We have exciting news to share: You can now read Travels Across America by Michelle and Chris Jacobs in the new Substack app for iPhone.
With the app, you’ll have a dedicated Inbox for our Substack and any others you subscribe to. New posts will never get lost in your email filters, or stuck in spam. Longer posts will never cut-off by your email app. Comments and rich media will all work seamlessly. Overall, it’s a big upgrade to the reading experience.
The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here. We hope you enjoy this week’s essay!
Digital ticket stubs are ruining my paper trail.
I’ve always been a selective collector of reminders from the road. I have a few hat boxes filled with ephemera from museums, amusement parks, and performances. Whenever I sift through them, memories shake loose and scenes light up like lanterns on a path leading me back through years and years of travel. A true paper trail to the past.
Lately it seems my collection has become a track of digital footprints through the cloud that I may never retrieve or be able to follow to the past. The pandemic only hastened the move away from paper tickets to bar code scans. For awhile, we couldn’t even get informational brochures or trail maps which are also part of my collection from National Parks and historic sites across the country.
My paper collection didn’t actually begin with travel scraps but rather with movie ticket stubs commemorating Friday night dates with Chris in high school and our early married life before having kids. Rummaging through a glass jar brimming with stubs, a veritable time capsule, is to remember the 1980s and 1990s in all their cinematic glory: The Princess Bride in 1987, Colors in 1988, The English Patient in 1996…dozens and dozens of films that captured an era and some of the special moments of our lives.
Because I don’t really have the ambition for scrapbooking, these pieces of the past are layered like sedimentary rock strata in glass containers and boxes or they’re stashed in between pages of my journals. My lazy streak, or as Chris lovingly refers to it, my leisure streak, prohibits me from organizing my paper mementos into anything other than heaps. They are curated heaps though!
They aren't overflowing bins or receptacles of unhinged homage to years past. They are mostly beautiful relics of paper. I have business cards from restaurants with names like Moonshadows, Bouchon, Doc Ford’s, Succotash, and Secret Sandwich Society, fast passes with Disney and Universal characters assigned to each of us, maps of city subway systems, and stacks of postcards with landscapes, landmarks, and scenes from around the world. Some of these I have displayed like artwork in picture frames and in collages on my walls, so I am always reminded of the places I’ve been.
When we taught in Argentina, many of the teachers had collections in their homes that showcased all the places around the globe they had been on the international teaching circuit. The pieces on display were eclectic and interesting, eye-catching and intent on starting conversations and igniting wonder. I remember being awestruck at the objects and envious of their travels and balked a little at my meager collection of paper, a poor man’s souvenir.
In America, so many gift shops deal in kitsch with cheap and cheesy merchandise, knick knacks and trinkets, a collection of these items can clutter up a home until it turns claustrophobic and menacing. It’s not easy to find dazzling sculptures, figurines and tapestries at places like South of the Border.
Stopping at this classic American gift shop of old, which is still selling garish, over-the-top souvenirs and fireworks, and pedaling racist tropes unknowingly or perhaps by accident, was a right of passage to many east coast travelers. As a kid, South of the Border was a riot of color and spectacle that was irresistible, plus it marked our progress to Florida. Once we passed South of the Border, it was like a downhill sprint to the Sunshine State and to the ultimate gift shop, Disneyworld.
Living abroad for a year and influenced by the seasoned traveler-teachers in our community, I did learn to up my souvenir game. I don’t avoid gift shops completely, but I also try to visit the local markets and buy from the artisans like the framed prints of tango dancers I bought at Feria de San Telmo. They remind me everyday that Argentina is a land of beauty and passion, and I walked its streets for awhile opening my mind to the world.
I wish, like in the days of old and in the movies, I had an old steamer trunk or suitcase covered in stickers naming all the places I’ve been like a roll call of exploration: California, North Carolina, Paris, Montana, and on and on and on through all the states and countries.
In the middle age land of forgetting, I need something to light the way, something to retrieve the memory.
And I don’t really want to scroll for it.
I want to rummage for it and hold it in my hands.