[Introduction] Nobody Travels Alone

NOBODY TRAVELS ALONE

Dutch Custard---The Patriarch

Cookie Custard---The Patriarch's Wife

Tiramisu "Tira" Custard---The Patriarch's Daughter

Jelly Tapioca---The Patriarch's Daughter's Fiancé'

German Tapioca---The Patriarch's Daughter's Fiancé's Non-Binary Teenager

AND MORE

Custard's Last Stand: Seven Days in Wyoming 

Or

Like A Fart In A Skillet: A Daughter Travels With Her Father

Or

Nobody Travels Alone

[Introduction]

He was finishing a slice of cheesecake when Tira sat down at the table. Before she could say, "Hi, Daddy," he told her to order the pastrami on rye with mustard. He’d just eaten a chicken liver sandwich and it was very good. Wasn't it, Cookie? "Yes, Dutch." She said as she looked at her watch. Cookie had driven two and half hours to get Dutch to this deli. She was looking forward to a week alone. Dutch finished his slice of cheesecake, ate half of Tira's sandwich, ordered a second slice of cheesecake. Ate it and declared he needed to use the "Office," his term of art for the bathroom. He struggled to stand up from his chair. Cookie stood up and placed his walker in front of him. Said goodbye to Dutch and asked Tira if she would be okay. Tira shrugged. It was too late now at any rate. Cookie laughed and wasted no time leaving for her car. Tira watched her father scoot towards the bathroom. He was very cute, but the next nine days were going to be trying. She sighed. She took a moment to reflect on the logistics of getting him to her car when she noticed that none of his luggage was next to the table. A moment later Cookie saw Tira waving her arms, running towards her car, yelling something in her side view window. She stopped driving and rolled the window down, "Cookie, wait! His bag!"

German and Jelly were standing on the sidewalk in front of LaGuardia airport. It was dawn. The cab ride was a short twenty minutes and it was early enough that they were both feeling logy and slightly anxious. This was the sixteenth time they had made this trip. Jelly was from Wyoming, but lived on the Brooklyn side of Queens with Tira. German was from Brooklyn, born in Manhattan, but lived and went to high school in upstate New York. Traveling to Wyoming every summer was tradition. They both looked forward to it, but the travel was stressful and long, like flying to Europe, but somehow more complicated and just as expensive. Over the sixteen years they had made the trip, they had missed flights, had flights canceled, been re-routed, had to fly into Minnesota, Utah, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, had rented a car, flown directly into Jelly's home town of Worland, the airport being a mere block away from his mother's house, had flown into Bozeman, Montana and driven for seven hours through Yellowstone Park, and now, ever since the Worland airport had become private, leaving only the most wealthy amongst us access, they were flying into Buffalo Bill International Airport, in Cody, Wyoming, an hour and a half drive from Worland. 

Jelly was looking handsome. His mustache glistening. His long flaxen locks whispering in the breeze. He was holding his black baseball cap in his hand, his black leather duffel bag hanging on his shoulder. His tee shirt had an American flag printed on the front, the stripes of the stars and stripes made out of hot dogs. It was his lucky travel shirt. Lucky because it looked cool. He looked young for a man in his mid forties. Debonair and sophisticated. The red button up houndstooth shirt he wore over his hot dog shirt had a Frankenstein flavor to it, like it was both too small and poorly sewn together. His eyes were hazel and slow to dart, but gleaned every action that came before them. He was wise beyond his years and just as talented. Both Tira and German were in awe of this man. A modern man with no faults. An embarrassingly handsome man who was once offered riches and turned them down because of his humble, down to earth nature. Jelly was a man of the people. A true patriot. 

