you don’t always get out of my town easily: cars get in front of you, and drive too slowly, and miss the lights, and you don’t want to zoom around, weave or do dangerous stuff before you even leave town. i grit my teeth and hold on until i slip onto the two-lanes outside of town. traveling in november is always special to me, it’s so beautiful, yet this time it seems almost as if winter is coming down, gripping the place with economic hardship, and other hardships, even though it’s a beautiful day and winter wheat fields spread out in the sunlight. i’m on my way to st. louis airport, and from there to new mexico, but I start thinking of all the places I’ve been that have stuck with me over the years. jupiter beach, that was one; on the coast of florida one night, I walked over a sand dune and there was the wide open ocean, stretching out toward a huge sky with lots of stars, and you could see wide dark and gray ocean for miles and miles, with the sand dunes below us. the name, I think, kind of stuck with me, but the wideness, the vastness of it is what I remember.
in illinois, I go past a town so tiny that it’s decided to put up its christmas decorations before thanksgiving; this is typical in that, if you have nothing to do, and halloween is over, you might as well get started, it's true in lots of these small towns. it’s really not a great way though, because you end up getting sick of them before december even starts and, in the case of trees, they become fire hazards after a couple of weeks which in some cases is before the whole season is really even ready to start. nevertheless in a place so hungry for cheer or something to look at, decorations are big, at least they’ve changed a place that looks so much like it did the last couple of times I came through.
once I was on this spit in the kenai peninsula and I think I was on high ground because I was aware that there was sea on at least three sides of me and I could see it on just about every side. I was also aware that I had gone about as far out to the edge as I could possibly get, as far from home as I would get, on land anyway, and I could practically see that the road led almost no further. but in front of me, down a little hill toward one of the edges of the peninsula, an odd person was working the land on a farm kind of place. he was like no one I’d ever seen, though I don’t remember what it was that was so distinctive; if it was his clothes, I don’t especially remember what they looked like. At the time I was almost out of money and coffee was like three or four dollars a cup so I was about turning around, but I’d found a job on a salmon boat and made enough to fix my pack before I turned around, and I asked one guy what was going on, and he said it was a kind of commune down there. I found out later that it was old believers. I read about those guys later, much later, but if I’d heard that name then, I’d never have even known who they were.
in pinckneyville there’s a grace outreach place but it looks humble, well who knows what kind of outreach, although in my town the word grace is associated with lutherans. In the center of town the opera house has burned down and is still a pile of bricks, old and classy bricks, but a guy in a cat dozer is in the middle of it and some other guy is standing in it too either telling him what to do, or telling him what not to do. actually it looked like that last time I went through too. nothing new here.
the old believers were the truly orthodox, they wouldn’t change when the orthodox changed. then when the orthodox became catholic the orthodox refused to change. Then when the protestants came along the catholics refused to change. But the old believers were the original “refuse to change”…they were so orthodox, they got run out of russia and had to come to alaska. I didn’t know this, of course, at the time. and of course one would have to figure that this was old believers, what, twenty generations after the first ones refused to change.
another place that kind of stuck with me in my travels was guymon oklahoma, out on the panhandle. actually just about everything in oklahoma seemed to be extreme, whether it was extremely barren and windy like guymon, or extremely hot and muggy, or sunny and inhospitable like lawton. or remote and out there like the ouachita mountains of the wild southeast where the rogue criminals hid out. In any case in this one place, guymon, out on the panhandle, the wind blew and blew and every bob-wire fence had whatever paper it had picked up for miles around, and this paper, mostly grocery store inserts, was flattened up against the wire fence like it was trying to hide something, but it was just the wind blowing. it was the kind of place you’d have to press hard on your feet to keep from blowing away. Our kids had high fevers at that time and we took them in to a clinic where they said, 103, or 105, or something like that. that’s where I first learned that that enormous kind of fever wasn’t unusual for a kid. they just cook up in order to burn it off.
past pinckneyville you come to the baseball player’s house which is huge, and beautiful, behind some trees, but basically right on the road. A little driveway heads right up there into it so I fantasize about using it and just asking him what it was like pitching in the big leagues. further on I come to the town of Nashville which is also quite small and which puts the names of players on one of its teams, maybe girls’ basketball, on decorative cheering cone-shaped decorations. girls’ names are spelled differently these days, but the only example I can think of is brittni…anyway they kind of fly by because at this point there is other stuff to look at besides winter wheat. again I get the feeling of economic squeeze, even in farm country. maybe people are worrying about christmas.
