MAN IN THE MIDWEST

From a young age, I knew I wanted to be a machinist like my father and his father before him. It came as a shock to me when once I had fulfilled that dream I found myself ready to swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid going to work in the morning. I worked at a job shop in Porter County Indiana which has since shut down due to incomprehensible mismanagement. While there I programmed two CNC lathes primarily making parts for the steel mills up on the lake. The shifts were grueling, ten hours a day sometimes as much as seven days a week. Our foreman picked fights with anyone he thought he could provoke. At one point his instigation was so severe he incited a mutiny. His entire night shift up and quit on him leaving the shop only able to operate during the day. This was reflected in the workload, jobs piled up on his desk as we scrambled out on the floor trying to get them done. When I was told I was being forced to take more hours one Friday afternoon, I finally snapped. The next day I quit, never looking back despite their pleading for me to stay. This left me in an odd position.

Suddenly at eighteen years old, I had no job, no school to go to, and no direction in life. I had wanted to be a machinist since middle school. Never had I considered another career path, leaving me adrift with no clear direction to head in. What I did have was a 97 Lincoln town car, five thousand dollars, and all the free time I could burn. If I didn't have a road to follow I would simply have to go out and find one. This started a four-month journey around the Midwest in search of something to do with my life. From December 2018 to March 2019 I drifted aimlessly, not settling in place again until I figured out what I was doing with myself.

I spent most of my first weeks as a free man hanging around Chicago. My time was spent wherever I could find the ins on the local music scene. During the day this was the guitar stores and record shops. I would make a lap around the city each day starting near the lake at Chicago Music Exchange and not stopping until I hit the Reckless Records on North Milwaukee. Even though the trip only took me around a three-mile wide area I would spend the whole day chatting up musicians and trying out gear I would never consider buying. In the evening I steered towards the seedy spots where you could catch a desperate musician trying to replace some hardware before his set began, pawn shops. The stench of pot hung over the dingy stores. Seventies hits leaked out of decrepit speakers and reverberated off the cracked tile floors. The merchandise they sold was usually crumbling from decades of hard love. Occasionally you could find something in stellar condition but these items were almost certainly hot. No doubt one meaty bass line would send a cloud of cocaine and glitter bursting out of the cabinet on sale for a fifth of its retail value. The atmosphere around the pawn shops was half as lively as the music stores and three times as hostile. After the fifth shootout happened just outside the doors of my go-to pawn I decided the scene wasn't worth the hassle. Chicago had all the music culture a guy could want. At any point in the day, a show was only a few blocks away. You could lose entire weeks hunting boutique instruments to test drive with the highest quality amps and pedals never having to lay down a dime on any of it. Local musicians filled the streets looking for anyone who would talk shop with them. Despite all this, the city wasn't the kind of place I could hunker down for any considerable length of time. The basic costs of living were astronomical, sometimes a meal would cost double what it would if I had gotten it on the other side of the state line. The streets were impossible to traverse, at times it would take as much as a half hour to drive five miles. The people outside of my picked subculture were anything but welcoming. Head down and moving forward was the only way to get around the city without getting into it with some bored geek looking for something to do. After only a few weeks of hanging around Illinois, I decided it was time to take my search elsewhere. I put the Chicago skyline in my rearview mirror hopefully for the last time.

In January I crossed the now arctic plains of Ohio. I skid along an iced-over I-90 until I reached Toledo. Here I had the last of Ohio I could stomach. From the sex shops that dot every street corner to the strip club buffets in every outlet mall, Toledo was one of the filthiest towns I ever set foot in. The city was a concrete hellscape devoid of a single square foot of greenery. On street corners, people lurked glaring at me as I rolled through black ice-coated intersections. Icicles hung from roofs like the tops of inverted fences warning all who passed from wandering too near. I had made the trip to look at a used car but unfortunately, that turned out to be a bust. The vehicle, which I was assured was in outstanding condition, failed to turn over when I came to see it. I assumed the thing to be a lemon despite the five-toothed owner's assurance that the weather was the only thing keeping the engine from firing up. I cruised the streets awhile looking for somewhere to settle in for a few hours to regroup. Every parking lot seemed to be manned by at least one crowbar-wielding gentleman waiting for some sap to park and walk away so he could make off with a stolen set of wheels. I decided to grab a pizza at a drive-thru and eat it in the parking lot. I pounded several slices of my dinner before two cars came into a head-on collision in the street in front of me. The owners both lept out of their totaled sedans to begin screaming at each other. That was all I needed to see of Toledo, or Ohio in general. I shut the pizza box, zipped back to I-90, and got out of that state.

