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US BY GREYHOUND TRIP 1963  10 of 10

 

FRIDAY, MAY 17. Wake up to have memorable breakfast in Billings [Billings morning stop will be indelibly engraved on my memory. First the contents of the first two tables in the Post House were filled with the football team, and they were as much picked for physical excellence as for performance. The fellow on the aisle, butch, had cream jeans packed with thigh. Next to him a frayed jean with cute face and bulging biceps even in repose. The combined width of their shoulders made it impossible for them to sit parallel, so the one in the window sat turned in, and his torso was a thing of beauty. In the next booth sat two of comparable excellence, the one decidedly crotch-showing. And then, the blond walked in, the French Jean-Jacques type, only better. Butch hairdo, short and even and square. Jeans filled to weeping perfection, unformed bulge in front. Black sweater draped off broad shoulders and caught on the hips. And beautifully complexioned. And, the topper, the neat ink saying above the urinal "a cock in the hand is worth two in the bush." GREAT brilliance. I steal glance at someone passing. On motorcycle? With horns? And flowing black hair? Look back through bus: a horse on a truck.] [Burma Shave can be biting: "Angels who guard you / while you drive / usually / retire at 65."] [Instant enthusiasm: the Negro father of the four girls 6-12 on the bus saying "There's a train," and there are even train cars with CARS on them.] [The beautiful blond was ON the bus, and he got off at Custer, Montana. Sigh.] [Negro man and wife sitting together, man gets up and tells daughter to move to mother. Daughter looks up, wide-eyed and daring, and says "I wanna sit with you," and the father tells the second (younger) to sit with mother, and the first smiles in surprised bliss at the third (older) who's agape at the temerity.] and ride through rather boring countryside in which I look at scenery of shifting terrain [Southeastern Montana (east of Custer) certainly not plain wheat fields, but old road bounces sea-sickly along canyons and cliffs and scrub pines and rock abutments. Nothing gives the idea of the age of a rock so much as to see a group of ancient trees growing around it.] [A boundary line of terrain is difficult to set. Coming off a hill in buttes and pines, the distance levels off into wheat. The road winds down through rocks that had once been worn by river waves. The road descends, the rocks become less, until the road passes from rocks to a wheat field that rolled a bit up their base like a wave. The analogy probably carries, since we might be leaving an old streambed for an equally old lake bottom. The rocks fade away on both sides (since the road followed the river bottom, and the river entry, on the shoreline, is farther west than any other point). These wheat fields are hardly uniform, since there are rocky uncultivated small gorges between parts of one field. This may be silt-streams on the river bottom, or streams from a later period when the waters sank and the lake diminished. Then the gorges slowly vanished or are plowed up and become part of the flattening contour. Thus we're in wheat country.] [Cartoon: Man to wife, standing at front door of house, "Was anyone here?" Out back door stream four nude men, one nude woman, a horse, a bull, a swan, a large St. Bernard, and a lion, maned.] [Sky clouds up a bit and rocks look funny in sun and shadow and some are parti-colored, black and tan.] [At the Kempton Hotel, a single "plain" is $2.50, a single "bath" is $3.50.] [Tumbleweed gathered along the fences, like small somethings wanting to get in.] [Burma Shave should sue John's Motel in Glendive. They copy exactly, and I read them compulsively, though I hate to.] [Would the French pronounce Glendive, "Glondeeve?"] [We crossed the Yellowstone River in Montana almost as many times as we crossed the Coeur d'Alene River in Idaho.] [Jordan Coffee Shop, "You've tried the Rest, now Eat the Best."] [Montana has no taxes --- marvelous.] and try to stay awake. Only time to eat breakfast in the AM, so shaving and washing waits for the noon stop, where we have 40 minutes. I get dop kit out and shave and wash and order dinner and eat quickly and fully, cause I'm hungry. Figure I have five minutes left so I get two glazed donuts for dessert. Glance out every so often at bus to make sure it's still there, but I see driver come out of other room and look around, and I see other guy I thought was on bus, so I tried to relax, though I gagged even at stuffing so much donut in my mouth at once. Look back two bites before end and bus is still sitting, so I finish, drink milk, leave tip, and turn around on stool, check in hand, to pay bill. The bus is gone [Run out (in Glendive?) to bus LEAVING restaurant, waving check; tell driver to wait, and pant onto bus, "Did you have fish with a lot of bones for lunch?"] [Real cute: white plastic bleach bottle on side, 4 corks for feet, with painted daisies on side.] I hop off stool and run for the door, and bus is stopped for red light down at the corner. I dash up to the side of the bus, shouting "Wait," and door swings open and I jump on last step "Wait a minute, I came IN on this bus." Driver looks at me blankly. "Yes, it WAS this bus," I say, seeing familiar faces, also blank. "Let me go back and pay my check, I'll be right back." He still looks down and I feel I must repeat: "All my stuff is on here. I'll be right back." Race back in, pay check, and out to bus. Sit down in seat slightly shook by the absurdity of it: didn't he count the people? Did NO one around me notice I was gone? About the closest I ever came to disaster in line with riding busses on the trip. People annoying on trip [From what I see now (ten miles) North Dakota is the state with brown and tan strips alternating.] [Thunderclouds stood about like immense atomic gray mushrooms, pouring rain from their centers to the ground and colored Red Rock Canyon red.] [Painted Canyon was pleasant east of Medora, but Medora itself was a sick and shoddy way-station.] [Past the wheat, and past a "Badlands" where the bare rock resembled dry wrinkled elephant hide, the land changed to rolling graying country, and many sheep charged off in unknown directions, and blue-jewel pools filled hollows of land.] [Then the land returned to wheat, but greatly rolling. The winds tore across the plains, and though it was May 17, only the smallest tips of green appeared on some deciduous trees, and some were still gripped in winter-death. Birds flew in the gale with ungainly lopsided difficulty. In beer-can like bins, I thought they were storing butter till I saw the word was butler. Thus we have a great butler surplus?] [Trash can 1/2 mile, the sign said. So we watched, stopped, and looked at it. It was a very beautiful trash can.] [Northern plains simply have no mountains, but they are nowhere near so extremely plane a plain as in the Plains. The only thing ADDED to a ground view of the wheat section of North Dakota (from an air view) is the fact that the ground is FAR from flat, and the cultivated fields far between. Plus the fact that from the ground there is no general notion of cloud shadow. Some ridges are light and some are dark, and sometimes the bus is in light or shade, that's all.] [North Dakota is the "Peace Garden State."?] [Oh, people, how you ANNOY me: you smokers, you lip smackers (and not only children, Jean-Jacques was guilty of this), you gum crackers and chewers, you talkers in unpleasant voice, you voices when I don't want you, you who clump when you walk, you who use nail clippers, particularly SMOKERS, and ladies with jangly bracelets, and men with pockets of change.] [NEVER so glad to see a gaggle of gabby girls GO as at Jamestown.] as I get nervous from riding so long. Terrible girls chatter through to Jamestown, and we have an hour wait in Fargo in dismal station as I read stories and glance at terrible man and hideous woman in throes of love, and a different love causing a prim spectacled nun to blush as she was escorted by an Irish-type doll with a mop of luscious curls and clear eyes and freckles who was dressed in a sleeveless sweatshirt and canvas slacks hacked half between thighs and knees, in sandals. He was dirtily edible, and she seemed to sense it and laughed and tried not to giggle like an infatuated girl. Complained about pillow getting sold in Spokane only to be taken away in Butte at 2 am, but the one sold in Butte carried through that night AND the next day and night, and the pillow and my sweater and jacket and various schedules helped ward off people sitting near me. [North Dakota shivery cold at night and frighteningly, steadily windy during the day. Elements tore across the face of the earth and left it rough and barren looking. Even this late in the spring the state of North Dakota looks like the most barren in the union. Sterile, heatless, rainy. Yes, it has its crops, its houses with heating and its outdoor dramas (General Custer at Mandan, and Old Four Eyes, about TR, at Medora) yet the only warmth in this section could be generated by people. Even Sioux Falls was blustery sunny that day I was there, so much earlier, but here the winters must be nine months long. Montana has interesting terrain, even in the narrow belt through, but the narrow belt through North Dakota is merely a road across the north, connecting Minneapolis to Spokane, without revealing anything, without diverting for anything.] Fell asleep after we cross the line into Minnesota from Fargo and slept through the night.

