As Jerry and I crossed the bridge out of New York City, he never looked back once. I didn't say anything. I didn't want to interrupt whatever he might be thinking about. I figured this was pretty heavy for him. Leaving forever. I wondered if he would cry, or if he would say something deep. He just laughed. And said we should stop somewhere and eat breakfast.

Jerry Korn was 90 years old. I was driving him home. He'd been in New York since the summer of 1945.

Though he was a classically trained musician, he'd spent nearly 50 years working a ticketbooth at the Greyhound bus station. That ended up being his life story. He was now at the end of it. He still had all of his hair, and had somehow held onto his original set of teeth, but it was his heart that was giving out. Though he felt pretty good most of the time, he'd sometimes experience sudden dizzy spells and see flashing yellow spots in front of his eyes. The blood was having difficulty getting around his body. Even though the doctor had given him a pill to take whenever these spells hit him, he knew he was just marking time. He was giving out. And when his brother asked him to move back home to Indiana, he said yes.

Jerry was my neighbor. We'd met on the roof of my building one time and hit it off. I didn't see him that often, but sometimes we'd go and eat supper at a place down the street. And he never would let me pick up the check. He said he was just grateful for the company. All of his friends were long gone.

When his brother talked him into moving back to Fort Wayne, Jerry indirectly asked me if I could drive him there. We were standing on the roof again, with a red sunset burning down the sky over the river, and he said 'I have to find somebody to drive me back to Indiana.' Which I thought was bullshit because at his age and with his condition, he should've just been thinking about scoring a plane ticket. Then I thought, maybe he didn't want to make the trip alone. And maybe he wasn't in a big hurry to get there. Whatever the reason, it didn't matter. As I stood looking at all that red fire in the sky, the sun rolling to the west, I realized it had been too long since I'd taken a road trip.

Jerry said he'd foot the bill. We'd do it on a weekend. We'd rent a car, drive half-way, do a night at a motel, then get up and head on to Indiana. Since the route would be a straight shot across Interstate 80, I could use the return trip to stop off and party with some old friends in the city where I used to live before I became a New Yorker--Youngstown, Ohio.

My only hope was that he wouldn't die during the journey. Though driving to Indiana with a corpse certainly had serious potential as the makings of a great Country song, I prayed the sweet old bastard would do his best to hang on for the ride.

He did. He was hilarious. Every time we passed a field of cows he would get excited like a little kid. I'd never seen anybody get excited over cows, but I guess after all those years in the big city, they seemed wildly exotic. Real live cows. Wow.

Jack Kerouac once said that everyone goes home in October. I was glad Jerry picked October to make the trip. There's just something about Fall in the midwest that seems right. The coolness of the air, the way the light hits the trees. It's something that can't be put into words, but it's absolutely the best time to be there. And people hang fake cobwebs on their houses.

The leaves in Pennsylvania looked like old books. Hand-tooled leather volumes from an attic laid out in a farmhouse yard sale, tarnished gold lettering shining in the sun. All the colors of indian corn.

Jerry still had his wits about him, but he repeated himself over and over again. He kept telling me how the first road trip he ever took was in a Ford model 'A', and that he and his friends had to keep getting out and adding water to it because it would overheat so easily.

We stopped in Sandusky, not too far from Cleveland. I hadn't been there in about 20 years. My family used to go to Cedar Point--it was the first place I ever rode a roller coaster. We got a room in a motel and he konked right out. I went out and walked around. Since we were out so close to the Interstate, there was nothing to see except for exit ramps, restaurants and shopping plazas. I went back to the motel and crashed too.

During the middle of the night a loud banging woke me up. Jerry stood there in the darkness, facing the wall. He had both of his hands up, pounding and pounding the wall. Butt naked. He said the neighbors were playing their tv too loud. They weren't bothering me at all. He kept banging on the wall and I went back to sleep.

The next day as we drove in to Indiana, Jerry said he wasn't thrilled with the idea of moving into somebody else's house. He dreaded living with his brother and his wife. Plus, he hated their dog, Penny. Actually, he admitted it wasn't the dog that he hated so much, it was the way they fawned over it so much. He said the only thing they ever seemed to want to talk about was "little Penny." He said her name with such sarcastic disdain, like an 8 year-old picking on the puniest playground loser. At that moment it was so clear, the 80something year-old man Jerry was moving in with, it was his little brother.

He said his brother was nearly blind now.

