Hell On Wheels, TV Guide Magazine, May 2013

So, where were we? Oh yeah, waking up in Sioux City, Iowa  because there was a police officer pounding on the Traipsemobile door.

It was 8 a.m. on a Monday, not my usual wake-up time. I’d fallen asleep around 2 a.m. in what appeared to be a nice quiet doesn’t-seem-illegal parking spot, not too far from the coffee shop where I planned to start my day at the crack of noon. What I hadn’t noticed, it being nighttime and me being new in town and slightly fuzzy brained, was that I had parked directly in front of an elementary school.

Most of the time I feel confident parking The Traipsemobile pretty much anywhere overnight. In Vermont, I even parked in a city hall employee lot, just to see if anyone would notice. They didn’t. But I really try to stay away from grade schools and playgrounds because, after all, take away one “T” from my license plate and it says “RAIPS.” I don’t need people jumping to any “Silence Of The Lambs” kind of conclusions.

Which, apparently, is what the principal of the Hunt Elementary School had done. The police officer, who may or may not have had his gun drawn (I couldn’t see past the glare of his flashlight) calmly explained that the principal had reported a “suspicious vehicle with blacked out windows” in front of her school.

They couldn’t have been nicer, the Sioux City cops, waiting patiently for me to find my pants and the paperwork that might establish my non-rapist identity. It wasn’t so much a roust as a pleasant early-morning chat. Once they’d confirmed that I had no priors or warrants, they suggested (not ordered, mind you, suggested) some better places to park and sent me on my still-groggy way.

And that’s how I started my first morning as a political volunteer. I eventually found my way to the Sioux City Obama For America headquarters, a rented run-down red brick office building across the parking lot from the LaJuanita Mexican restaurant and just up the block from the always-hilarious- Kum & Go convenience store.

It was a dreary place, especially on cloudy 30-degree days. There were unmatched tables and chairs, scratched-up office furniture, phones that worked only intermittently. The back door didn’t quite lock and the front door was always open. The Christie Vilsack Congressional campaign had a single office in an interior hallway. The 2012 Obama campaign was a marvel of high-tech wizardry, a seamless cyber-charged machine. But the physical working spaces looked like the back room at a Goodwill Store.

Some idiot making a spectacle of himself at the Vilsack-King Congressional debate

Still, the place was buzzing. Mostly with paid Obama campaigners who were constantly on their cellphones being updated from some unknown, presumably better-furnished, central office. There were local volunteers working the phones, when they worked. Mostly, they were using campaign-issued cell phones, reading off scripts, checking off forms, doing the tedious business of finding out the intentions every single voter in the district and offering to help the ones who were leaning their way; making sure they’d received their mail-in ballot, that they were properly registered, asking if they’d need a ride to the polls. It was endless. It was tedious. And it was what I had come here to do.

Ashley Sinha,  20 years old and diligent beyond description, was the one and only full-time Christie Vilsack campaign worker in Sioux City, the largest city in the Congressional district. Until I got there she’d been doing most of the canvassing – and pretty much everything else, all by herself. A 20-year-old woman has never ever been this happy to see me.

I spent the morning, what was left of it, on the phones. This consists mostly of getting wrong numbers and voicemail messages and throwing those names back into the computerized hopper for someone to try another day. Most of the people who did answer the phone were inclined to describe themselves as “undecided” because, as Iowans, that seemed the polite thing to do. This was, of course, a terrible mistake. If you tell a political campaign that you are “undecided,” rest assured that they will continue to call until you Goddam Well Decide. So, even if you haven’t made up your mind, you should lie and say you are supporting the opponent of whichever campaign is calling. They will scratch you off the list. Your life will improve.

Then they sent me off into the field, with a computer generated map listing the addresses of the allegedly undecided. The questions were essentially the same as the ones we asked on the phone. But now, instead of being an anonymous voice on a phone, the questions were coming from a stranger on your doorstep, a pudgy guy in a red baseball cap who’d knocked on your door right in the middle of Dr. Oz. This elicited a number of reactions.

The candidate endangers her campaign by posing with a tubby hobo.

There was some abruptness, sure, but very little outright hostility. There were lots of “I’m not interested” brush-offs, a couple of people who seemed genuinely annoyed that you were trying to put Democratic Party brochures in their hands and who rejected it as if might physically contaminate them.

There were rules. I didn’t go through any locked gates. I didn’t leave any literature in mailboxes (a federal offense). I knocked or rang the bell even if it appeared that no one was home. And sometimes it was hard to tell. These were mostly-wood-framed houses in blue collar neighborhoods. They had front storm porches, usually behind a locked door and often overflowing with cardboard boxes and other assorted crap. I suspect there were “Hoarder” candidates just waiting to be discovered. But I trudged up and down hills, down unpaved roads, over broken sidewalks, ignoring the barking dogs and the occasional suspicious stares from the guy across the street who was working on his Harley. There seemed to be a lot of those guys.

I sweated on some days and shivered on others. I tried but never really succeeded to figure out a system that would strike the perfect balance between blocks walked and how often I would have to move the van. I lugged my clipboard and my red bag full of glossy brochures, my maps and my checklists and my pre-screened questionnaires. I was pretty much Willie Loman, except I wasn’t getting paid.

But – and this was an even bigger shock to me than it will be to you – I really enjoyed it. I did. I like encountering people and engaging them, even if my spiel was a little repetitive, even if it required more smiling and nodding than I’m generally inclined to do. I didn’t mind the rejections or even the occasional door slam. I didn’t take it personally. I got into a rhythm and I could see how politicians learn to love the glad-handing, the baby-kissing, the brief-but-important voter encounters. If not for my general disinclination towards work of any kind, I could see doing this for a living.

I knocked on many doors that looked like this.

Most of the voters I met, probably 75 percent, were registered Republicans and most of those, probably 90 percent, were going to vote for the Republican candidate, no matter what. But – and I can’t stress this enough – none of them were dicks about it. None of them. We talked about issues, I gave them my pitch, if they wanted to hear it. Sometimes they would counter. There was no screaming. There was no nuttiness. They weren’t right wing maniacs. They were rational conservative-leaning Iowans, who were going to vote Republican, not because they thought President Obama was a Socialist Kenyan Muslim or that Mitt Romney was a swell guy who understood their problems, but because they were socially conservative and generally leery of government. I did not hear Ayn Rand quoted once.

And a few of them – Republican women mostly – seemed as if I might have won them over. They were uncomfortable with Romney’s (and the incumbent Congressman Steve King’s) views on birth control and gay marriage. They were open-minded. And even if they didn’t vote the way I hoped they would, they were willing to listen.

I can’t tell you how much this thrilled me. You know that horrible feeling you get watching shrill idiots scream at each other on cable news and you think we’re just doomed as a civilization? This was the opposite of that. There really is a middle ground in America, a rational, reasonable place. I saw it on those front porches in Sioux City, Iowa. And it’s why, in the long term, I’m pretty optimistic that things are going to work out.

I spent three weeks in Iowa, most of it drudgery, but some of it fun. Bill Clinton spoke to a Sioux City rally for Christie Vilsack in downtown Sioux City. I set up a table and passed out yard signs and registration forms to people as they passed by. I schmoozed and smiled and, after a while, I realized I wasn’t even faking it. The speech was inspiring and funny and the crowd went wild for it. I ended up in the bar across the street, drinking beer with Bill Clinton’s advance man, who gave me his lapel pin, which he didn’t need anymore and said it would get me backstage if I wanted. Not that it mattered. Clinton was already gone.

