Category Archives: Road trips

From Ohio to St. Louis

The alarm went off at six. Indiana is outside the train windows. Sun just touching the fields outside the window, a play of gold light on green shoots. We’re in flat country now.

I got to the dining car right when it opened at 6:30. Two Amish couples in plain dress came in just after I did. I was seated with a long-haul trucker, a woman who didn’t say much at all, and a retired man. The retired man asked the trucker to pass the sugar, then started to put sugar on his Frosted Flakes.

“You sure you want to do that?” said the trucker. “Those already got plenty of sugar on em.”

“Oh, yes.” The retired man smiled. “I’d put more on if I was at home. It’s just habit by now.”

When the trucker got off at Elkhart, the retired man told me about his hobby: visiting every major league ball park in North America. “I was just in Boston, but I couldn’t get seats at Fenway Park.”

“No,” I told him, “they sell out just about every game. You want decent seats, you have to buy them in March.”

He’s visited twenty parks so far. I asked him which he thought were the best.

“San Francisco and Toronto.” What about Baltimore, which everyone raves about? “Oh, that’s a good one too.” He was able to describe the park in satisfying detail: the old B&O warehouse that was integrated into the park; the plaques set into the ground showing where home run balls hit.

“The worst was Tampa Bay. It’s a domed stadium. The dome doesn’t open, though. And it’s so low that sometimes a pop fly will go ‘thunk’ off the ceiling. When you hear the crack of the bat, you don’t want to hear ‘thunk.’ ‘Crack, thunk.'”

On one of his first trips, to Cincinnati, he shared a taxi from the airport with someone. It turned out this other fellow was also visiting all the major league ball parks; he had two left: Cincinnati, and then Toronto. “I asked him how long it took him to do it, and he said five years. But I didn’t want to hear that. I don’t have five years.”

On this trip, he’s going to see Milwaukee, and the Chicago White Sox. But he couldn’t get a ticket to see the Cubs.

*****

A four hour layover in Chicago. I check my pack and my uke, and head out onto the streets of Chicago.

Across the Chicago River, and it starts to sink in: buildings, people, vitality of the streets. The people are the best part: I like watching the people hurrying by — in Chicago, they manage to hurry while still maintaining that relaxed Midwestern attitude; and everyone is so much more polite than in New England.

I walk to the Art Institute. It’s worth twelve bucks just to see Georgia O’Keefe’s huge painting Sky above the Clouds IV. I look at a few other familiar art works, see a few fine paintings by Ren Yi, a Chinese painter whom I am not familiar with, and head out.

Down Michigan Avenue to the Fine Arts Building. The elevator operator is sitting on his stool looking out into the lobby. “Performer’s?” he asks. “Yup, 904,” I say. He nods, and closes the outer door, but doesn’t bother with the inner door. We stop with the wood deck of the elevator just a few inches above the floor. He leans forward, opens the door, and lets me out. I buy some Renaissance-era sheet music, and decide to walk back down to the lobby. I pass three architect’s offices, three art galleries, a psychotherapist’s office; on one floor I can hear a violinist practicing; I pass offices with obscure titles on the doors, pass a piano store, through an open gate that says “Do Not Open Alarm Will Sound” (but the alarm isn’t sounding), the steps are now marble, down another flight and out.

Last stop: Prairie Avenue Bookshop, where I buy some books including one on the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson on Frank Lloyd Wright’s design of Unity Temple.

It’s time to head back to Union Station. I walk slowly, admiring the city.

*****

On the train from Chicago to St. Louis, I wound up sitting next to Rob. Rob lives in Tewksbury, was heading to Arkansas to see some friends. He asked me where I’ was going, and to save lengthy explanations I said, “To a conference in St. Louis.” The young woman across the aisle leaned over and asked me, “GA? That’s where I’m going, too.” Her name was Heather, she was from Nashua, New Hampshire, and the three of us wound up talking for the rest of the six hour ride.

As night was beginning to fall, we came around a bend. “There it is,” I said, and pointed out Rob’s window. The Gateway Arch was still visible against the pale blue-green sky, beautiful against the handful of skyscrapers that make up downtown St. Louis. “Wow,” said Rob. “It looks like a good place to visit. You see a place like this and you think, I’m going to come back here someday. but you never know if you’re going to see it again.”

Aboard Amtrak 449/49

Train no. 449: a coach class car, a cafe car with tables and bench seats, a business class car, and that’s all.

