Along Came a Spider

I have traveled back and forth along the both the I-75 and the I-69to I-74 corridors a number of times over the years. In this trekking between the frozen north and the deep coastal south I have come across many an oddity. However one of the strangest and it is strange enough that I have gone back a couple of times, is James Dean’s grave.

We all know the story. Young star with immense talent burns brightly but then flames out. The simple quote would be the Eagles’ James Dean “Along came a spider, picked up a rider and took him down to eternity…” but it misses the point. Fairmont, Indiana James Dean’s home and the site of his grave is a just a small farming community. James Dean growing up there knew he needed to be somewhere else. I kind of understand that part. When he took his thespian abilities to a venue that was ready for him the combination of money and exuberance led to disaster.

My oldest son asked me about James Dean once. I googled the scene where Jim Backus is trying to get Dean out of jail and played about seven minutes. As we watched it together it got awkward for me. It was clear that my just turned 13 year old understood the angst that Dean was exuding. He got it. His reaction made me feel like I didn’t have clue about the parenting thing at all. I think millions of kids get it when they see Rebel Without a Cause for the first time. Once you move beyond the period costumes and the faded Technicolor you find the eternal battle between parent, child and the larger community is universal.

Anyway the weird thing about the grave is that people leave stuff. The first time we were there we found several unopened packs of cigarettes were on the headstone. There was also some change and a red lipstick smack mark on the D in Dean. This time there was a blue ribbon from a fair, a copy of the Little Prince, some change and my youngest put a pair of black wrap around shades on top. People who connected with the films apparently are still trying to connect with something that James Dean represented. Here is a bit of a Phil Ochs song that touches on it.

A neighbor ran from the movie house, chickens they were scattered

He swore he saw upon the screen, Jim Dean of Indiana

He played a boy without a home, torn with no tomorrow

Reaching out to touch someone, a stranger in the shadow

The Winslows left for the movie town, they drove across the country

They hoped that he would stay around and they hoped he would be friendly

He talked to them for half an hour but he was busy racing

He left for the Grapevine Road, they left for Indiana

Then Marcus heard on the radio that a movie star was dying

He turned the tuner way down low, so Hortense could go on sleeping

It was not until they reached the farm where the hired man was waiting

The wind rushed silent through the grain, it was just as they had told him

They buried him just down the road, a mile from the farm house

That is where I placed a flower for Jim Dean of Indiana.

Chasing the Greats

Stories have always meant so much to me. Maybe that is why I have the job I have. Today I will be following up on some story tellers. I plan to visit the graves of Thomas Wolfe and O’Henry. In addition if the fee is not too awful we will stop at the Thomas Wolfe homestead here on Market Street in Asheville. More on this later.

I am not a Foodie

Today we journeyed from the coastal regions around Hilton Head to the mountains of North Carolina. At the start of our run it was 96 F and humidity in the 90 % range. Up in the mountains where we have stopped for the night it was 81 F and a just a whole bunch less humid. Humidity or not I will miss the beach. Hilton Head has a number of beaches and each has its own feel. The people vary from strand to strand as do the waves and the general settings (trees and foliage and walks to the beach). However and I grudgingly say this I liked them all.

Hilton Head has a quality of the Village from the old Prisoner television series. All the commercial buildings and signage are highly regulated. Almost every commercial facility is hidden behind palmetto façade. This can be frustrating because with all the earth-tone signage that is no more than four foot off the ground those of use that can’t see well often struggle to figure out where we are.

Hilton Head also is a place where the distinctions between the rich and the have-nots are very evident. Putting the have/have-not divide into an anecdote is kind of difficult. It may tie in to the parts of the island where the commoners cannot go or have to pay to enter. It may be the way the wait staff at restaurants treat you if you don’t bite on their solicitations for high priced specials. Still the food was good on the island and the road even if the waiters sneered at me.

On the topic of food we stopped for pulled pork barbeque in Spartanburg, SC. Good dead pig was had by 3 out of 4 in our group. I was limited to smoked turkey. Wow was that good. I know it sounds like this whole trip is food-centric. Well it isn’t but I am not upset with the food that is at the edges of each day’s travels.

