Here and there, on this site, on Jake's Book Covers, on Jake Ponders n'at, I've introduced some of the impetus to this road trip - thing - but I considered that perhaps something more, um, well - more might be in order.  

     Would that I could state that all of the photographs in this edition are completely new, but some have appeared on Jake Ponders already, as "previews" of this work as posted from the road, so yes, you may have seen them before.  I won't promise, either, that all the things I've written will be without overlap of ideas, notions, or what-have-you already observed.  That includes what's written in this Prologue; here, however, the idea is to (hopefully) pull things together so that it makes a bit more sense.  The idea is to make more sense; whether that idea is realized it another question entire!

     I have done my best to keep this 2015 version "fresh," but, hey - I'm the same guy (though naturally a year older) and some of the same thoughts crossed my mind as I went.  Also, since some of the route was covered on my "test run" of 2014, some of the subjects depicted will be similar.

     SO

     When I picked up that book in 2012, the name "Theodore Dreiser" was one I had read (that is, I had read the name, in someone else's book) probably a couple of times, but that's all.  I knew he was an author from the early 20th Century because I have, for many years, given some armchair study of that period.  Beginning with the scale World War Two models that my grandfather built for me (I later built them myself - oh boy did I!) and my child's fascination with war films on TV, my interest slowly broadened as I got older, reaching steadily backwards across the years to read some of the reasons why there was a war, then about the Great Depression, the "Roaring 20s," the Great War, and so on.  I had a few brief years in American Civil War re-enacting, but that's another story.

     I was also, from childhood, a "shutterbug."  Put a camera in my hands, and I could be happy snapping shots until the film ran out (remember film?)  While there have been spans of varying length when there was no camera available, there has never been a time in the last 30 years when I haven't seen something that brought the remark, if only to myself, "That would be a good photograph."  An object; a scene - pastoral or urban; a cloudscape; an interesting piece of architecture: fodder for my "eye." Many times, however, the next thought was "If I only had a camera!"

     A few years ago, the price of digital cameras and my take-home pay reached a convenient meeting place, if you will, and I could stop saying "if only..." because I could now take a photograph.

     Then there's the driving.  I'll admit my first couple of years "behind the wheel" were a little shaky.  But, hey, what do you expect from someone 16 to 18 or so years of age? Anyway, maybe it was commuting to college some 34 miles-per-day (that's round-trip) for a few years, but somewhere, sometime, I think I got pretty good at it - even came to enjoy it.  By the time I was out on my first full-time employment, driving was more than a way to get to work and the grocery, it was also simple pleasure.  I learned my way around what-ever city I happened to be living in mostly by driving out on a Saturday to see where I might wind up.  I still like to do that.     

     I consider myself both a good driver and a lucky one.  

     A view of the Tippecanoe County Courthouse, beyond Columbia Ave,            downtown Lafayette, IN, Spring of 2015.

     As for the contents of that book: in 1915, when Dreiser made his automobile journey from Greenwich Village in Manhattan, to Indiana, that was a pretty long-distance journey for a year so early in the age of the "car." While he did not actually do any of the driving, it was still novelty enough.  Novelty not only because of the time and distance necessary to convey from the North (or Hudson) River to the banks of the Wabash River (and on down to the Ohio!), but because there was no need for the trip to be driven.  This was still the high time of passenger rail.  In the introduction to the 1998 reprint, author Douglas Brinkley notes that the coming of the automobile also ushered in "...a flood of public relations stunts... races... marathon drives..." to gin up the public's interest in buying and the number of cars expanded geometrically in the first years of the 20th Century but the roads were, to put it mildly, crap (in the main, they were dirt, which would turn to soupy, wheel sucking mud when it rained -- where there were roads).  

           Uphill from the Michigan Central Station in 

               Ann Arbor, circa 1910 (Shorpy).

     While I've been working on this site, I have also read a rather more recently (2011) published work entitled The Big Roads

by Earl Swift, in which Mr. Swift traces the evolution of the idea of trans-continental highways in the U.S., and their execution. He notes that by 1915 there had been quite a number of people who had driven over great distances on still-primitive roads in still- primitive automobiles; some had even managed to get from coast to coast!  They had made their drives however -- or made their attempts -- to find the most accessible ways, or simply to find out if it could be done.