We sit just out of Back Bay station waiting for a signal. The conductor announces there will be 40 mph speed limit after one o’clock; CSX owns the track and has this speed restriction when temperatures go up over 90.

Winding in among the hills of central mass, we follow the courses of streams and rivers. Sometimes there’s a highway too, but seems like there’s almost always a river or stream nearby. The rivers are not the rivers I grew up on: these are swift and shallow, with rocky bottoms, class one and two rapids at least; a few flat millponds behind dams; not the flatwater, navigable rivers I learned to canoe.

In some tight (but not very deep) valleys, we pass flat ground beside the river with agricultural fields: corn not quite up to your knee; hay fields with bales of hay; markers of the season.

The man who was talking on his cell phone about “alternative radio” gets off at Springfield. quite a few more people get on, and now the train is nearly full.

We get into the Berkshires. The hills get higher and steeper; they stand out against the sky now. Going through one rock cut, the small wild pink rhododendrons in full bloom cling to the top of the rock face right where the soil starts. Some trees are not yet in full leaf. The streams keep getting smaller until what we’re following is nothing more than a brook flowing back the way we’ve come.

At the high point in the road, we pass along the side of an extensive swamp. Newly dead trees mark where beavers have recently come; then sure enough the beaver lodge, then their long dam. Blue flags blooming in clumps in the midst of the swamp. Red-wing blackbirds perced on cattails about to bloom. The beginnings of a stream winding convolutedly through the marsh. The marsh passes out of view. We go through a village, then the stream returns, bigger now, and flowing in our direction.

A line of blue mountains glimpsed through the trees, barely visible. Now I can see them over the buildings, over a lumberyard, over houses spread down the slope beside the tracks. Then trees hide that blue line of mountains.

The pittsfield station has been rebuilt since I last rode through here, in winter of 2003. Now there is what looks like a big parking garage labeled “Joseph Scelsi Intermodal Transportation Center.” It’s ugly.

After Pittsfield, pockets of decayed industrial landscape, woodlands, a shopping strip, more woods, glimpse of a big house, more woods. Always hills around us. The sky gets dark, darker, wind bending over trees (we whiz through a tunnel), the sky even darker, almost as if it’s night out, no rain yet, then I see dimples in a stream (the stream looks black in the gloom), a trip of bright sky for a moment between the lowering clouds and a line of dark hills, then all is dark. Drops on the window, steady rain now, dark enough that I can watch the computer monitor of the person sitting in front of me reflected in the window (he’s playing a video game). A strip of lightning. Thunder. Behind me the young man says: “Hey babe, you dropped out of service… yeah… there’s a big storm overhead…can you hear me?… hello?… ok. I’m about to switch trains in Albany, I’ll call you… I – I love you.”

Another hour to Albany, where we transfer onto train number 49, the Lakeshore Limited out of New York. The hills get smaller and smaller as we head west.

At the dump

Work has been keeping me a little too busy, but I finally have time to describe the trip to the Nantucket dump….

It was Alyzza’s idea to go to the dump on Nantucket Island. “It’s the best dump in the world,” she said.

On Friday, two members of our youth group, Danielle and Jarrod, met Emma and me at the church; Alyzza was going to meet us on Nantucket, where she was playing in a lacrosse game with her school. We left New Bedford at 3:18, leaving, we thought, plenty of time to drive out Cape Cod and get to the ferry terminal in Hyannis. But we got lost, and the wrong turns became nightmarish. Finally we were there with only minutes to spare; Emma dropped us off so I could buy the tickets; one last late couple came after us, delaying the ferry just long enough; Emma had to run the last hundred yards. The ferry left at 4:46, a minute late.

Dani and Jarrod had never taken the ferry over to Nantucket. Jarrod said, “I’m going to stay on deck the whole time, I’m not going to waste the trip sitting inside.” We followed his lead, and all stood out in the sun and the cold wind watching Cape Cod recede and Nantucket loom closer in the haze. At last we were in the harbor, rounding Brant Point. I pointed out the gold-topped steeple of the Unitarian Universalist church where we would be spending the night.

We met the Nantucket church’s youth group, and played some games including “Evolution,” one of our youth group’s favorite games. I said playing “Evolution” was a religious matter, because it proves that we can talk about evolution in our church. (If you want to know how to play the game, instructions are here.) We ate dinner together, we all got along, and found we had plenty to talk about.

