Rabbits and Ponies

Staunton, IL to Mount Vernon, MO

My first motel room, a cheap Super 8, is just fine. I desperately need to stretch and flex and unwind my body because I’m sore head to foot after being on the road all day yesterday. It’s true of any travel I do (but at least my “being lost” stomach knots untied after getting through Elwood). The evening news focuses our attention on those airplane travelers who die from a blood clot-induced stroke because they don’t move at all on a 16 hour flight. Blood flow apparently keeps us human travelers alive. Maybe timespace explorers don’t need blood to stay alive but I'm not going to be the first to find out. I get on the road around 10:00AM which feels really late. I take my time leaving, however, allowing myself a morning workout, breakfast, a long hot shower, and a little time on the computer. Normally my sense of urgency mean getting started that late would drive me crazy but today feels different. I don’t really think my goal is to get to the end of the…in fact I don’t really think I have a goal. This is not an outcome-oriented trip at all. Rather it’s a leisurely jaunt across the country at my pace, on my terms, in my car.

The Super 8 is run by an East Indian immigrant family. I wonder to myself if that’s going to be a trend—immigrants (mostly) proficient in English running service businesses in dying towns where labor is in short supply. Bobby from Bangalore delivered to your town to run your motel. As Steven from Shanghai came to handle your dry cleaning. Cities and towns and little villages may grow or decay or persist unchanged for decades but rarely do they exist in isolation, rarely in some closed artificial socioeconomic environment. Route 66 towns sprang up largely to serve the needs of passing motorists; when said motorists stopped motoring through thanks to the interstate what would suggest such towns would whither and return to nature. It's hard to predict but easy to inspect in retrospect how trends affect the environment sometimes, and other times or they don’t. Generations of a family farm suddenly bought by real estate developers. A family-run transmission repair shop suddenly decimated with the emergence of full-service repair chains. It’s modifying and manipulating the environment, making things better and leaving when things go bad. That’s progress in the new American economy. Time does that. Regardless of our opinion of it time keeps rolling along.

So I could have gotten moving around 8:00AM and made better time. But so what? Would I have seen more? I tend to find myself wound up with this idea that the destination is the trip and sometimes that’s true and more often it’s not. More often in fact that ruins the trip. I don’t know how many times I sat stuck in LaGuardia thinking to myself what a bunch of motherfuckers NWA or American or whoever was for not making weatherproof planes (or mismanaging their flight crews or whatever). Sometimes, rarely, I would crack a book or make a journal entry but mostly I got angry and blamed the ramp attendant. And somehow I never felt better. Would that I could enjoy the sights and the sounds around me. Now don’t get me wrong, LaGuardia is hardly a land of enchanted wishes; still, strike up a conversation with a stranger or read a book or otherwise make use of the time so it doesn’t feel squandered.

Plan for the unexpected—or at least learn to expect it.

I head to Henry’s Rabbit Ranch to meet Rich and thank him for his excellent advice. If I would have raced to Staunton I’d have missed so much. Being largely disconnected is a mixed blessing. I’m no luddite but I wanted to run this trip the old fashioned way, with twists and turns and a map of the terrain mostly to challenge myself and see if I could pull it off. Getting directions is a great excuse to bullshit with the locals and meet interesting people.

It turns out Rich and his rabbit Montana *Queen of the Ranch* are a complete blast! We spend two hours comparing car and driving notes (I mean Rich and I. Montana signed a postcard with her trademark nibble and patiently waited for us). I talk him up about Mustangs and he tells me a thing or two about his collection himself. At age 60 he’s been a professional insurance agent for the past 25 years and built the ranch for office space. In 1992 he launched the “Route 66 Emporium” because he loved the route (so much so he served two years on the city council to promote it). After visiting the Jackrabbit Trading Post in Arizona he took the idea north and renamed the shop. Even though it looks like it was thought out from stem to stern today the fact is that by riffing on the rabbit theme the ranch evolved; Rich incorporated the Arizona jackrabbits, the Texas Cadillacs, California Mustangs, and all of that. Having fun with a vision but without master plan, without a specific rigid goal, let the ranch develop. Like many people he turned his passion into nice hobby although he doesn’t make his living with the souvenirs (he sells insurance and took call several business calls in the few hours I was there). He also makes a few dollars selling Illinois’ required Firearm Certification license. Follow your passion and make it work—it was nice to have a fellow Catholic schoolboy welcome me into the Route 66 experience. Thanks for that.

