So Just Keep Rolling Under the Stars

I am writing about a loose collection of memories – of places and people and smells and animals and sandwiches – that make up the majority of who I am in this present moment, the one that I exist in. The one heavy with gravity that keeps me tethered to the ground.

I am writing about the things I have to accept and wondering if that changes anything or just allows me to keep moving forward. We pass through time, not quite the driver, not quite the passenger. We hang in the balance.

I am writing about what a family is, what loneliness is and what it means to be a traveler on that trip through time.

I am writing about abstract concepts that mean nothing except for the violent and unrelenting and real moment when they mean everything – I am writing about how much slack there is in the lines that connect us all.

But I am writing for the same reasons anyone else does. Because the bed is made, the garden is weeded and the dishes are done. The calls are made. I am writing because it is the next thing to do.

My favorite kind of song is a travelogue. "I've Been Everywhere" by Hank Snow or "Dime Store Cowgirl" by Kacey Musgraves or "We're an American Band" by Grand Funk Railroad. This is where we were and what we did. This is where we are going this morning. This is what we learned and what we learned is that we have to keep going. I am writing about highways on the horizon and cattle trails in my mind.

Six cities from a passenger window.

In Memphis I learned that the kid driving the electrician's supply truck is singing Junior Parker songs under his breath. I learned that the struggle continues. I watched little ducks waddle out of a golden elevator and into a hotel lobby fountain to the excited delight of tourists. I learned what you ignore and don't speak about will come to define you. I felt the dreamy autumns in the sweltering heat. And I saw the welder's sparks on the steel of the midcentury American dream. In Memphis, I saw the center of the Empire.

In Birmingham I saw that being nice doesn't count for much, and it tends to be inconsistent. I understood that rust hides beauty. I learned good people and good intentions aren't enough. I saw what a weak word pride is. I drank beer out of dark brown growlers and saw ruddy-faced Alabama boys happy just to see the Tide keep rolling. In Birmingham, I saw just how fleeting magic is. I kept coming to Birmingham to see if it would reveal itself, if it would make good on itself. I ate at a couple of decent restaurants and figured I wouldn't be back anytime soon.

In Fort Worth I saw what it means to play the game. I saw cowboy hats bump the top frames of cabin doors on private planes. I saw boots and pearl snaps and the spoils of economic siege in fine art museums and on Matisse-adorned city streets. I saw that a gambler's smile has more to do with you than them. I saw an old man in a Cadillac, jaw clenched, drive like he was the last plane on a World War II bombing run. I saw that what you say about it goes a long way to what people think about it. I saw what swagger looks like in a pair of dark-washed jeans. I ate cumin-seasoned fajitas and drank $3 Shiner Bock beer. "At a dancehall down in Texas, that's the finest place to be. All the women look beautiful and the men will buy your beer for free and say 'that's right, you're not from Texas, but Texas wants you anyway.'"

In Miami I saw America's loading dock – its back bay. I saw rich people spending money out of bored obligation. I saw what everyone else sees, flashy cars and beautiful women, and thought about that old song that says as things fall apart, no one paid much attention. I saw the old houses of Stiltsville pass away. I am realizing I learned less in Miami – I saw a lot, but learned little. If there wasn't a Miami, we would create one. That's how and why we created Miami to begin with. I saw the tides. I saw the winds. It's not the sunshine I saw; the sunshine is everywhere. I saw the dark storm clouds over the ocean – or over the Everglades – storms in the distance. Pressure changes. In Miami, I always saw the future, and it was always the same.

In Boston I walked around with ideas. Books, yes. Discussions, arguments. Oysters and Negronis. This and that. In Boston, I saw that you must cross the gap between theory and practice with a single step – that you must force the two together with your bare hands. I saw how bravery just covers the same sins of the fathers that you see anywhere else, but how that bravery actually counts for something. I saw seaworthy ships and people with sailor's hearts. I saw the "Real America" – a place where fans holler and chant at baseball games the way people in the South do at football games or Europeans do at soccer matches. I saw the swagger of rolled-up sleeves and dog-eared paperbacks.

In Bluefield I saw how the land lies fallow for 1,000 years after it's been spent and the people that hold on, and I admired them knowing that whatever it was that made them so stubborn and resilient would not yield harvest in their lives or my own but many years from now on a place far from the Virginia Hills. I saw that the wildflower blooms and then it dies, and the seeds scatter to the winds. I saw how progress comes with a tax and a toll, and I saw the aircraft carriers and the warships and the refugees of Vietnam and Afghanistan running besides airplanes and helicopters hoping the door would open. I saw why they call CEOs and robber barons fat cats. I saw there is no rust in the Rust Belt, just the return to the Earth.

