Ultimate Road Trip Mix: Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50(something)

#386) “Into the Night” by Benny Mardones – “Into the Night” sometimes gets negative chatter for a couple of reasons:

1) The video, which is … I don’t know, how should I put this: not in any way, shape, form or fashion complementary to the song. I try to judge old stuff fairly, through my very own jerry-rigged lens of what I know about the times in which they happened. I'm pretty good at adjusting for the inflation of changing sensibilities as time passes. But the video for this song is especially tough to watch. Even by 1980 standards, pre-MTV, pre-image over everything, it’s cringey the way the video for “Friday” by Rebecca Black is cringey. The project could have used an advisor, someone with fresh, objective eyes to make suggestions, to pull Benny aside, perhaps, and say, “Look, dude, the song's great, but I got some notes on the video I would very much like to run by you ..."

2) The lyrics…which are … I don’t know, how should I put this: great actually. But there's that one line, the very first line in the song: “She’s just sixteen years old / leave her alone…”

In this vigilant world, that line would never fly. And, yes, at face value, it shouldn’t. It's also a bit cringey … at face value. But to be sure, the second part of the line is a warning to leave her alone, not get her phone number, and more to the point, I think it’s important to monitor how our minds engage the notion of censorship, scrutinize the where, when and why of labeling any creative expression, any expression at all, “inappropriate" or "problematic". This is especially important to do as time passes and everything finds its forever home in the quiet, sunlit repository of historical context. 

Mardones, who passed away in 2020, had a ready explanation for the origin of the song and that first line in particular, having to do with him living next door to a family that had a teenage girl in the house. Around the time he started writing the music that would eventually become the album, Never Run, Never Hide, a buddy apparently did once make a comment about this girl, to which Benny said “hey, she's just sixteen, leave her alone”… etc., etc. The rest is one-hit-wonder history.

Okay, fair enough. But I don’t really think that explanation, or any other, is necessary. “Into the Night”, like all songs, movies, TV shows and novels, like anything creative, is a work of fiction, and open to interpretation. Yes, the words “she’s just sixteen years old” are heard, but so what?  I’ve known this song a long time, it was hitting me in enticing ways when I was ten (six years younger than 16!), and in spite of the disillusioning video (which I didn't actually ever see until about three years ago ... damn you YouTube!), there is nothing in it to make the listener think the character singing, the "protagonist" (so to speak), is anything other than a young man, himself sixteen years old, or seventeen, or eighteen, and it is a protective father or mother, or older sister or brother, who has spoken these words to him, warned him to leave her alone, not Chris Hansen on Dateline.  

People overthink things, look for trouble, actively seek out a reason to be outraged, and that’s no way to live. It’s just a song. It can and does mean anything the listener wants it to. And while a debate about how good or bad a song it is may be warranted, at no time have I ever thought it was a non-fiction account of 33-year-old Benny Mardones grooming a teenage girl. I mean, come on, that’s just ridiculous. That wouldn't have flown even in 1980.

To me, in adulthood, the song reads as a gripping account of what I remember about being in love at that age. Evidence to support this can be found in the rest of the lyrics, which are quite good, intimate, vulnerable but smoldering, exactly how young love tends to play out. Confession: I was in love with a teenage girl once in my past, and lines like, “It’s like having a dream where nobody has a heart”, and, “I can’t measure my love, there’s nothing to compare it to” are pretty much exactly what it felt like. It was never so pleasant as it was torturous, but I craved it just the same. And yes, there was a huge age difference at play with this seventeen-year-old that I was obsessed over, but it was all okay. Why? Because I was fifteen.  

Fifteen, and yeah, "Into the Night" pretty much told the story of what I was feeling, and how it was making me feel.

But where the song really punches hardest is musically. For my money, it is among the most potent rock ballads ever recorded, really something akin to sumptuous - the thick, lurching rhythm, syncopated guitar strikes, leathery bass line standing guard as a fever-dream piano twirls and skitters its way across an intersection like St. Elmo's fire. It's a musical left hook that very much evokes thoughts of desire, longing, and yes, a certain desperation, even a permeant shame and regret for it all. Mardones’ vocals are appropriately anguished, reflecting the kind of pain that accompanies unrequited, forbidden or interrupted love. And at the end, as the fadeout commences like a moonrise, it really does sound like the whole emotionally messy business disappears into the night.