     The trip described in A Hoosier Holiday was not done as a stunt; not as a test of endurance; nor in some "pioneer spirit."   When Booth considered making the trip by car, I'm sure that he considered that auto travel had become a viable alternative to the train, though still the new and novel way to go.  It was also a way to see the country in a manner that most people had not yet, a means of getting "out" -- out into the countryside, into an America that was in the main mostly only known by the people who lived there. And it was that: a way to see and experience the country for an author and an artist.  The resultant illustrated publication was also something new: a "road book."  Not part of a scheme, but a man's consideration of his life, his country, and what he saw along the way.  With sketches.

    Such is the foundation, and so the interest.

     An example of the kind of photograph I like to attempt, and which sometimes turn out "O.K.:"  shooting from one moving New Jersey Transit train at another Transit train as the two consists pass under the New Jersey Turnpike in the Meadowlands.

     Summer of 2014.

     Born and reared in Indiana, Theodore Dreiser was, in 1915, living in Manhattan, New York City.  

     I made fairly frequent trips to Manhattan during the 5-plus years that I lived and worked in New Jersey; and when I picked up his book in 2012, I was living and working in Indiana.     

     Manhattan, as seen from the Manhattan Bridge

     in 1915 (Shorpy).

     It was the "intersections," if you want to term them so.  New York and Indiana; an automobile journey made for the sake of making the journey in an automobile; the recording of images from alongside the road when-ever and where-ever something caught the eye of the artist.  All those, and that it was in 1915!  A year of much interest to historians, though not so much for what Americans were doing in their daily lives in the Heartland.

     A "road trip" made because you could do a "road trip."

     Those were quite enough for me to plunk down my card and buy.

             Sunset over the Wabash River, 

             downtown Lafayette, Autumn, 2010.

     Then for what-ever reason it would be the better part of a year before I actually got 'round to reading the whole of the book, and in the summer of 2013 the intersections rolled about in my head -- with the additional thought that in 2015, just two years more, would come the 100th anniversary of that journey.  Almost immediately following that consideration came the notion of re-enacting the trip.  It seemed more of a "convergence" than an "intersection:" history, driving, and recording what's alongside the road all together in a package deal.

                                                    A street scene in the Village, Summer of 2011.

      With my interest in history on the page is also an interest in literally seeing history - or what's left of it.  In my flat in Lafayette (the second floor of an old house) I have contemplated what was changed between its time as single family dwelling to being "busted up" into first and second floor apartments.  Old towns are also like that; old roads.  

     Because Dreiser noted, if only in passing, nearly every city, town, and village that their route took them through,  I could, to some extent, follow the "map" Dreiser left.  Mostly, roads in this country remain, though resurfaced and sometimes supplanted by an "improved" roadway nearby. Towns, too, mostly remain, if only as a "wide spot" on the road, and a name on a page of Rand McNally.  By referring to today's maps I could trace the drive taken in 1915. Franklin Booth sketched a number of scenes along the way, to which I could refer as well, and try to duplicate those scenes photographically.  I could also compare and contrast (wow, that sounds academic, don' it?) the way those towns appear now to how they looked then, whether outlined in words or drawn on paper.

     And thus the idea of a "re-enactment."  A re-tracing, several days driving, taking photographs of things old and new.  Perfect?  I don't know about "perfect," but maybe in the colloquial?  Perfect!

     Broadway, circa 1910 (Shorpy).

     Of course to begin with I set out to do the "re-enactment" in 2014, because I had somehow gotten confused.  For what-ever reason I was thinking that Dreiser's journey was in 1914.  Picking up the book again that summer, I said "whoops!" but since I already had plans to go out on the road, I went.  Which just meant that I would have to do so again in 2015!  Which I did.

     I put "re-enactment" in quotation marks because while I might have hewed more closely to the original road trip, that was not my intention.  "Re-tracing" may be better.  To my mind, a re-enactment should be that (probably because I did that Civil War re-enacting).  To do it "right" I would have needed an old car, preferably a Pathfinder (good luck!); I would have gone with a driver and another companion (a writer, I suppose); I would have sketched instead of taking photographs.  To do a "re-enactment" would have required staying in rooming houses, not motor hotels and taking each mile in a manner that the time elapsed would match that of Dreiser & Co in 1915.

