Ladies and gentleman, friends and curious
onlookers, thank you all for coming here today, for
taking time out of your day to join me here on the sizzling
asphalt of the Winn-Dixie parking lot on this scorching
but lustrous summer afternoon. Perhaps some of you came
into possession of one of my mimeographed flyers, while
others happened to be walking on the sidewalk or were
near a window when I drove past, and heard the sometimes
muffled or distorted announcements crackling repeatedly
from my car-mounted megaphone. As some of you may know,
my name is Raymond Kevin Hotchkiss and I am the longtime
proprietor of the Eat 'n' Stand lunch truck that daily
serves the dedicated workers of three of our community's
struggling industrial concerns. Yes, I'm Ray the roach
coach guy, guilty as charged! Ha ha. But levity aside,
let me now come to the reason for today's press conference,
which I perhaps stubbornly persist in calling a press
conference despite the unfortunate lack of media in
attendance this afternoon.
It is my fervent conviction, based upon
thousands of hours of listening to drive time talk radio,
that the very fabric of our society is tearing and ripping,
such terrible rending of our precious national cloth
are we witnessing in these troubled and confusing times.
The ripping, o the ripping! In the quiet hours before
dawn one can almost hear it, when adumbrations of an
awful woe cloud one's lonesome American heart. At these
moments of sickening dread I have oftentimes searched
my trembling soul to understand the sinister forces
that threaten to consume us and destroy the pleasantly
blinkered way of life to which we've become accustomed.
It was on one such dark still night that I realized
that before one can diagnose one must examine, and then
and there I hit upon my plan, my personal journey into
America, to suckle at its swollen teat and to fathom
its secrets, and so perhaps (just perhaps!) to begin
to formulate a curative moral tincture that could save
us and everything we hold dear. Yes, the swollen teat
of America may contain noxious moral poisons, ladies
and gentlemen, but that is a risk I am willing to take
on behalf of us all.
My friends, today I announce that I have
the intention of walking across the United States, of
criss-crossing our great nation on foot. In this way,
and with your generous support, I will discover The
Soul of America, and burn many thousands of calories
while staying within my recommended Target Heart Rate
Zone. The sun will be my friend, and ample sunscreen
with the proper SPF for my skin type (oily) will protect
me from my friend's pernicious companion, malignant
melanoma. This endeavor also requires comfortable shoes
(several pair, size 12) and a comfortableness with many
kinds of people, some of whom may very well turn out
to be deranged, or desperately lonely, or both, depending
on what sorts of people go out of their way to engage
in conversation a freely perspiring but morally astringent
stranger who has taken up the brash and perhaps quixotic
ambition of walking across our vast and impressive republic
in search of its beating heart. Although we do not normally
associate the truly crazy with loneliness, I'm sure
many of them are. We think, well, they have their voices;
the terrifying demons that haunt them are their companions,
day and night, night and day, ceaselessly, until that
day they are buried in cold but welcoming American soil,
to the secret relief of their exhausted loved ones.
But being crazy in America is probably very isolating,
in a social way. Not to mention institutionalizing,
or being held for observation. To be held for observation
in a hospital upstate or a grim downtown psychiatric
ward is not the kind of personal contact that serves
to alleviate a feeling of isolation and loneliness,
an isolation and lonesomeness I will myself experience
on my coast-to-coast perambulation. But I suppose being
watched through a small square window of thick reinforced
glass is better than nothing. Then again it could easily
be much, much worse than nothing. Somehow I've strayed
from my point. Let me quickly consult my notes.
During my soul-nourishing transcontinental
journey, which will not include the noncontiguous states,
and which in fact will not include many, most actually,
of the contiguous ones, I expect to witness firsthand
many of the emblematic scenes our country is known for
throughout the television-enabled world. For instance
rippling fields of grain, somewhere in America's Heartland.
Also overpasses and cloverleafs thick with traffic,
and gleaming towers of commerce possibly but probably
not designed by noted architects Philip Johnson or I.M.
Pei. A burly man in overalls on a red tractor waving
in slow motion. A satisfying number of cows, both dun
and piebald, dotting a hillside. A poor woman of hardy
nature with her chin up as she receives two free hams
from outstretched giving arms. A white church at dawn,
with that first-day-of-school kind of sunlight, so crisp
and so full of apprehension, morning-in-America kind
of apprehension. People in fast motion entering office
parks and factories like in the film Koyaanisqatsi,
carrying lunches they've made for themselves, with quiet
pluck so typical of Americans, that morning or even
the night before. A lady crossing guard, waving one
arm and holding a Walk/Stop sign as bemittened children
swinging colorful lunchboxes walk in front of her. For
some reason in my imagination this lady has the same
face as the two-hams lady, I don't know why. The two-hams
lady and the crossing guard lady in turn have the same
face as my childhood friend's mother, who was stricken
with lupus and liked game shows in which the camera
was prone to linger over the faces of disappointed losers.
To those few hardy individuals remaining,
please consider pledging your sponsorship of my journey
in the form of a modest cash donation. I will require
not only funds to cover basic sustenance, cheap lodging,
and comfortable footwear but also a transcontinental
airplane ticket, for at the conclusion of my long and
arduous but enlightening and spiritually nourishing
journey I will fly standby back home, and kill the three-hour
layover without ever leaving the airport.
Ronnie Cordova is a writer
and the master of all he surveys at his popular journal
site sublethal.net.
He currently resides in Portland, OR.
