[Before you begin, I just want to say that this is an account of American humanity, and not of landscapes or cities. I saw the sunrise over the Utah salt flats, and I watched it set on snow-lacquered peaks west of Cheyenne, and it was goddamn beautiful, but I’m not about to write poetry about it. I saw small towns, mountain towns, prairie towns (“Real America”), railroad junctions, trains that chugged along parallel to the highway for miles and miles, so long you got bored and stopped watching for the caboose. I saw dilapidated and depressed cities that were once thriving and clean. I could write a lot about vague American ideals and dead Americans dreams, but I’m not. I’m just going to tell you about the people. Please don’t judge them as harshly as I did. They’re Americans, after all, and don’t know any better.]
And that claim is, by the right of our manifest destiny, to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.
—John L. Sullivan, New York Morning News, 1845
U.S.A. is the slice of a continent…U.S.A. is the world’s greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains and hills, U.S.A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts. U.S.A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U.S.A. is the letters at the end of an address when you are away from home. But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people.
—John Dos Passos
THE GREAT EXPERIMENT
It felt good to have my feet on American soil again, and to see road signs in English, and order food in complete sentences. But I’d landed in San Francisco, and my home is in New England, 3,000 or so miles away. I thought I’d take a bus.
A what?
A bus.
A what?
You know, a Greyhound. Coast to coast.
But why? Why would you do that to yourself?
I’ve never seen much of the fabled “heartland.” I’ve flown over it a couple times. Looked pretty flat for the most part. From seven miles up I saw the Rocky Mountains, an uneven and disorienting panorama, cliffs and ice. Saw some rivers, too. All I really expected from the trip was some beautiful scenery, and at least in that sense, I wasn’t disappointed. I wanted to be able to say that I’d crossed America on wheels. And now I can. And maybe that was worth it.
(Besides which, I’d just been flying around and between two continents for five months, and didn’t want to push my luck with air travel. Something happens to that aluminum tube going 500 miles an hour, at 35,000 feet, you die. That’s it, man. You’re dead. At least when a bus jumps a guardrail into a canyon, you might get thrown clear of the wreckage.)
So I bought a ticket to Washington, DC. An old friend of mine, goes by the name of Gary, had been living and working there and said he’d be happy to have me. I was going to see America and end up in its capital. That seemed fitting. Maybe I’d learn something along the way about this country and my fellow citizens.
(I learned many things, most of them horrible and disheartening.)
The really unfortunate part of this adventure was that I had to ride a bus full of other people, and that I had to ride a bus. If you learn anything from me, it’s that you should attempt a trans-American ride only by car, and only with a good friend or two. Because even though your ticket says you have exactly four (4) transfers, it says nothing about the dozen or so other stops along the way, in lifeless towns, pulling into bus stations at obscene nighttime hours for refueling, where (company policy) you must leave the bus and wait inside. And also because, even if you think people are basically kind-hearted and welcoming, you are wrong, or, at the very least, your idealism should not extend to include the typical Greyhound passenger.
ITINERARY
Begin: 1 PM, Thursday, June 3, San Francisco
End: Noon, Sunday, June 6, Washington, DC
A list of stops along the way, for food, refueling, transfers, etc.
San Francisco–>Oakland–>Sacramento–>Reno–>Battle Mountain–>Wendover–>Salt Lake City–>Rock Springs–>Evanston–>Denver–>Colby–>Salina–>Topeka–>Kansas City–>St. Louis–>Effingham–>Indianapolis–>Columbus–>Pittsburgh–>Hagerstown–>Frederick –>Baltimore–>Washington, DC
This list is incomplete because some towns were so miserable and desolate that I forgot their names as soon as the bus pulled away, or else we reached them in the middle of the night and I couldn’t force myself to give enough of a shit while half asleep to remember the name.
EATING ON THE ROAD
I survived almost four days on 12 ounces of beef jerky (teriyaki flavored), an 8 oz stick of salami, and a loaf of whole wheat bread that I bought from a grocer in San Francisco. (And one small bag of Reese’s Pieces that I bought in Wyoming just because.) I think I was showing the first signs of scurvy by the time we reached Pittsburgh. The reason for this palate-numbing and nutritionally questionable menu was the equally unappetizing alternatives; McDonald’s, whatever crap I could buy and microwave at convenience stores, or overpriced hamburgers at some of the bus terminals, hamburgers I imagined as thin limp patties soaking the buns through with grease. No, for me it was: take a bite of salami, take a bite of bread, chew together, swallow. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Jerky for dessert.
By the way, someone at McDonald’s has definitely bribed the higher-ups at Greyhound. McDonald’s was literally the only fast food joint the bus would stop at, for the entire trip, in every state, even when some regional curiosity (a Waffle House, a White Castle, a Carl’s Jr.) was advertised on the same interstate exit sign. Serious dietary collusion here.
MY FELLOW AMERICANS
I’d returned to the United States not long after a stint of volunteering in Ho Chi Minh City. This experience ratcheted my faith in humanity to levels I previously believed impossible. I saw things in Vietnam, wonderful things that neared the philosophically-pure definition of altruism, and met so many kind and beautiful people, and it only took the first day and a half on a bus to lay all my goodwill to waste.
Initially my greatest concern was making it to Washington un-decapitated. There was a seriously unfortunate incident on a Canadian Greyhound, maybe two years ago now, where a schizophrenic passenger hacked off with a sizeable knife the head of his sleeping neighbor, who, please note, did not have the good luck to sleep entirely through his own beheading. The screaming awakened the bus, and while most fled out the front, the few who tried to help were apparently slashed at, reconsidered their rescue attempt, and quickly followed the others out to safety. The headsman, so to speak, spent the next while wandering up and down the bus, showing off the head to those holding the doors closed from the outside, and saving bits of the dead man’s features in his pockets, apparently as snacks. Obviously this story made an impression on me. I was going to be damned careful about who I fell asleep next to, and I’m relieved it wasn’t an issue. (This time.)
The Great Disheartening, let’s call it, begins in San Francisco as I’m waiting in the terminal. A very old man, stooped, long white beard, leathery bags under rheumy eyes, asks the next guy if he had been waiting there, or had he maybe cut the line? The old man speaks politely, slowly, and the question elicited the following exchange:
—Don’t even fuckin talk to me. I don’t give a fuck.
—But isthat your luggage? It wouldn’t be fair if…
—Fuck you. Y’all motherfuckas need to recognize I ben here since ten-thirdy. Back the fuck up.
—Now, there’s no need to talk like that. I just thou…
—Ben here since ten fuckin thirdy. Man, fuckin…
—I was asking, that’s all. You don’t need to…
—Shut the fuck up.
There is also, just in front of me, a very drunk, goateed man in a leather jacket, lying on the floor asleep next to a tall can of beer. Remember it’s about 12:30 in the afternoon. After awhile he sits up and starts asking people if this is the bus to Sacramento. He asks the same way every time:
—Yo! Yo homie! Hey…hey homie…is this the bus to Sacramento?
And is universally ignored. He then starts rambling in what sounds part-gangster rap, part-completely insane gibberish. There are a lot of “fucks” and that’s about all I pick up.
—Hey…hey…
He gets a woman’s attention standing in front of him. She is large and red-faced, a big fleecy blanket draped over her shoulders. On the blanket is a bald eagle flying (majestically, of course) in front of an American flag. The woman glances down. He holds up two middle fingers.
—Fuck you! Hah HAAAAAAAAAAAH! Fuckyoufuckyou.
She chuckles. Soon a security guard shows up and asks “Oh, choo got there? A beer?” (To their credit, there is a strict no drugs or alcohol policy on Greyhound.) The man hides the can under his coat. The security guard, motioning to the man’s open backpack, asks “And what ya got in there?” The man puts a finger to his lips, shushes, then opens the pack wider to reveal a plastic baggie full of weed. Needless to say, the man did not make the bus to Sacramento.
Curiously enough, the old man and the angry guy make amends before we board.
—I’m sorry I said that to you. I shouldn’t have…
—No, no. That’s all right. I was stepping on your toes…
—Nah, man, I shoulda shown more respect.
