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John Sheirer
Going Home
Part 2
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My trip begins on December 30, 2002 at 7:30 a.m. It's still pretty dark, but the sun will be coming up soon. Even in the poor light, I can see that there's a lot of blue in the sky, along with a few feathery clouds. Snow fell here on Christmas and a couple of days afterward, recent enough that there's still lots of white in middle of the fields. The roads are dry and safe, and the snow along the edges has that dirty brown and gray look from the interaction of mud and cars.
Ten minutes into the trip, I realize that I forgot to leave the landlord my rent check at the usual place near my front door. I'll be gone until the evening of January second, and the people who own my house are always there on the first to get the rent. Maybe because it's a holiday, they won't come by until the second. And I've paid them early a few times, so I don't think there will be an eviction notice on the door when I return.
I've gone through more money during this holiday season than I should have. In addition to the usual gift buying, I loaned money to a friend to get her computer fixed. And I took the car in yesterday for a $25 oil change that ended up costing $150. They always tell me about things needing flushed and lubed, and I usually ask if it can wait until my next visit. This time, I told them to go ahead. Maybe my car (a little ten-year-old Geo Tracker) doesn't really need the work, but it's a long trip, and I don't look forward to the possibility of sitting along the roadside in the middle of the night waiting for AAA while my toes get frostbitten. For the recent trip with Ginny and her kids, we rented that ridiculously huge SUV that cost more per day than the cabin did. I shudder to imagine how tight my funds will be when I get back to Connecticut in a few days.
So I certainly could save the money that this trip will cost. But I can't resist the compulsion to return any more than I could have resisted the compulsion to leave that I felt nearly thirty years ago when I realized for the first time that there was more to life than my parents and my sisters and Wills Mountain and gardens and haybales and my schoolmates and basketball.
* * *
I'm leaving a great deal behind on this trip. Most important, I'm leaving Ginny behind. We've been seeing each other for eight months now, and this is the first time we are voluntarily going to be apart for more than two days. I'm also leaving my career behind. I still have a little class planning to finish for the start of the next semester, just three weeks away. I'm also leaving behind the draft of an English department report that I promised to pull together for my colleagues when we get together two weeks from now. And I'm leaving behind my idea of the perfect vacation: just sitting around the house and not going to work--reading, writing, watching TV, napping, walking, tinkering around the house, going to the gym--all at my own pace. This is the most restful kind of vacation imaginable, partly because it doesn't involve a sixteen-hour round-trip drive in my rattling little car--like the trip I'm setting out on this morning.
* * *
I'm on the road for barely three minutes when someone crosses over the double line on Route 190 and nearly sideswipes me. The guy had scratched out a six-inch viewing portal from the frost on his windshield. I could see him leaning over his steering wheel and squinting through the tiny hole. His side and back windows are completely iced over, and he has snow piled up on his bumper hiding his brake lights.
When I was a kid, I had four dream careers for what to be when I grew up: basketball player, football player, baseball player, or police officer. If I had fulfilled the fourth dream, I would pull this jerk over and drag him to jail.
* * *
Today's drive should take about eight hours. I'll go through Hartford, Waterbury, and Danbury, Connecticut--then southern New York State--then northeast Pennsylvania through Scranton--then across the rural heart of Pennsylvania--then southwest to my destination in Bedford County. I've brought along lots of CDs and a book on tape: A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson's account of hiking the Appalachian Trail (which I'll cross in southern New York).
I've listened to hundreds of books on tape during my driving lifetime, and I couldn't begin a trip like this without a good one. Bill Bryson is one of my favorite writers. He's funny and serious, whimsical and meaningful, humane and sarcastic--all at the same time. I'm hoping that his words will inspire me to write about my trip.
* * *
After my detour to McDonalds, I go a few miles along the "southern shortcut," a rural back route from my house leading to Route 91, a major interstate that leads south to Hartford, Connecticut, the state capital.
