For good motivation to get things done, go here.
For a promised post on ACAM: Indonesia, I’m afraid you’ll have to tune in next week, as I spent last night writing a double-length review for Centerstage instead of the blog post I intended to do. Sorry!
Borobudur, a Buddhist monument and future Stowaway destination
Hello dearest fellow travelers. Some quick notes on this busy Tuesday:
What is this? Is this a return to a project I appeared to have abandoned months ago? Why yes it is! (For newer readers, check out this post about the A Country a Month project and then hop back here.)
When I last left this project, dearest fellow travelers, I was working my way through books and articles on Indonesia, having read up a bit on Australia and New Zealand. I’ve returned to the materials on Indonesia, and I’m currently reading two books aimed at the same audience: the overseas business executive. It’s so strange to read books written for someone who is living in a foreign country because they’re arranging corporate bank accounts or building factories or whatever. I protest against the decisions these people make all the time, and I will never live the wealthy kind of life they do. But that seems to be the market for books on how to assimilate into foreign cultures, so we’ll work with what we’ve got.
The first one is Culture Smart! Indonesia by Graham Saunders. This is written by a Brit and that may be partly why it reads like an exercise in colonial noblesse oblige. Everyone has servants, try your best to put up with the strange native ways, etc. It is also much slimmer than the other guide, and only aims to convey basic information without explication or nuance. It seems to expect the reader to be staying in Indonesia for only a short time, or to ensconce herself in the expatriate community and stay there, and so there isn’t much about forming lasting relationships or gaining a deeper understanding of the country.
Culture Shock! Indonesia by Cathie Draine and Barbara Hall, on the other hand, seems to be premised on the idea that the expatriate has moved to Indonesia permanently, and thus there is much emphasis on integrating into the culture, learning the language, and understanding how things are done beyond a surface level understanding. Obviously I prefer this approach, although there are still some wincingly condescending moments, like when they talk about the “superstitions” of some of the villagers, or how “servants know their place and are happy with it.” But overall, they make an effort to introduce Westerners to Indonesian culture with respect and affection; they expect the reader to love their adopted country as much as they do. Also, they have line drawings that are straight out of my Rise Up Singing songbook, which is adorable and shows the book’s age (written in ’86, updated a decade later).
So what have I learned for my expatriating ways?
1) Don’t talk loudly or gesture wildly when speaking. This comes across as hostile and I will be avoided like the plague. If you’ve ever heard my speaking voice, you will know that this one might be a bit difficult for me.
2) Status is crucial and manners essential. Status is mostly conferred by age, so I will probably not have much with most of the adults I meet, but if I follow my host’s lead, bring gifts when I visit someone’s home, and avoid criticizing anything directly, I should be okay.
3) A few things I already knew were reinforced: don’t touch children’s heads, don’t eat or pass food with my left hand, dress modestly, and do not expect traffic to follow any of the expected rules.
I have a couple more history/literature books to browse for Indonesia, and then it’s onward to Singapore!
Wake up. Shower. Brush teeth. Dress. Open the shades so the plant can get some light. Forget breakfast til I get to work. Dash down stairs because I’m always five minutes late.
We all follow various routines in our lives. The morning routine, the bedtime routine, the weekend routine (mine: Sleep in. Eat. Repeat.). Even the most laid-back person has something that needs to be done in a certain way in order for it to seem properly done. Routines order our days and keep us properly fed and in moderately good hygiene.
You know my feelings on clothing. I'm with Calvin on this one.
Of course, there’s the flip side. Much ink is spilled on the dullness of routines and our need to escape from their tyrannical reign over our lives. Do something new today! Take a different route to work! Plan a vacation away from it all! Vacations are the number one way to get out of your usual routine, and it’s usually a welcome relief. Most people make my weekend routine the decadent new norm, and I make my weekend routine a weeklong adventure in sloth, sprinkled with a few novels. It is a glorious time of shaking off the usual daily experiences.
But on longer trips (like, say, a trip around the world), routines are vital. If I’m going to be in a new bed every few nights, and a new country every few weeks, I’ll need some things to stay the same in order to stay sane and centered. I know many people who always do the same thing at every new city they visit: drop off their things at the hostel/hotel, walk around the neighborhood, and then eat dinner at a local restaurant before an early bed. This establishes them in their new surroundings before they run off in all directions having adventures.
Routines while traveling are also crucial to keeping your things with you. Say you use a computer at an Internet café to upload your photos, and you also chat with your mom on Skype and your friends on Gchat, and then whoops, time’s up on your Internet connection, so you have to dash. Only later do you realize you left your camera’s memory card in that computer. It seems silly and a small thing to focus on, but if you have an item that’s of value to you, attach a routine to it while you’re traveling. For example, if I’m uploading photos, as soon as they’re uploaded, I remove my memory card and put it back in the camera, and then put my camera back in its bag. Then I can carry on with editing photos and hearing the latest office gossip, secure in the knowledge that my memory card is safe and I can take more pictures tomorrow.
Do you have routines specific to traveling, or do they all go out the window the moment you leave town? Do you find any reassurance or guidance in routines, or do you find them stifling?
This is Part III in a series. Read Parts I and II here and here.
Part III, In Which Our Hero Triumphs Over the Familiar of a Dark Arts Practitioner
Our next misadventure picks up some time later, in the fall of 2010. Comedian Jon Stewart had announced his intention to hold a “Rally to Restore Sanity,” his answer to the polarized extremism of the contemporary political climate, and his sometime partner Steven Colbert, in his pseudo-right wing persona, announced a simultaneous “Rally to Keep Fear Alive.” This joint event would be held in Washington, DC on Saturday, October 31st, Halloween.
I thought the idea was funny, especially as it was at least partially intended to mock excessively well compensated professional jagoff Glenn Beck. But it did not occur to me that I would attend myself, until my dad proposed that we do so. I think he really wanted to show up Beck. He knew I was a huge Stewart/Colbert fan and is a great fan of road trips, the non-disastrous kind. At first I wasn’t sure I wanted to go because Halloween in Chicago is usually pretty awesome, especially the previous year which I’d spent hanging out with this blog’s hostess (Hello Lisa), but this did seem like one of those great once in a lifetime opportunities that I’d be a fool to miss. I posted my ruminations about this on Facebook, which was the fashion back in those days, all of my friends strongly encouraged me to go, and of course, I’d do anything for the old man. Consultation with friends and their plans indicated this might not be quite as fun a Halloween as last year anyway.