And the truth is, in spite of what I think the lyrics are about, I don't really associate anyone under the age of 21 with this song, on account of where I mostly remember hearing it when I was a kid. In the very early 80s, as I was riding my banana seater around town and the song was still kind of new and likely still being considered by some to be Mardones’ springboard to rock god immortality one day, I only ever heard it in places where grown-ups were. 

Not older kids or teens, but grownups. Grown-ups gathering in the loungey, local supper club/tavern-type places my parents frequented. They were usually town adjacent, and always down-to-earth (read: local) enough to be interesting without ever being sketchy. The dining room shared the same space with a long bar. Sometimes there was a river rock fireplace in the corner, but there was always trophy fish on the walls, an ashtray at every table, a happy hour, a jukebox and a great Friday fish fry, which turned into live music "'til 1 a.m.!" around 9.

My parents never stayed that late, but they were denizens of these places in the evening and twilight hours. Picking my through that crowd of middle-aged, middle to upper middle-class 70s gents and 80s ladies, “Into the Night” was thumping out of any and every jukebox I crossed paths with. I bummed a quarter here and there and played it myself more than once, and long before I knew what it was like to be in love with anyone, it made me feel things, made me feel some type of way (as the kids say), which I could never have described, but couldn't possibly ignore.

"And I would wait 'til the end of time for you ..."

#387) “Look What You’ve Done to Me” by Boz Scaggs – I've come to realize in recent years that Boz Scaggs is underrated (or perhaps underappreciated) as a performer and songwriter, and as Boz Scaggs songs go, “Look What You’ve Done to Me” is surely underrated and/or underappreciated.

I think the song might suffer a bit from its association with the 1980 movie “Urban Cowboy”, not because there's anything wrong with the movie necessarily, just because the song is so damn good, such an exquisitely rendered ballad, it almost seems a shame to share it.

And really, how could it not have been great? Co-written by Scaggs and David Foster, whose contributions have helped shape a lot of songs now considered classics, it features the members of the group Toto playing and The Eagles singing background vocals. Close, fragile piano chords and strategic key progressions work and play well with Scaggs unusual vocals, coming together to form a psychologically haunting brew that never turns sappy. A brew that is simply not done justice and will never be fully satisfied in its role as the “love theme” for any movie.

Like "Into the Night", it’s one of those songs that played a more richly textured role in my childhood than merely being another song on the radio. I grew up in a small struggling town that was quiet a lot of the time, quiet as the sun came up and quiet as the sun went down, and the mildly erratic blush of “Look What You’ve Done to Me” is what I remember so many of those days sounding like. There was always a radio on in the background somewhere, and always a mist of small-town loneliness condensing out of the the air on a dim Saturday morning or darkening Tuesday evening as the last daylight slid out through the window above the kitchen sink. 

For better or worse, "Look What You've Done to Me" still reflects this low-grade anxiety over a day that hasn't really done anything wrong but is making me feel low just the same. 

"Hope they never end this song / This could take us all night long ... "

Ultimate Road Trip Mix: Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50(something)

#384) “Will You be Staying After Sunday” by The Peppermint Rainbow - I was born into a world of Sunshine Pop, man. Technically, its hey-day was the late sixties, but I was lucky for where I grew up. Those close chilly harmonies and striated string notes strung like clothesline between bright white clouds, that rummage closet assemblage of acoustic guitar, horns, harps and harpsichord, that tambourine rattle pairing so well with the simple metallic tap of a 3-piece kit, was still being played on our town’s small, isolated radio station through the Carter administration, still actively part of its morning and afternoon playlists, in between which painfully local spots and weather forecasts were heard.

Which meant that in any space where musical sound was tinkling and crinkling out of tiny, tinny, wired tweeters, Sunshine Pop was there, hanging around the periphery of my consciousness, trimming all hard edges like garland, and yes, helping me put faces with the names of the grownups in my life, whom it was only just yesterday I had started to really be aware of.  

And if not from a radio, then some off-brand version of that oft-mimicked sound was sure to be heard in other places - movie soundtracks, TV theme songs, commercial jingles and most certainly children’s programming. From Saturday morning cartoons, to PBS at lunchtime to after-school specials, throughout the 1970s a veritable musical rainbow of Burt Bacarach/Roger Nichols/Paul Williams-inspired melodies and arrangements accompanied the delivery of an exquisite blend of information, comfort, virtue signaling and just a little plainclothes angst to Generation X as they emerged from diapers and learned to ride bikes.

