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DUSK AND MAGNETS: ON BECOMING
THE BUCKEYE HIGHWAY
by Jack Balas
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It's dawn and it's Phoenix. Phoenix, a city twenty miles wide and one story high. A flat city rung with dry, scraped and barren mountains, a city studded with King palms and aqueduct lawns and Chevron trucks cruising slowly down the streets, trucks that reflect the coming on of day in mirrored, convex sides. I stand outside my room at the Comfort Inn on east Van Buren and gaze at the palms, asking myself how a million people just happened to "come on down" and live on this godforsaken patch of desert. For some, maybe, it was the lure of a God's Plan that included croissant dealers and Cadillacs and armored Purolator cars, all within sight of twelve-foot-high saguaros. For others, maybe, it was the thought of the sun at high noon shimmering off plastic-coated menus at Denny's, the ones embossed with windswept scenes of a lighthouse on some rocky New England coast. And for still others, perhaps, it was the promise of pistol-packin' waitresses at sawdust-on-the-floor Bill Johnson's Big Apple, just down the street and where I'm headed for breakfast. But I doubt, seriously, if anyone is here because of the lights out on the Buckeye Highway, thirteen miles of them, stoplights blinking red and green into the face of cottonfields. Most people would shudder at the thought of driving their gauntlet. But for me, today, they are exactly why I am here.
I used to drive a truck. A bobtail. Half as long as a semi, almost
as tall, up to twelve tons loaded. Across the country from L.A.
to New York and full of art, schlepping paintings and sculpture
between artists and galleries, collectors and museums. But it
really shouldn't matter to you how big the truck was or where
I used to drive it or what I had inside. These things aren't important
because they don't explain the thing about the lights I want to
tell you about. Rather, what is important is how many gears the
truck had -- ten, to be exact. And using them to keep from stopping
is what, in fact, matters a great deal.
Ten gears may sound complicated, but really they weren't. There
were only five stick positions on the floor, each one split into
a high and low that you controlled by snapping a collar up or
down on the end of the stick. So if you wanted to go, for instance,
from low second to high second, all you had to do was snap the
collar up and hit the clutch; you didn't have to go and move the
stick any. When it was time to go to low third, then, you'd snap
the collar down, throw in the clutch, move the stick to third,
let the clutch out. What this meant was you could go through all
the gears without much work before you were up to top speed, unlike
the big semis that have twenty-eight gears or something and you
have to move the stick for each one (you've noticed how long they
take to get going from a stoplight?) And a nicer thing about all
this was if you had a light load, you could leave the collar up
(or down) the whole time and treat the truck like a five-speed,
going from high first straight to high second, straight to high
third just like a car. And, if you were like my boss, you could
simply skip all of this info the first six months you owned the
truck and treat the collar like you figured it was some kind of
toy, until you happened to notice the gear shift diagram pasted
to the back of one of the sun visors and figured it all out.
But the last place he should have tried explaining any of this
to me was out on this Buckeye Highway on our first trip in the
truck where he let me drive, and there he was finding out that
all the stuff I'd driven prior to that day happened to be automatic
(even those city busses), and now I was trying to figure out how
to shift any gear, let alone ten of them, on this thirteen-mile
detour around the last leg of Interstate10 still under construction,
a road with a 50-mile speed limit and a stoplight every mile,
every last one of which I was, of course, missing.
Now generally, you or I might consider a thirteen-mile detour
around a stretch of incomplete freeway going into a major American
city nothing more than a major annoyance, especially if it's been
hot out (as Phoenix is rather known to be) and you've been driving
all day. But being on this road was not like coming into some
other city such as Dallas, where you approach the outer highway
loop on four-lane roads that have eight lanes' worth of traffic.
