4/29/03
MY KENTUCKY TRIP - PART 1
4 PAGES

I had just about the most perfect weekend. I flew into Louisville, Kentucky on Friday for work, to set up Avid's for the Kentucky Derby. This came right on the heels of the Dixie Chicks interview with Diane Sawyer and I was fired up and pissed off. I went to Louisville armed all three of my Dixie Chicks CD's determined to blast them as loud as I could every time I drove through town. I wasn't sure, but I was fairly certain that Louisville was one of the areas that was boycotting the Dixie Chicks for their little remark about the president.

So when I picked up my rental car, I made sure to ask if it had a CD player in it. After all this whole operation would be moot if I had no way to play the CD's. The woman said she wasn't sure, but she would bump me to a car she knew had one. Fantastic. She told me what space number the car was in. Number 78. I walked through the parking lot counting as I went. When I got to 78, I thought there must be some mistake. I looked at my stub. I looked at the car. I checked to make sure I was in the right lot for the right rental company. I looked at the keychain. I checked the name on the trunk. It was definitely the car that I had the keys for. A Mitsubishi Eclipse. With a convertible top. They had rented me a CONVERTIBLE.

I checked and double checked my paperwork to make sure they hadn't upgraded to cost. My boss would never approve the extra money I'd be spending to get a convertible even if it wasn't my idea originally. According to the paperwork, I was still being charged the regular compact car rate. So I got in. At first I really didn't like it. It was raining, so I couldn't really put the top down. And with the top up, it was really hard to see anything behind or to the sides. The back "window" is a very tiny oval that pretty much restricts you to seeing what's DIRECTLY behind you. And the convertible top obscures your blind spots on each of your sides, so you wind up being very dependent on your side mirrors. So I was very hesitant about driving this car. I even considered going back and getting a different car without the convertible top. Thankfully, I choked down this initial feeling.

After checking into the hotel, I decided to drive around Louisville for awhile and grab some lunch on the company. Louisville is definitely small on the grand city scope. There's really only a couple of tall buildings that make up any kind of "skyline." Most of Louisville is very suburban looking like Los Angeles. There are a few places that make you think of Boston with that old city feel.

Louisville has great radio stations. At least, they were great for the short time that I was there. Who knows, living there I would probably get sick of them all the same. But Louisville had REAL country stations. I'd forgotten that they existed. The radio stations all the major cities that I've lived in have what I call "Top 40 Country." And by that I don't mean the Top 40 country songs. When I think of the words "Top 40" I think of pop. Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, maybe Green Day. Basically, the kind of songs you'd hear on Rick Dees or Casey Casem's countdowns every weekend. And so when I say, "Top 40 Country" I mean, the kinds of songs that you could play on a Top 40 station and people wouldn't change the channel. Shania Twain and Faith Hill seem to be the only artists these stations play consistently. A few Garth Brooks songs get thrown in here and there, but for the most part the music definitely sound more Pop than Country. It's gotten to the point where I've stopped listening to country stations because their music is neither here nor there. They don't know which genre they want to be because they're trying to appeal to EVERYBODY rather than picking an audience.

ANYWAY, Louisville isn't like that. When they say Country, they mean Country. I honestly did not hear one song by Faith or Shania. They had no less than 4 country stations. And every single one of them SOUNDED COUNTRY. I mean they had fiddles and mandolins and real honky tonkin' guitars. Every single one of them played songs that just made you want to say "YEE-HAW." Three of them were standard country stations, playing more modern country music but not forgetting the songs from as much as ten or twenty years ago with a little bit of bluegrass and gospel thrown in just for good measure. The fourth station was much more old school country. Which at first I was a little hesitant about. When I was driving through New Mexico the last time around, the only station that was coming in was a very old school country station and every song had a very prominent steel guitar and sounded like that horrible, twangy, drawling crap that people who don't like country music generally associate WITH country music. This station wasn't like that. It was old school people, but they were TOUGH songs. Not whiny cowboy songs. They were… TOUGH. I don't know how else to describe it. You listened to the songs and you'd be tapping along, singing along and just enjoying it. All these stations really made me ache to want to live in an area with stations like it.

I've always felt oddly drawn to the south and to the "heartland." I don't know why really. It's partly the overwhelming sense of community that you feel when your down there. It's partly the feeling of a place with real ROOTS. A place that doesn't forget about where it came from in its rush to catch up with the modern world. One thing you'll notice in the south, at least in the few places I've been and spent much time in, is that there isn't a problem of urban sprawl that you get everywhere else in the country. Basically, if you have a major city anywhere in the country, you don't JUST have a major city. You have a major city and then you have miles upon miles, cities upon cities who basically function as one giant suburb to the major city. New Jersey I consider nothing more than an entire state of urban sprawl, its only function being to serve New York and Philadelphia. It's like Philadelphia and New York just kind of fused together in the middle and the result was New Jersey. Los Angeles' sprawl I swear extends all the way to Phoenix.

But in the south, you don't have that as much. You have the city proper and a few outskirts and then there is a line and BAM you are in the country. It seriously happens over the course of a mile or two. One minute you're in the city and the next, you're driving by farms. Oklahoma City was the most notorious case of this concept for me, because as I was running for my life from a tornado one night, I suddenly found myself without clear city streets and signs to follow. Instead I was navigating unmarked farm roads just trying to get anywhere. Memphis was similar. So was Louisville. I guess I just didn't look at the map before I left for this trip, but I didn't realize just how close to Indiana Louisville is. It's seriously right on the southeast border of Indiana, separated by the Ohio River. And as soon as you cross that river, you are in the Indiana countryside.

