Back Then, in America
I’ll be brief. I’m gasping for air actually. I just got my internet connection back after a two day, unexpected, loss of service. Yikes! I am aghast that yet again my addictive personality has found yet another addiction to foster. I need to catch up with email and comments so ask your indulgence with yet another golden oldie.
It was a relief, in a way, to not read of the three pretenders to America’s throne, or about muslims seething, nor progressives chanting hosannas to their new born king. But, as mentioned earlier, I am putting up archives (in a helter skelter manner) and this old post only serves to summon forth the deeper anger I hold for those who are intent on slaughtering America’s spirit like an oxen offered up for sacrifice in a desperate attempt to allay the wrath of the gods.
I come from a family of wanderers and drivers. At 16 I stuck my thumb out and began a decade of crisscrossing this country, weaving America’s highways into my heart with every mile. As I have written elsewhere…
….from infancy, my heart became syncopated to the slick, sweet click of rubber tires bearing down on asphalt, the command of clutch changing gears, the sweet susurrous chortle of a purring engine. For a child translating her world on the basis of seeking escape, the apparent movement of a driver became a code etched into the walls of my soul.
I am, simply, to the road born.
I will never forgive those who are making it quite likely that my grandchildren will never know the ineluctable freedom of disappearing into the heart of America. It is from that place in me that i jotted out the following a few years back.
Back Then, In America
I am haunted by America. I am haunted by the raw power her past still commands. I look deep inside this picture and I can feel the thunder of her engines thrumming. Deep under the earth. They still sing.
This is a land that seems to have commanded audacious vision and reckless abandon in the lovers she would take to her bosom. Men who would look across the muted distances with hunger and purpose, and envision braids of weaving, tumbling roads to carry purpose and hunger west.
It took men who would build lonely buildings, dwarfed by the vastness of earth and sky, along miles of road, singing with empty winds and dark in all directions.
Coffee is hot. Pie is fresh.
Waiting for the one person. The lone traveler.
The one American driving west with technicolor dreams clutched in nervous hearts.
All they own in the world in the backseat of the car.
No forwarding address known.
You could disappear. Back then. In America.
A coffee. cheeseburger. apple pie. A smoke.
Will ya fill her up, mister?
Thanks, Mister.
Door slams shut, warm throttle of the engine as she winds away, cherry red taillights bobbing in the dips of the road, like a flimsy pair of glass hearts lost down the rapids of all roads going West.
Postcard courtesy of New Mexico Route 66 Association member Steven Rider
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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 1:10 am and is filed under America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
ligneus1 March 2nd, 2008 at 10:11 pm
I get withdrawal symptoms if I lose my connection for more than about ten minutes.