On such a trip as the train trip I took, there are certain realities that actually exist in the world of others but not in your plans. Spontaneity and ad libbing the trip has to take into account that while you have the time to take such a trip with the possibility of adapting your plans as needed because you have the time and wherewithal to do that.people you hope to meet along the way an d things you want to see have their own realities like jobs, family, an established schedule of events, and, although they might want to spend time with you, can only do so according to the real world.
For the 18 years I lived in Oklahoma City, the First Americans Museum was a work in progress. It relied on some funds outside of the tribes which, unfortunately, always seemed to make their way to helping rebuild Bricktown into an entertainment Mecca with shops, restaurants, bars, and a ballpark whose purpose was to make the city a destination place while ensuring the usual behind the scenes city leadership made money off the deal, something that could be slowed if money were to go to the First Americans Museum. While Bricktown and subsequent city improvements went along smoothly, there was always a problem with ensuring the needed funds got to the museum.
Years after I had left, the museum was finished and it was a must see on my things to do list.
The Uber from my hotel was a silver Chevy pick up and the driver was pure Oklahoman, looks. Accent. And truck. He dropped me off at the entrance to the museum complex as I requested so I could get the dramatic affect of walking toward the mail building as the complex grew around me with welcoming arms. I approached the front door ready with a cheerful “ayo” only to find it is closed on Tuesdays, the day I had put aside for the visit based on Mondays being the usual day for museums to close and get some large things moved around.
A Curator came out to get something from her car and I told her the tale and then we talked a little museumese.
A major physical feature of the museum is the Mound behind it, so I decided, if nothing else, I would walk around the mound. The weather was hot and dry, and the Mound was huge, but I began my walk. Halfway around it, I found a cement tunnel that led through the mound to the courtyard behind the building, and after seeing where it had led returned to my walk not wishing to enter the space if it, like the museum, was a closed space . A construction fence for a project adjacent to the museum property had me crawling up on a bit of the mound to get around it, but eventually I had circumnavigated the whole thing only to find that if I had gone to the right of the entrance and not the left I would have been able to walk up the always open public ramp to walk along the top, the shorter way to have circled the mound.
The next day, that would have been impossible as the walkway was closed to the public due to the excessively high winds that presaged a tornado later that evening.
Determined, I had gone back the following day when the museum was open, told the person at the desk of my having waited so long to see the museum only to find it closed as part of the small talk when getting a ticket. On my way out, she very cheerily expressed the hoped I would come back in the future not having to wait as long for the second visit and reminding me that regardless how many years from now I come back, the museum is closed on Tuesdays.
Another important stop was in Long Beach California. I had been very involved in the Gay Community there being a member of the Gay Men’s Chorus there, a political and Gay Rights activist, and the cartoonist for the local Gay newspaper. It was simple common sense to go to the LGBT Community Center there to get updates on the community since my time there, perhaps learn what happened with certain important people at that time, and, more importantly, any information about and ny contacts with members of the chorus and the chorus itself.
My motel was on the same street that crossed the one the Center was on, and being my first morning and having no place I had to be, I decided to walk and see the changes in an area very familiar to me. There were many. At one house I spoke with a man who was standing on his front steps as I passed who had been a child in that house when he was very young making him one of the children I had seen regularly in the neighborhood when I lived there.
The walk was a little longer than I had imagined, or it only seemed to be after thirty years, but in time and after a cup of coffee, I found my way to the Center on one of the days it is closed making a second trip necessary the following day. The visit did not go as I had hoped since the three people I encountered, the two at the reception desk and their supervisor whom I had called earlier to announce my arrival to ensure the place would be open when I got there, had no idea that for at least 10 years Long Beach had a well known chorus which, because it had proved itself, was the first to sing certain Disney tunes before any other entity by direct arrangement. It was as if it had never existed.
This was offset, somewhat, by a conversation at Hot Stuff, a gift shop leaning toward Gay adults while meeting the wants of the general public that opened at the same time I had arrived in town and whose owner, the person with whom I conversed filled me in on the last days of Mae Chen of House of Chen and changes in the area peppered with references to people we had both known.