SATURDAY, MAY 18. Wake to dream memory [Rural Cooperative Power Association sign marks the Elk River Atomic Reactor "First commercial reactor in US," and from the size of the containment shell, sitting concretely meekly behind the glass and brick facade of the offices, the reactor is quite small. Wake at 4:30 this AM with the TOO-distinct remembrance of a dream: I'm on a conveyance, but it's not a bus, it's a train, and more exactly, a subway train; I'm on it, I've LEFT Minneapolis, yet I haven't brought my baggage. I'll have to return from where I am, or from Milwaukee, to pack and check out. Maybe I'll have to pay an extra day and the extra transportation charges. I wander back through empty cars to find only sweaty drunk over greasy newspaper. Can find no schedule. I tell myself desperately this is ALL WRONG, there must be SOMETHING I can do. It MUST be a dream. I wake in a slight panic and realize that I'm BOUND for Minneapolis, we haven't passed it, and I HAVE my suitcase and ticket, etc. Relief. Sit up to find I have a ROUSING hard-on, which doesn't leave till forty minutes later as I write this. Four girls in back are still talking, but the male problem is pleasant. Fellow across and up one, the Curt Jurgens type, whom I'd thought was married, is now alone. The fellow in back of me, with pleasant jeans and a rather "understanding" look is asleep, but as I glance back there's a fierce frown in return from a giant of a fellow sitting next to him, legs spread wide apart, arms folded on gorilla chest. I turn back to look at the thousands of bodies of water sliding past in the blue to pink to gray to pink Minnesota morning. Cross the Mississippi River at Champlain at 5:15, must be SECOND time, after St. Cloud scheduled at 4:25? Maybe this is the LAST time. [Well, hardly was that the last time across the Mississippi, Minneapolis is ON the Mississippi. It looks much like a long thin Summit Lake. The driver, as I glance down in mirror at him, is not one to inspire confidence. His red puffy face twitches as he picks his nose and goes through kissing motions with his lips. It looks like he's mentally slapping himself to keep awake at the wheel, and the glances he shoots from the sides of his eyes are those of a man who is falling asleep. Try to look at him as little as possible.] and ride into Minneapolis at 6 am. Feel fairly rested and walk three blocks to Y and relieved to find room available, though it has someone's rubbers in it (foot kind) and a back stack of about six month's newspapers on shelves. Room has a mirror on back of closet door and a fluorescent light above it and strange drawers and shelves in closet and the change is delightful, even if it HAS no chest of drawers. Bought Sunday paper and plowed through it and found a good schedule for the Guthrie Theater AND a good double at a movie, and walking distance art galleries. This town will be a snap. Check on laundries and get everything set for 9 am, when I go down in elevator with lump in my throat because it keeps getting stuck on 8, and once, when 8 wasn't even pushed, the thing jerked to a halt, fell a foot, and coasted up to 8 and opened. Both the janitor and I, who had been riding, decided to walk the rest of the way up. The other elevator wasn't working. I got the shivers each time I stepped onto it --- it was simply pushed into going faster than it should have, I think. The laundry, as I should have feared, didn't finish shirts on Saturday, so I left only laundry. Back to plunk shirts down and take off for the Guthrie Theater (after trying Dayton's and finding it didn't open until 9:30) to get tickets. The walk is uneventful, but I get lost finding the theater and have to ask and backtrack, but the luck at the box office makes up for it [Incredible luck. Boy strolls up to box office, shorts, great calves, tanned, soft eyes, long yellow hair. Sigh. Wait for box office to open, the first customer is a girl from out of town who must exchange her tickets for Hamlet for a later date. They're $5, and there's no seating chart, and in a 1437 seat auditorium there's chance of a bad seat. Then she says she'll sell them BOTH for $5. Boy says it's too expensive and then he says, "Wait, we can go together." I mentally kiss him where the ear joins the neck at the throat. So we get $4 seat for $2.50. When I get to window and ask for seat for "Misers," and for a seating chart, the Hamlet seat is merely front row center. With a George Grizzard Hamlet, this is bound to be unnerving. The "Misers" ticket is a "very good for its price" $2.50 seat. I look forward with anticipation and joy to this performance, but I doubt that anything will come of it. Damn.] I got two good seats. [Oodles of girls race up and down the Guthrie Theater stairs, and girl with mother says, "They look like brownies, but they're not brown." On closer look at the green uniforms, the mother says in all truth, "They do look like brownies, but they are NOT brown."] Sit and write a bit, waiting for the Walker to open, which it does precisely at 10, and get in to a lousy Gottlieb showing [Adolph Gottlieb --- maybe because of the name, mostly because of the paintings, I can't stand. Get together: Martin Friedman in his REVIEW says "Inducing a sensation of spatial depth in front of as well as behind the picture plane." Then Gottlieb says, "We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion (true) and reveal truth" (thus truth is a flat form??). He maintained that his pictographic style (first of his three, when painting divided into compartments, like primitive art --- was distinctly a modern notion (yeah, like cave painting).] ["He finally decided that his use of human form could only be fragmentary: he might use a face, eye or hand, but not the entire figure, or he might use a generalized figure, with practically no detail." BOSH! "Not only critics but artists reacted negatively to Gottlieb's imaginary landscapes, and no sales resulted from their initial showings" (of course not, they were lousy). "Gottlieb wants the observer to be immediately engaged and feels that the picture should contain nothing not instantly perceivable." (Simplest and junkiest to DO, but rather than "Engaged" the view is "Disengaged.") England's Alan Bowness said "Yet, it seems to me that to achieve his aims, Gottlieb has had to abandon much that gives richness to painting (I'd rather have a poor rich painting than a good poor one.) High point of his life in 1939: "Won US Treasury sponsored nationwide mural competition. Commissioned to paint a mural in the Yerrington, Nevada, Post Office." HE'S A PHONY.] [Pieter Brueghel the Younger (in "Battle between Carnival and Lent") seems closest to Bosch.] [St. Anthony's Commercial Club?], a jade mountain and other pieces, awful modern stuff, and not much else. Out at 11:30 and pick up something to eat in coffee shop, with blond faggot and bacon, lettuce and tomato, and get laundry for surprisingly little for both black and white stuff (75) and ascend queasy elevator to change clothes and shower (in reverse order) and walk another way to theater. This seems to be the better type section, except for one drunk tough who plants himself squarely in front of me and bellows, "You got a cigarette?" But when I haven't he moves off. Auditorium is pleasant, again eschewing the right angle in wall-floor or wall-ceiling meetings, or particularly in wall-wall meetings. Company is pleasant, as we chat through start, but he deserts during intermission and our talks are briefest. "Hamlet" is well produced in the 1910s, and the ghost-Hamlet scene is electrifying, possibly since ghost towers over BOTH Hamlet AND me. (Later the German wrestler reminds forcibly). The mother-Hamlet scene is good too, and Ophelia is properly mad, but in all, Hamlet was inadequate, as possibly every Hamlet except one or two MUST be. Like opera you long to hear that ONE night when everything clicks --- that's HISTORY, and why such classics are a part of history and part of people's lives when they've seen a good performance --- something EVERYthing else can fall short of, not with regret, but with a glow of remembrance for that which WAS so superb. Clarion trumpets for intermissions good touch. ["Well (mock ruefully), I can tell you where it WASN'T. It WASN'T in the middle seat in the front row." "No, I guess not." "No, it was the NEXT seat to the RIGHT."] [Twen/ty/fourth = 3 syllables; Two/en/ty/fore/our = 5 syllables; Two/and/three/fou/rth = 5 syllables; How to get from 24 to 2 3/4 by adding two syllables.] Out and debate going to Charlie's, the Holiday choice. Do, and look for phones on way to call about double of "Miracle Worker" and "Sweet Bird of Youth," precisely the double I wanted to see. Lose 30 trying to get them in bum phones, then find it's the last night and the double goes on at 9 and off at 1. I decide I really don't feel tired (as I feel I should) and thus plan to risk it. When I get to Charlie's it's loaded, at 6:15, and WILL be loaded for one hour or more. I decide not to eat there, but out to get cab right outside for the theater at University at 13th. I figure the show should start at 7, I'll be OUT at 11, good. Cabby jabbers away about cars and transmissions and I barely keep civil, wanting to tell him to kindly lace his lip. But I bear it and watch meter creep to $1.05. I spent last change on phone and have only a single and a five. He was saying this was the last of the neighborhood theaters and HE used to come here. He sighed with memories and frowned when he saw the $5. "You got anything smaller?" "Only a single." "Well, give me that." "But I haven't any change." "That's OK." I gaped in amazement, then noticed the theater was closed. He called out to the kids, "Hey, what time's the show open?" They go inside and come out, "Seven. Hey, mister, you give us a tip?" "Look, I didn't even give the cab driver a tip, in fact HE gave ME a tip." "Oh, shucks, we had to go ALL the way INSIDE the theater to ask, too." "That's TOO bad." I thanked the cab driver a third time and walked down looking for a snack bar. Ordered a cheeseburger and milkshake and had the pleasure of ice cream mixed with milk rather than the lousy synthetic stuff whose machine roared like a foundry in the Y coffee shop. "We don't get asked for relish," said the marvelous fat Germanic waitress. I ate and left no tip and she said "Thank you" as I left, I'm sure without seeing I left no tip, expecting none in that lousy neighborhood and simply thanking me. Movie opened and I got popcorn and sat in front of lip-smacking grandma and moved closer. Miracle Worker was as rough and tender and heart warming as I remember, and they were good actresses but hardly up to Katherine Hepburn. Sweet Bird was sad because sweet Paul Newman is in process of losing his beautiful middle. Sad. Out at 11 and walk fast to get and keep warm, finding no cabs and deciding hitchhiking would be too slow. I steam along wanting to get back to Y to get bar addresses and get there before midnight closing (I really didn't feel tired) but passed the Happy Hour and recognized it and walked in for a beer. The crowd was some cute, some lousy, but there seemed to be no cruising, only laughing and partying, so I left half a beer and left all of me. To Y and to bed, and bed did feel good.

SUNDAY, MAY 19. Up at 10, feeling good after 9 hours sleep, and eat breakfast in the Y, good eggs, and walk down to Minneapolis Art Institute, getting there about 11. The shows were pretty good and I had to race through the last parts and looked lovingly at the muscle statues [Formidably magnificent Gold Presentation Boxes, Ch'un Lung (1736-1795) about five inches across.] [Casien on rice paper looks good choice for matte color whirls.] [Saw "White Wilderness" again.] [Good painting subject: Colossus of Rhodes --- huge central figure of nude man surrounded by ocean, cliffs, magnificent buildings, and thousands of tiny people.] [Magnificent torso of an athlete or god; gift of the William R. Sweatt III and Lucian S. Strong Foundation --- the Strong-Sweatt Foundation.] [Travelers at an Inn is a strange picture --- taken just above table height, but then the painter was Mattheiu Le Nain (1607-77).] [Antoine Louis Barye DID do humans and magnificently too, as in the Greek Hercules --- magnificent for body and form, and the (again) magnificent partner, the Gallic Hercules, and heroic Man and Centaur.] [Larry Rivers (1923- ) Studio. Quite good.] [Theseus and the Minotaur --- Barye had ONE model with an EXCELLENT head.] Out at 2:40, wishing I could stay longer but having seen essentially all of it. Walked quickly (hardly have I so much needed that city street map) and begin to fear I won't make it, when at 2:55 a car stops and two girls ask where highway 7 is. I see that it's the main street, Champlain (?), and say, take me there and I'll show you. They put purses in driver's lap, but she can't drive and they scarily drive me to highway. I say thanks and take off on left side of Walker. There's a walk and I see people in back of Guthrie. Run back and doors are locked. Curse and back to Walker and decide to enter through court. Run through museum, into court, and THOSE doors are locked. If I miss that start, I'm drawing and quartering the doormen. Out and down steps and across lawn to front door, and lobby is empty but for poky foursome who creep in just ahead of me. I sweat and dash up to balcony as doors are being closed and slip panting into my aisle seat. "The Misers" is mediocre, though people as gates and commedia dell'arte characters as propmen were good, and Hume Cronyn was properly miserly, the play simply didn't come up to what I'd expected after "Would-Be Gentleman." It had no innately funny lines, all humor was in situation, and the idea at the end, that every was related, was obviously satiric farce. [Joel Gray and Julie Newman at "Miser." Joel is so SMALL.] Out and pass the Basilica Church of the Virgin (which I'd gone into noon yesterday in dimness lit by flashes photographing newlyweds against the drab church), and back to Y. I'd finally reached Yvonne Mortvedt during the Miser's intermission, but she didn't ask me over, just sounded diffusely cheerful, and invited me to their madrigal group at 7:45 at the Unitarian Center. [Arranged to meet Yvonne at 7:45 at Unitarian Center (windows). Didn't.] Getting back to the Y and writing for a good hour, I decided not to go, only to eat and write and bed. Out to restaurant on corner and get ribs, which sadly were dry and tasted almost like beef, though sauce was good, and dripped juicily and ate very well, and back and wrote much more and bed at 10:30, after writing about half a book, but only just getting to the point when what I had not yet recorded was twice that left to go. Down to rocky elevator with rocky knees to leave a call for 6:45, and back up thankful I had only one ride left.

