Roadtrip-born Thoughts on America, Part 1
Listen, Experiment, Adapt — what we’ve really lost
Dare I speak from a general and ever-changing knowledge of US History?
Yes, I dare — it has to be said.
I have to contribute my 5 cents from the trip’s teachings.
With boldness I must declare, at risk of imprecision and scrutiny — and all the great adaptation they will produce:
I have discovered core, shared values of America.
It happened over the course of The Roadtrip Americana.
I had time to reflect and narrow down my (initial) conclusions during the long drive back in the last leg.
5500 miles of thought
After the side trips, the random wanderings, and the off-highway driving — my rough estimate (based on the Buick’s speedometer) is ~ 5500 miles of American road were covered.
It was in the last 1000 miles — a long stretch of mostly Texas highway ending up through southeast New Mexico — I began to interview myself.
From northern Louisiana, I-20 gave a smooth, if sterile, exit across the Louisiana state line into Texas
The WildCat could still roar at 70+miles an hour. Steakhouses and aggressive drivers were everywhere.
A billboard read “God‘s message to America: Repent! Judgment is at the door.“
Gas was at $1.97 a gallon for a couple stations in a row. The bumper sticker of the truck in front of me declared:
“Born to Hunt. Forced to Work.”
A big gun shop stood on the north side. It flew 8 flags:
2 American
2 Texan
4 Confederate
My instincts and auto-reactions took over as the interstate moved me quickly across eastern Texas. Half the state was already behind me. Drunk on fermented thoughts still brewing, I pulled off into a faded part of Abilene and a lone room-for-rent.
I wrote next to the house owner’s rescued Shepard.
In the morning, she helped me with my yoga in the backyard— and I helped her with her fetch game.
I took Texas Highway 84 coming out of Abilene.
Proud-of-energy-change SweetWater, TX had a welcome sign painted on a used wind turbine blade.
In the next stretch, cotton fields framed vast collection of wind turbines and a lonely, rusty, and silent oil pumpjack — no longer pumping or needed.
A bright yellow crop duster soared across the highway, cutting down in front of the Buick to drop a test load of pest-dust to the harvest.
Post and then Garza, Texas had shuttered stores and abandoned businesses with notes of apology, literally stating “Sorry we had to close” in spray paint on the plywood.
A few miles outside of town a large, hand painted sign read “Jesus: God’s greatest gift!”
I passed unceremoniously into Tatum, New Mexico.
New Mexico, I know that state name. Wait a minute. We’re really here?
The Wildcat had done it. We were back in the home state again, 5000 miles later.
Route 66 style motels and drive-ins appeared on either side as I moved up through the oil and gas country of southeast New Mexico. The dry and dusty remains of its former glory and continuing culture spoke to the state’s tax revenue problems.
With changing energy prices and demand, the steady flow of oil and taxes no longer had reason to flow.
The Chavez County sign brought up a crisp memory of a night in a steakhouse somewhere near Roswell.
It was a leisurely and loud dinner — with an old political family of the area during the race for US Senate. Oilmen sent drinks to each other, from the table where I sat with a legendary Jennings brother.
They played it the oil-rich way — running the waitress back-and-forth to one up each other on picking up tabs and out-tipping the next.
In the next mile, a couple worked on a flat tire. One last roadtrip stop for me?
The woman’s eyes flashed with fear as the sun fell further behind the unpopulated expanse of desert hugging highway 285. The man had already finished the change, evidenced by the old, torn tire laid on its side and the new spare mounted in its place.
I took all this in during the 3 second drive-by at 70 miles an hour — a sign of my new, road-adapted skillset to perceive, quick-process, and decide on action.
It should have been settled in my mind. Instead, irrational guilt washed over me.
Like some culmination of the trip’s potentials, it was a last grasp from an inner-hero voice. The Despair of Potential came surging back — something I had suppressed, surprisingly, for most of the previous 5300 miles.
What if they were struggling?
What if something else was wrong, something a wanna-be mechanic could fix with tools from his trunk?
What if they had a story to tell?
If men (especially ones who look like me) are often raised to believe in a knight’s honor story, searching for opportunities in our sarcastic post-modernism, women must fight through the fearful stories of rape, murder, abduction on the road. They enter a true unknown, a void devoid of a hero’s narration.
I read the roles on the couple’s faces.
The woman holding the flashlight as the man finished his work. He grimaced at the immediate strain. The inconvenience, the task had worn a mean discomfort into his features. I imagined some unknown struggle and fear he might hide.
The scene and my own reaction began to frame the huge set of reflections on American beliefs swirling behind folds of my skull — only partially digested and now cooling in a post-sunset New Mexico chill.
