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 Ramblin 'Round
Athens, OH - Salem, VA - Kitty Hawk, NC - Burgettstown, PA
July 12-18,1999
The Spiritual Traveler
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It
was midsummer. I was living in Michigan, between jobs and
between careers. I needed a change, and fantasized about
moving somewhere down south-to Virginia, North Carolina, maybe even
Florida. I wasn't ready to move just yet, but I felt the
need to scout around, explore new territory. So I made up my
mind to take a week or so off, just head south, and see what would
happen.
I knew that the devil would
be in slowing down. It took a lot of preparation for me to
get up and go anywhere, but once on the road, I tended drive straight
through to wherever I was going, sometimes pushing myself to the point
of exhaustion. "You've got to slow down," I told
myself. "This trip is about exploring, not about getting
somewhere fast. You shouldn't be looking for a job, or even
a place to live. You need to drop those expectations and
just give yourself the opportunity to experience whatever is happening
at the moment. Maybe something will happen that'll give you
a clue about the next step to take in your life."
As usual, it took a long time
for me to get ready for the trip. I went down to the Kiwanis
sale, and got a couple of sleeping bags and some mosquito netting for a
few dollars. I also got a light tent that was on sale at the
Army surplus store. The longer the preparation process took,
the more anxious I became. Trying to get out of town was
like tearing off something that had been glued to my skin.
July 12
When I finally
left town, I expected my anxiety to go away immediately, but it hung on
for most of the day. I put Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind
on the tape deck and listened to it obsessively the whole way
down. Most of the songs were about broken or unrequited
love, but their sadness and loneliness seemed of greater significance
than the love that had inspired them:
I know God is my shield
And he won't lead me astray
Still I don't know what to do
I was all right 'til I fell in love with you.
There are things I could say, but I don't
I know the mercy of God must be near
You left me standing in the doorway crying
Suffering like a fool.
I was cheered when I started
getting into the rolling foothills of Appalachia. By the end
of the day, I had gotten as far as Athens, Ohio.
 I
parked my car near the police station, only a few blocks from the
college, and wandered around. I walked around a corner and
down a steep hill, away from the business district, and came to a
bar. Outside, a young man and woman were singing a song by
Jewel, to the young man's guitar accompaniment. I peeked
inside the bar. It was very dark and decorated in a Western
style. In one corner, a kid was shooting pool. A
couple of kids hung were sitting on barstools, and in the back a very
young guy was sitting Buddha-like under a beer sign that glowed a deep
beer-like yellow color. I thought of going in and asking
them if they knew a place where I could crash. Suddenly I
was flashing back to my youth in the 60s. It was
absurd. I felt as if I hadn't grown up at all. I
ducked out again without speaking to anyone and wandered into a tattoo
parlor that was still open.
"I'm just looking," I told
the guy. I had never had any interest in
tattoos. The samples were hung all over the walls, and I was
struck by the uniformly Gothic or cartoon-like quality of the
designs. The only ones that were even somewhat attractive to
me were the Chinese characters. I was drawn to the
simplest-a single horizontal line that was the symbol for
'One'. I liked that. I could imagine myself with
this single enigmatic stroke tattooed on my shoulder.
I left the tattoo parlor, got
back in my car, and drove further down the hill. I passed a
motel, but had no impulse to stop in. A little way further,
I noticed some one-story office buildings with a parking lot to the
right and in back. I turned in to explore that
lot. Way in back I noticed a small patch of soft grass
between the lot and a tall embankment. The grassy spot was
overhung with trees. "If I park the car sideways, in the
very corner of the lot," I thought to myself, "it should hide me quite
effectively." The lot was dimly lit, which allowed me a good
view, but the car would also shield me from the lights once I bedded
down in the grass. I got out my various blankets and
sleeping bags, spread them next to the car, and went to sleep.
I had a couple of
disturbances during the night. At one point a garbage truck
came and emptied two dumpsters at the other end of the
lot. It made a tremendous racket, but I went right back to
sleep when it left. Later in the night I suddenly felt, or
saw, a bright light shining on me from in back of my
head. Without turning to see, I knew it must be a police
officer.
"What are you doing here?"
"Just sleeping, officer," I replied drowsily.
"This is a private lot."
"I'm not doing any harm."
"Is this your car?"
"It's my car and my bike."
"Where are you headed?"
"I'm on a two week bicycle
trip. I'm on a tight budget. I can't afford a
motel every night, or even $15 or $20 to use a campground."
