Sunday Whatever – Roadhouse Blues an Essay by Dale Williams Barrigar

“Keep your eyes on the road, your hand upon the wheel…”
 – The Doors

“This land is your land…” – Woody Guthrie

“Superman never made any money / savin’ the world from Solomon
Grundy / and sometimes I despair / the world will never see another
man like him.” – “Superman’s Song,” Crash Test Dummies, from

The Ghosts that Haunt Me

I used to leave in the middle of the night, solo, mostly.  

It was the 1990s. I was in my 20s. My procedure for road trips in those days was simple.

One: make sure there was enough gasoline in the car to drive for a long time. I’d run out in the middle of nowhere more than once before.

Two: make sure I had enough Marlboro or Camel (or both) cigarettes so that I didn’t run out until I came to a place where I could get more: an undiscovered roadhouse, gas station, tavern, bar, or convenience store in the middle of nowhere always beckoning somewhere up the road.

Three: make sure I had lots of beverages handy. (Depending on when I was leaving, the beverage might be a large thermos of hot, strong black coffee or a fifth of straight, cheap vodka; or both).

(Disclaimer: I do NOT recommend driving while intoxicated on anything and I was “lucky” to survive, and barely survived on more than one occasion, FYI (plus problems with the law); but my writing is always about telling (or trying to tell) the truth, like Jesus and Hemingway said to do, even when (or especially when) exaggerating or, partially, making it up. Thank you, Mark Twain and Norman Mailer.)

Four: make sure I had access to tons of tunes (via radio, tape deck, and/or CD player, etc.).

Five: make sure the large Rand McNally Road Atlas was somewhere in the car.

I’d gotten lost in the middle of nowhere so many times, even with the Road Atlas, that its presence was required before leaving if I remembered it; this, of course, was in the days before cell phones or robots would tell you which way to go, a practice I still don’t follow in honor of the good old days and in favor of using my own brain instead of handing it over to a computer.

My little car was already a moving library, overflowing with books, notebooks, sketchbooks, pens, and pencils of many different colors.

The Road Atlas often wasn’t in the car because often I brought it into the house or the apartment (I’ve always lived in at least two places at once, still do today, and definitely did back then; I can add that the places have never been officially mine, keeping me officially homeless, and officially free) in order to study the lands and waters, the names and historical signs and markers, of the United States. 

I was in love with America like a man loves a woman, like a woman loves a man, like the land that had born me had written itself on my heart, like the Indians loved the land, like the cowboys also came to love the land, like the slave loves her freedom when it comes, like the dolphin loves to travel the ocean roads while singing to her friends, like the sweet swan of Avon traveling the river-paths in his sonnet-penning nobility.

In this essay I will present a tiny, entertaining nature tale of every state I’ve ever been in, in my (currently) fifty-eight years. I will limit myself to a single memory contained in a single sentence for every state I’ve traveled to. And I apologize to Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, and Rhode Island, the five states I don’t remember being in; maybe I’ll get back to you later some day, somehow, some way, like Don Quixote rising from his bed to ride again…

In the spirit of Jack Kerouac’s “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose,” I will write fast without changing a single word afterward (fictionally). The list of states I’ve been in is by my side as I sit writing by a window with a mug of deep, very strong green tea at hand (no more smoking), and three dogs sleeping in my vicinity, two Siberian Huskies and one pit bull, Boo, Colonel and Bandit.

In the spirit of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” I will pretend that a poor man (myself) owns all of America, but only in spirit, never in “reality.”

Because I believe what Crazy Horse said: no one can own the land. I’ve been to Fort Robinson where Crazy Horse was crucified but I will describe a different memory of Nebraska for reasons you will see if you get there.

Anyone who pretends to own the land is sadly fooling themselves and ripping everyone else off. This I believe.

I was born in Dearborn, Michigan, USA, in 1967, three months before the Summer of Love. I’ve lived most of my life in Illinois, mostly Chicago and environs, which are in my blood. Black Hawk, Muddy Waters and Abraham Lincoln are all heroes of mine (none of them were perfect).

Today is the day of Jesus’ Last Supper, in the “Year of Our Lord” 2025. (Tomorrow I will fall silent until he rises again in the heart of the story on Sunday.)

Note to the Reader: The list can be read straight through or jumped around in. Each state is its own separate little prose poem attempt; sentences that can be studied, like life, for their successes and failures. (And failures can be more beautiful and interesting than “success;” this is one thing Leonard Cohen meant with his phrase “beautiful losers.”)

This is my Song of Myself and Song of the Open Road, where the individual self also stands for the USA which also stands for the people everywhere.

After the list, I’ll sum up with terse reflections on three massive, related problems almost beyond comprehension at times: Climate Change, The Bomb, and Tyranny. These brief words (already written in my head) are lessons I’ve learned from my time (metaphorically and literally) on the road.

***

Alabama: I remember driving slowly through a shadowy pine barrens section of this deep southern state and thinking about how the haunting lines of green trees reminded me of parts of my childhood spent with my grandparents in northern Michigan; I would drive slowly so I could conserve gasoline for earth-friendly reasons and so I could see and feel and smell and hear the land with the windows open.

