That Was Special

I have said before that when I travel my goal is to have as bad a time as possible, shy of being maimed, killed, or raped (especially raped...). In a way, I got this from my father, the Green Beret and Ranger, who certainly taught me to seek out and thrive in misery, which we have done on countless occasions. In fact, he came to call his intentional infliction of dire circumstances, usually involving weekend hikes through the likes of the aptly named Hellhole Swamp, as "Planned Misery." The difference in our perspectives is that while he sees a weekend or two a year as a way to more perfectly appreciate the other 360+ days, I view a horrific time as no less than the essence of life itself.

Shy of this transitory, ever-fleeting present, our lives are truly our memories. Of those, I submit, the far greater part are not our joys, but our misfortunes. Perhaps the people who argue this point are sincere but my own experience and my observation of others holds it as true.

As a child I went to Disney World, what many consider the acme of childhood delights, nearly a dozen times. Of all those times being there I can hardly recall a specific episode, save, of course, for the time that it was cold and rainy. No, I can´t recall that sort of thing, but I remember quite distinctly and vividly the night on our first swamp trip when an unexpected cold front came in. We´d all packed for seventy degrees and it dropped into the low forties/ high thirties, and that was after a day of wading neck-deep in the swamp. I stayed up all night tending the fire as Pop and the cadets were curled up around me, constantly rotating as if on a spit, so as to stave off that piercing cold. In the morning, Pop discovered his plastic raincoat had melted from his trying to get so close to the fire.

It was a truly miserable night. And I love it. I know I love it now, in retrospect, but even when I´m in the moment of a truly bad time, I find I love it. Certainly not from any warped masochism, but simply for the fact that I´ll remember it; I´ll have survived it; I´ll have conquered it in a way. So most people want vague recollections of general serenity...I´ll take the ingrained knowledge of contending, of running the gauntlet and making it out the other side.

I´m sure I´m right about this, and, besides, who wants to hear about someone else´s good time? Nobody. Okay...maybe your parents, but that´s it. Good times aren´t interesting. Struggle, conflict, these are the bases of story-telling. If people want to hear about good times, why is the word commiserate?

So without further ado...

Homeland Security Agent Knuckles was refreshingly tender, yet thorough, and I was through the gate and into the pond-jumper in no time. Having to stand hunched over as the plane was apparently designed for Lilliputians was a novel experience, but after take-off, when I attempted to use the facilities and found wedging my frame into that cabinet nigh on impossible, I considered that it was perhaps I who was Brobdingnagian.

Curled in a ball, I read contentedly until we made our descent and I looked out over miles and miles of perfectly rowed and surveyed suburbs. Allow me to correct myself: exciting misery is my goal. The hellish life of the wage slave living in one of those boxes outside Detroit would never hold appeal for me, which is most of the reason why I´m not sure I´ll ever be a lawyer. Life should be living, not trying to make partner.

Bleary-eyed, the Detroit airport seemed a nice enough place. In between terminals was a long walkway tunnel. I suppose the idea was to have rapidly changing colored lights run the length of the cylinder to go along with soothing sounds and thus help travelers shed stress and think positively, but the whole thing came off like another trip down the birth canal. Born again in Detroit! Oh joy...

Despite my greatest efforts, I did suffer a most gruesome violation (of my finances, mind you) by way of a honey-tongued waitress at an airport cafe where I ate lunch. The beer she brought me could have financed a new front on the Global War on Terror. Her kind words to me couldn´t hide the fact that she´d gotten what she wanted and so I had to go. Completely disheveled, I awkwardly bid her adieu and stumbled out, feeling confused and ashamed at what had just been done to me.

As for my fun nine hours crossing the planet, I was a proper fit for my seat, though of course there were screaming babies all around, the stewardess spilled water in my lap, and I was plagued by those two bane ulences of the locked- in traveler: turb and flat. Someone also evidently thought as that it was minus- seventy outside the plane, that it should be positive- one hundred ten inside. I peeled out of my layers and cursed the heat. I´ve been in 130 degrees and I think I broke my sweat glands on the river last summer. Part of the allure of going on this trip was to finally freeze my tuckus off. I swear I might move up to Maine.

