Miles To Go
As our packed minivan stood in traffic, the tension was thick. I had finally started questioning the very nature of our excursion: a 9-week road trip around the country and back. Maya and Talia were fighting like typical 6 and 8 year old sisters. Sandy and I were ready to kill one another. We had reached a tipping point, and to make matters worse, our stereo was mocking us.
On the road again. Just can’t wait to get on the road again…
Despite the pent-up frustration, no one expected what came next: I abruptly opened the driver’s side door and abandoned the van in bumper-to-bumper traffic. As angry drivers honked and shouted, my bewildered family watched me walk off into the distance.
We’re the best of friends, insisting that the world keep turning our way…
Turning the corner, I thought to myself, “I don’t know what I was thinking! Ten thousand miles from New York City to Washington state, down to Los Angeles, and then back home? It was a stupid idea, and I’m an idiot for imagining we could pull it off.”
But, after a few blocks, I calmed down, glanced at my 13 missed calls, and eventually found my family not too far from where I’d left them. Sandy was fuming. The kids looked confused. I didn’t know what to say. I got back in the car, started the engine, and together we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge — a quarter mile from where we lived — and began to make our way out west. That’s right, we hadn’t even left the neighborhood.
Traveling with kids is always a challenge, and M&T allow no exception to the rule. So, when we told people our summer plans, they thought we were crazy. And, in a way, they were right. But, this was important to me. I backpacked a lot in my youth and am a better person because of it. I wanted my kids to have similar, if toned down, experiences.
Back then, my prime motivation for traveling was the joy I took in meeting people from different walks of life. I was always on a shoestring budget, and I never brought a camera because I felt it would take me away from the moment. I recall going to the Louvre and looking on, aghast, at the hordes of tourists snapping shots of the Mona Lisa without even viewing the damn thing with their own eyes. I went to the great pyramids in Egypt, and there’s no proof. But, I’ve never regretted not bringing a camera, because in my mind the images are crystal clear.
By the time I was in my 30’s though, that enthusiasm had faded. The passion I had for late night around-the-fire conversations with like-minded people was replaced by the cynicism of a jaded New Yorker who just wanted to be left alone during any brief respites from the dense city. But, while it was too late for me, I could still help my kids explore the world.
But, yeah, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
M&T have a notoriously poor sense of restaurant decorum, so we decided to avoid eating out as much as possible this summer. But, while celebrating the Fourth of July in Indiana, I realized we were about an hour away from Chicago’s culinary crown jewel, Alinea. Reservations at the 3 Michelin-starred temple can take months to secure — and that’s if you’re lucky — so I knew there was no chance we’d get one with a day’s notice. But, to humor myself, I put us on the waitlist.
The next morning, Alinea offered us a table and 5 minutes to book it. I took a deep breath. The idea of bringing M&T to a place where people come from all over the world to marvel at astonishingly complex food in peace and quiet was about as stupid of an idea as I’ve ever had. But, just as I was about to decline the offer, I realized that we were being offered the “kitchen table,” their private room overlooking the kitchen. I realized it was the perfect way to introduce the kids to fine dining, because you know what they say: in the private dining room, no one can hear you scream.
When we arrived at Alinea and I handed the parking valet our keys, I opened Maya’s door and a large McDonald’s french fry container — probably a week old — spilled onto the street. But, as we were escorted to our table and seated with champagne and sparkling cider, I began to relax. So far it was going about as good as one could expect. Then Talia asked for a menu.
There is no menu at Alinea.
Talia was bewildered. Angry. Venomous. She shouted, publicly threatening to fire one of the world’s great chefs. The reaction seemed overboard, but as her tirade continued, I realized that a menu provides a sense of direction and structure — especially for a 6 year old. There’s comfort in knowing exactly what’s going to happen and where you will be going. I peered into the kitchen to see Chef Achatz focused on spray painting raw fish, blissfully unaware that he was being reamed out by a twisted combination of Gordon Ramsey and Boss Baby.
It would be nice to have a sense of exactly what and when everything in life will happen — or even better, a menu from which to choose. But the sooner Talia realizes sometimes you just have to go with the flow, the better off she will be. Sometimes I think that as a Jewish person, I have a keen sense of the twists and turns life can take, our people’s history having gyrated wildly between tragedies and miracles. My father’s own past certainly taught me much about the former.
My dad was a fiercely proud American, appreciative of the opportunity our nation afforded him. So, when I discovered that I was going to be in South Dakota during his Yahrzeit — the anniversary of his death — I took it as an opportunity to say the mourner’s prayer at Mount Rushmore. But, tradition dictates that it can only be said with a quorum of 10 Jewish people, called a Minyan. In Brooklyn, arranging this would be as easy as finding a decent bagel. In South Dakota…not so much. In fact, it’s the state with the fewest Jewish people — 251 to be exact. Not that anyone’s counting.