Saturday morning was the big day: the trip to Nantucket’s dump. Most of the Nantucket youth had to leave, either to go to work or for other obligations. But Alex, Jessie, and Lynnie joined us in our trek to the dump, while Sally, one of the Nantucket adult advisors, kindly drove us all.

To get to the dump, you head down Madaket Road. You can see the mound of the landfill from a ways down the road; it’s now the highest point on the island, higher even than Altar Rock. You turn in, stopping where the bike path crosses the entry road, and then you can see a number of buildings. The recycling shed is first, with doors where you can throw in every conceivable recyclable item. Trash disposal is a serious problem on the island — it’s too expensive to ship garbage off island, and the landfill is getting bigger every day — so there are strict laws that everything possible must be recycled. A buzz of activity surrounded the recycling shed: cars and light trucks pulling up, people going back and forth with bags and boxes. Sally said she had just been to the dump with a bag of bottles and glass, and the bag had broken, and it had been quite something to clean up.

If you drive past the recycling shed to get to the landfill’s face, but we didn’t go there. Instead, we went to the left of the recycling to our true goal: the “Take It or Leave It” shack. It’s a building about thirty feet square, with some shelves around the edges and a big central table. Two rather disreputable hippy-types sat outside: scruffy facial hair and disreputable clothes that had once been expensive. Sally said, “You’re not supposed to linger but people do.” The two hippy-types waited for people to bring fresh new items into the shack, and pounced upon the good things and put them in a truck with Vermont plates. Sally said, “There’s a couple of good yard sales today. They’ll close at eleven so they can leave off whatever’s left over before the dump closes at noon.” The hippy-types were obviously waiting for something just like that.

We went in the shack. The central table was filled with clothes; true to gender stereotypes, some of the girls went for the table, while Jarrod, Emma, and I explored the shelves. The books were pretty good: along with the usual Reader’s Digest versions of everything, I saw Tolstoy, Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air,, and, strangely, Canadian author Thomas Raddall’s Roger Sudden. I grabbed the Raddall book.

The big items were left outside. Sally found a great folding screen, cloth stretched over a wood frame; and a hanging lamp; and one or two other things. She had to take it all home and come back, because we could not have fit all eight of us and her treasures in the minivan.

After a while, we had all picked everything over pretty well. We stood in a circle talking, waiting for Sally to return. Everyone showed what he or she had found. Alyzza had a pretty good sport coat and a shirt. Emma found a Nancy Drew book for Sally (who loves Nancy Drew). Jarrod had half a dozen Steven King books. He sat down in a wicker chair that someone had just dropped off and started to read. The rest of us stood around and watched a pair of Barn Swallows swoop in and out of the “Take It or Leave It” shack. The sun started to come out. You could smell the compost from the big windrows out behind the equipment shed. You could smell the ripe garbage from the open face of the landfill. Gulls circled overhead, content with life, for a gull loves nothing better than a good open dump.

At last Sally came back. The big part of our adventure was over. We spent the rest of the eating lunch (at the resturant where Janine, one of the Nantucket youth, works) and walking out to Brant Point to see the little lighthouse there. Jessie found a wing from a dead bird. “My mother works at the Maria Mitchell Association,” she said, “where she stuffs birds for scientific specimens. She’s going to teach me how this summer.” Which sounded to me like a great way to spend a summer. Jessie and I looked at the bird wing — only bones and skin and feathers were left — and Jessie pointed out the radius and humerus.

The four of them came down to the pier to see us off. We waved to them from high up on the ferry deck. “Come back soon!” they shouted up to us. Then we were out in the harbor, and rounding Brant Point. I threw a penny at the end of the jetty, because our mother said to us that that’s what you’re supposed to do when you leave Nantucket. Jarrod and I stood on the deck, taking turns looking at Common Loons and Harbor Seals through my binoculars. “This was a great trip,” said Jarrod, who is often vaguely cynical. Who would have thought a field trip to a dump could be so much fun?

