The Reader Travels

I’ve been on this road trip tour for one year and three months, and now I’m ready to start talking about food travels. The trip started with my maternal grandmother who always shared good food and a warm kitchen. And it’s ending with a couple who have spent their marriage on the road in search of the best in home style cooking.

Two for the Road is Jane and Michael Stern’s memoir all about their Roadfood history and experiences. With chapters like “What Would Jesus Eat?” and “The Cow on the Roof and the Living Pig,” they sum up a few decades of touring towns across the USA, eating good and bad food alike.

In the beginning of the book, I found myself comparing their travels to Steinbeck’s, as they decked out their station wagon, hoping to live in their car to save cash. Their car was no Rocinante (Steinbeck’s name for his campered pick-up truck), and they were at the beginning of their career instead of the end.

Steinbeck also traveled alone, leaving his wife at home, in hopes of seeing the real America, thinking that traveling with someone might add too many variables to the social dynamic. He wanted to observe more than he wanted to be observed. But I think the Sterns managed to see a lot of the “real” USA by being grandly conspicuous, because they not only went to eat, they wanted to dig in and taste the people, how they lived, how they talked, what they believed.

Steinbeck feared that all the different accents across the country were being melted together so everyone was starting to sound the same, but the Sterns embraced the differences. “From the ear-bending patois of Long Island to the sugarcane sweetness of north Georgia, from the honk of Chicago to the musical refinement of New Mexico’s mountain villages, the voices people use to talk about what they eat are as enchanting as the food itself.” 

As I start down this new food journey, I find myself looking for friendly recommendations. If you were thinking about books or movies where food plays an important role, what would be on your list?

When I read Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, I kept thinking, this is a man I would have enjoyed hanging out with. You know how people sometimes ask you to name three famous people living or dead you’d like to meet, I’d probably have him on my list.  I may not have agreed with all his politics, but I had a lot of respect for him, and I got the impression he was a great conversationalist. I just liked him, plain and simple.

Anyway, it made me think of the questions Woody Allen raised in Bullets Over Broadway, about knowing the difference between loving the artist and loving the man.  They’re good questions to ask, especially if you’re somebody like Woody Allen, a great artist with an all-too flawed persona.  Some people can’t get past the man to appreciate the artist, like in the case of Roman Polanski and that thing with the thirteen-year-old girl. Others find themselves disillusioned when the media persona is shattered by reality, the most recent example being with America’s favorite golfer, Tiger Woods.

And though I don’t know any of these people personally, here are some thoughts I have on the artist versus the man:

1. Alice Walker - I think I love the woman more than I love the artist, even if I don’t always agree with her politics. Her art is often a vehicle for her politics, but that’s OK, because I just love her. Can’t explain it.
2. Gary Oldman - Love the artist. I have a strong feeling I might not be able to tolerate the man.
3. Sean Penn - Same thing. Love the artist. Not so sure about the man. 
4. Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon - Wow, did they really break up? Love the artists, could have totally had a couples affair. Again with the politics, though.
5. Natalie Merchant - I used to love the artist, and I was in awe when I saw the 10,000 Maniacs in concert and she stood up there singing acapella. Then I just got too annoyed at all the smug dripping off her and her music, and I just can’t even listen to her anymore.
6. Ann Beattie - Love the writer, but after reading one or two interviews with her, she’s probably not much fun to talk to.
7. Matthew McConaughey - You know, I don’t care much for the artist, but I’d totally hang out with this dude, if only just to smell him and his no-deodorant-wearing self.

My parents were an hour behind us on the road from New Orleans to Dallas, having stopped for a brief visit in Baton Rouge. The sun was bright and we made good time, unlike the trip out, which was snowy and rainy and dark and long.

My mother called me as she neared Dallas, squealing with delight at the snow along the hillsides lining the roads. She and Dad had left a day earlier and hadn’t seen all the snow the rest of us had to drive through. All she saw was the beauty, something she’s appreciating more as she gets older and mortality threatens.

I remember seeing Rain Man at the movie theater when it came out. These two brothers, who don’t know each other, are on a road trip across America, neither one of them seeing the beauty of the landscape along the way. It was something that really struck me about the film, how beautiful the photography was, how awe inspiring, and yet they didn’t see it, being trapped in their own minds.

I have just one final thought.  If you’re going to take a road trip, don’t forget to look out the window.

It seems like all I ever go to New Orleans for is funerals. Last time it was my step-grandmother, and now her husband has followed. Even getting remarried didn’t save him from dying three years after losing his wife of forty years. And his new wife Mary has known her share of loss, saying farewell to yet another man she loved.  People get old and they die. God takes care of the rest.

The Saints are in the Super Bowl today, an exciting and historic event, and Mardi Gras season is in full swing. We head out for the crescent city on Thursday, and the town will be filled with jubilation even if the Colts win the ball game. But we go to mourn.

I have never known a kinder man than Alan Temple Sparkman. He loved so much he had eight different wives in his lifetime. When he married my grandmother and adopted her son, it was the best thing that ever happened to my dad. Pop taught him one of the most valuable lessons in life. He taught him about love, honor and respect, and these are things my dad passed on to his own children.

With so many divorces and marriages, there must be casualties along the way. Broken homes are like sunken ships with the survivors grasping hold of flotsam and swimming for far reaching islands, surviving yet searching for ways back home, often unable to bridge the miles between them.

My father and his younger brother both met and married women from unbroken families and built their own sturdy islands of honored marriage vows and children who stay close beyond the miles. They learned love, honor and respect, and they also learned from a few of their father’s mistakes.

So we will have our own funeral parade, our headlights on, weaving through Mardi Gras traffic, as life and celebration roll on. Farewell honored husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, friend.