Later in San Francisco, after figuring out the various routes of the various modes of transportation, I often continued to walk to places observing things as I went, knowing which mode of transportation, BART, street car, trolley, electric bus, to take home for the sake of my feet. In looking for one place on my phone one morning, I accidentally came across one of those red location indicators on cell phone GPS maps marking the location of the Museum of Cartoon Art and headed for it, leaving the original destination til later. Even though the walk was mostly down hill in San Francisco with the return trip by trolley, it did not soften the blow of finding upon my arrival that I had chosen the one weekday the museum was closed. Obviously, as this was close to me, I returned the following day, by trolley this time, and went though the museum founded by a gentlemen with a large Edward Gorey collection of originals and who sponsors a display case each season at the Gorey House Museum on Cape Cod. Although he was not there, I had a nice exchange of Gorey info with the young man at the front desk.
That afternoon I took a BART train over to Richmond, across the bay, to visit the first school I had ever taught at fifty years ago having never seen it again in those years.
Apparently during the night when my phone was supposed to be charging, the plug had come loose, so by the time I reached the BART station the GPS I would be relying on died.
The BART station was a transportation hub with no buses, a closed information office, and no route maps posted. I saw a sign pointing toward the Civic Center, but that walk turned out to be much longer than it should have been. I had no idea where the school was in relation to the station other than a misty impression it was North of the Civic Center, and so I began walking assuming the various bus stop signs meant the buses that never passed me eventually would. I had only one thing to do in Richmond and all afternoon to do it, so a walk with the promise of a bus may have been an unplanned inconvenience, but it was not impossible.
The stadium lights in the distance indicated an athletic field I hoped was connected to a school from which I could get directions if needed and an Uber ride since I had a destination. I came upon an elementary school where I had a nice conversation with th office staff about my time in Richmond and found the lights I saw belonged to the school I sought.
I walked around to the entrance of the high school with mixed emotions considering all the personal changes that had taken place in the past 50 years and came upon a locked security gate at the entrance with matching gates blocking any pedestrian access. Entrance was only by phone and mine was dead.
There I stood after fifty years looking through a security fence at the school I had come to see but could not approach.
When a parent pulled up to the gate and pulled out his phone, I ran over, explained myself and my phone situation, and asked if he were calling to gain access, could he mention I was here, which he apparently did as a security guard came out of the school as the gate began to open arriving in time to bar my entrance while allowing the parent to drive on and requesting ID. Along with my ID, I also presented him with enough information, dropping a few names as I did so, some of whom he had as teachers as he was himself an alumnus along with being the football coach and the head of school security now and answering his trick question carefully by correcting him on the name of one of the administrators that was at the school when we both were there in order to give my credentials some substance for acceptance and to establish my bond to the place from my experience there.
The guard was what one would expect of an alumnus, football coach with whatever experience in his background made him head of security, a man who sticks to the requirements of his job without question and regardless of circumstances, and, so, regardless of any empathy for my being there and the meaning of it, he was not to allow anyone on campus who was not related in someway directly to the school as, apparently, as I found from the guard after having walked through parts I should have known better than to have, the gang situation is so bad in the city that schools like this one are on perpetual lock down with all outside activities taking place in those areas shielded from easy access or view from the street.
The closest I got to the building was on the far edge of the circular drive in front of the building I once had access to as a teacher there but could not get close to now.
And, so it was that the main object of the “pilgrimage” was barred to me.
I suppose I could have called the school for a visit the next day after charging my phone, but I was taking things as the trip presented them and it seemed hellbent on presenting things that were closed.
At least I got to stand on the grounds.
What magic the moment might have had as I entered the school and talked with people there now, and perhaps finding I did know a priest or brother stationed there from somewhere else, or getting to walk the grounds especially to see the cemetery that was there on the property while I was there but I, for the life of me, do not remember but which now holds the remains of some with whom I taught was lost.
I walked back to the elementary school around the corner and reentered with little difficulty beyond stating my business and showing an ID like the first time, only getting as far as the front office beyond which there was no access to the rest of the school, and got directions to the bus that would get me to the BART station.
It being the last place I had specifically intended to visit on my trip and yet another one closed when I got to it, I closed that chapter of the book, took BART to my hostel to get a jacket as San Francisco gets chilly this time of year when the sun goes does, grabbed a trolley to the Castro, and joined Tom for a drink at Twin Peaks.
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