Back in May of ’98, I drove U.S. Highway 1 from the top to the bottom. For the geographically challenged in the crowd, U.S. 1 runs from Fort Kent, Maine to Key West, Florida – a distance of roughly 2400 miles which I covered in ten days. As I jounced my way down the eastern seaboard, praying that I wouldn’t break an axle and wondering if Stevie Wonder and Louis Braille had paved the road together or if the guys at the Department of the Interior just gave Stevie an open-ended prescription for crystal meth and let him do it himself, I saw many things. Silly things. Stupid things. Scary things. I plan to incorporate all of these things into a book just as soon as I finish the relatively simple, yet so boring as to induce cessation of respiratory function, task of transcribing my tapes. But until I get done with the transcription process (projected date of completion: February 2002), find an agent who both understands and wants to represent a travel book set not on the road per se but in the valley of my neuroses, sell aforementioned Let’s Go! Sarah’s Neuroses for a fee sufficient to quench the ongoing grease fire of my personal finances, and see it published and in print, you will have to make do with the following highlight film. Or should I say “lowlight film”? Judge for yourself.

MAINE

On the first day I see a sign for “Dennis’s Crafts And Computer Repair.” How exactly did Dennis – that printer driver replacin’, god’s-eye weavin’ fool – find a way to merge the two loves of his life, programming and macrame? Well, I didn’t stop in to see, so I don’t know, but I had visions of mousepads that double as potholders and little clay magnets reading “I [Heart] Windows 95.” I had seen signs like this before; my family and I once spotted an establishment in South Dakota called Bob’s Plumbing And Gift Shop. Apparently, nothing says I love you like a sump pump. On another family trip, we crested a hill in Vermont and found Bill’s Poultry Farm And Museum, and we have always regretted not stopping in to visit the “Double Yolks: A Proud History” exhibit. (No, Virginia, they didn’t really have that exhibit – but what exhibits WOULD they have? “Which Came First, The Chicken Or The Egg: The Debate Continues”? Or perhaps “The Turkey Feather Molt Of 1966”? Or maybe a poultry safety filmstrip – “Little Johnny learned the hard way, kids. Never, ever put a live hen in the trash compactor.” I mean, come on.)

Many diners and snack shacks in Maine tout a delicacy called “chik’n pizza.” I spend many a mile trying to figure out what, exactly, an order of chik’n pizza would look like. Does the chicken wrap around the tomato sauce and cheese in the manner of chicken cordon bleu, or do they just throw some roaster scraps on a twelve-inch pie and charge a buck-fifty extra?

Maine also seems to have a fondness for beauty pageants. In Van Buren, a sign at the high school reminds passersby of the upcoming “Miss VB Pageant.” Okay, let’s think about this for a minute. First of all, Van Buren has roughly 2800 residents, so subtracting the male population leaves us with about 1400 females, but because the pageant’s name contains the word “Miss,” we have to throw out old women, middle-
aged spinsters, girls under the age of 16, women who got married to members of the football team ten minutes after graduating from high school, and women institutionalized with seasonal affective disorder due to the incredible boredom of the average Maine winter, which leaves us with about 300 women in Van Buren eligible to compete. Sort of. Once we rule out fat chicks, hatchet-faced chicks, chicks who look like God carved their faces out of a potato, and chicks with one or more front teeth missing, we have only 6 or 7 contestants left. No, seriously. Based on the women I saw in Van Buren, these aspiring beauty queens wouldn’t exactly give Claudia Schiffer a run for her money. In fact, Chelsea Clinton could beat them hands down with a flat-top haircut. A little farther down the road in Mars Hill, I see a sign congratulating Miss Teen Maine, a young lady by the name of Marcy Burtchell. Good grief.

Outside Calais, I make a pit stop. Rest stops along this stretch consist of woodsy outhouses in which a normal commode balances over a hole and reveals the donations of those that came before. Here, I come into contact with northern Maine’s richly textured nightlife; someone has scribbled “May 9, 7:30 p.m., Robbinston boat landing, young guy wants hot gay sex.” All righty, then.

Signs I see as I drive through Maine include “PAWN SHOP COINS GUNZ AMMO NEET STUFF” (nope, not making up that spelling), “SummerKeys – A Piano Vacation” (boy, do I feel sorry for the kid whose parents ship him off to SummerKeys), and “CAUTION PAVEMENT ENDS.” Pavement ends? Pavement ENDS? Oh, good. I definitely wanted to see that sign on a bloody FEDERAL HIGHWAY. After bouncing over a stretch of gravel so rough that the rattling of my teeth nearly drowns out the Ramones song on the radio, I pass the University of Maine Blueberry Hill Experimental Farm; little tents sit in the field, presumably housing some sort of steroidal blueberry the size of a small pony.

In Bucksport, I decide to find a motel room. I select a little oasis called the Bucksport Motor Inn and foolishly do not ask to see a room first. The room that I get – which lacks the little luxuries like towels, a remote control, a mattress thicker than an economy-brand Kleenex, and hot water – also smells like someone brought a vat of Bud Light to a boil and then threw in a couple of mildewy squirrels and left the pot on for a few days.

I slow down in a small town to let a groundhog cross the road. Unfortunately, the car coming the opposite way spanks the little guy on the head, pinning his skull to the ground but not killing him, so he runs around his own head in a little circle trying to get to the other side and getting thumped by successive cars. This incident marks the beginning of a trend on the trip – cars greasing animals and birds at an unbelievable rate.

At the side of the road, I see a bar called Pussy’s Port Of Call. At least, I presume that it’s a bar. I refuse to speculate further for fear of throwing up. A little later, a sign for Wishing Well Acres informs the world that they offer both fresh eggs and “llamas for sale.” Now, how in the hell did they get the llamas up here, first of all, and second of all, has anyone ever pulled off the road and said, “Hook me up with a llama – I want a smelly, high-maintenance pet to keep me company by hocking grass-encrusted lugeys on me while I drive”?

In Portland, I have some time to kill before I meet Mr. Kite for dinner, so I spend the afternoon surfing the Web and watching Baywatch. I have started to like the show, which has surpassed 90210 for so-bad-it’s-good camp viewing pleasure. Plus, I gleaned the following priceless quote: “Why did my dad have to be a dwarf?!?” During a commercial, I run out for smokes. The woman inspects my ID very closely, harshes on New Jersey for not requiring a picture on the renewal, and then tells me that I have gained weight since having my license picture taken eight years ago. Well, duh. And maybe people who live in glass houses shouldn’t eat so many TWINKIES, you fat COW.

What THC-induced munchie fever could have induced the incorporation of Will’s House Of Pizza And Roast Beef? I mean, this hardly strikes me as a brain wave of you-got-your-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter proportions, but whatever. I skip it and stop into a Burger King for a quick whiz and a cup of coffee, which tastes surprisingly good. I have fewer kind words for the bathroom, which smells like someone hosed down the walls with cherry-flavored cough syrup.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

I stop into a Harley Davidson dealership and ask if I can sit on a Harley. The guy gives me a weird look but he lets me, and we start talking. He tells me that the model that Schwarzenegger drives in the Terminator movies is called the Fat Boy and I start giggling. Then he tells me that they sell more Fat Boys than any other model. We discuss the tattoo convention in New York City briefly.

Wind blows relentlessly through the open window at 20 miles an hour, transforming the left side of my head into a total nest; on the other side, it sits on my head normal and flat. I look like a dandruff ad gone horribly awry. Then again, it looks like that fairly frequently. My eyelid has literally begun to flap in the breeze; these gusts remind me of that “Little House On The Prairie” episode when the windstorm hits and Pa has to tie a rope between the house and the barn to go feed the horses, and Michael Landon’s ëfro flapped wildly in the fake TV gale, and then someone else went out to look for Pa and possibly milk a cow as well and got blown away and showed up two days later after holing up in a snowdrift or something ridiculous like that.

MASSACHUSETTS

Okay, do we really need the sign that says “State Highway – Parking Prohibited”? Oh, yeah, I forgot. Driving in Massachusetts makes driving in New Jersey look like a croquet match. I cannot even count the number of times that some minivan-driving soccer bee-otch slams on her brakes and sails across two or three lanes of traffic to cut me off. At least men cut other drivers off with some authority; women pump the brakes a few times and sort of drift back and forth. If you must cut me off, show some balls about it, please.

I stop into a McDonald’s to use the bathroom. A seventh-grade field trip has also stopped here for lunch, and I nearly burst an eardrum in the din; the boys act like boys, running and shoving and clomping about in their giant clothes and too-big feet, and the girls strut around in way too much make-up and tight boot-cut pants. Their mothers let them out of the house like that at age twelve? In the eye of the storm, a mother feeds her infant Cheerios while her four-year-old steals her fries.

RHODE ISLAND

I get lost in Pawtucket. How could I get lost when I only have to follow one road, a road conveniently named “1,” you might ask? Well, when no signs mark the road, I tend to get lost, you see. I finally find my way back to U.S. 1 and then promptly get lost again in Providence. During the torturous hour and a half during which I only manage to cover thirty miles, I pass a car with the following bumper stickers: “I’m NRA And I Vote,” “Gun Control Means Using Both Hands,” and “Back Off – I’m A Postal Worker.” Note to self: DO NOT cut this person off.

Sulking in a traffic jam, I inch past a store called Art In Ice. Hmmm. Okay. Send out a giant upraised middle finger and a bottle of scotch, if you don’t mind. A hitchhiker limps along the shoulder. Trust me, buddy, I think to myself, you would rather walk. At last, traffic picks up and I pass a sign informing me that “QUACK QUACK THE DUCKIES HAVE LANDED.”

More adventures in the next installment . . .

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