Westward Hope
It was
that first hill out of Denver
heading west. Hill, hell, more like slope, incline, mountain. You get the idea.
Climbing, climbing, the motor in our van struggling against gravity. The
speedometer needle slowing, slowing, backing off as though braking for a stop
sign, backing off from 65 to 60, to 50, to 40. Cars, annoyed, passed to the
left, guard rail and rocky wall to our right. My foot pressed down on the
accelerator, yet the continued sluggishness gave no indication of abating. The
motor whined, groaned, downshifted, whined higher.
I kept
checking my rearview mirror, miniature, rectangular, glass view, opposite the
large, rectangular, glass view from which it hung. The car was filled with
boxes, bags, more boxes. I forgot about the load. I forgot about having every
single one of our material possessions packed tight into this metal box, this
ancient Ford. I turned my head to the side mirror, first toward the rocky wall,
then toward the open lane, just to see if I was holding anybody up, if I was
delaying some other vehicle due to my weighted drag of deceleration. A
semi-truck loomed, gaining, intimidating. Objects
in mirror are closer than they appear. I had a feeling of being an
obstacle, of being in the way of some cargo that had to get through the
mountains, or well into them anyway. But when it passed on the left, roaring
smell of diesel, it had an empty flatbed trailer.
The
speedometer needle finally stopped moving on a seemingly settled speed; we were
gaining on another truck directly in front of us. This one a full box trailer
and semi—fifty-three footer—which I assumed was loaded and weighted down like
our van due to our closing gap. I estimated that the truck was going about
twenty-five as I changed lanes and passed it doing thirty-five—the apparent
maximum speed for our present situation, ascending a grade somewhere between
six and seven percent.
The sky
was blue. The clouds were white. The temperature was forty degrees.
And
that’s when my wife said, “Look! Look at the top of that mountain. Look at all
those mountains behind it. It’s so beautiful.” Out of the corner of my eye I
saw her arm extended, pointing ahead and to my left, the lofty height toward
which we were headed. I explained to her I can’t. I can’t turn my attention
from the immediate sights in front of me, from the driving at hand. It felt
dangerous. But once I got past the semi and returned to that far right slow
lane, I glanced forward. She was right. Awe-inspiring was not an overstatement.
Beautiful a most appropriate word. The dizzying altitude, the magnificent size,
caused a see-saw of feelings: spiritual, existential, spiritual, existential.
Was I at one with the universe or was I a meaningless token of carbon-based
life wafting in the wind? I often thought philosophically about my place in
this world, and with a healthy, though amateur, interest in astronomy and
astrophysics, I knew the comparative size of this rock hurling through our
solar system, this organic spaceship we all shared while sailing at immense
speed through space, this “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” And we, mere
and clinging. We hurling right along with it. We out of control, randomly
sailing. We the micro-organisms on this scale. I used to take comfort in that.
I used to appreciate the diminutive and insignificant nature of that frame of
reference. It gave me proportion, and had always empowered me with a mode of
anything is possible. My personal form of spirituality. And here, among these
giants of nature, these wonderful, evergreen covered, snow-topped tips, this
ancient fault line between tectonic plates that gradually collided to force an
upward thrust of the earthen crust, among this awe, this beauty, the size
comparison was ironically amplified, made significant by proximity, made
important by the climb up them. It was our pilgrimage, a trip that was the only
option left, a journey that led us westward in America like so many before had
done for all the reasons they had done them, economic being most common. And
instead of horses and wagons, we had a ’94 Ford conversion van.
These high-minded thoughts placed
me in reflection and with help from the snow on the side of the road, I thought
back to Illinois, to the home we left behind, to an economic mess we needed to
overcome, to a life in which the upward climb had slowed to a complete
standstill.
Everything
was about consistent frustration and a depression so severe, I’m sure I’m still
paying for it on some psychological level. Paycheck to paycheck living, while
better than being homeless, was a futile existence. It made me angry, sad,
easily annoyed, indecisive, angry, indecisive, easily annoyed, angry, sad. I
had been given a raise recently, but it was meaningless. When your pay goes up
three percent in one year, while inflation goes up over seven percent, you’re
actually taking a pay-cut. And to put it bluntly, that sucks.
