Part One: Route 66, June 2008


This is only a little report floated
into the slow current so the wind will know
which way to come if it wants to find me.

--William Stafford


[I don’t know how other writers do tours; this is how I do it.]

#

Mother’s Day: flood. Dead sump pump.
Rain filled the basement.
Plumber after plumber, hundreds
of wasted dollars. Water.
Water poured from the house for days,
flooded sidewalks and street.
Finally, the plumber discovered we had a
spring or artesian well surfacing
under our basement—a small miracle
of unwanted water. “If you drilled thru the floor
and put in a drinking fountain,
you’d have free water forever!”
The earth,
trying to give me a gift.

Just like reading and writing.

#

Cinderella took her mom to Alaska on a cruise ship.
I didn’t go—have to watch the kids,
have to write next draft of my novel.
I’m inside my own Alaska of words: glaciers,
fjords, roving bands of brown bears
and bald eagles
of words.
I’d rather
be on a boat.

#

Van is refitted & ready
for 12,000 miles.
At $4.95 a gallon.
I must be crazy.
Still,
how much is it worth
to take the fam once more
into roadside America?
How much to smell sweetgrass,
watch buffalo,
buy rubber spiders
and jackalopes?
To see. See. See again
the muffler giants, the redwoods,
the wind-storms, the Great Stony Mtns,
the sea, the
desert/rancho/farm/valley
red-rock
canyon
oceanice
America?
How much?

#

Slow days.
Draft of INTO THE BEAUTIFUL NORTH done.
Luis Mandoki’s script for HUMMINGBIRD’S DAUGHTER
is excellent—I like to think of it as John Ford
with miracles and Mexicans.
Peter Orner & Dave Eggers have unleashed
UNDERGROUND AMERICA (w/ my intro)
to immigration consternation.
I did a call in show on KQED w/ those boys—
it was a delight! I got to talk, and callers called
and yelled at Eggers! Hoo-hah!
I love it.

Rain. Heat. Rain.
Soon, we board the Little Brown Van
& face into the
tornadic prairies
& sail.

#

Friday. Storms followed by storms.
Wind. Heat boiling up
more storms.
Oil jumps $7 overnight, radio panic-sellers
crow about apocalypse. Dollar falls. Dow
Jones dives. Road ahead
is harsh: I-90, tornadoes & floods;
I-80, floods & tornadoes; I-70, tornadoes &
floods on their way.

Trouble on the highways.
Danger on the land.

#

Father’s Day:
James Brown is telling the world:
“Papa don’t take no mess!”
I watch flood reports, read haiku.
Chayo brings me a book she made
of my favorite animals.
She started the day by asking me, “Dad,
what animals are you in the mood for
today?”

turtle
hummingbird
praying mantis
armadillo

#

[poem]

Paw-Paw’s Summer Vacation

Before the journey
Dead old man’s hat
On the dashboard

Died lonesome,
Abandoned,
We take his ghost
To America.

#

The fiercest
territory of all
--daily life.

--John Brandi

#

SUNDAY / JUNE 15

Flood, floods: freeways west
are riots of ruin & wind, drowning cities
& farms. We consult computer maps
like the skippers on Deadliest
Catch, charting
the churning prairie sea.

& see
we need to flee
the dull I-80, I-70 corridors & plunge
down into duende-land, down funky/holy
ol’ Route 66! Suddenly
I am excited
to go. Suddenly,
I am not bored or cranky:
I’m getting out the scissors, the glue stick, the
guide books &
rubber stamps.

Suddenly, Dullsvile
becomes Coolville.
So let’s get gone.

#

JUNE 16 / LAUNCH

Only one hour late.
Hard to get up, though.
Chayo processed the experience
by simply refusing.
Big kids trying to act excited.
Basically asleep.

Good omen:
as we packed the van w/ our last things,
the neighborhood wild turkey
supervised the activities from his paranoiac
hiding place at the end of the van, peering
around the bumper and suggesting
ideas to each of us as we came to the door.

Last night,
¾ of a tank of gas:
$75.

