"The Big Hard: My 18-Year-Old Self’s Guide to Travel and Life" By: Daniel Brugioni

            In the summer of 1995, my long time friends Jeremy (aged 18) and Scott (aged 19) and I – mostly I – decided we should venture forth from out our happy Northwestern Indiana suburbia and see the world, specifically the Deep South, more specifically New Orleans.  Jeremy and I had just graduated from high school and had amassed a vast fortune of nearly $500 dollars (between us) in graduation money, and Scott had an actual job, at Venture (a now-defunct Midwestern discount store) making a cool $5.25 an hour, so was naturally rich. 

            The three of us had done some traveling (Jeremy and I had even been to the wilds of Canada twice), but never without adults.  And we were at that age where one naturally begins to test the boundaries imposed by childhood and adolescence - what better way to do it, we decided, than stretch them all the way to the Gulf Coast? 

            The only problem was none of us had ever planned a trip before, and had no damn clue how to do it.  I went to the library and checked out a copy of Fodor’s New Orleans (this was in the days when the Internet was only just becoming a thing) and began looking for hotels and stuff to do.  Finding a few promising leads, we called some places, long distance from Jeremy’s moms’ phone, and found we could get a cool place right in the heart of downtown for only $189 a night!  (This was about a third of what our total trip budget would be.)  After some further searching, we found a Best Western in not-too-far-away Baton Rouge for $45 a night (this was the AAA Discount price…Jeremy’s uncle was a member and we were banking on the fact that they probably wouldn’t check for the actual membership card).   

            The rest of the trip was planned on the Rand-McNally Road Atlas.  The first night, we would spend at Brown County State Park, near Nashville, Indiana, perhaps a four hour drive from home.  Then, we would spend two nights at Great Smokey Mountains National Park, and then a small state park just south of Birmingham called Oak Mountain…and then it was on to the Big Easy!  The Garden of Good and Evil!  Where the Saints of football play!   

            (None of us, by the by, had any romantic engagements to worry about.  We had all discovered girls, but girls had not yet discovered us.  Our lives revolved around Sega Genesis, a board football game we invented, Saturday Night Live, and Wiffleball.  A typical weekend included (depending on the weather) the bowling alley or the miniature golf course.  We subsisted almost exclusively on McDonald’s.  We had no social lives to speak of, but didn’t really regret this.  All we needed was a Jerky Boys CD, roads to drive, the Oldies station, and each other (to insult pretty much 100 percent of the time). 

            We were to drive Jeremy’s mom’s 1987 Plymouth minivan, in which we had gone, with Jeremy’s dad, up to Canada in 1989.  It had sat, pretty much unused, for several years in the driveway (so would not be missed), and had plenty of room.  (I’m almost sure it also still had its original tires which, at the time, unbeknownst to us, were tires more in theory than in fact.  Much more on this later.) 

 

            We packed up everything – way more than we needed of course – and planned to leave early (5 a.m. for some goddamn reason) from Scott’s house.  His dad was out of town and we had the house to ourselves, but we were responsible and went to bed at a reasonable hour.  Not!  We loaded up on Cokes, and spent almost the entire night screwing around.  And the next morning when we left (we still stuck to the 5 a.m. deadline for some goddamn reason) we had only two hours of sleep in us.  Jeremy did most of the driving, telling us, every few seconds or so, that he thought he might be lapsing into a dream. 

            But still, we were on our way!  No parents!  More than a week of adventures in places we’d only dreamed about!  We celebrated by making fun of each other mercilessly and almost dying.   

            Scott and I fell into thin dozes.  Jeremy woke us up by unrolling all of the windows so he could keep himself awake.  He then found that, for whatever reason, his window wouldn’t roll up; this was bad because the early morning was quite chilly. 

 

            We arrived at Brown County State Park around nine in the morning, none of us questioning why in the hell we had had to leave so early, and set up camp.  It was a Sunday, so the campground was full but rapidly emptying.  We decided on a short hike before lunch and a nap.  We felt sweaty, woozy, and slow-moving, and it felt good to be out in the green and the wind.  

            Perhaps half a mile into our mile and a half hike, Jeremy asked me if I had any toilet paper. 

            “We just passed a bathroom.  It’s like half a mile back.” 

            “Not my problem,” Jeremy said, moving quickly off the trail and up into the woods (and squatting, as it turned out, only a few feet from where the trail would pass a quarter mile later). 

