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Tough Choices

Graphic Novel recommendations for 2009

From the December 10 issue of Eugene Weekly. Sometimes I write about topics other than comic books, I swear. But hey, if they want to keep paying me to write about this sort of flotsam, who am I to argue?

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In the three years I’ve been writing this annual graphic novel review roundup, I’ve never had such a difficult time choosing which books to cover. 2009 produced an amazing wealth of material, particularly in the realm of graphic narrative journalism and nonfiction.

A standout comic of 2009, The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders (First Second, $29.95) is the true story of Didier Lefèvre, a Parisian photographer embedded in 1986 with
an international aid convoy as it crosses on foot into Afghanistan to treat the medical ailments of mountain villagers. It’s a dangerous adventure, one in which opium dealers and tribal gang lords paradoxically provide refuge from airborne Soviet patrols, corrupt rural cops and harsh winter conditions. Even as Lefèvre is disheartened by the complicated web of strange bedfellows, religious division and sparse mercies of Afghani politics, he simultaneously achieves a grudging respect for the cultural and geographic idiosyncrasies of the troubled countryside. Illustrated comic book panels by Emmanuel Guibert are intercut with “panels” composed of Lefèvre’s stunning black and white photography, advancing the story in a wholly original way and even making a low-key statement about the nature of comics’ graphic storytelling.

In A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge (Pantheon, $24.95), another graphic story presenting a specific moment in history, cartoonist Josh Neufeld reconstructs the Hurricane Katrina experiences of six real-life New Orleans families. Some flee the city, while others remain defiantly in their homes. Some barricade themselves to protect property and livelihood as others seek an ill-fated shelter in the Morial Convention Center. As in The Photographer, salvation is discovered in the most unlikely heroes, while those sworn to protect become one of the problems they’re assigned to relieve. The affecting subject matter is never maudlin in Neufeld’s hands, never feels ill-treated by the comics format. Sentiment that could easily devolve into a moribund, jingoistic chest-thumping is kept invigorated by stories of struggle for survival that are by turns saddening, thrilling and triumphant, but always engaging.


From a serious tale of world affairs to something that’s anything but, Toronto cartoonist Kate Beaton’s Never Learn Anything from History (TopatoCo, $18) gives world history the “Fractured Fairytale” treatment. Think of Beaton as the brainy kid who sat in the front row of your high school history class, who also happens to be wicked funny. Beaton finds dry-witted humor and more than a little cuteness in a petulant Napoleon, a meeting of Garfield the U.S. president and Garfield the cat and even the 1981 attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. These comics aren’t for kids: Marie Antoinette advises one homely attendant she’d be better off as a hooker, and an arrow-to-the eye at the Battle of Hastings elicits some rough language. But adult history buffs will discover plenty of wiseass in-jokes in this charming collection.

Continue reading "Tough Choices" at Eugene Weekly.

Animal Instincts

Lane County’s quadruped competitors

From the the fall issue of Eugene Magazine. Okay, the restaurant and book reviews are fun, as I usually walk away with free eats or free swag, but there are definitely other perks to this lifestyle. Gotta love an interview in which I can ask someone about the strength of the average ferret and remain on-topic. I also love assignments that teach me new terms like dog fancy, or cattery. Expect both of those in all my writing from now on.

Special props to Eug Mag for the itty-bitty puppy hiking boots gracing the cover, a nice touch of whacked-out surreality for a magazine that's usually fairly restrained.

This article edited and endorsed by Velcro, my border collie.

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Caleb, a black and white border collie, corners and spins on his heels, jumping each of the 17 low, fencelike obstacles in turn, as his owner, Carolyn Hancock, indicates each challenge. A crowd is gathered in the Lane County Fairgrounds livestock pavilion on this Memorial Day for the Emerald Classic Cluster canine agility trials. Virtually all of them dog lovers, the onlookers cheer and applaud for Caleb, as they do for each of the competitors, even those dogs who simply bark and run around, ignoring the obstacles.

Around here, in “Track Town, U.S.A.,” Ducks aren’t the only animals with a competitive streak. Eugene
Celebration’s annual pet parade may be the area’s most well-known furry function, but it’s far from the only game in town.

Caleb’s not the fastest dog here at the trials, but Hancock, a petite, blonde woman sporting a pink sweatshirt, doesn’t seem to mind. She looks pleased as Caleb’s brief run concludes, snapping the lead to Caleb’s collar in a satisfied manner before retreating to a nearby folding chair to let the pooch cool down.

“He didn’t qualify,” she explains, but smiles as she says it. “He’s pretty smart, he’s easy to train. It’s his handler who isn’t easy to train.” Caleb, at 7 years old, has been competing for almost four years. The dog is in the Open class of agility categorizations recognized by the American Kennel Club.

No mistakes allowed

Hancock retired last year from human resources at the Good Samaritan Society, but recently returned to her position on a part-time basis, leaving her enough time to train with Caleb. This team is here to compete, but the trials also represent a chance to meet friends (both two- and four-legged) with a common interest. “It’s a great social event,” Hancock says of the trials. “You’re competing with your dog as a team,” and also fostering professional and personal connections.

One of those connections is Ronwin Ashton, Agility Trial Chairwoman for both the McKenzie Cascade Dog Fanciers and the Eugene Kennel Club, and the coordinator of today’s event. An unaffiliated club, Willamette Agility Group (WAG), also specializes in dog agility, but Ashton invests her energy in Kennel Club–sanctioned events like this one.

“Novice, Open, and Excellent are the respective levels of increasing difficulty,” explains Ashton. “Each increase in level has additional obstacles to perform, additional challenges, with less time and fewer allowed errors than the previous level. Three qualifying legs must be completed, at all levels, to advance to the next level.” If and when Hancock and Caleb do advance to the Excellent level, no mistakes whatsoever will be allowed in their performance.

Continue reading "Animal Instincts" at Eugene Magazine.

Dusting Off the Golden Lasso

An Oregon writer makes Wonder Woman relatable

It's fun interviewing someone famous, or at least famous enough to have fans, even when their fame leads to complications. This article, which I wrote for the December 3 issue of Eugene Weekly, is the product of attempts over many months to convince the intensely private Gail Simone to allow me to interview her. Guess now I have to find a new professional goal.

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Since her inception in 1941, Wonder Woman has been a symbol of freedom and democracy, a totemic 1970s feminist touchstone, a piece of bikini-clad eye candy and an icon of gay America.

What the foremost female superhero hasn’t been, particularly, is relatable, at least not for the legion of mostly male superhero fans who support the comic book industry. When the Amazon princess wasn’t being used for gratuitous T&A, she was portrayed either as a man-hating harridan or a cipher for blandly apolitical gender equality. Wonder Woman always seemed to work better as a symbol than as a character.

Happily, that’s changed. In an era in which parent company DC Comics is fostering iconic runs by star writers on some of its flagship titles — Grant Morrison on Batman, Geoff Johns on Green Lantern — Diana Prince (the heroine’s secret identity) has been quietly flourishing under the pen of Oregon native and former hairdresser Gail Simone. And though some women have tackled the character in the past, notably in a short-lived stint by novelist Jodi Picoult, it is Simone who holds the rather surprising title as the first female regular writer in Wonder Woman’s history.

“We have a different conception of feminism than was written in [Wonder Woman’s] conception,” Simone said in October at a panel for the UO’s Understanding Superheroes conference. And while the writer is certainly capable of writing a good, old-fashioned, politics-free superhero fight, Simone’s social messaging makes her work compelling. “I can’t write a story that doesn’t have some of that, somewhere,” she says.

Simone will discuss “Gender and the Superhero” in an appearance on Wednesday, Dec. 9, at the UO, likely touching on her work on Secret Six and Birds of Prey, both comic series that incorporate well-rounded characters of both genders, the latter detailing the exploits of an all-woman team of superhero espionage agents.

Even as her star has risen swiftly, Simone continues to live a quiet life on the Oregon Coast, far from fan culture. “I always wanted to be a writer to some degree,” she says, but the goal “just didn’t seem attainable, somehow.” She graduated from high school early and received a scholarship to study English and theater at the UO, but “life intervened,” and Simone wound up at a Springfield beauty school.

While managing her own salon, Simone began writing for online comics fan forums and soon attracted attention with her superhero humor column “You’ll All Be Sorry,” which led to work on The Simpsons comic book and then on Marvel Comics’ darkly humorous Deadpool. “It’s one of the amazing things about the Internet,” Simone says, “that kind of democratic notion that you can live in a town with no decent Chinese food and still be read each week all over the world.”

