Horseheads New York

Alright, here we are… back in Horseheads, NY. Now, Ronnie and Rocinante were supposed to be in New Jersey. Writing about New Jersey from the Jersey Shore, no less… from the Boardwalk… gnoshing on saltwater taffy.

But plans, you know. They’re like little paper boats you set sailing in a bathtub, and then the dog jumps in… C’est la.

We aimed for the Atlantic, for the roar of the ocean and the smell of fries, and we landed in Clinton. Clinton, New Jersey. Which, naturally, kicked off a little ditty in Ronnie’s head, a bastardization of something that was definitely better in its original form:

Well I’ve never been to Jersey…
It’s charms are kinda hidden…
Well we headed for the boardwalk…
Only made it out to Clinton…
Can ya dig it…?
Ya just can’t rig it…
Go on and swig it.

And I’ve never been to Heaven…
But I’ve been to Kanorado…
Well they tell me i was born there…
But i really don’t remember…
In Kanorado… not Eldorado…
What does it matter…?

What does it matter indeed? You try to make sense of things, write a nice little blog dispatch, and your brain starts howling like three lonely dogs.

Now, New Jersey. It gets a bad rap. A real thumping from the wits over in New York, the titans of 30 Rock, who probably only ever see the bits that look like the inside of a vacuum cleaner bag – all that industry flanking the Jersey Turnpike. “Garden State,” they call it. And you drive past refineries that look like metallic dinosaurs coughing up their last, and you wonder about the gardener.

But listen: Jersey. It’s small. Fifth smallest, a little postage stamp of a place. But it’s packed. Like a can of articulate sardines. Most densely populated state in the whole damn Union. And these aren’t just any sardines, mind you. They’re educated. They’re rolling in it – ten percent are millionaires. Millionaires! Probably from inventing some new kind of concrete or a better way to subdivide themselves. They’re healthy, too, second healthiest. And diverse? You betcha. Religion, ethnicity, the whole shebang. They’re practically a miniature, well-funded, surprisingly fit United Nations. Human Development Index, both the American kind and the regular kind? Near the top. So there.

And the noise they make, these New Jerseyites. You’ve got Frank Sinatra, Ol’ Blue Eyes, serenading the Meadowlands. Then there’s Springsteen, The Boss, sounding like he swallowed a gravel road and a book of working-class poetry. Whitney Houston, voice like a goddamn angel, soaring over Newark. Queen Latifah, hip hop royalty. And Tony Soprano, figuring out life’s little and bada-bing tragedies, usually involving gabagool. Even Snooki, bless her heart, contributing to the general, unscripted, leopard-print chaos. Moxie, Jersey’s got it.

So, Ronnie and Rocinante, they’re trundling along, aiming for the shore, and they hit Clinton. No beach, no boardwalk. But Clinton, it turns out, has ghosts (a prominent HSoB Tour objective). Every October, the Red Mill there gets dressed up as a Haunted Village. They even had Ghost Hunters poke around in 2008. Ghosts, by gawd. We were supposed to be looking for the soul of the Jersey Shore, and we found a place that specializes in things that ain’t there anymore. Or maybe never were.

Excuses, excuses. They’re like armpits, Ronnie always said; most people have two and they usually stink. One excuse for falling short of the salty air was a detour. A holy pilgrimage, almost. Rocinante, with a mind of her own, or maybe just following the subtle magnetic pull of craftsmanship, wandered off to Nazareth, Pennsylvania. Nazareth, PA. Where they made Ronnie’s guitar. Martin, the kind of guitar that made Robbie Robertson want to sing about feeling about half-past dead. Which, of course, set off another little ear-worm:

Pulled into Nazareth, feelin’ ’bout half-past dead…
Don’t need to find a place where i can lay my head…
Cos’ Rocinante was smart ’bout thinkin’ ahead…
Allowing Ronnie to skip the part ’bout askin’ for a bed.

It’s a funny old world. You aim for the ocean, you find a guitar factory and Jersey Mike’s for lunch. You expect one thing, you get something else.

And speaking of something else, New Jersey. Blue state. Thoroughly blue. But even in the bluest of states, you’ll find some folks trying to repaint the town red. Some genius, some absolute card-carrying comedian without an audience, tried to change the name of little Clinton to “Reagan.” Reagan, New Jersey. You can’t make this stuff up. The universe just hands it to you on a slightly greasy, very confusing platter. Who needs The Onion when you’ve got municipal politics?

So, the report on the day trip to New Jersey got written, not from the boardwalk, but from the quiet, and ever-friendly Horseheads Free Library. About a trip that missed its target but hit a few other things along the way. Ghosts, guitars, sandwiches, and the perplexing, often hilarious, business of being human. Turn, turn, turn.

Onward through the fog… RH

You don’t need beach towels…
On a Clinton hike…
But if you’re hungry…
There’s Jersey Mikes…
And if you’re lucky…
You’ll stop in Nazareth…
And pick out a brand new Martin ax.

Of course, like California, Texas, and Florida, New York is too big for just one post. However, we’ll have to settle on this phase of the tour as Ronnie & Rocinante are on an ever tightening time schedule. They may return to NY in late July or August, Texas in September or October.

Anyway… New York! The Big Apple! Everybody’s got a New York story, right? Like it’s a damn pilgrimage you gotta make to prove you’re a fully functioning ‘murican. So, Ronnie has his personal connections to New York, that slab of concrete crammed with eight million other schmucks all trying to get somewhere slightly faster than the next guy.

