Road-dansters to Yonway*
*Road-dansters to Yonway is the provisional name given my upcoming roadtrip across the USA by Fred Dewey, a writer focused on contemporary issues, events, and discourses, now writing a book for my imprint, IF SF Publishing. You will benefit from reading Mr. Dewey's previous book, The School of Public Life, Errant Bodies Press: Doormats4, Los Angeles/Berlin, 2014.
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I'm packing up for a cross-country road trip, commencing tomorrow.
Haven't gone cross-country since 1969 when I hitchiked from LA to NYC with my late friend Tom McSparran. We lived on PayDay candy bars and RC colas. I do remember getting a ride from Salt Lake City to Ames, Iowa from a nice kid who lived near Ames and let me drive when he got sleepy. Then a ride in a fresh-off-the-rack yellow schoolhouse from Akron, Ohio to New York City. Whether or not Tom and I made it to Woodstock is sealed until 2050.
Getting ready for this trip I imagine I'm feeling what an astronaut must feel just before blast-off, as this country has become a kind of combo outer-space and wilderness to me. We're hoping to stay off the interstates, take the backroads that aren't underwater, and to cross no bridge that hasn't been recently inspected.
Our small RV is big enough for me to stand up in but not big enough for jumping jacks or yoga, not that I do yoga but Lea Ann does.Commencing officially in southern Utah, the outback. Staying in national parks, showering at YMCA's, splurging once in awhile on a hotel room.
I'm eager to see the infrastructure, that is, the small towns and lonely roads to see if they live up or down to my imagination. I want to meet people who wear Make American Great Again hats and talk to them to hear what they're thinking--I'm pretty sure it's not what I think they're thinking.
The Arches, UT, Arizona, Gila AZ where my grandfather owned a silver mine, New Mex, Austin & San Antonio, up to Kansas, over to Tennessee, Mississippi, maybe Thomasville, Georgia where my mother was born, up the east coast, thru W. Virginia where Granny came from (Moundsville, Wheeling), Philadelphia, NY, then loop northwest, Minnesota, the Great Lakes, Chicago...that's about as much of an itinerary as we have.
No more than 200 miles a day. Taking our bikes, hope to bike Natchez Trace and other biketrails where there are no cars.
I want to see Baltimore too, where EA Poe was born.
Whenever I travel, time compresses mightily before departure. All the things that need to be taken care of--subscriptions cancelled, disconnect the tv, and so on. There's a pile of mail, bills, notices, charities that I'm trying to be conscientious about.
One of these caught my eye! An invitation to join The Academy of American Poets. I read the letters from the Chairman Michael Jacobs and The Poet, Juan Felipe Herrara, a former US Poet Laureate 2015-17. Then I licked their signatures to see if they'd really signed the thing or a machine had signed for them.
A machine had signed. I didn't join.
Direct mail from The Academy of American Poets, 'Celebrating Poets Since 1934'.