I was pleased upon landing to get the horrible recollection of being deaf, mute, and illiterate. My ability to say only "I don´t speak German; do you speak English?"; "Please"; "Thank you"; and "Yes, Mr. Bartender, I would absolutely, positively adore yet another satisfying, delicious, glorious beer" will have to do. I pulled some play money out of the ATM, stumbled on to the train to Berlin, and collapsed in a heap.

P.S. Reading law books for a semester is like weight-lifting. I thought that perhaps I brought too many books with me, but I polished off Charles Frazier´s (Cold Mountain) new book, 13 Moons, by the time I landed here.

Bon Voyage

Fully armed with a eurail pass, the requisite ridiculous facial hair, and no plan, I head off to Europe (for three weeks) tomorrow. As ever, my hopes are to have the worst time possible shy of being maimed or killed (...or raped) . Perhaps a trip to a Hungarian prison or thrashing by neo-nazis is in order as I'd certainly hate to have an ordinary time (and I need some sort of craziness after being locked in Columbia for five months). Should stumble into any adventures, be advised, I'll let y'all know.

Merry Christmas, Happy Channukah, Super Kwanzaa, and Terrific Solstice.

An Ode to Sarah Henry

This evening as the group walked out
and went to get some food,
Ms. Henry did begin to pout
and claimed that I was rude.

"André, you're always quick to tease,
not one nice thing to say.
For once in your life, pretty please,
throw compliments my way."

"Sarah, I just cannot comply
as much as I would want.
I'll leave that for some other guy,
whose dreams you no doubt haunt.

"It is just not in my nature
to say what's plain to see.
You've a stunning smile, eyes that lure,
inspiring beauty.

"Heaven forbid that you should know
and ruin what is best.
Your glorious lack of ego
sets you out from the rest."

"Many are the less pretty girls
who think that they are great,
and when their vanity unfurls
it makes me quite irate.

"So better yet I tease you well
than lose you to the mass.
If you don't like it, go to hell.
I will not kiss your ass."

And then she punched me in the face...

An Odyssey of Bumbling (Originally Printed in the Charleston Mercury)

I wanted to walk the United States.  I’d had the idea for nearly seven years.  Put one foot in the Atlantic and go until I dipped one in the Pacific.  Oh, the people I’d meet!  Oh, the adventures I’d have along the way!  Oh, what I’d learn about myself!

With a fifty pound rucksack on my back and a seven-foot Macedonian spear in my hand, I set out, last September, from Folly Beach for my Great American Adventure.

Four days and sixty miles later, I quit.

 

That blatant failure aside, I kept up with grandiose planning.  I came up with a reasonable substitute for the walk: canoeing the Mississippi.

The difference between “The Walk” and “The Paddle” was that I reduced my expectations to merely enjoying beauty and enjoying myself.  I didn’t make any requirements on time or distance.  If I went for three days and had enough, great; if I went for three months and made it to the Gulf, even better.

Having gone two months and 2180 miles on the Father of Waters, I can say that I not only more than met the expectations I had for “The Paddle”, but I ended up accomplishing those I had for “The Walk” as well.

It’s quite difficult to sum up a two month trip across the country, but the point that I always try to impart those who ask me about it is that we truly live in a remarkable country.  I can’t think of anywhere else on the globe where you can go the distance I did and not have a single bad run-in with someone.   Not only did I not have a single bad experience, but I was uniformly and graciously welcomed with open arms despite looking bizarrely haggard.

I spent most of the trip in sandals, blue basketball shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, a grossly oversized Bermuda hat with a hawk feather sticking in the brim, and broken sunglasses that I’d duct-taped back together.  As I did not shave during the trip, I discovered that my facial hair grows in a manner that I can only describe as puberty gone horribly wrong.