There were nights watching Presidential debates at the local pizza joint, booing and cheering like we were at WrestleMania.  There were”Charlie Boy” loose meat sandwiches at the Miles Inn, Lucky U IPA’s at the Soho Kitchen & Bar (emphasis on the Bar).  There was the Christie Vilsack-Steve King debate at Morningside College, where I waved my big red “Christie Vilsack For Congress” sign like a madman whenever a tv camera pointed our way and where, somehow, I ended up being interviewed on the local radio station. When they asked where I was from, I said, “Ames,” which wasn’t a lie, because that’s where I’d been before I got to Sioux City.

The night of the debate, one of the cops who was working security came up to me. It was the same cop who’d knocked on my door that first morning in Sioux City. He said he’d started following me on Twitter, which I loved. He also asked me if I’d ever Googled myself.

“Constantly,” I said.

“Well, when we first checked you out, the first thing that came up for Joseph Rhodes was a mug shot of a sex offender.” Apparently police Google is different from regular Google.  I was’t sure where this was going.  ”But it said he was born in 1984, so we knew it wasn’t you.”

Well, thanks. Sometimes it’s good to be old.

Barack Obama won in Iowa, as he did in all the swing states that night. Christie Vilsack lost her congressional race, but I’d like to think she came closer than she would have if I hadn’t been out there on her behalf.  Or maybe her willingness to be photographed with me cost her the race.  And, frankly, I warned her that might happen. She’ll know better next time.Which might be as soon as 2014. Steve King is running for Senate, abandoning his can’t-lose seat for a statewide race that he almost certainly can’t win. Given another opportunity , Christie Vilsack might very well win. There are Republican women on the porches of Sioux City who I know will give her a chance.

Downtown Sioux City, the night of the Bill Clinton Rally

So where were we? Oh yeah, heading from St. Louis to Iowa, home of loose meat sandwiches, ethanol subsidies, Tom Arnold, Ashton Kutcher and, as seen on tv, a critical swing state in the 2012 Presidential election.

When I first took up residency in the Traipsemobile, I thought about following Presidential candidates around during the primaries, maybe doing some heckling and subsisting entirely on free snacks provided at various rallies and/or protests, depending on who had the best food. I’ll bet those Gingrich people could EAT! But then I got drunk and forgot about that plan.

As autumn approached and the 2012 Election continued to look as if it would be agonizingly close, I re-examined my priorities. Specifically, I realized that if Mitt Romney defeated Barack Obama I would almost immediately lose my Obamacare health insurance. The prospect of me wandering around uninsured seemed like too much of a risk. Not just for me, but for America. Do you really want me stumbling into your understaffed emergency room demanding painkillers and water for my imaginary horse? No, you do not. You want me to be escorted into the relatively-secure environment of the local walk-in clinic where, for a $25 co-pay, they are able to diagnose me as being “full of beer.”

Oh sure, I could have done some campaign work in one of my legally-recognized (for accounting purposes) “home”  states, Texas or California. But there wasn’t any way to affect the outcome in either place. California was going to vote overwhelmingly for Obama or some other mixed-race hippie and Texas was going to vote for whatever gun-toting right-wing nutjob happened to be on the ballot. Or, since Yosemite Sam wasn’t running, Mitt Romney.

No, the election would be decided in an assortment of “swing” states – Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Iowa, Florida, Nevada and Virginia. If I wanted to make a difference I needed to go someplace where the race would be close, where knocking on doors, passing out flyers and harassing undecided voters in their own homes might be the determining factor.

I thought about going to Ohio or Florida, but I also wanted to work in a place with a close Congressional race, preferably where there was a Republican incumbent in some jeopardy of losing. And that’s how I decided on Iowa. It seemed like a place where they might be low on volunteers, since many of the residents live inside corn mazes and/or Des Moines. Also Steve King is one of Congress’ dickiest Tea Party loons, an old-school birther/creationist/racist/homophobe who has compared illegal immigrants to livestock, praised Joe McCarthy and was the first Congressman to go on record as supporting Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” theory. If Glenn Beck were a Congressman, he’d be Steve King.

Steve King, before makeup.

Running against him was Christie Vilsack, wife of the former Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack, and a generally-beloved figure in the state, a journalism professor of all things. She’d never run for public office before. But the district had been re-drawn after the last census (Iowa’s population shrank and so they lost a district) and now included Ames and other areas less likely to automatically vote for King no matter what he said or did. She had a chance.

So I went up the Mississippi, along Highway 61, through Hannibal and Quincy and Keokuk. I veered into the rolling cornfield backcountry (a lovely drive, actually), past Eldon where the American Gothic house stands, still in its original location and where, if I were in charge, there would be people in poorly-made Superhero costumes — fat Spidermen and crackhead  Captain Americas — waiting around with pitchforks to re-create the painting for passing tourists. Someone should do this. Someone probably has.

I went through Ottumwa and Eddyville and Oskaloosa. Pella and Des Moines and Ankeny. And finally I made it to Ames, home to Iowa State University and Christie Vilsack’s campaign headquarters, which is adjacent to the local health food coop. I know.

A sane person would have used the Obama campaign’s vast online resources and signed up ahead of time through the official website. I did not do this, of course, preferring to show up unannounced,  a paunchy bearded guy in a windowless special ops van with out-of-state plates. So, yes, there were some stares.

Campaign offices look a lot like film and tv production offices, in that they are filled with lots of temporary stuff, files in cardboard boxes, partly-assembled bookshelves and people who have no idea where to find the bathroom and/or kitchen. Also there are dirty coffee cups in the sink. Always.

Without asking any real questions (such as “Are you a Karl Rove double-agent?) the campaign coordinator gave me a cell phone, a script and a desk where I started dialing pre-screened Iowans to ask if they’d registered to vote yet, if they were leaning one way or another in the Congressional and Presidential races and dropping in a few focus-grouped phrases about  “fairness” and “farm bills” and possibly “corn flakes.” My memory is a little fuzzy on this.

I abandoned the script immediately. Not the questions or even the talking points. But the script was stiff and to read it word-for-word would have made me sound like I was a hostage, or a late-night tv used car salesman. So I improvised, just enough so that the undecided voter on the other end of the call, who was under constant siege from robo-calls and mass mailings, would at least know they were talking to an actual person.

Christie Vilsack

Because the election had come down to so few states and because the campaigns were aggressively trying to hunt down and make contact with every single voter who was foolish enough to declare themselves “undecided,” Iowans were assaulted by political ads and phone calls in a way I’ve never experienced before. Lots of people stopped answering their phones or their doorbells. They were basically in hiding until after the election, just wanting it all to be over.

So, I got hung up on a lot. (Much as I did when trying to date in high school.) And lots of people who didn’t hang up begged me not to call them again. (Much as they did in high school.)  I promised them, truthfully, that I’d do my best to get them off the list and apologized, sincerely, for adding to their burden. And every once in a while, people were so grateful that they’d go ahead and answer my questions and listen to the talking points. (“You seem like a nice young man, but why do you keep blurting out ‘Corn Flakes!’”) A little kindness went a long way. In both directions. I’m a lot more sympathetic to telemarketers now. I really am.

Ames Campaign Headquarters

I’d take a break every once in a while, get stared at some more by other volunteers and then I’d leave a coffee cup in the sink. I told the campaign coordinator that, yes, I’d actually driven up from Texas to do this and would be happy to help out in any way I could – transporting placards, harassing shoppers at local malls, pretending to have Mitt Romney’ dog strapped to my roof. Instead, he suggested I go to Sioux City.

