(June 28, 2012) RALEIGH, NC to ATLANTA, GA – This is the first and probably last tour diary that will be written in the press box at a Major League Baseball game. I’m writing it at Turner Field, where I just interviewed Matthew Kaminski, a jazz organist who also plays organ for the Atlanta Braves. I think they’re the AAA farm club for the Mets.
I awoke at 5 a.m. so I could catch the bus from Raleigh to Atlanta. It was warm and dark and quiet on the streets of Raleigh as I walked the 10 minutes to the bus station. These next few days are supposed to be above 100 degrees everywhere I’m going. Let the games begin!
A bus station before 6 a.m. is quite a place. Very few employees, very few travelers. CNN was blasting in the Raleigh station, which I imagine is what they used to chase Manuel Noriega out of his bunker all those years ago. CNN is awful. Truly, truly vapid. And today they made a name for themselves by reporting the exact opposite result of the Supreme Court’s decision on Obama’s health plan. And now I’m in Atlanta within view of CNN headquarters. Yay!
The early bus to Atlanta didn’t have many empty seats, but I managed to get on anyway, which was a big relief. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t have a specific ticket, just a Discovery Pass. It’s like being on permanent standby. The clerk warned me that I might not be able to continue on the bus once it reached Charlotte.
I don’t know if the driver was new to Greyhound or just new to the route, but he had paper instructions on the dashboard and seemed completely lost once we pulled out of the station in Raleigh. We did eventually find the highway. I was sitting right in front, noticing how often he had to jerk the wheel to get back in one lane after wandering across the lines. Not particularly relaxing.
As we approached Charlotte, it was again clear that the driver had no idea where he was going. In fact, when we got off the highway, he turned to me and asked whether I knew the location of the Greyhound station. Oy. We did eventually find it after some shouted directions from a few passengers who knew the area.
I was able to get back on the same bus in Charlotte. I chomped on more of David and Carrie’s wonderful bagels the entire ride. I ate an embarrassing number of bagels. A stupid number of bagels. An obscene number of bagels.
The rest of the trip to Atlanta, with a different driver, was completely uneventful. We pulled in to the Atlanta station exactly on time. So in the grand scheme, everything was totally cool. Yes, I’m a 38-year-old father of two and I just typed “totally cool.†Deal with it.
I finished Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums on the ride. I thought it was a beautiful book in many respects. Definitely some serious misogyny, though. And it seemed to rush through the final section on Desolation Mountain, a subject he went on to cover in more depth in Desolation Angels.
Matthew the organist picked me up at the station. I was hungry for an NBFI (non-bagel food item), so we stopped at a little sushi joint. Then we took a walk around downtown, encountering two musicians along the way – a saxophonist named John James and a percussionist named Anthony Mohamed. Anthony and Matthew talked about the local salsa scene. Anthony is a recent transplant to Atlanta. He’s from Bed-Stuy (Brooklyn) originally, but he was just in Philly before coming here. He told us how deep the Philly percussion scene is. He said it dates back to a core of people who recorded and studied with Olatunji back in, I’m guessing, the 60s.
We strolled around downtown, past the World Of High Fructose Corn Syrup And Diabetes, which I think they shorten to the World Of Coke. Yes, an actual multimillion-dollar edifice WITH A LINE OUTSIDE dedicated to Coca-Cola. We are doomed.
Much of downtown was forever transformed by the 1996 Summer Olympics, and reminders of the games are everywhere.
We also passed the site of a future civil rights center. I don’t know anything about it but I’m glad it’s going to be there.
Then we drove to Turner Field. I interviewed Matthew about his work with the Braves, we ate dinner, then I interviewed him about his jazz career.
And here’s something I never expected to receive:
A couple Braves notes: That “Tomahawk chop” thing is insanely offensive. At one point tonight, the PA system went from that to “Sweet Home Alabama.” I kid you not. It’s either the 1850s or the 1950s. I’m not sure yet.
Tomorrow I’m hanging out with Matthew and his wife in the morning. Then I’ll catch a bus for Alabama. I’m reading poetry at The Gnu’s Room in Auburn (AL) tomorrow night at 7 p.m.
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