Incoherency Manifest: The All-American Road Trip

For all those weary who have landed on her mighty shores (or travelled across the ambassador bridge in Windsor Ontario), America is a beautiful symbol for the cooperation of humankind, for good. That is of course ignoring centuries of genocide, imperialism, oppression and general vile hatred for those undeserving of it. If you have ever had the chance and been lucky enough to travel America, not just limited to the lower 48, the country is non the less jaw dropping gorgeous, with no better way to see it then behind the wheel of a large automobile or along for a good ol’ All American Roadtrip. Past the fog of pollution and signs for McDonalds, cracker barrels and Jesus Christ Almighty that are a bit too high up on the side of the highway, something as simple as a glance out your window can truly make a trip worth all its trouble.

I can not deny for any single fact, that the All American Roadtrip is built on a serious of terrible things, the interstate system’s destruction of cities and pristine natural environments, odd amounts of corruption and surprise surprise white flight. But also, why sometimes fly over states are more than just flat fields of wheat, and that only the open road can show you how vast of a continent we live on, seeing what life is genuinely like outside of the cities and the diversities, lifestyles and people across America. Also, its not just America, but also Canada. I however have a more refined hatred for the U.S. interstate system so fuck you.

Let’s start bad, I think the most obvious thing people associate with in modern times with American highways beyond terrible traffic, is the massive scale bulldozing of low income, predominantly BIPOC neighborhoods in nearly every city in America. It’s a good thing that images of before and after of cities like St. Louis and similar factory towns becoming clear cut for highways at such unprecedent and terrifying rates are now so widespread on the internet and in the modern youth conscious. It is disheartening however that these images along with generally being aware that this is a thing that occurred, were not scored into our general acceptance. It is only in recent decades that me and you might even convince that this is now the state of things, but like it or not, the fact that the interstate system did destroy so many communities was a deliberate choice by people who were either racist, fascist, classist or some combination of them all. To many people, some of whom were affected firsthand by development and displacement way back nearly 75 years ago, the interstates symbolism not freedom, freedom of movement and of the positive economic development it brought to a spare few, instead being a symbol of state supported hatred. The interstate and the All American Roadtrip are sadly inseparable.

As a smaller follow-up, some interstates especially had a tendency to completely obliterate the natural settings that they travelled through. The one that springs to mind the most is the John A Burns Freeway (H-3) in highway which was built well after the worst of the interstate programs and cuts through extremely dense foliage with massive bridges and viaducts above the canopy. Seeing images of the H-3 is genuinely sad sometimes, it just looks evil.

On a more positive note, one of the most enjoyable parts of time on the road is the time itself. Any major famous road trip across the states such as Route 66, the Atomic Pilgrimage or your Disney mom’s commute, requires sometimes absurd amounts of time to travel any meaningful distance, especially out into the prairies and further. For instance, the march break trek memorial from my childhood of roughly Detroit to Orlando is 20 hours of nonstop driving. Can you imagine for a moment, how incredibly fast that is? To travel such a great distance in less than a full day’s time is a miracle of modern road tripping, can you imagine even for a moment driving that distance back when the highways were made several notches slower? What about the same length travelled by ferry down the Atlantic coast or Mississippi, those were one to a few weeks each! Now think of the horse back and more importantly, pre-European travel on the continent, months!

Womp womp, back to bad. I do not think many people will know this but will be equally unsurprised is that especially during decades leading up to the second world war, that when starting its highway infrastructure projects nationwide especially under programs like the New Deal (Thanks FDR!!!). Handy relationships between politicians and guys who just so happened to make roads have existed for before even relationships between politicians and the guys who make things for roads. I truly never understood just how bad this of an issue historically until recently when listening to a podcast on Eugene Talmadge, a man described as the first fascist governor of a state and how he was quite literally best friends with the head of the Highway Board, essentially an older version of the state D.O.T. and how he hoisted several rounds of career politics men especially those loyal to FDR. Like I said a moment ago, the construction of the roads was not the only corruption present and relevant to the forming of the All American Roadtrip was the corruption of the automobile. Before it was official, the kings of Detroit decided that the car was the way, and the interstate the way to promote it. I would not be surprised if the ideas of Futurama, GM’s idea of the future is something that is taught as either a miracle or nightmare of design here in our very halls of Carleton and secondary education. The road trip is a natural extension of the ideas of Futurama and what good can come of the utopian ideals of freedom and autonomy but also representative of how the road trip falls flat (check out Spencer R. Scott’s article on Futurama if you’re curious to learn more).

Don’t forget why the road trip is here, to truly see what America is like out there. When you vacation or travel to another city, especially when you fly, you won’t get much of a chance to really see outside of the specifics of where you’re visiting. Of course, the tiny window of your plane can show you something, but things are blurry from above. This is where the All-American Roadtrip truly shines. Travelling enough distance on an open road that you can notice both small and large changes to the environment and world around you is truly special. Getting to notice when it’s a bit more humid when you finally hit the deep south or when you’re immediately in once in a lifetime storm that’s 24/7 do you realize you’ve hit Cascadia. Of course, you can notice this if you have the fucking MONEY to go by rail anywhere on Amtrak, but it’s a less distinct blur than the road trip, the important of not going too fast when you travel.

I think it is obvious at this point, a large overarching reason as to a lot of the awful history and just general existence of the All-American Roadtrip is white flight. I fucking hope you, the reader, know about this. That after the war, that white Americans fled the cities from a mix of increased finances of the post-war economy as well as BIPOC, especially black Americans moving into better housing in the cities with similarly increased finances. The interstates allowed for this flight to take hold so thoroughly, as especially in years closer to the end of the war, white Americans still travelled fairly consistently into urban centres while living in the burbs. The combination of whites leaving, while also having corrupt chokeholds on suburban development and the roads themselves allowed for the perfect ethnic exclaves of unseasoned food for decades.

But why? Why should anyone care about what is increasingly an antiquated idea of travelling across America with such awful gas prices! I present to you, why at least I still dream of going on several road trips across America in my lifetime. The people. Road tripping often makes one end up in odd locations when eventually a road is closed, or you miss a turn. I look back fondly at getting detoured quite literally into the middle of the Appalachians after 6 lanes of a highway were taken out a day before I got there and as a result genuinely getting an opportunity I don’t think I had ever gotten up to then to see what America is like for some people. Unfortunately, it’s not always pretty, honestly speaking, seeing what life is like in the holler for folks in Kentucky were I got stuck was an eye opening experience, especially when combined with the outpouring of hospitality that we received. A line of cars, miles long, in the dark and along a very small and twisty mountain road were descended upon by locals with food that we had already smelt come up the valley, giving it out completely for free knowing that we had all been stuck for several hours. That part of Kentucky is one of the absolute poorest places in the United States according to census but we were not poor in spirits thanks to them. This feeling is out there everywhere when you drive across the country, with people just being good. More often than not, getting out into the middle of nowhere geographically and also from your own social-class comfort zone, being able to accept that some of the nicest people come from the places seem as the meanest. That’s what its all about in the end, the people. We don’t just travel to see a change in scenario but a change in those around us and to experience more than just what we are accustomed to.

Thanks for reading my article, if you like what I talk about or the general incoherent ramblings of it all, feel free to check out newsletter Incoherency Manifest, where every once and a while when I write something I find of any good quality, I blast it off to your inbox to read when you’re really bored at work. Find it at https://incoherencymanifest.beehiiv.com/. Thank you all and have a lovely November. Don’t forget that America is still very awful despite what we might all hope sometimes.