They didn’t have many volunteers in Sioux City because, well, it’s Sioux City, far away from everywhere, jammed up against the borders of Nebraska and South Dakota, as far west as you can go and still be in Iowa. Lewis and Clark came upon the Missouri River here and many settlers, in later years, got this far and said, “Fuck it. I’m tired. Let’s just stay here.”

Which is exactly what I said on my first night in Sioux City and why, for the first time ever, I got an early-morning knock on the Traipsemobile door. I got into Sioux City on a Sunday night, after a four-hour drive from Ames and immediately found my way to Buffalo Alice in the “historic downtown” section along 4^th Street. It’s a beer and pizza joint with 132 different kinds of beer. Also, I’m pretty sure it’s named after a prostitute. (I’m wrong, of course. The original owner named it after two small towns in North Dakota, Buffalo and Alice. I like my version better.)

Pizza was consumed. Beers (Hop Wrangler IPA from Iowa’s own Peace Tree Brewing) were quaffed. And eventually, a more suitable non-metered, non-downtown parking space had to be found.

If I don’t fall asleep in front of the bar where I’ve ended the night, my preference is to wake up near a coffee shop where I can caffeinate and Wi-Fi. The Pierce Street Coffee Works, according to Yelp,  seemed perfect, but the nearby parking spots all had meters. I don’t mind parking meters. Happy to pay for my space. But you don’t want to overnight in a metered space, lest you oversleep into the enforceable hours and awaken to a ticket.

Not a problem. Went to a quiet residential street a couple of blocks away. It was after midnight. (I’d hung out in Buffalo Alice long enough to let the beer wear off.) The street was dark. I was tired. The spot seemed fine.

Until the policeman knocked on my door.

(To Be Continued)

Brave Combo at the Lake George bandshell, Lake George, New York

So where were we? Oh yeah, enjoying global warming in New England. Mmmmm, wild blueberries. It seems like so long ago.

Because it was. I’ve fallen months behind on chronicling my travels for a number of reasons, most of them stemming from the fact that a) I am incredibly lazy and b) I’d rather be drinking beer than writing. (Every editor I’ve ever had is confirming this with a knowing nod of the head.)

The Traipsemobile is essentially a diesel-fueled Procrastination Device, the kind of technology that could change the world, if only we would let it. You give the North Koreans a Traipsemobile and I guarantee they would be too drunk and nap-craving to ever test another nuclear device. If you were Kim Jong-un would you prefer, hanging out with your dad’s friends who are all secretly laughing at your haircut behind your back or saying, “Fuck It” (in Korean, of course) and driving up to Vladivostok, heading to Bezdonnaya Bochka and then passing out in the parking lot? Exactly.

Mose Allison

So, basically, that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing for the last six months. instead of Vladivostok, I was in upstate New York and the mid-Atlantic coast, drinking beer and listening to music from the Catskills to Blue Ridge mountains. I hung out with Brave Combo in Lake George (where they played at a lakeside park so idyllic it looked like the background had been photo shopped) and Cambridge, Mass. I saw Mose Allison, who’s 85 and frail, but still seductive and subversive and hilarious, at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C. I saw Joan Osborne, who it turns out I have a crush on, at the World Café in Wilmington, Delaware.

I hung out with friends in Battery Park (before the flood) and northern Virginia. I went to Asheville and Nashville, Knoxville and Louisville,  pretty much any place with a ville at the end of its name. I saw The Sheepdogs (who have the best hair in rock and roll) in Louisville and Dead Can Dance at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.

The Sheepdogs

I was there for nearly two weeks – Nashville, I mean, not the Ryman – because the Traipsemobile had a couple of breakdowns and I was working on a story about the “Nashville” tv show for the New York Times. I’d been to Nashville for interviews a few times and once applied for a job at the Nashville Banner, which I didn’t get. But they gave me a one-day tryout, during which I interviewed Al Gore over the phone. I have no idea what we talked about. This may explain why he’s not President.

I thought of Nashville then as a pretty-enough place, with all the hills and brick buildings and college campuses, but not particularly interesting. Like most people, when I thought of Nashville, I thought of Music Row and mainstream country music, which I really hated. It seemed like just another big southern town to me, a larger version of Shreveport. When I didn’t get the Banner job, I didn’t feel like I was losing much.

I don’t know whether Nashville has changed momentously in the last 30 years or whether I just wasn’t paying enough attention. Probably both. But this time through, it struck me as one of the coolest, most vibrant places I’ve seen. I used to think Nashville was Dallas. But it’s really more Austin. Except with less traffic and different barbecue.

East Nashville is as funky as South Austin used to be and there really is music everywhere. And not just stuff with pedal steel. There’s indie rock bands and alternative country bands and funk bands and soul bands and – I’m sure, even though I didn’t run into any – hip hop bands. The town is lousy with songwriters in the way Austin is lousy with guitar players. Every waiter and bartender has a set of lyrics in their pocket that can probably break your heart.

The Green Room at the Grand Ole Opry

What’s happened, I think, is that Nashville, like Austin before it, finally realized what an asset its music legacy and community represents. So they’ve been embraced and touted. The biggest crowds still go to Opryland, the high-gloss theme park home of the Grand Ole Opry (which used to be at the Ryman). But even there, things seem less cheesy. They’ve found the right balance between glorifying their tradition and welcoming new blood. So I stood in the wings and watched a parade of old and new talent walk out into the spotlight to play for the tourists and then wander backstage and hang out in the glorious one-of-a-kind dressing rooms and a green room that looks like a country club, which it is. But now you don’t have to put on a Nudie suit or a cowboy hat to get in. Beards and flannel are perfectly okay. If this had been true 30 years ago, Mike Nesmith could have gotten in.

This is kind of what the “Nashville” tv series is about, the contrast and tension between big-money Nashville and underground Nashville, the conservative church-inundated southern town  that’s also crawling with all these creative bohemian types and how they’re slowly finding things they have in common. Sort of like the redneck-hippie convergence that fueled Austin in the 70’s. Okay, maybe not.

My point is that I really liked it there, which is something I didn’t expect. I liked the Ryman and The Station Inn and 3^rd and Lindsley, this big converted-warehouse-of-a-bar where I saw World Party. I LOVED the Loveless Café, which is famous for biscuits and showcasing up-and-comers and where I thought we were all gonna die because there was a thunderstorm that knocked out the power and left us all just sitting there in the dark for 10 minutes, while we listened to what turned out to be a small twister knocking down pine trees all around us.  Then, as if nothing had happened, the lights came back on and the show picked up where it left off.

But the place I loved the most – and this was the centerpiece of my Times story – was the Bluebird. If you’ve watched “Nashville” you know the Bluebird is a recurring character. They shot the pilot in the actual club, but the logistics of filming in a working nightclub precluded them from shooting there every week. So they built a full-scale down-to-the-glossies-on-the-wall copy of the club on the “Nashville” soundstage. I spent most of the day on the set, at the “tv” Bluebird. And then, that night, I went to the real thing.

The Bluebird is so small that its impossible to walk in during a performance and not feel self-conscious. It’s a strip mall-storefront joint and the stage is tiny and if you open the door when somebody is playing, every head will turn and you get the sense that everybody is thinking, “Hey, asshole, hurry up and sit down. We’re trying to listen to music here.” So you scurry, head down, to the back of the room and pray there’ll be a seat at the bar. There was.

