Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
someonewaslittlebylittleturningadimmerswitchsothatthelightintheroomwasgradu-
ally disappearing. By the end of my meal I was finding my food more or less by touch and
occasionally by lowering my head to the plate and sniffing. Before I was quite finished,
when I just paused for a moment to grope for my glass of iced water somewhere in the
gloombeyondtheflickeringcandle,mywaitresswhippedtheplateawayandputdownmy
bill.
“You want anything else?” she said in a tone that suggested I had better not. “No thank
you,” I answered politely. I wiped my mouth with the tablecloth, having lost my napkin
in the gloom, and added a seventh rule to my list: never go into a restaurant ten minutes
before closing time. Still, I never really mind bad service in a restaurant. It makes me feel
better about not leaving a tip.
In the morning I awoke early and experienced that sinking sensation that overcomes you
when you first open your eyes and realize that instead of a normal day ahead of you, with
its scatterings of simple gratifications, you are going to have a day without even the tiniest
of pleasures; you are going to drive across Ohio.
I sighed and arose. I shuffled around the room in my old-man posture, gathered up my
things, washed, dressed and without enthusiasm hit the highway. I drove west through the
Alleghenies and then into a small, odd corner of Pennsylvania. For z00 miles the border
between New York and Pennsylvania is a straight line, but at Pennsylvania's northwestern
corner, where I was now, it abruptly juts north, as if the draftsman's arm had been jogged.
The reason for this small cartographical irregularity was to let Pennsylvania have its own
outlet onto Lake Erie so that its residents wouldn't have to cross New York State, and it
remains today a 200-Year-old reminder of how the early states Weren't at all confident that
the Union was going to work. That it did was far more of an achievement than is often ap-
preciated nowadays.
Just inside the Pennsylvania state line, the highway merged with interstate 90. This is the
main northern route across America, stretching 3,016 miles from Boston to Seattle, and
there were lots of long-distance travelers on it. You can always tell long distance travelers
because they look as if they haven't been out of the car for weeks. You only glimpse them
when they pass, but you can see that they have already started to set up home inside there
are pieces of washing hanging in the back, remnants of takeout meals on the windowsill
and books, magazines and pillows scattered around. There's always a fat woman asleep in
the front passenger seat, her mouth hugely agape, and a quantity of children going crazy
in the back. You and the father exchange dull but not unsympathetic looks as the two cars
slide past. You glance at each other's license plates and feel envy or sympathy in propor-