It was a long shot, but I sent an email to Synagogue of the Hills, a small congregation 40 miles from Mount Rushmore. I quickly received a response from their board president, Steve, who was delighted to help but warned me that getting a Minyan would be hard. Over the following months, Steve and I kept in touch, and just as it was looking like we might have 10 Jews, he found out we needed a first amendment permit to assemble at the federal monument. With everything going on, we weren’t sure we’d get one. Nevertheless, two of my siblings even decided to fly out and meet us. We were “all in.”
The morning of the Yahrzeit, however, the area was engulfed by a torrential downpour — thunder so loud that it knocked lights off our ceiling. I was sure that the congregants, many of whom were much older, would not be able to make the trek. But when I called Steve, he encouraged me to play it by ear.
By the end of the afternoon, our chances looked even worse. As we drove way up the mountain, the rain had turned into golf ball-sized hail, and most cars had pulled over. But, when we got to the top, the clouds suddenly parted to reveal a beautiful sun behind the iconic sculpture. We made our way to the amphitheater for what we assumed would be a quick affair — meet a few Jews, say a couple prayers, and then head home. Then I saw Steve dragging a red wagon filled with prayer books, Shabbat candles, challah bread, and wine with an accompanying ceremonial cup. Then I saw the other 15 people who came with him. These guys weren’t playing around.
Steve isn’t a Rabbi; he’s a pediatrician in Rapid City. Yet, he gave one of the best sermons I’ve ever heard. He mentioned how George Washington helped secure protection for the Jews in early America, and that Mark Twain once commented that, logically speaking, the Jewish people should have been relegated to the dustbin of history thousands of years ago when our great temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. One thing that kept us going was the invention of the synagogue, allowing us to turn any space into a sanctuary with just that magic number, 10. And, as the sun set, Steve remarked that we had turned this monument — known as “a shrine to democracy” — into our very own sanctuary.
By the end of the evening, we’d discovered that Steve had all but given up on securing a permit when he realized a new patient had the same last name as the Mount Rushmore superintendent he’d been trying to reach. With over 75,000 inhabitants, Rapid City isn’t exactly a small town, but Steve asked if there was any connection. There was. The girl was the super’s granddaughter.
We had our permit.
Glancing in a mirror in the cowboy hat section of Wal-Drug, South Dakota’s mecca of kitsch, I gave my best “blue steel” look with a brave amount of disregard for the other guys around me. This was the fifth hat I’d tried on, but I had finally found a keeper. Last summer, on a whim, I purchased a pretty cheap version at a gas station in Oklahoma, but now I was ready for the real deal. I walked over to Sandy to proudly show her my new digs. It was a real beaut.
“It looks just like your other cowboy hat,” she said, turning her attention back to the kids.
That was a week ago and by now I was in Cody, Wyoming, waiting for the country’s only nightly rodeo to begin. As we walked around, Maya and Talia were very excited by a mechanical bull, but, unfortunately, they only took cash and there was no ATM in sight. Suddenly, however, a dusty and clearly tipsy cowboy approached us, beer in hand. He had seen what happened and wanted to pony up the twenty bucks for the girls to ride.
Sandy and I politely declined the offer, but this dude wasn’t going to take no for an answer. While we were distracted, he walked up to the employee operating the ride and handed him a $20.
“Don’t let me waste twenty bucks for nothin’,” he slurred. And with that, a couple of scantily-clad cowgirls took him by the arm and helped him stumble into the ether.
It was an incredible gesture, and as M&T got in line, Sandy speculated that he must be one of the rodeo riders. She had to find out for certain.
“Who was that guy that paid for this?,” she asked the employee.
“Oh, that guy?,” he responded. “He works over at Yellowstone. He’s usually drunk. But, I guess he wasn’t tonight.”
There was no shortage of formalities prior to the action that evening. After a brief thank you to the event’s sponsors, there was a communal blessing to our armed forces, a prayer to Jesus, and a soliloquy — I can’t think of any other word to do it justice — about the importance of standing during our national anthem.
Then a rather tattered-looking young man entered to sing the honors. He had a good-enough voice and a simultaneously proud and sheepish demeanor. My mind conjured an image of a soldier on the western frontier, blowing his bugle to warn the town that an attack was coming. To me, it was a reminder that we’re part of a union — still fragile — that shares a common purpose, a cause, a mission.
