Chamblee54

This content was published June 1, 2019. Fake names are used for the actors. … The journey started tuesday morning, as the post-memorial day freeway carnage cooled off. PG made it to Uzi’s house in Sandy Springs by 10 am. By 10:30 they were on their way. I285 was the predictable madhouse, even on midmorning tuesday. It was a relief to get on the slightly less obnoxious I20. The destination was Raleigh NC. Uzi has a nephew in Raleigh, who will soon be moving to Massachusetts.
Uzi had been championing Cracker Barrel for a while. PG remembers the horror of the nineties, when CB was firing all the gay employees, or at least saying they were. When Pguzi got near Augusta, and could not pull directions to S&S cafeteria out of GPS … the first incident of a bad week for GPS … the deal with the devil was struck. After a CB sign was spotted on the interstate, lunch was going down. PG felt a measure of relief when he saw the merchandise. A pillow, with the big pink words “Just be fabulous” next to a pink sequin flamingo, was for sale as you walk in the door. This is probably a pride month olive branch, not to be confused with olive garden, or olive oyl.
PG started to drive after lunch, and drove the toyota hybrid all the way into North Carolina, with a brief side trip to Rowland. The farm where dad grew up is still there, on the Mckinnon Pate road. Pguzi got to the I95 welcome station after it closed at 5pm, and could not get a North Carolina map. This would prove crucial in the week ahead.
A few miles further up I95, nephew sent a text. “How is the ride going?” Since Uzi was driving, he gave the phone to PG. Type ok space so space far. Every time PG tried to hit the o key, p came on the screen. PG touched the screen in the wrong place, and another message came up. Then GPS, which refused all orders to shut up, started to give instructions for the S&S cafeteria in Augusta GA. PG hit the o key, and p appeared on the screen. What should have taken less than a second, if you were past the iphone learning curve, took twenty miles. Finally, somehow, nephew got the message.
Map-less navigation was clunky. Pguzi got on I40, then I440, which was correct. Someone remembered that the hotel was near Glenwood Road. The vehicle got off the freeway, and into a gas station. After a few tense moments, GPS coughed up the directions to the hotel. You go inside, and learn that the room temperature is set for 66 degrees. We will take care of that later. Ask GPS how to get to nephew’s apartment. Be patient.
Pguzi finds the apartment, where nephew is feeding his two month old daughter. PG sits and stares into space while others talk. A decision is made to go to dinner. Go driving around the area, looking at all the places that are closed. A place is still open, they go in, and see a steak house with $80 entrees. Uzi says he will buy. PG gets a salad, and nephew gets a slice of cheesecake.
Back at the hotel, the thermostat is on the wall by the entrance, not the ac unit. The temperature is set back from 66 to 72. The rest of the week was a cycle. The ac would run, and the room is too cold. Then the ac cuts off, and the room is too hot. This battle was a stalemate the rest of the week.
PG had a book to read, On The Road, by Jack Kerouac. PG had read it in 1984, thought it was pretty cool, and moved on. OTR is the story of Sal Paradise (Jack Kerouac) and Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady). Other famous people with declef names are Carlo Marx (Allen Ginsberg) and Old Bull Lee (William S. Burroughs). PG has seen and heard things in 35 years, and decided to give OTR another shot. PG read/blogged The Dhama Bums (one two three four) a few years ago. TDB was the follow up to OTR, and is a lot less fun.
Back to the comparisons. PG and Uzi are a couple of slack old gentrified redneck hippies. They are different people from Sal and Dean. Going to North Carolina in a Toyota hybrid, fussing about whether to listen to satellite radio or the thumb drive, is not the same as hitching a ride across Nebraska on the back of a flatbed truck. … Wednesday morning erupted in a barrage of sunshine across the fourth floor window. PG stumbled down to the breakfast buffet, and loaded up. Taking a cup of coffee upstairs, PG saw Uzi captivated by the Trump drama on MSNBC. The story today was a statement, with no questions, by Robert Mueller. Those eleven words, with politically correct computations and permutations, were endlessly repeated by the talking heads. At 9:59:40, some blow dry bird brain said we will know in one hour and twenty seconds.
The plan was for nephew, wife, 6 year old, and two month old, to meet Uzi, and caravan to an art museum. PG decided that this was not fun, and decided to stay at the hotel. What followed was a glorious morning. All alone, camping out in an air conditioned hotel. See what you see on the TV. Go downstairs, make a cup of hot tea, bring it upstairs, pour it over a cup of ice to get the best unsweet tea on God’s green earth. Read OTR. Take notes for this travelogue. Life is good.
Or at least better than chapter 4 of OTR. Sal has decided to hitchhike to Denver, and meet up with Dean. Carlo will be there to chaperone. As PG enjoys his iced tea, Sal is stuck in smalltown Nebraska. PG is writing it all down. When you write down Uzi, and try to read it later, Uzi looks like 421. All the magic of 420, with a useless digit tax added on for good measure. Meanwhile, Mr. Mueller is talking to a breathless nation. PG will hear much more, though it will tend to be the same basic details … Mueller resigns from DOJ, he could not indict DJT because you cannot indict a POTUS, repeat, repeat, repeat, skip the much needed rinse, repeat with the emotional volume turned up a few notches, repeat, repeat, repeat. It will take 67 senators to vote for impeachment, and remove numbnuts from office. You are not going to get 17 rethuglicans to vote to impeach pussygrabber.
