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How Many Miles to Galena
or Baked, Hashed Brown or French Fried
by Richard Bissell
Chapter One
When I Was a Kid
When I was a kid nobody went home unless they were sick.
— Mel Rodgen
I live in South Norwalk, Connecticut, a seaport so small it can only handle one barge and one tug at a time. South Norwalk looks awful and Urban Renewal is making it look worse but I love it anyway so that’s not why I always want to go someplace and usually do.
I find it much easier to survey the New America while out in it than while sitting at home getting it out of the papers. While I am at home here I have a nutty urge to read the daily papers and absorb every rancid sample of the daily garbage: corpses on sidewalks and marijuana reports. I don’t do this when I’m in Missoula because out there I don’t care about which college boys have locked the President of the University in the men’s room. I’m too busy, and when I do read the paper I read the local news in order to find out what’s going on in Montana. When I’m at home everybody insists on talking about “pot” (ain’t that the cutest word, though?) and about Mayor Lindsay in Harlem and what Mayor Daley said in Chicago and they say words like “Arthur Schlesinger” “Stanley Kauffman” “Governor Volpe.” I never hear these words when I am setting in the weeds alongside the Klondike, drinking beer and talking to some lame-brained sourdough about placer mining.
Back here I feel committed to check the daily corpse report in the paper and to brief myself on the guy who kills twenty-three nurses in the Windy City, on General Motors calling back eleven thousand cars with defective brake lozenges, on the fourteen men stuck in a West Virginia mine, and on the failure of the sunflower seed crop. I’ve got to know that David Merrick’s new show is a flop, taxes are going up, the redwoods are coming down, Ginsberg is in the clink, the Alaska salmon fisheries are going bankrupt, they’re showing dirty movies in Westport, and magazines are printing 25-page interviews with Warren Beatty.
This skittery drizzle of painful news indicates motion. One just can’t sit. One can just sit if one has a desk and a job and a letter basket and lunch with Ed Drooley but I don’t have a job, I am a writer and as everyone knows, writers don’t work. They just smoke pipes and go for long walks with their Irish setters, wearing Irish tweed jackets with elbow patches. John O’Hara even carries a knobby Irish walking stick when he is on one of his non-work walks.
Anyway with all this nasty jinglejangle assaulting the eye and my delicate little ears all day and most of the night, there is created a suction draft that whirls me around and pulls me right out of the house and into my car and out of town. And onto the highroad. Surely things must be better in South Dakota. Or Fairbanks or Provo or Hungry Horse. Just keeping moving will help.
Motion is certainly indicated. One can’t just sit and brood about Warren Beatty. “Go West,” said Horace Greeley, but my slogan is “Go Anyplace.”
Traveling is soothing to the harried nerves and sometimes numbing to the brain. The way things are, a good numb brain once in a while isn’t a bad lookout. Crossing Saskatchewan produces desirable mugginess in the head, and addly dream-states can be induced by staring into the Grand Canyon. Interesting trips into euphoria can be had free by gazing intently at Mount Rushmore, and glum thoughts about General Bombsight and his merry crew can be eradicated by sliding down glaciers in British Columbia and soaking the head in the icy waters of Lake Louise. All the geeks blowing about their gicky LSD trips ought to take some of them grow-up pills one day and go on a real trip, like, man, to Alkali Flats, man, like the horned toads all on the hard stuff and the psychedelic rattlesnakes making out with the barrel cacti. Black power ignores the Yukon and the Yukon rolls on. Rioting Columbia students shun the Nevada deserts.
To travel, to move around — that’s the thing. No matter where.
I have friends and relatives who don’t travel. I can’t understand that. It’s as though they didn’t eat, or had different apparatus than I have, which didn’t require them to breathe.
When I have been traveling for a while I want to go home. Pretty soon I want to go — anywhere.
“Why don’t we go to Vermont and do some Skiing?”
“There’s no snow.”
“Let’s go anyway. I haven’t been anyplace for ages.”
“What! You just got back from Australia on Tuesday!”
“Oh. Well, what if I did? Come on, let’s go someplace.”
Here we see a man in the grip of a compulsion stronger than dope, gambling, or booze. I want to go someplace. Anyplace will do. Look what I say next:
“Well, if you won’t go to Vermont let’s go to Bridgeport.”
“Bridgeport! Good heavens.”
I’m afflicted with the hobo philosophy; Weary Willie and Dusty Rhodes are fellow travelers. My wife is thinking of Bridgeport. But I’m thinking of getting to Bridgeport, of moving in the direction of Bridgeport, of the act of going. I’m thinking of the road and the cars and trucks and the tollbooths, stoplights, rooftops, diners, railroad tracks, church steeples, factories, people with flat tires, truck stops, coffee, gas pumps, road maps, perhaps rain or snow and the windshield wiper going Swish Swish Clank Clank.
I have a lovely home. Beautiful. Better than Ben Sonnenberg’s, better than House and Garden, bigger than Windsor Castle. “You got a swell place here,” they tell me. “Boy what a house! Hey what a layout! Man you’ve got it made.”
