Pokin Around: A visit from an old friend cycling the Mother Road to collect COVID stories – News-Leader

Posted: March 21, 2021 at 4:36 pm

Mike Comerford is one of those people you meet in life that you never forget andhope that fortune is kind enough that you'll meet again.

Prior to this week, I had last seen him in 1987. That's when he jumped at the chance to take a road trip to Warwick, New York to of all things help me and my wife move there.

I had taken a new job at a bigger paper. Mike and I had worked together at the daily paper in Elgin, Illinois.

Back then, he says, he was 6-foot-5. He's lost an inch to age. He's 62.

Mike Comerford, 62, worked with News-Leader columnist Steve Pokin in the newsroom of the Elgin (Illinois) Courier-News. The paper no longer exists. They had not seen each other since 1987 until this week. Comerford is biking Route 66 to Los Angeles as he collects COVID-19 stories.(Photo: Steve Pokin/News-Leader)

Back then, I had dark hair. I'm 67.

Our lives have taken different paths, but the bedrock of our friendship has remained true. After all these years, we're both still writing.

Mike is riding a bicycle that he estimates to be 40 to 50 years old along Route 66. He started in Chicago in late February and is headed to Los Angeles.

Along the way, he collects COVID-19 stories from everydaypeople he meets.

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Mike has interview subjects sign a release and asks them a few questions and videotapes their answers for some five minutes.

In this project, I am finding people incredibly articulate. You can not make up about how articulate people are about their lives. They start out by saying, I have nothing to say. And then, before you know it, they have these beautiful stories heartbreaking, exuberant, compelling and emotional.

"... I'm capturing the unique stories of people living with COVID, as opposed to all the obituaries."

With thunder, lightning and rain in the forecast, Mike Comerford leaves my driveway Wednesday morning en route to Los Angeles along Route 66. He is collecting stories from everyday people about COVID-19 and the pandemic. He hopes to make them into a book.(Photo: Steve Pokin/News-Leader)

I picked him up Tuesday at the Library Center on South Campbell. He spends much time in public libraries posting about his journey and, when needed, getting out of the weather.

The night before he stayed in a hotel in Seymour. He spends half his nights on the road in cheap hotels and the other half wrapped in a sleeping bag, in a small tent he pitches in a cemetery, park or forest preserve.

His odyssey is purely speculative. He will write a book. That's for sure. But the speculative part is whether it will make money.

Prior to this week, the last time News-Leader columnist Steve Pokin, left, saw Mike Comerford was in 1987. Pokin left the Courier-News in Elgin, Illinois, to take a job at a bigger paper in Middletown, N.Y. Comerford was quick to volunteer to help with the move and made the trip.(Photo: Steve Pokin/News-Leader)

He has no financial sponsor, but he is telling these stories with the help of the University of Florida'sSamuel Proctor Oral History Program. They liked the idea of a guy riding a bicycle on the Mother Road collecting pandemic stories.

After all, how often do we have a pandemic?

Mike told me about the interview he had earlier Tuesday with a woman he met on the Galloway Creek Trail, which is part of the Ozark Greenways.

The woman's name is Paula. She tells Mike she has had COVID-19 and has given it to several family members. She says: "If I were in charge I would unmask everybody. I know that sounds harsh; I would let people build up their immunities."

Mike Comerford spends much time at public libraries during his bicycle odyssey along Route 66 to Los Angeles. He often posts about his journey while on the road. He lives bare bones and often sleeps in parks and forest preserves and cemeteries.(Photo: Steve Pokin/News-Leader)

He has posted the remarkable interview on YouTube.

"I don't judge people," Mike tells me.

He simply lets them tell their stories and occasionally asks for clarification.

Mike's raw video is then dressed upwith spiffy graphics and music and posted by the University of Florida.

Go to YouTube and search for "thestorycycle and samuel proctor."

Mike has three younger sisters. His father was in the Navy and the family moved 10 times by the time he was 11, when they landed in Chicago.

He graduated in 1977 from St. Viator High School in Arlington Heights where, oddly enough, I once coached the track team for a season after stepping off the journalism career ladder to write a novel.

Mike started on the basketball team there and went on to Marquette, where he majored in political science.

He estimates he has visited close to 100 countries.

He worked at English-language papers in Moscow and Budapest.

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He stayed at my house Tuesday night and offered these snippets of conversation:

"I'm sure there were guerillas in the area where I was at in the Philippines ...

"We were on the ZambeziRiveralong the border betweenZambiaandZimbabwe ...

"In Switzerland, I had accidentally run onto a restricted area used by the Swiss Army as a mortar range ..."

