Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I stared at the radio, wondering whether I had heard that second item right. The biggest
one-day fall in shares in history? The collapse ofthe American economy? Itwirled the dial
and found another news broadcast: “...but Senator Pootang denied that the use of the four
Cadillacs and the trips to Hawaii were in any way connected with the $120 million con-
tract to build the new airport. On Wall Street, shares suffered their biggest one-day fall in
history, losing 508 points in just under three hours. And the weather outlook here in Crud-
bucket is for cloudy skies and a 98 percent chance of precipitation. We'll have more music
from the Eagles after this word.”
The American economy was coming apart in shreds and all I could get were songs by the
Eagles. I twirled the twirled the dial, thinking that surely somebody somewhere must be
giving the dawn of a new Great Depression more than a passing mention --and someone
was, thank goodness. It was CBC, the Canadian network, with an excellent and thoughtful
program called “As It Happens,” which was entirely devoted that evening to the crash of
Wall Street. I will leave you, reader, to consider the irony in an American citizen, traveling
acrosshisowncountry,havingtotuneintoaforeignradionetworktofindoutthedetailsof
oneofthebiggestdomesticnewsstoriesoftheyear.Tobescrupulouslyfair,Iwaslatertold
that the public-radio network in America-possibly the most grossly underfunded broadcast
organization in the developed world-also devoted a long report to the crash. I expect it was
given by a man sitting in a tin but in a field somewhere, reading scribbled notes off a sheet
of paper.
At Toledo, I joined Interstate 75, and drove north into Michigan, heading for Dearborn, a
suburb of Detroit, where I intended spending the night. Almost immediately I found my-
self in a wilderness of warehouses and railroad tracks and enormous parking lots leading
to distant car factories. The parking lots were so vast and full of cars that I half wondered
if the factories were there just to produce sufficient cars to keep the parking lots full, thus
eliminating any need for consumers. Interlacing all this were towering electricity pylons.
If you have ever wondered what becomes of all those pylons you see marching off to the
horizon in every country in the world, like an army of invading aliens, the answer is that
they all join up in a field just north of Toledo, where they discharge their loads into a vast
estate of electrical transformers, diodes and other contraptions that looks for all the world
like the inside of a television set, only on a rather grander scale, of course. The ground
fairly thrummed as I drove past and I fancied I felt a crackle of blue static sweep through
the car, briefly enlivening the hair on the back of my neck and leaving a strangely satisfy-
ing sensation in my armpits. I was half inclined to turn around at the next intersection and
go back for another dose. But it was late and I pressed on. For some minutes I thought I
smelled smoldering flesh and kept touching my head tentatively. But this may only have
been a consequence of having spent too many lonely hours in a car.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search