“Let’s go,” I say, strolling from the solarium through the art gallery, library, ballroom, Great Hall, and billiard room, and staring vacantly at the l00-foot landscaped pool.
“Let’s go to Detroit,” I say. “Let’s go to Van Wert, Ohio. Let’s take the train to Montreal. Let’s fly to Tampa and have some stone crab.”
“Edward Dahlberg,” she says, “says that the only reason we travel is that there’s no place to go.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well it means that . . .”
“Who’s Edward Dahlberg?”
“I have no idea. I read it at the beauty parlor.”
“He’s crazy.”
That’s pretty cute, Dahlberg, but you probably don’t even go to the supermarket. I go to the supermarket and it’s A Trip. You probably don’t even like dining cars.
The Travel Bug’s mind is a treasure chest of jumbled information: back roads in Vermont, the streetcar system of Melbourne, hotel rates in New Brunswick, the height of Chimborazo, Chinese restaurants in Detroit, narrow-gauge railroads of Mexico, how to get to Sauk City, bus schedules, campsites, and the distance from Manistique to Hibbing.
Everybody is all excited about the new California Governor’s stand on student protests and cutting the budget; all the Travel Bug is interested in is “How does he stand on cable cars, ferryboats, and rapid transit?” While the cocktail mob is yelling about LSD, I am planning a float trip down the Susquehanna River on a rubber mattress. “Tell me,” I say to the lady on my right, “have you ever been to Iquitos?”
A real Travel Bug reads constantly but has never heard of Norman Mailer because Norman doesn’t write travel dope. He reads books called Vagabonding Through Labrador and Inside North Dakota. He studies guidebooks, maps, and timetables and plans itineraries.
My car bristles with special gadgets for long-distance road travel: suctioncup compass, fusees, trailer hitch, bug-off sponge, roll-up sun screens, emergency blinker light, service-indicator gauge, panoramic mirrors, glow-in-the-dark dash knobs, wind silencers.
I have all that stuff but I am willing to travel by any conveyance from a burro to a Boeing 707. I have ridden in boxcars with the hoboes from Minneapolis to St. Louis, from Galesburg to La Crosse. I have floated down the Mississippi on a raft from Sinope to Sabula, rowed a boat from Winona to Clinton. Extreme Travel Bugs have walked from New York to Buenos Aires, rowed the Atlantic, and sailed around the world alone in cockleshells. Going from New York to Chicago the dedicated Bug rides the Erie-Lackawanna because it takes so much longer to get there that way.
In spite of constant reading and preparation, I know that the Unexpected lurks around every corner; and that no matter how many illustrated lectures about Shadow Lands of the South Seas I attend, I will never know what it’s like until I plant my foot there.
I also know, and burn with the notion, that getting there is not “half the fun” but three quarters of the fun.
“For my part I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”
There’s the basic, flagrant creed of the Travel Bug. It was written by a victim of the disease who wrote a great travel classic with added frills and thrills called Treasure Island.
“Bridgeport,” she says. “That’s only twenty miles.”
“I don’t care. Let’s go!” I say. I’m getting feverish. “We can stay at the Barnum Hotel, play pool, go to the planetarium, walk in Seaside Park, eat hot dogs . . .”
“If you really want to go someplace,” she says, “why don’t we pack up the car and drive to Kamloops?”
“KAMLOOPS?” I scream. “WOW!” and I rush off to pack my bags, which I have just finished unpacking.
“Round up the kids!” I holler. “Where’s the map book? Where’s the snakebite kit? Where is my bowie knife? Where is Kamloops?”
Frankie explains where Kamloops is. It’s in British Columbia east of Walhachin and west of Shuswap.
Frankie is my wife. She is a large-size blond on the order of Lillian Russell and like Lillian, has a good appetite, which she caters to by being a wonderful cook. This is nice for those in her orbit. Nobody goes to bed hungry. She was born in La Grange, Illinois, and went to her piano lessons in Hinsdale by train. I met her in Exeter, New Hampshire, when she was 13 years old and married her when she was in Boston working for the Fiduciary Trust Company at the ripe old age of 18. Everybody loves Frankie.
Sam and Stasie said they would go along with us. I have three sons and a daughter but the two older boys are doing things like sanding the kitchen floor under the supervision of a wife (that’s Tom) and carrying huge lawbooks around (that’s Nat). They live in New York City although they were born like the others in Dubuque, Iowa, the Heidelberg of the Upper Mississippi. My family came to Dubuque in 1845 and I was the first to leave. And it wasn’t my fault. In Iowa, 1845 means you were a real pioneer, as there was no A & P Store, Ford Garage, or Golf Club.
We were in the wholesale dry goods business and the manufacture of men’s shirts, pajamas, nightshirts, robes, windbreakers, jackets, mackinaws, leather jackets and sheep-lined coats. Years ago we were a big power in the overall business (‘Glover Overalls Since 1857’) but abandoned it and went into the style business. Yet every time Mother and Father were traveling and somebody asked Mother what business they were in she said “Overalls.” This made Father terribly indignant and red in the face.
