Loss and the Road Traveled

 

I have been busy of late doing what in my case can best be described as the business of self-amusement. I have finished my novella, The Killing of Rush Limbaugh, and I am in the midst of what will probably be something close to the penultimate polish of my latest tome, Life Without Cagney & Lacey. I have been a bit bogged down in and around chapter 10 of the twenty-seven segments that complete the book, and all but convinced that it will never be read by anyone save yours truly.

For the curious: the referenced chapter 10 has quite a bit of content leading up to the end of my first marriage in the late 1960s. I was experiencing some difficulty with the present-day timing of this task coinciding as it does with my first wife being brought back to her California home by our children as a hospice patient for what will surely be her last remaining days on the planet.

The kids have been checking in with me regularly by phone and even placed the speaker close to their Mom so that I could say the best goodbye I could come up with under the circumstances.

That all melded with the other piece of writing I had to do this week, which was an obituary for one of my oldest, boyhood friends. We had met a year or two before we attended the same high school together, and then we were both at college at the University of Southern California. My pal went on to law school and I became his first client. He was my lawyer until the day he died.

All this was going on while the powers that enforce Florida law are bringing my 40-year-old Fisher Island building up to current code with some destruction of the old, and more than a little construction of the new. The refurbishing is finally getting to be tiresome and there is a certain loss of privacy as crews of hard hats climb my deck to erect scaffolding while the seawall outside my window gets knocked down to be replaced with something newer, stronger, and higher.

The whole thing has me looking westward. A road trip. It would have happened sooner, but I have been mourning my Bentley convertible. This week’s events put that loss into perspective. It was time to stop moping and take my new(ish) BMW cross country to family and friends in Southern California. The Beemer is not the tower of power and prestige that was its predecessor, but it ain’t bad. Besides… it is arguably the most comfortable car I have ever driven and at my age there is something to be said for that.

There is the latest piece of harsh news: Hurricane Helene has very possibly wiped out a good section of roads I had planned to take for the first week of the journey. I have done many drives across the US in the past but never later in the year than August. This being October, I had therefore settled on a southern route… the gulf coast to New Orleans and points west, abandoning the roads through Appalachia, the Lincoln Highway, the friends in Omaha, the crossing of the Rocky Mountains … too late in the year… too cold.

I will make some hurricane-result adjustments but stick to the South as best I can, taking somewhere between three to four weeks to make the journey to California… never driving at night, and rarely going more than three hundred miles in a single day. The route will avoid the Interstates and focus primarily on the Blue Lane Highways (so named for their color on most maps). These are the roads (like the famed Route 66 of song and story) predating Eisenhower’s expansion of the nation’s highway system. These are the ones that go through America’s towns and business sections. Thanks to Hurricane Helene I may have to duck Florida’s central west to northwestern coast and most of her panhandle. Too bad. I was looking forward to that.

Finally, it may be a while before another one of these missives, so indulge me as I whiz through some suggestions and warnings about what might be viewed these days on your so-called premium channels.

So far only three episodes of the second season of The Old Man have been released by Hulu. With the caveat that things could easily go south in this series, let me say so far/so good, and very worth your time. The Penguin on MAX is provocative and dark, befitting its Batman pedigree. Colin Farrell plays the title role, and the actor is sure to get his share of nominations for his makeup, if not his extraordinary work. Only one episode out so far, but worth a look. There is a danger in giving accolades so early in a show’s season, but by the time I am settled in LA these shows may be old news.

One piece of old news is Dark Winds, a series released in 2022, set in the Navajo Nation of today’s American West and featuring all native American talent both in front of and behind the cameras of this AMC police procedural. You can catch it as well on HULU, but my best counsel is that you avoid the whole mess. Mediocre writing and some very poor acting are coupled with pedestrian direction in every episode. Occasionally there are some worthwhile moments but too few for you to stay with this series. Zahn Tokiya-ku McClarnon plays the lead in the show, and he is a notable exception to the talent level of the remainder of the players.

Even worse is Palm Royale, which I found unwatchable as early as midway through the first episode. Finally, my views are at best mixed about the Amazon Prime series, The Underground Railroad.

There must be a term for … wish it could be so even though it isn’t…shows set in an historical context, but if there is I don’t know it. Bridgerton from the Shonda Rhimes factory is an example. Quentin Tarantino turned it into something close to an “IF ONLY” art form with Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The Railroad series is that kind of fantasy/semi-realistic show.

Unlike what you will see in this series, the Underground Railroad was not literally a railroad that traveled subway like under the ground… nor was there a community at the end of the line where former Black slaves could be dressed up, fed, housed, and studied “for science.” Still, interesting stuff in this well produced series and a powerful presentation of America’s “original sin.”

I would continue to watch this last series, but I am called to my own road… This one above ground and (hopefully) not under water.

 

Barney Rosenzweig