            After our hike, we settled down into the sleep of the dead.  A song ran through my tumultuous dreams, a church song that repeated, over and over, with an agonizingly sustained high note.  I thought it was a hallucination until Jeremy and Scott informed me, after I’d stumbled from my tent, of the big camp of Amish people who had sung the same song, over and over, for perhaps four hours.  Thankfully, they had left. 

            Feeling marginally better, we began to enjoy where we were and the prospect of what we were doing.  We strung up my colored lanterns from two adjacent trees, and made a fire, and took showers in the adjacent shower house , and cooked dinner, and listened to Pink Floyd on our little boom box.  The night was one of those glorious ones that follow hot, humid days.  We took a long walk around the campground with my flashlight that I called Evil Lucas (because its beam looked like a mad face).  Still delirious (but happily so), I entertained the troops by telling bad jokes.  Once, I picked up a rock and asked it, “What’s it like being a rock?”  The answer: “Well, it’s hard!”  We laughed like loons. 

            We actually went to bed at a decent time.  I had my own tent and Jeremy and Scott shared another.   They were both mine, and both cheap.  So, when the storm hit at 1 in the morning with a fury that was actually a little scary, our tents stood no chance.  We ended up in the van, listening to the deafening sound of the rain on the roof, recoiling at each detonation of thunder, wondering how we were going to get comfortable.  Luckily, when you’re 18, you can pretty much sleep anywhere.  Also luckily, the storm began to wane after a few hours, and we decided to head back to our tents. 

            “There’s a puddle in here!” Jeremy called. 

            “Not in mine,” I said, falling immediately into a smug and self-satisfied sleep. 

 

            The next day was when things were to get real.  We were rested and were really going to make some miles.  All the way to the Virginia/ Tennessee border!  The weather had cleared and we were off. 

            The bad news, for me, was that both Scott and Jeremy hated my music (mostly long prog rock songs) and had voted that it was not to be played in the car.  I, having my teenage pride to uphold, told them that was fine, but there would also be no oldies (Jeremy’s favorite music).  Jeremy proposed, therefore, we’d play only country music in the car.  I acquiesced, even though I liked the oldies far more than modern country.  (The illusion of victory was better than nothing.) 

            Now, the thing with modern country stations in 1995 (and probably today) was that, first, there were ten trillion of them and, second, they all played pretty much the same ten songs.  So we would come into range of a station, hear those ten songs, lose it, and then repeat the process.  The song of the moment was “Any Man of Mine” by Shania Twain.  Not only was the song irritatingly catchy, it was not the best song for three gawky teenage boys to be singing together at rest areas in rural Alabama.  “Any man of mine…better show me a teasin’, squeezin’, pleasin’ kind of time.”  Remember, this was the don’t ask, don’t tell mid-90s... 

            Our drive that day was mostly (and blessedly) uneventful…definitely not a harbinger of things to come.   

We stopped for lunch at McDonald’s somewhere in Tennessee.  I got us a table and Scott went to get our food.  Coming back with it, the tray balanced on one hand like a waiter, he noticed a table of girls near us and decided to try to strike a pose and look cool.  I, having long ago realized that looking cool for girls was not in my repertoire, focused only on the super-sized vat of Coke I had ordered, and grabbed it.  This offset the balance of the tray, sending Scott into a Jerry Lewis-esque comedy routine of trying (and failing) to restore the tray’s balance and to catch everything before it hit the floor.  We didn’t lose much, but the girls all laughed at Scott before turning away. 

“Why would you do that?” he asked. 

“I wanted my Coke,” I said, drinking happily. 

            We arrived at the Smokies after sundown, made camp, and set out to explore the Cades Cove Campground.  We met some pretty girls who were resoundingly unimpressed with us (even though Scott wore his hat backwards).  In the bathroom, we also met a rather large man wearing only a T-shirt, washing his ass and balls in the sink. 

            “No showers,” he said, “but I’ll be done in a minute.” 

            We thanked him for his consideration but told him that we’d, you know, probably just wash up and brush our teeth at the faucet outside.   

 

            The next day, I awoke to a strange conversation outside the tent. 

            “You boys get in late last night?” a man with a heavy Southern accent said. 

            “Yep, probably ‘bout ten,” a boy with an equally heavy Southern accent answered. 

