Guns, beerlube and Jesus: Roadside adverts

Something’s got to relieve the pain of travelling by Greyhound in the US - for me it was the roadside advertisements.

There was a multitude of great advertisements which helped me to pass the time, making me gasp, chuckle or even howl out in amazement.

These massive great hoardings dominate the interstate landscape, interrupting your view and towering over chain motels, fast food outlets and anything else that has the misfortune to be backed up against these great highways.

Like so much in the States anything goes and - if you’ve got the money - it seems you can hire these hoardings; securing your own personal patch on which to try and flog your wares to the captive motorist.

The following few should give a flavour of what‘s out there…

“Nobody’s perfect - that’s why you need plastic surgery” - Texas

“We sue lawyers.” - Texas

“What can I build for you?” - Texas

“Get the trucking job you deserve” - Texas

“18 wheeler wreck? 1-800 Lawsuit” - Texas

“Cowboy. Your all -American dealer” - Texas

‘www.myhurricaneikeclaim.com. 888-IKE-CLAIM-4U’ - Louisiana

‘Experiencing Jesus Again’ - Louisiana

‘Give us your gun and we’ll give you $1,000’ - New Orleans, Louisiana

‘Our business stinks, but it’s picking up’ - rubbish truck, New Orleans, Louisiana

‘Get your hunting and fishing licence today. Call 1-800-GOHUNT’ - Mississippi

‘Tennessee - where Elvis lives’ - Tennessee

‘Abstinence works’ (Sponsored by the Girl Scouts) - Tennessee

“You can have Jesus forever. Call 1-800-NEEDHIM’ - North Carolina

“Hell is truth seen to late [sic]” - Church sign, North Carolina

‘Naughty adult shop - home of the famous beer lube’ - truck/shop, Wisconsin

“Depression can be dangerous. See your doctor” - Minnesota

“Been rear-ended?” - Minnesota

“Abortion is a death in the family” - Minnesota

“Congress has gone to hell” - Minnesota

‘Prison area - do not pick up hitchhikers’ - Michigan

‘We’re happy to sell to gunmen and terrorists’ - Boston, Massachusetts

‘Coming soon - Spring, and Jesus’ - New York State

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It takes a train to laugh, it takes a Greyhound to cry

We left our sunny, idyllic retreat in the North Carolina mountains and headed north, destination Chicago. Back to the real world. People, traffic, roads...and the dreaded Greyhound bus.


I braced myself as we entered Knoxville's Greyhound terminal, knowing what to expect. The waiting room presented a depressingly predictable picture: grim-faced broken people looking forlornly into their future through a miasma of poverty, anger, body odour and rubbery takeaways.

They were the same sad characters of previous encounters: the heavily tattooed thug, just out of chokey; the struggling young mother, cursing at her unruly child; the lost, lonely Mexican, hunched up beneath his cream plastic cowboy hat; the red-eyed hobo, two weeks shy of a bathtub; the sullen scrawny redneck, desperately drawing on his last Marlboro...

Over at the counter the same miserable, monosyllabic staff moved slowly behind the counter, scowling at this pitiful ragtag of humanity. From high up on a wall the same old scare stories screamed out from Fox News, where hysterical reporters brought news of an 'Alabama bloodbath'.

These places must surely be some of the most miserable places in this great country. If there is a hell then surely the condemned travel there by Greyhound. Not then, the kind of place you wanted to spend a minute more than necessary. And tonight the bus was late.

The passengers were becoming restless. A slightly unhinged-looking hick standing nearby huffed heavily and said loudly to no-one in particular 'Call George and have him order me a boddle of Ger-ray Goose.'

I shared his irritation. We had a connection to make in Cincinnati and, whilst we had left ourselves an hour and twenty minues to makes the two miles between train and bus stations, we were starting to wonder whether that was enough.

Half an hour ticked by, 45 minutes, then an hour. Finally our carriage arrived.

