A Good Theology Book

I’ve had people—especially ministers—say, “This is supposed to be a theology book? What theology?” O ye of little perception! Just from the first couple of pages, you should be able to detect: 1) Ongoing optimism 2) Everyone they meet gets treated equally 3) The two characters are quick to give each other the benefit of the doubt 4) They travel with spartan frugality 5) The plan for the cross-country hitchhiking trip was mapped out over the celebration of the birth of our savior (Christmas 1970), and (for now) 6) We spent 40-days and 40-nights on the road which is a direct reference to Jesus fasting in the desert for the same amount of time as per Matthew and Luke. Just sayin.’

A Letter to My Friend's Girlfriend

My friend from high school, Doug, who now lives in Las Vegas, has read my book (I think).  His girlfriend, Alison, hasn’t.  So I sent her the following letter, both as friendly couple-to-couple gesture (my wife and I, and her and Doug), and also as a way to promote the events in my book that happen in Las Vegas.  Here’s the letter:

Hi Alison, Doug better give you a copy of my book, We Picked Up, as a Mother’s Day present BECAUSE after seeing your rather generic street name Pinehurst Drive (sorry, I’m sure it’s anything but) from your thank you card, it brought back to mind several watershed events that occur in my book in Las Vegas. One, the guys arrive into town across the Mojave desert with a horse-faced driver with leukemia and his 300-pound mother who does nothing but berate him. To me, this is the funniest part of the book, especially after the guy’s car breaks down and the two hitchhikers have to push the dead car into a service area. When they arrive into Las Vegas, Roger (i.e. me) is stunned that a normal, everyday neighborhood exists in Las Vegas (“What’ll they think of next?” he says). On top of that, the two characters are fighting like cats and dogs but make up in Las Vegas and go up a few notches on the maturity scale. And on page 297, in North Las Vegas, the words “We picked up” are actually written as a three-word sentence. 
That’s where I got the title.  So there you have it! Thanks for your card . . . it was great hosting you guys (even though I won the Antiques Roadshow appraiser contest!), and I’m sure looking for an excuse (and time slot) for Wonza and me to come to Nevada!   Sincerely, Ken

The Buddhist Lingo

I hope I got the Buddhist lingo right on Day 33-35, the part where Roger and Otto take the sidetrip to the Grand Canyon. I also hope I got the Buddhist atmosphere right. Since this is a made-up episode, patched together only partially from other trips and experiences I had over the years, I couldn’t rely on direct memory to help me out.  I had to learn what a Buddhist wedding entailed, what words were right for the characters, and to set the mood.  I also needed it to somehow jell and conform (i.e. make it appealing and accepting) to a liberal Christian standpoint as well. Bottom line, I wanted it to be fun and didn’t want to offend anyone. I had to make Norbert and Vanessa’s wedding real, yet a point of distraction to Roger as he considers the awesome backdrop. And then we have the presence of sweet Gwen, who painted the hippie bus with the mantra, “Love All, Hurt None.” The budding friendship between her and Roger had to be as compatible and smooth as the tenants between Buddhism and Christianity; at least that’s what I pushed for. Though Roger and Otto agreed, “It’s all one God anyway,” to Roger, “it still has to square with Jesus Christ.” So there was a lot working out on these pages. One of my favorite parts of the book is on the morning of Day 35, when Roger and Otto are camping the night after the sidetrip and banter back and forth with playfulness: “I got all tuckered out channelin’ my bliss through the abstractions of my mental sphere.” “We purified our formless receptacles, Otto.  We made our material planes immune to delusion.”

Three Weeks Without a Bed

At the start of Day Twenty, page 187, Roger wakes up at his Aunt Betty’s house, lounging in luxurious sheets, where “no cops will be rooting me out here.” He ruminates how he made it almost three weeks without sleeping in a bed. After a split moment of self-congratulatory conceit, he thinks further and decides, “It’s pretentious to presume that going a couple of weeks without basic necessities is a long time.  People survive ordeals much more demanding than this journey. What am I boasting about? What right do I have to gloat?” How glad I am to have come to this realization. Yes, Roger can act like a pompous ass with his over-confident attitude, but not this time. He gets the perspective right. The rough style in which they were living was no big deal. “It was my CHOICE to live this way,” he thinks. “How dare that I think this is something special? I can hardly claim being thrust into dire hardship.  It ain’t this. No bed, so what?  Same as with not taking a shower.  Or not eating meals.  Or not wearing clean clothes.  What do I have to complain about?  Twenty days is nothing.  Go a year or more, Winans.  Then you’ll have something to write about.” That’s why you don’t see Roger Winans complaining much in this book. He understands that this 40-day cross-country junket is more or less an amusement park glee run (as he says himself on page 5) that he wanted very much to take. What was there to complain about? Nothing.

