937

by Vic Neptune

If I’m driving a long distance something comes over me, a temptation to keep going, to make it to the destination even if it means a late night arrival. When I drove my mother back to Wisconsin from Washington state, we stopped in Missoula, Montana, the first day. I like Missoula because it’s visually interesting. It’s in a long valley. Smoke and fog hang in the air for long periods, because, I guess, the air tends to stay trapped there, but I’m not a meteorologist.

From Missoula, I drove us across the state to Terry, Montana, a little town with, at the time anyway, a nice motel featuring rooms with a Frontier West decorative scheme and wooden walls. I got up early the next morning, showered, watched I Love Lucy—the only thing on at six a.m. I don’t remember the episode but there was probably a misunderstanding, Ricky and Lucy probably had an altercation and then made up at the end.

We left Terry at seven the next morning. I figured we’d get to Minnesota that day, but halfway across North Dakota I said, “If I was driving with Brian (a friend) I’d suggest going all the way home. We’d get there late tonight.”

She just nodded. After a while, she said, “Okay, let’s do that.”

I hadn’t thought my eighty-nine year old mother would be interested in trying such a trip, so I was surprised. I suggested she drive some of Minnesota so I could take a nap later, and then I would drive in the denser Twin Cities traffic.

The trip that day, getting us to Oshkosh at about 2:30 a.m. from eastern Montana, became a slog when traveling through Wisconsin in the dark. There was a feeling of tiredness and tedium in me, combined with an eagerness to finish the trip, a euphoria sparkling in my mind when Highway 21 came to the turn at Omro, where one drives across the bridge, goes through town and onwards to Oshkosh.

937 miles from Terry, Montana, to Oshkosh. I know many people who have driven much farther in one shot, three or four drivers in a car, taking turns. I had never done such a long distance drive. I got to feel what others have felt when stuck inside a car for around a thousand miles--sitting with limbs and back in the same positions, the eye strain, and the eagerness to reach home. Having to keep the driver’s alert mindset at an on position for hours and hours--it’s wearisome to sit still, more or less, for long periods of time, while maneuvering a 3,500 pound car, making sure it doesn’t come into contact with anything. We try to make sure our cars don’t touch each other. On roads and streets, cars and trucks seem to repel each other as they move, like the positive poles of magnets.

I don’t ever again want to drive 937 miles in one day, but I remember it as a good shared experience with my mother during the last years of her life. She was always willing to put up with the music on CD I brought with me. The one time she heard Sonic Youth was during that 937 mile day. She didn’t like it.

“Too many notes,” she said, quoting the Emperor after hearing Mozart’s music in Amadeus.

Vic Neptune writes, makes movies (YouTube Channel John Berner), collages, paintings. Moves made as Rhombus. Film criticism based on thousands of movies of all eras seen. Strong interest in literature: Shakespeare, Thomas Mann, Jack London, Robert . Howard, Joan Didion, Philip K. Dick, and many others. History and religion other interests also. Favorite filmmakers: Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasonlini, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Federico Fellini. Life without art is art without life.