Again, I find myself on the road. Thank you universe, for perfect storms.
I started this blog in 2007 while road-tripping around the country for three months. I spent time in New Orleans, where I helped a man rebuild his house, and bore witness to the devastating fallout that succeeded hurricane Katrina in 2005. Thirteen years later, I am on a different road trip, punctuated by its own brand of devastation. Except this time, its everywhere. Every media outlet refers to this time as "the new normal". The constant use of this phrase has a fishy smell. Shouldn't each of us decide what this is, in our own terms? The prescriptiveness of it is disconcerting.
"The new normal" refers to the resultant changes from the pandemic, and increasingly, the accompanying civil refusal to tolerate age old forces of nepotism. This current of change has been a slow burn, but the genie is out of the bottle. Most recently, the news has included the dethroning of Confederate monuments in Virginia before cheering crowds. Not everyone is getting their way. The night before I drove out of the city, a statue of Fredrick Douglas, the American author and abolitionist, was found in a river gorge in Rochester, debased and destroyed by a cowardly anonymous party. And now...all these empty pedestals, laden with all their meaning and potential meaning. New normal in the making.
Because I am half Irish Catholic, I have a complicated relationship with pedestals. Whether it be a parent, a priest, or a teacher, there is something so comforting about looking up to someone (or something). All you need to do is know your place. The figure on the pedestal gains so much power, only because you have been conditioned to give it to them. It is possible, however, to see things another way. With courage and boldness, one can emerge anew, and the pedestalled figure, looking down, loses it's value. This is a type of waking up that can happen in a person, when they are ready. Oswald Spengler, an early 20th century mathematician and philosopher, postulated that mankind is one massive super-organism with a finite lifespan and life stages. Could this be a growth spurt?
I drove out of Manhattan and through Pennsylvania during a raging Summer storm. Behemoth cargo trucks raced by blasting water against my windshield in their wake. My concentration was waning by nightfall. I slept in my car at a campground off I-80 about an hour outside of Ohio. In a gas station near my resting place, it was hard to ignore the one person without a mask - a bearded man in a hunting t-shirt playing slots in the candy bar aisle. Throughout the drive, personnel at gas stations and food markets wore masks, but their use was very spotty beyond that. I wore mine at all times. The few times I almost forgot to wear it, the concern that I would be signifying myself as a Trump supporter was just as alarming as the possibility of violating the social contract into which most of us have hopefully entered as a way of protecting ourselves and each other.
On day two, it continued to rain hard as I crossed the border into Ohio. I drove for 8 hours and hoped to cover more ground. Just as the sun was setting, the engine light came on, followed by a brief deceleration. The fuel intake lagged, lasting only about a second. I decided to keep driving with the hope that this would work itself out, as I have successfully wished myself out of automotive troubles before. So I wished and drove for several more hours in the dark night as the problem grew worse, and the faceless truck drivers signaled their intolerance of the slow-moving impediment with loud groaning honks.
I stopped at a Quality Inn in Mansfield, Ohio. I perused pamphlets offering guided tours of a local prison while waiting for the concierge to appear. The young man who emerged from a back room looked like an 18 year old, bleach blond Sean Penn. I asked him if he knew of any mechanics. He said he did, and turned out to be a race car enthusiast. "I've rolled twice," he said. His turbo-charged Corvette goes from 0 to 60 in 2 seconds, and his father yells at him when he doesn't change his tires before racing. It "burns lines" on the street and destroys the tires each time the car is raced.
It is Saturday, and the mechanic is closed until Monday morning. I drive the length of a vast empty lot and parked in front of my room. For the two nights that I was there, the only other people I saw were the cleaning crew. An indoor pool sat half full of water that looked like green gatorade. The patio furniture was strewn about in conversational circles - an echo of more vibrant times. I began to fear I was stuck in a food desert, and steered in the direction of a Dominoes Pizza. I walked passed a lifeless cement factory, an empty stadium, and over train tracks. A Mechanics Bank circled by an empty parking lot drew my attention due to its triumvirate of cultural allusions: Greco-Roman columns, the gabled roof of American suburban aspirations, and the titular designation of the financial institution in service to the working middle class. Inside the Dominoes, a staff of ten employees took orders over the counter, on the phone, and responded to orders coming over a disruptive omniphonic speaker. There was no air-conditioning, and the workers sweated into their masks. I noticed the workers spanned several ages and races, several of them seemingly in their sixties. I wondered about the circumstances that may cause a person nearing retirement age to have to work in these conditions as I ordered a "cheese steak" pizza, which I carried back to the hotel, smiling at one of the delivery driver as he passed me with a waving honk. In the wee hours of the morning, with the air-conditioning while eating pizza in the king-sized bed made up with sheets like white butter, I watched Family Guy, where Peter made a joke about being "more high-maintenance than a white woman on vacation." Though deeply suspicious of the Dominoes pizza, it won me over with its otherworldly MSG-infused deliciousness.
Monday morning, I waited in front of 301 Auto Repair as they opened their bay doors. A pleasant lady in the reception area had me speak with a mechanic who said he would take a look. While I waited for the verdict, she explained that the Shawshank Redemption had been filmed in Mansfield, and that a newer functioning prison had been built next to the old one used for filming. I asked her if she was from Mansfield, She said she was from Portsmouth, 90 minutes west, and that she is never going back. Portsmouth, she explained, was "the drug capital of the country" and she had there escaped an abusive relationship. When I asked her about the Portsmouth police, she said they were corrupt and getting paid to help sustain the system. Nothing new there.
The mechanic sat down next to me and showed me a printed photo of the solenoid that needed to be replaced and a breakdown of the charges. $207 for everything. He presented the information with the greatest of care, like a doctor delivering dubious news to a patient spouse. I was relieved when he said it would be ready in an hour. When I signed off on a work order, the lady told me I can keep the pen. "I have run over mine two times with my jeep, and its still working!" she declared triumphantly. I am paraphrasing, as she included the year, make, and model including details about its "six-inch lift package". People in Mansfield know their cars.
A few minutes of wandering lead to a small civic center. Workers drove water trucks and drenched the soil of flowers arrangements hanging from streetlights. I passed a monument of a European soldier which a few years ago, I would have given no further thought. In light of recent news concerning the toppling of monuments, I had to wonder: why was this one spared? Ignored? Deemed anodyne? The statue was erected in 1998 as a general tribute to soldiers in the area who died fighting for our country. Around the bend of the wide plaza, a statue of Martin Luther King, erected in 2007.
I photographed a lady watering flowers, whose face struck me with it's Native American features. Then, I observed two men traversing a grassy hill on their mowers. One of them posed for me with his cigar dangling in his teeth. He and asked what the picture was for. I thought about it for a second, and said, "its for my memories". Content with the answer, he began another lap up the hill, and I pondered how photography is a form of memorialization akin to a bronze facsimile, and noted the shift in my own thinking. I wanted to retain their images as people alive and functioning - working -today in this changing world. As if on queue, I noted a small randomly placed boulder with notable striations - the tell tale signs of geologic time passing glacially, the changes reflected in the different colored bands.
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