12:25 PG is on chapter 5 of OTR. Sal is on the best ride of this life, a flatbed truck, going from Nebraska into Wyoming with an assortment of characters. There will be quotes from this when this gets typed, but that is getting ahead of the game. … not so fast cowboy. The OTR.pdf is the redacted version. Whole chapters are either paraphrased, or edited out. While there are other quotes available in copy/paste form, this narrative is going to depend on the booknook paperback that PG read 35 years ago. … That moment when PG quits looking at the google page for OTR quotes. One of the results advertised Road Trip Quotes: Top 50 Inspiring Quotes About the Road! Maybe the answer is to get away from the internet and write your own quotes.
That is part of the fun for Internet addict PG, in going inkpen and paper. A dollar store notebook, a home depot inkpen, and a plexiglass clipboard of uncertain origin. There is a computer downstairs that PG could use, but the thought of going completely analog for a few days has a lot of appeal. These notes will look completely different when they are typed … the medium is the message.
The idea hit to spend a half hour meditating. A picture behind the desk could be the mandala. The stupid phone has a timer. The rest of chapter 5 will be waiting, as will the swimming pool, McDonalds, and more. The meditation was a delight. The phone alarm is birds chirping, instead of the hard core buzz of traditional alarm clocks. PG had such a smile, he wanted to do it again.
The lady came to clean the room. PG took OTR to the pool. He finished chapter 5. Sal gets off the flatbed truck, and sadly realizes he will never see those people again. Meanwhile Uzi sends a text. “We will be eating at the Golden Corral tonight.” Raleigh is the home of GC, and we will eat at the flagship store. At 1:59, Uzi texts “Heading home.” PG replies “Ok so far.” This seven letter two space message took a few seconds on a stupid phone, but required an act of congress on a smart phone.
4:13 Uzi is back. He is listening to Randi Rhodes on a sputtering smart phone speaker. It sounds horrible. PG goes to the pool to read and write. … Sal has made it to Denver. Carlo and Dean have become a unit unto themselves, with numerous other people mad at them.
Dean is a mess. He is screwing his soon-to-be-divorced wife, and screwing a girlfriend at the same time, and having an intense thing with Carlo. Dean and Carlo were known to be bumping gooberheads at one time, maybe in 1947 Denver, maybe not. Whatever they did with their peckers, Dean and Carlo would get beamed up on benzedrine and have intense all night conversations.
Dean/Neal is part of a chain of faggotry. Walt Whitman screwed someone named Carpenter, who screwed someone named Arthur…. the grandson of Chester Arthur, a POTUS. Grandpa Chester had an impressive set of sideburns, and was VPOTUS when Garfield got offed. Mr. Arthur conducted the procedure with Neal Cassady, who did his homework with Allen Ginsberg. There is the son-of-a-dunwoody-housewife named Marcus Ewert, who claims to have lost his jailbait virginity to Ginsberg. This is the next level of the conveyor belt … Neal Boortz is fond of saying that Randi Rhodes is in love with him. Please, for the love of Hilary’s e-mails, please make sure that they used protection, and that a cross pollination between these two does not happen.
On page 38, chapter 7, there is a reference to sleepint stillness. It will be fun to see if this is intentional, or a typo in the signet edition of OTR … sleeping stillness, or anything like it, does not appear in the pdf. A more durable copy of OTR has been ordered from the library. It will be fun to see which version of OTR appears … There is no indication when this edition was printed. The best guess is the early seventies. The book cost $1.25 new, which was pricey for a paperback in 1957. The style of the cover design, and use of the phrase “the book that turned on a generation” indicates a Nixon era publication date. PG would have been clueless in either 1957 or 1972.
At the end of chapter 7, Dean is screwing a lot, and doesn’t have the time to work. Carlo keeps tagging along, saying he thought they were going to talk. Sal is broke, and going to sleep in the cool Denver air. … It is 4:47. Randi Rhodes will be on a couple of hours more. Maintaining your sanity can be tough. The idea that people enjoy listening to that idiot can make your head swim.
After a while, Pguzi is guided by faithful GPOS GPS to nephew’s apartment. Soon, the crew… nephew and three women … will head out to Golden Corral. … after dinner, Pguzi went into town, and walked around the state capitol looking at Confederate statues … before heading back to the hotel to see a movie about sharks. After PG tried to go to sleep, Uzi turned the TV to the drone of talking heads, telling you what to think about the Mueller statement.
Thursday starts bright and early. Pguzi went to nephew’s place, and the crew went to a pair of museums by the state capitol. PG was bored silly, but realized this was his one chance to see this museum. YOLO Back at the hotel, Uzi took a nap, while PG got into the hotel slack lifestyle.
OTR roars on. Dean is screwing as though his life depended on it, which it might have. Carlo tags faithfully along, waiting for a chance to talk to the busy boy. “He wrote of Dean as a “child of the rainbow” who bore his torment in his agonized priapus.” Sal leaves Denver, to go hang out in a ghost town. He misses Carlo and Dean, but realizes they would be out of place, “… rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of america, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining.”
Thursday dinner was at a chinese restaurant, run by Filipinos. The attraction is the piano man, a non stop human jukebox. Pguzi went back to the hotel, and saw a series of tv shows about ghosts, and how to manage them in your properties. PG took his semi-annual hit of dope, and was a better person for it. The road trip adventure was slouching to an end.
Friday was checkout/back to town day. The trip out was a bit smoother than the trip in. One exception is when you left the air conditioned universe of the vehicle, and stepped into the blast furnace air of the gas station parking lot. The thumb drive got used, with Linda Ronstadt and Billie Holiday leading the way. Uzi decided to go through downtown, instead of i285, and it worked out very well.
The chamblee54 On The Road series is complete. part one part two part three part four part five part six part seven Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Dorothea Lange took the social media picture in February 1939. “Strathmore, California. From Wyoming and Missouri, eight years in California working in lemons “It’s easy for us because we haven’t got a bunch of kids to get drug around” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah