Bad Billboards Enroute to St. Pete

My wife recommended a trigger warning for bleakness, but I hate those things

I saw evidence of infrastructure spending out there. We’re building it back, I guess, but I can’t say it feels better. Just wider slabs of concrete with angrier drivers. I saw signs of Trump’s re-election in pick-up trucks with oversize tires and mirrors like elephant ears bearing down on other drivers. They push their grills a centimeter from the bumpers and tailpipes of sedans, minivans, and piddly SUVs until they move over, and every single one moves eventually, including me.

Not to overshare on the blog, but when mid-December arrived, it had been several bad weeks. Burnout, bum out, the state of the world; I can’t recall the last time I needed a year to end so badly. When the office closed for the holiday break, the only pause the music industry takes, I decided to drive to Florida and see my dad. His health was keeping him from traveling to see his kids, grandkids, and great grandkids for the holidays. I liked the idea of a long drive, listening to records and audiobooks, writing in hotels, taking some time alone to chew on shit.

Not long into the trip, I took the exit for Sewanee on a whim. I’d never seen the campus of the University of the South, though I know one of its buildings well by the drawing on the inside cover of each issue of The Sewanee Review. They pile up at the house. I almost never read them, but tell myself I will eventually. The school sits atop the “the Mountain” as it’s known to locals, though it’s not technically a mountain, but the Cumberland Plateau. I wondered whether there’s a terrible southern history that comes along with Sewanee, but I didn’t look it up.

Many hours later, after the sun set, driving up a real mountain and coasting down the other side, I was reminded of Roadside Monument’s van in the ‘90s, shifting on its struts. It seems possible it was on this same stretch of road when I took a late shift driving while everyone else slept. I had Lullaby for the Working Class playing through headphones as the sun came up, glaring on the dirty windshield decorated with the night’s dead bugs. The memory was a comfort to me.

I listened through two albums which aren’t out yet—pre-release streams, the music biz version of galley brags. Neither had gotten that crucial interstate listen at blistering volume. I credit some of my tinnitus to basement shows, but a fair share goes to the golden age of CD players in the car, the optimal music listening experience for Generation-X. An artist I know keeps their broke down Honda CR-V around, flat tires in the back yard, to sit inside and listen to rough mixes.

One of the albums is gonna knock off your socks, but the other, by an artist I love, leans too heavily on organs and keyboards this time.

Here’s what I listened to which I’m allowed to talk about: at least 20 seconds of all 94 songs on Anti-Matter’s AM Radio playlist. I’ve been craving heavy music, revisiting old records at home, but poking around for new stuff, too. Norm’s re-launch of the best hardcore zine in history is well-timed. I played the intro and at least some of the first verse of every song he’s got on there. Sometimes I made it to the chorus, sometimes got as far as halfway through, and here and there jammed entire songs. The stand-outs include: Pain of Truth (my heavy-music buddy called it meathead hardcore), Many Eyes (buddy says it’s the singer from Every Time I Die, one of his faves), and Jesus Piece (buddy says record was all over year-end lists but never connected with him).

I lose the hour crossing into the Eastern Time Zone, and two Amazon semi trucks are hovering next to each other, hogging both lanes and rolling well under the speed limit. I imagine them talking on CBs to each other, then wonder if truckers are still using them. When I was young, a dad from our street had a CB in his sedan. He’d take neighborhood kids for drives on I-465 in a circle around Indianapolis and pretend to be a long-hauler with his own handle. Breaker, Breaker, Dirty Underwear. Who’s got ears on out there? We’d be laughing somersaults in the backseat. There was a spot on the south side where a woman’s voice would fill the car singing a cappella country songs to the drivers passing through, sometimes dedicating tunes to them by name.

A string of yellow billboards with bold type said BIBLE SALE. LOWEST PRICE GUARANTEED. NEXT RIGHT. How hard is it to get a Bible, and how cheap could these ones be? I wondered what was behind the bait, but couldn’t bring myself to take the exit and find out.

There were so many goddamn signs for gun shows coming to every town, often with pictures of AR-15s. The news headlines I kept seeing about even the lefties buying guns were some of the scariest of the year.

A billboard for Boss Hog Radio as I exited in Bushnell, Georgia proclaimed NO RAP & NO CRAP. The logo was a big-headed cartoon pig with a cigar and white hat. Moments later, when I stopped to pee, Modest Mouse’s “Float On” played way too loud for a McDonald’s bathroom. All is not lost.

