Seeing America, when you've got no other choice

 Eight months ago, my car battery crapped out and the computer running the dashboard was wiped clean. As a result, ever since, when I drive, I've got no working clock, no radio and no way to listen to CDs. When I'm in my Honda, it's just me and utter silence. 

And that's what it was like when I packed my stuff up and hauled stakes out west to Colorado. 

"You should get it fixed," my wife advised. "You really want to be stuck with nothing but what's in your head for nine hundred miles?" I told her to stuff it. 

"What are you going to do?" my brother scoffed. "Sing nine hundred bottles of beer on the wall two thousand times?" I told him to stick it. 

"Take pictures," one middle school teacher friend of mine said. "I'm teaching geography and I want them to get a flavor of the landscape of this fine country of ours." I told him to eat shit. 

"I'll pay you," he offered. So I grabbed my Kodachrome and hit the road. 

First leg: Departure point--Elk Grove Village 

Nine a.m. Bright, with heat imminent. I roar down I-390 triumphantly, only to miss my exit to 290, curse clumsily and take several offramps and find my way back. Good. Now I'm at least headed west, which sources tell me is where the American West is. 

Second leg: across Illinois to the Mighty Mississip

Eleven-thirty a.m. I have passed DeKalb for the first time since before the pandemic, and I have passed Rock Island for the first time since I took my brother home for the weekend from college. Nobody in either town remembers me, though I stopped at every fast food joint and dive bar I used to frequent. This sours me considerably until I cross the Mississippi river for the first time in I don't know how long. The rolling waters that make up the spine of America's shipping industry, the peaceful shores with their lapping waves and plastic bags waving gently in the breeze. "America," I breathe reverentially, and immediately build a raft to take downstream some day. 

Third leg: Across the Iowa border

Eleven thirty-five, I'm pulling into the Iowa 80 Truck Stop, which purports to be the biggest one of its kind in the continental U.S. While I'm filling up, I pass the time by berating several locals about the inferiority of their merchandise. "Where I'm from, we have Cherry Vanilla Diet Dr. Pepper," I tell them patronizingly. "You all only have Cherry Diet or Vanilla Cherry. Welcome to the new millennium, hicks." While inside relieving myself in their housewares aisle, they remain outside, relieving themselves on my car. 

Fourth leg: Sampling small town cosmopolitanism 

Noon to one p.m. I marvel at the Iowa landscape. So green and fertile. So big and blue a sky. So many wind farms. Wait a minute, I wonder, don't they kill birds? Aren't they creating an Armageddon of Aviation? I realize how clever that phrase is and pull over to start making notes for a killer column for Matt Walsh to plagiarize and completely desecrate. 

I do the majority of my work in a small town called Anita, about four miles south of the expressway. One main street with businesses up and down it, all closed on Sunday it would seem. Two people wandering the street. One little boy. "Is one of those other two your parent?" I ask the boy. The other two people, having seen The Sound of Freedom, immediately deduce I am part of a ring of child abductors and tase me. I sleep it off in the county cell, which I walk out of easily enough once I remember it, too, is closed on Sunday. 

Fifth leg: "Is this the Old West or the Midwest?"

Two p.m. or so I cross into Nebraska. I'm pretty sure this is partly where Unforgiven was shot, so I make sure to stop in the nearest convenience store and buy a gun. The terrain immediately shifts from rolling green hills and a big blue sky to flatter, slightly less green land and unbearable humidity. I decide this is why the early settlers were so short tempered, illiterate and inbred, and I make up my mind to tell the first locals I come across of my theory. 

Sixth leg: Rest stop

By five p.m. I've had enough driving for the day, so I pull into York, Nebraska, named after the town of York, England, which the Normans sacked in 1069, and William Wallace sacked several centuries later. Can you sack a town today? Can I sack York and claim it for the King? Deep questions, all, but they'll have to wait until I find a place to eat and sleep. 

I've never been to Nebraska before, so I spend some time poking around. York boasts three late night restaurants, two of which are closed this evening, and a truck stop that agrees to serve me fried chicken with mashed potatoes if I'll stop asking them dumb questions about whether or not they'd submit to my rule if I sacked the town. Behind my hotel, asphalt roads terminate and become gravel roads stretching as far as the eye can see. I am utterly fascinated by this and decide to walk down the road and see where it ends, but my fried chicken gets cold so I go back and eat it instead. 

Seventh leg: Across the empty lands

More Nebraska the following morning. I've seen next to none of it. I've not seen Omaha and I wasn't even within spitting distance of Lincoln. Nevertheless, I am now going to discourse widely on Nebraska and Nebraskans to everyone I know. "Let me tell you about the road medians, folks. It's the unsung chorus of the song that makes this country what it is. Whatever that means. " 

Eighth leg: Across the last state line

And just like that, I'm in Colorado!

Well, if "just like that" means "after ten hours of driving." 

I can see the difference almost immediately. Green replaced by dusty brown. Rolling grassy hills replaced by sagebrush and scrubland. The sun, when I step outside my vehicle, beats down mercilessly, dryly. Not a hint of humidity in the air. How on earth do these people live without humidity to complain about? In the distance, eventually, I see Denver and the airport, and far to the south I can sense the great state of New Mexico with its roaring methamphetamine market beckoning to me. But I press on. The Boulder area awaits. 

Last leg: An Air B&B

Eh. Close enough. I'll look for a place to live and work tomorrow. 

Upon unpacking and settling in, I sent all the photos to my teacher friend. "Here's your stinking pictures," I wrote. "Now where's the fifteen bucks you promised me?"

"I want accompanying text," he responded. "And a great closing paragraph."

"No." 

"Then you won't get paid." 

Crap. 

So that, dear readers, was my roadside, out-the-window experience. About a thousand miles of highway, the occasional rest stop, one dumb essay, an unsacked town and my drug dealing potential still unrealized. Yes, the great citizens and attractions of the central to western United States are a deep and enduring mystery that require further exploration, but since I'm tired and, according to my Writer's Guide, these sentences, once strung together, make up a paragraph, I have thus fulfilled my contractual obligation, it shall all have to remain a mystery. Unless someone wants to pay me to go back and hit all the burger joints in Cheyenne. In the meantime, this is me, signing off as your eternal superior in every way.