The driver, a squat little man sporting an ill-fitting jacket which flapped around him like a penguin with sudden weight-loss, could offer like reassurance that he would make up any of the time lost. He snarled at us from under his ragged smear of a moustache: 'what were you thinking of, only leaving that amount of time to make your connection?'

I was gobsmaked. I still can't find the words to describe such a service. So instead I'll leave it to Tanis, a friend of our back in the mountains: 'It is pitiful, lowbrow, and ultimately chavish.'

An hour late, we boarded the bus and headed out into the gathering darkness, chugging up the Interstate and over the Kentucky border. We passed large brown tourism signs for horse racing, the state's famous 'bourbon alley' and even for a local restaurant, 'Colonel Sanders Cafe - KFC birthplace.'

Sadly no local delicacies for us, as we headed on to the town of London, pulling in at a Burger King. Different London, same plastic restaurant, same cardboard food. Once more we were prisoners of the Greyhound and the Interstate: dull, lifeless, predictable.

Except for one thing: this being Kentucky the god-botherers were also in evidence. The Ten Commandments hung from in a frame over the counter; leaflets at every table asked 'Do you know for certain that you will have eternal life?'

Keep eatin' them burgers...

Back out on the road the religious zeal continued. 'Jesus can turn March madness into pure gladness' a church sign proclaimed. Clearly the 'buckle of bible belt', which we had been told we were entering upon arrival back in Nashville, is rather large indeed.

It provided little comfort to us in our current predicament - time was against us. The air temperature was dropping (38F / 3C); our anxiety was rising. Would we make it?

An hour later the traffic started to thicken and the sky suddenly lit up with the glare of a million lights: Cincinnati, our transfer point. The bus rolled downhill towards downtown, crossing the Ohio River, the state boundary between Kentucky and Ohio.

An historical faultline along which the nation was divided during the Civil War it also marked a transitional point for us - we were leaving the South behind and entering the North. I had little time to ponder the significance of this before our bus pulled into the terminal. 45 minutes late.

The empty streets of Cincinnati were soon speeding past us as our taxi headed to the train station. Our friendly Senegalese cabbie gave us a potted history of the city's background before we pulled up before an impressive but decidedly empty-looking building. Dim lights shone from inside but not a soul moved.

'Are you sure this is the train station?', Lara asked nervously.

We heaved our bags out, entered a cavernous entrance hall and gasped in the gloom. It was a fabulous art deco interior, replete with marble pillars, ornate lettering and huge murals depicting stages of the region's development.

This was bizarre. All this grandness and yet no people. A landlubbing Marie Celeste where time had stood still and people had moved on. It was a museum (quite literally), not a train station.

Finally - right at the back - we found it: a modest little sign pointing to closed door 'Amtrak.' We walked through, entering a small art deco waiting room and a completely different travel experience. A friendly fellow behind the counter was only too happy to serve us and the other handful of passengers who sat around on handsome wooden benches.

Sensing our bemusement he outlined the history of the station. We were sitting, he assured us, in a station that once saw 200 trains a day (400 during World War II), a key stop on the rail lines heading east and west. Today that service has been radically reduced. To just one. Six days a week.

I was gobsmacked. How could this be? The railroads, once the glory of America, the vital arteries which opened up the West, traversing mountains and deserts and defying Indian attacks in order to carry freight, passengers and freighthopping banjo players, now reduced to this. One train a day? It wasn’t even a skeleton service.

Despite this ignominious decline, our Amtrak employee obviously took pride in his work, recounting the sad story of the railways as he personally escorted the small group of passengers down onto the platform.

We shivered in the cold as he told us of the establishment of Amtrak, the back in 1971, created out of the nationalisation of the private rail companies. As he told it, the company was deliberately neglected by a government which had decided that rail had no future, hoping the passenger service would simply wither and die.

The next year, 1972, Cincinnati station saw its platforms reduced from twelve to one. The future looked bleak and the line itself would probably have disappeared if it weren’t for the determined efforts of an influential Senator from West Virginia.

