48states

October 3, 2011

Day 42. NY/VT: fall rush, full bladder, cold shoulders, fancy grub

As I had been travelling around and people had enquired about my schedule, I had attracted many envious comments about arriving in New England in the Fall.

It was the perfect time said everybody with a sigh, almost as if I were proposing to do something mythical. As I had got nearer, others had been surprised to learn that I hadn’t booked anywhere given the time of year that I was going.

Pennsylvania Chip had told me that I’d been lucky to arrive in Wellsboro on a Monday, and that folks had booked up to a year in advance for later in the week. He warned me that it would be even tighter in New England proper.

I had been able to reach Adam’s friend Jon in Massachusetts, so I knew that I was sorted for Saturday evening but I thought that I should try and get booked in somewhere for Friday in Maine. I had tried the previous evening with no joy (unless I was prepared to pay $400 for a suite for the night), but one place had asked me to call back in the morning.

I telephoned them again when I woke up and found myself agreeing to pay $95 plus tax for a single room with a shared bathroom at the Whitehall Inn in Camden. I had tried every number I had for places in Camden and Kennebunkport with no success, and was prepared to believe the implication that I had secured the last available room in Maine for that Friday.

The woman on the phone assured me that it was friendly little hotel, and only a quarter of a mile from the harbor “so I could almost walk in to the town” if I wanted.

I should bloody well think so. A quarter of a mile? The Americans clearly had a strange aspect on the lot of the pedestrian. The woman at the Inn at Roscoe Village had been scandalized when I’d declared my intention to walk the 250 yards up the road to the Warehouse restaurant.

I also needed to arrange my final night on the road in Rhode Island. I wanted to stay at Watch Hill and so I had also tried calling the Inn at Watch Hill the previous evening, but there had been no reply. I gave them another go. Eventually the phone was answered, but the woman was unable to say whether they had any vacancies for Sunday. The person who looked after reservations wasn’t in yet. She suggested I call back again after ten.

I was enjoying not being in the rush first thing that I had previously been accustomed to. Thanks to getting as far as Cooperstown the night before, I only had just over a hundred miles to go before my lunchtime stop in Vermont. I had a leisurely read of the paper and then strolled into town to get some supplies.

The town was now bustling and looked very different by day. I took some photographs of the bistro and the Pratt, which was next door to a Chinese restaurant that really was called the Foo Kin.

I went to look at the Baseball Museum and the shop commemorating the start of the game and which went under the name “Where it all began…” I didn’t go in though. I had been subjected to quite enough sport that I couldn’t follow without voluntarily seeking out more stuff.

It was 10.30 by the time I got back to the hotel, and I had to be out by eleven. The management regarded staying any later as on a par with the misdemeanor of allowing an outsider to use the lavatory, and imposed a similar penalty.

I had just enough time to give Watch Hill another go. This time the woman got quite shirty with me and pointed out that I had to call after eleven. Now it wasn’t so busy, the bookings person didn’t get in until then, and they tended to leave by one. Hey, all I wanted to do was give them my business.

I drove out of town along the lakeside, which was another playground for the rich and indolent. Various folk who looked like they didn’t have to work were gearing up for a day’s sailing or jet-skiing or fishing along its banks. At the Otsego golf course, I passed a sign inviting me to “play one of America’s ten oldest golf courses”.

It didn’t take long to reach Albany and from there it was a fast run up to the state line. The moment I crossed over into Vermont, everything seemed to get greener. Even the vehicle license plates. There were trees for as far as you could see.

I drove through Bennington and up to Manchester, which couldn’t have been more unlike its English namesake. It was like a village-sized country club. But it did have a roundabout, the first that I had encountered on the whole trip.

I went for lunch at the Marsh Tavern, part of the historic Equinox Hotel, which had been at the heart of Vermont’s mobilization against the British in the War of Independence.

After I had eaten, I tried the Inn at Watch Hill once more. The same woman answered the phone and, with no apology, informed me that the bookings person had now gone home for the day. It wasn’t very busy at that time of year, you see. It was 1.25 pm.

I suggested that they might find themselves a little more busy if they instituted a system that actually let people make bookings, and promised to call back the following day between eleven and one.

I followed the scenic route up to Middlebury. Vermont was like one big forest, with occasional clearings where the odd building would stand. The road had been cut carefully through it, not in the usual straight through anything that laid in the way American style.

It felt like the place that Robin Hood would hang out if he were alive and in the USA. The problem with such a natural environment was that it lacked any of the infrastructure that I had got used to, and so I arrived at Middlebury with a bladder inflated well beyond my comfort zone.

I parked the car and spent the next twenty minutes dashing around town as fast as I dared move my legs looking for a restroom. Perhaps folk round there had been living among the trees so long that they’d learnt to photosynthesize.

There was no lavatory to be found, and too many people walking their dogs along the riverbank for me to sneak behind a tree. My increasingly frantic behavior was starting to attract attention and so, with my legs locked together above the knee, I tottered back to the car.

I left Middlebury behind, disappointed not to have formed any opinion of it. My eyes had been temporarily blinded by my urgent need for natural relief and had seen only blurs. Salvation suddenly loomed in the shape of a gas station.

I burst into the store promising to buy fuel as soon as I had gone to the bathroom. The contortion on my face must have told the attendant not to argue, as he passed me a key and pointed outside. With the job done, I duly filled up with gas and bought another phone card. I don’t think that they’d had a more grateful customer that year.

One of my guidebooks had a number for the Foxfire, and it looked as if they did accommodation too. I gave them a call. The man who answered seemed surprised to be getting a booking so late in the day. He had to check that I meant this evening three or four times.

He also emphasized that they only had vacancies for this evening and were booked out for the rest of the week. He warned me that the price didn’t include breakfast, but there would be coffee in the morning.

I warned him that I wouldn’t be there until about seven. In the end, I didn’t stop again as I made my way up to Stowe and arrived in the town around 6.30. I hadn’t got used to being in a smaller part of the world and was still looking at my road atlas with the eyes of New Mexico and Wyoming.

I felt disappointed that I’d not made very good use of the additional time that I’d had on my hands that day, but New England generally seemed to be a lot colder and reserved than the rest of the states. It was more like England in terms of temperament, and I’d forgotten how unwelcoming my homeland could be to outsiders.

The Foxfire was a high-class joint, and I again felt a little out of place with my scruffiness. I was greeted by a man called Bob, who turned out to be the owner. He showed me up to my room, which was homely.

He told me that breakfast was included and would be at eight in the morning, which was more than slightly inconsistent with what he’d said on the phone. I asked about dinner, and he said that he could fit me in if I could wait until eight.

I thought that I’d best shave and put on my least creased shirt before going down. The room had no TV, so I was soon downstairs parked on a barstool looking for company.

The barman was a taciturn chap who never told me his name. As he busied himself preparing the drinks orders that the waitresses kept bringing, I managed to squeeze something approaching a conversation out of him. He came originally from Vermont, had worked “all over the US” (although the only place he mentioned specifically was San Francisco) but had recently come back because it was “more calm and relaxed, and the folks more friendly and sincere in these parts”.

He’d never been abroad and was saving that for when he retired as he wanted to see the rest of America while he was still young enough to enjoy it. His next vacation was going to be 45 minutes up the road near Craftsbury in Vermont, where his brother had a cabin. That was about all I managed to get in the hour that we enjoyed together.

I fancied some wine when I was shown into the restaurant. I knew that I could comfortably sink three or four glasses, and thought about ordering a whole bottle. I decided against it in case they called the police. It didn’t look like the done thing in Vermont. It was the sort of place where even farting in the bathroom was probably frowned upon.

The food was unbelievable, not just by the standards of this trip but by any standards that I’d come across anywhere. Although it wasn’t an ideal environment for my purposes, it was a real pleasure to indulge in such culinary luxury. It was unlikely that I was going to meet anyone or have any interesting conversations but, for once, it had almost been worth it.

I went through to the bar for a last glass of wine. The furore of clearing up and cashing in meant that barman couldn’t stop to chat further, so I stepped outside for a cigarette. No smoking is allowed in any place that serves food in Vermont.

By the time I’d finished smoking, there was only one car apart from mine left in the lot. It was 9.25. This other car was an expensive model, and I could only assume that the change of heart about breakfast provision was because some big guns had swung into town and if they were making the effort for them, then I might as well be included.

The lights had all been turned off in the restaurant and, when I went to go back, the front door had been locked. Thankfully, I saw someone inside who had come through to the bathroom and managed to get their attention by tapping on the window. I felt like a naughty schoolboy who had been caught playing truant.

The bar was now closed and I had no choice but to go to my room. It seemed a rum situation to find myself in as I was nowhere near tired enough to go to sleep. The place was now closed and I didn’t even have a TV in my room to gawp at.

If I’d not been drinking and could still drive, I still wouldn’t have been able to go into town because I had no key to let myself back in. The cage was gilded, but I was definitely locked in. I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

I tried reading, but I was counting every page and checking the clock after each paragraph. I had given up by ten, and turned off the light.

The time didn’t pass any faster in the dark, but I eventually fell asleep after what felt like a fortnight.

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October 2, 2011

Day 41. PA/NY: waterfall, antiques, panto, and just surreal

I had hoped to see Chip at breakfast the following morning, as that would have meant that he had crashed the night on the floor somewhere rather than into a bridge on the way back to Troy.

He was nowhere in sight, although he might have been upstairs still nursing a hangover. He worked all night, so perhaps he slept all day. Allen was on the table next to me, making up for lost time from the previous evening and talking wood big-time with a couple of other delegates.

My schedule reckoned on 467 miles to Cooperstown NY, via Niagara Falls. At least after today, I would be in the small-scale world of New England and only have a couple of hundred to do each day.

I still had over a week to go, but I now knew that it would take something catastrophic to prevent me from completing my mission on time. The six New England states occupied an area smaller than shitty Oklahoma and I’d been in, through and out that in about seven hours. In a strange way, this realization left me more deflated than elated. The feeling was much closer to anticlimax than triumph.

The fog was thick in the air and, once out of town, it was like driving through a cloud. The radio auto-searched a remarkable breakfast show where the host invited listeners to ring in with their stories or problems.

Most of the stories were to do with sex, usually the over-indulgence of it or the deprivation of it. All of the answers and advice offered by the host also had something to do with sex. It had never dawned on me that the best way to deal with bankruptcy and the imminent repossession of your house was to “do more screwing”.

It was a fast run through to Buffalo, where I picked up signs for Niagara Falls. I missed my turning when I came over the bridge into Niagara City. This at least gave me the chance to see a bit of the town. I drove down one residential street and saw a bizarre looking house. Not only were there about fifty pumpkins outside, but there was a ghoulish effigy placed in all of the ten windows at the front crowned by the grim reaper hanging out of the top window.

It was early October and still almost a full month until Hallowe’en. There were also various placards painted with messages to bin Laden informing him that the spooks were going to get him. Presumably someone actually lived there. I bet the neighbors really loved him.

It was easy to find my way back on to the right road and within five minutes I was paying my five bucks at the car park. I walked across the grass towards the audible rush of the river where the white water was leaping around the rocks at formidable speed. I followed the river to the precipice where it flowed over and down, apparently dropping 65-75,000 gallons a second to feed Lake Ontario.

The spray gave it a natural soft focus appearance. I made the obligatory visit to the gift shop. I had heard that the Falls was a horrible, teeming tourist circus, but it had been genuinely quite awe-inspiring.

Inside the shop though, the commercialism swung into full stride. There was very little on sale that could not be described as pap, and extremely overpriced at that. I thought about getting a sandwich from the café, but I only had thirty dollars on me.

I spent the afternoon exploring the moneyed highways and byways of upstate New York. Seneca Falls was posh and Skaneateles posher still, but neither offered much to the speed tourist unless I wanted to recline on the grass by the edge of the Finger Lakes with a slushy novel. Much the same deal was to be had thirty miles up the road at Cazenovia.

From what I’d seen of it, the upstate had about as much in common with NYC as Hampshire had with Manchester back in England. There was very little edge, but plenty of big houses and self-satisfaction.

Cooperstown was another hour and a half away, along a stretch of US20 that was the road with the most antique shops in the world: for once that wasn’t a claim, it was my observation. I had no idea where all those antiques could come from, but I must have passed over fifty different outlets along the way.

The sun was setting as I pulled into Cooperstown, another pretty retreat but somehow it seemed to have more character. It had a number of claims to fame. It was supposedly where Baseball began, although this was disputed by Hoboken NJ where my trip had started. It definitely was home to both the National Baseball and Soccer Halls of Fame. There was also the Cardiff Giant, a fraudulent fossil that had been sculpted in the late 19^th Century, buried and then “discovered”. And to top it all, the town boasted the highest number of museums and B&Bs per capita in all of America.

Most of these B&Bs were located an uncomfortable distance’s walk away from the town centre, and none of the hotels that were centrally located looked vaguely within reach of my budget. I followed some signs down to the shores of Lake Otsego where I found the Lakeview Motel, offering discounted rates for single occupancy of rooms. I signed the agreement that I would pay double if I were discovered to have taken anyone else into my room – “this includes to use bathroom” – and I was sorted.

I wandered up and down the main street and eventually settled for the Hoffman Lane Bistro down a side alley with tables outside. It was quite busy, and I waited for about ten minutes before being shown to a table and given a menu.

The place was run by a bloke called Dave and my waitress was Sherri. It was all very friendly, and they started to refer to me by each other’s names as if we were three long established mates: “Has Sherri been to take you to your table yet?”; “Didn’t Dave give you a menu?”; “Has Dave brought you that beer yet?”; “Hasn’t Sherri taken your order yet?”; etc.

