American Freeway Culture


By Travis Taylor
Artwork by Steve Williams

This present moment finds me in Kingston, Ont., Canada. A large, strange man enters my cousin’s home, where I sit writing alone as Bob Dylan blares from vintage vinyl, "…ain't it hard to stumble, and land in some funny lagoon..."

Another large and strangely nervous young man, a roommate of my cousin, comes home after a tough day sweating over hot stoves and steaming bowls of soup, muttering about "women" and shaking his head in disbelief.

The strangely nervous man races upstairs to avoid contact with me and my bulging pupils, as the other man wanders like a larger-than-life South Park character, in search of a lost sketch book.

The house is cold because the thermostat is set to an energy-efficient level, but I'm comfortably clad in my Guatemalan woolen toque and green Merino sweater. It amazes me to think of how well dressed I am in hand-me-downs.

I'm attempting to arrange to drive a car to California en route to Kaohsiung, Taiwan, capitalizing on the cheap flights departing from LAX. The car service is run by an elderly British gent who seems increasingly confused each time we speak, a general kind of confusion that becomes helplessly condemned when he tries to comprehend my itinerary.

  "What is it that you do again?" he asks each time over the phone, usually followed by, "Where are you from?" and, inevitably at some point during each conversation, "Can you remind me once again what it is that you're doing in Kingston?"
  

These are relevant questions for a car service to ask. Especially so of a sketchy drifter-type holding an expired New Brunswick driver's license and purporting vague Montreal connections including a residential telephone number that reaches an answering machine with a sexy woman's voice advertising a textile company, urging callers to "leave your credit card information after the tone, and we will get back to you."

With travel plans in perpetual limbo, my cousin and I have been having some fantastic catch-up time and laughs -- especially so at the Toucan the other night when a drunken Kingston nurse offered to take us home and play doctor in her nursing outfit.

(A few days later)

I'm still waiting patiently, at this moment in Kingston's quietest tavern, just me and two beautiful barmaids. I'm near exhaustion following an all-night sex session and manic, pot and coffee-fueled day. My cousin and I ran all over town in winter jogging gear like some kind of hyper duo-bum twins, attempting to change his filthy collection of coins into paper money, unsuccessfully, at nearly every single Kingston financial institution – eliciting nothing more than strange looks and sourly-puckered mouths. No bills for change.

There are still places in the world where money means money, but no longer in this place. The last time someone dressed as the Fisher King was able to exchange a roll of pennies with song lyrics like "never love a woman" written on the side, Nixon was still lecturing Margaret Trudeau about the mating rituals of panda bears at White House state dinners.

Nowadays, if you're not associated with a business or a similar institution that has legitimate reasons to collect large amounts of change, and if your coinage isn't rolled perfectly in Chinese mass-produced see through plastic receptacles, you're considered some sort of odd cancer or mutant, deviant societal-boil, and your dime is no longer worth a dime. Look the part loser, or stay out of this game of trance.


(A few days later)

I check quickly out the window to assure the Lexus hasn't yet been stolen. When staying at a former crack house in Kingston with an un-alarmed luxury automobile parked in the driveway, it's a good idea to sleep with one eye open.


The car is staying well hidden, tucked neatly beneath a good foot of snow that continues to

 

fall steadily. I barely had a chance to really stretch her out yesterday, getting up to 160 kmh only once before the snow started falling and the rally tires started slipping and sliding – nowhere near the 280 she's registered for.

(A few days later, in Vandalia, Illinois)

I sped across the US into the plains this morning, the Lexus flying across the Kaskaskia River, straight up the off-ramp at 75 mph then into the Chuckwagon Café – "Hunters are welcome", where this present moment finds me.

I find myself fearful to make much eye contact with the Americans; this is only the third time I've left the Cowboy Junkie and Tom Waits-laden comfort of my luxury automobile. I find I don't have much to say to the neo-colonists. I just want to watch, participate and learn – filling up my tank with premium octane to fuel the efforts of the boys abroad, fingering the 'CNN Presents: War in Iraq' DVD at the freeway filling station with a tear in my eye, wondering where I can get me one of those little white ribbons to put on the back of my car.

Yesterday I sped through a toll at the NY/PA border. Spying the attendant in the rearview leap from his hut, bent over trying to read my license plate, I decided to stop and back-up after briefly considering a speedy getaway.

"I'm sorry sir," I said in my best subservient voice. " I thought I saw a green light."

"That was for Eeeee-Zeeee pay," the attendant whined, his voice reminiscent of a fourth grader whose last piece of bubblegum I once stole. "Pay more attention next time," he bawled with great moral authority.