I have to admit, my machismo took a bit of a beating by people being so nice and friendly to me.  Somewhere deep down, I wanted people to be intimidated or scared of me, this wild man of the river, but in hindsight, the fact that I didn’t look wild so much as clownish probably had much to do with that.  People not only helped me whenever I asked for it, but came up to me just to find out what in the world, exactly, I was doing on the river in a canoe.  The following is a relevant passage from the journal I kept of the trip.

Day 29, June 14th

            My spirits were given quite a boost when I was visited by river "angels", if I might usurp the handle given to those that buoy Appalachian Trail hikers.  A couple came puttering up to me in a small yellow motorboat and offered me ice water, which I gratefully accepted.  We chatted for awhile and they kept saying how "great" it was that I'm doing this.  The woman remarked that that all the time for reflection must be fabulous for getting to know myself.

            I joked, "Yes, and for going crazy." 

            I continued, "What I've been a bit disturbed to discover, as I come from a long line of illustrious alcoholics, is that alcohol really helps out here."

            They raised their eyebrows.

            "Not continuously drinking, but, at the end of the day, a beer or two (I didn't mention '...or three or four or five...') loosens your body and raises flagging spirits."

            I could tell this mightily upset the woman, who I believe was waiting for some yogiistic, transcendental truth, not merely "beer's a helluva thing."

            Her husband, in an effort to steer the conversation, replied, "Well, it's been said that two drinks a day is good for you."

            "Oh yes.  My step-brother is a brain doctor and he called up my dad and gave him orders to have two glasses of wine a day... of course, he didn't specify the size of the glass so dad got around it by drinking out of vases."

            The man squirmed in his seat and his wife was simply and purely aghast.  As any struggling comedian should do, I gamely barreled on.

            "Of course, I'm kidding.  But, back in the 80's when soldiers in the Army were allowed to have two beers at lunch, they'd drink two pitchers, directly from the pitchers, so that they weren't in violation of the rule."

            Now he was aghast and she was pale and turning slightly blue from not breathing, which was quite an accomplishment because her mouth was so wide open she could have chewed on a few hours worth of air simply by closing it.

            Suffice it to say, we parted ways shortly thereafter, though only after they inquired as to my name and promised to pray for me; they did not specify as to whether they'd be praying for my safety on the trip or my dissolute soul.

            I was pretty down on Iowans and pretty up on Illini, since that's where the couple was from, but within five miles a muscular Iowan, who in his ball cap and sunglasses looked to be the spitting image of the Pittsburgh Steelers head coach, Bill Cowher, rode up on a waverunner and offered me a beer.  It was with great reluctance, as I was falling behind schedule, that I joyously accepted and we drifted and shot the bull for an hour.

            Dan, a fifty- year- old, puts my adventuring into the proper perspective.  First of all, he's a captain in the Fire Department, which is adventurous enough, but then he went on to tell me about boating the Missouri River, boating from Tampa to Key West in a gale, buying an airplane and flying to all 48 contiguous states (he's not finished yet), and nearly being arrested when he accidentally landed on a Special Forces helicopter runway (The "airport" on the map had the same last name as him so he thought he'd land and get a t-shirt.  He didn't notice the military designation on the map.).  He'd river angeled for a few people before, including a pair of 20 year old girls, one of whom said she was doing the trip "because my dad needed a good (ticking) off."  He gave me a couple more beers and two sodas and then headed home.  Iowa has thoroughly trounced Illinois.

 

            Of course, the humorous aspect of that day was a tad aberrant, but I had many wonderful experiences of the more mundane variety.  My favorite day on the entire trip involved one of these. 

            I’d passed through Little Falls, Minnesota, the home of Charles Lindbergh, and was making my way towards St. Cloud.  As the sun began to set, a storm came in from the west.  As it was still May and I was so far north, it was a bit chilly, so I had on my heavy duty Army gortex rain jacket and gortex pants.  Both were camouflaged.  As the stinging rain pelted me, I got to a dam.  There was no way for me to portage (carry the canoe and gear around the obstruction) in that weather, so I paddled to the shore and chained the canoe to an overhanging tree.

