Cairo, Illinois is an abandoned town. Closed buildings, one or two stories tall and built mostly of brick, abut the sidewalks on both sides of Washington Avenue, the main street through town. Besides an occasional aged car ducking in or out of a side street or a shambling pedestrian, the avenue is empty. There’s one restaurant, Shemwell’s, a mediocre rib joint, and just north of town, a Quality Inn motel with a half-empty swimming pool located between the office and the guest rooms so that guests have to skirt it to get to their rooms, the water brown and scummy with cigarette butts. No lifeguard on duty.
The town sits at the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers. Both rivers are wide and stately and eddied with the power of their currents. It’s a very American scene; the beauty, the enormity, the magnificence of nature, the rivers spanned by humankind’s long and spindly bridges. There is a park at the confluence, the oaks are stately but the grass hasn’t been cut this year and there are potholes in the asphalt. There is an aged two-story viewing tower with concrete steps and galvanized pipe railings. A young woman walked past me singing to herself; she sang beautifully. I told her so and she smiled.
Gary’s from Kansas City and rides a Honda Goldwing. We met in the park. His wife died twenty years ago and he wanders the country on his motorcycle. It turned out that Gary knew something about Cairo’s history; in the nineteen twenties and earlier, Cairo was a boomtown. Organized crime had a large presence and a lot of shipping money stayed in town. Then the FBI moved in, threw the crooks in jail and left only “the blacks.” The town’s been going to hell ever since.
From Cairo, I followed the river north on the Illinois side. Very poor. Very beautiful. Rolling hills, farmland and forest. Middling roads. A friend had suggested East St. Louis.
When I arrived in East St. Louis, I stopped the bike to look around and get my bearings and Tiny, she’s seventy and lives in her truck, came up to sell me a copy of The East St. Louis Monitor. It cost me a buck. The newspaper office was across the street and the door wasn’t locked.
Frazier Garner has worked for the East St. Louis Monitor for fifty years. On the masthead his title is General Manager. The paper was founded by his father, Clyde Jordan, in 1963 and covers the local news of East St. Louis. The paper’s a weekly with a circulation of five thousand. We had a long conversation about the paper and its history and the town it covers. Frazier was patient and courteous with the white guy standing in front of his desk asking questions. He’d done it before.
As we talked, I studied his office walls. He had an NRA placard above the target he’d shot to qualify for his membership. He’s no longer a member. His reasons are unsurprising. It’s a small office, his desk against one wall, a narrow passage to get past it to his chair. On the wall, centered on that narrow passage at eye level is a photo. Arriving at work in the morning, coming back from a coffee break or the restroom or a meeting, he can’t sit down without looking at that picture. And his visitors, as he fields questions from his chair, are forced to confront it, to think about it, to lug that image out in their memories when they leave.
I wanted a picture of him. He wouldn’t let me take one.
For many years, I knew that there were culinary gems to be found in small town America. And for many years after that, I knew that there were no culinary gems to be found in small town America.
I’m in Bluefield, West Virginia. Dinner at Jah’ Kater Kitchen is the gem that I believed in. Don (he titles himself Jah’ Don) makes Caribbean soul food. His mission statement is to make food with “flavor you can feel.” Indeed, his sensuous candied yams, perfectly grilled and seasoned medium rare lamb chops, spicy yellow rice, and silky, peppery mac & cheese with a chewy melted top I could feel in my toes. Oh yeah, baby, it’s been a lot of years!
A couple of days ago I took a wrong turn and then another wrong turn and ended up on a steep little dirt road that got steeper and smaller and rockier until it was just a trail following a narrow, dry stream bed and had disappeared from the Garmin. I had no idea where I was or where I was going. I was surrounded by thick forest and undergrowth, no vehicles, no buildings, no people, no internet. The trail was too narrow to turn around, too steep and rocky to ride back up. The Harley weighs 864 pounds, plus gear and my fat butt.
I hung the bike up on a rock and walked a mile down the trail looking for help and walked a mile back with a six foot log to use as a lever. Along the way, I cut back brush and thorny blackberry bushes so I could see the path and it wouldn’t tangle with the bike (for years I’ve wondered why I carry that Buck knife when I travel). I took the gear and side-bags off the bike, used the log as a lever to pick it up and jammed rocks under the rear tire until the frame was clear. With great care and a little tire spin, it crunched and rolled up and over.
The dry stream bed turned into a wet stream bed so that I was riding in running water and when that smaller stream joined a larger stream, I rode through its rushing water, too. And the stream got bigger and the water got faster and deeper so that steam clouded off the engine and the exhaust burbled and blew bubbles and the engine coughed and wasn’t happy.
I tipped the the bike over three times and picked it back up, once in the middle of a stream in water almost to my knees; 864 pounds plus gear. But I repeat myself. My jeans were wet to the crotch, my feet sloshed in my boots and my t-shirt was soaked with sweat. Gentle clutch, gentle throttle, gentle brakes, it took me four hours to go three miles and find a tiny asphalt road.
I stopped at the first motel and poured the water out of my boots into the sink.
Two nights ago, my motel in Huntington, West Virginia overlooked a fast, busy, one-way, two lane thoroughfare. The speed limit was thirty-five, people were in a hurry, there was a lot of traffic, it was dusk.
I was sitting on the balcony watching flatbed semis hauling steel and diesel pickups rolling coal and gasser pickups with blue-lit wheel wells and growly hotrod Subarus and snarly Japanese motorcycles and burbly Harleys, the Harleys’ signature exhaust note muffled by their riders’ oversize butt cheeks, and a lot of people in sedans and minivans hurrying home for dinner.