—You know, I’m 80 years old. I’ve been riding these buses since they were a lot less comfortable…
And all is well. It was one of a few stray moments of grace that saved the bus and its passengers from perdition.
SACRAMENTO
One man, dubbed Jersey Man, got on at San Francisco and never sat more than two seats away from me until we parted ways in Pittsburgh. Jersey Man was trying to get home to whatever putrid New Jersey cesspool had spawned him decades earlier. His face was gray and puffy and pock-marked. His hair was long, stringy and greasy, and he had on a trucker’s hat which he never removed. He was tall and his belly tumid and straining his t-shirt. He limped (an inflamed ankle that he kept stretched out in the aisle).
Jersey Man was joined in Sacramento by Sleeveless Redneck and SR’s significant other, Loudmouth. SR wore a (sleeveless) plaid shirt, and his arms were inked with poorly considered and shoddily executed tattoos. (The universally low quality of tattoos on bus passengers suggested ex-cons, but I can’t prove that.) . SR and L actually had the bus recalled to the terminal to pick them up after the bus had left, after, in fact, we had already reached the onramp for I-80. I assume no one at the terminal wanted to deal with Loudmouth for any longer than they had to, and so took the extraordinary step of recalling the bus. This did not endear L and SR to their fellow passengers, especially Jersey Man, who had to painfully reposition himself to allow SR to sit beside him.
The two fell into small talk:
—Where ya headed?
—New Jersey.
—Oh yeah? Vacation?
—I grew up there. Movin outta San Francisco.
—Yeah? Lookin fer work?
—Yeah, nothin left in San Francisco. Plus I’m gettin tired of these faggots everywhere…
—I hear ya, brother.
—…every street corner…
RENO
The Reno terminal was full of down-and-out gamblers, toothless junkies and dissolute women, and was a low point in the trip’s sampling of humanity. We had a change of drivers, and the new driver began his announcements with:
—Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. This is Greyhound flight 13-14, overnight service to Salt Lake City.
If he seemed to have a sense of humor about his work, he dispelled the illusion soon after by promising that if anyone talks loud enough so he can hear it at the wheel, or in any way misbehaves, he’d pull the bus over, kick you off (Greyhound gives drivers the right to do so), and leave you with your bags at the side of the road. He said he does this, on average, to three people a night. If you have an alcoholic drink at one of the rest stops, or attempt to bring alcohol onto the bus, he will call the state troopers. If you are on drugs, or if you attempt to bring drugs onto the bus, he will call the DEA. He doesn’t mind having you arrested, he explains, because he’s paid more to appear in court than he is driving buses.
At this point Loudmouth makes good on her reputation. Up till now, she’s been yelling things to SR several seats up and holding a high-decibel conversation with her neighbors. She yells to the bus driver “DO YOU SING SONGS?” right in the middle of his announcements. “All right,” he says “That’s one.” The bus swerves to curbside. “Ma’am, grab your bags.” He is looking at her in the mirror and I can see his death-stare. “Oh…he’s serious? ARE YOU SERIOUS?” asks Loudmouth. “Ma’am! I am serious. Grab your bags.” But a rapid apology from L and the bus pulls back onto the highway. Loudmouth remains so quiet from that moment forward that I’m not even sure at what city she finally disembarked.
SALT LAKE CITY
There was a middle-aged woman who kept pirouetting and humming. She mentioned matter-of-factly that she was Judy Garland’s understudy. “Oh she was a star!” the woman told us. Later, when she found an extra quarter in the coffee machine’s coin return, she sang:
We’re in the money
We’re in the money
La laa ba bum bum daa dum la bum da da daaaaa
She had an alright voice.
Waiting for the bus, a meek man, very tall and lean, trembling with some kind of palsy, approached a mean-featured individual with close-cropped red hair and an earring studded with a diamond the size of a pinhead, and the meek man asked the scowly fellow if he could slip into the line here, if that was okay.
—You can get to the back of the fuckin line.
—Okay…I’ll go…
—I don’t give a fuck about you!
As the palsied man scurried away, the serious man turned to me and asked, “He has to wait in line, am I right?” I answered, “You said it. Not me.”
But what I can’t understand is this same person, who loudly and publicly stated how much he gave a fuck about another human being (amount of fucks given: nil), was concerned enough when I didn’t get food at the next McDonald’s to ask the person behind me “S’matter? Does he need some money?” and offer me the second of his quarter pounders with cheese. I didn’t take him up on it, but I counter-offered with a stick of gum. “Naw,” he said, almost sheepishly. “I can’t. Get caught in my dentures.”
A man with an extremely long dirty thumbnail coughed violently into his sweatshirt every few miles. Once the fit passed, he smoothed the sweatshirt out, thereby smearing on his palms whatever juices he had just before, somewhat considerately, captured to spare the rest of us.
Somewhere outside of Cold Spring, Wyoming, the air conditioning broke. Even with the roof vents open, everyone was sweating, uncomfortable, and impatient by the time we reached Denver. But before I go on, I’d like you to meet Ramblina.
RAMBLINA
From Salt Lake City to Denver, a 12 hour ride up into and down the Rocky Mountains, I was seated just behind the most brilliant and least sane character I met on the road. I call her Ramblina. Ramblina is a vagrant of sorts. She had on a wool cap that had once been white. She wore so many threadbare sweaters and coats that she appeared spherical. From the moment the bus pulled out of Salt Lake, and every moment thereafter except for a nap she took before we hit Laramie, she talked. She just talked about anything, everything that came into her mind. She talked to no one in particular, like hobos you sometimes hear on street corners. Ramlina was different, though. For a woman whose grasp on reality was tenuous at best, Ramblina had a silver tongue and she knew a thing or two about nutrition and politics and where her life stood and, well, I should let Ramblina speak for herself.
—I am here to enlighten you on some subjects I am familiar with, to educate you. I could have been a teacher if I had chosen, but that isn’t the way my life ended up. I can talk, though. I am a very clear and articulate speaker. I know how to speak well. Other people have told me this is true. I am a good speaker.
This is true, Ramblina.
—I am sixty four years old. I am too old for any romantic ventures now. I know that. But I am here to be friendly and to make friends with you. I am not here to be an object of sexual interest to you. I do not expect to flirt or have any romantic interest in any of you either.
—It is very important to eat well, to get good nutrition. Vitamin C is good for your immune system. So is zinc, I hear, but not like vitamin C. You can get vitamin C from a lot of foods. Broccoli, actually, that’s a very good source of vitamin C. You can buy broccoli and steam it. They sell little plastic bowls that can do that right in the microwave. Broccoli also has calcium. It’s such a good food.
—I was in a Salvation Army woman’s shelter not long ago. There was a woman there about to give birth. She was big, very pregnant. She was about to give birth and she told me “This is a man’s world.” And I agreed with her. Not just because she was pregnant, but because I think she had a point. Poor girl. She was maybe twenty years old. Her baby will be born into a man’s world. Sad, you know.
When told to be quiet (and that happened a few times), Ramblina would say:
—You want me to be quiet? Okay. I’ll be quiet. But there are people listening. I’m not just talking, you know? People are listening to me and learning.
—Here, look at this! [she holds up a USA Today with a full-page advertisement from BP] Everyone still gets paid. They have their advertising dollars so what do they care? BP has the money. They take out big ads like this in the paper. This paper has money now. No one cares, you see.
—I have just lost my brother. That is where I’m coming from. A funeral. My brother…I won’t talk about this. I’m sorry.
—Yogurt is very good. Good for you, too. I like plain yogurt without any added sugar. You can check the label on the yogurt and you can see, yup, plain, that means no added sugar. The best yogurt is Dannon. Dannon yogurt. It’s everywhere, too. Look for it in any supermarket. Dannon. The Greek yogurt is very good, too. It’s very rich. You have to stir the yogurt up when you open it, blend that watery stuff in. Then you add a can of peaches to it, peaches in syrup, right into the yogurt. Stir that around. Eat it.
The palsied man from before attempted to ask her a question about something, and Ramblina suddenly got angry and yelled:
—I was not speaking to you! I do not want you in my space. The individual or collective. En masse. I was not addressing you!
Ramblina became less and less lucid the closer we got to Denver, and her lecturing culminated in this ingenious idea for a sandwich:
—A cold burger patty. Right out of the freezer. Then you put a scoop of Haagen-dazse ice cream on both sides. And you just eat it like that.
