One Writer’s Journey: The Book Tour
By Jill Culiner
Episode Twenty-Three: Along the Road
Outside, the sky is still night black and, as I wait for the shuttle taxi that will take me into town, a young woman comes up to the hotel’s reception desk. Slender with fine features hidden under large unattractive eyeglasses, a baseball cap covers her thin braided orange hair, and an unlit cigarette dangles from the corner of her mouth. She looks like a toughie, but smiling seductively she leans across the counter in a flirtatious way.
The male receptionist isn’t indifferent to her charm. Amused, he grins back at her then shakes a rueful head. “You had someone else in your room last night.”
“He was only there for a little while,” she says. “He left at 4:30.”
“Yeah, well, sorry. The management says you still have to pay for the extra guest.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She shrugs an indifferent shoulder, hands over her credit card, and then slumps onto the couch where I’m sitting. “Hate having to get up this early but I have to get to the airport. Got an early flight.”
“Where are you going?”
“Seattle.”
“For work?”
She tugs down the brim of her cap. “I’m a dancer.”
“That’s nice,” I say, but she doesn’t answer.
Three middle-aged women barrel through the lobby, give us both suspicious looks, but the toughie is still slouched down, so I think she has no desire for further conversation. Only when we are settled in the shuttle that will drop her off at the airport, does she say with some embarrassment (as though she’s making things clear to an easily shocked granny), “Actually, I’m a lap dancer. You know, dancer, stripper, that sort of thing.”
I only nod, but she wants me to understand. “It’s an itinerant life, but not a nice one.”
I nod again. “I can imagine.”
“You can’t even trust the girls you work with; you have to keep your door locked all the time. You feel so alone all the time. I asked my best friend to come with me on this trip, but she has two dogs and cats and couldn’t.” She stares out at the bleak industrial wasteland we’re passing through. “You have to want to get up in the morning.”
Her loneliness is touching. What can I tell her that will make things right? “Isn’t there something else you can do eventually? Something you’d really like?”
“Yeah. What I really want to do is be a dog cop, work for the humane society.”
“I never heard of a dog cop. What is it? Can you get a job like that easily?”
“Oh, I saw it on television. You can do it in some cities. Look out for abused animals, bring them to safety. I’m going to look into it. I don’t want this kind of life forever.”
“Then go for it. And best of luck to you.” I wish (as I often do) for a magic wand.
Downtown in the station, buses going north are crowded. Our driver is a woman, but this is not to the taste of one huge square-bodied mama. “I’m not goin’ with her. She has an attitude.” Fashionable husband with his dernier cri hairdo says nothing, shows only self-centered boredom.
After several hours, we stop in some ungodly place for a long pause. Two police agents are handcuffing a screaming fellow passenger.
“What's going on?” I ask a lady in a fussy green go-to-church hat. She had been sitting across the aisle from me.
“He just refused to show his ticket to the driver, and he was rude. Now he’s been arrested. You show respect to someone in an authoritative uniform, that’s what you do. My own son is a bus driver and yesterday he was driving towards Charlotte when he sees this police car with flashing lights right behind him. He knows he’s not going over the speed limit so he pulls over. The police tell him to get out — they didn’t want to talk to him in the bus, you see — and the police asks him, ‘you got some people from…’ oh I can’t remember the name of the place… something east, you know what I mean?”
“The Middle East?” I offer.
“Yeah, that’s it! Middle East. So they ask him, ‘You got people from Middle East on your bus?’ And he says, ‘yes, four of them. They’re wearing them long robes and all, you know.’ So the police says, ‘that’s the ones we’re lookin’ for,’ and they pull them right off. Then he has to wait for an hour somewheres because someone’s gonna blow up a Wallmart.”
The newspapers are silent on this subject. Is it true? Who knows? She informs she is the leader of a church group, was the deaconess for a while. Then she gets down to brass tacks, preaching “the good word,” and there’s no discouraging her. Fortunately, she suddenly discovers she has left her cell phone on the last bus, and she tells me to watch her bag while goes off in search of her errant phone. “You keep your eye on that bag of mine. I only got the one, left the others with my son. I had to leave in a hurry, you see. My best friend just died, and I have to get to her fast.”
Rather after the fact, I think, but don’t say.
She returns shortly, telephone snug in her purse. “You see? God looks after me.”
I tell her my own story of losing a telephone one morning on a train in France while accompanying a friend to the airport near St. Malo. By the time I discovered my loss in the city of Rennes, the train had gone on, heading for the far west of Brittany before shunting back across country to Paris. We appealed to the stationmaster, and he phoned one of the controllers who went to our seats and had a look. The phone was gone. For the next six hours I had thoughts of someone calling Brazil and Tahiti and racking up a phone bill I’d never be able to pay.
After a longish bus trip to St. Malo, my friend took a plane to London. I returned by bus to Rennes and bought a ticket to the city of Laval where I had left my car. There was an early evening train leaving immediately, and I had to run to catch it. Certainly it would have been easier to wait for the next train that left half-an-hour later, but the station was cold and cheerless.
