36: Statesboro Blues

I'm trapped in Statesboro, Georgia. Not the Georgia in Russia although frequently, over the last week, I have wished to be there. No, I am in a land where the word 'ham' spans two syllables.

"Woke up this morning...."

Tuesday:
I reach Statesboro in the late afternoon, looking forward to a rest day. The sprained wrist is now almost better, but my back is beginning to stiffen. It probably needs an infusion of beer. Such demands will be met.

Familiar motel names proliferate along South Main Street: Ramada, Best Western, Days Inn, Baymont, Quality Inn and more. Budget Inn has a sign promising $29.99. I'll take it. Sixty bucks for two nights is impressively low. Porsches, BMWs and Mercedes stand in the parking lot, so how bad can it be?

Bad.

Only two light bulbs work. The towels look as though they've been used for the last two decades. Hopefully the stains on the bedspread are only water.

Those decent cars outside probably indicate a secondary use as a crack house and have little bearing on state of the motel, which might be just a cover. Should have seen the sign in small print on the door threatening 'No refunds'. Note to self: OPEN YOUR BLOODY EYES.

I'm starting to feel as though someone has hit me over the kidneys with a baseball bat. It will be good to finally reach Tampa in two weeks and visit the chiropractor. Now though, it's time for that medicinal beer.

One might think that a restaurant named the French Quarter, advertising itself in the Yellow Pages with phrases such as 'Balcony Dining', 'Authentic Cajun Cuisine' and 'Statesboro's home for live music', might embody a flavour of New Orleans.

One would be sadly disappointed.

The balcony, I am told, is not open to the public. A drunk at the bar, his face so bloated it looks sandpapered, thinks there was karaoke last week, but can't be sure. The single laminated sheet of paper that is the menu, is devoid of anything from New Orleans except gumbo and the only item not fried is the crab cake special. I ask how they're prepared - fried also? "Oh no," the under age bartender reassures me, "Sauteed."

I order a beer - bottled Sweetwater 420 Extra Pale Ale - but do not get a glass. There are glasses for wine, glasses for shots, but nothing for beer. I ask for a plastic water cup and all four regulars watch in silence as I fill it from the bottle. Maybe they think I'm gay.

Conversation around the bar concentrates on such subjects as why Person-A had to whack Person-B with a pool queue, recent fights and how many Jagermesister shots it takes to get Jeremiah really ferked erp, all at a volume great enough to wake the inhabitants of the next town. Hopefully, this is not the intelligencia of Statesboro.

Wednesday:
I can't stand up straight and even the most comprehensive stretching does no good. The back is killing me and I feel like an old man. The shower is a chest height so I have to bend and the bath moves like stepping on marshland. Finding a local chiropractor is now a requirement, rather than a wistful thought. How? Maybe the office has Yellow Pages?

I struggle up the slight incline and the desk clerk appears from a back room, as if by magic. His head is wrapped in something that could be a cross between a turban and a towel and he has a large orange paint blob where his nose meets his forehead. If I wasn't in such pain, I might have laughed. There's a pause after I tell him what I want, as though I should justify the request, but then he disappears again, leaving the back room door open. I can see nothing in the dark void but the smell that emanates threatens to dissolve the hairs in my nose. When he returns, he hands a Yellow pages across the desk and tells me to leave it in the room.

Armed with information and now in more pain that I have experienced for years, I organise a chiropractor and make my way, slowly, to his office.

It's a painful adjustment and I still hurt afterwards. Just swelling, Dr Ward said. The joints are back where they were supposed to be, he said. Take Ibuprofen, he said. Ice it every hour lying face down, he said. He said a lot of things, including that I should come back on Friday.

Some things in life are just hard and icing your own back, like applying your own sunscreen, is one of them. It's a fundamental rule of the universe - if something's good for you, feels nice and is desperately necessary - it's impossible to do. Necessity is the mother of invention though and handfuls of painkillers helped me through.

Thursday:
Back is stiff, but better and stretching helps. I'm moving from the crack house motel today. The Budget Inn has been a learning experience and I thank the owners for their material contributions to my next book. The Baymont, at the opposite end of the quality scale, offers a mini-suite, high-def TV and in-room computer, all for under $60 per night. If I have to stay in Statesboro, a little luxury will make up for the pain.

It occurs to me that I could use this time productively, by buying a computer book - C# perhaps - and learning whatever I can without actually having computer access. I'm directed to a local bookshop but, apart from fiction, they have simply a few technology reference shelves where books on photography, writing and motor mechanics sit shoulder to shoulder with the single one on computers, all mixed together in alphabetical order by authors with no concern for subject. It should surprise me, this lack of educational material, but, strangely, it doesn't.

After more pills, more icing and a sleep, I feel in need of sustenance. Across the street is RJ's, a renowned steak house and I believe a rare New York Strip and a whole bottle of Cabernet should be mine, but I am thwarted. Yes, they are the best steak house in town, I am assured, by a waiter who looks like a young church minister in training, but something persuades me otherwise when I am informed that they do not serve wine - and that is the end of my steak aspirations.

That is how I discovered my own slice of heaven in the form of Christoper's most wonderful eating and drinking establishment. People at the bar don't shout. Conversations don't include bragging about violence or bouts of drinking and customers don't look as though the task of propping up the bar all day is theirs forever.

I stay there until they close. I don't care if I have a hangover - which is just as well. Plans for tomorrow include the second and final visit to Dr Ward, resting for the day and then leave early Saturday; back on the road again....

Friday:
Fuck, hangover city. At least I can stand up. Shit, my head hurts. The adjustment helps but I am informed that yet another will be necessary on Monday. Will I ever get out of Statesboro?

I'm bored. It's not even noon. I find a local coffee shop but it serves the usual thin translucent stuff from an urn brewed at some time in the past and I have to put up with three sound sources in the form of background music, the TV and a crying baby. There's only so much thin coffee you can drink without bursting. How long do I have to wait before it's acceptable to go for a beer?

I decide to try the bike. There's a cinema two miles away so I go there and find a Books-a-Million, which has many computers books and - oh thank you Lord, I am a true believer, yes I am, whatever I said before, hallelujah - a STARBUCKS. Oh, the world is is mine, la la la. I love Statesboro.

Not for long.

I sense the onset of toothache and get back on the phone immediately. Statesboro dentists don't work weekends, I discover, and Friday is seen as one, so the earliest visit would be Monday. After the chiropractor, perhaps? Make a day of it? I call three, but all are busy for the entire week. First available appointment would be a week on Tuesday. Should I go or should I stay? I could just take more painkillers. I hate Statesboro.

Credence Clearwater revival recorded a song once called Lodi, about a town that they couldn't leave. Maybe I'll write one about this place. I could call it Statesboro Blues.

Oh - someone already did that?