On the Road: Dalhart, Texas

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

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

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

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

On the Road: Blythe, California

Click on Thumbnail for MapNote: First published on Blogger on October 23, 2008

Unfolding the Map

First, an apology. It has been over a year since I have posted to this blog. In the intervening time, I got my Ph.D. and I am now doing a one-year position at a university somewhere in Texas. But I've always had this at heart and wanted to return. So now, I will finish this. When last we left Sal, he was on a bus heading back home. Here's the updated map - click the thumbnail - and it will only go forward from here until we finish this trip of Sal's.

Book Quote

"...Blythe..."

On the Road, Chapter 14

Blythe, California

That wasn't much of a quote. I'd like to think that Kerouac put Blythe in the book, out of the other small towns he passed through, because of some literary allusion. Perhaps it was because he seemed to blithely leave California after his various adventures there. Perhaps it was because he had a blithe spirit. Perhaps Kerouac just liked the sound of the town, or the look from his bus window. It's hard to know. Given that Sal doesn't have much to say about it, in fact he is just ticking off the places until he arrives home, I really don't have much to say about it either. It doesn't really bring out any kind of feeling in me at all. Perhaps I'm being too blithe about it. I don't know.

If you want to know more about Blythe

Blythe Chamber of Commerce
Blythe Intaglios
City of Blythe
The Desert Independent (Newspaper)
Wikipedia: Blythe

Next up: Salome

On the Road: Indio, California

Click on Thumbnail for MapNote: First published on Blogger on September 25, 2007

Unfolding the Map

We're now zooming on through the night and into the dawn with Sal as he leaves California on his cross country trip back home. Click on the map and you'll see where we are.

Book Quote

"At dawn, my bus was zooming across the Arizona desert -- Indio..."

On the Road, Chapter 14

Indio, California

Obviously, this is just a little place that Sal zooms through as he heads back home. He most likely didn't stop. But one thing that I understand from this book now is that Sal really finds place names fascinating. He mentions this before as he is hitchiking through the towns of California's Central Valley - Manteca, Madera etc - drawn by their exotic Spanish monikers. And now, he mentions Indio, another Spanish word, and he will mention at least a couple other places that stick in his imagination. Kerouac, being a poet, would gravitate to these words -- words that stick out there almost as if you can hang your coat or hat on them.

I know nothing about Indio, but I do know about cross-country bus rides. I may have mentioned it before. I traveled from Milwaukee to Billings, Montana and back via bus in the late 1980s to attend a friend's wedding in Wyoming. The trip was long, with many stops. I was solicited by a guy in a bathroom in Fargo, North Dakota. All of North Dakota and eastern Montana were about the flattest things I had ever seen in my life. Periodically, the smell of weed came from the bathroom at the back of the bus. At one point, a woman got on with her two children...whatever drove them onto the bus had not been good because she was angry and the children were crying and it was something besides the normal mom angry at cranky kids. It was night, and someone shushed the kids, and the mother yelled "Don't you EVER shush my f&^%king kids again!"

The funny thing is, I remember all of the things that happened on the way out to Montana. It was new territory that I had never seen, and I was excited. I remember very little about what happened on the way back. It was long, but suddenly I was old hat to this traveling stuff.

I think maybe this is just in the way of warning. Sal will not describe much about what happens to him on this bus ride. Unlike the trip out to California, his mission here is to get home as soon as possible. The mileage that took chapters to get through on the way out to San Francisco is done in one chapter on the way back. So, we'll try to fill in some blanks, or at least ruminate a bit.

If you want to know more about Indio

City of Indio
Coachella (Huge music festival near Indio)
Desert USA: Indio
Village Profile: Indio
Wikipedia: Indio

Next up: Blythe, California