 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER is I'm optimistic about nearly everything: The stock market free-falls, so it's a great time to buy; I twist my ankle playing basketball, which clears more time to read; I get shut out of three hotels in a driving snowstorm at 2:30 a.m. and have to sleep in my trunk, so it's a story to tell you all. [Give me 10 minutes, and I'll lead you more than 6,000 miles, zigzagging this country through hell and high snow drifts. Along the way, you'll find answers to the following questions:
Log on now to http://www.mackenziewarren.com for all the answers. If my travels can bring me closer to you, please tell me. I'll go anywhere on any weekend, as long as you're willing to have as much fun as I do. As ever,
Aside from wide open spaces and new faces, I travel because every story — good or bad — ends up as a thread weaving a larger quilt. And I love to spin a good yarn. Browse this site a little while, and you'll see, you'll hear and you'll feel the spirit of movement. I'll take you across the Midwest and down the Eastern Seaboard, through the Southeast and up against the grain of the Deep South. You'll cruise the ordinary beauty of the North Central plains and arrive safely back in the Midwest— all in about 10 minutes. And so we begin. Click here to learn if a fan belt, a garden hose and a five-gallon gas can keep a Beetle alive. >> INTERSTATES are not all alike. True, they all look similar, with their required eight-foot shoulders and 800-meter straight-aways every four miles. But when you look closer, you detect subtleties: How wide the rivers are. What kinds of development patterns prevail . How much gas costs. Well, gas. I've gone through more of it than a small emirate in the past two years. It's my single-biggest expense after rent. And every now and then, I run into a character at the petrol pump. Such was the case on an ordinary stretch of I-90 in northwestern Ohio. Gregory Holtapp, 26, from Kapolei, Hawaii, was on his way to surprise his family in eastern Pennsylvania when I stumbled across him at a rest stop. Lacking the money to fly to the mainland, he said, he had bribed a barge captain to let him float across the Pacific with his '67 VW Beetle — on the condition that he work as a shipmate.
Eight days later, he arrived in Puget Sound, Wash., and began his transcontinental trek. "I've come into a lot of problems on this trip," he said. "But there's always a solution. In fact, dealing with all that shit, that's what makes it sweeter." "That shit" included outdated license plates, malfunctioning windshield wipers, a speedometer stuck on 85 (even in park) a leaking gas tank and a heater that had long since gone the way of the Hippie movement. But Greg was no layman with this complex machine. In fact, to keep warm, he devised a system whereby a flexible PVC pipe ferried lukewarm air from the fan belt along the interior frame and toward the accelerator, where it kept his feet, as he said, "plenty above frostbite." And Greg regarded the leaky fuel tank as an especially spellbinding project: He bought a five-gallon gas can, strapped it to the roof and routed a garden hose across down the rear hood and into the carburetor. What genius! When I asked him the secret to making the gas contraption work consistently, he looked at me oddly and replied: "Gravity." I guess he had me on that one.Click here to learn whom the Confederates are fighting for now. >> WHEN YOU THINK OF THE CIVIL WAR, what battlegrounds come to mind? Perhaps Antietam, Bull Run, Richmond, Shiloh or Fort Sumter. I had the good luck to visit them all on my way across the east and down the coast.
None, however, was as fascinating as the home of 19th-century Southern propriety, Charleston, SC Every inch of that town was like a movie set. Of course, one must deal with the fact that all the colonial architectural beauty was just that — colonial — and as such, was built on the backs of slaves. When I visited, it was roughly three-and-a-half months after the terrorism strikes. Yet, as is the case today, patriotism was running high. Still, it struck me as odd when I found a "God Bless America" sign in the window of the same building in which South Carolina signed the Ordinance of Secession from the Union. Perhaps the "American by birth, Southern by the Grace of God" bumper stickers I saw in rural South Carolina were marginal to the unity this country is feeling now. Click here to learn if anyone can golf in three states on one day. >> I TRIED, but like in many of my intended adventures, I ultimately failed. The plan was to tee off in Summerton, SC for nine holes at 6 a.m., followed by nine at noon in Savannah, Ga., and a closing round in Jacksonville, Fla., just before dark. In the room of my ramshackle roadside motel the night before, I had plotted every mile and every minute, convinced I could do it. And then the weather came. Of all things, an early-winter freeze in the Deep South. Ugh!!! So I waited in the clubhouse of this dinky, flat, short, straight cattle pasture for the frost to burn off so I could tee off with the first group. Finally, at 11 a.m. the starter furnished me with a motorized cart and access to the first tee for the sum of $8. I guess the Yankee dollar has some pretty strong buying power down in those parts. In the last year, the single-best investment I've made is a set of individually fitted golf clubs my friend Bruce made in his barn. Throughout the summer, I played at least twice a week, watching my scores come down consistently. This winter, I shot my lifetime-best nine- and 18-hole scores: a 40 in Summerton and an 83 in Pecatonica, Ill. My goal for 2002 is to average 88 and break 80 at least once. MIKE, A 38-YEAR-OLD SECURITY GUARD at the Ramada Inn in Ocala, Fla., is no ordinary rent-a-cop. And the Ocala Ramada is no ordinary motel. From the highway, motorists can't help but notice the 120-foot New York Yankees insignia rising high off the marquee. The motel, like four others in Ocala, is owned by Yankees majority partner George Steinbrenner III.
