Prompt #52 Road Trip!

This prompt challenges you to hitch a ride on your imagination and write about a road trip. Adapted from "Measure for Measure: Write a Road Song" by David Alzofon (American Songwriter Sept/Oct 2016)  Sections in italics directly quoted.

Road Trip!

Road songs often have an emotional impact far exceeding expectations. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," Kris Kristofferson sings in "Me and Bobby McGee," and therein lies the key.

Freedom (or lack of it) is a potent, pervasive theme in road songs. Most of us lead lives of quiet desperation, but give us four wheels, an open highway, and a distant horizon, and our hearts take wing. "Freedom" might mean pushing a broom, as in "King of the Road," or it might mean dreaming of driving to a better place in a "Fast Car," or maybe just getting out of "Lodi," but freedom calls to one and all.

So hitch a ride on your imagination, and write about a road trip.  

Process

First, immerse yourself in road trip songs. Choose one of these songs, or any other one you know in this genre, and map its structure.  Ask yourself what makes them work. Your task is to apply what you discover to your writing.

"We Gotta Get Out of This Place" The Animals
"Sloop John B" Beach Boys
"On the Road Again"  Willie Nelson
"Born to Run" Bruce Springsteen
"Where the Streets Have No Name" U2
"King of the Road"  Roger Miller
"Day After Day"  The Pretenders
"Two of Us"  Beatles
"Homeward Bound"  Simon and Garfunkel
"Life is a Highway"  Tom Cochrane


Second step is to think about road trips you've been on (or perhaps a fictional character is taking), and think of the images that will be present.  In "Bobby McGee" we have "faded jeans," dirty red bandana," windshield wipers slappin' time."  Think of the colorful places discovered, like "the coal mines of Kentucky" or "Baton Rouge"  Make lists. Attempt to think about two to four different kinds of road trips to get the one ripe for writing.

Third step is irony.  In "Bobby McGee" the irony is both humorous (Bobby is a girl), and tragic ("Freedom is just another word for nothin' left to lose.)  Think of pairs of opposites, such as gain and loss, beginning and end, high and low. Think of the geography in which you or your character is traveling, and connect it thematically.

At this point, I hope you will have enough grist for the mill to produce a poem, story, memoir, or some other piece of writing to make a road trip come alive!


Check out P!NK singing "Me and Bobby McGee" in 2003 to get warmed up.

The One Who Knows: A Memoir

Response to Prompt #51 High School Relationships

What a journey this has been to finding the right relationship to examine for this prompt. I went through yearbooks, scrapbooks, and photo albums, mulling things over, looking at things from different angles. Lo and behold, I realized some things that had never quite come together in my head before. Thank you, Laurie, for this prompt which shined a light on something I needed to know.

The One Who Knows

All the things you treasure most will be the hardest won.

I will watch you struggle long before the answers come.

But I won’t make it harder, I’ll be there to cheer you on,

I’ll shine the light that guides you down the road you’re walking on.

(Dar Williams)

In 1960’s, Saint Joseph Academy (Joe's) drew from all the Catholic schools around the west side Cleveland area. As a child, I had attended St. Mark’s School in Cleveland, before moving to North Olmsted and going to St. Richard’s. I had also spent several weeks in the summers going to CYO Day Camp where I met many girls from other schools, most notably Our Lady of Angels, a school right down the street from Joe's.

When I arrived on the campus in 1969, having taken public transportation from the suburb, I was fortunate to know girls from the schools and camps I had attended. (Reminds me of Laurie and her theory of Helen and the Six Degrees of Separation). Though I knew many people, I formed a close kinship with three girls: Kate, Mary Kay, and Laura.  I knew Kate the best coming in. I knew little about Laura – she attached to us because of the St. Richard’s connection. Every day we would take the bus together to school, eat together at the same lunch table, and meet after school to walk a half a mile back to the public bus stop to get home.

Kate and I started out nearly inseparable. We wrote poetry and letters to each other, went to dances at the local boy’s high school, and kept in touch over the summer. Kate, like me, was the oldest girl in her family. But unlike me, her parents were raging alcoholics, and she took the brunt of her mother’s wrath at all times.

By sophomore year, I found myself hanging out with Mary Kay more. Football games and performing in our church musical, she and I were together all the time.  Mary Kay was the youngest in her family, and the only one left at home. Her take on life was a lot more carefree, often mocking others and just wanting to have fun. While I analyzed the lyrics of Joni Mitchell songs (a Kate activity), Mary Kay would be doing the funky chicken to “I Feel the Earth Move”  -- also something I liked to do.  I guess what I’ve come to understand is that I was a midpoint between these two.

Mary Kay and I were fanatics about passing notes to each other in between classes. For a long time I had a brown paper grocery bag full of these notes in my closet at home. Several notes passed between us during the day, and I saved every one for a long time. They were full of craziness, complaints, making fun of stupid things people were doing, and general nonsense.  At one point we even had look alike navy wool pea coats, her’s with a Tweety Bird patch, and mine with Speedy Gonzalez. We affectionately referred to each other by Tweety and Speedy.

Meanwhile Laura, the oldest in her family, had stable family life. She was the oldest, with a younger brother and sister. She lived in a small house and could walk right out of her backyard onto the campus of North Olmsted High School. Across the street lived a boy named Bruce Hudson who would later become famous for (sadly) going down on the Edmund Fitzgerald. 

Laura in her dad's pajamas at our Junior retreat 1971

Laura was like me in that she had neighborhood friends.  I had Becky, Debbie, and Cheryl.  She had Diana and Paula. She had a great sense of humor, was artistic, and had a guinea pig named Snickelfritz.  She was the first true animal lover I knew.  Laura didn’t get into passing notes at school, and she didn’t hang out much at football games, dances, or many of the other things we might do on a Friday night.  Instead, she hung close to home and her neighborhood friends.

During our high school years, I dated a guy named Chuck for a short time. Eventually he got to know Laura, and they dated for about a year.  In a similar circumstance, Kate had dated a guy named Jim for about a year, and then broke up with him. Soon after he began to “go steady” with Mary Kay, but kept seeing Kate on the sly. This put me in a position of knowing what was happening, and unable to say anything about it.  Mary Kay was extremely jealous of Kate (maybe rightfully so), and this would come to a head in the summer before senior year.

In August 1972, Kate’s mom kicked her out for good, and she went to live with her grandmother. This meant Kate was no longer riding the bus with us, and a sort of separation began. She also tended to get more heavily into drugs, and this caused a bit of a barrier.  On top of that, in that same month Jim told Kate that Mary Kay was pregnant.  Kate called and told me.  I waited, but never heard the word from Mary Kay, even though we had spent a good part of the summer together hanging out, going to shows with our dates, dancing at a local club, swimming at her pool, even biking several miles to Jim’s house one night. 

Who did Mary Kay tell?  Laura. This is the person she turned to that August, even though she probably hadn’t spent any time with Laura that summer.

Eventually the only thing she would say to me was, “I know you heard.”

Given the time period, and Mary Kay’s very Catholic parents, it was decided she would withdraw from school and marry Jim – which she did.  And after that she fell out of our lives. Phone calls to her new apartment went unanswered, or she didn’t have much to say and would get off the phone quickly. (It was an abusive situation, but we weren’t too knowledgeable about those things back then.)

With Kate distanced and Mary Kay gone, I developed a deeper connection to Laura. We were both left riding the bus together and discovering a friendship that had been a bit hidden before.  To be clear, I was friends with many others, and our lunch table stayed full of people. It was just that the core group had changed.

Time wore on. We graduated.  That fall I got a job at Ponderosa Steak House.  My boss told me they were looking for someone else for the day shift, so I called Laura. Soon we were working together.  What was nice was that she was so trustworthy – I didn’t have to worry about recommending her for a job. I knew she had a great work ethic. 

Even after we no longer worked together, Laura stayed in my life through annual birthday cards and Christmas cards. When I moved into an apartment and threw parties, I always invited her. I think we went to a concert once or twice. In 1979, she married into a large, prominent, very Catholic North Olmsted family, and she asked me to be one of the nine bridesmaids. Turns out she had a whole cache of friends I knew nothing about!

She and her new husband bought an old farmhouse in North Ridgeville, a farming community turning into a regular suburb, and she put in huge gardens.  After Ponderosa she worked for while developing photos, before becoming a bank teller – a job she still has to this day.

In 1985 Laura had her son, Nick, and a few years later had to divorce her husband in an unpopular move. What she had to do was stay true to herself. She was not being treated right, and in her always grounded state of mind, knew she had to make a change.  She continued as a single mom, tending her gardens and her dogs, working at the bank, installing her own carpet, and living a minimalist lifestyle long before it was popular.

Laura, Chuck, and me  1994

In 1994, our class had its 21^st reunion, and Laura surprised us all by bringing Chuck to the dinner. In 2003 when I was visiting Ohio from Florida, my sister and I went to Laura’s for a cookout.  Her sister Tina was there, as well as some other people we knew. By then Laura had married a man named Jeff. What I remember most about that night is that we talked and laughed so much, I still can hear the echoes of our laughter to this day. That July night remains one of the most enjoyable evenings of my life.

Jeff, Laura, her dog and gorgeous gardens 2003

Since that day, I’ve only seen Laura two more times: once in 2012, and again in 2016. Both times it was through a Joe's reunion when I was in town.  In 2012, about 40 of us gathered at a restaurant on a Sunday afternoon to catch up.  In 2016, it was a breakfast with about 10 people. That year I was staying with my mom, and she had dropped me off at the restaurant before going to the Senior Center. Laura had agreed to bring me home.

Mary Kay, Me, Laura  2012

After the breakfast, she drove me home and we sat in her truck for a long time talking about stuff. Laura is one of those friends I can pick up with as if we had not been apart for years. I had just come off a very rough school year and a bout of shingles, and we were talking about that. I mentioned that I try to help my students discover who they are and encourage their strengths, since I don’t feel I got much of that as a young person.  Laura smiled and said, “But, Helen, I told you in high school that you should be a teacher.”

I was dumbfounded.  In that moment, I seriously did not recall that AT ALL. 

Yet, I believed her.

I could not get it out of my mind. And then one day, maybe a few days later, I remembered.

It was probably March or April of sophomore year. We had gotten off the bus on the way home to go to Great Northern Shopping Center – probably because I had money to buy a new record album, and wanted to make my purchase.  We were walking back across the parking lot to get the bus home, and were talking about the class schedules were making for next year. I told Laura that I was signing up for secretarial stuff since I wasn’t going to go to college.  Laura said, “You should go to college. You could be a teacher.”

I scoffed, “No way I’m going to college. I could barely pass algebra. I’ll never pass geometry.” I probably added on, “Besides, it’s more important for my brothers to go to college.”  (True belief.)  I had such a wall up around the thought of college, not even my insightful friend could break through it.

For three years I have never forgotten that valuable conversation. And through the process of thinking about high school relationships, it has finally struck me to the core that my best relationship was not with Kate or Mary Kay as I’ve always thought.  Laura was the real friendship – the one that saw me for who I am, the one who tried to nudge me in that direction, the one that was never critical or goofy or doing bizarre things or turning her back on me. She has always, always, always been there.

Today while getting a massage I was thinking about this essay, and the title of a Dar Williams song came to mind: “The One Who Knows.”  The song is actually a parent singing to a child, but I think of some of the lyrics as relating to Laura to me.  In the 1970’s in some ways we had to parent each other.  Our parents weren’t much like parents today. No one in my family ever told me I could be a teacher. But Laura – dear amazing Laura --she was the one who knew.

Single Red Rose

It took me a while to come up with something in response to Prompt #52, High School Relationships. Unfortunately, I don't have many fond memories of those 4 years. I didn't come out of my painfully shy, awkward shell until junior year, but as we all know, your place in high school is pretty much decided in middle school, at least in my small town of Dunedin, Florida. I was the nerdy girl with an old lady haircut who had to scrape together babysitting profits for the Jordache and Gloria Vanderbilt jeans (one of each--jeans were outrageously expensive back then) that had to be paired with mother-approved cotton granny panties that often stuck out the back of said designer jeans, K-mart shirts, and Payless shoes. This did not earn me a good rank in the hierarchy, but I did manage to have a solid group of 4 friends from middle to high school, girls from all different groups who for some reason wanted to include me. And, in all fairness, I didn't go out of my way to get involved--it was easier to  say I hated high school and be annoyed at the immaturity of my classmates.

Once I landed my first job, built up some confidence, and grew out my hair, a funny thing began to happen: I got the attention of guys, most of whom I worked with and who went to a neighboring high school. Popular guys. Football players. Wrestlers. Baseball players.  But, when these poor horndogs realized I wasn't going to put out (right about the 3-4 month mark), they found excuses to dump me. One even told me, "I have too much respect for you to push you into something you don't want to do."  I now realize the weight of that statement, but knowing he had someone waiting in the shadows who didn't need to be pushed upset me at the time.

I do have a high school relationship that sticks out--mostly because it never came to fruition due to bad timing and misunderstandings. It all culminated one fateful day, captured in this poem.

Single Red Rose
by Annmarie Ferry

Cheeks swollen and bruised
     wisdom teeth removed before they ruined years of orthodontic work
Tortured by a doting "boyfriend"
     a guy my grandmother introduced me to, a good Christian boy who had stalker tendencies
The doorbell rang
    who is that? my mother snapped, annoyed with the guy who wouldn't leave my side.
I answered the door
     eager to escape the creepy stares of Devon, if only for a minute
It was you
     standing there with a single red rose, a look of caring and concern on your face
A brief exchange
     you stumbling over your words, so weird for your overly confident and cocky self
I can't invite you in
     why after months of me longing for this moment does it have to happen now?
I smile as I close the door
     who was that? Devon asks. I drum up the courage--fueled by annoyance--to tell him to leave.
We were never meant to be
     when I liked you, you just wanted to be friends; when you were ready, I crushed you.
I still have that rose
     pressed between the pages of my junior yearbook, one you never signed 
A simple reminder
     love has a plan--one that doesn't always fit in with ours 
I sometimes wonder
     am I the one who got away? do you even remember that day?
I'll never know
     but I think back fondly on that moment, you at the door holding that single red rose.

Hollywood

Response to Prompt 52: High School Relationships

I didn't mean for it to be, but I guess it was kind of self-serving to create this prompt. The poem struck a cord with me, perhaps because August will be 30 years my husband and I have been together. Ahhh... nostalgia. Sorry, not sorry.

Hollywood
by LJ Kemp

You are Hollywood.
You are all the places
in the city we met.
Each time we visit
I ride beside you
looking at your face
and I see the boy I sat beside
all those years ago.
In a sense our son was born here
way back then.

It was inevitable
that through strife
and struggle of adolescence
we would find our way
together, still.
Are you as happy
as I am?

I still remember
fogged up windows
in front of John Williams Park
after a weeknight concert.
Scrounging for change
at the return toll
from a secret day trip
to the Keys.
Rolling in towels
half-dressed in the dark
on Hollywood Beach.
We are teenagers in lust
our bodies sticky in the ocean air
sand in our hair and
our sweaty creases.
I would stroll the shoreline,
my hand in yours
flushed and shameless
carefree and passionate
blissfully young.

In the shimmer of sunlight
you catch my stare and
as if you read my mind
you return the gaze
and take me there.