MONDAY, MAY 20. Up to another near miss on the bus front [Minneapolis sure looks posh with its one-story corner properties that are now exclusive restaurants, windowless with crests and marble panels, like the Stockholm and Charlie's and the Black Angus Club. Got to train station early because I got up at 6:30, at call, not at 6:45, when I left word. Packed and checked out and DIDN'T eat in coffee shop, but went right to station at 7:30 for bus due out at 7:45. Ordered cereal and halfway through when I hear the two busses announced for Chicago. Finish quickly, hand trembling greatly, even though it doesn't leave until 7:45. Out to ramp and stand twenty seconds before driver comes. "Where are you going?" "Milwaukee," and get on bus and the driver gets in and backs out! We're in the street when clocks say 7:35! I sit back in amazement and wonder how they can leave ten minutes too early. He might have been anticipating morning traffic, because we got into St. Paul only three minutes before the scheduled departure time of 8:20. St. Paul Cathedral wonderfully situated on top of a small rise, but it's the highest ground in miles and it's one of the first buildings seen, and the tower is visible clearly even from close-by streets. Miss the University of Minnesota in the city proper, but pass many spread-out buildings in the "between twin" city of Larpenteur. Leave on the DOT of 8:20 am. The road through Wisconsin is quite a bore. Ribbons of divided concrete, featureless bridges, and near towns the sweep of overpasses. But then, influenced by Steinbeck, I began to look over the countryside as "typical American farmland," and it became successful. A blue murky sky, featureless, hid the sun with sky-colored clouds, so the fields were drab and shadowless. But the land rolled softly, with trees everywhere to break the horizon. Farms were small, and thus looked like farms as opposed to the endless stretches further west. Changes of forest with thick underbrush on untillable slopes, and barns and silos and farmhouses and outbuildings, shaded all by trees, except the metal silo top that reflected the dim sun. The fields were full of buttery dandelion, and small churches with adjoining graveyards stood alone in groves of trees. Small wayside towns, with motel and grocery and gas station and two industries and a fresh vegetable stand, then out into the farms again. Typical American farmland. Light green trees clustered around bases of hills and tall dark pines at top of hill looked like light green waves up to the sheer dark green cliffs of tall mountains. Here it looked like summer but we passed groves of trees just beginning to leaf, and the lilacs still bloomed, so I still followed spring, even in these last two weeks of May. Surprised to see a huge USAF missile, incurved wings folded back, on flatbed truck.] Pass through St. Paul and Wisconsin and farms [Wisconsin odd in that country roads are lettered, singly or doubly. County "O" for example.] ["Forty-five ants" at "Fort Defiance."] [Never say it didn't happen before: bus driver roars to stop, hops out and telephones from a roadside booth.] [Wisconsin Dells is an outskirt of sharp rock ledges and an over-commercialized main street.] and eat lunch somewhere (things are getting bad, I eat only because I must and all lunch places on bus remain nameless and featureless, and I don't look them up because I'm not interested now in finding out. But, since I don't remember anything, nothing happened, probably, or I'd have noted it in book, and my trip could hardly be noteworthy every lunch), and into Milwaukee at 5 [Well, I've checked and checked, and the decision is there. Got into Milwaukee about five and asked for schedule to St. Ignace. This with the following incidental background --- the bus station is in a lousy section of town and far from either Y, and it looks like the farther Y is the better. The Antler Hotel is just across the street, which looks good, but then I really didn't go on this trip for sex purposes; if anything, the contrary. The St. Ignace schedule is fairly definite: there's only one bus to there and that at 7:15 pm. Oh. It gets into Detroit at 3 pm, which is pretty good, I decide. I DO want to see both upper and lower Michigan, even though the Wisconsin-Michigan line is crossed at 11 pm. But there IS no other schedule, so if I do it at all, as I decided I would, I have to do it then. To an extent (the following is laughable) it's Greyhound's fault for lousy scheduling, not mine. So I'm going at 7:15 pm. OK, what 7:15 pm? For this I buy the paper. In a city of 750,000 there must be something going on. Leaf through paper: nothing. Absolutely nothing. Positively nothing. I look through a second time: definitely nothing. Well, since there's nothing current, what HAD I wanted to see: up to men's room to look through book. Five items under Milwaukee: Art Institute (look under Museums, find an Automotive Museum, Milwaukee Art Center, Inc (which certainly sounds commercial, else why the Inc?) and the Public Museum, which is in the Public Library. Look under Milwaukee Institute and find an Institute of Hypnology and Technology but not of Art. Look under Milwaukee Art, and find only Milwaukee Art Center, Inc. That kills item 1. Item 2 was the Layton Collection, and I already located a Layton School of Art along the lake, and figure THAT must be it. Not too good. Item 3 was Marshall Pepper. Look in phone book and find the name but I vaguely seem to recall I found one before and that he's a junior. So either he's living at home or has moved out of town, but even then definite qualms hit me about calling him, and I decide not to. Items 4 and 5 I'd already seen --- the Wisconsin Dells and the beautiful farms that Steinbeck told of. In both I was disappointed. Search the paper again. Irrevocably nothing. So it will be 7:15 pm TONIGHT. Check back at the information counter since there's a schedule change Sunday, and he had only the new schedule. I checked to St. Ignace, that it was the ONLY one, and that it did go down to Detroit. "That's a mighty long way to get to Detroit." "How many people do you know who do things the straight way," I came back, in retrospect, cryptically. He said nothing. So I WILL leave tonight and I rattle back to write to pass the time between 5:30 and 7:15. No good pocket books. Clip out the weather report (chance of snow tonight in north) and get pulled up many times by sexy numbers wandering around. Some were the ultra-sophisticated New York type in trench coats, thin trousers and Italian shoes, with long blond hair, steady cruise and sunglasses. Two of them, describably precisely alike. And one hell of a doll of a darkish Puerto Rican-looking fellow with square black hair and a very butch strut and a short suede jacket over, get this, loose blue jeans, which perversely made him ten times sexier. Sailor, cute, wandered and sat. The place crawled. Another reason to leave. AND (does this lengthy excuse-giving sound too familiar?) I've been counting up the cities and states left, and I'm anxious to get on. Not that cutting off a city will make June 1 come faster, but it will make the TRANSITIONS fewer, and it's during transition time that I most think about how long or short a time I have left and what all my next stops are. When I settle in a town and say I'll leave THEN, it's easy enough to find things to do in town --- if only read, as in Salt Lake City --- or tour, as in Denver. Anyway, on my last list the Detroit was number five in city size behind New York (in which I live), Chicago (in which I spent two weeks and STILL haven't seen it all), Los Angeles (in which I ALSO spent two weeks --- saw most of it), and Philadelphia (in which I spent MANY weekends to see). And Detroit certainly has attractions greater than Milwaukee, and I'll be OVER Wisconsin, so I'm leaving tonight for Detroit. Then I'll have more time to fit Toledo in, maybe, or get to Akron sooner. Thank goodness Akron leaving is fairly definite. Since Thursday is a holiday there'll probably be dinner at Grandma's, so I MUST stay Thursday, and thus I must leave Friday. That does make it simple. While eating, the adorably skinned, beautifully eyed (and exasperatingly eyeing) fellow comes in and we trade long glances. Bring up the old thought, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if people could read each other's minds!" Within limitations, of course, say you'd have to be within ten feet and have to concentrate on "listening in," thus probably have to be facing the person. No use being unwillingly omnidirectionally bombarded by thoughts and anyway, what do YOU care what the person on floor seven is thinking if you're on floor six. That limits who and when, but not how much. You now have the voluntary directed beam, how deep does it probe? If you get down to subconscious, you may even get thoughts the person isn't aware of. Would be perfectly horrible to get through "Like to go to bed with him," and move to act on it only to get a sock in the jaw because the thought was censored and covered up --- those people are the most vicious. If you hit only the surface there's the chance for camouflage or cover-up, just as there is in eye glances. Etc. Knotty problem. And the lobby continues to fester with latent sex. Soldier comes in and goes up to men's room to change into uniform. Long slim blond with long face and incredible trouser profile: the cock makes a loop parallel to the ground, and positively disfigures (pleasantly) the whole crotch area. The cute kid wasn't just cruising, he got on the St. Ignace bus, and he had a surpassing number ON the bus already, a fellow incredibly fair of face and stout of arm, talking cheerfully with a Negro behind him, in front of me. The fellow had just been stationed at Key West and had an incomparable summer's-end tan: golden, in which the gloss in his hair is complementary and the gleam of the white teeth is essentially glorious contrast.] [Statue of Pere Marquette in "Central Park" probably high point of city, at Michigan and Third. The NEAR Y had rooms, too, it NOW appears a block away. It's a very old town, with old country names stretched across marquees. Schlitz a very old brick and block building, hard and baronial, the same taste as Anhauser-Busch in St. Louis, which smacked a bit more of industry. Schlitz looks like small manufacture, not heavy industry.] [St. Gall's Catholic Church? Rubbing it in, in poor neighborhood.] [Suggestive names: "Bite-a-wee Lunch." "Clara's Tap."] Write a bit and wait for 7:15 to Detroit via Mackinac. Eat lousy meat loaf sandwich and good hot fudge sundae and eat heart out for kid at bar and in waiting room. Onto bus and write through trip up Wisconsin (out of sight of lake) and upper Michigan [Fruit trees were all in blossom, but under darkening night sky it looked more like snow on barren branches. People on busses have so little concept of their surroundings, it takes a very long time for them to realize that the driver has put the headlights on and the ceiling pockets are gleaming into their laps.] [I AM OBSESSED WITH SEX!] [Is there any connection between adults chain-smoking and their parents --- smoking? Particularly the mother carrying the babe in arms, with a cigarette sending smoke down to the child as part of the youngster's "maternal atmosphere," along with the breast and sucking and mama?] [The cute kid from terminal got off a mile from Random Lake --- how I'd like to be picking up hitchhikers THAT evening.] [In the light from the front, the splashes of new rain look more like sparkles flaking from some of the drops already freckling the entire upper window of the Scenicruiser.] [Karting is certainly a popular sport in the North Central states.] [De Pere, from the driver, anyway, came out Die Pierre.] Stop at Rapid River and I get donut and card and milk and write a bit. Doze off on my sweater as a pillow and write in the meantimes. I simply wrote that day as it happened, which makes it by far the shortest day here so far (little more than a page). [Wisconsin State Reformatory, south of Green Bay, VERY impressive.] [First I've heard "He's thinking a buyin a 63-and-a-half Ford." If this ever catches on, heaven help the driving (or driven) public. And quick, invest in Ford cars.] [In Wisconsin, first in long time, they have tax on food, and again pennies are items of change.] [She was young, but her leg, showing between her neat narrow stocking and her wide rolled-up black jeans, was a truncated cone, growing greatly to the calf, of a fatty, solid whiteness with the off-color lumps which would later become varicose veins.] [I adjusted the atmosphere to ME. I told driver it was too warm in back, he said thermostat was broken and he had to guess, he'd turn it down, but "If it gets too cool, let me know and I'll turn blower back on." Since no one would complain but me, and since I wouldn't get cold, the air cooled down to a bearable level and I stopped sweating.] [Driver announced "You may smoke in the bus, cigarettes only. Do not smoke cigars or pipes, please," and repeated the last phrase. I had grinned at the chain cigar-smoker across the aisle, but I think HE thought I was cruising. This time I said, "So why don't you put your cigar out?" "Does it bother you?" he asked harshly. "Yes, I'm just getting over a cold and my nose is dry." It didn't look as if he was going to do anything. "Thank you," I said half angry, half sarcastic. But he let it go out, and the air cleared.] [They have some wonderfully bumpy stretches in southern "Upper Michigan," and LAST NEW state on my itinerary. There follows only Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.] [Fellow in Escanaba insisted on using the dolly even when it would have been much easier to carry it by hand. As opposed to the quiet Negro family with four kids, this bus contained a batch of a mother with three. The middle one would cry dry and brokenly every so often until the mother would holler hush and the child would stop. Then she would NOT stop, and got out of her seat and wandered down the stairs and moaned around the driver's seat while he was out caring for luggage (a job that seems to take more time than caring for the passengers), and mother hollered at the four-year-old to get back here. Baby stopped her cries of "Help me, help me," to explain, "I gotta go pee." After the mother found she couldn't talk her out of it, though she tried, she said, "Well, go!" The kid sobbed around the door, then got inside the john. About this time the bus started and some wails and cries could be heard from inside. "Mommy, mommy, please help me," and as the bus would lurch, a louder cry. Mommy finally unwrapped herself from her fur coat and went down the step in her red, green and white two-inch stripe shirt and black leotards. Presently two loud slaps were heard, followed by a baby's cry that intensified as each succeeding slap was applied. "OK, OK, I WILL," screamed the kid as the bus driver's face came and went in the rear-view mirror. Finally the baby quieted, the bus stopped for a train, and only low sobs could be heard from the toilet. Then silence, as the mother raised up to see what was going on NOW. Finally after a groping desperate fumbling with the lock from inside, she opened the door, let the child out, and closed the door again. She motioned the quivering little girl into the empty seat behind her and the trip continued.] [I guess I'll have to admit I'm tired, and a bit sorry I took the St. Ignace trip. I wanted to stay awake, but the first feeling that hits is not a desire to fall asleep, but you THINK about how nice it would be to fall asleep, and you have a soft, peaceful, surrenderful feeling that's so quiet and so insinuating it's hard to resist.] [Rapid River seemed almost a watering hole for those huge roving beasts, the Greyhound Scenicruisers. One was there as we pulled in, and two more were quickly added. The hulls flew open and soon packages and crates and boxes of flowers were flying back and forth among them. I had to transfer from one to the other, but my baggage was me-carried, and I nosed around labels until I found one for Detroit, and then asked to make sure it was going to Detroit. Get on with others (including the surpassing number from the other bus --- who certainly adapts a cool and icy way as I look at him) and the driver checks the tickets and I'm acceptable. It's now 1:45 and got in at 1:10 for a ten-minute rest stop.] [The ceiling light here has a terrible habit of flickering, and it's almost a relief to write THIS in the dark. But later it begins not to look so bad. Nap a bit between 1:50 and 2:50 and Engadine, and during this time the light of the bus, the doll, gets off and I see not where. Bus goes down long black road to Engadine, a sailor whom earlier I'd sworn said he as going to Sault Ste Marie got off, and the bus drove into driveway, backed out, and went back the same long black lane to the highway. The rain, which started long ago at the Wisconsin-Michigan state line still comes down, but it looks a cleaner rain as at 4 am it begins lightening for the dawn. I feel almost awake as I see the IMMENSE string of lights for the Mackinac Bridge. When I changed busses at Rapid River I had to sit at the only window seat available --- on the left --- unless I wanted to sit way in the back in the heat, AND near the moaning Negro kid in the last row. I remember fantasizing that the bus would have to go PAST the bridge and come BACK to it from the EAST if I was to get a good view of it. Imagine my shock when the bus does just that and I suspect we're GOING to Sault Ste Marie. But a change of bus is announced then (after driving through a vacant lot to make a "turnabout a la Engadine") for Sault Ste Marie and some Air Force base (and all the lovelies on the bus get off --- I SAID I was obsessed with sex, even at 4:40 am, when my eyes are heavy with sleep I can appreciate the lovelies). And as the bus pauses and I write this and the tickets are checked, a wholly remarkable event: the Negroes got off --- hurrah, no dry wracked sobbing from the rear --- and the best of the lovelies, a thinner version of the best of all, with short sleeves, like him, and a pouty face too like him, and the lights go out and we go off. We go off WEST, as in my fantasy.]

