The Incredible Weightiness of Driving (in Chicago)

My parents told me not to bring my car from Evanston to Chicago. “You won’t need it!” they said. “We never needed one! Public transportation!” I shared with my parents my thoughts on the CTA, laden with explectives and clenched fists, which I’ll spare you now—and then said, “No. I need my car.”

In the end, I was right. My car is a necessity. I work in the Ravenswood neighborhood, right off Silicon Alley, which is impossible to reach by El, bus, or Metra from east Rogers Park. On the weekends, I often relish in driving out to the burbs, subsequently fighting super-moms for parking spots at Old Orchard or getting my ass kicked in Wii boxing by J’s 5-year-old niece in Glenview.

However, the city car brings with it a burden that is greater than parking tickets or snow plows that impact dirty ice igloos around your vehicle. No, this burden manifests in the seedy underbelly of Rogers Park and Edgewater, in the speeding main thoroughfares and clogged side streets of these neighborhoods. It is, by a more common name, Chicken.

Living in Rogers Park, it didn’t take long before I recognized this game of brain and backbone as it played out between cars. In narrow streets flanked on either side by parked cars, cars speed at one another for the right to pass first in a challenge that requires gumption that the likes of Sherman and Grant once knew.

The first few times this happened to me, I blamed the drivers. I muttered profanities as they barreled head on at me and then veered close, narrowly missing scraping the side of my car. But the more it happened, I realized—I need not hate the players, but should instead hate the game. (Specifically, Chicken.)

This is how I start each morning—sleepy-headed, unkempt, and reckless. Heeding to no one (except pedestrians!/especially not the buses!) and pushing my way out of Rogers Park.

My trip south on Ashland and Clark is another story altogether, a harrowing journey with quick swerves around delivery trucks, those damned CTA buses, and thick-headed bicyclists. (By thick-headed, I literally mean they must have rock-hard heads because they’re often biking right down the middle of the road without helmets on. They must have no fear of crashing skull-first into anything.) Speedy motorists squeeze into the right turn lane and then gun their way through intersections to continue straight while cabbies straddle multiple lanes as if following the dotted yellow lines to their destination.

By the time I manage to wedge my car into a parking spot near my office, I’ve lost at least the duration of the commute off my lifespan and I’ve devolved into something more primitive. My heart is pounding and my pupils are dialated—I’m in full survival mode, ready to strike snake-like at the nearest postal worker who comes too close to me on the sidewalk with his cart-full of envelopes.

It takes me nearly eight hours to wind down, and by that time, I’m ready to take the same trip home. My hands are shaking, but I reach for the keys. This is my burden to bear.

Read More...

Summary only...

A Trip to the South

J and I drove down to the Ohio River on Saturday--a short jaunt from Lebanon, really, but one that ended up consuming our entire day as we wound up and down the Ohio and Kentucky banks. For J, this trip into Kentucky was his first venture into "the south except for Disney World," and for me, I hoped it would be a confirmation of my love of the raw and unrefined relics of southern Ohio and northern Kentucky. In between the rusting, abandoned hay balers and the darkly weathered tobacco barns, I wonder how I grew up only forty minutes from another world stuck in another time.

Our first stop was on the Ohio side of the river--Ripley, Ohio. A quick Google search told us that Ripley offered us two sure-bet stops.

First, the Rankin House, a home-turned-underground railroad stop whose reverend-owner helped over 2,000 slaves to freedom over forty years. After two missed turns, one settler cemetery and two wild turkeys later, we found our way to the startling top of a ridge where the little home teeters at its peak.

From the home's modest front steps, you can see the Ohio-Kentucky border carved for miles in either direction by the river. I stood at the crest of the hill with November wind licking at my face, imagining the people who stood on that very spot 150 years before me and wondered what they thought as they faced south from this summit, whether they too looked at the landscape as a map and saw it as if it charted their lives--at the bottom of this hill was their past to the south, and through the threshold of the door behind them was their future in the north.

It was not easy to keep these lofty thoughts in mind as J and I entered the museum/house itself. Neglect in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had worn the floorboards and walls thin, and a stuffy, self-important 30-something curator was droning in contemptuous monotone to a couple with two anxious kids in what used to be the family's dining room and now served as the gift shop. J and I opted to do the self-guided tour, which was a pretty quick one since there weren't many signs to read and the family's original furnishings have all gone on to posterity. We hit up the gift shop on the way out, paying our $3 each to the curator who seemed miffed that we handled the house without him.


On our way out of town, we made our second stop at a Ripley, Ohio winery (they exist!) for a wine tasting. While I had expected the rolling hills of the river valley to house a picturesque olde-tyme Gothic Revival farmhouse with rows of faded fall grapes around it, I was dead wrong. Instead, John and I rolled up to a 1970s Ranch house three blocks behind a McDonalds in a totally residential neighborhood.

