Nobody Travels Alone [1.1]

Day One/Part One

Monday, August 5th. Queens/Brooklyn, New York 

The day started at 4 a.m. for me and German. I had taken a shower the night before. I just needed to eat some rabbit pellets, required eating for my middle aged body, drink a little coffee, use my water flosser, floss proper and spend four minutes with my electric toothbrush, required habits for my middle aged mouth. German only needed to get up off the couch and get dressed. By 4:30  the apartment was locked and we were in a Lyft heading to La Guardia. I texted with Tira. She and Dutch were in a car as well. Thirty minutes later we were standing in front of the airport. German was wearing their cool Dishwasher tee shirt, black boots, black pants, black button-up shirt and blue hair. I was wearing my lucky traveling tee shirt, an American flag made out of hotdogs. We stood there for maybe thirty seconds before Dutch and Tira's car pulled up. As they were getting out a man, unprompted, pushed a wheelchair to the side of the car and Dutch got onto it. He asked his name and then asked for his ticket to scan. The ticket was on my phone so I showed him. He asked if we had any luggage to stow. We did not. Moments later we were going through first class security. No line, helpful people. No bad attitudes or repressed anger. Dutch was wearing a tee shirt he had received from a marathon he had run nearly two decades ago and running pants and a ball cap. He told security he had a pacemaker, not that it mattered, he was in a wheelchair, he could only go through the metal detector. They made him take his cap off and run it through the x-rays. Tira, German and I all had to take our shoes off, our ball caps and overshirts as well as anything else that might interfere in the screening process. I had put my belt and phone and wallet and keys in my duffel bag. German put all of their things in a bin. Tira put some of her stuff in a bin but then had to keep going back to put more stuff in because she had multiple layers of an outfit on. Ultimately though, she was wearing sweatpants and a white tee shirt and white Crocs. Her curly red hair springing in all directions like an exploded pocket watch. All three of us were on the other side before Dutch made it through. Because the TSA is very untrusting and paranoid, Dutch got patted down while we waited for our luggage. The whole process took about ten minutes. A modern record, I am sure. 

The walk to the gate was quick. Dutch held his walker on his lap, his roller bag tucked under the seat of the wheelchair. He asked the guy pushing the wheel chair a million questions. The man was from the west coast of Africa and had been in America for 20 years and had a family, two daughters and a son and was fond of his job. The whole time Dutch going, "What?!" And Tira going, "He has two daughters and a son, Daddy!" And Dutch going, "Oh! Good, good. How long have you been here?" The man going, "Twenty years." Dutch going, "What?! What did he say?" Tira going, "He said twenty years, Daddy!" And Dutch going, "Oh! Good, good!" 

When we got to the gate we were very early. Because security had been simple and fast and we were treated mostly like human beings, we had two hours to kill. We found four seats next to the kiosk and Dutch was transferred from the wheelchair to a seat. Hamptons, the West African wheelchair pusher unloaded the luggage and Dutch, thinking way ahead about this trip, had a giant pile of cash in a little black bag that Tira was holding. He told her to give the guy a $20. When Hamptons took the tip and thanked them and said he was leaving and somebody else would come around, closer to boarding time, Dutch had said, "Why did we give him that much? He didn’t do anything." Tira had said, "Don't worry about it, Daddy." Dutch, in all of his good will towards humanity, had a very short memory. Yes, it was a short trip from the car to the gate, but because of Hamptons. it was a short trip from the car to the gate. Dutch didnt linger on his perceived swindling, but he was very concerned about getting on the plane and what the plan was. Tira explained to him that we had to wait until it was time to board before anything would happen and that would be a while. Would he like something to eat or drink? A coffee? Dutch would like a coffee, black. He was not hungry. Tira left to find coffee and something to eat for herself. German claimed they werent hungry. And didnt want a coffee. I had bought Sour Patch Kids and peanuts and jerky for the trip. Also I had made a bunch of burritos to eat. Three of them unspicy for German, three of them spicy for me and Tira. Tira asked me if I wanted anything, I said I would take a coffee with milk if she didnt mind. She left us there, right next to the kiosk at the gate. Dutch wanting to talk to somebody about gettin on the plane. German, sitting cool and looking at their phone eating jerky. All of our luggage huddled in front of us.