And that’s when I realized that the performer I was interrupting was in fact, Ray Stevens. Yeah, “Gitarzan” Ray Stevens. What’s more he was at the piano singing “Everything is Beautiful” because, it turned out this was his daughter’s 40^th birthday party . Suzi Ragsdale is her name and she was the actual scheduled performer. But it’s Nashville and the Blue Bird and you never know who will show up. So I stumble in and come close to ruining Ray Stevens singing “Everything is Beautiful” to his daughter. This is not the sort of thing that happens in Chattanooga.

And,  by the way, Suzi Ragsdale turned out to be pretty damned good. In her own way. (See what I did there?)

I traipsed to Knoxville from there and managed to get roped into addressing a couple of journalism classes at the University of Tennessee by my friend and sometimes-adversary Chris Wohlwend, who saw my presence as a way to get out of lecturing. My advice to the students was twofold. 1. Kids, don’t be like me.. 2. If writing is easy for you, then you’re probably not very good at it. These lessons went over surprisingly well.

From there I veered towards the Midwest, for my friend Gary Childs’ funeral in Peoria (the highlight of which was my friend Nick stealing one of the magnetic “funeral procession” pennants. This will surely come in handy down the road.) There were visits to St. Louis (where I went to Chuck Berry’s club, The Duck Room, and waved to the cameras I assumed were in the restroom) and Indianapolis and Chicago. But these were just way stations. I was on my way to Iowa, where I would save America from itself.

Earl Kabong settles his differences with Professor Karl Lafong in Knoxville.

Brett Butler Comes Back A Scene At A Time

So, where were we? Oh yeah, harassing members of Cheap Trick in the wilds of Newfoundland.

The ferry crossing from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia was even longer than the ferry crossing from Labrador to Newfoundland, although not nearly so turbulent. It takes six hours on a good day to cross the 110 miles of open ocean between Port Aux Basques, Newfoundland and North Sydney, Nova Scotia. Don’t worry. There was a bar. And cafes. And a library. I went to the bar.

North Sydney, besides being north of Sydney, is on the far eastern tip of Cape Breton island, a part of Nova Scotia where lots of people still speak French, play fiddles and  accordions and silently plot to murder the English in their sleep. Kidding. They’re not really that quiet about it.

If you’ve ever been to south Louisiana, Cape Breton will seem very familiar, although there are a lot more mountains and considerably less perspiration. These are the French people – the Acadians – who didn’t get their asses shipped south in the 1700’s, when the British decided they couldn’t trust them (remember all that French and Indian War stuff you read about in history class. That’s what we’re talking about). The British Lord Mayor of Halifax ordered all the French people rounded up and put on George Island (which used to have a French name but the English decided to rename it after their King). It’s okay now, though, because there’s a plaque and everything. And it also led to poetry and music and spicy food. If the Acadians hadn’t been exiled to Louisiana we wouldn’t have Zydeco music or crawfish jambalaya. So, uh, hooray for ethnic cleansing?

My point is that people up here are still holding on to this stuff, in the same way that politicians in the southern U.S. are still trying to make it cool to wave Confederate Flags and keep black people from voting.  The French people are still pissed at the English people and the English people are still scared of the French people. That’s why the Quebec Separatist movement has persisted, why they are so adamant that all the signs have to be in French there. Because they’re convinced that, given half a chance, the English-speaking Canadians will send all of them to Abbeville or Ville Platte or some other place where alligators will eat them.

They’d rather stay up here, where the McDonald’s menus are in French and include lobster rolls. I think that’s their main reason.

The Governor’s Pub

But I was talking about Cape Breton, where you can stumble into the Governor’s Pub in Sydney on a chilly night and there’s a fireplace downstairs and live music upstairs and the best bowl of lobster bisque that’s ever been served anywhere ever. There is also delicious beer,  Hopyard Pale Ale. This may have influenced my review.

I spent the next couple of days wandering along the Cabot Trail through the Cape Breton Highlands, a 100-mile network of twisty back roads through forests and alongside cliffs, in and out of fog and mist, breaking through the clouds at the top of spectacular mountain passes, the ocean and the valleys suddenly visible for miles. Basically, it’s like driving through a Led Zeppelin album. I expected to be ambushed by Goths and Vandals or, at the very least, trolls.

The Cabot Trail

But there were no troll attacks, so I made it Halifax safely. I spent a lot of time down by the harbor. The Tall Ships were in town (including the HMS Bounty, before it sank in Hurricane Sandy), there were fireworks and lobster rolls and – oh, sweet Jesus – the Garrison Brewing Company, makers of the aforementioned Hopyard Ale. They have a tasting deck, right there on the harbor, within view of the ships and the fireworks. Hopyard makes me Happy. I stayed Happy for a while.

As you might expect, because of the Tall Ships, the crowds at the harbor were huge, Traipsemobile-sized parking spots few and far between. I am patient in these situations, content to circle the block as many times as needed before someone, fearing that I may be the authorities, panics and abandons their spot. Occasionally, to reinforce the illusion, I roll down the window and chat with traffic officers. I did this during the Harbor crawl, a three-quarter mile circumlocution of jam-packed one-way streets.

Tall Ships In Halifax

“There’s a spot in that lot over there,” the officer said, pointing to a place a half-block behind me. Somehow I’d missed it. Damn.

“I’ll go around,” I said. “Thanks.”

“No need,” said the officer. I swear this is true. He walked back up the block, stopped the traffic and motioned for me to go in reverse, the wrong way down the one-way street, so I could turn into the parking lot. Canadians are very nice. I should have offered him a beer.

I wandered through the Maritimes for another week or so, looking for bands (I highly recommend “Hey, Rosetta” from Halifax) and beer. I went all over Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and, crossed the 8-mile long Confederation Bridge onto Prince Edward Island. (Which is free crossing onto the island but has a $45 toll coming out. For all cars, not just the Traipsemobile)  And, with that, I can now say I’ve been to every Canadian Province (as well as all 50 states).  Did Mother Theresa ever do that? I think not.

Hunter’s Ale House

It’s pretty enough on P.E..I., but in a manicured, pasture-land way, not nearly so spectacular as Cape Breton or Newfoundland. It’s full of rich people. There are lots of golf courses. But there are also a few pubs in downtown Charlottetown, so I spent the night. Besides, it had cost me $45 to get on the damned island. I wasn’t going to leave without drinking beer.

Hunter’s Ale House, at the corner of Prince and Kent, seemed nice enough. And there was a singer from Cape Breton, Carmen Townsend, who I really wanted to hear. So I parked the Traipsemobile across the street and found myself a seat at the bar.

I noticed that a lot of people were hanging out by the sidewalk entrance, where there are tables and a place to smoke. They were staring across the street and talking excitedly about something. I stumbled over and asked what was going on.

“We think there’s going to be a bust,” one of them said. “See that over there?  Tactical unit. “

“What?

“Yeah, the Police Tactical Van. You know, the S.W.A.T. team.”

“You sure?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve seen it before. There are cops in there. Something’s going to happen.”

I hated to disappoint them, so I went back to the bar and let them keep watch. But any worries I might have had about whether I’d be able to park there overnight had disappeared. Nobody’s going to tow the S.W.A.T. team.

I crossed back into New Brunswick and from there across the U.S. border into Maine, once again with customs officials asking a lot fewer questions than they probably should. I spent the next few weeks horning in on friend’s family vacations in Vermont and Maine, sleeping in the driveways of assorted beachfront cottages and mountain lodges. Lobsters were consumed. Often on rolls.

