En Route No. 1(part one)

By way of a called-off wedding in New York I was escorted on the onset of my trip--from Ashland, Or. to San Francisco--by odd conversations in a limousine, a tiny deaf/mute man in a silk hat, an enchanting sense of sadness and nostalgia(the suicide always present), and other well-phrased occurrences as told by Salinger's "Buddy Glass," concerning his brother "Seymour," though without ever physically bringing him into play. Spatially, of course, this comment makes no sense, but to the avid reader, or even the casual one, this will be unsterstood as a simple truth about traveling: as your body moves, so does your brain move, albeit on typically abstract paths, that are often subject to be led by any semi-coherent piece of "literature," books of all sorts really, which then pose as if not fully, surely a large part of the landscape of your travels. I say, "any semi-coherent piece of 'literature,'" but it should be made clear--though I'm sure it is already(earlier mention of Salinger)--that I am partial to the engrossing lines of America's older literary caste.

[I am legally restricted from quoting any part of the work I would like to here, but I urge anyone reading this to take the time--now--to quickly read Little, Brown and Company's 1963 edition of J.D. Salinger's "Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenters," and "Seymour--An Introduction" beginning with the first complete sentence on pg 97 and ending with a certain gift from the author on pg 98. Thank you for complying.]

No one writes like that anymore. Most are taught a different(though all the same) way of writing--a way of cold detachment, or "un-attachment." Aside from the period, punctuation is too scary; sentences must not run on, or back-track, or side-track. Everything must be terse. Cinematic. Cutting. Derogatory. Like so.

I have known someone to often quote a professor of theirs as saying, "I love the 50's--nothing happened!" Although it is, without a doubt, no longer the 50's, I, too, love them and am apt to pretend: keeping memories in tangible photographs, not digital which can be removed from the world with a click of a button; making phonecalls from roadside payphones, not any- and everywhere from cellular; a suitcase almost too heavy to carry, but who needs wheels, and why mention anything else--the point has been taken as far as I'd like to take it. However, I should mention, for the sake of honesty, that a certain thin device that can be held in the lap(and is in front of me at present as I type up my longhand) and will communicate to anyone, anywhere, stands as the obvioust testament that you can never completely escape the "actual" times--but isn't this just an extension of the imagination? a place where only the things you want to exist, do(ignoring for now the nightmares knows as "viruses")? The answer, I promise you, is yes.

My brother says I ritualize everything; he also says(which no shit I agree with) that this is a better way to live. As I was thinking of those words, along with the wedding, and the suicide, I raised my eyes from New York and found myself on a fairly modern looking bus as far as the 1950's are concerned, riding directly behind the driver, and looking out the rain-splashed windows onto snowy road shoulders and ice-covered ponds--in the last days of March, mind you--climbing in altitude on "Dead Indian Rd.," What-the-fuck America, toward Klamath Falls for my connecting train to--San Francisco? Oakland?

[Oakland. I talked to the lady-attendant who gave me a pillow just as I was writing that second question mark--yes, on the train; forgive me for jumping ahead--and she said I could forego the the transfer back to bus for SF and stay aboard the train til Oakland instead, where I had learned there were keys to an empty apartment hidden away for me.]

There are certain places, even when you are physically in their presence, that never quite fully enter your "reality"; for me, Klamath Falls was one of those places:
Entering town, you are confronted by rain-washed, wind-whipped visions of desolation--typical sites of rundown buildings, closed-up businesses and the like, railyards of rust and debris; all things associated with failed commercialism, a seemingly "disappeared" working class, and general sadness.

We were deposited at a tiny shuttle-depot in the middle of that blown out grey mess with four hours until the train came. Like in a foreign country where they try to exploit you for your monies, "free" cab rides were offered to the so-called downtown area where restaurants, I'm sure, were waiting to pay the cabbies for bringing them customers they could overcharge(maybe fair game; it's not really for me to say...but something unsavory about it). I heard the busdriver tell a girl she oughtn't go downtown though, oughtn't go walking by herself, and certainly oughtn't go down any alleys for fear of falling on a syringe(!)--Klamath Falls. I, along with this girl, took the busdriver's advice and stayed cooped up at the depot watching televised movies I'm too embarrassed to name and eating some of my tiny sandwiches of peppered beef jerky on a baguette that I had packed into my bag.

Time passed slowly--you bet. Finally, we were told the train station was open and they would now be taking us over there. We put our bags in the taxi out front and take us they did on an absurd ride that involved two immediate turns, both to the right, which landed us directly behind the depot building. And there we were at the train station.

On top of everything, when I went out back to have a smoke(first surgeon general's warning put out in 1964(I believe), so no problem to me in the 50's) before the train arrived, I watched a massive freight train pass by and for a full minute there were these double-stacked cars on which in giant lettering read: "DO NOT HUMP." That is absolutely what it said. And sound advice, kids--every action has its consequence.