In addition to his duties of policing the premises in his white Chevy S-10 pickup truck with SECURITY stamped on the door, Mike tends a tangerine patch behind the motel. The grove's sole meaning in life is to bear fruit for The Boss when he's in town. "Do I know George?" Mike retorted disdainfully through boneless gums. "Oh, yeah. Me and George go way back. Every time he's down here I have to look after him. He's a asshole. But he give me this hat." Mike was wearing the same $6.99 mesh-backed Yankees cap that motel guests receive on their pillows instead of a chocolate. Jeremy Gilbert, 23, of Fort Myers, Fla., my partner in crime in the northward leg of the road trip, felt a kinship with Mike immediately. Jer managed to extract the following facts: Mike earns more money securing the Ramada than the Wells Fargo guys — "And they have to carry a gun.," Mike had announced in suddenly insecure upspeak. And he once owned a highly successful business processing stuff that slowly suffocates and strangles trees: Spanish moss. We learned, as you may be hearing for the first time now: Henry Ford stuffed seats in his first Model Ts with Spanish moss, and herbalists use it as tea to relieve rheumatism, abscesses and birth pains. And that's not all. Ocalans are liable to stuff their microwave ovens with Spanish moss to "cure" it when they wish to use it for handicrafts, indoor mulch or to pack fragile items. Others boil and then dry the moss to treat it. A warning, though: "It is always a good idea to inspect the moss for larger creatures (like frogs, lizards and all visible spiders and insects) before taking any Spanish moss home." Spanish moss even serves to fill potholes and to dam up puddles in driveways to private residences. Now this seems like more than just a cottage industry — one that might enrich its leading maven — but Mike claimed that for years he was the world's top processor of this endlessly useful bounty of nature, and never reaped the cash to which he seemed entitled. His dreams dashed, Mike says that soon he plans to move north, back to Maine, where he came from, to take care of his ailing in-laws. And when he gets to New England, he'll pitch his Yankees cap forever in favor of one from New York's arch-rival, the Red Sox. It will be a small satisfaction in what seems to have been an otherwise disappointing life. Click here to learn who would break into a filthy frat house at 4 a.m., and what they might find. >> ON THE ROOF of the University of Florida's Theta Chi house at 4 a.m., it all seemed like a harmless enough idea. Jeremy's brother, who still vaguely associated himself with the fraternity, had told us if we wanted a place to stay, all we had to do was break in. Nobody would mind.
Nobody, that is, who had completely disregarded normal, non-biohazardous living standards. And though I would later sleep in the boot of my car, I can safely say I am not among that number. By the time I had pushed Jeremy through a broken windowframe and he had hoisted me up behind him, we were in the midst of a Superfund site. Jeremy stopped short at the end of the hallway, shocked at the filth. "Mac," he said. "Prepare yourself. These are conditions not fit for the urban poor." There was garbage heaped everywhere. These wretched quarters seemed absent of sewer-dwelling rodents, because even for them it was too foul. None of the toilets flushed and the sinks were filled with trash. The smell of the bathroom was so bad that it was hard to walk past the open window while on the outdoor balcony without pitching off the roof. We found the most acceptable room to sleep in — no Hilton, but apparently without macro parasites. The room was divided into halves — top and bottom. Mattresses were placed on the floor in a virtual cave about four feet high. On top of that were futons which also had about four feet of head room. One of the guys (a weightlifter) had a blender in which he "cooked" all his meals, Jeremy's brother later reported. After putting practice at the UF golf course and $6 haircut appointments on the strip, we enjoyed a brunch of burritos and hot sauce at Tijuana Flats, a local