Which means nine months to go. The story’s still up here for those of you who started but didn’t quite get round to finishing.
OK, so I lied. There is one more thing. You may be interested to know that the story is now available in chronological order, so you don’t have to scroll down to the bottom and read up. Just go to www.48-states.com and click on the “read in chronological order” button at the top.
And I’ll probably do another plug in a month or so. So this isn’t one final final thing at all.
So, for those of you who have been following this all or part of the way round, that´s it. We´ve reached the end of the road. Thank you for sticking with it, and apologies for the daily intrusions into your Facelogs, Tweetboxes and LinkedHoles. That´s all over now.
For those of you who´ve only dipped in occasionally – and daily posts of around 3000 words have been too much for even me at times – you should know I´ve bought the URL for a year, so I´ll leave this stuff up here until Aug 2012 if you want to come back.
After that it´ll almost certainly come down: either it will have petered out to nothing and not be worth continuing, or it will have proved so wildly popular that it will cost me more than I´d be prepared to pay to renew it. So, you have 315 days to get through whatever bits still take your fancy. It was never my intention to promote this story, simply to make it available to those who were interested in reading it.
I´m writing this epilogue today, on 10th October 2011. The only other bit written this year was the introduction. Everything else was first tapped out on my keyboard back in the weeks following my return to the UK in the fall of 2001. The only editing I allowed myself along the way this year was to change certain spellings and terminology – like fall instead of autumn – so as to be more readily understood by an American audience (as most of the readership appears to have come from the western side of the Atlantic). Tempting as it´s been to update my perspective on things, I´ve resisted that even when it´s allowed my ridiculous naivety and/or ignorance to show through at times.
If I´d tried to assemble any sorts of conclusions back in 2001, I´d probably have said the two things that most characterized Americans – certainly in comparison to the people on the other side of The Pond – would be an accentuated level of common decency and a generally positive outlook. Most Americans seem to have a greater sense of community and care for one another, and they go out of their way to look on the bright side. I´ve not met a single American whose reaction to the idea of driving round the 48 states in 48 days was anything but congratulatory, in stark contrast to the general “What the hell was the point of that?” attitude I frequently encountered back home.
For those of you who don´t know me personally – and astonishingly there are some who´ve been reading this who fall into that category – you may be interested to learn that I moved out to America with Christine at the beginning of 2006. We now have a pair of Green Cards and a spectacular American daughter called Charlotte. And there are no signs of us returning to the UK any time soon.
After living here for almost six years, I can confirm those initial impressions from back in 2001: Americans are fundamentally decent and positively minded folks. The other observation I might have made back in 2001 is that, despite the wealth of diversity afforded by the country, perhaps the general homogeneity of the place was even more striking than all the differences. People from all geographies, social backgrounds and economic strata all seemed to buy into a similar value-set and believe in the same story. Being an American always came first, regardless of the sometimes extreme lifestyle dichotomies that existed alongside this consciousness.
Now I´m not so sure. The past five years has seen an increasing polarization of people broadly along the lines of political sympathies. I can´t think of many gay people who know many churchgoers and engage with them as people. Or vice versa. The tendency is much more just to objectify them as some kind of “other”. The same could be said of weed-smokers and gun license holders, Hummer drivers and those who´ve had an abortion, environmentalists and hunters, and dozens of other examples. These days, Americans are living more and more in a Them and Us world and demonizing anyone from the other side. You either watch Fox News or you watch The Daily Show.
Perhaps this is a consequence of the straitened economic situation that has engulfed most of the population in recent times. If so – and if the world economy continues to march to a tune of increased globalization and technological innovation seeing more and more money being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands – that situation is not going to improve drastically for the middle classes for some time yet. But the best response to a crisis is rarely to stop talking altogether. Just look at the Greeks and the Germans.
But what the fuck do I know? I couldn´t even find a publisher for this story ten years ago despite the drama of 911 sitting right in the middle of it, and a publicity boost when Virgin chose to feature it on a national tv advertising campaign.
What I do know though, is that the USA remains one of the most remarkable countries in the world, and I can now understand why so few Americans ever choose to leave its borders. There aren´t many things that can be done much better elsewhere that aren´t available within the lower 48. I´d heartily recommend any of 47 of those states. Just don´t bother going to Oklahoma.
Thank you again, and goodnight. It´s been a pleasure having you along for the ride.
DAY 1
New Jersey – Delaware
Hoboken (NJ)
Lincoln Tunnel, W 38th St, Queens Midtown Tunnel, I 278 to La Guardia
I 278, I 87, I 95, I 80 to Paterson
I 80, US 206, RR to Waterloo
RR, NJ 517 to Schooleys Mountain
NJ 513 to Clinton, Frenchtown
NJ 29, NJ 604 to Seargantsville, Covered Bridge, Stockton
NJ 29 to Lambertville
NJ 518, US 206 to Princeton
RR, NJ 33 to Cranbury, Manalapan
NJ 33, US 9 to Cape May (NJ)
Ferry to Lewes (DE)
Lewes (DE)
338 miles
Cumulative mileage: 338
DAY 2
Delaware – Maryland
Lewes (DE)
US 9, RR to Bethel
RR to Woodland, Seaford, Blades
US 13 to Dover
RR, DE 9 to New Castle (DE)
US 40 to Havre de Grace (MD), Baltimore
I 95, I 895, I 97, MD 3, US 301, MD 4 to Solomons
MD 235, MD 5 to St Mary’s City
MD 5 to Ridge
Ridge (MD)
353 miles
Cumulative mileage: 691
DAY 3
Maryland – Virginia – West Virginia
Ridge (MD)
MD 5, MD 234 to Leonardtown, Allens Fresh
US 301 to La Plata
MD 225 to Thomas Stone’s House
US 301 to Faulkner (MD)
US 301, VA 207, I 95 to Richmond (VA)
US 60 to Amherst, Buena Vista
US 501 to Glasgow, Natural Bridge
US 11, I 60 to Covington (VA)
I 64 to White Sulphur Springs (WV), Lewisburg
Lewisburg (WV)
381 miles
Cumulative mileage: 1072
DAY 4
West Virginia – Kentucky
Lewisburg (WV)
I 64, US 60 to Hines, Gauley Bridge, Charleston, Hurricane (WV)
I 64, KY 9 to Maysville (KY)
US 68 to Washington, May’s Lick, Paris, Lexington
I 64 to Louisville
I 265, US 42 to Prospect, Goshen
Goshen (KY)
399 miles
Cumulative mileage: 1471
DAY 5
Kentucky – Tennessee – North Carolina
Goshen (KY)
US 42, I 265, US31W to Fort Knox, Bonnieville
I 65, KY 90, US 127 to Glasgow, Cartwright, Static (KY)
US 127 to Pall Mall (TN), Jamestown
TN 52 to Rugby, Elgin
US 27, TN 63 to Pioneer
I 75 to Powell, Knoxville
I 275, US 441 to Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg (TN)
US 441 to Great Smoky Mountains Nat Park, Cherokee (NC), Franklin
US 64 to Highlands, Brevard, Hendersonville
US 25 to Flat Rock
Flat Rock (NC)
511 miles
Cumulative mileage: 1982
DAY 6
North Carolina – South Carolina
Flat Rock (NC)
US 64 to Sliding Rock, Brevard
US 276 to Cedar Mountain (NC)
US 276, SC 8 to Pumpkintown (SC), Pickens
US 178 to Anderson
SC 28 to Abbeville
SC 72, SC 34 to Camden
Camden (SC)
224 miles
Cumulative mileage: 2206
DAY 7
South Carolina – Georgia
Camden (SC)
SC 261, US 15 to Santee (SC)
I 95, US 17 to Savannah (GA)
US 17, GA 196, US 84 to Hinesville, Screven, Waycross
US 1 to Folkston
GA 23 to Okefenokee Swamp
Okefenokee Swamp (GA)
313 miles
Cumulative mileage: 2519
DAY 8
Georgia – Florida – Alabama
Okefenokee Swamp (GA)
GA 23 to Macclenny (FL)
I 10 to Tallahassee
US 319 to Sopchoppy, Carrabelle, Apalachicola
US 98 to Panama City
US 331 to De Funiak Springs (FL)
I 10, AL 64, Alt US 98 to Fairhope (AL)
Fairhope (AL)
486 miles
Cumulative mileage: 3005
DAY 9
Alabama – Mississippi
Fairhope (AL)
Alt US 98, AL 59, AL 21 to Monroeville
AL 41 to Camden, Selma
US 80 to Demopolis (AL)
US 80 to Meridian (MS)
MS 19 to Philadelphia
MS 15 to Louisville
MS 25, MS 19 to Kosciusko
Natchez Trace Parkway to Jackson, Port Gibson
Port Gibson (MS)
528 miles
Cumulative mileage: 3533
DAY 10
Mississippi – Louisiana
Port Gibson (MS)
Natchez Trace Parkway to Natchez
US 61 to Woodville (MS)
US 61 to St Francisville (LA), Baton Rouge
I 10 to New Orleans
New Orleans (LA)
226 miles
Cumulative mileage: 3759
DAY 11
Louisiana – Texas
New Orleans (LA)
I 10 to Baton Rouge, Lake Charles (LA)
I 10 to Beaumont (TX), Houston
US 290 to Giddings, Austin, Johnson City, Fredericksburg
Fredericksburg (TX)
592 miles
Cumulative mileage: 4351
DAY 12
Texas
Fredericksburg (TX)
US 290, I 10 to Segovia, Sonora, Ozona
TX 290 to Sheffield
TX 349, TX 2400, US 285 to Sanderson
US 90 to Marathon, Alpine
TX 118 to Fort Davis
TX 118, TX 166 round the scenic loop
Fort Davis (TX)
460 miles
Cumulative mileage: 4811
DAY 13
Texas – New Mexico
Fort Davis (TX)
TX 17, I 10, TX 17 to Pecos (TX)
US 285 to Loving (NM), Carlsbad, Artesia, Roswell
US 380 to Lincoln
US 380, US 70 to Ruidoso
US 70, NM 244 to Cloudcroft
US 82 to Alamogordo
US 70 to Las Cruces
I 25 to Caball
NM 152 to Hillsboro, Kingston
Kingston (NM)
536 miles
Cumulative mileage: 5347
DAY 14
New Mexico – Arizona
Kingston (NM)
NM 152, US 180 to Santa Clara, Silver City
NM 90 to Lordsburg
I 10, NM 80 to Rodeo (NM)
