I recently took a roadtrip to Boston with my friend Harry on an English major pilgrimage, searching for the beloved corpses of equally beloved authors. Here's the trip, by the books.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
ERIC
Allison (we hung out on Saturday night)
Jaysin (Allison's roommate)
Priscilla (we had breakfast Sunday morning)
HARRY
Billy (Harry's friend, whom we stayed with in Oberlin, Ohio on Sunday night)
Sally (Billy's girlfriend)
Anna (whose birthday party we visited in Oberlin)
Andrew (who let us play Super Smash Bros. Brawl on his Wii in Oberlin)
Baldy (the friendly clerk at the Prescott Hotel in Boston)
Yuan (Baldy's daytime counterpart)
STEVE
Hailey (the maybe-Irish waitress at the Green Dragon Inn in Boston)
The Band (a weird cover band at the Green Dragon; played "House of the Rising Sun" for Harry)
Sean (who we crashed with on Friday night)
Dee (his roommate)
Mary (who I hadn't seen in years!)
Raph (also Sean's roommate)
Mandy (Raph's girlfriend/roommate)
The Asians (a group of Asian friends of somebody's at Sean's place, referred to collectively)
Crutches (Mary's boyfriend?)
Twitch (Sean's ex-girlfriend, in absentia)
THE THICKBURGER (it nearly killed me and Harry both, man.)
DEAD AUTHORS VISITED:
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Theoreau
Louisa May Alcott
Jack Kerouac
Allen Ginsberg
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Zelda Fitzgerald
Edgar Allen Poe
Mother Goose
Samuel Adams
Paul Revere (not an author, but cool)
PROPOSED MOTTOES FOR WEST VIRGINIA, TO REPLACE THE QUITE LAME "OPEN FOR BUSINESS":
"Gitcher ass back in the truck!"
"You got a purty mouth."
"Jethro, get the shotgun."
"Play some Skynyrd!"
INSIDE JOKES AND WEIRD NAMES SPOTTED ON THE TRIP
-The Road to Shamballa
(The Three Dog Night song was our theme for the trip)
-Gary, IN
(Gas costs more in Gary, IN. People are willing to pay it in order to get the fuck out of Gary, IN.)
-"We can't stop here... This is wine country!"
-The Fishamajig
(A mediocre fish sandwich, but whatta name.)
-The New Jersey Turnpike
(It took us about four tries to successfully get back onto the turnpike after getting off at Newark, NJ to visit Allen Ginsberg. We thought we would die in New Jersey. Harry was clutching the wheel, muttering "The Road to Shamballa" under his breath.)
-Green Lantern Road
-Skaggsville
-Pig's Ear Road
-Big Otter, WV
-Nitro, WV
-"A dimebag of the old Venerable"
(It's rhyming slang. "Venerable Bede" = "Weed." This is really only useful to English grad students looking to be simeltaneously lowbrow and highbrow at once.)
-Framestown, WV
-Owingsville, KY
-The Mystic Generating Station
(We stayed near the town of Mystic, MA, and their power plant was literally called "The Mystic Generating Station." Goddamned mages.)
-Pollack Johnny's
(A restaurant we ate breakfast at in Baltimore, staffed entirely by black women who could not possibly be the eponyomous Pollack Johnny.)
-The ridiculous pipe heavy load trucks
(I have no idea what the fuck this was. We must have passed 20 of these "wide load" trucks with large tubes of some kind on them going to Louisville on Friday. It kinda looked like somebody was transporting a mile-long, thirty-foot diameter waterslide across the country.)
-"Truly, Thickburger, you are the most dangerous game."
(Harry nearly killed both of us after getting a Thickburger at a Hardee's outside of Columbia on the last day of the trip. At one point I had to take the wheel for a second while he adjusted himself to meet this challenge.)
-E
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
ERIC
Allison (we hung out on Saturday night)
Jaysin (Allison's roommate)
Priscilla (we had breakfast Sunday morning)
HARRY
Billy (Harry's friend, whom we stayed with in Oberlin, Ohio on Sunday night)
Sally (Billy's girlfriend)
Anna (whose birthday party we visited in Oberlin)
Andrew (who let us play Super Smash Bros. Brawl on his Wii in Oberlin)
Baldy (the friendly clerk at the Prescott Hotel in Boston)
Yuan (Baldy's daytime counterpart)
STEVE
Hailey (the maybe-Irish waitress at the Green Dragon Inn in Boston)
The Band (a weird cover band at the Green Dragon; played "House of the Rising Sun" for Harry)
Sean (who we crashed with on Friday night)
Dee (his roommate)
Mary (who I hadn't seen in years!)
Raph (also Sean's roommate)
Mandy (Raph's girlfriend/roommate)
The Asians (a group of Asian friends of somebody's at Sean's place, referred to collectively)
Crutches (Mary's boyfriend?)
Twitch (Sean's ex-girlfriend, in absentia)
THE THICKBURGER (it nearly killed me and Harry both, man.)
DEAD AUTHORS VISITED:
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Theoreau
Louisa May Alcott
Jack Kerouac
Allen Ginsberg
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Zelda Fitzgerald
Edgar Allen Poe
Mother Goose
Samuel Adams
Paul Revere (not an author, but cool)
PROPOSED MOTTOES FOR WEST VIRGINIA, TO REPLACE THE QUITE LAME "OPEN FOR BUSINESS":
"Gitcher ass back in the truck!"
"You got a purty mouth."
"Jethro, get the shotgun."
"Play some Skynyrd!"
INSIDE JOKES AND WEIRD NAMES SPOTTED ON THE TRIP
-The Road to Shamballa
(The Three Dog Night song was our theme for the trip)
-Gary, IN
(Gas costs more in Gary, IN. People are willing to pay it in order to get the fuck out of Gary, IN.)
-"We can't stop here... This is wine country!"
-The Fishamajig
(A mediocre fish sandwich, but whatta name.)
-The New Jersey Turnpike
(It took us about four tries to successfully get back onto the turnpike after getting off at Newark, NJ to visit Allen Ginsberg. We thought we would die in New Jersey. Harry was clutching the wheel, muttering "The Road to Shamballa" under his breath.)
-Green Lantern Road
-Skaggsville
-Pig's Ear Road
-Big Otter, WV
-Nitro, WV
-"A dimebag of the old Venerable"
(It's rhyming slang. "Venerable Bede" = "Weed." This is really only useful to English grad students looking to be simeltaneously lowbrow and highbrow at once.)
-Framestown, WV
-Owingsville, KY
-The Mystic Generating Station
(We stayed near the town of Mystic, MA, and their power plant was literally called "The Mystic Generating Station." Goddamned mages.)
-Pollack Johnny's
(A restaurant we ate breakfast at in Baltimore, staffed entirely by black women who could not possibly be the eponyomous Pollack Johnny.)
-The ridiculous pipe heavy load trucks
(I have no idea what the fuck this was. We must have passed 20 of these "wide load" trucks with large tubes of some kind on them going to Louisville on Friday. It kinda looked like somebody was transporting a mile-long, thirty-foot diameter waterslide across the country.)
-"Truly, Thickburger, you are the most dangerous game."
(Harry nearly killed both of us after getting a Thickburger at a Hardee's outside of Columbia on the last day of the trip. At one point I had to take the wheel for a second while he adjusted himself to meet this challenge.)
-E