I’m happy to have been born into it, kind of relieved, actually, that my parents were easy listeners as opposed to rock and rollers. Sunshine Pop was extremely good music to be a little kid to, and no other song better exemplifies the auditory essence of the genre than “Will You Be Staying After Sunday?” by The Peppermint Rainbow, released in the spring of 1969.  

That "essence" was propagated not only by the practice of prioritizing melody and harmony over vocals and rhythm, but also by being deceptively cheery. The subtext of so much Sunshine Pop often involved as much cloud cover as sunshine. On the surface, "Will You be Staying After Sunday?" is musically light and airy, almost sounds like the "sunshine" itself, but the woman singing, the protagonist if you will, is struggling with what's coming. There is a subtle element of foreboding afoot, a disquiet that sounds distant, like a storm on the horizon. You're not necessarily involved, and it isn't necessarily affecting you, but you're aware of it. Aware that the sunny skies might not last, that there is likely to be, at the very least, a sun shower, but possibly, possibly, a small rain-wrapped tornado wrecking afternoon and evening plans.

That very kind of dynamic tension did nothing less than color the early perceptions of this Gen X'er, as he emerged from diapers and learned to ride a bike.

"Don't let a lonely Monday come again ..."

#385) “Desert Moon” by Dennis DeYoung – This song haunts me. Not so much for the song itself, although I do think that, for all it ever wanted or tried to be, "Desert Moon", released in autumn 1984, holds up better than many other, "FM 95.7 Light Hits..." staples. Some of the lyrics are actually pretty good ... poetic.

But what I remember most about it is the video.

In it, Dennis DeYoung returns home, presumably for a high school reunion, and over the course of a weekend, it would seem a real sun-drenched, “you can’t go home again” vibe is engaged by Dennis and his buddies. There was a girl he loved who moved away, and clearly he's not forgotten her, and this ongoing longing sullies the visit. 

It's a video from the golden age of MTV, when, well, first of all, the "M" still stood for music, but also a time period when many new videos were trying cinematic themes on for size. That simply doesn't happen anymore. Not the same way. I mean, just the notion of depicting something so Alan Alda-ish as a high school reunion weekend seems unlikely ever to happen in a video for a Top 10 single nowadays.  And even at the time, it might have been better suited for VH-1 than MTV.

I wasn't 28 or 38 in 1985, I was twelve, but a weird kid, I guess, a fan of Alan Alda's The Four Seasons actually, so I responded to the drippy melancholy depicted in the video, to the notion of times and people changing in some ways and not changing in other ways. I was feeling the anxiety of my older brother graduating high school and leaving the house for good, and the "brothers" aspect of the video is probably what initially got my attention. DeYoung is greeted home by his younger brother at the beginning, and his younger brother sees him off at the end, leaving him waiting for a train out of town, where they share these final potent words:  

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“I don’t know ... maybe Chicago.”

It reads a bit corny now, but it was nothing less than evocative when I was twelve.

And fine, I admit: it still kind of is.

 "When a whistle cut the night, and shook silence from our lives..."

You CAN go home again, but without a specific reason, you probably shouldn't

Every couple years, I try to take a trip home in the third week of June, because I'm addicted to the long, lingering days and short, short nights that crowd around the summer solstice in the northern latitudes where I grew up. 

Well, relatively northern: northern Wisconsin, where in summertime, June specifically, Lupine grow along roadsides in profuse propagations of purple and pink and the sun's westbound departure each night can only ever be described as reluctant. This phenomenon of late-lingering twilight tormented me as a little kid, having just been put to bed and expected to fall asleep when there was still a heapin' helpin' of useable (playable) daylight falling through my bedroom window at 9, 9:30, 10 o' clock and beyond. Enough light at 10, at least, to feel comfortable hanging out on the front porch a little, maybe daring to dart into the yard right to the edge of the porchlight's influence. Often, I heard my older brother and all the older neighbor kids doing just that while I was stuck in bed, trying to force myself to sleep, resenting every minute of it.

In adulthood, I've developed a certain devotion to the northern summer night's ultra-slow seduction. I'd love one day to journey way up north, past Canada to Alaska, or ideally Scandinavia, to witness a day that never ends, a true midnight sun. But for now, this third week in June spent in the town I grew up in, on the shores of Lake Superior, just a well-skipped rock across the water from Canada, will have to do. It's far enough north to provide a little savory taste. 

