Sundown
“Roadside Philosophizing”
Monday, November 11, 2024 Entry #123
That was a satisfying detour to Springsteen-Dylan land (see Entry #121 and Entry #122). As for the main event, my road trip to Canada to see Bruce Springsteen in Calgary and Edmonton, I was off and running with many miles to go. As I wrote in my post about Highway 61, this first leg of the journey was very familiar to me. I am at the age where the slightest whiff of a past positive experience can illicit feelings of deep nostalgia in my soul. I wasn’t even very far away from St. Louis for the first of these moments. I was entering Hannibal, Missouri, Mark Twain’s hometown on the banks of the Mississippi River. It’s obviously a significant site in American cultural history, and once on our way back from Camp Thunderbird, my son Gabe and I spent a really memorable afternoon taking in the places in town that inspired Twain’s stories of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
However, I didn’t feel the need to exit the through road and revisit all of that. No, all it took to make me look back in gauzy reflection was Hannibal’s Dairy Queen. This was a frequent stop on our family car trips, and upon seeing the familiar signage, the passing of the years hit me hard. It felt too wintery to get a DQ Blizzard, but I did pull into the parking lot, stare out at the picnic tables where we often rested with our treats on hot summer days, and take a photo.
I then crossed into Iowa and settled into what was going to be a long stretch of rural driving.
The sunset that day was breathtaking, and it literally left me gasping. I pulled off the road to spend some quality time with the sky.
As you can see, where I stopped there was a single farmhouse, with no other residence for miles around. As I marveled at the swirling colors, I also started to think about the people who live out there, trying to imagine their world, and piece together from that what their worldview might entail. Politics crept into my moment of Zen, and I thought I had a pretty good guess about which presidential candidate they had just voted for. It kind of swept over me that I was in “Trump Country” and would be for the vast part of this trip.
Aside from the sense of freedom being offered to me by my Sabbatical, and my excitement about being back on the road for another Springsteen odyssey, I was also dealing with my distress about Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election. Bruce Springsteen, in a down-home diner wearing a flannel work shirt, had cut an ad for Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, that seemed designed in part to appeal to this part of the country.
The seeming isolation of the spot where I had stopped my car (little did I know, I would have a few drives even more detached from ‘civilization’ ahead of me on this trip) led me to some roadside philosophizing and a sudden revelatory understanding about why so many people who live in low density places like these are attracted to conservative, and now MAGA, points of view.
I have always been a person who loves big cities and their urbane, diverse, and progressive denizens, but who finds small town and rural America with their rugged, neighborly, and straightforward ways appealing as well. I have lamented lately over how far we have come from President Obama’s vision as expressed in his defining speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. There, he waxed eloquent about how citizens of red states and those in blue states could find common ground in discovering how much they actually share in common. Making a similar point, I often refer to the biblical story of Jacob (an archetypal city dweller ) and Esau (“man of the field”), the twins who rage at one another but ultimately embrace and reconcile. In Deliver Me From Nowhere, (soon to be a major motion picture!), Warren Zanes speaks to Springsteen’s love for both “town and country,” and his desire to weave together the highest forms of rock, soul, and country-western music in order to help their varied constituencies transcend their differences. But, the gap between urban and rural folks keeps widening (I do personally know liberals in small towns and rural areas, and the 2024 election exposed an increase in urban Trump voters. Still, the divide remains numerically stark). Though Trump’s agenda, behavior, values, policies, style, and attitude will always be anathema to me, it felt like a mini post-election breakthrough that, thanks to glimpses through my car window, I was able to come closer to terms with his rural supporters.
In a larger sense, my road shoulder rendezvous with the glorious sunset filled me with a deep love for the American landscape that was able to push back against my newly downcast feelings about the country. The marvel of nature that was playing out in front of me made me a witness to an eternal cycle that will result in a new day taking the place of the one that is just now ending. Whether it was a good day, a bad one, or as is most likely, mixed, the sun will rise again and tomorrow won’t be the same as today. My time parked in my car entranced by the setting sun and the resulting panoply of colors on the horizon reminded me that there is a layer of life that exists beyond even our most significant political concerns.
Once it grew dark, I got back to it, with a little more perspective and hope. I just kept driving and went much further than I had originally planned. In the wee hours of the morning, I pulled into Motley, a northern Minnesota town only a few hours from camp. This small town really has a place in my heart. For one, Motley is home to a seafood company owned by Louis Kemp, who wrote a book about his friendship with Bob Dylan that started when they were kids at summer camp. I love that. Once, driving to Thunderbird with a friend, my car broke down and we settled into seats at the town bar while repairs were made across the street at the gas station garage. Though we were obvious outsiders, we were made to feel like saloon regulars right away. The town is also the start of the so-called “Motley Shortcut,” which is very woodsy, and off the beaten path, but the most direct way to reach camp. It is a route that historically offered few services (though that has changed in recent years), and the camp director always told the staff to fill up our gas tanks in Motley before hitting the road for the final stretch.
But, most of all, Motley is the home of The Old Tyme Trading Post, housed in a ramshackle old building with a charming silo. Inside is a shop filled with antiques, curiosities, and collectible chotchke’s. Outside, there is one of those old-fashioned coin-operated mechanical pony rides and the actual Motley Jail from days of old. The later is presumably for sale, but it’s been there as long I have been passing through (and I can rarely resist stopping in), which is 45 years now.
I checked in to Motley’s Eastwood Inn and drifted to sleep while looking forward to my next day’s first steps back onto hallowed ground.
Day 1