Let's Go Somewhere - 10/7/2014 - Cross Country USA

Ally says:

So now that I’m finally free of the shackles of novel revision I can get back to talking about stuff I love here at the Forked Road.

Mainly, travel.

Traveling was something that I always wanted to do. My parents had a subscription to national geographic (didn’t everyone’s?) and as a kid I used to sit down in the playroom and flip through, amazed at pictures of the African deserts, the wildlife in Alaska, the teeming streets of Bejing.

The very first trip I took anywhere as a semi-grownup was to Chicago. I was in college and my then-boyfriend (now husband) and I decided that we would drive from Pittsburgh to Chicago for the weekend. It was huge. We were going on a journey. I sold off my music collection to be able to go. That’s how serious I was about it.

But that was just a weekend. We went to Boston and NYC a few times after that. But the first real trip was after graduate school in 2007. Armed with our higher learning degrees and staring down the double stock barrel of a life of public service work and loan repayments until the age of 64, we did the only thing we could: 

Grabbed whatever leftover student loan money we had and headed west.

Thanks Horace.

We left from Monroe, NY on a cool crisp morning, a cooler full of food and beer in the backseat, a supped up and meticulously checked transmission thanks to my dad, Big Ron, and a map. No GPS. First off this was pre-GPS in every car and secondly, GPS takes all the fun out of traveling. You never get lost you never discover something new. We kept a register in the front seat to manage our finances. Upon leaving we booked half the trip. From NYC to Texas. Everything after that was up to us.

So we climbed aboard our trusty steed, Rocinante, named after Steinbeck's camper from Travels with Charley, which is named after Don Quixote's horse and did as Horace commanded.

Here she is parked at the Steinbeck museum in California

From Baltimore/DC

To Nashville and Memphis

through Louisiana 

To the crossroads where they say Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to learn how to play guitar

To New Orleans

To Texas

Cadillac Ranch

New Mexico

Arizona

Grand Canyon. I was too scared to go near the edge

through the desert 

finally arriving on the other coast in California

San Francisco

and then all the way back

through Salt Lake

Salt Lake Basin

and Denver

Rockies

St. Louis & Kansas City

Chicago

and finally back home.

Recently, I was called anti-American because of some of the poems I was writing for my How To Be An American series. That is a misunderstanding made towards people who just want this country to be better – for everyone here. Because she’s beautiful. And she’s ours. And she deserves a people who deserve her.

And that was where it started. A lifelong love of traveling. It’s a big world and we’ve only got so much time, friends. Pack only what you can carry. Let's go. 

Let's Go Somewhere-7/29/2014 New Orleans

Ally says:

Back in 2002 I decided I was going to go to school for writing. I was going to get an MFA and I even managed to get accepted into the one school I picked simply for their ad in the back of the issue of Poets & Writers that I was reading in Barnes and Nobles the week beforehand: University of New Orleans. I’d never been there but I figured, it’s New Orleans – can you think of a more muse-ful place?

So I put together my sample, filled out my forms and mailed them off to the admissions department. And I got in. Unfortunately I got my letter of acceptance about 1 month after my mother called me in tears telling me my father had stage 4 cancer. Instead of moving to New Orleans, I moved to New York City in 2003 to be closer to home.

I delayed my acceptance for a year thinking I would go back. I never did. Instead I got a different masters degree – an MLS – a Masters of Library Science. Yes, I’m sure you too are surprised to hear that you have to get a master’s degree to be a librarian. Stranger things.

I got married in 2004. On our first wedding anniversary, months into my MLS coursework, my husband and I boarded a plane for our first trip to New Orleans.

We drank at the Napolean House:

watched the Mississippi roll by, 

crept through the old cemeteries

rode the streetcar:

 and listened to some amazing music, including this guy: St. Louis Slim

and the Panarama Jazz Band:

My husband had such a good time he didn't want to leave:

It was an amazing trip. And walking around that city I felt, for a moment, I had stepped into that other life - the one where I was a student at the University of New Orleans, getting an MFA. Living and writing in NOLA.

Three months after that first trip, Katrina ripped through New Orleans, forever changing, but not destroying, that city. Since then I have been back 4 times. I hope to make this fall number 5.

There are certain places that welcome you back no matter what. That stretch out their arms, wrap you in a hug, show you to your seat at the Spotted Cat on Frenchman Street, slide a pim's cup into your sweaty hand while the thin man on stage replaces the reed in his clarinet before playing you a song.