On the Road - East Coast

NYC

My second big trip of the summer after my sophomore year at ASU (see also On the Road - Colorado and On the Road - Family), was a solo tour of some of the East Coast. I flew into NYC for the first time September, 1972. I took advantage of a student deal to stay in vacant New York University housing near Washington Square for a few nights. This wasn’t a great time for NYC. The bus ride in from Kennedy had all the charm of touring a war zone. It seemed like they were tearing down half the city. But I was alternatively in love with and overwhelmed by the New Yourk. My favorite experience was at Schraft’s. I didn’t have much money but I recognized the name from books and decided to splurge on what I assumed would be a very urbane and sophisticated dining experience -- something one could write up for The New Yorker magazine.

I walked in late afternoon and the place was nearly empty. I found a likely vegetarian dish I could afford on the menu and ordered that from an older, very business-like waiter. He disappeared and then I heard some confusion from the kitchen and he returned to inform me they were out of that particular dish. So I ordered something else. And the same thing happened with more shouting from the kitchen and when he returned this time he apologized profusely and explained that some of the kitchen staff hadn’t shown up and the shopping hadn’t been done properly and so forth. He seemed to be appalled at the way things were going. I asked what they did have that I could eat, and he went back in the kitchen to find out. After what I assume was negotiation with the irate cook, he returned and I made my decision. Eventually I was served and it was fine, though not as entertaining as the ordering process.

One surprise was taking the subway to Midtown Manhattan and then having difficulty spotting the Impire State Building. You'd think it would always be visible from the street but there are so many other tall buildings around that it is tricky to spot.

Massachusetts

Next I took a bus from the Port Authority Bus Terminal to Cape Cod. I had picked out a likely campground pretty far out on the Cape, the bus even let me out at the campground. Only after the bus pulled away did I discover that the campground was closed for mosquito abatement (or something). I was referred to a private campground near North Truro -- and I hitch-hiked over there and found a place. But this was more expensive and not at all the same experience I had anticipated. Not that it was necessarily worse. It was a very crowded place with less nature and more social interaction. People set up large, screened tents with lawn chairs and TVs inside. I wasn’t clear on why they didn’t just do this in their backyards at home, but I guess it made sense to them. When I wasn’t hitchhiking or riding buses around the Cape, I hung out with a group of young people from the Boston suburbs and was quite amused by their accents and the way they pronounced words like Concord (CAHN-kd). It was all very educational, though I could imagine Thoreau spinning in his grave.

I took buses on longer jaunts -- like out to Provincetown -- and rode the ferry to Nantucket, but otherwise got around by hitching. Compared to California, it was lush green with charming New England buildings and everything was much closer together.

On the ferry to Nantucket I ran into a girl about my age and we hit it off at once. Without saying much, we assumed the parts of an old, well to do couple on a holiday away from the responsibilities of servants and family -- I recall a good deal of complaining about the servants and not being allowed to beat them. We stayed in character until we went our respective ways after disembarking on the island. And I never saw her again.

I rode a shitty old bicycle to the far end of the island and then had a hellish ride back, against the wind, to just barely catch the return ferry.

I then caught another bus to Boston where I stayed at the YMCA in the Back Bay neighborhood, very near where the Green Line comes out of the ground and starts running on the surface. Staying at the "Y" was a one time experiment. I’ve stayed in worse places (even on this trip) but I can’t really recommend it. 

If anything, I loved Boston even more than NYC. Here I could at least understand the strange dialects -- in fact I start mimicking the standard Boston accent within minutes of arriving there. Boston is more manageable in size and the subway (the oldest in the U.S.) is endearingly strange. On another visit I was stuck in a street car jam (some lines run streetcars -- now LRVs -- while others are the usual heavy rail cars) under the city with tunnels looping around in unlikely ways. It was more like an amusement park ride than anything else.

I had been keen to catch a Boston Pops concert, but the day I was in town so was the U.S. Navy and they had bought up all the available tickets. The next morning I boarded another bus for Camden, Maine.

Maine

This was the location of another state park campground I’d found on the map. This one was even open. Camden was wonderfully full of structures -- buildings, remnants of the pre-steam infrastructure that used water to power machines -- left over from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It is also a lovely coastal area though so amazingly different from California.

My camping equipment at this point was about as basic as you could get. I had an orange tube tent (a simple tube of plastic you hang on top of a rope secured to two trees) and a sleeping bag. My backpack was a steel framed military model that was sturdy but heavy. One day in this Maine campground, I was resting on my sleeping bag in my bright orange tent (both ends are completely open) when there was a tugging on one of the side ropes. I was annoyed -- who would just walk up and mess with someone’s pathetic tube tent? In this instance, the answer to that question was, a smallish black bear. I yelled and slapped the plastic and he wandered off. I didn’t have time to beat pans together even if I had thought of it. I was just so surprised that after all my time camping in the west my first bear encounter would happen in Maine.

I think hitching between the state park and Camden was the last of my hitchhiking adventures. If I hitched again after that I don't recall it.

Montreal

From Camden I took the bus back to Portland, and then switched buses and headed for Montreal. Lovely trip, of course. Montreal turned out to be my favorite city on this trip. I was so smitten that for years after this I subscribed to an English language Montreal newspaper. The rubber wheeled Metro trains were quiet and seemed to go everywhere I wanted to be. It was a good thing I liked the place because I got stuck there when Air Canada went on strike. I was staying in a room in a house downtown that was just large enough for a twin bed and a small sink. It had a window into a light well but was even smaller than my closet room after high school. It was also very cheap but I was still running out of money by the time the strike ended. I flew out of Montreal and landed at Chicago O’Hare where I met my cousin N__, on my father’s side, who I had scarcely seen since Louisville.

Chicago

N__ was still in the real estate business but had moved to the southern suburbs of Chicago (next he would be near Detroit). They had a big suburban house and he drove a nice Mercedes. Those relations always moved around as a group -- like Roma -- so I finally got to spend time with some of my young female cousins. I guess nothing really says Kentucky Boy like having real kissing cousins (the actual kissing had taken place years before when my family visited Louisville briefly after my dad's half-brother, Paul, killed himself). Also on this trip, N__ gave me an older, 35mm camera he wasn’t using -- a Zeiss Contessa rangefinder that I still have. 

This turned into a very dependable backup camera for me (I used it for every wedding I photographed) so this visit really paid off.

As for seeing Chicago, I don't recall that much from this trip. I did take a quick train trip on the South Shore line from Chicago to Gary, Indiana. Gary was famously on the skids at this time because of the decline of the steel industry so I was keen to see the industrial bleakness. Unfortunately, the train just paused there (at the end of the line) long enough for the conductor to flip all the seats so they faced Chicago before returning the way it had come. So I only had time to take a picture or two from the station platform -- it did look wonderfully post-apocalyptic.

The reason I'm glad I took this little trip is that the South Shore train left Chicago from an ancient station that looked like it should only be filmed in black & white or sepia. The station was located where Millennium Park is now, and the replacement station is underneath the park. I'm sure Millennium Park is lovely, and this is a much better use of the real estate, but the park hardly compares in my mind with a rundown train station where you could easily imagine 19th Century steam locomotives arriving and departing.