German did not share the same opinions of their father. He was an embarrassment, shameful. He was loud and made stupid jokes loudly. They were not only a teenager, but of a different generation. Nonbinary, they used they/them pronouns, dyed their hair bright colors and generally had an openness to other human beings that was not possible when Jelly was growing up in Wyoming. German didn't think that Jelly was intolerant or out of date, behind the  times, or whatever cool term the kids used these days, but being a teenager, embarrassment overshadowed everything. There were times when Jelly would do things so embarrassing that German would have a physical reaction to them and would threaten to punch him and mean it. Something that Jelly found quite funny, because, naturally, he was a jerk. German was looking cool with their blue hair and sharp black outfit. Their amazing Dishwashers tee shirt. In their mind they had a running fantasy about traveling and being a moody young adult on the move. A city kid heading to a backwater like Wyoming. They didn't like to admit it, but German looked forward to this trip every year. 

The timing could not have been any better. Dutch and Tira were pulling up to the curb just as Jelly and German were walking away from the cab they had arrived in. Tira waved as the cab pulled up. She was in the front passenger seat, her father was in the back. It took a moment for everyone to realize that the trip was now beginning in earnest. Dutch needed to get out of the cab, but first he needed his walker. It was a moment of pure chaos. Doors opened, luggage appeared, Dutch grumbled something that was drowned out by cars honking, Tira was moving fast and light, like a hummingbird, her curly red locks glistening in the early morning sunlight, her muscular, field-hockey-toned gams flexing in her designer sweatpants, her juicy jugs bouncing freely in her well worn white t-shirt. Jelly and German ran over and tried to help, but all they could really do was receive the luggage and make sure that everything was out of the cab. 

Before they all could get their bearings or make a plan for getting into the airport and finding the service desk to get the wheelchair Jelly had requested when buying the tickets, a man with a wheelchair approached them, asked if Dutch was Dutch Custard and moments later they were going through security like millionaire movie stars straight out of Hollywood. 

—--------------------

Such is the beginning of the wild and sloppy novel I would write about this trip I took with my teenaged youth, my fiancé and her father to Wyoming in the summer of 2024. I am not writing a novel though. I am not certain a novel is the way to perceive the events of this trip and to understand the true nature of this adventure, and an adventure it certainly was. They say that heroes are not born, they are made, well, whoever they are, are fools. Life can never be heroic. Life is fragile and spontaneous and brief. There are times when an action can be heroic, but I suggest that we leave violence out of this conversation, although Dutch did tell me a pretty good story on the plane flying out to Wyoming about training to become a prisoner of war before he was shipped off to Vietnam. How he didn't eat for seven days and that when he finally did his commanding officers told him to not eat regular food, that he needed to build up to it, so he had his then girlfriend, who I am not sure who he meant, how did he have a girlfriend at bootcamp? but his then girlfriend, snuck out of the base and brought him back a hamburger and fries and a chocolate frappe as he called it, something I would learn later meant a milkshake, that when pressed he explained a milkshake was actually chocolate milk and a frappe was chocolate milk with ice cream blended together. Such is how it goes.

I have digressed. My intention was to set the tone of what the trip felt like when it started and how it came to pass, to this sentiment I feel like I have been successful. The Ancient Egyptians had a god called Set, or Seth, depending on how you interpret the hieroglyphs, but he was known as the Harbinger of Chaos, I don't mean to suggest that Dutch is such a thing, but for sixteen years I have been traveling back to Wyoming with German, sometimes with Tira too, depending on her Hollywood schedule. The travel has never been like this. Oddly the trip was the most structured of all the trips we have ever taken out there. We crammed more adventure into seven days than I think we could have had we had an entire month out there. All of it without leaving the rental car. I'm not saying it was impressive, but it was very impressive. And chaotic. The chaos was not the actions of the trip, the chaos came from within. The emotions and limitations of a man with limited mobility and a desire to see one last thing before it was too late. The emotions and limitations of a daughter agreeing to bring him along on a trip. The emotions and limitations of her partner and his ability to be present on such a trip. The emotions and limitations of her partner's teenaged youth getting foisted upon by decisions that were out of their control. It was wild. The trip was wild. It was a wild trip.

