By Kaylee Johnson
Campus News
This summer I did something I had always wanted to do. Having read so much pristine literature from The Beat Generation, specifically “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter S. Thompson, I decided that a three week, structureless road trip to see and experience the real America would be similar to a renewing of my baptism, awakening in ways I could never imagine. So, I loaded up my Kia Soul with a film camera and a suitcase full of clothes and started first toward Washington D.C.
The tones in beatnik literature are never happy. They may be cynical, sarcastic, even witty in a peculiar way at times, but never authentically happy. Raw joy could easily be misconstrued as corny in beatnik writing, so it is just not present, ever. Unlike the dislinear writings of Kerouac, I found happiness in my Kia Soul, sitting next to my partner, listening to Talking Heads and counting how many Waffle Houses there were per state. Where I started to develop the beatnik mindset was when I started observing the people around me in Washington D.C., Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Indiana, Tennessee, and so on. My goal was to see, write about, and take photographs of the real America, whatever that is. Everything was so completely average, flawed, no place is better from the next. America’s beauty lies in its authenticity, diversity, and boring nothingness. After a while you start seeing the same faces in different places, and realize that there are only so many personality variants and uniqueness is dependent on perception and eyeglass strength.
The Midwest is a fairytale land, covered in chain restaurants and the sounds of people whistling. One night, as we were driving to our Marriott by Hilton somewhere in Indiana, we took a wrong turn down a residential back road, where a group of children were smoking weed and crowding around the car to scare us. As we made a dangerous u-turn and sped down that cornfield road, we laughed with tears in our eyes. How beautiful it was to see such innocent danger! We would have never even known about that silly hidden, unmarked road had we never taken a wrong turn, and most of America will never experience that road either.
On my film camera, I took a photo of a rare event, something that made sense in a somber, uplifting sort of way: A baby shower at a McDonald’s in Ohio. The entire restaurant was covered in “It’s a Girl” helium balloons and little pink napkins were laid out at every setting – The Real America. It was 10:15 a.m. and the pregnant mother was rubbing her belly and smiling at the decorations lovingly. She seemed to stand there, next to the Ronald McDonald statue with a glow wrapped around her body – stunning.
The further we got from home, the more people caught on to our accents and different ways of doing things. In the town, neighboring Dollywood in Tennessee (Dolly Parton’s theme park, yes she has a theme park) the waitress at the town pizzeria, the only restaurant for over forty miles, asked to read our tarot cards and loved talking about her days at Grateful Dead concerts, dancing in bikinis. What a personality she was. Through all that banter and witty side conversation, she forgot to tell the chef to add extra cheese to our pizza.
One of the more bubbly things we decided to do was go to an authentic Midwestern county fair. This one was called “The Big Butler Fair” and it had everything from fried butter to dirt biking in the mud. There seemed to be some childish unity amongst the groups sharing snacks and riding mechanical bulls, and it was fun to watch all of this go down with such jubilee and whimsy. The Real America can laugh at itself and take breaks to go on rinky dink carnival rides run by sleazy carnies.
The further we cut into the south, the larger emphasis was placed on religion. The radio stations preached against divorce and told us to look to the sun if we were ever feeling disconnected from the Lord. Every Motel 6 and Super 8 had bibles on the bedside tables, placed next to the Pizza Hut and Panda Express coupons.
We stopped in Goodwills and antique shops in every state to see what people disposed of, left behind, and forgot about. To name a few: a casserole dish with “meemaw” monogrammed on it, a wedding dress with yellow stains on it, a box of keys, a trophy for the 2002 Pig Race, and a broken Atari.
I plan to make this road trip a yearly tradition, to get to know the world around me on a more three dimensional, technicolor level. What I know right now, at 23, is that the grass is not greener anywhere you go. All places have their lustrous fields and rustbelt districts. After a while all of the pubs, rest areas, and faces start to look the same. There are only so many personality variants to go around in The Real America, so enjoy the town or city you live in. As the 3 a.m. radio preacher in West Virginia told me, “Look to the sun when you are feeling unsure.”
Kaylee Johnson is a teacher and graduate student in New York’s Capital Region.
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