Mother Road fans (like hardcore fans of just about anything) are busy doing what they love—following their passion. People like Rich build up these roadside attractions as attention grabbers or attention disruptions or whatever you want to call them to make something just a little different pop out of the landscape. Not unlike a short skirt, a bridge collapse, a drifter passing through a small town, a Korean nuke test: neon signs, unusual people, unconventional actions, and hot-button events deviate from some normal or average (more accurately, the perception of normal and accurate by the person whose interest is piqued). Or at any rate they capture attention (by definition they are “attention grabbers”). Now the attention grabbers on the old route feel something a bit like this: imagine the Canada side of Niagara Falls, or the Wisconsin Dells, or your local traveling carnival, piled full of novelties and barkers like leaves stacked to your chest. Now imagine a giant leaf blown spreads the whole mess down the length of the road. All variety of little interesting debris dot the roadside, sometimes clumped into big attractions (Henry’s is one and I have the National Museum the Cadillac Ranch ahead of me) and little (a muffler man, a neon motel sign, maybe a restored gas station).

Of course the route culture has been out there for generations (Route 66 was fully decommissioned in 1985 and preservation societies started before then) and I’m just scratching the surface; it’s a neat feeling, like a rite of passage, to take a peek at this subculture. We’re sharing in an experience; despite the gulf of geography we have a common interest (the route grabbed our attention) and shared experience. My latest serial obsession? Maybe. Understanding the code, learning the history, making sense of the symbols—it’s hard not to internalize it, to feel more a participant than just an observer. So how is this different than growing up and internalizing and identifying with the values of a Polish Catholic or Militant Muslim or Cambodian Buddhist or Hasidic Jew or Southern Baptist. And simply recognizing this fact does not refute it: constructed meaning is still meaningful. By what means then, Dear Mr. Jefferson, are we to separate our values from our public lives? How exactly do we distinguish the “church” part of us from the “state” part? Easy, the clever rhetorician says: we disallow state-sponsorship of religion and allow every person to do exactly as he (remember when people were defined as white and male and owned land?) sees fit and that’s separate enough. Yet what is state sponsorship if not people, our elected officials, doing as they see fit: cutting breaks for the institutions that support their religious convictions? Bright line this ain’t.

While I don’t expect my mother road enthusiasm to be universal I am surprised by the virtually complete disinterest in the old route along the way—it’s one thing to stop into a roadside souvenir shop but when attendant at the local Shell station or the BP Amoco in Normal is which way to go and it comes as news to them (“What’s Rot 66?”) their little Central Avenue or Main Street was ever anything else, it’s clear that time precedes with or without our permission. The route is obsolesced. Change is accumulated and the source forgotten. That’s not just a road; it’s a city, a culture, a government (you’d think U.S. lawmakers were paid per word). It’s an individual’s personal story. And of course it’s the road. Experience changes us because it informs our perspective and expectations and judgments…whether we want it to, whether we recognize it or not.

Rich mentions that up the road a pace is the Mustang Corral just outside Edwardsville, IL (I miss the turnoff and slate it for the return) and it has a very pretty girl behind the counter. He comments, “Not sure how old you are or if you have a girlfriend.” To which I counter, “I’m not that old and I don’t have too many girlfriends, so I’m looking forward to visiting the Mustang Corral.” And I am.

A thought about constructing a social event. Small towns can feel like the middle of nowhere or are the center of the universe. People have different preferences for different speeds. My dad for example hates the city—the traffic, the crowds, the attitude—and would rather spend time in a small northern Minnesota town any day of any week. By contrast some of my banker friends think New York is Podunk. Of course it matters less where exactly we are since people throw big and little events all the time (I don’t know how many state fairs and renaissance festivals are up and running right about now). Now the event itself is intrinsically meaningless. The universe would be no better or worse off in the absence of the Minnesota State Fair. What’s far more compelling is the chance to participate in something, to share an experience together. Watching the Chargers vs. Bears in the company of friends or going out drinking to a random north side bar one Thursday night can make that spot feel like the center of the universe. As a kid I often felt restless, like I was missing out on something and my real life was waiting to start; I’d feel trapped if I were in a small town. By contrast, writing right now from a motel room in the middle of the Missouri countryside holds more meaning for me than being at Lollapalooza with a bunch of strangers. I’m looking at myself through the lens of America’s heartland. I haven’t made up my mind about myself, but the lens is absolutely captivating.