As we neared Fort Wayne, he kept rambling about the dog and I got lost in my own thoughts. I'd never really done the state of Indiana before, other than crossing it in a Greyhound riding to California once. After all that time in New York, t was weird to be in the midwest again. Then it hit me, I suddenly remembered that we were in James Dean country.

When I was younger and living in Ohio, I'd always wanted to do a weekend trip to James Dean's hometown, Fairmount. I'd never gotten around to it, and it eventually fell off my list of things to do. But now I realized I had the chance. As a teenager I'd mapped out the route, the town was somewhere in the middle of the state, if I recalled correctly.

I asked Jerry if he knew where Fairmount was, but he didn't have a clue. Figured I'd check a map at his brother's house. I knew Fairmount had to be pretty close to Fort Wayne.

When we arrived at their home, Jerry's brother and his wife were just returning from the grocery store. They seemed very kind. Unfortunately, they were under the impression that I was spending the weekend with them. Jerry's sister-in-law was all ready to throw together a big spread of food. I didn't know if Jerry had possibly told them otherwise, but I had to let them know that I was turning right around and heading to Ohio.

Disappointingly enough, it was revealed that Jerry's nemesis, the dreaded Penny, was in reality nothing more than a well-behaved little Pug who barely made her presence known. As we walked around the backyard while she innocently did 'her business,' I pressed him on the issue. He finally conceded that no, she wasn't such a bad dog, but she sure was an ugly one.

At their kitchen table, I checked out the road atlas. Fairmount was only 45 minutes away. I figured I could head over there, spend the afternoon checking it out, then make the drive to Youngstown.

Youngstown was the darkest place I'd ever been, sort of like a waking nightmare. The locals often joked that it was the Gateway to Hell. For some reason, it just seemed that there was meanness in the water. It felt less like a city and more like a huge, sinking pirate ship. Regardless of how rotten it was, it had been a few years since I'd been home. And even though the last time I'd been there I'd had to dodge bullets, I was extremely nostalgic for it.

As I got ready to leave, I thought to myself that Jerry was in an alright place. Even though he wouldn't have the city sidewalks anymore, he would be in a decent house with a nice yard. Still, I felt for the guy, because he did love New York. He'd spent the last half of the 20th century there.

When he left Fort Wayne in the 1940s, I wondered if he ever expected he'd come back in the end.

Jerry's sister-in-law gave me some bananas and a can of Pringles for my return trip. They all stood in the driveway saying goodbye as I got into the car-no one admitting that their whole plan was to put Jerry in a nursing home. It echoed the end of every family visit to my Kentucky relatives when I was a kid-those old people smiling and waving goodbye.

I knew I'd probably never see Jerry Korn again.

The first time I saw James Dean, I thought he was terrifying. I was about 6 years old and a local tv station was going to be showing 'Giant' one weekend. The previews showed only the scene where Jett Rink's well comes in and he rejoices in that huge, gushing shower of oil. Glistening, black. There was something about his madness that chilled me to my core. The voice-over ominously pointed out that this was James Dean in his final role.

All I saw was a dead man screaming.

Of course, by adolescence I understood that James Dean was cool, and I wanted to learn all about him. While in studyhall, I read The Mutant King. And I sought out every movie he'd ever made. Since he only did three movies, it was a fairly simple quest. 'East of Eden' being the best one for sure, 'Giant' ranking a distant third. Though it did have some iconic imagery, 'Giant' was overlong and suffered from a certain Hollywood cloyingness typical of other corn from the same period.

My all-time favorite photos of James Dean were the ones by Dennis Stock. He was the photographer behind the legendary image of Jimmy sulking through a rainy Times Square. The best of their collaborations consisted of a series of shots taken during Dean's first visit home after making it in Hollywood. He returned to his uncle's farm where he was raised, and Stock documented how the animals literally flocked to him. He also snapped an infamous image-later deemed too distasteful for publication by LIFE magazine-of the young rebel playfully sitting in a coffin at the local funeral home. Ironically, his body would return to this same funeral home, lifeless, a mere seven months later.

The town of Fairmount seemed untouched by time. If it weren't for the modern cars, the place would appear no different than it had in Dennis Stock's photos. That, and the fact that I was now finally seeing it in color.

It reminded me so much of the little Kentucky town where my mom had grown up.

The Fairmount Historical Museum was an old house in the middle of town whose first floor had been turned into a bare-bones archive of Fairmount-related memorabilia. There was an antique Future Farmers of America jacket and high school class photos dating from the 20s and 30s, but mainly the entire collection was devoted to the town's main claim to fame, James Byron Dean.