     Nope, that's not what I did.  Not that that would be out of place for me; such might have been quite a to-do, but frankly I don't have the resources for it.  Maybe in another 25 years? In another 25 years I'll need a driver to do it!

                                                            42nd Street, looking West from 7th Ave.  Summer of 2014.

     My focus, for better or worse, was to go as much as possible where they went, and record, photographically, those things that "stuck out" to me as scenes or buildings, or what-have-you that fell mostly into two categories: either it was there in 1915 (or could have been, or was close to 1915) or was patently not there (and there was a lot of the latter!)  

     I also wanted to observe how things and people moved about in these places, compared to what Dreiser noted of the people he encountered on the way.  

     Frankly I had no want to stay in cheap road-side motor hotels, the low-slung, single story motor courts left-over from who-knows-when.  There aren't a lot of them left (though I did pass a few, especially in the vicinity of Lake Erie), but those that are seem to be failing.  Many have been converted to apartments.  Sorry.  When I was younger I relished that kind of adventure more readily.  Today I really do prefer better beds and well-washed sheets, however mundane a Holiday Inn Express or a Comfort Inn might be.  Having driven over some of this route, too, I also knew in advance where I might find lodging (which came out to the good near Buffalo - kinda' near Buffalo).  There is also a certain "something" to checking into a motel; my friend Ken in Pittsburgh remarked once that it seems so "adult" to do so.  Then, he and I are of part of a generation that still recalls when people bothered to put on better clothes to get on an airplane (yes, way back before TSA and practically getting undressed at the security check-point - oh for the days!) because you paid attention when you went out in public.  A hold-over, I suppose from the days when there really was a "jet set."

     I probably could have gotten out of my car more, been more conversational with people along the way.  Maybe I should have, but my focus came to be the going and the shooting, and less on the stopping.  That may be detrimental to the results of this whole thing, but there y' go.  It's who I am I suppose. 

     Not that I can't have conversations with folk; I can, but it's usually when I've already stopped for some reason.  I have managed in the last few years to come by the ability to hold polite conversation with strangers; perhaps because I've lived enough to have anecdotes to actually recall; that I have something I feel I can throw out in a chat.  Well, there are other things, but then I'm not writing a whole book on my psyche here, and it would take one.

     I did on some occasions give out the "short version" of this story when someone wondered what I was doing, a curiosity usually prompted by the fact that in most situations I will be the only man of middle-years in a hat, jacket, and tie.  The hat especially draws attention, since headwear these days is predominated by the "ball-" or "gimme" cap, worn either bill-forward or -back (sometimes sideways), and a proper felt or straw (yes, "proper") elicits interest, which is usually positive, but not always. Some of those polite conversations often include remarks that someone had a relative (usually a father) who always wore a hat, and wouldn't it be nice if more people did?

                                          Because I have a tripod for the camera.

                                               Have tripod, will travel!

     I'll also make note of the fact that I did not do extensive research for this.  I guess you could say it was a bit above desultory.  However, what it comes down to is that this was a trip about the going.  I've picked up a little research-like on the web (which would be deplorable if this were actually an academic piece, but fortunately it's not) and there have been some interesting "finds" not the least of which is just how diverse the on-line world is (yeah, I know I've still but scratched the surface).  Without it I might never have known that there was a group dedicated to the preservation of the old Morris Canal route for conversion to a "greenway:" Morris Canal Working Group.  So, no, what-ever I might have done, it probably is not that.  This was, in the main, between me and "the book."

     Just for reference, for some reason I do occasionally refer to my little four-door as a "saloon."  As far as I know it's an English term for an auto that is just like a sedan, only smaller.  A compact car if you will.  I don't know if it's still even in usage, but it was in the years before Second World War, and I picked it up somewhere.

     Regardless of any preparation, off I went.  It was simultaneously fun and exhausting, comforting and un-nerving.  To spend my own time behind the wheel and look for "that shot" is one of my joys, which enjoyment was at root of putting all those "intersections" into play.

     The results are depicted, and noted, on these pages.

     Enjoy. 

     Author's note: I've thought of many things I might relate here, but some of those were fleeting and not always recorded.  Oh well.  As this edition will be published in serial fashion, I may edit this page.  Check back if you're interested.

     Jake