I was watching the sun come up out of an east facing window, apparently. Things were good. I felt good. The trip had started well and was looking like we had made some good choices. It was early, but not too early. The plane seemed to be on time and would be leaving on time. Dutch was agitated, slightly, but as long as I had known the guy, nearly ten years at this point, he was always that way. So much that way that I offered him a burrito as he sat there hyper focused on talking to the flight attendants when they showed up. He said, "No! I will not eat a burrito!" Notoriously, NOTORIOUSLY! The Custard brothers did not eat burritos. Even their sister, a woman of the world who was open to all things cosmopolitan, was suspect of burritos. German and Tira loved the burritos I made. Part of me was simply harassing the poor man, but then again, he needed to be distracted. In many ways he and his daughter were very similar. They thought the things they wanted were the most important things, even when they were irrelevant. But then again, I had seen Tira in operation when things were complicated and needed a strong, unmeek hand, and I wont lie, I can appreciate an aggressive and competitive approach to things now. 

—-

Let us go back to January, no, that isn’t far enough, we have to go back to last summer. Dutch, an 84 year old man, was lying on the concrete of his garage. It was raining. He had gone out to his car to drive to T-Bones to pick up a tasty dinner of juicy steak, french-fries and a slice of chocolate pudding pie, he was planning to watch a Red Socks game. As he put his walker in the trunk he slipped. After he slipped, he fell. For three hours he lay on the concrete waiting for his wife to come home. Half of his body was out of the garage getting rained on, half of his body was inside the garage staying dry. It was his upper body, the part of his body that has all of the important parts that was out in the rain. When Candy, his wife, finally came home, Dutch was in such a poor state that of course the ambulance that she called delivered him to the hospital. When he got to the hospital he was essentially declared dead. They shoved every plastic tube they had up every orifice they knew of. I don’t remember where I was coming from or what I was doing, but when I got to the hospital everyone was on death watch. It was very dark times. So dark they wouldn’t even let us in to see him. It was two at a time and those two had to be directly related. I squeaked past because legally I am 50/50 with Tira. Common law. When she and I got into the dark, chaotic back room where Dutch was dying, where they had removed his intubation because it was all over, he spoke for quite a while about odd and intriguing money things, that, as somebody who is very fond of mystery novels, I kind of loved he was saying very inappropriate things, but poor Dutch, he was dying, truly dying and he mentioned that he wanted to go to Wyoming. That if he could live, he would take one last trip to Wyoming. And we, me and Tira, we promised him, held his hand as the poor old man was dying, we said, "Dutch, we will get you there! Just keep living!" There were tears rolling down our faces. All around us people redlining. Doctors calling for this medicine or that medicine. I remember a curtain being pulled shut so quickly and a nurse so grim looking that I swear the hospital played Handel's Funeral March over the loud speakers.

But then the sun rose on poor Dutch Custard. Days went by slowly, but he got better. Soon he was out of the ICU and was up on another floor socking it to anybody that would listen. Soon he was claiming that the nurses gave him a shower topless and a guy came by to give him karate lessons. It was an incredible shift of fortunes. A week later he left the hospital and he was back at home scooting around with his walker and living the best life he could live. 

January came and Dutch remembered the promise me and Tira had made. That a trip to Wyoming was on the books. That Dutch could get one last blast before they were done with him. He even called us. Speaking on speaker phone, yelling at us from his rocking chair in his living room, "What's that?! Are we going to go or not?!"

"I think we should go, Dutch!" I bellowed.

"We can do it, Daddy!"

"I think we should!"

For a few months we ignored the idea, me and Tira, there was no way in hell he would want to go, to follow through on that threat. Wyoming was a giant pain in the ass. You have to fly to Denver or Minneapolis/St Paul or Salt Lake or Billings and then you have to fly into Cody or Casper or Rivington, and then from there you have to rent a car and drive for two hours. It is oddly harder to fly to Wyoming than it is to fly to Europe and more expensive. 

I was always going to go with German. We have been going there for 16 years at this point, as a tradition, as a way to see my family. Our family. Three of my brothers and my mother and 13 cousins. And German being from Brooklyn, New York, it was always a good to see more of America. Wyoming is a very unique place, visually and spiritually. I am from Wyoming. I left as quickly as I could when I was German’s age. Dropping out of high school and hitchhiking south, eventually ending up in Denver, Colorado and then The Lower East Side of Manhattan. But I have always identified as a product of Wyoming and it was, and is, my original home. In the beginning, when German was a little baby and then a little kid we would fly out for three weeks in summer. As they became older and began to have a more complicated life, three weeks turned into two weeks. Then, two years ago, because German had entered high school, two weeks turned into ten days. And now that they are a junior in high school, seven days was all we could muster. Between theater camps, and friends and a summer job and school starting mid-August, anything longer than that was impractical. Regardless of whether Dutch was coming with us, the plan was always to travel there the first full week of August and be back in time for The Violent Femmes concert.