            “How far’d ya’ll come?” 

            “All the way from Indiana.” 

            “Welp…welcome.  Just be sure to go register before too long.” 

            “We sure will.” 

            “Were you faking a Southern accent?” I asked Jeremy when I got up. 

            Laughing, he told me that he was. 

            “Are you bent on us getting our asses kicked?” 

            That day, we hiked many miles out to a waterfall and then, solo, I did the lovely Cades Cove Loop Trail, on which I saw a large, bear-like creature (possibly a bear) and a mountain lion.   

I hiked a total of 20 miles that day, the others about half that, some of the prettiest hiking we have ever done.  Our campfire and dinner that night were both lovely, and even our constant barrage of insults seemed harmonious.  I went to bed that night, thinking how all of the trouble of a trip was, apparently, in the getting started. 

 

            I woke before the others the next morning and set about organizing and repacking the car.  Just as I was finishing, I realized that the right rear tire was flat.  We had to take everything out of the car to get the donut spare and get the car on the jack.  The hike I had hoped for before leaving did not happen.   

After airing up the tire at a gas station and putting it back on, we got on the road again, again feeling the wondrousness of exploration.  Yay!  59 South!  Yay!  “Any Man of Mine” again!  Yay!  A trucker is honking at us, mouthing the word “Flat!” over and over.  “Sonofa..!”  We pulled over.  A different tire was flat. 

We got into Oak Mountain long before sunset.  It was a hot and lovely day, and Scott and I set out to explore by car while Jeremy napped.  There were some dramatic vistas overlooking a huge lake, and the summer bugs were so loud we could hear them even over the engine. 

After dinner, we went out to the lake and watched the sunset.  Though the drive had been stressful, and though we realized that our tires were in horrid shape (one of them was already going flat again), we were able to stop and take it all in- one of the most amazing sunsets and gloamings I have ever seen. 

That night, despite the heat, we had a blazing fire.  A giant bug (what my dad would call a ‘chainsaw with wings’) buzzed by us and into the flames.  It literally screamed as it ignited. 

“I don’t think I’d want to live somewhere where the insects scream when they die,” Jeremy said. 

We sat together and watched the stars and listened to the night bugs (the non screaming ones) and drank our cold Coke IIs. 

“It just doesn’t get any better than this,” I said. 

“Shut up!” Jeremy said.  Then, in a high pitched, mocking facsimile of my voice: “It just doesn’t get any better than this.” 

(I’d forgotten we were teenagers, and had lapsed momentarily into genuineness.  I vowed it wouldn’t happen again!) 

 

The next morning, I again awoke early and set out alone on a hike up into the hills; it was hot even at 8 and the bugs were already deafening.  The views were expansive and beautiful, and I thought of all the hikes I had taken with my family, and missed them.  When I got back to the site, Scott and Jeremy were up.  We had breakfast and broke camp, feeling happy.   

Tonight there would be a hotel! In Baton Rouge!  

Our drive, however, got off to a rough start (a flat that necessitated finding a gas station) and soon devolved from there, into a series of events worthy of a tragicomic movie.   

First, Jeremy realized he didn’t know where his wallet was, and while he drove, Scott and I searched everywhere in the much cluttered car.  After a careful hunt, we determined it was nowhere to be found.  We had already gone about 100 miles since leaving Oak Mountain, and were about to cross into Mississippi, so turning back was not an option. 

Second, we realized that something had gone very wrong in the cooler.  After we had finished all our food and Cokes, we had stuffed our wet clothes in there - and then promptly forgotten about them.  Opening it on the off chance the wallet had wound up in there, Scott inadvertently made the car smell like straight-up ass.  The smell lingered, even with the windows open.  (Opening the cooler, of course, soon became an oft-repeated prank pulled by whoever was sitting in the back.) 

Thirdly, we had another flat tire, just outside of Jackson, Mississippi.  I was driving, and this time, we didn’t need anyone to tell us it was flat – the car began rocking wildly and sounding like the end of the world.  I coasted to a stop at the top of a small rise and turned the car off…Scott and Jeremy got out and began working the jack and retrieving the donut spare again.  Jeremy, once he had the car up on the jack, told me to pop the hood, I guess figuring that, the day being hot, he’d check the fluids while we were stopped. 