Nor was it like coming into the southwest side of Chicago, where
the ship canals that run alongside I-55 between the power plants
and the junkyards look a helluva lot more tranquil than the river
of semis you happen to be navigating. No, I'm not talking about
those roads. I'm talking about the west side of Phoenix and the
Buckeye Highway, a two-lane asphalt causeway lapped on either
side by cottonfields, fields dusty red that you ply in the dusk,
alone, while a breeze blows in and cools off the day, and where
cities light up on the horizon. If there ever was a road that
literally pulled you into a city, it was this one. And because
of the lights that I'm telling you about. But in order for me
to tell you right, let me start in Los Angeles.
Pasadena, to be exact. You've spent a week driving around L.A.
loading the truck, and now your stack of work-orders is spread
out on the table while you have breakfast at the Salt Shaker.
You picture the trip in front of you: deliveries in Scottsdale
and Tucson and Dallas, pickups in Albuquerque and St. Louis, maybe
a day off in Santa Fe, two in Chicago before you head on to New
York. For days you've been anxious to leave, and today you're
convinced that you actually will. When you called in to the office
last night they had no more pickups for you, it's too early now
to call in again, and thank God they're not going to call you
here at the Salt Shaker. Your bag is out in the truck, you fueled
up when you were down on Alameda last night, and now you're set
to go. All you have to do for the next eight hours is drive. So
when you head up Lake to the 210 you don't feel particularly concerned
about anything. You know your tankful of gas will get you to Albuquerque.
You don't have to remember which exit is yours -- just go till
the freeway runs out. And all that traffic you've noticed, stop-and-go
and stretched to the horizon? Well it is, after all, pointed in
the direction you're not going. So when you pass that light at
the top of the ramp and floor it you feel: Finally. Blastoff.
Outta here. Next Stop, Phoenix. Autopilot time.
It doesn't take long, maybe five miles, before your hand stops
hovering above the stick. Another five miles and your foot stops
hovering above the clutch. You glance at your mirrors as the San
Gabriels slide by in the haze. And everything starts to slide
by in the haze: the swoop onto the 10, the big merge after that,
the lane changes to avoid the ruts that go on past Ontario. It
all merges with the other times you've done this drive, and what
you're left with is a blur not unlike the one at the side of the
road, a blur that, like the radio now, begins in places to fade,
to white out in a snowstorm of static out of which, depending
on the strength of the signal and the way, today, you finger the
antenna, certain landmarks come in for a landing, loud and clear.
Here, for instance, is the Union 76 and five hundred semis huddled
behind a hurricane fence gathering the nerve to drive to Las Vegas
or, worse yet, to Hollywood. Here come the train yards at Fontana,
the ones wrapped in barbed wire and those 20-story eucalyptus
trees. Here's the hill up to Yucaipa and at Banning the sign that
gives you the jitters: TRUCK SCALE TWO MILES. Do you go around
today? You eye that last exit just short of the Super 8, but then
you remember this outbound one's always closed.
You look at that snow up on San Jacinto. And that dinosaur truckstop
at Cabazon -- have to go in there sometime. And these windmills
at the Palm Springs exit, and the Motel 6 out at nowhere and the
sign: Leaving the Indian Bingo Reservation. And the other sign:
HILL NEXT 8 MILES TURN OFF AIR CONDITIONER TO AVOID OVERHEATING.
No more radio, just the engine and the hot air blowing in the
window. Now the ocotillo start, today with bright red blossoms.
Here's Chiriaco Summit, where you can get ice cream bars. There's
Desert Center, where the water comes in plastic turquoise cups.
And here, maybe, you ignore the mountains because the sun has
robbed them of every shadow, every bit of color; better to be
on this stretch later in the day. You can't, however, ignore that
727 that's taken off and circled around for the third time. Nor,
at Blythe, the temperature drop. The rice fields, water skiers,
MOUNTAIN TIME, lose an hour. ARIZONA PORT OF ENTRY TWO MILES ALL
VEHICLES MUST STOP.