This panto continued for about fifteen minutes before Sherri came back with a beer and took my order. The food was OK eventually, and when I had finished it, I waited again to attract someone’s attention to check whether I could go and sit at the bar for a cigarette.

It seemed like Sherri was the only waitress in the whole joint. I had my tape recorder on me and made a big show of talking into it “surreptitiously”. I hoped that they might notice it and think that I was from Michelin or Egon Ronay or something, and start paying me some attention.

It then dawned on me that no high-powered restaurant critic would have been likely to order meatloaf and a pint of Bass, and so I abandoned the ruse and went down to the bar regardless. I ordered a beer and explained to Dave that I had come down without paying my bill, so that he could get a message to Outer Mongolia or wherever Sherri had disappeared to.

I lit up a cigarette and looked into space. On the barstool next to me was a twenty-something girl who was yabbering away to the barman. She became distracted when she saw me light up and I thought that she was going to ask me not to smoke near her.

Instead, she turned to me and asked for a light. I can’t remember what I said, but it must have been something, because she picked up on the accent, which she thought was “cool”.

We went through the usual rigmarole of where I came from, what I was doing and where I was going. She pulled out her mobile phone and tried to call her friend Rita who was writing a book. She thought that we should meet, but she couldn’t get any answer on the phone.

She introduced herself as Sabrina and, so as to establish exactly where we stood, contrived to mention her husband three or four times in the next couple of sentences. It came as a relief to me also.

She clarified the situation by saying that he wasn’t really her husband, more her fiancé but she hated that word. They lived together and he was away for the evening on business in Brooklyn. She was an artist and Internet entrepreneur, but also worked in the bar here. Tonight was her night off.

We chatted for a bit about America, and what it meant to be free. Sabrina’s view was that you should be able to think anything and to say anything but not to do anything, because that impacted on other people.

I suggested that perhaps bin Laden was to blame less for his actions than for his words. He’d not got aboard the planes himself, but his talk had clearly inspired others to do so. George Washington may have physically led his troops into battle, but the main implement of the modern day leader is his tongue more than his deeds. She still thought that people should be able to say what they liked.

Sabrina felt that September 11^th was down to “two things, God and religion”. The way she saw it, the attack was motivated by a desire to impose the Muslim way of doing things on the whole world, starting with America. She then bizarrely changed tack, and concluded that if it wasn’t down to that then it was down to money “because money lies behind all action.”

Apparently, the fact that marijuana wasn’t legal was also “down to money”. She wanted to know if other countries had civil liberties, or whether it was just the USA. She liked going off at tangents.

Sabrina was annoyed about Rita, and tried calling her again. Rita was working as a journalist while she wrote her book, which she was due to finish in the near future. I asked Sabrina what it was about, and she replied that it was based on Cooperstown. I asked whether it was fact or fiction, and she replied that it was unlike any other book that had ever been written. She explained that it was factual, but based on fiction. It sounded worth looking out for.

Suddenly she asked me whether I had been to Walmart yet. I had to confess that I hadn’t. She told me about a 24-hour Walmart that was only twenty miles away, and was ready to lead me to it there and then. It was what American life was all about. You could “go see the optometrist any time, night or day, and while your glasses were being made you could go buy some groceries”.

It was very sweet, but I had no immediate need for any provisions or spectacles, and pointed out that neither of us was fit to drive. The disappointment made her physically slump. She obviously felt that I was missing out on some quintessential American experience.

We drank there until about ten-thirty, during which time Sabrina tried to introduce me to some of the other regulars. None of them were that interested, although one called Bob, who was a builder, did say hello. When he heard that I was going to Vermont the next day, he told me that I should go to the Foxfire in Stowe to eat. I wouldn’t find better food anywhere in the entire state.

I saw Sabrina having a word with the owner at one point and when my bill arrived, I found that I had only been charged for my food. It was explained that Sabrina wanted to pay for all my beer and I watched as she handed over six dollars. She explained that she always got her drinks at “bar staff rates”. She turned and asked me if I was ready for the next place yet.

It was hard to say no, not that I particularly wanted to. She was a boxful of random thought and made very entertaining company. We wandered over to the Pratt, another bar on the ground floor of a hotel, and this time I bought the beer. I came back to the table and Sabrina asked me if I smoked weed. The answer was technically yes, although the last time I had done so I’d ended up telephoning my mum and asking her why the ivy outside my house was fucked.

I shrugged my shoulders and nodded. She asked if I fancied smoking some later, and I said I supposed I would. I assumed that I couldn’t be sent to jail provided that I didn’t inhale.

I went to the restroom and when I came back, Sabrina was looking worried. She told me that it would be a problem going back to her apartment because Andrew, her husband/fiancé, would be cross if he found out that she’d taken me back there. I agreed that that was understandable, but she then came up with a solution. I could stand in the corridor outside the door.

Two lads came sauntering over to chat with Sabrina. One of them, who went by the remarkable name of Jynj, was some sort of parody of a young person at the turn of the millennium. The waistline of his multi-pocketed combats was hanging a couple of inches below his buttocks, and he had six or seven layers thrown over his top half. His shock of red hair was combed over Bobby Charlton style under his baseball cap, so it stuck out in a ponytail perpendicular to the side of his head.

Jynj was wasted but knew that Andrew was out of town. He wanted a shot at getting in Sabrina’s underpants, and was irritated that my presence was hindering his prospects. He said that they were going off for a drive and tried to persuade her to go with them. She wasn’t interested, and the more he begged the more resolute she became. When he eventually gave up and left, Sabrina turned and told me to hurry up so we could go back for that smoke.

Sabrina and Andrew’s apartment was just across the main street. We went up and I stayed behind in the corridor when she let herself in through the door. She came back out and asked me what I was doing.

When I reminded her of the plan, she dismissed it and said that I might as well come in now we were here. She stopped me as I got to the threshold and pointed out that they had a light-colored carpet and so they didn’t allow anyone in with their shoes on. I knelt down to untie my laces, and she changed her mind again. She said that I didn’t have to take my shoes off though, unless I really wanted to. I was fairly neutral on the subject, and so I wandered in still fully shod.

It was a small apartment and full of stuff. I sat on a leather sofa that would have been an imposing piece of furniture in a room twice the size, and Sabrina handed me a china pipe, which she thought was shaped like a penis. Insofar as it was long with a bulbous bit on the end, I guess that she was right.

Any reservations I had had about inhaling were allayed by my inability to make anything come out of the mouthpiece. Sabrina showed me repeatedly the system of holes that had to be covered/uncovered at strategic moments, but I couldn’t the hang of it.

She had a bad case of ants in her knickers, and couldn’t sit still for a moment. She wanted to play music, but changed the track each time I said that I recognized it and most times that I didn’t. She thought I needed to listen to new stuff, but kept no single piece on for more than 30 seconds.

She told me that she didn’t believe in God, but that she did believe in Energy. She believed that when someone died, their energy had to go somewhere. She passed me a couple of books, one on reincarnation the other on hypnotherapy.

I wasn’t sure if she was lending them to me, or whether I was supposed to read them there and then. She jumped up and ran through to the kitchen, imploring me to look round through the adjoining breakfast bar. She turned all the lights off and I could hear her talking as she scrabbled around in the darkness. She said she had something amazing to show me.

What did follow I have difficulty describing. There were electronic whirring sounds, and then some flashing lights. I could make out movement of an outline of something with that glow-in-the-dark paint. In fact I could make out several, and the sound was now building to a cacophony. The show lasted for about a minute before the lights went up and I could see what had been happening.

Ranged in two rows on top of the kitchen cabinets were fourteen boxes, each emblazoned with Star Wars logos. Inside these were a number of different animatronic characters that wiggled and made noises in response to hand movements, and some glowed in the dark. Even without narcotic stimulation, it had been most surreal and left me genuinely speechless.

Sabrina explained that Andrew collected things, any things, and that these were now worth over $200 each. She showed me some of his baseball stuff, that “nobody had ever seen before”, and some photos of herself, her family, and friends.

One of them was of an English ex-boyfriend of hers from Redhill in Surrey. He had the letters B-A-S-H tattooed across his chest in Gothic script. She proudly announced that it stood for “Bay area soccer hooligans”. He had another tattoo on his arm of a heart split in two, which he’d had done following the demise of their relationship, because “his heart would be broken for ever”. He was now back in England, playing American football for one of the London teams. I hoped I never met him.

The phone rang. It was Andrew calling to say goodnight. Sabrina took the phone into the bedroom and emerged a few minutes later, saying that Andrew didn’t believe her when she told him that a writer from England was in the apartment with her. She claimed that it was the first time they’d ever let anyone else into their home, and so Andrew had just assumed that she’d been imagining things.

I was beginning to feel the same way. I was keen to return to the comparative sanity and sanctity of the bar, but Sabrina wanted to show me some of her work as an artist. She led me into the bathroom and swept back the shower curtain. The wall was painted blue, and there were some green stems with red cups at the top that I took to represent tulips. I found myself hoping that her Internet endeavors worked out for her.

We returned to the Pratt for one last drink. It was approaching 1 am, and Sabrina looked like she could keep going all night. I looked at my watch and mumbled something about having to get to Vermont the next day.

Sabrina walked out with me and skipped across the road back to her apartment, waving gaily as if we’d see each other again soon. I tromped back to the motel and had a last cigarette on the edge of the lake.

It was beautifully peaceful, and the stars were out in force. It chilled me enough for the warmth of the room to be like a welcoming embrace.

I checked around for spare people. I was fairly convinced that I’d not brought anyone back, but I thought it best to make absolutely sure.

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October 1, 2011

Day 40. OH/PA: gobbler’s knob, lumber boys, formula 1, more beer

Needless to say, I set out early for Pennsylvania. The first major town over the state line was Butler, where I was delighted to see comparatively few private cars on the road, but plenty of people on the buses.

Another phone-in show on the radio had one caller who was very concerned what the folk of New York were going to make of all this food aid that was being sent to Afghanistan. He couldn’t make sense of it at all. The only rationale that he had been able to come up with was that the US was going to drop the food out in open areas and when the Afghans ran out to get it, it would be easier to bomb them to smithereens.

The driving was getting tricky. I wasn’t following a major route and had to change roads several times during the course of the morning, before finally reaching Punxsutawney at around lunchtime. It was only a few miles but it took hours, and constituted the slowest progress that I had made yet.

Given my previous experiences at places like the Roseman Bridge in Madison County, I had expected to see references to the film everywhere. The initial signs were promising, with the Punxsy Phil Brasserie on the road into town, but once in the center there was nothing. There were no photos of Bill Murray or Andie McDowell and no signs indicating where the main bits of the film had been shot.

That’s not to say that Groundhog Day wasn’t important to Punxsatawney, more that their celebration of it had nothing to do with the movie. I pulled in and parked at the Groundhog Plaza and went to buy some supplies. There was a gift shop there with loads of Groundhog memorabilia and postcards celebrating Punxsatawney’s status as the Weather Capital of the World.

I asked the woman behind the counter where I could find the Groundhog Day stuff in town. It depended upon whether I wanted to go to Gobbler’s Knob or to see Punxsatawney Phil. She explained that the former was up a hill outside the town, and the latter was now kept in a library next to the Town Hall. It transpired that Phil didn’t live at Gobbler’s Knob, he just got taken there each year on February 2^ndto be given the chance to spot his own shadow.

I should have left my car at the plaza and walked to the Town Hall, but I took the “shoppers only” sign seriously and tried to drive around the corner. I had already noticed the Town Hall, but I couldn’t figure out which building might be Phil’s library home. After driving back and forth a couple of times, I realized that I wasn’t going to find it, but it was no great sacrifice. Presumably it was just a caged woodchuck whose turn it was to be called Phil for this lifetime.

A turning up a hill had paw-prints painted on the road. I followed these for a mile and a half, until they suddenly scampered off the road and left into a field. It was just as I remembered it from the film, hardly surprising given it was shot there. It was a large park with trees and slopes and in pride of position was a small hut with the word “Phil” written over the door. There were crash barriers – like those that used to be on the terraces at football grounds – on the slope facing Phil’s hut. The only thing that was different was that there were no crowds. I was the only person there. October 1^st was obviously not as popular a date.

Once I had got beyond Shaffer, the scenery returned to the astonishing. The road followed the river along the edge of the Moshannon State Forest, and was a glorious sight. I’d not yet reached New England, but the colors of Fall were appearing on these trees too.

It was slow going though, as the road petered out into little more than a country lane at times. By the time I reached Westport, I knew that I’d be struggling to make Wellsboro before sundown.

An NPR broadcast on the need to provide the public with proof of bin Laden’s guilt segued into the Paul Harvey review of the news (and promotional bonanza). In the midst of today’s bulletin of serious subjects, he informed the listeners that in his household he always made sure to give Interferon Alpha to any of his guests who suffered from Hepatitis B. Apparently, he found that it cured most of them.

The much faster US 6 took me the final 26 miles in about half an hour. Surprisingly perhaps for a Monday night, most of the accommodation in town was showing “no vacancy” signs.

After trying a couple of numbers, I managed to secure the last available room in the Penn Wells Hotel. It was an old building, and had a dining room that you needed to walk through to get to the reception. I asked if there was a bar, and the receptionist pointed to a door across the lobby.

The bar was in keeping with the age of the hotel. It was dark and wooden, with alcoves and nooks. I sat on a stool and ordered a beer. I had just taken a sip when a hail-fellow-well-met appeared at the counter beside me and called for a drink.

I looked at him and he introduced himself as Chip. He handed me his business card, which was printed on wood. He explained that his business was lumber, and that he was here for a lumber conference. Most of the delegates were staying in the hotel.

