We had to evade a flood. So we swung wide around Memphis, detouring through the countryside passing through towns like Moscow and DeSoto. Tractors, trucks, Caprices on 24s, handlebar riding on weathered bicycles, boots, sneakers, barefeet. Blacktop winding through rising streams, nobody else on the road, a small pick up loaded down, boxes, books, clothing, people, animals, assault rifles, whatever. Strange histories breath heavy in the South, the humidity only emphasizes these thoughts. Caffeine dream, AM radio, Welcome to Mississippi. "Ya'll know where I can get an abortion around here?"
I was helping an old, dear friend, her dog and a cat, move back to California from a holler in the middle of Tennessee. I flew out to assist, got picked up in a small pick up in Nashville, headed West the next morning. By all accounts, the river would flood Memphis, rising higher than it had in a hundred years or something. The media seemed to put exclamation points on every claim, the people we talked to at gas stations and bbq joints were a little easier about it, shit happened and they were dealing with it. No punctuation, graphic design or clever headline titles. It wouldn't be too bad but it was best to avoid Memphis and its tributaries in Eastern Arkansas. The skies were clear, it was 95 degrees, driving south downriver seemed just fine. A trucker assured me, "Bypassin' Arkansas? Aw, you won't be missin' shit, ya heard me? Go on down the 55, ya'll be just fine."
We turned west at Jackson and crossed the Mississippi at Vicksburg, somewhere the air conditioner had stopped working and morale was low. But we moved on into Louisiana, driving all day, eleventh hour down and the sun setting over the Pines and lush plains, growing dark around Monroe we decided we would stop driving around Shreveport and thoughts of grandeur, Northern Louisiana style, flourished and we had our night planned out, something to look forward to, moving toward another short term goal at 85 mph.
This is where a plain and decent thing turns to shit with assistance from modern technology. Road trippin' ain't what it used to be. You have travel centers, corprate highway robbery, metastasized police states, too many cars and not enough road, mindless construction, and small computers, connected to satellites and a billion strands of stupid information, attached to everybody's hip. It's a fucked up time out there and the said internet attached to the hip of my friend and co-pilot would be used, we decided, to fuel a secure and comfortable environment to drink countless beers and probably eat something fried in. Anything would go once we got to Shreveport, the next great metropolis in Northern Louisiana. With the assistance of this modern technology, we planned to stay in a cheap motel with a swimming pool, near houses of sin, gambling, bourbon, pills, dope, anything, moving on forever, the sun bidding its final farewell and the sky at its darkest shade of blue. Flying creatures moved about psychotically while our destination for the night lied 42 miles ahead.
The plan was to drive to the motel, putting our trust in GPS, it seemed that there was a place for drive thru daquiris(a Louisiana staple and for an outsider, a phenomenon,) and some kind of casino buffet, all on the Red River that snaked its way South through downtown. We arrived to the semi-bright lights of what had become for the last hour of driving a beacon of all that's still salvageable in this sinkhole we're all living in and currently driving through, booze and a bed and a goddamn swimming pool, drenched in sweat, broke and road weary, why the fuck not?
Then our friends at Google conspired to send us through a maze of commerce leading us to a dead end and the clock ticking and the gas gauge tumbling, waiting for the satellites to reconfigure while sitting in the darkened, dirt lot outside a tire shop in Bossier City wondering why I ever trusted the bastards in the first place.
To clip a dull story down, we got fucked with the directions, ended up driving around, past all the pretty sites and dirty casinos, bars with names like the Tip- Top and Rulon's Place, establishments we couldn't wait to frequent until dawn, on past them now, out of downtown and into the dim lights and thick shrubbery where we could see no motels, no liquor stores, no street lights and our personal quest for broke-ass luxury was fading. I was tired, still sweating, driving. Finally we got outta there, found some daquiris despite the wrong address but then the rerouting had us driving ten miles west. We complied and found the motel. But it was different than the original one it was supposed to lead us to. The motel did not have a pool, was next to an empty lot and a diner that had apparently closed down in 1982 but sat as a monument to what once was. Across the Interstate was a truck stop and a small, sketchy Casino/Bar. At this point, it didn't matter. I felt like shit about relying on some pocket gadget fueled by the internet, all paths diverted by the owners of the world, our perpetual enemy, I'm complying, knowing its the wrong way. We should have just rolled with it, found out for ourselves but with a panting dog and comatose cat, we cut our losses with dull pocket knives and laughed at the way it all turned out. It wasn't too late for loitering and knife fights but my body collapsed as soon as I killed the engine in the parking lot.
We had our 32 ounce barrels of liquor and corn syrup, a couple tall cans. We ate chicken fingers from the truck stop. I looked for a souvenir for my mom and couldn't find shit. I substituted a cool shower for the swimming pool and then watched cable TV. I fell asleep to the air conditioning roaring full blast, 80s sitcoms drowning the sounds of a couple arguing in the parking lot, the man saying to the woman, "Well if you weren't with him, how come you been parked outside then?" I'll never know what happened with all of that.
Morning came and we drove to Austin, found a swimming pool at another cheap motel. The pool was cool and clean and seemingly never used by the guests. There were hookers and johns and families and cops called and some commotion around back but it couldn't phase our life of luxury. We swam in the cool, chemically clean water, floated around with bottle of beer, life can't touch you sometimes.
We ate good food and drank a 12 pack of Lone Star. A beautiful town if there ever was one. It rained real hard and we left in the morning after some breakfast tacos.
Then we crawled across Texas. It's different now. Less mythical but no less exciting than when you're young and think about driving across these vast landscapes that persist and remain. Hill Country is a beautiful thing.
The sky opens up and runs off in every direction forever, the air and vegetation and natural sense of place in the world transitions from one region to another, unfolding into the arid, familiar Southwest. The scent changes and stays the same for a thousand more miles, always deceiving when you're trying to make it home. It begins to smell like the California Desert when you still have a couple days to go. Through the windshield scattered with the insides of a thousand different insects and one tiny bird, I can see they haven't completely killed the world. It's a pure, simple experience that I'll always need to survive. No words out of any mouth on earth can compare.
It's intangible and inexplicable and the answers I pretend to seek just keep running, an abysmal world away, 12 beers waiting, another tale told, trying so goddamn hard to cling to your mind, to wrap itself into a ball and lie inside your chest, can't let it get away but it always gets away. Now I have to find some bullshit to do, some work, some task, something to scream in one direction or another. Something to stay awake until it all comes back again.
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