Asphalt, Steel and Stories Hub
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"Oh, gather close, my friends,
and these old stories I will tell,
of the jungles and the state routes and the diamond crossings
and a breed of sunsets that fell…"

We’re formed piecemeal. I remember it that much.

From passenger seats. From plastic Winn-Dixie bags and gravel. From barbed wire. From flimsy pocket paperbacks. From long-disinherited motorcycles and ancestral tombs. From ashes coming off charring rubber and bits of a rotted out dollhouse. From kerosene fumes, twisting dirty indigo with steam.

A harmonica wheezes, sleeves and cuffs unbuttoned. Fluttering free.

Slip off the back of a U-Haul a mile off past the Vallejo rest stop. Follow the dirt path branching off from the highway shoulder, watching as the stream of tractor-trailers and minivans sink behind golden grass. Figures shift behind a grove of eucalyptus. Shuck off the pack. Vienna sausages buried under a layer of three-day old zucchini. Someone whistles, knees bent. Hands flung wide. A neck of vodka glistening with a smile, molded from mobile homes and farmhouses gutted by the wind, batting floral curtains no longer boxed inside by shutters or glass. Stamp, stamp, stamp! Thrashed Converses and bare feet.

A busker's guitar pitches in. Murmurs of Guadalcanal on the sidelines. A taffeta cloak. Trailways brochures. Locomotive wheelslip. Touch. Pace. Gaze. Whirl. See. Telephone poles in a drainage ditch, stacked and bundled together with cable ties. Of braiding together thistle stems, thorns scratching at grubby fingers. Of fording strawberry fields and ridges long since damned by hedge funds. Of seeing the coast. Granite and dead chalk and breakwaters intermittently punctuating the smear of lifeguard stands and shuttered canneries and Gatorade myopia. After the fervor dissolves—sleeping bags and tarps and refrigerator boxes and creaky box mattresses bleeding stuffing slowly dotting outwards, past the bushline and up the hillside like smooth stones extending up to touch—cradle an half-masted moon—we bundle up. Hunch close, leaning forwards on milk crates and logs worn smooth. Glossy. Reflecting embers.

And speak—speak in hushed, croaking tones: tracing the veins of exit signs and spiked rail binding us all. Paso Robles. Albany. Toronto. Kansas City. Seattle. Reno. Mobile. Mazatlán.


Ramblings of a Retired Tramp
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By lzhoudidionlzhoudidion

And here's where the whole thing kicks off.
~Audio reading by RounderhouseRounderhouse
~Audio reading by Scrambleking
A Dance Between Flesh and Steel
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By lzhoudidionlzhoudidion

The screech of thousands upon thousands of pounds of steel on the move rents through the air. Shoulder your pack. Poise your feet to run—and dance, dance to a unseen rhythm, a unseen tune of gumsole, denim, ballast, boxcars—sacred in our world.
~Audio reading by Scrambleking
Pictures of Her True Son
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By lzhoudidionlzhoudidion

In which he roams from Amtrak waiting room to waiting room with an cigar box and an Bicentennial handkerchief lashed to his arm.
West of Winnemucca
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By lzhoudidionlzhoudidion

A parting gift from Juneau and Moore. Scorching tarmac, lopsided Burma-Shave signposts, and snatches of the Rolling Stones.
Into Its Heart I Beat Again
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By lzhoudidionlzhoudidion

Why you shouldn't guzzle raw riverwater and fistfight.
Phosphorescent Sunrise
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By meltedbeemeltedbee

Rememberence and lack thereof of the desert's beauty, cool and granular between your fingers.
The Night That Margot Left
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By PallidAlbumenPallidAlbumen

Light snowfall froze her flowing tears.



What is this, exactly?

Asphalt, Steel and Stories is a collection comprised of tales and poetry set and centered around the central theme of “The Road”, or the sights, settings, people and philosophies that one encounters while living a transient lifestyle: traveling not as merely means from Point A to B, but to sustain an pulse of living—spooled, fastened and made concrete over the course of miles upon miles of treading on pavement and hitching rides on the back of the iron horse. Some of the pieces are found by, recorded or told in part through the retrospective eyes of a figure named 'The Tramp', a former Boy Scout turned runaway and wanderer from Woodland, California—and as a result shares underlying currents of nostalgia, vague familiarity, grime, grunge and abrasion, and specific, pinpointed references/homages to places and people who may or may not, in various degrees, still exist.

This world is open for contributions! While a chunk of the pieces are set entirely on the US Western seaboard in the dying breath of the 1980s to the late 2000s—the legacy of the Interstate Highway, American railroads and the Library's Way system spreads far and wide. Prior to September 11, the affairs of travel were much, much lax and straightforward, and as such, you're welcome to write pieces set almost wherever and whenever featuring your own original characters.

That said, however, if you find that the drive to pack up and hit the road ever springs off from the page, please reconsider. Hitchhiking and train hopping are historically risky activities. The former has always carried its share of nasty figures, the latter always illegal—now much, more so in an era of greater mainline speeds, societal distrust and increased police militarization. Spending the day watching the freights and Amtrak manifests trundle by from the sidelines with a can of iced tea and Walkman loaded with Nirvana and Tom Petty is probably an more accessible and (less daunting) option.
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Both pieces of art on this page were made by D. Vega (A.A).

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