21 August 2003

East of the Allegheny Tunnel on the Pennsylvania Turnpike you return to the part of the Eastern Continental Divide that drains down into the Chesapeake Bay. I glanced down at the trip meter on the odometer. I was over a thousand miles on this trip. It started yesterday and I was beginning to think that my life was bounded as narrowly as the cab of this truck as bounded by the miles of Jersey Barriers that channel the Turnpike along this twenty miles stretch into a two lane-gutter with no verges and no escape. Lot of trucks. The muscles on my back and neck tightened as the reflectors on the concrete whipped by just below eye-level and the twisted rear bumper of the semi-trrailer I was trying to pass made me hang maddeningly in his blind spot. A miscalculation or a blown tire and we both would become twisted sheet metal hurtling forward, contained in the construction channel.

They are rebuilding the grand old highway. The billboards on the hills tell you to be careful and call it not construction but a labor of love. What it is, is a nightmare. The old Pike was the first superhighway in America. It was intendedto replace the old National Pike that ran from Baltimore to the gateway to the West, to Wheeling on the banks of the Ohio River. Mr Jefferson chartered it, and you roar over parts of it that remain. This is the way to the west that people have used as long as they have known that there are gentle plains and rich soil by the rivers.

The National Pike had been an Indian trace called Nemacolin's Path. It traversed mountain passes from Maryland northwest to the Forks of the Ohio. Pioneer Christopher Gist used it to pass west of Chestnut Ridge in the early 1750s and establish the first English presence there. He also introduced George Washington to the path, which Washington used in his mission to the French in 1753 and in the 1754 campaign against Fort Duquesne, the French military garrison at the confluence of the Three Rivers. We call it Pittsburg today.

Gen. Edward Braddock widened the Path for the passage of his army of 2,200 men, 200 wagons, and artillery train. He was buried under it out to the west, after he was killed before the gates of Fort Duquesne, and what was left of the his retreating army marched over the grave to ensure that the traces were obliterated. The English officers and their American troops did not want his body would not be dug up and desecrated by the victorious Indian allies of the French. To this day many portions of this route are known as "Braddock Road" or "Old Braddock Road."

In 1802 Albert Gallatin proposed the use of these paths for development as a primary route to the western lands. The National Road was born in 1806 by a vote of the U.S. Congress. It was called the Cumberland Road, or the National Road, but its most common name was the National Pike. Thousands traveled it heading west in Conestoga wagons and on foot or horseback. It became U.S. Route 40 in this century, the parts that could be made safe for driving, anyway. Pennsylvania was visionary. The old road had to follow the contours of the land, but the Turnpike slashed across the mountains of the Keystone state with purpose. Still, it was the first and consequently not built to the standards that we have become accustomed to on the rest of the Eisenhower Interstate system, the miracle of concrete that the Astronauts can see from space. The old Pike was two lane and quirky. Antique. Short merging lanes. Many sharp curves. A lot of cops.

In the process of gentling the old road they are carving at the hard limestone ridges, widening. In order to avoid closing it, they have kept two lanes and channeled it with those ubiquitous barriers. They have to stay current, after all, because there is competition to the south.

Senator Byrd's personal involvement caused massive I-68 to be blasted right through Sideling Hill and obliterated many traces of the original road traveled by Washington and Braddock. My son and I had ridden west on that road yesterday, headed for his own pioneering expedition in the Michigan Territory. He was to move into his dormitory this morning, and my task was to get him and his gear there in one piece. I only had time for a day up and a day back, and since we were together I wanted him to see a little of the majesty of the mountains, and avoid the construction on the Turnpike. It was a little longer, though. And that is how I found myself with that semi bumper next to my ear.

Coming up was a music festival in the cab of the pick-up truck. It made him feel comfortable, listening to his music as he confronted his college experience four states away from home. I didn't mind. I heard new artists and vibrant lyrics. Some so vibrant that I would turn to him and say: "Did they just say what I thought they said?"

