Taking the Off-Ramps to America

I’m gratefully home again with a head full of thoughts, memories, observations and feelings after 34 days and 8,256 miles on the roads and streets and highways of the United States of America. Here are just a few that push their way immediately to the surface:

I took the nation’s pulse each day by buying--and reading--local newspapers wherever I was and listening to my car radio. The former told me that we aren’t unique in our political conservatism in Orange County, and the latter--as long as I could stand it--told me that if our national temper is reflected in the corn-pone preachers who infest the airwaves of the South and Southwest, we might just as well pack it in now.

I read the Letters to the Editor columns first each day (after I checked the Angels box score, which often appeared a day late because of the difference in time) and found them to be about a 50-50 mix of local and national issues. Surprisingly, the one issue on which there seemed to be widespread agreement was that President Bush’s call for a constitutional amendment to punish desecration of the flag was piffle.

In Houston, readers were complaining about the hypocrisy of sanctions against South Africa, the perfidy of the media in not supporting the National Rifle Assn. and the amount of money paid to ex-presidents. In Wichita, Kan., readers were agitated about the possibility of “The Last Temptation of Christ”--which was never screened in a Wichita theater--appearing in video stores. And a wonderfully choleric letter to the Orlando Sentinel ended: “Leave us alone in the right lane of our highways, you Yankees. That gives you at least two other lanes to weave and bob about. I’d rather be alive and late.”

There is so much history to be absorbed in the small towns of the United States--but you frequently have to wander off the interstate highways to find it. I’ve already written about visiting Plains, Ga., and Johnson City, Tenn. A week later, I detoured up to Marion, Ohio, to see the home and grave of Warren G. Harding, the 29th President of the United States.

His large, rambling Victorian home has a broad front porch that circles half the house. It was from this porch--in simpler times--that Harding conducted the presidential campaign of 1920. Representatives of various segments of American society took the train to Marion to talk with Harding on his porch. Although he won easily, his untimely death three years into his presidency probably saved him from the humiliation of presiding over one of the more corrupt administrations in U.S. history. Yet, he is buried in a pretentious monument, enclosed by massive Doric columns, in marked contrast to the simplicity of the graves of most U.S. presidents I’ve seen.

Food changes with geography: frijoles in New Mexico, barbecue in Texas, Cajun in Louisiana, grits in Georgia, fried chicken in the Midwest. Truck stops are good places to eat, and so are mom ‘n’ pop restaurants in the small towns a mile or two back from the interstates. The major intersections are so infested with fast-food places that one wonders if Americans--especially those on the road--ever eat a decent meal anymore.

I became a connoisseur of rest stops, sanctuaries provided by each state along the major highways for motorists to stop and stretch and breathe and picnic. Texas, Louisiana and Alabama had the best, with Florida and Utah close behind; they had splendid trees and clean restrooms. When I found a pleasant rest stop, I would frequently get out my lawn chair and read for a half hour, thus refueling the soul.

Californians should appreciate the variety of bread we are offered. Throughout most of the rest of the country (not the major cities), there is a choice of only thin, soggy white or wheat bread.

One of the more thought-provoking places I visited with my family was the tomb of Martin Luther King Jr., next to the church in which he preached in Atlanta. A museum gives the history of the civil rights movement in pictures and text, and one is struck first of all by the courage of the people who brought this revolution off, and second by the absolute imperative of aggressive and constant support from the White House--not pale statements of principle but real muscle backing a determination to establish social justice and equality. I was shocked at the realization that all this happened less than three decades ago. The place was swarming with visitors, but for most of the time we spent there, we were the only whites.

Probably the greatest joy generated by all those miles of travel--after my family flew home--was seeing friends, old and dear friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen for many years. They are scattered about the country now, and not once did the visits--all brief--turn sour or even neutral. We gulped talk, like people with a consuming thirst, and we parted with vows to keep in touch--which may or may not happen. But whether it does or not, I will treasure those hours and think on them in quiet moments in the months ahead.

Jumping around: The name of the football stadium at Georgia Tech University is Grant Field. . . . The motorist often looks in vain for the towns behind the motel facade along the highway. . . . Trains look like toys huffing away across the prairie. . . . The most peaceful time to drive is at dusk when a kind of mellowness seems to settle over the earth.

One early evening, I sat in a booth on stilts at a rest stop near Socorro, N.M. (it was on stilts because blowing sand would make picnicking impossible otherwise). I ate my sandwich and drank coffee from a Thermos and looked out over the vastness of a grant by the Thomas B. Campbell family--220,000 acres given to the National Wildlife Refuge System on the condition that it be left in its natural state. The wind was blowing dry and hot, and I studied this endless scrub desert and felt an enormous gap between this place and the way I live.

I felt the same gap with Americans all across the country, and yet I felt a powerful bond, too. This is a land of such immense variety--in its people, its geography, its attitudes, its interests, its priorities. It also is a land and a people worth knowing. Most of us see it almost exclusively from the vantage point of airports and downtown hotels. That’s like reading the jacket on a book. The real riches can be gleaned only by industrious digging. Time is necessarily a high-priority consideration today. Probably few of you would be able or would want to use your time as I did this summer. But to those who think they might, I urge such an odyssey. It’s as much an internal as an external search--and the rewards in both areas can be priceless.