TUESDAY, MAY 21. Doze and wake, determined not to miss the bridge that took me so far out of my way. [$3.75 for car; $9.00 for bus, and $15.50 maximum for truck. Length of main span 3,800'
Length of suspension 8,614'
Total length of steel superstructure 17,918'
Length of north approach (incl mole) 7,791'
Length of south approach (incl mole) 486'
Length of bridge and approaches 26,195'
Height of main towers above water 552'
Depth of main towers below water 200'
Diameter of main cables (2) 24"
Number of wires in each cable 12,876
Diameter of each wire .196"
Total length of cable wire 41,000 miles
Weight of cable, wire and fittings 12,500 tons
Total weight of superstructure 66,000 tons
Cost estimated to be $99,800,000
Contractors: American Bridge Division, USS Corp.
Merritt-Chapman and Scott Corp, USS Corp.]
[Bus shed outside Mackinac City leaking, and in one place right on top of a light fixture, and due to the teapot effect, the water came directly from the middle of the lamp --- which had burnt out. No wonder.] [Yes, maybe it WAS worth it. The rates are SO high (ferry rates are 75 and are probably used, too), and the bridge IS quite a sight. It LOOKS long, which is more than can be said even about the Golden Gate, which looks about half as high as it is long. But this is TEN times as long as it is high. And since it is so long, the height to which it rises is not so noticeable as in, say, the Baltimore Memorial Bridge. And there's no ISLAND in the middle, like the Oakland, to break up the scheme. The effect of length was greater because of the huge long approaches to even the point above where the cables start, and these are huge to where the towers are. The cables are very thin, and the whole gives an effect of great delicacy. And the early morning fog made it impossible to see the further shore except in the middle.] [Add personal annoyances: teeth suckers after meals.] [Chose proper side (left) perforce, because lower Michigan lake dotted with picnic groves, motels, and nice homes as road parallels the lake a thin wood strip away, through woods like those I couldn't see last night, but guessed correctly to be scantily-leafed birches, a very few pines, and a few other varieties of heavier-leafed deciduous trees. The whole area is open and park-like, with trimmed grass all around and the rain making everything green and new and shiny. The fact that full spring, even on May 26, has not hit the birches also opens up the vistas and allows glimpses of the lake from the road, which will be patched in when full foliage grows.] [The sad-looking girl across the way rends the ear by turning on her probably constant companion, a ticky (it goes tic) little low-fi transistor radio that she pampers for a slight bit of clarity. Followed the Met around a bit --- was in Minneapolis during its stay there, and got into Detroit on Tuesday to read about its gala opening Monday night.] [In Minneapolis they only had $10 and $12 seats left, maybe they have a more reasonable setup here, with other operas besides Traviata. Most of the cities (smaller) in Wisconsin and Michigan seem SO old. Tree-lined side streets, old mansions, small brick-front main streets. Like nothing new has been built for 30-40 years.] [Saginaw Post Office and Hoyt Library, dark, look just like Episcopal or Presbyterian churches.] [Michigan, joy of joys, had two completely new Burma-Shave series.] [As I passed a store sitting in front of a house, the wind blew up the sign that had flipped down: "For Sale." I looked and passed and the wind left it flop back down to blankness.] [What self-willed, belligerent, egotistical, disobedient totally unlikable bitches little girls of 4 or 5 can be --- girl in front seat, slapping mother.] [The third doll, the lanky one, was remarkably reticent. Finally cute blond (crewcut with long curly curl in front) sat next to him and tried conversation. Maybe it was the curly curl, or the slight case of acne, or the too-sharp eyebrows or too-long eyelashes, but the fellow could hardly exchange three words, and all the while eyes flickering with sullen disapproval over his head and face. Eventually they lapsed into silence (maybe it was the fact that blond was married and had kid, and thus lanky knew he wasn't "one of those" and (pitty pat) wasn't interested?). At Flint the lanky one got out to change busses. Blond's face lit up in a wide, open smile and said "So long." Lank actually looked back a few seconds, unsmiling, paused, stared, and said something that sounded like "Yop" and was down the stairs. Wow.] See it and like it and figure it worth the while, then remain awake until lake gets far away and we're back in farmlands again. I doze for a few hours on sweater, waking up at stops, and moping in Bay City when we stop for lunch at an absurd 10:30. Read paper and find the Met in town and debate where I'll get the maps and the information I need about Detroit, since I have none at all. Through suburbs [Travel through the Midwest probably only SEEMS slow since the busses don't travel much on the freeways but keep to the local streets --- which are practically all built-on in the vicinity of Detroit, with Flint and Pontiac and etc. all joining together to form a megalopolis of its own down the state of Michigan.] [Now that I'm back in the Midwest there's again the large ornate Masonic temples --- the one in Detroit being so big it can seat 5000 for the Met season. The rain stopped in about Bay City and from there down there was a constant cleaning as the heavy clouds hurried past with their moisture and sun occludants. In Flint patches of blue sky were visible everywhere, and streets had dried except for puddles, and the sun seemed to be out as much as it was in. The fruit trees seemed to stretch and glow in the first bright light, and the eyes glowed with them for their brilliance. Birmingham Hills obviously the Scarsdale of Detroit. Very good entree to a city.] [Biggest address I can recall seeing: 22240 Woodward in Detroit.] into Detroit, and I scan both sides of Woodward, which must be the main street because I can see East X on the right and West X on the left, and as we get to the river I see that the county building, with its huge loin-clothed nude with Atlasean muscles, is next to the river with the address 2. At least I now have the axis of the city. But I see no sign of the YM, though I see the YW. Off the bus and get schedules for Toledo and Akron and up to the information booth. There ARE no tours but there is a map and the Y is just off Woodward about 10 blocks north, and other places are marked and points of interest seem clear, all except how to get to them. Pick up bag and walk too long, worrying that this last of many Ys will irk me by not having room. In to find my worries in good vain, but when he asks for my membership he insists that the social doesn't give me a discount. I get the cheaper room ($3 vs $4) and pay an extra 35 per day for membership. Seems my $15 for social membership was poorly spent. I'm sure I didn't save $15 through people being too stupid to recognize a social membership --- or maybe Detroit is just different. Try citing precedent and authority but it does no good and I'm stuck with $3.25 per day. Up to room and unpack and put things away for a good long stay (as it turns out, THE longest), and down to phone bus lines to see how to get where. As a thought, ask at the desk and he refers me to the program department, and a lady sits me down for a good twenty minutes and gives bus names and times and places of departure as well as places I never would have thought of (along Jefferson to Grosse Pointe) to other plants beside Ford, to Belle Isle, to the mural on the back of the library). I'm now set. Eat a meal (lunch? diner?) at 4 and walk over to the Masonic Temple to see what they have left in the line of Met tickets. There's no one in line, a questionable sign, and he hands me a booklet with a glued notice saying "Only seats behind poles and standing room." Tebaldi is ill and not with them, the Tosca is unknown (later turned into Mary Curtis-Verna), and the Cav and Pag features Eileen Farrell. Well, I really mainly wanted to see the inside of the Masonic Hall, and to see the Met on the road, and since Hines was doing Boris and I had much wanted to see Boris, I got standing room for $3 for Friday night and Boris. Back and decided I would probably do a lot of reading just to pass the time in Detroit, so stopped into Doubledays and searched their paperbacks. Came across a translation of Psychopathis Sexualis of Krafft-Ebbing and took it immediately. The scar-faced homo at the counter looked at me thoroughly as I paid for it and left. Back to the room and left the door open to see who'd walk by and get the skinny oddball with the crewcut who turned out to know the 407 inside and out, and the 402 (?), and we talked on about IBM. He left and I got deeper into the book and, deciding to come before bedtime, chose a singularly erotic section on autosexuality, an old idea, but only here formulated for the first time and recognized. Read and came myself into a stupor and fell into bed at 9:30. Up again for a drink, and up again to try to stop the odd dry ticking of the hot water pipe insulation against the wall, but could do nothing about it --- got used to it. Amazing!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 22. With the program lady giving me the bus routes I still messed up. Ate in cafeteria and walked down to Shelby and Michigan, but on Michigan. Bus comes and tells me to wait across the street. I cross against red to get the Dearborn the driver told me, and the Dearborn driver pointed to the Wayne behind HIM. So the lady was right. Ride out quite a distance, past the Tigers stadium and much urban renewal close to town, and Dearborn itself further out. The driver heads toward a tall glass building which must be the Ford Central Office and a colored lady gets up in a panic, only to be told by driver that it was OK. I had the idea he was going out of his way to take me to the very door and glowed with pleasure. I guess he does it for anyone because it was repeated the next Monday when I went back. Looked through plush brochures with the three busloads on the previous tour filing past, and at 9:30 went out with a group of high school girls from Berlin, Ohio, with a tall broad white-stockinged, square-receding-forehead fellow with crewcut who seemed either the biggest fellow in the senior class or a gym instructor. He was intelligent enough for either. The assembly line was down due to a strike in Chicago, so we went through the Engine (Assembly) Plant and the Steel Plant. The Engine Plant impressed me with its seeming inhumanity. Coats hanging near work areas, heat and poor light, vibrating floors and tools, huge constant noise and intermittent blasts of steam-hammer sound. We passed really cruddy lunchrooms with wooden tables and benches and all overhung production signs, "Vote for union leader so and so" [Ford Plant: The advice to take the first tour was certainly spurious, since it contained three busloads, and the second tour had a mere handful. The city bus (which I got to by way of Michigan and Shelby, asked Michigan-Wyoming and was told Dearborn, across the street. Saw a Dearborn and raped (violated?) a red light to get to it, to be referred to the Wayne) drove me to the door.] [37-38,000 people; one million dollar payroll per day.] [Newest and most automated building was built in 1941.] ["Joe Waligora for Vice P. Piss on him," greeted ten girls from Berlin Ohio High School as they entered the Dearborn Engine (Assembly) Plant. One looked over and grinned after she read it, the others gave no notice.] [Engine reaming, piston plating: one hour and 36 minutes to assemble an engine.] [Plant is incredibly full of noise of the semi-erratic percussive type --- puffs of steam, clanks of metal, clump of metal presses, whirl of drill, bang of hammer and hum of motors. Obviously it's organized and probably it's fairly clean, but it looks somehow sloppy and degrading to see coats hanging nearby.] ["Steel Operations Building." Automation HORRID.] signs chalked on walls and push carts and girders. Trucks shunted past with loaded trailers, and much of the "automatic" assembly line seemed done by hand. The line was simply to bring the right pieces to the right place, and the people did most of the work. "People" is the only way to categorize the participants of the assembly ritual. Each individual, no matter where or what they did (except for the obviously heavy work which predominantly fell to the larger younger Negro male) could have been young (people looked just out of high school) or old (some certainly ready to retire and looking ready), white (looking fairly grimy in gray clothes and gray light) or black (working anywhere: true automated integration), man (most of the line was male, all inspectors were) or female (all in slacks and male shoes and gloves), and all eight possible combinations, middle-aged white men about half the entire force of 36,000. The line was easy to follow and each person seemed to have a fairly small job, so set that they had much time to stare blankly and steadily up at the sightseers trekking through. We got back into bus and to steel plant, which I'd never seen before and it was impressive, particularly from the heat when the four flat cars rolled in beneath us, glowing redhot like an immense superheated radiator, and made looking over the side uncomfortable and the metal catwalk before hot even through the shoes. The blooming mill was great fun to watch, and the two operators were flattening a bowed ingot to show their skill in switching the horizontal rollers to the vertical rollers. The 27 stated passes to reduce a block to a 40-foot slab seemed fewer than 27, and the water looked like black graphite sliding on the orange-red surface, and head-sized fragments were chewed off the ragged ends and somehow digested underneath the machine. We walked around the side and watched the slab going away, then watched as it passed a few dozen feet along the wall and here it came back from the other direction, about 100 feet long, and as the walk turned to the right, the slab passed lengthwise along our walk, and even through my protective sunglasses it shone intensely red, and the heat was such that you simply as a matter of self-defense raised your hand against your face. We then passed machines of unknown purpose with bits of metal of unknown source and usage. This partially served as a cooling-off area, so the cool air outside was not astounding when the tour was over. Ask for transportation to Greenfield Village, but there is none, so I'm out to walk the curving road away from the offices and along highway. Ford station wagon stops and takes me directly to museum door, and I'm glad I didn't have to walk since it was quite a distance. We talk of nothing much, and I'm out to huge facade which is a replica of Independence Hall and three other buildings. Inside is chaotic, kids running and screaming everywhere, and a truly bewildering array of simply stuff [1901 Ford Racer with silver platter beneath it, catches fresh oil. Seems rather sad to see a Stradivarius, a Guarnerius and an Amati violin enclosed in glass, never to be used. From lancing boils and carbuncles, barbers got their pole: red for blood, white for bandages. Phyfe characterized by lyre on chair backs and the style used laurel garlands, lions foot, eagles wing and the saber leg. Mourning pins and broaches and rings: an odd and sick and possibly unique display. A cultivator among many on floor with Y-shaped cobweb between the handles. Boys go along the street of shops, pushing all the buttons, and all the speeches rattle off to themselves, all voices going at once, and one by one clicking off until I can hear only one, then silence again along shop-front crossing.] [Eight-acre gallery is the largest in the world.] [Home-lighting history in nine fits:
1. Grease lamps and rush lights (pine knots) 1650-1800
2. Candlelight (a luxury in colonies) 1700-1850
3. Whale oil and camphene and alcohol (turp) 1750-1850
4. Aryward and Astral (more air & chimneys) 1800-1870
5. Kerosene (coal oil) 1870-1900
6. Gas lighting 1850-1900
7. Carbon lamps 1900
8. Tungsten lamps 1925
9. Fluorescent

