Saturday, August 9 2008
Ithaca, NY to Buffalo, NY

Mark and Aja had told me about Ithaca’s wonderful Farmer’s Market, and since it was Saturday I decided to check it out.

First of all, the aromas were intoxicating. Fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, and pastries and waffles being baked from scratch at every other booth… it was an absolute delight of scent. And that’s not even getting into the beautiful setting of the Market, under a beautiful wood-strutted structure, just off the banks of a lake where a pier led to boats, and green areas where trees were perfect for climbing over a duck-filled watering hole. If charming were a big enough word, I would call the Ithaca Farmer’s Market charming… and until a bigger-than-charming word comes along, that’s what I’ll call it.

I also got to speak to some very nice people who were enjoying their breakfast of said fresh pastries among said bucolic setting.

Charlotte, who was there with her daughter and son-in-law, and their two children, is a teacher of Design Foundation and Theory in the Department of Textiles and Apparel at Cornell. This made her an ideal subject to answer a question I have been thinking about for a while. Namely, did fashions in the past change as quickly as they do today? When I discuss this question with friends, they often hold to the theory that fashion in the past was not nearly motivated to move as quickly as it does today. Look at clothes from the 1700’s, for example; they are all pretty much the same. However, my belief is that clothes from any decade in the 1700’s look almost the same as any other decade in the 1700’s to us, because we are 300 years removed from those times. If an everyday person from the year 2200 were to look at the clothes of 1930 vs 1970, my bet is that it would feel very similar to them, even though it is wildly different from our perspective. So I asked Charlotte about this:

Okay, so I’m not sure that she completely got what I was asking–or maybe she did and I didn’t fully understand the scope of her answer. But I think what she was saying was “you’ve got the right idea, Eric.”

Charlotte also explained to me the importance of textiles, and how they’re not simply what our clothes are made out of (which is what most people tend to think about textiles):

Down by the water I met McKenzie and Lindsey, who moved to Ithaca from Myrtle Beach, and their cousin Cassie, who was visiting from South Carolina. McKenzie explained why the move to Ithaca was difficult:

I’ve helped people move before–believe me, that’s just bad times. But don’t worry, the rest of the move seemed to go fine even without the donuts:

This next clip starts off with Cassie talking about the time she and her cousins were visiting their grandmother’s house, and then McKenzie and even little Lindsey join in, providing a wonderful example of how you can simply put a microphone in front of some kids and they will go for any topic their brain can reach, quick-changing from one to another in the bat of an eye:

Friday, August 8 2008
Washington DC to Ithaca, NY

Today I had to drive through Pennsylvania. I have driven through Pennsylvania a handful of times in my life and let me tell you: I have never enjoyed driving through Pennsylvania.

The entire state’s highway system is under construction. Or there’s an accident. So there are too many trucks driving slow and blocking the road for other drivers. Or the signs say ‘Work Zone Ahead - Speed Limit 40″ but you never see any workers. Think I’m lying? Ask anyone from Pennsylvania. Better yet, ask anyone who was caught in the 8-mile-long traffic jam that had everyone completely stopped. Most people turned off their cars.

Many people started milling around and introducing themselves to their new neighbors:

Some people even got out a football and started an impromptu game of catch!

I’ve only ever seen traffic like this in Pennsylvania. Next time, I swear I’m just going to make a giant circle through Delaware and New Jersey and avoid the whole thing.

The aforementioned traffic jam, plus a little difficulty of my own (okay, I got lost–on some very tree-hidden streetsigns, might I add!), found me arriving at my intended stop, the Martin Guitar Factory a little later than I had intended:

I own a Martin guitar, and it is one of my favorite things, as far as possessions go. They make such beautiful guitars that feel silky smooth to play, and sing like crazy. I just had to see where they came from. Alas, I arrived too late for the factory tour and as a matter of fact, I only had about 17 or 18 minutes to enjoy the Martin Guitar Museum just off of the building’s lobby. Perhaps I’ll make it back someday. But for now, I simply had to move on to my next destination, a campsite in upstate New York.

Before I left for my trip, I printed out Google Maps to tell me the directions and driving distances to every place I intended to go. I made a reservation for a campsite near Ithaca, New York, which I planned to spend a bit of time in. But as I got closer to Ithaca, I noticed that the road signs and my Google Map didn’t quite match up–it seemed that I was only an hour from Ithaca, but my map told me that I had two more hours of driving. I decided to trust the map for another forty minutes, but by that time I had second-guessed myself so much that I had to find out for sure what was going on.

I pulled into the parking lot of a motel (I’m getting good at knowing which hotels and motels have non-protected wifi to leech off of) and tried to get my bearings. Sure enough, the campground I had selected was really nowhere near Ithaca. I would be better off finding a cheap motel in town. Besides it was already about 10:30pm and I was getting tired.

So I drove straight into Ithaca and checked out the first cheap-ish motel I could find. But there were no rooms. The woman at the counter told me “It’s NASCAR this weekend. I’d be surprised if you could find a room anywhere in town.” I thanked her, and with hope in my heart, I went on a mission that pretty much confirmed exactly what she had said. There were no rooms to be had anywhere. At the last hotel I looked into, after being told there was no availability, I asked if there was at least a coffeeshop nearby where I could use my laptop. The manager on duty told me that I was welcome to use the hotel’s conference room as long as I’d liked. This was an incredibly kind gesture, and I took him up on it. I needed to post new stories to the road trip blog, after all!

Once I was finished, I packed up my laptop, thanked the manager again, and headed out the door. It was 1:30 in the morning. I decided that I would have to make the best of the situation. I remembered from some pre-trip research that there are often truck stops that will allow drivers to spend the night in their parking lots. If you’re not near a truck stop, Walmarts are another popular spot for overnighting. Fortunately, I remembered passing by a Walmart down the hill a bit, so I went into my trunk and pulled out a blanket and pillow… and I spent an actually-not-that-bad few hours reclined and sleeping in the front seat of my car.

Ah well. What is a road trip without adventure, right?

Thursday, August 7 2008
Washington DC

The second stop of my Two Stop Muppet Tour (as I have just decided to call it) took place at the Smithsonian, where a touring Jim Henson exhibit is on display. In fact, I wonder if the materials on tour in this exhibit are part of the reason that the Puppetry Center’s Jim Henson Wing won’t be open for another three years. Either way, I consider myself fortunate to have seen both big Henson exhibits in the states right now.

Joining me at the exhibit was Hector, a classmate from when I was in school, and Hector’s girlfriend who is starting her first year of teaching. As I waited for Hector and his girlfriend outside of the exhibit hall, I saw a young woman eating a hotdog on a nearby park bench. She would occasionally tear off small pieces from the bun and feed it to the small collection of birds on the pavement in front of her. It wasn’t long before the small collection of birds turned into a crowd of birds, and people started to gather to watch these birds follow, en masse, the direction of every tiny crumb she threw. I wish I had got out my video recorder earlier, but here you can at least appreciate a little bit of the spectacle:

Hector and his girlfriend arrived and we went inside to check out the Henson exhibit. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed inside the exhibits, so I have no pictures to share with you. But I can definitely recommend a visit if you’re a fan. One of the most fun things Hector and I checked out were the storyboards and television presentations of a few of Jim Henson’s old television commercials from the 1950’s and 1960’s. We were shocked by how subversive they were, and how none of the concepts would be likely to get on the air today. For example, imagine a puppet sitting on top of a cannon and telling the camera that he’s there to talk about Product A. Along comes a second puppet, who says “I don’t like Product A.” The first puppet fires the cannon, turning the newly-arrived puppet into a smokey mess, and then points the cannon at the camera asking “Do you like Product A?”

Yeah. I don’t think that would get on tv today, either.

After the exhibit, we walked around the mall, which is the name for the big area of Washington, DC with all of the famous buildings and parks and whatnot. I mention this because in any other city “we walked around the mall” has a completely different meaning. We at lunch at the Air and Space Museum (all of the Smithsonian museums are free admission! did you know that??), enjoyed a beautiful sculpture garden, and then escaped the heat by laying in the shadow of the Washington Monument. It was a very nice, very tourist-y, very Washington DC day.

Wednesday, August 6 2008
Raleigh, NC to Washington DC

I stopped in Richmond, Virginia for some lunch. I walked around to find a good spot, and decided on a small African Cafe. I walked inside to find a small empty room, and that all of the food was set up in the center as a buffet, and the woman behind the counter in traditional (I assume) African clothing could not possibly have looked less pleased than I had come into her establishment. I couldn’t tell whether this was an accurate analysis of the situation, or if she’s simply one of those types of people whose face rests in an expression that could be read as hostile but is actually neutral.

She explained that I would have to put my food on a tray and then weigh it before she could tell me how much a lunch would be. So I filled my tray with some vegetable pies, two kinds of rices, a carrots-and-greenbeans mixture, and some collared greens. I sat down to eat while the African woman stood at the counter, specifically not looking at me. (this, I completely understand: it’s awkward to be in this kind of situation, and watching me would probably have only been three or four times more awkward)

Two other customers came in while I was eating–one of them ate in the restaurant, and the other ordered his food to go. I tried to discern whether she treated either of the other gentlemen differently than she had treated me, but it was very difficult to tell. I’ve decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and believe that she was not actually a rude person, it’s just her natural demeanor and she’s probably very pleasant if you get to know her.

