Road Trips
Aug. 29th, 2003 09:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smibboWhen I was about 21 and living in New Jersey (Leonia - about a twenty minute walk from Teaneck) Nikki and I used to take road trips. Actually, we didn't really RoadTrip per se, we just drove to hellanback in order to go see our favorite bands. We went to Boston, NYC, Providence, and a buncha little cities in crusty old new england states with weird names like "Hochtoosulley" and "Woonsocket".
At some point, we had sent a letter to a friend of a friend who was a singer in a band. He wrote us back with one of the strangest letters we ever received. He told us we should send him information on Charles the 3rd of Spain (I think that's right) and we should tape record our adventures and send them to him. He told us to light candles for a certain mutual friend of ours (even though there was no bad things happening to our friend at the time) and that we should consider wearing white robes occasionally.
So we had a cheap tape deck with a mic on it and we started taking it with us on our road trips. We didn't leave it on all the time, just every now and then we'd switch it on and say something odd. I wish I still had copies of those tapes... I imagine him getting it and playing it and having no earthly idea what the hell kind of hi-jinks we were getting into.
I recall one particular trip to Boston. THat was the time we decided "Woonsocket" was a good replacement for "Moonshadow" in the famous Cat Stevens song. We sang along to it, occasionally switching on "Andy" - as we called the tape deck - and cracking inside jokes that probably made absolutely no sense to anyone else. At one point, Nikki was bitching about slow drivers - pokeybutts I dubbed them - and I began to scream "pokeybutt! Pokeybutt!" in my best imitation of Diamanda Galas. Screeching out "pokybuttpokybuttpokeybutt!" as fast as you can while garbling your voice so you can sound like Linda Blair on a very bad day can really wreck your vocal cords. Then again, leaning into a tape deck mic only long enough to whisper "closer... closer!" probably doesn't do much for an adult frame of mind either. SUfice it to say, we were nearly hysterical by the time we reached our destination. Our mutual humor society seemed to be vague and inarticulate to other people standing near but we certainly amused ourselves quite well. We brought a camera with us and while in town, ran around taking pictures of random people. I caught a couple making out in a car (Jump out of car, run to hood, snap picture, jump back in car yelling "gun it!" and tearing off), a business man trotting home (grinning and waving at me - at 11:00 at night?!?) and a lady coming out of the bathroom ("that crazy bitch jess took Mah Pick-toor!")
On the drive back, we had a blow-out.
Providence is a nice town. Boston is a nice town. Vreehonken (or whatever freakish name it was, I really can't recall) was NOT a nice town. That is, if you call a dunkin' donuts, one gas station and one bus terminal sitting next to the one government building a town. We walked into this throwback to the golden age of man at about 4am covered in highway dust and babbling incoherently. The gas station was closed, not to open for another 3 hours. We had the luxurious option of either renting a hotel room (only about 5 miles from the gas station but maybe you could convince Arnie at the dunkin' donuts to give youse a ride, he's a nice kid) or standing around in the dunkin' donuts. Being as the DnD was across the street from the repair station, we opted to stay awake and wait for the gas man to open up shop and sell us a new tire.
4 hours in a dunkin' donuts. Drinking non-arabica coffee. Counting pennies to see if we could buy a donut too. Chattering on and on about Calvin and Hobbes, pretending to be foreign musicians, and trying not to smear more dirt around on our faces. At some point, we tried to stick pennies on our foreheads -saying something about increasing psychic abilities - throw wet toilet paper on the ceiling (Of the dining room) surreptitiously, and made up voices for her cat (assumed to be indignant since we were obviously late coming home to feed her) We postulated on the average intellectual capacity of the man who was coming to sell us a tire, the possibility that this town even had a library - much less one with a copy of "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" - and whether or not people around here ever went to NYC.
Delirium city.
We had a total blast.
I think the citizens of Podunktinytown were on the verge of tossing us back towards the highway and insisting we walk back to our own godforsaken town and never come back. Eventually, though, the man came to fix the tire situation. By then, we were getting grouchy and sprouting fangs. His chipper attitude did not amuse us.... but then again, how can you help but be grouchy after 12 cups of coffee, two pounds of dirt on your face and watching the sun rise through the beer-bottle brown sky of a should-be-nameless town in noweheresville Rhode Island? We had a blast but after 4 hours, we cottoned to the fact that no one else found us amusing in the least.
