ON THE ROAD AGAIN
By Walter Mills





I made a business trip to Erie, Pa. on the still-cold shores of Lake Erie
last week and discovered I don't much like traveling alone anymore.


There was a time when I was younger and single that I loved the open road
and the highways, and I often set off across the country with everything I
owned packed in the back of my car.


In those days I would drive six or seven hundred miles at a stretch and then
pull over into a rest stop for a few hours sleep in the front seat before I
drove on. I didn't dawdle along the way or sightsee; the road itself was all
I wanted, and some new, undefined experience at the end of the journey.


On my trip to Erie last week I drove in a cold rain on I-80 with trucks
blasting past throwing sprays of water too heavy for my windshield wipers to
handle. By the time I passed Snow Shoe my daughters were on their way to
school and the local radio station faded out about the time my wife was
putting away the breakfast dishes. With each mile marker I passed I grew
sadder.


I guess it all depends on which way you're traveling - away from those you
love or toward your dream. I've heard it said that wherever you go you still
take yourself with you. I don't think it's true; I think sometimes you leave
your self behind.


I stayed in a nice hotel, a Marriott off I-90 on the outskirts of town. I
unpacked my things and went down to the indoor pool and swam a few laps in
the body temperature water. I sat in the sauna with a man about my own age,
though to me he looked much older. He was a traveling sales rep, up from
Mobile, Alabama and he didn't like the northern territory he was assigned.
He had stayed in this same hotel so many times that he knew all the
employees, he said, and he talked on in disjointed fragments about his job
and the weather and a Carl Hiasson mystery novel he was reading.


He talked to me, not like someone with whom he was carrying on a
conversation, but like I was someone who was passing him by so quickly that
I was only an echo on a radar screen. We were like two truckers heading in
opposite directions on the highway at night talking on our CBs for a moment
until we moved out of range.


I thought he was a man who had left his identity back in Mobile and he had
just sent his too-quickly-aging body ahead without bothering to include the
spirit that animates our flesh.


By the next afternoon I was on my way home; the weather had changed and the
sun was shining down like a blessing. As I drove south towards Pittsburgh I
picked up a good rock station out of Youngstown, Ohio on the car radio. When
it faded a Pittsburgh station kicked in and I rode it east until the
Johnstown broadcast came in clearer. All the songs were good songs and all
of the trucks seemed to be heading in the other direction.


By the time I got to the Centre County line I checked my watch and saw it
was almost time for school to let out. My older daughter would be packing
the books in her backpack and standing in line for the school bus. Her
little sister would be waking up from her nap.


Johnstown faded and I could just pick up the hometown station. An old
favorite road song came on the radio, Janis Joplin doing "Me and Bobby
Magee." I would be home in time for supper.



(The above column originally appeared in the Centre Daily Times and is
copyright 2000 by Walter Mills. All rights reserved worldwide. To contact
Walt, address your emails to wmills@vicon.net)
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Walter Mills columns also appear regularly Saturdays on Recipes Du Jour www.recipedujour.com