W. Stephen Hathaway, associate professor of English, shares his thoughts on open spaces.
Several years ago, Noel de Berry, a London banker friend, phoned to say he was going to be in the United States on business and could I meet him for lunch?
Sure, I replied. “Fine,” he said, “I’ll be in Dallas on Tuesday.” When I told him that Dallas is as far from Wichita as London is from Edinburgh, I imagine his face fell, as he uttered a soft, “Oh.”
Similarly, to impress upon my American literature students how vast this country is, I remind them that the distance from Wichita to Kansas City is the same as from London to Paris and what a world of difference there is between England and France.
With this thought vaguely in mind, I set off recently on a motor trip to visit a retired colleague in upstate New York and my daughter, Margaret, in New York City.
Scudding across the Flint Hills, I surveyed the huge, open vistas before me with satisfaction, aware of the fact that I was covering as much ground in 20 minutes as early settlers did in a day. Shunning I-70, I made my way north from Kansas City to Veterans Memorial Highway, which crosses Missouri from St. Joseph to Hannibal, boyhood home of that quintessential American author, Mark Twain.
From there it was a hundred miles or so to Springfield, Ill., where I found a place to stay and then visited Abraham Lincoln’s tomb, which continues to inspire awe, 137 years after his assassination.
The next day brought me to Indiana and the lush forest along the Wabash River, and then it was more blue highways to Ohio, where I dawdled, spending the night just west of Toledo in a smudgy little motel managed by a grumpy Vietnam veteran who became only slightly less grumpy when he found out I was a fellow traveler.
In the morning I headed north on I-75 toward Detroit and the Ambassador Bridge into Windsor, Ontario, every molecule of my body seeming to say, “We’re home, we’re home,” as I crossed the line from Ohio into Michigan. Getting into Canada wasn’t any more difficult than I remember and in no time, it seemed, I was waiting in line to get back into the States at Niagara Falls. Again, it was surprisingly easy. Another 3 1/2 hours brought me to upstate New York and two days of fishing before I headed 350 miles downstate to visit my daughter.
In New York City, I stashed my car in a midtown garage, bought a MetroCard, had dinner with Margaret and her friend at a Thai restaurant, and took the subway back to Brooklyn.
And then, on a hazy morning in May, I found myself walking across the Williamsburg Bridge over the East River to lower Manhattan. We bumbled around the Essex Market on Delancey Street, took in the Tenement Museum (noting that the streets have been re-cobbled for authenticity), admired the Sopranos license plates and Marlon Brando Godfather posters in Little Italy, had tea in Chinatown, and passed by 100 Centre Street (where Alan Arkin was nowhere to be seen).
All the while, of course, we’d been moving inevitably, inexorably toward the great, gaping wound in the earth where the towers had stood.
A block-and-a-half from Ground Zero, we halted.
Margaret had watched in horror from across the river when the towers collapsed and had delivered food to St. Vincent’s Hospital. And somehow it now struck me as unseemly to stand in a long line to get a ticket in order to stand in an even longer line to ascend the huge ramp and gaze upon the scene of so many other people’s devastation, misery and loss. And so, 1,500 miles into my journey, I was going no farther. I had lots of rides left on my MetroCard, so we took the subway up to Central Park and the American Museum of Natural History.
In the park, people were throwing Frisbees, having picnics, lying on blankets, chatting on cell phones — in short, going about their business.
In the American Museum of Natural History, I wanted to visit the Early Man Exhibit, where one diorama struck me with particular force.
The plaque on the wall explained that the footprints of two hominids walking side by side had been preserved in volcanic ash some 3.5 million years ago in Africa, probably near the Olduvai Gorge. Owing to the different foot sizes, it was clear that one of the hominids was quite a bit larger than the other and would have had to slacken its pace so the smaller one could keep up.
In the artist’s conception, the larger hominid is male and the smaller one female. In the background, volcanoes are spewing fire and smoke and ash, and there is wholesale destruction all around. And in the midst of this desolation, instead of tearing off to save his own hide, the male hominid has slowed his pace and drapes his arm lightly over the shoulder of the female as they make their way together through the volcanic ash to an unimagined future.
Amazing.
