The Leisure Seeker Read Online Free

Some of the poles are broken and splintered, toppled or teetering over in some places, the lines long snapped and dangling; yet many still retain their wires, and they somehow connect us to the road like an old streetcar, as if we are tethered to the air.
    On the other side: the freeway and the railroad tracks that will follow the road pretty much all the way to California. Between our road and the freeway, I see barricaded patches of what must be a very old alignment of 66, a narrow pinkish path that barely looks wide enough for one car. Nature is slowly reclaiming it. Vegetation creeps in from the edges, narrowing it like an artery. Weeds grow in the crevices roughly every six feet or so, where the slabs were poured. In a few more years, you won’t even be able to see this old highway.
    When we’re not on the frontage road, we pass through tiny, desperate towns. Once everyone stopped taking Route 66, there was no reason for anyone to stop and spend money in these places, so they just languished. In one burg called Atlanta, we pass another fiberglass giant (as they refer to them in my guidebook). This one is Paul Bunyan holding a gigantic frankfurter.
    “Well, look at that,” says John. It’s the first one he’s shown any interest in.
    “They just moved it here from Chicago.”
    “What for?” he says.
    I look around this street, all boarded up and joyless. “That, my dear, is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”
    We pull over, roll down our windows to look up at the giant’s bulging forearms. According to my guidebook, he was originally holding a muffler, so now the wiener sits on the top of a clawed left hand withered shut. It looks like Bob Dole holding a jumbo hot dog. It makes me sad to think of these people pinning all their hopes on this thing to bring their little ghost town back to life.
     
    Outside Springfield, we stop for the night. The park is not so much a campground, but a trailer village, with a few extra spaces that they rent out to folks with campers. Basically, it’s like camping in the middle of someone’s crummy neighborhood. But we were tired and it was available.
    We settle in, hook up our electricity, water, and septic lines. (Between what John remembers and what I remember him teaching me, we muddle through the various plugs and connections.) We have sandwiches and take our meds, then John lies down for a snooze. I let him sleep because it feels good to be by myself sitting at the picnic table.
    Next door, our neighbors arrive home for the night. Firstthe man of the house arrives in a beat-up Olds, the hood and roof covered with a vast landscape of rust, a corroded map of the world. When I wave hello, he stares right through me and heads inside the trailer. Minutes later, the woman shows up on foot. Still in her Wal-Mart smock, she’s tanned and rail thin—that kind of beef jerky look that I associate with either two-pack-a-day smokers or those people who run long-distance races. When I wave to her, she marches right over.
    “Hey, neighbor!”
    I smile at her. “Just for the evening, I’m afraid.”
    “I’m Sandy,” she says, holding out her hand.
    “Ella,” I say, shaking it.
    She lights a butt, then launches right into it. “Lord, what a day I’ve had. My manager was on my ass from the moment I punched in till the moment I walked out of there. He searched me out while I was eating my lunch, I swear it! I was sitting there, nice as you please, eating my Salisbury steak when he comes up to me and starts giving me grief about the inventory we’ve got coming up. He’s screaming at me during lunch! Can you imagine? I just sat there and shoveled food into my mouth right in front of him. And I didn’t close it, either. I just left it wide open and chewed while he bitched away. I even let a little fall from my mouth onto my plate. He didn’t even notice. I figured, hell, I’m on my lunch hour and I’m gonna eat my lunch whether he likes it or not…”
    This goes on for