August 8th, 1980
The Homecoming:
On board flight 587 to St. Louis. The plane is more than half empty. I have the absurd impression that everyone on board is a Missourian. Colorless people in cheap polyester clothes. The weekend trip to visit Grandma is fraught with the standard baggage I have toted for years– the strange fears and vulnerability I always experience when faced with visits home. My morning at the office is spent drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and staring at the clock. Trying to maintain a rational, realistic perspective on this. I am going to visit a sweet old lady who lives peacefully in the Midwest and who adores me. Shadowy demons dart through the surface. Always in the nightmare I was in Springfield, driving a car usually through a menacing night, pursued by a man intent on murdering me. A veil of sexuality thickened the images. Springfield is a lost land of terror where blank faced children kill cats and bug eyed, pot bellied idiots sweat in their pickup trucks. And he, the maniac who is always after me, relentlessly advances.
It is a beautiful day, bright and sunny inside the plane. I asked for a window seat and I have an entire row alone. So far I have not noticed any murdered cats or shotguns aimed at me. I waited until the last possible moment to leave the office for the airport– and was still annoyed to find myself at the gate ten minutes before boarding. I don’t want even ten minutes sitting here imagining all these people to be Missouri zombies who want to kill me. I managed to get to the bar and have two beers and a cigarette and get back to the boarding gate just before take-off. Cocktails are being served by a middle aged horsey stewardess with dark pancake makeup and yellowed blonde hair wrapped around her head in a french twist with dark roots. She has promised us over the loud speaker that we are about to be served a hot lunch.
An enormous fat girl sits across the aisle from me. Her huge body bulges in rolls through a red cotton pantsuit.She has eaten two lunches, complained about the food and just rang a loud buzzer over her seat for a stewardess. She ordered a light beer. I despise her.
Ahead of me, in the first class section, a pretty young stewardess with long hair pulled back and parted in the middle, sits on the edge of a seat and entertains the children of a middle class family. She is vivacious and cloying. Her attitude is too happy, such studied enthusiasm. I hate her, too. I drink my fifth beer and fume with hostility for all these “folks”– these middle class, middle aged, middle minded mid-westerners. I have an unrelenting need for exotica.
St. Louis airport–
There are two men in business suits standing in the middle of the terminal distributing literature in favor of nuclear power plants. They each have home made placards hanging from their necks which read: “NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS ARE BUILT BETTER THAN JANE FONDA” and “NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS ARE SAFER THAN THE KENNEDY’S CARS”
After supper at my grandmother’s house, a young guy and his enormous blubbery wife come over. He has a carpentry job he is interested in my grandfather helping him with. The fat girls pecks at the side of my grandmother’s aquarium and baby talks to the fish. “What kind is that great bigun?,”she asks. “That there’s one of them allergy eaters” replies my grandmother.
Springfield is a gift I will always have.