Alaska: I remember all the animals I saw who you can only see here, or in a very few other places on Planet Earth: the caribou, the reindeer, the massive salmon, the grizzly bears, the lynx, the moose, the Dall sheep, the mountain goats, the orca, the humpback whale.

Arizona: We were hiking, very, very deep down into the canyon when suddenly we came upon the edge of the world, the cliffside jutting out into the air and leading down, down, down into the eternal, snaking river.

Arkansas: I remember a rare, hilly, hillbilly, hippy town with the brightly painted buildings and people hanging off the sides of the small mountains and the curving streets and sidewalks and the bright green trees hanging out and sprouting their breathing leaves everywhere.

California: I am on LSD standing upon a beach staring out at the ocean and watching the massive fog roll in which will soon be enveloping me, transporting me instantaneously to the surface of the moon like in a Jimi Hendrix song; no fear; I realize there should never be any fear, not for or of anything, not even, or especially not, of death (because we never really die…).

Colorado: I was as exhausted as I’ve ever been in the tiny tent being battered by the wild-ass wind on a rock face on top of a mountain after a twelve-hour nonstop hike straight upward on switchback trails and wondering how did I get here and why did I do this; I thought I might die.

Florida: I was standing on a riverside staring at the opposite bank upon which a ten- or twelve-foot alligator was lolling with its mouth open; I was covered with Everglades bugs buzzing around my head and body and wondering how long it would take the gator to swim across the not-too-wide river; and then I ran back into the car.

Georgia: I was standing on a hillside staring at a historical marker, a sign that talked about the Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears.

Idaho: I was standing and staring at Hemingway’s house and thinking about the end.

Illinois: I’m standing in a cave mouth inside a massive bluff and staring out at the mighty Mississippi; I can’t see the other side of the brown, foamy river because it’s too far away.

Indiana: I’m standing on the top of a massive sand dune looking out at the unbelievable blueness of Lake Michigan beneath the incredibly blue sky, which reminds me of the blues; in the hazed-over distance, I can barely make out the famous skyline of Chicago, where my tiny apartment lies buried.

Iowa: the endless hilly green cornfields are as mysterious as the ocean; no wonder they think they see UFOs here.

Kansas: a herd of wild cows jumps out from nowhere in the tangled bushes and blocks the dirt road so that I have to stop my car and turn around, which doesn’t matter because I’m not going anywhere specific, just driving around, slowly, and daydreaming, which is inspired by the land; first I watch them for a very long time and they watch me.

Kentucky: I wake up lying down in a field of grass and dreamily remembering I’m sleeping not too far away from Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood cabin; a hawk is flying above me; his scream is the thing that woke me.

Louisiana: I’m looking at the white cotton balls dotting the fields and wondering what it must have felt like to be a slave in America; then knowing that we are all slaves of a different kind, now, in America; I can see the beautiful ghost of Sojourner Truth.

Maine: I’m standing on the wet sand staring out at the gray ocean toward England and remembering my mother (now passed on) and thinking how she taught me much of Shakespeare in her oral versions (retelling the tales) before I was ten years old, the TV quietly on in the background.

Massachusetts: I’m standing on the porch of Herman Melville’s house and staring out at Mount Greylock, the mountain that looks like a whale in the landscape as Melville pointed out while he was writing Moby Dick, his magnificent failure.

Michigan: I’m staring down into the deep water of Clear Lake from a small row boat and watching a gigantic fish, probably a lake trout, swim by; the water is so clear and blue it seems transcendently tropical, magically made by the hand and brain of the Supreme Being: I’m “high on life.”

Minnesota: We’re rowing a borrowed canoe against the wind with the wind hard in our faces across a gigantic lake and we’re talking about Bob Dylan’s hometown.

Mississippi: I’m sitting on the porch of William Faulkner’s ramshackle mansion whose windows were all broken out when Faulkner bought it and daydreaming about Cormac McCarthy’s Christlike drinking novel Suttree and William S. Burroughs, an old man on cigarettes and methadone living in Lawrence, Kansas, with his cats.

Missouri: It’s after midnight and I’m wandering around an abandoned drive-in theater on magic mushrooms with my brain floating up among the clouds and dreaming about Huck Finn, Jim, Tom Sawyer, and Becky Thatcher, mostly Becky Thatcher.

Montana: I’m standing at the place where Chief Joseph surrendered after almost making it to Canada.

Nebraska: Outside of Red Cloud, Nebraska, Willa Cather’s hometown, my number one traveling companion and I come out of a clump of trees where we had suddenly disappeared together for spontaneous love; later this kind of behavior will result in twins who changed my life, converting me from a skeptical agnostic into a believer, although I had already been on my way before then.

Nevada: exhausted with all the strip clubs and gamblers who are obsessed with nothing other than sex and money, I’m climbing, alone, the dry chalky hills of the desert outside Las Vegas.