I scraped in just as the doors were closing and took a seat. And suddenly I heard a telephone ring, a familiar sound coming from somewhere beneath me. I took a peek under my seat — and there was my phone, exactly where it had fallen after dropping out of my purse so many hours earlier. It had travelled back and forth for over a thousand miles, and no one had seen it. By pure chance, I had managed to step into the same compartment and take the same seat of the same train I had been on earlier in the day.
The green hat lady smiles happily. “You see? God took care of you, too. He knew that was your phone and he wanted you to have it.”
Which is a comfort (since I’m a sloppy sort of person). I can’t help wondering, however, if there aren’t more important issues for a god to busy himself with.
In Philadelphia, I wander through city streets where townhouses are lovely, and the beautiful 30th Street train station, is a glory — especially to me since I live in France where elegant nineteenth-century stations are being converted into shopping malls. Of course, nothing is certain: there are plans afoot to change even this beauty and increase retail space within the station. People just can’t leave nice things alone.
Philadelphia was founded in 1682 as the capital of the Pennsylvania colony, and it remained so until the Philadelphia Mutiny. In 1783, the Continental Army of more than 10,000 soldiers was camped on the nearby estate of Jockey Hollow. Feeding such a large force put great a burden on the local community, and the strain resulted in hungry, poorly clothed soldiers — many went barefoot in the snow — who hadn’t been paid for almost a whole year year despite their appeals to Congress.
Over one thousand deserted, another 100 died in the brigade hospital, and the rest mutinied. Raging through the countryside, foraging, stealing horses and whatever they could carry away, they marched into Philadelphia, surrounded the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall), and threatened Congress at bayonet point.
Instead of resolving the problem, Congress took refuge in the first-floor room where the Declaration of Independence had been signed, begged the Pennsylvania government to make the mob go away, and pleaded with George Washington to send reinforcements. Then, terrified, they pushed through the jostling rowdies and fled the city.
When he heard of the mutiny, Washington was incensed: “I cannot sufficiently express my surprise and indignation at the arrogance, the folly, and the wickedness of the mutineers.”
He dispatched 1,500 troops to disperse the crowd and arrest the ringleaders. He did, however, urge Congress to provide supplies and deliver pay.
In July 1790, the new national capital of Washington was created on the Potomac River, and Philadelphia lost its important status.
There’s a fairly large audience at the Historical Society for my book talk, which is certainly satisfying. Okay…I only sign and sell two or three copies, but there is compensation: the president of the Historical Society just happens to own a very chic fish restaurant in the city and, after the talk, that’s where he takes me. Learning of my passion for oysters, he presents me with a huge plate loaded with two of every variety available on the east and west coast of North America. The oysters and the lovely white wine I’m served are hedonistic treats, and they easily outweigh unloading a few books.
©2021 Jill Culiner All Rights Reserved
Long ago, J. Arlene Culiner set out to have a life of adventure, not one of security and comfort. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, traveled, by bus, train, car, or truck throughout North and Central America, Europe, and the Sahara, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, on a Dutch canal, in a haunted stone house on the English moors, and presently in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village. Her experiences in out-of-the-way communities with their strange characters and very odd conversations are incorporated into all her stories. http://www.j-arleneculiner.com/
“Yeah, well, sorry. The management says you still have to pay for the extra guest.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She shrugs an indifferent shoulder, hands over her credit card, and then slumps onto the couch where I’m sitting. “Hate having to get up this early but I have to get to the airport. Got an early flight.”
“Where are you going?”
“Seattle.”
“For work?”
She tugs down the brim of her cap. “I’m a dancer.”
“That’s nice,” I say, but she doesn’t answer.
I only nod, but she wants me to understand. “It’s an itinerant life, but not a nice one.”
I nod again. “I can imagine.”
“You can’t even trust the girls you work with; you have to keep your door locked all the time. You feel so alone all the time. I asked my best friend to come with me on this trip, but she has two dogs and cats and couldn’t.” She stares out at the bleak industrial wasteland we’re passing through. “You have to want to get up in the morning.”
Her loneliness is touching. What can I tell her that will make things right? “Isn’t there something else you can do eventually? Something you’d really like?”
“Yeah. What I really want to do is be a dog cop, work for the humane society.”
“I never heard of a dog cop. What is it? Can you get a job like that easily?”
“Oh, I saw it on television. You can do it in some cities. Look out for abused animals, bring them to safety. I’m going to look into it. I don’t want this kind of life forever.”
“Then go for it. And best of luck to you.” I wish (as I often do) for a magic wand.
After several hours, we stop in some ungodly place for a long pause. Two police agents are handcuffing a screaming fellow passenger.
“What's going on?” I ask a lady in a fussy green go-to-church hat. She had been sitting across the aisle from me.
