No. 173 - Americans Aren’t Lost … America Is
There is something special about touring our country
…that gets the old Red, White, and Blue pumping through my patriotic heart.
“I feel connected with the American spirit… I want to meet the people who call these parts of our country home.”
As I pass farms that roll into infinity, and houses from another century, and gas stations from another era, and diners that have served locals for generations, and abandoned parks with lonely swing sets, and rusted farm equipment, and high school football stadiums swelling with pride, and one-light towns with small post offices … I feel connected with the American spirit.
I want to meet the people who call these parts of our country home.
Hope Outside the Cities
I guess I feel a peculiar sense of hope when I get out of the big cities – places where people work hard… six, seven days a week – where the turmoil and rottenness along the Potomac might as well be a million miles away – where Americans of every color and creed live their lives doing the best they can with the tools they have.
This is why I travel.
America Is My Home
My connection with my nation is felt most deeply when I’m not home. Call me a vagabond, a gypsy, etc… I call myself a drifter. America is my home – not the South, not the Pacific Northwest, not anywhere … this whole nation is home.
The Prettiest Parts
I’ve long said the prettiest parts of our country are in Northern California, the Rockies, the coasts and hills and hamlets of New England, beneath the Spanish moss along the coastal South, the deserts of the Southwest, and the islands of Washington State.
“Towns where American flags fly from every light pole.”
But if we light another cigar, I’ll dive into small towns you’ve probably never heard of… towns where American flags fly from every light pole. Towns where a President visited years ago and they still take care of the sign commemorating the occasion – even if the industry that built the town abandoned it. Towns where volunteers work at the local library, clean up riverbeds, and put two months of planning into an annual Fourth of July parade.
Americans Aren’t Lost – But America Is
It’s a paradox, I know. The majority of us wake up every day with one goal: to get through the day – to comb the kids’ hair, get them to school on time, make sure they’re fed, make sure we get to work on time, and do our best in whatever it is we do. It’s a full-time job making ends meet for most of us.
We don’t have time to study every candidate running for office, let alone every judge, coroner, and dog catcher. If we’re lucky, we may get to watch the nightly “news” to see what our national “leaders” have done to ruin our country.
But by the time we get home, eat, and, God willing, put our feet up, we’re tired.
The D.C. Disconnect
We know that in a few hours it’s gonna start all over again – rinse and repeat until we’re 65 without a fully funded 401(k) and a stack of bills that will only cease to exist when we cease to exist.
It’s an exhausting existence.
But we do our best. We work hard, save where we can, and collectively question how a congressman or senator making $174,000 a year with two or three homes can retire with millions of dollars – all the while watching the national deficit climb into the tens of trillions.
For the average American, they look at the national debt no different than they look at their own debt – as in, who, how, and when will it be addressed – let alone paid back? Surely you can’t assume more and more debt without a consequence, right?
Not to mention most folks cannot comprehend what a trillion dollars looks like – let alone almost forty trillion.
The Burden We Carry
It’s a burden all taxpaying Americans carry. And no one in D.C. seems to give a damn about it. Yet we, the “normal” people, continue to pay our taxes to a government that is hellbent on breaking the economic back of OUR country.
It’s maddening – and no one is listening to us.
My American Family
On my travels I wonder about the people who live in the houses I drive by. I wonder about the people who attend the churches, cheer in sporting arenas, go to the theaters, fish the rivers, garden the front yards – I wonder about their lives, their dreams, their worries.
Though I don’t know them, I care about them because, to me, they’re my family too. All Americans are part of a family. And like any family, there are disagreements, but families move on towards the greater good because they must to survive.
These are thoughts that occupy my mind when I’m driving through our country.
Three Men – And Waiting for the Fourth
I’ve believed since my college days that God brought three men into the American experiment:
George Washington – for obvious reasons. We needed a leader and, as history has shown, his appointment was divine.
Abraham Lincoln – someone needed to keep this country of ours together.
Martin Luther King, Jr. – I’m at a loss for words here. King is not only a national treasure, but an international treasure.
But I’ve always wondered who’d be the fourth. Who’d be the person to bring us back together?
The Question on the Road
Lord knows we’re in trouble. To be sure, though, we’ve been down this road before. America has always been a powder keg of sorts. But we’re trending down a dangerous path.
As I drive down that ribbon of highway, I wonder who will be that person. As I pass those homes and Little League fields and swimming holes, I wonder if that person lives there.
Is he, or she, sitting in a kindergarten class? Or maybe they’re a lumberjack, a lifeguard, or a kid who’s living in a hellish existence inside a city. Maybe they haven’t been born. I wonder about these things.
“It’s why I travel. It’s why I prefer road trips. It’s why I’m a drifter.”
*Composed, Edited, and Published at The Cabin in Atlanta, GA
