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| Bentzman |
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Suburban
Soliloquy #43
NO
PLACE LIKE HOME |
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When we are
young, our memory is outstanding, but
confined by our own interests. It is all
about us and not necessarily what we need to
survive, or what might be of interest to
someone else. Youth is
self-absorbed. And some in time mature,
releasing many of the old memories to make
room for new ones. But this isn't true of
everybody.
I recently sat in a bar next to a fellow in
his late thirties or early forties.
Gregarious and loud, he was quick to express
his bitterness with the woman he divorced. He
bragged to me about his son's athletic
prowess, how a scout came to see his son play
- was it football? It meant a scholarship for
his son. While talking to me, he flirted with
the bar's young female clientele, ten or more
years younger than himself. Then he boasted
of his own prowess in high school baseball,
even to have folded in his wallet, a worn
news clipping that gave tribute to his skill.
He must have been carrying it about twenty
years, and how many times over beers has he
pulled it from his wallet and flourished it?
I have decided to write here a story I've
told often. Nearly all of us have stories we
retell with each new ear that presents
itself. If we don't rehearse these stories,
they begin to dissolve. If we don't use the
ganglia that extend to those memories, they
begin to dismantle. I don't know about you,
but I am tired of hearing myself repeat this
story. So here I will tell it one last time
and free up some desperately needed space to
file new memories.
On a fine summer day, a Saturday afternoon in
1971, I retrieved from the shop my freshly
tuned Honda 450 Sportster motorcycle and took
off up River Road. I was leaving home, the
stifling mediocrity of suburbia, for the
second time. I would go to Boulder, Colorado,
because my sister lived there.
It was a familiar drive alongside the
beautiful Delaware River. I've spent many an
afternoon or night in my young adulthood
tracing that route, first in my 1967 MGB
Roadster, once on my ten-speed Raleigh
International bicycle, and that year I sat
astride my Honda. These many trips were born
of unresolved dreams, of trying to think my
way through some existential dilemma, or were
simply fueled by sexual sublimation. Many a
long, lonely trip I've made, those
ninety-three miles to the Delaware Water Gap.
Here the earth rippled, but the recalcitrant
river was there first and had carved a sharp
path through the slow growing wall of rock
that rose perpendicular across its path. It
is a beautiful sight. But the mountains of
the East Coast are old and worn. They are
rolling green mounds up which one can stroll.
I had never seen my nation's great Rockies,
except in westerns. So I pointed my cycle
into the setting sun.
Racing through the night at ninety miles per
hour (145 kph), every time I stopped for gas,
I found the drive chain had stretched. I
would adjust the slack before resuming my
journey. The sun went all the way around and
came up behind me. By that time I had reached
Indiana and put up in a motel.
The next day I was eagerly on my way again,
cruising along until I reached the mighty
Mississippi River. From the far bank rose the
Gateway Arch, the city of Saint Louis at its
base. The arch is an elegant line that sweeps
to a precarious 630 feet high (192 meters)
and is the symbol of the gateway to the great
American West. It is hard to believe that
inside there is a tram to carry you to the
top. It was during my approach to the Gateway
of the West that my shift pedal came loose.
The peg from the transmission had worn smooth
and the pedal's armature was slipping without
shifting. I put the bike into fifth gear
using a wrench and left it there. The rest of
my journey would require a running start,
hopping the machine like a cowboy hops his
horse to get out of town before the posse can
form. It was a long haul getting the machine
up to speed and for the rest of my journey I
stayed on highways.
It was the second night of my adventure west
and I was following my headlight beam across
Kansas. All I could see of Kansas was what
the headlight displayed. Behind the edge of
light I rode in the pitch-black night. There
were no streetlights, no traffic along that
incredibly straight road. Houses and barns
might have been out there, but without lights
I didn't know of their existence. The road
moving towards my bike seemed placed there by
the beam, as if the headlamp was a movie
projector. It was windy, but I wasn't sure I
was moving. Someone could have walked up to
me and shut off my projector. Ghouls could
have been chasing me for I saw nothing but
black mirrors. I was afraid to look behind me
to see if anything was sharing my seat.
I grew sleepy. Having allowed one motel to go
by, an oasis of light in that dark universe,
I promised myself the next one. The next one
never came. The road went straight forever.
I'm still there.
Okay, I'm not still there, thank goodness,
and another motel eventually did come along.
It was hard bargaining with the clerk before
he gave me a room for half a day. He put me
in a room on the second floor of his two
storey motel.
My alarm watch woke me. I dressed and opened
the door to my room. The earth had
disappeared. Beyond the balcony was nothing
but sky, as if the motel had slipped its
moorings and drifted into the atmosphere. The
unreality of the vista caused me to panic. I
dashed to the edge of the balcony and there
was Kansas, an uninterrupted flatness to the
horizon. And there was my motorcycle beneath
me in the parking lot and barricaded by a
herd of cattle. Departure had to be postponed
until whatever motivated the herd to move had
taken effect.
Another running start, another slow
acceleration, and I was once more pushing
west. Now I could see Kansas and longed to
have the night back for my imagination to
fill.
Kansas slipped into Colorado and there were
no mountains. My trip was growing eternal.
The road didn't veer from its course. Where
were the f@#king mountains!?
What did break up the monotony of this drive
were the rain storms. That morning I must
have past through a dozen of them. A group of
clouds would appear on the western horizon
before me. They would grow closer, their
shadows giving chase along The Plains. We
would pass each other going in opposite
directions and as they flung themselves
overhead, they would spill on me. The next
minute they were behind me, leaving drops on
my face mask to refract the bright sun into
colours. And already I could see the next
bank of clouds looming on the horizon.
The mountains never came that day. By the
time I reached Denver there was nothing but
rain and clouds to obliterate anything
distant. It wasn't until I was entering
Boulder that, lifting my face mask, I saw the
first range of mountains. It was thoroughly
unimpressive. I figured they were foothills
and the mountains were yet many miles further
west. I had journeyed 1,875 miles (3,017 km)
since Saturday afternoon and arrived in time
for dinner on Monday at my sister's house in
Boulder, Colorado, at the very foot of that
wimpy range.
This story could end here, where my
motorcycle trip ended, not having found the
hoped for mountains I had seen in films.
Eventually I would be living at home again. A
dozen more times I would try to escape that
house - this house. It is this house where I
am now living and writing in Levittown,
Pennsylvania that then belonged to my
parents. But the story does not end where I
dismounted my motorcycle.
After dinner, after going to sleep on my
sister's couch, the next morning I couldn't
stand. My legs were paralyzed from the trip
and for a week I could do little walking. The
drive chain had been stretched to its limit
and was no longer safe. My next two
motorcycles would be bigger and have drive
shafts. But after a week of recovery, I
climbed that first row of mountains. When I
reached the top, I was bedazzled by the most
improbable vision.
As far as I could see to the west was an
ocean of mountains, real mountains, peaks and
pinnacles high above the timberline, and
snowcaps in August. Uninterrupted mountains
ever grander and they filled the world to the
horizon. I felt like an aphid in the garden
of the gods. And looking back the way I came,
I saw the Great Plains utterly mountainless,
flat to the horizon 140 miles (225 km) away.
It was impossible. North and south ran a
ridiculously precise line. It was as if the
most powerful god had drawn the line and
declared all mountains on this side, all
plains on the other, and no crossing that
line. It was unimaginable until I saw it. A
photograph in the hand accomplishes none of
the sense of it. This was no place like home
and I was grateful. |
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