TRAVEL
It’s one of the three or four most important, soul satisfying pieces of my life puzzle. Of course, music shares that high ground.
My parents gifted me with both. The large international company my dad worked for gave him only two weeks vacation time, then, with seniority, three. We always explored by car, and it was packed and ready to roll first thing day one. The exception, every other year, was a train trip from Albuquerque to Chicago, which I loved. We had our own cozy "roomette" and I could look out the window from my top bunk berth, but spent most daylight hours ensconced in the observation lounge, with its wrap-around windows. Nursing a Shirley Temple and never tiring of daydreaming into the landscape rolling by.
I wanted to treat my family to this experience about 20 years ago, with a trip up the coast to Seattle, but was shocked to discover I could have taken a nice suite at the Beverly Wilshire for less. I’m pretty sure my dad didn’t pay that equivalent price back then.
We visited family friends from my dad’s upstate New York beginnings, in dirty, hot, muggy Chicago, and always saw a Cubs game (traveling to Wrigley Field by the El), if they were in town. Never, ever the White Sox, even though that was my dad’s favorite team. That’s when I learned from "Uncle" Ray, in a Chicago minute, that when your city has two major teams, you pick one and wouldn’t be caught dead at the other team’s stadium. After two or three days there, a short trip to Detroit, and dozens of cousins from my mom’s side. I would play catch with my older cousin Bobby, who was such a star in college that the Tigers offered him a six-figure bonus to sign, serious money in the early ‘60s. But his father forbade it, insisted he finish school and become a chiropractor, a "real profession" that would last a lifetime. I’m pretty sure Bobby’s resentment lasted a lifetime, too. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Uncle "Frenchy" was the first flat-out, unapologetic racist I encountered in my young life. He was in all respects an angry little man.
THE FACTORY
My dad was a pretty sharp guy, and he figured out that instead of the big Ford sedan his company offered to anyone who drove that many business miles (New Mexico was the fourth-largest state then, 121,000 square miles), he could take the cash equivalent, I think about $2500, and go to the factory in Detroit and drive off in a big Buick, Oldsmobile or Mercury, much better and definitely spiffier cars.
And so, in comfort – as the only child (nyaah, nyaah, nyaah) I was King and sole occupant of the spacious back seat, bench style, stretch out, no seat belts – my family explored this beautiful country, at ground level. I think by the time I was 16 I had been to 40 of the 48 states. (OK, 50 in 1959, but when I started…)
Then the nasty ol’ US Army drafted me and sent me, by pure chance, to Germany instead of the really nasty Viet Nam (where GIs with my job description, radio operator, had a life expectancy of seven seconds), and I discovered there was a big beautiful world to travel in. Twice now (1972, 2011) I threw my wife and kid in a VW campervan and cruised Europe and North Africa for a year. Feh on the five-star hotels and restaurants route. Best experiences of my life. Nothing can compare. I’ve now traveled in 40 countries. But my wife one-upped me in 2019 by hitting her last two of the seven continents. I declined the "opportunity" to go with her to Antarctica, opting instead for Tangier, one of my favorite places on this green globe. I ascribe to my friend Mary’s life axiom: "the words ‘fun’ and ‘cold’ do not belong in the same sentence."
But it all started in the back seat of the family car, in the good ol’ USA, and I am forever grateful to my parents for that "training." My mom urged me to use the proceeds of a small insurance policy after my dad died in 1969, to travel, and so she got to send me off into the big world, even though it meant missing her precious grandson Christopher for a year. Thanks, Mom, and thanks Pop, for making it possible, even imaginable. Our daughter has hit a couple of countries we have not, and is going to both Mexico and England. Good on ya, girl.
THREE STATES
So I guess I have some basis for offering the opinion that while this amazing country is worth seeing coast to coast, there are only three states that are so culturally different that they stand out, and come close to offering the experience of traveling "abroad": New Mexico, Louisiana, and Hawai’i. To some degree, they all have their own distinctive language, music, cuisine, architecture, traditions, holidays, religious practices. I can’t think of any other states you can say that about. Unless your favorite pastime is splitting hairs and picking nits.
I’ve been to Hawai’i several times, including this past January, to Louisiana, not enough, and am lucky enough to have Nuevo Mexico as my home state of 40 years. I was just there a couple weeks ago, only in Albuquerque, but because I was participating in an awards ceremony honoring my old UNM Journalism prof turned mega-selling mystery writer Tony Hillerman, I felt immersed in his world of the Navajo, Hopi, pueblo and other Indian tribes – who prefer the term "Indian," he wrote. That’s what they call each other..
"DARK WINDS"
There are bound to be some, disgruntled about a white man writing about their culture, but Hillerman received many awards of gratitude from those tribes for exposing their cultures to the world and doing so honestly, sensitively, accurately.
While there I binge-watched the first season of "Dark Winds," based on Tony’s novels and characters, exquisitely produced by Robert Redford and George R. R. Martin ("Game of Thrones," Meow Wolf) and executive produced by his author daughter Anne, who has bravely and very successfully continued his Leaphorn-Chee series where he left off, adding a female Navajo police officer as a main character. All eight of Anne’s novels have made the New York Times bestseller list. She went to my high school, but apparently survived well that potentially damaging indoctrination.
"Dark Winds" is absolutely enthralling in every aspect: actors, story, setting, music, cinematography. Anne said season two is set to air in August, and I can barely wait.
Charles Andrews has lived in Santa Monica for 37 years and wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. Really. Send love and/or rebuke to him at therealmrmusic@gmail.com