Arguments
about money were ceaseless. Well, argument
is a bad word choice. My wife would state the facts and I’d get angry, sad,
easily annoyed—and on and on. It was just how it was. We went three straight months
of having to pay at least one overdraft fee on every payday. Banks seem to make
the most money from those with the least money: higher interest rates, fees due
to low balances, fees due to overdrafts, repossessed vehicles due to
non-payment, foreclosed property for the same reason. It’s the typical
capitalist model: people with the least money are stood on by those with more
money in a pyramid scheme to beat all pyramid schemes, because nearly everyone
in the country is involved in one way or another.
On a
payday Friday during one of the worst winters northern Illinois had seen in a long time, ice and
snow covering all, I came home for lunch to let my wife know I deposited my
check. The temperature was below zero. The furnace hadn’t shut off in days. I
considered our gas usage and what that was going to cost.
While I made lunch, my wife
shuffled through the monthly bills. I choked down a bread and mustard sandwich
followed by a glass of water and realized my time was already up. Just as I was
walking out the door, she told me we had maybe twenty dollars for groceries
after paying the minimum due on all that needed to be paid. And that included
bills we skipped last payday in order to eat. Twenty dollars for two weeks. I
can’t explain the psychology, but anger was my first hot wave, a conflagration
of blazing emotion. I slammed the back door as I left. Then, the anger twisted
into a slow burn of frustration. Outward, frustration is a far easier flame to
hide. Since I was going back to work, I had
to hide that kind of feeling in order to ensure my employment, but inward,
it’s like the hot, glowing embers of a died down campfire, gradually eating you
up, smoldering the last of the ashen wood into a mess of desperation and
confusion.
After experiencing depression on
many levels of my life, I’ve found one of the primary end results after so much
time is the inability to make even the simplest decisions. It’s no wonder
people who are chronically depressed need outside help—I’m sure they can’t even
decide whether they do or not.
I came
home that evening, my innards burned away, my appetite ashes and smoke, to my
wife sitting in the dining room smiling at me. She stepped up to me and on
tiptoes pecked me on the cheek, making loving attempts to cheer me up. These
small acts in the face of enduring my depressive streaks are how I know her
love is true, and in for the long haul.
“I have
an idea,” she said, going to the kitchen to make tomato soup and grilled cheese
for us.
“What?”
I said cantankerously. Idea after idea for us seemed to never work out, it
always boiled back to money, so my cynical skepticism bolstered my vocal
quality. And depression has a tendency to give you a truculent attitude, right
or wrong.
“Let’s just go to Vegas,” she
said. And it was that simple. Let’s just
go to Vegas. Five words to change the destiny of two human beings.
She was referencing an offer my
parents had made to give us a chance, an economic opportunity to improve our
situation. Jobs were more readily available and the cost of living was
significantly lower than the present economic trap of our small Illinois town.
“Go west young man!” In our case, “Go west middle-aged couple!” And so we sat,
slurped soup, ate cheese sandwiches, and discussed the possibilities. Later
that night I made a phone call to my parents to let them know, yes, we would
take them up on their offer.
The
decision was quick; we gave ourselves about six weeks. I started packing the
next morning. That kind of motivation, that kind of early start, only comes
with great incentive. I was ready to leave. I thought it would solve all my
problems. I believed it was the beginning of the end of my depression.
Like a fire sale, everything must go! We were getting rid
of most of our material possessions. We unloaded things that weighed us
down—they were just things after all. We gave away furniture, threw out crap
that we kept in cupboards, boxes, the basement. Went through our large
collection of books and gave away some, threw away others. We were cleaning
house and the goal was to make it so that everything we kept we could carry in
one single vehicle. We, not just being my wife and I, but also two dogs and a
cat. It was going to be tight. Even with an old conversion van.