Hungrytown In Hinesburg

I spent most of August in New England, hanging out with the hippies in Vermont, eating lavender goat cheese, going to concerts, getting stared at for being the only person not wearing or smoking hemp. There was a wonderful full-moon open-air Wilco show in Burlington. My Sprinter van role models, Hungrytown, played at a small park in Hinesburg, where all the townspeople inexplicably set up their lawn chairs 40 yards from the stage. I sat right up front, by myself, secure in the knowledge that no matter how much I farted, no one would be able to tell.

In New Hampshire and Maine the weather was perfect and there were wild blackberries and blueberries everywhere, free for the picking. What I’m trying to say is that this whole global warming thing is really working out well for me. So keep it up, America! I appreciate your support.

The northeasern Newfoundland coast, off St. Anthony

So, where were we? Oh, yeah, Labrador, about to get on the ferry to Newfoundland.

And, yes, I’m well aware that it’s been months and months since the last dispatch, even more months since I was actually in Labrador and/or Newfoundland. But I’ve had shit to do, you know? Like re-electing the President and saving America’s ass and stuff like that. Do you think it was easy tricking Karl Rove and Mitt Romney into believing that most Obama voters were people like me, who live in vans and drink too many beers and would probably be too drunk to vote on Election Day? No, that took a lot of time and effort. And they bought it, which is why they were so shocked to discover that millions of people didn’t actually think electing a craven sociopathic gajillionaire was a good idea. So, you’re welcome. Enjoy that health insurance I got you. And also the war with Iran we won’t be having.

But enough about me and what a hero I am. Let’s talk some more about when I was just an incredibly attractive guy who’d bravely driven three days without benefit of pavement and then took the vehicle containing all his worldly possessions onto a bucking ferryboat – a huge cruise ship-sized vessel –  for a two-hour ride across the Labrador Straits in a semi-gale, turning the whole thing into a 120-minute rollercoaster ride of sliding tables, chairs and screaming children. Lesser men would have puked. None of them were on board, though. Everyone here was drinking beer and laughing their asses off.

This is how I arrived in Newfoundland, slightly woozy. Most people come to Newfoundland from the south, via Nova Scotia,. Then they take the impeccably maintained multi-lane highway to St. John’s (a nine-hour drive, by the way, Newfoundland is WAY bigger than you think), wander up the western coast and then, finally, get to the remote northern fishing villages where Leif Erickson and the Vikings first landed  and called the place Vinland– 500 years before Columbus landed at Club Med and invented the first gated community. Since there weren’t any villages in Vinland to pillage, the Vikings just built their own, got drunk and stayed. Now tourists go there to see whales and icebergs and people catching lobster with their teeth. (Okay, that last one may not be a real thing). Basically, I’d come in the back door.

So, instead of the impeccably-maintained multi-lane highway, my introduction to Newfoundland was these little two-lane winding roads looping from one inlet to the next, little villages marked by blue and white wooden houses, giant piles of communal firewood, stacked up in advance of the next winter and hundreds of roadside gardens, full of flowers and assorted vegetables and marked off by flimsy wire to discourage the moose from walking all over them. No one ever steals anyone else’s firewood or produce. So there are no locked gates, no warning signs. If it’s not yours, you leave it alone. They are trusting people, the Newfoundlanders.

But the cloudberries (also known as bakeberries, a bitter orange version of a blackberry, kind of) are fair game, as are the moose, which are everywhere and quite a nuisance. Newfoundland, as you surely know because you are not idiots, is a big-ass island, 42,000 square miles of island, 25 miles south of Labrador and about 100 miles east of Nova Scotia. So moose are not a native species, because they do not surf.

But in 1904, a few geniuses thought it might be a good idea to bring in four (count em) moose from Manitoba, let them loose in the woods and then, you know, have mooseburgers to go along with those damned cloudberries. Except it turns out that the moose reproduced faster than they got eaten. Now the island is overrun with them. There are moose detector motion sensors on the highways, which may or may not actually work.  There are now more than 150,000 moose in Newfoundland and there are only 500,000 people. And neither species travels particularly well after dark, the moose because they’re half-blind and clumsy, the Newfoundlanders because they are, well, half-blind and clumsy, but that’s because they’re usually drunk. Here’s a traditional Newfoundland joke I just made up: “Hey, Paddy, what’s the only thing Newfies run into more than moose?” “I don’t know, Mick, what? “Bars.”

Which is to say that I adore Newfoundland, top to bottom, east to west,  dimly-lit pub to dimly-lit pub. I’ve never been to Ireland, but because I’ve been to Newfoundland, I don’t feel like I need to go. This is a place where people are friendly, loquacious and full of whiskey. They are huggers, the Newfoundlanders, big, smelly huggers. They also sound more Irish than Canadian (Anthony is pronounced Antony, for instance) and they really, really hate Canadians, which is what they call those bastards on the mainland. Newfoundland was an independent colony until 1948, when they voted for “confederation” in an election so close it made Bush-Gore look like a landslide. Some locals still refuse to recognize the result.  If you are from Newfoundland (that’s New-found-LAND, not Newfundlund) then you are not Canadian, you’re a Newfoundlander. They remind me of Texans in that way.

They are like this because they live on an island but also because, let’s face it, they killed off a lot of the other people who used to live on the island, including the original natives and then a fair number of the French and Spanish and Portuguese explorers who came along later. They’re the descendants of pirates and smugglers, basically (which is why they drink a lot of rum. No, really, they do.) They’re loud and raw and often completely full of shit. They also remind me of Texans in that way.

Someone on the ferry had mentioned that there was a huge iceberg floating near St. Anthony (remember, “Antony”) off the far northern peninsula and visible from the lighthouse. I thought there was a chance they were  exaggerating and, at best, it might be a little white spot on the horizon, the melting remnant of something that used to be impressive.

Uh, no. This thing rose 250 feet above the water and was as big around as a city block. And, no, I was not drunk (yet). That came later. First at what I believed to be the only open bar in town, the Royal Canadian Legion Hall, which is a sad metal building on the non-scenic side of town. There was one drunk old guy at a stool (no, not me) a couple of video poker games and a sign explaining that to become an honorary Newfoundlander you’d have to be Screeched, to drink the local rum and also kiss a cod. I did one of those things. I got a ribbon. I also found out there was another bar. At The Haven Inn.

Which was also, on first glance, an incredibly depressing place, a bare, harshly-lit room off the hotel lobby with even more Video Lottery games, a half-dozen of them, all of which were occupied by people who were piling in an alarming number of two-dollar coins. The bartender, who was also the motel clerk – she could see the check-in desk and the bar equally well from her chair – would occasionally cash in the winnings. Which were, I shit you not, often hundreds and hundreds of dollars. These people were not drunken losers. They were gambling geniuses. They bought me drinks. They gave me hugs. Have I mentioned how much I loved Newfoundland?

They also suggested I should get even closer to the iceberg. So, for $40, I got a seat on the Northland Discovery whale-watching boat, which would take us on a three-hour tour. Yeah, nothing ominous about that.

The area off St. Anthony is called Iceberg Alley (and there is indeed an Iceberg Watching website) because the currents conspire to send most of the broken pieces of the Arctic Ice Shelf right through there. Other places may claim that “You Can See The End of The World From Here” but St. Anthony might actually be the best place for a seat. Your melting glacial harbingers of doom  come floating by here on a regular basis.

Usually they’re gone by July, except they’re bigger now and take longer to melt. Thus the behemoth I’d seen from shore. We headed straight for it, well, not completely straight for it. The currents dictated a little bobbing and weaving. Also some vomiting passengers. Turns out they were from Ontario. Fucking Canadians.

The closer we got to the iceberg, the more you could appreciate how much of it there was, the blue outlines of its underwater base made an appearance. Then there was the sound, the creaking of the ice melting, the growing lines, the occasional thunder of chunks breaking free and crashing into the North Atlantic. It was great. We got close enough to scoop up some bits and put them into our mouths. And, no, I was not drunk. That came later.

There were humpback whales and dolphins visible pretty much the whole time, sometimes breaching within 50 feet of the boat. Other than that, I was bored as shit. A few weeks earlier, tourists on the same boat got to see the whales and the icebergs all together. Here’s a video.

The west coast highway, looking towards the Gulf of St. Lawrence

I spent the next three weeks wandering around Newfoundland, reversing the normal tourist route and gradually making my way into the less wild (relatively speaking) southern end of “The Rock.” There were stunning cliffside drives along the way, twisting mountainside/ocean views that put California’s Pacific Coast Highway to shame. There were dark spectacular forests. There were rivers, right off the highway, full of fishermen taking advantage of the salmon run. There were places like Hawke’s Bay and Torrent River and, in every one of them, a small pub full of pathologically friendly locals. At one point, I swear, I had to sneak out of a bar because so many people were buying me drinks that I couldn’t possibly finish them all. I didn’t dare turn them down. So I slipped out a back entrance and into the Traipsemobile, where I laughed myself to sleep.

My favorite coaster. At the Magnum & Stein.

Eventually, I made it to St. John’s which, seriously, has the most densely-packed bar scene I’ve ever seen. George Street isn’t as long as Bourbon Street, but it’s even more jammed with drinkeries. And I had some pan-fried cod at Magnum & Stein’s that may be the best thing I’ve eaten since this road trip began.

There were other adventures, including an encounter with Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick (who were opening for Aerosmith at a nearby festival) , in which he possibly mistook me for the most dedicated stalker he’s ever seen. Actually, I was just in the hotel lobby stealing Wi-Fi. “What the hell are you doing way up here?,” he asked when I told him I’d seen his son, Miles, playing at a bar in Rockford, Illinois just a few weeks before.

“Just passing through, “ I told him. Which was, of course, completely true.

The easternmost point in North America

Both the city and the new ABC series.

So, where were we? Oh yeah, in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, drinking beer with the Yoopers.

I crossed into Canada the next day and made my way across Ontario, which is way bigger and has more bears than I realized. (Roadside signs warn you not to feed them and, sure enough, about 200 yards past one of the signs there was a bear, just sitting there, watching the traffic go by and looking at the passing cars like, “Really? Nothing? None of you? Because of the signs? You people are SHEEP! Which are delicious, by the way. Anybody got a sheep in there? A goat? Cat? Hamster? Cheez-Its? Anything? Oh, Come ON!”)

I spent the night in downtown North Bay, next to Cecil’s Eatery & Beer Society, which I thought was closed because there were no cars around and it was, you know, downtown, so I’d expect some people to be visible. But, external clues notwithstanding, they were open, serving delicious beer inside and, as is the Canadian custom, showing only hockey-related programming on their over-the-bar tv’s. It was midsummer and the screen was filled with people talking about off-season trades and the greatest games in NHL history and pretty much any hockey thing they could think of. Then they switched to a movie and, swear to God, it was “Youngblood”, the greatest Rob Lowe hockey movie ever made, in which he learns how to punch other hockey players in the face before they punch him. I don’t know this, but I suspect they show it every night. I choose to believe that they do.

It had taken me 7 hours to get from Sault Ste. Marie to North Bay and it was still another 5 hours to Ottawa. That’s 500 miles of Ontario I had to cross (and, because they use the metric system, it takes twice as long. The official distance from Sault Ste. Marie to Ottawa is approximately 37,000 liter-grams.).

I spent a day at the Ottawa Jazz Festival, being bored to tears by Esperanza Spalding, who is an enormously talented bass player and vocalist and clearly a prodigy but, hard as she tries to emote, there’s something too-technical and slightly off-putting about her. She should have been Mitt Romney’s running mate.

I also should note that I parked right by the concert site, Confederation Park near the Canadian Parliament, on Nepean Street, which smelled like it sounds.

But that’s not important. What’s important is that I went 125 miles from there directly to the Montreal Jazz Festival, which did not smell like pee at all. Somehow, and I have no idea how I did this, I slalomed The Traipsemobile through the narrow chicanes of central Montreal and ended up just off Rue Sainte Catherine, approximately 20 yards from the Place de Arts, which was jammed to the brim with people in culottes and low-cut striped tube tops. Also some women. I kid the French Canadiens.

The thing is, the whole block was swarming with people who were there to hear actual jazz. I tried to  get a ticket for a Stanley Clarke performance a few hours before the show and they French-laughed right in my face. I might as well have been hunting for a last-minute ticket to see Arcade Fire or Justin Bieber. I love this place. I truly do.

First of all, you can walk all over the damn city without ever going outside. Minneapolis has a network of skywalks that is pretty cool but Montreal’s is AMAZING, a whole world hidden under the ground. And, when you surface, the city is as vibrant as any in North America, although there does appear to be an unhealthy infestation of mimes and jugglers. But there are also bagels and beautiful women wearing dresses while riding bicycles and looking all French and shit. I could live here. In the summer, anyway.

Rue St. Viateur, Outremont

I spent most of my time in Outremont, an old-world residential neighborhood, populated mostly by Greeks and Orthodox Jews. It’s where Mordecai Richler grew up. I might as well have been in Europe. There were stoops and old ladies sweeping sidewalks and, on Canada Day, a parade heading towards St. Michael’s Catholic church, a brass band following a paper Mache statue of the Virgin Mary, slowly moving down Rue Saint. Viateur. It felt like a scene from Godfather II. I left before they cut to the montage.

I was on my way to Quebec City, which I’d never visited. Because there are no Anytime Fitness locations in Quebec (you know how it is with the French and showers. Again, I kid.) I took advantage of Couchsurfing to find a place with plumbing and an electrical outlet. I got a lot more than that.

Steve Bellemare, my Couchsurfing host in Quebec, grew up there and has worked in a local sawmill, off and on, for most of his adult life. But the sawmill closes down pretty regularly, subject to the vagaries of lumber demands and union disputes. So he’s had long stretches of being out of work. During which he rode a bicycle around the world.

Seriously, with his riding partner Pierre (they called themselves the Velcro Brothers) he rode a bicycle from Vladivostok, across Siberia, across Eastern Europe, across Western Europe, all the way to Ireland. He rode a bicycle across China and Mongolia. He rode a bicycle all the way up to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, on the same gravel road that I was so proud of having survived in the Traipsemobile. On a bicycle. He is 49 years old, a volunteer paramedic and quite possibly the coolest person I’ve ever met.

Steve Bellemare

His wife, Karine, speaks almost no English, but laughed at my jokes without understanding a word of what I was saying. (I know. Most of you do the exact same thing.) He took me all over Quebec City, through the old fort, the Chateau Frontenac Hotel, on the rampart of the old battlefield, down hidden pathways along the St. Lawrence River. We drank beer. We took a ferry across the St. Lawrence and back again, just so we could get a spectacular view of the city. And, when one of our fellow ferry passengers, confined to a wheelchair, had trouble on the ramp – picking up some dangerous downhill speed, Steve raced over and saved the day. A few minutes earlier that guy, and all the other wheelchair passengers, apparently on some kind of excursion, had been on deck singing La Vie En Rose, while we crossed the St. Lawrence. It was awesome.

Steve introduced me to all sorts of cool Quebecois musicians, Lisa LeBlanc, Bernard Adamus, Les Respectables. And he told me that, even though he’s ridden his bicycle pretty much everywhere in the world, he’d never been to Labrador. So that’s where I decided to go.

The hilariously-misnamed Trans Labrador Highway is several hundred miles of potholes, dust and gravel, some of it the size of monkey skulls. This is among the reasons why Steve Bellemare hasn’t ridden it on a bicycle and why I probably shouldn’t have driven it in a van. But one of us is an idiot.

Get out your Google Maps and follow along. From Quebec City it’s 250 miles of two-lane highway , a beautiful seven-hour drive along the north shore of the St. Lawrence to Baie-Comeau, including a ferry crossing of the Saguenay River  where it converges with the St. Lawrence at Tadoussac, which was established as a French trading post in 1600. So far, so good.At Baie  Comeau, you turn onto a little provincial highway, paved but narrow and head north through dense forest towards the Labrador border, which is 300 miles away. The pavement stops about 175 miles before that. With the exception of a couple of brief paved stretches around mining sites,it’s nothing but gravel from there to Labrador City.

Most of the time, that’s not really a big deal. The gravel’s easier to maintain in cold weather than pavement, and the potholes are not so unforgiving. I learned this in Alaska, driving the Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay.  As long as you don’t get in a hurry, it’s really not so bad. Sometimes you can go as fast as 50-60 miles an hour. Most of the time, though, 40 is a better idea.

But you have to pay attention, to resist the temptation to speed up when there’s a straight, level stretch because, the minute you let your eyes wander, there’s a frame-cracking dip in the road, a place where the grader didn’t quite do its job, where the last rain left divots or the ore trucks have turned the whole thing into corduroy. It’s exhausting  to pay that much attention for that long, especially for me.

The worst stretch, of course, is right before you cross over into Labrador, right when you think you’re just about done for the day. It’s a 40-mile stretch that locals refer to as “The Trail” that winds and twists in every direction and crosses over the railroad tracks (used to transport iron ore) 8 separate times. Supposedly this stretch was built by workers who were “on strike” refusing to work any harder than they had to, so they just took the roadway around whatever curve was easiest. They did very little leveling or digging or attempting to straighten things out. I respect that.

But the result is that, even if there are no other vehicles on the road – and there are always big ore trucks – you will soon be enveloped in a self-generated cloud of dust. Not just regular dust, either. The sand in this part of Labrador is this fine, white talcum stuff. (It piled up in little cones on the Traipsemobile’s rear bumper, like someone had dumped out a hundred hourglasses when I wasn’t looking.) It fills the sky as if the forest is on fire. You can’t see more than a few feet even on a bright, clear day. It was the worst stretch of road I’d ever been on in my life. Period.

Until the next day.

After a night in Labrador City, a dismal dusty city that feels trampled by mine workers and the big mining companies who have taken their profits elsewhere, I headed east towards Goose Bay, 350 miles away. The first 80 miles is paved and smooth. After that, though it’s back to the gravel, to bigger chuckholes, skidding turns on rain-softened mud and, worst of all, a 10 mile under-construction stretch that is straight out of a Jeep commercial. You know, the one where guys drive over boulders that most mountain goats would avoid.  It looks like the work of a careless giant with a broken rake.

Only one lane is “navigable” because of all the construction equipment and rockslides and such, so you invariably have to wait a half-hour or so before a flagman gives you permission to go. I was already dead-ass tired after all those hours of paying attention. I needed a pick me up. I decided to play “In A Gadda Da Vida.” The 17-minute version. With the drum solo.

And that’s what was pounding in my brain as I careened over rocks, rocking side to side, sinking into mud pits and wobbling, somehow, to the other side. It was like being on a boat in choppy seas, only dirtier and with that damn drum solo pounding into my head. By the time I got back onto “level” ground, my heart was pounding and I was borderline hallucinating.

So, of course, I found a place in Goose Bay to celebrate the day, a double-doored giant cabin of a restaurant called, appropriately enough, Trapper’s Cabin, where — I swear this is true –  you have to cook your own meal. You order steak or chicken and they bring you it to you in the plastic-wrapped pack from the supermarket and direct you to the grill, where there are sauces and pans and assorted cooking implements. They do cook the vegetables for you.

And the bar itself is like something out of “Evil Dead.” Taxidermy on the walls isn’t that unusual around here, there are always moose antlers and deer heads and such. But Trapper’s Cabin has giant stuffed, mutant squirrels and some disembodied hooves. This is not a place you would want to enter if you’d been taking the wrong kind of drugs.

The people, though, were friendly enough, as people in Labrador tend to be. Some of them were there because of the Canadian Air Base, some were actual trappers. One guys told me he’d seen wolves on the “highway” just the other day. Maybe he did. Or maybe he hit his head while bouncing over boulders. One’s as likely as the other.

At that point I still had another 350 miles of gravel to go, until I got to the south end of Labrador and took the ferry, a 30-minute rollercoaster ride of high waves and sliding furniture, to northern Newfoundland. I found a place to eat just before I left Labrador, a little diner/motel, The Northern Light Inn, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean where it mixes with the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

A couple there noticed the layer of dirt on my van and assumed, correctly, that I’d come across the Trans-Labrador Highway.

“How bad is it,” the husband, asked. “We’ve heard it’s pretty rough.”

“No, it’s not bad at all,” I said, meaning it. “A few rough spots, but not bad.” I didn’t mention the mutant squirrels or In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. They’d find out about them soon enough.

Pavement at last

So, where were we? Oh, yeah, headed for Milwaukee because Illinois – like Missouri before it and Kansas before that – was too damned hot. Global warming is not my friend.

The Traipsemobile in Milwaukee

You know who IS my friend? Beer is my friend. And also tv. And Texas music. Those are my goddam friends. If only there had been some place in Milwaukee where I could combine all three. But, wait, there WAS!!! Dale Watson, bless his Johnny Cash-lovin’ rockabilly heart, was playing in the Fire Pit’s Side Bar at the Potawatomi Bingo Casino in Milwaukee, a horrifying cavern of a building filled with bell-and-whistle slot machines and cigarette smoke and gigantic fake trees. The décor, schlocky in the extreme, was all fake bear rugs and fake fireplaces with fake fires, fake muskrat traps, fake snow, fake everything. It’s like The Grove, only with log cabins.

And off in the corner, where the new fake Fire Pit was under construction, was the Side Bar with a multitude of real tv screens and, set up to play on the tiny stage, Dale Watson and his Lone Star band.. On the TV’s, the NBA Finals. So, let’s recap: NBA Finals to the left of me, Dale Watson to the right of me, beer directly in front of me. Generally, I don’t enjoy multi-tasking. Hell, I don’t even enjoy uni-tasking. This, however, I could handle.

There were some hard-core fans in the room, dressed in their Dale Watson sleeveless work shirts, telling so many stories about Dale and the road that I thought they were roadies. They were big and burly, mullet-haired and heavily tattooed And it turns out they were women. I didn’t realize this until they turned around.

