On The Road Again

My Summer Road Trip, part 1

So there I was: eating a rather inauthentic burrito in a no-star Mexican restaurant on the north side of Independence, Missouri. I sat at the south end of a long table, the other end bedecked with a tall birthday cake while various relations whooped and hollered in celebration of one of my cousins' birthday. Suddenly, between bites, I had an epiphany: I could just leave, could get up and leave the table, go out and drive far away and never return. I had my bag packed; I always keep a packed bag with me in case of errant interdimensional tangents opening up. I wasn't expecting any, however; indeed it had been years since the possibility last occurred. 

Actually, I had been planning a road trip ever since the issues of 2020-2022 made the idea disheartening and possibly inconvenient (running out of gas, quarantine checkpoints, etc., yes, the stuff of my FLU SEASON trilogy). Now I was ready to go again. As planned, my route would take me eventually northwest to Montana. I planned to stop at specific scenic locations along the way which I'd never been to in all of my youthful travels.

As my general direction sent me northeast to Kansas City to start my travel, I found myself pushed into a birthday party not of my choosing. Enduring that brief detour, I left my hometown and continued north into Iowa on a bright, sunny Sunday morning. A surprisingly unassuming bit of pasture I hadn't passed through since 2019 when I went to Canada spread out from the pavement as I rolled along. As I drove, I listened to the soundtrack I'd put together for my pandemic trilogy and little by little managed to plot out the next book.

For that 2019 trip, I had it stuck in my head to replicate the travels of my youth when my teacher-vacation parents drove me here and there at their whim while I remained ensconced in the backseat sans seatbelt. I went as far north/northwest as Edmonton before venturing south to slink back into the comforts of Montana, and onward home. In my childhood and youth, we had gone all the way to Alaska.

Not this trip, however. No, the Great White North was not my destination. I had nobody to buy me lunch there. Instead, I would travel to nearer places of childhood significance as well as revisit some places that had glittered with roughshod joy on that 2019 trip. So I began with a deliberate stop in Iowa. Because it is there.

You wouldn't know it to look at me but I once flew from Kansas City, before the vast new airport was built in the countryside far to the north of the city, all the way, non-stop, to Cedar Falls, across the river from Waterloo, in that so-called Iowa. I think I must have been around 14. I know it was summer and I was allowed to fly by myself (there were a few other passengers) on an Ozark Airlines turboprop (no longer in business). 

My purpose there in Cedar Falls was to help my great-aunt (little sister of my grandmother) and my great-grandmother (their mother) build a "dog run" in the small backyard of the house. In exchange for my help, I would be fed and perhaps get a gift later (it was a model airplane kit). My great-aunt raised poodles for show, so being a boy who liked dogs but did not have his own, I also liked that aspect. I got to play with dogs. Back home, our landlord didn't allow dogs. 

I also flew up there in March of my final college year, all coursework having been completed the previous December and awaiting the May graduation ceremony. The purpose then was for me to consider continuing in my field of study at the University of Northern Iowa, where my great-aunt had been a professor (but at that time recently retired). I consulted with a Music professor there about my musical future. The lingering snowy landscape did not impress me, however. In hindsight, I should have given it a go because you never know where you might go if you don't go, you know? So it goes.

I found the house from my youth after a day's drive, long since occupied by other people, and was pleased it looked as quaint and charming as it did during my previous visits. There was no longer the "dog run" I had helped build, yet to my mind everything else remained the same. It had been 40+ years since I had been there, after all. Yet I felt nothing. No nostalgia. This is a phenomena I've noticed when seeing other places from my childhood: my mind knows it is the same place but the emotions I expect to flood me instead evade me. (Same with seeing my cousins after many years' apart.) As I drove the neighborhood, I recognized other places from my two visits. Creepy.

On that first visit at 14, I recall spending my evening hours in the house's cute little attic, which my great-aunt had filled with bookshelves. There was a small desk up there and once I climbed up, I could hide away. While hiding away, I would peruse the books on the shelves or, more typically, sit and type on a story using my great-aunt's manual typewriter. It was one of my first long-form pieces, a rip-off of Dr. Zhivago, which I eventually turned in for a class assignment. The teacher was amazed by my 105-page double-spaced epic. However, my great-aunt constantly urged me to stop typing and get to bed, to stop the racket she was not used to - though she was happy to let the dogs bark!

Finding nothing suitable for overnight accommodations, I drove back across the state and did not find anything that had changed during the day. At the west side, I was close to my next visitation destination, the site of a week which shall live in infamy! I would get my revenge by driving there, parking, and taking a photograph of myself standing there (to prove I was there) and that would put them all to shame! They would feel sorry they hadn't embraced me into their family but sent me home like a sewer-soiled puppy.

NEXT: "Waldorf Hell Week"  and Devil's Gulch!

THEN: The Long Trek West!

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