#08 / 2003 Peace Tour: Pennsylvania: Dangerous Encounters

DEADLY WINTER ROADS IN PENNSYLVANIA

#08

Well our challenges are just beginning. I was all set to discuss today all the trials and tribulations of driving through the Appalachian and Pocono Mountains in a snow storm, like that would be entertaining enough, until the Coleman stove blew up inside the van this morning and almost caught me on fire.

God is with me, I know. We set out late from Pittsburgh, our second gig no better attended or promoted than the first, so we cut our losses and hit the road, snow was in the forecast. Now something interesting I didn’t know about Pennsylvania is that you can’t buy beer in a convenience store.

Joe likes his beer as we go along. We were slightly surprised to find out we couldn’t get beer when we filled up with gas on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. We made a few more stops along Highway 28, to no avail. Joe finally asked what was going on and we were told you can only buy beer in the taverns.

About midnight we found a little tavern, actually the only place we did encounter for hours on this route, called the Desperado. Aptly named I said. We went inside and settled in for a few brewskis. Finally, we learned you can buy a six-pack to go.

I just couldn’t imagine my old poetic nemesis C. Ra, for those of you who remember him, moving to a state that didn’t sell beer in the markets. But I guess you go down to your local tavern, toss one down, and pick up a six pack to go.

It was in the Desperado that we learned just how severe this snow storm was going to be - three to ten inches. We eased on down the highway to a town named Snowshoe and pulled into a friendly looking truck stop. When we got up, we were encased in three inches of snow. But that isn’t too bad. We could get out of the parking lot and the roads didn’t look that bad, so off we went.

We traveled all day up and down mountains, me trying to stay in the two black lines made by the big trucks. It was scary when they passed; I couldn’t pull on to the shoulder of course. But as I say God is with me, we made it to the edge of Papal, set up in the Wal-Mart parking lot tucked in for the night with my Coleman stove keeping me toasty and warm.

We learned on the evening news that a van of eleven Chinese educators had careened off one of the icy Pennsylvania highways and seven had died. It was so tragic, made me ill. We were so grateful to be safe in a WalMart parking lot, all safe and warm, right?

Now, in six weeks I have thrown out four Coleman stoves. Two were the cooking stoves, and now two of these heaters. There is something in the mechanisms that transfer the gas out to the element that seems to wear out rather quickly. I don’t know what it is, but after working perfectly well all day and night, I changed out the canister and the gas wouldn’t come out. I turned the whole heating unit upside down to try to get the canister to go down in its track evenly.

This particular heater has a flint unit where you push a button and it ignites. You don’t have to use matches. I don’t know what happened. I hadn’t even to my knowledge pushed that flint button, but all of a sudden you could hear the gas wooshing out and the whole thing went up in flames right on the bed.

Joe had to jump outside and open the big sliding door for me to throw the whole system out. It was a miracle the door wasn’t frozen. But only because Joe had been walking around the van this morning chipping off ice. Couldn’t buy a new unit, they had nothing but spring items for sale at WalMart and KMart.

So, we do have a fifth Coleman appliance, a catalytic heater, that doesn’t stay propped up so nicely as these last two I had to dump. The other unit fell in the van and the spring that holds the heating mechanism got knocked out of alignment, and that is why I had to ditch the other unit.

So in six weeks I am down four stoves and getting very frustrated. My clothes, being cheap polyester, melted, and I scorched my hair. But I can see that I could very well have been the next weather related news story following that tragic van accident. Woman burns to death in Wal-Mart parking lot.

As for my other journal accountings, I want to discuss my disillusionment with the media and my efforts to get the word out on our anti-war efforts. I have decided what I really need to do is hook up with some of the peace movement folks on line.

So, I give up on any attempts to publicize what I am doing, I will just show up at places and speak out. But in the meantime, I am going to make a discerned effort to get hooked up with some of these promoters on line.

My journal is also an accounting of my grief process since the loss of my mother, who died in September. I think grieving over a parent must be a very long process indeed. I have had the luxury to for lack of another phrase “wallow in my grief.”

I have indulged my grief, been sad when I needed to be, alone when I needed to be. And that is a luxury. I figure I am doing rather well, because I feel good about how I cared for mother. I didn’t necessarily do the right things all the time, or the best things, but I was there and she knew I was there for her.

And I did do the very best I could. That keeps me from feeling guilty or remorseful. But still, grief is work. Anyone that knows me on a very personal basis, at least in these last few years, knows that I have some anger issues. And that has been one of my greatest challenges to get my emotions under control.

This is something I really worked on while Mama was dying. I didn’t want my last thoughtless words to be angry words, and I think I did well. But, I notice under the stress of traveling, I can really get upset.

Joe is my navigator. When we headed towards Pittsburgh I really got loud and so upset one night, because he failed to notice a turnoff and we wound up in the wrong direction. But how bad is that? Travel is high stress, but I am trying to figure this out. And I think I have had an epiphany.

I’ve spent months writing in my head this definitive narrative about death and dying, my lifelong fear of mother’s death, and I think I have hit upon something. It occurred to me in the parking lot of WalMart last night.

I think it is not so much Mother’s death that I have dreaded and feared, but what comes after. The me that got so angry is not the me I want to be. On the road Joe and I are reading Luis Borges, it is deeply philosophical. And I am not that anger, that energy that can get in such a rage.

All of a sudden it occurred to me it is not Mother’s death I feared but what comes after, who and what I will be. Mother would criticize me for cussing, which I made my New Year’s resolution to stop doing, for getting upset. This would only make me more angry and resentful, I would cuss more.

But in my mind I knew I was that better person, I would take the lazy way out and just blow up out of frustration. I used to think I wouldn’t cuss so much if she wouldn’t quit telling me not to cuss. And this is what I think I have hit upon.

I knew deep down I was a better person, but Mama’s complaining just couldn’t bring that out in me. But now she’s gone. Who am I now? Borges says there is no personality. We aren’t what we say, we aren’t what we hear, or otherwise, once we heard these things and saw these things we would disappear. But we are still here.

So my fear of mother’s death, I believe now, is not the grief work that would follow but more the me that would follow. I know there is something greater in me than what I have tapped so far, and now I must tap that inner self.

And it is hard to be a better person, a kinder person. It is easier to cuss, to get angry, to fight, easier than it is to forgive, to take time to calm down. Now that is my challenge.