I had certain deeper misgivings as well. I am a huge fan of Stewart and Colbert, watch them most every night when I have the chance. And Stewart’s passionately felt but moderate and independent minded liberal politics have always pretty much seemed a mirror image to my own. But I had to admit he may have been going too far down the moderate road with this endeavor. The general thrust of the statement he was trying to make was that the American political landscape had been hijacked by extremes and the voices of reasonable people who lie in the middle are getting drowned out. Honestly, who disagrees with that? It’s like saying you like puppies. And I definitely have problems with people on what I consider the far left, a group which includes many close and beloved friends of mine (Hello again Lisa). I think their tone is often too strident and I think they often think more idealistically than realistically. I don’t care for old school sixties organizations like Code Pink, which confuse disrupting free expression with exercising it. But ultimately my differences with them are more about strategy, tactics and style than they are about substance, whereas my differences with folks on the far right are more my contention that they should be beaten with sticks, an issue of substance on which their position is probably the reverse. And seriously, when was the last time you heard about Code Pink?
As tempting as this pox on both their houses business is, it’s just not true that “both sides” are equivalent in America today. The left is not bringing guns to town hall meetings. They’re not setting off bombs and they’re not murdering doctors, and while some on the left made deplorable jokes about assassinating George Bush, a whole lot fewer people actually tried it than have with Obama. You don’t hear about it much but it happens a lot.
And anyway, however moderate and reasonable Stewart’s audience might be, they are overwhelmingly seen as liberal. Hell, that’s what liberal used to mean. And considering the fact that Republicans were about to retake the United States Congress with an agenda pretty far removed from the restoration of sanity, maybe it would have been a better idea for thousands and thousands of liberals to spend some time volunteering for Democratic candidates instead of going to a big party in DC with their favorite comedians.
All of these nagging misgivings were eventually overtaken in my brain by “Jon Stewart! Colbert! Woo!”
By this late stage of the year, I had exhausted all my vacation time because I can be an imprudent sort in some respects. This meant we couldn’t depart until late Friday afternoon and had to be back ideally Sunday sometime. We had toyed with the idea of flying. But it would have been a thousand bucks for both of us by the point we looked into it. The sticker shock put me off immediately, spending that much (of my father’s) money on this adventure was surely a terrible idea. No, we would just have to press on through the night for the entire epic thirteen hour drive from Friday to Saturday morning. I had booked one of the last available motel rooms in the DC area, where I hoped we would be able to grab maybe three hours’ sleep before assembling with the other multitudes.
Though the rally was theoretically a nonpartisan affair, my dad had brought some of my vintage Obama for Senate signs to demonstrate where we stood, firmly, in an election that had taken place six years earlier. If we’d had some Obama for President signs, or better yet, “Democratic Congress: Please Give Them Another Shot” signs, we would have brought them but you’ve got to work with the resources that you have.
I inherited my political junkie orientation from my dad and we spoke grimly about the prospect of impending Republican rule. I suggested that this Rally to Restore Sanity event might be even more necessary a year or two from now. What if a whole movement sprouted out from this day, a counterpoint to the Tea Parties? “What do we want?”
“The opportunity to sit down and discuss our problems like mature adults without being mean to each other!” “When do we want it?” “Whenever it is convenient for you!” Probably not, but if it did, we would be there for the start of it.
Of all my road trips recounted here, this was the one most dominated by, well, the road. It competed with a college trip to Philadelphia as the longest one I’d ever been on. Somewhere in, once again, Ohio, I encountered a rest stop phenomenon that may be commonplace but that I found slightly surreal. There would be a set of businesses, a Burger King, a Pizza Hut, a Starbucks and a BP Station, say, and across the street, there would be the exact same Burger King, Pizza Hut, Starbucks and BP Station. My dad is not one to pay particular attention to this sort of thing so I ask you dear reader: That’s kind of weird isn’t it? It was like parallel worlds facing each other. Maybe my brain wouldn’t have fixated on this so much if it didn’t want to go to sleep as badly as it did. But I had miles to go… Like way more miles than Robert Frost had to go on that horse.
As the night wore on, my father and I, switching off the driving duties, had adhered to an unspoken pact to travel cheerfully at excessively high speeds. We had a motel to get to, and oh, 90 miles an hour seemed appropriate when there was nothing else on the road for what felt like 90 miles. My dad had a little GPS gadget that predicted the time when we would arrive at the destination. The time would get earlier as the car went faster. I made it a personal game while driving to make the time display go backwards.
At about four in the morning on Saturday, October 30th, Halloween for all practical purposes, my dad was driving, we were passing through Bedford County, Pennsylvania about two hours from our destination. Again so tantalizingly close when misfortune struck, this time with the kind of vicious, overwhelming force designed to crush what plucky optimism you’d managed to hold fast to through previous misfortunes because this misfortune doesn’t like the cocky look on your face.
Completely without warning, a deer ran in front of our path. There was less than a second to process this realization before impact. I can’t even recall exactly how I became conscious of it. My father may have shouted something along the lines of “DEER!” I was sad that we had killed a deer. And shocked of course. But I did not, in the first few seconds, grasp the full implications for ourselves. I thought, “Terrible tragedy that, how carelessly and ploddingly we tread on God’s green earth… But I’m sure we will quickly recover from the no doubt minor damage to our vehicle and be on our way.”
Exiting the car, however, we saw the picture of a very damaged automobile. The whole front appeared to be completely wrecked. I was prepared to speculate that among many other things, the deer had almost certainly taken out the alternator.
I started mentally sputtering. What…who…why…Burger King… “nonpartisan rally”? What the FUCK? Why the hell was this happening to me AGAIN?
The all but mindless hunk of venison for which I had moments earlier felt sorrow became the target of my rage. The deer and my father’s car had destroyed each other in a symbiotic symphony of doom. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that jumping in front of speeding cars was fucking STUPID, Bambi?
Or perhaps you were a familiar, the servant of some evil wizard? An evil wizard opposed to the elevation of American discourse? Or was there some other unknown cause you gave your life for? Thanks a lot, deer. Hope you’re enjoying your fucking Deer Valhalla where all the deer martyrs go or something. You blow.
At this point, I knew the drill. There I was once again. Broken down on another rural highway, running my ass off just to determine where the hell I was. This was definitely getting old. Then the sheriff’s deputies arrived, an older man and a younger one. We explained what happened. Their tone was generally polite until they asked my dad for his license and registration, for some reason, the latter was in the trunk rather than the glove compartment. That’s when the deputies saw the big Obama sign, and the tone changed a bit. Bedford County, Pennsylvania is not Obama country. The young deputy became heated.
“Exactly how fast were you going to do that much damage?” the younger deputy started asking. My dad initially ignored this and kept talking to the older deputy, whose tone remained relatively respectful. When the younger deputy persisted with the question, my dad, himself a Chicago Police veteran albeit for a brief time, favored the boy with a withering glance and answered in a tone dripping with disdain that my words cannot capture, “I have no idea how fast I was going,” the clear implication being “And you don’t either.”
My dad is awesome.