"Yeah" he said and punched the CD out of the player, embarrassed to share it with me. That particular song seemed to be about the ice-pick murder of a homosexual after a sexual encounter with his sister by an individual who really just desired to spend the day in his "crib" doing something which I think is still criminal in several states with a person or persons known collectively as "Hoes."

I wondered at that. I have heard the complaints about gangster rap but it was quite an experience to have it wrapped around my ears. The National Pike was an interesting counterpoint to the urban mayhem. Primitive in a way the music wasn't, not evil. Primeval.

We made it to Michigan before dark came on full. We stayed in a motel about twenty miles from East Lansing and drove in far earlier than my son wanted. I was eager to get him in an installed so I could start the way east again. I could not make this less than ten hours coming back, and I had a commitment the next morning for which I was supposed to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. It was going to be a challenge if I drove in too late, wired and unable to sleep.

It was a festival at the dorm complex. We were allotted a twenty-minute window at curbside to get his stuff out of the bed of the truck and I marveled at the young people. The girls were uniformly lovely and all were showing bare midriffs and summer tans. Seeing them with their parents also gave a vision of what they would become as they aged, a disconcerting flash-forward of thirty years done over the mounds of suitcases and fans and computers and carpets. Giving the children up to something completely different. Emotional, like the Dad with tears in his eyes after banging his elbow on a mini-refrigerator, wanting to curse and having to bite his tongue.

Naturally we had failed to bring some crucial items, and that meant a trip to the Meier's Thrifty Acres for picture hangers and power strips and computer cables. And cash. Then back to Bedlam at the dorm and I met the roommate's parents and exchanged pleasantries and I looked at the watch and knew I had to go, had to head east. I did not hug my son. He would not have wanted that, not in front of strangers, though I should have. But I looked him the eyes and I told him to call if he needed anything. Anything at all. Then I left.

I always am on the verge of sleep as I roll across Ohio. It is flat and featureless. Going east, there are no landmarks. Only the periodic sign to announce how close you are to Cleveland. The land begins to undulate there, with mighty bridges thrown up over the valley carved by the Cuyahoga River over the millennia. Then Youngstown, and the border. The construction begins there as you pass out of placid Ohio and enter the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The first thirty miles are torn up something fierce. I passed the exit where you can cut south to I-68, the way we had come the day before but it was coming up on five in the afternoon and I needed to do the serious hills in daylight. I pressed on and slide past Pittsburgh- Fort Duquesne- on a stretch of the road that has been modernized. It was easy going and traffic was light. Then up onto the central plateau and the vast sweeping views and Somerset county, where they have erected a monument near Shanksville to the passengers who sacrificed their lives on 9-11. No time to stop and then the construction began once more and the trucks all moved over to the left lane so that the drivers could see the barriers. The cars and little trucks like mine were forced to pass on the right and my grip on the wheel got tighter. Thank god the weather was clear and my window was down and the dregs of the coffee laced with sugar combined with the adrenaline to make this super-real.

Finally the Hole in the Wall loomed before us and the great peircing of the mountain was past in deep darkness. When I emerged from the eastern portal the road was down, all the way down to sea-level and the Potomac. There was a song on the radio that was oddly appropriate, Jane's Addiction, I think. The lyrics were about kids way out on the edge, in love with danger and dying. The refrain went:

"They were all in love with dying

They were drinking from the fountain

That was coming like an avalanche

Coming down the mountain."

I came down that damn mountain just about as fast as I could. I picked up the speed a little, couldn't help it, and got off the Pike at Breezewood, the Village of Motels. On freeway again, and knowing there were no cops until deep into Maryland I let the truck go, arcing through the curves, passing fast but safely, and picked up a playmate in a little black sportscar. Male or female I do not know, but we flew in formation around the traffic that was simply going from point "A" to point "B." They did not feel the exhilaration of the music real loud or the resonance of the nerve endings and the roar of the wind. Or drinking from this fountain of speed and motion and danger.

Coming like an avalanche. Coming down the mountain. I looked at the trip meter when it was done. 1,248 miles in two days. A kid deposited at college. Ready to drink from the fountain.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra