Lincoln 24/7

all in good time

bruce kept telling me throughout the trip that after it is over, it will get better and better with time.

memory is a good editor, if not a biased one.

we made it to the indiana border on rt. 30 early sunday morning. i fell asleep in the car to the sound of the hazard lights and the occasional 18-wheeler passing by. we had pulled over in the ditch right in front of the 'Indiana Welcomes You' sign. bruce woke me up to help him with his flashes. it was cold and gray. i was standing in a patch of reeds that had spawned from a drainage ditch.

bruce looked up from behind his camera. "after this is over, it will get better and better with time," he said.

i yawned.

it is now tuesday night and i am busy organizing, duplicating and logging tapes. already i hear myself answering questions about the week to people:

"it was a great time."
"watching bruce is amazing."
"you wouldn't believe the stories bruce has."

an estimated 3,000 images were taken, over 15 hours of footage, about 1,000 miles, and 134 of 168 hours we were awake. and i doubt if Bruce would have stopped there.

i was unpacking my gear today. the road map was left open to the northwest ohio section. i retraced our journey. what used to be dots and lines on a map are now faces and places in my mind. and they will get better with time.

the speech we told people along the way became well-rehearsed. "we're working on a project called america 24-7. it's all about life in america for this particular week in time."

i didn't see america this week. i didn't even see all of ohio. but i did see a good part of life in america during this particular week in time. we were on main street in van wert saturday night, shooting the cruising strip. I had my eye buried in the viewfinder. two girls walked behind me:

"i don't see why they want to take pictures of van wert. van wert is so boring," one girl said to the other.

what qualifies as interesting, like beauty I suppose, is in the eye of the beholder. life is everywhere, if you choose to look at it. bruce is a good example of that.

it was a good week, and it will only get better and better with time.

living once

i cut off bruce's press pass wrist band from the 18th annual advance auto parts spring 4-wheel jamboree nationals with the butter knife.

I set the knife back down on the custard yellow countertop. The scoop of ice cream on my plate was melting down through the raspeberry pie and dripping onto the countertop.

i began to think about the week as bruce fell asleep sitting upright on the custard yellow barstool. we were tired. i was eating pie and ice cream in balyeat's restaurant in van wert. i was too tired to think about the work that was waiting for me back in athens. but i wasn't too tired to enjoy the ice cream.

as we sat there, I thought about what makes up a worthwhile life. i tried to recount all i have done in the past 150-some hours. i thought about the boys at the busy bee muffler shop in east liverpool. i thought about the cunningham family in massillon. i thought about spiro matso of matsos greek restaurant in wooster, and the fox brothers who live in bucyrus. i thought about their lives and what they meant to mine. i also thought about the guy at the gas station in tiffin. we had driven across the state and stopped to see the glass factory in town. the guy had never heard of it. but he did offer to look it up on the town map. turns out it was 5 blocks away. i thought about how much there is in life and how little most people know about this world, let alone what is 5 blocks down the street.

people live and die in corners of the world, and by means of which i will never know. Life is big and time is long. And i am small and my life is short. I am always remined of such things during travel and sleep deprivation. The notion that a worthwhile life is defined by what you do, not what you have, has once again been reinforced.

The waitress saw me eyeing a particular slice of raspberry pie a few minutes ago. When she asked me if i would like a scoop of vanilla ice cream with it, i said, "no thanks."

"Come on," she said. "You only live once."

questions and answers

"i was up in one of these one time and we took the doors off. i wonder if these come off," bruce whispered to me.

"well, i have never been in one of these," I said as I buckled in. "but i figure you are going to ask."

of course he asked. but evidently cessna centurions aren't built to take the doors off. so bruce then asked if we could at least clean the windows before going up. i am finding out that bruce asks lots of questions. and despite the question, i am finding most people answer with a yes.

we were cruising down rt. 53 from tiffin back to upper sandusky. the light was stretching the silos' shadows across the green wheat fields. as we blurred past the fence rows, a sign caught my eye. WYANDOT AIRPORT was lettered on a faded and weatherd sign hanging cockeyed on a fencepost. we turned around and headed down a one lane road. the windsock on the aluminum pole barn told us we were there. as luck would have it, so were larry and his grand-nephews. larry was prepping his 1970-something cessna to take his three grand-nephews for a flight over upper sandusky.

"you think we can take a ride next?" bruce asked.

mind you, bruce has known larry all of about 4 minutes.

larry seemed a little surprised. he throught about it for a moment.

"i guess i can do that," larry replied.

mind you, larry has known bruce all of about 4 1/2 minutes.

i was watching through the camera screen as the airplane's shadow separated from the landing gear and drifted off into the green wheat field. i was sitting on the back bench. bruce was sitting shotgun with his long lens pressed against the window. for the next half hour we circled upper sandusky and central wyandot county. the sun was warm and low. from that vantage point rt. 30 looked like a chalk line marked across the state. and the on and off ramps for the new bypass around the town looked like someone had tied a bow in the line.

"can you fly over that farm again?" bruce aked over the whir of the propellor.

After a sharp bank that let the sun shine across the ceiling of the cabin, we flew back over a group of white barns and silos.

"can you do that one more time?" i heard him ask again.

as the shadow found its way back to the airplane and we came to a smooth touchdown, i unbuckled my seatbelt. we jumped out and thanked larry for his generosity. after we said our goodbyes we chased the remaining light until the sky turned dark, then headed toward lima.

we walked into the days inn in lima about 11:00. the monster truck and 4x4 jamboree is at the allen county fairgrounds this weekend, and the parking lot was full of suspension lifts and the rooms were full of budweiser.

"$70 for two guests," the lady behind the desk said.

"could you do it for $50?" bruce replied.

pausing for the moment

it was 5:45 am. bruce and i were standing in our underwear in the travel lodge parking lot of mansfield, ohio.

"at least we are not missing a good sunrise," he said, as he peered into the mushy sky.

all we were missing was sleep.

somewhere, situated right along where the last glacier did a u-turn sits mansfield. and somewhere within mansfield live a 210 lb. rotweiller, a python, and a 3-year-old girl named brianna. and as she stood on the sidewalk with the snake around her neck and small puppy in her arms, bruce was sitting right in front of her with an 80mm lens.

48 hours ago i was sitting on a tractor with four amish boys on their farm. this morning i was in a penitentiary cell. at least the door was open. at the suggestion of several mansfield residents we visited the ohio state reformatory earlier today. there we met daryl, the caretaker who gave us an all-access tour. the place has been shut down since the early 90's, but by the looks of things it had been shut down for much longer. as i sat in the 8'x8' steel cell block surrounded by 116 years of peeling paint i was reminded of how great it is to live life in motion, and not on pause.

the state has flattened out and bucyrus light is even flatter. so after a footlong shaggy dog at the daily scoop, and a quick stop at the public library, we are pushing on west, with no time to pause.

filling my pockets

i had: three dvd tapes, a sharpie marker, the keys to bruce's subaru, chapstick, a receipt from the arcade restaurant in canton, a lens rag, a roll of certs, sunglasses, a headlamp, and driving directions to the swiss village in sugarcreek in my pockets. all were at the risk of falling out onto the hardwood floor and causing distraction. i was trying to maintain eye contact, but he was sitting with his bible very close to the lamp, and i was trying to keep a good exposure. having electricity in an amish family’s house is unusual. What is more unusual is that i was sitting in the family room with them, with a video camera, taping as bruce crawled across their rug with his camera as they had their evening devotions.

we met the miller family as we pulled into sugarcreek about evening time. we drove over the tracks and bruce was eyeing a railroad worker unlinking cars on the track. we pulled into the filling station, and behind us was a massey ferguson parked at the diesel pump. a man in a straw hat was pumping gas into it. it was pulling a wooden wagon with a family of six enjoying a mcdonald’s dinner.

most people smile at a scene like that and drive on. some try to lean out the window and take a picture. we made new friends.

for the rest of the day we learned about the amish religion, lifestyle and the different orders within. we took a walk around their farm. we also learned about midnight, the new pony, the poultry industry — in which many amish are involved — built a campfire in their back yard, and swapped stories of our families.

there is life often unseen and unknown to a lot of people. the more i see and learn of it the more i can take with me; and not just on the film in my pockets.

being human

i woke up. the phone was ringing. it was far too dark to tell where i was. i think part of being human is trying to understand where you are. i tried hard to think about it. but a few minutes later i fell back asleep completely comfortable with the fact that i had no idea where i was or why i was there.

then a curtain opened.

"what do you see?" i asked to the dark room.

