See The USA!

I'm about finished as I ever will be plotting out our next ginormous back roads cross country trip.  As mapping has gone from tracing and calculating mileage to Google maps, one naturally adds more to the process---that's the way computing always goes, isn't it?  My latest layer of plotting is subscribing to roadfood.com and seeing what regional eats are along our route.  We've found that in spite of all the back road glories of California, dining isn't apparent among them, so it's a treat to stop and have a local taste in the Midwest or on the Atlantic Seaboard.  Accommodations are accounted for but not fully booked---after all, April is pretty slow tourism-wise and we could be stalled somewhere because of foul weather.  Normally we travel in May or September into October, but this coming May has too many schedule conflicts---and who wants to wait until fall?

If memory serves me right, my husband and I have been on six or seven cross country trips in our fifteen year relationship/marriage.  We've been to every state but Alaska, Hawaii and Florida---and we're checking Iowa off our list on this trip.  Canada has been covered in general, but on this trip we'll search out a vein of Quebec we haven't been through before.

 

Why, yes---we did start off seeing the USA in our Chevrolet, albeit it was just a '97 Metro named Melvina.  Observers were strangely incredulous about our mode of transportation, like the man who approached us at a road block on an old US highway in Pennsylvania.  He got out of his car, walked up to my open window and exclaimed You drove all the way from California in that?! as if Melvina was a clown car from a three ring circus.  Fortunately he recovered and offered his first intention---to tell us he was late for work and to follow him on a detour around the road block.  The word was passed along to several other motorists, so he ended up with a little convoy following him.  He drove at a very familiar speed, even after the road lost its pavement and wound along the banks of a creek through a broadleaf forest.  People rushed out onto the porches of their cabins, gawking at us racing by in a cloud of dust.

These days we travel by Prius---an '04 dowager named Patsy with almost 300,000 miles on her.  Again people are growing incredulous, this time for taking such a high mileage car on such an ambitious trip.  There is a perennial discussion between us of purchasing a slightly used Chevrolet Spark a year or so from now, so once again the incredulity will shift to our car's déclassé size, not her advanced mileage.  Him, I mean---since he'll have the very unoriginal name of Sparky and be in the hue they call Lemonade.  I nixed Techno Pink after real life revealed it to be a very timid lavender gray with a relentlessly gray interior.

Road trips didn't used to be so easy, no matter the size or mileage racked up on an automobile.  At the turn of the 20th Century, road maps were merely suggestions---ambiguous lines for unmarked routes where locals could lead a motorist on to their own diversions.  I love this 1890s map of central and southern California for bicyclists.  The route from Los Angeles to the San Joaquin Valley is totally terra incognita today outside of the avid hiker and trespasser.  From the vicinity of Fillmore one was supposed to ride a bicycle up or aside of Sespe Canyon and over the mountains to Lockwood Valley---and then around Pine Mountain and down San Emidigo Canyon and onto the valley floor---but not directly to Bakersfield, but west to Asphalto, the land of There Will Be Blood.  There were once vast wetlands one had to bicycle around to get to Bakersfield.

By 1920 the proliferation of pavement and the legions of motorists traveling at some 35 MPH and often much faster demanded a uniform system of highway designation.  At first an abbreviation of the names bestowed on the highways by various promotional groups was used.  Official and regular signposts of any type were a major improvement, but the signs lacked uniformity, leading to confusion---which obviously would only get worse as more highways were routed and named.  Note that both the Pikes Peak Highway and National Park to Park Highway both used two Ps prominently, and it was likely at some point they crossed one another or even shared the same roadbed.  Their official designation was switched to a numeral in 1926, but some of these names have persisted in pop culture. Tourists may still see or read the term Redwood Highway along the Northern California coast, and the transcontinental Lincoln Highway is getting its fair share of attention this year due to its hundredth anniversary.  The Pacific Highway still runs through many towns in the Northwest.  Most of the other names soon sank into obscurity.

Unfortunately, the pavement still didn't reach most of these designations.  Of all the possibilities on our old highways/back roads trip, I think this scene is one we'll safely bypass.  Note that the motorist is a member of the National Park to Park Tour---via the National Park to Park Highway, of course.