Well, since I had coasted to a stop, and was an inexperienced 18-year-old driver, I hadn’t remembered to put the car in park when I’d turned it off, so it was still in drive.  And perhaps because we were on the top of a rise, with the front of the car at the beginning of the decline, and it was not in park, it slipped off the jack.  And the hood came down on Jeremy’s fingers, pinning his hand underneath.  And then the car began rolling, faster and faster, down Interstate 20.  Jeremy, running alongside it to keep up, yelled to me to hit the brake. 

“What?” 

“The brake!  Hit the fucking brake!” 

Panicking, it took me a long time to obey the command, but I got the car stopped and in park just before crossing into the path of the myriad speeding semis that were whooshing past.  Phew!  I relaxed back into the seat and concentrated on my breathing. 

“Please pop the fucking hood!” Jeremy yelled.  “Damn it!” 

I did.  Jeremy, retrieving his hand, saw that the damage wasn’t too bad…cuts and scrapes and a couple bruised knuckles.  We got the car up and the donut spare on again and set off, all of us quiet and rather badly shaken.  

Fourthly, we got rather hopelessly lost coming into Baton Rouge – our brilliant plan had been to head into the city and look around for a Best Western.  That plan didn’t work out too well.   

We had all showered the night before but not in the morning, and the day had been long, hot, and hard, and we were all ready for dinner, a shower, air conditioning, and a bed. 

“Man,” I said, “I am so ready to get settled into our room!” 

Jeremy looked over at me then, smirking sardonically.  “Daniel, what in the hell makes you think we’re going to get a room?  We’re 18 years old.  The room is in my name.  I have no way to prove I am who I say I am.  I don’t have the card that we booked the room on.  I don’t have the Triple A number.  We smell like shit!  Why would anyone give us a room?” 

I laughed, but suddenly I was worried. 

We found the hotel at just before ten, and made our first order of business making ourselves semi-presentable.  (Scott, for some reason, opened the cooler again while we were doing this, and we all almost retched ourselves.)  The second order of business was to find a pay phone and at least get the Triple A number from Jeremy’s uncle.  Then we approached the hotel desk like three ragged mendicants.  

“If we’re turned away, I’m going to cry.” 

“That won’t happen.  I’ll put out if I have to.” 

The hotel clerk looked at us critically.  “May I help you?” 

“Yeah,” Jeremy said.  “We have a room for three nights.” 

He looked at us, rather more critically.  “Name?” 

Jeremy told him, and the clerk began flipping through cards until he found ours and then…that was it.  Jeremy had to sign his name.  He didn’t even have to give the clerk the Triple A number.  The clerk handed us our keys and we were in! 

I have traveled, prolifically, for most of my adult life and have been in some tough and hairy situations, but I can say, without hyperbole, that I have never felt the relief that I felt in that moment.  Laughing and hooting with pure joy, we gathered our ass-smelling bags and hurried up to the room, pretty much diving in when Jeremy opened the door. 

It was a suite, and a damn nice one, with a couch that folded out into a bed in the living room, a huge TV, a balcony overlooking the pool, a kitchen, a master bedroom, and a huge bathroom.  And… 

“Oh my God!” Scott screamed. 

“What is it?” Jeremy and I asked, alarmed, fearing the worst. 

“There is a washer and dryer in here!  We can do our clothes!” 

“Really?” I asked.  “That’s it?”  But I laid off the sarcasm.  We had had a really tough go of it and that was the first time I had seen Scott genuinely happy on the whole trip.  So I laughed, but amenably, as Scott began separating our clothes by fabric, type, and color. 

 

We tried to go to New Orleans the next day, but it didn’t work out.  We took a series of wrong turns, including one into a private driveway in front of three lanes of speeding traffic.  (I’m still not sure how we didn’t wreck.)  After steeling myself, I backed out onto the road, put the car in drive, and floored it – but failed to turn the wheel.  We rocketed right back up the driveway again, narrowly avoiding another wreck, and I think Jeremy might have had a mini stroke. 

“Why is your hand bleeding?” I asked. 

“I don’t know,” Jeremy said, looking at it confusedly.  There was no cut, or scrape, or anything.  “I think a blood vessel just burst.” 

After becoming more and more hopelessly lost, we decided we’d just double back to the hotel and try to find something fun, closer to home, later that evening.   

It took us a long time to find the Best Western again, and we were again pale and shaking when we got there.   

That night was the closest we came to getting wild on the whole trip – we went to Hooters for Cokes and hamburgers.   

