← Columns

Which way, General Grant?

The Source

Which way, General Grant? I am no genius. I’m the first to admit that and those who know me well would gladly second the motion. The simplest tasks confound me. . . installing a hinge, opening a plastic-wrapped package, finding my shoes. . .but sometimes my simple-mindedness puts me in the ranks of Einstein. It was the weekend of the big freeze right before Christmas a few weeks ago. The National Parks Service had hired me to write a play about General Grant to be presented at the Grant Historic Home Site in St. Louis, so the General along with Abraham and Mary Lincoln traveled southward with me for a three-show weekend while the forecast boded bad things. Mary and Abraham took their own cars while I crawled into Grant’s SUV and we took off to fulfill our engagement, no matter the weather. The weathermen were right, for as soon as we hit St. Louis the ice storm began. General Grant was sure he could find our hotel and Grant’s home since his cell phone had plenty of maps. Too make a long journey short, we passed the St. Louis Arch three times with the Grant claiming that we were going the right direction. I’m a very polite passenger and try to never disagree with the driver, but when you start recognizing the same gas stations over and over, well. . .the Arch is hard to miss. It took us 90 minutes to get to St. Louis. It took 90 more minutes to find Grant’s homestead. Mary and Abraham Lincoln had both taken shorter routes and we unloaded our set to rehearse on site. Halfway through the rehearsal the site director arrived to tell us that our Friday evening performance had been cancelled due to the icy conditions. “No one can get anywhere,” he said. This was not good news my cast and I who still had to get back to our hotel, but Lincoln said that his GPS would get us there easily and that we should simply follow him. The original Abraham Lincoln made it from the hills of Kentucky, to Indiana, to a home on the eastern side of Illinois and finally to New Salem, Springfield and Washington. He must have had a better GPS since our route that icy night took us into a dead-end cemetery somewhere on the south side of St. Louis. There’s nothing worse than being stuck with Abraham Lincoln in a cemetery on a dark night. Somehow and only through the grace of God we found the hotel and had to literally hang onto each other to simply make it to our rooms. Over dinner that night the two Lincolns and Grant discussed the advantages of their various digital navigation systems as they checked their cell phones while I played with the croutons on top of my Irish potato soup. They each claimed to have the best route-finding devices although none of said gadgets had done us much good so far. It’s a darned dull evening at a table of four when three of them are busy fingering their devices. The next day’s forecast was even more dangerous, but we made our way to the theatre by yet another “best route.” All three performances had been sold out in advance and with the previous evening’s show being cancelled we had audience members wanting to squeeze themselves in to the theatre. As the ice became thicker and thicker on the streets of the Gateway City, my three actors hit their marks, pleased the crowd, and sent them on their way while we were forced with the prospect of somehow finding our way out of St. Louis and up the icy trail to Springfield and home. Lincoln said, “Just follow me. I have the route mapped out.” Mary insisted that her onboard GPS knew the best route and General Grant was still relying on his totally reliable IPhone, however there is no way for a caravan of three vehicles to stay within sight of each other in St. Louis traffic during an ice storm. We lost Lincoln almost immediately and Mary disappeared as soon as we hit I-55. Grant turned to me and said, “You’ll have to navigate. I can barely hold this thing on the road.” The Victor of Vicksburg handed me his cell phone, which was much like giving the instructions for a moon landing to a three-year-old. Luckily I had gone to the hotel desk clerk that morning and asked for a map of St. Louis. The first General Grant depended upon maps and on this dangerous night his theatrical heir was going to have to do the same. End of story: we made it home and all thanks to non-digital piece of paper. When you write and direct a show the cast assumes you know what you’re doing which is hardly ever the case, but on this cold night I had become a stinking genius.