I'm looking forward to sharing a daily travelog of our trip with you.

The Pleasure of Pushbuttons

The pleasure of push buttons no longer lies within their convenience but in the story they tell.  Unless their cardboard tabs have been devoured by silverfish or shrunk and displaced by time, they leave behind an accurate accounting of the original habitat of a vintage radio.

In the late 1930s, the Federal Communications Commission had a very firm, paternal grip on the airwaves.  They ruled that the ether was public domain, therefore what was broadcast through it was to be ultimately for the public good.  In order for the 'good' to come through clearly, there had to be minimal interference between broadcasters.  Therefore, three types of frequency allotments were set aside: Clear for high powered stations meant to be heard a thousand miles or more at night, regional for stations meant to cover several hundred miles and locals---which operated at very low wattage at night or not at all.  This regulation particularly favored rural residents, whose news and entertainment could otherwise be limited to going to town Saturday night and church on Sunday morning.

The push buttons on this 1939 Montgomery Wards Airline radio features most of the clear stations of the West, south to north.  That the stations aren't arranged 'professionally' in progressive frequency fashion suggests that the buttons could have been set by a mail order customer, another indication of rural residency.  Perhaps this person simply started with the station they most listened to on the left and progressed downward along their own scale of interest:  1160 kc, 680 kc, 590 kc, 1050 kc, 860 kc and 1110 kc.  On a map this would be represented left to right by Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Spokane, Los Angeles, Tijuana, Tijuana.

1939 Airline Radio Reception Map

Plotted out thus, the cross hairs come together somewhere in Nevada.  Since the sole radio station in Nevada at the time was in Reno and is not represented on the push buttons, the set was likely located well east or perhaps north or south of there.  The Elko area is as good a guess as any, since KSL Salt Lake City seems to be favored.


A precursor of push button tuning was telephone dial tuning, as featured on this 1937 Troy---a radio manufacturer in Los Angeles.  From left to right we have the frequencies of 750kc (KXL), 1190kc (KEX), 1080kc (KWJJ), 970kc and 620kc (KGW). All these being Portland, Oregon stations assures us this radio was originally resided in the Portland/Vancouver area.

Mammoth radio manufacturer Philco had a similar idea with their 1938 Cone-Centric automatic tuning.  However, the selections on the dial were not simply those deemed interesting by the new owner but printed at the factory for the 'radio market' the set was to be sold in.  The dial would be installed by the shop and the stations set---the latter being a more complicated procedure than most.  Still it is interesting in what Philco decided what was to be received locally---especially in the rural Far West, where stations were few and far between.  How this information was verified is a mystery, but Philco wasn't the only radio manufacturer that did it.

This Philco was sold in Reno, Nevada market, for the one local station is KOH Reno---the only radio station in Nevada at the time.  Perhaps they had a different dial for Las Vegas, but it would be harder to discern that market now for the lack of local stations.  At the most there would been a third dial for Eastern Nevada.  California could have had a couple dozen different dials.

The stations represented left to right broadcasted from: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Reno.  On a map, we get a nice 'X' marks the spot over Reno from the various points of reception.

Reception map for 1938 Philco for Reno

Gilfillan, a Los Angeles radio manufacturer, also marketed their little Plastikon radios with regional dials.  Since no automatic tuning was involved, it was likely they were shipped directly from the factory equipped for broader markets.  The 'S' in the lower left hand corner and the stations listed suggest Seattle---but it appears the dial stood in for all of the Washington and Idaho market.

From left to right, stations represented are: Wenatchee, Spokane, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francsico, Seattle, Portland, Spokane, Seattle, Seattle, Calgary, Los Angeles, Vancouver BC, Salt Lake City, Portland, Seattle, Tacoma, Boise, Los Angeles and Spokane.  The resulting lines of travel crisscross Washington state.

Reception map for 1938 Gilfillan

Today the FCC appears to equate the public good with cramming 'choice' in our ear, with no concern if it's actually discernible or unduly repetitive---such as the same chattering Pez head at eight points across the AM dial.  Most of the clear channel allocations are now in name only, a jumble of language and music every night due to multiple stations allowed to broadcast at low power under the high powered stations.  There are exceptions, but it's no wonder radio's audience grows older by the day.

It is interesting that CFCN 1010 Calgary is on the Gilfillan dial above.  It is still under a Canadian Clear allocation, and we listen to it quite often way down here in Northern California while driving back to the ranch on winter nights.  A few years ago I noticed that the FCC had allowed a Salt Lake City NPR station to use the frequency at considerable power---perhaps 50,000 watts daytime, since we could receive it during some winter days.  Surely directional antennas were supposed to control the signal into an east west pattern, but obviously there were problems---and not just a personal annoyance over a jumble where there used to be something to listen to.  The fact that CFCN is part of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation network---a government entity---made sure there would be swift diplomacy in the matter, and now Mother Nature is once again the only true arbitrator of that frequency.

Although I was born way after the Golden Age of Radio, I still have great respect for its potential.  One good reason is that most of my childhood was without television, and although greatly diminished, radio was still more varied and entertaining then than now.  From repeats of classic radio dramas and mysteries on KNX to Dr. Demento on KMET, from the San Francisco news on KGO to some South Carolina station caught at four in the morning---it all seemed somehow magical, that dial in the dark.  That ghostly sense of space, so close and yet so far---the voices carrying over the deserts and mountains.

There are still places in this world where radio is an honest form of news and entertainment.  In Great Britain, it's still big enough to demand a weekly glossy magazine, Radio Times.  Most of the programming is provided by the BBC---and so I ask, if we can have BBC America on cable television, why can't we have the apparently more lively BBC radio over the air?  With an allowance for advertising, it seems the perfect alternative feed for our stolidly automated American broadcasting system, barking its way into oblivion.

Overloaded

The Nash, cut down into a truck of sorts and overloaded, rolled along on three tires and a rim that wailed a constant complaint.  Each expansion joint in the concrete punctuated the protestation with sharp metallic blows.  For all the noise there was not quite enough to fill the big quiet caused by a motor silenced by the lack of gas.  A hot breeze sanded over the sunburned faces of those passengers perched on the patched canvas covered remains of their lives.  Their dirty hands gripped the canvas tightly, their fate on the downgrade, brakes burning.

Al looked over at Floyd, but they were strangers again.  Their night on the Colorado River was a couple of hundred miles ago, and the Mojave had since sucked all the juiciness out of the memory.  Floyd looked resolutely ahead, knowing he was being watched.  The increasing wind whipped at his open shirt and the sunlight counted his ribs.  He was as dark as an Indian, except for his knuckles.

These mountains offered no reviving waters, no reliving the recent past.  They passed into them easy enough, but now they were being pitched forward---not into the green garden below, but off into eternity.   This family was not Al’s but something he bought with his canteen of water somewhere before Peach Springs.  At the river they had all given thanks but asked for more and so they were given this.  Al looked away from the curve looming ahead.

A flash of color registered out of the corner of his eye, and a sweet scent just barely broke though the stench.  The taste of Nu-Grape filled his dry mouth, and Al looked down to see a large shrub waving wands of lavender and white, like a frothy freshly opened bottle of pop.  These shrubs dotted the steep barren slope below, increasing in number as quickly as the pitch of the wail of the naked rim.  And then he saw why the stench had been momentarily replaced:  The brake beneath him had burst into flames.

Floyd screamed for his father, dead for several years.  Al knew it was Floyd, for it was the same strangled passion that rang in his ears that river night.  Time to let go.  Al’s hands relaxed and he started to float as the Nash dived.  For a split second he watched the car hurtle ahead of him, and then he dropped into the sweetness.

Al bubbled back to conciousness, smelling Nu-Grape and tasting blood.  Bees buzzed around him.  He could see the swath his body had cut through the shrubs and hear voices above him and then around and below him.  Slowly he turned his head, feeling twigs poke and comb his scalp.  Blossoms waved over his face, between him and the deep blue sky---and then, a wisp of smoke.  His head, unbroken, completed the radius and took in the view of shattered remains strewn far below him.  There was nothing left of the back of the Nash, only the differential remained, wicking a small dull orange flame and greasy thread of black smoke.  Only a few brittle branches held him back.