He seemed OK and was very friendly, wanting to know all about my travels. He told me that he already had a collection of 1500 books in his library, and would love to add mine to it if I could send him a signed copy. I didn’t tell him that I was yet to secure a publishing deal.

After about half an hour, he excused himself because he wanted to get back to hear the main speaker’s speech. He bought me a drink and promised to return. To my right was another drinker who appeared to be on his own. I’d seen enough to believe that this meant he had to be dangerous, deranged or alcoholic – or possibly all three – and I made a point of avoiding his gaze.

I’d left my Zippo in the car and was trying to get the barman’s attention to see if he had any matches. To my alarm, the fellow loner reached over and lit my cigarette for me. I thanked him and he said that I could keep the lighter as he always carried a spare. I decided to take a chance on making conversation, safe in the knowledge that Chip would be back to rescue me if things went horribly wrong.

I was glad that I did. He turned out to be safe, mentally stable and only slightly boozed up, and also very engaging company. He was a construction worker who laid roads and now lived in Cocoa Beach FL. He’d lived and worked all over the US in fifteen different states to date. Where he was now was his favorite, but he’d also liked Salt Lake City UT. The worst place that he’d been was Atlanta GA and he’d not been too wild about Flagstaff AZ either.

He had been born in Wellsboro and had come back to help his mother prepare the home for winter before she left until the spring. She’d already gone down to Florida, and he was staying around to finish things off for her and to catch up with some old buddies. What was more, his name was Kevin, the only other one I’d come across to date.

Chip returned from the speeches along with a load of his lumber chums. I was engrossed listening in on the conversations. One of his mates had a load of 8-foot clear white oak, but was upset because he couldn’t use it for facan butter. Or something like that. It was riveting stuff.

Chip tried to introduce me to a number of the other delegates, but each in succession quickly lost interest in me when they realized that I wasn’t up to serious timber talk. Chip was in his element and was working the room a treat.

Chip explained that his family had been in lumber for generations. He didn’t believe in advertising in a commodity market. His best advertisement was his product, and he got a better return on his money by investing in taking potential customers out for a day’s golf. He said that he’d like to take me to play golf if I was ever back in that neck of the woods. I explained that we would probably need more than a day if we were to get round a complete 18 holes. He seemed to think I was joking.

I said that football was more my sport. Chip said that he didn’t get soccer. His sister played it, and he just didn’t get it. He understood the rules, but said that he couldn’t see the point. There was so little to the game. If American Football was chess, then soccer was checkers. He said that his sport was Formula 1, which he was mad about.

As usual, the subject of September 11^th came up. Chip was the first American I had heard voice the view that it was less comparable to Pearl Harbor than it was to Hiroshima. It was an event that had redefined the rules, and things could never be the same again as a result of it.

Presumably those who had named the site Ground Zero had also spotted this similarity (it had been the codename for the atomic target in 1945). We agreed on a number of aspects, notably that this wasn’t some macro-political event that ordinary people could do nothing about.

Beyond the terrible destruction and loss of life, there were emerging three striking legacies of the event. Firstly, the American people were in a state of feeling terrorized and were all taking conscious steps to go about their daily lives differently. Secondly, it had caused social divisions to erupt with outright hostility being suffered by totally innocent Americans of Asian or Middle Eastern extraction, which in turn was destabilizing entire communities. Thirdly, as a consequence of the shock and panic people felt, they were not going out and spending their money and this was in danger of turning a mild recession into a severe one.

In these three ways, the terrorists had won and they were all things that ordinary people could and should do something about. Otherwise, the “war on terror” was likely to develop into the political leitmotif for a generation, an ongoing disruption to the “normalcy” for which all decent folks yearned. With plenty of nodding and yessing, we congratulated each other on our consensus and insightful analysis of the situation.

I noticed that our chat was being listened in on by a balding fifty-something who was sitting to my right. Chip caught my eye as it flicked over. He turned and recognized the bloke and introduced him to me as Allen.

Chip returned to circulating and left me in Allen’s hands, who gave me his business card (which was only made of card but did have a picture of a tree on it). He was a bit more gnarled and cynical than the fresh-faced enthusiastic Chip.

Although he had been genial with Chip, he commented that things weren’t like they used to be. Allen had been in the game for over thirty years and had got to know all the other guys, but now they were sending along their sons to do business: “college boys who know diddly squat about the lumber world”.

He bought me another beer and seemed glad that I gave him an excuse not to have to tour the room. Allen made the point that America’s great strength and weakness was that it was built on diversity. What had happened on September 11^th had only been possible because of America’s tolerance of diversity and he felt that it might be time to rethink things. After all, the constitution had been drawn up for and at a very different time and place, and was now in need of updating.

Chip came back with a worried look on his face. He explained earnestly that he was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican and he didn’t want me to misrepresent what he’d said about Hiroshima. He wanted to make clear to me that that had been a justifiable military strike, but that nothing could ever excuse what had happened on September 11^th. He implored me to make a note of that difference when I wrote my book.

I assured him that I understood his point and we agreed that there wasn’t any proper analogy to be drawn because this had been an utterly unprecedented event. He seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders.

I made the point that there was greater degree of delicacy in my subject matter as a result of September 11^th, and that I would have to operate with a large amount of sensitivity when it came to putting the story into words. This seemed to anger Chip, who told me to “fuck sensitivity”.

He said that too many things were said and written with sensitivity nowadays, and that I should just go for what I thought. He quoted back the three ways in which we had agreed the terrorists had won. “If you hold back on your story, then they would have won in a fourth way too.”

The three of us started talking about Europe. Chip liked the sound of England, but had only been on a lads’ holiday to Copenhagen when he was 19. Allen wanted to know about Amsterdam, and whether it was true about cannabis cafés and prostitutes in the windows.

Sensing that they were showing signs of being a bit cosmopolitan, I told them the story of Pat in Maryland with his pigs called Napoleon. They looked uncomfortable. They got it when I came to the point about France and England being the same place, it was just that they clearly had no idea who Napoleon was. Perhaps they thought that their forebears had made the Louisiana Purchase at Walmart.

I was flagging, but I’d had about six beers since I last bought one myself so I offered to get Allen and Chip a drink. Allen was off to bed himself, and Chip said that he needed to go home soon. He had to drive thirty odd miles back to Troy, and the police were super alert to drunk drivers around this area. He’d already had six or seven himself, and just didn’t want to risk it.

I asked Chip whether the state police scampered around really quickly and threw custard pies at each other. He obviously didn’t get the Keystone reference, and just gave me a derisory look. I made a mental note to shelve gag-telling until after this trip was over.

We were just about to get up and leave when Chip came back to the bar, and asked if the offer of a drink was still on the table. He’d decided to stay for just one more. I felt uncomfortable about buying him another now that I knew he was intending getting into a car. I didn’t know him well enough to tell him not to drink any more for his own sake, and the barman was already pouring two more beers before I could construct a delicate enough line of objection.

As we waited for them to be served, Chip grasped my shoulder and said that he had one question to ask me as an Englishman. I invited him to go ahead. “I’m going to say two names. You know who I mean, don’t you? You do, don’t you?”

I hadn’t even the slightest idea, and had to admit it. Chip glanced around the room, as if he was worried about being overheard. He moved his face closer and, in almost a whisper, let me in on what I assumed would be a secret: “DC and Eddie. Your boys. What do you think?”

I was still none the wiser, until he followed it up with wanting to know why Jordan had fired Heinz-Harald Frentzen. He was blathering about Formula 1 again. But not for long. He swept up his beer as soon as it hit the counter, and was off across the room again.

The bar had thinned out now to the last few lumber diehards, and Chip was on a mission to squeeze out one more deal. I looked around in search of someone vaguely sober, but with little success as it was almost midnight.

I struggled my way half way down the glass, and saw Chip return to the other end of the bar. He was buying a round for three people sat at a table at the far end. The barman delivered the drinks and came over and put a token in front of me. Chip had got one in for me too.

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September 30, 2011

Day 39. MI/OH: urban sprawl, irish jigs, amish bikes, shaker sticks

I had done a recce of the facilities when I had first arrived, and so I was aware of the score when I woke up. There was absolutely no chance of even basic breakfast, let alone deluxe.

Even the drinks and candy vending machines were broken. There was one of those contraptions that churns out ice which, in truth, probably came closer to meeting my requirement than anything. I still felt a little rough from the night before.

Now that I was up, I decided that an early start could see me in Fraser in time for breakfast. Then I could see if the place was all that the ladies had cracked it up to be.

The problem (from the visiting traveller’s point of view) in being a suburb that’s part of a huge urban sprawl is that it is very easy to pass through and be away before you even realize that you’ve arrived. There isn’t the break in continuity that punctuates other places. I’d seen the sign saying that I was entering the city limits of Fraser, and then I seemed quickly to come across the same thing for Roseville. I doubled back and found some shops. One of them was a general store, so I went in to see if there were any souvenirs going.

The guy serving recognized my accent and asked me what part of London I came from. It turned out that he had just returned from a two-year stint studying to be a Cordon Bleu chef and living in very well-to-do Regent’s Park.

He wasn’t happy to be back in the US, and longed to return to London again. He was too precise and knowledgeable for it to be all bullshit, but it must have been a strange pass that saw him catapulted from that life in London to serving in a general store on the outskirts of Detroit.

They didn’t do postcards, and so the guy suggested that I try the pharmacy next door. The pharmacy didn’t have any postcards either, but again my accent was noticed. The woman behind the counter, whose name badge said Mary, had just been over to England visiting relatives in Newcastle, where her family had originally come from. They had made a trip down to London, and she’d been amazed to find out that it was the first time that her relatives had been to the capital too. It was a reminder that it’s not only Americans who like to stick to their home turf.

I didn’t have many miles to cover that day, and so I decided to return to Ann Arbor for brunch. I’d regretted not getting out and wandering around the day before, and so I could have a second bite at the cherry. The sun was bright in the sky as I drew once more into the main street, creating a dappled effect on the footwalk beneath the trees. Parking was easy and soon I was installed at a table outside Conor O’Neill’s Irish Pub.

It was just as I had imagined it from my cursory drive through the previous day. Seasoned academics rubbed shoulders with eager students as they enthusiastically attempted to unpick the mysteries of life. Others read quietly, keeping their thoughts to themselves. The occasional embarrassed undergraduate came past, hampered by two smartly dressed but over-anxious parents.

Inside the pub, it was dimly lit and a live band complete with fiddler were striking up the first notes of their lunchtime concert of traditional Irish music. It may have been a theme pub, but it felt more authentic than most of the similar efforts back in London. They only served Irish Whiskeys, and they had both Guinness and Murphys.

Despite having come that way the day before, I got lost leaving Ann Arbor and trying to get back to the freeway. Somehow, I ended up going down the road to Saline but it was no great drama. It did mean that I spotted the Shipshewana road show taking place in a field though. I presumed it was some sort of travelling Amish freak show. And they wonder why tourists flock to take photographs of them.

Even with these distractions, I was over the state line and going round the Toledo bypass in less than an hour. I noted that some of the state’s license plates bore the legend “Birthplace of aviation”. It was a subtle difference to North Carolina’s “First in Flight”. The Wright Brothers came from Ohio, but neither state had offered them much encouragement prior to 1903. Still, everyone loves a success after the event.

I had spent a week in Toledo back in the summer of 1994, during the USA World Cup, and had gone to Detroit to see Brazil play Sweden. The ticket had been arranged for me by a young lady on whom I had vague carnal designs at the time. I had known her in London, but she had moved back to America and was living in New York. The idea was that we would stay with her parents in Toledo, I could go to the football and we could spend the rest of the time hanging out together.

The evening before I had flown, she had phoned me to say that she couldn’t make it back home, but that her mom and dad (whom I’d never even spoken to, let alone seen) would meet me at the airport and I’d still be welcome to stay with them. I took this as a none-too-promising sign. Perhaps the desire was not reciprocated after all. Either that, or she was playing ludicrously hard to get.

Her parents were very pleasant and did everything to make me feel at home, but I’d seen enough of Toledo in the week that I spent with them not to feel the need to return now.

My plans had gone faintly awry. After going off-piste the day before in Michigan, I now had to pick up the threads of my strict itinerary that indicated I should have been in Ohio for lunch. I had wanted to eat at the Roscoe Village Inn near Coshocton, which one of my guidebooks described as having the finest dining room in Ohio. When I had telephoned the inn, they’d told me that the dining room didn’t open on Sundays. This had thrown me somewhat, and in the ferment of my confusion I had become over-excited and ended up booking a room there for the night instead.

Astonishingly, the radio station that I was listening to was seeing fit to play a cover of Bye bye baby, which had originally been a hit for the Bay City Rollers back in the seventies. Why anyone should want to cover that track wasn’t explained before I found myself tuning elsewhere.

I picked up the excellent Dr Joy Browne. She was dealing with a caller who was perplexed because her sister had just got married and was now away on honeymoon. They had cleared everything up after the party and had realized that – shock horror! – some of the guests who had come to the reception had not brought a gift for the couple.

What a dilemma! That sort of thing’s never happened to me, but I’m sure that if it ever were to then the first thing that I’d do would be to get on the phone to a radio psychiatrist’s show. Dr Brown dealt with the call with elegant tact, finding a beautifully roundabout way to tell the caller to piss off.

I continued down towards Wooster (pronounced “Worcester”) and on to Wilmot, which was very pretty as the books indicated it would be. The roads were quiet, the trees were mature and the houses very large. My next stop was Zoar, which offered more of the same. It was the kind of place that was so peaceful that you found yourself turning the volume on your radio down almost as a subconscious action when you drove into it.

This was where I would have stayed the night if I had remained on track, and I was rather thankful that I hadn’t. Although it did have an inn and restaurant, it wasn’t the sort of community where anyone would have ventured out after seven. They’d all be tucked up snugly in their huge family homes, and I would have spent another solus evening gazing at the wallpaper.