A guy came riding by on a BMX bike. Tall guy, he was wearing a black hoodie, black baseball hat, black pants, work boots and carrying a black backpack. He was standing up and stomping the pedals like the cops were moments behind him.
When he was in front of me, he slammed on the brakes, skidded the bike sideways to a stop, lifted it chest high, slammed it down on the pavement and stalked away, back the way he’d come.
He was a hundred feet down the road and I was starting to think I’d better move his bike when he stopped, bent down and out of the gutter picked up a bright, shiny Bowie knife and held it above his head. The blade was twelve inches long or longer. He stalked back to the bike waving the knife over his head like a balloon on a stick, put the knife back in the sheath he’d dropped it from, and pedaled away, standing and stomping.
Yesterday’s gentle evening, James and George and I sat on metal chairs beside the creek murmuring alongside the Mineral Springs Motel watching the night come over the mountains and I listened to their stories.
James and George are HIV positive. James was diagnosed in 1991, George was diagnosed in 2001. James has a Parkinsons-like tremor in his jaw and hands from the drugs and has blackouts, dropped conversation and a straight-ahead stare that lasts many seconds until he blinks and shakes his head and says, “Sorry, sorry.” George has osteoporosis and arthritis from his treatments, the pain is constant. His doctor’s afraid that one day his legs will collapse from his body weight. He walks with a cane. Through the years, they have both teetered over and over at the edge of death.
They were both born in 1964. James went to West Virginia Tech where he joined a fraternity and had a first boyfriend and dropped out of school. He worked in retail, as a model (he went to modeling school) as a writer and editor. George worked as a florist. His dad died in a coal mine. He and James have been together for 16 years. They live on disability.
George told me that they used to drink a liter of vodka a day. They’ve switched to wine because it’s healthier. They drink all day. George smokes cigarettes and James, who dislikes the habit and the smell, walks across the parking lot for an ashtray and lays it in George’s hand with a gentleness and intimacy that catches the attention.
They’d been living with James’ sister, Loretta. There’s tension; James had a fling with Loretta’s now-deceased husband. It happened some 40 years ago when Loretta was first married but it’s still there. A few days ago, she threw them out on some pretense and they’re staying at the Mineral Springs Motel. She calls the motel owner, Randy, every day to check on their condition. It sounds like they may be going home tomorrow. A relief for James and George; between them they have three older cats and miss them terribly. And they’ve been wearing the same clothes for a week.
I spent the night at The Mineral Springs Motel in Webster Springs, West Virginia. That’s a lot of springs for a little coal mining town, I’ll ask Randy about that. Randy owns The Mineral Springs Motel. He’s sixty-nine, former mayor of Webster Springs, former member of West Virginia House of Delegates, former West Virginia state senator and the first openly gay elected official in West Virginia. He recently had surgery for brain cancer and wants to sell the place, $750,000.00 (two acres, mature trees, well-maintained lawns and flower gardens, a stream running through it, masonry building with a metal roof and twenty-three rooms not updated since the wood paneling was installed in the seventies). He’s willing to negotiate.
I had breakfast at Vicki’s Cafe. The Special was two eggs, sausage, toast and coffee for $4.75. With potatoes and a buttermilk biscuit, my breakfast was $6.31 plus tip. The coffee was weak, maybe that’s their cost savings. My no-humor waitress was in her forties with sagging jeans and tattoos on her hands and arms. I tipped her well, the girl needs pants.
While I was eating, three motorcycle guys from North Carolina sat down at the next table. I said hello and got curt nods in return. Sixties, bearded, baseball hats hiding their pates, black leather jackets with American flag patches and a goose stitched on the back, they were members of the Wild Geese MC. I’m sorry, but an embroidered goose just doesn’t have the same gravitas as “Hells Angels” or “Hells Outcasts “ or “Banditos.” Just sayin’.
Walking to Vicki’s for breakfast, I ran into James and George. Nine o’clock in the morning they were sitting by the creek and each had a tumbler of white wine. Last night, I sat with them and drank that same wine. They’re a strange couple. James hates the smell of cigarette smoke, George smokes and so they sit together ten feet apart. James seems physically quite fit, George had a hip replaced and hobbles with a cane. George doesn’t talk, James won’t stop talking. They seem to drink well together.
James and George were born and raised in Webster Springs and had been living in Fort Lauderdale. James had been writing and editing for a variety of gay publications including a stint in the leather press (who knew?). When I arrived yesterday afternoon, he was wearing a Black History is American History t-shirt, which would seem to me bold in small-town anywhere, particularly small-town West Virginia.
West Virginia has a lot of poor people. They live in tiny clapboard houses with peeling paint and broken steps surrounded by stacks of firewood, junk vehicles and carefully manicured lawns. Or they live in ancient mobil homes, a haphazard wood porch nailed to the front that’s piled with broken furniture and trash bags surrounded by stacks of firewood, junk vehicles and carefully manicured lawns. Indoor plumbing seems unlikely. But here’s the question: if poverty is set in steep hardwood forest, clear trout streams and tiny well-maintained roads is it still poverty? The lawn thing is weird.
The town of Pritt Mountain is a bar. I stopped because of the LGBT banner hanging over the door. I sat at the bar next to Mark and Don and ordered a bottle of Bud. We were all hard of hearing. I yelled at Mark, “What’s the name of this town?” and he took my arm and led me to the jukebox so that we’d know what song was playing.
One of our two waitresses complained that eating raw broccoli gives her gas so bad she can’t breath. The other waitress has 25 grandchildren and one great-grand child. Her fifty-one year old son is having triple bypass surgery and she held him while he cried. She talked at great length about how nothing is more important than family.
