I stumbled last night
onto “Billy Connolly's Route 66” on PBS.
Connolly is a British
actor and comedian. The show is centered
on him riding a three wheel motorcycle across the country. He starts in
Chicago and follows the famous Route 66 all the way to Santa Monica, California.
There are four
episodes in the series. They were filmed
in 2011 and originally shown on British television. I have only seen the first one. But it has me hooked.
Connolly is an aging
but vibrant man. He has long white flowing
hair and matching mustache and goatee and dresses like someone out of the 1970’s. He looks part Hippie and part motorcycle gang
from an assisted living center.
I wasn’t much
interested at first but the strength and sheer joy of Connolly’s personality
kept me engaged. He’s a bit of a rebel
with an absolutely infectious laugh.
He’s old school and loves the historic architecture of the cities and
towns he visits. He’s captivated by
various “giants” in remote places across the land, statues of some person or
character relevant to a particular locale.
He simply loves those things and keeps saying he wished there were more
of them.
Along his journey in
the first episode his visits with individual people are heartwarming and
moving. He shows that underneath all of
that mischievousness and silliness and sometimes sharp criticism of things
(billboards) and people he disdains (Donald Trump), resides a large soul
crammed with genuine compassion and even a kind sweetness and care for
others. He clearly enjoys people and
life.
He visits with an
African American man who collects detailed and beautiful small clay dolls or
figures of different characters out of the jazz age. Connolly delights in each one. The gentleman who owns them talks about the
days of segregation and how many of the great jazz artists, in spite of their
fame and popularity, still lived under the isolation of a country filled with
prejudice and indifference to Blacks. Connolly reveals his sadness of those long
combative years. The two men connect
immediately and share stories and squeal with laughter like two adolescent
girls.
Later down the road he
rides in a horse driven buggy with an Amish man who allows Connolly to hold the
reigns and drive the cart. Their
conversation is warm and personal. They
talk about their children and the man tells how he lost a baby son in a
terrible accident on the farm. Connolly
listens with such tenderness and you can hear in his voice a man with a heart
of generosity and grace.
At another point he
strolls through a town in Oklahoma where a tornado has devastated the community. He walks through the rubble and comes upon a
young woman and her mother. Standing in
the midst of random debris she tells how she found her engagement ring still in
its black velvet box and she shows it to Connolly. He thrills to this news and this sight and
his brief visit with these women, filled with feeling and empathy, is like a
minister shepherding his people. His
quiet solidarity with them is moving.
There are many other
instances like this that are so compelling.
It is easily
tempting, and I often succumb to it, to adopt an attitude of cynicism about
things and people. The glaring scars on
our environment, signs of our callous carelessness and refusal to be responsible
stewards of our land; the raw menacing political and religious divisions between
people today that shame and wound and discredit us; the self-indulgence and
craven greed of so many of us, a plague that weakens our unity as a people, as
neighbors and individuals—these things and other disturbing behavior too often
become our focus and we identify them as who we are as Americans.
But Billy Connolly’s
freewheeling ride across Route 66 reminded me of what an incredible country we
live in with its lovely landscapes and dazzling architecture and its enchanting
people. There is an elemental goodness
that weaves its way through our nation and makes us at the heart a country
characterized by decency and good will, by hard work and responsibility, by
family love and individual acts of common kindness, and by quirky likes and
funny expressions and amazing but necessary differences.
Billy Connolly
expresses such delight in his travels.
His child-like fascination with life and its inhabitants; his deliciously
healthy laughter that spills so honestly and so often out of him; his sheer
openness of spirit to all of his surroundings was an inspiration I found
enthralling.
The ancient mystics wrote, “If you can risk
getting lost somewhere along the day you might stumble upon openings that link
you to your depths.” Clearly, in his
planned but sometimes spontaneous journey down a historic highway, Billy
Connolly has done this.
If we could capture his spirit we might come to
know what a character in one of Chekhov’s plays wished for, “And our lives will
grow peaceful, tender, sweet as a caress.”
© 2013 Timothy Moody
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