WINE TASTING, proclaimed a sign to reassure us that we wouldn't be knocking on some poor old lady's door if we dared approach it. After I parked, J and I took a good look around us and then at one another.

"Are we going in?" J asked.
"I guess so," I shrugged, checking out the middle-aged ladies decked out in faux fur coats and home perms who were carrying two cases of bottles each.

When we did get the courage up to leave the car, we discovered that the house had been gutted. Where floor-to-floor carpeting and La-Z-Boy furniture should have greeted us, concrete floor and dozens floor-to-ceiling barrels consumed the room. We opted for the $6 wine tasting option--two glasses with the winery's insignia and tastings of four different bottled wines. We mingled with only one another, avoided bumping into other tasters for the obligatory chit chat that might follow, and scarfed down crackers and Kraft cheese. It was awesome. At the end of the fourth glass, we decided to buy their new release, a 2005 Petit Verdot, fermented right there in those barrels. And we kept the glasses.


As we crossed into Maysville, Kentucky, J took a shot of the WELCOME TO KENTUCKY sign, commemorating his first trip "south." Appropriately enough, Maysville appeared totally shut down for the day (it was about 3 P.M.) and nothing seemed open. We did, however, drive by the town's theater which displayed a plaque that boasted Rosemary Clooney's childhood in the town.

A few miles down the road, we hit up Augusta, another town that claims Rosemary Clooney (this time with a Rotary International clock in her honor). More exciting Clooney claims lie in a house just off the state highway in Augusta, where George grew up. (We hoped to glimpse him at home for the holidays, but we didn't have any luck.)

Having been driving for several hours in what felt like a haze of November gray, I realized my body would shut down in a matter of minutes without a dose of caffeine.

"There has to be a Starbucks here."
"There's a cafe over there," John pointed to a quaint, hand-painted sign that did, in fact, say CAFE.
"Do you think they have Starbucks?"

It was here that I realized I am a city dweller. I grew up in a town that got its first Wal-Mart when I was nine and its coffee shop my junior year of high school, and where, up until recently, the only shops on our main street (other than the 200-year-old Golden Lamb and staple Ice Cream Parlor) were antique markets, and this whole daytrip, I had been explaining the art of tobacco making and covered bridges to J. But here I was--in a town of 1,200 people where between the antique shop and general store on Main Street there is literally a trailer home parked in an empty lot--and all I want is generic coffee, in a thick paper cup that I can carry.

We parked the car ("Look, J! No meters!") in front of the cafe, and peeked in. A friendly woman with dirty blonde hair swished up, carrying Christmas decorations.

"Oh!" she smiled, surprised (there was no one else in the restaurant). "Y'all just caught me puttin' up the Christmas decorations! It's that time of year alrea'y. Now, y'all want somethin' to eat?"

"Um, actually," I said, becoming increasingly aware of my cheeks flushing in embarrassment, "do you have coffee? that we, um, can carry out?" I glanced nervously at the white-washed chairs and bead board walls, well aware of how my conscience was yelling at me to be polite and sit down for a whole meal since, after all, it was Saturday and she had no business.

"Oh, of course! I just finished a pot!" she smiled again and proceeded to describe what amounted to Starbucks grinds in a coffee pot in back with such a flourish that it sounded like she had grown the beans herself and my mouth watered.

"Sounds wonderful," I said and then poked around the Christmas decorations and handmade soaps while we waited.

Some minutes later, her high school-aged daughter reemerged from the back, carrying my coffee and J's peppermint hot chocolate, her eyes locked on J with a shy smile on her face. It occurred to me that probably not many 20-something guys pass through Augusta on vacation, and I smiled too--partly for the feeling of knowing exactly how that girl felt, and partly because that home-brewed Starbucks was the best damn coffee I've ever tasted. We walked down to the river bank one last time, and then got in the car, ready to head back home.

Read More...

Summary only...

Compilation

Like Robert Frost said...

The house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place's name.

No more it opened with all one end
For teams that came by the stony road
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs
And brush the mow with the summer load.

The birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,
And the aged elm, though touched with fire;
And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm:
And the fence post carried a strand of wire.

For them there was really nothing sad.
But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,
One had to be versed in country things
Not to believe the phoebes wept.

-----------

The barn and tavern are about 50 yards apart. The cemetary is up the hill, about 250 yards, overlooking a ravine that leads to the river...

the view up into the rafters...

part of the cabinet that was part of the schoolhouse in the upper room of the barn...

more of the cabinet...

the cabinet, with all its worn colors...

somewhat disconcerting discovery on the top floor of the barn...

perhaps someone who IS well-versed in country things can tell me what kind of farm machinery this is...

old nail and chains hanging from it, next to the uhh...wagon?

close-up of the front of the wagon-like thing... note that the wheels on the front are super sharp.

this mystery dial was on the front of the mystery machinery...

sunlight peeks through into the barn...

the rear view of the adjacent tavern...

the upper rear window...

the layers of paint peel off a window sill of the tavern...

a shattered window and glimpse inside the kitchen...

a better shot of inside the kitchen through the broken window...

the view of the barn from the tavern...

the front of the Cross Keys Tavern (operated as tavern from 1809-1820, schoolhouse where friend Amy's neighbor was instructed thereafter, currently maintained by Camp Kern(??))