The younger deputy said he would have to look for the deer and shoot it if it was still alive, which it wasn’t. I thought I detected a bit of sadness in his voice for the poor beast, which made me like him just a bit more.
Once we were, again, dropped off at a motel, my dad engaged in some charming banter with the female desk clerk, which, apart from being contemptuous of authority, is one of the things he’s very good at. It was now past 5am and when we adjourned to the motel room, my dad and I decided that we would have to forgo the Rally, which was both a relief and a disappointment. It frustrated me to have traveled so far for nothing but neither of us was in any condition for standing in a big crowd having gotten no sleep whatsoever. At least I’d kept true to the “Keep Fear Alive” portion of the event. My dad was now pessimistically saying it may be days before we can return home as the nearest rental car agencies are closed all weekend.
I absolutely refused to countenance this talk. I couldn’t wait until fucking Monday to go home, as I had no days off left, and if I did, I was sure as hell not going to waste it on the road. I’m going to get home and I’m going to get home now. I furiously combed the Internet for some means of escape. The nearest city I’d heard of was Altoona. If I’d heard of the place, I reasoned that they must have cars available for rental on Saturday. They did, from 9am to noon. It was close to 6 now. And Altoona was fifty miles away. No public transportation of course. And no taxi companies in the sense I was familiar with, but after my dad and I conversed with the clerk we discovered there were people in the area who would give you a ride as a sort of side business. She gave me a phone number and I called to arrange a pickup at 9am. I managed to get an hour of precious, precious sleep before having to be on the road again.
Our driver was a diminutive, elderly man in U.S. Air Force fatigue pants. He and his wife were friendly I’m happy to say, they asked us where we were from, and we told them Chicago.
“Chicago…” the man said. “I think I might have met another fella from Chicago once.”
As if Chicago were some obscure, remote region he’d only heard of on occasion. We are a rather world famous metropolis you know. Or perhaps, they were just too polite to repeat what they had heard. They asked us if we had Chicago accents and we said we supposed we did.
We managed to rent a car and head home. It looked like I’d be home for Halloween after all. I texted a few friends to ask them what they were doing. I told my friend Molly that it looked like I would be coming home a bit earlier than anticipated. With no more prompting than that, she texted back “Oh no! Did you destroy another car out of state in a political endeavor?” I responded “If I told you the answer was yes…I’m not even going to bother coming up with something witty here, the answer is yes.”
If I have a regret about these misadventures in this strange “other” America, it’s that I never really tried to reach across these perceived (largely by myself) cultural and ideological divides. I always adopted meek and unthreatening postures and never once tried to engage anyone I met in a forthright, honest conversation about things. Perhaps this silence is one of the reasons these sort of divides exist. Or perhaps it really does maintain a sort of tense peace.
Oh and a bit of a footnote to the previous entry, I found out that the TV series Glee is set in Lima, Ohio. I kind of love that, because I don’t think the Klan would have liked Glee.
My dad and I found out, not long after our return home, that his 1.5 year old car was not in fact salvageable, making my (blameless!) automobile death count three. Marc told me that I would have to undergo some sort of powerful exorcism from a seriously hardcore priest or shaman before he would ever allow me into any car of his again, though he has already yielded on that threat.
And hey, much as we can joke about my streak of bad luck, that’s all it was, bad luck, it’s not that I’m really cursed because we’re all grownups here and we know curses aren’t real. As I write this, I’m preparing to drive back to Ohio for a friend’s wedding. I am firm in the conviction that absolutely nothing will go wrong…
This is Part II in a series. Read Part I here.
Part II, In Which Our Hero Misses A Play But Learns That All Ohio Is A Stage
The next road trip of note took place just a few months later, in May of 2009. Another of my best friends, Reina Hardy, was a playwriting grad student in Athens, Ohio. She was having a play produced, which I’d read before and loved but never seen performed, at a high school elsewhere in Ohio. I wanted to see the show so I planned to drive out there. This would be very different from the quick, purposeful jaunt of November. This would be me, alone. And it would be EPIC. One of the paradoxes of my personality is that I am very social, with many friends that I love and wish to see often, but I also love and crave solitude. I am a lone wolf at heart. I’ve always liked the idea of just driving across the country by myself. Stopping in roadside bars and restaurants, getting to know different people, occasionally having to bust heads and break hearts. Beautiful women would try to cleave me to them but ultimately they would understand that I was meant to return to that open highway where I belonged. Always driving into the sunset, a man alone, lost in the romance of the great American road…searching for…redemption. For what? I’m not sure. But that sounds right.
Of course I had no wheels of my own so I planned to rent a car. When I told my father of this plan he said that it would not be necessary, and he would let me take his, which I often drove anyway, for the weekend. My dad is generous to a fault, a fault which will shortly become clear. He did mention that the car was twelve years old and probably not long for this world, but it “should be fine”; we Leahys are above all optimists, at least by Irish standards. You would think I might be concerned given my recent experience with another old car but what, me worry? It was certainly cheaper than renting a car, things were looking up!
So the play was going to be Saturday, my plan was to arrive then. But I would depart Friday night, to break up the six-hour journey. My plan was to stay at a motel in Indiana, and soak up some America. I wound up departing fairly late on Friday night, maybe 9pm. I was thrilled. I had a tall ship, and a star to sail her by. Which was Mapquest.
My dad’s car was indeed old, and probably one of the last cars in the world not to have a built-in CD player. I’d had some sort of adaptor Discman thingee but it had broken. So for entertainment while driving I checked out audio cassettes (cassettes!) of the original radio version of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was glorious, but around midnight I wanted music so turned on the radio instead. It was growing darker, ever darker. I was the only driver on the road. Somewhere about an hour east of Valparaiso, home long behind… the radio decided to play the Decemberists’ “The Rake Song,” which I had not previously heard.
The song is about a man murdering his young children and casually describing it in grim, cold blooded detail, what they used to call a murder ballad. Did I mention I was alone on an unfamiliar road at midnight? I think I did. The song transfixed and chilled me. Hey radio. How about you try being just a wee bit less creepy for a little while? Would that be okay? I returned to the comfortable world of Douglas Adams, and decided it was motel time.
Checking into a motel by myself. Certainly not the first time I’d done it. But it somehow felt badass. I slept pretty late into the following morning, had myself a nice diner breakfast and got on the road again. Things were going great. Sunshine, good traffic conditions on the open road, got about halfway through the epic Hitchhiker’s saga, which was good because that meant I could listen to it on the drive home. It was now about 4pm, the show was going to start at 7:30. By my calculations I would reach New Albany in two hours with about 90 minutes to spare. Smooth sailing. Because I was a hoopy frood who knew where his towel was.
