ground Jewel Cave, got drenched on a boat ride under the pounding Niagara Falls and walked among monuments to man and country in Washington, D.C., at night. On our final day, in Harlem, we ate Italian food and drank with friends until 5 a.m. At 8 a.m., we visited Ground Zero.
Planning for the trip was easy. My wife Louisa, a Santa Monica teacher and cellist, and I waited for gas prices to peak at over $2.80 a gallon, then decided the time was right. Actually, that’s not true. It was the chance to spend six weeks on the road before leaving for a two-year Peace Corps stint in China that we found irresistible.
So I turned in my last news story for the Daily Press, headlined “Surfer finds dead body at SM beach,” and we left in late April with our only goal being to arrive, eventually, at Louisa’s parents home in Contoocook, New Hampshire.
More than puttering around on small highways, visiting landmarks and sightseeing, we met people who reminded us of what a massive and diverse country this is.
We listened to travel stories told by Gordon, a veteran of the Korean War who now is the sole pilot for a tiny helicopter outfit near the Badlands. Gordon was a talker, but even more than to us, he chatted with his small dog Dozer, comforting him from the chopper’s drumming motor, teasing him kindly for scurrying after the shadows created by the spinning blades after we landed.
We spoke with Tran, an immigrant dishwasher at a Thai restaurant and bar in Nashville. Tran had learned to speak English near perfectly after only two years in America. Long a poor man who struggled to feed his large extended family, Tran had begun saving money weekly to travel to exhibit events for top-end sports cars. He spoke excitedly about how he could drive at breakneck speeds from his house in the Nashville suburbs to the restaurant where he worked, evading state troopers all the while.
We learned the philosophies of Cincinnati wordsmith Tom, a retired college administrator and handy man who fought on the front lines in Vietnam, meeting the brutality of war both in enemies and in other servicemen. His high school best friend, with whom he enlisted, was standing next to him when a fellow soldier shot and AMERICRAWLER, from page 10 killed him in retaliation for an offensive prank. While “hanging a lip over a beer,” or eight, Tom shared such insights as “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.”
It was people like these, the veterans and the immigrants, that made me most proud to be American, to belong to a nation of newcomers.
Then there was local color. Road signs along the way reminded us that “Hell is Real,” “Guns don’t kill people, people do” and “Your mother was pro-life.” One church near the shore of Lake Erie urged passersby to “Come in for a faith lift.”
Never once did we stop to dine on fast food or stay in a hotel, opting instead for greasy spoons and out-of-the way campgrounds.
There were times when the places we stayed and the people we met reminded us much of our times in Santa Monica. There also were times when the diversity and relative sophistication of our home city couldn’t have felt more distant.
It struck me while driving that in many ways highways are the great underappreciated public spaces of the United States. Though historic civic spaces and parks often are preserved and sometimes new ones still are built, malls and other controlled, private spaces continue to encroach on communities under the guise of offering open, public space.
They are anything but that. The road, on the other hand, is free to all those inclined who are fortunate enough to afford a vehicle and fuel. We were just thankful to be a part of that group. (To reach John Wood, e-mail to )
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 2, 2005. Read the original PDF.