I was re-entering Amish country. If I had not known this from the legion “traditional Amish” shops and restaurants, then I would have got it from the warning road-signs that had little pictures of horse drawn buggies. These villages were all well and good, but too many at one sitting was proving hard for my digestion.

I took a short-cut from Sugar Creek down to Coshocton forgoing my intended visits to Walnut Creek and Berlin, supposedly the Amish capital of Ohio. It was a comely run through the fields, and I passed a number of Amish homesteads, which were very recognizable from the fences and wooden style. I also saw several Amish on bikes, pedalling strenuously in a manner that seemed hardly appropriate for the Sabbath.

Whatever reservations I’d had about Zoar, it couldn’t have proved a worse place to spend the night than Roscoe Village turned out to be. This contrived hamlet on the edge of Coshocton was old and traditional in a way that seemed to have no continuity with the past. It was all rather Limehouse and Mudchute. The inn was more of a hotel complex with eighty rooms and little cosiness about it. I was one of only a few guests staying and all conversations were being held in hushed tones. Everywhere was closed apart from one restaurant in a converted warehouse at the other end of the street, where I had a hurried and far from pleasing time that found me back in the lobby of the inn by 8.30.

With none of the inn’s three bars open that evening and nowhere else in town to go, I retired to my room to enjoy the highlight of staying at that particular establishment: the Shaker furniture.

I looked at the desk, opened and closed its drawers, sat on the chair, and ran my finger over the wood. However much I tried, it was an activity that could only preoccupy me for a couple of minutes. I was left with nothing else to do than wrap some presents. My only further respite from the tedium was when I ran out of Scotch Tape and was given the thrill of going out to reception to see if they had some I could use.

It afforded me a ten-minute chat with the same woman, Tricia, who had been there since I arrived. She told me that Berlin was well worth seeing, but probably not if I’d been to Shipshewana because I wouldn’t see anything new.

I gave up and went to bed.

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September 29, 2011

Day 38. IN/MI: anabaptists, wind chimes, assisted residence, duelling pianos

The familiar sound of Fraser hullabaloo informed me that breakfast had begun. Out in the lounge area, several tables had been set up and there was a free-for-all in the kitchen.

I sat on the same table as LuAnn and Mrs Culver whose agenda for the day was shopping. They reckoned that I should go to either Ann Arbor or Port Huron. The former was a university town and the latter had a great place to stay on the waterfront called the Thomas Edison.

Mrs Culver, who tended to be known outside the classroom as Sue, also enthused about a bar called the Duelling Pianos where she had got so drunk once that she was now banned. Before they left, Sue thrust a scrap of paper into my hand. It had two cell-phone numbers on it, hers and her husband’s. “If you have any problems at all…” she smiled.

It was odd to be at the beginning of a day with little idea of where it would take me. Every other day had been carefully planned, but I had no blueprint to follow for today.

Anna suggested a good shop to buy Indianan souvenirs and also said that it would be beneficial to visit the Menno-Hof Museum. I took the hour-long guided tour with various shows about the Anabaptists, covering not only the Amish, but the Mennonites and the Hutterites too.

The building had 18 different rooms to troll through, and had been built in six days flat (although it took another year and a half to equip it with wiring, pipes, rendering and finished décor). The Anabaptist movement had started in the 16^th Century by people who objected to infant baptism and who sought a more biblically oriented way of life.

Underlying a lot of it was the conviction that community could only exist if it were in some way separated off from others, and stood for something distinct. The reason for Amish dress was to avoid becoming muddled and possessed by the world of fashion.

There was a threefold justification for the buggies. Firstly, the waste created by this mode of transport was recyclable and so environmentally friendly. Secondly, the average family went through three buggies in a lifetime (versus an average of ten cars for an American family), and usually only changed in response to a need for a larger vehicle. Thirdly, their ethos was concentrated around the family, and buggies meant that nobody ever got to stray too far from the homestead. Presumably they could also have claimed the fourth benefit of much less roadkill, but they chose not to.

The Anabaptists had been subjected to great persecution back in Europe and when they arrived in America. One of the eighteen rooms was a replica of a torture chamber and made the point that the more they were reviled the more entrenched they became.

There seemed to be a pertinent lesson for today in all this history. Nowadays the community was prospering and their numbers swelling, partly down to the average family having ten children.

It was all interesting stuff. I would have stayed longer, but I was conscious of time rushing on. It was now 11.30, and I would have to pay later today for Indiana’s having the same approach to daylight saving as Arizona when I lost an hour going into Michigan.

I made my way round to Fork’s Store as Anna had directed to pick up a souvenir. The store had a large parking lot, with long thin bays rather than short fat ones. It had been designed for buggies over cars and there were about thirty of them tied up along one side.

It wasn’t the kind of store that I was after, being more of a grocery supermarket than anything else. I wandered the aisles of fresh produce, conscious that my bright yellow Benson & Hedges Jordan Formula 1 fleece was far from “plain” attire.

Anna had also told me that the main characteristic of Amish cuisine was that they prepare everything from scratch and don’t use any pre-packaged food. I’d learnt at the museum that nowadays some made a concession to breakfast cereals, which were the only recognizable food brands that I could find on the shelves. There certainly weren’t any souvenirs. Not even a picture of Kelly McGillis’s bosoms.

I returned to the Visitors’ Center and they suggested that I tried Yoder’s, which turned out to be an Amish department store. The people in there were very helpful and one Amish woman scurried off to find “just the right thing”.

She returned struggling under the weight of some wind chimes that were nearly as tall as she was. Regardless of the fact that you’d need to live in a house along the lines of Admiralty Arch for a set that size, there was also the issue of getting it on the plane home given that I didn’t have any five foot long baggage. I wasn’t exactly wild about the $600 price tag either.

In the end they found me a much smaller set and I was off. I had been surprised to hear from Kentucky David that he had used some Amish folk to do building work and that they had got very well paid for it. My impression had always been that they shunned everything to do with the modern world, but this clearly didn’t include cash. They were voraciously commercial, and had little compunction capitalizing on their myth when it came to selling tat to tourists. Various Amish goods/crafts/ food shops along the way were shameless in their exploitive positioning.

I had chosen this area rather than the more renowned Lancaster County PA, which was described in the books as an over-commercialized Amish Disneyland. I shuddered to think what could possibly constitute greater commercialization than this place. What on earth did they have? Amish bordellos and gambling parlors?

Once in Michigan, I continued to Ann Arbor without stopping. It looked lovely, just as I had imagined an American university town. The main street was tree-lined and arrayed with book shops and cafés, and fresh faced students were bustling about with folders under their arms or sat outside at tables having earnest conversations.

It was too late for lunch, so I continued on to gruesome Motown. I found myself in stationary traffic when I hit Detroit. Rather handily the northbound carriage of the Interstate had been closed for a 25-mile stretch and all cars diverted onto the much smaller MI 3.

Here I was in the state with the longest coastline of the 48, where you could never be more than six miles from a lake or trout stream (if you laid all the state’s rivers and inland lakes end to end, it would stretch for 36,000 miles), and I was stuck on pot-holed tarmac in the middle of crappy old Detroit.

Port Huron lay at the southernmost tip of Lake Huron and stared over a narrow stretch of water at Canada. It was approaching seven by the time I arrived in town and been able to locate the Thomas Edison Inn.

All that the Fraser women had been able to tell me was that it was just past the bridge over to Canada. The car park was jammed full and teeming with golf club members and their families, all dressed up to the nines. They may not actually have been golf club members, but they were certainly of that ilk.

It was strange after the last few weeks in the wilderness to see such seemingly formal dress. I couldn’t remember the last time that I had seen a woman wearing a dress and court shoes. Some function, or several, was obviously going on.

It didn’t surprise me when I went to enquire to find out that they had no rooms. It didn’t particularly bother me either, as the place wasn’t what I had imagined. I was hoping for a snug little inn bravely sheltering in the face of the great lake and offering warm refuge to travelers. This place was like a Holiday Inn: large, faceless, bureaucratic.

Driving along the main drag, I came upon some shops and then more shops and then more shops. The neon of about twenty gas stations and endless pharmacies and fast food places lit up the dusk. I wasn’t sure whether the sign outside the Rite Aid pharmacy – “With us it’s personal” – was a reference to September 11^th or to their relationship with their customers. One dry cleaners had a special offer on: American flags cleaned for free.

Back near the center, I saw a place called the Historic Harrington Hotel. A sign outside commemorated it as one of the oldest in Port Huron, dating back to the 19^thCentury. It looked like a characterful building and promised an atmospheric reception.

A couple of old dears were relaxing in armchairs in the lobby. Behind the desk was a grey haired woman, who seemed to be a little deaf. She was preoccupied with searching through all the drawers in the desk for something.

I tried coughing, tapping my credit card on the counter and even a couple of “Excuse me”s, all to no avail. When she had finished her search she picked up the phone and in the middle of the ensuing conversation finally noticed me. She looked slightly scared, and when she put the phone down she just stared at me.

I asked her if they had a room for the night. She looked at me for another moment and then came round from behind the desk and walked down the corridor. She beckoned me to follow. The thing that I had assumed was a turquoise pinny, was tied down her back like a hospital gown.

At the end of the corridor, we turned left into a large hall with a trestle table at the door. Inside, chairs had been arranged all around the edge of the room and most were occupied by pensioners. It was some old-timers’ shindig, and everyone looked like they were enjoying themselves.

My guide pointed to another woman who was behind the table collecting entrance fees, tugged at her sleeve, pointed to me and scurried off. The fee collector was more formally dressed and in her fifties. She looked like she might be the owner.

“You want to come to the dance?” she asked quizzically. I laughed. No I was after a room for the night.

She laughed louder. This wasn’t a hotel any more. It was an assisted living residence for the elderly and infirm.

I had found the Duelling Pianos place that Sue had enthused about, and there was a Super 7 Motel a couple of blocks away. Resigning myself to yet one more Saturday night of high-living, I checked in. It was a room, it was cheap, and it was near the centre of town. Apart from that, it didn’t have much going for it.

I never liked leaving my car in a car park that had three shady characters hanging around for seemingly no good purpose. As a precaution, I gave them my mean-motherfucker look as I coolly grabbed my bag from the trunk. They probably thought I was squinting.

When I got to Duelling Pianos there were still plenty of stools free over by the bar in a raised area, but the tables down in the pit by the stage were packed with diners. On the stage there were two grand pianos facing each other. I ordered a beer and waited to see what was going to happen.

A couple of likely looking lads were larking about on the stage, seemingly as part of a boys’ night out. One was podgy and clumsy looking and reminded me a bit of John Belushi. The other appeared to be about fourteen. He was scrawny, wore specs and generally came across as a bit of a dweeb. A third guy with a menacing appearance, long blond hair and a fresh bruising around his eye and cheekbone seemed to be keeping watch, ready to throw them out at any minute.

From my first impression of these blokes, I would never have guessed that they were to be the evening’s entertainment. I certainly wouldn’t have guessed that they were as talented musicians as they turned out to be.

The fat one was called Doug, the pre-pubescent Jeff, and the bruiser Danny. They took it in turns to face off against each other, with only two of them on the stage at a time. The audience wrote the names of songs on napkins and passed them over, and then the two musicians tried to outdo one another in playing the tune while still staying melodic and in harmony with one another.

It was like the duelling banjos scene in Deliverance, only a touch less sinister: a constant cabaret, a kind of cross between Jools Holland and Norman Wisdom. Despite the horsing around, the music was good.

At one point, Danny got his guitar and sax out and changed the mood. When he sang God bless the USA, not only was the whole restaurant joining in and booming out “I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free”, but everyone to a man was on their feet. Some were waving lighters in time to the song.

Without thinking about it, I’d got through a fair amount of beer. During one of his breaks, I saw Doug near me at the bar and I went up to congratulate him. He was probably the best musician of the three and clearly the most charismatic.

My enthusiasm was a bit overstated, but he handled it well. When he heard that I was from England, he politely said that he’d always wanted to play London. He came from Boston, but his family were originally from Walsall in Staffordshire.

I told him that I thought he’d be a storming success. I gave him my details and told him to contact me if he ever felt like coming over. I’m pretty sure that I also told him that he could stay at my house and that I’d be able to fix him up with some gigs. He thanked me and said that that sounded great and he’d be in touch.

As he resumed his spot on stage, it began to sink in what I had just done. I was sure that he would be successful if he ever came to London, but I was going to be in a real pickle if he got in touch.

I wasn’t sure whether inviting a complete stranger to come and stay open-endedly was a very wise thing to do. I was absolutely sure that offering to set up gigs for him was just plain idiotic, seeing as I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to go about doing such a thing. If I had been that much of a twat, then it definitely was time to go home.

The fresh air outside hit me like a tank. Although it had been a short walk there, it proved to be a lengthy stagger back. It had been a great evening out, which was unusual given that it was a Saturday, but I was relieved to be back in my room. What’s more the car looked intact out of the window.

All that I needed to hope for now was for Doug to lose that scrap of paper with my details on it, in amongst the napkin requests for Your Song, Wully Bully and the Hawaii Five-O theme.

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September 28, 2011

Day 37. WI/IL/IN: underpants, Reagan lore, Amish country, shouty housewives, ass-wipes

CNN was still on when I woke in the morning. It didn’t look like the news had changed much while I’d been asleep.

It also looked like my laundry hadn’t dried much either. With a miscellany of damp T-shirts, boxers and socks strewn across the back seat and parcel-shelf, I set off for Illinois.

