Wide Open Spaces

As I crammed into the elevator with a half dozen people for the ride twelve floors up to my Manhattan office it was hard not to notice that every last person was frantically tapping away at their phone. It was a heady reminder of why I went out on the road.  Before a phalanx of critics shriek hypocrisy and remind me that I Instagrammed my entire trip, allow me to suggest that I am not a luddite and we can peacefully coexist with these technologies and the world around us. My purpose was to get outside of the screen, put New York in the rearview mirror, and see how we were doing out there. 

The other reason I was craving America was most assuredly political. Like so many others, I felt like my brain was being ground to databyte-sized sawdust by the onslaught of bad news. Nothing felt real and it seemed like there was no escape. So I did. 

I am married to a scientist. I understand that five days and a handful of conversations doth not a scientific survey make. On the other hand I am a writer and my unique professional skill is observation. Do I know there is anger and racism, hatred and division hiding around every corner? You bet. That's not what I went looking for. I just wanted to see for myself – a random straw poll if you will – how America was feeling during these turbulent times. Here's what I learned.

Always, first and foremost, people can be good – and friendly, civil, and curious. Order a grilled shrimp po'boy at a rural Lousiana roadside shack and mention you are from New York and you will draw a crowd. The kids who worked at this cafe happened to be recovering addicts brought together by a charitable organization. We talked for an hour. The sandwich was delicious, their sense of hope elevating. I learned more from them about the pain of addiction than I have from the last 50,000 words I've read on the opioid crisis. 

In Artesia, New Mexico, over the best green chili stew and spicy pork adobo I have ever tasted, my waitress Patty enlightened me about the desire for work and the realities of immigration. Maybe all diplomacy should be done over local food in a roadside cafe. The enchiladas were delicious, too.

I am a shameless ambassador for Hampton Inn and every morning started with breakfast shared with ordinary Americans crisscrossing the nation. It's amazing the things you hear when you put down your screen. Conversation is a lost art and if you just give someone the opportunity, they inevitably have a story to tell. (And if you keep your ears perked up in the truckstop men's room stall, you will hear about shootings, DWIs, affairs – a regular litany of country song lyrics. If I knew more than three chords, I'd have an album!)

Is it all fall-off-the-bone tender ribs and roses out there? Nope. I saw plenty of desolation on the great American two-lane. I could go back tomorrow and start tracing the history of every cinderblock shack that began as someone's bright tomorrow and ended up a page of weather-splintered history, a footnote to a simpler day. 

When I travel like this I take a lot of pictures, plenty of gravel-strewn U-turns to capture something I saw going by in a blur at 60 per. A back roads road trip is a window into how people live somewhere you don't. I saw in people's front yards: oil rigs, cattle, cotton fields, 18 wheelers, a llama – every single rusted out first car you drove in high school!  The list goes on and on. 

There is always one photograph that got away and this time it was a little boy in rural Alabama one late afternoon. He must have been 12 and he was dressed in full Little League uniform, hitting balls off a tee all by himself next to the rundown doublewide that I assume he called home. Don't know where his team was, don't know where his folks were. This happened to be the day of March for Our Lives. I'm still thinking about that kid, that image. I hope he got to play.

I started out each day with my Rand McNally spread out next to my coffee, juice, eggs, toast and sausage gravy. Just the sight of an actual road map started plenty of lively dialogues. People were mesmerized by the analog-ness of it all and everyone had a recommendation. There's always one more road to be explored.

Maybe therein lies the beauty of the trip. It's not what you find out about people, but how much you don't know. The Internet has given us access to everything, but you can't GPS dreams. Give someone fifteen minutes. Trust me, they've got one.

The Last Picture Show

It may look like just another intersection in a faceless Texas town, but this is where my imagination was born. I was 12 years old growing up in New York when I first saw the film. I'd never been west of New Jersey! And then I met that place and those characters. Sonny and Duane and Sam the Lion and Jacy and Ruth Popper – god, they were larger than life to this suburban kid. When poor Billy and his broom met up with that cattle truck in the very intersection pictured above, I was wrecked. So no surprise, when I found myself in North Texas yesterday I had to go see where it was filmed.

If you know North Texas (or most of Texas for that matter), these small towns never change. Neither had Archer City. I walked the fabled two blocks clicking away and drinking in the breeze rolling off the scrub grass plains. I noticed the small storefront library was open. I had questions that needed answering. Meet Cheryl, the town librarian for the past 40 years.

The wall of Sam's Cafe still stands, though it's been closed for 20 years. A kindly old gentleman with a deep Texas drawl told me they had the best burgers in town, though they could have used a table or two more. Larry McMurtry, who wrote the original book, not to mention Lonesome Dove, Texasxville, and about 30 others, went to Archer City High School and the town is rich with the real stories that became the movie. He still has a place nearby and owns a couple of bookstores in town. Unadorned and simple, same as Archer City.

Cheryl told me stories about "Larry" and the townsfolk, but she might as well have been talking about Duane and Sonny and Ruth themselves. I was transfixed.

I asked how many people came traipsing through on a Last Picture Show pilgrimage. She said about one a day, a few more in the summer. Cheryl was an extra in Texasville, but her scene ended up on the cutting room floor. I told her I'd read "Eddie & Gardenia" – a book about a boy and his goat on a West Texas ranch – about a thousand times as a kid. She reached under the checkout desk and pulled out an Archer City library bag as a gift. Then she disappeared into the back of the library for a moment. As I waited for her to return a tow-headed boy with a backpack clattered in and set up shop. He pulled out his schoolbooks and started his homework.

Cheryl came back with a book in hand. It was the last installment of McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series. "I'm sorry Larry's not here to sign it for you," she said. Then she grabbed her Archer City Library Book stamp and firmly marked the front page. "There you go," she said. "Now you have a book from the Archer City library."

"Any fees if I return it late?" We both laughed. I shook her hand but felt a deep urge to give her a hug. I held that thought, as well as the tears welling up in my eyes. I glanced at the boy as I walked towards the door. I'd guess he was about 12. He could have been me, head buried in his book. I stood at that intersection where a cattle truck had brought Sonny and Duane's youth to an end. It was just a location in a movie scene. It was also the crossroads in my life where a kid from New York's writing life began.