Continue reading "Dusting Off the Golden Lasso" at Eugene Weekly.

Deep-Fried Soul

"I have some bad news," my wife said as she climbed into the passenger seat. It's not what you want to hear when picking your wife up from work, especially in a week in which death has seemed to shadow us and our loved ones at every corner. News of the passing of Ted "Papa Soul" Lee, an institution in the Eugene music and culinary scenes, has left me saddened.

I interviewed Papa for a grad school writing project, hanging around his restaurant a few times over the course of a week in 2007, notebook in hand. Papa was wary of me at first. His star was on the rise, and he'd been interviewed a number of times by various news outlets. My brand of narrative writing, though, calls for some good old-fashioned depth reporting, and Papa couldn't quite seem to put his finger on why I'd want to bum around in his joint multiple nights in a row, and scribble down what his regulars were saying to one another. He was always hospitable, however, even when I'd only buy a single beer and nurse it over an hour. Papa loosened up after I'd questioned him a bit, once he realized I was an ex-pat Southerner who, like Papa himself, was trying to make sense of his own lineage and cultural inheritance.

And when the article appeared in Eugene Magazine, in much-truncated form, Papa framed it and hung it on his restaurant's wall. In a way, having the man memorialize my writing that way was significant for me, perhaps even more so than it was for him: having a respected businessman value my work enough to have it framed was a big mental boost for a young writer, and gave me the confidence to approach other interview subjects fearlessly. I guess I have always thought of the man as a sort of spiritual benefactor, even if he never knew it. In fact, that grinning photo of me you see above and to the right was taken on the sidewalk in front of his place.

And what's more, Papa never forgot me, and hailed me warmly each time he saw me. (A perk of being a reviewer, to be sure.) He was a man with an enormous appetite for life, for both its nurturing and destructive sides... including some rougher elements (drug use, response to racism, a deadbeat father) that were understandably scrubbed by my editor for publication in a lifestyle magazine. And while I understand why the piece had to be gutted, I've always felt something was lost in translation. This seems an appropriate occasion to recognize the life and the works of Ted Lee, to mark what the man stood for.

So I hope my readers will indulge me in this, perhaps the longest blog entry I've posted, the unexpurgated, original version of "Deep-Fried Soul."

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It’s past the dinner hour, and most of the restaurant’s dining customers are on their way out the door, bellies and doggie bags full. In less than an hour the regular Thursday night reggae jam will usher in a new clientele, and in one corner of the tiny Victorian bungalow’s front room, a couple of DJs are already pulling tables into a makeshift desk for their sound equipment. The sound system is cranking out the cream of Motown and soul, all African-American artists. From the kitchen, a cook’s voice wavers as he sings along with “Heat Wave” by Martha and the Vandellas. A young waitress joins in under her breath and she putters about behind the front counter.

Peering down at the waitress from the upper echelons of the liquor rack that crowns the front counter, a rubber ducky with James Brown’s distinctive locks mugs next to a peeved-looking Snoop Dogg action figure. They’re mirrored on the opposite side by a grinning Louis Armstrong figurine. The walls of the cottage are plastered with retro-styled posters and “outsider art” featuring black musicians, Robert Johnson and Lightnin’ Hopkins and Jimmy Hendrix and Stevie Wonder. An oil painting features a large, heavily-tattooed man wailing away on a harmonica.

Say, you attended a conference, right?

Why yes, Johnny. Yes, I did. A few more words on the University of Oregon's recent "Understanding Superheroes" academic conference. I'll try to keep this post Teen Titans-sized, and not one of the Justice League-length diatribes of my last couple of superposts.

Perhaps my favorite of all the conference events I've attended to this point (yes, there are more upcoming; this conference and its schedule of attendant events are massive), was the panel "Being and Super-Beings: Existentialism, Temporality, and Eschatology." I knew I was among my own when I met a dapper Ph.D. student from UC Davis name Kane (or Caine?) who was dressed to the nines in a natty shirt, blazer, and Blue Lantern ring. I also met a wheelchair-bound comics expert from Tacoma who works for Twomorrows Publishing, who not only amused me with the tale of one Halloween when he won a costume contest dressed as a motorized Sherman tank, but recognized in me a kindred spirit when he realized he didn't have to explain the meaning of the phrase "Cei-U".