My daughter Stasie is 18 years old and says she goes to Barnard College in New York City. Her name is Anastasia because it is such a beautiful name and not because of the movie. She is a sprite, petite, about 1/2 the size of her Ma but although not inheriting the luxurious proportions has her old lady’s good looks; but she says she has my nose and doesn’t mean it as a compliment. She is a geology major or, based on the amount of studying she seems to do, a majorette. She has never passed a drugstore in her life without borrowing $2.00 from her Pa for some magazines. She’s the only college girl I ever knew who doesn’t smoke a drop, drinks but seldom, and has never pronounced the word “groovy.” When I was up at Finley Hospital in Dubuque waiting for Stasie to be born, my brother Fred came up to the hospital and said “You must be getting hungry,” and gave me an eggplant sandwich.
Sam looked up Kamloops on the map and started getting the car ready for the trip. He is someplace between 6 and 16 and a good car cleaner. This time while cleaning out he found the following lost articles: 2 tennis balls, 1 library book four months overdue, 2 petrified candy bars, 3 unmatched gloves, a green dog collar and 1/2 pint of Johnnie Walker. Sam goes to school in Colorado at Fountain Valley, where he is taking up the study of football scores and the history of root beer. He is a great kid and has ‘charm’. He knows more people 1/2 hour after hitting a strange town than I would in 1/2 year. I don’t know where he got that charm from; well, obviously from his mother, certainly not from me, as I am known all over as “The Beast of Fairfield County,” or sometimes merely as “The Blob.” Sam plays the trap drums, shoots a mean game of pool, and is an expert at opening pop bottles of all brands.
Both these kids are born travelers and never say “Where are we going?” or “Why can’t I stay home gee whiz I will miss out on Ronnie Barfs pool party three weeks from Friday heck.”
We decided to go to Kamloops via Fairbanks, Alaska, which is like going from South Bend to Chicago via Nova Scotia.
Before we get going let me advise the reader of some of my idiosyncrasies:
I don’t camp out.
I like old towns, old buildings and old places.
I like boats.
I like trains.
I don’t much like planes except as a convenience. Sometimes they are fun especially the eating.
I like motels and motel pools and walking the dog in fields near the motel.
I like old hotels with remnants of grandeur.
I like Pittsburgh.
I don’t fish. One of these days I’m going to learn.
I don’t hunt or shoot off guns and I don’t care to hear about it.
I take my own engine oil along which I get at the Auto Store for 39¢ a quart. This is a bother but a protest against 75¢ oil.
I like any Italian restaurant no matter how poor.
“ “ “ Greek “ “ “ “ “
We travel light but the girls always bring along enough pretty clothes to look nice.
The girls don’t wear hair curlers.
We always take tennis racquets but never get a chance to use them.
I am not rich but then neither am I poor so we eat one big swell meal a day.
Every night I go to the grocery store and buy breakfast for the next morning. We eat in the hotel room, making coffee and getting cold milk and orange pop from the cooler in the car. This adds up to a lousy breakfast but it saves one hour and five or six bucks.
I drive fast on thruways, up to 90.
The fastest I’ve ever driven was 106, on the Indiana Turnpike. Frankie was asleep and didn’t know. It’s too fast.
Frankie is too shy to ask questions so I always have to lean over her and ask the cop where Genesee Street is.
I drive an eight-cylinder Oldsmobile station wagon with a rack on top. Except when I am not in a car.
I always get the local daily papers. I skip the national and international horror news but read all the local farm news and social notes and the want ads.
We eat lunch in the car, beside the road, or off some side road, preferably by a stream.
I like museums of all kinds from mineralogy to Matisse.
I make the others read aloud to me when I’m driving, anything from The Hardy Boys in the Haunted Mine to Geomorpholog y of the Mesabi Range.
I buy souvenirs like rocks and reindeer skins but not ashtrays and rayon pillow tops.
I like bookstores and public libraries.
I am constantly consulting bird guides, flower guides, rock guides — and always fretting because I don’t know anything.
Once a week I take everything out of the car and clean house.
We are enthusiasts. We exclaim a lot. “Look, look over there. Oh too late you missed it. A neat old steam tractor.”
The kids and I like to go to the movies in a strange town.
I like band concerts on the town square.
I like Chinese food.
I like ferryboats.
I don’t like dams.
I like jolly filling station guys and talkative waitresses.
Nothing is so great after a long hot drive in summer as that pool.
We are not gourmets or vintage wine elocutionists.
There will be no notices posted here on which cafe in Calgary serves the most meaningful soufflé of ravigote. Giving other people advice on where to eat is hopeless anyway, it’s like trying to promote a romance.
“Why don’t you take that nice little Whittaker girl if you haven’t got a date?”
“Gee Pop, you mean goony Whittaker? She’s a creep.”
“Well she may be a creep but she’s an awfully pretty one.”
“Pretty! Hoo hah! Listen to that, Stasie. Pop says goony Whittaker is pretty!”
“Don’t get me involved in your problems,” says Stasie, opening another bottle of Coke.
I wish I had some stock in that company.