I took the Blue Star Highway, a tribute to the US Armed Forces who had defended the United States of America, to Galena where U S Grant had once lived. This highway could have been a road in Wiltshire. It swept through rolling hills of green fields and trees, with neither the mind-numbing straightness nor the testing twists that had broadly been the alternatives so far.

The next town was Hanover, which to all intents and purposes had two streets (or perhaps just one arranged in an “L” shape, depending on how you looked at it). This wasn’t enough to prevent them proudly claiming the lofty title of being “The Mallard Capital of the World”.

More rolling countryside led to Dixon, where my guidebook assured me I could find the boyhood home of one Ronald Wilson Reagan. I hadn’t intended to hang around long, but there was a sign inviting people in for a free guided-tour.

Three other cars were in the lot, each with a bumper sticker voicing approval of the former President: “I [heart] Ronald Reagan”, “Ron’s the best”, and “God bless Ronald Reagan”. I parked my car, with its South Carolina plates and arrangement of undies on show through the rear window, alongside. It would make an interesting photo for someone.

I walked through the door into a lobby area, where an elderly couple and a young child were milling about. An old biddy stepped forward to greet me. She was wearing a badge sewn onto her shirt that informed the world that she was a “Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home Tour Guide Volunteer”.

After a couple of minutes, the guide announced that the tour was about to commence. We all took one pace to the right and stood facing a quilt that hung on the wall. On it had been embroidered six pictures depicting key stages in Reagan’s life.

The guide painstakingly explained the details of each as we stood there motionless for twenty minutes. I was interested in the waves and the tree, which represented Ron’s time as a lifeguard on the River Rock. He saved 77 lives in his time.

Or so he said. He used to carve a notch in the tree each time he performed another heroism, so I guess the count had to be irrefutable. He sounded like the type of guy that would have been really popular around town.

I commented that it seemed like a high number. With a wink, the guide told me there was a theory that, because Ron was such a heart-throb, some of the local girls would deliberately get into trouble (in the water) so they could be saved by him.

With the quilt lecture over, we moved through to the adjoining room where the process began again with various framed photographs being explained in laborious detail. The stories were identical to the ones that we had heard in the previous room.

After another half an hour, we were ushered into the next room where seats were lined up facing a TV screen with a U-matic. The lights were dimmed, and a twenty-minute video reiterated the same stories a third time just in case they hadn’t sunk in yet.

I was itching to leave, but there had been no real opportunity. I hadn’t banked on it taking so long. The lights came up and the guide announced that we would now be welcome to go next door to see the house.

We weren’t even in his boyhood home! We’d spent an hour of eulogy in triplicate in the house next door! The others were keen Ron fans, so I rushed ahead to have a quick look around. It seemed silly to have wasted all that time and not even seen the house. Another volunteer biddy greeted me as I arrived, but we had to “wait for the others”.

Ten minutes later we began our plod around the actual home. During this second phase, a few important facts came to light. Since his time living there, the house had become dilapidated. After he had become President, a trust fund had been set up to renovate the property. It had been gutted and built again exactly as it had been. None of the furniture was original, although the Reagans had been sent catalogues from the era and had picked out what they could remember. Not all the furniture was modern reproduction. They had one rocking chair from a friend’s house that Ron used to go around and sit on sometimes.

It also transpired that Ron had not been born in Dixon. He had lived there for three years, between the formative years of 14 and 17. He’d come back twice since the house had been renovated, once as President in 1984 and once again in 1990. He’d even taken a meal in the dining room.

Or at least that was the story told by the volunteer guide. I picked up a leaflet as I was leaving. From this, not only did I learn that “only three weeks after moving here, Ronald and [his brother] Neil both took out library cards” but also that he had moved to this house at the age of nine. It confirmed that he only lived in this property for three years, but that the Reagans had had four other houses in Dixon. And that he’d grown up to be King of Brazil.

It was now about 12.30. I had planned to be away by eleven with a view to having lunch in Chicago. It needed to be full steam ahead along East-West Tollway to the Windy City.

Unfortunately, despite paying my 70 cents for what I assumed would be a fast road, a combination of roadworks and heavy traffic exacerbated my delay. The absurdity of trying to see a city such as Chicago in a couple of hours had not really dawned on me until I got there. It should have been obvious, but I had naively thought that a Sicilian lunch in Cicero (Al Capone’s old stomping ground) followed by a drive through the skyscrapers of downtown would do the trick.

It might well have done, but it wasn’t much of a plan if you arrived in Cicero at 3.30. I parked precariously outside Cicero Post Office, unsure whether my chosen spot was safe from the twin dangers of thieves or meter maids. Inside the pleasure of a twenty-minute queue lay in store.

While I was waiting I witnessed some fantastically rude customer behaviour. These people subscribed to the “if you don’t like what you’re told, then shout obscenities back really loudly” school of thought. When it came to my turn, the woman seemed taken aback at my politeness. She told me that it would be best to get out of Cicero as quickly as possible and go downtown, which was both much more interesting and safe.

With the looming skyscrapers came a depressed feeling. This was pointless. I couldn’t park and had no time to do anything here. I took a photograph of the Sears Tower and decided to come back another day when I had a sensible amount of time. Like two weeks. At least I could be thankful that I had broadly stuck to small towns on this trip. The big cities were just not amenable to speed tourism.

I had booked myself a room in an Amish village in Indiana. The directions I had been given were excellent, and I was soon approaching Shipshewana. With the hour added on after passing into Eastern Time, it was 8.40 pm.

My headlights reflected off a red triangle up ahead in the darkness. It appeared to be oscillating. As I drew near I could make out a square silhouette. I’d come across my first horse-drawn buggy.

The inn was run by Anna, who came originally from Austria. She was a strapping woman with soft edges and a kindly smile. When I mentioned food, she looked at her watch and told me that I’d have to hurry as the restaurant nearby closed in fifteen minutes.

The place to which she was referring was an Amish restaurant, with an appended gift shop selling hand-made crafts. All of the waiting staff were dressed like something out of Witness.

I wasn’t sure whether this was a gimmicky uniform or whether they were all for real. The dining area was large and felt more like a refectory than a restaurant. Although it was newly built of some sort of light-colored wood, it had a huge angular vaulted ceiling. The furniture was all very solid stuff and made of the same wood.

The place was brightly lit and also packed. I was squeezed in to a table near the middle of the room and handed a menu. It didn’t take long for me to decide that I wanted to try the Amish Sampler, a plate with a variety of good wholesome Amish fare including ham, beef and chicken.

My waitress seemed to have disappeared, although dozens of other uniforms were swarming about. They were all around the late-teenage bracket and were all girls. I might have assumed that they were for real if it weren’t for the high tech nature of the operation. I’d already noticed the cash register area, which was more like the reception at a five star hotel with computer terminals instead of tills.

Two or three slightly older girls stood at starship command near the head of the room, brandishing an assortment of mobile phones and walkie-talkies. And all of the waitresses had pagers clipped to their waistbands. What was more, some of these girls were wearing clumsily applied make-up, the Jezebels. It was obviously just a theme restaurant.

Most of the diners looked like civilians, but some Amish were lurking in the lobby. They really did look the part. And all the men appeared to be chewing matchsticks, which hung out of the corners of their mouths, and had full on beards and pudding-bowl haircuts.

I had a quick look in the gift shop. It was mainly wooden artefacts and books, including one called Living without Electricity, which seemed a bit incongruous given the environment.

It was a non-smoking establishment and I figured the inn would be too, so I had a cigarette in the car park before returning. It was bizarre. There was no noise of conventional traffic, just the clip-clopping of horses’ hooves approaching and receding. The buggies were all out in force.

Relative mayhem had broken out when I returned to the inn. “Inn” was a rather grandiose word for it; it was really just a big family home. I was greeted by Anna, who looked embarrassed and apologetic.

Screeching and jabbering from the lounge filled the air. I assumed that she had friends or relatives over, but it turned out that they were other guests, a party of housewives down from Michigan. It was their annual girls’ weekend away, which always preceded the start of the hunting season after which their husbands would all be gone every weekend for about six months.

Anna assumed that I would like some peace and quiet. I had told her briefly about what I was doing and she seemed to accord some VIP status to it. She appealed for hush and announced to the room that I was an author over from England and was researching an important work.

The implication was that people should calm down because I would probably not want to be disturbed, but the announcement had the opposite effect. The women screamed like teenagers seeing David Cassidy walk into the room. They begged me to come and join them. I didn’t need asking twice.

About half a dozen made up the Michigan contingent but other guests had already joined the party: a mother and daughter from Indiana and a couple who lived in Indianapolis. Anna was serving iced tea but you would have guessed that the rabble had been feasting on Champagne all afternoon.

It was riotous. I listened for a while, and talked below the din with a woman called LuAnn who was sat on my right. I also had a chat with a teacher called Mrs Culver, whose face had been decorated like a Christmas tree. It looked like someone had painted on it. She had the letters LHS in glitter on her cheek and the end of her nose was blue, as if she’d been chalked up for a game of billiards.

The Michigan women came from a town called Fraser, which they loved. They wanted to know where I would be going in Michigan and I answered that I didn’t know yet. Michigan was the most unplanned of my states and the only thing I knew was that I wanted to avoid Detroit because it was the only place I’d been to previously in the USA that I thought was a complete shithole. I didn’t appreciate when I said this that Fraser was a suburb of Detroit, but they accepted my immediate apology with good grace.

Everyone had something to say about where I should go and what I should see. The lower peninsular of Michigan is shaped like a mitten, and soon the whole room were holding up their right hands and pointing to “places” on their palms.

They also wanted to know what I thought of the USA, and I held court for a while with stories of my adventure to date. I asked the assembly whether every American place had to have a superlative claim, and whether best/biggest/most in the world actually meant that or did it just mean there wasn’t anything like it within the known vicinity.

They laughed and laughed. They seemed to think that it was one of the most incisive observations that had ever been made about their country.

They asked me what it was like in the UK, and whether all the Brits hated the Americans too. They wanted to know whether the UK would be a friendly place to go for an American.

The woman from Indianapolis was concerned about the Queen, because she was quite old and likely to die soon. She wanted to know what we would do then. Would there be another queen or would Prime Minister Blair take over?

I explained the function of the monarchy, and she was surprised to learn that British laws were passed by an elected parliament and not on the whim of the Crown. When I pointed out how succession worked and that Charles and William were lined up to follow the Queen, she was quite dismissive. “Well, that’s not going to work, is it?”

Anna joined us and I asked her about the Amish. She said that a number of her neighbours were Amish. She reckoned that the restaurant staff were all bona fide. The aversion to electricity only applied to their homes. It was OK to have it in the workplace.

The make-up meant that the girls were aged 16-18, the period when they are allowed to try the “other way”. The Amish bring children up to follow their strict code until 16 and then they are allowed to experiment with modern living for two years before deciding whether to go back. Make-up was part and parcel of this deal.

It seemed surprisingly enlightened. You couldn’t imagine the Catholic Church giving everyone a free spin at abortion, contraception and adultery to see if they liked it.

The women wanted to know whether I had been to a garage sale yet. They claimed that they bought all their clothes from garage sales, basically off one another. Mrs Culver tugged at her lapel and announced that she’d bought that shirt for a dollar at one of LuAnn’s garage sales.

It struck me that somewhere along the chain, clothes had to be introduced from outside or else everything would just go round and round, but I let the point lie. The woman from Indianapolis confirmed that she generally did the same, but announced that today she had bought a present for herself from a real shop. She was decked out from top to toe in Tommy Hilfiger gear, as a reward to herself for losing 56 pounds in the last eight weeks. I thought that everyone was going to applaud.

I turned to Mrs Culver. I just had to ask. What was all that stuff on her face, or did she usually go out like that? She laughed and explained that her kids at school had done it. They knew she was going away for the weekend and so she had let them daub colours all over her face.

I tried to think of a teacher from my high school who would have agreed to such treatment, but drew a blank. The LHS stood for Lakeview High School. My watch told me that it was almost 1.30 am, which seemed quite late to be gabbling on.

I asked them whether they usually stayed up to this time, and one of them looked at their wrist and exclaimed that it was twenty-five after midnight. I queried this. Wasn’t this part of Indiana on Eastern Time?

Indianapolis woman confirmed that it was, but that Indiana didn’t participate in daylight saving and so never changed its clocks. For the time being it was in synch with Illinois instead of Michigan, although she became irked again when I described it as being on Central Time. “No, we’re on Eastern, it’s just that we don’t change our clocks.”

Whatever, it was time to turn in, and the Michigan housewives had to go across the yard to the barn where they were sleeping. They warned me that there were another dozen girls over there, and that I’d be able to meet them all at breakfast.

Indianapolis woman went out onto the deck for a cigarette, and I was delighted to join her. Her husband came out too and we exchanged frivolous small talk.

We were just about to go in, when he sidled over and enquired whether he could ask me a question. He was shifting from foot to foot, as if something were really bothering him. As he prefixed his question with “This is probably a dumbass thing to ask but…”, I braced myself.

“You know over there in Europe like? You know, where you come from?”

I nodded. So far so good.

“Well, I’ve been meaning to ask. What I mean is, I’ve never had the chance to ask a European face to face…”

For goodness sake, spit it out man.

“Seeing as you’re here, I just wanted to know…”

Yes. Get on with it.

“Do you have, you know, toilet paper in Europe? Or do you use your hand?”

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September 27, 2011

Day 36. WI: disappointments: cows, rocks and houses, pasties

Bayfield was very pretty. So had many places been that I’d visited, but this one had an extra factor. There was a joy about it, the whole place felt very up and positive.

It also felt as if I had returned to civilization (or, at least, population); as if the east began here. I wandered down to the pier and around the harbor, but the town was barely awake and there wasn’t much going on.