Pity the guards who must state angrily that the "music boxes must NEVER be played." Melodeons differ from organs in that air isn't forced OUT by bellows but bellows forms a partial vacuum and air is sucked in. Thus a melodeon is a sucker, an organ a blower. Harpsichord has no volume control since strings are plucked by quills.] [Museum johns a masterpiece of indirection. Noticed the foot button for the urinal flush, but tried the soap spigot (not working) and had to be told to step for water. Then turned and looked for paper, and it came from a recess under the mirror. They had an ordinary receptacle for the wet paper.] [Bugatti, Type 41, 1930-31, possibly one of the most impressive sporty cars ever made. JP Morgan gave gorgeous 1925 Rolls Royce. Comprehensive antique cars (200 of them) collection. Great collection of "Classic" cars. 1863 Roper "Steamer" oldest car in US. First transcontinental auto left SF June 23, 1903, reached NYC August 23; 1903 Packard.] ["Oriten" is a ten-man bicycle. "The first successful pilot of this bicycle told of the disconcerting weave of the vehicle, to say nothing of the difficulty negotiating curves." Speed 45 mph, length 23 3/4 feet, weight 305 lbs, capacity 2500 lbs. "Needed two miles of good road to get it started."] [Thought a 600-ton steam locomotive, the Allegheny, was the heaviest item on display. Then I saw the 6000 hp Gastian Engine which was used in the Ford Company from 1915-28. Weighs 750 tons. There was a HUGE mass of brick and metal to the ceiling 40 feet above and sunk 30 feet into the floor. Not ONE WORD of description --- Looks like "the oldest," later --- Elsewhere, was a 24-foot diameter flywheel. "World's most comprehensive exhibit of prime movers in the world." I can see WHY. Dynamos, motors, generators, converters, THOUSANDS of displays, IF you happen to be interested in machinery. Oil, gas, electric, steam --- thousands of things. Not only one of each, but types and varieties, by different MEN for different YEARS. For example, they had 13 "portable skid engines" period of 1900, 1865 (unsaid), 1860, 1880 (unsaid), and seven not even labeled, but which resemble the labeled "portable skid engine."] [1750 Newcomen Atmospheric Steam Pumping Engine, developed eleven horsepower, is oldest engine in Institute, and, just when I was ready to leave, they kicked everyone out at 4:40, and I almost missed guns and knives. Flintlock, percussion, Gatling, and automatic made, first automatic by Eli Whitney, the cad!] Inquire and find that the restaurant (with the outside section unfortunately closed) is open till closing time, an enlightened idea that I could have seen better in practice when I wandered, starved, in the Chicago Museum of Natural History. [The Lamplight Restaurant in Dearborn, with fluorescent tubes outlining the windows.] Looked for a good while and at 2 to the quieter restaurant (the snack bar was complex compound chaos). Ate lunch and looked more until closing time. Walked long and laborious trek back to highway, after trying a bit to hitchhike and remember feeling a bit put out that things were so rough on a nondriver and that my luck with rides seemed about gone. Bus came quickly and rode way into center of town and got off in huge blustery wind to get to the London Chophouse. Elegant in a "21" sort of way, but two women in corner booth kept yammering about other food they'd eaten and their opera-going and they spoiled the dinner a bit. Started with "Spanish melon" which was unripe cantaloupe with a lime wedge, and had some sort of chop, fairly good. No dessert because I was stuffed. Paid a rather high bill ($6?) and left to walk back to Y to read Psychopathis Sexualis a bit [The hell with "The Great Homosexual Novel." Write "THE Autosexual Novel." There never HAS been one written about it, because civilizations are never autosexual, only individuals, yet those the greatest of individuals. Christ was undoubtedly autosexual, so was James and probably Einstein and da Vinci and Michaelangelo. Aristotle PROBABLY was, and GOD could be nothing else. About time someone wrote a book about it. By definition, almost, a genius is autosexual. If ever I went back to school, auto vs. homosexuality is what I would study. ARE geniuses autosexual? And muscle builders, and performers, and every beautiful unattainable man, and hustlers, and anyone who has to be "done for"? Was Gide and James and Whitman and Anderson? What a chance to TALK to beautiful people and geniuses! What a chance to investigate the deepest part of the most complete library's "hell." What a TOPIC. And has NO book been written on it??] (amazing book) and get down to Club 1011 at 10:30, sit untalked to except by obvious pickup for money, and left disgusted and feeling rather sorry for the beautifully featured, soulful-faced fellow who sang and played the piano rather well, but everyone was too busy cruising; except for a close coterie of friends, there was little applause. Bed at 12.

THURSDAY, MAY 23. Up at 1 and mess around room until too late and grab cab to Cadillac [Cadillac has much to praise it, much to condemn it. Its lobby is smaller and more personal, its information more generous about the company (Ford had only cars --- always the hard-head approach), but the tour, scheduled for 10 am, didn't get off until 10:30. The furniture was pleasant, and an elaborate Indian-fur cover was atop the table to set off the brochures. A bit of negative, however, the table had a white sticker with the printed number 12798. Typing came from adjacent offices, and working desks could be seen off the showroom lobby. Such sights and sounds would have been unthinkable in the ultra-modern, completely refined Ford lobby. You got the feeling that any WORKERS were miles away, and they were, in the heat and roar and vibration of the factories literally miles away.] tour scheduled at 9:30 and it doesn't start till 10; I could have taken the bus. Fellow seems not to know much of what's going on and we hear great reports about the twenty-foot drop of body onto wheel-base, and spend much time looking at them putting the wheel-base together, the noise too loud for the fellow to talk above, and the artificial waterfall roars as it sucks up stray spray from some sort of protective spray of all metal parts. I see in the distance one frame coming down, get into position to see the second, and the whistle blows and the guide apologizes that they're knocking off work early today only. We go back and load him with questions, and we're out of lobby and I meet fellow from tour who swings himself along on crutches. We walk together to the bus and chat on the bus about my trip and the auto plants. He's an architect and recommends we take a look at the Consolidated Gas Building by Yamasaki, and I say fine and drop the few names I learned from JJ. The lobby is stark and clean and beautifully impressive, and we catch a car to the "Top of the Flame," move our way through the pseudo-Oriental décor to the fabulous windows that sink into the floor and marvel at the view of the city. [The WEALTH of detailed architectural beauty in Yamasaki's MacGregor Memorial Center. The dark marble of the hexagonal insert for the walkway, the water rippling in motion, with walks from island to island where he can stretch supine in the sun and she can dabble her feet and they can sail boats. The bar of light, free but for the sides, in the stairwells, and the stairs don't touch the sides. The pointed segments of in-room roofs, and accordion ceilings and walls, the huge windows with gathered drapes, the grillwork on the doors, the skylight, the beautiful attachment of the balustrade to the stairs. The marvelous connection of buildings.] Look down at Cobo Hall and am amazed to find a sign for the Spring Joint Computer Conference. We're down in elevator and over to Cobo to find that this is the last day of the conference. I part with the crutches and find the names of people from SBC, put notes up for Cathy and Barry, leave notes on the board, see that Carl is NOT there, then grab a $1.35 cheeseburger with the manager of SBC's Detroit sales office when it becomes obvious everyone's in the closing dinner and speeches. Look at some of the displays briefly and back to wait at the door as 2 pm nears, the time of the last conference. Look about the room and THERE'S Barry. Get a fix on them as the room dissolves into movement and dash toward the table to Bob Maldonado and Cathy and Barry and John McNaughton and a few other people I don't know. We chat a bit, then I decide to walk quickly behind Cathy and John into the last lecture on simulation, and it's just as much a bore as any convention conference can be. ["There have been many suggestions, some of them facetious, as to what you can do with an associative memory": AFIPS SJCC.] Out with them to the free bus to the Statler and find they're leaving this evening. Talk fast all the while and get off to get back to Y, marveling at the luck that let me tell these people I'm certainly coming back on Monday, June 4. Back to Y and fuss with schedule but finally make schedule which, infallibly, solves all my problems. Out, starved, to walk back down Woodward to the bus through the tunnel to Windsor, Ontario, Canada. One goes through in ten minutes, and I pay quarter and figure I'm getting slightly rooked as I pay in American and they pay me in 90 to the $1 Canadian money. Wander around business section and look for place to eat, having no map, but searching phone book for likely restaurants and Etna baths, and get in for delicious broasted chicken and I'm so hungry the food does seem like foreign delicacies. Decide to wander town until it's dark, go down to river front garden, with a few people cruising, and look across the waters to Detroit, across there in another country. The park is quiet and the flowers are nice and the sun is gone and the waves flop against the bank, and I'm back up Ouillette St. and stumble into Shanfield-Meyers, which I'd seen advertised in the US, and I decide I must get presents. The process is long and painful but finally I end up with a tiny silver cross and chain for Rita and china earrings and pin for Mom, which I carry along, and a Wedgwood vase which I have sent to me. A nice possession. Out and begin to look for Etna and a truly amazing merry-go-round transpires. Walk up Ouillette to 900 block, then east to where I presume the baths are. Figure I've gotten too far over or that street names have changed and double back toward river. Many buildings are torn down, and I try a couple turns and find streets blocked and closed and find NO street where THAT street should be. Tempted to go back but Laird's glowing reports drive me on. Cross over three blocks, double back, down street again, and numbers elude me. Down abandoned street again and across to backyard and ask playing kids where the street is. They think a bit and say it must be there, walk up there, and it isn't --- it's merely the main street again. Into a pastry shop and get literally a Cockney accent from a girl who doesn't know neighborhood, referred by passerby who suggests the people in the store. Wander ten blocks the third time and ask young fellow. It should be THERE. Walk ten blocks AGAIN, and feel absolutely stupid and frustrated and ready to turn back five times in the last hour. Finally stumble onto the street and the baths look horrid, only a small two-story cement block building with no windows on the ground floor, rubbish around, red limp curtains over lighted windows above, no cars, no people in or out, the solitary door forbidding and featureless. I walk past in disgust and back to the bus and to the States and up to the Y and to bed, thoroughly tired, at 11.

