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In just a few weeks, I plan
to drive from Phoenix to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis
and St. Paul. However, feeling as though I have just
traveled along with Robert Sullivan and his family
as I read Cross Country (sorry, I've typed
that paragraph-long subtitle once already and do
not plan to do so again), well, it certainly gives
one pause.
Pause, but also that sort of euphoric pleasure that
comes from the completion of any long, long, long
drive.
Sullivan writes that for 15 years and nearly 100,000
miles he's been doing cross-country drives - from
New York to Portland, Oregon - sometimes to visit,
sometimes for relocating the family's residence --
and by routes that have taken him and his family
as far north as Canada and as far south as New Mexico
along the way.
While Michigan to Florida multiple times or even
Phoenix to Seattle don't qualify as true "cross"
country trips in the east-to-west or west-to-east
sense of crossing, this upcoming drive to
the Twin Cities, and from there just a short if multi-state
sprint over to the middle of Michigan's mitten before
heading home to Phoenix, will be my third such 2000
miles each way across the heart of America
drive in seven years. I used to keep track of the
miles I've driven, but stopped counting once my personal
odometer clicked over half a million.
Still, Sullivan's travels do give me pause, because
while I disdain the impersonal see the U.S.A. but
don't really touch it of the Interstate highway system
unless I'm in a huge hurry, Sullivan has found a
way to turn travel on the such roads into a book
that not only details his family's latest cross-country
drive but that teaches the history of cross-country
travel of America by Americans.
As we ride back from Portland to New York with Sullivan
and family in their rented Chevrolet Impala, we learn
- and thankfully not as though we're sitting through
a history class but as shared by Sullivan's very
conversational writing style -- about the Lewis and
Clark Expedition, the development of the Lincoln
Highway, the first real interstate (lower-case "i"),
about how Emily Post, yes, the mistress of manners,
was an early cross-country driver who considered
the Southwest to be "America's Orient."
We learn why there are white stripes between the
lanes and we learn more than you ever wanted to know
about the history of the design of the lids on disposable
coffee cups. Indeed, we learn not only about fast
food but also about motels and when you add in fuel
for the car and you have what Sullivan calls "the
road trinity: gas, food, and lodging."
Along the way we meet Woody Guthrie and Jack Kerouac
and Norman Bel Geddes and Lewis Mumford and Carl
Fisher and so many others and we discover that the
Interstate system that President Eisenhower got isn't
quite like the one he thought he was getting - and
we learn what that has meant to too many American
cities.
We also hear about Sullivan's worst trip ever --
and, no, his mother-in-law was not along for the
ride - and we hear about it in all its excruciating
detail to the point where we just want that part
of the book to end - just as Sullivan did when he
was living through it.
Because each of us has had this experience, we understand
when Sullivan writes about driving when he's too
tired to keep driving.
And having been there just a few months ago, I understand
the Sullivan family's anticipation of returning to
the Commodore Perry service plaza on the Ohio Toll
Road, an oasis in a desert of asphalt.
Now, as I contemplate my drive to Minnesota and
Michigan, I'm thinking about using the Interstates
for a change, and find myself looking forward to
visiting the Great Platte River Road Archway Museum
that celebrates the early cross-country travelers
with a museum that bridges Interstate 80 in the middle
of nowhere in the heart of Nebraska.
After all, though I think of the two lanes, the
"blue highways," the Mother Road and her
sisters as being the real America, it is,
indeed, on and along the Interstates where America
reveals itself.
"In the roads of America is the history of
America," Sullivan writes as we begin our Cross
Country trip. "See the nation grow from
an unmapped, just-purchased spread of western land
to a wagon-train-crossed compilation of territories,
to states bound by a few muddy highways, to the modern
United States wired with interstates.
"In the interstates," he adds, "are
the paths toward the next America, the one that is
always under construction.
"The America that I see," he says of his
view over the steering wheel and out onto the multi-lanes
of pavement, "is an America that tells you to
keep moving, to move on to something better, to get
on the road and keep going, to stop only briefly
to refuel your car and yourself but then to keep
pushing toward the place that is closer to where
you should be, or could be, if only you would keep
going. America says move, move on, don't sit still."
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