It was only 8.45 when I left, and Alia and another of the girls were just arriving. They were coming in to bake cakes for some fundraising event. To an outsider their gesture just underlined the palpable pleasure about the place, although such behavior probably had its roots in the Lutheran background of the town. There weren’t any of those “No whingeing” signs, or the like. It all epitomized pleasantness and friendly community.

I followed the dotted line in my atlas, justifiably designating a scenic view around the coast of the peninsular. It took me through the ironically named Grand View, which was in a valley and afforded no views of any description, grand or otherwise.

Perhaps it was named after the view of it that you could get if you stood on the crest of the distant hills. I had an ambitious schedule for the day. It was only 400 miles, but I wasn’t out west any longer and the roads were less straight and far more congested.

Wisconsin claimed to be America’s dairyland, but to date I hadn’t seen a single cow anywhere. I came down through Eau Claire and covered over half of the north-south distance of the state without the faintest whiff of a moo.

As I left the outer reaches of Eau Claire, the orange light popped on. I was low on gas but, this being a car made for America, it probably meant that I still had at least fifty miles in the tank. Nevertheless, I was mightily relieved when I finally came to a gas station that was open thirty miles later in Independence.

It was an old fashioned station called Pietreks with full service, as opposed to self. As the guy was filling the tank, he also wiped down the windscreen and started to scrape off the major insect morgue that had established itself on my headlights and front bumper. I asked him casually how often oil should be changed and he replied that “they” said once every 3000 miles. He’d heard the commercials too, but his tone suggested that he didn’t really believe them either.

I asked if there was any place hereabouts that I could get my oil changed, and he said that they could do it for $23.16. It would take about half an hour. The car had done 12,072 miles since I had picked it up. Within 35 minutes the job was done, and the guy was very apologetic for taking so long. They’d checked all the fluids and lubes as well, and put some air in the tyres. The oil had been “pretty black”, and they had had to send out for an oil filter as they didn’t have the right one in stock.

Remarkably, the bill did come to $23.16 precisely. No additional tax. No “sorry mate we found a problem and it cost an extra $150 but, what can I do, it had to be done”. No “that was just the labor cost, the oil was an extra $30 on top”. There was just the apology for taking all of five minutes more than they had promised. It was most refreshing.

The car felt like new as I drove off. I felt comfortable that I had made a wise investment which, with a bit of luck, would see me home to NYC. At Arcadia, I made the minor diversion to Fountain City to look at the Rock in the House. I assumed that it was named as a play on the more famous House on the Rock in southern Wisconsin.

The story was that this house at the bottom of a cliff in Fountain City was smashed by a falling boulder in 1901. The same thing happened with an even larger boulder in 1995, this one being ten times the size of the 1901 rock. The owners packed up and left and sold it to some folks who now kept it open as a tourist attraction.

I parked in the driveway, left my dollar entrance fee in the box and went in to look around. The 55-ton boulder occupied all of what used to be a bedroom. The house was unstaffed, out of superstitious tradition, which was fair enough if it weren’t for the fact that there were souvenirs on sale. I would have been happy to leave money for a T-shirt or something, but all the gifts were locked away in glass cabinets.

I followed the Great Mississippi River Road down to La Crosse, but it was painfully slow. It was now gone four and I was desperate to see the House on the Rock and knew that it was bound to close within the next hour or so. The traffic continued to be unkind and it was already 5.30 when I reached Gotham.

Disconsolate I resigned myself to not seeing one of the few spectacles that I had really been looking forward to since before I had left London. I pulled into Spring Green, the nearest town, and went in to an antique/craft/curiosity shop and asked if they knew when exactly the House on the Rock closed.

They said that it might stay open until six, but the man behind the counter told me that it would be a mistake trying to get round it in what remained of the day. Apparently they reduced the price for late entry and everyone who tried it regretted it and ended up going back again the next day.

I explained that I wouldn’t be here the next day, and enquired whether there was some point where I could see the remarkable construction from the highway. There was a viewing point that I’d come to a bit further down the road. At least that seemed better than nothing, although when I got there I wasn’t so sure.

The viewing point was a bit of a misnomer, unless you happened to be gifted with Jodrell Bank eyesight. Across the valley you could just see a sharp thing jutting out from a cliff. It took a while for me to notice it at all, as a blinding sun was setting immediately behind it. Forlornly I took a photograph, expecting little of consequence to come out.

A couple of miles further down the road, I found the entrance. The sign said that it was open until 7 pm but that last admissions were at six. My watch said 6.10. I thought that it was worth chancing it. The car park didn’t look promising, with only four cars, but I parked in any case. Just as I was approaching the doors, a voice called out asking me what I thought I was doing.

A fifty-something security guard was walking towards me, shaking his finger and saying that it was closed and that I’d have to come back tomorrow. I explained my situation and said that I’d be happy to pay even if I could only have a quick five-minute look inside. All that I wanted to do was see the Infinity Room (admittedly this didn’t sound like a five-minute pop inside).

He said that he couldn’t do anything as the cashiers had all gone home now. Part of me realized that he was being perfectly reasonable, but part of me thought that he was just being a jobsworth tosser. He clearly had the power to let me in for a quick peak, but then again there was no reason for him to do so and every reason for him not to.

It was about twenty miles to Mineral Point, where I wanted to stop for the evening. When I had called earlier, I had learnt that the town was pretty much booked out for the night because there was a meeting of the Cornish Brethren or something going on over those few days.

It was a town that was supposed to be akin to rural England with hilly winding streets and had originally been founded by Cornishmen. Even without lodging sorted, I thought I’d have a look regardless.

Approaching on the highway, the Redwood Motel was offering good rates and appeared to have vacancies. I made a mental note and drove the mile or so down the hill into town.

The streets were teeming with folk, and so something was obviously happening. I drove the length of Main Street, and concluded that it looked like an interesting place to stay. Driving back to the motel though, I figured that it didn’t look like an interesting hill to have to hike up after a night on the beer.

Contemplating my situation, I decided that I would sooner limit alcohol intake and drive than have to do that walk both ways.

The Brewery Creek Inn, one of the places where I had tried unsuccessfully to book a room, had a blackboard outside advertising pasties. This I had to try. I was just in time as the kitchen was closing at 8.30, Cornish Brethren or no Cornish Brethren in town.

Entering fully into the spirit of the occasion, I ordered a pint of cider with my food. The cider was very good, but it was a sorry excuse for a pasty.

The English are supposed to have a reputation for bland food, but it tends to be the concept of the dish, not the preparation of it that’s bland. It’s the Americans who put all their blandness into the actual cooking, so when you let them loose on a fundamentally dull thing like a pasty, the outcome is sure to be a disaster. You might as well go and chew some damp cardboard.

The couple behind the bar were friendly enough and I wasn’t the last one there, but I got the impression they wanted people to leave so that they could pack up themselves. I bought one of their T-shirts and explained that I had a close friend back in London who came from Cornwall, but they didn’t bite. They just nodded politely and commented that it must be nice for me, or words to that effect.

Across the road was a more buzzy looking place called Riechers’ Corner Bar, so I went there to use up my alcohol quota. It was lively enough, primarily due to the antics of Chris the barman. He was a young guy and clearly a life and soul kind of character. As he promenaded up and down his side of the counter, he seemed to stop and have something to say to everyone and anyone.

He saw my packet of Silk Cut and was intrigued. He picked the box up and examined it really carefully. You’d have thought that he’d never seen a small cardboard box before, rather than it just being an unfamiliar brand.

He thought the “Smoking Kills” health warning in huge letters was hilarious and wanted to show everybody in the bar. Within a few moments, the phone rang and Chris was still within my earshot when he grabbed the receiver. His greeting was unconventional: “Hey, this is Chris. Who the fuck is that?”

It was a fine enough place, but I wasn’t much in the mood. I certainly wasn’t having such a good time that I fancied leaving the car in town and having to walk back. I also felt a little out of place without a mullet and a moustache.

I finished off my beer and set off for home. Back in the motel, there was a piece of paper on my bed saying that Neal from Hoboken had called. For some reason, I didn’t like the fact that they had come into my room to deliver the message. I would sooner they had poked it under the door or something. I hand-washed some laundry and remembered what wonderful things washing machines are.

My schedule had allowed one contingency day for disasters, and to my surprise, I’d yet to use it. I had always planned to use the extra day to extend my time on the Illinois/Indiana/Michigan leg, if I still had it. The time was coming to make that call, as this part of the journey began tomorrow. The alternative would be to hang on to the contingency and finish with a day in NYC.

When I called Neal back, he suggested that I do that as it would then see me back for Columbus Day, a big deal for the city with its large Italian population. There was also the small matter that Neal and Lisa were going to see Joe Strummer and wouldn’t be there if I got back the next day.

All in all it was a convincing argument. I made up my mind that I wouldn’t extend any of the immediate bits of the trip, especially as time spent rather than distance travelled was proving to be more useful for finding out about each state.

I wrung out my washing, turned on CNN and contemplated the day’s disappointments.

Three quarters of the way round: cumulative mileage 14729

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September 26, 2011

Day 35. ND/MN/WI: grumpy riser, true head, celebrity guests, icy blasts

The house was dark and silent when I got up. I went into the kitchen and wasn’t sure quite what to do with myself.

I snuck outside for a much overdue burst of nicotine, but even then felt guilty about polluting the crisp rural air that was billowing politely in the cornfields.

When I had finished, I put the butt in my pocket and went back in. The crashing of pans from the kitchen, a couple of doors down from my room, alerted me to woken life.

By the look on her face, I’d say Kathleen didn’t much like being up at 8.30 in the morning. Jerry, on the other hand, came bouncing in from outside ten minutes later with the air of a man who had already done a day’s work.

The country lane on which they lived looked very different by daylight. The previous night it had seemed menacing, but now it was like something out of a Famous Five book. I fully expected to see some kids in pre-war garb come bounding across the corn with their excited pet dog in tow, off in search of daily japes.

Soon I was in Fargo, and approaching the state line. The traffic was slow moving, and as I edged along Main Avenue towards Moorhead, I noticed a Pennzoil service station offering an oil change and lube check in 10 minutes for only $17.95. The radio had been bleating on throughout the trip with commercials, surprisingly enough from companies offering the service, advocating the necessity of having your oil changed every 3000 miles. It had been almost 12,000 miles since I had picked the car up in Savannah GA.

As well as being home to the Artiste formerly known as Zimmerman, Minnesota is apparently a state of 10,000 lakes. I passed so many of the latter that I didn’t bother stopping to take any photographs because the day was evidently going to bring me many opportunities. And who would want fifteen photographs of various lakes, in any case?

My first Minnesotan port of call was Lake Itasca, or more precisely its State Park, where the headwaters of the Mississippi were to be found. Itasca was a contraction of the two Latin words, veritas and caput.

It was another astonishingly beautiful park, and I enjoyed teetering through it at 25 mph to reach the northern end where I parked and walked the last 600 yards to the point where the mighty Mississippi began as a small stream. I had a brief look around the inevitable gift shop but there was little of interest. It seemed the more important the sight, the more shoddy the gear that was sold in the official shops.

The river ran north out of the park before looping south, and I followed its course to Bemidji, the first town on the Mississippi. The place was also famous for its statue of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox called Babe. The Bunyan legend told of a giant lumberjack who had walked across the state with his pet ox, and it was their plodding that had made all the lakes.

He must have been pretty bloody big – he’d also made the Grand Canyon and Puget Sound in his time – and his statue was obviously a scaled-down version, about 15’ tall. It appeared to have been made by the same bloke who did the figures for Trumpton. He looked like one of the soldiers out of Pippin Fort.

Not that I would have said anything publicly to criticize such a state icon. You had to be careful in Minnesota. The governor of the state, in true Bunyan style, was an ex-professional wrestler who gloried in the name Jesse “The Body” Ventura. His response to some recent press criticism had been to sue the newspapers concerned, on the basis that his name was trademarked and they hadn’t received his permission to use it. It seemed quite a no-holds-barred approach to public relations.

I was running low on cash, and there was a bank nearby so I went in to change some travellers’ checks. The cashier had a thorough look through my passport and then, with a “My, you’ve been all over haven’t you?”, asked me if I had an account with them. When I confessed that I hadn’t, she pointed to an ink-pad next to the chained pen and I was asked to put my thumbprint on each cheque that I wished to cash.

Across the road was the Chipewa Trading Post, with anxiously helpful staff. Within two minutes of entering and explaining that I wanted something different (ie. not a shot glass) distinguished as being from Minnesota, I had three of them ferreting around for ideas. After a dozen or so attempts, I finally settled for a Paul Bunyan/Babe golden Christmas tree decoration with the word “Minnesota” at the bottom.

The owner came over to introduce himself and to welcome me to the USA. He was interested in what I was doing, but seemed to struggle with the concept. “Wowee. That’s great. So you’re doing the 27 states in 29 days. Amazing.”

It was a beautiful drive out of Bemidji through the Chippewa National Forest and past the superbly named Lake Winnibigoshish. It sounded like a Japanese game show where the contestants vie for a large kebab. A nearby school had the equally impressive name of Bug O Nay Ge Shig. It must have been a laugh being a cheerleader there.

As I came out of Grand Rapids, it dawned on me that I’d not taken a photograph of a single lake let alone one of Prince or Bob Dylan. A quick glance at my road atlas showed no more blue blobs between where I was and the state line. My fears were confirmed when I arrived in Duluth with no lakes on my film.

It seemed a ridiculous oversight, but little I could do about it now. At the very least though, I wanted a shot of the great lake taken from Minnesota. This proved more easily said than done, and I wasted another 45 minutes driving around the manic streets of Duluth trying to find a decent vantage point where it would be safe and legal to stop and snap the blue expanse.

