From the top

Nov. 21 – Great Falls, MT

When we left Casper the sun had not yet risen. Day broke over the Sand Hills and Teapot Rock in northern Natrona County, but the morning remained gloomy until all at once the Bighorn Mountains emerged sunlit from above the low hung clouds, as if through a bedroom window as we drew the quilt from our waking eyes. By the time we reached Buffalo and Interstate 90, the morning was clear and bright and alpine.

Big Sky Country: The surface of Montana takes many forms, but its overhead remains always true to the appellation, and seems to pull the land inexorably toward it. Just north of the Wyoming line, the Wolf Mountains rolled endlessly across the Crow Reservation like peals of snowcapped thunder, and we wound with the Little Bighorn River among them. Past Billings we climbed the face of an escarpment and struck out over the pervasive highlands. At Judith Gap, north of Harlowton, ninety stark new turbines looked like nothing so much as a baleful army of cyclops as they marched toward the ridge crest, drinking the wind from the constant sky. To reach Great Falls, we were again drawn heavenward, rising out of a valley onto a plateau from which we did not descend, a surprising topographical situation for a city built on the banks of the Missouri River. Then again, how could there be a great falls except from such a pronounced height?


Because of moderately icy roads, we'd left earlier than planned, leaving us with extra time to kill when we arrived in Great Falls. This chronocide was carried out at the Holiday Village Mall, which is to shopping centers as Great Falls is to American metropolises. Here the Big Sky was a thing more felt than seen, for if Casper had sent the wind in icy daggers, then Great Falls carried a lance; I'd never before seen coffee frozen solid. We played a modest municipal auditorium in the Civic Building, with an entire convention hall for our backstage, down the corridor from where you'd obtain a Flood Plain Permit if you needed to. That, combined with a vague nighttime awareness of its attractive riparian setting and a fortuitous after-hours fast food stop, was all we ever knew of Great Falls.

Shortly before midnight, having driven nine hours already from Casper, we piled back onto our bus for another six hour trip, a cost-saving venture to the tune of about two hundred dollars a head, to the Spokane airport where the celestial boarding call would finally be answered. The moon was full enough to show that we traversed the most beautiful scenery of our entire odyssey by night in the mountains north of Helena. I saw it again a few hours later, from the other side of the clouds and thirty thousand feet farther away, and I would take one more on-the-road meal in Denver before boarding my last flight.

That day I departed one Washington and arrived in another, and while the new time zone was three hours ahead, the late eastern autumn still in force seemed to set me back two months from the winter I'd just left, almost as though I had never been away.

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A ghostly friend

Nov. 20 – Casper, WY

As cities go, it's right up there with Miami and St. Louis, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. It's on par with Nashville, San Diego, San Antonio, and New Orleans. In fact, the city of Casper, Wyoming actually outranks San Francisco, Cincinnati and Dallas. New York City beats it, of course, but then so do Fargo, North Dakota and Burlington, Vermont. Also Kansas City, Missouri (but not Kansas City, Kansas). And, of course, bustling Cheyenne, which we'd passed on our way up Interstate 25.

Reading the names of those first eight cities, you probably doubt that Casper could hold court in any way with these great American destinations. But it's statistically true, for each, like Casper, is the second-largest city in its respective state. (That's according to United States Census population estimates for July 1, 2006, in case you're feeling defensive of, say, Nashville's supremacy: sorry, but Memphis has you beat. And New Orleans only makes the list because of the displacement by flood of so many thousands of people.)

With that distinction, naturally, the similarities end.

Our visit to this second city was marked by several firsts: first snow and first frigid temperatures—the day before, Denver had been in the 70s—and first performance in an arena-style venue. An over-confident SUV spun itself around on the exit ramp in front of our hotel, probably the first weather-related traffic mishap for the season (or perhaps just a Bronco as untamed as the one forever bucking its lone rider on Wyoming's state emblem). And first impressions: Casper was frozen shards of wind through every seam and buttonhole in my coat, snow swirling frictionless across asphalt, as if the pavement itself were ice. Brakes creaked and metal groaned as boxcars were shunted, and a skyline of two or three boxcar-like buildings shivered behind a gunmetal gauze of falling snow and twilight against an industrial gray drop cloth of a sky. Night fell cold, sharp and hard like an icicle, and morning in Casper I never saw.

In the lobby of the Parkway Plaza Hotel, Christmas decorations were going up, though Thanksgiving was still two days away, and although Casper was a frozen outpost on the remote windswept plain, both a full-service restaurant and a fully functioning bar were at our disposal. The latter was a tired, time-worn saloon with brick above rough-hewn wood paneling accented by faux Italian frescoes, imitation brass sconces and wrought iron filigree; a faded red-and-white awning hung over the bar itself. The carpeting and upholstery were from sundry generations, none of them current, and the clientele equally anachronistic, as you'd only expect to see in a film about people more miserable than yourself. As for me, I thought it the coziest place I'd been in a long time.

Our surroundings were as desolate as they had ever been, and the months and miles had accumulated like the snowdrifts now forming, but two days later I'd be at the Thanksgiving table and home for the holidays. So, in a Wyoming winter amongst Christmas decorations, the warm glow of ambulance lights, and that desperate dive in the second-largest city of the emptiest state, I felt snug in insular comfort by the peculiar familiarity of where I was and the welcome knowledge of where I would soon be going. It was eminently fine.

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Postscript:

As it happened, the bar denizens were true to their mien: while civil at first, after unsuccessfully offering to buy drinks for the ladies of our group they were thrown out on their staggering butts into the snow. We were told this was because they intended to avenge being jilted by administering a 55-gallon drum of whoop-ass onto us fellers. The bronco forever untamed. Yee-haw!

Just another Mile High Monday

Nov. 19 – Denver, CO

If the American West had a capital, it would surely be Denver. Like Washington, D.C. in miniature, the Colorado State Capitol sits at the eastern end of an axial landscaped mall, with the City and County Building (for Denver is both at once) at the opposite end. Surrounding the mall, in much the same Beaux-Arts style as is found along the Potomac, are memorials, museums, the public library, and the United States Mint, one of many federal agencies having their western offices in Denver. But stretching northwest from the Capitol, a different kind of mall leads to a different kind of style, for fifteen blocks and seven Starbucks away, down the 16th Street Pedestrian Mall, Art Deco is alive and well in LoDo.

"LoDo" stands for Lower Downtown, and it's a neighborhood of groovy people and places anchored by Union Station, another name shared by Washington, D.C. (and dozens of other North American cities). While this edifice, too, is in the Beaux-Arts style, it's emblazoned in red neon with the encouragement "Travel by Train", as you might well have seen on the cover of a railway timetable circa 1933. And while we're in that year, the Cruise Room Bar at the nearby Oxford Hotel is bathed in red and blue neon and festooned with original Deco bas-reliefs (except for one featuring Hitler, which did not outlive his popularity in America and was not restored).

At the fringe of Lower Downtown is El Chapultepec, which sounds like a greasy taquería across the border from Harlingen, Texas, but is actually one of the best-loved jazz clubs in Denver. Here a quartet played, looking about as unassuming as the venue itself. I can't say they rivaled Austin or Bourbon Street, but then again it was a Monday. Outside the club, I tried deftly to evade the swarm of panhandlers that made Little Rock seem like a millionaire's convention by comparison. Still, as we headed back down 16th Street, this time in one of the fleet of free buses that are the only motorized traffic allowed on the mall, I marveled at what a livable place Denver seemed, and we had not even ventured out of the center city.

Because we had the evening off, several from our group had gone to a Broncos game (they played the Tennessee Titans, the home team for many in our company). My friend from Buffalo, who has seen his share of Bills games, was astounded by the cleanliness of the stadium and the civility of the fans in their celebration of the Broncos' win. I said it must have to do with an awareness of one's environment that comes with living in Denver. One of the great American metropolises, Denver lies at the intersection of mountain and plain, of drought and blizzard, of Beaux-Arts grandeur and Art Deco whimsy. With concerns ranging from urban blight and poverty to the management of land and water resources, combined with the majestic cityscape and natural setting, I think that a respect for one's surroundings must be unavoidable here, and that respect extends to city, land and people alike. Coloradans live in a world they cannot ignore, and that world is not only physical, but also human.

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Postscript:

I couldn't decide on an acceptable plural for "Starbucks"; apparently I'm not alone. I leave the question unsolved for your rumination.

A hundred years Sooner

Nov. 16 – Tulsa, OK

Like Lubbock, Tulsa was in a state of ongoing refurbishment, city and hotel alike. We suffered through a week at the Crowne Plaza, where jackhammers would be tearing up concrete in the lobby during the morning and afternoon, as they were likewise tearing up the downtown streets, permitting no escape from the din. Elevators, if working, had a habit of going in the wrong direction and stopping at the wrong floor, or not at all. It became a regular occurrence to be awakened by the maid telephoning your room to inquire about the Do Not Disturb sign on your door. As lemon juice for these lacerations, a tidy package of sleep aids and a CD of soothing sounds was provided with each room, a gesture made doubly ironic in a city that gave little cause to be awake at all during daylight hours.

Tulsa may be the only town I've visited where more goes on downtown after dark than during the day. Restaurants and delis in the city center shut their doors at two in the afternoon, while taverns and coffee shops don't open at all until four or five. But once night fell, we were within walking distance of two distinct entertainment districts.

The first, a short walk across any of a number of bridges over the Santa Fe railroad (whose presence was betrayed loudly by air horn for five minutes at a time, at intervals of approximately five minutes), was known as the Brady Arts District. It might better be called the Shipping and Receiving District, for interspersed between loading docks and warehouses are funky boutiques, cafés and a few taverns—intercity commerce meets la vie bohème.

More thorough whistle-wetting (of dubious necessity if the passing locomotives are any indication) can be had in the Blue Dome neighborhood on the eastern edge of downtown. The Blue Dome itself surmounts what was once a filling station, and in fact remains one, since a wing of the edifice is occupied by Arnie's Bar, an unpretentious self-styled dive with a shuffleboard table and the occasional Irish band playing. Around the corner is McNellie's, another Celtic-themed watering hole and a sister venture to the Mexican restaurant across the street. Such unlikely cross-branding seems apropos to the agressively upswinging economy of the district, where even I, with no interest whatever in the real estate market, could read "Buy! Buy! Buy!" in each shuttered window of every unrenovated brick façade.

Tulsa rivals its big brother Oklahoma City in urbanity, if not in population, for its city center has a compactness and venerability that suggests a genuine purpose for being (historically the oil industry), as opposed to the bigger city's somewhat arbitrary designation as the state capital. Landmarks such as the Blue Dome, the Union Depot and the Philtower Building recall the boom years of Art Deco, seeming to root the city more firmly into the American fabric than can be said of the capital.

During my week in Tulsa, I hated the noise and construction because I had to live in it; would jackhammers and chain-link fence be any more welcome in your living room than in my lobby? Yet hammer and fence were darning the fabric of this part of America, and for that week, despite or because of the tribulations, I nevertheless did live in it.

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