How I Conquered the Country, Grew Fat on the Blood of my Subjects, Tired of Absolute Power, Abdicated the Throne, and Returned to my Ancestral Home

This essay was written in 1994 and appeared in Volume 1, Issue 1 of The Inner Swine.

(Or, South Dakota and Back in a Few Short Days)

The trip cross-country is an icon of the American Experience, a dream which has lost none of its attraction with the aging of culture. The Unites States’ Interstate Highway system never fails to fascinate, the concept of going anywhere never fails to boggle the mind. You could fit Europe inside the U.S., and we can drive from one end to another, any time we want. I know it made me giddy. I suppose I had the same romantic vision most people have, just me and Jack Kerouac motoring down empty roads bathed in pure sunshine, eating local food and making new friends, laying the local girls and somehow burning my name into this cold land of ours. I guess I figured it would be like the end of that movie How I Got Into College, where the hero’s friend gets picked up by a group of gameshow hostesses driving around the country in a pink convertible with a U-haul attached full of unclaimed prizes. At some point, I thought, MTV would be secretly filming me for use in one of their videos.

And if not that, then I would have the sort of intense experience that bring about books, that bring about movie rights for the complex, moving tale of a young man finding himself in the heartland of America. I could entitle it Wild Country or Dark Roads or something like that and be hailed as the brooding new artist of the shadows, writing biting commentary about our fellow Americans while still managing an epiphany of wisdom, of sorts. I would come back a changed man, I thought: how could I not?

I’ll tell you how. Because there are more Bob’s Big Boys out there than local diners, because no one living out there gives a shit that you’re driving cross-country and finding yourself, because the cops are all pricks when your license plates aren’t local, because gas is too fucking expensive and the local girls don’t fuck the drifters prowling through like thinned wolves looking for a fire to lay down next to. Because the closest things to friends I made were two drunk guys named Todd and Marty who owned a Chevy Malibu with a rusted tailpipe and a trunk full of beer, because the closest thing to an epiphany of wisdom I managed was the realization that there is absolutely no reason to ever, ever enter Nebraska.

So, I suppose in a way I learned a great deal by attempting to drive cross country, since I now know better than to ever want to do it again.

That’s right, attempting. You see, I tried to do the USA on twenty bucks a day deal, I tried to drive cross-country when I was unemployed and broke, and after staring at Mount Rushmore for a few hours I realized that if I drove all the way out to California I’d be walking home. But let’s not get to that, yet, let’s not get to the dark foray into a pit called Nebraska, let’s not talk about terror and motor oil at 3am. Let’s begin at the beginning and we’ll get to the end eventually.

The Trip: I owned, by chance and luck, a startlingly perfect vehicle for this amazing adventure: a 1978 Chevy Nova, rusty, four doors and a parking brake that was basically theoretical, a leak in the oil line you could push a small rodent through, and a leak in the back windshield that loomed over the coming weeks with a leering, demonic grin. For supplies, I bought Pop-Tarts, seventy-two Pop-Tarts, because I am a strong believer in the Catholic splinter group I founded: The Eternal Power of Pop-Tarts. With a shelf-life just slightly less than forever, and with a million uses some of which no one has encountered yet, there is no situation you cannot solve or in some way placate with Pop-Tarts. If I got hungry, I knew I could eat them. With seventy -two of them, I knew I could eat Pop-Tarts from one side of the country to the other and still have one left over when I got home. If I needed to I could use them as effective insulation against the cold. If I let them harden in the air I could use them as weapons against attackers. If I ate enough of them I would see visions. If I stuffed some into my gas tank I knew that my tired and wheezy 1978 Chevy Nova would roar into life, belching multi-colored and fruit flavored exhaust, purring like a kitten. When people ask me how I did it, I invariably reply: Pop Tarts.

I roared out of this burg on the east coast one hot afternoon with four hundred dollars and a full tank of gas, the aforementioned 72 Pop-Tarts and, I suppose, a few changes of clothes for my Mother’s peace of mind. In fact, I remained relatively clean over my trip mainly because I grew fearless about getting naked in front of strangers. There is simply no way you can wash up in a rest-stop bathroom without getting naked in front of strangers, who will mostly pretend that there isn’t a naked guy washing his hair in the sink next to them. Rest stops are my new salvation, my temples. They are like little parks along the highways, with art exhibits and free coffee, literature, and conversation. There are people there to greet you, to answer questions, give directions. There are vending machines, shining beacons filled to bursting with overpriced Pepsi and Snapple. A man could live a fine life flitting from rest area to rest area, and never stop in a regular town again.