AZ 80 to Douglas (AZ), Bisbee, Tombstone, Benson
I 10 to Tucson
Tucson (AZ)
317 miles
Cumulative mileage: 5664
DAY 15
Arizona
Tucson (AZ)
AZ 86 to Sells, Why
AZ 85 to Ajo, Gila Bend, Buckeye
I 10, RR to Vicksburg
AZ 72, AZ 95 to Parker, Lake Havasu City
Lake Havasu City (AZ)
385 miles
Cumulative mileage: 6049
DAY 16
Arizona – California
Lake Havasu City (AZ)
AZ 95 to Parker Dam (AZ)
RR, CA 62 to Earp (CA), Vidal Junction, Twentynine Palms, Palm Springs
I 10, I 405 to Los Angeles
Los Angeles (CA)
327 miles
Cumulative mileage: 6376
DAY 17
California – Nevada
Los Angeles (CA)
I 405, I 10, I 5, local roads, I 210, I 10, I 15 to Barstow, Zzyzx, Baker (CA)
I 15 to Primm (NV), Jean, Las Vegas
I 15, NV 168, US 93 to Moapa, Alamo
US 93, NV 375 to Rachel
Rachel (NV)
466 miles
Cumulative mileage: 6842
DAY 18
Nevada
Rachel (NV)
NV 375, dust lanes to Area 51
Dust lanes, NV 375 to Rachel
NV 375 to Warm Springs
US 6, dust lane, US 6 to Lunar Crater, Currant, Ely
US 50 to Eureka, Austin
NV 305 to Battle Mountain
I 80 to Winnemucca
US 95 to Orovada, McDermitt
McDermitt (NV)
617 miles
Cumulative mileage: 7459
DAY 19
Nevada – Oregon
McDermitt (NV)
US 95 to Burns Junction (OR)
OR 78 to Crane, Burns
US 20 to Brothers, Bend, Sisters
OR 126 to Redmond
US 97 to Madras
US 26 to Government Camp
OR 35 to Hood River
Hood River (OR)
440 miles
Cumulative mileage: 7899
DAY 20
Oregon – Washington
Hood River (OR)
I 84, US 30, I 84 to Portland (OR)
I 5 to Kelso (WA), Olympia, Tacoma
I 5, I 405, WA 520 to Seattle
Seattle (WA)
259 miles
Cumulative mileage: 8158
DAY 21
Washington – Idaho
Seattle (WA)
WA 520, I 5 to Seattle Center
I 5 to Everett
US 2 to Sultan, Leavenworth
US 2, US Alt97 to Chelan
RR, WA 172 to Chelan Falls, Mansfield
WA 172, WA 17, WA 174 to Grand Coulee, Electric City, Wilbur
US 2 to Spokane, Newport (WA)
US 2 to Priest River (ID), Sandpoint
Sandpoint (ID)
421 miles
Cumulative mileage: 8579
DAY 22
Idaho – Montana
Sandpoint (ID)
US 95 to Coeur d’Alene
I 90 to Wallace (ID)
I 90 to Clinton (MT), Butte
I 90, MT 2 to Three Forks
I 90 to Bozeman, Livingston
Livingston (MT)
446 miles
Cumulative mileage: 9025
DAY 23
Montana – Wyoming
Livingston (MT)
US 89 to Gardiner (MT)
US 89 to Mammoth Hot Springs (WY), Tower-Roosevelt, Canyon, West Thumb, Old Faithful, West Thumb
US 89 to Moose, Jackson
WY 22 to Wilson
Wilson (WY)
268 miles
Cumulative mileage: 9293
DAY 24
Wyoming – Utah
Wilson (WY)
RR, WY 22 to Jackson
US 89 to Alpine, Afton, Smoot
US 89, ID 61, WY 89, US 30 to Cokeville, Sage, Kemmerer
US 189, I 80 to Diamondville, Evanston (WY)
I 80 to Park City (UT)
Park City (UT)
304 miles
Cumulative mileage: 9597
DAY 25
Utah
Park City (UT)
I 80 to Salt Lake City, Great Salt Lake
UT 201, I 215, I 15 to Provo
US 6 to Helper, Price
I 70, US 191 to Arches National Park, Moab, Monticello
Bluff (UT)
439 miles
Cumulative mileage: 10036
DAY 26
Utah – Colorado
Bluff (UT)
UT 163, UT 262 to Aneth (UT)
CO 41, US 160 to Four Corners (AZ/NM/UT/CO)
US 160 to Durango (CO)
US 550 to Silverton, Ouray, Montrose
US 50 to Salida
CO 291, US 24 to Florissant
RR to Cripple Creek
CO 67 to Victor
Victor (CO)
481 miles
Cumulative mileage: 10517
DAY 27
Colorado – Kansas
Victor (CO)
CO 86, US 50 to Fowler, Swink, Holly (CO)
US 50 to Syracuse (KS), Dodge City, Hutchinson
KS 96 to Nickerson
Nickerson (KS)
479 miles
Cumulative mileage: 10996
DAY 28
Kansas – Oklahoma – Arkansas
Nickerson (KS)
KS 96 to Wichita
I 35, US 60 to Ponca City (OK), Pawhuska
OK 99 to Hominy
OK 20 to Claremore, Pryor, Salina, Spavinaw, Jay (OK)
AR 72 to Gravette (AR), Bentonville, Pea Ridge
US 62 to Garfield, Eureka Springs
Eureka Springs (AR)
410 miles
Cumulative mileage: 11406
DAY 29
Arkansas – Missouri
Eureka Springs (AR)
US 62 to Mountain Home, Salem
AR 9 to Mammoth Spring (AR)
MO 19 to Alton (MO), Winona
US 60, MO 21 to Centerville, Pilot Knob, Caledonia
MO 32 to Farmington, Ste Genevieve
St Genevieve (MO)
342 miles
Cumulative mileage: 11748
DAY 30
Missouri – Iowa
Ste Genevieve (MO)
US 61, I 55 to St Louis
I 70 to Wright City
I 70, MO 47 to Troy, Winfield
MO 79 to Clarksville, Louisiana, Hannibal
US 61 to Wayland, Kahoka (MO)
MO 81, IA 2,W40, IA 1 to Bonaparte (IA), Bentonsport, Keosauqua
Keosauqua (IA)
353 miles
Cumulative mileage: 12101
DAY 31
Iowa – Nebraska
Keosauqua (IA)
IA 1,IA 16, US 3, US 63 to Ottumwa, Oskaloosa
IA 163 to Pella
RR to Reasnor, Monroe
IA 14, RR to Pleasantville
IA 92 to Winterset, Bridges of Madison County, Massena
US 71, Us 34 to Red Oak
IA 48 to Essex, Shenandoah (IA)
IA 2 to Nebraska City (NE)
NE 2, US 6 to Lincoln
Lincoln (NE)
397 miles
Cumulative mileage: 12498
DAY 32
Nebraska
Lincoln (NE)
US 6 to Friend, Hastings, Minden
NE 10, I 80 to Gothenburg
NE 47, NE 40 to Arnold
NE 92, RR to Anselmo
NE 2 to Thedford
US 83 to Lovejoy Ranch
Lovejoy Ranch (NE)
374 miles
Cumulative mileage: 12872
DAY 33
Nebraska – South Dakota
Lovejoy Ranch (NE)
US 83 to Valentine (NE)
US 83 to Mission (SD), White River
SD 44 to Wanblee, Interior
SD 377 to Badlands Nat Park
SD 240 to Wall
I 90 to Sturgis
US Alt 14 to Deadwood
US 85, I 90 to Spearfish
US Alt 14 to Lead, Deadwood
US 385 to Crazy Horse Monument
SD 244 to Mount Rushmore
US Alt 16, US 385 to Deadwood
Deadwood (SD)
436 miles
Cumulative mileage: 13308
DAY 34
South Dakota – North Dakota
Deadwood (SD)
US 85, I 90 to Spearfish
US 85 to Belle Fourche, Redig, Ludlow (SD)
US 85 to Bowman (ND), Belfield
I 94 to Medora
I 94 to Dickinson, Mandan, Jamestown
ND 1, ND 46, RR to Fort Ransom
RR, ND 46 to Leonard
Leonard (ND)
582 miles
Cumulative mileage: 13890
DAY 35
North Dakota – Minnesota – Wisconsin
Leonard (ND)
ND 18 to Casselton
I 94 to Fargo (ND)
US 10 to Moorhead (MN), Detroit Lakes
MN 34 to Park Rapids
US 71 to Lake Itasca
MN 2, MN 9, MN 3to Bemidji
US 2, MN 194, US 53 to Duluth (MN)
I 535, US 2, WI 13 to Herbster (WI), Cornucopia, Red Cliff, Bayfield
Bayfield (WI)
430 miles
Cumulative mileage: 14320
DAY 36
Wisconsin
Bayfield (WI)
WI 13, US 2, US 63 To Hayward, Trego
US 53 to Eau Clair
WI 93 to Independence, Arcadia
WI 95 to Fountain City
WI 35 to La Crosse
US 14 to Coon Valley, Spring Green
WI 23 to Dodgeville
US 151 to Mineral Point
Mineral Point (WI)
409 miles
Cumulative mileage: 14729
DAY 37
Wisconsin – Illinois – Indiana
Mineral Point (WI)
US 151 to Platteville, Dickeyville (WI)
US 151 to Dubuque (IA)
US 20, IL 84 to Hanover (IL), Savanna
US 52 to Dixon
I 88 to Chicago (IL)
I 94 to Highland (IN)
I 94, I 80, IN 13 to Middlebury
US 20, IN 5 to Shipshewana
Shipshewana (IN)
392 miles
Cumulative mileage: 15121
DAY 38
Indiana – Michigan
Shipshewana (IN)
IN 5, IN 120, IN 9 to Howe (IN)
IN 9, MI 66 to Sturgis (MI)
US 12 to Coldwater, Allen, Clinton
US 12, US 23 to Ann Arbor
MI 14, I 96 to Detroit
I 94, MI 3, I 94 to Port Huron
Port Huron (MI)
243 miles
Cumulative mileage: 15364
DAY 39
Michigan – Ohio
Port Huron (MI)
I 94, MI 59, MI 97 to Fraser, Roseville
I 94, I 96, MI 14 to Ann Arbor (MI)
RR, US 12, US 23 to Toledo (OH)
I 475, US 20, US 250 to Ashland, Wooster, Wilmot
OH 212 to Zoar, Zoarville
OH 800 to Dover, New Philadelphia
I 77, OH 39 to Sugar Creek
OH 93, OH 643 to Keene
OH 83, US 36 to Roscoe Village
Roscoe Village (OH)
363 miles
Cumulative mileage: 15727
DAY 40
Ohio – Pennsylvania
Roscoe Village (OH)
US 36 to Coshocton, Newcomerstown
I 77 to New Philadelphia
OH 39 to Mechanicstown, Wellsville, East Liverpool (OH)
PA 68 to Glasgow (PA), Rochester, Butler
US 422 to Kittanning
PA 85, PA 210, US 119 to Trade City, Punxsutawney
US 119 to Du Bois
PA 255 to Weedville
PA 555 to Driftwood
PA 120 to Westport
RR, PA 144 to Hammersley Fork, Carter Camp, Galeton
US 6 to Wellsboro
Wellsboro (PA)
366 miles
Cumulative mileage: 16093
DAY 41
Pennsylvania – New York
Wellsboro (PA)
US 6, PA 287, PA 249 to Cowanesque
PA 49 to Gold, Raymond
PA 49, PA 44 to Shinglehouse (PA)
NY 417 to Olean (NY)
NY 16, NY 400 to Franklinville, Buffalo
I 90, I 290, I 190 to Niagara Falls
NY 104 to Lockport
NY 93, I 90, NY 414 to Seneca Falls
US 20 to Skaneateles, Cazenovia
US 20, NY 28 to Cooperstown
Cooperstown (NY)
444 miles
Cumulative mileage: 16537
DAY 42
New York – Vermont
Cooperstown (NY)
NY 80, US 20 to Esperance, Albany
I 787, NY 7 to Troy, Hoosick (NY)
VT 9 to Bennington (VT)
US 7 to Manchester
VT 30 to Dorset, Middlebury
US 7, VT 125 to Hancock
VT 100 to Stowe
Stowe (VT)
280 miles
Cumulative mileage: 16817
DAY 43
Vermont – New Hampshire
Stowe (VT)
VT 100, VT 15, RR to Craftsbury Common, Craftsbury, Greensboro
VT 15 to Joes Pond
US 2 to St Johnsbury (VT)
VT 18, I 93 to Littleton (NH), Franconia, North Woodstock
NH 112, NH 16 to North Conway
NH 16, US 302 to Crawford Notch, Willey House, Twin Mountain
NH 115, NH 115A, US 2 to Jefferson, Six Gun City
US 2, NH 16 to Berlin
NH 16 to Gorham, Jackson
Jackson (NH)
271 miles
Cumulative mileage: 17088
DAY 44
New Hampshire – Maine
Jackson (NH)
NH 16, Auto route to Mount Washington Summit
NH 16, US 302 to Redstone (NH)
US 302 to Fryeburg (ME)
ME 5 to Bethel
US 2 to Hanover
ME 232 to Bryant Pond
ME 219 to Winthrop
US 202 to Augusta
ME 17, ME 90 to West Rockport, Camden
Camden (ME)
211 miles
Cumulative mileage: 17299
DAY 45
Maine – Massachusetts
Camden (ME)
US 1 to Rockland, Brunswick
I 95 to Portland
US 1 to Kennebunk
ME 99 to Kennebunkport
ME 9 to Wells (ME)
I 95, MA 114 to Salem (MA)
MA 114 to Middleton
MA 114, I 95, MA 9 to Wellesley
Wellesley (MA)
236 miles
Cumulative mileage: 17535
DAY 46
Massachusetts – Rhode Island
Wellesley (MA)
MA 9, I 95, MA 2 to Concord
MA 2, MA 2A to Lexington, Boston
I 93, MA 3 to Plymouth (MA)
US 44, I 495, RR, MA 126 to Woonsocket (RI)
RI 99, RI 146 to Providence
I 195, RI 114 to Bristol, Newport, Jamestown
RR, RI 138 to Plum Point
RI 1A to Wickford
Wickford (RI)
207 miles
Cumulative mileage: 17742
DAY 47
Rhode Island – Connecticut – New York City – Hoboken (NJ)
Wickford (RI)
US 1, RI 1A to Watch Hill (RI)
RI 1A, US 1 to Mystic (CT)
US 1, I 95, US 1, CT 9, CT 154 to Essex
RR to Deep River
CT 153, I 95 to New Haven, Bridgeport
US 1 to Westport, Stamford (CT)
I 95, Hutchinson River Parkway, Bronx Pelham Parkway, US 1 to New York City
