Road Trip Part 1

SEPTEMBER 13, 2009

Our trip was a palindrome, beginning with an annoying drizzle as we left Brooklyn, giving way to clear skies and warm summer sun for the bulk of our trip and then ending with a return drive through hundreds of miles of rain and the hypnotic thump thump thump of windshield wipers working overtime.

But the weather in Michigan was picture perfect. Perfect for holding baby alpacas, sailing in crystal clear waters, hiking sand dunes and eating locally made chocolate, but before I get to all that let me start at the beginning:

After Jason helped us load the Triumph into the back of my truck in the gray, early morning rain, he wished Deborah and me a bon voyage, and we headed out on the first leg of our trip: three hundred and sixty miles to Daisytown, PA. We didn’t actually stay in Daisytown. As I’ve written about a thousand times before, Deborah’s parents are more than a little eccentric, and it’s better for everyone that we stay in a motel when we visit. We chose our old standby, the Carlton in Belle Vernon, a rundown, ramshackle side-of-the-highway classic with musty rugs and bleach-faded bedspreads. Across the highway stands a tall lavender sign: “Adultmart.” Open 24 hours, truckers welcome. Some day we’ll go in and I’ll give a full report.

Just down the hill from the motel is a small church with a diner attached that makes a killer breakfast, but Deborah’s mother makes an even better one, so we skipped the food and simply got a couple of watered-down coffees, instead.

Deborah’s parents are as nutty as ever. They have two yappy dogs — supposedly both Lhasa Apsos. Though the verdict is still out on the larger of the two. They bark at the slightest provocation, and sometimes at no provocation at all. Deborah’s parents take turns holding them on a double leash as we sit at the dining room table to eat. The smaller dog whines and moans, making high-pitched sounds like air being slowly let out of a balloon. Her parents both talk at the same time, each trying to be heard over the dogs, as well as over each other, and it’s nearly impossible to follow anything that’s said. Deborah’s dad, Elmer, tells us his entire employment and unemployment history — every job he ever had, including one where he made a dollar a day. Deborah’s mom, Barbara, yells at him for telling the same stories over and over, but Elmer defends himself, saying, “We don’t ever do anything. If I didn’t repeat myself, I’d never have anything to say.”

Deborah’s mom offers us homemade peanut butter cookies and tells us about a contest she saw on television where a woman won a million dollars for a similar recipe.

“You should’ve entered,” Deborah tells her.

“Her cookies were real plain, too,” said Barbara. “Not like mine, they didn’t have nothing on ‘em.”

“No cookie is worth a million dollars,” says Elmer.

On a similar subject, Barbara tells us about an episode of America’s Funniest Videos where a woman who had just visited the dentist had a hard time talking due to a Novocaine shot. “Her husband filmed it,” she said, “And they won ten thousand dollars. You know, she was talking real funny and she was drooling and everything. I said to your dad he should’ve filmed me, I look like that every day. We could be rich.”

“Nobody is worth a million dollars,” Elmer says. “Nobody. Nobody. Like those football players who get a million dollars. The football players and the baseball players and whatnot. Nobody is worth a million dollars. I think everyone should be paid 750 dollars.”

“750 dollars?” said Deborah. “A year?”

“Welp. Nobody is worth a million dollars.”

Deborah’s mother tells us we should visit Deborah’s uncle, a beekeeper in Flint, on our way to Lake Michigan. “Remember, he used to come visit us when you were little? He’d find frogs and turtles and things in the backyard and eat ‘em. He’d eat anything. Frogs, bugs. Remember him hanging the turtles from the clothes line with their heads chopped off? I didn’t know what they were, I was like, what’s that on the clothes line, and then I saw. They tried to get me to eat ‘em, but I said no way. Your dad tried ‘em though, didn’t you, Elmer?”

“He told me it tasted like a bunch of different things,” says Elmer. “Like chicken and like this or that, A bunch of things. I don’t remember it having much taste at all, though. I don’t remember.”