The Potawatomi Bingo Casino

Dale Watson

They knew Dale, who looks like a shorter, stumpier and whiter-haired version of Billy Bob Thornton,  and Dale knew them. He dedicated songs to them. They hooted. They hollered.. They bought him drinks (Pabst Blue Ribbon, because Lone Star wasn’t available. “It’s the Lone Star of Wisconsin,” Dale said, accepting the tribute and the tequila shots that were soon to follow.) And, as the night went on, these big burly women, who I’d mistaken for truck-driving men, began to dance. Slowly. And gracefully, their eyes closed, the stage lights hitting their small diamond earrings, their blue eye shadow visible for the first time. They were lovely. They were poignant. I never found out where they were from or how often they’d danced to Dale Watson singing his rockabilly country songs. But it made me happy to see them there at the Potawatomi Bingo Casino, dancing by the Fire Pit’s Side Bar.

From there I wandered up the edge of  Wisconsin, along the western shore of Lake Michigan, past hundreds of lake houses with hundreds of “For Sale” signs. Past mailboxes shaped like bears and badgers and one that I think was supposed to be Ed Gein. Past dunes and small islands and hidden coves. Through Sheboygan and Manitowoc. Through Sturgeon Bay, all the way to the end of the Door Peninsula and finally, by ferry, to Washington Island. And to the oldest continuously-open bar in Wisconsin, or so they claim: Nelsen’s Hall. Home of the Bitters Club.

Turns out that Tom Nelsen, who opened the bar in 1899, drank a whole lot of Angostura Bitters, cause he thought they had wondrous medical properties. Also they were 45 percent alcohol. So when Prohibition started, Tom got himself a pharmacist’s license so that he could dispense the bitters as “medicine.” This is why Nelsen’s Hall never had to shut down.

They still sell the stuff, lots of it and the current owner swears it cures just about everything, including flatulence. If you order a shot of Bitters, you get to join the Bitters Club. Which is different than the Bitter Club, of which I am a charter member. And no, I didn’t drink any goddam bitters. I drank beer and watched the NBA game on tv. I’m not your puppet, goddammit!

The other thing they do here, and I was just drunk enough to be amazed by it, is wrap quarters in dollar bills and throw them at the ceiling where a bunch of ‘em stick. How do they do that? It looks like an ordinary white-painted wooden ceiling. Do they wedge between the slats? Are there magnets behind it? Can I get another beer?

After spending the night in the parking lot, I took the ferry back to the mainland, sat in the Traipsemobile, looked out through the windshield and pretended I was driving across the water. I still might have been a little drunk.

I made my way around Green Bay and onto Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, hugging Lake Michigan’s northern shore – which is gorgeous — most of the way. More coves. More forests and more “For Sale” signs. If you want waterfront property, there are deals to be had up here.

I spent a night in Escanaba (which I’m pretty sure is an old Lyle Lovett tune. No?), crossed the Mackinac Bridge, just to say I had, and eventually ended up in Sault Ste. Marie, “the Soo” as the locals call it and the place where ships, mostly giant freighters carrying iron ore and, I think, taffy make the transition from Lake Superior to Lake Huron, which is 21 feet lower. Water slides, apparently, don’t work for ships.

They built the first version of “Soo Locks” in the 1850’s, with newer and bigger versions being constructed five or six times in the decades since. Before that, ships had to be portaged, on  wooden rails, through downtown Sault Ste. Marie. I’m not sure where exactly. I think it’s near Portage Street. Someone should probably look this up.

What I’m trying to explain here is that going through 21-foot locks is extremely cool but not particularly exciting. It’s like being in a giant bathtub and waiting for it to fill up enough for you to move around without scraping your butt on the bottom. Or trapping the rubber ducky in your crotch. Oh, right, like that’s never happened to you.

Speaking of maritime disasters, they love them here. They talk about shipwrecks almost as much as hockey. Gives the place a certain pathos and, I guess, makes everyone feel a little luckier just to be alive. Almost every bar, every restaurant, every hardware store has a photo of some doomed vessel. Or a scale model. Or, if at all possible, some bit of wreckage. You look out at Lake Superior, massive and gray and it’s hard not to think about how often people have died out there. In the winter, it must be even harder, when the trees are bare, the skies are gray and the water is even grayer.

At Whitefish Point, which juts out into Lake Superior about 70 miles northwest of Sault Ste. Marie, is the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, which has lots of memorabilia (including the ship’s bell) from the Edmund Fitzgerald and, yes, they play that damn song constantly, so much that after a half-hour at the place I believe Gordon Lightfoot would just punch himself in the face.

There are detailed models of pretty much every major shipwreck that’s occurred in Lake Superior, and there have been shitloads of them. The Edmund Fitzgerald went down just 40 miles from there. It’s a cool exhibit actually. Among the things I didn’t know is that all the crew members were American, mostly from Michigan and Ohio. I’ve always thought of it as a Canadian ship, because of the song, I guess, but it wasn’t.

The ships, mostly giant ore freighters, that make it to the locks without sinking,  tend to be filled with guys who really want a drink, which is why downtown Sault Ste. Marie, and the upper peninsula in general, is loaded with bars, mostly no-nonsense beer-and-a-shot kind of joints. There are so many bars in Sault Ste. Marie (13 bars in a three-block area) that one guy calls it, “the Barmuda Triangle, where people go in and are never heard from again.”

The guy who said that, to me, sitting in a bar in downtown Sault Ste. Marie called Moloney’s Alley, is Kevin Kluck, who was explaining why he and his just-out-of-college son Randy spent a year going to EVERY BAR IN THE UPPER PENINSULA and have self-published a book about it, which I purchased immediately. It’s called “Yooper Bars”, cause apparently if you live in the U.P. you’re a yooper. I like this.

Kevin and Randy drove 47,000 miles , went to 109 bars and published a guide with pictures, prices, each one’s house specialty drink, history and best-ever celebrity visitors (Jeff Daniels’ name turns up a lot, as do Kid Rock and Sparky Anderson). This may be the greatest book ever written and certainly the best one if you want to know what they charge for a 24-ounce beer at The Jack Pine Bar and Grill in Kinross ($3.50). Here are some excerpts:

The Albany Bar (De Tour Village, MI): “The best Polish dinner west of Warsaw.”

The Bomb Shelter Saloon (Sault Ste. Marie, MI) : “originally build as a bomb shelter by Finnish immigrants . . .The lowest elevation of any bar in Chippewa County.”

Downtowner Tavern (Sault Ste. Marie, MI): “Happy Hour is every day from 3:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m.”

Rapid River Pub (Rapid River, MI): “Best joke: Q: What’s the only world in the English language that is always pronounced wrongly? A: Wrongly.”

The Hard Rock Bar (Negaunee, MI): “has the largest documented urinal in the U.P.”

Jack’s Tee Pee Bar (Ishpeming, MI) :“one of the opening scenes for “Anatomy of a Murder” was filmed in what is now Jack’s Tee-Pee Bar.”

The Gay Bar (Gay, MI): “Home of the Most Photographed Sign in the U.P.”

Hoop ‘n Holler Tavern (Merriweather, MI): “the westernmost bar of the Eastern Time Zone in the United States.”

Now that, my friends, is journalism.

We sat in Moloney’s for a while, talking about writing and drinking and pickled eggs, the write-up he and Randy got that day in the Sault Ste. Marie Evening News. He talked Randy into doing the book, because the kid was just out of college and couldn’t find a job. It was more a father-son outing than anything and you can tell Kevin’s enjoyed it way more than Randy did. Kevin wants to write a novel, but I’m encouraging him to pursue his other dream, which is writing a guide to every bar on Highway 1 between Miami and Key West. And when he does, I will personally nominate him for a Pulitzer Goddam Prize.

Randy and Kevin Kluck