Day 28 Wednesday, November 2, 2011

At this writing 10:30, I am in Lake City, Florida. I felt the need to
reach Florida and sleep on Florida soil. So at last I've reach the last
link in the chain or the last state where I will turn around my car and head backward.

It has been a most extraordinary past 24 hours. Last night at this very time, 22:45, in Atlanta I heard by far the most unusual, even bizarre tale from a man. In all my travels - I mean from the time I was a teenager hitchhiking around the countryside I've never heard such a tale of depravity and sordidness. To say he was a lost soul fails to accurately explain his life as told to me.

Then sitting in the exact same spot this morning, in the same McDonalds, I witnessed a heart-warming, heart-lifting act of human kindness from another kind of person. I failed to get photographs of either person but at some later point I'll describe what I witnessed in the difference of human souls. Along with that lost soul I met in Cedar Rapids, in ordinary circumstances all this would keep my mind in turmoil trying to sort out and understand what I've witnessed. I have an idea how to capture and explain the essence of the man in Cedar Rapids by using the tale he told me of his life for a character in a short story.

The last thing I did in Atlanta was to search for the apartment complex Lora and I lived in from November, 1974 to April, 1975 on Briarcliff Road. After an absence of 36 years at first nothing looked familiar or at least the way I remembered it and I supposed it was a fool's errand to even look. But persistence paid off and as I drove by one place I recognized it by the English Tudor style of architecture. Then it took some time on foot to exact unit we rented.

Nothing was resolved or even gained by retracing where we lived so many years ago. I see by my records it was a most unproductive period in my life: I wrote but one short story there. A story called His Freshman Year of 16,000 words in December, 1974. That was it. I left not a single friend behind in Atlanta, although my wife I think made several at work. Neither of us warmed up to Atlanta. I think I see why now. We arrived just as the winter weather set in and the streets there are uniformly narrow and closed off by thick underbrush and trees. One feels hemmed in and for someone used to an open landscape and western sky it feels suffocating, even depressing.

But the campus of Emory University, where my wife worked, I examined more closely than I ever did when we lived there. It's small, but lovely with Spanish architecture. It is of course a private school and expensive. I found at least half the student population was Asian or Indian. Maybe they have the money and the brains now. But it does not have the affluent feel of Notre Dame. (I'll download photos tomorrow.) If you will excuse me for saying so, the girls were not as pretty as at Notre Dame, although some of the girls at Notre Dame might have been from St. Mary's College across the street from Notre Dame. Neither did the Emory girls dress as well. Emory University is funded by generous grants from the maker of Coke Cola the Chandler family. His name is everywhere including the main library.

Once again the driving weather was brilliant. It's hard to imagine so much snow falling in places like New Jersey and New England. I'm feeling much much better the last two days or since I cleaned out the backend of the van and actually sprayed a solvent to breakdown and remove the gasoline stains and smells. I suspect breathing the gasoline fumes for about three weeks might have been poisoning my whole system. I feel more normal now with my normal energy.

I felt a ripple of excitement at sunset knowing that if I could see far enough over the horizon I would see the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, even Cuba. It would be nice to see Cuba. Move over ghost of Hemingway! Poor old Papa; it makes me sad every time I think of how he ended his life.

R.B.