Then she laughed, which sounded like bunch of different kinds of laughs—chuckles, guffaws, giggles, chortles—all strung together. And a guy from Portland, Oregon said from the back, “Yo, Imma pay this lady to follow me around.”
DENVER
In the terminal bathroom, there was a morbidly obese man at a urinal with his pants and underwear dropped to his ankles, the way boys pee when they’re in first grade.
I didn’t understand where these people were coming from. It was as if William Faulkner and Flannery O’Conner had a friendly contest as to who could invent the most grotesque, most unstable and unhygienic characters, and then some depraved god breathed life into their creations and bought them Greyhound tickets.
After everyone had boarded, the driver left the bus and closed the door behind him. No one gets in or out. A boy hustles down the aisle with his father scrambling after him. They’re stopped by the door and the father starts pounding the glass to get someone’s attention, while yelling to the rest of us how exactly do you open this door, open this door, how the hell do you open this door. A muffled voice yells back from just outside:
—Murgh phrugh turmuuhah?
—MY SON IS GOING TO THROW UP HOW DO YOU GET THIS DOOR OPEN
—Habbonur hahgargtorah!
Jersey Man is vaguely motioning toward a small metal knob just over the door, but it’s too late anyway, and the kid vomits all over the steps.
We were about 15 miles outside of Denver when my iPod died. The last song: Tumbling Dice by The Rolling Stones. Rest now, gentle iPod.
KANSAS CITY
From Colorado and through most of Kansas, until just before the bus crossed into Missouri, I sat in front of a 30 year old ex-infantry private and a 17 year old girl who was heading to her mother’s house outside Topeka. The girl was chubby and lively, and spoke with the strongest Midwestern drawl of any that I heard on the trip. She was completely enamored with her much older neighbor.
—I always told myself I’d move back to my mother’s once I finished I high school. I’m so glad I’m going home.
—Wait, how old are you?
—Seventeen.
—Jesus Christ…
—Is that that young? I mean, c’mon, I’m outta high school.
—Shit, I didn’t finish high school till I was twen’ny-two.
Sometime around midnight she tried to give him a handjob under the coat he was using as a blanket.
About 2 AM the bus reached her stop and the ex-military man got out with her and met her sister and a couple of friends. He came back after a few minutes and the guy from Portland spoke up again:
—The hell happened out there, man?
—Jesus Christ, she kept sayin how sad it was we’d never see each other again. And she wanted me to meet her mother. She basically did everything but ask me straight up to come with her.
—Pfft ha ha, you met like four hours ago!
—I fuckin know that! She’s seventeen! She made me take her number, but I wrote it on the side of that cup of soda I had, and when I finished the soda I threw out the cup! Ha ha! Pretty sure she saw me do that, too.
It is better to have loved and lost than ah whatever.
The bus driver took a wrong turn leaving Kansas City. By that I mean he completely failed at the simple task of taking the highway east, the direction we should be going, and not west, the direction we just spent all fucking night driving in from. When we turned around, the bus got caught in rush hour traffic. I was demoralized and hungry for something other than cured meat. I knew I had more than 24 hours left on the road, but I tried not to think about that.
COLUMBUS
The dentured man offered me one of his Peanut Butter Cups. It was the last I saw of him. God speed him on his way.
NADIR
At 2:20 AM, Sunday, June 6, the bus made an unscheduled stop about an hour from the Pennsylvania border. The driver switched the lights on, which woke me up from an admittedly shitty sleep, and he made the announcement that the steering wheel was “loose” and he couldn’t drive the bus any farther. We would have to wait for another bus from Columbus to pick us up. Probably two hours, maybe more.
I actually said, out loud, “What a fucking nightmare.” How does a steering wheel come loose? It’s a fucking steering wheel on a Greyhound bus, not a plastic molding on a piece of shit Tonka. Fuck this! And of all the thousands of miles this bus has gone all week, why this stretch of desolate Ohio at this time of night? The fucking steering wheel is loose. I began to think the whole experiment had failed. Except for reading 500 pages of The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (so, so good), I’d learned nothing, seen nothing quintessentially American, and felt I had at last been worn down and beaten by this continental empire’s sheer hugeness.