Winter vista

Walked across to Fairhaven this afternoon. High thin clouds had already covered the sky; the harbor and the sky were both gray. I was hoping to see sea ducks on the harbor, but aside from a few Buffleheads I saw few waterbirds. On the way back from Fairhaven, I stopped at the north end of Pope’s Island, stood for a while on the expanse of asphalt parking lot between Fairhaven Hardware and Dunkin Donuts. Through the binoculars I could see a raft of sea ducks far up in the harbor, black-and-white specks bobbing in the water almost to Interstate 195. I moved the binoculars to the old brick Fairhaven Mills building, nearly a hundred years old. Home Depot wants to bulldoze it and erect another big-box retail store that will last maybe twenty-five years before it has to be demolished. Carol and I snuck up to the top floor of the mill one afternoon last month, imagining what it would be like to have an office, or a store, or an apartment in that big, vast space; the tall windows with their views of the Acushnet River and the harbor, the skylights giving the space an open roomy feeling. The New Bedford City Council quickly voted to give Home Depot the permit to destroy; they have witnessed how the mallification of North Dartmouth sucked the life out of downtown New Bedford, and they must have thought, if we’re going to suck the life out of the downtown at least we can keep the tax dollars in the city. I moved the binoculars down the the wetlands sandwiched between the interstate and the harbor. With the binoculars, I could see that Phragmites, or Common Reeds, dominated the wetlands; a non-native species that offers little to the rest of the ecosystem while pushing out native flora and fauna; thus degrading the overall ecosystem. The dull tan stand of reeds offered little contrast to the dreary gray waters of the harbor. On late December days like this it’s hard to feel much hope. No leaves on the trees to soften the cityscape; no falling snow to gently cover the worst of the city’s ugliness; just dreary gray sky, dreary gray water, no sea ducks to watch diving, the only people in sight stay mostly hidden inside their cars, the only sound the rush of traffic on U.S. Route 6 behind me. Whatever hopelessness I feel is probably just a cold coming on, or a reaction to the short, dark days. These short days wear on you, we have a long way to go before spring comes, but at least by this time of year the days can only get longer. Then five Common Mergansers swam out of their hiding place among the docks of the deserted marina to my left, swimming away from me, warily looking back to see what I would do; the dull reddish heads of the females appearing bright against the grayness of the day. When they got a little farther out, they began to dive, staying under for long periods of time as they hunted for food, or perhaps dived just for the sheer joy of it. I stood watching them for a while until the damp cold sunk in. I walked briskly towards home. By the time I got there, I was warm and far more cheerful.

Workshop

Saltwater UU Church, Des Moines, Washington

Josephine and I finished leading the workshop at 12:30 today. We had fourteen people attending the youth advisor training this weekend. Now sometimes you get people at these workshops who want to work with youth for (ahem) the wrong reasons, but at this workshop everyone had all the right motivations. We had responsible lay leaders committed to spending time with young people, because they know that young people really benefit from the support of a religious community (and studies do show that youth who have the support of a congregation are much less likely to engage in risky behaviors). You couldn’t do better than spend a weekend with responsible people who are committed to doing ministry with youth.

I did have one disappointment about this weekend’s workshop, though. Josephine promised that she would teach us all how to play a silly bonding game called “Pass the Chicken.” But we ran out of time, and never got to play. I was crushed, absolutely crushed I tell you.

Pacific Rim city

Des Moines, Washington (just south of Seattle)

The woman who checked me in to the motel last night was not a native speaker of English. The hotel, right next to the Midway Casino and Restaurant, stands on a little pocket of reservation; the woman who checked me in was a Native American.

Seattle/Tacoma ariport has electronic signs giving information in some East Asian language (Japanese?).

It’s fall, so you see the occasional tree with bright red or yellow leaves: sweet gum, red maple, sugar maple, ash. But the most common trees are dark firs, or trees that drop big brown leaves without any show.

Weather today: Clouds. Clouds and mist. Sunny and warm. Clouds. Partly sunny. Clouds.

A different aesthetic from the East Coast: –no hulks of old brick industrial buildings; –trees everywhere; –bright colored accents on houses; –balconies even on cheap apartments and condos; –plenty of trees in the trailer parks. Even the ugly buildings seem to fit the landscape. A differnt landscape from New England: the land drops dramatically in big steps and swoops down to Puget Sound, which glows silver gray under the broad cloudy sky.

It’s a world away from the south coast of Massachusetts.

Flight 15

On Alaska Airlines flight #15, seat 30D, Oct. 6, 2005

“This is the flight deck, giving you an update on our progress. We’re just leaving North Dakota air space, heading into Montana. We’re still holding to our original estimate of arriving at the gate about ten minutes after nine o’clock.”

A night flight, the cabin lights are off, but I’m too wide awake to doze. The light over my seat doesn’t work, so I can’t fall back on reading. The couple to my right are in and out of sleep. The woman across the aisle and just in front of me has been typing constantly on her laptop since they brought dinner around. Dinner was hot sandwiches and apple slices encased in plastic. The girl, maybe ten years old, in the middle seat right in front of me is watching “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” on a portable DVD player. Two young women across the aisle are talking, but I find I can’t eavesdrop due to the jet noise:

“It’s like I was just [drowned out]…” “…so I was thinking [drowned out]…” “…I was like[drowned out]….”