Tira's schedule has always been more complicated than mine. I work freelance construction so my schedule is based mostly on when I am available to work and whether or not there is work. For Tira, who is a professional artist, work can come out of nowhere and she often finds herself canceling plans last minute because of this. Including trips to Wyoming. 

Dutch was showing more and more interest in going. It was becoming increasingly clear that he was going to come. So clear, in fact, that I started to research where and how we could make it work. My hometown, Worland, is a high desert town in the north central part of the state. It is in the center of what is known as the Bighorn Basin. Essentially a giant bowl surrounded by mountains. The Bighorn Range to the East, the Absaroka Range to the west, the Pryor Mountains to the north and the Bridger Mountains and Owl Creek Mountains to the south. Worland has roughly 5,000 people. When I was growing up the City Commerce invested heavily in tourism. The downtown area had many old west style buildings, the Washakie Hotel, an old movie theater, there were festivals in the fall, parades et cetera. Crazy Days, which I loved, where the main street was shut down so local businesses could sell their wares on the street for cheap. There were games and food and a general excitement about the community. I am not sure what happened, but sometime in the 90's the politics of Worland changed from being welcoming to tourism and outside humans to being an isolationist kind of place even though the traffic never ceased. Worland is both on the way to Yellowstone National Park and Sturgis, North Dakota. Ten Sleep canyon, a canyon roughly thirty miles to the east of Worland is famous for its rock climbing.

Instead of embracing tourism as a way to supplement the community, they went the other way. They tore down the Washakie Hotel. As well as almost all of the old west style buildings downtown. Oddly they spent gobs of money creating a park on Main Street called Pioneer Park that was supposed to embody the spirit of Western Expansion and Manifest Destiny, the idea that pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and the American Dream were alive and thriving, while at the same time destroying any real economy aside from the absolute necessity economy that exists there now. It is sadly a shame, if you ask me. One of the most beautiful places in the world is right there in the north middle of Wyoming, free for all to see. Yet it goes unnoticed because of some oblique politics that I do not know. I left town because of this politic and I have no desire to move back because of this politic, but it is a strange politic that is as baffling to me as it is foolish. People will continue to come to town. Continue to drive to Yellowstone, to Sturgis, to Ten Sleep, but Worland, for all of its wise and superior wisdom, said, "You want to spend your money here? Wait, your not from here? No, thank you. Now leave and dont come back!"

I know this about Worland because I am from there. It might not be apparent to those traveling through, because handsome beauty has a way of tricking the most astute amongst us, but when we started thinking very earnestly about Dutch coming to Wyoming with us, I did a mental navigation of things and our options were very bleak, quite limited. 

There are two hotels in Worland. One a block from the Bureau of Land Management [BLM] where my mom works, and then up the hill from there, across the street from the Bloedorn’s Lumber Yard [Lumbry Yard, as my brothers and I called it growing up.] There are two motels as well. 

Dutch is a man of showers. He is a man of shaves as well. He likes to shower and he likes to shave. He is also an 84 year old man that uses a walker. Steps without handrails are difficult. Steep steps without handrails are something he wont even try and showers inside of bathtubs are an impossibility. My mothers house has both, steep steps without handrails and a shower inside of a bathtub. Not ADA compliant. Tira briefly tried to convince me we could shack Dutch up at my mom’s house. I tried to share her optimism, but I didn’t. Between him needing a shower, which would mean one of us helping him get into the shower, into the bathtub, probably not me, even though I would have gladly helped him in, and German being a 16 year old probably not wanting to sleep on the floor of the living room so Dutch could have his own bedroom, to the steep front steps up to my moms front door without handrails, it seemed like we were asking for trouble. When it became more than likely that Dutch would come with us, Tira called him and told him the bad news:

"Daddy, we are going to have to get you a hotel room."

"Okay, good. Does it have a shower?"

"I don't know, we will find out."

"It has to have a shower! If it doesn't have a shower I don't want it!"

"Okay! We will see!"

"How much will it cost?"

"I don't know, we'll see."

"Okay, good."

I didn’t bother calling the hotel by the BLM or the two motels. There was no way any of them were Americans With Disabilities Act compliant even though the people living in Worland are getting older and older, and quite few of them are disabled and for at least 40 years the young people have been scattering like flies off a picked clean corpse. The hotel on the hill, next to Bloedorn’s had been built within the last ten years and was the most likely place to have a shower that wasn’t also a bathtub. 