FRIDAY, MAY 24. Get buzz at 7:30 and get bus to Chrysler plant and finally get up nerve to ask if bus is TO the plant --- I may get to a point where I'm unafraid to ask Americans questions! The tour starts a half hour after I arrive and the tour consists of four easterners (Indonesian?) and myself. I catch up on Post until tour comes, and the tour is made memorable when one of the buxom "water inspectors" invites me into the car to go through the falls. The sensation is great and the car leaky enough to show me how she marks up her sheet. They make an obscene comment about my getting out of there without being raped and the tour continued, this time following mainly the body work. We saw a lot of bodies being dropped here, but from above, a rather odd view. I get back out to bus stop and ask next bus driver which ones go way out on the point, and am told the Jefferson Beach. Ride out Jefferson Beach and the residential area puts even the Millionaire's Row in Houston to shame. The truly great houses are visible only down a long verdant driveway where the gates to the castle are visible, beyond which is Lake Michigan. The bus is full of maids and cleaning ladies, but the sun is bright, the yacht club looks nearly newly hewn, and dozens of gardeners are primping the immense lawns. After a while the endless splendor becomes trying. I no longer identify with such wealth. I wouldn't want to live in such anti-Baroque (far from the subject being greater than the frame, here the occupant is made positively silly in the over-lush surroundings), and I fear the trip has jaded me for good. Out to the end, around a curve that looks like it passes Stan Hywet sitting on a private 18-hole golf course with the entire lake as a swimming pool, and we're in sub-suburbia, into tract lands and dusty gas stations and lovely kids getting out of newly-built schools. I pay the fare again and as the trip winds back the same way I almost spend more time looking at the Negro eating his sandwich and drinking his chocolate milk from a half-pint bottle than I spend looking at the wealth that automobiles have created here. Change busses and ride up to Wayne State and am dazzled with the beauty of the Yamasaki student center and complex. Untiringly beautiful buildings. And the students were nice to rub shorts with. Walk back via the library mural [Good quote by Disraeli on Detroit Library "mural": "He who has long been intimate with one great author will always be found to be a formidable antagonist. He has shaped his faculties insensibly to himself by his model and he is like a man who ever sleeps in his armor."] and the history museum, much like all civic history museums --- boring except a bit of brightness as the huge model railroad set came alive with one tiny train for a group of enraptured school kids. Across to the Art Museum, and the Detroit Museum of Art is outstanding [Another full-size Thinker outside the Detroit Art Museum.] [For "eternal gloss" on painting, why not try tempera on Saran Wrap, and when dry, turn over and Saran Wrap will always shine?] [Most magnificently malely beautiful face in "Portrait of a man" by Baron Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1833). Why don't people like Bougereau (1825-1905)? He seems uniformly bright, airy, with wonderful light and child's complexions. An honest to gosh Fuseli "The Nightmare" Blake-like. From a 17th century Georgian (Caucasian) "Epitaphsis Sindon" used to cover the ceremonial bier of Christ on Good Friday, I see where Ter-Artunian got angels for "The Flood." Sienese paintings 1390-1450 have such featureless backgrounds.] ["The Adoration with Two Angels" by Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonard da Vinci is HERE. Bought in 1957, amazing unfinished, with three heads by Leonardo who at that time made noses MUCH too large.] [Eleanora da Toledo and her son, Don Carlo, by Bronzino, VERY similar to the Mother and Son in Cincinnati. Interesting head of "The Resurrected Christ" by Botticelli, greenish-yellow face, beautifully featured, and a wound in the left hand just like a delicate upper lip print in red, with a scar-shadow of the lower lip only faintly darker than the rest.] [Have a marvelous time running my damp warm hands over the muscles of the cold dry bronze of "Mars" and "Neptune" by Sansovina (1486-1570). Beautiful bodies of about 3 feet high, and calves JUST round enough to get your hand around. Great feeling.] [In a very small Madonna and Child by Correggio, the child looks much like a scrawny white monkey.] [And, by golly, a John Zoffany, RA "Love in a Village."] ["Judith and Holofernes" by Artemisia Gentileschi looks much like it could have been painted by the painter of "The Gypsies" --- de la Tour --- they have his "St. Sebastian Nursed by St. Irene."] [Even worse than the men who wash and dry their hands after urinating are the ones who only dry them.] [Come ON, a sword blade with a calendar on both sides? For use in years 1576-1579, six months on each side.] [Probably the MOST elaborate wrought-iron screen ever made, designed by Thomas Hastings of Carrere and Hastings, architects of NY, and made by German and Hungarian ironworkers under the supervision of the late Edward Caldwell of NY --- six men, one year.] Bus back to Y, and walk over to the Masonic Temple prepared to stand in line (with Mort d'Arthur) to get good standing room, and eat dinner in the restaurant on the corner and compare notes a bit with Ron Sequoio, who is very faggoty indeed but an interesting face. He tells of boredom of tours and that the cast usually goes to the Diplomat for the show, or the Woodward for cruising. Nice to know. Pity I bought the ticket because he has some standing room also, and he tells me to watch his dance with Marina; I should have told him I probably knew his name, probably should have taken his ticket. Oh, well. Into hall and read and doors open and stand in back and read more, and some of the fellow standees are nice, but intermission I sit down until end of Act 1. Then girl with slight foreign accent walks up and asks "Are you standing?" "Yes." "I have a seat down here" and it's good and she gives me whole ticket as usherette glares up to me. We talk and I'm from Ohio and innocent, up on Computer Conference, and she's by comparison a woman of the world. A lesbian? Her girlfriend "had a date" and couldn't take her seat. I ask her out afterward and she promises to think what we could do. At the end of the mediocre "Boris" she leads me to car, and I suggest "Top of the Flame" and we park across the street and walk to the elevator and sneer at the décor, and she's afraid of heights and we have drink and talk and I'm hungry and she says, "Let's not eat here, it's too expensive." So we're into car and out east to a Greek restaurant for salads and shish-kebab and she's fun to talk with. We seem to be fencing, both merely friendly, and she says "I could show you some of the lesbian bars in town," and drives me to the Y, where I get her phone number and say I might call her tomorrow if we want to see "Beggar's Opera." OK. Into Y at 2:30 and the nicely-bodied fellow from down hall is in shower and I can't resist. I make remark about his living here and say, "You must have been propositioned many times" "You want to do something tonight?" he asks, and "Yeah," I say, feigning (ha) innocence. "I'd sure like to get my rocks off." "OK, come to my place." He comes in in towel and I take it off and look at him, cursing mentally because I don't have a shower, smell awful, and he's so fastidiously clean he must loathe touching me. I play with him and he has nice body and we embrace standing and he puts it between my legs and begins pumping, heads on shoulders. He wants to fuck me and I say no, and he's surprised, then lays on back on bed. I try to get him to take mine but he definitely won't, and that's a pity. He's nicely shaped and large and I play and play and play with him and he tenses and jerks and acts like a real enjoyable hot-rocks. He comes and wipes on towel and looks at me strangely as he leaves. I get to bed at 3:30, feeling off. [Thoughts at 3 am: I must be terribly sadistic to try to prolong time before orgasm so long when I do someone or jerk someone off. OR, possibly, I want them to feel impotent and worry about their virility when they can't come as I constantly shift gears. I'm thus attracted to the virility of men, and want them to have NONE when they leave me, thus I will absorb their virility, possibly in the hopes of building mine, which subconsciously I may not think is too high; by my hatred of being considered a woman or being "used like a woman" and by my own fear of "not coming" and lack of potency. WOW.] [Answer to age-old questions: Adam and Eve did NOT have navels, because they were created (Adam was, anyway --- more primal question, does God have a penis? --- answer would probably be no, God has no body) to God's image (spiritually) and GOD has no navel (though, more primarily, from the above fact: God has no BODY).] [How many angels can dance on the head of a pin: ALL of them could, but I doubt if they WOULD.]

SATURDAY, MAY 25. Up at 10 and decide to spend the day writing, [New biological question: does man have an ODD number of ribs?] shifting schedule around a bit, figuring to leave on Tuesday, write Mom that, and get down to cafeteria for quick snack at 1:30 and the waitress is interesting about her kids getting married and relatives. Real pleasant talker. Up to write but feel listless and lay on bed 2:30-4:30. If I have these low sleepy periods at home, why not on trip? Call Eili at 6, and she says she'd rather not see Beggar's Opera as she just SAW opera, Met, in PM, and wanted to keep this as last reference, not the university's probably inferior singing. OK. She suggested "How to Succeed" and I suggested it would be sold out, and to my relief when she called back, it WAS. She suggested a few which I'd seen and then came to "Divorce, Italian Style." She said it was good --- she'd seen it before. I tried weakly to argue her out of it, but she insisted. I dressed and caught bus up the ubiquitous Woodward to 9-Mile, then another to 11-Mile, and bought a comb and there she was. The movie was good and she seemed to enjoy it a second time. To car, wondering what to do, and we ended up at "Fox and Hounds" an English-villa type thing, and confused the car-parker who, of course, broke with tradition to go to the driver's side to let the female out. Fun. Into the bar and talked about odd-eyed couple across from us, obviously brother and sister, ringless, and they know we were talking about them. We felt hungry after a bit and went into dining room for a meal. It was Prom night and for the next hour and a half we were entertained as the place cleared out of "regulars" and a steady stream of gawky girls in immense chiffon poufs of tulle and crinoline and satin with greasy-faced, awkward boys in dinner jackets and starched fronts paraded past us. We both sat and grinned in our dark tailored suits and felt like the receiving line as they stepped up toward our tables and the lights lit up the dresses from the stair treads, and they lumened like gauzy Christmas tree bulbs. We made an even division. She looked at all the girls and I looked at all the fellows. Many of the trousers didn't fit, and many times the legs were lost in the billows from the girl, so I didn't crotch watch, just the faces, some scrubbed so that the broken pimples shone, other fellows with the look of maturity and tall heads with broad shoulders supporting the plaid-collared dinner jackets and their fancy cummerbunds. The service was lousy, the food was decently good, and I had pork chops and she shrimp, and the potatoes in butter were good. We joked at their stiffness and laughed with ease, but inwardly we were also still a bit awkward with the show we were putting on for each other and for the bit of envy that we both held (possibly each for the partner of the opposite sex). The meal passed in a constant turn of necks, and then out to the car to aimless wanderings. She wanted to show me the Northland shopping center, and did so, it looked like a huge square unlit factory in the midst of its empty parking lots. We seemed to drive aimlessly all over the map, and we decided that Woodward and 6-Mile was a good place to drop me, but it seemed to take ages to get there. Was she looking or waiting for something? I hope not. Onto corner at 2:30 and wait for bus, and long ride down now familiar Woodward, and to Y at 3 am.

SUNDAY, MAY 26. Up at 10. [Photo: Group going into church on bright sunny Sunday morning, man looking wistfully at golfer with clubs in toter standing on corner to cross street.] [On upper Woodward, around 14000 block, there's the "S & M Appliance" store front.] Take bus to zoo and marvel at the black-jeaned boy, strong chest showing through open shirt, who says "hi" as he pauses in his waving cars into the parking lot before the zoo parking shows up for 50. Look around at the entrance and see that the train is just about to leave. Pay 50 and hop on and get a fast view of the spread-out zoo, [South American tapir has a short TRUNK very like an elephant's. Wolverine is MOST vicious of vicious weasel family. "Hey, bear (polar bear), gimme your white coat and I'll give you some money." Girl to father, looking at train: "Why aren't they WALKING?" Egyptian wall statues in giraffe exhibit quite effective.] ["There are authenticated cases of reticulated pythons eating people. They do not crush their prey but instead suffocate them by constricting their chest and lungs. Five largest snakes and their KNOWN maximum lengths are:
Anaconda South America 37 feet
Reticulated Python Asia 33 feet
African Rock Python Africa 25 feet
Amethystine Python Aust & New Guinea 22 feet
Indian Rock Python Asia 20 feet"] [The alligator lay stoically, like an Indian god with a jewel in his forehead, with a penny between the eyes that someone had thrown.] [Bare-throated bellbird sounds not so much like a bell as a creaking hinge on a huge iron gate, swinging gratingly back and forth.] ["Brother and sister" from Fox and Hounds have three KIDS.] [Dossin Great Lakes Museum not even mentioned, maybe because not worth seeing? Or too new?] built around an immense central pool with a fountain upheld by highly unlikely bears. Wind around the park and get used to exchanging left for right as I'm riding backwards and facing commentator who is facing front, but he's in the back and when he points to things and HE sees them, I see them. There are only three sections the train doesn't cover: the reptile house, the ape house, and the bird house. I get off at the further one and walk through, saliva-dripping at cute males looking at the animals --- I might even be content to sit in one of the cages and look at the "animals" that walk past. Grough! And look in amazement at the group of 3 bodybuilders, shirtless, with bulks of muscles around the parking lot afterwards. Was worried about not fitting zoo AND Belle Isle AND the pictures into the day, but with the tour I was out of the zoo at 12 and onto Belle Isle about 1:30 on a hot, busy Sunday afternoon. Rode the bus around until the Great Lakes Museum popped up and I hopped off. Through that quickly, and through the small old educational [Oldest public aquarium in western Hemisphere on Belle Isle, open to public August 18, 1904. "Age: In captivity catfish have lived 60 years, an eel has lived 55 years; and carp have lived 47 hears. In the wild very few fish live over ten years."] [Salt-water fish DRINK water and have poor kidneys to keep from drying out, since blood is less concentrated than salt water. Fresh-water fish reject water and have effective kidneys to keep from drowning, since blood is more concentrated than fresh water.] [The Detroit Art Museum was excellent, worthy of the top five cities, but the aquarium was hardly anything and the conservatory hardly ranked with even FIVE best.] aquarium, and to the conservatory, where again I couldn't resist following fellows who had their shirts off. The conservatory was typical [How about growing orchids in my apartment??] [In the palm house kids saying with fearful delight "Now we're in the JUNgle," and giving croaks and screams of birds and jungle noises. As per usual it has fern room (fernery), cactus room, tropical room, palm or tree room, and show room (with unimaginative BLAZE of color).] I look at trolley tour through island but see sign for bicycle rental and decide that's for me. Rent one and take off on the highway, stopping off for shirtless canoers sexing up streams. Up to northern tip of the island, which is very little above water, and look at golf course and see boats cruising past on river. The bicycle is effortless, un-English, and convenient. The northern part of the island is given over to the Coast Guard, and I get tired following shore and take off into lovely forests. The light is nice but the island is too crowded to permit silence. To shore again for a bit of boat races, watch shirtless (think I have a fetish?) handball players sweating it out before a leopard-bikinied blond, and down to the south tip of the island where I grab a Good Humor and park bike and sit on rocks, pretending not to disturb fishermen, and look at waves from passing boats and all of Detroit there on the horizon. Onto bike and peddle around huge terraced fountain, and back to whiz past traffic-jammed cars and have little trouble with cars at all, except when they back out of parking spaces. Give up bike after almost two hours and back to shore to watch boats race [Boating, cycling, horses, baseball, tennis, badminton, handball, motorboat racing, swimming, sunning, picnicking, necking, walking, fishing, yachting, driving, swinging, sliding, teetering, drinking, watching flowers and fish and boats, pony carting, merry-go-rounding, kicking ball, foot wetting, wading, pram rolling (and Good Humor Creamsicles only 10), cricket, depth kissing, ballgame listening, and shirt removing and muscle showing, ball throwing, rock climbing, Coast Guarding, Nike sitting, motorcycling, golf driving, burning food to the gods in white smoke, all these in park.] --- it gets quite a bit of coverage in the next day's paper, but I couldn't see the worthwhility of the fuss. [If you back out now, mister, your name is crotch-itch.] [Passed three jigs in a Jag.] [Four guys, shirtless, young, etc. dunking each other out of canoes into shallow stream.] ["The wind is picking up, folks; we might have some action this heat." Won't people watch unless they're promised blood?] [Detroit Boat Club, Detroit Yacht Club, and Detroit Golf Course.] [Memorial statue of Hazen S. Pingree in Grand Circus Square in Detroit: now how many people know that little-known fact?] [At the zoo, the human animal competed rather strongly for my personal perusal instead of the irrational animal. At the aquaplane runs there was no competition at all, even though I missed the splash when an aquaplane cracked into a crash boat which had gone outside the turn buoys.] Wait for the bus and back to the mainland and walk two stops back and get a window seat back to the Y. Change busses again after leaving junk off at Y, and up to 6-Mile again for "Critic's Choice" and "The Hook," not bad double. [Critic's Choice: "I'm a dog and you've been like a mother to me."] Take caramel corn in to salve heavy hunger and get out with little money left except a $100 traveler's check that'll be hard to cash. Bus down (it feels as though I LIVE on Woodward St. bus) and eat at Mayflower coffee shop for last money and leave no tip and get rather disgusted to bed at 12, tired and ready to get back to NYC.