Fashion Faux-pas

Grandmother had a way with malapropisms.  In the 1950s she was clunking around the kitchen in Cuban heels, warbling Please Don't Knead Me When You Squeeze Me Oh So Much.  In the 1960s, she was confusing two hot topics when she consistently used Napalm in a sentence that required Valium.  In the 1970s, Barbra Streisand had great birth control---which evidently was true.  And in the 1980s, she was a willing participant in the laid on look.

Of course, so was I.

I grew up in a world of gay discrimination of a different sort---at least at the familial level.  There was acceptance and a niche for gay men, for apparently they were all florists or beauticians.  I could go along with that, for I loved flowers and certainly had design sense, having drawn in perspective since kindergarten.  As for hair, my interest fell off after Mother would rat hers out and then cackle like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Perennially Grandma would pipe: "I love gay men; they're all so sweet."  And invariably Mother or one of my aunts would groan: "Mommmm, that's such a stereotype."  Grandma would get that 1930s ingenue look, brows towards her hairline in wonder of why the world wasn't as she saw it.

The last time Grandma professed her opinion on the subject, she stood her ground.  "They're not macho or anything."

"Mom," Mother and aunt chorused, "Gay men are like all men:  They can be sweet or macho or ineffectual or just plain assholes."

She turned to me, now a young man.  "Is that true?"

"I'm afraid so, Grandma," I sighed.  "And I should know.  I've slept with a few."

Her eyes bugged a bit, but then relaxed into a twinkle as she let out a giggle very much like Toby Wing.

Spring Has Fallen

Spring has fallen
The ground is petal white
Snowbirds flying low
Over asphalt
Back to Wild Rose Country

My Husband, My Beard

The good thing about growing old is that you finally believe you can do whatever you damn well please. The bad thing? The resulting pain is simply the weight of time on your body, not a social repercussion.

And then there are those lucky few---the few that are timeless. Such as my husband.

I'm not offering this as an endearment. It's simply a fact based on fifteen years of careful observation. And discussion. Yes, we discuss his 'condition' not because we're vain or conniving but are amused by the mystery of it all.

We have decided this aura is based on his small stature. A short man can either fight his supposed shortcomings or revel in the fact that a major social expectation has been removed. The perception of power is shifted, causing strangers to relax into chatty, even forward behavior. Women find him an endearing equal, which may have its own sex appeal. Men, safe in there looming size, make the pretense to treat him as an equal, or gush over his mustache.

Yes, his handlebar mustache is definitely part of his petit mystique.

"You're so cute---you're so cute!" a woman cried out at the local Dairy Queen a few years ago. "You look like the Monopoly Man! You should go to McDonald's and see if they’ll give you a free Happy Meal!"

I was sure she'd wet her pants.

She was with her teenage daughter, and her distraction over my husband went on sporadically as we indulged in our two for one Blizzards. He happened to be away from our table when she came out of the restroom and repeated her mantra to me up close and personal, and I just smiled back at her. When she got to her table, she turned back to ask:

"Is he your dad?"

"Nope," I replied---not quite looking at her in the eye.

I heard her daughter swat her and tsk mommmm. She seemed more embarrassed by her mother's stupidity than her impropriety.

In writing this I've realized that I haven't been asked since if my husband is my father---which means I'm aging in the public eye while he remains the same. The question used to annoy me since we're so physically opposite, but now my ego might welcome it. No one believes he's almost seventy, while I must look very much forty-something.

If age has changed my husband at all, it's expressed in his increasingly matter-of-fact attitude. Recently he was being chatted up by an older woman while in line at another Dairy Queen inside a truck stop. She was momentarily distracted but still noticed when the first Blizzard was handed over to him, so when she turned back and noticed the Blizzard missing, she was shocked.

"Where did it go?!"

"Oh, I handed it over to my husband."

The trucker in front of her spun around as if my husband said he just handed it to a supermodel or a martian, but I was already safely away in the twelve volt appliance aisle.  There was nothing for them to do but duly note his truth and continue waiting for their order.

In case you haven't noticed, the evolution in facial hair continues.  There were goatees, and some men just can't leave behind what Mother called muff mouths.  Beards are still hot, but mustaches are cutting edge.  My husband has overheard the teenage boys in the coffee house murmur that's the mustache I want.  Another, hardly any older, recently flagged us to stop for a construction zone on the Feather River Highway.  He peered through the glare on our windshield which could not hide the white mustache inside.  He gestured grandly over his bare upper lip and gave the okay sign---and then hocked a big loogie.  Eventually he let us on through, but he had to lean towards my open window to voice his approval.