Of course, I don't remember the ride home. I don't remember much of anything. Nikki's got a picture of me gripping a humongous coffee cup labelled "The Big One" grinning like a Stepford idiot while pointing at it. Man, I wish I had that picture.
At some point, we had sent a letter to a friend of a friend who was a singer in a band. He wrote us back with one of the strangest letters we ever received. He told us we should send him information on Charles the 3rd of Spain (I think that's right) and we should tape record our adventures and send them to him. He told us to light candles for a certain mutual friend of ours (even though there was no bad things happening to our friend at the time) and that we should consider wearing white robes occasionally.
So we had a cheap tape deck with a mic on it and we started taking it with us on our road trips. We didn't leave it on all the time, just every now and then we'd switch it on and say something odd. I wish I still had copies of those tapes... I imagine him getting it and playing it and having no earthly idea what the hell kind of hi-jinks we were getting into.
I recall one particular trip to Boston. THat was the time we decided "Woonsocket" was a good replacement for "Moonshadow" in the famous Cat Stevens song. We sang along to it, occasionally switching on "Andy" - as we called the tape deck - and cracking inside jokes that probably made absolutely no sense to anyone else. At one point, Nikki was bitching about slow drivers - pokeybutts I dubbed them - and I began to scream "pokeybutt! Pokeybutt!" in my best imitation of Diamanda Galas. Screeching out "pokybuttpokybuttpokeybutt!" as fast as you can while garbling your voice so you can sound like Linda Blair on a very bad day can really wreck your vocal cords. Then again, leaning into a tape deck mic only long enough to whisper "closer... closer!" probably doesn't do much for an adult frame of mind either. SUfice it to say, we were nearly hysterical by the time we reached our destination. Our mutual humor society seemed to be vague and inarticulate to other people standing near but we certainly amused ourselves quite well. We brought a camera with us and while in town, ran around taking pictures of random people. I caught a couple making out in a car (Jump out of car, run to hood, snap picture, jump back in car yelling "gun it!" and tearing off), a business man trotting home (grinning and waving at me - at 11:00 at night?!?) and a lady coming out of the bathroom ("that crazy bitch jess took Mah Pick-toor!")
On the drive back, we had a blow-out.
Providence is a nice town. Boston is a nice town. Vreehonken (or whatever freakish name it was, I really can't recall) was NOT a nice town. That is, if you call a dunkin' donuts, one gas station and one bus terminal sitting next to the one government building a town. We walked into this throwback to the golden age of man at about 4am covered in highway dust and babbling incoherently. The gas station was closed, not to open for another 3 hours. We had the luxurious option of either renting a hotel room (only about 5 miles from the gas station but maybe you could convince Arnie at the dunkin' donuts to give youse a ride, he's a nice kid) or standing around in the dunkin' donuts. Being as the DnD was across the street from the repair station, we opted to stay awake and wait for the gas man to open up shop and sell us a new tire.
4 hours in a dunkin' donuts. Drinking non-arabica coffee. Counting pennies to see if we could buy a donut too. Chattering on and on about Calvin and Hobbes, pretending to be foreign musicians, and trying not to smear more dirt around on our faces. At some point, we tried to stick pennies on our foreheads -saying something about increasing psychic abilities - throw wet toilet paper on the ceiling (Of the dining room) surreptitiously, and made up voices for her cat (assumed to be indignant since we were obviously late coming home to feed her) We postulated on the average intellectual capacity of the man who was coming to sell us a tire, the possibility that this town even had a library - much less one with a copy of "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" - and whether or not people around here ever went to NYC.
Delirium city.
We had a total blast.
I think the citizens of Podunktinytown were on the verge of tossing us back towards the highway and insisting we walk back to our own godforsaken town and never come back. Eventually, though, the man came to fix the tire situation. By then, we were getting grouchy and sprouting fangs. His chipper attitude did not amuse us.... but then again, how can you help but be grouchy after 12 cups of coffee, two pounds of dirt on your face and watching the sun rise through the beer-bottle brown sky of a should-be-nameless town in noweheresville Rhode Island? We had a blast but after 4 hours, we cottoned to the fact that no one else found us amusing in the least.
Of course, I don't remember the ride home. I don't remember much of anything. Nikki's got a picture of me gripping a humongous coffee cup labelled "The Big One" grinning like a Stepford idiot while pointing at it. Man, I wish I had that picture.