"we are missing it. it is pink and blue." bruce said.

i was looking for a little more general answer.

but as the curtain opened i answered my own question. i saw the teal and fuschia blankets of a motel 8. by 6:36 i was bonging a bowl of fruit loops from the continental breafast in the lobby. by 8:20 i was walking past 130 degree kettles of hydrochloric acid with earplugs and a hard hat on. i am now at a computer in the stark county library. i only know that because i just asked the girl sitting beside me.

"i have never been asked that question in here before," she just said.

"i think part of being human is trying to understand where you are," i said back.

life in the B roll

what do the massillon public library and the gregory galvanizing plant in canton have in common? if someone asked me to tell them, i would have to take a really deep breath and reply with a very long run on sentence. but the punch line is:

we somehow found our way from the former to the latter via the quick print shop to smiley's italian restaurant to the massillon h.s. football stadium to the massillon women's club to the dugout behind catholic central school and eventually to meet dave, the night foreman who was busy galvanizing well casings and the like.

i said life is big and has no boundaries. but it does have coincidences.

bruce scoffed at the 15 cent price tag on copies made at the library, so we headed down lincoln way to the print shop. right there, over the xerox was a memorial photograph of amanda cunningham. amanda was the senior class president at ohio university who died 2 weeks ago in a car crash. she also attended the same church as bruce in athens. we were also standing in the same print shop her parents own.

this is not normal for me. how much of moments like that translate to 720x540 pixels? i am trying to record time and experiences and live them at the same time. the difference between my human memory and my sony memory becomes confused. and how much of what i will remember will be remembered on tape because i remembered to push record? (and set the white balance and the gain and the exposure and the audio level)

later at the motel 8, i was logging time codes on the videotapes. the paper bruce gave me told me to define each scene and highlight the important areas that were interesting. i began to think of the luxury it would be to live life with such definition; to live a life after post production.

i guess at this stage of the game i am just hoping for enough preroll. and being happy for living unedited.

focusing

my digital camera fell apart last night. literally. i can open the camera body like a taco. and the inside actually even sort of looks like ground beef. we are at the massillon ohio public library, and bruce is printing out more model release forms.

i am not sure if i will be taking any more still images this week. bruce said i can use his camera when he is not using it. when i woke up in the hotel room this morning the phone was pushed over and his camera was sitting on the bedside stand. so waiting to use his camera is like waiting for ted kennedy to put down his bottle so i can take a drink.

so i think i will focus on video. not my forte, but i will keep the camera rolling. it is what i was asked to do anyway. so now i am heading over to the non-fiction section where bruce (and his camera) are shooting away.

axle grease & ice cream

the rain drops bobbed across the windshield. they formed braided lines of water and flowed up the glass on bruce's subaru and out of sight. bruce has plenty of stories about singapore and tibet and the jungle, but he was telling them all to me with his eyes closed.

we reached chester w. va. around 8 and under the sunless sky filled up the car at a sunoco station and talked to ernie and his girlfriend. as much i sincerely would have liked to have stayed and listened to his classic country band this weekend, we headed west across the rt. 30 bridge into ohio.

we hopscotched down the old lincoln highway from east liverpool to lisbon, and on to kensington. and back to hanoverton. we demolished cars at an auto salvage yard, changed mufflers on a '96 chevrolet corvair in east liverpool, ate inside hoge's family restaurant, and slept in its parking lot, and i drank a 32 oz. milkshake at the kensignton dairy barn while bruce photgraphed a minivan full of girls and mini-ice cream cones.

life is big and has no boundaries, and everything merits a picture. if taken right. and every picture tells a story. especially if you are keeping company with the likes of bruce.

all caps

it rained hard here last night in athens, as it is apt to do in ohio. i had just taken prada for a walk and left her and her wet paws on the porch. i opened up my computer and went to my inbox.

this is what it read:

IMPORTANT - PLEAES READ - BRUCE STRONG

it is sunday morning. approx 10:30 as i click on the email. i am thinking: 1) all capital letters on a sunday morning email?... this ought to be good. and 2) any email spelled like that surely must be important, right?

sure enough. it is now nearing 1 pm and i now have a new list to do today:

1: get sister to watch dog for the week.
2: find someone to teach class for me.
3: tell proffessors i am skipping class.

and last but not least, pack a rain coat; as it is apt to rain in ohio.