Travel Biography - Week 57.

General Overview of 1995 Journey across the States.

I was born and grew up at just the right time in human history. Indeed, I could have married during the early seventies when I entered my twenties. But having had a girlfriend around 1971-1972, and after I was dumped by her, it turned out that I was not yet mature enough to take on married responsibilities. Just as well as the old saying, Marry in haste, repent at leisure, would have applied, and I might have regretted it later in life.

On the opposite end of the timescale, I was already married and the father of our first daughter when on September 11th, 2001, a terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Center forever changed the outlook on travel, especially long-haul.

Entry into the United States from the UK is a good example. For my first and second visits in the seventies, I had to apply for an entry visa at the US Embassy in London, a procedure which took quite a bit of effort to complete. Then in 1986, the Visa Waiver Scheme was introduced for all British and European tourists for visits not exceeding three months. However, as a consequence of 9/11, the US Government now require an ESTA, which the applicant would have to pay for. Therefore, I was able to take advantage of a fifteen-year window of opportunity, enabling me to enter the USA with nothing more than a valid passport with a stub of a green card stapled inside.

And so, there I was, leaning out of the window of a side-street hotel on the day of arrival from the UK, looking out into the night. However, I had one special target to aim for - to hike the Grand Canyon for the second time to bag some outstanding photos.

St Louis 1995. The Gateway Arch

The Journey Begins. Arrival at St Louis Missouri.

After spending much of the next day in Manhatten, I boarded the Greyhound Bus at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, which I remember well from 1978. Although the bus was destined for Los Angeles, my first stop on the route would be St Louis in Missouri, on the west bank of the Mississippi River, with the west shore of the State of Illinois lining its east bank. 

The ride brought flashbacks from 1978 as the bus cruised through the Hudson Tunnel and opened out into New Jersey. This section of the whole trip was "fast" - that is, I didn't make any overnight or extended day stops between New York and St Louis, although there were a couple of cities where I had an hour's pause whilst the bus was given a service. At one point I was humming to myself Simon and Garfunkel's song America. Its lyrics were about a young couple on board a Greyhound Bus out looking for their destiny.

The fact that the distance from New York to St Louis is nearly as long as from London to Rome reveals the sheer size of the country. On the Americruiser, it took 21 hours to complete the journey, approximately a third of the way towards the Pacific Coast. 

After alighting at St Louis, I felt relieved to be walking on solid ground again. Looking for a hostel in St Louis wasn't easy, as I was about to find out here in America. North American HI-AYH-affiliated hostels tended to be privately-owned properties which were registered by the association rather than owned directly by the administrative body as were the YHA England &Wales properties. Thus, they tended to be located out of town for running cost reasons. One hostel that appeared on the guide I had on me was the Huckleberry Finn Hostel, an AYH-affiliated but private property some distance out of town. (This was 1995. The hostel has closed and gone out of existence long since then.)

Not knowing where to go, I asked a taxi driver to take me to the hostel. The driver pulled a face as if I was wasting his time. Then it became apparent. The distance was short, a five-minute drive to a residential estate south of the city centre. Right outside the hostel was a local bus stop for services into town. Hoping a bed was available this time, I entered the empty property. In searching around, I strayed into the owner's apartment, but the fellow wasn't rude or unkind. Instead, he reserved a bed for me and asked me whether I had a fear of mice. Reassured, he then told me to come back later, as the hostel was closed for the day.

After checking in that evening (having remembered the route from the City Centre, approx a twenty-minute walk) I claimed my bed. This was my very first hostelling experience across the Atlantic. Although I was already well experienced with British, European and Israeli hostels, this was to be a new and exciting experience I call The American Dream.

Nearby was a small superstore, and I found this to be convenient for stocking up. With other backpackers having arrived, I made my way to the kitchen and found the food storage pigeonholes near the cookers. I stooped to look inside. There were several dead cockroaches within the pigeonhole. Feeling disgusted at the sight and of the odour emanating from the tiny corpses, I decided to keep all my groceries in the rucksack next to my bed and only take out what I need for that evening.

 The courthouse from the crest of Gateway Arch. 1995.

While I was cooking dinner, I began chatting with another backpacker from Germany, who eventually began lightheartedly to refer to me as That crazy Englishman - although I had never considered myself English, but a full-blood Italian who happen to be British by law, and a holder of a British passport. Unfortunately, although he got to know my name, I never asked what his name was, so for the convenience of this biography, I'll refer to him as James.

James wasn't alone but had a companion with him. As we cooked, we chatted, and it was then I realised that I had forgotten to bring the Greyhound route map of the USA with me before taking off. It was still resting on the dining room table in my apartment. James took out his copy of the map and gave it to me, and he said that I could keep it. This, with my anticipation to hike the Grand Canyon, might have earned me the title of crazy Englishman.

I was talking with James when, all of a sudden, a grey mouse sprang out of a mousehole in the kitchen, then hesitated as it paused to look up at us, then sprang across the floor to a hidden corner. I wasn't startled, as I was already aware of its presence, having been warned of it when I turned up earlier that afternoon. But I have wondered how many females in the past, and even some males, had let out a whoop at its sudden appearance? And I also began to wonder how the AYH accepted the owner's application for registration after what was meant to have been a vigorous inspection.

It was during the following morning that what I saw and experienced made me decide that the Huckleberry Finn Hostel was the worst hostel I ever stayed in, and no other establishment anywhere around the world had ever eclipsed it. And that was the row of toilet cubicles. For me who had a pressing urge, the Western saloon bar type of swing doors was an awful embarrassment! Any individual passing by can turn and look straight in. But like any living organism, nature's call had to be answered. But fortunately, hardly anyone passed by on that occasion and nobody looked in. 

Toilets with doors like this!

A little later that morning, I stood with three other backpackers at the bus stop. Presently, a saloon car driven by a middle-aged gentleman stopped at the bus stop and explained that his wife ran a grocery shop downtown and needed helpers for the day, whom she was willing to pay. All three of us climbed into the car after waiting a good while for a (non-existent) bus to turn up at the stop. Once in town, the car paused not at the shop but in a parking bay. The driver told us all to sit and wait while he got out of the car and slammed the door shut, leaving us four alone.

That's when I said,

Listen, all of you. What we're doing is illegal. If caught by the authorities, it could mean a jail term or thrown out of the country.

Immediately, the guy on my right flung open the rear door, and so did the fellow on my left, and both of them climbed out, with me following the chap on my right. However, the backpacker who sat in the front passenger seat remained in the car to await the driver. Probably the prospect of some extra cash in his pocket cancelled out any fears or apprehensions of tampering with the law, thus willing enough to take the risk.

I made my way to the 192-metre-high St Louis Gateway Arch, and I remembered it as it was in 1978. Nothing had changed, except that this time, I was swimming in deep curiosity about the reaction of the car driver when he sees that three of the four passengers legged at the first opportunity. Indeed, I would have loved to have seen his face!

Like I did fifteen years earlier, I boarded one of the eight cylindrical pods that make up the tram operating in one of the arch's curved legs There is a tram on each of the legs, making a total of 16 pods, thus a total capacity of 80 people are carried at any one time, five people in each pod. However, during my 1995 visit, the tram in the south leg was out of action, thus only the north leg gave access to the curved viewing platform at the crest. I also spent some time in the underground museum, learning why the arch was there in the first place and the trail that would lead from it westward, towards the Pacific coast in the Oregon area.

There were sofas here and there in the museum, and one, in particular, faced the entrance. Some people entered and they were messing about. Then they saw me looking up at them and they suddenly started to behave. They thought I was a staff member and carried authority. I watched as they made their way to the tram doors.

I also paid a visit to the famous St Louis Law Court, I visit I didn't make in 1978. This was the place where a slave named Dered Scott sued for his freedom in 1846, and won the case. I managed to see the interior.

Interior of the St Louis Law Court, 1995.

Later that evening, I made dinner and began to wind down. James and his mate had already moved on. The next day, I would vacate my bed and make my way to the Greyhound Bus terminal to continue the journey west. The journey, which includes sections of Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles, would, from Missouri, cross into the State of Oklahoma, where the bus has a service stop at Tulsa, a town whose name was made famous by the late Gene Pitney's 1963 chart-topping song, 24 Hours from Tulsa. 

The bus then would journey on and cross the border from Oklahoma into the northern square of Texas, where a stop would be made at Amarillo. After leaving the town whose name was also made famous in the pop song world by Tony Christie's 1971 hit, Is This the Way to Amarillo, the bus would eventually cross from Texas into New Mexico, where I made a day stop at Albuquerque. From New Mexico, I travel on to reach Flagstaff in Arizona, the start of the branch journey to the Grand Canyon.

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Next Week: More details on the St Louis to Grand Canyon Greyhound Bus travel.