Both panel presenters were excellent. Professor Beth Davies-Stofka of Excelsior College spoke on the connection of superheroes and religion, arguing that comic book heroes are not the "modern day mythology" (yawn) fanboys make them out to be, but rather are representative of humanity, the religious themselves. Reading Comics and New York Times-published author Douglas Wolk also spoke about a connection of gods and men, helping this dubious nerd locate a logical through line in Grant Morrison's sprawling, metatextual Final Crisis storyline featuring DC Comics' so-called "Fourth World." (How could I never have noticed that the Omega Effect symbols on Darkseid's gauntlets on the cover of issue #4 form a "DC"? Jeez Louise.)

Both of the presenters were gracious and engaged in taking questions after their respective presentations, even when I pushed Wolk a bit to defend what I believe to be substandard work from Morrison. Davies-Stofka and her husband were also great fun to hang out with for the rest of the weekend.

The week prior, at one of the earliest conference talks, UO law professor Dominick Vetri, spoke about the complicated legal struggle of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, to regain control of their golden goose after a rash adolescent decision to sell the character to DC Comics for $130(!) in 1938. Vetri spoke at length about the legal ins and outs of the case, a superhero-style "neverending battle" that has risen, phoenix-like, from its own ashes countless times over seven decades...and which, believe it or not, is still taking place as I type this, long after the principle actors have all passed along to that great comics bullpen in the sky.

Professor Bummer's Tenure Track

I have a new nickname. Or deejay name. Or maybe it’s a superhero name: “Professor Bummer.” The moniker was bestowed on me by Matt Fraction, writer of the comic books Iron Man and Casanova, at the comic creators panel, a part of the University of Oregon’s “Understanding Superheroes” academic conference that ran a week ago on campus in conjunction with the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art’s exhibition Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Art of the Superhero. The conference sported panels with names like "Being and Super-Beings: Existentialism, Temporality, and Eschatology." (Yes, really.)

In fact, I have written previously about the exhibition and conference for local media.

Fraction appeared with fellow Oregonian comic writers Kurt Busiek (Trinity, The Avengers, Astro City) and Gail Simone (Wonder Woman, The All-New Atom, Birds of Prey). In the panel’s wrap-up Q-and-A, I asked the creators what it’s like writing for these sprawling, decades-old mega-storylines, considering that the DC and Marvel Universes have been rolling along since the 1930s and 40s, respectively. I may have asked it a bit bluntly, I’ll allow, as I phrased it along the lines of “…considering that you could stop writing for comics at any time, take a break of 20 or 30 years, and come back to find the same story had been told in your absence?”

Fraction’s response: “I’ve ever thought of my work in such Sisyphian terms. Thanks, Professor Bummer.”

That kind of wit was on display through the whole thing. Prof. Ben Saunders of the UO English department, conference organizer and guest curator of the exhibition, opened the panel with, “I apologize for the less than ideal angle some of you may have of our esteemed guests.”

Busiek: “Head on?”

As often happens when comics geeks and academics gather in real or virtual spaces, much of the chit-chat revolved around the agony and ecstasy of comic book continuity, the sprawling web of interconnected stories that compose a shared fictional universe, the violations of which give fanboys ample opportunity to praise or lambaste creators.

“I think continuity is the devil,” Fraction asserted, his usual timid, reticent self. He went on to explain that, so long as characters and story scenarios operate in a basically consistent manner, he’s happy with his writing.

Busiek, who along with Mark Waid represents perhaps the largest walking repository of superhero continuity lore in the industry, countered with a quote his mis-attributed to John Donne, but which actually belongs to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

(Coincidentally, Saunders specializes in Donne and Shakespeare. Reckon he was gritting his teeth.)

“I personally get continuity fatigue,” added Simone.

Affection and Nostalgia

The UO’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum gives comic books a hero’s welcome

This article, which first appeared in the September 24 issue of Eugene Weekly, afforded me the opportunity to sort of wallow in my own special brand of hedonism, thinking and reading and talking at length about comic books.  I can guarantee you I'll be returning to the museum multiple times before the exhibition has concluded, to commune with the spirits of my gurus.  I was also pleased to discover a kindred spirit in the University of Oregon's Ben Saunders, a man who walks the walk in terms of comic book nerdery.  This guy isn't taking advantage of a pop cultural trend; he's advancing an art form about which he has been passionate for decades.