"Well, the owner might not
like it if he finds you here. You better be gone by sunup."
"I will," I said. "I promise. By the first light, I'll be gone."
"OK. Have a good night."
"Thanks."
July 13
Daylight came
around six in the morning. If the light hadn't awakened me,
the relentless chirping of the birds would have. "Put, put,
pui… put, put, pui… put, put, pui," was the cry. I stood up
and stretched. A lot of the anxiety and tension of the
previous day had gone. As soon as the sun peeked up over the
buildings, I laid the various blankets and sleeping bags out on the
pavement of the parking lot to dry. I also spread out the
tent I had bought and applied the seam sealer necessary to make it
watertight. Around eight o'clock, a couple of workers parked
their cars, and I began to gather up my stuff. I had
everything in the car, with only the bike to put on the rack, when a
man with a large build drove up.
"Have you been camping here?" he asked angrily.
"I've just been drying my stuff," I said.
"You camped here. You stayed the night."
"Well, yeah," I admitted.
"It's against the law. I'm calling the police."
"I already talked to the police," I said.
"I'm calling the police," he said, and strode into the building.
I hurriedly put my bike on
the rack and drove out of the lot. Just a little further
back up the road, I parked opposite a coffee shop. I went
in, and saw there was a bathroom just to the left of the
entrance. I returned to my car, got out my shaving cream and
razor, and went into the bathroom to shave. When I came out,
I approached the waitress and ordered a large cup of decaf to go.
"Put it in a large Styrofoam
cup, don't fill it very full, and bring me plenty of coffee creamer," I
asked.
After I paid for the coffee,
I went back to the car and headed out of town, towards West
Virginia. I stayed on the highway most of the time, so the
day's trip was uneventful. The weather grew cold and
misty. I thought of taking things slower, stopping in the
mountains, looking for a bike trail, and getting some
exercise. But the weather discouraged me, and I gave in to
my urge to just keep going, to drive all the way to the coast just so I
could bike along the shore.
I replaced Time Out of Mind with A Tribute to Woodie Guthrie, another favorite tape of mine. There were also a number of Dylan cuts on it. I listened to him wailing:
I ain't got no home
In this world any more…
There was also a cut of Odetta singing "Ramblin' Round:
My mother prayed that I would be
A woman of some renown
I am just a refugee
I go ramblin 'round.
I got all the way down to
Princeton, West Virginia by early evening. Although the map
indicated that the scenic road lay to the south, on an impulse I turned
east on Route 460. The leaden sky became even darker and
heavier, but the woods were lush and pristine, almost like a rain
forest. There was a sharp descent to a river
valley. It began to rain lightly. I turned in at
a campground at a place called The Narrows. There was a free
campground there, inhabited mainly by RVs and trailers. Some
of the trailers had little wooden porches built on to them, in pathetic
imitation of real houses. I found a spot right by the river,
overhung by trees, got out my tent, and managed to put it up all right.
July 14
In the morning, I
found that my bedding had stayed remarkably dry in the tent
overnight. The weather was the same as the evening before,
with rain coming down in a light mist. Not long after I got
back on the road, I crossed the state line into Virginia. I
was torn between heading for Roanoke, to the northeast, or due south to
Charlottesville, North Carolina. My urge was to keep moving,
to keep heading south, where I was sure the sun would be
shining. I decided to skip Roanoke. There was a
turnoff indicated on the map just a few miles ahead. I
missed the turnoff, though, and took the next exit to another college
town, called Salem. As soon as I came off the highway ramp,
I saw a sign for the Visitor's Center and the YMCA. I got
some maps of the town at the Center, and then dropped in at the
Y. I felt stiff and out of shape, and needed a hot shower
after two days on the road. I went in and inquired at the
desk. "I'm not a member, but I'd like to swim some laps," I
said.
The receptionist was a very
tanned young blonde with a serious physique. "Oh, that's
OK," she said. "You can come as a guest for a day and check
it out." She showed me a schedule of
activities. "Lap swimming is at 11:30 and 5:00."
"Thanks," I said. "I'll probably come at 5:00."
I found my way to the Roanoke
College library. The parking lot next to it was free to
visitors. I went in to do some writing. On one of
the periodical racks, I picked up a copy of a recent issue of Rolling
Stone, and started browsing through it. It mentioned the
current Dylan tour, which had been going on since the beginning of the
summer. I decided to check out the remaining tour dates,
went to a computer terminal, and found the schedule in a few
seconds. He was actually playing in Raleigh that day,
together with Paul Simon. The subsequent venues were in
Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New
York. My thoughts started drifting northward, and I began thinking
about making a dogleg up to Massachusetts to catch one of the concerts.
Then I started fantasizing
about having a conversation with Dylan. "Who are you?" I
imagined him asking me in his typically detached, disinterested manner.
"It would take too long to tell you," I replied.
"Try me."
"You're Bob Dylan. You wouldn't have the time."
"I've got the time right now."
"All right. I'm a
man and you're a man. But you're luckier than I am, not
because you're rich and famous, but because you have a
mission. Something has used you, and is still using you, to
affect the lives of others, and you've had the wisdom to understand
that."
"It sounds like you understand that, too."
"I understand it in your
case, but not in my own. I don't know what my mission
is. I never had the courage to find out. I tried
to play it safe. I hung on to an identity that was provided
for me, instead of creating one of my own. I looked for
security in a world where there isn't any. Now I feel like
I'm lost, like life has passed me by."
"So what do I have to do with it?"
"Nothing, and
everything. You were giving the message the whole
time. But instead of acting on it, I just listened to
it. And thousands, millions of others did the
same. They listened to you, but your message didn't sink
in. They were content to let you tell their story for
them. They never tried to tell it for themselves."
My fantasy conversation
continued in this vein for a while longer. Then I started
thinking again about catching the concert in Massachusetts or
Connecticut. "Except that then I'll just be another
spectator, another listener again," I thought to
myself. "I'd be truer to Dylan's message if I stopped
listening to him altogether and just started living my own life!"
I left Salem late in the
evening, gassed up, and headed south on Route 220. I got to
the outskirts of Greensboro around midnight, parked on the outskirts of
a deserted park, and set up my little tent. The rain, like
the previous night, was coming down in a fine, misty
spray. When I got into the tent, I realized that I had
placed it a little too close to the only floodlight in the parking
area, so I got the rain flaps out of the car and draped them over the
entrance to block out the light. I slept a little longer
into the morning this time, perhaps because I had bedded down much
later, but also because the tent flaps kept out the morning
sun.
July 15
From Greensboro I
headed towards Raleigh-Durham, and when the road split, with Raleigh on
the right and Durham on the left, I chose Durham. After a
couple of hours hanging around the Duke University campus, I drove out
of town through the Falls Lake region, parked at a dead end that I
thought would lead to a campground, and pitched my little tent next to
swampy ground.
July 16
The next morning,
the landscape was cloaked in fog so thick I couldn't see farther than
500 feet. From there, I drove all the way to the Outer
Banks, and camped at a place called Collington, near Kitty
Hawk.
July 17
In the morning, I
went out to the public beach and swam in the tide, as the sun was still
red and low in the sky.
After my swim, I visited the Wright Brothers Memorial.
 The monument was inscribed with the following words:
In commemoration of the conquest of the air…conceived by genius, achieved by dauntless courage and unconquerable faith.
The inscription brought tears
to my eyes. It was a strange thing to cry at a mere
inscription, and I wondered what there was about it that touched off
such a well of feeling within me? It had something to do
with the idea of greatness, of making a difference in the
world. I knew I was not a person who was destined for great
achievement in this lifetime, and yet the desire, the ambition to make
an imprint, a singular difference, a contribution to my fellow man
seemed to be hidden, but important, aspect of my psychology
In the late afternoon I got
back on the highway and drove north all the way to Hancock, Maryland,
on the Pennsylvania border. I spread my sleeping bag late at
night on the edge of a school parking lot.
July 18
In the morning I
got on the Pennsylvania turnpike and reached the first rest stop on the
Ohio Turnpike by mid-day. I got out at the rest stop and
bought a Pittsburgh paper. I remembered that the Bob
Dylan/Paul Simon tour had a date near Pittsburgh, but I hadn't copied
down the information. I looked in the entertainment section
of the paper, and saw that the concert was that night in
Burgettstown. I looked on the map. It wasn't more
than an hour's drive south.
"Nah," I thought to
myself. "Why should I take in the concert? In
four hours I can be back in my mother's apartment, sitting in front of
the TV. The sentiment I had felt in Durham came back to me:
"What would I be except a spectator?"
