Going the Distance

DEAD, ALIVE or DREAMING

We thought we had located heaven but we had to pass through Indiana first. I was wondering why the hell somebody decided to name this state Indiana when we cruised into a blind spot.

The first moment that I realized we were in a blind spot was when I saw the front fender of a semi smashing through the driver’s side window. We were going 70, I don’t know how fast the semi was going but somehow the driver never saw us when he attempted to change lanes.

I remember flying up in my seat and hitting my head against the roof of our vehicle. 

Then the swerves began as the semi hit the brake while it pushed us down the road. For a moment we were perpendicular with the eightyeen wheeler and taking up both lanes. I remember thinking to myself….I can’t die here. I’ve got to teach next week. Nobody will know who the hell we are….our friends back home will never understand how we came to crash and burn in this weird place.

This can’t be the end but it must be. Nobody ever lives to tell this story.

We disengaged from the semi and the high speed spin began.

The laws of physics must be obeyed.

The swerve into spin continued forever. I lost consciousness. When I came to a second or a minute, an hour or a lifetime later, our totaled van was in the median between the lanes of a four lane highway.

I figured that I had just learned how to die. It was simple really. You hit your head and the video tape called life goes dark for an undetermined time and when you wake up, you’re in a median in Indiana.

Slowly, I got the impression that I might be alive but what about Lynn? She.was driving She must be dead. I saw the fender smash through her window. I saw the flying glass Her head was against the steering wheel. 

There was blood.

She had to be dead.

The whole goddamned thing was my fault.

I was the one who thought we could find heaven.

Whatever this was; it didn’t look like heaven. 

I had a lot to learn about heaven.

I had a camera.

Soon I would use it.

In my dreams, the camera never works.

The camera worked.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t a dream.

to my mortal amazement, Lynn was as alive as I.

To my immortal wonder, perhaps she was as dead as I.

I saw the truck coming through her window.

No way that she could have survived that collision as long as there were laws of physics that governed force, mass, speed and velocity.

If she was alive…these natural laws had been circumvented which put us in the realm of the supernatural where we have remained ever since.

And the blood?

We both had slashes above our right elbow from the shattered glass….nothing serious.

We were able to exit the vehicle without much trouble.

I went to check on my cameras. In my dreams, my camera is always broken at times like this.

My camera was shattered.

That suggested, I might wake up so I decided to go with the dream a little further to see what would happen.

I went to my video camera. It seemed to be working.

Uh Oh.

This might not be a dream.

Whatever it was, if I could tape it…it might help.

I turned on the camera. It worked. The semi had come to a stop about 150 yards in front of us. The driver was still in the cab

I pointed the camera in the other direction and noticed a person coming towards us.

I kept the camera aimed at his face so I got a closer up look than I would have without the camera.

I focused on his eyes.

His eyes told me that he thought he was looking at a couple of ghosts.

When he got within speaking distance, I put down the camera.

“I saw the whole thing. I thought you guys were goners? Are you okay?”

I wasn’t sure.

We walked around to the side of the van. Lynn was leaning up against it.

I kept the video running. 

The tape would later be seen at least three times on national teevee.

Moments later, the police arrived.

Lynn explained the collision with astounding calm and clarity.

I was no longer taping.

They arranged for our totaled van to be removed from the median.

They gave us a ride to a nearby hotel.

They explained our situation to the folks at the front desk who set us up with a room although all of our belongings were still in the van.

They gave us a room pro-bono.

Everybody told us not to worry.

We found out that we were in La Grange, Indiana.

All we had was the clothes on our backs.

And the aid of better angels.

If Lynn wasn’t exactly rocking the boat during the previous couple of weeks, she was damned sure checking for leaks.

I was teaching summer school.

I was a teacher all the way. I taught twelve months a year. No house painting for me.

I had been going twelve months a year for ten years with only one break in between. I didn’t teach in the summer of 87, the year that I met Lynn.

Lynn was a single Mom when we met. She was raising three daughters. I was a single Dad raising a son and a daughter. Her kids liked me and my kids liked her. We spent a lot of time together especially on the weekends when I had custody of my two.

Lynnn was working part time at First Federal Bank.

She was good with change. She balanced every day. She could find the errors when someone else failed to balance.

She didn’t stand for a lot of bullshit that’s why she was checking the boat when I suggested a road trip test.