I had booked a room in Bayfield, Wisconsin, on a peninsular overlooking Lake Superior. As I picked my way through the darkness along the coast road, I thought I saw movement up ahead but then lost it. Seconds later, I saw it again but it was too late, I was right upon it.

As I flashed my full beam and held on my horn, the deer twenty feet in front of me in the middle of the road froze. I threw on the anchors and swerved into the oncoming lane, missing the hapless beast by a couple of inches. I drove gingerly the rest of the way and arrived in town at about 8.30.

The place I was staying at was called Greunke’s First Street Inn. I was the only person staying that night, and so sharing a bathroom was a fairly minor sacrifice. I was shown up to the room by a waitress from the restaurant/bar downstairs, and warned that food was only served until nine. I didn’t feel like eating immediately, and so sat at the bar and chatted with the two barmaids until closing.

The younger was called Alia, and thought that it was absurd that I was leaving the following morning without going to see the islands. The Apostle Islands lay just offshore and were the major tourist lure for the area. I explained the nature of my trip and, in the nicest way possible, she told me that she couldn’t see the point of it.

I didn’t think that I could argue with her. She did want to know what I had made of New Orleans though, as she was going there herself the following week. I said that I had found it quite decadent.

Although they had closed for the evening, Alia let me have one last drink after hours and the kitchen staff all came out and congregated by the bar. They asked me if I minded them smoking, apparently something only permitted after all customers have left.

A rather stern looking middle-aged lady, who turned out to be the owner, joined us and started examining the till roll. She introduced herself as Judith and said that she came originally from Sweden. When she heard about my trip, she was a lot more interested and impressed than Alia had appeared to be.

She asked if I was going to Montana, as she had a cabin to rent in Red Lodge. I told that I’d already been and had not gone to Red Lodge, but had thought about it. Impressed turned to sniffy.

What looked like an old news-sheet was pushed across the counter to me. It was actually a rather neat promotional tool of the Inn, with the menu printed inside. It advertised the lodge in Montana, but also had stories about the great and the good who had stayed at the Inn in Bayfield. I hadn’t heard of many of these celebrities (Leo Kottke? John Prine? Pat Paulson?), but was slightly impressed by John F Kennedy Jr, and almost slightly impressed by Garrison Keillor. It seemed a touch intrusive to detail what all of these people had chosen to eat during their stays though.

Alia told me about Maggie’s, only five blocks away, where I could get good food and something to drink now that they were closed. She said that the Rum Line was closer, but was pretty rough and they only served “shitty pizzas”. I was surprised that it was possible for somewhere to be five blocks away in a town that size.

I passed the Rum Line on the way, and it looked perfectly fine to me. I’d certainly found myself in less salubrious joints elsewhere on the trip. Indeed I was soon to find out how rough it was because when I got to Maggie’s it was closed, and so I had no other options.

It turned out to be very civilized, even if they had overdone the pink lighting a touch. Alia obviously wasn’t the most reliable source of local knowledge. She also told me that there was a call box at the end of the pier, which of course there wasn’t.

I overheard the guy next to me say to the barmaid that they’d been to Hawaii the previous year and it was lovely. I took my opportunity, and turned to him to join in.

Summoning my most obvious English accent, I asked whether being in Hawaii felt like you were in America or did it feel strange. I’d been to Gibraltar, where the language, money, food and shops were the same but it felt no more like the UK than Timbuktu.

He and his wife got my drift straight away. He answered cursorily that it felt half-American and half-Japanese, because that was the proportions of each nation visiting the islands and all the menus were in both languages. They saw that I was a foreigner by myself and that I was just trying to start a conversation. And it worked.

Their names were Tom and Marty, and they were originally from Wisconsin but now lived in Colorado. They’d been back for a wedding and were now spending a few days looking around and reminiscing. He was a Latin teacher who bore a striking resemblance to Jimmy Hill (only with white hair), and she was a primary school teacher.

When I mentioned what I was doing, their reaction was to say that I was probably going to beat them to it then. They’d been around all 48 with the exception of four, “the Carolinas, Mississippi and Louisiana”. I said that I thought they were an odd four to have left until last and they agreed.

They were a fantastically amiable couple. Given their professions they were understandably scholarly. As well as hitting me with a bit of “Conticuere omnes, intentique ora tenebant”, he wanted to talk about Chaucerian English. It also turned out that they had both started to learn to ski in their sixties. Very charmingly, they insisted on paying for all my beer.

It took me a while to get back into the guesthouse. The route through the restaurant was now closed, and so I had to find the outside stairs and walk along the balcony to a door that my key was supposed to open. Only it didn’t.

The wind was whipping in off Lake Superior making swift entry fairly imperative. I didn’t reckon that I could bank on being as lucky as William E Larson, if I fell foul of the weather. He had recently lost some fingers to frostbite after falling asleep outside while drunk. Because this had occurred outside his mobile home, which doubled as an office, it had been deemed that he had suffered “work related injuries”.

He had been awarded $85,000 compensation by the state of Wisconsin.

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September 25, 2011

Day 34. SD/ND: “unique” shops, metal sculptures, Royston Vasey, crappy boxes

Noise from the corridor woke me at 6.30. A family was shipping out even earlier than I had intended to, and the kids didn’t like it one bit and were kicking up a right noisy fuss.

I suspect that the adults weren’t that chuffed either. It was a disturbance that worked in my favor though, as I really had no desire to hang around Stepford Cove any longer than necessary. Deluxe continental breakfast consisted of some bread and bagels that you could put in the toaster yourself plus as many polystyrene cups of coffee as you could drink.

I was soon on the road heading up to Spearfish, and north to the state-line. There was nothing new to see all the way to the North Dakota, unless you counted the numerous small snakes that were wriggling across the highway. The roads were straight, the fields were flat and other vehicles appeared at approximately fifteen-minute intervals. It was the basic story of most of the US west of the Missouri.

An astonishing item came over the radio, which even the otherwise bullish host almost balked at reporting. A speculator in Baltimore MD had invested $4.5 million putting together a new concept restaurant called the Crash Café. Its features had been due to include the tail fin of a DC 10 sticking out of the lobby and a burning engine as the charbroiler for the outside barbeque. He had now changed his plans because he had worked out it might be considered an inappropriate theme under current circumstances. No shit, Sherlock.

As I entered North Dakota, signs anticipated imminent arrival in Bowman with the imprecation “ a time to stop for our unique shops”.

It appeared that North Dakotans had come to terms with their lot by developing a huge sense of irony. I remembered New Mexico Pete’s stories about the tourism posters, and here was another example when entering the state from the south. The only shops in Bowman were all parts of chains, as were the hotels. The town was full of things like Burger King, Super 8 Motel, Walmart, Conoco and True Value.

It was, in fact, a place with nothing but run of the mill shops. The Gary’s Jack and Jill Food Shop was the only frontage I spotted that I didn’t immediately recognize from elsewhere.

I sensed a foreboding of the thrills to be had in the state when the question was posed over the radio: “Have you ever looked at your garage door with disgust?” It transpired that Midway Stores in Dickinson were sponsoring an ugly garage door competition. In order to win first prize, you had to take a photograph of your garage door and send it in to them with an explanation of why you thought it was worthy of the accolade. There was no mention of what the prize was. Lobotomy vouchers possibly.

NM Pete had assured me that the only place worth visiting in the state was Medora. It was an eighteen-mile diversion west on the Interstate. I took the exit and drove past a row of old wooden shops then on past a park.

Two miles later, I was approaching the Interstate again. I’d managed to miss the town altogether. Back at the row of shops, I filled up at the gas station. I was about to ask the obvious question about where the town was and what had happened to it, when I noticed a rack of free maps. I asked if I could take one and the woman kindly showed me where the gas station was so that I could orientate myself.

I felt a little foolish to discover I was actually right in the middle of town. I found a phone box and called Pete’s sister, Kathleen. She told me that of course it would still be OK to stay and that they were looking forward to meeting me. She gave me careful directions, pointing out that if I got as far as Leonard then I had gone past their turning.

She told me not to worry about food as she would have something for me to eat there when I arrived. It felt like I was talking to an old family friend, not someone about whom I knew nothing but her name, where she lived, and the fact that she was interested in art & crafts and travelled all over the country.

One of the shops in the original row that I had seen when I first passed through the town was open (unlike everything else in town), and so I was able to pick up a North Dakota letter opener. I had heard stories that since September 11^thno knives of any description were being allowed on to planes, but nobody seemed sure whether this applied to checked baggage also. As a precaution, I bought a North Dakota scented candle also. My accumulation of tat was blossoming nicely.

I was still faced with about 350 miles to cover that afternoon, but at least North Dakota allowed 70 mph on its Interstates. I joined at the 27-mile point. My exit would come just before Casselton at 324 miles.

I set the cruise control to 72 mph and sat back to enjoy whatever was to come into view. The mountain removal project most certainly had been completed. North Dakota was as flat and featureless as a billiard table.

It wasn’t that there was nothing to see though. My curiosity was first roused by a succession of what can best be described as scrap metal edifices. A variety of metallic animals littered the verge at regular intervals. Then a big metal eye. A large sign invited me to “hop hop hop over to the Enchanted Highway” nearby, where more of these creations were displayed en masse. It claimed to be the “World’s Largest Metal Sculptures”. Superlatives obviously didn’t always need to be singular.

I did pull off the road at the New Salem exit briefly to take a snap of the largest concrete cow in the world. It was pretty big and I was able to photograph it from about a mile away at the top of the ramp. I was unaware of any challengers to its claim to fame elsewhere in the world.

They had a thing about odd roadside adornments in these parts. A few miles down the freeway, a row of perfectly choreographed scrap cars adorned the grass verge like a junkyard showroom.

As I neared Bismarck, something very strange happened. The radio was interrupted by a voice, apropos of nothing, saying “I knew they didn’t put red dashed lines on the ground where the time zone changes. What were Rand McNally thinking of?” As chance would have it, this broadcast came over the air at precisely the point that I was crossing the time-zone line. It was either a coincidence, or showed a sophistication of pointless interactive marketing that I didn’t even know was technologically possible.

Since September 11^ththere had been a run on US flags to the extent that it had become virtually impossible to get one for love or money. This had turned out to be good news for the nation’s tattoo artists who were reporting a massive upswing in business. According to the radio, full chest tattoos were proving very popular and the three most requested designs (in order) were the stars and stripes, a teary eyed eagle and the World Trade Center on fire. It seemed quite a gesture of solidarity to have a picture of the burning twin towers seared indelibly across your chest or back.

So single-minded had I been about the drive that I reckoned I might still have time to visit Fort Ransom, which had been my planned stopover before NM Pete had offered up his sister’s house.

I swung off the Interstate and headed south, pursuing a maze of roads before I finally got there. This place, with its population of 105, really was off the beaten track. The bar across the road from a general store cum gas station was full of faces staring out at me. I filled up my tank, conscious that I was taking loads of their local gas and they probably wouldn’t get another delivery until December.

It felt like visiting Royston Vasey. A hush descended in the store as I went to pay, and all heads turned to look at me. The Fort itself was nearby, so I went to have a look only to find it closed. Returning to the village, I got out of my car to take a photograph but jumped back in quickly when a number of those in the bar spotted me and came out to see what I was playing at. With mild wheel spin, I made safe my escape.

I tried to take a short cut to Leonard, but soon found myself stranded at a dead-end on an unmade track in the middle of some fields. It was a costly mistake. By the time I had retraced my steps, I had lost almost an hour. I roared off to make up the time, but in my haste I missed Kathleen’s turning and ended up in Leonard itself.

It was almost quarter to nine by the time I thought that I had found her road. I needed to look for the second farm and a redbrick building. It was dark, but I passed one building after about a mile and it was white. Another two miles down the road and I saw a silhouette of what I assumed must be the second building.

If so, I was there. The precariousness of my position suddenly struck me. I was alone in the middle of nowhere and about to knock on the door of a house that I did not recognize, hopefully to be greeted by someone whom I’d never met. I didn’t have the faintest idea what she looked like or even what age she was.

I was saved from my concerns by the front door opening. A kindly middle-aged woman bustled towards me and I nervously said hello. To my enormous relief she greeted me with a “By your accent, I guess you must be Kevin.”

She welcomed me into the house and we took off our shoes. Her husband, Jerry, was at the computer. He jumped up and invited me to check my e-mail if I wanted to. I took him up on the offer and he said he’d go off to fetch some coffee. Fifteen minutes later, I was perched on a stool by the breakfast bar and already on to my third cup.

Jerry disappeared and I didn’t see him again all evening until he went to bed, except for the frequent times that he returned to the kitchen area to fill up both our cups with more coffee.

By the end of the evening, I must have had a least a dozen refills. At one stage I steered the conversation gently around to beer. I had a couple of cans in my bag that I would have loved to crack open. I was thankful not to have suggested this prior to learning that they had a strict policy of not allowing any alcohol inside the house.

Kathleen had clearly given herself a brief to make North Dakota sound as interesting as possible for me. She was narked by the press that it tended to get within the US itself. Some people thought that the whole state was snowbound for half the year and that nobody could even leave their homes. I told her that I blamed the Coen Brothers, but she didn’t seem to get the Fargo reference.

Her conversation seemed almost rehearsed, but jumped all over the place. One moment we’d be talking about travel, or London, or September 11^th and the next she’d be off on an anecdote that bore no relevance to what we’d just been discussing.

She had a list of things that she wanted me to know: the things that were good about America, and about North Dakota and then a few left-fielders, such as the four people that she was most looking forward to meeting in heaven (for the record, they were a couple of country and western singers, Abraham Lincoln and Sacagawea).