“He just refused to show his ticket to the driver, and he was rude. Now he’s been arrested. You show respect to someone in an authoritative uniform, that’s what you do. My own son is a bus driver and yesterday he was driving towards Charlotte when he sees this police car with flashing lights right behind him. He knows he’s not going over the speed limit so he pulls over. The police tell him to get out — they didn’t want to talk to him in the bus, you see — and the police asks him, ‘you got some people from…’ oh I can’t remember the name of the place… something east, you know what I mean?”
“The Middle East?” I offer.
“Yeah, that’s it! Middle East. So they ask him, ‘You got people from Middle East on your bus?’ And he says, ‘yes, four of them. They’re wearing them long robes and all, you know.’ So the police says, ‘that’s the ones we’re lookin’ for,’ and they pull them right off. Then he has to wait for an hour somewheres because someone’s gonna blow up a Wallmart.”
The newspapers are silent on this subject. Is it true? Who knows? She informs she is the leader of a church group, was the deaconess for a while. Then she gets down to brass tacks, preaching “the good word,” and there’s no discouraging her. Fortunately, she suddenly discovers she has left her cell phone on the last bus, and she tells me to watch her bag while goes off in search of her errant phone. “You keep your eye on that bag of mine. I only got the one, left the others with my son. I had to leave in a hurry, you see. My best friend just died, and I have to get to her fast.”
Rather after the fact, I think, but don’t say.
She returns shortly, telephone snug in her purse. “You see? God looks after me.”
I tell her my own story of losing a telephone one morning on a train in France while accompanying a friend to the airport near St. Malo. By the time I discovered my loss in the city of Rennes, the train had gone on, heading for the far west of Brittany before shunting back across country to Paris. We appealed to the stationmaster, and he phoned one of the controllers who went to our seats and had a look. The phone was gone. For the next six hours I had thoughts of someone calling Brazil and Tahiti and racking up a phone bill I’d never be able to pay.
After a longish bus trip to St. Malo, my friend took a plane to London. I returned by bus to Rennes and bought a ticket to the city of Laval where I had left my car. There was an early evening train leaving immediately, and I had to run to catch it. Certainly it would have been easier to wait for the next train that left half-an-hour later, but the station was cold and cheerless.
I scraped in just as the doors were closing and took a seat. And suddenly I heard a telephone ring, a familiar sound coming from somewhere beneath me. I took a peek under my seat — and there was my phone, exactly where it had fallen after dropping out of my purse so many hours earlier. It had travelled back and forth for over a thousand miles, and no one had seen it. By pure chance, I had managed to step into the same compartment and take the same seat of the same train I had been on earlier in the day.
The green hat lady smiles happily. “You see? God took care of you, too. He knew that was your phone and he wanted you to have it.”
Which is a comfort (since I’m a sloppy sort of person). I can’t help wondering, however, if there aren’t more important issues for a god to busy himself with.
In Philadelphia, I wander through city streets where townhouses are lovely, and the beautiful 30th Street train station, is a glory — especially to me since I live in France where elegant nineteenth-century stations are being converted into shopping malls. Of course, nothing is certain: there are plans afoot to change even this beauty and increase retail space within the station. People just can’t leave nice things alone.
Over one thousand deserted, another 100 died in the brigade hospital, and the rest mutinied. Raging through the countryside, foraging, stealing horses and whatever they could carry away, they marched into Philadelphia, surrounded the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall), and threatened Congress at bayonet point.
Instead of resolving the problem, Congress took refuge in the first-floor room where the Declaration of Independence had been signed, begged the Pennsylvania government to make the mob go away, and pleaded with George Washington to send reinforcements. Then, terrified, they pushed through the jostling rowdies and fled the city.
When he heard of the mutiny, Washington was incensed: “I cannot sufficiently express my surprise and indignation at the arrogance, the folly, and the wickedness of the mutineers.”
He dispatched 1,500 troops to disperse the crowd and arrest the ringleaders. He did, however, urge Congress to provide supplies and deliver pay.
In July 1790, the new national capital of Washington was created on the Potomac River, and Philadelphia lost its important status.
There’s a fairly large audience at the Historical Society for my book talk, which is certainly satisfying. Okay…I only sign and sell two or three copies, but there is compensation: the president of the Historical Society just happens to own a very chic fish restaurant in the city and, after the talk, that’s where he takes me. Learning of my passion for oysters, he presents me with a huge plate loaded with two of every variety available on the east and west coast of North America. The oysters and the lovely white wine I’m served are hedonistic treats, and they easily outweigh unloading a few books.
©2021 Jill Culiner All Rights Reserved
Long ago, J. Arlene Culiner set out to have a life of adventure, not one of security and comfort. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, traveled, by bus, train, car, or truck throughout North and Central America, Europe, and the Sahara, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, on a Dutch canal, in a haunted stone house on the English moors, and presently in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village. Her experiences in out-of-the-way communities with their strange characters and very odd conversations are incorporated into all her stories. http://www.j-arleneculiner.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment