Re-reading Steinbeck's Travels with Charley lately has me thinking about 1/48/50 from a writer's point of view. I will, of course, write about this trip when it happens. Certainly I plan to keep a travelogue on this page as I go, but afterward, I hope to write about it in a more indulgent voice, something similar to Road Trip 2011. Whether the resulting manuscript ever sees the light of day in a publishing sense will remain to be seen, but won't really affect the decision to do it. I will write about it, even if nobody ever reads what I've written.
The 'big road trip' I've been fantasizing about since I was thirteen has taken many forms over the years, but it's always remained mostly an abstraction: brought sharply into focus in my mind in certain moments of restlessness or desire, but rarely allowed to become more than a fleeting thought, all too easily extinguished by one of the many sobering realities that prowl the everyday world.
Now though, approaching the one-year anniversary of this blog, essentially the one-year anniversary of establishing '1/48/50' as a thing - a specific goal - I've begun to think about what that goal will entail. In other words, what do I expect to happen on this trip?
What will I have to write about when it's over?
Naturally there are some obvious answers, a few things that any good extended road trip can't help but be.
First and foremost, 1/48/50 will be about seeing new places. There is no small amount of locations in this country worthy of a look, especially out west. There are national parks to be taken in, ghost towns galore to seek out, small town main streets to walk up and down, city skylines to skim the surface of, plenty of bodies of water, a veritable potpourri of world's tallest, shortest, biggest, smallest, highest and deepest dotting the landscape...not to mention endless varieties of local festivals celebrating everything from watermelons to blueberries to apples, pumpkins to honeybees to hydrangeas to BBQ.
I'm actually really looking forward to seeking out festivals (another good reason to go in summer, when they abound); I love the thought of an otherwise garden variety community rallying behind one specific thing that makes it unique and turning that thing into a couple days' event.
There are also certain points along my planned route (as it stands right now...) that may be of interest only to me: historical spots I might want to check out, birth places of writers I've admired, maybe towns where something I like - some product I use or enjoy - was invented, and/or manufactured. Seriously, the headquarters of a certain type of coffee, or a microbrewery where a really good beer is made, or a certain candle gets dipped, is worth going out of my way to check out. Bridges are always cool; I'd also go out of my way to drive over one (as random as that sounds), and I'm a huge fan of water towers, though not sure why.
The point is, no doubt I will easily find somewhere to go and something to do on 1/48/50. But all of it will be a subtext to the trip, rather than the main text. The main text, a burgeoning narrative, will spell out on a personal level; I have a feeling I will be in search of something on this journey, or perhaps in pursuit of something.
In the fall of 1960, Steinbeck was 'In Search of America', but that won't be the case with me. I don't feel disconnected from my home country, quite the opposite in fact. And to be honest, America has been 'found' time and time again. Everyone since Steinbeck has been writing about it. It's an old, horse-beaten concept. I'm sure there will be things I observe that are uniquely, fascinatingly, movingly American, but probably nothing that somebody else hasn't already written about.
Likewise, I don't think I'll be spending a lot of time searching for myself on this trip. Part of its allure is being the right age, and the right frame of mind, to go on it. I know who I am at this point in my life, in a way I didn't when I was 20, and I think that will make for a much more satisfying journey. In general, I've always had a pretty healthy sense of self, never considered any part of my personality, my identity, to be missing.
That is, with one notable exception:
If there is any part of me I would hope to work on, improve or 'discover' over the course of the 14,000 miles and five months I plan to travel, it will be the manner with which I engage people I meet along the way. This would seem to run the opposite of 'living nebulously', but I don't want to merely drive around and look at monuments; I want to talk to people, strike up some personal - if temporary - friendships with strangers.
Truth is, I've never been too skilled at that.
Because I've always been okay with myself, my own company, I've never been especially sociable with people I don't know. I'm never unfriendly, exactly (unless I'm in pissy mood), never rude, but the polite smile I proffer has always been an unequivocal sign that in the end, like a lot of people, I just want to be left the hell alone. I do not want to make small talk.
Unfortunately, that same smile usually gets read by the well-meaning but completely filter-less John Candy types of the world as a green light to pop open a fresh can (of small talk), and this phenomenon (and with some, it really is a phenomenon) has always made me bristle.
I can't say why. The easy answer would be that 'people' - that is, strangers - are roundly annoying, and contrary to movies like Planes, Trains and Automobiles, or television shows like Cheers, there isn't really anything amusing or charming about someone like Del Griffith, or Cliff Clavin. Too often, people like that do not want to have a conversation; too often, they don't give a shit what you have to say, are interested solely in hearing themselves talk. This is not a lovable quirk, as far as I'm concerned, it is a bonafide personality flaw, and not only is it not funny, it's insulting, this lack of acknowledgment that my time is precious too.
But I have shied away from organically grown conversations with strangers too, conversations that arose from a shared interest or mutual benefit. Indeed, I have avoided feeling obliged to say something to someone I don't know, needlessly clamming up at the slightest overture on their part, as though it were some kind of assault. I have avoided check-out lanes in supermarkets if they are manned by a cashier I know to be a talker...I have even avoided getting to know extended family, not for any specific reason, certainly nothing to do with them, just my own weird compunction letting friendliness risk opening the floodgate to commitment.
I'm not meaning to paint myself as an anti-social creep; I'm not the guy standing on his porch in a stinking bathrobe, clutching his mangy cat and screaming at the neighbor kids to get off his lawn...I just don't want to risk becoming that in my later years, set in my ways, actively practicing evasion as a (needless) protective measure and alienating myself into oblivion. I've already drifted away from more friends than I thought I would, or probably should have. It was easy to do (without realizing it) when I was younger. I've always fancied myself a loner; but the older one gets, the less healthy that is, and at some point, it's just not cute anymore. We humans are social animals; we're not meant to be alone entirely. Sometimes, maybe, it's good to be alone, and important to know how to handle it in case you have to be...but 'alone' as a lifestyle? Hell no. That, more than anything, is what I learned in my first forty years.
Moreover (and more to the point of 1/48/50), I wonder what I have missed out on - denied myself - by avoiding potential friendships with strangers. I'm a writer, after all, and though I've always nurtured a theory that the best writers aren't reclusive, but are instead outgoing, Type A personalities, I have certainly not lived by that credo absolute. Sometimes not at all.
A good writer must always be willing to listen, ready to engage, never too quick to draw a conclusion.
A good writer knows that without human interaction, without dialogue, there really isn't anything to write about.
Maybe on 1/48/50, I will be in search of a new me - a worthy stage presence for the third act.
