Books We Love Insider Blog: Another Journey down I-70.

Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OH

Old Main, built in the 1870's

I don’t do much long distance driving these days, except to western Ohio to visit my 90 year old Aunt J. She was the youngest of the 3 girls born to my grandparents. Paradoxically, she was the one always in ill health. She had trichinosis in her 1930’s childhood and barely survived. She had spinal fusion during the 60’s—not an optimum decade for surgical tinkering with the skeleton. Though she’s weak as a kitten—between busted spine and unused muscles—here she still is in 2018—breathing and talking, as full of opinions and stories as she ever was. A perfect descripton for her would be Shakespeare’s: “though she be but little, she is fierce.”

Aunt Juliet and me, Summer 1945

ALL my female relatives were spacey in one sense or another, so I come by it naturally, but with my aunt, I am just beginning to note a faint slippage between her past and future selves. Aging is such a bitch, as it takes place on many levels, body and brain. Read a Thurber story, one like “The Night the Ghost Got in” and you’ll have a better understanding of what the women in my family are like.

I’ve done a lot of traveling on I-70 over the last thirty years, always making the “home place” pilgrimage. My arrival brings mixed messages. Yellow Springs is nothing less than an fable I tell myself. Aged nine, I chronicled the tears when I departed, written in a journal while on my way home from Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

In those days, I was little, cute, and good. The college was prospering; the town was eccentric, but still sleepy.

Camping with my grandparents

Physics—or, a driving story

A long side by side train of vehicles emerging in a long snake as we go west out of Columbus. Construction, construction, on I-70 and on I-71, as well as I-270, causes a pinch point of driver’s stress. The semis are rolling; FDX with pups, Crete, Hunt, England, and they are not the only ones, the heavy equipment long bed, except for some big chains, want to run back for the next load at 75, and a whole bunch of what I am told are called by the professionals “Roller Skates” are out there, driving like fools, a few potential dotards beside me. I--like 70% of us, I think I recently read--imagine ourselves to be "above-average"drivers. I know I'm a pretty good one, especially at defensive driving--after all, I learned to drive in Massachusetts...

Other than the truckers, the rest are “kids” which is now, in my book, anyone under 50. Of course, the real kids, the backwards hat twenty-somethings—both male and female—can be a real problem. A couple of them in a beat up black Japanese something or other—maybe a ten year old Civic—decided that the tiny crack between a semi and the aforesaid heavy equipment long bed would be a good spot to wedge themseleves into .

Maybe they were playing automobile roulette, or maybe they thought they were still in the video game they’d been playing earlier, the one which automatically resets the players at “start” after you die. I, at 73, have much less faith in this kind of magical thinking, so, instinctively—I was two cars back but traveling the inside lane so I had a sight line—well, I tapped my breaks, just to tune up the guys behind me. People always follow too close. A second later, the following truck hit his.

I don’t know if the trucker screamed at the dopes who’d just asked him to perform a stock car racing kind of miracle in order to keep them alive—this, while he was just out there at 9:30 a.m. on a Monday, trying to have a decent day in the office. I prayed we all would have a decent day, and cast an eye to the road's shoulder.

Fortunately, around Columbus is flat as a pancake, even beside the sculpted vandalism of an interstate. Flat, no big trees, no immediate barbed wire—good! To my great relief—and I don’t think I was the only one—though, nothing happened. The truck slowed, the Civic squeezed into the spot, no one touched anyone--and a good thing, too, at 75 mph. We and the backwards hats were spared one of those hard, mean life-changing lessons about PHYSICS.

Yellow Springs Bumper Sticker: 1.9 square miles surrounded by Reality.

Mr. Eko

The Sixties landed and never took off from this town (my hometown) in a sometimes less than pleasant way. Some things delight me, the glittery, slight sinister pipe, t-shirt & poster shops, the book store—the fabulous Dark Star--the import and antique/junk/clothing shops, the deli, little restaurants, and Tom’s small, yet incredible grocery store, full of local, organic free-range everything.

It’s the attitude of the visitors, and of many of downtown folks that grates. Some towns have drunks, and YS has always had a few. Over the years, the town also acquired the tattooed/pierced owners of lunging Akitas, the gray-disreputable chronic cafe table hogs, all of them scattering cigarette butts and dog poop indiscriminately. I mean, you can be tattooed and pierced and have green or orange hair—no problem —just be polite and keep your butts in your pocket if you can't find an ashtray. Smile and say hello! After all, isn’t engagement the whole point of the sidewalk café sitter? And don’t let your Akita or Pitty bite me in the leg –or more to the point—the leg of my aged aunt -- as we pass by.

There’s the 21^st Century too, to contend with. The cell phone users who blindly crowd others off the sidewalk, or insist that everyone needs to listen to their very important conversation, those texting behind the wheel who can barely operate the vehicle because they are busy talking, the jay walking scofflaws--there are a plethora-- who don’t use the many well-marked crosswalks.

The big semis who are forced to drive through on State Route 68, must really, really hate this once unremarkable small midwest town.

~~Juliet Waldron