I was correct, but the conversation with the concierge or the woman at the front desk was not entirely encouraging. I asked about the shower and then I asked about the room, whether there was an extra bed or a cot or something that somebody could sleep if necessary, there was a real possibility that Tira would need to stay at the hotel as well, and me and German would stay at my mom’s. It wasn’t ideal, but it was what it was. Whoever it was I was talking to had no idea about the rooms capabilities. She was certain there was a room on the first floor with a tubless shower, but there were certainly no cots to be had. She also indicated that there was only one room that was ADA compliant. I accepted her premises and thanked her and hung up. Tira had a million questions for me that I couldn’t answer. Instead of calling the hotel back and asking the concierge, I instead started a fight and told her that she could call them back herself if she was so curious. That argument did not land well and before we could even plan the trip we were fighting about the trip. It was going to be a nightmare, she decided. I thought it would be funny. She told me that she was the one that would have to ultimately have to deal with her dad and it would not be funny at all. I agreed with that assessment, apologized, and we were able to reroute our emotions and think constructively again. 

A month went by. There was still hope that Dutch wouldn’t want to go. I liked the idea of him going, but mostly in a way that would probably be wild very wild. Like a carnival ride, but somehow more intense. There were so many unknown variables that I couldn’t even imagine. At any moment something maximum could happen. A missed cab, a missed flight, a breakdown in the airport, a breakdown on the plane, Dutch could HATE Wyoming, scream like a child to go back, refuse to eat, trip on a bit of loose carpet and end up in the hospital. I reiterated my support for Dutch going. "It's going to be his last trip. Why not make it a good one?" The implication being he was a dog that was about to be put down, but had a great last day. A stroll around the park, his favorite meal, a nap on the front porch, et cetera. But it was true. He was never ever going to go on another trip again. Facts are facts. If it was me, if I was 84 and that was that, and I had the opportunity to go somewhere I had never been that was as wild as Wyoming, I would go. In fact, German, if you are reading this in the future, 40 years from now, when I say I want to go to wherever it is that I haven’t seen that you said you want to take me, Take me!

Life is complicated though. Context is important. Nobody wants to talk about the past, but things were difficult four years ago. Both Dutch and Tira's mom had issues during the most difficult part of it. So much so that it changed our lives. German's life as well. We all moved out of the city because of it and as a result I got to know both of Tira's parents. Something I don’t think I would have been able to do had it not been for such duress. I am glad about that. In fact, I am very good friends with her mom. Four years ago both parents were quite a bit younger. The human body has its limitations, is a machine. Like all machines, there is a limited ability to operate. Tira's mom, never in a million years would she want to travel to Wyoming. She does not have the wanderlust that Dutch does, and I very much appreciate that. If it was up to me, I would stay home forever. Living in a ten block radius and life would be simple. But that contradicts what I said before. I don't know. Life is complicated. And who knows, maybe I would have become friends with Tira's mom and Dutch along the way anyway? We certainly had a few good times together when the world was not on fire. But the struggle brought us together and I am glad about that. 

I respect Dutch. That he would take this trip to Wyoming, want to take this trip to Wyoming, the amount of suffering he would have to endure just to get there. I, personally, struggle with the travel every year. It is such a slog. It has always been a slog, but now it is almost a joke. Wake up at 4 a.m. and then white knuckle it for twelve hours hoping and praying that your plane is on time or even shows up at all, that your connection is also equally sorted, that the summer weather doesn’t destroy things, that you don’t end up in Chicago or Minneapolis or Salt Lake, staying overnight at a hotel with your confused and exhausted toddler. Not that German is a toddler, they have been kind of amazing over the years. Really amazing. Rolling with things as intense as they came. I remember, I dont know, they must have been seven or eight, always taking the window seat, because they loved to look out, I was sitting in the middle seat, naturally, we were in the very back of an airplane. The last seats on the left. A bathroom behind us. The air became choppy and the pilot told us to fasten our seat belts. I had a beer on my tray table. German said:

"You should drink that quickly, or hold it in your hand."

"It's fine, I'm fine." She was a little pipsqueak! What the hell did she know? Then the plane dropped and my beer spilled over. Suddenly the guy sitting next to me was a comedian. He handed me napkins.

"You should have listened to her." he laughed as the plane bounced like coffins on a trampoline.

"I should have listened to both of you shutting the hell up!" I yelled as the plane banked and everyone on board screamed. Okay, I didn’t yell that, but I thought it. Unsolicited advice is still unsolicited advice even if the plane is crashing.

End Day One / Part one

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