PITTSBURGH
The breakdown meant I missed my transfer in Pittsburgh. Two more hours of waiting in the terminal. I ran out of food. Just before boarding my final bus, at about 9 AM, I wolfed down the last two slices of bread for breakfast. I was determined that the next thing I ate would be a burrito from Chipotle whenever I got to Washington. I’d settle for nothing less.
I saw the last of Jersey Man, too, pacing with his cane by the vending machines. I hope he finds a place of his own somewhere with a suitably low concentration of faggots. Or goes to hell. Or just lives in New Jersey the rest of his life. Fuck him.
BALTIMORE
In Hagerstown, Maryland, a rotund black woman boarded and sat in the empty seat next to me. Her name, I learned later, was Kim, and her girth made me nudge closer to the window and draw my knees together. “Have you got room?” she asked, genuinely concerned. “Oh I’ve got enough. I don’t need much room.” And I put my book up to my face. Shortly after, I asked her “What time do we reach Baltimore?” And so began a conversation that lasted until we reached the terminal.
Kim, it turned out, owns a moving business in Springfield, Massachusetts. She is a pastor and a gospel singer. Her choir has released two albums. Every so often she takes in down-and-out people from the streetand hosts them as a sort of halfway house and never accepts any government money for doing so, even though by law she’s entitled to some. She is one of the kindest and most good humored people I have met in my life. One of the greatest human beings alive today. She is a goddamned angel and made me forget how miserable and hungry I was. She asked me:
—What were you doing in Vietnam?
—Well um uh I was volunteering at a uh pagoda that was also an orphanage for…for disabled kids. [I still have troubled admitting to people, face-to-face, what I did in Vietnam. It sounds unreal, like something made up by a guy pretending to have a sensitive side to score chicks.]
—Really!? You got compassion in you, boy. [She pats my chest reassuringly.] I can feel that in you.
—Hey um thanks! Thank you. I’m writing a book about it, too.
—You are!? Oooh I am so excited for you! I’m about to holler up in this bus! [She claps her hands together. I believe she’s about to break out into gospel.]
I’m not the type to say this usually, but bless you, Kim.
WASHINGTON
The bus arrives at the terminal before ol’ Gary can get out of work, so I call him up. And I ask Gary, my dear Gary, my oldest friend in the world, if he would bring a couple of trash bags, just to protect my luggage in case of rain. (It had poured between Hagerstown and Baltimore, and the sky in Washington looked dark and evil.)
Of course, he says, for you, Sam, of course.
Gary meets me at the terminal doors. He extends his hand for a hearty shake and his first words to me are, “You look like shit.”
Then he hands me a small cardboard box. Inside the box are two black trash bags…and a Smirnoff Ice. Gary had iced me. (For those unfamiliar with icing: http://www.theawl.com/2010/05/guest-op-ed-why-bros-get-iced-bro) I had traveled over 3,000 miles, four days on the road, slept little, ate nothing but cured meat and bread, only to be iced by one of my closest bros in our nation’s capital. “We’re not doing this here,” I say. So we leave the station and walk two blocks, to where we could see the dome of the Capitol down the street. This is the place. This will do.
And as I got down on one knee and put that lukewarm flavored malt beverage to my lips, I realized something. I did look like shit. I hadn’t showered in four days. My hair was so greasy it looked wet. My scent I’m sure was something heinous. My clothing was rumpled and smelled like the stale air-conditioned air of the bus. I had dark puffy flesh under my eyes from sleeplessness. Four days without toothpaste left my mouth tasting scuzzy, and my breath, tainted by sodium benzoate, was the hot meaty breath of a pre-processed carnivore. I looked, in short, exactly like the sort of person who rides Greyhound.
The statue of Freedom Triumphant atop the Capitol dome looks away discreetly. She is embarrassed. Rightfully so. But she can’t ignore me forever. Just another American son who came home the long way, she thinks. Get a haircut. Fine. But I’m home now, and I have a few grand plans that I think deserve her attention. Soon as I finish this Ice.
