Carson Michaelis
W05 → Collected Notes from the Road
Summer 2023
Below are excerpts from my first of two notebooks kept as I travelled from Chicago to Death Valley, and back to Kansas.
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trauma grapes, grandma, hiroshima, anti-union rep
portillo’s, au cheval, smoque. what’s the best? how much to bring home. 11:00 sunday open.
the nauseating feeling of two L trains moving alongside each other in the same direction. uneasy.
architectural frontier going west? where is it? who cares, but a good place to start.
cars certainly move along the dan ryan at an unfathomable rate.
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...to the North there is a pride parade, one of the countries’ largest. “but if you want the crazy stuff you have to go to San Francisco,” I’m told on the subway by somebody who said they once “even saw two people having sex on the street there.” South there is certainly excitement...
there are a growing number of people concerned that the physiqes of actors and actresses have become unobtainable, but there seems here to be a whole class of people dedicated to spending a significant amount of time and money to be the exception, and subsequently in mass, they ironically prove them wrong.
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Farnsworth
It was never a house to live in, only a house to look at - but I couldn’t look at it anymore. As the tour guide fielded quesitons I watched a caterpillar with a red head and grey fur crawl along one of the columns that held up the lower deck. I almost cheered when it got to the top. I almost cheered again when the questions were over. The house, we were told, had four methods of heating. I was reminded of Banham. How he would have hated “the hand of Meis,” or maybe not. Maybe the trip from Germany over to America made available the gadgets and gizmos necessary to make something as useless and oppositional to the Environment-Bubble house necessary. Meis, of course, seemed not to have ever read Loos’ piece about the artist not needing to control the life of the client. The guide also laid his own opinions out as we went. The new director was letting an “abbhoration” hang upon one of the ‘feature walls’. “I’m just not sure what they’re thinking.”
The electrical cords from the lamps were sprawled and unplugged, and I think they’re what provide the largest break from the symmetry the house wants to subvert so badly.
“Please don’t touch the countertop. It looks nice but gets dirty really easily”
I would like to petition to call things like this by their name. Farnsworth Weekend House.
We ended with some wise words from the guide. “There’s a couple sculptures out there. Do they make sense? Well, let’s just say that they’re art.” Too true, Stafford, too true.
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Iowa City
My own suspicion is that Iowa City must actually really suck. They’ve made it too obvious they’re going for the whole ‘nice architecture’ thing. There must not be too much else going on.
later to our waitress, at 3:00 while eating a burger basket (the lunch special ran till 4) and a ‘Big Busch’, the plce was practically empty but for us:
“what is there to do in town?”
“well, uh, I guess there’s Karaoke in here tonight”
“”
“well there is a museum, but it’s the summer and I do go I promise but I think it may be closed in the summers”
The Holl buildings there seemed to display something there that Ghery’s couldn’t. While they each slot well into the canons of the firms’ portfolios, Holl’s buildings far better reflect their contexts (duh!). They do a wonderful job of feeling like they talk to each other, and while a bit worse at actually having a conversation, they do at least whisper to their context.
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Grinell
Wonderful little town, even on a Thursday afternoo at around five it seemed every building downtown was filled and everything open, except the city coundil building, which happened to be the ole building I came to see.
The sun was just moving behind the neighboring facade, and for the first time the front of the building was not lie like it seems to be all of the time in all of the photos, but the light has a wonderful way of making you pay attention to other things. The shadows cast along the flat plane of brick from the low neighboring awning jutting out into the street just one building to the West was a reminder that this building neither wants or needs to be its’ own object, and while the plastic overhang next door came along much later, it seemed only to add to the Sullivan facade. The lion too, on the floor to the left of the door was the only element to glow, and only for the first minute after we got there, as soon another shadow swallowed its glow. I was content, but still wished ot have seen the inside and, perhaps too, hae seen it with a two-thirty, rather than five o’clock shadow. And as well, early in the morning, to see the golden pillars floating between the stained glass on the East radiating the same way that the lion had. But, in the end, the show must move on, and the building will live on, well documented in the ‘proper’ light for me to see on a screen somewhere far away. The value in a trip like this is to see it in its’ context, with a couple leaned against the wall before sharing a kiss on the corner and loading a bag of new records into their car, or a motorcycle buzzing through main street, or even a pair of women walking out from under that neighboring awning, checking in the golden light their freshly died and cut hair.