MONDAY, MAY 27. Spend last dime calling Ford, and yes the assembly-line tour is going. They didn't return dime as Telephone people had Saturday when I called about a tour they said wasn't going, then asked for my number and cheerily plinked my dime back at me. I didn't even have enough for bus fare, and I walked down Woodward to many banks, but they all opened at 10, so I walked back up Woodward to the other bank and finally got cash once more. Down to catch bus to Ford plant and get out on a tour of assembly plant and steel plant again. The assembly plant a bit of a bore, finally [A decision I'd made earlier (to stay in Detroit Monday) was remade for me on Monday morning after I made a list of things I wanted to see in Akron. I debated leaving for Toledo on Monday. I left it as follows: if the Ford assembly line was running, I would go to Ford, if it wasn't I would go to Toledo. The assembly line, the Special Events voice said, WAS on the tour.] [Fink's coveralls: "They wear like a pig's nose."] [Sea Era Lounge.] [Very good: one gas station had "Discount Pump, No Stamps." Let the DRIVER make the choice.] [FORD car every 54 seconds. Telephone system in Rouge second only to system in Pentagon. Free shuttle from parking lots (longest 1 mile) to plant. Ford, also, is done strictly by order, so I guess ALL are. 19.8 hours to assemble an auto. 12,000 parts in Ford. 49 men for final assembly --- from Body Drop a man added to Drive-off. The Ford tour bus was made by GM.] Out about 11:30, the steel plant seemingly not so "hot" as before, but it still felt that glass frames might melt. Walk the long way to Greenfield Village [Edison was really prolific: 1876-86 came electric light, phonograph, mimeograph, telephone transmitter, radio tube, and others."] [From the Laboratory/ of Thomas A Edison/ Orange, N.J.(Posted April 26, 1914.): "Friend Ford, The injurious agent in cigarettes comes principally from the burning paper wrapper. The substance thereby formed is called "Acrolein." It has a violent action on the nerve centers, producing degeneration of the cells of the brain, which is quite rapid among boys. Unlike most narcotics this degeneration is permanent and uncontrollable. I employ no person who smokes cigarettes. Yours, Thos A. Edison."] [Clock nearby with block of wood for face and bob and no words.] [Millers were valuable, and exempt from taxes and military duty. Mills (54 feet) had brake so miller could climb out in winds and remove excess canvas. A bit overdone: Carver's tribute read by Negro, McGuffey's by a Scotchman, etc.] [Idyllic settings as goats brayed and cows mooed and ducks and geese and swans bumbled about lawns and swam in pools, followed by their tiny grey (geese) and yellow (ducks) offspring. Rabbits hopped in the grass or fled under porches at my approach. Goats ate leaves off trees and birds sang in trees and every fifteen minutes the old, clear, off-tune clock gave off antique sounds. It was dim and windy, and the animals nosed a weather change, and about 3:45 it began misting slightly, somehow adding to the "authenticity" of the recreation of past times.] ["Here we spin the niddy-noddy; has two heads and just one body" for flax.] and this time no one picked me up. Am thus a bit tired and the $1.25 entry seems steep. It looks like it might rain, the streets are fairly empty, the women seem reluctant to talk, and it's terrible listening, alone, to someone talking only to you, something they've said hundreds of times before. MUCH better if there's a group and at least the guide has the various faces to look at. About the nicest one was the gal in the post house who startled me because I didn't think she was there. I went through with more a sense of duty than anything else, but enjoyed picking up the bayberry and beeswax honey candles and the miniature cars. Many of the "Make things" were closed down; it began to rain and other places closed up. They did have an amazing amount of material but all somehow sterile and lifeless. Anyone who reads the guidebook with even a bit of imagination can get as much out of the book as out of the baldly displayed real thing. Some of the items in the jewelry shop were interesting, for example, and nothing could describe the hectic lunch with groups of school kids on wooden benches in a strong wind, either, but on the whole Greenfield Village was starkly inhuman. Rained as I walked out and I glared inwardly at the cars not picking me up as I walked to the bus stop. The day was clammy inside the bus and I refused to dry. Back to the Y and probably had another talk with the intense-eyed fellow at the end of the hall who went to IBM school, wanted to take his girl to opera, and figured with reluctance that a 19-year-old girl was probably too young for me and that I probably didn't want to double-date with him. I might have attempted to tell him what he really might have liked, but he was terribly thin, seemed to have no interest at all, and simply found living in the Y cheap, rather than a downright experience. Went in to shit and found one toilet full. Used the other and found the water didn't work. Ugh. Wrote a bit and out to the $1.19 steakhouse, and watched the people walk by on the rainy street, then back and wrote some more and prepared to say goodbye to my last strange city and state. Still the water didn't work and I got a drink from another floor and went to bed after trying to pack a bit at 10.

