Day 1 – Houston TX
From the cool of an English March to the heat of a Houston afternoon, around 90° in the shade and there wasn’t much of that. Potential DVT was avoided by seats at the emergency exits; any fear of thirst dispelled by the same seats being a curtain away from the plane’s obviously, as it came to pass, capacious fridge. We flew into the petrol centre of the western world, appropriately well-oiled.
We check into a Microtel, the centre of the city shimmering in the distance. It’s often forgotten that Houston is the fourth largest city in the union and representative of the shift in USA power since the 1960’s. We were directed into the wind-blown, hot-dust early evening to a Brewings Bar with a feisty bartender who served a good chicken and orange salad with noodles, accompanied by the ubiquitous Sam Adams. (Texas makes every effort to dispel the anachronistic view of it being simply flaming steaks and chilli bean cantina land.)
Day 2 – Houston TX to Austin TX
This was the first leg of a road trip which would take us from the Gulf of Mexico, east and north across the Mississippi and up to the Great Lakes: the temperature would drop from 90° to 0° in the space of 10 days – so let’s go
First stop was the Lyndon Baines Johnson NASA space centre. A great piece of history, of scientific brilliance and human daring. The Control Centre; vast rockets with wiring which to us looks a fire-risk; pieces of the moon in the shop; ATMs which don’t recognise a card from the other side of the Atlantic, Texas longhorns in the LBJ corral – it really is worth a visit.
Kennedy gave responsibility for the space race to his vice-president, LBJ. The idea was to keep Johnson away from DC business and the machinations of the Boston-Irish coterie around JFK. Johnson wasn’t even allowed to fly on Airforce 1. But Johnson used this to bring millions of federal dollars and employment to his home state.
Half-way to Austin, in a MacDonald’s carpark drinking cans of beer, my mates are warned by an older, diplomatic policeman about the rules on alcohol in the open. He’s firm and clear but, ominously, in the light of recent events, warns us about “younger, more aggressive officers”.
Stayed in central Austin at La Quinta. The temperature remains high but the atmosphere is very relaxed, great selection of bars along the main street, and nearly everyone sporting tattoos, sideburns and piercings. We drank in, amongst others, the Burnside Bar – great IPA, good music and a great life-size picture of Lincoln taken before the age of the selfie.
We ate classic Texas steaks, served with asparagus for any Democrats present, in a great institution called The Driskill. This was a favourite of another great Texas institution, LBJ; and he and Lady Bird dined there regularly, even after that November day.
Day 3 – Austin TX to Dallas TX
Austin was a great town and we could possibly have stayed for another day – but that would have been to ignore the iron rule of road trips, as they serve as metaphors for life, “always leave when the going is good” – and so we turned north for Dallas.
Texas scenery is harsh and unforgiving and it is vast – bigger than France or Germany by far.
Dallas seemed like a city that had had better times; the centre was run down with empty office blocks, empty parking lots and groups of young men loitering seemingly aimlessly. The urinals in the Macdonald’s were the dirtiest imaginable. The temperature had dropped and the homeless fitted in well.
We passed the only famous book depository in the world and stood in Dealey Plaza, next to the grassy knoll. Here, on November 22nd 1963 at around 12:30 local time, the most notorious assassination since Lincoln’s took place. It is known who killed Lincoln and why – it was the personification of the South’s wish to rid the country of a president committed to the abolition of slavery. As to who killed Kennedy and why, that will never be answered, but it hasn’t stopped official Commissions of Enquiry, films and hundreds of books from asking the questions.
Kennedy had gone to Texas to look for votes in the 1964 elections – against all the advice of his wife and closest advisers. This time in the South was febrile with murderous, racist, anti-northern hatred; the historic failure of the Reconstruction era was all too obvious. It was almost like the Civil War had never been won. The Confederacy banner, and all it stood for, flew proudly across the South, and nowhere more defiantly than in Texas. The Lone Star State loudly proclaimed in so many ways “The South shall rise again”.
Kennedy’s fateful trip to Dallas was a Greek tragedy – the central character with his hubris, his pride refusing him to allow for any weakness and the terrible nemesis meted out in the bullets which left him dead, in a state so far away from his beloved Cape Cod and the waters of the Atlantic.
There is little in Dealey Plaza now to commemorate those shattering events. Texas, anyway, never loved Kennedy. The traffic trundles past, the homeless shake a cup, workers hurry for a lunchtime Starbucks, the dealers continue business.
LBJ was finally able to use Air Force 1 on the way back to Washington. He is still the only President of the USA to be born in Texas. I think the Greeks invented the concept of irony for that kind of outcome.
After lunch, and a cowboy hat shop, we got back on the road, got to stick to that rule.
Day 4 – Dallas TX to Hugo OK
Through the scrub of north-east Texas into Oklahoma – once the centre of the 1930s “dustbowl”, that great creation of the immigrant farming methods in an ecology of which they understood little. The people who did understand the land, the native Indians, had by then been murdered, betrayed, traduced and denied all human rights – maybe the “dustbowl” also came with a share of nemesis. I doubt the “Okies”, on their way to another poverty, picking fruit in California, escaping ceiling-high dust dunes, thought much about this.
Oklahoma now, its economy buoyed by oil receipts and the general shift of the USA economy towards the south-west, is a long way from the 1930s.
We headed for Hugo, one of the thousand small towns in the USA unheard of by anybody outside the county line. But each small town is different; Hugo has a “circus’ cemetery”. It is a beautifully kept little gem with interesting and informative headstones and soon you accept it on its own terms, and you can realise why it is important to Hugo. It’s unique and at the same time it’s small town America, where most Americans live and work. The informative and helpful cemetery-keeper gives us the dreadful news that the only hotel anywhere near is a large Casino with 5 star rooms, and “I’m not sure, but I think they sell alcohol there.”
There are those, and I’ve met them, who argue that if it’s after 5 in the afternoon and there’s a large Casino with 5 star rooms on the road you’re on, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. So we didn’t.
The Choctaw Casino was very welcoming and had great rooms – typical Casino rooms, 2 king beds, a writing desk which will never be used, a bathroom the size of a UK kitchen and a view over the endless Plains of the west. The Casino had limited stakes, very useful at the start of a road trip. It also sold beer at only 3.2%, very useful when you have an early start the next day. The 9$ buffet hit the spot, especially the cold mash salad and catfish.
At the checkout the people seemed genuinely sorry to see us go, but genuinely wished us well as we set out for Memphis.
Day 5 – Hugo OK to Memphis TN
“There ain’t nothing like an Oklahoma mornin’”, sang Charlie Pride; and he was right, it does “put Oklahoma sunshine in your soul”. But we had a road to travel, said our fond farewells to the Casino and headed off to Memphis and its legends. Before we hit Arkansas though, we had one ever present road trip duty to perform – breakfast at the diner (not Tiffany’s, strangely enough).
We found another Denny’s classic: strips of crispy, brittle bacon; sausage links (god knows what the EU would have them called); English muffins (which are neither); eggs anyway you like ‘em; pancakes and floes of syrup; grits (I think the EU would allow that name). And all served with endless coffee and “half and half” at tables not quite big enough for the number of plates which arrive. The waitress, as ever, is cheerful and helpful. After the meal we discover there is a supermarket attached and so make the appropriate purchase, in denominations of six. It’s a long way to Memphis.
Initially the plan was to get to Memphis by 2:30 and watch the Man United match. This plan was destroyed by the sheer size of Arkansas, a massive road jam in the middle of nowhere and a decision to take a short cut through Forrest City – a place whose overt poverty is astonishing in the USA; shoeless children, windows stuffed with newspapers, wooden shacks, rusting chasses cannibalised and sinking into the mud. Nothing like this would be tolerated in, say, rural Massachusetts or Colorado. You realise again that the South, even the upper South, is another world. This is why Bill Clinton was so serious about providing opportunities for all children in the USA, to redress the sectional imbalances which still blight American life.
Arkansas seemed interminable, even with the odd break for ice-cream. Our spirits lifted though when we eventually saw the “Father of Waters” separating Arkansas from Tennessee. The statue of Jefferson Davis on the riverbank in downtown Memphis served as a memory of where we were.
Memphis was strangely quiet – was it another Confederate Day, I wondered? Apparently not, just too early in the year. We had a couple of beers in a classy bar, leather and walnut, and checked into the Econolodge.
The Beale Street area was a disappointment, maybe they clean it up for the tourist season. It certainly didn’t come across as the home of some of the most influential recordings in popular music – think Presley, B.B.King, Howlin Wolf for starters. We tried a couple of bars which were fairly useless and decided on an impromptu Diners’ Club.
The Capriccio Grill in the famous Peabody Hotel fitted the bill perfectly. Honey and lemon salmon steaks, Scaloppine di Vitello, House Meatball (not normally an option on a Diners’ Club but this was Memphis), that kind of stuff all washed down with plenty of Nappa Valley red. The food was great, especially a porcini risotto, the rest rooms might have been imported from Versailles and the bill only moderately ridiculous. This was a successful Diners’ Club, and our first west of Salford Quays.
Nightcaps of doubles all round were had at a dodgy dive next to the hotel – black customers we couldn’t understand, prices suddenly rather too high for the establishment and a slight feeling of unease prompted us to leave while the going was good, or at least safe. Another round would have been definitely a bad idea.
Tomorrow on to Nashville, with one more visit in Memphis.
Day 6 – Memphis TN to Nashville TN
We drove a few blocks out of our way to the second assassination scene of the road trip – it wasn’t planned that way, but in the south politics and history keep on intruding. The Lorraine Hotel, scene of the Martin Luther King assassination is kept exactly as it was on the evening of April 4th 1968; he was only 39 and, like Kennedy, had a lot left. King’s murder led to nationwide riots and many Americans to wonder in their own different ways just what was happening to the country. This assassination came only 4 days after Johnson had announced he would not seek a second term and the war in Vietnam was now clearly being lost, at the expense of thousands of young Americans and many, many more Vietnamese. The Cadillacs in the Lorraine carpark remain, Martin Luther King’s message remains.
After the marathon through Oklahoma and Arkansas, it was a mercifully short drive to Nashville. We arrived early afternoon and booked into The Hampton Inn, not without difficulty in proving we actually had enough money between us to pay for their expensive, expansive rooms. So far not a rhinestone or a good ol’ boy to be seen. But the water of the historic Cumberland river rolled on to its destiny, as it had during the Civil War years, to be consumed into the Mississippi, and eventually the Gulf of Mexico.
Another rule of a road trip is that you must watch the match from Europe – even if you wouldn’t bother if you were in Europe, and you happen to be in one of the music capitals of the world. So, according to this strange dictate, we found yet another hotel, the Hermitage, prepared to switch the channel so we could watch Chelsea. The huge bar was in almost total darkness and with the AC switched to Lapland setting, it made for a session to forget.
The corridors of this hotel gave us the first hint of what Nashville is known for. Beautiful display cases of country memorabilia – a George Jones’ shirt embroidered with fake diamonds and pearl buttons, a Hank Williams’ extra-large hip flask which still smelt of the moonshine, a pair of scuffed cowboy boots which Willie Nelson wore in the “Dukes of Hazzard”, a Waylon Jennings’ Stetson.
Even in the afternoon Nashville is alive with music, bar after bar swinging with good bands playing their own tunes and playing them well. The atmosphere is friendly, people of all ages enjoying the true home of country music. Nashville weaves a spell, not unlike New Orleans, and even those who claim not to like country, soon fall into its power.
In the evening we end up in a bar with a group with a girl singer backed by quality guitars and drums. There’s no entry fee on the Nashville Strip, a bucket comes round and you tip in your appreciation. The lady singer raises a cheer for us when she announces that “a gang of guys from the UK are with us here in Nashville”. I hope she makes it, I thought; but then I realised she had made it, she was singing on the strip in Nashville – as good a place to listen to music as I know. Live country in Nashville is, surprisingly, completely unlike Patsy Cline at last orders at our local
Roadtrip orthodoxy and the cost of the rooms, meant that we dined cheaply. Wings and rings in a Sports Bar, someway from the pedal-steel and the sparkle. Even in this out of the way dive, two guitarists-singers played great stuff and we tipped in our appreciation.
Tomorrow, temperatures drop, off to Cincinnati.
Day 7 – Nashville TN to Cincinnati OH
The massive buffet breakfast slightly offset the massive cost of the rooms, especially if you diluted the California tomato-juice concentrate with some of the tax-free Irish vodka left over from last night’s soirée. The normal ATM decline on various cards was solved fairly quickly, if that’s what you can call a £25 phone call to the UK, and it was back on the road, heading west and north to Cincinnati via Kentucky and Indiana. It was a fond farewell, more of an optimistic au revoir, to Nashville. We were leaving the South and heading into the old North-West, the heart of the once embryonic Republican Party, when that party was the party of Lincoln and anti-slavery. (I wonder what Lincoln would think, as he stares timeless and ennobled from the great Monument, of the party of Trump and vicious anti-immigration.)
The weather turned foul as we crossed into Kentucky; grey skies and endless rain, coats came out of the boot as the temperature dropped. We passed the most heavily guarded international cliché in the world, the US Gold Depository in the Fort Knox Military Reserve, located on what is now Bullion Boulevard at the intersection of Gold Vault Road (do you get it?). From a distance, the only way to see it, it is a strange, squat building which wouldn’t be out of place in Moscow, or Washington come to think of it. But it guards more gold than any other country has. And who knows what else it guards?
The country up to Cincinnati was flat and grim, the weather unrelenting and the road seemingly endless. Sometimes a road trip is not all San Francisco to Los Angeles in the California sun, with the convertible’s top down and the Pacific glinting down to the right. This was considerably more Springsteen than the Beach Boys. A bit of a blue collar road trip into Ohio.
Cincinnati is on the Ohio river, another of the mighty waterways of the USA and all the rain had ensured it was coursing high and mighty through the centre of the city. We took a tram downtown and found a classy jazz bar with a combo of 2 old black guys, one on a Roland organ and the other on drums who created a sound you can only hear in the USA; tight and yet more laid back than reggae, perfect music to relax to after a day’s driving, perfect with a large Knob Creek on the rocks, perfect when you are watching the driving rain through the large windows of a warm bar.
Deciding to eat later, we come up against another of a road trip’s rules – not every meal will be good (unless you eat only at Denny’s, and why not?). We had a sample of some of the worst meatballs north of the equator and south of the north pole, truly appalling. But tomorrow we were on the road again, this time heading for Michigan City and another couple of states. And, on a road trip, every new day is a possibility and hope springs eternal.
Day 8 – Cincinnati OH to Michigan City IN
The road soon took us into Indiana, a new state but the same old weather, only colder and windier. We stopped in a bar and the barmaid was surprised that a group of Englishmen would come to Indiana at all, let alone in a cold, rainy April – we tended to agree. She thought we should return in August so that we could see the state fair, which showcased its agriculture. She said this with no sense of irony, but with a pride in her state, which was nice to see.
Our lunchtime destination was North Manchester, Indiana – which we hoped wouldn’t bear unfavourable comparison with the likes of Cheetham Hill and Miles Platting. We found a pie shop, of a quality not found in the real north Manchester, England. So lunch was pie and chips all round, washed down with Sam Adams or “trois boules” and ever northward.
Michigan City was, confusingly, not in Michigan but still in Indiana. It was however right on Lake Michigan, freezing and 2000 miles away from sunny Houston. It came at that point in any road trip, and believe me I’ve made a few, when the energy levels drop and you get what the French call “fatigue du chemin”. It’s easy to get rid of.
We followed the orthodox remedies: book into a hotel/casino with large rooms and fantastic showers; go to an “outlet” and buy several pairs of cheap Levis; eat comfort food in the shape of racks of lamb; drink comfort shorts in the shape of Knob Creek on the rocks; lose a couple of hundred of dollars on the tables and, above all, get an early night. Works every time.
Tomorrow, the Windy City, via Michigan.
Day 9 – Michigan City IN to Chicago IL
The morning started with a short drive across the state line into Michigan. The shoreline of Lake Michigan was vast and the biting wind pushed blocks of ice onto the sand. We didn’t stay long, but it was another state and that’s important on a road trip. But another rule of a road trip is that to say you’ve been to a state, to tick its box, it’s not enough simply to step into it – you must spend a night or have a meal (unless it’s Arkansas, and there all bets are off).
So in Michigan we settled down to a real decent USA breakfast in a nicely heated diner with lakefront views – endless coffee, brittle bacon, links, pancakes, eggs over-easy, hash browns, English muffins, toast, grits and cream, half and half, extra butter, more milk, more coffee, waffles, honey, syrup, biscuits and gravy and, in case this wasn’t quite enough, pecan sauce and endless waitress attention. (The more discerning of our north Manchester Wetherspoon readers will shake their heads in disappointment at the absence of black pudding and pints of strong lager, but these are breakfast-perfectionistas, and this wasn’t the Rochdale Road.) All chased down with a cigarette in the freezing cold.
Checked in to the Inn at Lincoln Park, on West Diversey Parkway. We were in Chicago giant Saul Bellow’s “somber city”. Once the abattoir of the USA thanks to railroads from Abilene and the invention of refrigeration, Chicago transformed for ever world architecture with its pioneering use of the skyscraper, its “gigantesque outer life,” (Bellow, again). Its centre skyline is still as impressive as it gets in the USA, with better bars than Manhattan and a lakefront you don’t want to turn your back on.
The day finished at Matisse, a tavern serving great beer and burgers like you can only get in Chicago. The atmosphere is friendly and noisy, a real Saturday night in the heartland – as far from an ocean as you can get, and yet on the shore of a mighty water.
Road trips into the immensity of the USA can be tiring; physically and emotionally the geography and the diversity of the people demands a level of attention and appreciation way above the quotidian. They’re not holidays in the usual sense of the word: no struggling with the Germans for the best spots at the pool; no guided tours round the galleries of the quattrocento; no safaris among beautiful scenery with the poorest of the world as a backdrop. Road trips in the USA are journeys into the most historically diverse and, contrarily, modern society in the world and are more interesting, enjoyable and demanding than any other kind of holiday.
Great road trips, and we don’t do any other kind, demand a great finale and Chicago came through like Nijinsky with Piggott in the saddle. Miller’s on Wabash is up there with the best bars in the USA, it rivals Triple George in Vegas, no higher praise is available in any language. We watched Liverpool beat West Ham 2-1 and ate divine steak and mash with onion gravy. As an end to a road trip it was perfect.