Grinell seemed to market itself around that box, but everybody seemed to be going along great without it.
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Anita
three tv’s. one on fox, another on grit, another on AMC. “Just yell at me if you need anything, hon” directed at me, came from a quiet game of cards in the corner.
Later, around ten, a huge group of men showed up an began a much larger, much rowdier game.
“can I get two chips from you? I don’t want to be big blind twice” “I’m little, he’s little, and we all suck!” “look it up, look it up, look it UP!”
“I don’t want ot be in this game man.”
“well you’re sitting at it aren’t you? youre in the damn game.”
hundred dollar bills were bet on the round, but there wasn’t any agreed distinction between chip color between players. here, there was a difference between being serious and being competitive.
In the morning the only cloud in the sky was a wake of vultures circling over the town. Something must have died in the night.
At around this point, the number of road signs claiming they were historic routes became meaningless.
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Lincoln
So far the most obvious town I’ve visited where the block size has a drastic effect on life. They’re far too small here. It’s so bad I almost want to call up Robert Moses, even he couldn’t make things worse.
There’s just a point where the blocks can be designed at a pedestrian scale, but the lifestyles haven’t changed because of it. Things were working well when action is as-planned (downtown), but in the rest of the city where everybody still elected to frive everywhere, getting around became a game of running red lights.
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After Lincoln
windy drive. not a cloud in the sky. a car in front of ours’ fender blew off in the wind. we were finally back in the great plains, and this is how you knew. back in those counties whose sheriff drives a Camero.
“Jesus - The Way - The Truth - The Life”
“Family, Faith, Farming”
Got a little glimpse of the sand hills as soon as we got out of Grand Island, but the next fifty or so miles were a reminder of what the same landscape looks like when irrigated and cultivated. But it finally broke, and we were at last in the place we wanted so desprately to be.
When moving west along state highway 2, Nebraska sheds itself of one element at the landscape at a time, until it’s finally just you and the hills, their grass, and the blue sky.
“There’s actually a lot of international ones there. Telling about the hottest car he’s ever driven. A new corvette, an old 69 like corvette with a block motor. but he didn’t own either”
“Custer. He was good in his day, but he was an arrogant son of a bitch. Did an essay on him in hichschool.”
“what’s going on wade”
“oh how are you”
“you know, doin nothin”
“You wanna gamble? wanna put a dollar down? just put a dollar down, lets play”
three man game, we lost a dollar.
“Well up there aways, maybe eight miles from the river, the fence changes. You’ll notice it. I mean it’s real nice. 6-wire and everything, and it’s owned by... you know.” He paused expecting that it should be so obvious that anyone could answer. We sure didn’t, who in their right mind knew shit about Ellsworth, Nebraska? “Well, it’s Turner ranch. Old Ted Turner. And he’s even got a bunch of Buffalo back in there. That’s why the fence is so big and everything. A lot of land”
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Fort Robinson
I didn’t want to go. I hated those kings of places. But looking at the forecast and and knowing the reality of driving six miles along a muddy road in a camry tends to make one reconsider. We decided that the backup, Fort Robinson State Park, would have to do.
at the T.V. gambling bar ‘Diamond Jack’s’
“how does this stuff even work?”
“you’re asking the wrong person”
Went on a historic tour of the Fort today. Not much about the actual condition of the existing buildings and their remodeling and use seemed to come into play. Other than the “well that one was built in 2019. But to the specifications of the original building on the site.” “Although when I took a tour right after it opened I was astonished to find out they had microwaves way back when.” The history of these buildings was only a backdrop, they set the scene in some unique way for people to have separate but dependent conversations about the way their corn was growing, how great uncle Jack is doing, or when the lease on somebody’s car was up.
The buildings exist in some zombified form as real-estate now I guess, and as such have mainly been turned over to that world. Cleaned every few days, to change residents every few more, and in a perpetual state of occupation.
The second night our campfire was a sad one. No matter which way the logs were arranged or where the smoke blew it was always sad. The bamboo stoker that I was using burned and smoldered so short I burned my hand after setting on the last log. It ended at 11:30, as we threw ash on the embers to Dylan’s ‘Mama You’ve Been on my Mind.’
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Deadwood
Western lore pervades everything, but nothing is ever clear cut. Sat in a bar and listened to a family chat for hours about the site where Wild Bill was killed and where it was and if the chair that claims to be the one he died in really is the one he died in. Who knows. Who cares.
The town has perfectly distilled down the most alluring elements of a town to the common RV traveler: food, drink, gamble. No real residents required.
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Devils Tower
On every trail you could hear something. The cars on the nearby road, voices from the base of the tower, or, if you’re lucky, nothing but the hum of the old air conditioning units of the Kampgrounds of America campers. Oh, and somebody mowing. Somebody everywhere in this country is always mowing.
Talk at the visitor venter consisted of the price difference between Mercedes sprinter vans and their competitors, on the trails were talks of off-road strollers, bat mitzfahs, and shipwrecks.
In Wyoming the historic signs that were easier to get to seemed to be less meaningful. Near Aladdin I pissed behind a sign marking Custer’s 1874 expedition.
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At the Dime Horseshoe Bar & Grill
“I want another five dollar touch up (on drink), but not full”
“There’s another North Dakotan there from the fuckin oil fields willing to gamble on a hundred”
“I am not from the feckin oil fields”
“well okay then”
Patrons so drunk they’ll pay for half a shot as a sipper.
An hour long conversation about wether a Vegas road trip really did happen ten years ago.
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Boulder
On his last day joining along with my journey, we decided to end it with our first nice meal of the trip, a nice Italian joint. We sat outside. Three minutes later an anti-fur-trade protest began. It was quite loud. Why our italian restaraunt was the target of it I’ll never know.
First the police came, then the fire department, then the fire department left. At a certain point I wondered how long it would take them to lose their voice. How long it would take them to get tired, to go home, turn on Netflix and fall asleep. Then the fire truck was back.
Everybody only cared about personal attention it seemed. The protesters, the prople videoing the protesters and then panning back to their house reds and tortellini. The skaters trying kickflips and board slides in front of the protesters. The man in the ball cap and jordans who had gone home to grab his biggest fur coat, come back, and began to dance while his friend recorded. The guy marching just beyond the protest’s first line with his middle finger raised so high his dress shirt had come up above his belt and then belly button.
Even the conversation between the police officer and protest leader took place with each of them facing the camera of a third party, not each other.
It seemed rather sad that the stand the young people were making was purely against the fur trade on the part of LVMH, and nothing larger. And even sadder they were doing in front of nothing but an Italian restaraunt on a Saturday evening.
But for all of that it was nice to see some sort of activism which wasn’t just a reaction to that week’s news.
I thought it would all be over at 10:01, but instead, like clockwork, at 9:31 the fire truck parked at the nearest intersection pulled away, and minutes later the gang decided to roll their banner back up and walk down the road together, no more noise. Perhaps a deal had been struck. Maybe there had been a deal stuck here in Boulder, Colorado on July 1, 2023.
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Saratoga Springs, July 4
small pool temerature: 106.5
big pool temperature: 107.5
lobster pot temperature: 117.5
river temperature: damn cold
“So what kind of stuff do people do around here”
“Well I do contracting. And nearly hald of the population around here does too. It’s crazy”
“Damn well where do you work then?“
“Oh up towards the mountain. I’m full time for the lodge up there.”
“Oh wow that’s sweet. You know I’ve done a little bit of work on my house out in rural Tennessee. Don’t need no permits around there or nothin.”
“Yeah same around for most of the things here. Been living in this house and ‘ve remodeled all but two rooms of our 4000 sf and still have yet to ever see an inspector.”
“Oh yeah. I had someone else add a bathroom a long time ago for cheap but it was so shit that when they left I just roped the walls to my hitch and pulled it to the burn pile.”
Talks about snakes. I never really understood why. Easy small talk, snakes. More personal talk, snakes. Philosophical talk, snakes. Even came back to the small pond after being in the river and heard a conversation about professions with people most likely in them to be snakes.
A teenager sat with her feet in the big pond reading Ulysses. Like all Ulysses readers, she was somewhere between page 40 and 60. Good luck to her.
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Lander
Bathroom sharipe stall insult. At first I thought it was “Ya Mutha!” On closer inspection it was “Ya Mutnat” (mutant).
It was funny here to see different conservatives call each other liberal and turn away as soon as they got annoyed at them in the bar.
Met an interesting couple. They didn’t seem to like each other all that much, despite having been married just 3 years before, and both being in their 50’s. But once they started talking about things other than each other it was easy to see why they were together. They disliked and hated the same things. It was a perfect American marriage.
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