favorite. Trying to prove my manhood to nobody in particular, I selected hot sauce No. 15, "Ass in the Tub." That name would be confirmed later that night in Marietta, Ga. Inside the Tijuana Flats john, Jer and I separately observed a strange amalgam of graffiti. One epithet above the urinal read: "This fills Al Queda (sic) water tanks — contribute at will." Nearby there was a Star of David. Another comment, not clearly directed toward anyone, said: "DICKHOLE." Another choice remark was "Your Mamma's (with arrow that read "no apostrophe dumbass") got a peg leg with a kickstand." Jeremy and I evacuated the establishment soon thereafter, got a quick nine in at Ironwood (know locally as Ironweed) Golf Club, and set out for Atlanta, Birmingham and points north. Click here to learn what BBQ burgoo, eyeliner and puppy chow have in common. >>
OWENSBORO, Ky. is home to the second-most successful basketball program in college history. Kentucky Wesleyan College has won eight NCAA championships, more than any other school except for UCLA. So we wanted to watch the Panthers play in front of a sellout crowd of 5,000 at the Owensboro SportsCenter. Instead of basketball, though, the best part of our visit to Owensboro was a behind-the-scenes visit to the "world-famous" barbecue mecca, the Moonlite. (Aside: What barbecue joint have you seen that doesn't to be world-famous?) Besides the barbecued meat, the specials at Moonlite are the coleslaw and the burgoo, a meat chowder that used to include squirrel meat"until the damn USDA got involved," the owner told us. Naturally, this fact piqued our curiosity. After lunch, Jer and I would find ourselves hair-netted in the kitchen, stirring a 100-gallon vat of the stew with a wooden oar. Now, really all we intended when we asked the third-generation owner Pat Bosley if we could peek into the kitchen was to see if he'd actually let us back there. After all, we'd just eaten barbecued mutton, so how much more distasteful could it get? Well... An hour and fifteen minutes later, we had toured the packing plant, the distribution plant, the warehouse, the cannery, the kitchen, the furnace and the "recycling area." That's where the excreted grease from the 40 x 20 x 20-foot oven emerged. "I betcha wanna know where that stuff goes when we're done with it," Bosley drawled in a half-Southern, half-Western accent. As to his question, well, since we had just eaten, we actually didn't wanna know where the grease ended its lonely, scalded life. "I used to just toss it," he said of the oil filling 50-gallon drums. (Footnote: Wherever those barrels lay, we now have Superfund site No. 2) "But now I sell it for two bucks a barrel. Some guy hauls it outta here. He uses it to make cosmetics and dog food." Now, Pat holds an anthropology degree from Western Kentucky and a masters in industrial psychology from Colorado, but I doubt he had any idea how close I was to barfing in his rack of ribs. As if it weren't bad enough to have eaten lunch there having a vague idea of what we were putting inside ourselves... but we left town with a story, and that's what really matters. Click here to learn when it's okay to get flipped the bird. >> WE'VE ALL HAD ROMANCES FLAME OUT. Sometimes it's painful. Sometimes we're indifferent. And sometimes, it's actually pretty funny. This was definitely the case with my latest girlfriend-person. Lita and I had been dating for a little more than three months when things started to go bad -- mainly over her desire to spend more "quality time" together versus my desire to have other things in my life besides a job and a girlfriend-person. This was all manifest in my refusal to stop road-tripping. It got to where we were clearly about to go our separate ways. I had actually tried to end things once, but she didn't accept the breakup. I didn't even know that was possible, but apparently her will and my lack of backbone proved that indeed a breakup sometimes must be mutually agreed to. My friend Dave from Rockford suggested we were like nuclear missile commanders, both of whom have to turn our keys to unleash the warhead. She wouldn't turn her key!
