I wander America on a Harley Davidson motorcycle, sleep on couches and in fifty-dollar motel rooms, eat at Waffle House and Main Street cafes, and have conversations with people whose politics I might not agree with. These are our stories.
The Road to Ripley
My cousin Molly lives in suburban Cleveland and has a husband, three kids and cancer. Her parents, my aunt Mary Jane and uncle Phil, live nearby; I stopped for a visit. Phil taught geology at Case Western Reserve and brings real knowledge and understanding to the...
The Four Seasons Motel
Smokey ride across northern Wisconsin yesterday, I guess Canada’s still on fire. Spent the night at the Four Seasons Motel in Crandon, a town of abandoned two-story brick buildings and out-of-business businesses. For dinner, I had a California burger, fries and a root...
Grand Canyons
My worn and dusty shoe dangles Above a billion years Three thousand feet of history Just beneath my soleThe river’s cut is steepBut the fall is not my fearInstead the eons stacked in shades of redCountless to a squintEach the span of all of human historyBut not...
And Snow, Snow was Dead
When I arrived at O’Brien Barracks, I was tired. I hadn’t slept on the plane from JFK to Rhein-Main or on the bus from Rhein-Main to Schwabach, my low-quarters were scuffed and my dress greens were wrinkled and stunk from the travel. There were five of us ‘cruits and...
Lovely Rita
The black vinyl snapped and cracked when I sat on it. The night was cold like that. I fumbled the key into the switch, twisted it and the engine ground around until it'd hacked itself into a roar. Even in the cold, the cab stank like gas and sweat and grease burgers....
Lunchtime Lingerie
Spring semester, 1973, eleventh grade. I was sixteen. First day back after winter break, the principal called me into his office and told me that he was putting me on OJT, no more curriculum, no more math, history or French, no more cutting up frogs. On the Job...
The Soft Smell of Citrus
I got out of the Army in March of 1978 and stayed in Europe. It was cold in Germany and I hitchhiked south. I met Clayton at a campground in San Sebastián in northern Spain. Tall, skinny, scuffed leather-soled wingtips with no socks and food-stained khaki shorts, Clay...
The Louisville Slugger
Have you ever had a conversation truly free of consequence? People pick up hitchhikers because they feel sorry for them standing in the rain, the blowing snow, the bitter cold, the cruel sun; because they’re bored; because they’re shitfaced and need somebody to grab...
Driving West
We left Valentine at 5:30 Sunday morning headed west driving Nebraska Highway 20 which runs along the state’s northern border. Good road, cliffs and buttes and curves in unlikely juxtaposition to movie-set ranch scenes and vastnesses where the prairie meets the horizons all around. It’s a beautiful, beautiful part of our country.
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