Chapter One
Phoenix, Arizona, 1 pm on a Wednesday afternoon, terminal four and I've just boarded a plane headed for Louisville, Kentucky.
I'm on a mission.
I'm tracing ancestors because I believe that I do not know who I am or where I'm going because I don't know where I'm from and I cant grow because I have no roots.
I am lost and I blame my lack of direction on my ancestors who failed to water my tiny seed with Christmas traditions and pink birthday cakes.
Sometimes I feel I am pretending. I'm existing. I'm not living. I'm roaming and wandering through valleys and peaks. Due to my constant desire to seek who I am, some individuals have come to the conclusion that I am a runner. I run from things.
Perhaps, in certain instances, this may be the truth but mostly, I'm just looking for answers. My old therapist would say that the answers are within me, but what do you do if you don't trust your own judgment even when you think you might know the answer?
Anyway, at this point, I know not even what the questions are, I just know I'm boarding an outbound plane headed to Louisville, Kentucky.
I walk down the aisle of the longest plane I have ever seen. The Green Mile crosses my mind and I shudder at the idea that this could be my last walk. It's an awkward walk, people seated in way too close bucket seats, with nothing to do but ogle at the folks that limp by them, smacking chair backs with their laptops and black carry on bags overstuffed with books and i pods and crossword puzzles. If you ever look into the faces of these seated people as you walk by them, it's not hard to miss the look of bewilderment and fear. They are seated, you are still standing, you still have the chance to turn and escape. They scan you, you scan them because there may be a fifty-fifty chance that this group of trusting adults could end up like a Hollywood movie scene of screamers and consolers- a rat-a tat-tat of the next breaking story on the evening news and victims of a suspected terrorist attack. It isn't hard to tell what persons on the plane will be the screamers and which ones will be the consolers, nor is it hard to detect which ones will rise from the ashes and make a fortune telling their story on Oprah.
I find my seat number towards the rear of the plane, squeeze in, lower myself into m assigned bucket and shove my laptop bag under the seat in front of me. To my left is a man who must weigh three hundred pounds, in front of him is a man who must weigh two-hundred and eighty pounds. Both of the largest people on the same side of the plane. I suppose it would be too discriminatory to insist someone disclose their weight when purchasing a ticket but wouldn't it make damn good sense to distribute the weight a little more evenly, just to be safe? All this weight makes me feel guilty for packing a one month supply of clothing in my suitcase for a four day trip. What if my suitcase is the final straw that drops this fuselage from the air. I suddenly empathize with the machine that is forced to carry loads of people filled with joy, fear, love, expectations and weight. We expect this machine to get us where we want to go in a jiffy. No failing, no falling, no stalling. I know this weight all to well, carrying the weight of the world and expected not to fail, fall or stall.
A handsome older man carrying a black leather bag, takes his seat to the right of me. He too, is now trapped in this metal machine with his own set of of joy, fear, love, expectations and weight. I peer down the narrow walkway and suddenly feel crowded. I feel like I cannot breathe.
Oh no. Not this. Not now.
I'm trapped. I am suffocating. I cannot breathe. Calm down, says my rational side. I cant breathe, snaps my manic side. Of course you can breathe, everyone in here is breathing. If you couldn't breathe, good chance no one else could breathe either and everyone would be standing from their seats, gasping and turning blue and no one here is blue, at least not on the outside.
Okay, I can breathe, as long as I don't look down that narrow aisle again. That narrow aisle wants to kill me. I feel anxious and I already need a cigarette.
I gnaw down a bag of pepperoni combos, some pretzels and some m&M's. I chew gum, read a magazine, read a book, read the lines on the face of the man to my right and the laptop that the big guy to my left is holding in his lap. He is working, his laptop displays a graph of city statistics on diabetes. I chuckle at this, I wonder if he is on the list. The flight attendant walks by and wants our order, the big man orders a bloody Mary. He is overweight, probably has diabetes and now he wants alcohol. The man to my right, orders a diet Pepsi and a salad.
It all comes down to choices I suppose. I chose to take this trip. I chose to drive. I chose to get on this plane and what seems like an eternity later, a higher power chooses to allow the plane to screech onto a runway in Philadelphia and allow me to live.
An hour later, I am boarding, yet another plane except this one is half the size of the last one. The seats are smaller, the aisle is smaller, the ceiling is lower but the people, the people are the same size.
Why do I continue to torture myself in life? Why didn't I drive? I could stop, go, stand, stretch and smoke as I please and when I felt a hint of suffocation coming on, I could jump out, lay in the middle of a deserted highway and inhale all the air I needed. But I chose this.
I want to jump from my seat and scream, repent you sinners, for the time is near, just so I would know ahead of time who would scream and who would console but, alas I refrain.
Two hours later, it's the middle of the night and I'm standing in front of a baggage claim carousal in Louisville, Kentucky.
What the fuck am I doing in front of a Louisville airport baggage carousal in the middle of the night?
Thirty minutes later, I'm in a rental car, in the middle of the night in Louisville, Kentucky. What the fuck am I doing in a rental car, in Louisville, Kentucky in the middle of the night?