Due to the gallbladder issue I have been eating things like steamed oysters, salmon, smoked turkey and various types of chicken breast preparations. Also I have been finding out how hard it is to cut fat from your diet in America. Good golly gosh about the only things that are not fried on the side dish menus are apple sauce, vegetable medley (if you are lucky) occasionally a baked potato.

Oh well tomorrow I will explore the city of Asheville.

Pounded by the Waves

The tropical storm lies to the south of here today. Yesterday we went to the beach anyway. Both of the boys kept throwing themselves at the high surf. Using boogie boards they crashed out into the surf and then rode the waves back in. The currents were relatively treacherous with one pulling them down the beach very, very quickly and an undertow that was fierce. In the course of five to ten minutes we were pulled 1000-1500 feet down the beach. There I was out there in the surf yelling come back in, not that far, etc. In a way I have become my father.

Years ago I was on the Outer Banks in NC when a hurricane was a couple of hundred miles south. No lifeguards were present and few people were around but I went body surfing. Waves rolled in at about 8 feet tall. Time and time again I went out to form a human crucifix and ride those puppies on in. At a point five or six rides in I became aware that my chest was shredded from the broken small shells the waves would drag me across at the end of a heart pounding rocketing ride. Bleeding just a little I decided it was time to call it quits. My kids would have stayed in the surf until that point and then some.

Those rides I took that afternoon were part of a life peak moment. Those five or six rides were everything a bodysurfing run should be. They were the Platonic ideal of a bodysurfing ride as far as I was concerned. Hopefully today had some of the same elemental nature for my boys. My thought is that times like this are why we come on vacation. Maybe forty years on they will remember the waves and not Dad yelling get your butt in to shore before you drown.

Of course the weather that pushed those waves has a down side. Tropical storm Fay is moving up this way slowly but seemingly surely. As a result this means we will be facing a wet vacation for a large part of our time on the road. Still this also means we will have to focus on museums and places that have artistic and cultural significance. Savannah and Charleston both have possibilities but Savannah is much closer. The last time I was there was when we stayed there on our honeymoon. It will be interesting to see what is happening there now some twenty three years later.

Oh the picture at the top is a bit of Americana. We stopped at the original KFC in southern Kentucky. That is me and the Colonel there.

SE through the hills

I am on the road today. Most of the morning was spent roaming about the KY, TN, NC and SC border lands; very pretty. There is a town in KY called Berea. Hippy dippy little place with lots of bric a brac stores. Despite its appeal for me to loosen up the upper regions of my wallet it just seemed like a place where a variety of colorful folk had washed up. I wouldn’t be surprised if it produces a pop band someday.

Lovely rivers and KY has some great parks. One weird town we saw had gates that would swing across a US highway. Big metal gates that looked like flood gates. I am not sure what that was about but it was impressive.

When the morning is over tomorrow I should be in Hilton Head. More from there.

Take Me to Your Leader

In all my years of watching television I have been drawn to science fiction more than anything else. Science fiction is a bit of loose definition here because it does incorporate fantasy elements. Okay, the genre I am describing involves guys with ray guns and/or women in 18 century breast exposing neck lines.

My fascination began with programs like Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits. My parents made me stop watching the Outer Limits because it scared the living crap out of me. I gather I would demand the lights in my room and the hall adjacent to my room be left on because I did not want those giant ants crawling into my room. And then there was that really creepy “Don’t Open Until Doomsday”.

As I grew older my tastes followed those of the kids on the playground. We watched the Time Tunnel and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea religiously unless it conflicted with some parent’s favorite (and boy did they hear about it if there program was in conflict). From the Time Tunnel the shift was to fantasy because I don’t think there was a kid in America who wasn’t familiar with the exploits of Angelique and Barnabas and Dr. Julia Howe on Dark Shadows. (CBS’s now cancelled Moonlight was just Dark Shadows with a hunkier but just slightly less conflicted vampire).

Yes I even watched Star Trek. But it didn’t capture my imagination as much. Clearly it beat the other stuff that was on but it was just too melodramatic most of the time. And how many times could I star at William Shatner being lured into the status of love slave to an alien femme fatale without feeling inadequate.