My prior experience as a road warrior had convinced me that you don’t really know a person  until you’ve been on the road with them. I had made the trip from ocean to ocean three times before I got married the first time. I regretted the fact that I hadn’t road tripped with my first wife before we got married. Although two children had to be born, we might have saved ourselves some nightmares. I had rushed into that first one and wasn’t gonna rush into this one.

Two years had already passed with Lynn and me….our bodies were at rest and would tend to stay at rest unless acted upon.

I enjoyed teaching summer school because I got a chance to pay attention to the kids who had been lost along the way during the regular school year. I was always amazed with the progress they made when given that second chance.

So the question would be, if we were going to take a road trip when would it be. Lynn had her schedule at the bank and I had mine at the high school. During the regular school year, I taught twelfth grade English as well as Creative Writing. I also taught an elective called Cinematic Literacy. I created that one myself and it was a great success. I was approaching the peak of my teaching career.

I had ten days at the end of August, beginning of September.

Lynn had a week of undefined vacation saved up.

We had  originally met on July eleventh 1987 or as we called it 7/11. On our two year anniversary, we went out to dinner at the very restaurant where Lynn had made her first proposal a month before. Midway through the meal she said “I sent away for a marriage license in Iowa. The field is located in Dyersville which is near Dubuque. We have a license waiting for us in Dubuque.”

Of course I was surprised but since I hadn’t been bullshitting her about the road trip idea, I said “that’s great. Good job.”

I didn’t know if she had actually procured a license or if she was reality testing

I was mystified when she said “so if we break up this summer at least we can always say that at one time we had a marriage license in Iowa when we tell our story”.

All through the month of August, we came up with reasons to take the trip and those reasons were roadblocked by objections, obstacles and realities.

During this time, we watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We loved the flick and mixed it into our plan. If we headed west we would go as far as Devil’s Tower in Wyoming and if we hadn’t made up our mind to get married by that time, we would head back and know that we had tried goddamn it, we had tried and we had a Iowa Marrigae license to prove it.

It was also becoming clear that if we hadn’t made up our mind to try the road trip this before school started, it meant that we probably should wrap up the relationship as painlessly as possible.

On August 25th, I called  Lynn from my apartment and said “I was ready to go if she was”.

She wasn’t ready and she hung up sorta pissed off.

A couple hours later, I heard a knock on the door. It was Lynn.

She told me the van was in the parking lot, packed and ready to go if I was serious.

I ran into my house, packed a few things. 

I climbed into the van.

“Let’s go” I said.

“I’ll drive”

I drove the first leg. We found rest area deep in Ohio.

We napped for a few hours. Then we went into the rest area and washed up. Lynn came out first and went behind the wheel. I started to climb into the van when an impulse struck me. As I was leaving the rest area, I saw a machine selling bio-rhythm cards. I dec ided what the hell…I went back and bought a card for that day.

It only took maybe an extra thirty seconds. I didn’t like what the card said so I threw it out.

That thirty seconds would be crucial as we were headed for a blind spot that we might have missed if not for the card.

We didn’t know if we were dead or alive but we knew we were getting married. We didn’t know where. We had a marriage license in Iowa. We had been looking for the Field of Dreams which we heard was in Dyersville. We drove through that town. There’s a lot of farms in Dyersville and a lot of corn. We couldn’t find the farm that we were looking for. We were hungry, tired, not sure if we were alive and headed for a place that might not exist. We were in a rented van. 

We saw the driveway to yet another farm and turned into it, past yet another corn field. When we got to the farm itself, it was most definitely not the Field of Dreams farm, it looked more like the Cujo farm. We got the hell out of there but not before some giant thing flew out of the corn, through my open window and onto my chest. I don’t know what the hell it was a bird, a locust, a demon grasshopper? I don’t know, I just grabbed whatever  it was and threw it out the window toward the cornfield or the hell from whence it came.

When we reached the end of the driveway safe from Cujo and the flying thing, I pulled the van off the road. I realized that I had gone crazy. Here we were in the middle of Iowa for God sake. We were lost. We might be as totaled as was our original van. All my fault, all part of yet another crazy dream that I had dragged Lynn into.

We turned right at the end of the driveway. We drove about a hundred yards. And then…we saw a paper plate…..nailed to a tree….on the plate two words and an arrow…..Movie site….arrow pointed right.

We took that right turn and a half mile down the road, there it was….The Field of Dreams. No doubt. Right exactly out of the film and out of my dreams.

Perfect.

We drove down that long driveway and met a man who was working in the yard. I asked him if he was the owner of the place.