I 95, NJ 3, NJ 495 to Hoboken (NJ)
209 miles
Cumulative mileage: 17951
DAY 48
New York City
Total cumulative mileage to La Guardia: 17973
After sorting myself out in preparation for my holiday, I went out for a walk around Hoboken.
Some of the lampposts still had missing portraits on them. Many of the hospitals in New Jersey had been put on alert for the casualties that never arrived, and desperate relatives and friends were covering every conceivable base in their hopeless search.
I had arranged to meet my friend Damian for lunch in Manhattan, close to where he now worked. It was an easy ride on the PATH train from Hoboken.
With admirable discipline for a writer, Damian wasn’t drinking. He had more work to do later that afternoon, and his wife Emma was expecting their first child any day now. He didn’t much relish the potential humiliation of turning up at the hospital slurringly drunk.
They lived a couple of blocks away from the World Trade Center and had been out of town on the morning of the disaster, but the proximity of their home to it had affected them a lot. Bits of engine and some body parts had landed on their roof. The remains of one air stewardess, still tied to her chair with her throat slit, had been found on the roof of a neighboring building.
I listened to as much as Damian was prepared to volunteer but he seemed too upset about it for me to probe any further. I don’t think he really wanted to talk about it.
The bar was bustling and outside New York could be seen in full swing. In ephemeral terms, it had recovered well. After Damian returned to work, I went for a walk. I thought about calling another friend, Matt, who I knew wasn’t at work at the moment but decided that perhaps it wasn’t a good idea. Matt was no small drinker, and it would be likely to evolve into a full-blooded session.
This would have passed the time, but would probably have been a waste of it too. I also had to think about my flight the next morning. I had originally been due to take off at 10.30am but, thanks to all that had happened in the aftermath of the attacks, this had been rescheduled to 8.30am with a three hour check-in. Given that I also had to return the car to Hertz first, this meant leaving Neal’s house by 4.30am latest the following morning. An afternoon on the sauce with Matt wouldn’t have been ideal preparation.
Instead I walked south along the Avenue of the Americas. As I approached the depths of Manhattan, the missing portraits came thick and fast. They weren’t just on lampposts. Whole corners of blocks were dedicated to them, like macabre galleries. They were a testament to hoping against all hope.
I walked into a stationer’s, and found a whole stand of postcards with pictures of the World Trade Center still upright. A shop nearby was selling T-shirts. One had a photograph of bin Laden with “Wanted. Dead not alive.” Another had a picture of the Statue of Liberty with torch discarded and middle finger raised. Its legend read “We’re coming, motherfuckers.”
A little further down the road was a fire station, decked out with flowers and flags, and letters of gratitude from all around the country. Photographs of all the firemen from the station who had been lost on September 11th were displayed in the windows. A small gathering of onlookers stood by, silently paying their respects.
I crossed Houston Street and continued my path southward. After zigzagging through Chinatown, I encountered the first of the roadblocks. An acrid stench filled the air, the smell of the foundry and burning metal, but with a putrid twist. It made my stomach turn.
By following the crowds, I reached one of the few vantage points that offered a limited sightline to Ground Zero. As might have been expected, there wasn’t much to see. Some were rabidly trying to get snaps, but most were just staring on dumbstruck.
I had my camera with me, but didn’t have the heart to take any photos. I was content to let the official journals commit the sight to the record books for future reflection. From a personal point of view, they were seared onto my memory and I would need no camera-captured version of them.
As I wandered back north, I came to a crossroads. The familiar sound of sirens came blaring down the street towards me. As the fire engine lurched across the camber of the avenue when it hit the junction, the crowd of pedestrians around me burst into a spontaneous round of applause.
I was left with the impression that it wasn’t merely their heroics on the day of September 11th that had cemented this esteem from the general public. The firemen had become beacons for getting on with life as normal.
There was a PATH station at Christopher Street that took me back to Hoboken. I arrived at the apartment just in time to hear the telephone ring. It was Neal. He’d knocked off a little early and fancied a drink. We had a couple of hours before Lisa would get back. I felt like I needed one, and agreed to be ready to go straight out the moment he walked through the door.
We went to a bar in nearby Court Street. It was a quiet time of the day for the barman, and we chatted with him as he cleaned the glasses. He knew Neal as a regular, and they were enthusing about Joe Strummer and the concert that Neal and Lisa were going to later that evening. Neal introduced me to him and mentioned the trip that I had just been on.
The guy nodded and commented that it must have been an interesting time to be travelling around the States. I agreed, and said that everyone whom I’d met had been deeply affected by September 11th but it was obviously even more acute here where everyone knew someone – or at least knew someone who knew someone – who had been caught up in it all.
The barman nodded sagely. His fiancée had worked on the 32nd floor of the second tower, and when the first plane hit he’d phoned her to tell her to get out. He had been watching it on TV at home. She had reassured him that everything was all right. The internal Tannoy had announced that everything was under control, that people should remain calm and stay where they were.
Moments after coming off the phone, the second plane hit her tower. He tried to call her back but he couldn’t get through. He continued trying both her work number and her cell phone throughout the next couple of hours as he watched live coverage of first one then the other tower collapse. He was beside himself with distress and convinced that she must have perished.
It was nearly 2pm before he heard from her, by which stage her dad had turned up at his apartment to share in the tears. She had just made it out in time, and had run down the street pursued by a cloud of dust as the building collapsed. She had then walked and walked, not knowing where she was going but just that she had to get away.
She had reached the George Washington Bridge before she knew what was happening or where she was. She had no memory of the time in between. She had tried calling but couldn’t get through. He said that he had never known a moment of such sheer happiness before and, while the rest of the city and possibly western civilization mourned, he found himself popping Champagne and celebrating. He felt terribly guilty and sad, but couldn’t contain his own delight and relief.
It was time to go back home and meet up with Lisa. It was approaching midnight back in London, and I had promised to call Christine. I got through to be confronted by tears. Her purse, containing all her dollars, travellers’ checks and credit cards, had been stolen from under the table while she’d been out for a farewell drink with some friends in the pub. She didn’t even have a card for the ATM, but the others had had a whip round to furnish her with forty quid for the journey.
At least she still had her passport and plane ticket, and enough money to get herself out to Heathrow. We just had to hope that nothing would go awry as she travelled via Chicago to New Mexico and I went via St Louis. It would only be a problem if one of us failed to show in Albuquerque.
It seemed ironic that the worse thing to have happened on a personal note on the whole trip had occurred five hours short of the end of day 48, and a hundred yards from my home back in London.
I decided to go Arabic for the last meal of the 48 days and ventured out to Ali Baba’s on Washington. It had about twelve tables, but only one of them was occupied by what looked like a party of four students. It didn’t look like business was good, but I didn’t want to ask whether things had changed since September 11th. The establishment was unlicensed, and so I ordered a Turkish coffee when I had finished eating and supped the last of my Coke.
It suddenly struck me that the absence of customers might not just be down to a backlash against Americans of Arabic origin. A place like this would be very vulnerable to sudden attack from extremists. With such melodrama washing around my imagination, I hurried through the coffee and paid the bill. Every car that drove by now looked like it might be harboring potential petrol bomb throwers and I just wanted to get out. At least I had the choice.
I returned to Court Street for one last drink. It was 10.30, and there were only five or six people in there. From my barstool, I could see at least twice that number giving their bodies a workout at the gym immediately across the road. I stopped just for the one and then went back to the apartment to fetch my camera. Before I went to bed, I wanted to take a photograph from a respectable distance of the sight I had witnessed from the previous evening with Johnny.
I walked down to the riverfront and tried to focus. The camera clicked and whirred, but it didn’t matter whether any recognizable picture would come out. My odyssey was such a small endeavor compared to the magnitude of what had happened over the water, and what was continuing to happen as I gazed on.
I had been in America at a more momentous time than I could ever have hoped for, and I wished that it hadn’t been the case.