On the subject of her brother Pete, she told me that he was in the Guinness Book of Records for being the oldest man to throw a Frisbee. I had to admit that I hadn’t realized that the category existed, but thought that I might have a pop at it myself in a few years time. Pete was only 43.

Kathleen was unusual for an American because she had done so much travelling around. At her son’s wedding a year or so previously she had finally met a couple from Delaware and that had completed her set. She now had at least one friend in each of the fifty states whom she could call up at any time for a quick chew of the fat.

We started to talk about her arts and craft, and she explained to me that she made boxes and decorated them, and that formed the basis of most of their livelihood these days. We went through to her workshop to take a look. She showed me some small plain boxes, the sort that cigars sometimes come in. She had a pile of what looked like magazine cuttings and greetings cards, and explained that she cut out things like this and glued them on the boxes. Nice.

She showed me an example of a finished box. It was certainly very distinctive. It would have been great to have been able to take one (or even buy one) as a souvenir, but Kathleen explained that they were so in demand that she only made them to order nowadays and all of her stock was due for pretty immediate delivery. I’d have to live with just the memory.

Back in the kitchen we jabbered on for a while until Jerry went to bed at around eleven. She was clearly proud and happy to come from North Dakota. She had been amused to see me lock up my car and explained that this wasn’t the done thing around there.

This wasn’t the usual “oh in the country everyone leaves their front door open” malarkey that you even get back in the UK. It had a practical benefit. With so many people working in remote fields, it had become acceptable just to borrow the nearest person’s car if you needed to get back in a hurry.

One local had recently been informed by the police that his car had turned up in Minnesota and he hadn’t even been aware that it had been stolen. It had been missing for three weeks, and he had just assumed that a neighbor had borrowed it. I silently congratulated myself on locking my doors.

The chat was still going strong at midnight, when I glanced at my watch and apologized for keeping Kathleen up so late. She said that it was fine because she never really went to bed much before two or three usually. I was far too knackered for such a marathon, much as I was enjoying my chat with her, so I made my excuses.

In the bedroom, I examined all the windows to see if I could get one open. I was dying for a cigarette, but was going to have no joy. The caffeine was coursing round my body. I felt like my whole torso was pulsating.

In the end, I might as well have stayed up with her as it took me about three hours to calm down enough to sleep.

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September 24, 2011

Day 33. NE/SD: badlands, dead men, presidents, gamblers

My plan was flawed. I’d been aware of this for some time, but today was the day that I would have to confront it.

The west end of both Dakotas is in the Mountain Time zone while most of the rest of each is on Central Time. I wanted to visit Mount Rushmore this evening; Texas Jeff and Karen, on the basis of their extensive globetrotting, had implored me to see the Presidents by night.

This meant a drive of less than 300 miles with an additional hour thrown in when I crossed zones. This wasn’t so much the problem as the fact that I would cross back the following day, and be left with over 500 miles to cover and one hour less in which to do it.

It meant that I had no need to rush off this morning, and so I got up around eight and had a leisurely breakfast as Cheryl pottered around the house. I was particularly impressed by the jam, and complimented her on it. It was Very Berry Jam, whatever that meant.

It was an odd feeling leaving. I had only met Cheryl fifteen hours earlier, but I felt as if I’d known her fifteen years. It also felt more like I was just nipping out to the shops rather than driving away into the distance never to come to this place again.

As I turned the ignition, Cheryl came bustling out of the house carrying something. I wound down my window and she pressed a jar of the jam into my hand, as a present for “your girl back home” whose photo I had shown to Cheryl. This one had a sticker on the lid that read “Nebraska Food Industry Assn. WINNER. Jelly Division.” No doubt a fiercely contested competition, that one.

The road north to South Dakota continued to be eventless. Apart from the brief punctuation offered by Valentine, there was nothing to see but fields. I stopped to cash a travellers’ check at the Wells Fargo in Valentine. The cashier looked a touch flummoxed when I handed over my passport. As she nervously fingered the pages, I pointed out that the photo was at the back. She thanked me and then added apologetically that she’d never seen a passport before. Not even an American one.

Every now and then there was a cluster of trees that, at a guess, looked like they covered about five acres. Cheryl had been perplexed this morning by an overnight frost that had killed some of her plants. As I was crossing the state line, a voice on the radio confirmed that last night the temperature had dropped to 28ºF and that today it was expected to reach 92ºF. It struck me as quite a fluctuation.

To see the Badlands, I needed to turn west at White River on to a narrow twisting lane. It was my luck to get stuck behind a large cement truck that was moving more slowly than I would have liked, but fast enough for it to be difficult to get by. After almost thirty miles of jockeying, I finally managed to overtake.

No sooner had I got by than the road straightened itself out and stretched before me into the distance. I was whizzing along taking in what scenery there was on offer, when something red and disc shaped flashed by my window. It looked like a Stop sign, but I was over the junction and fifty yards down the road before I could obey its command.

I’d just jumped Highway 73. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t seen it coming. I couldn’t believe how fast I’d been going. I couldn’t believe that I had just come belting straight across a main road with no right of way. I rested my forehead on the steering wheel and took a deep breath. Behind me, the truck arrived at the junction and took the precaution of actually drawing to a halt.

The Badlands could not be better named. As inhospitable terrain goes, this was even a notch up from the wildernesses of Nevada and Utah. It was a mass of craggy rocks and lumpy ground that looked like it was made of ash and concrete. There was no chance of even the Indians knowing this as a Land of Many Uses.

Wandering around it, I kept expecting the ground to crack under my feet. If the conspiracy theorists who believe that the Americans never really landed a man on the moon were right, this must have been where they forged the film. You could have put Armstrong, Aldrin and a lunar buggy down here at night and nobody would have known the difference.

With lunchtime fast approaching, I reached the Interstate. Before I set off for Rapid City, I wanted to visit Wall and the famous drugstore there. It had made its name by offering free iced water, a tradition that it still maintained, and with 30,000 customers a day it claimed to be the largest drugstore in the world.

Being a pedant, I noted that the pharmacy section was in fact rather limited, but there was loads else in the shop. It was enormous, but there were surely other shops in the world that were bigger than this. The major department stores for a start. It all depends upon how you define drugstore. If it’s a shop that sells a miscellany of old kak, then Wall’s claim probably had some validity.

Deadwood had recently legalized gambling on the condition that a hefty tax levy be put towards maintaining the town’s authentic western appeal and to pay for the main street to be cobbled.

Or at least that’s what my guidebook said. It seemed odd that a town probably most famous for being the place where Wild Bill Hickock met his end while playing cards – giving rise to the aces and eights that he held at the time being known as dead man’s hand – had only just embraced betting.

It looked like an interesting enough place, certainly more appealing than Cripple Creek CO, and so I looked around for somewhere to stay. I figured that I could have an hour’s wander around before I needed to set out for Mount Rushmore. I had gathered from the Visitors’ Center that it stayed open until eight.

I went to check out a couple of B&Bs that I had spotted earlier. There was no answer at the door of one. Nor was there any answer at the second, but the door was open. I walked in. It was a hair salon of sorts, but appeared to be someone’s front room. I came out and walked around the side to the door with the B&B sign. That led to the back of the same hair salon room.

I could see up the stairs and into what I assumed was a bedroom. A pile of clothes lay on the floor just by the door. I called out without reply. I passed up the opportunity to steal my fill of Paul Mitchell hair care products and left.

Before Mount Rushmore, I wanted to visit the nearby Crazy Horse memorial. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was supposed to be impressive. I could see the outline of a man’s head on the mountain as I approached the barrier and paid the eight bucks for the entrance fee. I didn’t fully appreciate that this got me no closer to the (unfinished) monument than a hundred feet past the barrier.

If you wanted to get a closer look, you had to stump up another three bucks to take a coach to the foot of the mountain. You weren’t allowed to walk there by yourself. This piqued me somewhat, and on principle I declined to take the bus ride. Instead I took a distant look at the memorial. It did look incredible, and would be great when it was finished.

In the same style as Mount Rushmore, lumps of mountain were being blasted and carved away to leave the image of Crazy Horse on his crazy steed. I felt a bit stupid that I had not even realized that the work was way off completion. I also felt a bit stupid to have paid eight bucks for a view that I could have got for free from the roadside.

When I got to Mount Rushmore, I was glad to see that they were decent enough to be up front and give you the option. Eight bucks bought you parking rights and the opportunity to approach the monument as a pedestrian. The alternative – “remote viewpoint” – was free.

It was just as I had imagined it, only smaller. The four presidents looked just like the photographs I’d seen, which was hardly surprising I suppose, but they seemed tiny. Certainly Crazy Horse looked as if it were going to turn out to be a lot more imposing.

It was 6.15, and I’d been there, done that and taken the photograph. It was now a question of whether I sat it out until eight to see the after dark spectacular. A crowd was already gathering. It reminded me of my dilemma at Old Faithful, and I hadn’t regretted staying for that. I made up my mind to wait.

An amphitheatre of benches faced the monument, but I elected to stand at the back so that I could get away as quickly as possible when I’d seen the scene.

It started to get dark around 7.20, after arguably one of the most boring hours of my life. Next to me stood a large lady in her late thirties. “Have you ever seen the Presidents after dark?”. I wasn’t sure if she was speaking to me, so I replied with a tentative no and explanation that it was my first time at Mount Rushmore.

She obviously had been speaking to me, and she picked up on the accent immediately. Our conversation must only have lasted five minutes, but in that time she gave me a fairly detailed potted history of her life. She came from South Dakota but now lived in Columbus OH. She’d been to Mount Rushmore fourteen times before, but never after dark. Her mom and dad were still alive and well, living where they always had. He was a farmer. She’d gone to Ohio with her husband, but was now divorced. She had two kids, who were great. She worked as a pharmacist. She loved James Herriot books. She had difficulty keeping her knickers on whenever she met a man in uniform.

Her flow was only interrupted by the lights suddenly being turned on the faces by the flick of a switch. That was it. White spotlights shining on something that had been perfectly visible ninety minutes earlier. No colors, no music. I’d kind of expected a light show of sorts, but this was illumination at its most basic.

In truth, I was more entranced by the fireflies. All very nice, but barely worth the lengthy wait. It certainly wasn’t worth it given that I was still to sort myself out for the night.

I tried to break off the conversation, but was unable to until we had exchanged addresses. She told me that, if I were in Ohio in three weeks time, I should go to the Pumpkin festival. I told her that I would be there in six days’ time, and ran back to the car.

It had been an expensive day, and so I was more interested in cheap rather than luxurious accommodation when I got back to Deadwood. A motel called Thunder Cove was advertising rooms starting from $29.95. What’s more, deluxe continental breakfast was included, although I was unsure which continent was being referred to.

Before I was allowed to check in I had to sign an affidavit promising not to allow pets or smoking in the room, and to agree to pay $75 if I introduced either of those evils to any of the buildings.

The guy behind the counter had his patter off to a tee and ran through the welcome chat without breaking tone or pausing for breath. “No smoking. No pets. Breakfast from seven. Here’s a timetable for the trolleybus. Give 50 cents to the driver. No smoking. No pets. Would you like some ice? Here’s an envelope with a map and discount vouchers for places in town. No smoking. No pets.”

At least the guy in Delaware had had some personality. It wasn’t clear whether it was a one-off fine, or whether it accumulated to $150 if you engaged in both smoking and pets in your room.

The trolleybus facility was a bonus. It left and dropped off from directly outside the motel, and the next one was at 9.25. I dumped my bag in the room and rushed out on to the forecourt. I had five minutes to spare and so I sparked up two cigarettes and smoked them concurrently, in deliberate full view of the dalek on reception.

In town I headed for Big Al’s Steakhouse Saloon, which did food until midnight. It had been owned by a friend of Buffalo Bill, and Mr Cody had whiled away many an evening drinking and fighting in there.

This was not an establishment for the world’s most beautiful people. I was shown to a table and given a paper menu that was stiff from previous drink spills. Smokers puffed at every table.

I opted for the “filet” steak but when I gave my order to the waitress, she looked at me as if I were some kind of idiot. I had pronounced the “t” on the end of “filet” deliberately, so as not to come across as a gentrified ponce. “Oh, do you mean the fee-lay?” she asked with a laugh. Cheeky bitch. She was still laughing when she came back with the food. “What was it you called it again? Fillert?” It was obviously hilarious.

After eating, I took the remainder of my beer and sat on a stool by the bar. Just as I was finishing off the pint and contemplating another, a woman came and sat down next to me. She was wearing a short skirt and stilettos and her face was carrying an ungodly amount of make-up.

She opened her bag, took out a cigarette and then looked at me with a pout and asked if I had a light. She swiveled on her stool friskily, re-crossed her legs and ran her red talons up her calf to her knee. I couldn’t be absolutely sure she was a hooker but, if she wasn’t, I was prepared to bet she frequently got mistaken for one. Either way, I didn’t really want to find out so I quaffed and left.

Out on the street, I looked at the cobbles. They were very strange for cobbles. The road was made of small strips of red stone arranged in a fashion akin to parquet flooring. It was perfectly flat and smooth. I’d just call it fancy red paving.

I walked past a number of bars that were really just casinos. If I’d seen somewhere that appealed, I’d have stopped but nothing did. The fact that I was carrying a concealed tape recorder and probably wouldn’t have been the most welcome guest in a casino had nothing to do with it.

In any case, I needed an early start the next day given my schedule, and so was happy to wait when I reached the trolleybus stop. The timetable obviously was of very little use or accuracy. The trolleybuses just turned up when they felt like it, bang off time.

My motel was the last drop and I was back inside by 11.30. It had been my final taste of the Wild West. I could heartily confirm that these towns were not the places for vegetarian non-gamblers.

The next day I would turn finally and irrevocably east for home. It was a nice feeling.

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