Old Wildcat Hollow

I've been in Lexington recently. It's a city on the west end of Columbia in South Carolina, and where I grew up. My mother still lives in the house I grew up in, and I'll be visiting her for the next two weeks before the job in Birmingham starts. I don't know anyone in Birmingham yet, and there wasn't enough time to get a summer job, so I thought it best to crash with my family and spend some time with old friends. I'm running low on cash, so renting that room from my friend is no longer a viable option. It was sad to move out of her place, but I can't afford double rent, and I refuse to mooch off of friends. Family I can mooch off of forever. While it is a family's duty to allow for the occasional week or two mooching of relatives, nothing will kill a friendship faster than mooching more than a 3 day period.

While it's been great to be at home, I am really ready for work to start; I feel a lack of purpose at the moment. It's funny. There truly is no place like home. It's a place you can't wait to leave, but a place you always long to return to. Nothing feels better than coming home, but once home - then what? What comes next?

Columbia was (and still is) a wonderland for me. The city has a great vibe, the parks are beautiful, and I love the zoo and museums. L-town (short for Lexington) on the other hand, I have a love/hate relationship with. Growing up here had plenty of ups, but a lot of downs. I always felt isolated, because I wasn't like the other kids on my street. They were farmers and hunters. I was the son of a stay-at-home-mom and a dad that taught leadership, training, and management classes for a chemical company. I was a city kid that lived on a dirt road surrounded by country boys.

The isolation continued at school, because I wasn't the child of a lawyer or a doctor. In the South, nepotism reigns supreme, and a family name will take you far. I didn't carry a prestiged family name; I wasn't so-and-so's great-grandchild. My family was lower middle-class in a city that privileged wealth and status. Neither of my parents held prestigious jobs, so there was no way to overcome the lack of namesake. We also went to church in Irmo (another city on the west-end of Columbia, north of L-town). Irmo and Lexington were fierce rivals, and I was the only Lexingtonian in my Sunday School class. Yet another barrier towards my full integration, I could never get excited when churchmates cheered for their schools, and no one wanted to invite a rival to their school's events.

My isolation became complete, however, with my own actions. I used to cry a lot. I mean a lot. I was a huge crybaby. I was the kid you wanted to punch to make him stop fucking crying. Other kids thought something was wrong with me, and many adults didn't know how to approach the situation. FYI, if you ever encounter a seemingly normal child who randomly bursts into tears, he/she has emotional problems indicative of troubles elsewhere in their lives. It is abnormal for a child to burst into tears about a minor embarrassment, so there is probably something going on under the surface.

I rarely cried at home, however, because at home I had to be the adult. I had to take care of my mother when she went psychotic, which was more frequent than not. To this day, I have a hard time dealing with emotions because of emotional scars as a child. Somewhere deep inside there was a crying child - a lonely child wanting to be normal - a child wanting to belong, but somewhere along the way I told that child to "shut the Hell up, and keep on trucking." I no longer cry in public, but I also have years of distance on many of my emotional scars, and am able to balance (although precariously at times) all of my issues. I have gotten the child to stop crying, to be happy with who he is, and to express his emotions in other ways.

I used to beg my parents to move, however. Other kids wanted to stay put, but I wanted to leave. I wanted a different house, on another side of town, where I could be someone else. I recognized that my crying had placed too much damage on my reputation at school, and by changing schools, I could start over. Whenever my parents suggested moving, I would suggest houses I had seen for sale, and ask when we could go house hunting.

My obsession eventually came to a place, however, where house hunting became more important than changing schools. I had decided in my childhood brain that maybe a more expensive house would improve my rankings at school. Other kids sometimes weren't allowed to play with me, because our house wasn't nice. Certain parents didn't want their kids playing with children - like me - who were beneath them.

One time when I was a child, I had a play-date with another kid at my house. I was so excited I could hardly stand it. I barely remember this, but my father relayed the full story when I got older. My father and I were waiting in the driveway when the car (I believe it was a mini-van) pulled up. The driver slowed down to survey the house, while the kid in the backseat pointed happily with a huge smile on his face. Then, without warning, the driver hit the gas. Gravel spun out from under the tires; the kid in the backseat - no longer smiling - started yelling for the driver to stop. The kid continued crying as the van raced out of sight down the dirt road. I turned to my dad - in tears - wanting to know why. Unfortunately, I don't remember what my father told me that day. All I remembered for years was not getting to play with my friend.

I would like to say that that was the only time a kid wasn't allowed to play with me because of where I lived, but it happened more than once. That moment, however, was the most telling - and one very straightforward way of making a point. Before moments like that, I never knew my house was inferior. It was house. It was just a house. After being denied friendships because of it, however, I knew something had to be wrong with it - or wrong with me. It never crossed my mind that there was something wrong with the other people.

