Friday, July 13, 2007
(6:19 PM) | Brad:
Weekend Jazz: American Travel Edition
We left the City well after noon – roughly about three hours later than we had planned, meticulously, two evenings earlier. The sheer number of errands we had both delayed until the very morning of our departure seriously betrayed the fact that neither of us were ready for or excited about the trip. The problem is never a matter of too much history, but of not enough future to put it into proper perspective, never enough present time for the past and future. It is sometimes enough to make you dizzy.[Charles Mingus, from Tijuana Moods, "Dizzy Moods"]
Once we were finally driving, things were uneventfully smooth. Chicago snuck up on us like a lumbering though strangely effective thief, but ultimately caused our driving schedule no harm. From there, we had before us a 2.5-hour drive through Illinois. In some areas of the United States, driving on the highway can be made exhilarating. In Colorado, for example, you have the sphincter-tightening turns of I-80 through the Rocky Mountains; and on I-75 you have the lazy bliss that is driving through the rolling hills of central Kentucky and the foggy valleys of northern Tennessee. North-central Illinois, however, offers the traveller little but weary, blurring eyes and a hungry, screaming stomach.
[Charlier Parker, from The Complete Live Performances on Savoy, "A Night In Tunisia"]
The road spat us like two fleeing Jonahs into Davenport, Iowa just as the sun was setting. Delirious with hunger, though, I drove us north around the city instead of south, and we found ourselves in the midst of an endless path of fast food drive-thrus. Another level of hell. Not wanting to subject ourselves to this inevitable torture so early in the trip, we continued our detour around the Quad-city area until we an unassuming restaurant in Walcott, Iowa called Gramma’s Kitchen.
It turned out, if the quality of food and service isn't one of your dining considerations, Gramma’s is a truly great place. Our waitress moved as quickly as either of my grandmothers, and they’re both dead. J. suggested she subscribed to the whole “slow food” philosophy, whereby we as consumers train ourselves to be conscious about what we eat, why we are eating it, and where it comes from. I decided, though, she was cleverly hoping that if she served us slowly enough the senescent decay of Gramma's taste buds, nothing worse than a dead tongue, might afflict us, too, for then we couldn’t blame her, anybody but her, for our sub-par portion of their promised “American slice of life.”
[Art Blakey, from Moanin' (Live, 1968), "You Dont Know What Love Is"]