one place that definitely stuck with me was northeast iowa, a place so stark and beautiful yet totally void of tourists, you couldn’t even move in and buy a chunk of beautiful land to save your life. It was hilly river valley, lots of rivers through there including the wapsipinicon, the cedar, the iowa, and a few more, all feeding into the mississippi and making hilly and beautiful farm country. I think people jealously guarded it; part of that was that it was just such good farm country that it was worth a fortune, and only other farmers either had the money, or had a true idea about its worth. in any case it was strange traveling up there because these farmers were generally never even aware of the beauty, yet it was just stunning in the way that you’d come around one hill and see fog, a cornfield, an old barn, redwing blackbirds, a kind of paradise scene out there, and nobody to share it with.
in new baden, which I consider to be illinois’ version of out there, farm country squared, I see a flock of white seagulls, and then around the next bend a large flock of black crows, or black birds of some kind. I actually wouldn’t know a crow from another kind, but when they come in large numbers and circle around you always think that they are either menacing the trucks or getting caught up in some other kind of updraft, or, maybe they’ve just picked the goods out of one field and are looking for another. Further down the road we come into east saint louis which really looks much different now that I know about Cahokia, it being the center of the world as we know it for a thousand years and all, now reduced to strip clubs and fast food restaurants. There’s a lot of work on the highway too; somebody’s getting paid something, and it’s probably keeping a few families afloat. Again it looks bleak though. Looks like a depression is settling in, taking hold and making everyone cough.
back home I was given a trove of books before I left, six full boxes of books about every aspect of judaism, including mystical Judaism, orthodox, etc., everything. I could hardly bear to pick through them since I have so little time in my life to actually read anything, but fortunately I had my boys with me and they were able to pick through and keep a few.. the one I had to grab though was called “postville.” It was about a group of orthodox jews who came to northeast iowa and opened a meatpacking plant which they operated for years, with much cultural conflict etc. I can’t even imagine. I’ll have to read the book, if I can find any time.
high above saint louis now, I look back and see that the center of town, the downtown, looks incredibly small and recedes as we follow the sun out west across the ozarks. the arch, it’s like a little ribbon popping out of the ground and marking the place, but, you would have never guessed how insignificant it would look when you were tearing through town, cars flying by on both sides, road construction tearing up the lanes. the “mark mcguire highway” sign is gone, which is good or in any case it’s good that they won it all this year, and were able to move on and glorify in a new world championship…enough to make them forget the steroid era. And the economic malaise. and the loss of budweiser, and whatever else they’ve lost.
there’s a cloudy haze over the ozarks or western missouri if that’s what it is; I wonder if it will burn off as we get into the dry country further west, and I can see the wide plains and the hills of northern new mexico. For once I have a laptop on the plane and can type away while everyone settles in with their crackers and soda; I’m typing mostly for the novelty of it, since I’ve so rarely got to bring a laptop. What a joy! And to tell you the truth, I’ve run out of other memories, nothing else comes to mind, though I’ve been lots of places, and remember them, but at the moment, they’re all kind of blended together, the fog spreads below, the nuts come, & i’ll sign off for now.
in illinois, I go past a town so tiny that it’s decided to put up its christmas decorations before thanksgiving; this is typical in that, if you have nothing to do, and halloween is over, you might as well get started, it's true in lots of these small towns. it’s really not a great way though, because you end up getting sick of them before december even starts and, in the case of trees, they become fire hazards after a couple of weeks which in some cases is before the whole season is really even ready to start. nevertheless in a place so hungry for cheer or something to look at, decorations are big, at least they’ve changed a place that looks so much like it did the last couple of times I came through.
once I was on this spit in the kenai peninsula and I think I was on high ground because I was aware that there was sea on at least three sides of me and I could see it on just about every side. I was also aware that I had gone about as far out to the edge as I could possibly get, as far from home as I would get, on land anyway, and I could practically see that the road led almost no further. but in front of me, down a little hill toward one of the edges of the peninsula, an odd person was working the land on a farm kind of place. he was like no one I’d ever seen, though I don’t remember what it was that was so distinctive; if it was his clothes, I don’t especially remember what they looked like. At the time I was almost out of money and coffee was like three or four dollars a cup so I was about turning around, but I’d found a job on a salmon boat and made enough to fix my pack before I turned around, and I asked one guy what was going on, and he said it was a kind of commune down there. I found out later that it was old believers. I read about those guys later, much later, but if I’d heard that name then, I’d never have even known who they were.
in pinckneyville there’s a grace outreach place but it looks humble, well who knows what kind of outreach, although in my town the word grace is associated with lutherans. In the center of town the opera house has burned down and is still a pile of bricks, old and classy bricks, but a guy in a cat dozer is in the middle of it and some other guy is standing in it too either telling him what to do, or telling him what not to do. actually it looked like that last time I went through too. nothing new here.