But remember that this is a tale of misfortune and the cruelty of fate. My dad’s car suddenly lost all forward momentum and the folly of taking a twelve-year-old car on a three hundred and fifty mile road trip became clear. I pulled over on the shoulder of the highway, to avoid being smashed out of existence by some other speeding vehicle. I desperately tried to start the engine and failed, dead in the water. And so I had to repeat the drill I’d learned in Indiana six months earlier, only this time it fell to me to determine where the hell I was, because a tow truck can’t come if it doesn’t know where you are, which, beyond knowing what highway I was on and what direction I was going in, I didn’t. I had to find the nearest road maker, which was not visible to the naked eye, which meant I would have to run for a long ass time, which I got to doing. At least it was daylight for a little while longer. It was warm for May, at least it would have been in Chicago, and the running made it a lot warmer. Jesus these markers are pretty far apart if you’re a pedestrian, which I guess you’re not supposed to be on a highway.
As I run, not yet seeing the object of my search, I slow down, as I let the shock and horror of my predicament wash over me. I am stranded far away from anyone who knows and loves me, with no immediate means of getting anywhere else, the possibility of ever seeing home or civilization again grows dim, and it occurs to me I could just stay there, on the side of the highway forever. Go native. Become a scavenging barbarian. Let my beard grow as my clothes become rags. Try to catch fish from the nearby stream. Throw stones at the passing cars, those metallic monster reminders of a world which rejected me… But soon I see the sign telling me where I am and hope is restored. I run back to the car and make the necessary phone calls. I inform my dad of my plight, and tell Reina that it looks like I won’t make it to the show. Reina tells me her parents, who have also come from Chicago to see her, can take me back home. I tell her that I must stay with the car in the hopes that it can be repaired. But it is Saturday, relatively close to dusk. And it won’t be until Monday that an auto shop will be open to assist me. Which means I’m stranded for the weekend. Various people, from the deputy who responded to my initial call for help, to the clerk in the hotel I checked myself into, suggested in a tone of hope that “It could be the alternator.”
When the tow truck arrives, the driver tells me he can haul my car to the nearest major town, Lima, Ohio, a place entirely unknown to me that is nonetheless about to enter my consciousness forever more.
This tow truck driver is older than the last. And quieter. This makes me uncomfortable. I’m simultaneously afraid to make conversation and afraid not to. It’s strange. It’s the whole culture gap that is at the fringes of what this article is about. I’m often a bit nervous around older adult men who are from a different social class than myself. Or is it class exactly? I mean I know plenty of blue collar guys whom I get along with great, I mean my dad is a union carpenter. And it’s not just the geographical distance either because I’ve had this experience plenty of times in Chicago. There’s just this kind of aggressive quiet with certain guys. Like they’re thinking that you’re thinking you’re superior to them because you’re a middle class kid with a bachelor’s degree even though that’s totally not what you’re thinking, and maybe they’re also thinking they’re actually superior to you because you don’t know shit about cars or electricity or tools or anything that’s actually useful when in fact you’re totally grateful that people do know about those things and you wish you did… And maybe this detour into my neuroses isn’t strictly necessary. He dropped the car off outside of a Midas, now closed of course, and I told him I’d find my lodgings on foot (we’d passed a few on the way).
I crossed into the threshold of a nearby McDonalds. Thanks be to the sainted Ray Kroc for covering the globe with these outposts of civilization to provide comfort to all afflicted wanderers. I sat and read some comic books with my chicken nuggets, fries and Coke and tried to collect myself. A nice little respite from the trauma of the previous few hours. I hoped to make the spirit of that respite last a while. So I checked myself into a Marriott. No tiny motel room for me. If I was going to be stuck in some distant nowheresville like Lima, Ohio I was going be stuck in a big pile of luxury. What I saw immediately surrounding the hotel, however, was far from that. It was a post-industrial decline middle American hellscape, or as some prefer to term it “The Real America.”
What depressed me about the place were not the big box stores and cheesy chain restaurants I could see all over the place, because unlike a lot of snooty urban elitists I actually rather like those things (well maybe not Walmart because I know too much about it, but its competitors aren’t more than slightly better in the end, still, it seems to me that the distinction to be made is that a lot of America’s giant corporations are evil because evil is profitable to be evil, Walmart is evil because they seem to enjoy it). What depressed me were vast, empty lots, making me wonder if non-retail businesses had once been there, in some lost, legendary time of economic strength that actually benefited ordinary people. And the fact that so many of the faces I saw seemed kind but sad.
I am trapped inside a Bruce Springsteen song.
I am very happy that by sheer whim, I had brought my laptop with me. This meant I could repurpose my weekend from its original intention of visiting my friend into a sort of writing retreat. I had the opportunity to spend the weekend writing, hanging out in a hotel and basking in glorious solitude. I was still disappointed in not getting to see Reina and her play, and plenty anxious about the automobile situation, but all things considered, these circumstances were not too bad.
I have loved hotels since childhood, and one of the primary reasons is swimming pools. I bought some trunks at one of the big box stores. American flag trunks. It seems appropriate.
I decide to learn a little bit about where I am by looking Lima, Ohio up on the old Wikipedia, because at this late hour, that’s a lot easier than firsthand observation.
For one thing, it appears that Lima was a major font of Ku Klux Klan activity in the 1920s. That’s always the kind of thing you’re excited to hear when you’re alone in an unfamiliar place. And this is not a thing of the distant past, as the town’s politics have remained ultra-conservative. In the 1950s, the town’s newspaper denounced public libraries as a socialistic endeavor. This is the kind of thing I’ve often said as a satirical joke. Turns out Lima, Ohio was ahead of that favored quip in my repertoire decades before my birth.
Whatever passionate views I might hold about other subjects, including a general disapproval of violence, are secondary to this overarching principle: If you’re against public libraries you need to be punched in the fucking face. Hard.
Wikipedia’s magic also told me that Lima’s opera house had once been a major site for vaudeville performances. However, Lima audiences were so unreceptive to their humor that “Lima” became a codeword for a stone faced audience. Supposedly they originated the joke “First prize is a week in Lima, Ohio. Second prize is two weeks in Lima, Ohio!” since adapted to many other towns.
One of these young performers was named Spencer Tracy, who found himself performing in Lima for months and hated it, desperately calling up producers in New York to get him a gig there. Decades later, while filming the western Bad Day at Black Rock in a hot, desolate California town, someone is said to have ventured that it was the worst place in the world to be stuck in. Tracy replied, “Then you’ve never been to Lima, Ohio.”
Hollywood elitists have an insufferable way of looking down their noses at traditional American institutions like the Klan.
Wikipedia also confirmed my diagnosis about rust belt decline. This hard hitting online reference article obviously made me a bit anxious about the place in which I’d found myself. On the other hand, I was in a Marriott, and that was pretty sweet.
