Somewhere, Over the Radio…

Somewhere, Over the Radio…

Kansas City is a shithole.

Maybe that’s too harsh. It’s a nice place.

If you like gun racks and mud flaps.

It isn’t even a city. It’s a no-horse backwater surrounded by withered cornfields, sagging buildings, wife beaters in wife beaters and punch lines like “I was just helping the sheep through the fence, officer.” It’s all “Dueling Banjos” all the time. Squeal like a pig, boy.

That’s not fair. It’s really a wonderful patch of God‘s green earth.

If you like having sex with your cousin.

But, what the hell, I’m a sucker for symbolism.

So my reverse manifest destiny began in tiny Kansas City, Oregon, a hamlet west of Portland that isn’t even on most maps. More than 1,800 miles stand between that KC and the KC, and I was to cross them aboard Old Yeller, a scarred Ryder truck. I merged into traffic on the Oregon Trail. It was like the pioneer days, minus cholera, rattlesnakes and late-night sneaky uncles in the covered wagon. Instead I would monitor the musical pulse on the yellow-striped road to Oz.

My preparations had begun long before I left one Kansas City behind. I’d seen Tech N9ne perform with the Insane Clown Posse at the Portland Expo Center. Tech bounced giddily across a stage normally reserved for gun shows and fired staccato salvos for his “drunk motherfuckers” and “psycho bitches” while rhyming cocaine with Rogaine and Einstein with Tech N9ne. The drunk motherfuckers and psycho bitches in clown makeup nodded polite approval.

I’d watched the Border War football game, read In Cold Blood, analyzed the Chiefs and raided the city’s musical vaults. I’d pined for lost lunch money with the Get Up Kids and toyed with alcoholism to the sweet strains of Charlie Parker‘s sweaty sax.

Those means exhausted, I’d sought counsel from the Rococo Chinese Restaurant oracle. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” said the first fortune cookie. “Don’t let television steal your brain,” offered the second.

Touché, General Tso. Touché.

The magical musical tour began with Ice Cube‘s “Check Yo Self” and churned through Fleetwood Mac, Good Charlotte and Chingy before the Black Eyed Peas‘ “Where’s the Love” emerged for its first of 1,742 spins during the three-day trip.

Mercifully, OutKast‘s “Hey Ya!” was crackling when Old Yeller lurched into the gravel parking lot of the Waterin’ Hole Tavern in my hometown of Fort Rock, Oregon. Speed limit: 25. Population: 25.

The Hole’s jukebox coughs up eight songs for a dollar, though it’s incapable of playing songs with a 0, 6, 7, 8 or 9 in its catalog number, thus limiting options to Hank Williams and Hank Williams Jr.

Fortified by strong drink, free popcorn, several airings of “Family Tradition” and my fiancé’s bleary-eyed rendition of “Fur Elise” on the tavern piano, our journey continued.

What followed was a surreal blur of dusty towns, wild donkeys and faded blacktop. The radio undulated between Bible-thumping sermons, public radio drones, hyperventilating Spanish DJs, Tim McGraw, Motley Crue and, of course, the Black Eyed Peas.

Cabin fever set in. Intelligible conversation dissolved into discussions of cannibalism over handfuls of Red Vines. Donner, party of two, your table is waiting.

We suffered our first fatality near Battle Mountain, Nevada. Our fish, Rex the Superdog, went belly-up in his lunchbox home. Diamond Rio lamented the involuntary fish slaughter by crooning, The good news is … the time we spent together/The bad news is, you’re gone.

We hurtled past grain silos and the World’s Largest Prairie Dog with CCR prodding us through Topeka and Lawrence. At dusk, the lulling strains of Mama Cass‘ “Dream a Little Dream” welcomed us home.

There we were. And here I am.

A place where, as the song says, there are pretty little women and the water tastes like sugar. Last week, I weaved through I-35 traffic on my first Kansas City morning, cheerfully cursing my new neighbors. The sun was shining. The future looked bright.

I turned on the radio.

“Beautiful Day” by U2.