American Traveling
July 3, 2005
Driving home from a short summer vacation, our hero, who we’ll call A.S., was rudely interrupted his pleasure drive listening to “The Beatles, Live at the BBC”, by flashing lights in the rearview mirror of his yellow Mustang. “What’s this,” thought the driver, “a personal roadside caution from our fine and upstanding law enforcement to drive safely and have a nice 90-degree summer day?” No, much to his dismay, there was no such luck, for the trusty radar detector A.S. had bought off of a friend had failed him (maybe the music was too loud), and the final leg of the trip from Angelica, NY to Dunkirk was spent in bitter solitude, cursing the fastness of a new car, and the unfair way cops take advantage of the 65 MPH speed limit on unsuspecting youngsters. Had the cop, who was nice, to an extent NY State troopers are friendly to stewing and embarrassed speeders, let our hero go his 80 in a 65 without interruption, it would have been a keen capper to a 5-day extravaganza to Philadelphia and Atlantic City that featured the usual in terms of fine dining, gambling, and sight seeing, but fate being what it is, cruel and unusual, a $150 speeding ticket and disillusionment in long distance traveling leaves a bitter taste to an otherwise harmless journey for our hapless hero. What can be said about lessons learned in the times of fast summer fun, wonders A.S., except that all good has an unenviable bad, waiting for it at the end of a speed gun, and perhaps at the end of a 25-year-olds reckless led-foot, in lieu of law and boring order.
The trip had had its share of memorable moments, like the time in which A.S. visited the Liberty Bell Center, stood next to the famous cracked bell, and wondered just how said bell obtained such an imperfection (the gobs of information proceeding the bell being too much for him to handle). Legend has it that the bell was cracked in a rousing, and slightly drunken, post-revolution game of Who Can Ring That Huge Bell Loudest, to which George Washington, the grand daddy of such games, won with such vigor the damage was forever forged unto the poor bell’s backside, but nowhere in the center, or in the whispers of Independence Hall, does such a legend hold true, for history is, like you remember it from 7th grade, not as fun as make believe. It is though, a humbling experience to stand on the floor boards of Ben Franklin and John Hancock, soaking up American history like so much patriotic sponge, and to anyone who questions A.S.’s dedication to his home soil, one needs only to look at his blurry images on his ancient digital camera to see a proud and tired (what do you expect after six hours of futile poker, Jack-and-Coke’s, and three hours of sleep the night before) American citizen enjoying the sights, sounds, and, ah yes, the smells, of a country’s independent birth.
Besides seeing the world’s most famous retired ringing device, A.S. and his traveling companion, we’ll call him Crazy Y for anonymity purposes, spent a few days of buffet eating, blackjack playing, and boardwalk walking in famed Atlantic City, New Jersey, where the Ocean is salty, and the cocktail waitresses saltier. Like always, our hero was able to salvage big losses with one or two dazzling shoes of blackjack play, before packing it in, saying goodbye to a too-short, much-needed vacation, hello to the daily grind that is paid labor, 51-weeks a year, and so long to any profit garnered at that wonderful table, 35 hours later on the side of the road in middle Allegany County. In retrospect, A.S. wishes his last-place Mets had beaten the Phillies the night he and Crazy Y went to see game two of a mid-week N.L. East series, but in his heart he knew, naturally, that the stinking N.Y. bullpen would let him down, again, and he was right, a pain salvaged only by numerous six dollar ballpark Yuengling’s, the rowdy Mets fans lobbing obscenities from the top row, and a souvenir photo courtesy of the ESPN interactive fan truck.
This story comes to an end now, with the image of baseball futility, New York Mets style; it was told in the third person, with names and dates altered to protect the sanctity of its participants, but for legal reasons, and future introspection, it was true, especially the part about that pathetic bullpen. Vacations may be an escape from everyday life, but some things never change, as A.S. painfully knows, from years of faithful and tortured fan devotion.
by Adam Suraf