I’m staring at 30 and I’m
at the point where I can’t do something like that unless something drastic in
life changes. It might be another couple of decades before I get to traverse
the country in search of some mythic America that exists only in
booze-inspired novels, film and music. Plus, the pages of history have already
passed. With the super highways that cross the continent, would it really be
the same to travel the country by road? Who even does that anymore, other than
those looking for or forced into a new life?
If interstate-5 in California—or
the California Route 99 that I traversed today—are any indication, the quaint
little road-side stands, the eccentric road-side stands (how can a farm be a
vintage cheese shop and sell fruit at the same time?) and hidden towns are all
becoming an afterthought as freeways and highways are being rebuilt to go past
these places. Never mind the fly over states—in California there are now drive-thru towns.
Places like Delano , Pixler and Madera . I’m sure that the population signs
don’t lie, but I cannot imagine people actually living in these places. Unless
you have been granted the privilege of water in the Central
Valley , everything around you is brown, lifeless and void of
civilization. In Fresno ,
as I made a stop for a bite to eat, you can see houses boarded up, storefronts
vacated and transients begging for food. On the surface, this is where the California dream does
not exist. But dig deeper in San
Francisco and LA and you will see the same things—the
empty storefronts, the run-down houses, the countless number of people looking
for a place to sleep.
You come to a point in your life when you realize that you
can’t do all the things you wanted to do. Life gets in the way. You find
yourself in a groove at a job you hopefully like. You might get married. You
might have (please don’t) have kids. Eventually, the chains are placed upon
you, whether you want them to or not. And then we do things to try to cast off
those chains.
To travel American with its ghost in my passenger seat was
always—not a dream—but a hope of mine. I’ve wanted to drive from the Pacific to
Atlantic, wanted to see the Great Plains, traverse the South, cut through the Rockies . That may never happen. But at least I can do
this trip. Something that is probably less than one-tenth of what I could have
done. I can travel up-and-down the Left Coast of America and see the wonders
that it holds—and think, “If I had done this on the other side of America
