A coincidence is all in how you see it. As Harvey the RV traveled around the country, a few things from local news clippings stood out for the travelers. Maybe it was just being in transit that made a few events unusual, because everyone knows his connection with the community better than the passers-through.
Monday, March 18
President Bush visited St. Louis; Johnnie and Delphine were forced to stop catching the bus in front of the Adams Mark hotel downtown. The buses were routed not to stop near the president's location, so the Coxes hurried over to another street to catch a ride back to the RV park.
Wednesday, March 27
News helicopters from every local TV station circled above Harvey the RV for at least two hours. A train hauling automobiles derailed from the tracks directly behind the RV park. Johnnie and Delphine heard loud noises from about a quarter mile down the tracks. They heard what happened from neighbors in the campground, and tuned in to local stations to see the story.
Sure enough, a story about a man driving his pickup into the Mississippi and waving at folks as he apparently committed suicide had been preempted by the train derailment story. A zigzag jumble of cars lay piled down an embankment in the helicopter video. It was surprising that they stopped the suicide story so quickly, however, in light of the fact that just the previous week - while Johnnie and Delphine were staying in downtown St. Louis - an elderly woman had accidently driven into the river just a few miles to the north in Alton. But then, some witness talking on camera about seeing somebody drive into the water couldn't hold a candle to video of actual train cars piled up near the Casino Queen riverboat.
And wouldn't you know it? It happened again. From downtown St. Louis, video started coming in showing a firefighter on top of a house, axe in hand, battling a fire that had broken through the roof.
The house fire was a one-family dwelling in which nobody appeared to be injured. Clearly, a train derailment tying up traffic all over East St. Louis was more important, but zigzagged cars were static and boring. Better to show a blaze leaping through the top of a house. So the video from all those helicopters flying back and forth over East St. Louis came to nothing in the editing room.
Of couse, another vehicle plunging into the icy waters of the Mississippi claiming the second life in two weeks was more important than a bunch of train cars on an imbankment. But there was no video of the people going over, only some witnesses talking.
Monday, April 1
The NCAA tournament, all a-dribble in US cities in March, seemed to play man-on-man with the Coxes right up to the end.
In case you missed the strange case of Duke and Notre Dame elsewhere in these web pages, this summary should serve to bring you up to date:
In St. Louis, a city currently hosting NCAA basketball games (which signs everywhere proclaimed Arch Madness,) in Mike Shannon's Irish pub, the day before St. Patrick's Day, two folks from North Carolina watched Duke beat Notre Dame.
J and D flipped on the motel TV in Independence, Missouri. They had come to see Kansas City play baseball, but began, near the Kansas border, by watching KU play basketball. Maryland, another ACC team, defeated the local favorite, Kansas.
History seemed paused to repeat itself, because Maryland faced Indiana in the final. Indiana, the team that sent Duke home for the summer. Soemhow, though, Maryland kept their game face, and the ACC won out on Monday night, their last night in the Kansas City metro area.
Saturday, July 13
News came and went, affecting everyone generally but never Johnnie and Delphine directly until they reached Minnesota. Then George W. Bush, who has dogged our trip, showed up there in Minneapolis. The governor, Jesse Ventura, had been hospitalized with blood clots in the lung, a recurring ailment for him. But W. didn't come to see Jesse. One again he snarled traffic, however. He was only in town for a day, earlier this week.
The Minnesota Twins blew off talks with the city of St. Paul over building a new baseball stadium. The city made the completely unreasonable request that - if they raised taxes and built a stadium - the owners commit to staying in the area. Nope, too much to ask.
Delphine was discussing this with a stranger, a local man, in the line to buy movie tickets at Mall of America. The man was disappointed that the Twins would very likely move now. Johnnie leaned into the conversation and reminded the man that it might academic anyway. The baseball players very probably will end baseball forever in a week or so by striking before the World Series again.
Monday, July 22
George W. Bush is coming to Chicago while the Coxes are there. They have to quit meeting like this.
Friday, August 2
Perhaps the magic is over, because Johnnie and Delphine, instead of catching important people and events are starting just to miss them. Congressman Traficant of Ohio was sentenced to jail shortly after they left Ohio. The very day they crossed into Pennsylvania, the nine coal miners were rescued. But that was in a town 50 miles south of Pittsburgh, where the Coxes stayed. Now in Toronto, they find the Pope already gone by a few days.
No person on Earth believes less in astrology than Johnnie Cox (who once changed his sunsign from Cancer to Orion as a pedagogical inspiration to other people to examine for themselves how little sense such things made.) Grand cycles of the sun and moon and planets play out the vast expression of Einsteinian space, where gravity twists place into velocity by acting at cross dimensions. The stars at one's birth matter less to one's personal development than the beating wings of butterflies outside the hospital window.
But people see stars in the sky and worship stars in Hollywood. Who could argue that we set our clocks by the sun, our calendars by the moon and our lives by the coming and going of bright torches on television, in newspapers, in magazines? Then little wonder that Johnnie and Delphine mark the mileposts of their trip by events in the world at large.
As one cycle winds down and their life-altering trip comes to an end, the coincidental markers they've kept pace with have spun out of phase. There seems no appropriate anchor. Where would the event have to occur to be a significant milestone, a striking coincidence? In North Carolina? In Florida? On the road nearby or somewhere over the horizon? Which horizon?
J and D are just missing big events in the world; they are turning from their previous life; falling out of sync with life on the road; thinking more each day about a new home and new life in a future still too vague to carry any marker they would recognize.