My desire to search for houses, therefore, got worse as I got older. In high school and college, when my parents brought up moving I would bring them real-estate pamphlets.

"I don't like that house," my father would retort.
"There are others for sale!" I would say as I shoved another pamphlet at him.
"We can't afford to move."
"This one's cheaper!"
"I don't want to look at these right now."
"Then why did you bring up moving?"

Despite my best efforts, and most of the ink in our printer, they never moved, and now I'm kind of glad for that. A sense of permanence is nice, and so what if the house isn't the greatest? It does its job. It's also good to come home, even if it sometimes leaves me wondering what's next.

So many memories fill this house, and since I grew up in L-town, every street is a memory. So naturally when I was taking off the trash today - the trash dump brought up memories of my father. We would load up the old black truck (later it would be the blue truck), and wander off down Wise Ferry and over to the Ball Park Road waste collection facility. (To this day, there is still no waste collection on our street; so if you don't like living surrounded by garbage bags, you have to load the truck and haul bags of trash several miles to the dump.) Afterwards, my dad would generally go to a local gas station and buy us each a Coke and a candy bar. I can rarely remember an outing when we didn't go to a gas station and get snacks. The world was ours in those moments, but this post isn't about my father, so I'll save that for another time.

After dropping off the trash, I took a left toward town. I had a few errands to run, and I thought I'd drive down past the old football stadium.

A few years ago, my high school built a new football stadium on the high school's campus. The old stadium was/is about 2 miles away from the campus on Ball Park Rd. Most of my autumn Friday nights were spent at this old stadium - Wildcat Hollow. I'd carpool with my friends - find a seat near the band (most of my friends were Band Geeks; I was practically a band mascot), and wait until the 3rd quarter. The marching band was given the 3rd quarter off for conversation and refreshments, and we'd walk around the Hollow gossiping about any and everything - well everything except football. No one really cared about the football game (except for the players, and the game against Irmo - we all hated Irmo.)

The last time I drove by the stadium, the grass was overgrown, and it looked to be in a state of disrepair. Today, however, the grass had been freshly mowed, and it looked almost like it had a decade ago - when it was THE Friday night location for high schoolers and townspeople alike. Yet, it was empty. Not a car in the parking lots, not a single person in the stands. (I learned after some investigative googling that a semi-pro team is now using Old Wildcat Hollow for their games - hence the field being manicured).

Driving by the stadium, all of the memories came flooding back to me. The ghosts of those Friday nights reminded me of my endless quest for belonging - my desire to be popular, my want of a different house. There they all stood in an abandoned football stadium. It's funny what time does. Now no one cares that I used to cry, and the people that matter don't give a damn about my social standing. If they do, they aren't people I choose to associate with. Why then was it so important a decade ago? Old Wildcat Hollow may be empty, but nothing has really changed - except for me.

All those misspent years of wanting to be popular... If I had just opened my eyes I would have realized I was popular. I was popular and liked by the people that mattered - by my friends, by the band geeks, by those who had gotten to know me. By those that didn't care that I cried. I didn't need a fancy house, or a fancy name for them to be my friends. Why did I feel isolated? Why did I feel inferior?

In a way, the quest to be popular is like Old Wildcat Hollow. It's empty. It's a quest that can never make you truly happy. But on the same token, an old abandoned football stadium can also remind you of what it's like to be popular - an echo of friendships and Friday nights. In each way, Old Wildcat Hollow is like a monument to my past - a part that not only symbolizes my feelings of difference - my isolation, but also a part that reminds me of my friendships, my integration, and my connection to the whole. If my parents had moved to another city, I would never have experienced the friendships I had. If I had gotten a better house, I still would have been the boy who cried. Who knows? I might have missed out on Friday nights at the Hollow, and may have missed out on a valuable lesson. Looking at that empty stadium, I never thought I'd be as thankful as I am for what I have.

Now, if only I could get a fucking boyfriend...

The Road is Paved with Mezzanites.

Today Cara and I traveled from Evanston, IL (just North of Chicago) to St. Louis, MO. Along the way, we stopped to visit a friend working a summer job in Sullivan, IL - a small small town deep in the heart of Illinois Amish Country. Our friend works for a theatre in Sullivan (or should I say - THE theatre in Sullivan), so her work and social life doesn't allow for much interaction with the Amish, but she did feel the need to warn us of the sheer amount of Mennonites we would find en route. I had never seen an Amish person (apart from movies, books, and TV), so this was very exciting.

Cara and I began to discuss the differences between Amish and Mennonite, but Cara could not remember the word Mennonite and created the Mezzanites - hence the title of this post. Oh those Mezzonites and their lobbies.