You park and get out at this one; this one's always open. But
here they just want your money, ask you what you're hauling, write
you a one-trip permit. You stop on the scale, hope the green light
doesn't turn red, and just when you start to climb the hill at
milemarker five the first saguaros. Tall. Green. Everywhere. Full
of woodpecker holes. (I mean, they can't all be from shotguns,
can they?) Milemarker seventeen: Quartzsite. RV's everywhere,
drawn up pow-wow style in circles, campfire in the middle, lawn
chairs around under awnings. Sand and rock and scrub brush everywhere.
And hot. What a vacation.
Milemarker 20. 25. 30. At 45 the Chevron stop and the road up
to Vicksburg. 50. 55. The aqueduct here is still under construction;
Phoenix is gonna drink it in like a sponge. 65. 70. Whoops! Is
that a cop under that bridge? 85. 90. 94. 96. Damn, it's hot!
477th AVENUE EXIT ONE MILE. Some city planner is being pretty
optimistic. Hundred and two. Hundred and eight. CORRECTIONAL FACILITY
DO NOT STOP FOR HITCHHIKERS. Great place to break down, though.
Hundred eleven, hundred twelve. This abandoned horse track --
it took me two years to figure out it was abandoned. Hundred and
fifteen, hundred and twenty. Hundred and twenty-four. Then both
sides, big and yellow: FREEWAY ENDS TWO MILES. ALL TRAFFIC MUST
EXIT. Click.
Hello? Are you there? Jeez, it's late already. Sun's already down.
That nap couldn't've been that long, wherever it was. You slow
when you see the Waffle House; you turn. Weird to use your feet
again, isn't it? Do your hands still work? Feels good to turn
that wheel back and forth more than a couple of inches, huh? What's
that? Radio! Yes, we have radio again. And people! Look! Wake
up!
From there it's two miles south to the Buckeye Highway. Over the
tracks. Stop light ahead. Left turn lane. Two left turn lanes.
You turn left. And that's when it happens. You see them. There
in front of you and fading to the horizon. The stoplights. The
first one a mile away, the second a mile after that. Thirteen
miles of them. And you've timed it just right. It's dark enough
to make them out in the failing light. But it's light enough still
to see the cotton fields and rows of palms to your left and right,
the occasional beat-up homes with junk cars off to the side, the
Mexican grocery and currency exchange and further on in the gas
stations and more of everything else, everything old and covered
with dust, nothing new and snappy because the new stuff's gone
in along the interstate, whenever that gets done. And that's when
it hits you. The breeze. It's damp and cool and a reward, blowing
in off the fields. And those lights strung out on the horizon.
Phoenix and Tempe and Chandler turning on in the dusk. Your eyes
widen a notch looking at them. They seem to be like arms stretched
out in welcome. You want to feel their embrace. Fast. And this
is when the thirteen miles of lights start to work their magic.
Because you know if you do it right, you can let those lights
pull you in like a magnet on a receding strobe, a strobe not unlike
the ones you see just outside of airports and lined up with the
runways. So as you straighten out from the turn you step on the
gas, and as you hear the change in the engine you, like the jets
a mile above that have just aligned themselves for landing twenty
miles east at Sky Harbor, begin your final approach into the Valley
of the Sun.
You get up to 50 fast, and your eyes focus on the first of the
lights a mile away. A half mile from it the light turns red and
you begin to drop gears. Click. Low fifth. Click. High fourth.
Click. Low fourth. A hundred yards from the light you go down
to low third. Click. You're in high second a hundred feet later,
the collar already snapped down, your foot poised over the clutch,
you wait just one more second and ... Bingo! The light turns green
and you barrel on through on your way back up to third. A hundred
yards past the light and you're back in high fifth. But the next
light is a mile away, and a half mile from it the light turns
red. You begin to drop gears again, the clicks filling the cab.
High fourth. Click. Low fourth. Click. High third. Again a hundred
yards from the light and you're poised to go to second. Click.
You wait on this one longer. Closer. A hundred feet from the light
... Green! But you barely notice it; your eyes are on the next
light a mile away. The rush is tangible, part of the breeze pouring
through the windows. Your ears listen for optimum RPM. Your feet
keep a steady beat: up, down, up, down. Your hand orchestrates
with the stick, fingers adjust the tempo. And the lights change
right on cue, just at the crescendo. And again, and again.
Imagine, then, the alternative to all this: the typical freeway
lanes sunk twenty feet below street level; gentle banks of Kentucky
Bluegrass rising, fully watered, from the sands of the Sonoran
Desert, revealing only the uppermost stories of the Ramada and
Hampton Inns, only the highest of the Circle K and Seven-Eleven
signs. Green slabs the size of tennis courts hang off bridges
passing over you, signs promising 51st, 43rd, 35th, 27th Avenues.
(You can only assume they're up there somewhere.) Your speed hasn't
changed much since you left Blythe three hours ago, and now your
tunnel vision has widened from four lanes to ten. Your feet have
barely moved in those same three hours; your fingers are almost
numb. You're practically in downtown Phoenix, but you haven't
exactly tuned it in yet. Will anything trigger consciousness again
before you miss your exit? Or will you rely still on autopilot
to shoot you up some off-ramp in the nick of time? And whenever
you do exit it's going to be nasty and instantaneous, a reurbanization
in that insidious form Phoenix is best known for: crosstown surface-street
traffic, baked and congealed at a hundred and ten degrees.
* * * *
Over the years that I spent driving in and out of Phoenix, I noticed
more and more of the bumperstickers that said, simply, BUILD THE
FREEWAYS. At the time Phoenix was not, to put it mildly, a city
of them. And, on those days when I too was caught in traffic,
when even 44th Street and Indian School were clogged and I too
was anxious to get either to Scottsdale or out of Scottsdale,
I began to agree: Yeah, what this town needs is about a million
freeways. And so, as that last leg of I-10 skirted by the Buckeye
Highway was completed over the years and opened a couple of miles
at a time, I too felt the progress urge, the increasing impatience
as the very last mile still under construction seemed to be taking
forever and ever. And when, one day, about a mile west of the
capitol, I made it all the way through the I-17 interchange without
stopping (albeit on a shoulder opened to traffic, not the future
sky-ramp itself), I too felt some kind of elation, not unlike
that which I felt after four or eight or twelve years at school,
walking finally across the stage for a diploma and a handshake
from the dean.
But was anything lost in this process? Some would say not. Phoenix,
they would say, is just becoming with the freeways more like a
Dallas or a Chicago, easier at times to get around in, and less
of a nuisance, for sure, if you are in a hurry to get to Tucson
and don't want to hang out at every other stoplight between Goodyear
and Tempe and Chandler. And that Buckeye Highway? What are you
talking about? Just an old dusty road with a bunch of stoplights
on it already anyway, stoplights blinking at a bunch of cottonfields
that are just gonna get filled in with more houses and stores
and schools and before you know it you'll need another freeway
down there too. It's not like it was some luscious route through
the Grand Canyon or something. And you can still drive on it if
you're fool enough. Who's going to get romantic over it?
Well, maybe I can. Maybe because I got to know that highway back
when it was the only road you could take, back when it was just
the road and the cotton and the lights. And if it's been filled
in since then, if you can't drive it and still hit all the lights
anymore, then it's been lost forever, and with it something greater.
You see, back then those lights meant more than merely stop and
go out in the middle of nowhere. They were also there to talk
to you. They asked you to sit up after a long drive and pay attention,
to think about what you, the driver, had to do there in the cab
of your truck to win this little game of red light / green light.
And if you knew what to do, if you knew how to drive and were
good at it, they rewarded you. They created this strobe that slowly
pulled you in, and the closer in you got the more excited you
got about being pulled in, about being put to this test.