Then I quit watching TV for a number of years. I went to college, I discovered intoxication, I discovered women (okay I didn’t discover them, what is probably the better description is that a few of them took mercy on me).

Somewhat later post marriage when I had settled into the corporate grind there came the X-files to fill up Friday evenings when you were just too burnt to go out. Then Fox’s hoped for X-Files replacement Millennium came and thus began my commitment to a string of shows that if I watched them, they would die. Uh let us see, John Doe, Threshold, Firefly Journeyman shall I go on? Well just one more Dead Like Me. If you haven’t seen this rent both seasons on DVD. I particularly loved the yoga instructor’s demise.

Okay Buffy came along and the fantasy came back, for a while. What is it with vampires and all the sexual tension?

I don’t know why I like this stuff. My thought is that it is because such programming plays to our insecurities as to the meaning of life and death. This stuff is a guess at what lies at the edge of the possible. Nobody wants to be an existentialist. Most atheists want there to be something more than cold science that is our experience isn’t just a random collision of atoms then life, death and entropic atoms again.

On the other hand maybe it is just shinning stuff, buff babes and explosions that are nothing more than eye candy induce us to stare. Oh well for now I have got the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Reaper and Eureka. Trust me with my luck these will be gone soon. Watch ‘em quick before they go bye-bye if you like this kind of stuff.

Again most of this stuff is at www.hulu.com.

I Added to the Sad and Horrible Total

I too must admit my culpability. In my haste and malicious desire for points aplenty I added hundreds if not thousands to this graveyard. I am sorry.

Fortune Cookie Disconnect

Tuesday August 5, 2008

I got this in my fortune cookie at lunch today. Hmmh, I thought. Now I ask you dear reader do you think there is any chance in hell that I could be reserved? Ever? The exhortation’s Sisyphean effort not withstanding, this one is a non-starter.

Watch your relationships with other people carefully, be reserved.

Hah, I say. Hah.

I Am So Boring, but I Guess that is the First Step Toward Recovery

Monday, August 04, 2008

This is more or less a “What I did this weekend” note. On Friday evening I attending a going away party for a person I work with. Here for about 2 years she has made a great deal of difference in how my section of the office works. Very good with the customers I see, Petitioners is the nomenclature we use here, she makes the intake process flow. In greeting these folks, handling their paperwork (often scrawled in barely legible pencil on dirty party) and generally maintaining order she has been a godsend.

As celebrations go this departure party was low key. A group of folks, very nice people actually, gathered at one of the areas more rowdy beer and a bump bars. The problem with going to places such as this is that with my job I was almost certainly guaranteed to run into a disgruntled patron or two. 999 out of 1000 times they will not say anything to may face but boy will they stare. As I walked into the washroom there was one guy coming out who judging by his expression appeared to be reacting the same way he would have upon coming face to face with the grim reaper or maybe old Scratch himself. There was at least one other guy who was burning holes in me from across the bar. So it goes. People told filthy jokes, laughed too loud and drank too much. It was wonderful. If my life were a John Mayles novel we would have been eating escargot and drinking great local wines in a place call Le Chateau. My life is not the material for A Year in Provence and so we were drinking black and tans at the Green Door Lounge feasting on very, very salty popcorn.

A point came however when I had to leave. My thinking is that I really disappointed my two observers/stalkers when I departed. Most assuredly after the two and ½ beers I had consumed they were ready to drop a dime on me when I entered a vehicle. Nope, they were to be denied. Instead of hopping into a car and roaring off I went out the front door, walked across the street and took a bus into East Lansing to get some healthy low fat food. Almost certainly my admirers didn’t see that one coming.

After that came the trip to IKEA that was deferred due to a kidney stone now passed/past. (Heh, heh-passed/past). Then came dinner in Ann Arbor of pistachio encrusted Lake Superior Whitefish severed over steamed veggies. Then there came another day of sorting out flood damaged good and toys grown too juvenile for my lads. And finally there came a trip to the sushi place for Francie’s birthday dinner. All in all a good weekend was had.

On the normal rants side I started reading a biography of Kant. Yeah, that will wait for another posting.