            There, next to the dam, was a farm, which consisted of a barn, farm house, and several sheds, all painted white.  Keeping my Stetson down low and looking at the ground to keep the wind-driven rain out of my eyes, I made my way to the front door and knocked.  An elderly woman came to the door, took a gander at me and her eyes got as big as saucers.  I took off my hat to let her get a good look at me and I hollered over the gale that I was just trying to get permission to set up camp.  She motioned me to the kitchen door.           

            As I got around to the kitchen door, her husband barked through the door, trying to figure out what exactly I wanted with them.  Yelling at the top of my lungs, I explained who I was and what I was doing, and, cautiously, he opened the door to me.  Though it was raining still, he came out and walked me over to where he thought it would be best for me to set up for the night, where I would be protected from the majority of the wind and rain.

            I thanked him and went back to the canoe to get my gear and as I lugged it ashore the old farmer returned.  He introduced himself as Alfred Kusterman and then, after asking if I’d eaten, offered to have his wife cook sausages for me.  I gratefully accepted, having burned up quite a few calories over the fifty miles I’d paddled that day, and we chatted as I set up the gear, the storm having blown past. 

            At a picnic table next to the house, as we watched the sun break through the clouds in time for a magnificent crimson sunset, Mr. and Mrs. Kusterman and I sat and talked, as I wolfed down the food she’d brought out for me, and, though we were nearly alien to each other, they being lifelong Minnesotans (and thus practically Canadians in my book) and me being a fourteenth generation South Carolinian, we were able to connect in an elemental way. 

           

            As the Roman tactician Vegetius said, “He who desires peace should prepare for war (‘Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum’).”  I was no fool.  I didn’t set out on the trip thinking everything would be hunky-dory.  I slept with my pistol by my side every night.  Considering how Terror and Amber Alerts, “if it bleeds it leads” journalism, and pop culture (Deliverance, Hostel) bombard us, it is no wonder that we tend to live our lives thoroughly convinced that every stranger is a possible psychopath. 

            I may not have sampled the entirety of this Great Land of ours, but what I take from my trip is that there is a severe disconnect between what we think others are like and how they really are.  We need not be afraid of our fellow Americans; wary certainly, but not afraid. 

            In ancient Greece, kindnesses shown to strangers were seen as prayers to the gods.  Having spent four years in the Army, of which for three and a half I was stationed overseas in Germany with deployments to Macedonia (FYROM) and Iraq, I can resolutely state that by that standard, these United States are holy country.

Law School Satire

Tomorrow we at the law school vote for our Honor Council Candidates and Student Bar Association Representatives. For the past week, scores of people have posted their flyers, most of which have invariably included taglines like, "Honor. Integrity. Uprightness.", "Upholding Honor", etc. Today we even had some of the candidates stop by the classroom before class started and give their spiels. Admittedly, some were lucid, but most kept up the standard pablum.

At any rate, somehow, someway, the attached flyer was posted in several prominent places after class today. Ithink what Bretrem was getting at is that it's kinda silly to spout one's characteristics when we haven't gotten to know each other yet, as if someone who were not honorable, truthful, and upright would admit to being so.

Well That Was Different

It is finished. While I'm a bit annoyed with the fact that I stopped at New Orleans instead of going down to the gulf, there was nothing for it. I can handle wind and waves but the 95 degree heat (heat index 105) was more than I could safely handle. Pop, who met me in Baton Rouge last monday, and I made it to NO on thursday and spent all day Friday getting back to SC. I've spent the past few days doing a great deal of nothing, which I feel I've earned after 2180 miles and two months on the Mighty Mississippi. The trip was a blast and I'd like to thank all those I met on the river who were instrumental in helping me get so far.

The following is my journal entry from my next to last day out.

