We drive slowly uphill into Lincoln Park. The twilight is fading fast. It’s misty and foggy. We see people playing golf, walking in the park, we assume we’ll drive up to the top of this hill and easily find the concrete marker that proclaims this as the official end of the Lincoln Highway. The Terminus.
Let’s just say that it’s not immediately obvious. And I’m driving so I’m not scanning the Butko book for clues. We see the stately California Palace of the Legion of Honor that looks like a museum (which it is) off to the left. But we’re not tourists now, we’re a TV crew that wants to shoot the end of the road before it’s too dark to do so. Where is the blasted marker? We continue straight ahead, thinking we’ll see something that says Lincoln Highway. No such luck.
It’s a dead end. We see two young women walking out from a hiking path of some sort. Bob asks if they happened to see the marker for the end of the Lincoln Highway. “The what?”
We see two dogwalkers in a nearby parking lot and ask them too. The man says, “I’ve been walking my dog here for over ten years, and I’ve never seen anything for the Lincoln Highway.”
You get the picture. The last marker, the Terminus, the end of the cross-country journey, it’s not a major attraction here in Lincoln Park.
We drive up and turn in front of the museum of fine arts. We drive very slowly. We keep going, and soon we’re heading back down the hill surrounded by the golf course. It ain’t down here. We start back up the hill. I’m crawling along. It has to be here somewhere.
There! The marker! It’s there beside the bus stop. It’s right across from the front of Palace of the Legion of Honor, but it’s totally upstaged by a nondescript bus stop shelter.
Bob is shooting already but he says, “No. It’s a mess. There’s too much garbage all around here. I’m not shooting it like this. We have to clean up first.” He’s absolutely right. The concrete marker with the stately notice, WESTERN TERMINUS OF THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY, is surrounded by spent ketchup packets, old styrofoam burger shells, empty greasy french fry bags, sticky milkshake cups. It’s a litter magnet. Bob has put the camera down and is picking up trash. There’s an explanatory panel there too, telling interested bus riders and passersby what this Lincoln Highway marker is all about, but it’s also decorated by fast food waste. We police the whole area.
Bob is pissed. “We didn’t drive all this way to have to deal with crap from stupid fast-food eaters. Morons.” When we get it reasonably clean, “red up” as we’d say in Pittsburgh, then Bob starts to get some shots. Jarrett is totally impressed by the Palace across the way and says we should be shooting that, but it’s not our story. I suggest that Jarrrett and I work together on a final video postcard for this journey of ours. Bob is shooting the Terminus from all possible angles in the last seconds of dull gray light. The fog makes it misty too, and for the first time, I put on a jacket that I’ve had in the van. It’s cool up here.
I guess there’s a certain relief, but a real sadness too, not just because the trash was so disconcerting, but also because the journey is over. This leg of it anyway. “Terminus” is so final a word. I wouldn’t mind if the drive continued for several more days.
I set up my camera on Bob’s tripod, set the timer, and we take a couple of pictures of the three of us, the Three Musketeers, standing at the Terminus marker. It’s taken us eleven days.
As we climb back into the van to head to our motel, I hear something off to one side of the van, and then I see a big raccoon walking toward me. “Get in,” says Bob. “Don’t let him get close. There may be something wrong with him if he’ll approach you like that.” OK. Good thinking. The raccoon skuttles off toward the Terminus. Jarrett says, “He’s probably living on the trash left by people at the bus stop.” Yeah. And he’s not cleaning up after himself. Old Rocky Raccoon.