After breakfast, I had another chat with Becky as she pottered at her morning chores. She claimed to have lived in over forty of the states during her upbringing and adult life (she was single and her father had been in the military).
Becky asked me whether the emergency telephone number in the Middle East was 119. She was aware that America was unusual in the way that it wrote its dates, with month followed by day followed by year. It was a connection that I had not made up until that point. September 11th was, of course, in numerical terms 9.11 and the American equivalent of the British 999 telephone number was 911.
I drove for about half an hour until I reached the turn off for Watch Hill. At the very least, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. From the map I could see that it stuck out in the ocean on a small peninsula, but I might have guessed that from the wind when I got out of the car. I was almost blown over. Presumably those playing on the nearby golf course had to contend with a significant degree of fade.
This was a town that lived for the summer, and there was something sad about seeing it deserted now that the season had passed. The roller security blinds on many of the shops had been battened down for the winter. I fought my way against the gale across the parking lot to where the beach lay, but found my path barred by a wire mesh fence. There was just enough space to stick my camera lens through one of the holes and take a photo of the Atlantic.
I found the Inn at Watch Hill up on the hill overlooking the promontory. It was an old Victorian house with Gothic touches and more than a touch of the Addams Family about it. A sign warned non-residents of the hotel not even to think about using the parking lot. I had no desire to meet Cerberus, or whatever it was that they used to greet unwelcome visitors, and so turned around at the end of the lane and was on my way.
Within ten minutes, I had completed my mission and had crossed the state line into Connecticut. This was my 46th day on the road and I had now set wheels in all 48 contiguous states. I was pleased, but not exactly elated. My mind was now focused on getting home, or at least reaching the familiar faces of New York and not living out of a car trunk any longer.
Adam from Arizona had been born and brought up in Connecticut, and had made a number of insistent recommendations. Some of these had been negative: “Believe me, you do NOT want to go to Bridgeport”. My plan was to continue along the coast road without diverting inland, so I was going to have to pass through Bridgeport even if I didn’t stop.
On the positive side, he had circled the town of Mystic in black ink on my atlas. I couldn’t remember why I was supposed to go there, or what I was supposed to see, but I decided to make it my first stop in the Constitution State.
It was a pretty town that boasted a seaport. I followed the signs and found my way to a sheltered stretch of inland water where old sailboats and schooners were moored. I was put off visiting the maritime museum by the crowds. In the short time that I had been there, I had been bustled by confused and disorientated octogenarians and had my ears assaulted by screaming schoolkids. I got the impression that most were there out of a sense of obligation to a public holiday’s day out and would all have sooner been some place else.
It was almost lunchtime, and I wanted my final stop of the journey to be in nearby Essex. Kathy and Eileen, whom I’d met in Maine but who came from Connecticut, had enthused about the Griswold as a splendid place to eat. Essex was another place that bore very little resemblance to its English namesake, or at least to the bit of Essex that runs along the Thames from Southend to the East End of London. It was a tree-lined rural idyll, with one main street that sloped down to the Connecticut River.
I stopped at the General Store to buy some final postcards. When I came out, a car had pulled up in the car park. The window was wound down and the two female occupants hollered at me as I returned my car. They wanted to know directions to somewhere.
I explained that I was over from England and didn’t know the area at all. They forgot about their problem, and immediately wanted to know where I was from and what I’d been doing. When I told them that I was on the final day of a trip that had seen me drive around all 48 lower states in as many days, they almost wet their pants.
They introduced themselves as Karen and Yvonne, and hurriedly scribbled down their e-mail addresses. They were from Rhode Island and were desperate to find out which of the states I would most like to come and live in. Mindful of my solemn declaration on my visa waiver application at immigration, I assured them that I had no intention of settling in any of them.
The Griswold was like an upmarket old English Tavern. A sign warned that although a coat and tie were not compulsory, diners were expected to be appropriately dressed and groomed. No tank tops were allowed, which I took as a good sign.
There were several dining rooms in the complex, and I was taken to one of the more empty ones. The food was very tasty, although the people on the table next to me didn’t seem to think so. It was a couple who had developed being gratuitously rude to waiters into a fine art. It was almost as if the thing that they had come out to enjoy wasn’t a meal, but the chance to pick on a young kid who wasn’t allowed to answer back.
It wasn’t that this couple were just discourteous, they nearly disappeared right up their own arseholes. He wanted a gin and tonic, and then sent it back because it wasn’t Bombay Sapphire. She wanted to be given a list of the brands they used for the ingredients for her chosen dish. At the end of the meal, he wanted a double decaff cappuccino and she just needed shooting.
Or perhaps I’d been in America too long. It wasn’t the first time that I had seen manners like this in New England. Perhaps it was a wealth and arrogance thing, but most other places people seemed to understand that basic courtesy was very easy.
Back on the freeway, it was stop-start traffic all the way, presumably because of the public holiday and people returning to town after a long weekend away. There were only about a hundred miles between me and New York, but it looked like it could take anything from three to four hours to cover them.
Things were still not looking bright by the time I reached the dreaded Bridgeport. From the looks of things – admittedly from the vantage point of a crawl across an Interstate flyover – Adam had probably been right.
It was almost six by the time I reached the state line and the toll road of the New England Thruway. The traffic was now flowing, but remained very heavy. After the debacle of my late arrival on the first day at Neal and Lisa’s, I didn’t want a repeat performance. I glanced at my watch nervously. It was 6.30, the time I was supposed to be there, and I had only just reached Pelham Parkway West.
It was no longer holiday traffic – just the conventional NYC type – that hampered me as I struggled through the Bronx. I kept looking around expecting to see indicators of fundamental change post-9.11.
It was strange to be back under the circumstances, but the place looked and felt much the same to me. There was little evidence of any new-found gentleness of manner that the rest of the country had been speculating about. The horn and the finger remained central tools in the NYC driver’s armory.
I had no idea where I was going when I arrived the other side of the George Washington Bridge. Now everything was moving at speed and I got sucked from one lane to another in my uncertainty. Chance led me to the New Jersey Turnpike, where gloriously I spotted a sign to the Lincoln Tunnel. This led me to the Hess Gas Station at the end of Willow Avenue. I was outside Neal and Lisa’s ten minutes later. It was 7.30 on the nose, which made me only an hour late.
I made a careful note of the mileage. Including the drive to La Guardia still to come, I would be returning the car to Hertz with 23,424 miles on the clock. It had read 7,703 when I had picked it up in Savannah GA. Even without the 2,252 miles that I had covered in the first car, the total would still be 15,721 miles. Well, the deal had been for unlimited mileage.
I rang on the bell and Neal came bounding down to throw the door open and greeted me with a “Whay-hey. Welcome back warrior”. It felt as if I had only been gone a couple of days.
Up in the apartment, Lisa was preparing dinner and they had invited another old friend, Johnny, round. Johnny had worked with Neal and me back in London, and had also come out to work in the New York office with Neal when our boss had transferred out here. It was good to be home.
After dinner, I got out my array of souvenirs and explained that I had bought something distinctive from each state. My much better half, Christine, was flying out on Wednesday to meet me in New Mexico for a week’s holiday. It was her birthday on Friday and these 48 souvenirs were going to constitute her presents.
The assembled party asked whether I had bought her anything decent as well. The looks on their faces when I said I hadn’t suggested that I might have made a mistake.
The others wanted to know what had been my most memorable experience, or the most spectacular highlight. It was a hard one to answer. The street-fight in New Orleans? The porno shoot in Nebraska? Use of authorized deadly force at Area 51? Maryland Pat and his France/England confusion? The toilet paper question from Indianapolis man? New York Sabrina and her luminous animatronic models? Trying to escape from Oklahoma? It had been less a trip of amazing and cataclysmic events, more a patchwork of small happenings and conversations that had added up to a remarkable whole. As I made this point, I was aware that I sounded like a politician.
I thought back to my first day and my gazing across the river at the Empire State and the World Trade Center. I’d seen a million shots of the tower-less skyline in the four weeks since the attacks, but I couldn’t help wondering what that view looked like from outside the camera lens. It was time now for Johnny to go home, and he suggested that I take the same walk with him back to the station that I’d taken with Neal back in August, and have a look at what could be seen now.
Down by the river, the water glistened with the reflected lights from Manhattan. The Empire State was lit up in red, white and blue. Turning to the right, bright white lights illuminated a spot where there was now a break in the skyscrapers. Smoke was still rising like dry ice, billowing up into the atmosphere.
Somewhere over there, an army of punch-drunk, hapless souls was continuing the grizzly task that had been going on 24-hours a day solidly for almost a month. Even with the gargantuan effort that had been made, still little progress had been made.
Johnny said that the water people had only got to test the mains that ran under Ground Zero that weekend and had found water heated to 180°F.
This was not a sight to be taken casually. I stood gawping in silence and was only shaken from my stupor by Johnny saying goodnight and being on his way.
Jon was looking bright and breezy, in that sickening way that I was beginning to associate with American students on a dawn call.
After coffee and bagels for me and pink health sludge for Jon, we left the house to find the streetlights still twinkling outside. I followed Jon in his car as far as the Interstate where I headed north for a few miles.
As Jon had predicted, I was in Concord within twenty minutes. It was a pretty little town in its own right, and everything that Salem hadn’t been. I found a map next to a Visitor’s Bureau that was still closed. Although the Minutemen Monument itself wasn’t designated, there was a house up the road that had taken an early bullet in the battle.
When I went to look for the house, I found everything that I wanted. There was the Monument, there was the bridge on either side of which the opposing forces had gathered, and there was the spot where the first British soldier had fallen. It was awesome in the true sense of the word, and all the better for my being one of only half a dozen other people there at the same time.
An inscription beneath the Monument read:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world
I followed the Independence Trail through the 7 miles to Lexington and easily found the Green where the first gunshots of the Revolutionary War had been fired.
A monument from the 19th Century told the tale. It was surrounded by a wrought iron fence, and the ground around it was littered with pennies. Around me the people of Lexington were quietly going about their business. I could almost believe that I’d come to the wrong place. One of the most important historical sites in the whole country, and not a flicker of razzmatazz about it. It looked like any village green.
The road from Lexington to Boston took me through Cambridge, home to Harvard University. It felt scholarly and sylvan but was also beset by traffic; I had fifteen minutes of being nigh-on stationary to take in the views.
From Cambridge, it was a short hop across the Charles River into Boston itself. Not because of priority, but because it was near to where I crossed the river, I went to have a look at the Cheers bar. It did look identical to the thing seen on the credits of the TV programme, but was actually named the Bullfinch Pub. A doorman on the steps of the Hampshire House Hotel above it invited me in to look around the souvenir shop. There were endless items emblazoned with the Cheers TM logo, but nothing showing any distinctive imagination. I bought a lighter.
I was near the center of town, and it was short drive to see the Interstate 93 highway construction project. Or, at least it would have been, if there had been anything to see. Perhaps I was looking from the wrong vantage point, but it appeared to be like any other major piece of road construction with diversions, cones and heavy plant but nothing worth a photograph.
