Book Quote

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

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

On the Road, Chapter 14

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

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

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

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

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

If you want to know more about Harrisburg

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

Next up:  Allentown, Pennsylvania

On the Road: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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Sal reaches the city at the conjunction of two rivers that combine to form a mighty third.  He's out of money.  To get home from here, he'll have go back to hitching and waiting for a friendly ride.  To see where we are, click on the map.

Book Quote

"...and I slept all the way to Pittsburgh. I was wearier than I'd been for years and years."

On the Road, Chapter 14

Downtown Pittsburgh in the 1940s as Jack Kerouac would have seen it

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh is one of those cities I've always wished I visited, but haven't.  Most people that I've met that are from Pittsburgh, or lived there for a while, really like it.  I think of it as one of those mid-sized northern cities, like Milwaukee where I once lived, that holds on to its blue-collar identity despite the demise of the blue-collar economy because that's what made it strong and put it on the map.

I remember when I was young, watching the Pittsburgh Steelers win Super Bowl after Super Bowl.  The television sports announcers would extoll the hard working, industrial image of the Steelers with monikers like their "Steel Curtain" defense, and I grew to hate them with a grudging respect for their accomplishments.  Of course, I knew the nickname attached to Pittsburgh, the "Steel City."  But I was more intrigued by the name of their former football stadium, Three Rivers Stadium.  I liked the image of three rivers coming together.  I had no idea what those rivers were, but growing up on the coast of California and spending a lot of my summers 20 miles inland, swimming in a river that ran through some property we owned, I felt an attachment to rivers. I liked walking up or down them, learning what new features could be found with every bend or curve.

I think of Sal, coming to the city defined and delineated by three rivers, which I have learned somewhere in my adult life are the Monongahela and the Allegheny which combine to form the Ohio.  As I wrote in a previous post about the Hudson, rivers are representative of pathways to new places or even for escape.  I think of Huck Finn rafting down the Mississippi, or Lewis and Clark using the Missouri River to make their way into unexplored territories.  Even escaping prisoners often make for rivers to follow in the hopes that tracks will be washed away and scent concealed.  I was always told, when hiking alone in the mountains as a youth out at our property at Irmulco, California, that if I got lost and I found a stream or streambed, follow it down and continue to work my way along the water until I found someone or something to get my bearings.  I put this advice to use once, and it worked perfectly, bringing me back to the railroad tracks that got me back to our property.

But rivers are also boundaries, borders, and barriers.  The Greek myths place the River Styx at the boundary to Hades, where the boatman Charon ferries souls across to the afterlife.  In history, before it was possible to build bridges across large rivers, they presented significant obstacles to the movement of peoples and armies.  Even in the age of bridges and ease of travel, rivers can wash out crossings, flood their banks and create difficulties in getting from place to place.  In going home to see my mom during the winter holidays, I often end up staying longer than I intended because the rivers flood and roads are closed until they recede.

Perhaps I'm making more out of Sal's Pittsburgh stop than need be.  After all, it's the farthest he could get on the bus with the money he had.  But it seems symbolic nonetheless.  If he truly is weary, the confluence of two large rivers to create an even mightier third symbolizes a new strength and vitality.  It is also a boundary, where his bus ride ends and where he now has to rely on his ability to persuade others to take him the rest of the way.  Rivers continue to flow to their end, time moves on, and Sal's journey will continue through time and space back to Paterson.

If you want to know more about Pittsburgh

BurghFeeding
Burghilicious
Digging Pitt
Eat PGH
Foodburgh
I Heart PGH blog
Pittsburgh Bloggers
Pittsburgh City Paper (Alternative newsweekly
Pittsburgh Green Story: America's Three Rivers
Pittsburgh Point of View
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Newspaper)
Three Rivers Arts Festival
View from the Burghchair
Wikipedia: Pittsburgh

Next up:  Harrisburg, Pennsylvania