9/25/11

So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine

And the moon rose over an open field

“Kathy, I’m lost.” I said though I knew she was sleeping

I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.

Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike

They’ve all gone to look for America

--Simon and Garfunkel

Way back in ’79 I straddled my brand new motorcycle, fired up the engine, and headed off to look for America. I didn’t call the trip that name at the time, but I ended up singing this song over and over again as I motored across the waist of Nevada on Route 50, according to Life Magazine the “Loneliest Road In America”. My bike had no radio, and such novelties as MP3 players wouldn’t come along for another several years, so if I wanted tunes to go with my scenery, I had to supply them myself. And so it became the Look For America trip.

At first I didn’t realize I was looking for America. I’d always thought I had long ago found America. I figured I had spent my entire life in America. But I was wrong.

No, I had spent my time in the greater Chicagoland area, and then in California. These places call themselves America, but in many important characteristics, they are not. It was only later that I discovered the real America. And of course I realized that I like the real thing much better than the imposter.

I recommend Route 50 across Nevada to you. It traverses a land of stark lonely beauty. Very lonely, and very stark. Whilst driving it you will pass only the occasional car. You will pass through only the rare tiny town. You will lack much of anything you could call “services”. And you might see a raven or perhaps if lucky a pronghorn, but you had best be comfortable inside your own head for you likely will be your own company for most of this trip.

I had passed on the opportunity to top off the fuel tank in the quaint burg of Austin. Eureka didn’t look that far off on the map. I could make that easily….

Route 50 is even lonelier when you are parked on the shoulder for a bit, lamenting the local shortage of fossil fuel. Eureka was down the road somewhere, out of sight. No idea how far. Might be a long walk. But hark! A vehicle cometh! A motorhome, with California plates. Drove right on by in a cloud of dust and indifference. Apparently, these folks from California could not be bothered to help a stranger stranded out in the middle of less than nothing.

California corrupts human behavior, because we have compressed together far too many people, mashed into inhuman conditions, and to keep them happy in that unhappy and unhealthy environment, we tell them that all the wrong stuff, the unimportant stuff, is really the important stuff. So folks obsess on the bad and let the good in them dissipate.

The old pickup truck that did stop, piloted by a local man, not only carried me into Eureka, but back to my bike with a can of gas. Not insincerely friendly, the man driving was however helpful when needed, and polite, and decent. You know, like an American.

He didn’t act like a Californian. I’ve found many other Americans in the less traveled, rural places that fill that bit of the continent the coastal urban denizens call “fly over country”. Such folk lead perhaps simpler lives that we have here in California. Might even call them boring. But you can spot em right away because they are lacking in the scowls that daily fill your rearview mirrors, and they don’t wave to you with only that one finger as you interact in traffic. And they are not always in such a danged hurry.

Such people are so unaccustomed to fearing for their very lives if they so much as make eye contact with the wrong stranger that they will actually help you if ya need it. You know, like an American.

When I wander out into America, I can feel the oppression of living in pseudo-America peel off in layers. The relief is palpable. It feels so good that I look forward to repeating the pleasure whenever possible. So when the time came to deliver ourselves to New England for a wedding, and we contemplated the airline flight from one crowded oppressive coast to yet another, we decided to drive through America instead. We plan upon enjoying the trip.

Some have questioned this project. The last thing they would wish to do would be to drive across what they feel is interminable boring landscape. They see things a mite differently than we do. Such folks really should stay on the coasts, and just fly over the middle when needed. They’d hate our trip. For me, I expect to find much less “empty and aching and I don’t know why” out in the middle of nowhere important, than I find here in California.