I drove towards the waterfront so that I could at least pretend that I’d seen where the Boston Tea Party had taken place. I took a turning that wasn’t guarded by any no entry sign, and found myself driving across a pedestrian precinct in front of some hotels that looked out to sea. I jumped out to take a quick photograph before turning back and rejoining the main highway.
Although I had been advised that it wasn’t worth a special trip, it was no huge diversion to head down to see Plymouth Rock. Plymouth was less than an hour south and it was still only eleven. The rock itself – if indeed it was the rock, or if indeed Plymouth was the place where the Pilgrim Fathers had in fact landed – was protected by a kind of portico with Doric columns. Somebody had carved “1620” into the rock, which seemed unnecessarily crass.
I wanted to loop north and enter Rhode Island at Woonsocket. It was a place I wanted to visit for no better reason than it sounded like an anatomical reference to something discovered in the supposed autopsy at Roswell in 1947. It was 1.30pm as I found myself on the Interstate heading northwest, and tuned into a country station that was playing the ubiquitous Where I come from by Alan Jackson. This track must have been the only one that I had heard in all 46 states that I had visited so far.
As the music faded out, the twangy voice of the DJ came over the airwaves in as sombre a tone as he was capable of mustering. “Well folks, in case you haven’t heard yet, it’s started.” The first American strikes in Afghanistan were underway. I tuned out of country and into news. I was about an hour behind the start of events.
In the end, I was so absorbed by news of these events that I barely noticed Woonsocket. It certainly had nothing so intriguing about it that could have grabbed my attention away from what I was listening to on the radio. Just past Bristol, I noticed that the lines in the middle of the road were no longer comprised of two yellow stripes. Instead there was one continuous red and one continuous blue one, and in the middle where the tarmac of the highway usually showed through, a third white one had been painted. Go USA.
It was still only 3.30 and I was already crossing back to the mainland at Plum Point. I had booked into a place called the Haddie Pierce near Wickford, and I was there less than seven minutes later. I hadn’t fared well at adjusting to these smaller states back east.
The woman running the place was an aunt-like soul who offered a warm welcome. It was one of those B&Bs that was more like a private home. It was especially good if you liked dolls. About fifty of the things lived in my room alone. The woman’s name was Becky and she listened intently as I explained that this would be my last night on the road after a tour of all the 48 contiguous states and I wanted to go out with a bang.
She assured me that I’d come to the right place for fun and that there was plenty of choice for evening entertainment in town. She thought my best bet would be the Seaport Tavern, which stayed open late for food and drinking.
It was still early so I took the car the mile into town to have a quick look round. The place was dead. The dozen or so shops were all closed or just about to. I found the tavern and thought it best to check it out, before going to the lengths of driving back and walking in.
A Portuguese woman greeted me at the door and warned me that they didn’t sell liquor, but were serving food for the next hour. They closed at seven. Containing my excitement, I sloped in. It looked like my only option for the night, and it transpired that they did at least have beer available. As she poured out the bottle, the woman explained that no liquor was allowed anywhere in Wickford but that I could venture to the Irish Pub just beyond the city limits later if I wanted.
On the next table were an elderly couple down from Canada, who had emigrated from the UK thirty years previously and were keen to talk about the old country. I was feeling nostalgic about it myself having been gone all of seven weeks. They could never go back because they had become too used to the pace and the space of Canada.
It kind of showed in their line of conversation. The thing that seemed most to preoccupy them was finding out what good detective dramas were currently being screened back home. They tended to get our programs a few years down the line.
When I mentioned the trip and the book, they insisted that I write my name down for them. I then had to spend the next five minutes convincing them that I wasn’t the bloke who had written A Year in Provence. I still don’t think they believed me, as they winked that it was understandable for me to prefer travelling incognito.
I left it as long as I could before ordering food. I still wasn’t hungry, but I thought I should have something. I can’t remember what it was I ordered, but I remember it tasting like muck when it arrived. It was like a frozen ready-meal that someone had shoved in the microwave.
By the time I had finished forcing it down, I was the only one left inside. I still had some beer left in my glass, which I had to take outside if I wanted to smoke. I stood on the deck in the freezing cold and choked down some nicotine. I stared over the railing into the creek, and wondered quite how I was going to while away this momentous final night. It didn’t look promising.
I went back in to pay, but the woman was nowhere to be seen. The rest of the staff were all Turkish and one of them was behind the bar. I asked him if he knew where the Irish Pub could be found. His answer suggested that he wasn’t entirely at home with the English language. “Yes. Very different. I’m Turkish. American, all very different.”
Thankfully the woman appeared again before we could continue the conversation, and gave me directions. It was less than a mile away, but in the opposite direction to the Haddie Pierce. I would have to take the car. She also suggested that I try another bar in that direction called Duffy’s, just across the crossroads from it.
A party of sorts was in full swing in the Irish Pub. Most people in there seemed to know one another, and I was very conscious of being an outsider. I ordered draft beer and got given a bottle. I didn’t want to argue.
I retired from the edge of the counter, and tried to find some space where I wouldn’t bother anyone. It was only when I had planted myself at one end that I noticed the men were all in one half of the pub, gathered round watching sport and hollering at each other and the TV set. And the women were all in the other half where the TV sets were playing various films without sound. A roaring juke-box filled the air.
As luck would have it, I had chosen a spot down the women’s end. I was beginning to attract questioning looks from the men’s end. What was I playing at with their womenfolk? In truth, the prospect of getting my head kicked in was only marginally more alarming than the notion that I might have been even remotely interested in these women in terms of sexual adventure. To describe them as fishwives would be to do a terrible injustice to fishwives.
I’d only just arrived and so somehow I had to brazen it out. I turned my back on the room and concentrated on a TV set that was showing There’s Something about Mary. I’d have to take a chance on getting a bottle round the back of my head. If I’d carried on looking at any of the people in there it would have become a certainty.
I was reasonably familiar with the film and could follow most of it even without the soundtrack. It had just got to the bit where the Ben Stiller character has arrived at Mary’s house, to pick her up for the prom, and gone to the bathroom. I knew what was going to happen next, and a scream from behind me suggested that at least one of the women did too.
“Oh, you’ve got to see this… this bit is fucking… ha ha ha” she screeched. “Look he gets his cock and his balls caught in his zipper. Hee haw, hee haw.”
I glanced round to see eight or nine women intently concentrating on my screen, with a running commentary being provided by the screamer. When it got to the bit where the father breaks into the bathroom and finds out what has been going on, the woman descended into some sort of hysterical meltdown.
“This…this…this…fucking haw haw haw…this…this..he says… ‘Is it the frank or the beans?’ Frank or beans! Ha ha hawhaaaaw howl!”
It had a remarkable effect. With the men cheering the sport at the other end of the bar, I found myself surrounded by a group of sizzled women chanting “Frank or beans! Frank or beans! Frank or beans!” repeatedly at the top of their voices, even when the action of the film had got past the point in question.
That was enough for me. I’d only had a few sips of my beer, but I didn’t need to stick around any longer. They didn’t seem to grasp that it was a movie, or that at least it wasn’t the Rocky Horror Show. This was audience participation in the sense of the Jerry Springer Show or Gladiators.
As I was leaving, the ringleader was shouting outraged expletives because the bit where you saw a close up of the damage done to the poor boy’s delectabilia had been edited out. Perhaps there’d been a different cut released onto the US market. I left before a riot started and the TV got smashed in protest.
I could only afford to have one more drink and still feel safe with myself to drive. If it hadn’t been my last night, I would have called it a day. As it was, I went to investigate Duffy’s. After all, it couldn’t be much worse.
It took a little bit of finding, but proved to be well worth the effort. The only annoying thing about the place was that I hadn’t discovered it at the beginning of the evening. It was more of a restaurant than a bar, but the atmosphere was comfortably informal. In the main body of the room there was waitress service for diners sat at the tables, and along one long side was a bar with stools for drinkers. They had a variety of beers on draft, and a chiller cabinet at one end of the bar with a glass front displaying a scrumptious looking array of fruits de mer.
It would have made a lavish last night, but it was too late. I resigned myself to settling for limp. I was reluctant to get involved in conversation with anyone in case I was tempted to drink more than my one last measure. Once I’d reached that conclusion, I didn’t even bother finishing the glass I had and sulkily returned to the car. It wasn’t even nine o’clock.
Back at Haddie Pierce, Becky was in the lounge talking to another guest called Carol and watching the first TV pictures of the day’s action in Afghanistan. They both turned out to be Rhode Island enthusiasts, and soon the leaflets, maps and pictures were coming out.
The smallest state in the Union, it transpired, officially had the longest name: The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Its claims to fame on the world stage were a trifle thin. Apart from being the home to the America’s Cup for 53 years, and the place where Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier, there wasn’t much. It was where the first gas-lit street in America could be found and the state where the first jail sentence for speeding had been imposed. And it was the birthplace of Mr Potato Head, the first toy to be advertised on television.
It had not proved to be quite the triumphal climax that I had been looking forward to for weeks. But if you’re looking to go out with a bang, then Rhode Island is probably not the best place to plan to do it.
When I called Jon in Massachusetts to ask for directions to his house, he asked what time I expected to arrive. I reckoned I’d be there around 6.30 – 7.00pm.
He said that it would be better if I could either get there an hour earlier or an hour later. They needed to go to a dinner with some colleagues of his wife’s, and would be leaving around 5.30. They reckoned they’d be back by eight. I told him that I’d be there by five.
I hit the road south towards Rockland. It was a grim gray day with the wind and rain lashing in from the Atlantic. The route through Brunswick afforded far fewer direct sightings of the ocean than the map suggested I might get. The wind was vicious though, as I discovered when I wound down the window for a cigarette and had my face sandblasted by the crosswind whipping off the distant beaches.
I continued on the Maine Turnpike, bracing myself for the only scheduled re-entering of a state on my itinerary. With Maine landlocked by New Hampshire, I had no choice but to skip across the southern tip of the Granite State where it touched the Atlantic. It only lasted twelve minutes, during which time I closed my eyes, put my fingers in my ears and sang “la la la” continuously at the top of my voice. Fortunately, I wasn’t seen by the Highway Patrol. Live free or die.
Once into Massachusetts, I motored on to the Peabody exit. Given the brevity of time I had spent outside the car that morning because of the inclement weather, I reckoned I had plenty left for a visit to Salem. I knew about Salem from the notorious witch trials of 1692, and I had studied The Crucible for my English Lit ‘O’ Level back in the depths of the last century.
According to the guidebooks, Salem had had enough of people going on about the trials and wanted the outside world to know about all the other things it had to offer. You could have fooled me.
Despite the genuine history surrounding this long-established community, it came across as even more “flim-flam” than Eureka Springs AR. It was one big tourist ride. It took forty minutes of the hour I had allocated just to find somewhere to park. The Salem Witch Museum looked about as serious as the Waxworks on Southend seafront, but had queues stretching around the block.
The site of the burnings had been consumed by a building site, and was nowhere easy to be seen. The streets were teeming with adults dressed up as spooks and looking like a troupe of over-eager method actors sent out on a trick or treat spree. And the shops sold nothing but occult tat and joke souvenirs.