The Insterstate System

One thing you can follow along with my book, somewhat, is the progress of the American Interstate system. As you may know, this network of limited-access highways, named for President Dwight Eisenhower who initiated it in 1956, took 35 years to build.  That puts 1971 smack in the middle of its construction history. You surely can see the start-‘n-stop nature of the interstate in the pages of We Picked Up. Some states were further along than others. Nebraska, for instance, had almost all of I-80 built when we crossed. Kudos to them. But I can’t say the same for Nevada. Turn to page 116 on Day Eleven. I write, “We gained sporadic distance at best as a series of kiddie rides brought us through dry alkaline gulches, broken by hills and mountains, empty sagebrush reservoirs, and canyons stripped by quarries. The interstate was complete, incomplete, complete, incomplete.” The pain in the neck was the most common place for the interstate to be incomplete was around towns. As a hitchhiker, this was frustrating, because you wanted to avoid towns that weren’t your destination as they would slow you down. A couple of nice things about the interstates back then was police weren’t doing an efficient job in patrolling them—you could “usually” get on the highway proper and hitch directly on it, especially in way-out places like Wyoming. Other states were more strict to varying degrees. Also, the system wasn’t fully “discovered” by the public, meaning traffic wasn’t a circus like it is these days. There was adequate traffic flow, but sparse enough so that drivers still could pull over in a safe manner to pick you up.

I Address the Reader Only Once

When writing a novel, it’s tough enough figuring out if the first or third person will be used in the narrative. Also difficult is deciding how close do you want the reader to get to the author. Should he or she be acknowledged directly?  I did so just one time in the book.  Turn to page 283.  Roger, Otto, Detroit, and Paul McCartney have just gotten let off in the middle of the night at what is described as “the last exit before the desert,” in a heavily wooded area of south-central California. They are heading north along I-15 toward Las Vegas.The quartet has a good buzz on their heads thanks to their previous driver.  But now the starkness of the situation hits them all at once. “We sized up the vast canyon’s degree of severity.  Our elevation was ‘high, very high.’ The only hint of life was the glare of a Shell station on the far side of the interchange.” That’s when I, author Kenneth Lobb, felt the need to turn to the reader. “Not a lick of traffic came by in either direction.  I’m not talking about the entrance ramp, dear reader.  But I-15.  Nothing. Zero.” Maybe I was suddenly lonely and needed a friend. More likely, I wanted to emphasize that the nothingness around us wasn’t just on the local roads, but included the interstate as well.  Everything was silent and non-moving. It was a vast void of emptyness. No wonder within a few minutes Paul McCartney unrolled his sleeping bag and went to sleep in the shoulder of the ramp.

Roger the Writer, Not the Reader

Another strange thing to talk about is how when Roger (i.e. Kenneth Lobb) starts out on the trip, he’s a writer but not a reader. That's a flip from the norm. He’s been keeping a daily journal for quite some time, but keeps reading material at arm’s length. Just by virtue of typing out this story in day-to-day format shows that. “I never read any Huck Finn books, but I knew the themes,” Roger says while being camped out at the Mississippi River. But how did that pan out? It doesn’t seem to follow the usual scheme of events—being a writer but not a reader. But that is true. I was always writing . . . always had the need to express myself, to jot something down. That’s probably because I never had the friendship outlet or the security bond with my parents to express all I felt I needed to express—even with Otto. There was always something more that needed to be said, to be pondered, to be withheld from the verbal realm.  So I turned to writing it down. It never occurred to me I needed to know another person’s (i.e. author’s)  viewpoint before I could properly “join the conversation.” It didn’t strike me until I hit Hanford Library and decided that I'd better start reading (it didn’t happen THAT starkly, by the way, but it’ll do as a good point of reference). However, I believe I actually said to Otto, as Roger does to Otto on page 219, “I’m going to write a book someday if I ever find a subject.” Otto actually said back to me, “Don’t forget to put me in it.  Mention this ice could water foundtain, why don’t ya. This spouritn’ stream eased this kid’s dry innards.”