All come to look for America

I was watching the Today Show this morning. More listening than watching, as I do. Josh Groban sang “America,” by Paul Simon. It’s a song I like and he sang it very well. He has a beautiful voice, and the lyrics are easily poetic and lyrical.

The beginning of the song is a sweet interaction between two young travelers, and the intimacy between the two is evident, yet seems uneasy. Then the lyrics,

"Kathy, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping.
"I'm empty and aching and I don't know why."
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike:
They've all come to look for America
All come to look for America
All come to look for America

I remember my own journey to look for America, though it was more like a flight out of New York to distance myself from my life. But searching for America is such a wonderful illusion so easy to believe at age 20.

It was the summer of 1972 and I was in flight from drug rehab. My family had closed the door to my returning home. I had no job and no money, and in fact, very little clothes. I was staying with a high school friend at her apartment on Burnside Ave. in the Bronx. She was living with her boyfriend and another high school friend who had been crippled in an accident and was wheelchair bound. There was an empty room that had sheets of newspaper spread out on the floor with marijuana drying. Kathy, the cynical wheelchair bound girl was shooting heroin and had a variety of “friends” bringing her daily fixes. While I had bolted from rehab I had not abandoned my drive to stay off drugs. I knew I had to leave.

I looked in the paper one day and saw an ad for door-to-door magazine sales out of the city. I called and made an appointment to meet a representative at a hotel on Times Square. I met with the representative and he told me the deal and I made an appointment to meet with him at the Port Authority bus terminal the next afternoon. I went back to the Bronx, packed my bag and borrowed $10 from my friend. Everything I owned I was able to carry in one hand. Everything I wanted to get away from was a bus ride away, or so I thought. I boarded a Greyhound bus bound for Akron, Ohio. Thus began my trip of looking for America.

I like the song because it’s melody is sweet, and the song is orderly and easy. That period of my life was anything but. I found America on that trip. I also found me. I was out in the world alone and I handled it well enough to survive to be the person I am today. But I also learned a lot about how well I didn’t handle life. I took risks that nearly cost me my life. I took risks that put me in harm’s way physically, emotionally and psychically. I had no one else to look at, focus on, or blame. I found a world that I had not a clue existed. The other America. Farm land, illiterate adults, wandering souls who crisscross America in their semis, were a complete revelation to me. While I lived in the most exciting city in America I had become accustomed to seeing only the curb.

It was a good trip for me and now that I have 30+ years of hindsight to look back on it, it was pivotal in my long term recovery from addictions. I remember parts of the trip, which lasted 4 months, with horror, sadness, and awe. But mostly when I think back at that period in my life I remember the loneliness and pain that I brought with me on that trip. It’s that part of Paul Simon’s song that speaks to me most.