Ultimately, I became indifferent, because I had done my due diligence with the politeness and so on. So, I started to do what guys are often found guilty of, which is to say I began blowing her off. About a week later, after I could jockey and delay no longer, we agreed to go out and have coffee. This was where I planned to deliver the decisive blow. It was just a matter of saying it. I could be gone before the coffee got cold. But I forgot something: I had a basketball game that night. Being indifferent, I wrote her and rescheduled the coffee by two hours, figuring we could do the breakup thing before the game or after it -- what was the difference? Well, the difference was I was blowing her off again, and she kinda saw that. So in a preemptive strike, she called me to say, "You better check your e-mail, pal." I logged on, and found... a picture of her middle finger at full-mast. Amazing! It was the perfect end. You see, she got to feel vindication for my not caring toward the end, and I, who had admittedly behaved in a less-than-exemplary manner over that period, emerged with the moral high ground. (I also scored 17 points later that night, my Rockford-carrer-high.) Anyhow, all I can do is laugh. Click here to learn: Couldn't I have run 60 miles in 11 hours? >> SELF-PITY AND SELF-INDULGENCE are wonderfully practicable emotions, if deployed properly. So last weekend, when I was stuck in a town I barely know, with a car that wouldn't move, in a driving snowstorm with nowhere to stay, I the time for both was at hand. I had been in Madison, Wis., to watch Northwestern get pummeled by the Wisconsin Badgers. After the game, I visited with my friend Margaret and her husband and son, and before long it was 1 a.m. and the rain had come. Margaret tried to get me to stay, but since I was scheduled to be in Chinatown the next morning for dim sum breakfast, I thought it best to return to Rockford for the night. Out on the beltline that rings Madison, I was having trouble controlling the car in the rain. It was a near-certainty that if I stayed on the road, I'd crash. So I stopped at a 24-hour restaurant to wait out the rain. Except it started snowing. And snowing. And snowing. Over the next five hours, I would start and restart the car, drive for awhile, and then realize it was hopeless. I drove 32.4 miles and netted 4.1 miles of forward progress. Finally, I decided the snow wasn't stopping and I'd have to get a hotel. Too bad every hotel in Fitchburg, Verona and McFarland was full. When I asked Ty at the Super 8 in Monona why all the rooms were taken, he replied in a skateboardish tone: "Cause we're the cooooooolest." Feeling some rapport with Ty, I laid $40 on the counter and told him to keep it himself if he could find me a rollaway bed and an janitor's closet to fit me in. Poor Ty, he could have had pot money for a week, but instead he felt a surge of conscience and told me he just couldn't do it. When I told Ty it was either he took my money or I was sleeping in the parking lot, he warned me about their vigilant security guard who patrolled outside. So I marched back to the car, pulled down the back seats, and set about making myself a camoflouged bed. I must have looked like the most pathetic and worn-out traveler, curled up in unpacked clothes, tucked into my trunk so the Eagle Security guy couldn't see me. I had two pairs of pants on, a jacket for a blanket on my upper body and a camel-skin blazer around my waist, my legs jutting through the arm holes. Best of all, I had a necktie wrapped around my ears to keep the heat in my head. The next thing I knew, I was awake, and every window in the car was piled over with snow. What time was it? How long had I been there? I sprung up, cast open the door and found... darkness still. I had been asleep for about 20 minutes. The next three hours comprised my being rejected by AAA for a tow, because they considered the car "operable." After getting nowhere with someone's supervisor, that person's supervisor and leaving a message on the company president's secretary's phone, and after calling back once more to threaten to sue them for breach of contract and negligence, my cell phone gave up. I'd say my continued business with AAA is about as secure as an Enron pension. I had given up. I spent the next 20 minutes watching three noble, virtuous and bored-to-tears Denny's waitresses try to steal stuffed animals out of that carnival-like machine to which you pay 50 cents for the chance to clumsily claw for a prize. When I asked them what they were doing, one of the waitresses, Lindsay, told me: "In my career here, I must have spent $400 on this machine." Savvy investor? Well, yes. Unsatisfied with her dividends, she simply defrauded shareholders for her personal gain. At 10 a.m., with the snow tapering off, I drove over to Menards, acquired 140 lbs. of sand to weigh down my sliding tires and drove the 60 miles back to Rockford at half the speed limit. Aside from avoiding an accident, it was a total defeat. But it made for a story, which is all that really matters! Click here to learn why the Miss Rockford finalists need my endorsement to win the pageant. >> NO DOUBT I KNOW A BEAUTIFUL, TALENTED WOMAN when I see one. Seldom am I permitted to publicly acknowledge this. But coming this Sunday, that all changes. That's because I've somehow been appointed a celebrity judge for the Miss Rockford Pageant. I'll join TV and radio personalities, as well as Rockford's mayor, in determining Rockford's best 17-to-24-year-old woman. Actually, this is a demographic I've come to know something about. The Miss Rockford Pageant kicks off a really exciting next six weeks for me. I'll be traveling, of course — to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Atlanta. I'll be training for a grueling eight-hour adventure race I'm helping to organize here in Rockford. I'll be preparing for my summer intern (This is true: I have a 20-year-old intern from California coming for three months; she's a student at Med..) And I'm investigating trying out for Rockford's new single-A minor league baseball club. (This is also true: They have agreed to consider me for a three-game contract as a pinch-runner, mostly for the publicity.) So although Rockford is not Manhattan or Hollywood, it's actually pretty exciting! Nevertheless, my urge to move about remains. If I can come your direction, please let me know and we'll schedule a trip. Contact me at mac@mackenziewarren.com. Looking forward to hearing from you all! |