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“Can I touch this?” I ask, gesturing to the 70-year-old magazine sitting on the glass top counter of Nostalgia Collectibles, a Eugene comic book store. Darrell Grimes, the owner of both the shop and the comic book in question, gives his assent, and I lift the object carefully, reverently, as if I’m handling an illuminated manuscript from the Dark Ages.

Even encased as it is in clear, hard, protective plastic, the illustration on the comic book’s cover exudes a kinetic sense of exuberance: a boyishly grinning Superman leaps high above the rooftops, his cape billowing behind him.

This is a copy of Superman #1, published in 1939. Fewer than 200 copies are thought to exist. It’s worth $50,000. The very fact this comic book resides in Eugene makes this city noteworthy, in some circles.

And I’m holding it. For me, comic book nerd that I am, that’s like touching the Holy Grail.

This comic, and the nearly 200 pieces of original comic book art it will soon be joining on the campus of the UO, matter to the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of hardcore comic book aficionados in the area.

But they’re also a point of pride to the citizens of Eugene as a whole, or at least they should be. Because the artwork that has been collected for “Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Art of the Superhero,” an exhibition opening Friday, Sept. 25, at the UO’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, is one of the most expansive gatherings of superhero comic book art ever assembled. And it’s not hanging on a wall in N.Y. or L.A. or London, or even Portland. It’s here.

“I do think this is the best museum exhibition of superhero comic art to date,” says Ben Saunders, an associate professor of English at the UO, and curator of the exhibition. “‘Best’ in the sense of broadest, most historically comprehensive,” he continues, “and with a large number of key pieces by key artists from the 70 years of the genre.”

It may sound as if Saunders is bragging about the show he’s assembled. But to be frank, the man has a right to brag: Works are on loan from the Library of Congress as well as from 18 private collectors from around the country.

But this show is about more than just volume. Saunders is an expert on this stuff, and he has taken care to present the original artwork. Originals are created on card stock pieces larger than the comic book pages to which they will eventually be reduced, in a manner that tells a story: not just the thrilling tales of spandexed champions or the story of good winning out over evil, but the story of the creation of a wholly new and inherently American way to tell stories in the first place.

“I went in pursuit of key works by key artists,” says Saunders, who revels in name-dropping from the collection’s impressive catalog: “Not just ‘something by Jack Kirby,’ but Jack Kirby’s cover to [Fantastic Four] #74. Not just Bill Sienkiewicz, but one of his large collage poster/covers from the mid ’80s. Not just Neal Adams, but Neal Adams on Batman.” Care has also been taken, Saunders says, to include “once-influential masters of the form” of the 1940s Golden Age of comic books, “who deserve to be better known.”

Continue reading "Affection and Nostalgia" at Eugene Weekly.

Photo by Todd Cooper.

Summer Vacation: The Vertigo Project

Continuing an occasional series in which I share how I wasted spent my summer vacation. The First Lady of Inkville and I decided to spend a week in San Francisco.  Here we are hanging out in the stables of an old Spanish mission just a little over an hour south of the city:

Oh, whoops.  That's actually a shot of James Stewart and Kim Novak in Hitchcock's 1958 noir masterpiece Vertigo, one of our favorite films here in Inkville.  How'd that get in there?  Here's a photo of us in San Francisco:

Hm.  You know, come to think of it, Vertigo coincidentally takes places almost entirely in San Francisco... 

Hey, I have an idea!  Wouldn't it be really nifty if Aaron and his wife totally took a pilgrimage to all the shooting locations, and photographically recreated the high points of a fifty-year-old film storyline panned by contemporary critics?  By golly, I think it would! 

But wait, what point would such a jaunt serve?  Well, perhaps it would make a statement about the continuity of fan culture, or comment on the subversion of traditional American gender roles and filmic tropes, or serve as a sort of urban archaeological expedition.  Or heck, maybe it would just be an excuse for Aaron to to annoy his wife all week with Jimmy Stewart impressions.

Or maybe it would be all of the above.  I think we should find out.  Let's skidoo, shall we?

