I only remember two recurring nightmares from childhood. In one, I was with my mom in the greeting card aisle of a store, and when I turned around she was gone. I searched for her in a series of rooms where I had to overcome bizarre obstacles. In the end, I walked out onto a sidewalk crowded with giant adults. I never found her. This is normal for a preschooler: the fear of getting lost.

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“In Pattaya, it is hookers. Here, it is treks,” a stranger said to me in a restaurant in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It was an unusual pick-up line, but factually right on the money. Just as the beach-town of Pattaya was known for prostitution, the mountain town of Chiang Mai had become a mecca for travelers who want to “trek” through the hill tribe villages of northern Thailand. Trekkers claim to want to get a feel for indigenous people like the Hmong, Karen and Mien by sleeping in villages they get to by foot, elephant and raft.

I was one of them.

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“…the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn…” Jack Kerouac.

My girlfriend and I came to Chicago because we plan to drive Route 66, and it would seem wrong to hit that storied road without slipping into Chicago’s notorious past. That means jazz. If you’re going to jazz it up right, late night’s the ticket. It’s almost 10:00 when we grab a cab to take us to the oldest continuously operating jazz club in Chicago, an old speakeasy called the Green Mill.

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I was walking through a ghost town with no ghosts. Maybe that’s why it never whispered any clear answers. Ancient Akrotiri was a city of 30-thousand souls, until they vanished, every last one of them.

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