At 4:00PM I get through Saint Louis, MO having branded the website across the back window (it takes two Office Depots to track down sticky lettering). People have been what I’m up to so I thought I’d advertise. The regional driving style in Saint Louis fascinates me. Locals love to break a half a mile from any other braking driver but refuse to let people like me merge. Good for them, prick bastards. They can keep their arbitrary and aggressive driving habits, I'll keep one hand on the steering wheel and one over the horn. As I do anyway. I’m drawn to later Route 66 alignments and in Saint Louis I'm taken through some odd side roads and avenues cutting through town. With my new travel guide I don't mind straying from the freeway or from the route since I can correlate with my atlas if I must. Cities don't lend themselves to diversions as well as small towns, since these cities seem to have recommissioned Route 66 roads for more practical uses than historic preservation. Small towns, by contrast, don't have so much going on that a resident is too busy or too ignorant to get a stray traveler back on course. A short ways out of Saint Louis and the route traffic thins out, once again becoming virtually empty.

The Jesse James museum is situated at Exit 230 in the middle of Missouri. Wasn’t Jesse James a criminal? Al Capone of the Old (mid)West. The signs catch my attention because there are about fifty thousand of them leading up to the wax museum and Merrimac Caves (seven stories of underground wonder or something like that). What I notice even more than the relentless signage imploring me to exit is the Jeep puttering up and down along side me. A couple of cute locals (license plate suggests) waving and weaving and getting their cute bleach blond selves noticed. We do a little flirtatious driving and before long I have to turn off for gas.

This episode gets me thinking about what makes people interesting, attractive, appealing, whatever. Now I’m a confessed and confirmed flirt—having spent much of my adult life faithfully married, women weren’t available so I was not looking for sex; this socialized me differently that many guys I know. Women simply aren’t a threat. The world’s most boring sex goddess is still boring. Fascinating people fascinate me (leaving for now my personal criteria for fascinating and being fascinated undefined for now) and I get bored quickly. So harmless—albeit shameless—flirting developed out of my effort to be a charming gentleman and keep myself amused. I found plenty of people interesting and sexually attractive (a nice smile, a light perfume, a revealing outfit), and since sex wasn’t part of the deal I’d try to crack the veneer and see what kind depth I could get to know.

Ponder this: what does it mean to “really know” someone? I mean, when we say we really know someone, what does that entail? A knowledge of their personal history? By that reasoning I really know Lee Iacocca from his braggart biographies. Personal likes and dislikes? By that reasoning I don’t know anything about my own father except his home team preferences and his taste for meatloaf...at least not in much detail. A few favorite hobbies? By that reasoning hell I know a billion people in car clubs, business networks, the arts community, or local politics. I’m reminded of surfaces: paint or makeup or metal or flesh covering up what lies beneath that surface; secrets held deep within the interiors. I’m not sure I know what “really knowing” someone means; I do know, however, that if I have a few things in common with someone, particularly when I have a few shared favorites (Favorite Movies/Books/Music), I feel that somehow I know something about the inside of that person. Taste is an interior thing, after all. If you know I have brown hair you know my exterior. If you see me walking around Chicago you know I live there (or at least currently am standing there). But when you see my “Fuck Bush!” t-shirt you know my interior—my politics. Or if you detect my sense of irony, you may know from my “Handguns for Everyone!” t-shirt that I am pro-gun control and a little edgy. Similarly if I read your Facebook profile and find you have cute pictures and love Muse and Dead Can Dance, well it’s clear that I must now have sex with you.

Liking some of the same things helps understand the interior of another person because by having a like in common there's fodder for discussion of underlying tastes, preferences, and values. Externalizing tastes is done without much attention to the mechanism: our choice of clothing, tattoos, hair style, car, career, mate, etc. Certainly many of these choices are constrained (our economist friends might say we have a resource-limited budget constraint on our preference selection and expression); yet to a greater or lesser degree our externalized display discloses our interior makeup—the “capacity for quality judgment making” if you like.

Back to the Jeep cuties. Suppose a prospectively interesting individual enters your vicinity. Drive-by flirting, strolling down Main Street, ordering a Tom Collins. I size them up by appearance: dress, clothes, etc. Now imagine you had the ability to see right straight through exterior appearance, straight to the core makeup of that person. Some kind of personality X-ray vision where you could perceive some of the basic human warmth, depth, unique experience, values, preferences, judgments, thoughts, etc. that make up that person. What if we displayed billboards over our heads that read

Hi, I’m Stan
About me: 47, an observant Jew, want kids, financially secure, thrice divorced
Favorites: Food-fried chicken; music-Beatles and bluegrass; movie-Terms of Endearment
Interests: Traveling, wind surfing, critiquing the life choices of others
Call me: 762-381-6883

Like a telepathic match making service. Just friends? Just fine. Love debating politics? I’m your man. Maybe we can wirelessly detect candidate matches using our cell phones. I’d be into that. You know, for the sex.