The anesthetizing effect of a good murder mystery would help the boredom. Maybe I’ll try to doze, out of boredom.

(Later)

Bits of a conversation from the woman with the midwestern accent and the man behind me:

“It’s a long flight, isn’t it?” “Yeah. Yeah, it is.” “Five and a half hours.” “You don’t think it’s that long, but it is.”

“Can I get out? –when you get a chance, it doesn’t have to be now.” This to the woman was has been typing constantly on her laptop, and she gets up to let the man in the middle seat get out. She’s not typing now, though, she’s playing a video game. “Ah, that’s important work you’re doing.” The woman with the laptop laughs, and the man continues, “I’m gonna stretch my back, it doesn’t do well in these –ahh!” as he stands up and stretches. He rocks back and forth and stands in the aisle.

I sit and stare in front of me. Too wide awake to doze again. I let my mind drift.

“We’re supposed to get in just after nine so it’s going to be,–” the woman with the laptop looks at her watch, “–another hour and twenty minutes.” This in response to the woman on her far left, sitting in the window seat. The man stretching his back is still standing in the aisle, rocking.

I let my mind drift.

Saturday

Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

I was hanging out last night with some people from a music conference who were doing a little impromptu singing. One of them wanted to sing “Ode to Billie Joe,” originally recorded by Bobby Gentry, but no one could quite remember the lyrics. So they turned to the laptop that one of them had brought and did a quick search of the Web to find the lyrics….

It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out choppin’ cotton and my brother was balin’ hay
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat
And Mama hollered out the back door “y’all remember to wipe your feet”
And then she said “I got some news this mornin’ from Choctaw Ridge”
“Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge”

One of the musicians later said how pleased he was to be able to sit around and play music that was not electronic. And none of the instruments, none of the voices, was electronically altered in any way. But I’m in a postmodern, deconstructionist mood today, and very interested in how finding song lyrics on the Web alters the reality of folksinging.

Which makes me think about something else. In the next room over from where I’m sitting, there’s a workshop going on. Although I can’t hear much, I can tell from the rhythms and tones of the voices, by how many people get to speak at once, by the occasional bursts of polite laughter, that this workshop is using techniques of group process that grew out of the ferment of 1970’s pedagogy and group work — the human potential movement, second wave feminist group process, and so on. They are using, in fact, the same techniques I typically use when I lead small groups.

But in my present deconstructionist mood, I’m questioning whether those techniques still match the reality of our lives (almost definitely not). And wondering whether we can reconstruct new ways of teaching and learning that move beyond the tight limitations that I have begun to see in those old group process techniques. And thinking that teaching and learning are even more limited than I had ever thought.

Hey, just call me a postmodern kind of guy.

Friday

Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

I’m spending a couple of days at Ferry Beach Conference Center. I was supposed to attend a small church conference, but it was canceled at the last minute. I decided to come up here anyway and spend a couple of days doing a sort of study-retreat.

I left Concord at about 4 p.m., after having lunch and a long talk with a good friend. Traffic was heavy and slow on Interstate 495 headed north, and I didn’t arrive at Ferry Beach until 6:30 p.m. First stop was Huot’s, a seafood restaurant in the village of Camp Ellis. At their takeout window, I got fried clams, French fries, and cole slaw, and started the ten-minute walk back to the conference center. But I couldn’t wait to start in on the clams, and began eating them out of the bag as I walked.

“Is there going to be any left the time you get home?” said a man sitting on the wide front porch of one of the summer rentals. He had a good-natured grin on his face.

“No, I don’t think so,” I said. He just laughed.

Today, I’ve been working my way through Faith without Certainty: Liberal Theology for the 21st Century by Paul Rasor. I skimmed some of it back in June when I bought it, but now I’m sitting down and reading it straight through. I sat at the picnic table at my campsite on this perfect summer day, the sun glinting down through the trees, a chipmunk running back and forth between some trees, a few late summer birds calling idly every now and again.

And Paul writes clear prose that’s almost entirely free of the obfuscatory, precious academic jargon that’s endemic in theological circles. I have been particularly enjoying the way Paul clarifies the postmodern challenges to liberal theology.

It’s too bad the small church conference was canceled, but I have to say this is the perfect setting to catch up on my theology reading.