On December 29, 1963, I was newly married and headed west. Very west. Judy and I had just gotten married, and I had school reopening in Pasadena in five days. California had apparently declined to rearrange its academic calendar around my matrimonial activities, so whatever honeymoon we were going to have would largely take place while crossing the United States in an automobile.
That was a three- or four-day proposition in those days, depending on roads, weather, automobile, stamina, and how badly you wanted to get wherever you were going. Interstate highways were still being built, and quite a bit of America remained connected by two-lane roads that went through towns instead of around them. Our first night as a married couple was spent at a motel next to Cobb County Airport in Georgia.
I had been driving through the North Georgia hills on two-lane roads, didn’t really know where we were, and remember feeling somewhat lost. There wasn’t anything particularly significant about that at the time. We were young, married, headed for California, and had several thousand miles of country between where we were and where we needed to be.
I certainly didn’t know that I would eventually spend the largest part of my life in Cobb County and North Georgia. I didn’t know Celeste. I didn’t know what most of the rest of my life was going to look like. All I knew that night was that I wasn’t entirely sure where the hell I was. Funny how that works.
Most of the Trip Is Gone
I don’t remember much of the drive west, which is inconvenient if you’re trying to turn it into a story. A writer wants a journey to have events. There ought to be weather, diners, gasoline stations, interesting characters, marital conversations, mechanical difficulties, scenery and perhaps a small adventure involving a state trooper. I don’t have any of those for you.
We drove west. Presumably we ate. I am reasonably confident we bought gasoline. Since we eventually arrived in California, I can also report that we continued traveling in approximately the correct direction. Memory kept almost none of it.
What it did keep was a plateau in New Mexico.
By then Judy was driving and I was dozing in the passenger seat, with my head resting against the window and the support beside it. Somewhere in that half-world between being asleep and awake, I opened my eyes. Outside was the New Mexico desert, and in the distance was a plateau.
I looked at the top of it and apparently knew immediately what was happening.
“Injuns, injuns, all around us. Look up on the top of that plateau. Thar they are, injuns.”
I wasn’t making a serious statement about Native Americans. I was a twenty-two-year-old in 1963, waking from a doze in the middle of the American West with a head full of the Western movies, television shows, books and assorted nonsense my generation had absorbed since childhood. For a few seconds, that empty plateau wasn’t empty. There were riders up there. I could see them—or at least I was perfectly willing to pretend I could.
Apparently This Was a Problem
Judy was not impressed. As I remember it, her reaction was essentially that what I had said was stupid and that she wasn’t going to be married to somebody who couldn’t grow up.
That puzzled me more than it chastened me. I wasn’t actually proposing that we were under attack. I wasn’t suggesting she accelerate the automobile while I climbed into the back seat and returned fire. I knew perfectly well there weren’t Indians massing on the ridge. I was playing. Something outside the window had bumped into something already inside my head, and for a few seconds I let the two of them fool around together.
I didn’t have words for that then. I certainly wasn’t developing a theory about imagination, patterns, memory or ideas while crossing New Mexico. I had seen a plateau, it reminded me of something, and out came the Injuns. That was all.
But Judy’s objection went deeper than one silly remark in an automobile. She believed there was something about me that needed to grow up. At one point she told me she had stopped using birth control because having a baby would make me do it. That struck me as a rather substantial project to undertake without consulting the prospective grown-up.
We did eventually have a son. We also eventually divorced. Judy discovered a world outside the life she had expected, and we went our separate ways. Somewhere in there, despite everybody’s best efforts, I apparently failed to grow up.
I Think I Know What She Meant
To be fair to her, adulthood does require us to give up quite a few things. You have to pay bills. You have to show up when you say you will. Other people begin depending on you. Children arrive and rather inconsiderately expect food, clothing and some evidence that an adult is in charge. Jobs have consequences. Mortgages have due dates. Automobiles break. Parents age. People get sick and people die. There is plenty about life that demands seriousness.
But somewhere along the way, I think we sometimes confuse becoming responsible with ceasing to play with what we see.
Children are terrible at leaving reality alone. A cardboard box can become a fort, automobile, spaceship or house. A stick can become a sword. Clouds contain animals. Darkness contains monsters. A hill has something on the other side of it, and whatever is over there is probably considerably more interesting than another damned hill.
Then we teach them what everything really is. That’s a box. That’s a stick. That’s a cloud. There’s nothing under the bed. That’s just a hill. Most of that instruction is useful. You can’t spend your adult life genuinely believing the cardboard box is an automobile. Insurance alone would be difficult.
But I wonder whether some of us become so accomplished at identifying what things are that we stop noticing what else they might be.
I Still See Things That Aren’t There
I have spent a fair amount of my life asking questions that begin with ordinary things. Why did they make it that way? What does that part do? What does this remind me of? Who thought of that? Why do we still do it this way? What would happen if we moved this over there? Could a piece of that work with a piece of this?
Most of those questions go nowhere, and that’s perfectly all right. The point isn’t to produce an invention every time you look at a shopping cart. That would make grocery shopping exhausting.
The point is that I still enjoy allowing one thing to become another thing for a little while. I can look at what something is without immediately shutting the door on what it reminds me of, what else resembles it, how it might work differently, or what it could become if somebody screwed around with it. Every once in a while, something useful comes out of that. More often, I simply enjoy the trip.
Maybe You Never Grew Up Either
That’s one of the reasons I’m building this website. I’m interested in ideas, certainly, but I’m becoming just as interested in what happens before the idea. What did somebody notice? What did it remind them of? What question did they ask that everybody else had stopped asking? What two things bumped together that had never previously had any reason to meet?
And I wonder how many people still do what I did in that car. Not the Injuns specifically. They can have New Mexico. Find your own damned imaginary population.
I mean looking at something perfectly ordinary and allowing your mind to wander away from the approved answer. Maybe you see faces in buildings. Maybe a machine reminds you of something your grandfather used. Maybe the way ants move around a dropped cookie makes you wonder about traffic. Maybe you’re watching somebody perform a completely ordinary task and suddenly think, Why the hell are we still doing it that way?
Don’t dismiss the thought quite so quickly. Have a look at it. Ask what brought it there, what it reminds you of, and where else that little piece might fit.
If it takes you somewhere interesting, that’s what Your Ideas is for. Bring it here and tell us what you saw and what it made you think of. Maybe somebody else will see something completely different in it. Maybe we’ll discover a connection. Maybe we’ll discover absolutely nothing and have a good time looking. I can’t promise much more than that.
After all these years, I can say with some confidence that Judy was right about one thing.
I never did entirely grow up, and somewhere out there in New Mexico, if I squint just right, the Injuns are still a’comin’.