I still think of it as a homecoming when I visit, but truth is, my hometown is not "home" anymore. I moved away several years ago. I still live in the Midwest, but not the Northwoods, which anyone who grew up in, say, northern Minnesota, northern Wisconsin or the UP of Michigan will attest certainly reads Midwestern at first glance, but has its own distinctive look, feel and culture. It's never so flat or expansive here, less proud farmland, more sullen (sometimes sulky) woodland, a place where falling afternoon sunlight must search for the ground, picking its way through dense clusters of trees that obscure the view in every direction, grow right up to the shoulder of the road for miles-long stretches, and tend to be more coniferous than deciduous. 

Also, the slant of daylight is different where I grew up, a phenomenon related to the curvature of the Earth and its relationship to the sun providing the light from 93 million miles away. I never noticed this until I left and started coming back periodically. Yes, it's entirely possible I'm imagining it, and yes, with the click of a mouse or swipe of a finger, I could find out for myself. But I choose to keep believing I've spotted observable evidence that the daylight shifts hue - in ever subtle gradients - the further north I travel, the closer to "home" I get.

LUPINUS ARCTICUS - Trimming northern roadsides every June

I've enjoyed my periodic homecomings over the last decade, always an opportunity for reflection, a little sentimentality, which like so much else in life can be beneficial in moderation, and I know I'm not the only one. "Coming home" after a long absence has been written about in books, sung about in songs and captured in movies countless times over the years, usually in a small-town context, but I would imagine the experience is the same for people returning to big cities too, because at the end of the day, it's not so much about the community as it is the person returning. Really, why should returning after 20 years to an urban stoop on an inner-city street with a fire hydrant at the end of the block hit any different than returning to a dusty main street with lots of vacant store fronts running over a ravine on the way to the softball park with a county trunk running past it? 

City or country, it's your cradle, it's what you knew first and foremost for a big portion of your formative years. Coming home is really only about memories being sculpted by the hands of time, and I admit, I indulge the notion whenever I return to my hometown. Often, just for something to do during the 4-hour drive, I will write an improv movie treatment in my mind, in which I'm the star returning. 

This mental cosplay is easy to do, given a) I grew up entirely in one town, and b) I didn't actually leave until I was in my thirties, which means I have not only childhood memories but a generous portion of adult memories to write into the script, to brush and primp gently in the mirror of my mind's eye whenever I roll into town and glimpse the big lake I grew up on with fresh eyes.  

Something is different this time, though. 

In the past, trips home were kept in balance by an agenda. I always had a reason to be coming home, something for me to do, to take care of, someone to visit or meet up with. An agenda kept me focused on the here and now, away from any seductive but ultimately disenchanting deep dive into the past, to dwelling for too long in the basement of my brain, where boxes and boxes of memories get stored.

But a paradigm shift has taken place in my life since I last visited three years ago. A lot has changed. Loved ones have passed away, friends have moved on (and passed away). My parents are gone. I have no ties to the area now, and as a result, my hometown has become a place holding only memories, rather than that crucial blend of memories with new, developing moments to emulsify the experience into something pleasant, or at least satisfying. 

NORTHWOODS THRUWAY - A Midwestern drive to be sure, but the tree line's

invasive creep right up to the edge of the road indicates in no uncertain terms

that you're somewhere a little more North than merely Mid or West.

With the exception of one family member, there's simply nobody around anymore, and so I'm left only to hang out by myself and consume all those memories. And consuming too many memories is sort of like consuming too many doughnuts: the first is delicious, so yes, I'll have another one, please. And why not, you only live once, hit me again with a third! 

But then I keep snarfing, turn gluttonous, start thinking that if I don't have just one more I'll be missing out. Time disappears lickety split, and before I know it, that baker's dozen of cream-filled rings, holes, ears, johns, fritters and crullers has banded together and is now forming a groaning brick in my colon.

So it is with memories, if I'm not careful: they too can form a groaning brick in the basement of my brain.

Driving around on this almost sensually protracted June evening (June 19, to be exact, close to that most lovely shortest of short short nights), I'm noticing things about my town, things I was always aware of but have never really stood back and taken a good look at, not with fresh eyes. Or at least not with fresh eyes so completely undistracted by anything better to look at.