My mood toward work had improved
during this short time. I smiled more and I was peculiarly more productive.
After I turned in my two-week notice, I had a slow realization come over me—it
wasn’t the job per se that got me down, though I didn’t particularly like being
a file clerk, it was not being able to see a future, an ending. It was the
hopelessness of paycheck to paycheck living and never knowing if that would get
better, seeming as though it never would. And despite that we were making a
leap of faith, a future undefined, it suddenly became a future of hope, of
being able to dream again, of looking forward to something better.
The
night before we were to leave, I loaded the vehicle with our priority things.
I’ve never reduced my possessions to so few items in my entire adult life. It
felt good, like taking off a heavy backpack after a long day of hiking. And
that evening, we walked through our rented house, now empty. A sight we hadn’t
seen since we first looked at it and decided to rent it over four years ago.
But that was when both of us were employed. That was when my wife was
pre-cancer instead of being a cancer survivor. That was when our hopes had
elevated slightly. Our bright-eyed willingness to accept the monthly cost of
that house was dashed within the second year when my wife was diagnosed, and
during treatment, was laid off from her job. My income alone just wasn’t enough
to live in that house and pay the bills.
It had been a dream—we always
wanted to live in a house after living in apartment after apartment after
apartment, and one trailer home. The house represented something important to
us—the American dream, even if we
were just renting. But on that last night, it represented something else: the
end of an era, the end of reduced opportunities, the end of being swallowed by
an unfeeling economy, the end of fighting for mere survival, the end of a
vision that ultimately did not meet our expectations.
The house was clean and empty,
light and bright, just like our future. Our future in a city that lay over
seventeen hundred miles away, a city filled with lights. That night we slept on
our mattress on the floor for the last time in that old farmhouse, that old
dream of ours.
We woke up early the next day, but
got a later start than planned due to the last-minute packing taking up more
room than I wanted or expected. But we fit it all in, jammed it in, gathered up
the cat and the dogs, and left, giving one more quick look around. It was the
least sad goodbye I’ve said to a material thing in a long time. My attachments
over the years were becoming less material, more human, more spiritual. And
leaving that house, leaving behind an old dream, put a cap on my old material
desires. Everything seemed to be a journey of spirit, an evolution of the mind,
along with an evolved view of our future, and our new vision, our new dream.
The first day of traveling started
out with a warm, clear day, and excitement held back by a trepidation about
whether we were making the correct decision. Of course, by this time, it was
too late to turn back. When you’re in that situation, you do your best to put
the doubts out of your mind, leave the past and cut yourself off from the
future—you live in the here and now, in the fulcrum of the moment, without
consideration for the past and future ends of the lever you’re balancing.
As we passed through the flat
farmlands and rolling hills of Iowa, high winds from the south pushed our van
around the highway, me gripping the steering wheel, tense and fighting it at
every moment. There was no letting up. It was like constantly turning slightly
to the left. And as we got to the other side of Des Moines, we heard a strange
flapping noise on the top of the van, right side toward the rear. Since it was
a twenty-year-old vehicle, it had a few noises I dismissed as usual for the
situation. But this one was new. This one we had not heard before. So, I pulled
off at the next truck stop.
We had a car-top carrier bound to
the luggage rack, and I hoped it was just one of the straps come undone. But it
turned out to be a little worse than that. The right rail of the rack had
popped every machine screw that held it to the roof, except the one at the
leading edge. I’m sure the high winds and the speed of the vehicle combined to
put tornado-type pressure on the carrier. This was bad. With some of that
depression from Illinois still trailing, I had a moment where this seemed
tragic to me. Depression has a tendency to do that—exacerbate any given problem
turning molehills into mountains. My wife calmed me down. She shored up my
confidence by telling me she had faith that I would come up with something,
pointing out all the inventive household fixes I had managed over the years.
So, with a better attitude, and a tenacity to get the job done, I went into the
truck stop store.