It was fascinating to watch the Amish ride by in their buggies or on bicycles. They really look like relics from a bygone time. Seeing them was like looking at a window into the past. I found myself wondering what it would be like to be Amish. Would a life removed from the troubles of modern existence - all the complications like TV, Internet, etc. - truly be a life lived for the better? I do think that we often over-complicate our lives, and perhaps the Amish might have some insight into existence that we as modern Internet users do not. This lead me to wonder what Amish dental care is like. I'm fairly positive they don't get braces, but do they use dentists? What oral hygiene methods are available for the Amish? If you know the answer to this, please let me know...

The road today was simple - no mountains or real hills (until we reached St. Louis) -flat farmland prairie as far as the eye could see. I once had a professor who told me that she hated living on the prairie because it was so open that she felt chronically exposed. There was/is no place to hide; you are out there for the world. She preferred living in the mountains - where the world has clear boundaries - a sense of permanence and place. While the landscape was beautiful, with the corn blowing in the breeze and farm houses and commercial argicultural structures dotting the landscape, I tend to agree with her. The wide open expanse of the prairie is beautiful, but at the same time it is oddly disquieting. I think living on the wide expanses of flat land is best left for people other than myself.

I do think I could live in Chicago, specifically the Evanston suburb. Evanston still feels urban and is connected to downtown via the "L" system, but has a small-town atmosphere, and plenty of things to do within walking distance. Recently, I have been thinking of returning to graduate school - possibly earning a PhD. Nothing is set in stone, and it is only one option on the table at this point, but Chicago really made me long for city living again. I mean real city living - with mass transit trains. I have missed using the Metro since I left DC, and I have even missed using the toy People Mover after living in Detroit. I need to be in a place with a subway or "L" system. Returning to school in a major metropolitan area would allow me that very opportunity...

Here are some photos of Evanston.

Here is the Chicago skyline.

Here are some rural Illinois landscapes.

An Amish woman riding a bike.

Illinois is a state that I had never really considered before this trip. I saw it as home to Chicago, and that was about it, but now the state fascinates me. A place with both the big city and the rural - a place of extremes - corporate executives catching trains while surfing their blackberries and Amish in buggies, thier long beards waving in the breeze.

Once in Sullivan, we toured the theatre, and visited with our friend. We ate at Doug Wilson's (of TLC's Moving Up and Trading Spaces fame) restaurant Jibby's. We did not meet Doug Wilson, and I think that might be for the best. I imagine him as being rather rude, and rude people have a greater probability of meeting my bitchy side.

It was great catching up with our not-Amish friend; here are the three of us in Sullivan. (There was a picture of my hair not in her face, but Cara wasn't looking at the camera in that one.)

The Sullivan Courthouse.

I think I should call it a night. Yesterday I fell asleep while blogging. (I did wake up and finish the blog, as you should know if you have been reading...) I want to make sure I have enough sleep for St. Louis. We are spending the whole morning, and I want to fully experience the city.

Too Ugly to Steal, too Stupid to Prostitute

So the roadtrip has begun! Yesterday was the first official day of the road trip, and it was a doozy. We spent a late evening with some old friends of ours and didn't arrive back to Cara's place until well after midnight, and it was even later before we could go to sleep. While we were with friends, we were mistaken for a married couple. Our friends' relatives assumed we were a couple, and were curious if we were married. Hilarity! We hated to leave, especially after we were offered a room for the evening, but Cara and I needed to be at the U-Haul place at 7am, so her trailer hitch could be attached. I told her I would be a good friend and go with her, so naturally I was a great friend and slept in. Cara was off to the U-Haul by herself. I didn't mean for her to leave without me, but by the time my alarm went off she was already leaving, and she didn't want to wake me.

It turns out it was a good thing that I didn't go with her, however, because once at the U-Haul she was informed that the procedure would take at least 4 hours - something they had neglected to mention during the numerous phone calls Cara made to confirm, reconfirm, and ask questions about her reservation. We had hoped to get the trailer hitch attached, pick up the U-Haul, and have everything loaded by at latest 2 - now our timetable was shot - and Cara and I would have been stranded, if I hadn't slept in.

Instead, we went to I-hop and had breakfast. The waitress was training a newbie and vented to us about the process. After that we hit up a local Meijer (like a Wal-Mart, but not frightening), and Cara received a call saying the trailer hitch was ready (They were about half an hour early - yay!)

Being thoughtful, I said I'd go back and start packing up a few things and getting ready for the trailer. What Cara and I neglected to think about, however, was my lack of keys to her apartment. So I drove back to Grosse Pointe Park - eager to get started - but ended up having to sit in my car and wait. I would have waited outside, but Metro Detroit had a record breaking heat wave, and this Southern boy was sweltering. My car has AC; Cara's yard does not. When Cara finally got back, it was very much after noon, and all I had done (all I could have done) was pack the cooler. We then commenced the packing of the trailer.