Sunday was pretty much a day of reading, writing, instant messaging with an unnecessarily guilty Reina, swimming, eating, watching cable and walking around. Or at least attempting to do the latter. This area of Lima appeared to have been built with barely the faintest notion that human beings could ever or would ever be pedestrians, even as an afterthought. In Chicago, we have a remarkable innovation called “sidewalks” that allow you to traverse great distances with no means of propulsion save those of your own body! Mind you I’ve tread on these wholly remarkable pathways not only in the big city but in other places as well! Why, I’ve even seen them in Champaign-Urbana! But obviously Lima’s wise town fathers view such amenities as the work of the Devil and have worked hard to prevent their town from being infected by the socialist corruption they bring with them.
Instead, this area of Lima provided me with a kind of unholy mixture between grass, gravel and dirt that seemed designed with at least as much of an eye towards entrapping and killing pedestrians as towards providing them with assistance. But I am a powerful and experienced walker, and was in no mood whatsoever to be entrapped and killed, so I wasn’t.
Monday morning came and I was able to confirm pretty quickly that the car was not salvageable, at least not without spending thousands of dollars that would be better invested in a new car.
We have now learned, from these two experiences, that “Maybe it’s the alternator,” while often said in a tone that seems intended to give comfort, is in fact an ominous portent. It’s code for “This car is fucking dead.” If you are ever in the hospital, dear reader, and you hear someone say that it might be the alternator, prepare to make peace with this life.
I was a bit sad in my entirely too sentimental, anthropomorphizing way. This was the car I’d learned to drive in. Gone back and forth from college in, taken girls on dates in… It deserved better than this ignoble death in Ohio.
But it was also liberating. I now knew what I had to do, which was rent a car and get the hell out of this godforsaken pit.
I settled into the car, excited to be returning home after a fun but stressful three day sojourn. I turned the key to the ignition. The radio was on. Rush Limbaugh. Of fucking course.
And of course, this car being of more recent vintage, it had a CD player and not a tape deck, meaning I would not be able to finish my Hitchhiker’s. Sigh. But fortunately I did have a Jonathan Coulton CD in my laptop which provided similar levels of dorky joy.
On my way out of town I stopped at a Ruby Tuesday’s restaurant and sat and read the book I’d had with me the whole weekend, an anthology of H.P. Lovecraft stories. Somehow reading H.P. Lovecraft at a Ruby Tuesday’s encapsulated the entire weekend for me. Over my cheese covered chicken sandwich and fries, I began to read his novella “Shadow Over Innsmouth,” whose protagonist/narrator recounts the tale of being trapped in a strange and terrifying little town. It begins as follows:
During the winter of 1927-28 officials of the Federal government made a strange and secret investigation of certain conditions in the ancient Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth. The public first learned of it in February, when a vast series of raids and arrests occurred, followed by the deliberate burning and dynamiting – under suitable precautions – of an enormous number of crumbling, worm-eaten, and supposedly empty houses along the abandoned waterfront. Uninquiring souls let this occurrence pass as one of the major clashes in a spasmodic war on liquor.
Keener news-followers, however, wondered at the prodigious number of arrests, the abnormally large force of men used in making them, and the secrecy surrounding the disposal of the prisoners. No trials, or even definite charges were reported; nor were any of the captives seen thereafter in the regular gaols of the nation. There were vague statements about disease and concentration camps, and later about dispersal in various naval and military prisons, but nothing positive ever developed. Innsmouth itself was left almost depopulated, and it is even now only beginning to show signs of a sluggishly revived existence.
Complaints from many liberal organizations were met with long confidential discussions, and representatives were taken on trips to certain camps and prisons. As a result, these societies became surprisingly passive and reticent. Newspaper men were harder to manage, but seemed largely to cooperate with the government in the end. Only one paper – a tabloid always discounted because of its wild policy – mentioned the deep diving submarine that discharged torpedoes downward in the marine abyss just beyond Devil Reef. That item, gathered by chance in a haunt of sailors, seemed indeed rather far-fetched; since the low, black reef lay a full mile and a half out from Innsmouth Harbour.
People around the country and in the nearby towns muttered a great deal among themselves, but said very little to the outer world. They had talked about dying and half-deserted Innsmouth for nearly a century, and nothing new could be wilder or more hideous than what they had whispered and hinted at years before. Many things had taught them secretiveness, and there was no need to exert pressure on them. Besides, they really knew little; for wide salt marshes, desolate and unpeopled, kept neighbors off from Innsmouth on the landward side.
But at last I am going to defy the ban on speech about this thing. Results, I am certain, are so thorough that no public harm save a shock of repulsion could ever accrue from a hinting of what was found by those horrified men at Innsmouth. Besides, what was found might possibly have more than one explanation. I do not know just how much of the whole tale has been told even to me, and I have many reasons for not wishing to probe deeper. For my contact with this affair has been closer than that of any other layman, and I have carried away impressions which are yet to drive me to drastic measures.
It was I who fled frantically out of Innsmouth in the early morning hours of July 16, 1927, and whose frightened appeals for government inquiry and action brought on the whole reported episode. I was willing enough to stay mute while the affair was fresh and uncertain; but now that it is an old story, with public interest and curiosity gone, I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly-shadowed seaport of death and blasphemous abnormality. The mere telling helps me to restore confidence in my own faculties; to reassure myself that I was not the first to succumb to a contagious nightmare hallucination.
Yeah. Pretty much.
I pointed my rental car west and never looked back…
This week will feature a three-part guest post by the witty and delightful Rory Leahy. He is, in his own words, “a Chicago writer, actor, producer, raconteur, occasional shiftless layabout and Artistic Director of American Demigods, a theatre company whose next production will be Erratica: An Academic Farce, running from April 21st through May 14th at Second Stage Theater.” He’s also a road warrior of the most terrifying kind; he kills cars and stealthily blames it on the alternator. Observe:
Part I, In Which Our Hero And His Companion Singlehandedly Change The Course Of American History
It’s appropriate that I come to the good Lisa Findley’s blog to tell this tale, or rather tales. For this is a blog mostly about travel that also dips into passionately felt left wing views. This story is, in a broad sense, a little bit about how these two can intersect, and how uncomfortable it can feel when one ventures outside one’s geopolitical bubble. Mostly though, it’s about misfortune. And the kind of disasters that can befall a well intentioned soul through no fault of his own because the gods are cruel. That well intentioned soul being me. In the past two years, I have embarked on a handful of cross country road trips. Three of them, which probably constitutes the majority of a handful, have been the death voyages of the automobiles I was traveling in. Three times, in two years, the vehicles ceased to function, forever, with me in them, as either a driver or a passenger.
One begins to take it personally.