TUESDAY, MAY 28. Up at 6 and still no water, and the urge to move is on [The urge to move is ON. Leave call for 6:30 to get 8 am bus to Toledo and wake at 5:35 and toss and stew and worry about what may have happened in NYC, and get up at 5:50 to get the 7:30 bus to Toledo. There's no water, so no shower, and bag is overfull so I make it worse by packing sloppy, and check out and catch a cab because I don't feel like lugging suitcase. Again get non-NY reaction to being told "Thanks" for paying the 60 fare, and a surprised "Thanks again" for a 10 tip. In NY, vituperation would have been hurled along with the dime at my head. Time for breakfast, though, and I need the time as the coffee shop is crowded and the waitress does things so minutely (takes order and gets food, asking for cream in coffee and lettuce and tomato on each hamburg) there's a long wait. The two Amish fellows sit stoically, giving an unblinking impression behind their simple gold-rimmed round glasses. Their black hair long over ears and their beards make them stand out, and to join the pair of men, a pair of women and little girls, all round-faced and pudgy, but the older woman particularly with a humorous round fat face, slightly flushed, and huge round eyes perfectly reflected in her huge round eyeglass lenses. She peered pigeon-like at the two men and it appeared that they may not know each other, but like meeting sailors from the same ship, warily sniffing around each other in curiosity for their kind. The women stared over with a half-smile habitually fixed on her wet lips, and you could almost hear and feel bubbly chuckles running through her flabby flesh. They had no compunctions (the men) about belching aloud and each of them gurgled and, pursing the lips properly, rumbled gas into the morning air. A woman sat next to them (the women) and asked "What order are you in?" The woman closest, glassless and cowlike as a nun, looked over at the fat glassed one, then back at the woman, taking her time. "Amish." The sleepy fellow next to me, rubbing his face after the waitress told him to quit mumbling, asked me to "Please hand me over the sugar." And the bus was called and I got on the almost fully window-seated bus. The fellow behind me will probably add an item to my list of dislikes: Those who rattle their false teeth in their mouths, making a sound like someone chewing plastic lifesavers.] Get cab to bus station and wait for bus [From Detroit you must go north and west, on Edsel Ford Expressway, to go southeast, to Toledo. Highest number was 28919 Telegraph Road, in Detroit. That changed to 14931, though still in Michigan. End of Michigan, start of Ohio, is VERY flat, but broken by lakes and streams and trees all over the place. On Toledo Cinerama marquee: "How the West / Was Won / With 24 Great Stars". Oh, so THAT'S how they did it.] On and through Michigan and into Ohio and into Toledo. Dump bag into storage and walk back up the way the bus came down, to 20th Street and beyond, to see the large white rambling Toledo Museum of Art. Pick up a map for 10 and wander into the unlit halls. Before long I get into the habit of turning on the light as I enter a room, sometimes pleasantly surprising somebody already in the room, walking in a circle about the room, reading the book-page length comments on most of the pictures, playing the recorded notes that are present in every major room once or twice, and then, if no one remains in the room, turning the light off as I leave, [I must say I like Thomas Cole. His "Architect's Dream" very much my dream. One property of a mobile should be that in no configuration is its mobility impeded by any other part. Cole isn't nearly so good with landscape.] [Gustave Doré has a beautiful touch with color in "Scottish Highlands." John Martin almost a match for Cole: his "Destruction of Tyre" wonderfully SF and purple. There were three "Le Nains." Mathieu seemed fairly tall, as his "The Family Dinner" was ABOVE table height. Octavina is a miniature harpsichord, why oh why aren't they made today? Museum has many great pieces --- "The Crowning of St. Catherine" by Rubens, Cosimo de Medici by Bronzino, an excellent Rembrandt self-portrait, a beautiful red, yellow, blue Christ in Gethsemane by El Greco. Fillippo Lippi introduced the smile into Florentine art. Hugely luminous Adoration of the Child by Piero di Cosimo. John Constable in 1824 painted "Arundel Mill and Castle" with profuse dots of white to show the presence of light and moisture. This created furor in Paris Salon of 1824, and he influenced Manet greatly. Giovanni Bellini, in "Christ Carrying the Cross," far better than his brother Gentile, in "St. Jerome." Gainsborough started with landscapes and turned to portraits for a living. In later life he wrote "I'm sick of portraits, and wish very much to take my viola da gamba, and walk off to some sweet village, where I can paint landscapes and enjoy the fag-end of life in quietness and ease."], to the delight of guards wandering the halls. The museum has some good paintings, but I'm sufficiently uninterested in glass to be unimpressed by their collection, though I am impressed that Toledo seems to proclaim itself the glass center of the US. Out to the street about 12:30 and catch a bus and ask where to catch the next bus to the zoo. Change busses and out along the river to the zoo [Toledo Zoo really its "natural center" with Museum of Natural History, Aquarium, zoo, wild-animal acts, barnyard, conservatory and amusement park, and even playhouses for summer theater.], and the gates are open though all signs say 50. The aquarium is closed, all announcements point to the wild-animal act in the amphitheater, but I'm content to wander the older, compact zoo, looking at everything and everyone, dropping into the small museum of natural history, startling a couple kissing in the conservatory, picking up hot dogs and peanuts and soda and creamsickles and move along the quiet animals. [Damp wet warm moist clammy Toledo seemed to want to give a pretaste of the sultry summer in NYC. It rained an hour and sunned the next and streets and sidewalks steamed moisture. I'm getting, I think, what I shall call the Paris syndrome, for the place I first identified it. I'm homesick for New York and anxious to get back. Add to this an up-to-the-ears-with-sightseeing feeling, and I find myself going through things intrinsically interesting (like Paris, or this time, the Toledo Art Institute) and knowing, somehow, that it IS interesting, and being dimly intellectually interested, but being completely unable to generate the EMOTIONAL interest so necessary to really enjoyable sightseeing. Like merely "Just going through the motions" with deep French kissing without feeling ONE BIT interested or excited, only vaguely intellectually interested. And steamy humid weather helps this feeling along.] It begins to rain as I decide to make the 4 pm bus out of Toledo, and anyway I've lost 15 at the behest of hungry animals into nonworking animal food machines --- I think I'll go into that business --- make a fortune that way. Get back to the station in plenty of time to ignore the announcer who says "Stay inside until the bus is called" but who's to say this to such a world traveler? Anyway it's cooler outside and I stand with a dozen others for Akron, and I'm playing with a small green caterpillar who had the ability to spin webs from my fingers. Onto bus and pass through pleasant towns ["Going to Akron?" "Yeah, common on." "No, no, I'm goin to Fort Wayne." "T'other direction, ma'am."] [Tally Ho Hall on Jefferson leads me to sing, "Hallelujah, Hallelujah."] [I went from Portland to Akron by way of Toledo, and Toledo to Akron by way of Oregon.] [Sign on the Saratoga Bar and Grill in Fremont: "Sandwiches --- You bet the're good."] [The gaunt expressman walked picking his feet high and pivoting them wildly around the ankle in the plane of his direction, but swings his arms not at all. At the end of these bony veined arms hung huge hands, with a lacing of veins so thick an inch above the knuckles, with reddened fingers, he looked like he wore half-gloves.] [Bellevue and Norwalk sure are beautiful towns I pass through. Huge old mansions set in huge old trees along highway, all green and familial. Norwalk terminal typical of stupid ones: far from center of town, out on highway, in some stupid drive-in. Small sign just before Medina: "Free manure, help yourself."] [Pass Medina, 15 miles to Akron, nothing that I RECALL. Route 18 completely foreign so far. 13 miles, still nothing but on Medina Road, crossing Ridge Road which sounds familiar but nothing to see to remember. Pass Coddingville, 11 miles, nothing. Stony Hill, nothing. Strange motel on Market. Eight miles to Sheraton, nothing. Hametown sounds familiar. Sign to Crystal Lake sounds good, but still nothing to see. Montrose Drive-in --- know that I've never seen it? Fairlawn Village not at all. Junction 176 --- Holiday Inn never seen. THEN the Chanticleer and I know where I am --- Themely's new. Fairlawn Plaza shopping familiar. IN Akron when I'm sure it's West Market, and Fairlawn Golf Course, and I'm IN Akron, and Manner's!] [She's sure got a heavy-handed foot.] ["Please pass / Mrs. Smith's Pies," very good on back of truck (left).] and get very close to Akron indeed before I recognize any part of it. The ride is quite delicious with anticipation and the ride down Market finds me again wide awake to touring. Things have changed quite a bit but are paradoxically still the same. Proportions and distances seem wrong rather than details. I've remembered each building rather precisely but not so much the juxtaposition of the building; though the buildings are right, the vistas are wrong. Get to bus station about 6:30 and call Mom quickly after getting change from paper man. Rita answers first and Mom gets on and bawls me out for staying "a whole week in Detroit but only three days here." "Do you want me to leave right now?" I ask menacingly, half not in jest. I decided to take taxi but she says she'll come get me if I want --- probably only because I said I'd take taxi first. I'm up to men's room to wash and clean up a bit and by golly if there isn't cruising there, in good old Akron, Ohio! My old home town! To cab and drive down Brown Street via Exchange and much seems changed there, especially impressed with the four-story glass and brick medical office building going up on Cole and Brown, removing for good any trace of the old haunted house or the daughter's place. Home and Mom's on the porch and kiss and Rita tries to avoid kiss, but I do it anyway. Sit and talk and unpack and give jewelry and cars and candles and make sure they got other things and talk about trip and school and Mom and her minor inner problems. I eat a bit and talk more, then get to bed around 12, feeling strange in my old room --- after getting the cot up from the cellar causes many laughs.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 29. Up with Mom and have French toast, good, and Mom drives me to Brown and Exchange and I walk to Akron U. Meet Mrs. Blankenship and Miss Hamlen and get up to Helen and we talk about Greg having an 80 IQ and Rita being good and Helen is a regular bitch as she hollers at student assistants and makes snide remarks and untrusting innuendoes. She praises her degree work, and I tell her a bit about trip. We're waiting for Marion but finally she appears not to be appearing, and I call Dr. Sumner and leave word, and call Dr. Thackeray and say I'll get there sometime. Walk across to Buchtel Hall and greet a plumper Doc Sumner and we talk and he's as usual full of stories: about the Phi Delts who enjoyed Mardi Gras by getting towel on fire on grate, one fellow burning foot, other fellow sitting on the roasting grate. And about playing Funeral March during showing of TV grades and then, as a repayment, "JOY to the World," at some point in the next session. And found out that the piano in the lounge was painted orange because someone looked at the gaudy lounge color scheme and said sarcastically "Next they paint the piano orange." And they did. Doc is perfect for things like that. Then to Physics building (after lunch with Sumner in the cafeteria) and Drs. Thackeray and Fouts are both there, and conversation drags terribly as we bring up old names and they take me on a tour of the lab and show off new equipment squeezed in side by side with the same old moldering items that had been old when FOUTS was born, and they told of the bargains picked up at the lab's equivalent of the bargain basement sources. And the reactor hadn't worked for months because a radiation counter was broken. These two almost wreck my day. But it's 1:30 and I look at watch and say "must go," and to Main Street, good old decaying Main Street, and wait 35 minutes for West Market-Sand Run bus and get off at ILGWU, enter through second floor way, and get to Mom. She introduces me to fellow fellow-workers and talk is stilted, but then I see Delores and Evelyn Thornton and Edna and Bill Lawyer and down to first floor where white-haired Helen Kapel thinks I look wonderful. Shake hands with Shafer and Mitchell, both looking like hoods, and Mrs. McClurg and Florence Pittenger ogle over me. To basement for others whose names I can't remember, and worse than that, confuse one with another, and Henry comes up and slaps me on back and Mom types letter for me (recommended by Cathy in Chicago) (she paid my LA traffic ticket, too), and we leave for Grandma's, stopping for groceries and candy that I buy for Grandma. Rita's there already and dinner is good and Grandma shows great sense of humor and soon Mom will look older than Grandma. We talk long and laughingly and then home while Mom sleeps and Rita and I play Careers, an interesting enough game, though more infantile that I'd thought. Bed at 11.

THURSDAY, MAY 30. Coming into the home stretch. The morning is spent in stupid argument as Marion wants me to see Greg and Gary, but doesn't want us for dinner that Henry would have to cook. Helen and Jim are theoretically busy, and Grandma had us over already, so what's to be done on a Memorial Day when Mom has nothing to cook? We fuss back and forth and finally I call Grandma and ask her to go to cemetery and then to dinner. Grandma says no, no, but then, to my relief, says OK. Mom picks flowers and I know it's a pretty skimpy bouquet, but say nothing. But Grandma says a lot, and Mom and her bicker and bite to cemetery. There's a crowd and as usual no one knows where anyone's buried, things are rusted, everyone has nice flowers and the little unopened bouquet looks terrible. As quibbling goes on I feel ready to drop through earth. Finally we kneel and pray, and back to car and drive around to see Enoch Raski, and cars are coming in wrong direction and parked wrong and place is terrible mess, finally we can laugh a bit, but it's certainly forced. Out to look for a place to eat but direction and memories are confused and everyone screams in quiet desperation and Rita starts to sulk and Grandma goes falsetto and I laugh half-hysterically. Finally we end up on Waterloo for good salad and steak and dessert; with food in stomach things are better. We take Grandma home and drive to Marion's for only a bit, and somehow (lose track of family fuss) we're over to Helen's. Helen is shocked to see us, partly because Jim, who had to study so hard, took off to Youngstown, and partly because we tell her kids are coming over. We sit on lawn, talking, and kids are over and we play games and then eat in kitchen and continue to play. Everyone says Greg is taken with me, and I hope it's not near as badly as I was taken with his father and uncle. At his place he shows me in quick succession his model planes, his skeleton, his homemade radio, his neat room, his half-finished Soap Box Derby, his submarine, his tadpole, his games and his heart on his sleeve. Greg doesn't SEEM to have IQ 80 --- Gary, rather. I feel terribly tired and Jim comes in and we talk fast and furious and he shows his "Who's Who" entries and gives me pen and shakes and talks and Helen fusses and says she'll see me tomorrow at station. Mom leaves and Marion and Henry drive home and leave Henry and Gary off, so Greg and Rita and Marion and I make strange quartet eating custard and getting home at 9. I start packing and get to bed at 11. I've been doing almost the impossible, seeing all the relatives, seen Akron U, seen much of the city, talked Mom out about her operations and troubles and boy friends and refrigerator and car and porch and insurance and talked Rita out about school and ambitions. I'm tired and happy, and everybody, I'm sure, is glad I'm leaving the next day because not one of us could stand the tension of my strange presence any longer. I also did a tiny bit of writing and caught up on a whole lot of Superman comic books (and somewhere in the middle rode around Firestone Park, looking at Mom's old home, and the old store, and the schools and libraries, etc) and saw by some of the SF comics that cocks were certainly coming back into view. It'll be rough on impressionable kids like me, again, to see pleasingly filled crotches on our space heroes. Surprisingly, I sleep well that night.

FRIDAY, MAY 31. Wake at 6:45 and cut off alarm set for 7, finish packing and eat quick breakfast and wake Rita to kiss her goodbye and kiss Mom goodbye and out into waiting cab and to bus station. It's cruisy, and I look at lovely creatures sleeping around me. Helen comes in and takes my picture patting greyhound, and we talk and she gives me apple and kiss her goodbye and onto bus and she takes picture and we're off. Through foggy early Ohio morning and finally sun comes up and towns pass by and Ohio turnpike cruises on, and cross to Pennsylvania and my stomach turning somersaults as the last day is here [Sweat to mile 239 in Ohio and miles 1-358 in Pennsylvania. 29 exits float past, get off at 30th. At Delaware Memorial Bridge. Count by weeks until two, then count by days, until two, then count by hours until two, then by ten minuteses until two, then by minutes until THERE. New Jersey from mile 50 to mile 115, and exits 6 - 16.] Into Pittsburgh and have two-hour wait. Eat lunch heartily, but food sometimes sticks in throat. I can't write, I can't read, I only look at lovely people and count minutes to bus leaving. Finally it does leave and last lap is by far the worst. Miles creep on, creep on, across Pennsylvania, and we get very close to Philadelphia, but then turn north and go across the bridge and I check off another state and there's only New Jersey left. It's cloudy and the sun's gone and the last miles creep into New York. [Ugh --- "Gasoline / Snack Bar."] I fidget at window and chew my insides up and the ten-mile posts sweep past on the Jersey turnpike and I can see ever so faintly, across the mist, the New York skyline, then the drive into Lincoln Tunnel and I almost burst in anticipation of the blue marker separating New Jersey from New York. [Then the Lincoln Tunnel, and I sit up in seat gasping for the line which takes me into New York State and New York City and New York County, and I'M HOME.] [AND NOT ONLY THAT, HEY, BUT I'M FINISHED WITH THESE NOTEBOOKS!] I have a headache of anticipation, and my stomach is in knots. Then we pass it and I sink back in seat and feel that THE TRIP IS ACTUALLY HISTORY. Into station and as luck would have it, between Pittsburgh and NYC is the only lap on which they wouldn't let me take luggage on bus, but had to check it. I also wondered which station it would stop at, 34th or 50th, and was amazed to find it arriving at Port Authority. Things really change. Push people aside and grab luggage and make dash for cab, ride down 42nd to Park, and up Park, looking at everything, and in front of apartment, which I'm immensely relieved to see still standing there. Things don't collapse during the time you choose to be away! Rattle upstairs and open door and there's lovely Jim, in glasses and sneakers and shorts, scrubbing bathroom and all lights on. Apartment looks different in same way Akron did, details were OK, but vistas were wrong --- also Jim had moved things a bit and had record player and books and clothes all over the place, preparing to move to 322 East 70th. Luck! Talked a bit and out to Third Avenue Deli for dinner, I was famished, and back to help him over roof with junk, and he finally piles out at 12:30, and I fuss around apartment, come once to prove I'm home, and get to bed at 2:30. IT'S NOW JUNE 1 AND MY 99-DAY GREYHOUND TOUR OF THE USA IS FINISHED AND I'M HOME.