I bought a pack of cards with a silhouette of a witch on a broomstick on them, and wondered whether similar souvenirs from the Inquisition were available in Spain. Perhaps folks in the 25th Century will look back on some of the horrors of our last hundred years as just a bit of fun to be made light of.
Passing up the opportunity of a tour of the city in a black stretch limo that was being touted by a guy in a Dracula outfit, I hurried back to my car. I could see little value hanging around here any longer.
Getting out of Salem was no easy matter. It was not quite as hard as leaving Oklahoma, but it came close. Although I had been back behind the wheel by four, it was gone five by the time I eventually managed to find the Interstate. The signs just kept running out. The choice at each junction became a matter of trial and plenty of error.
I wanged round the Interstate at about eighty and reached the Wellesley exit just after 5.25pm. Jon’s house, at the end of a leafy and cul-de-sac, was easily found and I pulled up outside about a minute after the deadline. It was a huge house, with a big oak door and wide driveway. With no lights on and no car in the drive, it didn’t look good.
A note to me was taped to the inside of the window, saying that they had had to leave, that the key was with the neighbor, and that they’d be back by 8.30. I was to go in and make myself at home.
The easy bit was getting the key and letting myself in. From that point, I found myself almost paralysed in the hallway. It was not only a very grand home, but it was also utterly pristine. The sterilized atmosphere would have put many an operating theater to shame.
There wasn’t even dust in the air, let alone on any surfaces, and none of the usual ephemera evidencing human habitation. No shoes. No coats. No bits of paper. No boxes of stuff. No cups or jars on the sideboard. I tiptoed across the plush white pile through the hall into what turned out to be the kitchen. About 500 square feet of living room lay off to its side. There wasn’t even a kettle or TV set in sight, and the furniture didn’t look like it had ever been sat on.
Once more I froze, uncertain of what to do next. I wasn’t sure what would be the best policy regarding my feet. Thankfully my boots had clean soles, but it didn’t seem like the sort of house where outdoor footwear was tolerated. I would have taken them off, but I was vaguely aware of the state of my socks and thought that they would be even more likely to pollute the carpets and tiles if they were allowed to come into contact.
The situation wasn’t great. I had never met Jon before, and had only gathered by inference that he was even married. At least Wyoming John and North Dakota Kathleen had been there to show me into their houses. Here I was in someone’s extremely well-kept and luxurious home, and the only thing about him that I knew was his name.
That was it. If a burglar had pitched up there and then and introduced himself as Jon, explaining that he just needed to take some stuff down the road, I would probably have helped him load up the car.
With the widest strides that I could manage – so as to minimize the number of times that my feet had to come into contact with the carpet – I returned to the sanctuary of the mat by the front door. A very fat, blue-grey cat came down the stairs to investigate but seemed unimpressed and waddled off into the kitchen.
With my back to the door, I noticed a glow from the room off to my left. In the twilight, I could see the outline of a computer that had been left on. I reached around the wall to find a light-switch, and then had to check that I’d not left any grubby paw prints. I touched the mouse and some sort of medical website sprang up in place of the screen saver.
Judging by the volumes that filled the shelves, this was the study of someone who was a doctor, quite possibly a paediatrician. Judging by the certificate of graduation from Harvard that was framed on the wall with the name Elizabeth on it, that person was Jon’s wife.
Nervously I sat at the desk, and clicked through to check my e-mail. With a fair amount in my box, I spent half an hour of reading and replying. It was still not even seven when I tried to return the computer to the site on which I had found it and ended up closing down the Internet connection altogether. Wincing, I at least remembered to put the mouse back to its left-hand position.
I went out to the car to get some books, and to have a cigarette. It was obviously out of the question to smoke in the house, but I wouldn’t have even felt right drinking a beer in there. I cracked open a can out on the street and started to sup. After a couple of swigs, it occurred to me that my behavior was somewhat lowering the tone of a very pleasant neighborhood and I migrated up the driveway and into the back yard.
I finished my beer, put the cigarette butt in the can, and returned it to the car. My boots were now muddy from walking across the lawn. If I wanted to return to the house, I would have to do something. I rummaged in my trunk and found some shoes and a passably clean pair of socks. I sat on my rear bumper and put them on. My suspicions about the state of the socks I had been wearing were vindicated, as small animals in the undergrowth could be heard running for cover when I peeled them off.
Back in the house, I began to read. Around 9.15pm, the phone rang. It was Jon, calling to apologize but to say that they were just leaving. It would take half an hour for them to get home.
It was only now that it dawned on me what a mistake this arrangement had been. I had initially told Adam that I would be in town on Sunday, because I had assumed that I would have used up my contingency day by now. Jon and his wife had clearly arranged to go out to dinner this evening, but had felt obliged to honor their offer of putting me up when I’d called in the week.
Due to this courtesy, both our evenings had been compromised. They had had to cut short their dinner, and I had spent my last Saturday night sat in a chair alone in somebody else’s study.
I waited twenty minutes and went outside for a last cigarette. I didn’t really want them to catch me smoking, and would have felt more comfortable being outside when they arrived. I waited until the cold began to bite and went back in. The door of the downstairs bathroom had been left open, presumably so that I could find it easily. As part of my general policy of touching as little as possible in their house, I went for a quick leak and left it open.
In mid-flow, voices from the kitchen told me that someone was home. Alarmed, I carried on as I heard my name being called out. This really was not going to create a good first impression. I finished up as quickly as I could and went to introduce myself with the flush audibly wheshing in the background.
Abashed, I was at least relieved that it was two people called Jon and Elizabeth who seemed to know their way around the house. I took it as confirmation that they were indeed who they pretended to be.
Jon was disproportionately friendly, behaving as if he owed me some great debt from a former life. He listened with enthusiasm to what I had been doing, opened up a bottle of red wine to share, and put pizzas in the oven for me to eat.
Elizabeth seemed a little less impressed by the situation. She had probably wanted to stay at the party and was irritated that they had to leave early to come back for some English guy who had foisted himself on them and whom neither of them had ever even met. And who didn’t bother closing the restroom door when he urinated.
She sat away from Jon and me as we chatted, and read a book. I felt a mixture of guilt and awkwardness, and found myself slipping into apology overdrive. It turned out that Elizabeth was a doctor and that Jon was a student and teacher at Harvard, but with the emphasis on the former.
As with Adam in Tucson AZ, I marvelled at the standard of living they had. Perhaps their wives made inordinate amounts of money, but both their lifestyles certainly outstripped anything I knew from the world of British studenthood.
As was to be expected, Jon was fiercely academic and I had difficulty following a lot of his discussion and arguments, particularly when it came to September 11th. I was unable to counter anything he said. None of his points was just opinion, they were all backed up by a wealth of facts drawn from his far more comprehensive knowledge of world history and politics. I don’t know if he sensed this, but he mentioned that he and Adam had written an article in the week following September 11th, which they had unsuccessfully touted to the New York Times and the Boston Globe.
He showed it to me and I found it easier to follow than some of his conversation. It made its points in comparatively everyman language, but no doubt would have been dismissed by Michael Savage as another example of “left wing intellectual liberalism from those who hate America”. It was certainly more rational than it was emotional.
I asked Jon whether he thought that the east coast had been affected qualitatively more than the rest of the country. He agreed that the immediacy of the disaster had obviously been felt more acutely by those directly involved, but that this wasn’t the real legacy. He cited a statistic that 80 people a day in the US suffer spinal injuries that result in a permanent quadriplegic condition. His point was that bad things had continued to happen every day since September 11th, and caused profound distress wherever they occurred. Those mourning the deaths of loved ones from the terrorist attacks weren’t more sad or bereaved than these others who were also suffering.
The real legacy, in his view, was what the attack represented and in this respect, everyone in America (and arguably the western world) had been affected equally. The reason why the British were upset wasn’t because there had been two or three hundred of their citizens in the towers. They would have been upset if not a single Brit had died.
The deaths were tragic and rightly angered people, but the harsh truth was that it wasn’t the deaths themselves that were exceptional. The exceptional thing was an unexpected and random terrorist attack on the US mainland on such a scale and by such a method. In turn, the exceptional response wasn’t the grief (this was to be expected) but the reappraisal of so many things previously taken for granted.
I tried to wrestle things onto a different subject, and asked where he thought I should go the next day in Boston. Beyond the usual sights, he thought it would be good to go and see where they were sinking Interstate 93 below the ground in the center of town. It was currently an unsightly flyover that blighted the skyline of the now fashionable business district, but was being rebuilt as an underground tunnel.
It was, naturally, the world’s most expensive highway construction project ever. Ashamedly, I said that I’d also like to go and see the Cheers bar. Jon laughed and drew me a map showing where to find it, but pointed out that it was only the outside that was used in the opening credits of the show. The episodes were all shot in LA, and the inside of the bar in Boston didn’t look anything like the set for TV. Jon also gave me directions for getting to Concord and Lexington, both of which were nearby.
I had been picking at pizza but had made little headway. Jon had cooked two and neither of them wanted any. He probably assumed that a man of my girth must have an American appetite. The wine had been finished some time, when Jon started to make noises about bedtime. He had to go for a run the next morning and so couldn’t have a late night as he had to leave by 7.30am.
He clearly shared the passion for early morning jogs that Adam and Rebecca back in Arizona had. I asked him how long he thought he would be, and whether Elizabeth would be going with him. He smiled and said that the run was taking place across town and he’d be gone most of the morning. It was a 24-mile race, a warm up for his next marathon.
No wonder he didn’t want more wine.
Breakfast in the morning was a high-class affair, attended by some high-class fatties. I had the unusual experience of being the slenderest in the room.
It was no mystery seeing where the weight came from when you watched these people putting away their food. If volume-noshing ever became an Olympic sport, the Americans would be certain of a gold medal every time. The meal was served by a delightful woman called Monica, who was also in charge of the front desk.
An especially absurd couple was roosting on the next table. After farting their way through a gallon of fruit salad, they proceeded to demand tea. The woman wanted to know what teas they had available. Being a fairly swanky joint, they did have a choice. There was Earl Grey, Darjeeling, English Afternoon Tea, and regular Lipton’s. “Don’t you have any English Breakfast Tea? I want English Breakfast Tea.” She then opted for Earl Grey, but wanted to check the brand. It wasn’t one she’d heard of. In the end, she produced her own teabag, and dispatched Monica to brew.
On her return, she regaled Monica with a story of how they had had some friends to stay recently who grew up on a plantation, and even they had had to admit that she really knew her tea. As her coup de grace, she then asked for another four sachets of sugar to shovel into her cup. Very Queen Mother.
I had to interrupt Monica from dishing up the fifth helping of pancakes to one pair of lardbuckets in order to pay my bill. While we were waiting for the payment to process, she commented on how she didn’t find the people from New Hampshire very friendly. She was originally from Connecticut, and had only been up there working for a couple of weeks. She said that they were all a bit to stand-off-ish. She reckoned that she’d need to serve a 5- or 10- year apprenticeship before she got to the stage of being truly welcomed and accepted.
