“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
-Jack Kerouac
Among the most charming and fun developments of the United States hosting the World Cup, along with all the ties and low-scoring, of course, has been a bunch of Europeans discovering the wonders of America and sharing it on social media.
A German who goes by the handle Freddy has taken America by storm, describing the joys he finds driving through the deep south. He and others have lauded everything from the grand magnificence of Buc-ees gas stations to the savory goodness of biscuits and gravy.
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Perhaps most American of all is the fact that the majority of these travel accounts on social media are road trips of Europeans, who are used to biking everywhere with a baguette under their arm. Here, they are even posting maps, covering hundreds of miles like latter-day Lewis and Clarks.
As the great American novelist Jack Kerouac understood, driving is the only way to truly understand America, to find its secrets, its nooks, crannies and roadside gems. You can’t fly there and you can’t take a train. You have to get behind the wheel and hit the road.
What European travelers are really experiencing is the freedom of driving, and how essential it is to the whole mythology of modern America. The ability to chart your own course vs. highly efficient rail systems that guide not just your travel, but your life.
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You want to drive to Waffle House at 1 a.m.? Knock yourself out. You want to buy a rifle somewhere between Buc-ee’s and Barstow? You can.
America isn’t the only country where you can take a road trip, but it is the only country that is essentially founded on the practice. America, as Kerouac knew, is its roads, and the little towns and people that thrive along them.
Even American hospitality often comes with a helping of four wheels and an engine. My favorite Freddy tale was when he wrote, “I love Americans. We were about to walk an hour to the stadium in the rain to save on an Uber, and the receptionist at the hotel we were parked in front of decided to drive us there.”
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Frequent travelers of American byways will all have experienced this at some point.
When a Midwesterner or someone in Dixie offers you a ride, you quickly get the clear sense that refusal would cause great offense. The next thing you know, you are in the front seat hearing apologies about the dog hair.
The songwriter Morrissey recently commented on the homogenization of European culture, brought about in part by its ubiquitous and highly efficient public transportation systems.
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Moz, as his fans call him, said that before everything became cookie cutter, “You could go to Germany and see the most incredible culture, you could go to Italy and see the most incredible culture. Now they just want everything to be the same, the same, the same, so diversity means conformity.”
Even in America, our cities have begun to feel all the same, the same stores, the same foods, the same accents. But in these places that you have to drive to, you find the trees in the forest of great America, and when you do, their branches will astound you.
So drive on Europeans, under the blanket of stars as our hot-shot freight trains sigh and whistle in the distance. Feel the curve of our continent under your wheels and enjoy the hospitality of those who mean it when they say, “How ya doin’?”
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And just maybe, some Americans will be inspired to do this themselves, to forgo one Disney or Cancun vacation for a road trip with the family, with all the small miseries and abundant joys that the packing the family into a car brings.
Until then, thanks to Freddy and the gang for holding up the mirror to the true nature of America, its small town decency and wide-smiling hospitality. Americans who live near international airports needed the reminder.
At the end of the day, what these Europeans are realizing is that Americans do whatever the hell we want to, and it is our cars that give us that freedom. However dire the straits or low the soul may feel, when the engine roars, we can get from point A to point B, and anywhere in between.
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“Sal, we gotta go and never stop going ’till we get there.’
‘Where we going, man?’
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‘I don’t know but we gotta go.”
-Jack Kerouac
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