Around 6:00PM I get into Bourbon, MO and find a farm and fleet store to stock up on lead additive. Lead is required for my 289 engine because the piston heads are original and without lead they can warp (something to do with heat and friction and Chinese toy imports). I have a brand I use that is cheap and works great but it’s mostly for tractors, so a farm store is usually the best place to track it down. I get to talking with the guy behind the counter and he tells me that Sammy Hagar had been tooling his recently rebuilt ’67 up and down the freeway in front of the store because Gateway Classics up the street recently make a reality show of the buildup. I'm stoked at the prospect of seeing Sammy's car and a professional restoration shop; we look up the address and I thank him quickly, in a rush zip over the address he gives me to find Jason the owner closing up shop. I beg to get some pictures and once he catches sight of my (pale by comparison) pony he gives me all the time in the world. I spend an hour checking out his work and bullshitting about how he runs the shop, what he's working on next, what his plans are for future kit car builds, the works.

What an amazing car with an awesome story. Reasoning that the “I Can’t Drive 55” guy would make a perfect customer for a kit fastback, Jason spent two years trying to get Sammy Hagar to endorse the car—going to concerts, calling his record label, trying to reach him through friends of friends. Nada. Finally as a lark they called Sammy’s tequila company and gave a concise elevator pitch. That was enough to impress the guy on the other end who gave them the number to Sammy’s personal manager…and he loved the idea. They built the car from scratch: body, doors, fenders etc. come as part of a reissue kit and all the rest (suspension, electronics, you name it) is new assembly, new parts. They make virtually every part aftermarket (he mentioned that details like the ashtray weren’t being manufactured…yet, so they sent samples to the vendor to add them to production). So Sammy has a brand new car that’s shaped like a ’67 but has the speed and agility of a new machine. By the way the thing is worth like $150K, and Jason’s goal is to use the ESPN exposure to build 100 of these kits for customers in the next few years.

Here’s another great example of a guy who had a skill, a passion, an opportunity, and made it all click. His brother and he restored a Boss as kids and were told, “That doesn’t look half bad.” Then they started getting requests from all over to work on their cars. So they applied some basic economics and now they do $100K-plus custom rods. God bless ‘em!

By the way, Sammy Hagar has Lamborghinis, Mazeratis, basically three of whatever sports car you care to name. When he saw the car he called his manager (something he never does when he buys a car) and said, “Bro, when you see this car make sure you have a girl nearby because you’re going to have such a raging hard-on you won’t believe it!” Ringing endorsement indeed.

Around 8:00PM I notice I'm cruising down the interstate at zero miles per hour. Swell, I've seen this before...my speedometer cable snapped on me. Great. Tomorrow I'll head into town and find a Napa or something and replace it. That should kill at least two prime driving hours. It's frustrating because the speedometer cable also spins the odometer so I'm losing trip distance and mileage. It's not a race so if I'm forced to use local traffic to pace myself I will, but this still sucks. More than anything I notice myself glancing at the speedometer for the last few hours before I pull off the freeway to find a motel room and each time thinking, "Oh, yeah. Broken." Habits are just that sometimes.

I pull into Mount Vernon late enough that I decide to shop around for motel rates. After interrupted a few dirty t-shirt wearing proprietors with a jack-o-lantern smiles to ask for the best deal on their cheapest room (which I do not consider all that cheap for Mount Vernon) I finally find empty looking motel and tell the Indian attendant I’ll pay $30 or keep looking. That late at night I figure supply and demand are in my favor, since any room would be worth letting out or it goes unoccupied and makes not money. That is, it's worth it as long as I don't come off as the room-trashing, towel-thieving type. As I walk away the proprietor reluctantly agrees. I don't get too bad a deal: save a few bucks and suffer a few dying roaches. My room has no wireless internet access, so disconnected from the outside world I take some time to review my trip photos, edit some journal entries, and finish of that awful Busch beer. I look forward to getting a good night's sleep and getting out of Missouri after fixing Cherry in the morning.

Next stop: Missouriable