The next morning, I will strike out for Chicago, after making an obligatory stop in South Bend IN, to visit the campus of Notre Dame. The University has become a pretty obligatory stop on any road trip to the midwest, not only because it is my undergraduate alma mater but because it has figured in a series of trips westward that have, over time, built to this one.
For one thing, I still have friends there: my dear friend Lorri Wright still lives in the Bend with her partner Erik; I hope I might have a chance to stop by and see at least one of them for lunch as I pass through.
But the University itself is always my main target when I stop in SB - I like going back to see how the campus has changed, and to rekindle the memory, at least, of the bygone days when it was the cradle of nascent avocation, and eventually career - theatre. It is also the home of what became my biggest involvement besides theatre during those days, and shaped my feelings about much of what is happening around us - I was on the staff of the independent student newspaper, The Observer, for three of my four years.
In fact, it was The Observer, rather than theatre, that drew me back the last two times I went to campus - first in 2010, on what I called the Quest for Shirleyfest, and again just last year, in 2017, when I went out for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Observer. (I think we will be noticing a LOT of 50th's" over the next few years - not for nothing have I made the comparison between today and the turmoil of the 60's....)
The last trip was supposed to be a motorcycle trip as well, but the gods of knee replacement surgery didn't see it that way - so I wound up driving the Element of Surprise out for the 1200-mile round trip. But back in 2010... well, that's where the idea for this trip was born.
The last (and first) long-distance motorcycle trip I made was the trip to South bend for "ShirleyFest" in 2010. Shirley. Shirley was the lone "grownup" (i.e., non-student) who worked in the Observer offices, and she was a combination office manager, den mother, and consigliere for the staff of - I really don't know how big the staff was, but it ran from hard cases like myself who tended to live in the offices (whenever I wasn't in rehearsal) to the occasional stringer who would file a story once every few weeks. Shirley arrived in south bend the same month i ddi, and thirty years later, we all went out to celebrate her and her retirement.
In a fit of "me-ness" - I decided that this trip would be not only fun, but a perfect excuse to wring out my relatively newly found motorcycling touring chops. I had been camping off the bike for about 4 years, and having a grand time, but I had never put this kind of distance on it. Especially since, in 2009, when my first Interceptor was "totaled" in an accident, I had to replace it for a time,with a Honda 996 SuperHawk, the Japanese equivalent of a Ducati (i.e., light fast, ridiculous torque but actually reliable...) Even more so than the Interceptor, the SuperHawk was NOT built for long distance, but mine just happened to have been previously owned by someone who thought that was no reason not to try, and so it had "Heli-bars"to raise the handlebars to a more relaxed position, , a custom seat, more forward pegs, and a luggage system that was intended to make it more into a "sport touring" bike than the track beast it really was.
On that trip visited Notre Dame, caught up with old newspaper colleagues and friends, saw my friend Lorri, visited for a day in Chicago's suburbs with my old friend Catherine, who was a 1L when I was a junior, and tried to see my friend Aly on the way home. I made South Bend from Frederick MD in a straight, nine-hour shot (there are some advantages to being on a modified race bike, even on the toll road ;-) almost drowned in rain on the way into Chicago (8 years ago, Chris and Elspeth didn't lve there yet, so I had fewer options for shelter) and then, very nearly died of exposure riding home through the mountains from Morgantown, as the temps dropped into the twenties literally two days before May. Then, everything changed: I blew out my first knee at work a few days later, Jamie died a couple of weeks after that, and well, it's been a bit of a whirlwind ever since then...
In Jamie's eulogy I mentioned the trip - and I relaized, going back to find the words, that i am finally fulfilling a promise I made then (and then some, I suppose) - I am making another long-distance trip, and besides my friend Tricia's spirit, I suppose, I really do carry my brother's with me:
"He covered, in his brief life, more of this country than many do in much longer lifetimes, and did most of it by car. Out west, down south, the Northeast - sometimes a call would come beforehand - "I'll be out of town" - and sometimes I would find out only afterwards where he had been, when he dropped in on a mutual friend. Sometimes the goal was a life event of a friend, sometimes a concert (that Springsteen thing, again...) sometimes the goal was not the destination, I think, but the drive. It was his constant wanderlust that inspired my recent 1600-mile motorcycle trip through the midwest, and I hope now that I will make many more such trips, and I know his spirit will ride with me.
The last thing I did at Notre Dame on this recent trip, on a grey, rainy day, was go to the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, and it was my brother's faith, not my own that prompted me to light a candle for him there - and then as I prayed, some dozens more. I went through all the cash I had on me, as I counted the blessings of friends and family he and I are blessed with, and ran out of dry candles long before I was nearly done."
And so, I will stop again, at Notre Dame, and light candles. I will light them for those who have gone before, and those who come behind. And I hope you don't mind, but one of them will be for all of you.
Here are some pictures from that first touring trip; the reception at Shirley's bash:
Below: Margaret Fosmoe, Left is now an editor with the South Bend Tribune; on the other side of Shirley is my Assistant Features Editor, Sarah McGill, to whomI turned over the department when I graduated. I was surprised at how good it felt to hear someone say I gave them their first job.
Joseph's very first Scene shop, in O'Laughlin Auditorium on the campus of St. Mary's College:
More to come.....
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