Deborah tells me that her uncle wears a long handlebar mustache twisted into curls with beeswax. He sounds like a character, and I’m curious to meet him and eat frogs, turtles, and bugs, but Deborah says she hasn’t seen him since she was a little girl and doesn’t know him anymore, so we keep it off the agenda.

At the first lull in the conversation, Deborah suggests we pay a visit to Deborah’s cousin, who lives next door in her grandparents’ old house with her husband and two kids. Barbara blames Elmer for chasing us away, but Deborah assures her we’ll be back in a little while.

Before going to her cousin’s house, however, we take a walk over the creek in the backyard and up the hill for some temporary peace and quiet. “They were driving me crazy,” Deborah says. She says it every time.

The property is beautiful. Deborah points out where her grandfather used to grow corn, to where the tomatoes were, and where green beans grew. “It was all perfect, in careful rows.”

Deborah’s grandfather was a Hungarian coal miner who got his head bashed in by his fellow union brothers after standing up for a couple of black miners, one named Porkchop, that the union didn’t want around. He lingered in a coma for a month and never fully recovered, so after being released from the hospital, he quit the mines and devoted all his time to farming. As a child, Deborah’s parents kept her on a tight leash just like they did with their dogs. Her only avenue of escape was visiting with her grandparents next door, spending much of her time helping her grandfather tend to the crops and feed the cows. She looked out over the field and told me where everything had been planted. Except for her cousin’s small garden, it’s mostly just a field of grass now.

Unlike her grandfather’s moderate sized farm, Deborah’s cousin’s small garden is a wild mess with weeds and vegetables growing in equal proportion. “Japanese style,” her cousin says. The sweet smell from a small patch of basil is miraculously able to overcome the powerful stench of the nearby chicken coop, duck house, and dog pen. Deborah was walking through duck shit in flip-flops for about five minutes before her cousin told her to watch her step. The dogs used to be allowed inside, but they live in dog houses these days. The smaller mutt, Bullet, killed one of the chickens not too long ago, and Deborah’s cousin says he hasn’t been the same since he tasted blood.

Deborah’s grandfather built the house with a bunch of his drunken coal miner pals, and although it served well for a long time, it needed a lot of repair by the time Deborah’s cousin acquired it. Deborah’s cousin and her cousin’s husband, James, have been working hard upgrading it. The ongoing renovations combined with a hyperactive two-year-old, make it look like it’s been shot with a clothes cannon — or rather a clothes, toys, tools, and potato chip cannon. We sit for a beer before heading back to Deborah’s parents’ house. It would be easier if everyone could visit together at the same time, and considering the proximity, there’s no reasonable excuse for everyone not to, except that Deborah’s parents don’t like to leave their house. “What about our dogs?” they always say.

After a brief stop with her parents for a few more repeat stories from Elmer, and several rounds of dog-wail serenade, we get in the car to return to the hotel. I wonder aloud how Deborah’s parents can live with those dogs.

“When I was little, my parents had six of them. Imagine? Try sneaking out of the house with that kind of alarm system. Why do you think my nerves are the way they are?”

Tailgating is a local pastime in and around Daisytown. “I’m not tailgating, I’m drafting,” read the bumper stickers of the NASCAR wannabes. They race down the narrow roads flashing their high beams at anything in their way, skidding around the loose gravel in the tight turns, drifting into the opposing lane. “I’m not speeding, I’m qualifying.”

Just as bad are the Diesel pickup trucks with every conceivable performance part bolted on and spewing black clouds from chrome exhaust stacks. Dixie Land blaring from their car horns as they take up the full width of the road. Rebel flags across the rear windows or “Buck Truck” written across the tailgates in giant stick-on letters. I’ve called the area Pennsyltucky before, but Deborah suggests I call it Pennsylssippi or Pennsylbama instead.

Although I got the Triumph out of the truck and managed to squeeze in a little riding, a British bike with New York plates made me conspicuous sport, and I couldn’t help imagining I’d eventually get blasted by a shotgun from a redneck with a goiter, so I tried to lay low.

Three days of essentially the same routine before heading off to Michigan.