When our waitress, who was pretty and very well endowed, set our drinks down, I marveled, “Wow, those are huge!”  Looking over, I honestly couldn’t figure out why Scott and Jeremy were pissing themselves laughing. 

“I meant the drinks!” I said. 

 

We really didn’t do much over the next couple of days, and that was fine.  None of us had stayed in hotels very often – I think that was the sixth time I had ever done so, and it was easily the nicest room any of us had had.  And the fact that we were alone made it all the sweeter. We watched baseball, read, swam (though it was rainy), and just enjoyed being still.  We had come so far to see New Orleans, and were not going to make it, but none of us cared. 

Not one bit. 

 

Scott found he didn’t have as many days off as he had thought, so we had a day and a half to make it home - about 1,000 miles…on a friggen’ fifty-mile donut spare.  We hated to leave our room, and none of us was looking forward to the journey home. 

Jeremy got us from Baton Rouge to Memphis, and then it was my job to get us to Nashville, where we would stop for the night.  The weather was threatening but uneventful the whole day - until it was my turn to drive.   

When I took the wheel, just as it was getting full-on dark, it began to rain, biblically.  Not only that, there was now heavy road construction (which, unbeknownst to us, would continue pretty much all the way to Nashville).  Only one lane was open, with concrete barriers on both sides.  The lane was the narrowest I have ever experienced, and the barriers weren’t high enough to block the glare from the oncoming headlights.  I could literally see nothing but the barriers on either side.  It was so bad, even Scott was rendered momentarily non-sarcastic.  (Jeremy lay down in the back and nodded off.  I’m pretty sure he had fully accepted that he was going to die, and wanted to spend his last few moments on earth in peace). 

But we didn’t die.  During a torrential downpour, in a lane so narrow I could’ve touched both sides, with headlights right in my eyes for maybe fifty miles, on a donut spare and three other tires that were mostly dust, we didn’t die.  I’m still not sure how.   

We arrived in Nashville and found a hotel that would take us in. Jeremy, flumping down on the bed, insinuated my driving had made him ill. 

“Actually,” Scott said, “he honestly did an amazing job.  I’m not sure how he got us through it.” 

As I could take anything but praise and sincerity, I directed everyone’s attention to the screen.  There was a late-night Cinamax movie on, which we all watched for awhile. 

“This might be the worst movie ever made,” Scott said, “even if there are boobs.” 

 

We arrived home late the following afternoon.  Our fifty mile emergency donut spare had gotten us about 1,300 miles, and the other tires had (somehow) held up. 

When we crossed the Kankakee River into Lake County, I looked longingly down; there is a trail that runs along it that I often hiked with my dad, and I was, despite everything, not ready for the trip to be over. 

“I have an idea,” I said, “let’s stop and go hiking one more time.” 

“I have an idea,” Scott said.  “You shut up…” There was a very long pause.  Then: “That’s…that’s pretty much the whole idea.” 

We all laughed together. 

That was pretty much the last time we did so.  Scott left our group right after we arrived home (he met a girl).  Jeremy and I were close for a few more years, until he went to college in Evansville (I went to Purdue) and then moved to Tucson, Arizona.  (I helped him move – that was another trip full of flat tires, Jeremy’s mini-strokes, and hilarity.)  I am still in touch with both of them, but time and distance and adulting have taken their tolls, and they were as heavy for our group as they are for everyone else. 

            I have never taken a trip where so many things went wrong, where so many of my initial plans went unrealized.  Every single thing which would later come easily was a struggle.  It would be 18 years before I would set foot in New Orleans.  I still smell that damn cooler in my nightmares. 

            But, maybe because of all of this, our trip to Baton Rouge occupies a very big place in my heart.   

It was, after all, a first (and very substantial) step towards my finding my place in the world - and towards discovering how wonderful it is.  It showed me I was capable of venturing forth without guidance, of not only testing my boundaries but absolutely obliterating them.  It set the template for traveling that I still use today.  And I can’t think of any trip that has given me so many hilarious stories. 

            I wish I could borrow the mentality – the wide-eyed earnestness and enthusiasm and ability to just let things go when they weren’t working out – that we had on this trip, that (in some regards, at least) my eighteen year old self would put his arm over my shoulder and say, “Listen.” 

            You know what?   

I think, maybe, he just did.