The trailer was very small. Cara clearly had more stuff than this trailer could hold, but this was the best option available. We packed things as tightly as possible, but left room for pieces of the drafting table we planned on disassembling. Notice I said planned... We tried for an hour to take the drafting table apart, but it was not going anywhere - bolts were stripped and the nuts would not turn. It was nightmarish. We finally decided to move it whole, but we ran into difficultly getting it through the narrow doorways and hallways of Cara's 1940's Post WWII bungalow. (You know - the primary reason we wanted to take it apart in the first place.) Eventually, however, even it was packed.

So there we were - it was 6 o'clock. We had been packing for five hours in record breaking heat. We looked and smelled like ragamuffins, but the car was loaded, the U-Haul was loaded, and we were off, and on our way to Chicago. Here we are ready for the drive:


Here's Cara with the full U-haul:

Here's Trixie (Cara's Cat): Poor thing was practically buried in her carrier.

I wish I could tell you that the next few hours of our lives were spent in blissful contentment, the drive soothing our frazzled bodies. I wish I could tell you that, but it seems the next hours were intricately designed by some masochistic force to frazzle our nerves in addition to our bodies.

My credit card was put on hold for suspicions of fraud.

A bum offered to sell us a kitchen sink.

At least we were driving.

But, then it got dark...

Driving is stressful; it just is. And after hours of towing a U-Haul (with a manual transmission), Cara was exhausted. I was doing my best to lighten the atmosphere - to keep her entertained - and to keep everything positive. Somewhere in Indiana, however - it was very dark by this time, Cara missed an exit. No biggie, things happen. Especially on unfamiliar roads at night. Helen (I named my GPS so I could yell at it) gave us directions to get back on the highway. Helen's directions, however, didn't take into account any road construction, and the ramps onto the Interstate were closed. This happened three times. Three times Helen tried to get us back on route, but each time the new ramp to the highway was closed.

We drove - following Helen's angry voice - through the backroad industrial neighborhoods of Gary, Indiana. If you have never been to Gary, you haven't missed much - except the setting of the next Wes Craven film. Looming, imposing factories twinkling against the black night. Slabs of row houses standing watch. Seedy bars and neon signs. The grime of industry besooting skeletal skyscrapers - the bony hallmarks of a recession. It is a place I never want to visit again - but especially at night.

Finally we made it to Chicago, and then Evanston where we are currently staying. Once in Evanston, however, we had to figure out how and where to park the car. We attempted to park it in the Hotel's parking garage, but the U-Haul wouldn't make it up the steep ramp entrance. We then tried to park it in an adjoining parking garage, but it was too big and too much of a pain in the ass there too. We eventually parked in two spaces on the street. After this, however, we were informed that we would be towed from that area, so one of the employees of the hotel gave us a pass to park in a special zone beside the building.

It was around 1:30am before we finally settled in to the hotel room. The bed and shower felt like Heaven! We decided when we arrived that we should cancel another portion of our roadtrip to make up for the delay... So, farewell Grand Canyon - we will have to catch you another time.


Today was much better; I got to see Chicago for the first time! We both woke up early - wide awake - our brains ready to start the day. Our bodies, however, were soon rebelling... After eating from the continental breakfast and planning out our day, we boarded the train to downtown. We managed to squeeze in the Library, visiting a friend for lunch, Millennium Park and the Bean, the Modern American wing at the Art Institute of Chicago, Navy Pier, a skyline boat tour, and dinner at Buca di Beppo all into one day. We were going to visit the John Hancock tower, but the weather took a turn for the wet.

We were on the skyline boat tour when it began to downpour. We hid below deck until the tour was over, (we could still see out the windows, but pictures were rather impossible). The rain had stopped, but as soon as the boat docked to let us off, the rain hit harder than before, and we were literally soaked upon entry to one of Navy Pier's shopping centers. (We were so wet that I bought a new shirt and changed.)

One of the big highlights of the day must have been the visit to the Art Institute. I got to see American Gothic up close and personal. There is something thrilling about seeing a work of art that has forever been stuck in a book - in real life scale - inches from your eyes. It makes it more real. It gives it a sense of belonging - of permanence - and of fragility. Even with all the replicas, there is still only one. We also saw a great exhibit on Islamic and Indian art, and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks.

I found myself busily taking snapshot after snapshot today. I began to worry that maybe I am too busy worrying about capturing the moment instead of fully embracing it. That's something I need to work on. I need to live fully - embracing the moment - and let go of the fear that I won't be able to preserve the moment. I can preserve the moments with or without my camera - the experience should live in me more than it lives in photographs.

Tomorrow we hit the road again. This time we are headed to St. Louis, via a stop in Sullivan, IL to visit a friend.

Here are a few pictures from our adventures today:

The eye. It's pretty awesome.

The gargoyles on the library are oversized owls!

The bean!

American Gothic.

Chicago streetview with the Bean!