Preface to Chicago

Almost as soon as summer began, I somehow got it stuck in my head that I should take a trip to Chicago. I can't explain just why the Windy City all of sudden appeared so appealing but the longer I thought about it the more intrigued I became by the idea. I had already been mulling over the work of William Upski for the past few months and his tales of self-publishing had inspired me to form this endeavor here. So perhaps, I reasoned, there was more to glean by a pilgrimage to his hometown and so my curiosity began to grow.

One day in June, my roommate Noah out of nowhere popped the question to me: "Do you want to take a road trip to Chicago this weekend?” I was so taken aback that I didn't know to what to say. This was what I'd been thinking about but I found myself, strangely hesitant to sign on. Wasn't this exactly what I said I wanted to do? So why the reluctance?

Well for one thing we were still in New Orleans at this time and Noah didn't know exactly how long a drive it might be. He estimated 12 hours, 10 if we sped. Of that I was skeptical, considering it takes me 8 hours every time I drive to Nashville. When we consulted the Rand-Macnally map of the US on I had on my wall, Memphis appeared to be the halfway point. So we would have to drive through the night with all the passengers (two more were expected) taking shifts without stopping.

(Aside: I salvaged that map from the trash at the end of the school year and it has proven to be one of the best things that I found. However the FLAG of the United States of America that I dumpstered still remains my favorite metaphor for the Great Move-out Hysteria /Trash Extravaganza of May. More on all that ridiculousness later).

He proposed that we leave on Friday and that we could return before Monday morning so I that I would still get to work on time the next week. Seeing how it was already Thursday, I felt some pressure to make up my mind real soon.

“I…uh…don’t know yet, dude. Lemme think about it and get back to you,” I told him and left to go off to work . In the car on the way to Chalmette I weighed the decision.

"It will be a lot of driving but the trip has the potential to be cool," I figured. "So what if we would drive all the way just to turn around almost immediately? 'The journey is the destination,' right?" As I cruised across town I saw the choice appear above me in the big green interstate signs overhead. One side read “NEW ORLEANS,” with a big white arrow pointing towards another weekend of the samo-samo in an oppressively hot city, too crazy for words. But the other side pointed to “BATON ROUGE,” and an arrow beckoned towards all that was outside waiting to be explored, waiting for those courageous enough to take a chance. Here it is, Bud: your trip, your dream, your life just waiting to be lived...

“Aww! To hell with it! I’ll do it. We'll go!” and I called up Noah to tell him the good news right then.

“We’ll leave as soon as I get off tomorrow and if were lucky we’ll make it by mid-day Saturday. Let's do it!”

“Naw man," he said over the line. "I was wrong. We shouldn’t go. It’s a ridiculous idea.”

And that was that.

We didn’t go. And I ended up spending a perfectly fine weekend downtown at the Tomato Festival instead, watching the ships drift by from the banks of the Mississippi River. Chicago would wait.

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Post-script: The next weekend my man Phil from Philadelphia called me up to see if I wanted to drive with him to Baton Rouge that morning. This time I agreed and we arrived a little after noon. We picked up his friend at the Sheraton where they’d biked to the day before all the way from NOLA (Phil had immediately taken a greyhound back so he could drive the van to fetch the bikes). To celebrate we ate a pizza at a little restaurant downtown, then went to the old capitol building and read about Huey Long, and ultimately left with little reason to come back again anytime soon.