As I clutched my hat to my chest, the last sentence of the Star Spangled Banner stood out to me. How had I never realized that, despite its assertive intonation, that line is actually a question? Are we the only nation on Earth whose anthem ends with a question? Why the heck does it end with a question?
If someone had told me a year ago that I would have such a profound reaction at a rodeo, it would have made little sense. But, that’s the beauty of traveling: the most meaningful moments can rarely be foreseen. And after that night, I started to feel something I hadn’t in a long time. It was a sense of openness, and of wanting to meet new people and experience new things.
There was a ten minute conversation in a grocery store checkout line about the superiority of Colorado peaches over those from Georgia. A married couple in California spotted our NY license plates and reminisced about driving cross-country with their kids decades ago. A older cashier at a wine shop in Idaho spoke to me fondly of her days in the Coast Guard.
Looking back, the entire summer there was something in the air that reminded me of the classic Grateful Dead lyric ‘strangers stopping strangers, just to shake their hand.’ After a year of being locked indoors, people were ready to let loose. Experts had predicted that the handshake was dead. It was now more than just an arbitrary social formality. It was an act of defiance.
Yellowstone was the perfect embodiment of this. We may have missed over a year of live sports, but those of us at the world-famous Old Faithful Geyser were making up for lost time. While waiting for the water to erupt, we entertained ourselves by doing the wave.
But, my favorite such moment happened in a country club pool in Arizona, when I overheard two 50-somethings—who had just met — share their recent epiphanies that there’s more to life than money. At that moment, the gated community pool might as well have been a youth hostel in Amsterdam. One of the guys lamented, quite seriously, that “accounting just isn’t as fun as it used to be.”
Was this sense of openness a natural post-Covid reaction our country was having, or was it only I who had changed. When did I become a person who takes countless photos, after all? When even Maya got annoyed at my photo taking, I remembered the ethos of my youth and put it away. After all, I didn’t need a camera for my most precious moments, whether it was sharing a wave with Maya during a joint surfing lesson in Santa Cruz, or seeing the look on Talia’s face when the Alinea staff brought her a commemorative menu at the end of our meal.
I had planned this trip so that our last night would be seeing Dead & Company at Hershey Park Stadium on my birthday. I credit The Dead and Phish for helping create my love of travel and appreciation for Americana, and I was looking forward to bringing M&T to their first show. I vividly remember my dad taking me to see Miles Davis back in 1986, so this was, I guess, paying it forward.
We didn’t intend to visit the amusement Park on our one full day in town, but once we got to Hershey, it was unavoidable. In fact, we spent all darn day there, and by showtime my kids had run out of juice. There was no way they were making that show.
I didn’t mind going to the show solo. That’s the thing about life. You make changes. You make do. You improvise — or as our Joshua Tree photographer said, ‘you make Jazz.’ Who, for example, could have predicted that I’d wake up in the middle of the California desert to a police car taking too hard of a turn during a chase and flipping over into my backyard? Or that one of the cops would come back the next day to survey the damage to the house, only to lock his keys in the car and have to call his partner to pick him up?
It’s that sense of the unknown that drew me to this type of music, and to traveling, and even to tasting menus. Then, as if to accentuate the point, the Dead broke into a rendition of Milestones by Miles Davis. It was a tune they almost never played, and, actually, I had no idea they ever played. Yet, here they were performing a song by the very artist that my dad took me to see. On the anniversary of my birth.
Despite this enjoyment, when the band began to play the traditional American folk song Going Down the Road Feeling Bad, I’d had enough. I was exhausted with no idea how I was going to get home. So, I took it as the perfect opportunity to literally go down the road feeling bad.
During the 3 mile trek, my mind started to wander back to the star spangled banner and that pesky question that implores us to look inwards at our ever-evolving country. I’m not sure if our nation has changed exponentially over the past few years, or if it’s just our generation’s perspective shifting with age. But, like a tasting menu, we should embrace it. Put yourself, as they say, in the chef’s hands.
As I reflected on our nearly 9 weeks from coast-to-coast-to-coast, I remembered Alinea and how upset Talia was about not having a menu. I hoped that she, too, would one day understand that beauty is in the unexpected. But then I remembered the sheer joy on her face when they finally brought her one. I don’t want to know what’s going to happen in life — that would be boring — but maybe a recap would be nice at the end. You know: to see what we had, and when, and with whom. Maybe that’s what happens at the end of our journey on this planet. Maybe not. But one thing for certain is that we will all find out, eventually. And, I hope when I finally do, I have a smile as big as Talia’s on my face. Then it will have all been worth it. Even that time I abandoned my family in the middle of NYC rush hour gridlock.