On Saturday, me and the two guys from the production truck company set up all our stuff outside Churchill Downs. The day went surprisingly swift and by six o'clock, we called it a day. We were going to meet back at the hotel bar for dinner around seven-thirty. They were going to go work out and shower. I decided to take my new convertible for a spin. The clouds had finally cleared and it was about eighty degrees in Louisville. I pressed the button and opened the roof of the car. I popped in my Dixie Chicks "Home" album and took off.

The main roads in Louisville are I-64 which runs east-west through the city, I-65 which runs north-south, and I-264 which makes a giant circle around the city. At first, my intention was to just get onto 264 and just loop around the city once and head back to the hotel. Just to get a feel for driving with the top down on a nice day. As I got to the northern end of the city, I saw signs for 64. They told the directions and where each direction brought you. East - Lexington; West - St. Louis. Hm… I figured Kentucky must border Missouri. I'm not very good with geography unless I have a map right in front of me and even then… I figured if it was close enough, maybe I could drive to St. Louis and be back in time for dinner.

As I drove along 64 along the northern side of the city, I saw something that made me remember another thing I love about the south. The way they don't easily let go of the things of their history and heritage. Specifically in the form of architecture. I mean, you'll have thriving modern cities embedded in with buildings that are from the 1800's. Specifically, the thing that was striking me in Louisville was a series of bridges spanning the river. A few of them were old train trestles rusted brown. I'm sure they weren't even in use anymore. They looked to be in pretty bad shape. But really, not all that bad. It's like they were rusted beyond belief, but the structures themselves didn't look unstable at all. It was like looking back 50 or even 100 years. You know, those old steel structures that are just formed from a bunch of cross beams forming a really sturdy bridge. There were three or four of them, and then a couple of car bridges. The bridge I took over the river into Indiana was on of those… I guess it's a suspension bridge, but not like the typical long bridges like the GW and the Golden Gate. The suspension parts were actually domes. Again, it looked like a bridge that would have been around 50 or so years ago. Just very quaint and rustic looking.

I actually thought that the river was the Mississippi at first. Again, bad geography without a map. I mean, the River was wide and brown. It sure looked like what I remember the Mississippi looking like. But I was actually two states to the east.

When I made the decision to drive to St. Louis, I looked at the map that I'd gotten from the rental company. I just wanted to see how close the city was. That's when I realized that I was actually next to Indiana, not Missouri. But I thought, maybe St. Louis was just across Indiana. I mean, how wide could Indiana be, and why would the signs even mention St. Louis if it wasn't fairly close. I couldn't tell by the map that St. Louis also was 2 whole states away. But that was okay, because as I was looking at the map, I saw something that caught my eye. It was almost insignificant on the map. Next to the bright blue and red lines of the other roads, this was a gray secondary road. But the name of it leapt off the page, even as I read it in glances driving 70 m.p.h. Old Vincennes Road.

Vincennes, Indiana was the name of the town where I almost moved. Back when I had first moved to New Jersey and had had no luck finding any work, I started looking out of state, and I interviewed over the phone with a commercial production company in Vincennes. It was for a producing job. Exactly the kind of job I'd wanted since I graduated from college. I was seriously all set to tell the guy I would take the job when I changed my mind. I knew that I was in love with Lauren. Much too in love to just flit away half way across the country, knowing full well that it would kill the relationship. In the hardest decision of my entire life, I called the guy from Vincennes and told him I couldn't accept the job.

Man, I can still remember that day. I had broken down sobbing, not knowing what to do. Not knowing what decision to make. It was the only time in my life I can honestly say that God spoke to me. I was sitting on the toilet downstairs with my head in my hands just sobbing, begging God to tell me what to do. For about 15 minutes I just begged and pleaded and prayed for God to tell me what to do. And in one of the biggest surprises of my life, God answered. And I heard just the ever most soft yet audible whisper in my right ear, "Stay." Just one word. That's all. But that's all I'd needed. I called the guy and after he offered me the job, I turned it down. I didn't stop crying though. I cried the entire trip to Trenton to Lauren's apartment just saying, "What the fuck did I just do?" over and over again. I told Lauren that I was staying for her. And I really haven't regretted the situation ever since. Sure every now and then, I've thought back on it and wondered how things would be different for me career-wise if I'd taken the job, but I never once regretted my decision.

Now, here was Vincennes being presented to me. This was the closest I'd been to Vincennes since I made that decision. And here apparently was the road that would take me to it. Because, I couldn't really remember where it was. But surely a road called Old Vincennes Road would eventually lead to Vincennes. I felt this really eerie feeling come over me. I was going to Vincennes. The place that could have been my past and present. The place that never quite was for me.

I got off the exit in Indiana that I could see would lead me to the road. Just like I'd said, about 5 miles into Indiana and I was already smack dab in the middle of the country. I turned onto OV road and started driving down a two-lane 45 mph road. I honestly had no idea how far away Vincennes would be. I just knew that I had 90 minutes to get there and get back to the hotel to meet the other people for dinner.

I didn't end up making it to Vincennes that day. The road somehow looped around on me without my realizing it and before I knew it, after about an hour, I found myself back at the interstate. Well that was okay. I knew I had another day or two to try it again. I headed back over the rustic bridge into Kentucky and drove back to the hotel.