He said that he wasn’t but that the owner was out in the cornfield on his tractor.

I saw the man on the tractor in the corn and walked towards him. He turned his tractor to meet me. 

When we were about ten feet apart, he turned off the tractor and turned his blue eyes on me.

“Can I help you?” asked the man on the tractor.

I said, “I believe you can. We’ve traveled from Rochester, New York. We had a terrible automobile accident yesterday. I’m not sure if we’re alive or dead so tell me, is this heaven or is this Iowa?”

He looked at me and realized that there was something going on here and he wasn’t sure what it was.

Then he answered in the most perplexing way possible.

“It’s whatever you want it to be.’

I said, “whatever it is, it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. I want it to be the place where we get married.”

He said “You can do that.”

I asked “Would Friday be all right.”

He said “that would be fine.”

We shook hands.

On that Friday, he would be our best man. His name was Don Lansing.

I told Lynn the great news.

We got in our car and drove to Devil’s Tower. We had originally said that we would go as far West as Devil’s Tower and if we hadn’t made up our minds by then, well we’d head back home and take a break. Of course, we had already made up our minds thanks to the junkyard proposal.

We returned Thursday night.

Don greeted us warmly and invited us into the house. Yeah, the house in the movie. Don wanted to know what we were going to wear. All we had left were our jeans. Don went to the phone and called the local tux shop. They had one tux left. Don asked if we wanted a cake. We said yeah. He got on the phone and called the local bakery. He asked Lynn how big the cake should be. She said big enough for fifty. I laughed out loud. We didn’t know a single person in Iowa aside from Don and the guy who originally greeted us, a guy named Butch who was a caretaker for the field and his wife Annie.

Then he asked Lynn if she needed a wedding gown. He knew a dressmaker in town. He called Anne Steffen, the local dressmaker. He described our dream and asked Ann if she could help out. She said that she could.

That evening, we drove into town. The only tux in town fit me perfectly. Next we met Anne. She and Lynn got together and designed a wedding dress. That night we slept at Butch and Annie’s house and the rain poured down ending a drought.

The next day, we went back into town. The dress was made. Beautiful like in a dream. We drove to the town office to pick up our wedding license. Lynn had sent away for one before we left on our pilgramage. By the time we got to the office the word had already spread. We got our license. They told us that they had heard all about the plan and so had the local television station. They wanted to interview us. 

We met the reporter and she seemed very interested in our story. She had a full camera crew with her. We told them that we had arranged for a justice of the peace to do the honors. We told them about the car crash.

The town barber had heard aboutall of this and volunteered to give me a haircut while Lynn tried on her dress.

By that time it was getting late. We stopped at a restaurant to have our last meal as single people. We looked up at the teevee and there we were on the local news. We watched ourselves telling our story.

We made it back to the house. By this time, a bunch of neighbors had gathered.

I went into the room where in the movie Ray’s daughter looks out the window and says “something’s gonna happen out there.”just before the ghost shows up.

I had the same view of the field and I knew that indeed something was gonna happen out there. We were gonna get married. The ghosts were gonna show up.

I made sure I had the wedding ring which we had bought at Wall Drugs in South Dakota. The rings were made from genuine Black Hills gold.

By this time about fifty people had gathered.

I left the house and walked into the corn in left field. I figured that since I still wasn’t sure that I was alive that I should come out of the corn like the ghosts did.

I made my way to the pitchers mound where I met Don. I was on the mound for a few moments when the fifty people started to ooh and ahh as Lynn emerged from the house. Suddenly everything was in transcendent five dimension. I couldn’t have dreamed of a more beautiful bride.

She made the long walk past the bleachers and crossed the magical first base line. She didn’t disappear. She met me on the mound and we walked together to home plate where the magistrate awaited. We took our vows with Don standing right behind us. The witnesses cheered.

After the ceremony, we went back to the porch. The towns folk had brought fixings. We ate the cake together. They all wanted pictures so we posed for awhile. We drank some champagne that somebody had provided. We bid them farewell. We would see most of them again.

The next day we were home. On the flight back, we told the  stewardess our story and she put us in first class. Sitting right next to us was Maury Wills, the ex-Dodger shortstop who had once stole a hundred bases in a season. She told Maury the story and he congratulated us.

We made it home in time for the Ring of Fire around Canadaigua Lake.

We’re going to be celebrating our thirtieth anniversary next week.

We’re still going the distance and easing each other’s pain.