John and Osee Terry's headstone, (one of the best in condition there)...

typical rural Ohio, this schoolbus is in the woods, visible from the cemetary...

Henry Stibbs' headstone, seemingly very successful farmer, the father of John Stibbs, grandfather of Jackson Stibbs, would outlive most of his grandchildren as he lived to the remarkable age of 98. Walked through his old property today...

These two headstones were near the Stibbs' plots, the names are illegible, but these red silk flowers that some person left there mark the graves...

Read More...

Summary only...

"I've been driving a lot."

Today I drove.
It was the most important thing I've done in a while.

I realized many things in the time it took my gas needle to sink from half empty to quarter full.

I leave the house, my hands damp with the humidity and heat, fingers pressing the flip-key of the Volkswagen. And as if in slow motion, I move down my steps unevenly jumping two at a time (clip-clop, clip-clop).

I unlock the door just before my hand reaches for the arched handle of the car. Slipping into the hot seat, the faux leather burns my thighs and bare arms. I turn the key in the ignition, roll down my windows, and turn on my music.

Usually I complete this expected and framed moment by tearing my hairband out of my hair, pulling my sunglasses over my eyes and immediately putting my hand on the gearshift and my foot on the clutch. I'm ready.

Each turn is decided by whim. I veer toward the unknown, the blind corners, the shadows, green hills lined with the ribbon of black pavement at their crests.

I want to be somewhere unknown, where no one knows me. When I find those places, I photograph it. I make those places mine.

Sometimes its the stark contrast of color that draws me: the seering green against a brilliantly ominous sky or the toffee color of thrushed wheat.

Sometimes its the people: the old man sitting in his lawn chair on the main street of an impoverished town, his two scrawny granddaughters bent over in gutter, playing in their worn swimsuits in the dilapidated concrete and dirt, a light blue 1960 Ford pickup truck parked alongside the old man's store that is marked by an old Coca-Cola sign that has faded from red to orange in the sunlight.

Sometimes its the smells: a bonfire in the country, freshly cut fields, skunks, gasoline, manure, burning rubber, plants crushed underfoot, rain. Each smell fresh as the next and unexpected.

It's enough to see my hand on the wheel in front of me, my thumb anxiously stroking the bumpy surface. Enough to grab the gearshift and move from third to fourth as I peak around that curve. To feel my hair whipped by the wind, stinging my eyes.

Somewhere in the gas needle's descent, I realize it's okay to make decisions and be scared of your future. That nothing is ever final. That even if I go to law school, I can take a year off and do this--drive and think.

I realize, too, that I take memories from the past, and like blocks build something that never existed and can't stand by itself. I've worked too hard to hold this construction up and it's time I let it crumble.

I realize (as I speed by the small airport where Amy's grandfather took her as a little girl to watch the planes take off and bought her an ice cream cone but grass flew into the cone and stuck and her grandfather had laughed but Amy had cried) while I'm in my car, time stops. Location becomes unimportant. I can piece together my past and present and see my future.




I drove by a cemetary today at a stoplight and as I sat idle, I read a gravestone on the hill that read: "Sarah, Died Dec. 23, 1823." I wondered what Sarah thought about at my age and in her time and if she could have gotten in her Beetle and driven hundreds of miles in one summer, if she would have. I then thought about how sad it was she died the day before Christmas Eve. I wondered what she had planned to give to her friends and family.

Later that day, I looked at Christmas ornaments and thought about buying my mom one. I didn't realize the workings of my subconscious until now.

Read More...

Summary only...

Mission: Ohio

finally started the drive-around-Ohio-and-photodocument-it mission. First stop? The abandoned gunpowder factory in Kings Mill.

This place is amazingly creepy/beautiful. Abandoned during World War 2, the factory has become a haven for kids who wish to wreak havoc, drink, and seek out the ghosts of the workers who died in gunpowder explosions. Perhaps, judging by the inside of some of the rooms, painted with messages like:

OUR GOAL IS TO BE EXTREMELY SCARY.

Perhaps some of those kids are the ones being the ghosts too.

Nature, too, is staking a claim here. Inside one portion of the factory, a large generator of sorts is rusting as it looms over a sapling. Ivy thrives on the interior walls of the factory and cats have made a home of the space as well.

I'm putting what pictures I can for now up. My computer memory is literally so low that I can no longer edit the photos. So, for now, here are some...

-------------- ------------------- ------------------ ------------------ ----------------- ----------------- ------------------ ----------------- ---------------- ----------------

Read More...

Summary only...