Today the service still runs, leaving New York and chugging slowly westwards, arriving at Cincinnati at 1am, not ideal for the locals but thereby allowing said Senator to appreciate his beloved West Virginia countryside during daylight hours. A small price to pay surely for preserving this vital public service.

It was a small train as well, composed of only three passenger carriages, a dining carriage and a sleeper. The ever-helpful staff escorted us to our seats and we sank back into the huge, comfortable seats, luxuriating in our acres of space, two seats apiece - a decent mini-bed for the rest of the night.

The onboard atmosphere couldn’t have been more different to the Greyhound and its paranoia, pent-up aggression and hopelessness. It was friendly, relaxed and surprisingly jolly at such an hour.

Train and bus: they couldn't be more different experiences in the US, yet another example of the great extremes which characterise this country.

I found myself wondering how could this supremely wealthy nation, rippling with massive economic muscles, swaggering with technological might, could have such a poor public transport system.

They had built the railroads through hostile terrain and opened up the West, erected lovingly-designed buildings and inspired many a romantic song but then somehow they abandoned them, convinced that rail had had its day and roads were the answer.

Was it down to the American love of cars and the power of the auto industry? Did it stem from a personality trait buried deep within the American pysche? The desire to be independent, free from government intervention, the master of their own destiny? Or is the country simply too big to cross quickly by train?

I still didn’t have the answer as I woke up hours later, the bright winter sunshine crowbaring open my heavy eyelids and flooding my vision with the flat icy cornfields of Indiana. They stretched on morosely for mile after mile, the relentless monotony broken up only by clumps of bare trees, chunky red barns and grain silos, dark shadows against the swirling snow.

The scenery was't the only thing to have changed during the night; the accents were noticeably different too, the drawl of the mountains now supplanted by a nasal twang. ‘Howyoodoin’?’, a lady enthusiastically greeted us. The intonation was unmistakable - we could only be drawing in to one place: Chicago.

Soon the small towns gave way to one long urban sprawl, the sidings crowded in on both sides and we drew in to ’the Windy City’.

Chicago. The hub of the country’s railway network, a city that grew upon the iron road, its astonishing population boom driven by the expansion of the railways and the industry that followed it.

Another train station echoing to former glories, and a huge, grand waiting hall straight out of The Untouchables (which indeed it was). I felt I were back in a museum again rather than the nerve centre of a modern, fully functioning public transport network.

Entering the street outside the station looked rather an anomaly, squeezed under the towering, sleek skyscrapers, hidden away like an embarrassing old uncle. It was light years from Japan, even aged in comparison to home. Would they ever catch up?

Back on the Cincinnati platform we’d been assured there was a chink of link at the end of this long, dark tunnel: Amtrak enjoyed its highest-ever passenger numbers last year and President Obama has already announced more investment in train services.

Is this the first step towards a resurgence of the railroad? On behalf of all Americans who don't own a car I truly hope so: as our experiences have shown it takes a train to laugh, it takes a Greyhound to cry*.

*With thanks to Bob Dylan







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The deep South - A musical odyssey

‘I’m going to Jackson, I’m going to mess around. I’m going to Jackson, look out Jackson town.’

- Johnny Cash and June Carter

“Are we going to Jackson just because of Johnny Cash?”, Lara asked?

No, I replied. But I had to admit that he was at least a partial motivation for it.

The state capital of Mississippi lay on our route, the second stop on our musical odyssey through the Deep South.

Leaving behind the jazz of New Orleans we headed for the blues of the Mississippi delta. And not without some trepidation.

Back in The Big Easy Fox News had screamed at us about a recent jailbreak in South East Mississippi: ‘Lookout folks - it’s lockdown in the county!’, a worried-looking chap with a large microphone reported excitedly, ‘these guys are bad and dangerous!’

Prisoners on the run in Mississippi; I was sure I’d heard that somewhere before.

Back on the road the string of Mardi Gras beads led all the way up through Louisiana and across the border, seeping into Mississippi gas stations, cars and the roadside diner where we pulled up for dinner.

Sat amongst red-eyed revellers I looked up from my BBQ pork po-boy to catch the new President’s address to Congress. Somewhat boy-like himself, Barack Obama gave a confident address, commanding the attention of the house and even a few of my fellow diners.

Again I sensed the renewed wave of optimism, one which has appeared since our brief visit in December, and to which people are drawn, desperate for a candle in the gathering economic darkness.

It‘s particularly interesting to witness the first few days of the first black President’s administration unfold here in the south, a region forever associated with the horrors of racial discrimination and still struggling, many believe, to fully shake off its hangover.

Entering the state capital of Jackson we look out for the visible effects of the unofficial segregation we've heard about, where the racial divide often seems to replicated economically.

Tied intimately to this are crime patterns and our host, the delightful Lizzie, stakes her town’s claim to the apparently much-vaunted crown of ‘crime capital of the US’ (Americans seem as obsessed with this as the British are with house prices), but it doesn’t wash with us.

If our part of town is anything to go by it seemed a pleasant enough place - letterboxes at the end of drives, basketball hoops in driveways, BBQs on lawns - and populated with perhaps the friendliest locals we have encountered all trip.

Once again our accents went down a treat, provoking gentle curiosity and kindness at every turn.

As an aspiring young musician Lizzie soon introduces us to the local music scene - it’s not the delta blues but we do catch a blistering performance of zydeco music,a Louisiana speciality.

Every Jacksonian under the age of 30 seems to be busily engaged in making their own albums and we soon find ourselves in Lizzie’s own recording studio, contributing suitably plummy English accents to an her self-penned anthem ‘Happy Minutes’.

With the infuriatingly-catchy lyrics still whizzing around my head I remember Johnny Cash and - now being in Jackson - I ask around about the 'Jackson' song.

No-one seems sure - it's more likely to be Jackson, Tennessee, Cash's home for many years.

More curious American words enter my homemade and burgeoning American English dictionary. Round these parts everything seems to be described either ‘awesome’ or ‘big ass’.

I’m not the first to notice that for many Americans, in Basil Fawlty’s words “It’s all about bottoms, isn’t it?”

Leaving Lizzie to another jamming session we headed north and soon I found my feelings for this land turning once more from admiration and love to irritation and loathing.

Without our own set of wheels we were prisoners of the pitiful public transport system. In these parts, this meant there was only one option - the Greyhound and its regular helping of stony-faced staff and ‘no soliciting’ signs, the unwashed and the unwanted.

It pained me even more to stick to the interstate, speeding right past the towns of the delta, the breeding ground of the blues and a place I’d been eagerly anticipating for many months. Better luck in Memphis.

I glared out the grimy window, the flat unrelenting landscape only broken up by bulbous water towers and roadside hoardings advertising for medical centres (most of them baptist), the latest Willie Nelson concert and one naming and shaming two grim-faced fellows for ‘convicted sex crimes against children’.

Public lynching may be a thing of the past but here the stocks still seem to remain.

The blue skies were gone by now, their place taken by dark swollen clouds which turned to cold drizzle as we stopped in another anonymous town for a short break.

Our amply-proportioned fellow passengers piled out and waddled over to a nearby restaurant out to restock with fried crawfish and fries.

Friday night Fish and chips, Southern style.

A lone Mexican alighted amongst them, his cream plastic cowboy hat shining out like a beacon and bringing a smile to our faces, a reminder of the millinery delights south of the border.

Down in Mexico he wouldn’t stand out from the crowd but here he looked lost and alone, adrift from his homeland in search of a better income.

An hour up the interstate the Tennessee flag fluttered in the strengthening breeze and Memphis hove into view.

Home of the Blues, Soul and Rock ‘N’ Roll, surely here we would find our much-sought after live music here.

After a vain attempt to catch the blues in the raw form, unadulterated, deep down and dirty, at a small venue out in the suburbs we slid through the snowy roads back into town, driven to the juke joints of Beale St.

Once hallowed haunt of blues artists they now seem a hollowed-out core, commercial operations catering for the Hard Rock café crowd and offering watered-down fare.

The picture was the same the next day at the legendary Sun studios, where Jerry, Johnny and Elvis cut their first records - and at Graceland, the gloriously over-the-top home of the latter.

With their music still ringing in our ears we headed on once more to another great music city lying to the west - Nashville.

Another Greyhound. Another stony-faced, round woman on the desk. More pungent passengers and hopeless hobos.

Their spirit crushed, our fellow passengers sat morosely in the waiting room, drawing back into the hoods of their loose-fitting leisurewear some kind of proxy amniotic fluid.

Gordon Brown’s weary face stared out from CNN, his drawn features a stark contrast to those of the sprightly new US President. The coverage showed them talking earnestly over coffee and tilting their heads behind large dais at a press conference.

The rolling newsbar brought the latest economic woes: Northern Rock loses billions in the UK since being nationalised; Ford sales have plummet 48% in the US. Barrack and Gordon stood shoulder to shoulder: these problems are ‘global’.

An hour later we were heading west and, if the large roadside hoardings we passed were anything to go by the lands we were entering are even more redneck: gun and knife shows, fishing appliances and baptist pastors staring out from their lofty perches.

We stopped briefly at an old bus station in a town called Jackson. Is this the town Johnny sang about? There was no time to find out, as our fellow passengers hastily stubbed out their cigarettes on the tarmac and we continued.

The snow remained on the ground as we headed east and we found ourselves amongst low hills, the first since Mexico.

The generously-built lady next to me tucked into a meal of fried chicken and corn bread and we passed a large tour truck painted in the Stars and Stripes, ‘Freedom and Family Tour’ emblazoned boldly across it.

Country music. We had to be nearing Nashville, ’the music city’ .

I couldn’t help listening to Bob Dylan‘s ‘Nashville Skyline’ in anticipation.

Half an hour later the aforementioned skyline itself gleamed at us, the smart towers of downtown glinting orange in the sunset.

The streets looked smarter, the atmosphere more austere in comparison to Memphis. Everywhere I looked I saw a church - we were, as our couchsurfing host, Jason, put it ’in the buckle of the bible belt’.

Together with his wife, Tamee, he has counted 17 churches between his house and the café where we dined: baptist, evangelical, church of god, seventh day adventist to name a few.

Such is their popularity that the police have to come out to direct traffic on Sundays.

To the backdrop of live music (cajun, once again) our conversation turned to the musical delights of this city.

Not only the home of country, there’s hillybilly here, and rockabilly, and in the engrossing Country Music Hall of Fame we read all about them.

Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Merle Haggard, they all crooned at out us from video screens, replete in their cowboy hats and rhinestone jackets.

The streets outside rang to the sound of the fiddle and the southern drawl, drifting out from venues on Broadway and even loudspeakers at road junctions.

Yet to me one voice stood out from them all: the deep, sonorous sound which sends an earthquake through me every time I hear it.

“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash”

And so it was that we found ourselves in a cemetery, after dark, in the small town of Hendersonville.

With the help of Jason’s whizzy iPhone (every American seems to have one - cricked necks and arthritic fingers must be a big problem here) we located the grave of the Man in Black.

He lay next to his wife, the love of his life, both graves etched with passages from the bible. It was a modest plot on a small grassy slope, overlooking people’s backyards, a couple of gas stations and a hotel.

I stood and looked at the final resting place of my musical hero. Jackson to Hendersonville.
Mission complete.

But the musical odyssey continues. We‘re making for the mountains. There‘s a man waiting for us there, and he‘s brandishing a banjo…







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