For the first time on record,
I surrender the helm to Captain
Cinderella, let her maneuver us out of port/
out of town. Woman Power!
It’s the Hillary Clinton
Memorial Drive.

I just want to look
& write.

Wearing my red Independent Mind cap.

Feeling independent, it’s true.
Don’t know about the mind part—
too early to know if I have one.

A pause for our traditional launch-day
health food breakfast
from McDonald’s drive-thru.

#

Sad fact:
After cleaning up 3 cars,
the kids have decreed
a new family law:
Daddy
can never have
Corn Nuts
again.

#

Hey, kids! We’re
seeing America!
OK, it’s only south Naperville, but
when you come from nowhere
everywhere
is somewhere
& endlessly
fresh.

Oceanic plains.
Joy of green.
Deeper than water.
So far, so far.

44 miles: first dead deer.

#

This year, life has changed.
Megan is The Photographer, w/ her fancy camera,
making art out every window.
Eric is the Musician, jumping out at rest stops
to drum maniacally on his practice pad.
Chayo is going to Fishtrap to her first writers’ workshop—
she is the Young Author.
Me & Ma? We’re out-dated.

#

I love inexplicable visions
Of Roadside America:
Beside I-55 (Route 66), six
identical puffs of smoke
hover five feet
above the ground,
floating like tethered ghosts
in the bushes.

#

White plastic bag
perched atop a tree
like an egret.

#

Abandoned
gray dust-bowl farm: dead
windmill.

#

Heading for the tarantula-
legged tangle of Ol’ St Lou.

#

Sign:
SAVE PONTIAC PRISON.
You imagine
old cars
gone bad.

#

World’s awesomest rest-area:
A green river ambling behind, giant
dragonflies &
in the men’s room,
a gray-haired slender gent
in white tennis clothes
at the center urninal
looking back and forth
as he frantically
masturbates.

Run away!

#

I take the wheel at Springfield.
Emancipated in the land of Lincoln.

Lonely highway—
no crows.

#

More
Dead
Deer
Than
Dead
Possums.

Blood
Blood
Blood.

#

Sweetgrass scent of the prairie
so strong it floods in
thru the a.c.

#
Poor old 66 over there, weed-choked
and cracked, baking
between I-55 and the train tracks.
Passed by.

#

Shell station, writin’ on the hood of the van.
$52,50 for a half tank.

#

Skid marks off side
of elevated roadway

30 yards
across the field

a crater.

#

Modern wonders: a life-size plastic elephant.
In the distance, The Arch.
Suddenly, while looking for more
roadside attractions, we are crossing
the slowly flooding
Mississippi!

#

New one on me:
Missouri rest area sells
A $1.00
Diabetes newspaper.

#

Jesse James
Wax Museum.

Jesse James
Cavern Hideout.

Civilization at last:

The first Jack
in the Box.

Then

The World’s Largest
Rocking Chair.

#

Writer:
Every inch of the earth
Remains fresh and new: I tire:
I grow stale.

#

400 miles.
No weather.
Sirius radio.
And then one of my favorite WTF
American landmarks:
The 24 Hour Porno Superstore
with a two story bowling pin in front.

#

Best place name:
Sleeper, Missouri.

Best bumper sticker:
I’d rather Be Reading Bukowski.

#

100 times I have seen
pheasants, turkeys: just
turn out to be
weedy vines
climbing a fence.

#

In a sacred grove
one silver dead tree
wild as the head
of Medussa.

#

Detour
to Animal Paradise.
Long car-crawl thru
gnus, goats, oxen, yaks, emus,
ostriches, donkeys, zebras, “zedonks,”
cows, llamas, deer, ditant
uninterested elk, a very insistent camel, and
shaggy profoundly amused
bison.

Bags of food.
Pints of animal slobber.

#

Hampton Inn, 500+ miles.

Bad, bad, insomnia night. Hallucinatory
HUMMINGBIRD dreams. Poor Vic the Bear
came walking out of the ether from his brain-locked coma
put there by a biker beat-down
years ago now; he was
worried about his family and friends,
sad & wanting to talk all night
about his hauntings.

Give me the frissons.

Wandering spirits
in Floodland.