But if I’m ever in Richmond again, I’ll probably look for a different place to have lunch.

Tuesday, August 5 2008
Raleigh, NC

Today I met up with my classmates Carlos and Megan, who work at Red Storm, a games company in Raleigh, North Carolina. They showed me around the studio, including their Motion Capture area (which doubles as a ping-pong area when people aren’t wearing their body suits and rolling around on the floor pretending to get shot), and their desks which were covered with the requisite “I work in animation” toys and action figures.

We went to lunch at a real Southern BBQ joint, where I had a pulled pork sandwich with hush puppies, and a sweetened iced tea to drink. I was told that Southern folk like their iced tea sweet–but goodness gracious, this was some sweet iced tea!

Carlos and Megan and I talked about our days at school, and then career aspirations after we had graduated, and a good time was had by all. I wish I could have spent more time with them, but my travel schedule kept me moving pretty quickly. Perhaps the next time I’m in the area, or if they ever want to come out to Portland. It would be great to see them again.

In the late afternoon, I drove around trying to find a laundromat to take care of the clothes that got soaked during the storm in Baton Rouge. It’s been a while since I’ve used a laundromat, so it took me a bit to get acclimated to how many quarters I’d need, and which were the washers and which were the dryers, and where the soap goes, and all of that.

The laundromat had a Ms. Pac Man machine (which I didn’t play) and a Galaga machine (which I did), but my favorite thing I saw in there was one lonely little washing machine among a bank of them that spanned from wall to wall. This one little washing machine had a note on it, indicating that it was broken:

But the note didn’t say “out of order” or “broken.” It had a very succinct way of telling you that you would have to choose another machine. Here’s a close-up:

Monday, August 4 2008
Atlanta, GA to Raleigh, NC

In the middle of my drive, I stopped for lunch in Greenville, South Carolina. Greenville is the birthplace of Shoeless Joe Jackson, the early 1900’s baseball phenomenon. Jackson was part of the 1918 conspiracy during which the Chicago White Sox agreed to intentionally lose the World Series. This act earned the team the nickname Black Sox, and they were shunned for years and years. It says something, then, about Shoeless Joe’s popularity that he is still remembered fondly and that Greenville is proud to announce his origins in their town. There are references in street names, the local baseball team, and even a statue in the center of one of the busy shopping thoroughfares:

Next to the statue is a fine restaurant called Smoke On The Water, where I enjoyed some delicious catfish with vegetables, and a chocolate-chip covered piece of heavenly pecan pie for dessert. Highly recommended for the next time you’re passing through Greenville.

By the way, this entire area of the South is Peach Country. Don’t believe me? Check out this water tower rising above the trees:

That means people are damned proud of their peaches. That’s what that means.

There were peach stands at almost every exit off the highway, selling peaches and peach-related products (cider, preserves, jam, etc.) from local farms. I stopped at a stand from the Lemons Farm and met Daisy Lemons and her friend Mary, who were sitting in two rocking chairs enjoying the shade while waiting for customers. Daisy was a little shy about talking to my microphone because she was afraid of sounding “too country,” but she finally gave me permission to use anything she said. I am thrilled that she did because she and her friend have wonderful accents.

This is Mary telling me about a couple from California who stopped by the peach stand earlier that day:

And it’s absolutely true. People in the South are extremely nice. I asked Daisy and Marie why they thought this was, and they both agreed that it was their Christian upbringing–but they fear for the younger generations because of shifts in the culture:

Just as when I had spoken to Phil a few days earlier, I was reminded that not all Christians are the Bible-Thumping caricatures that me and my liberal friends are so often sold by the media. Daisy and Mary are sweet and sincere, and I felt their love and faith in Jesus Christ as something very important to them. You can recognize the sadness in their voices when they think about Christianity no longer being a driving force in the lives of their children and grandchildren, and how that may ultimately result in a lot less happiness and kindness all around.

Here is a longer discussion about the subject. It’s three minutes long, but I really enjoyed hearing everything that Daisy and Mary had to say. Oh, and it also once again proves that when faced with a microphone, the people who claim “I don’t have anything interesting to say” are so often the ones who have the most interesting thoughts to offer:

Daisy made me promise her that I would think about faith and about Jesus Christ while I continued my trip. I have tried to honor that promise, and while I can’t say that my considerations would likely be in the direction Daisy had hoped, I am very glad to have met her and been able to speak to her about something so intimate and dear to her life.

Sunday, August 3 2008
Atlanta, GA

Today’s part of the trip brought me to the Center for Puppetry Arts in downtown Atlanta. I had heard about the center last year when there was an announcement that they had received a large donation of props, puppets, and more from Jim Henson’s family and company. The Center will open an entire Jim Henson wing in 2012. In preparation of the new wing, there is currently a one-room exhibit of many of the puppets, videos, and sketches that will be included in the final exhibit. Though it was small, it was still wonderful to see the actual characters that we all grew up with, right there in front of me: Ernie, Rowlf the Dog, The Swedish Chef, Dr. Teeth, and even the Jim puppet from the Country Band segments on the Muppet Show, who was designed to look like Jim Henson (just as the other two puppets in the band were designed to look like their puppeteers, Frank Oz and Jerry Juhl).

Photographs were not allowed in the Henson exhibit, so I’m afraid that if you want to see all of that Muppet goodness for yourself, you’ll simply have to make the trek to Atlanta. Or better yet, wait until 2012 when the new wing is complete and see even more than what’s there now!

I was, however, allowed to take photographs in the Center’s regular museum, and there was some fascinating stuff there. For example, I was familiar with Lotte Reiniger’s shadow-puppet film, “The Adventures of Prince Achmed,” but I had no idea that the stop-motion film’s roots were in actual puppet theatre. As it turns out, shadow puppets have been a long tradition in Europe and Asia. Here are some European shadow puppets:

And if that’s the only shadow puppets that were on display, that would have been interesting enough. But check out this gigantic and intricately carved puppet from Thailand, and the gigantic and two smaller colored shadow puppets from Turkey!

Pretty cool, huh?

In the next room, there was a Punch puppet from 19th Century France:

For those uninitiated to the history of Punch, he is essentially an everyday guy who gets upset and then picks up a stick to whack the heck out of his wife, Judy. This is comedy. It should be mentioned that Punch also beats the living daylights out of his child, his dog, local townspeople, and anyone else who crosses his path. All of these other characters are on display in the Punch room as well.

Actually, the display’s accompanying text explained that Punch’s role is to be understood as satirically over the top, and that he is able to get away with all of his intensely brutal actions, that we can forgive and see past them, because he is a puppet. I’ve heard similar things said about Bender the Robot from Futurama and Eric Cartman from South Park, whose existence as cartoon characters (and especially a non-human one in Bender’s case) allows them to be incredibly over-the-top in ways that would be shocking and probably unbearable in live action.

One of the next rooms included a large-scale version of a puppet-theatre toy that could be found in children’s homes in the 1800’s. The theatre consists of five puppets, each mounted on an individual rod. Each rod can follow a common track, or be set back into place in individual slots. The rods are controlled below the stage. Here is a family enjoying this interactive exhibit:

In other rooms were some Henson puppets (apart from the Henson-specific exhibit mentioned above), including one of the human-sized Skekis from The Dark Crystal,

Fishface from Labyrinth,

And last, but certainly not least, the Pigs In Space puppets (minus Miss Piggy) from The Muppet Show:

By the way, the Pigs in Space and Fishface puppets are part of a display which includes a timeline of puppets in the 20th century:

I like seeing them included in this way, as it really points out how the Muppets are not a single entity, but part of a long tradition that had developed over hundreds of years, and is still developing today.

Oh, and incidentally, to the left of the Pigs in Space is a puppet of Elizabeth I from 1972. She was created by Bruce Schwartz, who I recently wrote a bit about here. I would definitely recommend you check it out, if only for the two videos I was able to post up there. Schwartz puppetry, characterization, and storytelling are nothing short of brilliant.

Saturday, August 2 2008
Baton Rouge, LA to Atlanta, GA

Driving through Mississippi is every bit as green and beautiful as driving through Louisiana, thanks in large part to the Mississippi Delta and all of the water it contributes to the area’s many rivers and swamps. Once again, I can’t help but notice that if you’re around water, things will be pretty. And if you’re not around water, well, why are you building a city there?

I decided to do a bit of interview hunting, so I stopped off in the town of DeLisle, MS to see what I could find. I knew that I would regret it if I didn’t try to find at least one more deep southern accent along my trip. Just off the highway, I saw a sign for a yard sale, and remembering the yard sale from Los Angeles way back on Day 5, I recognized the potential. Lo and behold, when I got to the Yard Sale, there was an entire family sitting out in front of the house. And when I say “entire family,” I mean entire family, from mothers, daughters, and aunts, and even a great-grandmother. The father of the household, Freddy, was inside but when I introduced myself and my intentions, one of the young daughters brought him outside to meet me.

Freddy told me about how he and his family were directly in the path of Hurricane Katrina in 2005:

The family left town and stayed with a Church Group in Louisiana. They were the first to arrive there, but there ended up being about 250 people at the Church before too long. About five days later, Freddy and his family decided to try to return home:

At this point, Franky’s son and his friends pulled up in the driveway, covered in mud and carrying something that looked like a wakeboard with two large notches embedded into it. I was told it was a ‘kneeboard’:

There was a lot of mud that day because DeLisle, Mississippi was hit was the same storm that I had experienced in Baton Rouge the day before. Freddy mentioned it in passing, but I had to hide my excitement at his use of a southern term I’d heard of, but hadn’t really heard used in context:

Hear that? I could be mistaken, and that could simply have been the word ‘ruined,’ but I’ve heard of a southern word that means something similar to ‘ruined’ but also includes shades of ‘messed up’ or ‘broken’ or just plain ‘bad stuff happened to it,’ and it sounds something like rrrrnd. If this was a true spotting of that rare beast, I am absolutely thrilled.

After a while, Freddy got positively philosophical. Knowing that this interview would make it to my web page, he wanted to be sure to spread at least this one message:

I also got to speak with the youngest member of the family, Dusty. She’s 6 years old, and like Adam and his schoolmates on Day 16 and Day 17, she was eager to tell me about some of the cool stuff she has.

Again, I love accents that are so set apart from my own I can’t quite make out a word here or there. It took me a while before I understood they were saying “Four-Wheeler.” It makes me wonder what words I say that might be difficult to understand by someone with a vastly different English dialect.

Dusty also told me about her puppy:

In addition to Zack and Cody, Dusty is a big fan of High School Musical:

Dusty also wanted to make sure that I didn’t forget to mention, in addition to High School Musical, she also loves Hannah Montana. So, I’ll let Dusty round out this part of the story with her rendition of the Hanna Montana hit, ‘Nobody’s Perfect.’ Ladies and gentlemen…. give a big round of applause to…. DUSTY!!!

Outside of Montgomery, Alabama, I stopped at a fruit stand. The proprietors declines to be interviewed, but I have to tell you that I ate the juiciest peach I’ve ever had in my life. I would have recorded myself eating it, but all you would have heard was “Mmmm—-ohmgd–mmm—this’s’ajuseeepeach—mmmMMMmmm.”

As I drove towards Atlanta, I saw the sky fill up with clouds and streaks of lightning appear here and there. It didn’t look nearly as bad as what I’d seen in Kansas, though, so I decided not to pull out the video recorder. Little did I know that it actually was a pretty bad storm. I found out when I took the highway exit towards my hotel and I had to be very careful driving because all of the streetlights were out! That was an unexpected obstacle, and I was lucky that the hotel was so close to the highway, or else I would have had a lot more intersections to navigate.

When I arrived at the hotel, the entire block was dark and the parking lot was full of black men, women, and children all wearing the same brown t-shirt with yellow graphics and letters. The kids were mostly running around the parking lot dribbling basketballs, and passing them back and forth to each other. It was too dark for me to read the t-shirts, so I simply assumed that this was a youth basketball team who was in Atlanta for a tournament.

Turns out that was a wrong assumption. In actuality, they were all part of the annual Jamison Family Reunion, and had just returned from Six Flags to find that they had been locked out of their rooms. No one could get into their rooms because the hotel ran on an electronic key-card entry system, and without electricity, there was no way to get inside. So the mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and cousins were hanging out in the lobby and on the benches in front of the hotel while the younger kids played around with the basketballs they had won at Six Flags earlier that day.

Well, I couldn’t check into the hotel with the power out, so I decided it was as good a time as any to try to speak to anyone who was just hanging out waiting for the power to come back on.

I first spoke to Junior, an older man who was sitting on the bench outside the lobby. His real name is Cicero, but he told me to call him Junior because that’s what everyone calls him. He’s originally from South Carolina but lives in New York City now. He told me a little bit about the hot weather and storms he grew up with:

I think that his fatigue from the long day accounts for a little of the way he’s speaking, but I still think it’s pretty cool.

I also got to talk for a bit with Synetria (pronounced sih-NEE-trah), a young woman who is just about to enter her first year in college. Synetria plans to major in Political Science with an eye towards a law degree in the not-too-distant future. She told me a little more about how the family reunion works:

Synetria also explained some of her passion for the law, which she really got into during Youth Court. She also discusses why she eventually wants to get into Corporate Law instead of, say, Criminal Law:

As Synetria was telling me about Youth Court, and the trials she has been involved with arguing, I couldn’t help thinking to myself “Wow, she is incredible articulate!” And then I kind of had to do a mental Heimlich Maneuver as I thought ‘My goodness, Eric, that is incredible racist! Like you expect all black people to be blathering fountains of urban-speak, and then you’re surprised because you meet a young black woman who sounds white, and on top of that you praise her for sounding white instead of sounding black??’

And THEN I thought how absolutely ridiculous and unfair it is that to describe someone as “articulate” has taken on such bad racial overtones–to the point where I feel guilty over even thinking the word in my head. Do you know what I mean? Do you agree with what I’m saying at all? Listen to Synetria speak again. She’s not articulate for a black person, she’s articulate for anybody. Most of the people I know don’t speak with as clear a mind as she does, and I think that that is awesome. I am certain it will be a skill that will be of great advantage in school and in her career. Screw you, Eric’s-afraid-of-sounding-racist-brain. This is a very well-spoken young woman. So there. Nyeh.

Inside the hotel lobby many people were seated in the dark, simply waiting for the power to come back on. At a table near the back of the room was a woman and three children holding a flashlight, playing a story game. Each person would make up a line of a story and then pass the flashlight to the next person, who would make up the next line and pass the flashlight on, and so forth. I asked if it would be alright for me to record one of the stories they were making up, which were largely inspired by the blackout and some characters from earlier stories. I am fascinated by the different ways the kids’ personalities all come out in what they choose to add to the story, and also the way they deliver their contributions.

And so, I give you the improvisational storytelling of Francie Bray, Hope Bray, Hugh Bray (Hope and Huge are siblings from North Carolina, and the children of Francie), and McCaley Bray (Hope and Hugh’s cousin from Mississippi). McCaley speaks pretty soft sometimes, so make sure you pay attention to her 1/4 of the story as well:

After about an hour more of waiting around, the power came back on and there was an incredible burst of applause from everyone inside and outside the hotel! The lobby cleared out almost immediately as people rushed to get back into their rooms. Two people who had been trapped in the elevator were thrilled to get out of the claustrophobic space, and the two desk clerks worked like mad to unscramble everything that had been scrambled because of the 5 hours they had been without power.

Finally, I was able to check into my room and get some rest, but I’m thrilled that I got a chance to meet so many people staying in the same hotel. You really don’t get an opportunity like that very often, and I think it’s important to take advantage of those opportunities when they come along. Especially if you’ve got a microphone.

Note: gigantic post today–hang in there!

Friday, August 1 2008
Baton Rouge, LA

I decided to do some exploring on foot. I’d been driving too long, so I Google Mapped an area of town that looked interesting, which turned out to be about 5 miles away from my hotel. Perfect! I could walk there and back and probably see a bunch of interesting things along the way.

The first place I stopped was at a game store called Little Wars. I was surprised to see a game store like this out the outskirts of Baton Rouge; in my experience they’re not very common. Actually, it wasn’t that it was in Baton Rouge that surprised me, it was more that I happened across it randomly on my own. I had been looking to purchase a new game Matt and Christine showed me in San Francisco, so I headed inside.

I met the store’s chief employee, Shane, a tall man with a gigantic silver mustache that followed from his upper lip down the sides of his mouth. His mustache could go head-to-head with Sam Elliot’s and it would be a compelling competition. Shane is a quiet man in front of the microphone, but after a few minutes he seemed to feel a little more comfortable, especially since some other regulars had come into the store to sit around the game table. I asked what would be interesting to see while I was in Baton Rouge, but he wasn’t very enthusiastic about the subject:

I took Shane at his word. (Mostly because, at that point, I couldn’t have known that my day would be filled with adventure!) Our conversation turned to the topic of gaming, and the kind of clientele Little Wars usually received. Turns out that gender stereotypes appear to hold pretty well when it comes to gaming geekery:

Although I wasn’t surprised to hear this, it did occur to me that fully half of the people I play games with (including the people I’ve gamed with on this trip so far) have been women. Maybe I just happen to hang out in the circles that foster a ‘rare breed’?