Wednesday, July 19

While is has been in the mid- seventies, at a maximum, so far this month, last night was at least 80 degrees and neither of us slept particularly well. As such, we were both of a mind to find a town in which to eat breakfast. We stopped several times, but each time either the town was too small to have a restaurant or it was too far to reach on foot, so, in the end, all we succeeded in doing was wasting an hour of prime morning paddling time.

The morning is usually good for paddling because it's cooler, but today it was plumb hot and worst of all we had no breeze. Our banter, which for the past two days has been ceaseless, dried up to grunts as we slapped the river inefficiently and our shirts soaked in sweat and stuck to us. My thoughts of quitting went from conjecture to resignation as it became more and more obvious that even a paltry 40 miles a day was too much in the face of the unyielding heat (I had been making 80 miles a day earlier in the month).

When I turned to face Pop to broach the subject, I was startled, as well as reaffirmed in my conviction that we'd have to stop short, by the blotches of red that had appeared on his cheeks and above his eyes. Those blotches were the tell-tale signs of impending heat injury I well knew, as I'd had them all over my forehead the day I called Al Lacour to come get me in St. Francisville last week. While I didn't have the blotchiness, it struck me that I'd stopped sweating; never a good sign.

"Pop, we have to get off the river. We'll never make it to Venice (the last town on the river) in this heat. We're 20 miles from New Orleans. I say we do that tomorrow morning and that's it."

"I didn't want to say anything, but, yeah, New Orleans is going to have to do."

We got to the ferry landing at Reserve at just after noon and pulled the canoe up. As we were making our way up the levees, I saw an old man in a denim shirt with the sleeves cut off peddling his bike along the bike path on top. I ran up and motioned to him but he looked at me warily as he passed by me. He thought better and turned around though after I hollered that I just needed directions; he warmed right up to me rather quickly as he gave the directions to the local eatery.

His name was Al Terrio; he was seventy years old; and he was, in his own words, a "registered coon-ass". I didn't know what that meant per se, but nodded approvingly. Pop had just reached us just in time to hear that and so inquired as to what exactly such a dandy epithet meant.

"It means I'm a muthaf#@!er," he bellowed before laughing.

That pretty much worked for me but Pop got him to explain that "coon-asses" were proud Cajun stock. As his last named seemed mighty Italian, Pop asked for clarification and all confusion dissippated as Al revealed that it was really Theriot from near Marseilles, but that his daddy spelled it Terrio.

Al pointed us on our way and off we went, but the lure of being our guide proved too much and so he came along five minutes later to escort us to the joint and put in a good word for us with the woman who ran it, before pedaling off again.

It was simply a short-order deal and had no indoor dining area but the picnic table was at least under cover so we were able to have shade; however, as per Al's request that we be shown "good Southern hospitality", the owner opened up her new air-conditioned annex party hall for us to dine in, which was a mighty glorious thing for her to do we thought.

As we were chomping down fabulous shrimp Po-Boy sandwiches, Al showed back up to inform us that in the heat he'd been rather foolish and if he'd been thinking straight he'd simply have gotten his truck and taken us to eat over at his daughter's restaurant farther away. Pop sprang upon the idea.

"If there were any way you could give us a ride to a motel, we'd like to go by your daughter's place and buy you a beer."

That seemed a good deal to Al, so after we got in his truck, we went back to the ferry, gathered our things, hid the canoe, and off we went. Al gave us the tour of Reserve, which had been named thusly when a businessman in the thirties or so had asked that the land be reserved for him until he came back with the requisite money.

The restaurant, Pirogue's, was pleasant and Pop and Al got to talking about music from when they were growing up. Without saying a word, Al got up, went to his truck and came back with a strange object in his hand. He opened it and pulled out a harmonica.