I figured that I had plenty of time for the Mount Washington ascent, an eight-mile road straight up the mountain to the summit at 6288’. It was the highest point in New England. A sign warned that it was a steep treacherous drive up a road with no guardrails and that those with a fear of heights might not enjoy this driving experience.
I paid my money and had to pull over to read the information pack before I could set out. It instructed drivers to select their lowest gear for the entirety of both ascent and descent, never to exceed 20 mph and to give priority to uphill traffic. You were only allowed to stop at specified lay-bys, and it was suggested that you stop frequently on the way down to allow your brakes to cool.
For the $16 admission charge, I was also given a CD to play as I drove. This told me the history of the road, which had been constructed in 1850 and was originally used by horse-drawn carriages. It was a remarkable feat of engineering, especially considering when it had been built.
The concentration required to drive it safely meant that I didn’t see much on the way up. As John had suggested, I had checked with the men at the bottom about conditions and they had promised a clear day. By the time I reached the top, the cloud had come in below us and shrouded the view. There was a fair wind whipping up, but nothing like the world record speed of 231 mph recorded on this summit in 1934.
Another of John’s suggestions had been to enter Maine via Conway so that I could go to the Fryeburg Fair. As I crossed the state line into Maine, the traffic ground to a halt. A sign by the side of the road announced “Welcome to Maine. The way life should be.” I took that to be a general reference, and not specifically to do with the fact that bestiality was legal in Maine, where a guy called Philip Buble had recently married his dog.
The fair had attracted a bumper crowd, and every front yard was hiring itself out for parking at $5 a day. It appeared to be the American equivalent of a County Show, with funfairs, stalls and livestock. Some people were dressed up (or at least I think they were), or had decorated their cars. One pick-up had a scarecrow with an Uncle Sam mask bending over and mooning its pumpkin buttocks, on which was pinned a piece of card with “Happy Hallowe’en Osama. We’re coming to get you.”
It looked one step up from the affair I had attended in Maryland, but still wasn’t interesting enough to merit the hassle of finding somewhere to park and walking for miles. I’d had my fill of demonstrations of bits of John Deere equipment.
My afternoon’s radio entertainment came once more in the form of the Michael Savage show, which was just as reactionary as it had been back when I was approaching Idaho on September 12th. His head was close to exploding, as he railed against the mollification of response to the terrorist attack. “Week 1 it was a war. Week 2 it was a crime. Week 3 it was a tragedy. Now it’s being described as just an incident.” He was bemoaning the absence of war-hawk politicians and the notion that the leftists were winning the debate in America. “Where’s General Patton when you need him?” I would have thought the answer was obvious.
He was clearly pleased with himself: “Nobody on radio anywhere comes up with as many new and good ideas as I do. They have ideas, but not new and profound ones like mine.” He then went on to suggest that the authorities make an offer to illegal immigrants. If they were prepared to sign up to the forces and go off to fight for the USA, and managed to come back alive, then they should be offered citizenship. His idea was to form a special aliens’ brigade.
One caller rang in to make a case for Colin Powell, and the good job that he thought he was doing. After giving him about ten seconds of airtime, Savage cut across him and enquired whether he lived in a mental hospital and was let out once a month to make a phone call or something. As the caller spoke, Savage began singing: “Hey, Mr Taliban, tally me banana. Daylight come and I wan’ me go home” (repeat).
As he sang, he returned to the hapless caller intermittently before losing patience. “I’ve had enough of you now. You’re boring me. Get yourself down the pharmacy and buy some more medicine.”
It was just gone five by the time I reached Camden and found the Whitehall Inn, an imposing old building, with a white wooden frontage and myriad American flags bedecking its numerous porches. It was dauntingly posh, and I almost felt thankful that my room was over the road in an annex.
The room itself was the most basic that I had lodged in. It was a box room with a single bed and no basin. The shared bathroom was down the corridor. I contemplated a quick wash and brush up, and was delighted to discover that the face towel that had been laid out for my use was actually a bathmat.
The welcome leaflet said that jacket and tie were not expected at dinner but that guests should be dressed appropriately. The manager looked me up and down and said that he thought I would be fine dressed as I was. Jeans obviously passed the mark, but it was far too stuffy for my purposes, not to mention pricey. New England in the Fall was not well suited to the budget-traveller.
It was more like a mile into town and still light. I walked around the various shops and down to the harbor area and found the Bay View Lobster Restaurant. It was more like a café but, as its name suggested, it was serving lobster (and was also on the waterfront). A big tank of the things was by the door, and there were three pots into which they were being put after weighing.
I gave my name to the bloke with the list and waited my turn for a table. I sat on a bench on the dockside and smoked a cigarette. An old schooner was moored close by, with three people working on deck. One was a woman who was covered from head to toe (and she was bare-footed) with a sort of silvery gunk. It looked like she’d taken a dip in a bath of industrial lubricant. As the three of them beavered away, I could see another two through a porthole drinking beer below decks.
After dinner, I was keen to stay out in town rather than return to my stuffy hotel but there weren’t many places to go. Most of the things that looked like bars were restaurants, and the one pub I found, a seedy looking joint called Gilbert’s, had an entry charge of eight bucks. Pardon?
Back at the hotel, people were lounging in the lobby with drinks but I couldn’t figure out where they had got them. I could find no bar as such, just a room with leather furniture called the Spirits Room. Presumably finest cognac was available at fifty bucks a balloon.
I didn’t feel comfortable reclining with the grown-ups, and so I went outside and sat in a chair on one of the porches with my notebook and worked out my finances. I was far enough round to deduce quite how far over budget I now was. I would have fetched a beer from the car, but a notice explicitly warned against taking one’s own drinks onto the veranda.
Presently, I was joined by a middle-aged woman who sat two chairs away and starting reading her paper. Just as I had reached a crucial stage in my mental arithmetic, a booming voice hollered at me that I couldn’t be reading in that light. A man had come out onto the porch and was lighting a cigarette.
I assumed he was the woman’s husband, when he sat himself down next to her and exchanged a small familiar pleasantry. It only became clear that they weren’t together when he said that he needed to get back inside after he’d finished smoking, or else his wife would start to wonder what had happened to him. In the meantime though, we’d managed to squeeze a normal hour’s conversation into about ten minutes.
He’d opened by asking me where I was from and then skipped immediately over my answer to declare Maine to be the finest state in the Union. He looked at me with a glare, daring me to contradict him. He was from Kansas City MO, and he’d been to every one of the states, except Vermont “and only because you don’t go through it to get anywhere”. Presumably Interstate 91 up to Canada didn’t count.
I wondered where he thought Maine led to. For once I was able to bring up the subject of my trip without sounding like I was trying to show off. This seemed to irk him, and he reiterated his challenge about Maine. I told him that my two favorite states so far had been New Mexico and Missouri. He sneered and said that I must have gone to a different part of New Mexico to the places he’d seen.
Mischievously, I added that Vermont would probably run those two a close third, but that I thought it was a silly subject to discuss. I made the point that every state had its pros and cons, and that they were all very different in many ways and difficult to compare meaningfully. This sent him back to his wife with a harrumph.
Meanwhile, the woman reading her paper had put it down and had been listening to our conversation. She politely checked with me that she’d heard me right. Had I said that I was driving around all 48 states in 48 days? To write a book?
Her name was Kathy and she now lived in New Jersey, but came originally from Connecticut. She was waiting for her sister and brother-in-law to arrive from Boston MA. The conversation that ensued was most earnest. She couldn’t understand why I had only given myself 48 days in which to do the trip. I agreed that I probably hadn’t come close to doing any individual state justice, but that I had been able to glean a good overall impression of the country and its people.
She thought that I should be looking at the economic consequences of September 11th. She cited the way people’s attitudes to money and the future had changed. Instead of worrying about where to invest most prudently, people were now cashing in all their savings and going out and buying 37 different types of gas mask.
Despite my reservations about such an approach, she wouldn’t let it rest. The debate was only broken by the appearance of her sister and brother-in-law about an hour and a half after Kansas City man had retired to his wife. They introduced themselves as Jon and Eileen, and went off to drop their bags. They were soon back with a couple of bottles of wine and an extra glass. They offered me a glass, which I gratefully accepted even though I knew it was against the law.
I apologized for continuing to hijack their conversation, and then apologized again for the insensitivity of my terminology. After four glasses of Chardonnay, Kathy was becoming feisty and Eileen had to keep asking her to be quiet and let others have their say.
The subject turned to east coast conservatism, and I agreed that my experiences since arriving had led me to conclude that New England was well named. The people and atmosphere were far more akin to the British reserve with which I was so familiar, but strangely made me feel not the least bit at home.
Kathy was adamant that people in the east were different; they didn’t carry guns, and were calmer and more circumspect. They were pleased that the response to the attack had been measured and not knee-jerk. Jon and Eileen felt that Kathy was overstating her case with silly generalizations. They knew plenty of radicals from Boston and Connecticut.
Much of the focus of the commentaries after the attack had been on liberty. I’d been surprised to learn the extent to which the USA considered itself to be the exclusive refuge of liberty. What’s more, many folk seemed to think that the freedom enshrined in the constitution was supposed to be absolute.
Some of the measures that had been discussed were causing concern because they threatened to confine this liberty. I made the point that Americans had no problem with being expected to carry driver’s licenses with them whenever they took to the road. The three of them were surprised to learn that such a requirement was not in force in the UK, and that photographs on licenses had only recently been introduced.
They all agreed that September 11th had had a profound effect on the psyche of the country as a whole, and that the best evidence for this was the amount of flags on display. The hotel we were in proved a good example. I said that I had seen lots of flags prior to the attack, but they were convinced that the number had increased to levels usually reserved only for July 4th.
Whatever the truth, it was fairly clear that the terrorists would have struggled to find a more patriotic target and that they had succeeded in bringing all that latent feeling to the fore.
It was a relief to be indulged by Jon and Eileen’s listening ears, and they seemed genuinely interested in my recounting non-September 11th stories from my trip. With poor judgement, I mentioned the ubiquitous fatties and they smiled appreciatively.
Encouraged, I followed this up with a derisory comment about the clothes the fatties wore, and quickly felt ashamed for the cheapness of the observation. Eileen pointed out that, while she didn’t want “to exchange barbs”, she’d been to England and not everyone there exactly dressed like Princess Diana.
It was time for me to get my coat.
I had been lying on the bed for nine and a half hours when I woke up, and had little inclination to spend another moment there. I couldn’t remember the last time that I had spent that long in bed.
Downstairs there was no sign of life, but a pot of fresh coffee was steaming on the sideboard in the room where the tables were laid for breakfast. I helped myself to a cup and sat deferentially in the corner, so as not to upset the more illustrious guests. A cheery Bob soon appeared and ran through the breakfast options with me.
My food had arrived by the time the other guests appeared. They were a middle-aged couple, who were undoubtedly moneyed but not famous outside their own home. Although he was very courteous to them, Bob didn’t offer them any special treatment. They were German, and in fact were only offered the choice between pancakes and scrambled egg. I’d been given the choice of French toast as well.
