Get Off the Bus!

The summer after I graduated from college, I read Jack Kerouac's On the Road and thought that Dean Moriarty was the coolest, wildest dude and that hanging out with him would be a non-stop carnival of insane adventure and mind-expanding conversation. He talked and talked and talked about all sorts of way-out ideas, took Sal Paradise (Kerouac's alter ego) to parties, listened to jazz like it was the most amazing thing on Earth and just burned burned burned.

This, I thought, is what I want to do: go on a cross-country trip that is full tilt all the way, meet new people, live on the edge, learn about new places, experience danger. You can read about how my expectations measured up to reality in my new memoir, Great/Dismal: My Four-Month Tour of Duty on the Battleship Patchouli.

As for Dean Moriarty -- known in real life as Neal Cassady -- I learned many years later that he was the kind of human firework who is fun to read about, but not for a guy like me to hang out with. He was a complicated guy who had a messed-up upbringing, sure. And he influenced Kerouac's writing style and featured not only in his books, but in the poetry of Allen Ginsberg. He was one of those characters we all meet on occasion in our lives, who seem like they walked off a movie screen because they're just so manic and funny and smart and loveable and frustrating and selfish that it's hard to believe somebody didn't create them on a written page.

But I would've tired of his shenanigans very quickly if he'd somehow been reincarnated and stuck his thumb out along the highway west from Oklahoma to New Mexico, looking for a ride that would've quickly turned into him taking the wheel and commandeering the conversation and putting my introverted ass into a tizzy. See for yourself, below.

Planes, Trains and 18 Wheelers

I loved "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," the 1987 comedy starring Steve Martin and John Candy. My son, Owen, has loved trains for many years, and recently has become enamored of plane spotting. But I think at 12 he's a little young to watch this R-rated film.

I thought of the movie after watching Owen over the last several days bounce out of the house with his camera every time he hears a plane overhead. He snaps pictures, and then zooms in on the screen to see what type of plane, and what carrier. If he can't tell, he can always check the radar app on his phone. It's pretty amazing how technology has made easy what surely used to be an exercise in futility, as plane spotters would have to buy trade magazines, visit the public library to check through Encyclopedia Brittanicas, hack into air traffic control or spend loads of money on telephoto lenses for their cameras.

Owen and I have traveled to South Boston's Castle Island a few times in recent weeks to watch planes take off and land at Logan Airport. The planes are so low, you can almost hear people complaining about having to turn off their electronic devices.

And of course the two of us have traveled countless miles on Boston's subway system over the last several years, and driven far and wide so he can take pictures and videos of commuter, Amtrak and freight trains.

Sometimes I wonder, "How can he enjoy looking at the same planes and trains over and over?" Then I harken back to when I was his age, and obsessed with semi trucks and boogie vans.

Here's how I described my fascination with 18-wheelers in the road trip memoir I've been working on for the past two years:

I knew Peterbilts from Kenworths, Macks from Internationals. I liked conventionals better than cabovers. During my bus ride to junior high school every day my heart skipped a beat when I saw the gleaming red-white-and-blue tractor with the double sleeper sitting in the parking lot of a factory in the center of my town.

I would ride my bike, sometimes alone, other times with my buddy Pat and his younger brother Bryan, about half a mile to the main drag through my hometown and anxiously wait for big rigs to drive by. When I spotted one, I'd give the signal for the driver to blow his air horn, and whoop it up whenever they complied.

Spotting trucks was my favorite game while on family road trips.

One time, I had my mother drive me about 10 miles into Granby, so I could take a picture of a Peterbilt that I'd noticed on a previous drive. Here's the picture:

I still keep an eye out for big trucks when I'm on the highway.

Around this time, ages 11-13, I discovered custom vans. I bought magazines and ogled the tricked-out rides (and bikini babes), and looked for boogie vans wherever I went. Connecticut's Farmington Valley wasn't exactly a hotbed of vintage vans with waterbeds, wet bars, fur-covered steering wheels and murals straight off the cover of Heavy Metal magazine, but I saw a few here and there.

On a family trip out West in 1977, when I was 12, I snapped the picture below in Salt Lake City.

I guess it's no surprise that in 1988, when I was almost 23 and nearly a year out of college, I bought a van with my buddy Andy. We got it into running shape, but didn't have the money to remodel the inside to look a celebrity's living room, or hire somebody to paint a scantily clad Amazon riding a war steed on the side.

We slapped a Grateful Dead sticker on the front before picking up my friends Pete and John and going on a four-month road trip.

I got rid of the van a long time ago. The Greater Boston area, where I've lived for the past 20+ years, is thin on old custom vans, unlike Southern California. But I still love seeing an old boogie van, or watching Fu Manchu fans' homemade videos once in a while to rekindle my passion.

Yesterday, one of my neighbors asked Owen if he wanted to be a pilot or train engineer when he grows up. He said he wasn't sure. Chances are he won't be either of those things, but I'd put odds on the fact that he'll have a passion for planes and trains for the rest of his life.