God bless America, if for her freeway billboards alone:

"1-800-DIVORCE"; and,

"WE WILL REMEMBER 9/11" (on the giant, flashing filling-station tower) and

"PORNOGRAPHY IS HARMFUL" (aside photo of a saddened little girl) and

"WHEN THE NEWS MATTERS MOST, LIKE NOW" (with photos of bin Laden, Hussein and Kim Jong Il) and

"SERENITY FOR SALE" (a gated-community advertisement) and

"FREE 72-OUNCE STEAK" (accompanied, in small print, with "if you can finish it within one hour")

...and of course all the competing church-sponsored messages are cleverly placed beside the adult video mega-depots, inspiration perhaps for the trucker who just can't quite wait 'til he's home.

(Later, at a Denny's 90 miles north of Phoenix)

An over-sized American flag covers the wall facing my booth as the Lexus cools down out front following her 2,500 mile trip. She’s a little dirty, but I've stolen some towels from the various East Indian owned-and-operated motels that I've slept in en route so that I can do a quick clean-up before delivery later today.

I should have had the flag wrapped around my shoulders last night as I sped across the New Mexico and Arizona desert, the sheer speed caused the car to shake and rattle, the sound-system speakers pumped an incredible volume of bass, and sweet Margo Timmins screamed at me, "Johnny, beeee-haaaave yourself!!!"

The car and stereo vibrations combined to take hold of the entire automated driver's seat itself. With my long and lanky legs confined in the tiny coupe, and the left side of my body pressed-up tight against the car door speaker – the pulsations caused a throb and tingle that traveled straight from my knee to my nuts.

I've never before known such pleasure.

I flicked on CNN at the dodgy Wavering Pines motel this morning, and noticed how very carefully they avoided showing their two top news stories back-to-back. The first piece was coverage from Saddam's trial, including the graphic testimony of five witnesses describing torture under the old Iraqi regime at Abu Ghraib prison. After sandwiching in some fear-inducing fluff of little relevance, token warthog Condy Rice's European scutwork vacation was detailed, complete with clips of her attempts to "defend", cleft-tongue and all, against allegations the CIA has flown al-Qa'ida prisoners to various covert prisons in Eastern Europe and tortured them there – including a German man who was allegedly picked up in a case of mistaken identity and flown to Afghanistan, where he was detained and tortured for 5 months.

He is currently launching a lawsuit against the CIA.

(Later)

Duke was right; Phoenix is hell. A noisy, polluted matrix of retirees, yuppie business-types and a Latino underclass. Like the rest of America, Phoenix might have a bit of potential if it banned all vehicles except delivery vans, taxis and buses – then implemented public bicycle pick-up and drop-off depots.

Like the rest of America, however, everyone is all too content to ride with his windows up in re-circulated air conditioned cars and pass judgment on other drivers they've never met. These cities are not a part of nature, of the external world. They are transit grids upon which we commute day-to-day, place-to-place, living our lives inside – inside our homes, our offices, our cars. There's a parallel between the way America views her cities and the way her inhabitants view their bodies – as though they are two distinct and mutually exclusive entities – our bodies a separate vehicle from us, our cities something separate from nature. Take a vacation to a nature preserve in your RV if you want to get outdoors.

(The following day)

I'm sleepy as hell as I reflect upon my last 24 hours – a last minute repacking and jettisoning of winter items in Camp Verde, Arizona; the successful delivery of the Lexus and the successful bulging of my wallet to the tune of nearly an American grand; a serendipitous meeting with anarchists at the counter-culture cafe in Phoenix; a night of freestyle rapping in front of an open mic by the young and hiply dispossessed; standing on an Arizona freeway at 3:30 a.m. beside a smoking Greyhound bus, a minority white guy surrounded by a fair sampling of the black and Latino-American labor underclass; the lengthy bus ride from hell that I thought would never get me to LAX in time for my flight.

And now here I sit, enthralled by the petite bodies of China Airline stewardesses that brush up against me in my aisle seat every few moments. I plan to have a beer before nodding off into some Asian fantasy dream that could send wood jutting straight out into the aisle.

I'm calm as hell but likely underestimating the fear that will grip me when I land in a city of 1.5 million people without speaking the language or knowing a soul. A challenge, though, is always good for the spirit. And the only moment that exists right now is the present one. If I can harangue another Suntory Malt beer from one of these sexy stewardesses, and catch a little shut-eye – perhaps I can challenge myself to seize the moment when I arrive in Kaohsiung.

As I reflect upon my four days of American freeway culture, I'm not really sure of what to say. I'm trying to be less hateful lately. Americans are very good drivers. They do get lots of practice.