Stories From the Road by William Klein

The road changes you. The likes of Jack Kerouac knew that, so did playwright Sam Shepherd who refused to fly and drove everywhere. Kerouac wrote about the adventures of characters he encountered on the road and recorded the history of a beaten generation. Sam Shepherd wrote about the aesthetic of the road; a load tied to the back of his truck and a piece of rope that was too loose, so a flap of the canvass created a syncopated rhythm that stretched in time with his imagination.  Both writers are good drummers — always listening for the tempo of life through characters and events.

I’ve just arrived home from a field trip to the south stopping in places like Charlotte, North Carolina, Savannah and Milledgeville, Georgia, Chattanooga, Tennessee and Louisville, Kentucky. I, too, heard the rhythms of the road, as my mind raced with clips of tire on graded pavement at times clicking through rivers of unnerving gyrations that sound like machines drilling grooves and tires finding their way to smooth surfaces.

I could hear the resonant cadences of voices with the beautiful southern accents of kindness and sleepy drawls of impassioned hospitality. If you listen closely, you can hear their history and mark budding optimism of progress. As my friend says, “The South has risen again.”

Charlotte is one of those cities where a new America is emerging. Sitting at the assisted living facility where my friend lives, I listened to natives talk about how they don’t recognize the city anymore. It’s growing so fast, “You need a new map every five years or so to find your way.” Sure, hyperbole is at play here, but from the serious look in one woman’s eyes, she was lost in the memories of a bygone era where you could see where towns began and ended. 

My friend took me around proving her point, but I tested this theory with a man from New Jersey who lived there since 2007. We were both waiting for our cars at a ten-minute oil change shop that took 30 minutes due to the shorthanded nature of the business and meeting demand. The man told me he attended an event with a dozen people and there was only one native in the group. When a new customer joined our conversation, we asked him “Where are you originally from?” He replied, “Michigan.” We just grinned and giggled having proved our point.

Savannah, Georgia is one of the greatest treasures in our country, a virtual Disneyland for historians. Dating back to the Revolutionary War, the city boasts of magnificent southern homes with their intricately designed rod iron porches and Georgian architecture. The dripping Spanish moss and canopied town squares lends itself to other worldliness and offers a treasure trove of ghost stories from a town that has seen its share of travelers.

As I walked the Wheland Foundry Trailhead known as the “Riverwalk” at the base of Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I met a homeless man, Dana, who shared his story of rambling around the south and his hard-fought battle to survive maladies due to riding a bike, his only form of transportation. His bike was purchased for ten dollars, and exchanged hands in the homeless population, as one of the men who lived in the gutted foundry stole the bike and used it as a form of barter for a small stove. What a comedy of errors that was as I listened to Dana tell me his story of how he tracked it down and had to convince someone the bike was rightfully his.

Dana shared with me what a challenge it had been to keep his own possessions, as his own family that lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, sold off some of his personal items for food. I thought to myself, “No wonder people succumb to the evil of abject poverty and lose hope. The man couldn’t even trust his own family with his property.” His skinny frame shrugged it off and he stated with no hint of bitterness, “We do what we need to do to survive.”

He and I walked along the banks of a ghost “river,” for there was no water in sight. The only sites I saw were the gutted foundry which will soon be knocked down to make a new home for a minor league baseball stadium, a ranger station, some new buildings rising from the ashes of a rural town and tall blue street lamps that guided visitors in hopes of more promising times to come.

I met a lawyer who gave me directions to the top of the mountain while I was buying gas. We spent fifteen minutes talking about life around the country. I felt like I knew him forever, as we talked about labor and unions as well as the wonderful places he’s lived around the country that we shared in common. Southern hospitality is alive and well. He gave me his card and told me to keep in touch.

As I open myself to new understanding, there’s no better place to start than the highways and bi-ways of this beautiful country. Though I find myself being road weary, looking back I am always surprised at the little synchronous experiences of meeting people with the same calculus for survival; open your mind, travel the land and let the stories of the journey penetrate the heart, as you listen to the rhythm of the times.