Forty-five minutes later, I am dragging my overweight suitcase up three flights of stairs to my hotel suite on Blankenbaker Drive, in Louisville, Kentucky.
Choices.
Day one. I awake in heaven. I had a dream I spooned with the handsome man on the plane. I look out the window and I am definitely not in Phoenix. I have coffee and a cigarette under a gazebo.
I see:
Birds.
Trees.
Grass.
I don't see:
rush hour traffic.
smog.
pollution.
illegals on the corner fearfully begging for work to feed their families.
I have brunch at the waffle house. I order songs on the old jukebox, two eggs over-easy, a side of wheat toast and coffee. There's a old man at the counter sipping coffee and reading a paper. Behind him are two guys at a booth that scowled at me whilst stopped at the red light bulb that was swinging from a wire at the last intersection. Then there's the waiter, a middle aged bat faced guy, from Indiana, who probably still lives with his parents. He serves me my first Kentucky meal, then sits at the counter to match up his tickets with the register receipts. He counts, staples stops to dip his toast in some gravy, licks his fingers and resumes his counting and stapling. The simple life, I could do this every morning, eggs, coffee, an old jukebox and a borderline mommas boy counting his sales and licking gravy off of his finger. He refills my coffee cup, clears my table and steps behind the old cash register. When handed a credit card, he swipes it, swipes it again, he mumbles and then hollers in a deep drawl, to the back room, "ken you tale her ah need the phon lihn?"
On to Cave Hill Cemetary..
Cemeteries can be creepy. Cemeteries can be even creepier in a downtown area of Kentucky where you don't know what to expect. This is not your average mid-city cemetery in phoenix that has an on-site attendant who walks around adjusting fake silk flowers that the wind has blown over. This is an ancient, neglected and unattended cemetery with soggy turf and sinking headstones. There is no rhyme and reason to the way these people are buried and it is impossible not to step or drive or park atop someones grandma or an alleged civil war hero. I drive, I park, I walk. Wind drifts through the lifeless branches of some very old trees. I'm looking for ancestors. I think to myself, how is this going to help me? These people cant offer up answers to unknown questions, they are dead. They cannot speak. I keep looking anyway. I walk and walk and walk. I see grave markers of babies who died in the late 1800's. I see head stones that say Momma and Poppa. That sounds so much more intimate than what you see now, Mother, Father, Grandfather. I keep wandering, camera in one hand, cigarette in the other, no one here will mind my second hand smoke and besides the sign on the gate said no dogs, not no smoking. I wonder, can the stray dogs read the sign that hangs half-haphazardly on the rusted metal gate? Sorry says the German Shepard mixed breed to the abandoned Pitt bull, we cain't go in there, they don't allow dogs, we should get on back to the junk yard."
Apparently, the cats can't read. I move on to the next cluster of headstones, I'm looking for the Dooley's or the Gibson's. I find Smith and Presley. I did find a Fuqua and this excites, though I have no idea who they are. I found during an on line search that somewhere along time ago in these southern states, that my ancestor built a colony with some land the Fuqua's gave him. They built this with the Leftwich's which turns out to be my middle son's dad's last name.
Irony.
I'm excited to find Fuqua, I don't know who the fuck they are, but nonetheless, it is at least a name that is recently recognizable.
I walk on, I step over heads, and feet and arms and legs and I step in sink holes. My stomach turns. What if I fall in a hole here and no one can find me? They will get hound dogs and set out a search but of the course it will be futile, the search dogs cant come in here. I will be buried alive with the Fuqua and the Heinz family.
The wind blows, branches creak and a Kentucky Fried Chicken food wrapper blows across my path. Who eats lunch in here? Which reminds me, the colonel is supposed to be buried in here somewhere, or so I'm told. I add him to my list of names to search for. The cell phone in my coat pocket vibrates and I wonder, oh my god is a dead man is trying to pick pocket me? I answer the phone and it is a gentleman from author house that wants to discuss publishing my book.
Maybe my dead relatives are here after all, pulling some serious strings.
I walk on looking for Dooley's. Why cant they bury people in alphabetical order? I could have ended this a long time ago. I laugh out loud and my voice echoes through the trees. I realize that I am in Kentucky, walking through an old cemetery, laughing to myself, out loud.
Choices.
The sun begins to set in the sky and shines onto the most interesting tree in the cemetery. It ironically resembles the dead tree in my children's book. I take a few snapshots, get in the car and head out of the cemetery, I haven't found anyone, except a Fuqua and they aren't even related to me. As I get close to the end of the driveway, I see the sign that says, no dogs and I stop the car and get out. I am fiercely determined to find someone that could've been related to me. I walk on and find a Griffin, I take a picture, as my youngest sons last name, is Griffin. I look to the left. Dooley. Dooley next to a Griffin. I get excited!
I get excited over dead people.
I drive away. I have mud stuck on my shoes from stepping in sinkholes and I still have no answers. I have pictures of dead people.
Choices.