New Hampshire: standing on a mountaintop alone reciting Robert Frost lyrics to no one, one’s long, unkempt hair blowing back in the wind.

New Jersey: standing near the sound of the waterfall in Paterson, New Jersey, thinking of Camden where Whitman lived, and daydreaming about William Carlos Williams and his friend and rival Wallace Stevens, both of whom, like Whitman, were obsessed with the beauty and tragedy of the American land.

New Mexico: standing in the mountains surrounding Santa Fe thinking about how D.H. Lawrence wanted to be both a cowboy and an Indian.

***

EASTER SUNDAY, 2025.

New York: standing and looking up at the Statue of Liberty remembering the first time I was there, so small my grandfather was holding my hand and listening to the sea gulls sing their songs while they swoop around both times.

North Carolina: standing on the Outer Banks looking at the Graveyard of the Atlantic and thinking of Blackbeard, the outlaw who avoided violence when he could with his outrageous costume.

North Dakota: marveling at the vastness of the badlands in Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Ohio: marveling at the wild colors and wonderfully waving depths in the wind of the tallgrass prairie fragments that remain, big bluestem, purple coneflower, Indian grass and hundreds of others.

Oklahoma: puffing upon and passing a pipeful of the sacred ganja with my brother while we were hiding in the tallgrass prairie and watching the bison wandering away in the wind.

Oregon: the sublime, terrifying tide rushing in, huge bodies of dead trees all over the wet gray sand, living trees so thick and green, and tall, all around me I felt like I was in a fairy tale, the fishy salt smell of the ocean and the smell of the trees mingling like a sweet morphine dream.

Pennsylvania: staring at the cracked Liberty Bell with the sun shining on the crack.

South Carolina: intoxicatedly leaping off a fishing boat onto a dock and heading straight into a seaside bar where a man sang “Superman’s Song” by the Crash Test Dummies, solo, with his acoustic guitar – and he sang it perhaps half a dozen times in a row, all perfect; I raise my drink at him many times.

South Dakota: I’m standing in the Badlands hearing the eerie howling of the coyotes in the distance when a baby rabbit runs out from nowhere straight up to me on the ground and gets on top of my booted foot where s/he sits for a few seconds before darting away and vanishing.

Tennessee: I’m hiking to a waterfall with a beautiful, brown-haired, green-eyed woman when a black bear crosses our path on the trail, disappearing into the trees.

Texas: I’m lost alone in the Panhandle and my small car is broken down in the middle of nowhere and I can see a very dark storm approaching me across the dry plains.

Utah: I’m standing high and marveling at the weird, wild, witchy beauty of the Great Salt Lake and feeling like I’m on a magic carpet with Muhammad, a hypomanic hum created by the buzz of nature.

Vermont: I’m marveling at the stunning colors of the trees in autumn everywhere my eyes can reach, the fresh, first-of-the-year snowflakes falling down all around me and into my hair hanging over my shoulders, purposely grown like an Indian.

Virginia: I’m looking at the green lawns of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and thinking about how he tried to free the slaves and failed.

Washington: Bob the Goat is chewing on my flannel shirt in a junk yard as I pass a jug of cheap wine and a burning cigarette to my new friend, an ancient Chinese dude.

West Virginia: I’m staring at the mountains thinking about the state motto, Montani Semper Liberi, “Mountaineers are always free,” and also thinking of coal miners.

Wisconsin: I’m in the middle of the Aldo Leopold Nature Center and a sandhill crane is soaring above my head.

Wyoming: elk, some with massive antlers, materialize out of the morning mist and march through my campsite ten feet away from where I’m sitting on a log with an unlit cigarette and a volume of Robert Burns in my hands.

Washington, D.C.: I’m standing in the rain at the side of the Lincoln Memorial and reading this quotation from Honest Abe: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.”

Thanks to the bold and brave and Jewish Emma Lazarus, the Statue of Liberty says this: “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

THE USA IS THE LAND OF AMNESIA.

But the end of things is always beautiful; even the end of nature; the saber-toothed tiger and the wooly mammoth become more beautiful after they are gone.

William Faulkner said the basest of all things is to be afraid; so never be afraid. Even the Bomb – all it can do is kill us, said he. Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Black Elk, and the others never really lost, and they never lost their genius personalities.

America has no kings. Tyrants will always fall – in America.

ADDENDUM: Here’s a quick list of ten classic American road songs I used to (and still do) jam to while moving (either on the road or in place).

One: “Me and Willie” by Emmylou Harris.

Two: “Me and Bobby McGee” by Janis Joplin.

Three: “Key to the Highway” by Big Bill Broonzy.

Four: “The Weight” by The Band.

Five: “Friend of the Devil” by the Grateful Dead.

Six: “Lonesome, On’ry and Mean” by Waylon Jennings.

Seven: “Brownsville Girl” by Bob Dylan and Sam Shepard.

Eight: “Tangled Up in Blue” by Jerry Garcia.

Nine: “On the Road Again” by Willie Nelson.

Ten: “Ramblin’ Man” by Hank Williams.

Dale Williams Barrigar