TOO MUCH FIGHTING ON THE DANCEFLOOR

What I would call ghost towns, are somehow still inhabited.

Like Afton, Oklahoma.

Tumbleweed actually blows down the main streets and long deserted red bricked banks, fire-stations, bar-brawl saloons and ballrooms are now served by one still-open grocery store.

We walked into one to ask for directions and an autograph book was thrust in our faces. A man with long, dyed-black hair, a double-digit broken nose and covered head to boot in denim (even his eyes had a stonewash blue hue) asked where we were from…

“England” I replied.

“You wanna buy a meat grinder?” he enquired, holding one out with his left hand as though it was the most normal question in the world.

THIS AIN’T KANSAS

Route 66 is full of kitsch tat, leftovers, curios and bric-a-brac. Exactly the kind of shit that Natalie loves.

Antique shops full to the brim with rusted old school lunchboxes, old licence plates, signs, 78rpm records (like the ones my mum gave me as I’m the only one in the family with a working “gramophone” - you know, the ones which you can’t play unless you have a hole-extension) dolls, gollywogs, broken bikes, kid’s cowboy pop-guns, 1940’s games and hundred year old photographs which make you think about dead people’s lives and just how ugly women were at the advent of photography. In actual fact I do quite like looking at all that stuff, but not all the time… for me the geography and people of the land are more important… The Knight Rider lunchbox was pretty cool though, but maybe only as it reminds me of my own Hasslehoff-like, thousand yard stare when I’ve had too little sleep, which is becoming nearly every night.

And we all know what happens when my insomnia hits…

Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, the year that Natalie was born and replaced by five Interstates, or Superslabs. Sometimes we take the replacement interstate and sometimes the old Mother Road which arcs into Kansas briefly. We hopped off Interstate 44 and onto the 400 to follow Route 66 passed a banana bridge constructed in the 1920’s; before the road came into being. We whizzed passed it at high speed.

In Kansas, we stopped in Gallena before making our way into Oklahoma, unfortunately missing the Spook Lights of Joplin. Strange balls of light that levitate above roads. Not cos we got lost, but because we arrived in daylight. However, that said sometimes the old route is not signposted at all, leaving it to your own imagination and internal compass. As a result we have taken wrong turns and bumped along farm tracks, while dark storm clouds gather over coloured carbon copies of Aunt Em’s farm.

If we saw a Tin Man, he would definitely feel at home in our giant baked-bean can. If he was searching for a heart, the lion for courage and the scarecrow for a brain, then what the hell am I searching for?

I’ve come to think I’m searching for something to search for…

Or something worth finding.

I think I found her.

Is that just plain old crazy?

Need.

Sleep.

MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS

Missouri begins with the city of St. Louis, where the famed Gateway Arch overlooks the Mississippi like a giant advertisement for a new fast food restaurant… NcDonalds.

Think about it, you'l get there in the end.

We got lost on the confusing intersections and drove through the hood once again to get our bearings. Although we are in the Mid-West, it feels like we were back in the Deep South. People sit, occasionally waving at us from their wooden porches as we pass and Creole-sounding street names have reappeared. They say this is where the South begins, and it really rings true.


We drove miles out of the way to get petrol and stopped at a famer's market for bread, cheese and oranges. That's all we need; food, petrol, map, each other and the sun.

Some miles along the road we stopped at antique shops in the hometown of the first battle of the Civil War, Carthage.

In the west of that town lies the Route 66 Drive-in theatre, which was showing The Fast and The Furious later that Friday night, but was closed when we pulled up; slow but still a little miffed.


We stopped in Carterville, Missouri, home of the Route 66 Superman Museum.


But it was closed.

In the town of Webb City, north of Joplin, we happened across a small-town fair, complete with funfair rides, candy floss and a real Indian selling dreamcatchers and T-Shirts emblazoned with Native Americans and reading “Homeland Security… Protecting America since 1492”

On a stage in the town square a local barbershop quartet crooned to a crowd of twenty five, all seated in school chairs. They were pretty good. It was the kind of town funfair that pregnant teenagers wander round on that weekend every year and every year it is rained off.

Will they never learn?

GET YOUR KICKS

We joined Route 66 in Dwight, south of Chicago and immediately our souls were buoyed.