And he won the city heavyweight title in Cork, Ireland, where he attended college his junior year. He jabbed with his natural hand, his right, and sent them to sleep with his left.

I have no reason to doubt any of this.

After all, here was Exhibit A, in my living room: a 62-year-old journalist riding an old bicycle the 2,110 miles of Route 66.

But I did ask if he is physically up to the task.

If I take it in small steps," he says. "I am out of shape and older than I should be for such a project."

He takes his time and bikes 30 to 40 miles a day. Regarding his itinerary, he quotes Forrest Gump:

"When I got tired, I slept. When I got hungry, I ate. When I had to go, you know, I went."

In fact, Mike says, he is in the vanguard of what is called "slow journalism."

He asks if I know the exploits of journalist Paul Salopek, a National Geographic Fellow who has won Pulitzer Prizes for reporting on human genetics and the civil war in the Congo.

No, I say.

Salopek is retracing our ancestors' ancient migration on foot out of Africa and across the globe. His 24,000-mile, multiyear-voyagebegan in Ethiopia, believed to be our evolutionary "Eden." He started in January 2013 and his walk will end at the tipof South America.

It is called the "Out of Eden Walk" and Salopek is writing about it for National Geographic.

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Mike has already completed one "slow journalism" project that resulted in his 2020 self-published book "American Oz: An Astonishing Year Inside Traveling Carnivals at State Fairs & Festivals."

Mike Comerford last year self-published "American Oz: An Astonishing Year Inside Traveling Carnivals at State Fairs & Festivals." He spent February 2013 to February 2014 hitchhiking as he worked as a carny from New York to California and Alaska to Mexico.(Photo: Steve Pokin/News-Leader)

From February 2013 to February 2014 he worked as a carny in 10 states from New York to California and up to Alaska.

In the book, which I've read, he captures the behind-the-scenes life of carnies and talks about the new face of American carnival workers who typically are from Mexico and work here on the same type of visa used by farm workers from Mexico.

The most amazing part of the book is Mike's trip to Tlapacoyan, Mexico. He went there during adrug cartel war between El Chapo's Sinaloa drug cartel and the Los Zetas drug cartel.

He had onlythe name of a fellow carny whom he had befriended.

Most men in Tlapacoyan come to the United States to work carnivals during the summer.

Mike took a 1,100-mile bus ride from Dallas to Veracruz, Mexico, which took 33 hours. He rode another bus six hours to Tlapacoyan and, incredibly, found his friend.

The book is available on Amazon.

Mike made some money on "American Oz."

"I know how to sell a book," he says.

He hopes to make some money on his current project.

I am attempting to make a living out of this. I want to be a book writer who writes a lot of books. If I wrote 20 books and all 20 of those books are making $1,000 then I will have a nice income. These are my first two projects.

Did you ever envision these "slow journalism" projects as a career?

"I never had a career vision for myself. I did want to travel and I did want to write.

His first inkling this could be a living came when he was hitchhiking through Canada.

"I met a French journalist in a van doing radio reports back to France. I saw this guy making a living doing whatever he wanted to do. And he was making a living by writing."

Mike is divorced and the love-of-his-life is his 15-year-old daughter Grace. He talks to her every day. She worries about him.

"She tells me not to eat badly. Or get run over by a car. Or get COVID."

At one point, he tells me, she suggested he hop a train to Los Angeles and just pretend like he rode his bicycle there.

On Wednesday morning, it is pouring rain in Springfield.

Mike is in my home packing his gear. He wraps his feet in cellophane to keep them warm. He tells me that not once in his life has ever felt cold in his sleeping bag and tent.

In my driveway, he takes his ancient bicycle from the back of my vehicle.

It thunders; there is lightning; Ron Hearst of KY3 warns of tornadoes.

I worry about Mike and offer him another night in Springfield.

No, he says. Time to get moving. Remember? Slow and steady.

Attached by bungee cordsis a sign on the back of his bicycle: "TELL ME A STORY. THE STORY BICYCLE. Check it on YouTube. TheStoryCycle@GMAIL.COM."

He swings his legonto his bike like John Wayne getting on a horse to face destiny.

Mike Comerford has always been an easy guy to talk to. He says people are more than willing to tell him about the impact of COVID on their lives as he videotapes them. While in Springfield, he interviewed a woman along the Ozarks Greenway who told him why she thinks masks are not needed.(Photo: Steve Pokin/News-Leader)

I say goodbye.

He looks at the ominous sky.

"The Mojave Desert," he says, "nowthat's gonna be tough."

Keep those questions coming. Send themto The Answer Man at 417-836-1253, spokin@gannett.com, on Twitter @stevepokinNL or by mail to 651 Boonville Ave., Springfield, MO 65806.

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