In a corner of the front room, one of his motorcycles silently gathered dust. A beautiful old machine, I wondered how long it'd been since somebody fired it up.

Then I noticed the ultimate relic. On display in a glass case, his black leather jacket. I was alone in the same room with James Dean's leather jacket.

This was one of the few times in my life that I had to do my best to repress an overwhelming urge to steal something. There didn't appear to be any alarm systems in place, the joint was about as low-tech as it gets. It'd be an easy job, bust in the the glass, snatch the jacket, and bolt out the front door. I stood there and thought about it. Should I or shouldn't I? I figured I could outrun the two sweet little old ladies who were in the back working the gift shop.

Nah. They were having a bad enough day as it was.

They told me there was a guy who'd stopped in before me who really gave them the creeps. One of the women asked me if I'd seen him. I hadn't. Glancing over at the other lady, she said, 'I'm sure glad he left, cause he was just plain weird.'

They had a flyer the guy left with them. He was a professional Don Knotts lookalike. Or more specifically, a Don Knotts as Barney Fife lookalike. He criss-crossed the country making personal appearances dressed in an exact copy of the police uniform Don Knotts wore on The Andy Griffith Show. He even drove a replica of a Mayberry police car, which he said was available for parades. Who knew there was a demand for such a thing? He also visited schools. I wondered about the probability of the kids having any idea who Don Knotts even was. What could his act possibly consist of? I imagined the students probably ended up throwing things at him.

I wanted to visit the grave before sundown, so I said goodbye to the ladies at the museum. As I walked to my car I saw a tractor trailer that said something about Mayberry on its side panel. The trailer was indeed large enough to house a squad car. I glanced around but the coast was clear, there was no Don Knotts.

James Dean's grave was in a cemetery that was, at the most, just a quarter of a mile away from the farm where he grew up??and it was on the same road.

The sun was going down as I parked in front of the tombstone. I got out of my car and at the exact moment my boot hit the pavement, I heard the lonesome moan of a train. Over past the road I could see the freight barreling across a field, passing straight along the horizon directly behind the light gray stone which was etched with the years 1931-1955.

One of the only offerings that had been left was a small bouquet tied with a ribbon and a card that read: With Love, From Japan.

It was nearly dark.

Making my way out of Fairmount, I came upon a fireworks store. I pulled in to buy a batch, figuring my friends and I could set them off on the streets of Youngstown later that night.

I remembered one time shooting off roman candles from the roof of an abandoned varnish factory.

Night had now fallen. It was time to go to Youngstown.

I thought of Kerouac's 'October in the Railroad Earth' and how that was one of the best short story titles I'd ever heard, hands-down. And in the darkness up ahead, I saw fire in the road.

A handful of flares were burning, and behind them the ominous flashing of police lights, their glare flooding the night like some infernal tide of blood.

There'd been an accident, and it looked like there were no survivors.

I slowed and drove past.

An Amish buggy had been hit by a car. I didn't see the other vehicle, they must've already taken it away. All that remained was the black buggy, splintered to pieces like a coffin that had fallen from the sky-and the lifeless body of a horse, laying on its side. I didn't see the driver anywhere among the wreckage.

I wasn't superstitious, but if I was I certainly would've taken this scene as an extremely bad omen in relation to my drive home.

For some reason, the first thing that crossed my mind was my camera. I felt compelled to document this scene. Bathed in the red sea of police lights, I pulled over and reached into the back seat to grab the camera out of my bag. With the flashes glaring in my eyes, I fumbled to get hold of my old Pentax.

Suddenly, if only to defy me from taking a picture of its dead body, the horse leaped to its feet. This huge, handsome creature lifted its head straight up towards the cold dark sky and shook it's mane in the breeze. Standing in profile, completely backlit by all of the flashing red lights, the horse was all black, a stark black shadow in the Indiana night.

I aimed the camera out the back window of my car. There wasn't enough light. I went to make some adjustments and I lost the shot. The horse changed position, and a cop car pulled into the space between us.

Regardless of not being captured on film, that black and red vision had been burned into my brain. I'd just seen a dead horse come back to life. I could think of no better way to begin a drive to Youngstown, Ohio.

It was over a year later when Jerry Korn called me. He wanted to know if New York was still the same as when he'd left it. I told him it was. I asked him how he was doing. He said he was fine, except that none of the cable channels at the nursing home had any porn.

- Wayne Lovan