So I Remember Every Face Of Every Man Who Put Me Here

I’ve been through a lot of states in the last few days. I’m in Lincoln, Nebraska right now, and as soon as I finish this blog entry I’ll be heading south to Kansas where I’m camping tonight.

So far, because of this trip, I’ve been to the following states:

Massachusetts

Rhode Island

Connecticut

New Jersey

Pennsylvania

Delaware

Maryland

*(Washington D.C.)

Virginia

*North Carolina

*South Carolina

*Georgia

Florida

*Alabama

*Mississippi

*Louisiana

*Arkansas

*Tennessee

*Kentucky

*Indiana

*Illinois (just to drive through, I’ll be stopping in Chicago in August)

*Missouri (the Garmin pronounces this misery and it’s really unsettling)

*Iowa

*Nebraska

And in a few hours, *Kansas

. . . I think that’s all of them.

* I’ve never been here before

I’ve gotten used to the driving, the nightly (seriously) thunderstorms, cooking on a fire, and never not being lost in big cities where everyone stares at my fanny pack. I’m keeping lots of notes, but there are so many things I don’t have time to cram into this blog.

I’m having an incredible time and have no regrets about this trip or its length. Pretty soon I’ll be meeting up with three friends in a row in California—after that, there won’t be much trip left.

On Monday, I headed into Kansas City early in the day. I walked around, took pictures, and talked to some locals in stores.

At a Christmas party for my old job, I won a $40 gift certificate to the Cheesecake Factory in a Texas Hold ’Em tournament. My supervisor (who smokes cigars in her office) suggested I use it at the Cheesecake Factory in Kansas City.

It was very difficult to save the card for so long, but I’m glad I did. I got artichoke wrap appetizer things, and steak and shrimp for the entrée. I didn’t wrap up the leftovers (and I’ve NEVER done that) since I had nowhere to put them, and this made me feel like a really important or wealthy guy. I like this feeling.

The reading at the Kansas City Public Library (which has the coolest children’s section that I’ve seen, complete with a climbing cow) went very well. And I’d like to thank Henry Fortunato (2^nd coolest name ever behind Hank Scorpio) for setting it all up and helping out with the promotion. Before I began, a woman came up to me and introduced herself as someone who’d worked for a private company similar to the Department of Mental Retardation. She also told me that she rides her bike everywhere, and after talking with me, she filled up her two bike water bottles with the water that had been set out for audience members. Then she grabbed a bunch of the free bags of peanuts and almonds and put them into her bag. This pissed me off because I’d been planning on taking them.

I talked about the book and then read a short section that I’d never read to an audience before—it was a little racier than the stuff I usually read at libraries. As I finished reading, the bike lady got up and walked out. It threw me off and I kind of stuttered in the middle of what I was saying. I’d never had anyone get that mad at something I read. But ten minutes later she came back, sat down, and later bought a book. I guess she just went to the bathroom.

After the reading, Lorenzo, the pr guy at the library offered to take me out to dinner. We went to the coolest (though kind of artificial) bar and restaurant area I’ve seen in any city so far—the Kansas City Live! Pavilion in the middle of the Power and Light District. It’s an outdoor pavilion in the middle of two stories of restaurants and bars, under a huge plastic awning, with a giant television at one end for Royals and Chiefs (and other) games. For a Monday night, there were a lot of girls wearing foam domes.

We got a beer and dinner and sat outside (you can carry your drinks around the whole outdoor pavilion). He said he’d really enjoyed the program and we talked about my trip while watching the Royals game. He’s a young black man from Orlando who went to College in Texas. He told me he almost threw up when Bush was voted in the first time.

We talked about sports teams (he’s been able to tolerate the Red Sox ever since they swept the Cardinals in the playoffs). He was a sports writer before he began working for the library, so he knew much more than me about sports, even stuff regarding Boston teams.

We talked a little about the promotion for the reading. He told me he’d called the Missouri equivalent to the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation. Apparently they did not respond in a friendly manner to the idea of my book. Perhaps they’re afraid that one of their employees will be inspired to do the same thing.

Again, this stuff worries me a little bit, and I don’t really understand it. At my training for DMR, they kept stressing how things have improved since the dark ages of institutions and sterilization, yet (if the information I’ve received about the MA DMR’s reaction to my book is correct) they act like the state employees of that era—they’re unwilling to question anything about, or even discuss, the current conditions of the people they care for. But perhaps I’m jumping the gun here, and perhaps the DMR higher-ups haven’t reacted in the way my former coworker says they have. Maybe they’ll even like the book.

I’m not naïve enough to think that my book will change things in the department, nor did I even attempt to recommend how things should change in DMR, but I do think the issues raised in the book should at least be talked about.

On Monday, in the middle of the night, I was again driven from my tent by lightning. A friend of mine got struck by lightning in Brockton, Massachusetts last week, so I’m now even more wary of it. She’s ok, other than some numbness in her fingers and burns on her feet, but still, that’s pretty frigging crazy—and now I’m heading into tornado town.

Ah well. Ah Kansas.

I LOVE driving through the cornfields of Iowa and Nebraska. So far, the fields have been smaller than I thought they would be. They’re also lumpier than I’d been led to believe, but it’s beautiful here and not boring at all, as I’d also been led to believe by some friends who’ve driven cross country. Everyone in Iowa waved like Stanley as I drove by, and every stop sign is preceded by three sets of rumble strips.

And, unlike the bible belt, there aren’t billboards on the edges of every farm. Down there, there’s a huge-floating-Jesus-face or anti-abortion billboard for every ten acres of crop. Since when is Jesus so impotent that he needs a million billboards in his own backyard? And who thinks it’s appropriate to blow up photos of human fetuses and plaster them on billboards? I can’t wait until digital billboards get more popular and they can loop film of fetuses getting vacuumed out of the womb.

But perhaps I should let these things slide. After all, one church came up with this really inspiring piece of advice that I now live by:

“Aspire to inspire before you expire.”

Not even pop star Jewel could write with more casualty.