November, 2008: Barack Obama is about to be elected President of the United States. This is personal for me, and honestly, kind of surreal. I first met Obama almost six years earlier, when he was an unknown state senator taking the big shot blah blah blah. He was a long shot at the time, but his charisma was overwhelming. My girlfriend at the time tells me that I told her “Take a good look, cuz this guy’s gonna be the first black president” back in 2003. You can ask her if you don’t believe me. She’s from Oregon. Oregonians don’t lie. Anyway, I may have believed that but I had no idea it would be so soon. I’d fallen out of regular political activism by 08, but my best friend from high school, Marc wanted to be part of the final assault. He proposed that we take a trip to Indiana, our nearest swing state, on Election Day and help get out the vote. So we got in his girlfriend’s generously loaned car and we pointed it southeast.
Whatever disappointments folks have felt since, there was an amazing feeling in the air that day. The Bush/Cheney empire was about to fall. We were gonna rock this thing Battle of Endor style. Then we were gonna go back to Chicago that night and celebrate with friends like dancing Ewoks. I have to confess that’s the part I was looking forward to most, the social part. That’s just the kind of party animal I am. Marc was a bit more idealistic I think, wanting to do his part. I already felt like I’d done my bit for the cause and was resting smugly on my laurels, but I was happy for a day off work and a road trip anyway.
On the two hour plus journey, Marc and I played one of our favorite games, mocking right wing rhetoric, gleeful at the impending triumph of Islamo-Communist revolution.
“I can’t wait for Christianity to be outlawed!”
“I know, that’s going to rock!”
“I hate America so much, you have no idea.”
“No I totally do, because I am also a liberal and wish to see our way of life destroyed. How long do you think it will take to build the gulags?”
“I’m thinking maybe 90 days max. The genius of it is, the patriotic Americans will be building their own prisons, it’s very efficient.”
“We’re going to execute the entire Bush family, like the Romanovs, right?”
“Oh yeah, for the next hundred years there will be legends that like, Jenna somehow survived but no one will be able to prove it.”
“I’m assuming Cheney is Rasputin then?”
“Oh definitely, he’s gonna be shot, stabbed, poisoned, drowned and finally beheaded…”
“But he’ll keep coming back.”
While we were joking outlandishly I’d like to point out that a lot of what we said turned out to be true, at least metaphorically.
We reported to the campaign office, an auto workers union shop on the outskirts of Indiana, and were given our assigned addresses. These were the addresses of registered Democrats. Our job was to knock on their doors and make sure they went and voted. If they were elderly or disabled, our job was to call the office and make sure they got rides to the polls. There were always dangers in this sort of work. They were registered Democrats according to the best information but no information is perfect, and you never know when you’re walking into hostile territory. And on a couple of occasions we did. One gentleman held his nose and waved his hand in a “PU” gesture saying “Obama? You’re gonna be sorry four years from now!”
Maybe but probably not for the reasons you think.
Then there was the dog. We find ourselves in a somewhat rundown neighborhood where a mangy cur is just wandering the streets alone. When he sees us he starts growling and barking at us menacingly. This is a bit scary. We immediately retreat, walking slowly like you’re supposed to do. But the dog keeps following us and growling, just a few inches behind us.
“I’m going to kick you in the head.” Marc warns, to no apparent effect. Both of us are pretty sure we can take this flea infested asshole but we don’t really want to have to. After what must be a block, the beast finally gives up his pursuit and turns around.
Fucking Republican dog.
But for the most part, our canvassing was uneventful, people told us they voted or were going to, we gave them directions. In three cases, we met up with people who needed rides to the polls. We called headquarters to arrange it. So that was three people who were going to vote that otherwise would not have. We were determined to win this state, and would credit ourselves with the victory.
At last the time came to head home. Grant Park. Dancing in the streets. Great moment in history. Ewoks. This was gonna be good.
Maybe 20 minutes out of Indianapolis we notice billows of smoke coming out of the engine. This is not happening. Because it’s. Just. Not. We apparently had an overheated engine. We pulled into a gas station and purchased large quantities of coolant fluid. Which seemed to work. For a few minutes. Then it started again. Marc and I were humanities dorks who knew nothing about cars. We desperately tried to figure out what to do. These desperate attempts yielded no appreciable results.
The car came to a dead, sputtering stop as Marc pulled it over on the shoulder of the highway. Next to a cornfield. I did what any responsible 21st century adult does in a situation like this. I called my dad. He doesn’t really know much about cars either but a fair sight more than us. My dad spoke to Marc briefly. He said, optimistically, that it might be the alternator. We called 911, and waited for a deputy to come meet us. The deputy would make a report and put us in touch with a tow truck. Marc wanted to call his girlfriend Kelli, the owner of the car, to inform her of what had transpired. He asked me to leave the car for a moment so they could have a bit of privacy, which was understandable, but vexing on a midwestern November’s night.
“Sure guv’nor,” I grumbled, “Just throw old Rory to the elements, he doesn’t mind a bit.”
I turned away from the car and my eyes fixed on what was in front of them. Corn. Rows upon rows upon rows of corn. Or maybe they were soybeans. Like I can tell the difference.
The evening grew later. It was past 7 now. People were texting me. Results were coming in. This was not how I wanted to get the news of victory at all. I listened to Marc negotiate with the tow company on the phone. Initially, we clung to desperate hope that we would reach home that night, a hope reflected in the defiant tone of Marc’s initial round of negotiations.
“I need my car towed with me in it to Chicago. Tonight. I don’t care how much it’s going to cost. Wait….how much is it going to cost?” We conceded to cruel fate that we weren’t gonna get home that night and agreed to be driven to a motel and drop the car off at an auto shop in the hope of its eventual repair. We would celebrate our victory in an unfamiliar and probably hostile land. There would be no Ewoks.
It’s possible that a couple of obscure X-Wing pilots might have suffered engine failure and gotten lost after the Battle of Endor, thus having to spend the night in a motel and miss the party, but there’s a reason Return of the Jedi did not focus on those characters.
After a seemingly interminable wait, the tow truck arrived; we were pretty excited to see it. The driver, I am happy to say, a very friendly sort. Young, perhaps a couple of years our junior. He had a shaved head and a big, bushy beard. He expressed his condolences for our plight and we talked about that. It’s sort of hard for a political junkie like me to comprehend that people are capable of talking about anything else on the night of a presidential election, but I was relieved that he did not ask us what a couple of Chicago boys were doing getting stranded on a rural Indiana highway, and we did not allude to it. As John Cleese so memorably admonished: “Don’t mention the war.”
My goalposts for the evening had obviously moved. We weren’t gonna make it home for the party, but I wanted to get the big news from a TV in a warm room. A text informed me that we’d won Ohio, which pretty much sealed the deal. The final word though… Marc later chided me, rightfully so, for my rather self-centered attitude. A bad night would have been a night in which Obama lost.
