I'm Back
Dear Reader,
I know. It’s been a while.
Writing this newsletter for all of you (and myself) has been a joy. But it takes time and thinking and obsessing and reading. All I could think about, for the past several months, was Heather Cox Richardson, author of the DAILY newsletter “Letters from an American.’’ Smartly, she takes vacations, sending subscribers a lovely photo whenever she needs a break. So, to recharge, I decided to take the last month off too.
In that time, my wife and I have driven across the country. We left Vermont on Dec. 15, headed down to Washington, DC, and continued on to one of our favorite places: Pt. Reyes Station, CA.
Our goal was to escape Vermont’s brutal winter, spend time together, think new thoughts, and see the U.S.
Our need to escape winter is pretty simple to explain. Back home, when talking with friends and neighbors my age (over 60), I hear the same story. How do we escape the dark and the cold of our beloved Vermont? Should I continue working? What makes me happy? Should we sell the house and move to town? Should we leave Vermont altogether for warmth and sunlight?
So far, our answer to these questions is California. We are not Florida people or Bahamas people. We like exploring new places and understanding how communities work or don’t work. And there is always the allure American history has for me. Wherever you go in this country, there is always a statue or marker to lead you down a historical rabbit hole.
So Pt. Reyes it is. An incredible place. A national park created by President Kennedy in 1961 before the developers could ram a highway and amusement park through it. Sixty degrees most every day. Work in the morning, and hike in the afternoon.
But let’s focus on the journey instead of the destination.
For my wife and me, driving across the country forces us to be together. We thought we would listen to audiobooks and podcasts. But mostly it’s strategic thinking. Where will we stay tonight? Where can you get healthy food in Amarillo, TX? Should we take the highway or back roads? Should we see the Grand Canyon and spend one night there? (Yes) After a while, you fall into a rhythm, answering these questions together.
I’ll admit to you, I was dreading the trip. I had halfway given up on the US. My belief that we have given this country over to commerce and marketing at the expense of the common good has deepened in the last decade. Everything is a product now. The hedge funds and private equity guys own everything: the newspapers, the car companies, the hotels, and the farms. They also have most of the money.
Every city and town across America is the same: same motels, same restaurants, same Home Depots. It is so ungodly boring. The out-of-town business owners have made a science of extracting every last dollar (Dollar General) from the people of a community. We subsidize their parking lots, their turn signals, and their tax bills. The local Rotary Club meeting is gone. The local hardware store too. That invisible glue of a community where people looked out for each other has vanished.
Or that is what I believed. And for parts of our drive, my fears were proven right.
But… to avoid the sameness of America, we dug a little deeper. And America, in response, surprised us.
First, every time we approached a new city or town, we Googled the “historic’’ district. Second, we Googled “healthy food.’’ And third, we Googled the local bookstore.
It turns out that there is a small army of mostly young people out there who yearn for community and reject the sameness. They are starting cafes and coffee shops, community centers, and art studios. Trust me, there is a brewery in almost every town in America. And these folks are starting these enterprises in the abandoned downtowns cleaned out by Wal-Mart and Home Depot.
Davis, West Va, just two hours from Washington, DC, is nicknamed “Stumptown.” In the early 1900s, loggers stripped all the trees from the area for lumber, leaving only the stumps behind. It is still a barren place, but that is starting to change. A local has renovated the Billy Motel to include a sultry bar, a great menu of local food, and clean, modern bedrooms for just over $100 per night.
At one end of the bar, the chef is hanging with locals. The bartender has stumbled in from ski bumming in the west and is on year three of pouring drinks. A few visitors from DC sit by a real fireplace. It’s a good vibe, but it doesn’t stop there.
When young entrepreneurs start things, community and government funding follow. Just eight miles away, the Blackwater River has been named a state park. It boasts hiking and biking trails to take you into the wilderness. This far from DC, the houses are inexpensive. But there is a new, modern house in the middle of downtown. The coffee shop owner tells us it's an AirBnB, a sign of tensions to come.
Davis is in transition. It’s deciding whether to cling to its past or venture into an uncertain future. The guys with gun racks in their trucks look warily at the trucks with bike racks headed for the mountains. But the outdoor store in town welcomes them all and sells their stuff. You can get a cross-bow there. You can also get a kayak and your Darn Tough socks from Northfield, VT. Everybody needs those!
On our way into the southern midwest, we discover that the local bookstore still acts as a gateway into each community.
In Charleston, West Va., Taylor Books does it all. It’s a coffee shop. It’s a bookstore. It’s an art gallery. It’s a community gathering space with coffee klatches and discussion groups cloistered around tables in easy chairs. And there is an indie theater downstairs that shows little-known films.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a visit to the infamous massacre at “Black Wall Street’’ led us to Magic City Books, then to the Woody Guthrie Museum, and to a deeper understanding of all that happened and still happens in the city of oil and gas.
If you take the time to walk instead of drive, you will discover new communities being born. In Tulsa, we stumbled on an Ecuadorian restaurant run by a family. In Santa Fe, we went to Cafe Pasquals for breakfast and in St. Louis, we ate at a Thai place where Lewis and Clark began their journey.
Speaking of St. Louis, what a park!!!
Forest Park is one of the largest urban parks in the United States. At 1,300 acres it is bigger than Central Park. It’s filled with stone walls, park benches, and footbridges. Its skating rink was jammed. Walkers and bikers were everywhere. It’s an oasis in a city left for dead years ago. You can get a house here and build a life.
And then there are the people. In St. Louis, we stayed in a short-term rental room owned by a group of young people. They’re pooling their resources to renovate the big house and inject new energy into an old city. Should it be long-term housing? Probably. But the other side of that equation is that these entrepreneurs can make more money with short-term rentals and inject that money into other businesses and renovate a beautiful old house in the process.
A guy at a bar in Amarillo, TX was the most welcoming stranger on the trip. Six cocktails in, he was still coherent about his life, his interest in Vermont, and our lives. He introduced us to the owner, a woman who has run the place for 30 years, and his son, who sits down at the end of the bar with his wife who joined him after work.
The guy runs a van rental business. He makes a good living and employs his son and daughter-in-law. He’s a pillar of the community. I don’t think he is voting for Joe Biden, but he cares about his kids and his community. For just a small moment, I felt the three of us could fix Israel-Hamas, public schools, and climate change if we just had a little more time.
America is still out there. You just need to work a little harder to find it. Commerce is trying to destroy what unites us and what makes life worth living. But on this trip, I learned that there are people who won’t lie down. They are gonna start new businesses in West Va., open a film house in St. Louis, start a tech company in Santa Fe, and renovate a house in Holbrook, AZ.
We are all looking for the same thing in the end - a safe and nurturing community. A place where we can talk to each other. We don’t have to change the world. But getting along has a way of making you feel good about the people in this country. The communities we visited - most of them ransacked by the extraction economy of the 20th century - are filled with people trying to rebuild and make life worth living in the process.
It gives me hope for the future.
