up at you with chains and hooks and cranes; everyone inching along, afraid to drop off into the wide abyss. Just barely tap the brakes and the whole rear end slides out from underneath you. I’m trying to keep two tires on the shoulder in the chatter strip at about five mph hoping the ice will get dislodged between the treads. Only radio station is a preacher ranting from Paul—somethingabout the body as a tent; “this tent in which we groan.” Same preacher segues into a declaration that, for him, 1961 was the absolute turning point where the whole wide world went sour. I don’t know why he landed on that particular year—1961—the very year I first hit the road, but he insists this is the date of our modern dissolution. He has a long list of social indicators beginning with soaring population then family disintegration, moral relaxation, sexual promiscuity, dangerous drugs, the usual litany. But then he counters it with the imperious question: “What must the righteous do?” As though there were an obvious antidote which we all seem to be deliberately ignoring. If we could only turn our backs on this degeneration and strike out for high ground, we could somehow turn the whole thing around. It seems more political than religious. “What must the righteous do?” An “Onward, Christian Soldiers” kind of appeal. I’ve lost track of the centerline. Snow boring down into the windshield so fast the wipers can’t keep up. Your heart starts to pump a little faster under these conditions; not knowing what might suddenly emerge. Not knowing if the whole world could just drop out from underneath you and there you are at the bottom of crushed steel and spinning wheels. What
must
the righteous do?
Buffalo Trace
I am stuck now in a town of backyards. This is not a dream. There are no houses to speak of so it can’t really be called a town, certainly not “Our Town” or downtown Milwaukee or something identifiable like that. There is no center; no Main Street but the people stroll along as though they had somewhere to go; some destination or another—purposefully but without any urgency like they would in a Big City, hustling and bustling just because everyone else is, as though caught up in a fever they can’t escape. More like a walk in the park; meandering but not really wandering so much; not really lost like me who seems to be the only one the least bit bewildered. And it’s not as though I don’t recognize certain signs; not signs like stop signs or signals because there are none. No advertising of any kind. Very much like the East Berlin of old, before the wall came down. (Hard to believe I once drove through there in a gray Ford Anglia, reading Brecht quotes below the barbed wire while they wheeled a mirror back and forth under the axles, searching for something I might be bringing across illegally.) But now I do recognize certain backyards from years and years ago; certain fallen fences, single-track dog paths worn down through the cooch grass connecting immense vacant lots where vague footprints of very large warehouses once existed and there must have been a great traffic of oxen teams and black mules coming and going, throngs if you will; blacksmith hammers ringing down the broad avenues. And beyond these lots, fields stretchingright out to the highway with volunteer oats and blue timothy undulating in the prairie breeze. And the highway itself, now broken up with tall yellow weeds and potholes deep enough to kill a Ford of any kind and, what’s even more revealing, is that now the dead highway seems to be returning to the ancient buffalo trace beneath it where someone must have tried to copy the migrations of vast herds that once blackened the landscape. Maybe they felt the buffalo knew where they were going even if they themselves didn’t have a clue.
“Our dwelling is but a wandering, and our abiding is but a fleeting, and in a word our home is nowhere.”
—Separatist leader at Plymouth,
must
the righteous do?
Buffalo Trace
I am stuck now in a town of backyards. This is not a dream. There are no houses to speak of so it can’t really be called a town, certainly not “Our Town” or downtown Milwaukee or something identifiable like that. There is no center; no Main Street but the people stroll along as though they had somewhere to go; some destination or another—purposefully but without any urgency like they would in a Big City, hustling and bustling just because everyone else is, as though caught up in a fever they can’t escape. More like a walk in the park; meandering but not really wandering so much; not really lost like me who seems to be the only one the least bit bewildered. And it’s not as though I don’t recognize certain signs; not signs like stop signs or signals because there are none. No advertising of any kind. Very much like the East Berlin of old, before the wall came down. (Hard to believe I once drove through there in a gray Ford Anglia, reading Brecht quotes below the barbed wire while they wheeled a mirror back and forth under the axles, searching for something I might be bringing across illegally.) But now I do recognize certain backyards from years and years ago; certain fallen fences, single-track dog paths worn down through the cooch grass connecting immense vacant lots where vague footprints of very large warehouses once existed and there must have been a great traffic of oxen teams and black mules coming and going, throngs if you will; blacksmith hammers ringing down the broad avenues. And beyond these lots, fields stretchingright out to the highway with volunteer oats and blue timothy undulating in the prairie breeze. And the highway itself, now broken up with tall yellow weeds and potholes deep enough to kill a Ford of any kind and, what’s even more revealing, is that now the dead highway seems to be returning to the ancient buffalo trace beneath it where someone must have tried to copy the migrations of vast herds that once blackened the landscape. Maybe they felt the buffalo knew where they were going even if they themselves didn’t have a clue.
“Our dwelling is but a wandering, and our abiding is but a fleeting, and in a word our home is nowhere.”
—Separatist leader at Plymouth,
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