A rust belt casualty of America's industrial decline in the time I was growing up, my hometown possessed a love-hate relationship with its early 20th century hey-day, which, like a lot of other early 20th century hey-days, started to fizzle out in the 50s and 60s, and continued fizzling in dribs and drabs for decades after, as each remaining mine, plant and factory closed, businesses shuttered and local schools consolidated.

Being a small town of not even ten thousand residents probably helped blunt the impact of that decline, because it never actually died completely. In certain critical ways it remained the hub of the region, and in the 90s and 2000s, started trying to reconcile its past with initiatives to revitalize and re-identify in the future, a process that started with simply cleaning itself up. 

To that end, the abandoned train tracks and cars, chunks of re-barred concrete, blankets of taconite pellets, unused docks and wood pilings - essentially the post-industrial jungle gym I and others of Gen X played on growing up - were removed. The shoreline was prettied up with walking trails, a marina, an historic hotel and green space holding it all together, while at the same time, in what reads to me as great irony, the blight it was trying so hard to scrub away started getting memorialized in "historic" murals on the sides of downtown buildings, depicting my town's contribution to a roaring industrial age and various war efforts. The goal was to attract visitors or at least get them to stop for a while on their way to someplace else, and all of it was centered around the town's most vital and precious resource, the actual thing that blunted the impact of the decline: Lake Superior.  

But it seems nothing has ever been able to stick, nothing has ever really taken root. I won't venture an opinion why, it simply never became the tourist destination it wanted to be and probably should have been, and distance to market, among other factors, has kept it from becoming a place where anything gets made in quantities great enough to have any impact. 

To be sure, the news is not all bad, at least not all that different from other small towns affected by the Galactic shift in American manufacturing, technology and culture over the last 60 years. But this summer, with so much time on my hands, the decay, the dilapidation and most notably the tired slant of lingering evening sunlight revealing it, is much more apparent. 

What's more, and I guess this is really the issue, when I'm out and about, I don't recognize anyone. I encounter no friends or friends of friends, no old co-workers or classmates, nobody who recognizes me and comes up to say hello. It's all young people around here now. Not kids, but young adults with kids of their own, in whose eyes I see no glimpse whatsoever of someone I may have known once, someone I grew up next door to, or once whiled away a stale, gray Wednesday morning smoke break with. 

I come to realize that's it's not really the town itself that has changed. It hasn't gotten better or worse; it is, in fact, carrying on as it always has, caught somewhere in that middle place between laying down to die and standing up to keep fighting. 

I'm just not part of it. I don't know anybody here anymore. Being somewhere where nobody knows your name can be a pleasant sensation when you're traveling, but this isn't traveling. This is supposed to be a homecoming. I'm supposed to know people, see them around here and there, catch up a little, even if only briefly while standing in line at a convenience store, or even just an over-the-shoulder acknowledgement as we pass in a Wal-Mart aisle.  

But there's been none of that on this visit. It's a rattling and lonely feeling to realize your hometown has become a town full of strangers.

The evening sunlight drapes itself damply across quiet intersections where only occasionally a car passes or a stranger crosses with a dog or a baby stroller.  I feel like I'm on that big road trip, the one I've been planning for years, feel as though I'm stopped in a random town in a random state. Sure, it very much looks like my hometown. "A dusty main street with lots of vacant store fronts running over a ravine on the way to the softball park with a county trunk running past it..."  But it's not my hometown. It can't be. The streets, avenues and alleys, bars, businesses and ballparks are right. But the faces are all wrong. 

I'm led to wonder, for the first time ever, if I may not be back this way again. 

Elegy in Purple

Sooo ... I guess I turned 50. 

More than a decade ago, around the time I was taking my first reluctant steps into my forties, I vowed to take a solo cross-country road trip by the time I hit the big 5-0. Inspired by the concept of being nebulous (as I thought of it), I set up this page to document the ... I don't know ... the "journey", I guess, a move I knew was likely a bit premature. I knew the trip wasn't going to happen overnight, that there would be some lead-up that could very well run into years, but wanting to get and keep myself in the right preparatory headspace, I established the "...by age 50" deadline and started posting weekly with any road trip-related material I could think of. This was a mix of things, ranging from random stuff I saw in society so inexplicable, objectionable or repugnant it made me want to be "nebulous", to the best type of RV for an extended road trip (class B all the way!), to longplay thoughts on what music I would take along with me, the ultimate playlist for my 14,000-mile drive through 48 states in under 50 years. That last was an easy prescription; I could go on and on about music as long as I needed to, maintaining the desired headspace, biding my time until the time finally came to hit the highway. I spent most of the 2010s doing just that: biding my time.

And wow, has that time flown. In the wink of an eye all those 2010s were gone, taking that lofty "by age 50" deadline with them. What's more, sometime in 2019 I fell behind in my posts, kind of lost the thread of what up until that point had been a strict weekly schedule I actually managed to hold to for a while. There was no reason for this. No tragedy befell me, no upheaval, nothing major jumped up and started tearing my attention away, and I can't say I lost interest in the project (certainly never lost interest in prattling on about music); I did, indeed, keep myself in the right headspace. I just got distracted, and lazy. The sad truth: I've always been a little distracted and lazy. I have no one to blame for that other than myself.

"...by age 50" never happened, but I'm not too concerned; I could still take the trip. It's unlikely to happen this year, and probably not next year, but I still hold out hope. I'm still anticipating, making plans, running logistics through my head, still adding to my music playlist, and in response to that self-imposed deadline blowing my hair back as it shot past at breakneck speed, I've simply altered the mission statement to reflect the new reality: One Drive, 48 States, in 50(something) Years.  

1/48/50(something), if you will ... and if I dare.  

I'm going to continue to post here. Although perhaps not as regularly as once per week, I will nevertheless look to keep the dream alive, and if it never happens then it never happens. That will be too bad, but I'll be okay with it. Life is too short for a lot of things - anger, grudges, pettiness, etc. - and certainly too short for the gross habit of actively collecting regrets, Pokémon Go-style. The bumper sticker is correct, shit happens, but conversely, sometimes shit doesn't happen.  There's a lesson in that too.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to focus on posting in this space whenever I go anywhere new, for any reason, an area of opportunity I have not seized on much in recent years, at least not as much as I could have.  I've traveled plenty in the last decade but haven't always written about those travels. A share-worthy "road trip" doesn't have to be a cross-country undertaking, doesn't even require leaving the state. Any time I drive somewhere I haven't been before, whenever I find myself in a place where nobody knows me, I am, in effect, nebulous (as I still think of it), and feel I should be trying to capture that psychologically sensual situation in words, even if it never gets read by anyone, even if it turns out to be more private journaling than public blogging. 

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However, these days there is something else to consider, something I never thought I would have to when I started this in 2013. I always kept in mind the possibility that my trip might not happen before I turned 50, and that, indeed, it might not happen at all. I knew I was setting myself up for a conspicuous failure by establishing a deadline, willingly assuming a measure of responsibility to the likelihood that any number of life's shit sandwiches would keep the trip from happening by constantly forcing me to push my plans back, like that utterly depressing first scene in the movie Up.  And I was well aware going in that simply the notion of driving across the entire country, hitting all 48 contiguous in one fell swoop, is a lofty goal for anyone, of any means.

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But now, after another celebrated summer season not on an extended road trip, it's not me driving across the country I'm worried about so much as the country I've wanted to drive across since I was thirteen. I'll be okay if my big road trip doesn't happen for legitimate, "shit sandwich"-related reasons, but not okay if it doesn't happen because there is no longer a country to see, that is, the country that I grew up in: divided but standing, silly but stable, laughable but lustrous and kind of awesome, with more bringing us together than tearing us apart, and the fringe types still resigned to the fringes.

​

This is not a political diatribe. It's not about red or blue, liberal or conservative. I have opinions, but all-in-all, I'm about as centrist as can be, and for this, it might be said this post is about red and blue, those inflexible, binary labels we slap on ourselves and each other and our increasing inability, and/or unwillingness, to step out from under them, identify as different hues of the same American color scheme, which if we really commit to the red and blue idents should absolutely make Purple. 

It's about how dangerously close my country 'tis of thee seems - sometimes - to disintegrating into fractious chaos that heretofore only happened overseas, hurling headlong toward a terrifyingly unstable future of closed borders, occupied sections and hastily rewritten governments, all these gorgeous red and blue states, with gorgeous "red" and "blue" cultures living next door to one another, amongst each other even, becoming red and blue territories, the stability that once made us a cohesive society, a single place so vast and diverse and, for this, luminously world-leading in all the ways that count, disintegrating before my eyes. 

​

Every American alive today, from, say, age 10 to 100, has enjoyed a presumed quality of life - relatively safe, stable and bejeweled with opportunity, cup runneth over with plenty of everything (not the least of which, free time) to get minds wandering, eyes laughing, hearts racing, creative juices flowing, hands busy, moving and working toward the future with anticipation, and with options available to those among us who are struggling.  There have always been problems, yes, always some uncertainty, injustices, racial strife, gender inequality, tensions between haves and have-nots, and amidst this an ever-present third rail of liberal v conservative conflict. But the country continuing on in spite of it all was never in question, not like it is now.

It is something that hasn't happened, and for this fact, something that may never, a worst-case scenario that for now remains safely encased in the sparkly, "lights, camera, action!" aesthetic of Hollywood. I just never thought it would be something any American would ever have to think about at all, could never have imagined, while sitting in my Future Trends class in the winter of 1991, a second Civil War. Even if the teacher had prompted me back then to describe how it might happen and what it might look like, I would never have taken whatever I (or anyone else in the class) came up with seriously.  

But it can be argued that momentum to spin us wildly away from the stability of my lifetime is already in play in certain places. Whatever side you come down on politically, each has its fringe element who, driven by anger, intolerance and/or a painfully myopic view of the world, refuse to listen to anything or anyone outside their bubble, are reinforced on the reg by social media (which is anything but "social"), and actively use that platform to spread dis and misinformation around the globe at the speed of light. You might see them as radical, but they see themselves as heroes fighting the good fight.

Even when politics are not involved, we seem to be agitated now, teetering on the edge of something that, no matter what the conversation is about or who it involves, always seems to wheel back around to Democrat v Republican, liberal v conservative, red state v blue state. It's a political powder keg, the likes of which we've never had to deal with before, not since the 1960s, but to which I would argue we are far more vulnerable now than we were back then.

Politics used to be the boring shit on C-SPAN most people flipped past. And while flipping past on our way to the brain rot awaiting us on other channels might not have been the best way to spend the last 50 years, now it seems we've swung too far in the opposite direction.  Politics used to be one of the things we didn't talk about in mixed company, not so much because it could lead to ruining Thanksgiving dinner, but because it could fucking wait. It wasn't entirely (or at all) urgent. It wasn't the colors we donned before entering a room, wasn't anything we felt must be presented to complete strangers through our lifestyle. For better or worse, it was not the most important thing going on in a country that ticked along nicely in spite of it all, a country where "mixed company" didn't have to be forced, it just happened a lot, probably more so than today, so naturally led to a shortlist of topics everyone tacitly agreed should be avoided, a country that made progress here and there while still keeping its shit together, still leaving room for traditions, a continuous give-and-take that for most people reinforced the spirit of "my country 'tis of thee" as they lived their lives.

A road trip across this country holds far less appeal, almost no appeal, if there will be states, cities, places, I can't get to anymore. What a frightening, but also ugly, ugly, motherfugly thought. The whole point of "1/48/50" was to see all the contiguous lower 48 states in one drive-through, over a series of months, because it was something that I could do, not only without the bullshit of having to show an ID at the next state line, but without any thought given to potentially being somewhere I'm not supposed to be, some manifestation of the "other" America. 

That's at the very heart of the "Great American Road Trip" - all the different places and faces and cultures and ways to spend a Saturday night, Sunday morning or Tuesday afternoon at our fingertips, 48 unique states' worth (Alaska and Hawaii are, of course, no less part of the Purple, but separate discussions when discussing a road trip, which I think I still am...), and in them, multiple counties, each one with its own unique way to present itself, something it's proud of, something it wants to share. And within every one of those counties there are cities and towns, same deal. And if you are inclined, and can afford it, you really can see it all in one drive. And if you can't afford it, in terms of either money or time (or both), most of us can still take a few days, drive somewhere not too far away and see something new, something different but still American. Still ours.

I strenuously rebuke any talk, from any public figure or entity, of splitting up this beautiful blob of everything. "National divorce" my ass, and I bristle whenever I hear civil war talk, even in passing, even if only with a curious but not entirely serious sense of foreboding. Fuck that. That is the opposite of what should be happening. If I can't get into Idaho, or Maine, or New Mexico, or if any part of the aforementioned states, counties or communities turn into "occupied" sections where travel is considered something even as mild as "inadvisable" in some worst-case dystopian future where insurgencies are creating Middle Eastern Bloc-style roadblocks, there will be no point to doing it at all.

Yes, an American road trip is as much a celebration as anything, and on 1/48/50(something), I want to see all of it, not just some of it. I want to see the Deep South, Southwest, Northwest, Northwoods, Great Plains and Lakes, Big Apples and Skies, Grand Canyons, Tetons, Forks, Rapids and every single one of the little rivers, bluffs, crevasses, meadows, towns, roads and friggin' casinos with the prefix "Grand" along the way. 

I want to see snow-capped mountains hoisting the horizon from the unbridled vantage point of an Interstate. I want to see lunar landscapes, bayous, northwoods and redwoods threaded by small two-lane highways. I want to experience crashing ocean waves from Asia and crashing ocean waves from Europe eroding impossible shorelines.

And no, I would never dare to forget the flyover states. I grew up in flyover country after all, and I'm a big believer that there is nothing "flyover" about any of it. Even in places time has clearly passed by you just need some imagination, some presence of mind, maybe a little bit of self-awareness or reflection, and you too can come to understand the profound beauty found in the way corn sweats on a blistering July afternoon in the middle of Not-So-Nowhere, Iowa.  You might receive a message from the last of the evening light glinting off a window above Not-So-Nowhere, Arkansas's downtown, maybe about how time never really passes anything by, it's still always there, everywhere, unboxing, happening.  Open your mind just a little and you will be sure never to miss the unincorporated crossroads on the edge of Not-So-Nowhere, Washington, where a single blinking stoplight strung above and swaying in the breeze might provide a sense that somebody was by there, if not recently, then once, and someone will be by there again, if not soon, eventually. And you'll know they were American, just like you.

I will be heartbroken if I cannot see all the festivals a long summer road trip through this country might present: every state connected by Interstates celebrating crops and commodities in communities in the time of abundance: blueberries, strawberries (all the berries!), rhubarb, apples, peaches, honey, almonds, peanuts and radishes, and every odd thing I never knew came from somewhere specific and never knew I liked.  I want to, at my leisure, check out art fairs and micro-breweries and "Taste of ..." events put on by Chambers of Commerce doing everything they can to keep their downtowns alive.  And yes, absolutely, I want to visit national parks, monuments and landmarks, from Valley Forge to the Redwoods, from Mt. Rushmore to Crazy Horse, from Badlands to Death Valley, from the Everglades to the Gateway Arch, across Purple mountain majesty, from one shining sea to the other, from Cali to Long Island, homeward bound on every country road I come across, like the old songs go.

I want to continue to have the luxury of romanticizing a road trip: train whistles in the night, tracing the path of jets through impossibly wide spaces, spontaneous highway convoys of mis-matched makes, models, passengers, cargo and origin, all carrying on for a hundred miles while the radio plays the music I want to listen to. And maybe storm clouds darken the distant sky while I'm driving, but they are real storm clouds, full of water and fury, rather than the "storm clouds" of grave political unrest. I may get easily distracted, but I don't want to have to be distracted by serious political machinations going on underfoot, don't want to have to think about plots to kill governors or bomb city halls or block highway travel or any unruly gestures of civil disobedience. It is all a waste of precious energy in this country, my country, our country, that has ticked along just fine for the last 200-plus years and leant each and every one of us the best general quality of life the world has ever known.   

I want to see Savannah.  Cour de 'Elene.  Pittsburgh. And every Not-So-Nowhere along the way. 

The true nightmare scenario is still hypothetical, something I merely think about rather than watch on the news. But it is not out of the realm of possibility, and were it to happen, if we actually started shooting at each other, it would be to the detriment of all our lives, all 300 million-plus of us, most of whom, I think, would immediately start looking back and appreciating what we had that we lost the moment the needle broke. But it would also hand deliver me the biggest regret of my life: that I didn't make 1/48/50 happen while I had the chance.  While I could. While there was still the stability of my lifetime to cash in.

I hope, I pray, it never becomes the case. Please, fellow Americans, liberal and conversative alike, when you feel slighted, when you feel put upon, ignored, under-represented, disrespected by people you're starting to consider an existential threat, take a deep breath, find some middle ground.  Let Purple Reign.