By Andrea Scarpino
(Somewhere in Michigan, we think…)
Driving across the country for four days with three cats, suitcases, computers, a printer and scanner, kitchen essentials and Subway sandwiches fit into every available inch of car provides ample material and opportunity for contemplation.
For one thing, the scenery changes. Brown swathes of desert give way to redder swathes, then small shrubs and evergreen trees appear, then tall grasses and farms, rolling hills and deciduous trees, small lakes. The people change, too. Their accents lilt one way and then another, and their language changes—from soda to pop, from like to you know. Their clothing, bumper stickers, political signs change.
This is a huge country, I kept saying to Zac, which of course is something I should have already known. I’ve visited many countries where a drive from end to end can take just one day, where a train can bring you through multiple customs stops in just one afternoon. But passing through state after state, day after day, really hits home just how expansive the United States really is, how many different types of people call it home, how many different ideologies and time zones and landscapes and climates interact in one space.
Almost every presidential election, I look at the blue and red colored maps all the news organizations produce and say, We’d really be better off if this country were divided in two. I would be happy, in those moments, to give Texas back to Mexico—in fact, to concede much of the southern and middle states, to build my own country of coasts. But as I drove through some of those middle states (states that Californians like to call flyover), as I watched the changing landscapes and cultures, I wasn’t quite so sure.
And I worried at my snobbishness. Who am I, after all, to cut out entire states just because I don’t agree with their politics? Who am I to stand on my soapbox and decry entire citizenries stupid or less than? Yes, I was terrified by the man pumping gas in Utah with a pistol visibly strapped to his waist. But I have family members who own guns and I’m not sure I’m ready to disallow them from the Union. No, I’m not a big fan of the lack of vegetarian options at restaurants between Los Angeles and Chicago. But I’m also not sure that warrants complete state-wide ostracization.
Driving across the country with most of my worldly belongings squeezed into our car, I thought about the presidential candidate speeches that used to rankle me—how candidates talk about traveling our great country or meeting people in small town America. How they act like seeing our country unfold from a tour bus or airplane helps them understand something about Americans. But now, I almost feel like I get it. Something shifted in my thinking as I drove across the country, as I watched the incredible diversity of the United States unfold from the seat of a car. I’m not sure what to call it or how long this feeling will last, but I feel, for the first time in my life, like all the varied and strangely cut pieces of our country actually fit. That that gun toting Utah man belongs in our country just as clearly as I belong (if, indeed, I do belong). That there’s something magical about so many types of people and landscapes and accents and climates coming together into one country, one populace, somehow, somehow, making it work most of the time.
Poet and essayist Andrea Scarpino lives now in Marquette, MIchigan and is a regular contributor to POTB. You can visit her at: www.andreascarpino.com
Planet of the Blind 
Andrea,
I understand the theoretical and practical aspects of driving cross-country with a child as wjpeace has done. My parents drove cross-country in the cab of a Chevy pick-up truck with three children tucked away in a separated camper space. If the truck violently swerved off the road at any point during the trip, us kids all knew that my father soon would be arriving at the back door to attempt to terrify us into calmer behavior. He usually suceeded for at least the next half-hour of the road trip. But three cats?!?! How is this managed? You must expand on this. Were drugs involved (massive doses of catnip perhaps)? Hypnosis? Did you need to wear protective clothing? How did you enter and exit the car throughout the trip? Perhaps you didn’t even attempt this. Perhaps this was the reason for the many Subway sandwiches that you mentioned. My thanks for any enlightenment that you might provide.
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I have driven across the USA with my son. One understands in a visceral way why the midwest is called America’s bread basket. I consider myself lucky having had this experience. In an idea world all Americans should have the experience we did.
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Hi Andrea,
Do you know that it’s actually drizzling today in the L.A. basin? Drizzling in July! Water condensation from the immense clouds of fireworks smoke? Go figure.
It’s interesting to think about where we’d be if our “big” domestic wars never happened:
The Revolutionary Way: We’d probably be like (ulp!) Canada now (ya know?)
The Civil War: People being abused by slavery would have immigrated north from the newly formed Confederacy to the U.S., and we would’ve been happy to have ’em! If we ever decide to break it up, I only hope that we can do it by negotiation, rather than wholesale slaughter! Wouldn’t that be nice? Ah, a girl can dream.
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