I've puffed on a harmonica once or twice and managed only to evict a sound that could only be matched by the simultaneous kicking of a thousand ducks in the testicles. Al put that thing to his lips and out came the most amazingly layered yet clear music. As his hands shuttled back and forth, cupping furiously to make the correct sounds, Al had his eyes closed and his suddenly elastic face poured every ounce of effort into the instrument. Pop and I were initially dumbfounded, nay thunderstruck, by such an unexpected virtuoso performance, but Pop found himself and began singing the words as I just sat rapt.

I have quite obviously exaggerated a great many happenings in the course of this narrative (the entire journal, not just this passage) for the sake of humor, but I wish to make absolutely clear that I am in no way, shape, or form exaggerating or being ironical. Al Terrio is flat-out awe inspiring with a harmonica. I am convinced that I have never heard, nor will I ever hear, a thing like it unless I should someday stumble upon some other misdirected genius who can play Beethoven's Ninth by blowing into a coke bottle.

After three or four songs, which stopped all activity in the restaurant, he stopped to applause and he apologized that his "wind" wasn't what it used to be. I assaulted him with questions and discovered that he was self- taught and that he not only was still in a band, but that he, as a harmonica player, was the lead. I'd like to know the tamborine player who could pull that off.

Shortly thereafter, Al took us to the town of LaPlace, where the Millet (pronounced "Meeyet" by the locals) Motel was. At $60 it was a tad expensive, especially as the motel office was located in the adjoining Citgo gas station, but we paid nonetheless. We bid goodbye to Al and made our way to our room.

Having spent a night in it, I can honestly say it was the worst motel room I've ever stayed in. No sooner did we walk in than we walked out, as the smell of cigarette smoke was overwhelming. I went to the counter/ office and asked for a non- smoking room. The clerk informed me there were none and handed me a can of air- freshener.

As I coated the room in Lysol goodness, we made note that the only light, besides the bedside lamp, was an exposed light bulb hidden behind the wall- mounted, non- functioning TV, that the smoke detector had been wrenched from the wall, and that the tub was covered in hairs and burn marks where persons enjoying their daily constitutions had set down their cigarettes. Actually, it was amusing, as the night wore on, to discover more examples of the room's decrepidness. The sink knobs were backwards so that hot came out cold and vice-versa; the bathroom doorknob had punched through the bathroom wall; the shower dribbled like a garden hose until I somehow magically convinced it to work by cussing and rotating the knob repeatedly; we had to request toilet paper; there was a sinkhole in the shower that felt as if it might give way at any minute; the telephone turned out to be covering a half-inch- long cigarette ash; the other functioning TV had no remote; the mini-fridge not only didn't work, but reeked; and, last of all, the floor was so dirty that Pop had to wash his feet again before he went to sleep, even though he'd showered only an hour earlier. My last discovery was that the comforter must not have been washed since the Ford administration, as the funk and stink of untold unwashed masses gagged me to sleep. I might have paid double to experience a room that bad.

Oh Lord!

Yes, this is a mass mailing, but I couldn't resist sending what is sure to be my Christmas Card photo early this year. I took this on June 22nd in Hannibal, Mississippi before I got on the Riverboat "Mark Twain" for my hokey little ride around the river (which was much more pleasant with the good-looking redhead I met, Shana, to chat up). At any rate, I never would have bought the picture but it was just irresistable.

As for the update on my progress, I'm 2000 miles down with 300 to go, having stopped in St. Francisville, Louisiana, 40 miles upriver from Baton Rouge. I'm staying with a friend of mine for a few days before I get back on the river to meet Pop in Baton Rouge on Sunday so we can finish the trip together (he did the first four days with me). Because the storm wiped out so much at the mouth of the river, I may not technically make it to the gulf, but the town of Venice (being resurrected as I type this) will have to do. It's 20 miles from the Gulf. Ah well. I hope to make it there on Friday the 21st.

P.S. I didn't have my eagle feather jammed in the hat because of a storm that day. Rest assured, it's in there most of the time. The gnarled, smelly gloves and broken, cheap sunglasses that I repaired with duct tape complete my paddling ensemble.