Paper Moon Trail

Driving through the middle of Kansas last week I had an occurrence of kismet -- one of those coincidences which makes you wonder whether there might be more to life than mere broken bones and semen (i.e., survival of the fittest and evolution).

Have you seen the movie Paper Moon, starring Ryan O'Neal and his daughter Tatum? It's the story of a sort-of/maybe father and daughter (they aren't sure) wandering the prairie states grifting rubes in the 1930's.

Tatum O'Neal won an Oscar for her performance as Addie Loggins and held the record for being the youngest actor to do so for a long, long time.

I saw this movie at the drive-in when it came out in 1973, when I was nine years old and Tatum O'Neal was 10. And I've been fascinated by the film's final image ever since. The last scene of the movie is of the two main characters, Mose and Addie, jumping into a Model-T Ford and heading down a long, dusty road that goes down a hill, turns and then beelines toward the horizon, shrinking to a point where forever and eternity entwine. It reaches a place inside me nothing else touches.

I've always felt I would find that road someday and stand in front of it on the same spot. And each time I've seen the movie subsequently I've wondered why I feel that way and whether that personal prophecy might come true.

By now, you've probably realized where this tale is headed.

As I drove along Interstate Highway 80 at 75mph I kept seeing all these roads going off into nowhere like in the movie, disappearing behind hills and reappearing, continuing toward the horizon. And I was thinking, 'Man, that road's out here somewhere, isn't it?'

I didn't, however, have any specific information on the location of the road. And there was no way to justify pulling off the highway at random to search for it.

Nevertheless, the temptation to do just that kept nagging at me, freeway exit after freeway exit. This might be the only opportunity I get allow my 38-year-old hunch to come true. So I turned the steering wheel to the right and coasted down into the barely inhabited plains.

Well, I quickly started feeling like a dope. Driving around. Trying to stay oriented to the I-80. Considering the angles and trajectories of different paved and unpaved roads.

I'm not wasting a lot of time doing this, mind you. I'm just giving it the old 'what the heck.' An hour - 90 minutes tops. Then, at a man-made reservoir, I found an information kiosk. And it mentioned a hotel where some of the scenes from Paper Moon were filmed. I was surprised, because listening to my heart actually seemed to have worked this time, sort of. I was probably right about the general location of the road, anyway. That was more than I expected. So I drove down Hwy 232 (on the left) to the Midland Hotel in Wilson, Kansas.

I went in just hoping to talk with someone who might have an interesting story to tell about the movie being filmed there. They did not. But they directed me to all these still photographs from Paper Moon on the wall where the stairway leads up to the second floor. And there at the base of the steps was the final scene of the movie. I walked up to it and stood in front of it, looking at Addie and Mose and the Model-T. And I thought:

'Here I am, in a spot where Paper Moon was filmed, looking down that road from the end of the movie, like I always imagined I might someday do. But this is also different from how I imagined it. Is this prescience made manifest? Or is this wishful thinking with convincing props?'

I seem to have satisfied the terms of my prognostication. But what does it mean? I don't feel changed because of it. Is the metaphysical realm sometimes just a souvenir stand located in The Twilight Zone, interesting to remember but empty of portent?

I'd like to know what you think. What if this happened to you? What does it mean that these things sometimes happen in our lives and yet weightlessly?