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I EXIT ONTO U.S. 32 TOWARD CRAWFORDSVILLE, taking the inside lane and dodging between a slow-moving semi and a hapless Chevy headed for Arby’s. It’s always exciting to see if I can make it to the highway before these other dolts. But on 32 I have to keep the velocity under control. One of my colleagues has been ticketed for speeding here twice, and it’s important to keep within eight or nine miles of the 55-mile-an-hour limit. I have contempt for cars that slow down on the curves, and I find joy in taking a semi on the straight stretches, where I can punch it to 85 for a short burst before settling back into the 63 mph doldrums. The empty fields pass by quickly. Soon, I know, they will be prepared, planted, plowed, poisoned, and picked; but right now they are sodden and sedentary. Soon the last hill before town appears, and I slow to a sedate 45. I hope I am still early enough to grab a parking place outside Center Hall.
Denver to Colorado Springs. He said: “The truckers have won. The railroads are now extinct.” The Japan Railroad system took the opposite track. After WWII the Japan National Railroad began a series of upgrades, expansions, and improvements that culminated in hosting the Olympic Games in 1964 and the development of the world’s first high-speed train, the Shinkansen. Now it is possible to travel anywhere in Japan by train. I have taken the whooshing, amazing 180 mph Shinkansen to Kyoto, and as far as Fukuoko, near Hiroshima. I have taken a slow, silent, three-story night train, creeping up the tracks to the country towns in Shimane. I have taken funky little trains in Kyushu that had to switch from front to back in order to negotiate the mountainous tracks. And I have walked up and down countless stairs in Tokyo to catch yet another crowded commuter train.
THE AMERICAN INTERSTATE SYSTEM was begun by President Dwight Eisenhower, under the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956. Soon the entire country was crisscrossed with limitedaccess, high-speed arteries. In 1958 I made a cross-country trip from Denver to Boston via the railroad. It was a two-day affair; I had a sleeping compartment with a seat, a table, a bed, and my own bathroom. Meals were elegantly served in a diner, and my bed was turned down at night. I don’t think I was aware that the railroads were dying. My grandpa was. He saw the new freeway being built from
WHEN HURRICANE KATRINA struck New Orleans, the city’s residents were trapped by inadequate transportation. My friends in Tokyo were amazed. “Why didn’t they just requisition more trains to take them out?” they asked. I didn’t know what to say. “Because there were no trains” was all I could muster. “They had to use the highways.”
Professor of English Tom Campbell’s commuting days are over for the time being—he retired from the College last Spring. WM interviewed the former Corvette owner and will have a tribute in the Winter 2012 issue.
Chasing Ambiguity IN THE COURSE OF MY TEACHING I used a lot of Bic pens, and I was going through these pens at an amazing rate. I attributed this to my carelessness or forgetfulness. The house had a room I rarely went into, and one day I walked into that room, stepped on the throw rug and felt something underneath
it. I peeled back the corner of the rug to find 20 or so Bic pens carefully lined up, all parallel, each facing the same direction. This was the work of a cat, who had been doing this while I was asleep or gone. I like to imagine that this cat, when he was lining these things up, paused and asked, “Why am I doing this? What’s the point?” My point in telling this story is that I know about as much about why I paint as that cat knew about why he was collecting pens and putting them in order. I think that’s true of most people who make things. Whether they’re writers, painters, or musicians, they are driven by forces they don’t understand to compulsively make stuff. —John Strickland ’63, from his talk, “Chasing Ambiguity: Trying to Get It Wrong,” opening an exhibit of his paintings at Franklin College in September. We will feature John’s work in the Winter 2012 WM.
In the audience for the opening of Strickland’s exhibition was classmate and friend since junior high Brent Sutton ’62 (right). 82
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