In February I decided to take a day trip to a small central Indiana town called Monticello. The snow had receded leaving muddy dead grass in its wake. I pulled into town around one in the afternoon. I parked in a public lot, a free amenity that too many small-town citizens take for granted. I sat here for an hour watching people walk by. Townspeople coming back from lunch hurried to escape the frigid air. When I got bored of watching I decided to join in on the action. I left my car, walking blindly down the street towards nothing in particular. I ended up inside a gas station that seemed to have been stuck in its exact position since 1982. White laminated peg board walls with advertisements hung up that were decades out of date. I asked the guy behind the counter what was going on in the area today. He looked at me bewildered as though it was entirely absurd that a young man would come into his store and ask him, another young guy most likely in his early twenties, what was happening around town. I paid for my drink and got out of the place before I rattled his world any further. A stroll around the area I was in told me what the clerk's reaction should have. Nothing was happening. Small-town America had lived up to its reputation, outside of the chain bar and grill currently hosting happy hour the town was dead. I walked to a grotto near where I drove into town. I was able to sit down by the edge of a river and watch cars roll in and out of town. For the entire hour I sat there less than ten cars drove by. How people make it through their days in a city like this I have no idea. The town seemed plenty hospitable with friendly locals and clean establishments. The culture however was nonexistent. This was the kind of place where you only went out to go to work or the store. You spent your free time at home with the wife and kids only occasionally splitting off for date night at the town's only Italian restaurant. A perfectly comfortable place to live but not a particularly enriching one. Entirely the wrong scene for me so once again I packed up my Lincoln and went back out on the highway looking for a path.

March came and with it the occasional warm day that would give you a taste of what summer was soon to bring. I wandered to the freshly melted shores of Lake Michigan where I bummed around the city of New Buffalo. Vibrant streets full of clean-looking people snaked along the pristine beachfront. I walked around the streets near the water where bars and business fronts had opened up their shops letting the new spring air blow in. The scent of a dozen kitchens floated around making the area smell like fried meat and spices. Everywhere I went people were cheerful, enjoying the splendor of the town with their neighbors. The only issue weighing on anybody's mind seemed to be me. No matter where I was, happy faces stiffened as they watched me pass. Men in pastel polo shirts diverted their manicured families from my path. Even at the bars where faux motorcycle clubs gathered to show off their sparkly Harleys, I was watched hesitantly. Maybe my dirty long hair and unshaven face had spooked the locals. It could have been that my flannel and third-hand jeans didn't fit in with their strict gap-bought uniform. Whatever the issue was, it was clear I was not welcome among these well-to-do citizens. I had found a place with the culture I wanted, no matter which street I turned down a band was laying down a heavy beat in some dining or drinking establishment. Plenty of people were hanging out enjoying the city instead of rushing to hide from it. No one was getting stuck up in rank alleyways. If only I could have met the criteria to hang around there I probably would have. I didn't stick around New Buffalo for long. I got a chicken sandwich at a bar and grill a few blocks from the beach then beat it.

At this point, I had begun wondering what exactly it was I was doing floating around from town to town. I had learned quite a bit about myself and even more about the place I wanted to live but not so much about what I wanted to do with my life. No grand calling had presented itself to me nor had I had a revelation calling me to study any particular topic. For a week I remained idle back home trying to find some reason to have done all this traveling. A sizable chunk of my savings were spent and I seemed no better for it. It came to me finally that maybe I didn't have a calling in the usual sense. I didn't lust to fill some position working day and night for my boss. The thing I wanted out of life was what I had been indulging in this entire time, freedom. I didn't want some inflated title or a corner office. I wanted to do the things I enjoy. Go see shows, hang out in happening bars, and see new places. No salary can match freedom like that. I would need income to have this kind of freedom, good times aren't always free. I found myself a position driving a forklift in a lumber yard. Just enough work to pad my wallet and sustain a living. After that, the good times were back on. I ended up living in Indianapolis, a quiet bohemian borough of the city where music culture thrives. The days go by peacefully as I indulge in the fruits of my travels. The scene of Chicago and the serenity of New Buffalo with just enough of that Toledo grit to keep things interesting. I may not have found a career but I found a life.

Dusty Hayes is an indigenous writer and psychedelic advocate living in Indianapolis, Indiana. He spends his days there engaging in Broad Ripple's bohemian culture. He never pursued a higher education in writing, choosing instead to hone his writing style independently. He writes about social injustice, mindful living, and psychedelia. Recently he has published his first book Rock and Terror : A Psychonomic Look at the Effects of Psilocybin. A gonzo journalistic documentation of a mushroom trip that gives the reader a full rundown on the substance and its effects. You can find him and his work on Twitter and anywhere ebooks are sold.