I was happy that we found ourselves ensconced in a motel room ahead of said final word and we immediately flipped on the TV, and for the first time in hours, recovered some enthusiasm. Eventually, we got the official word we’d been waiting for. A solemn anchor confirmed in a solemn anchor voice that Barack Hussein Obama had been elected President of the United States on the historic night of November 4th, 2008. Marc and I jumped up on our respective motel beds and gave each other a high ten, at which point we collapsed back into those respective beds. We were damn proud of the bit of work we did, and while we haven’t gotten our hoped for liberal paradise two years later at least we beat Dr. Strangelove and Serena Joy.
We watched Obama’s acceptance speech at Grant Park, the event we couldn’t make it to. At one point during his speech he thanked all the people who couldn’t make it, but who had worked so hard, making phone calls and knocking on doors because they wanted to improve the direction of their nation.
“That was us, you know.”
“Damn right it was.”
The state of Indiana went for Obama. By a 1% margin. Despite our misfortune, and despite the fact that poor Kelli’s car never was repaired, Marc and I slept the sleep of the just…
I’ve been fortunate in my travels so far–not only have I not had really bad experiences with other people, but I’ve had some fantastic interactions that make me believe in the kindness of strangers. My favorite such story is when I visited my sister Emily in France in April 2008, and it’s my favorite not just because I got out of a jam but because the people who helped me out seemed the least likely to open their doors to a stranger. Preconceptions, what!
I was feeling quite proud of myself for cobbling together an itinerary of two flights from two different airlines to get the cheapest fare to Avignon from Chicago, but that backfired magnificently when my flight to Heathrow was delayed and there was no time for me to get to Gatwick in time to make my connecting flight. (Oh yes, did I mention that the two flights were to and from two different London airports that are an hour apart if you don’t factor in traffic, and that there were only two hours between landing in Heathrow and taking off in Gatwick, and that I’d called a car service the night before to get me to Gatwick on time, but when I tried to cancel after I realized there was no way I’d make my connecting flight, they still charged the full amount and I had to call my credit card company to get the charge removed and I received threatening letters from the car company for the next four months? Travelers, take note.)
After passing several uncomfortable hours in the airport, I was finally able to get on a plane on standby. True, it was going to Nice instead of Marseilles and I’d have to rearrange my train ticket to Avignon once I landed, but no matter, I was on my way to France. I settled in to my middle seat between a teenage girl zoning out on her headphones and an English businessman shaking his newspaper out in front of him. It was a cramped flight and I just wanted to land, turn on my phone (newly enabled for international travel), and call Emily to tell her I was that much closer to seeing her.
But of course that’s not how it went. We did indeed land, but when I turned on my phone, nothing happened. I knew the battery was charged, so who knows why it chose that exact moment to die, but regardless, I had no way of contacting Emily and I was pretty sure there wasn’t much time til the last train to Avignon for the day. So I turned to the businessman beside me and said, “I only have one pound left, but can I give it to you to use your phone real fast to call my sister? My phone seems to have died.” He told me not to be silly, he didn’t need the money, and handed over his phone. I called Emily and sure enough, there was one more train to Avignon and I’d need to hoof it to make it to the train station on time. Even then, I might not make it, so I warned Emily that I’d call her from a hostel if I didn’t make the train, and in that case I’d see her tomorrow. When I handed the phone back to the businessman, he was looking at me with horror.
“You’re going to try to make that train? There is definitely not enough time!” he said.
“Oh, well, I might make it. I’ll give it a shot,” I said casually.
“And what if you don’t make the train?” he asked.
“Oh, I’ll find a hostel somewhere and stay there. I’m sure there’s a listing of hostels at the train station.”
“That’s ridiculous. Do your parents know you travel like this?”
I didn’t care for his condescension, but he seemed genuinely concerned for my well-being, so I gave him a pass and repeated that it was fine. By this point, we had made our way off the plane to the baggage area, and he met up with his wife and son. I went outside to flag a cab to take me to the train station, but the businessman and his family chased after me and offered me a ride to the station instead, to save me money. I said sure, that sounded great, and I inwardly sighed with relief that I’d save that fifteen euros; as European vacations go, this one was being done on a shoestring budget. The man and his wife turned aside and spoke to each other in rapid French, while their preadolescent son and I looked awkwardly at one another.
“Why don’t you come home with us?” the businessman said, turning back to me.
“Um, what?” I replied, a bit stupidly.
“Yes, we will take you home and then tomorrow you can get the first train to Avignon,” his wife said in accented English.
“Oh, well, I think I can maybe still make the train tonight, and if not, there’s a hostel somewhere,” I tried.
“You won’t make that train,” he said frankly. “Come on, Fanette has made a great dinner and you can share our daughter’s room.”
Here is the point in the story where I’m sure some people would back away slowly, or splurge on a cab to a hotel in the city center. But I saw an opportunity not just to save some money but to spend time with new people, people who had just proved themselves very generous. I said yes without any further hesitation.
We drove for about 25 minutes past the city limits of Nice until we reached their house in Antibes, which was oh yes, a small mansion with a pool overlooking the Mediterranean. Did I mention that this businessman obviously did very well for himself?
the back patio -- that's the pool, a palm tree, and the view out to the sea
Paul, as he revealed himself to be, did some type of finance work, and the family owned a house in London, this summer home in France, and also a Swiss chalet for skiing in the winter. Hot. Damn. As might be expected from that description, the house was beautiful, and the wine was expensive. After calling Emily to update her on the situation, we sat down to a delicious meal, and they asked all sorts of questions about my travels past and future. Paul continued to see me as a foolish young woman, I think, but I flatter myself that his teenage daughter might have found some inspiration in my tale. Except for maybe the part where I’d bungled every bit of transportation so far on this trip.
We talked politics over dinner, and it became clear that Paul was staunchly conservative, and didn’t think Bush had been doing such a bad job. Keep in mind that this was spring of ’08, when we were all in a fever about finally getting rid of Bush and bringing in Clinton or Obama. The discussion got quite spirited, but I will say that he kept it civil. We both thought the other naïve and irresponsible in politics, but we didn’t resort to name-calling and we kept coming back to the common ground we did have. It’s the type of political debate I think we all wish could be the norm but has become increasingly rare in the States.
Anyway, I think you can see why this is my favorite story of surprise hospitality. These people were rich conservatives, who saw my whole approach to travel and probably my whole life as dangerously slapdash and unfocused; hardly the kind of people known for helping out travelers in need. And yet they opened up their home to me, made me feel entirely comfortable, and gave me a ride to the train station the next day. What a great example they were setting for their kids, even if they did sit them down after I’d left and explain that there would be no trotting all over and staying who knows where for them.