I headed for the tools, looking for
self-drilling sheet metal screws and a screw driver. My idea was to fix it the
right way, if I could. But, without even checking, I could tell the screws were
too small for the holes that had grown in the roof of the van due to the pulling
out of the original screws. One of the voices in my head told me not to waste
the money nor the time. Another voice told me to think outside the box, told me
to consider anything that’ll do the job. And that’s when I saw the cargo
straps. I knew this was probably the only other option I had, so I bought one,
a small, urgent orange strap and headed back to the parking lot. My wife held
the hook of one end in the wheel-well, and I threaded it through the luggage
rack and down the other side of the van to the opposite wheel-well where I
hooked that end. I pulled the strap tight and cranked it tighter, drawing the
loose luggage rack rail to the roof. I locked the crank handle in place, and
thanked my wife for believing in me. Sometimes I needed her to remind me of the
open windows where I only saw the closed doors. And away we continued.
The delays, both the late start and
the luggage rack problem, put us in Lincoln, Nebraska that first night, instead
of Kearney, where we originally had planned to be. We got a pet-friendly motel
and settled in for the evening.
Outside the motel window, the wind
howled and whistled all night long. Our temporary neighbors had a dog that
yipped at all the wind-caused sounds, the creaks, the bangs. That night, sleep
was intermittent.
It was dark when we awoke the next
morning, giving me nostalgic feelings of leaving for vacation when I was a kid.
Our goal was Grand Junction, Colorado, to get there by dusk, where we were to
spend the last night on the road before reaching our destination.
While my wife stayed with the pets,
and finished ensuring we had everything, I took our overnight bag to the van
where I saw our neighbor with the yippy dog loading her own, stuffed vehicle—a four-door
with bags, suitcases, and boxes filling the entire back of the car. She was no
vacationer; she was moving.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Hi. You were next door, right? I
saw you with your dogs.”
“Yeah. My wife and I are headed
west to try to find better jobs, better opportunities.”
“Really? I’m headed west, too.
Where are you coming from?”
“Illinois, near Chicago.”
“What a coincidence! I’m coming
from the Chicago area, too. I’m originally from Seattle, but had a job
opportunity I decided to take. It paid ten thousand a year more than what I was
making, so I jumped at the chance and moved there about a year ago. But, the
cost of living was so awful, I was actually worse off than I was in Seattle.
So, I’m going back. Not to mention, I couldn’t stand the winter there. Too
cold, and too much snow.”
“Yeah, the Illinois economy is
terrible. We lived sixty miles outside of Chicago and still the cost of living
was outrageous compared to the typical wages.”
“I know. I can’t wait to get back
to Seattle. A lesson well-learned for me.”
She popped her puppy into her car
and got in herself. I said goodbye and good luck to her, the Seattle lady with
the yip-yip, and went back to get my wife and our accompanying zoo. We loaded
up, stopped for fuel and coffee, and merged back onto the highway.
As the dawn began lighting our way,
I could see that Nebraska had flatter terrain, more expansive views, the
continuation of farms, but none of the rolling hills as did Iowa, which is why
the high winds continued, and continued to get worse. Still coming from the
south, blowing the warm spring air up into the plains, they had increased in
speed and consistency. The fight with the steering wheel was becoming even more
tedious. But no glitches this time, smooth sailing, until we got close to North
Platte. That’s when the winds shifted on us, first blowing from the west,
straight at us, then from the north. With that shift, the winds brought a freezing
rain that turned to snow. We were delayed again having to slow down due to the
slick road conditions, but nothing severe, we kept on through it, and into
Colorado, the foothills of the Rockies, where the skies and the roads cleared,
but the wind kept coming. Denver was right in front of us, and on the other
side, there was a wall of mountains from as far north as we could see to as far
south.
At the east edge of Denver, we
stopped again for gas and food, and to let the dogs do their thing. It was a
little before noon and the place was filled with people, truckers, families,
locals. Next to the gas pumps and all through the parking lot, there were
U-hauls, Ryders, Budgets, Penskes, trucks and trailers. If I didn’t know
better, I’d have thought it was a mass exodus of people moving westward. I
pictured them all as being from Illinois, but that was ridiculous of course. It
was apparent from looking around at license plates that most were from the
east, though. We weren’t the only ones.
