The Baxter Chronicles - Travels With Baxter

(Ed. - With apologies to John Steinbeck, who wrote most of this.  However, it seems to apply.)

When we were very young and the urge to be someplace else was on us, we were assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described us as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age we were assured that greater age would calm our fever and now that we are retired perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four blasts of Great White's horn still raises the hairs on our necks and sets our feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, we don’t improve; in further words, once a vagabond always a vagabond. We fear the disease is incurable. We set this matter down not to instruct others, but to inform ourselves.

When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical vagabond is not difficult. He has a built—in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey.  How to go, what to take, how long to stay.  This part of the process is invariable and immortal.  We set it down only so that newcomers to vagabond-dom, like teenagers in new-hatched sin, will not think they invented it.

Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process; a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass vagabond relax and go along with it.  Only then do the frustrations fall away.  In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.  We feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand it.

Our plan was clear, concise and reasonable, we think. For many years we have traveled in many parts of the world. In America we lived in Philadelphia, or dip into New Orleans or San Francisco. But Philadelphia is no more America than Paris is France or London is England. Thus we discovered that we did not know our own country. We, an American couple, coming to look for America, were working from memory, and the memory is at best a faulty, warpy reservoir. We had not heard the speech of America, smelled the grass and trees and sewage, seen its hills and water, its color and quality of light. We knew the changes only from books, the internet, TV and newspapers. But more than this, we had not felt the country. In short, we were coming to look for something we did not know about, and it seems to us that in a so-called American this is criminal.

Since we made no secret of our project, a number of controversies arose among our friends and advisers.  (A projected journey spawns advisers in schools.)  It was said that our Pennsylvania license plates would arouse interest and perhaps questions, since they were the only outwardly identifying marks we had.  And so they did - perhaps twenty or thirty times in all our travels to date.  But such contacts followed an invariable pattern, somewhat as follows:

Local man:  "Pennsylvania, huh?"
Us: “Yep.”
Local man: “We were there in 1998 - or was it '99? Alice, was it '98 or '99 we went to Philadelphia?”
Alice: “It was '96.  I remember because it was the year Alfred died.”
Local man: Anyway, I hated it. Wouldn’t live there if you paid us.”

There was some genuine worry about our traveling alone, open to attack, robbery, assault. It is well known that our roads are dangerous. And here we admit we had senseless qualms. It is some years since we have been alone, nameless, friendless, without any of the safety one gets from family, friends, and accomplices. There is no reality in the danger. It’s just a very lonely, helpless feeling at first—a kind of desolate feeling.

For this reason we took three companions on our journey—an old gentleman cat known as Luckie, a high-strung young feline named Flip, and a big, fat black cat known as Baxter.

Actually his name is Baxter Boombalotsa. He was born in Wyncote on the outskirts of Philadelphia and trained in the patois of Cheltenham Township, and while he knows a little English, he responds quickly only to commands in cat. Otherwise he has to translate, and that slows him down. He is a very big cat - more than 20 pounds, of a color called sable, and he is black when he is not dusty.  This makes it hard for him to sneak up on his prey.  Take a poor chipmunk, for instance, who lived under a storage shed in the campsite next door.  Baxter wanted that chipmunk so badly.  But a chipmunk is normally just too fast for him.  Baxter must instinctively know this, because he makes up for speed with patience.  Outwitted more than once by that quick rodent, Baxter finally just waited at the chipmunk's door.

The dumb little chipmunk eventually popped out - right into Baxter's loving embrace.  Luckily, Baxter is not a killer and only wanted to play with the little feller.  As a result, the chipmunk lived to see another day.

Baxter is a born diplomat. He prefers negotiation to fighting.  Only once in his eight years has he been in trouble - when he got stuck up in the walls of our RV with his butt hanging out.  Baxter lost only his pride that time.  But he is a good watch-cat - has a growl like a lion, designed to conceal from dogs he meets the fact that he couldn't bite his way out of a cornet de papier.

He is a good friend and traveling companion, and would rather travel about than anything he can imagine.  If he occurs at length in our blog entries, it is because he contributes much to our travels.

A cat, particularly a hulk like Baxter, is a bond between strangers. Many conversations en route begin with “What degree of a cat is that?"  We answer that he's a Boombalotsa cat.

Now, Baxter is a mind-reading cat.  There have been many trips in his lifetime, and often he has to be left at home.  He knows we are going long before the backpacks come out, and he paces and worries and whines and goes into a state of mild depression.  During our trip preparations he is underfoot the whole time and makes a damned nuisance of himself. He took to hiding in the truck, creeping in and trying to make himself look small.

He is not the most courageous cat.  About the time Hurricane Sandy was reported tromping her way out of the Caribbean in our direction, we prepared to stand a siege.  As Sandy crept toward us, we filled the fresh water tank, activated the RV's water pump and tied down everything movable.  Sandy sneaked on. We brought out a battery radio for reports, since the power would go off if Sandy struck. But there was one added worry - Chuck, our fifth-wheel trailer, sitting among the oak trees of Oak Grove RV Park.  In a waking nightmare we saw a tree crash down on the truck and crush Great White like a bug.  We placed Great White and Chuck far away from a possible direct fall, but that didn't mean that the whole top of a tree might not fly fifty feet through the air and smash them.

Baxter cat has no nerve.  Gunfire or thunder, diesel engines, backfiring trucks, explosions or high winds leave him helpless with fear.  Most of all, he fears the monster on the RV roof when David climbs up to attend to some cleaning or maintenance up there. In the midst of such terrible events, Baxter finds a warm place under the covers and cowers until the danger is passed.