First up, Bob Dylan! Yeah, Bobby Z. The voice of a generation, a moniker he wisely refused to hold. Voice like a rusty wheel on an outlaw biker’s ride, but hey, you know what they say about the squeaky one! And Ronnie has a deep reverence for Dylan’s impact on the music biz. Over the years Ronnie has cultivated a small garden of his own. Well… not so much in the “business”. Even though he was active as a player in the 1980/90s, he retreated from that merry-go-round in time to ring in the new millennium. No longer playing for money, but not willing to abandon his garden. He’s out there with a tiny little rake and a watering can, growing organic, timeless songs while the bulldozers of pop-country are paving a formulaic paradise next door… in “the biz”.

Anyway, Ronnie retreated from the biz. Got out before some cheap hustler grafted a spiked dog collar on his neck and made him rock out about peach cobbler, or cherry pie, or something equally inane. Meanwhile, in contrast, Dylan, like Ronnie, came from “nowheresville“. But, unlike Ronnie, Bobby Z. made good. You could say he cashed in. Or you could say he wisely avoided J. Edgar Hoover’s death ray at a time of serious danger for influential folks taking contrary views on the war in Vietnam. And Ronnie? Well, he “jumped off the bandwagon in time to raise a couple kids and try to pursue some resemblance of adult career-like activities.” Translation: he chickened out and got a job! A job, folks! That thing you do so you can afford the therapist you need because of your job! But hey, at least he’s got his self-produced records, no autotune, all-natural. Not perfect, in fact, fairly crude. But hey, imperfect authenticity beats sanitized, pitch-corrected pablum any day!

Next up for Ronnie’s New York story! Those goddamn 1970s and 80s TV programs. Oh, the cultural landmarks! “All in the Family” apparently had a big impact. Well, that explains a lot, doesn’t it? His maternal grandad and eldest uncle were “Archie Bunker clones.” Clones! Like they were churned out in some bigot factory in Queens! Provincial, nativist, racist, misogynist… the wholeunenlightened enchilada! The things Ronnie’s Grandpa would say watching ball games on TV would make a PC maven cringe all the way to their socks. We kid you not! Probably stuff that would make Archie Bunker hisowndamnself say, “Whoa, take it easy there, Meathead’s dad!” There’s that. Yeah, but for Ronnie, Saturday Night Live came as a refreshing cool breeze… a tonic for the raging rebel soul!

Then, there’s the mid-2000s. Ronnie and his girlfriend hit the big city! A “whirlwind junket around Gotham.” Five days in Manhattan! Almost enough time to get used to the subway system. Almost! That’s like saying five minutes in a high-school boys’ locker room is almost enough time to get used to the smell! I’ve heard folks say you never get used to the New York subway. Like a mobile petri dish filled to the rim with way too much humanity and the distinct aroma of “what the hell is that?”

They “visited MoMa.” Modern art! Where jaded connoisseurs stare at a red square on a white canvas and go, “Profound!” Yeah, easy money, right? After a good stroll through MoMa, Ronnie and his companion “Sought out culinary treasures.” For some, that would be like paying $30 for a hot dog and calling it “artisanal.” But no, there’s super interesting ethnic fare to discover if you know where to look. Our heroes had an “exotic food on a budget” guide, and it delivered, in spades. They also hiked across the Brooklyn Bridge, a little slice of history. Hey! You can take the boy out of the High Plains, but… Anyway the pair also rode the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building! The observation deck! “Look, sweetie! Tiny little yellow cars full of tiny little schmucks just like us!”

And the highlight: a nighttime 5K around Central Park! Because running in circles in the dark in a city famous for its muggers is just good, clean fun! Nothing like a good dose of adrenaline to pump up your 5K time. And then, the pièce de résistance: Ronnie got yelled at by a Ralph Kramden clone driving a shuttle bus! A shuttle bus! They didn’t have a pass! A pass! For a bus! What is this, Gaza? “Where you from?” the bus driver bellows. Ronnie, thinking he’s clever, says, “Queens?” And the driver, a true scholar of human nature and New York geography, wasn’t buying it! So they had to walk back to the hotel! Oh, the humanity! Trudging through the concrete jungle, probably past a dozen guys selling “I Heart NY” shirts made by children in a sweatshop in a country they can’t pronounce. That’s your New York experience right there!

Finally, Ronnie and Rocinante are hunkered down in Horseheads New York for the writing of this post. Horseheads… central southern New York. Now there’s a name that just rolls off the tongue and lands in a pile of what-the-hell. The story behind it is “somewhat Stephen King-esque.” You might imagine it involving a disgruntled farmer, a cursed field, and a pile of, well, you know. Horseheads! We wouldn’t be surprised if the local football team was called “The Impalers.” Truth isn’t far from all that, by the way. You gotta love a town that just puts the weird right out there on the welcome sign. No pretense, just “Yup, Horseheads. Deal with it.” At least it’s honest, unlike the rest of the current era in the good ol’ U.S. of A.

Ok…

Onward through the fog… RH

In New York City…
You’ll find no pity…
To make it there…
Takes lots of gritty…
But like ol’ Blue Eyes…
In soothing crooner tones…
Make it there…
You’ll make it anywhere.

Loopcircus

Loopcircus

This Land: New Jersey

This Land: New York