"That's one hell of a mustache, brother."

 I smiled wanly as he grinned beyond me, knowing I was quite invisible.  Brother?  You mean Grandpa!

The Queerest Little City in the World

The other day my husband and I walked into the Mill's End remnant store in Reno on a quest for colored denim.  Once again I was reminded that if I tarry too long in any fabric store the strangest thing happens:  Customers start gravitating towards me, asking me where the seersucker is.  So far I've never seen a fabric store clerk wear cowboy boots---so they must presume some sort of expertise from my jeans of green instead of blue or my fussy little mustache.

"Is this where the swimsuit material is?"

I turned and looked down on a fireplug of a woman.  She's definitely not making herself a swimsuit.

"I'm sorry, but I don't work here," I smiled.  "But, yes, this is where the swimsuit material is."

We calmly studied one another---all the unspoken questions being answered as clearly as dogs sniffing one another.  Her mouth half opens, and I expect her to ask if I'm family, but that would seem archaic to her.  Besides, she had no time for such pretense.  She looked back and forth between me and my husband and simply intuited.

"I need to make myself a binder," she launched off.  "Someone stole mine and my packing too!  Can you believe that?"

Well, no, I can't.  Someone in Reno is now packing her---I mean his packing.

"I'm thinking Spandex," he continued, pushing his tongue through the gap where his front teeth should be. 

"Yes," I nodded, casting a glance over to my husband.  "But he's the tailor.  My interest falls off somewhere below rayon challis." 

My husband didn't seem to mind being volunteered.  He pulled some Spandex off the racks and they discussed the merits of each fabric and ideas on how to sew a binder, which included stretching the material over each others chests to see how much material would be required.  Of course Roland really had only a vague idea of what sewing a binder would entail, and 'Sam' had never done more than some simple mending.  Roland thought that buying something like a small sports bra at a thrift store might be a good way to experiment on how to sew something that might actually work.

 "Oh, I'm not experimenting," Sam misconstrued.  "I've been doing this for years.  I just haven't the money right now to replace the real thing."

So Sam gave us a grand detour through Chicago, operations desired and hormones.  The latter perked up my husband, since he knows way more about hormones than binders.

"You know, they have excellent transgender services in Sacramento."

"Really? Cool."  He pulls out a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket.  "Do you have a pen?"

My husband gave him a pen and some information.

"There's a casino bus that goes between here and Sacramento," Sam mused aloud.  "It's real cheap, like six bucks."

But in Sam's mind the bus was already leaving for Phoenix, where there's a famous and handsome Native American transgender---and for me this surreal situation started falling into place.  I had stood back a bit once my husband took over, occasionally looking over the challis for a sundress for our house sitter but occasionally engaging in the conversation, too.  Frankly I was uncomfortable with Sam's forwardness and the leaps in his thinking process, but underneath my uneasiness I was receiving a sporadic buzz that made me stay engaged.  Now I could deduce Sam's ancestry, and it matched my admittedly limited exposure to Native Americans---of speaking with people boxed into Western civilization.  I started reviewing the scene outside of that box---the spiritual communication,
and found a person in the now and without pretense.  Yes, he spoke of change in the form of operations and hormones, but the goal---for the lack of a better term---was not an exchange of physical for spiritual, that thing we call happiness.  He was literally seeking a more comfortable form to be present in.

The conversation wound down, and Sam reached to shake my hand.  I had to juggle a bolt of challis to do so, and it gave him enough time to decide to fall back into what came naturally to him---to reach out and hug me and kiss me on the cheek.  I was amused by his generosity---amused by the fluidity of gender that knives can't cut or hormones alter.

On the freeway on our way back to our hotel, the Atlantis---the proverbial lost and therefore exotic---a car came up behind us and started beeping as if my prairie skirt was caught in the door.  The car slowly passed by, a middle aged blond man waving from the driver's seat.  Below his Nevada license plate was a bumper sticker stating Family Car.