These are six cities I saw and the sketches I made. They have left their imprint on me, but I was like a hand in the water, gone as soon as I left.

Then there are the people.

The ones who couldn't control themselves and the ones who only controlled themselves. There are the generations that came before us and there are the ones that will follow us. I saw the hard eyes of my great-great-grandfather, his leg kicked up in a defiantly casual pose.

I saw the impatient cigarette draws of my grandfather as he tried to get cows moved from one pasture to another or some kind of fertilizer spread. Long after his mind had gone, he was still back there, and occasionally he would call out to us to help him fix fences on some barbed wire line from 1965.

Stone cracks, and the memories of war fade. The grass ripples in the evening breeze.

There are the stiff-backed pews of some rural Kansas Methodist church and the ecstatic shouts of a Pentecostal tent revival. There are men with snakes and women with shoulder-padded dresses. There is bluegrass and coffee and chain restaurants with names like Bob Evans and Cracker Barrel, and there are always signs with how many miles it is to the first city in the next region or the last city in this one. There are mountains that people tell me are peaceful but to me feel like places where rugged boys sniped at military officers and where the roads washed out.

There are other cities, ones that feel like the end of the world or at least the end of the country -- New Orleans and Seattle – where people pulse with the anxieties of the end of the world, like that scene in "The Godfather Part II" where Castro pushes in on the black-tie gala. The end of the party, the looting, the shooting, the revolution, the next regime. Meet the new boss, the same boss as it ever was.

I saw it all from the highways. I was sometimes the passenger and sometimes the driver, but I was rarely alone.

In Chicago, I saw nothing. In Dallas, I saw the freeways and the banks. In New York, I saw Dallas.

There was dancing. In Texas, they still danced with partners, but elsewhere they danced alone. In some places, they danced on the streets.

I suppose these are my recollections of America. There were deserts, and they scared me the most. Long stretches of desaparecidos. The all-day twilight of Southern New Mexico and the hard high desert and the uneasy sunset in Tucson. There were cowboys in Los Angeles and ingenues in El Paso. There was the border like a toll booth staring down a black mountain.

And wherever I went, no matter what the temperature was, there was a teenager in beltless baggy jeans, a red hoodie and a beanie with a skateboard in one hand and a Mountain Dew in the other. There was a woman behind the bar, 32 years old with a black T-shirt and a tight ponytail and a smile pinned below her no-bullshit eyes.

Sometimes there were stars.

Three people now.

The old woman outside the Tampa Hard Rock Casino who told us about Alabama and where she lived before she "caught the schizophrenia" and how my grandmother loved talking to her but thought she laughed at her funny way with words, something my grandma also had.

My cousin Doug, forever loading up a horse to go to some arena somewhere so someone could rope calves or ride barrels. A handlebar mustache and a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, always telling a story about someone who did something stupid and how they got hurt. My other cousin Monty barely listening as he smoked another cigarette.

The Italian man at the bar in the North End of San Francisco, buying us Peronis and Bellinis while he waited for his blind date to show up. He owned an Italian restaurant in South San Francisco. She showed up, and she was beautiful, but he wasn't interested in her even though to the passerby she would look out of his league – like Nigella Lawson sitting with Al Molina. The bartender said everyone loved the man. I emailed him when I got back home, and he invited me to his restaurant next time I was in the Bay Area, but I haven't made it back yet.

Where is the next frontier? Is it my job to finish up the bookkeeping and paperwork on this one or head out for that one? This plan started many generations ago, and no one left instructions. It doesn't make sense to stay, but leaving doesn't look much better. We are all waiting for the bus to arrive, perhaps like that bus in "The Great Divorce," to take us to another place entirely.

The times I drove, my passenger slept – and those were many miles. Perhaps I should have slept. But there was still nothing better than the open road and a good song, fresh eyes and a hopeful heart.

And so this is my travelogue through the heart of the good land. There was always another highway exit, and there was always another gas station, and there was always a girlfriend or wife or sister in pajamas walking into the convenience store. There were angry travelers and cool travelers and tired travelers and old folks trying to answer their phones. There were 18-wheelers throttling down the interstate and Buicks and Toyotas and BMWs and Fords and Ray-Bans and Levis and Nikes and Coca-Colas and McDonald's.

And who was I? I was the rider. Somewhere between the driver and the passenger. Somewhere between here and home. I wondered what the next place looked like and what songs they sang there. So let it ride.