Coming Out Redneck: Cross-Country Trip, part 2

The hotel might have been a little run down, but I loved the beaten up old town. Made me feel right at home. The TV stayed on for only a short time, but I was angered by what I saw (ok, T.V. makes me emotional, especially after 12 hours of driving). It was a reality show on repossessions, where people are delivered repo notices for their cars and then asked to answer five questions for the opportunity to win it back (called “Repo Games”). The guy labeled a “dumb redneck” who actually managed to win his car back was ridiculed. We got to laugh at the fact that rednecks don’t know where to find all the Six Flags theme parks in the country and the director made sure to poke as much fun (otherwise known as humiliate) the guy who could not afford to keep his car. The Awl calls this “poverty porn,” “a field guide for the slanders used by those that believe that debt, poverty and bad circumstance are always the result of bad decisions and poor breeding.” And, of course, rural and small town folks that don’t travel much, live relatively simple lives, and are perfectly content with that are always the results of “bad breeding.” Since when did working folks in America become backwards hicks unworthy of the sympathy or respect of the wanna-be professional class?

The next day started out poorly. We spent the better part of three hours coaxing, cajoling, and finally wrestling the one ton horse into the trailer. We would have never made it without the help of our new friends the horse boarders. Some people might call them rednecks, but they were as helpful and hospitable as everyone else we had met thus far. The soil is so rich in this part of North Dakota that it is sticky; sticky in the sense that it soon covered our shoes, pants, and, of course, the entire truck by the time we hit the road. We were all happy rednecks now.

I slept through Minnesota, since I was driving Wisconsin. We got around our first big city, Minneapolis/St Paul without a hitch. Then on to the rather unkept interstate through the great dairy state. I was disappointed to see more corn fields than dairies from the road. I have a soft spot for milk in all of its forms and for the animals that produce it. As far as I am concerned, milk is just about the most perfect food ever invented. I waxed nostalgic at the memory of making my own cheeses, yogurt, and various other products as a teenager on a small goat dairy farm. It was always amazing to see a vat turn from boiling milk into soft curd cheese just begging for my garden chives and heirloom garlic. I miss those days.

My cheese longing was met at our dinner stop in little Windsor, WI at the Mousehouse Cheesehaus (see picture above). Finally, real food, at least some of it locally produced. I had already begged a stop to buy bread, apples, and cheese to save my stomach the pain of McDonalds. Unfortunately, my only option had been Wal-Mart. What could be local foods produced by local people and feeding the local economy was generally boxed and processed and served by underpaid waitresses who could not find any other job in Timbuktu. But, finally, I got my amazing sandwich with local cheese and ham. What a feast! Of course, we could not leave without their homemade fudge and cheese.

Skirting around Chicago led us to stop in Rockford, though not before witnessing a stunning sunset over a lake on the border of Illinois. It was slightly comical to drive into a cheap inn in the middle of Main Street in a city with "population: 200,000" hauling a trailer and taking up half the parking lot. Two little kids came rushing out asking to pet the horse (who, unfortunately for them was not in the mood for visitors). They had seen one once on a farm, but we were a novelty. “Oh, I wish my four year old was awake,” another woman gushed. “She loves animals.” What was part of life in rural America was a petting zoo novelty to their urban counterparts. We were staying at a cheap inn in the less affluent part of town and I noted again differences between rural and urban poverty. Kids go hungry either way, but inner city kids play on asphalt and broken glass and breathe air thick with fumes.

Indiana and Ohio treated us to corn fields in ever increasing size, a testimony to U.S. obsession with corn. Or, at least, the obsession of agribusiness with corn. I could not help but think of the small farmers who had lost out on this increasing mono-cultured crop climate. I could not help but think of all the small farmers of Mexico and Central America who were losing their small scale, locally developed corn varieties as they were forced to leave their ancestral farms and migrate north when U.S. agribusiness won out on NAFTA and flooded our southern neighbors with cheap corn. These same farmers were showing up in the American heartland to work for poverty wages picking crops for agribusiness. The U.S. consumer is losing too, filling our bodies with more corn than it was ever meant the handle and, according to researchers and doctors, increasing our propensity for heart disease and diabetes. Besides, the food taste terrible. I was also increasingly annoyed by the difficulty I had finding places to refill my water, since I refused to spend money on something so common as water.

I also thought about the small farms that were still left, searching for some way to stay viable. Not far from the highways we passed, the Amish tended crops in an agrarian culture that had survived the Industrial, “Green,” and Information Revolutions. I noticed, even on the commercial book racks in convenience stores, the simple and austere spirituality of the Amish infiltrated popular religious culture. Religion was kinder here, at least on the surface, less about proving points and more about inspirational reading, simple living, and loving the land affectionately known as “God’s Country.”

As the rolling plains and fields gave way to oak decorated hills, we wound our way slowly to Pennsylvania. It was getting dark as we pushed through the state, but the early Appalachian Mountains with tiny towns nestled in them were a welcome sight. A sliver moon hung out above the trees whose names I did not know, trees that looked different from the towering conifers of the Pacific coast, looked a bit tamer and certainly shorter. I wanted more pictures and I wanted to stop more often, but we had a schedule to keep, so I contented myself to watching the deep river ravines cut through the tree studded hills until it was too dark to see.

Our last morning went quickly, after a stop in a small hotel right off the highway in the middle of nowhere, weaving through the last of the Appalachians and into Virginia. Williamsburg, with its fine colonial homes and signs remembering Indian attacks (but apparently not settler attacks on Native peoples), was full of revolutionary nostalgia and horse pastures. We left the horse to one of those pastures before heading off to my train stop.

Now, as I weave my way by train through the urban chaos of the Eastern seaboard, I wonder what brought this small town redneck all the way across the country. Part of what brought me (aside from scholarships and grants) is a search for answers, answers to the pressing problems of my people, the rural working folks of the forgotten regions of the U.S., and a quest for a way to use my faith to answer that call.

The Soul of the West: Cross-Country Trip, part 1

I fell in love with the continent and country I call home all over again as I drove across country with my sister and brother-in-law. We packed into my sister’s truck with her massive German Shepherd that always wanted more of my seat than I was willing to part with and towing her restless Thoroughbred mare. I fell in love, not with an abstract idea, or a government, or a flag—but with the beauty of the land and the culture of its people, especially in the tiny, rural towns that dot the nation. All is not well in the American countryside, it is true. There were plenty of trucks guzzling a good portion of the world’s oil to deliver food and goods over long distances, there was GMO corn everywhere, and horrible plastic tasting food at every rest stop. But there were also friendly and helpful small-town clerks, stunning mountain lakes, welcoming horse boarders, and incredible local cheeses.

We started out early from my hometown and I think I teared up a bit driving away from the only place in the world that I think of as home. But a new adventure awaited me and I felt a bit like Bilbo from The Hobbit (a book conveniently tucked away in the back seat), trudging away, half excited, half dreading the long five day trip that lay ahead.

When we crossed the Cascades under the shadow of Mt. Baker, I was amazed, as always, at the distinction between the two sides of the state. On one side, my own side, we have enough rain and clouds to create part of the largest temperate rain forest on the continent. But as you start down the pass on the eastern side, the landscape gives way to dry expanses of farmland and even some high desert. My sister was thrilled to watch the tumbleweed. We might get all the rain, but our eastern neighbors get the long growing season.

The neck of Idaho gave us fantastic views of glacier fed rivers and lakes nestled in the heart of more conifer forests. No matter where I am in the world, I am a sucker for mountains. And they just kept getting bigger. In Montana, one of the least densely populated states in the country, we entered the great Continental Divide, full of signs for fishing and hunting and the occasional Bible verse. Butte showed signs of deep mining, cutting massive holes into the earth and rendering the land useless for anything else in future generations. But the mountains kept coming and running rivers followed us on our way as we drove through vast stretches of public land.

When I was greeted by a store clerk in Idaho with; “Hello, ma’am, have a great day!” I knew I was still in small town U.S.A. where hospitality is a way of life. At gas stations and corner diners, people always greeted us and sometimes helped guide the unwieldy trailer out of gas station stalls. I felt right at home in my flannel shirts and boots.

I was highly amused in a Montana gas station stop by the items for sale. There were special brands of huckleberry chocolates, soaps, and candies, a testimony to someone’s entrepreneurship in marketing a local (and may I say, delicious) product. On the magazine rack, cowboy magazines mingled with “Creation Magazine” and the “Biblical Archeological Review,” a testimony to the power of a peculiarly American form of fundamentalism. What I had to buy, though, were the postcards in black and white of various Montana activities. Two men fishing—why, that was a stress reduction seminar. Meet someone driving by in a pickup? That’s the communications network. And a treehugger? Well, those are obvious out of towners holding on to trees for dear life as grizzlies sniff the air underneath their flailing legs. This last one—well, I suppose I am a treehugger at heart, as you might surmise by my last post. But I understand the point. With urban environmentalists, we rural folks sometimes feel like they think of nature as a giant teddy bear to be embraced. It may be that, but it is also cruel and unpredictable, both a giver of life and a destroyer. This dark side seems to be missed by many a treehugger.

We left the giant trees and towering mountains behind when we crossed into North Dakota. We entered into the land of rich farmlands and grassland. Its little shops on the roadside had a more eclectic feel and I finally saw a herd of bison. As we moved east, the rivers were growing smaller and cornfields were growing larger. We stopped at the far east end of the state for the night, navigating through tractor roads between fields of soybeans and corn to find the stable for the horse. My sister was frustrated after an hour of bumping through the fields and I was trying to keep from laughing when I wasn’t holding on for dear life. Why did I sign up to drive this part anyway? Well, at least I was driving to the beat of Reba McEntire’s “I’m a survivor.” And the tires weren't stuck in the mud yet.

We drove through an enormous mono-cropped farm with a runoff facility that smelled so bad we could barely breathe. Monsanto dutifully had an office nearby, clearly supplying the patented seeds that have replaced the small farm varieties of a half century ago. The only living thing that seemed to survive the invasion of pesticide infested corn and soybeans were the wild sunflowers smiling with bright yellow faces on the edges of the fields. With small farmers pushed out and large, corporate farms dominating American agriculture, our food quality is going downhill. After all, I was standing (or bumping over) some of the richest bottomland in the country (known as the “Red River Valley”), but all there was to eat was highly processed, corn fed hamburgers or chicken on white buns and served with plastic tasting fries that had been trucked in from who knows where and sold by giant multinational chains. Oh, and I could also buy corn syrup sodas flavored with caffeine. My stomach was in revolt.

When we finally arrived at the stable, we were met by a middle aged couple living in between the cornstalks with a small herd of horses. We gratefully left the horse to find a place to sleep.