Like all mid-century detective thrillers, this one begins in a flower market.  Okay, maybe I'm reaching, but that is in fact where our journey began.  Vertigo is about a retired police detective hired to tail one looker of a suspicious character.  Kim Novak plays the distant, ethereal Madeleine Elster, the object of our hapless ectomorphic detective's passions.  It seems Madeleine has been zoning out of the here-and-now of 1958, falling into a trance in which she believes herself to be 18th-century Spanish gentry. It's up to Stewart to bust this case wide open, Scooby-Doo style.

So why a flower market?  Over the course of the film, Novak, in fact, dies three times.  (Uh, right.  Sorry.  Spoiler Alert.  The movie is half a century old, people.)  Novak and her freaky, romantic longevity are represented in the film by means of a visual device: flowering perennials, which bloom everlastingly.  Or, um, is that annuals?  I can never remember. 

At any rate, like Jimmy Stewart says of the redwood trees, "Their true name is Sequoia sempervirens, 'ever living.'"  Kim Novak's connection to the natural world and plant life is typified by her penchant for gadding about the Presidio sporting a small, trim bouquet like the one she has seen in a painting of her Spanish noblewoman...

...which is my roundabout way of explaining why we started at a flower market.  My wife's bouquet, however, was neither small nor trim:

Sweet Talk: Stretching your dough on desserts

This article first appeared in the fall Chow! guide, in the September 10 issue of Eugene Weekly.

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In the 2000 film Chocolat, Juliette Binoche soothes the pain of the residents of a provincial French town with a single magic potion: chocolate, the movie’s namesake. And while the current worldwide economic recession presents a different set of problems than the 1950s conformity and heavy-handed demagoguery of the film, eating one’s way to happiness still sounds like a tempting quick-fix cure for depression...both the emotional and economic varieties.

With a disheartening 12.5 percent unemployment rate in Lane County, more than three full percentage points higher than the national average, belts are tightening across the Southern Willamette Valley, and extras like sweets seem like a natural place to start trimming the fat. But if the thought of foregoing dessert due to a limited budget makes you want to toss your cookies, some local sugar-slingers are taking steps to ensure their customers can have their cake and eat it, too.

Adam Bernstein, proprietor of eateries Café Maroc and Adam’s Sustainable Table, recently changed the name and menu of the latter from Adam’s Place, a measure to reflect not only sustainability of the environmental sort but a nod toward finances as well. “I think people tend to share more desserts” these days, says Bernstein. 

“We have a chocolate volcano, a shared dessert,” Bernstein says. Ordering a dessert, even a shared one, makes “people feel like they’re getting a bonus,” he explains.

If even half a chocolate volcano is beyond the budget, Amy Brown, manager of the Candy Baron at Fifth Street Public Market, may have the solution. Brown equates the shop’s à la carte shopping experience with a way to save a few coins, asserting that her customers “are appreciative of the fact we carry individual candies, and can buy just a couple of pieces” as a pick-me-up. All the same, Brown says, “We’ve definitely had a [sales] drop at the beginning of the year.”

Continue reading "Sweet Talk at Eugene Weekly.

Pay As You Go

The train station of Raton, New Mexico, seemed little more than a cement slab, simmering in the June heat. In cooler weather, in less dramatic circumstances, I'd probably have enjoyed the history of the mission-style building. The station defied all my expectations of rail travel. The terminal building was locked.  No smartly-dressed porter in a tie greeted me. No one carried a pocket watch.

It was 1997. I was earnest and crying and twenty years old. I said, I can’t believe this is how we end. It’s not, she responded, we’ll see each other again. The capstone project of her senior year in college was to take place among the red rock of the southwest. My crappy summer job was to transpire back home in the humid flora of the southeast. I’d wanted to see her off, so we’d wended our way from school in Chicago to this train platform in Raton, from weeds to wheat to cacti to the simmering slab. I boarded the train with a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a whole supermarket rotisserie chicken. I had a change of clothes and a jacket and a couple of books. And I was broke.

I was always broke, of course, but now I was broker than usual, so broke I hadn’t contributed to gas or food on the trip. And now she was not only bidding goodbye to me, but to twenty-five of her dollars that she could not spare, pocket money for the train that more than doubled my pathetic savings. 

My Amtrak route would backtrack me from Raton to Chicago, then send me on home to Greensboro, North Carolina, where my father would meet me. Cacti to wheat to weeds to kudzu. Amtrak would demand payment in Greensboro when I claimed the boxes containing the contents of my dorm room that I had shipped ahead, but that was a problem for Greensboro.