I listen to the second half of the Will Hermes’ Lou Reed: The King of New York audiobook, which is A+.  I’m struck by how relentlessly he followed the muse, and how little I know of the solo records. I put on Coney Island Baby. God, give us a Lou Reed for the 2020s, please.

Deep in southern Georgia, a billboard with an illustration of an eagle and a knife combined like a centaur. In Helvetica Bold it said DON’T BE A DEMOCRAT. When I crossed the Florida line, I saw a pristine Jaguar coup from the ‘90s driven by a Gregg Popovich lookalike, heading south into the state in the lane next to me.

I arrived in St. Pete, a short drive to my dad’s place, and compared the nicest two hotels I could get for free with Marriott points. I opted for the Venoy, a newly renovated spot about to celebrate its 100 year anniversary.

My room had a balcony overlooking a harbor with boats and small yachts. There was loud music coming across the water, where I could see temporary tents and a festival stage. I went down the elevator and joined the steady flow of people heading that way, winding around the harbor to the St. Pete Pier. As I got closer, I could hear the DJ hyping up the crowd, teasing the arrival of the night’s headliner, Ludacris.

When I got to the gate and saw that it was ticketed, not free, I resisted the urge to text local promoters asking for last-minute guest list. I stood on a raised slab of concrete with sight lines over the fence, far away but in range of the PA. It was packed, the crowd bumping and buzzing, and when Luda came on stage, I could tell that he was pleasantly surprised. I imagined the booking of the gig, probably an easy one-off with a strong offer, another show of a million shows over the decades, but still sometimes one rises above. Between songs—I was stunned by how many I knew—he let the crowd know he was feeling them. He riffed with his hypeman, saying St. Pete didn’t fuck around.

I milled around the pier and the park there, which was decked out for a palm tree Christmas. A guy played carols on his acoustic guitar, and a local rapper with his own DJ and a dancing girl with devil sticks was giving it hell under a badass light and string installation. No doubt the trio believed they could poach some heads from Ludacris, but they’d only drawn a little girl on a tiny bike riding in circles under the lights.

The next morning, I drove to my dad’s and spent a few hours with him on the couch, football muted on the TV. Our chat was mostly a recap of recent phone calls, which are repetitive because he keeps having more and more pain and more and more surgery. I let him in on the fact that I’d been in the dumps.

That night, back at the Vinoy, I drifted off to the Tom Wolfe documentary. I recently bought a stack of his hardcovers when I stumbled upon a low-price listing on eBay. The movie said two of the ones I got might be his worst, but a couple of the classics are in there, too. Before watching the flick, I knew little about him beyond his outfits and his slim, funny architecture book.

The second day, back at dad’s in our same spot on the couch, we talked bigger things like my mom ten years gone, and our diminishing memories; his by age, mine by weed. I asked if being stuck inside all the time made him depressed, and he said no. I don’t think he was lying or hiding anything, I’m just not sure he knows what the word depression means, a generational thing.

When it was time to leave, my dad shuffled out the front door with me, the dog on a leash attached to an aluminum leg of his walker. We hugged and said goodbyes. I took a photo. He gave the pic a thumbs down later when I texted it to him, but his smile, against odds, remains undefeated.

By the time I had backed out of the driveway, he was down the sidewalk a ways, pausing for the dog to shit. We waved as I drove past, and in the rearview mirror I saw him carefully turning around to head back inside.

Toward the end of the drive back to Tennessee, I listened to Elizabeth McCracken narrate her memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination. It’s about losing her first child in utero and dealing with the grief. There’s a lot of moving in the book. McCracken and her husband are moving or looking for a new place to live more than once, as I remember, and McCracken travels alone, too. After delivering the stillborn baby, she goes goes goes, but notes: “Of course you can’t out-travel sadness. You’ll find that it has smuggled itself along in your suitcase. It coats the camera lens. It flavors the local cuisine.”

I ate my fast food staples throughout the trip, so I can’t say if the local part rings true. Would you unsubscribe if I told you that over the course of several days and nights, I never ate anywhere that wasn’t a chain? I ate most of my meals in the car, a sad cartoon panel in a smart magazine. Like McCracken’s food, my favorites didn’t exactly deliver comfort, either.