I sat in the driver's seat of
my car, and for several seconds I felt as if I was balanced on a
razor's edge, immobilized by two conflicting impulses. Then
another thought occurred to me. There was third
alternative. I could go not as a spectator, but as a
reporter... Suddenly, my mind was made up. I
turned off the town of East Liverpool, crossed the Ohio River on an
antiquated steel toll bridge, through the steel town of Weirton, West
Virginia, and back into Pennsylvania. I arrived at the Star
Lake Amphitheater, outside of Burgettstown around noon. It
sat atop a rounded hill, surrounded by a vast dirt parking
area. A member of the setup crew was driving a forklift
around the deserted grounds, and stopped me. "Can I help
you?" he asked me.
"I'm a free-lance reporter,
here to cover the concert," I told him. "I wonder if there's
a place where I can plug in my computer and do some pre-writing."
"I'll have to ask the chief
of security," he said. He grabbed a walkie-talkie from the
forklift and radioed in. "He'll be there in just a moment,"
he assured me. We waited together a bit uncomfortably under
the noon sky, until his boss appeared. I repeated my
request. The chief of security gave me the number of the
road manager. "Give him a call in an hour or so," he
said.
"Is there any place I can hang around til then?" I asked.
He shrugged his
shoulders. "Not around here. The concert doesn't
start til eight, and we won't even open up the lot 'til
five. You might drive into Burgettstown and look there."
I took the number and thanked him.
"You been traveling?" he asked.
"For six days," I replied. "I was in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina yesterday."
"That's a long way," he
said. As I pulled out, he noticed the tapes in my
car. "A Tribute to Woody Guthrie," he noted
approvingly. "Good choice."
"That and Time Out of Mind are the two tapes I've been listening to the whole trip."
"You can't get better than that," he said.
I drove into Burgettstown,
and after a while called the number he had given me. "What
paper are you with?" he wanted to know.
"I'm free-lance," I told him.
He hesitated, then softened a
bit. "All right," he said. "Check in with the
Media Desk in front of the VIP parking at 5:30."
I had several hours to kill,
and luckily found a restaurant, practically deserted, but
open. I asked if I could set up my laptop at one of the
tables, and the waitress said, "Sure." I sat and typed,
while the young waitress horsed around with her boyfriend and younger
sister, who were working in the kitchen. At around 5:00, I
left for the amphitheater. A girl at the gate asked checked
to see if my name was on the press list. It wasn't, but I
told her that I had spoken to the road manager, dropped his name, and
she let me in. I found a choice parking spot, right next to
the main entrance, got out, and stretched my legs. A few
middle-aged tailgaters had already arrived, and were already putting
chicken on barbecues and passing around plates of salad while the tape
players in their cars blasted Dylan tunes like "I Ain't Gonna Work on
Maggie's Farm No More" and "Highway 61 Revisited."
I checked in at the Media
Desk thinking I might get a free ticket to the concert. The
road manager was there, but all he offered me was an outlet for my
computer. "No thanks," I told him. "I already did
all the work I needed to do." I had no alternative but to
pay for a ticket myself. I stood in line at the ticket
booth, and when I got to the counter, asked the salesgirl if there were
any seats left in the pit.
"Only obstructed view seats," she said.
"Are you sure?" I insisted.
"Let me check again."
I waited while she scanned
the monitor in front of her. "We have one seat left," she
declared.
"Great. I'll take
it." It was a lot of money to shell out for a concert
ticket, but I figured I had saved a lot by camping out every night the
past week, and could afford to indulge a bit. I walked
around the outer grounds, which were filling up with people of all
ages, but the audience in the pit was clearly a middle-aged,
white-collar crowd. I had a seat in the second row, near the
right aisle. Almost as soon as I sat down, I noticed an
attractive woman sitting by herself a couple rows in back and almost in
the center of the pit. The seat next to her was
empty. She had long, dark hair, Mediterranean features, and
wore a black dress with a multicolored scarf draped over her
shoulders. Every so often I would glance back over my
shoulder to look at her, and each time she seemed to be returning my
gaze.
Paul Simon appeared on stage,
dressed very casually in faded jeans, T-shirt, and baseball cap,
looking very fit. He launched into a series of familiar
melodies from his famous Graceland album, such as "Diamonds On the
Soles of Her Shoes," and "You Can Call Me Al." The music was
both ebullient and comforting. He had the crowd standing,
clapping, chanting, and cheering. I looked back at the
woman. She was still there, the seat beside her still
unfilled. I decided to take a chance and got up very
deliberately, walked over to her, and sat down. She smiled
disarmingly at me.
