The Reader Travels

I admit I’ve yet to read any Hunter S. Thompson, other than the opening pages of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on Amazon.com. But I’ve seen the movie, and one day I will read the whole book. The fact is, I really liked the movie, but I have a hard time rewatching it. There’s something very disconcerting about seeing people so incredibly out of control.

I have a big history of self medication in my family, so I’ve seen out-of-control people, up-close and personal, all my life. And I guess you might say my biggest fear (besides giving birth to conjoined twins) is to be out of control. Everything in moderation, balance in all things, I say.

I have nightmares about driving in cars that are going too fast and swerving erratically. They bounce off other cars, off guard rails, roll up and down hills, twisting and turning like I’m behind the wheel of a dimly lit roller coaster train with no tracks. And here are these guys, wasted out of their minds, driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. It’s just too much to handle.

But if I can just step outside of myself for a moment, I can appreciate the humor and enjoy the ride.

On the subject of drugged out road trips, James Michener’s The Drifters takes us on a trip through Spain and northern Africa in a Volkswagen Microbus with some young hippies who have lost their way. The trip starts with a draft dodger who escapes the US through Canada. He meets some new friends in Torremolinos, Spain, somebody buys a VW bus, and the adventures roll.

I enjoyed reading this book, even with the conservative Michener’s minor judgment upon these silly youths and their dangerous drugs. Of course, he had to have the obligatory bad acid trip scene. Thankfully, the girl slept through most of her bad trip, so that helped.

One fun thing about the book was all the little quotes at the beginning of each chapter, my favorite of which was, “King Kong died for our sins,” though I’m not quite sure what it means, even after reading this poem. I’m also not sure if the quotes added meaning to the chapters, or if they were just a fun diversion like singing camp songs to pass time along the highway.

I had a special yellow library card when I was growing up that only allowed me to check out books from the young adult section. There was a whole world of books in that library, but beyond the kid stuff, I only had access to one lonely bookcase from Judy Blume to Paul Zindell, one long row of self-esteem and anti-drug propaganda bound in hard back.

Ahead of Judy Blume, there was a book by Anonymous called Go Ask Alice, which was turned into a TV movie in 1973. It’s written as the diary of a teen-aged girl who gets all spaced out on drugs. The movie includes the ever-popular “White Rabbit” performed by Jefferson Airplane, you know the one, “One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small, and the ones that Mother gives you don’t do anything at all….”

Anyway, not that I think getting spaced out on drugs is a good idea, but this sort of mind control hogwash is just rude. Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing the movie, purely for its soundtrack and camp value.

So, I’m on my road trip now, and it seemed only appropriate that I actually read Alice in Wonderland, which would have been a much better choice than any of the crap on the young adult propaganda aisle. It’s quite the magical trip, fun for all ages. Just don’t try to read too much into it, especially when you get to the hookah-smoking caterpillar on the edible mushroom. Just enjoy the ride.

I can only remember one big road trip with my family where we actually went west of Texas. I was sixteen, and my father had a convention in Colorado Springs. We took an extra week to visit family in Wyoming, saw Yellowstone National Park and some real live mountains.  We took some trips to San Antonio, Dallas and Austin from our home outside of Galveston. We even took a very memorable trip across the Red River into Oklahoma.

But most of the big trips were eastward bound, getting back to family we’d left behind in New Orleans, heading to Florida to see my uncle outside of Pensacola, and even one trip all the way to Orlando for the tell-tale trip to Disney magic. I-10 was a very familiar road to me, and I would enumerate the towns along the way.

• We’d pick up I-10 in Baytown outside of Houston, never touching the monster city.
• Nacogdoches is next. Signs for Beaumont, Port Arthur and Vidor signal that Louisiana is near. Orange is the last town before we cross the Sabine River.
• Lake Charles is the first big town on the Louisiana side, then Lafayette where I loved the Cajun accents of the men who sold us gas and snacks for the road. I can still smell the boudin.
• Crossing the Atchafalaya is the most beautiful part of the trip, and I would stare out the window in awe the whole way.
• Baton Rouge signals that New Orleans won’t be far now.
• NOLA might have been the destination with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and other extended family. Or we might have just stopped there along the way, or detoured along I-12, waving as we passed Lake Pontchartrain with plans to stop on our return.
• Mississippi and Alabama make up skinny swatches of land at this point in the map. Each state dips a thin toe down into the Gulf of Mexico, fighting for coastal entryways with Louisiana and the Florida pan-handle.
• Mobile, Alabama, is a signal that we’re almost to Florida, but it has charms all its own. It’s the closest we’ve been to the sea since we entered the first I-10 on-ramp in Texas, with Mobile Bay connecting us to the Gulf. It feels like we’re driving right into her as we enter the tunnel.
• My uncle is there on the other side, at Eglin AFB near Pensacola, along with my cousins. We stay for a while, but the road calls us back, back to count the mile markers in the opposite direction.

Larry McMurtry compares the Interstates to rivers, but I’m seeing I-10 as some other kind of waterway, an umbilical cord connecting a child to its motherland.