the old believers were the truly orthodox, they wouldn’t change when the orthodox changed. then when the orthodox became catholic the orthodox refused to change. Then when the protestants came along the catholics refused to change. But the old believers were the original “refuse to change”…they were so orthodox, they got run out of russia and had to come to alaska. I didn’t know this, of course, at the time. and of course one would have to figure that this was old believers, what, twenty generations after the first ones refused to change.
another place that kind of stuck with me in my travels was guymon oklahoma, out on the panhandle. actually just about everything in oklahoma seemed to be extreme, whether it was extremely barren and windy like guymon, or extremely hot and muggy, or sunny and inhospitable like lawton. or remote and out there like the ouachita mountains of the wild southeast where the rogue criminals hid out. In any case in this one place, guymon, out on the panhandle, the wind blew and blew and every bob-wire fence had whatever paper it had picked up for miles around, and this paper, mostly grocery store inserts, was flattened up against the wire fence like it was trying to hide something, but it was just the wind blowing. it was the kind of place you’d have to press hard on your feet to keep from blowing away. Our kids had high fevers at that time and we took them in to a clinic where they said, 103, or 105, or something like that. that’s where I first learned that that enormous kind of fever wasn’t unusual for a kid. they just cook up in order to burn it off.
past pinckneyville you come to the baseball player’s house which is huge, and beautiful, behind some trees, but basically right on the road. A little driveway heads right up there into it so I fantasize about using it and just asking him what it was like pitching in the big leagues. further on I come to the town of Nashville which is also quite small and which puts the names of players on one of its teams, maybe girls’ basketball, on decorative cheering cone-shaped decorations. girls’ names are spelled differently these days, but the only example I can think of is brittni…anyway they kind of fly by because at this point there is other stuff to look at besides winter wheat. again I get the feeling of economic squeeze, even in farm country. maybe people are worrying about christmas.
one place that definitely stuck with me was northeast iowa, a place so stark and beautiful yet totally void of tourists, you couldn’t even move in and buy a chunk of beautiful land to save your life. It was hilly river valley, lots of rivers through there including the wapsipinicon, the cedar, the iowa, and a few more, all feeding into the mississippi and making hilly and beautiful farm country. I think people jealously guarded it; part of that was that it was just such good farm country that it was worth a fortune, and only other farmers either had the money, or had a true idea about its worth. in any case it was strange traveling up there because these farmers were generally never even aware of the beauty, yet it was just stunning in the way that you’d come around one hill and see fog, a cornfield, an old barn, redwing blackbirds, a kind of paradise scene out there, and nobody to share it with.
in new baden, which I consider to be illinois’ version of out there, farm country squared, I see a flock of white seagulls, and then around the next bend a large flock of black crows, or black birds of some kind. I actually wouldn’t know a crow from another kind, but when they come in large numbers and circle around you always think that they are either menacing the trucks or getting caught up in some other kind of updraft, or, maybe they’ve just picked the goods out of one field and are looking for another. Further down the road we come into east saint louis which really looks much different now that I know about Cahokia, it being the center of the world as we know it for a thousand years and all, now reduced to strip clubs and fast food restaurants. There’s a lot of work on the highway too; somebody’s getting paid something, and it’s probably keeping a few families afloat. Again it looks bleak though. Looks like a depression is settling in, taking hold and making everyone cough.
back home I was given a trove of books before I left, six full boxes of books about every aspect of judaism, including mystical Judaism, orthodox, etc., everything. I could hardly bear to pick through them since I have so little time in my life to actually read anything, but fortunately I had my boys with me and they were able to pick through and keep a few.. the one I had to grab though was called “postville.” It was about a group of orthodox jews who came to northeast iowa and opened a meatpacking plant which they operated for years, with much cultural conflict etc. I can’t even imagine. I’ll have to read the book, if I can find any time.
high above saint louis now, I look back and see that the center of town, the downtown, looks incredibly small and recedes as we follow the sun out west across the ozarks. the arch, it’s like a little ribbon popping out of the ground and marking the place, but, you would have never guessed how insignificant it would look when you were tearing through town, cars flying by on both sides, road construction tearing up the lanes. the “mark mcguire highway” sign is gone, which is good or in any case it’s good that they won it all this year, and were able to move on and glorify in a new world championship…enough to make them forget the steroid era. And the economic malaise. and the loss of budweiser, and whatever else they’ve lost.
there’s a cloudy haze over the ozarks or western missouri if that’s what it is; I wonder if it will burn off as we get into the dry country further west, and I can see the wide plains and the hills of northern new mexico. For once I have a laptop on the plane and can type away while everyone settles in with their crackers and soda; I’m typing mostly for the novelty of it, since I’ve so rarely got to bring a laptop. What a joy! And to tell you the truth, I’ve run out of other memories, nothing else comes to mind, though I’ve been lots of places, and remember them, but at the moment, they’re all kind of blended together, the fog spreads below, the nuts come, & i’ll sign off for now.
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