Initially it wasn't going to happen. Initially it was going to happen. I suppose it depends on what your definition of is, is. Years ago, maybe five, Tira and Dutch took a trip to Vietnam. Dutch was an integral man of 78. I remember Tira being worried about taking such a mature man on such a long distance trip and how it would go. It went well. And things were fine. And they had fun. And it was true that he was difficult to travel with, not because he was corpulent with time, but because he was a giant pain in the ass. Which is his wont, I suppose. A couple years later The Pandemic hit. Things changed and as things changed, Dutch changed with them. A few years went by and one day Dutch found himself lying helpless on garage concrete, half outside, half inside, rain falling on his torso, the running shirt, marathon shirt he was wearing, getting soaked, his running pants remaining dry, Candy, golfing. Dutch attempted to drive to T-BONZ, to pick up the prime rib dinner he was planning to eat while he watched the Red Socks lose for the fourth time in a row to the Baltimore Orioles. It would be two hours before Candy found him there. 

There was every indication that Dutch was going to die. The ICU was bleak. Nobody expected a recovery. The actuary tables were against him. I started clearing my schedule. If I am honest, I can't even remember where I stayed during that time. Where Tira stayed. Whether we commuted from our rental in Vermont or what? But then a miraculous thing happened, Dutch got better. He didn't die. He went to rehab and he eventually went home. Somewhere there, when we were sure he would die, when we were sure it was over for him, this idea of traveling to Wyoming came up. I remember him on his deathbed declaring he would come to Wyoming, that he would meet my mom, and then he would tell us secrets about things I cannot repeat and then moments later we would have to leave the ICU because things would change and he was surely going to die again. Dutch didn't die. He got better. And better and better. Eventually he got so good that he remembered his dying words about going to Wyoming and somehow, somehow really, in a way that I have no idea how it transpired, Dutch persisted and as much of a pain in the ass as it was going to be, we three, Tira, German and me, we decided we could do it. It was going to be a quick trip, seven days, nine for Tira, a day on either end, back and forth to New Hampshire. We would rent a car and get a hotel room that could accommodate a man with a walker. It would be an action of patience is all. He was slow, and wise, but nothing would be that different. Tira could take him home to the hotel and then come back and hang out later at night. The morning would be easy, the breakfast at the hotel would be perfect. If he was bored, he could watch baseball on the television. Some days he could hang out under a shade tree next to the reservoir and watch us swim. It wasn't complicated. He was a gentle and reflective man who just wanted to have one more look around before he went elsewhere.

We were certain that he would not want to go. That he would prefer to stay home. That it would be too expensive. When I bought the plane tickets, I bought fully refundable tickets. I think I spent an extra $100 plus on an already expensive ticket. Four tickets? That's $400. And all the hotel rooms and the rental car. Before we left Queens we were going to be $5,000 in the hole. To go to Wyoming? To do what? Drive around and see things? I really thought Dutch would come to his senses.

Dutch did not come to his senses. He pushed and pushed and pushed further. There was a moment where Tira got off the phone one day and looked at me and said, "He's coming. It's happening." I think I called German right after that to relay the news. I think they said, "What can you do?" 

I took notes. I asked German and Tira to take notes too, but they did not. Ironically, Dutch did, but I don't have access to those notes, however, they are mostly food related, as far as I am told. Weather related as well. I can fill in the blanks, I suppose. If I can't fill in the blanks I can assume it is hamburgers with mustard or ice cream, frosted mini wheats or beef sticks, naturally. 

I cannot  guarantee what I experienced is an accurate accounting of what transpired or how and why it transpired, but I will defend my recounting passionately and sincerely. I mean no harm to anybody observed in this missive, and  I consider myself a camera at best, a reflection in still muddy waters at worst. 

"We are but a Wet Hambone, weak and slow and Dropping away." –Peppermint Bizmark, from the poem, "Sjip-Sjape med og Snus Fjord" New Directions Press, c1983-84

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