It was 9.30 by the time I drove away into to the green yonder. I’d read about a couple of small villages that I wished to see before I headed off for New Hampshire. I had originally intended staying in one of them, but had decided that they would be too quiet. I wanted to see if they could have outdone the roller-coaster experience of staying at the Foxfire.
The first was Craftsbury Common, and the sort of place that I’d only seen before in tourism brochures and picture postcards. Twee as an adjective doesn’t get near expressing the full extent of tweeness that was to be found there. I didn’t think that places like this were for real. The common itself was surrounded by trees in the full flush of Fall. A gravel lane ran round its perimeter, giving access to a number of large white houses all painted identically with dark green shutters.
Nobody was around. The only person I saw was a teenage girl who visited the post office before sloping back to a building that I assumed was the local school. I drove off in the direction of Craftsbury village, where I found a pay phone.
It was time to call Watch Hill once more. It was 11.05, but the bookings person wasn’t in yet. Ring back in half an hour. The village of Greensboro was a few miles further down the lane, and was in similar vein to Craftsbury.
I went into Willey’s General Store, which was as old fashioned as they come. It felt like something from the Norfolk Broads back in the fifties or sixties. There was no obvious system to the layout, just numerous aisles with shelves full of random everything. I bought a paper and some more Scotch tape.
The road out of Vermont towards St Johnsbury was glorious. The trees were a kaleidoscope of reds and yellows, and small brooks ran hither and thither.
The weather that day was due to be mild with the possibility of showers later. There might even be snow flurries this weekend. I knew this because I had listened attentively to the forecast given by Star 92.9 radio’s implausibly named weatherman, Randy Mann. No doubt he’d had fun introducing himself to prospective dates as a teenager (not to mention their parents).
New Hampshire was distinctive, certainly for an east coast state. Not only did it have a speed limit of 65 mph on main highways, it was the only state in the Union in which seat belts were not compulsory (although occasional signs did urge under 18s to buckle up on the basis that “you know it makes sense”). It was also one of only four states in which auto liability insurance was not mandatory. The whole attitude was summed up in the state’s official motto, “Live free or die”, which they happily emblazoned on their license plates.
I also spotted some signs with the warning “Brake for Moose, it could save your life.” Apparently, somewhere in the region of 200 people a year are killed by hitting moose with their cars. The beasts weigh up to 1600 pounds each. You wouldn’t want one careering through your windscreen at 50 mph.
The emblem on the state license plates was the Old Man of the Mountains, and my guidebook told me that this rock formation was visible from the highway on which I now found myself. Directions to a viewing point led to a car park where there were eight or nine other vehicles.
Everyone was walking out on to a bridge and taking photographs to their right, and so I followed. I looked up at a magnificent mountain bedecked with all the colors of fall. I stared and stared, but couldn’t see anything of note.
The guidebook had warned that it looked quite small from the ground, so I thought I might be looking at the wrong spot. I asked the person next to me where the Old Man of the Mountain was, and he told me that I needed to go down to the next exit on the Interstate. I was thankful that I had phrased the question in such a way that my idiocy of being in completely the wrong place had not become public. I was also quite thankful that the person I had asked knew what was meant by “the Old Man of the Mountain”.
A couple of miles down the road, I found the right car park and walked the 600 yards to the foot of the monument. The guidebook wasn’t understating the fact when it described the stone face as looking small from the ground. Even standing in the right spot, it was barely noticeable. If it hadn’t been for the legion of camera lenses trained up at a ridge, I still wouldn’t have known where to look.
Way up high 1200 feet above me, formed from the weathered rocks, I finally saw the Old Man. It just about looked like a face, in the same way as the constellations in the sky look like crabs and rams.
The time was right, so I stopped to call my friends at Watch Hill once more. Finally, I got through to someone who could answer my enquiry, and who told me that they did have a room on Sunday for $108. They also told me that the minimum stay was three nights. I explained that I would only be in town for the one night, which met with a firm reply. The minimum stay was three nights. Well thanks a bloody million.
New Hampshire was a state that took its scenic routes seriously. The Kancamagus Pass was delicious. By the time I had reached Conway, I had already used up more than half a roll of film. The only other place where I had taken so many shots in such a short space had been Yellowstone National Park. It was rudely beautiful.
Just beyond Crawford Notch, I stopped at Willey House. The place was named after a house built back in the 19th Century by the Willey family, much to the derision of the locals at the time. It was below a cliff that was renowned for falling boulders and the like. One day there was a massive landslide that wiped out everything in its path, but miraculously split as it reached the house leaving it untouched. Sadly, the whole family had perished when they scampered out the house and tried to make a run for it.
I had no idea where to go next. Ironically, given that it was the mythical Fall, I felt that I’d arrived at the wrong time. These were tourist places, but the only folk on vacation in October in America were pensioners.
The skiing season had yet to start, and everywhere decent cost a fortune and had been booked a year in advance. Thanks to sticking to the tourist areas, I still hadn’t seen any of the real New Hampshire where the normal people lived.
I was quite close to Berlin, which looked like a large town and so I decided to go and have a look. It didn’t take me long to conclude that it wouldn’t be the best place to stay for the night. Juxtaposed against the wealth of the nearby ski areas, it was pretty run down and grubby. Even the main street felt more like an urban back street.
I circled around and came back south to Gorham. I looked at my map. I was only a few miles from where I had entered the state from Vermont, and at the top of the road that led south back to Conway.
On the way down the road, I passed a couple of attractions that were closed for the night but looked interesting possibilities for the next morning: the Mount Washington Auto Road (seemingly a route for driving at least part of the way up the mountain), and some gondolas that stretched up into the mountains with the intriguing name of Wild Cat.
A worrying number of “no vacancy” signs greeted me as I passed various motels and B&Bs along the road. Only the dodgiest looking places seemed to have any space. It was getting dark, and I started to set my sights lower. I didn’t want to end up sleeping in the car that night.
Up ahead I noticed a glow from a building. It was an Irish pub called Shannon Door and looked perfect, apart from the fact that it didn’t offer accommodation. This was the place that I wanted to come this evening.
I resolved to find the nearest motel, however grubby. I pulled out of the car park and found myself opposite the Ellis River Hotel, complete with a “vacancies” sign. I slunk up the long driveway and parked. It was a cosy place with a swimming pool outside that, judging by the vapor coming off it, was heated.
I went in and rang the bell. A young chap appeared, full of smiles and welcome. They had a room for $110. I winced, in the way that had worked so effectively in Eureka Springs AR. It didn’t work at all here. He explained that this was their busiest week and so they had to charge that amount. I told him that I’d go and see if I could find something more in my price bracket, and traipsed back out across the parking lot.
I wasn’t half way back to my car when I owned up to myself that this was still my best bet. After all, who was I kidding? Did I want to save myself perhaps twenty bucks in order to have another miserable evening staring at the wall? I went back in and told him that I’d take the room after all.
He laughed and showed me up to it. I asked about the bar across the road and he said that the food was basic but good and they had a live band playing there that evening. Two people were in the pool as I left for the pub. Either it must have been heated or they were clinically insane. It was not a warm evening.
The pub was more spit and sawdust than it had looked from the outside, and I’d arrived at family meal-time. All the tables were packed with legion juveniles stuffing pizza into their faces. I took the one empty stool at the bar and ordered a beer.
Like many of the places that I had been to, this was full of locals who were keeping themselves to themselves. I looked around, but there weren’t many conversations that I was likely to be able to break in to. All I got were a couple of filthy looks from a guy who thought I was eyeing up his food and another from a guy who thought I was eyeing up his woman.
Regardless of the potential welcome or absence of it, I wasn’t best placed. I was on the corner of the bar with a pillar in front of me and so I couldn’t catch anyone’s eye naturally without craning round like an over-eager moron.
A couple of girls came up to the bar and ordered drinks. One of the guys to my left started chatting them up. He knew a colleague of theirs, and had given him lessons on how to ski. After a few minutes of exchanging pleasantries, the two girls bade their leave and went back outside.
The two guys joked about how much easier it was talking to women when you’ve got a girlfriend. The barman joined in. They all agreed that women had the uncanny knack of smelling desperation from miles away. It seemed an odd conversation for three guys in their forties to be having so publicly, but it at least suggested they were approachable.
I took my chance and leant over to ask if they could tell me about skiing in New Hampshire. I think I asked how much a day would cost, but it didn’t really matter. I just wanted to have a chat with someone. Fortunately, men aren’t quite as good at smelling desperation from miles away.
Whatever it was I asked, they were off and running. Homer and John were both technical directors of nearby resorts. Homer worked at Wild Cat and John at Cranmore. They got into such detail that they couldn’t help me any more, and gave me some numbers to ring to find out more information before returning to their conversation. My ploy had had no lasting effect, and I was back to lurking behind my pillar.
Within a few minutes, Homer stood up and gulped down the last of his beer. He was off, but John appeared to be staying and was now in the same boat as me. We both looked into space for a short while and then John turned and continued the conversation about skiing.
Within five minutes, he had pulled his stool up to my corner. Within an hour, we were buying each other beers. Within two and a half hours we were both rolling drunk and arranging a tentative house swap for a week.
John had been to London and really liked it, and wanted to go over again with his girlfriend. He thought that the skiing in New Hampshire couldn’t touch that in the Alps, but it was still good stuff if you knew where to go and were a decent intermediate.
He came from New Hampshire, and I told him where I had been and the difficulty that I’d had finding the real people from the state. He agreed and said that it was mainly folks “up from Mass” who frequented those parts. Apparently those from New York state ski in Vermont, and those from Massachusetts ski in New Hampshire. The locals knew them as Massholes. John was kind enough to point out the phonetic similarity to “assholes” for me.
I hadn’t seen enough of the state to come up with any searching questions, so I asked him why the New Hampshire primary was always the first to declare. He didn’t know the answer, but reckoned it was something to do with being a small state and a keenness to retain some degree of national prominence. He advised me to do the Washington Auto Road the next day if it was a clear day. It would give me a much better view than the Wild Cat gondola, which was just a standard ski lift serving Homer’s resort.
Just as the kitchen was closing, a couple presented themselves at the bar begging for pizza. The barman reluctantly agreed to take their order, and they fell in with our conversation. Their names were Rana and Vicky and they were over from London. The previous night they’d spent in Bar Harbor ME and had found it amazing. They’d also been to Camden, but told me that Bar Harbor was much better.
I asked them if they had been at all worried flying in the current situation. They had been totally unfazed by it, and glad of the discounts that had made their vacation a possibility. They reckoned that now was the safest time to fly ever.
John agreed and asserted that no American plane was ever going to be hijacked again. He reckoned that Americans would never again believe assurances from the cockpit if a plane were hijacked and would rush any terrorists and overpower them. They might as well, if they were going to die in any case. And, he pointed out, any aspiring hijacker knew that and would never risk it again.
I went to the restroom, and when I got back there was another pint waiting for me. John had got them in on our behalf. After all, we were good mates now and were going to be exchanging houses for a week in February.
By the time we all rolled out of the bar, the driveway back to the hotel seemed much longer than I had remembered it being on the way out.
48states 