This country is big and beautiful, with gorgeous little roads which meander through hills and farmland. Hills and farmland is what you mostly see when you’re tooling about the country, and Hills and farmland are fine when you’re twelve and on the field trip bus and don’t give a rat’s ass where you’re headed, only that its a) away from school and b) nice scenery. After a day of staring at hills and farmland you can only wish that you never see another hill or another farm as long as you live, you can only vow to gouge both eyes out in self-defense if you wake up the next day and find more hills and farmland. This is, I think, a normal enough response to the overweening beauty of our unspoiled (or at least only moderately spoiled) country and leaves you with only one difficulty: the nature of the interstate highway system brings you past more Hills and Farmland than anything else, except perhaps cows. The only mental defense against this is to speed and sit, hunched, over the steering wheel with a bloody grin on your face and no intention of stopping until you reach Chicago.

In New York State, all I met were lonely convenience store workers who though you’d come into their gas station-slash-mini mart because you could hear the tender keening of their tortured, bereft soul. I drive all day, stopping here and there, eat shitty food (trying to conserve my Pop-Tarts until they’re really needed) and end up low on gas on some county road that doesn’t even lead anywhere, and when I pull into a Gulf station to gas up I don’t want to make friends. This is precisely the atmosphere in which that species of human I will dub The Talkers thrives.

The Talkers are normal-looking but horribly mutated humanoids who lurk in lonely, dark areas of the country. They cannot tolerate large crowds. They cannot accept criticism. What they can, and will, do is talk to you. They will pick the least convenient time, the least interesting subject, the least appropriate place to speak to you, and once you look up and grin that polite grin, they burrow their pointy little heads into your skin and begin to suck.

Now, maybe some of us drive cross country to talk to new and exciting people. I didn’t. If I’d wanted to talk all the way across New York, I would have gone with one of my crummy friends. The Talkers, though, don’t care what you want. Their existence is primarily focussed on them, their crummy opinions and their crummy jokes. They will sneak up on you in the Gas N’ Sip, right by the microwave in the back, and catch your attention with a slight smile, or a nod. You nod back, and it happens. The Talker begins to talk. He begins to tell you how he’s worked in that Gas N’ Sip for thirteen years. You smile slightly and say, wow. He shakes his head and says he’s seen it all, a lot of weird things. Uh-huh, you say, searching for beef burritos. He says he could tell you a tale or two and before you know it you’re standing at the register and he’s just talking to you, on and on, and because Mom raised you right you just keep nodding and grunting. Time goes by, and you can feel yourself getting weaker and weaker, your will to go on wilting. Or maybe you’re ringing up gas and snacks, and the girl behind the register begins to complain. Complainers are just a subspecies of The Talkers. She will tell you she’d been working since six in the morning, which in case you were interested is an 18 hour shift, that she has to drive down to Albany in the morning and then be back there at noon to work another 10 hour shift. All this while she holds your Doritos hostage, all this while you just want to scream and smack her, hard, across the face.

The Talkers will talk, I have found, until you are rude. You will simply have to swallow air and belch forth attitude until they get angry and pissily hustle you out of their domain. It might seem unduly mean-spirited, but only until you find yourself in the same situation, believe me. When you glance at your watch and it says one oh seven a.m. and you pulled in for a Big Gulp twenty-seven minutes ago and have been hearing about all the times Ernie there behind the counter’s been robbed in his tenure as night manager of the Route Twenty Seven-Eleven, you get rude quick.

Between New York and Illinois, I don’t remember too much, really. Just more rolling fields of green and hallucinatory levels of heat as I trundled down the highways under the heartless sun. I can recall Todd and Marty, who may have been a hallucination or perhaps ghosts, haunting Route Twenty (Ohio’s Route Twenty, not to be confused with New York’s Route Twenty, or any of the other Route Twenties this great land has to offer). Perhaps it is no secret that the interstate highway system in this country is not quite finished yet. Ssssh! There are roads on the maps that aren’t there yet, there are roads on the maps that end before they’re supposed to. And every road in this land of ours is under repair, and has been for decades.

I met Marty and Todd while cruising the peaceful side of Ohio, just emptiness and Amish country, and the only nuclear reactor I’ve ever seen up close. This one had big bellowing clouds of black smoke pouring from it; I’m not sure if it was supposed to be doing that, but it was. If I bear X-men for children, you alone will know why. Suddenly, at a point where Route Twenty turns into a two-lane dustbowl going by places which look like they were built in the worse times just before the better times, traffic stopped, and about ten cars or so found themselves waiting for workcrews to move an uncooperative bulldozer off the road. I was behind a grey Malibu, badly painted (just like my Nova!) and in need of serious body work (just like my Nova!). After idling for a few minutes, it was obvious to all of us that we weren’t going anywhere, not really, and we all cut our engines and got out, because if we had been parked in molten lava it would have been cooler outside than in our cars. Todd and Marty were gangly, cheerful Tokers in jeans and tye-dyes, who greeted me with a more than polite good cheer, walked determinedly to their trunk, and popped it open to reveal a literal trunkload of Coors. There are several types of people in the world, and I have narrowed it down to 3. We are all one of three basic types, and this incident clearly illustrates that: one type of person debates the wisdom of keeping your beer in the veritable oven your car trunk becomes on the highways. A second type of person wonders what kind of moron drinks and drives that much. The third type is simply disgusted the moment they read the word Coors, thinking that if your going to buy that much beer, at least buy beer you can drink.

At any rate, Marty and Todd were friendly, and offered beer to the half dozen or so stranded drivers, and we passed the half hour we were stuck in high spirits, drinking beer under the harsh Ohio sun, listening to Marty and Todd convince each other that there would be some sort of wisdom in moving out to California with only a trunkload of beer to their name. The road cleared, we all got back into our cars, and I for one have yet to see or hear of Marty and Todd again.

From this point on I entered what I call the Great Zone of Nothing in Ohio. It is a dark era in my trip’s history, a painful memory. It is the point where I almost starved to death right there in my car, right there on route twenty. Of course, that’s melodrama. I had my Pop-Tarts. I couldn’t starve.

The Great Zone of Nothing was a stretch of about four hours of absolutely nothing but dazzling scenery and empty horizons. I have photos of this expanse, pictures I took while driving (believe me, you could drive like you had nothing to lose in the Zone and nothing would happen —the likelihood of seeing another car was somewhere between doubtful and laughable) photos which, when I show them to my crummy friends, inevitably get the reaction “Hey -I don’t see anything in this picture”. I just nod my head heavily. “Exactly.” I say. “Exactly!”

I drove through the Zone from ten in the morning until two in the afternoon one hot day and by the end of it I was feverish and desperate for a place to pull over. But there was nothing. No restaurants, no gas stations, no people. I screamed and grunted, I speeded and cursed, I invoked ancient familial incantations designed to bring forth the most horribly evil spirits in the netherworld, simply because I needed the companionship. And by two in the afternoon I was starving for a bite of lunch. Even a 7-11 burrito would have been a Godsend, at that point. I became afraid that I had been swallowed up by the Zone, that I had become just another part of the nothing, unseen by traveling eyes, ignored by the waking world. And then I finally saw a sign for I-90.

Now, let’s not confuse The Great Zone of Nothing with Nebraska, though the similarity is strong. The Zone is merely that, a section of emptiness in Ohio that I happened to get lost in for a while during my ill-advised tour of that state. (“Want to see different Amish people than the ones in your home state? Come to Ohio!”) Nebraska is an entire state. It has a large population, and, supposedly, several large cities. Somehow, in my nightmarish ride through Nebraska, I failed to meet any of them. If Ohio houses a Great Zone of Nothing, then Nebraska is must be a Black Hole, so empty there’s just no room for anything. That only makes sense to me, I think, but then I’m the one who’s been to this shadowy Ur-Nebraska, so whatever I say goes.

I guess the circumstances of my arrival in the Black Hole colored my perception of it somewhat. I had arrived at Mount Rushmore with the fresh realization that I was broke much, much sooner than I had ever expected to be, and that left me with two choices: turn around or get a job in California. So, I spurned California. I hung around Mount Rushmore to see the lighting ceremony (in my opinion Washington’s sculpture looks nothing like Washington) and then I hopped in my car and drove, literally, into the wilderness. I saw an interesting looking turn, and I took it in the full spirit of my trip. This was what I’d intended to do, this was the whole idea: getting lost on purpose. I was tattered and weary and close to broke, but I was hurtling into the Black Hills without a clue as to where I was going. It was fun for about an hour. Then I started to get sleepy, I started to wonder where I was going to sleep that night, I started to wonder if those “Cow-Crossing” signs were meant to be taken seriously. They were. I decided this was the case after a Cow loomed up in front of my car so quickly as to give me mental whiplash, so that every time I turned a curve from then on I had nightmare visions of Cow chewing cud, sleeping in the middle of the highway.

By the time I realized how badly lost I was, I had already entered the Black Hole without realizing it. Instead of the dense forests of the Black Hills, there was: corn. And only corn. Corn as far as the eye could see, which admittedly wasn’t too far in the near-total darkness. All through this, I played a tape a friend of mine had made for my trip, and the ghostly voice of Steve Miller took on an hypnotic rhythm, a terrifyingly chant-like tone:

“My Grandpa he’s ninety-five

He keeps on dancin’, he’s still alive;

My Grandma, she’s ninety-two,

She still dances, and sings some too

I don’t know, but I been told

If you keep on dancing you’ll never grow old”

Over and over and over. I admit it was me rewinding the tape, but I don’t think it was my decision.

If this were not freaky enough for you, then I have a trump card. You may recall a mention of my car’s amazing ability to leak stupendous amounts of oil on a steady basis: this is the payoff. While travelling the Black Hole in desperation, near madness from the dark and the corn and the velvet tones of Steve Miller, my oil light comes on and stares at me, angry red, pulsing with quiet insistence and it was saying just one thing, over and over again: pull over and put oil in the car, monkeyboy, or you’ll have a whole new definition of “black hole” when this engine seizes up and turns into one. I pulled over, I killed the engine, and then I sat there, for a moment, listening.

Nothing. Nothing but corn, swaying in the strong wind. Nothing but that.

What followed were perhaps the most intensely irrational moments of my life, a time when I was thoroughly convinced that I was about to be murdered by the several hundred ghoulies and boogies I thought had been left behind years ago. I performed what may be the fastest oil operation in the known history of old cars, dashing into the forsaken night to rip open my hood, pour two quarts of 10W-30 into the engine, and then dive back into the car with my heart pounding and a chill slime of sweat all over my body. I can’t say that I envisioned wolves, prowling the back roads, or that I had a Children of the Corn flash (especially since I’ve never seen the movie) but I was definitely terrified. Sounds bad, huh? Sounds like no fun at all, you think? Now, imagine that it’s not just a small area, not just a “zone” of terror, but an entire state. A Black Hole, a sinkhole of fear and silence and swaying corn, an endless expanse of emptiness called Nebraska.

I have never driven so far so fast, all in the name of getting the hell out of Nebraska. By light of day it wasn’t terrifying, it was just empty. So empty you wonder that Nebraska has any Representatives in Congress at all. I can recall sitting in my car just outside of Lincoln, reading my Fodor’s Guide to the USA, and reading that there are over a million people in Nebraska. And I thought: well, they must all be in Lincoln enjoying cable TV, because there ain’t one of them back in the Hole with the corn.

Now, I am back in the lap of luxury on the east coast, where we have invented streetlights and no highway strays far from an industrial park. We don’t have any cornfields, and nobody drives cross-country to get here. What have I learned from this experience? I’ve learned that you can’t eat Pop-Tarts every day and keep your good humor. I’ve learned that you can’t bring enough albums to keep yourself from the blues. You can’t sleep in your car and expect to feel good. You can’t make it across the country with $400. I learned that Des Moines, Iowa is the nicest city in the world, even though it’s citizens are going mad with boredom. But most of all, I learned the one thing I gladly traded my summer away for, the one bit of wisdom I will doubtless cherish for years to come, that will doubtless inspire me in dark times: there is absolutely no reason to ever, ever enter Nebraska.