The Reader Travels

One of my dear friends visited over the last few days, on a road trip of her own. It’s not a very long trip from Austin, Texas, to Oklahoma City, but her journey seemed a bit like Dorothy’s travels in The Wizard of Oz. I-35 is her yellow brick road, and Dallas her Emerald City.

Seattle may be nick-named the Emerald City, but I always thought of Dallas that way. It’s all about appearances, everything sparkling clean on the surface. And there’s even a big emerald green building beside the all-seeing orb of Reunion Tower. There’s glamor and excitement, but at the heart, an illusion.

All of her personal belongings were packed into her Lexus, a closetful of clothes lining the back seat of the car. And she had to go through Dallas to get home to her mom and sister and a tiny niece. I can’t tell which of us was scarecrow or tin man or lion on Friday night, but there were three of us with her, strays picked up along the road, each of us searching for something more, both inside and outside of us.

On Saturday morning, she clicked her heels three times and was gone from us. But before going home, she had one more stop, one more chance to dream the dream of something better. In a northern suburb of Dallas, she had a girlfriend there, a beautiful blond with her husband, a toddler and another baby on the way, the good witch Glenda, there to show her all that’s possible.

Now that you’ve seen what’s out there, dear Dorothy, it’s time to make the most of home. After all, there’s nothing quite like it.

When I was in college in Houston, I drove a car that my dad had treated well and handed down to my wild younger sister who handed it down to me when she bought her own vehicle. Now, if I had gotten it straight from Dad, that would have been one thing. But inheriting the four-door Toyota Corolla Tercel from my beach-dwelling, party-hopping sibling was another thing altogether.

She had a bumper sticker that said, “A clean car is the sign of a sick mind.” The cassette player had long since died, a victim of sand from East Beach in Galveston and a heavy layer of Hawaiian Tropic deep tanning oil. And of course, the car was never the same after she wrecked it on the way to visit me in my dorm room freshman year.

So when I inherited the car, I had to make the most of it. I lived on the far east side of Houston, with my roommate whose family was from Louisiana and stayed as close to the Sabine River as they could and still be in the city. My job was 10 miles west, and my school was 10 more. The boyfriend didn’t have a car or a phone, and he lived as far north as you could get and still be in Houston city limits. This was fine, I put a lot of miles on the car during those years, and the boyfriend did some parking lot repairs to keep me rolling.

The last year was the worst, though. I moved way out to the west side; my job was still on the east side; school still downtown, and the boyfriend moved to Galveston County. But the real problem was that the car had started shaking violently at speeds over 45 mph, and me with no money to fix it.

I found roads I never knew existed to keep me off the freeway, but when I drove toward Galveston down I-45, I just stayed in the right-hand lane and waved as people passed. I just have to be thankful I lived in Houston. I’d have never gotten away with it in the Big D. Of course, I could have taken the bus.

Horatio Nelson Jackson’s trek across the United States was a very costly venture, what with all the high-priced car parts and repairs, and with one or two price-gouging gasoline vendors who knew what Jackson would pay for his car’s life blood. But somewhere in the middle of the country, Jackson had to invest a little money in his mental health. What better way to keep up your spirits during trying times than to get a pet?

Maybe Jackson knew how that touch could heal the soul, or maybe he just needed a warm body to sleep next to as he longed for his wife so many miles away. Or perhaps it was the goofy look on that dog’s face that always made him look like he was smiling, and Jackson just wanted to smile right back.

I’m working on stress management in 2009, and one of the things I’ve decided to do is pet my dog more. It’s a symbiotic relationship, really - I stop to relax, and she gets a much coveted belly rub or ear scratching. It’s working out pretty well for both of us.

Wow, I really do sound like a dog mommy. Next thing you know I’ll start wearing sweatshirts with her picture on them.

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Side note: As I started writing, thinking about dogs in cars, I turned on the song “Woyaho” on Edie Brickell’s Ghost Of A Dog album, which starts off, “Red dog riding in the back of a pickup truck. Free on the freeway.” But I started to listen to the album again, and I realized that all of the references to dogs in the album seem to be about slightly neglected pets and not the cherished comfort bringers on a long hard road. So I’ll leave that discussion for another time.

So, even though Kerouac didn’t have the Interstates to drive on, he at least had a series of US and state highways to get him where he was going. Even when he was touring Mexico, there were well defined motor ways. And before Kerouac took his journeys, my Oklahoma neighbors to the north still had Route 66 to take them out of the dust bowl.

But in 1903, they didn’t have any of that. AND the cars were still pretty crappy. Leave it to Ken Burns to give us the very first cross-country road trip, which turned into the first cross-country automobile race. Kerouac and his buddies were all worried about having gas money to get them to the other side, taking money from hitchhikers and coasting the downhill mountain roads. But they had nothing on Horatio Nelson Jackson.

Check out Horatio’s Drive. It was a helluva trip.