Through the Rockies, we were
floating on inspirational attitudes and a love of seeing such sights. Purple
mountains majesty indeed. We had seen the amber waves of grain, the fruited
plains, and even the alabaster cities gleaming. When you compact all that into
a three-day trip, freedom is not a mere occurrence, not a mere word, but truly
a deep-rooted, exalted ideal.
We arrived in Grand Junction
earlier than expected, and found another pet-friendly motel. I awoke the next
morning right at daybreak, and went outside to put our overnight bag in the
van. And there, to the south, the sunlight shone upon the mountains, rocky and
red, radiant over this western Colorado town. It occurred to me that with that
kind of beauty, that kind of natural setting, I could’ve stayed right there.
But we had a destination already, and we loaded up the pets and continued our
trek into Utah.
One thing about the Rockies, while
you’re driving through them, they seem to never end. They start with green
trees, gray rocks, and white, pointed, snow-topped apexes as you pass through
them westward. But they keep going on and on. By the time you hit Utah, it’s
all buttes and plateaus in reds, oranges, yellows, browns—desert colors. And
then you come upon a little town called Green River. We had fair warning from
my father who had made the drive from Grand Junction to Las Vegas multiple
times, being a truck driver, that there is no phone signal and no gas stops, no
motels, no nothing for a little over one hundred miles between Green River and
a town called Salinas. It’s all desert. Not flat desert, but mesa-filled desert
like in old American western movies.
We prepared ourselves for that
stretch, and continued the journey. No problems, the strap was holding the
luggage rail. I commented to my wife that our van must be pretty cool because
everyone kept staring at us, from cars, from trucks, when we stopped for gas.
She told me it wasn’t the van, the van was a piece of junk. It was us. It was
the load. Every window behind the front seats had boxes in it, there was the
cargo carrier on top, the orange strap appearing to hold the van itself
together, the bottomed-out suspension. She said they were curious. She said we
probably looked like bohemians with no home except the wheeled one in which we drove
around. I wondered if she was right, and she said, “wouldn’t you be curious?
Wouldn’t those thoughts occur to you?” Yes. Yes, I would be curious, those
thoughts would occur to me, wondering where such people were going with so much
stuff in that kind of vehicle with Illinois plates in Nebraska, Colorado, Utah.
It would appear adventurous to the outside eyes. And, honestly, it was
adventurous from the inside, too.
Towering rock walls closed in on us
as we entered the Virgin River Canyon—a sort of gateway that leads you through
a brief stint in Arizona—and we exited the other side right into Nevada and the
home stretch to Vegas. Here, the desert is flat, the mountains distant like
far-off shadows. In the last part, we humped over the northern border mountains
of the Las Vegas valley and from here, you can see the whole city. It’s not
like other cities. It’s flat, spread out wide, with the only high rises on the
strip. And when you’re in the valley, you can see mountains in every direction.
As we got off the exit ramp, I saw
something, a familiar sight from drives to Chicago, a man holding a piece of a
cardboard box with something written on it. It said, “Homeless veteran, any
help would be appreciated.” I stopped and gave my wife a dollar bill to give to
him. As she handed it out the window, she said, “It isn’t much.”
He said, “Any little bit helps. I
thank you folks an awful lot.” He was wearing a Chicago Bears sweatshirt. I
imagined that he too was from Illinois and had headed west for greener
pastures. It must be better to be homeless in Las Vegas than it was in Chicago—at
least you don’t have to deal with winter and sub-zero temperatures. He nodded
our way, smiling and grateful, and we continued on to my parents’ house.
We arrived with stressed-out
animals, a broken luggage rack, and everything we owned in this entire world.
Our hopes had finally reached a higher plateau. My mother was in the driveway, waving
to us, welcoming us to our new home—the end of our trip and the start of our
revised American dream.
As I pulled in, I swore I heard a
horse neigh and the squeak of wooden wheels coming to a halt.