Hartford is a nice but generic city famous as the hub of the insurance industry. Less well known is the fact that poet Wallace Stevens worked for decades in that same Hartford insurance community. I puzzled over Stevens's poems for one semester during graduate school, and that experience gave me a great deal of empathy for my students who hate trying to figure out the mysteries of poetry. Even more obscure is the fact that Mark Twain, a writer more closely associated with southern literature, lived in Hartford from 1871 to 1891. Twain did his most significant writing while a resident of Hartford, including such classics as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi, and (appropriately) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The Twain House still stands and is a first-rate museum and historical landmark.
I've gone to plays and concerts in Hartford, given presentations at academic conferences at the city's several colleges and universities, and watched my favorite sports team (the University of Connecticut's national-champion women's basketball team) play in the Civic Center. The central office of the state community college system that employs me is here. Still, I fell no real connection to Hartford. More than anything else, it's a place for me to drive around or through to get somewhere else.
In Hartford, I switch from Route 91 South to Route 84 West. A few minutes later, I pass the town of Plainville, where my ex-girlfriend Amy grew up and where her parents still live. They're wonderful people who always treated me well during the few years of my on-and-off relationship with their daughter. As sad as I was about that relationship not working out, I was also sad about losing her parents' friendship. Even an orphan as old as I am responds to parents. I have the urge to get off the exit in Plainville and visit them--but I resist. They'd probably look at me like I was crazy. But then they'd offer me some food. That's the kind of people they are.
Soon after, I pass Bristol, the home of ESPN television and radio. Although I'm not an "ESPN junkie," as are some men I know, my radio is preprogrammed to their station, and I often fall asleep and wake up to their sports reports on television. I would have thought I was in heaven if a network like that existed when I was a sports-loving kid.
Route 84 then takes me though Waterbury. I know some terrific people who teach at the community college in Waterbury. But to me, this is an ugly city with some ugly people, including a former mayor who is currently jailed and awaiting trial for being involved in sexual relationships with minors. This horrible mess was plastered all over the news a year ago, and has popped up again now as the legal maneuvering continues. Maybe it's no coincidence that Waterbury has one of the most hideous phallic clock towers I've ever seen.
Waterbury is also the home city of Connecticut's governor John Rowland. I'm a state worker, and Rowland is technically my boss, so I'm not allowed to do political campaigning while on the job. But when my students asked me whom they should vote for in last November's gubernatorial election, I had a very hard time keeping my mouth shut.
I asked them if they liked coming to the community college. They all said yes. I asked them if they'd like to see the community colleges stay open and get proper funding. They all said yes. Then I told them that one candidate for governor supports the community colleges and one doesn't. They all nodded, but I don't think many of them voted because Rowland was re-elected easily. A few weeks after the election, he announced another round of budget cuts that included layoffs of thousands of state workers--including some of my colleagues at Asnuntuck.
So driving past Waterbury always gets me a little worked up. Pennsylvania, like most states in the union, supports its community colleges because they provide low-cost, high-quality education and training for the state's citizens. Connecticut, under Rowland's leadership, tries to close the community colleges or merge them with the state universities. As I drive past Rowland's home town, I force myself to remember that many good people must live here, and I try not to lift my middle finger in greeting.
From there, it's on to Danbury, the last town in Connecticut on the route. There's a great highway rest area here, hidden away in the woods with lots of trees and clean, well-maintained facilities. But it's only for travelers entering Connecticut, not those on the way out like I am. On the way home, I'll be sure to stop here and jog around in the cold temperature to keep from falling asleep during the last leg of the trip.
* * *
In just over ninety minutes of driving, I've left Connecticut and entered New York State about an hour north of New York City, the lower part of "upstate" New York. Predictably, I'm tasting the McDonald's breakfast again. I should have had a couple of bananas instead.
I once made the mistake of stopping at a rest area off Route 84 in this part of New York at night and was propositioned by one man and offered drugs by another. Since then, I hold my bladder for the hour or so it takes to get through to Pennsylvania. Halfway across, there are huge prison facilities on both sides of highway. I'm used to seeing prisons but not ones like this. One section looks like an old hospital or college campus with a mix of modern and traditional buildings. The prison has a beautiful valley view from its hillside, and I'm sure I'd enjoy teaching there if it actually were a college.
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