In that last clip, you can start to hear some of the other people around the table chiming in and chuckling, so I thought I’d bring them into the interview as well. Sitting around the table were Cody, who works with Shane, Daniel, who is soft-spoken but well-informed, and Cade, who assured me he was too boring to say anything interesting but only moments later had the entire table in stitches when he went on a tirade against a game called Rifts Canada:

Daniel stepped in with his opinion on what makes for good game play in a game. I can’t say I completely understand it all, but I am intrigued by the detail and the depth of a game’s structure:

I was also interested to learn that in a game of Dungeons and Dragons, the DungeonMaster (who controls the story of the game) is not a role suitable towards just anyone. It takes a specific type of person to really flourish when controlling the game and keeping it fair and fun for all of the players:

At this point Daniel’s brother Steven joined the table. Steve isn’t as much of a gamer as everyone else is, but he accompanies them to the store every now and then. Steven is currently enrolled in film school. He’s of the philosophy that an artist should constantly be putting out work if there’s ever any hope of improvement, so he makes any film that comes to mind:

The movie Steven is talking about, by the way, can be seen here:

Steve has also made several movies using World of Warcraft characters in a style called Mechinima. You can see all of Steven’s movies at his YouTube channel under his username, NoNeed2Unplug

There was one other clip I wanted to include, but couldn’t find a natural spot to fit it into the story, so I’ll include it here as an extra. The topic of WalMart came up at one point. Back in Dallas, Aja had told me all about her objections to WalMart, and I have given them a lot of thought as I’ve been driving around and seeing them all over the place. Little Wars used to be located in another part of Baton Rouge until WalMart bought the land for themselves. Here was a bit of the discussion about the love/hate relationship a lot of people seem to have with WalMart:

Food for thought.

I stopped into a grocery store to get a little snack, but by the time I was ready to go the weather had changed from sunny to absolutely pouring. I’m talking about rain that comes down in sheets–sheets, blankets, pillowcases, and duvets! I have rarely seen rain like this. I believe it must have been the beginning part of the storm and hurricane that hit the area after I left, but at the time it just seemed like “Holy Cow, this is a lot of rain!” Many people were standing in the entrance to the grocery store, too timid to even run to their cars for fear of getting drenched. I stepped outside under an awning, and figured this would be as good a time as any to try to talk to people. I saw an older gentleman with big, muscular arms (one of them in a cast and sling), and asked if he would be interested in speaking. I’m so glad he was–I am super happy to have captured an extra-rich Louisiana accent.

While we were standing under the awning, Phil started to tell me a little bit about his background hanging out with hippies in the late ’60s, as well as a little bit about his brother. You may want to turn down your audio around the one minute mark of this audio clip: there are two loud thundercracks that nearly made my heart drop into my shoes. I could adjust the volume here on my end, but I feel like it’s really important to give you a taste of the untreated audio, so you can experience a little bit of this surprising thunder yourself. Just like that Kansas lightning, this was a kind of thunder I have never heard before:

P.S. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Seriously, that second thunderclap literally knocked me off-balance, and I had to catch myself. So, um…. yeah. We stepped inside. Normally it’s mundane to simply talk about the weather, but I was in absolute awe. I asked Phil if this kind of weather was normal:

P.S. You can return your speakers and headphones to normal volume now.

Again, I love that accent! I also got a little bit of local jargon thrown in there, too. Here’s a little more weather talk:

I wanted to get back to Phil’s history from when he was hanging out with the hippies. I’m intrigued by the idea of what I think hippies were like based on what I’ve seen in tv shows and movies made decades later, and what it was actually like to be there. So I figured Phil would be an ideal person to ask:

Ahh, that accent! I love it! I love how I couldn’t even tell he was saying “drinking parties” until he repeated it two or three times! I also like how he doesn’t know if he would have been classified as a hippie or not, because it just goes to show the blurriness of a culture. According to Phil, a lot of what distinguished hippies from non-hippies was whether or not you had a job. You couldn’t be a hippie and have a job because the hippie lifestyle had a very loose attachment to time and responsibility; and you couldn’t have a job and be a hippie because having a job required you to fit into a specific mold and reliably perform your duties. Phil floated in and out of the hippie and job cultures, but it sounded to me like he had a higher percentage of his footing in keeping down a job and earning money for himself than in drinking and partying.

At one point, Phil and I were talking about food. He doesn’t really fancy himself as much of a cook, but he enjoys cooking for himself and his wife. He was telling me about the different dishes he makes, but I had to stop him when he mentioned something I’d never heard of before. This is Phil explaining to be what a roux is:

The topic turned from food to politics, and from politics to religion. Now, politics and religion are two things I have avoided speaking to people about because I pretty much assumed that my beliefs wouldn’t be the same as the people I’d meet–especially in the south. And you know what? I was right. But I also assumed that those differences, if they were out in the open, would lead to argument and bitterness. And that’s where I was completely wrong. I guess I’m just so used to being surrounded by people who, for the most part, believe the same things I do, and it’s so easy for us to caricature everyone else into a picture small-minded bigotry. Phil and I disagreed on a number of issues, but we simply included those issues into our conversations without either of us trying to convince the other to see things our way. Very different from what I would have expected, and I feel sheepish to even admit that that is what I would have expected.

