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Black River
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Little Rock, Arkansas, January 31-March 12, 1993

for Steve

Black River came to me in a flash in the summer of 1989 as I drove northbound alone on I-81 just south of Fall Branch, Tennessee, the coalescent product of some half-forgotten road song, a mind made receptive by fatigue and the dimming light, and the gnarled silhouette of a single tire fragment on the highway shoulder. I pulled over, backed up, and retrieved the rubbery souvenir in the first of countless similar roadside rituals to be performed over the next three years. It is easy and pleasant to recall that moment of inspiration – the warm June night, the solitude and freedom, the ordinary object turned suddenly extraordinary, the visual possibilities nearly tangible in the mind's eye – but somewhat less agreeable are memories of carrying out the task formulated that evening. The accumulation, storage, and documentation of more than a thousand blown retreads ranging from one to ten feet in length is an undertaking to tax even the most obsessive of souls. So what began as another highway song, another Whitmanesque homage to the open road, has become something else. As I collected the bits and pieces which make up Black River, the timeless reverie of driving was replaced by a confining vigilance. An extraordinary moment had spawned another routine, another odd responsibility. I suppose it was the drudgery of this self-imposed burden, coupled with a recent family tragedy involving a car, that de-romanticized the road for me, carrying me to the realization that, like everything that man invents, the road is both magical and mundane, full of both promise and threat. And so the blown retread, a permanent record of unanticipated turbulence, has become for me a fitting symbol for life's journey. Scattered everywhere along the highway, they are both beautiful and sinister. Each silent fragment holds a story of potential danger ending in tragedy or only temporary relief.

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