It was an elusive reward, granted, one that wasn't for everyone.
Maybe you had to be tuned for it. But if you were tuned for it,
you were also tuned for the even bigger, more elusive reward:
the sense that there you are, out on this two-lane field road,
feeling very close to your truck. You've been in it all day, barely
left it the whole drive from L.A. and now you're just very aware
of how you drive it, how you control it, how you, moreso than
the engine, are at the heart of it, the center of this machine
that hovers like an electron around a city and then jumps, on
cue, from the pull of one city to the pull of another. And now
at this moment not only do you feel the new pull, via these stoplights,
towards the nucleus of Phoenix, but you begin to feel too everything
that impedes that pull. So when you begin to feel the friction
of the asphalt under you, you realize then that this truck, on
however many tangents of rubber it addresses this road, will never
be separate from the road, and so this road must be part of the
truck. And if the road is part of the truck and you are at the
heart of the truck, then you must be at the heart of the road
too, right? And what about the fields then? You can't really separate
them from the road; I mean, don't they go under the road? They
must be part of the truck too, and you must be at the heart of
them. And what about the county then? And the state? And the planet?
And this truck keeps getting bigger and bigger, the more things
you can't separate from it, all because of a bunch of stoplights,
and all the while there you are, sitting at the heart of it.
But you're not just sitting there, you think to yourself, you're
moving. And you were moving long before you got anywhere near
these stoplights, and you're going beyond them too -- this business
of the electron jumping. So what makes all of this go? Is it really
just the engine? Just the gas in the tank? Is there not something
more here that propels you toward that next city, toward that
horizon at the same time that you are momentarily propelled here
toward Phoenix?
Well, if we were talking physics I might have to call this something
the other magnet, the fleeting, unseen one deeper down somewhere.
It faces or opposes the magnet of the stoplights and, in so doing,
pushes away from it. It faces or opposes the magnet of the stoplights
with some greater force, and the faster you speed toward it the
faster it somehow grabs you and pushes you away. And it's this
force of pushing apart that sends you down this road. It's this
force of pushing apart that creates the wind you feel, because
you're the one moving. It's this force of pushing apart that shows
you dusk, because you're the one spinning away from the sun. And
it's exactly this force of pushing apart that I've come back here,
and now, to find.
It's dawn and it's Phoenix. I stand outside my room at the Comfort Inn on east Van Buren and gaze at the palms. I've come back to look for something, or else to create it again -- a thing I don't have a name for, but a thing I have felt before. I may not find it, but I think today my chances are good. The day will be hot, the cotton is just in bloom, and I know where, and when, to look. So later I'll head out west to Quartzsite or so, maybe even to Blythe, a slow drive on I-10 out to where the radio stations fade, and then I'll turn around. And on the way back maybe I'll watch for that 727 and find out if it ever lands. And while I'm out there maybe I'll look to see if those saguaros really do have bullets in them, or if the aqueduct has any water. And maybe, on that way back, I'll even ask someone why that racetrack went bust. But the main thing is that I get back to Goodyear when the light is just about right, when everything is just about right, so that when I head down to the Buckeye Highway I should be tired and it should be dusk and I should be anxious to get into town, and I'll do that left turn and those thirteen miles of stoplights will be waiting for me. And as I straighten out and pick up speed slowly down that causeway and sense the cotton waving on either side, when I hear the clicking sound again and taste the cool breeze arrive at last, that's when I'll feel that red and green magnet start to pull me, to pull me again, and that's when I hope to find it, this other magnet I've been telling you about, the one that seems responsible for so much, this other force that sits, alive, at the heart of hot cotton at dusk and at the heart of me, this unspeakable force --this soul-- that keeps me in a certain orbit of red and green and, at the same time, propels me constantly, urgently, toward the one thing I know I can never reach: that line of stars far away, flickering at and then rising above a broad, red horizon.
Jack Balas