Here is Phil talking about his Presbyterian beliefs, and explaining how they differ from Catholic beliefs:

Near the end of our conversation, Phil told me how the Lord saved him in 1975. I’ll let Phil take it out from here and finish this section of the interviews with his transformation:

The rain still hadn’t let up, but I had been in the grocery store for over and hour at this point, so I decided to start the five mile walk back to my hotel. I would get wet, sure, but a little water never hurt anyone. As a matter of fact, I like walking in the rain because it gives me a chance to smile and put into effect one of my major philosophies: you can either choose to be happy or choose to not be happy. I think that there are a lot of people who would walk in the rain thinking “Grrr… It’s raining. Grrr…. I’m soaking wet. Life sure is miserable.” But it’s just as easy to walk in the rain and think “Hey, it’s raining now. Rain happens, but then it clears up. I’m soaking wet at the moment, but it’s just water. And before too long, I’ll get where I’m going and I’ll dry off. No big deal.” So I decided to walk in the rain.

Let me tell you, though: this is probably the hardest rain I’ve ever been in. People down in Louisiana must be used to it, but I’m sure not. Have you ever heard anyone tell you that they had been out in the rain and that it was as if they had jumped in a swimming pool with all of their clothes on? Well, I always took this kind of thing to be an exaggeration–hyperbole to enhance a story. But no! Seriously! I was thoroughly soaked, and if you had thrown me in a river, I couldn’t have been any more drenched than I was walking in the rain that day. At most points in my walk there was at least a half-inch of water on the ground, and in some places I couldn’t avoid stepping into three or four inches that had built up on the sidewalks!

At one point, a man stepped out of his parked car and asked how far I was walking. I told him that I had to go pretty far, but I wasn’t too worried. He handed me his umbrella. He handed me his umbrella! I told him that, no, thank you, I couldn’t take it. But he insisted, telling me that his wife buys new umbrellas all the time. It was one of the nicest things any stranger has ever done for me. That’s the South.

After about an hour more of heavy rain, things began to clear up a little. But the ground and the roads were still covered in water–I supposed it would take a while for those drainage systems (the ones Phil told me about) to clear away the excess. Here’s a short video of what the roads were like after about two hours of heavy rain, and an indication of what I was walking through and being splashed by whenever a car drove by:

But like I said, it was good times. You can see that this particular post is rather long, and with good reason. I believe that Baton Rouge will be one of the most memorable legs of my trip. It was really quite a wonderful day!

Thursday, July 31 2008
Austin, TX to Baton Rouge, LA

In the morning, Rick and I took Adam and his little brother to day care. When Rick and Adam and I walked into his classroom there were already many other 4 and 5 year olds playing with toys and running around with each other. Adam’s teacher asked Adam who I was, and Adam said “He’s Daddy’s friend.” Rick whispered to Adam to remind him of my name. “Daddy’s friend, Eric,” Adam said. Adam’s teacher said “Hello, Eric” and I said hello back to her. As soon as I said hello back, as if some sort of signal had been given, every child in the room rushed towards me. “EricIGotANewToy-EricWeSawASealAndADolphin-EricWeGotSplashedByShamu-EricShamuIsAKillerWhale-EricWeSawShamu-EricThisIsMyToyThatIReallyLike-Eric…” I don’t think I’ve ever been so popular in my entire life! I was like a rock star, and it was very difficult to get the kids to acknowledge that I had to leave and try to shut the door behind me. When we got outside, I commented on how amazing it was that the kids would start to vie for so much attention from absolutely anyone who walked into their room. Rick said “That’s every day. Every day.”

After a quick tour of Rick’s workplace, Edge of Reality Games, the rest of the day was spent driving to Baton Rouge, and let me tell you something. The first thing I noticed when I hit Louisiana is that it is a lot greener than Texas. There was a lot more water, too. A lot of swamps, and some rivers, and a heck of a lot more green. It reminded me that most major cities are built around a major natural water source, which has probably been the way of cities since ancient times to accommodate shipping, and agriculture, not to mention drinking water. This brings me back to my impression of Dallas, as a very dry and concrete-y city; most of the water reservoirs in Dallas have been made by human beings, and that probably accounts for the low occurrence of plantlife. Louisiana, by comparison, has actual water and actual plants, and is really quite pretty.

For the record, Austin has some nice natural water and thus a decent showing of greenery around the town. But I’ve gotta say, especially after Texas, Louisiana hit me like a lush green ball of beauty in my face.