I sent them a postcard from Germany later in that trip, but I’ve since lost the address, which really bums me out. I wanted to send more inspirational postcards to those kids and Christmas cards of gratitude to the parents. I wanted to keep this tenuous connection between us, to hold on to my own Good Samaritans and keep a tangible link to the kindness of strangers and the fortune of the traveler. Since I can’t do that directly, I do the next best thing to keep that spirit of spontaneous generosity alive and encourage it in others—I tell people this story.
I’m sure you’ve been just as inundated as I with ads for the shitty remake-although-they-aren’t-admitting-it’s-a-remake movie Due Date, which is of course limply redoing Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, which is of course making me think of how road trip movies are always shown as wacky jaunts shot through with soul-searching and character changing. But then, I think of my most favorite road trips, and they all involved comic capers as well as a solid layer of bonding with friends or reflecting on self. That’s the eternal appeal of the road trip.
Which way? (photo by me)
There are three distinct phases of a person’s road tripping life: childhood vacations, high school wanderings, and adult road trips. When you’re crammed into the backseat of your parents’ car with obnoxious siblings and no rest stop for the next 200 miles, the journey is a trial to be endured until you reach Walley World. You have no control over the car, and very little voice in when you’ll stop to eat or sleep, so you must content yourself with playing the alphabet game and poking your sisters til they shriek. But then when you’re a high schooler, everything changes. Now you’re borrowing that same car and out with friend. You can take whatever side road strikes your fancy, because you have a game of MASH going, your best friend’s sixteenth birthday mix tape is playing, and shit, you aren’t paying for your own insurance and you’re certainly never going to die, so take that curve as fast as you like. Who cares where you’re going, so long as the radio works and school’s out.
The open road (photo from http://www.autonorth.ca)
I’m about to make a morbid leap here, but bear with me: When you’re an adult, the pleasure you derive from road tripping comes from a sense of your own mortality. Horribly aware of just how lethal cars are, you don’t drive quite so fast or recklessly as you used to (usually), and you have to wait til spring break or save up your vacation days to take the trip in the first place, so every moment matters — the journey and the destination. You can still meander from point to point, or drive through the night just to make your next stop, but either way, time is more precious now so you pay more attention to how you’re using that time.
As with most things, I have fond memories of my childhood and adolescent road trip experiences, but I like the ones I’ve had as an adult the best. It’s no secret that knowing you only have so much time here on earth can cause either a sense of panic or a sense that everything is to be savored before it’s gone. Road trips are a great way to come down on the side of savoring; hopefully you’re with people you like, and going somewhere you’ll enjoy, and in the meantime, you have time to talk, gaze at the scenery, and reflect or make jokes as you like. This isn’t the whole “it’s not the destination but the journey that matters” BS — it’s even better because they both matter! Having something to look forward to doesn’t have to distract from the excitement of the present, and enjoying where you are now shouldn’t mean you can’t plan for a great time in the future.
And yes, I just made that a bit life lesson-y, and I apologize. As penance, here are some funny road trip memories of my own.
Less than ideal weather conditions (photo by me)
Okay, so half of those were life-or-death experiences, but hey! I told you the appeal of road trips is a bit morbid. What about you — what are your favorite or just most memorable road trip memories?
When I first read The Diary of Anne Frank, I was 12 or 13 years old, about the same age as Anne was when she started the diary. I had a completely adolescent reaction to the first part of the story; I was envious of how popular she was at school with all her friends, when I was pretty friendless at mine. By the end of the book, I liked her so much I wished we could hang out and be friends. That’s how instantly relatable Anne is — not a blandly “universal” character, but one with her own personality, dreams, and worries.
She had a great eye for detail, and had plenty of time to turn it to the hiding place she lived in with her family and others for two years. The result was a description so fine that one could sketch out an exact replica of the Annex (the hiding place), including all the furniture and odds and ends. When I was younger, I was into floorplans and the ways homes were laid out. I would sketch the grand houses of my imaginary characters and make up stories of them moving around those spaces. So I probably focused on that aspect of the diaries more than most kids, and tried to imagine just how small the Annex was and how all the beds and tables and sinks fit together.
The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam (photo by me)
This March, I visited a friend in The Netherlands and spent a few days touristing in Amsterdam. I stood in a long line outside the Anne Frank House on a rainy day, watching canal boats glide by and listening to the Westerkerk chime the hour. Once inside, I bought my ticket and selected an English pamphlet from the many language options. It’s a self-guided tour, and there’s a constant stream of people, which is a little unsettling in the building that once housed just a small office and a back room of people for whom every visitor meant possible discovery and arrest. I followed the crowd, reading the small placards placed along the way and peering at the photographs hung on the wall. I had forgotten that the Annex was attached to Otto Frank’s office, not to a residence. Much of the material at the front of the house focused on how the office functioned before they went into hiding, and how the “helpers” smuggled food into the Annex.
Otto Frank had requested that any museum made of the house not include the furniture; he said the emptiness of the place would symbolize how everything they had was taken from them. So I didn’t get to see all the pieces fit together as I’d imagined when I was penciling improbable architectural structures on my sketch pad. How that furniture would fit in there anyway, I don’t know, because these rooms were tiny. If you go to http://www.annefrank.org/ the museum has set up a neat 360-degree view of each room with the furniture intact, so you can get an idea of how everything was set up. Even with that guide, when I was standing in the rooms and looking around me, it seemed impossible. How eight people could fit into this small space (and a teenaged Anne sharing a room with a middle-aged man because there was no room in her family’s room, at that), I still don’t see, except that needs must. They had to fit, so they fit. They had to put their lives on hold for fear their lives would end, so they put their lives on hold.
It was such a dark place, too. They had blackout curtains drawn all the way down or almost all the way down in each room in the Annex, so you could get a real idea of how each day looked to the Franks, the van Pelses, and Mr. Pfeffer. It looked dark, and small, and dull. Anne talks about how bored she is several times in the diary, and it’s no wonder. She’s bright, young, and full of energy, but she has to be practically silent for two whole years, confined to a tiny space with her parents, sister, sometime boyfriend, and three other adults. Distractions are few and frivolity almost impossible. Long before her life was taken from her, her adolescence was stolen away, or at least forced into unnaturally cramped conditions.
At one point in the diary, Anne writes, “I wander from room to room, climb up and down the stairs and feel like a songbird whose wings have been ripped off and who keeps hurling itself against the bars of its dark cage. ‘Let me out, where there’s fresh air and laughter!’ a voice within me cries.” In most other diaries of girls her age, this is usually teenage angst and hyperbole. The heartbreaking thing about Anne, and what visiting the museum made more real and terrible to me, is that while she felt the usual swirl of teenage emotions and conflicting desires, she did so within a fatally dangerous world that made her imprisonment all too real. And yet she never stopped writing.
Anne Frank memorial statue (photo by me)
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