1965 headlights cut through the darkness.
My left foot toggled the high beams off and on with the old-school footswitch as the curves and hills of the road cast me into deeper and lighter dark.
The flow of traffic had stretched thin. The 1934 rest stop of early Route 66 lore, Clines Corners, burst out its blinding white lights as I pulled across the crest to I-40.
Albuquerque lay just west, glowing orange and screaming of Home or journey’s end — ready to test my new American histories.
The Road’s Reflections
Most days, I write standing. On the roadtrip, it was often outside. I looked out over an offline machine (Buick), recording my signals and interpretations of the tales and events absorbed.
The scene gave me pause, and peace, and purpose in writing.
Like a poor, less-decadent Hemingway (or Martha Gellhorn, before she married him) or a Faulkner wanna-be, I stumbled into words and expressions unknown — idolizing some writer or lifestyle I never really knew or understood or could do justice.
Some have referenced the roadtrip, the writing, the manner of pursuit as Kerouac-esque. I smiled and gave a nod, knowing the name — and having not a clue what he wrote about or stood for.
Don, the self-made man living lakeside in Alabama, has read thousands of books, and believes one must live before they can write about life.
Travel writing moves me through strains of life never imagined, forcing me to confront the fears and biases in myself, by reflecting and listening to the beliefs of others without an agenda.
On their turf, in their minds and trust, living their world — I have no right to judge, only a right to listen.
An exercise in unfair simplification itself, here is my short-list, my top-of-mind conclusions, followed by excerpts of the reflections they trigger. I share so you may know my privileged pain and affirm an ongoing mission to understand:
We have created Un-American formulas for life
Note: “Un-American” here is used in the opposite way it was used by H.U.A.C. (The notorious House Un-American Activities Committee of which Richard Nixon was a member, and later Joseph McCarthy would use to wage his failed terror campaign against those randomly chosen as ‘Not American’ by their actions). In this case, “Un-American” is simply reflecting on what restricts our exploration of the unknown, our drive to explore, adapt, and continuously create anew.
From all of the people I’ve met, it is confirmed: there is no set, single “retirement” or way to finish your time here — in America or on Earth.
Strange “retirement age” and life-planning phases — I bought into them as a young capitalist/entrepreneur alongside my fellow Americans. They are figments of late-20th century imaginations and economic machines.
We are not to be simplified.
We have lived in the unknown, adapted to it, thrived and changed and lived more boldly, without fear or persisting through it — for far longer than our current hysterias and traumas have controlled our spirit.
Could you see yourself:
- Losing your current stake, your health, your known place in the world?
- Living and shaping and caretaking some plot of land, in a simple Home you formed, only for what you truly needed?
- Moving, relocating — whether by force or by choice — and redefining your place and purpose?
When did we forget?
These are common events and storylines for modern humans, for Americans. They are written in our histories, woven deep into our family paths, our present. They wait in our future to see how we respond, what we cause and what we are willing to face — how we help or hate, how we abandon or love each other in the inevitable trials of life.
To simplify our lives and chase some stagnant safety, some unchanging utopia of the known — this is the Un-American denial of nature.
Our Big Imbalance in Listening
We are chasing fewer voices, fewer people — simplifying even our listening. Consuming more, understanding less.
At the root of our disconnection, our fear, our decline — lies a loss.
There are issues and principles — lessons — to describe this loss. Returning to some romantic, fictional past is not the solution. Americans use the same stubborn resolve responsible for our greatness to avoid evolution, adaptation, and learning.
There is a principle of living greater than those of the Constitution for Americans, for humans: adaptation.
We were once the greatest at this skill.
We led for a time because we practiced change. We listened, talked, responded with confidence — in our purpose, our morals, our need to change.
Temptation lies in dwelling on greed, on hate, on the vice that derailed us. In this exploited capture of our great minds, our experiment and creative science is lost.
The future requires a painful honesty — a bold action to face the past and enter the unknown future together.
The Buick’s engine cooled in an Albuquerque driveway.
Deep thoughts bled over from the last 1000 miles into a New Mexico-settled reflection. A restlessness swept through me after the first night in once familiar places. Traveler pains swelled — to keep going, to never stop, to endlessly explore. I listened patiently and returned to the mission. Stronger still was the writer’s itch — the need to explain, express, translate — to communicate.
Once the voice had finished its barking, my unfinished philosophy lay before me as a mix of images, notes, memories, and fragments of breakthroughs from countless nights beneath a shared, American sky’s star-scape.
I began to write, and remember, and rewrite with new humility.