"Is this one your first show
of Bob and Paul tour?" she asked, surprising me with a thick Italian
accent.
"Yes," I replied. "What about you?"
"Oh no, many… You
are a reporter?" She gestured at the steno pad and pen I was
carrying around with me.
"Yes. But I'm
free-lance," I told her. "I don't have a press pass."
"You write your articles and send to more than one magazine?"
"Yes," I nodded.
"What you write about-the music?"
"About
anything. And what about you?" I
asked. "Why do you come to these concerts?"
She looked downward. "I am shy," she said.
I was perplexed by her reaction to my question. "Why?"
"I just am."
"Do you like Dylan or Paul Simon better?
She looked down modestly
again. "Bob, of course," she said. So she was a
Dylan freak. It seemed strange-a young woman like
her. I wanted to ask if she was a groupie. She
seemed mysterious-almost like a woman out of a Dylan
ballad. I wondered if she knew Dylan, perhaps, and could get
me backstage to meet him.
Dylan came onstage at that
point, haggard in his appearance, stiff and awkward in his
movements-the very antithesis of the outgoing, cherubic
Simon. He was dressed in self-consciously ostentatious
Western-style attire-a black string tie and black suit with a white
stripe down the pants leg-that made him look like an usher at a
mortuary. Unlike Simon, who played his songs almost exactly
as the audience was familiar with them, Dylan subverted each number,
tinkering with its melody until it was recognizable only by the rhythm,
tempo, and lyrics. "Masters of War," "It's All Over Now,
Baby Blue," "All Along the Watchtower," "Simple Twist of Fate," "Mr.
Tambourine Man," "Tangled Up in Blue," "It Ain't Me, Babe," "Blowin' in
the Wind," and others blew by the audience as sullen reminders that
nothing stays the same.
While Simon's appeal was his
ease, his intimacy, his informality, Dylan's was that he was a pure
enigma. He looked distinctly uncomfortable onstage, as if he
didn't want to be there, and disdained the audience. I found
myself straining to distinguish each line in his face for some hint,
some clue as to what he might be feeling or thinking. Every
once in a while the illusion of youth would pass over his features, and
he would look as he did when he was just starting his
career. Then suddenly, he would get a little more into it,
lean into the guitar, bend a little more intimately towards the
microphone, and I felt cheered, as if he were a potentially terminal
patient showing renewed signs of life. He waltzed,
staggered, shuffled around the stage like an errant minstrel playing
for an audience of fools.
In-between numbers I talked
to the young Italian woman. Her mystique had worn off a bit,
and it was now clear to me that she didn't know Dylan personally, but
was just an infatuated fan.
"How many times you have seen Bob?" she asked me.
"On this tour, you mean?" I returned the question.
"Yes."
"Just once," I replied,
astonished at the question. "How many times have you seen
him?"
"All," she said.
"All? "You've been to every concert?"
She nodded. "I come from Italy to follow the tour."
"Just you alone?"
"No, I come with others."
I got a mental picture of a
whole busload of Italians following the Dylan-Simon tour around
America. I wanted to ask her where her friends were and why
she was sitting alone, when some ticket-holders made their way towards
us and indicated that we were sitting in their seats. The
Italian girl obviously did not belong in the pit. She
started to make her way out, shrugging apologetically, but I ran after
her.
"No, come with me," I
offered. I led her to the front of the pit, and we stood
against the fence that fronted the stage. One of the
security guards seemed to be familiar with her, however, and made a
point of coming over and asking for our tickets. I flashed
my ticket at him.
"Fourth row," he said.
As I headed back to my seat,
I saw him engaged in conversation with the girl and eventually lead her
out of the pit. I didn't have the presence of mind to follow
them. I was more interested in the girl than I was in the
concert, but as usual my initiative failed me. I sat through
the rest of the performance, vainly glancing around every once in a
while to catch a glimpse of her. At the end of the show I
paced the entire arena, hoping to bump into her, but she was
gone. The audience had scattered with the wind, the
floodlights still lit up the evening sky, the ground was littered with
trash, and the cars were still filing out of the parking lot like a
parade of missed opportunities. But there was also a hint of
promise in the day's experience. I had gotten a glimpse of
how I could be something other than a mere spectator in life… |
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Copyright © The Spiritual Traveler, 2001 |
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