We stopped for photo-opportunities at a characteristic road-side diner and disused gas stations, alternating the superslab for old R66 to make sure we get back to California as quick as we could.

In the capital city of Springfield, Illinois lies the tomb of our second assassinated President; lawyer and soldier Abraham Lincoln.

I don’t know that much about his life, perhaps I’ll read up, but I do know he helped abolish slavery, which makes him alright in my book.

In his impressive mausoleum, we joined a party of school kids on a field trip and were treated to a guided tour of his final resting place and the fascinating story of how a gang plotted to steal Lincoln’s body, but a co-conspirator got drunk and blurted the plan to a whore. By the next morning, the whole town knew of the plot. Thinking about assassinated Presidents and the like, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, Martin Luther King by James Earl Ray… do all assassins have three names?


That night we stayed at Beaver Dam State Park in Illinois as a treat after all the car parks, to refuel with electricity and to use the dump station. A tall wooden pier stood overlooking a midge infested lake so we watched a Canada Goose rearranging her nest; keeping her eggs warm.


Anyway it’s time to go to bed. Those fireside baked potatoes have made me sleepy.

Signing off… Will Howell-Cornes

FNG

Drawn to the hood like flies around shit, we parked in the ghetto yet again and placing the RV on craigslist.com and eBay, we waited a couple of days to hear absolutely nothing from either… Spending the days trying to post and repost on craigslist in Panera Bread (free wifi and great pumpkin muffins) we got bored so went and got drunk in an Irish bar, just missing Arsenal and Liverpool’s 4-4 draw but joining in with the regulars watching Cash Cab.

A few people called in answer to the for sale sign on the truck, including the police, who left us a lovely $50 fine for “selling a vehicle on a commercial property” A quick trip to the cop shop, and using her new-found confidence and charm which has finally rubbed off on my partner in crime, a nice lady-cop let Natalie off on account of her being from England. By way of a receipt she gave Natalie a photocopy of the ticket and wrote FNG in big letters.

Found Not Guilty.

After a whistle stop in Downtown Chicago, we had a great, sunny day at Lincoln Park Zoo, with my favourite animals being the Sand Cats, which I didn’t even know existed. I haven’t been to a zoo in about 15 years, I think. I find it cruel to see big cats and polar bears locked behind cages bored and pacing. It was like looking in a mirror, they reminded me of us, of our lives… bored and stagnant.

So we decided to head back to LA along Route 66 as we believe that we’ll have more luck selling our behemoth in California. Setting out early evening we immediately had a sense of purpose. It would cost us God-knows-how-much in gasoline, but at least we had a plan. 150 miles out someone called wanting to buy the van, they were four hours north of Chicago and we were south, so we had to leave it and just take it as a good sign that someone will eventually buy it.

WITNESS

Driving west on the 90 through Indiana we were detoured from the main highway along some smaller roads. At first this unrehearsed ball-ache seeemd like it was cutting into our time yet it turns out, as the saying goes, that sometimes the journey ellipses the destination and on this occasion it truly did. from the point on, we made a vow to each other, we would not scramble back cross-country at such a break-neck speed.

We saw a real, living Amish person doing road maintenance in the town of LaGrange and then drove through several Amish towns eventually settling in Shipshewana. With a curious mix of new meets old, black, horse drawn carriages clip-clopped passed cars or pulled up next to petrol pumps.

The "plain people" as they are known are tri-lingual, speaking English, High German and Pennsylvanian-Dutch though here it is with a Swiss dialect. Amish children in traditional dress rode bikes or played volleyball in headscarves, hats and dungarees no doubt before a dinner of cooked ham shoulders and potato salad served with hunks of crusty bread while the townsfolk sang Christian hymns and built barns in a day.

It was a refreshing change to the Interstate, a glimpse of something different from The United States of Generica, our new name for this secured wifi, mall-infested country.

No sign of Harrison Ford or any evidence the Amish are good at bowling though.

As the sun set on another day we made our way towards South Bend and then onto Chicago.

EVERYTHING MUST GO

So its time to sell the RV, our home for the past two months.
Truth be told, I can’t wait to see the back of it.
Here is the advert we put on craigslist.com