July 4, 2022
The neighbors came out in the evening of last year’s Fourth of July and set off fireworks in the street. We walked the block, introducing ourselves, we still were new and didn’t know anyone. They had all the do-it-yourself stuff, the rockets, sparklers, the Roman candles, and put on a show. We talked with folks who were out with their kids up and down our street and on the next block. The rockets soared and boomed well past midnight. It was good enough.
Last week we were still on the Wyoming trip when June raced to an end and summer settled in. I fought bronchitis, picked up somewhere in the Midwest, maybe while sleeping outdoors, maybe while caught in monsoon-like rain. The Fourth barely registers this year, we’re exhausted, the country is exhausted. Parades and fireworks used to buck us up, not this year. Rep. Liz Cheney, the Republican from Wyoming, speaking last week to young women, said that “for the most part, men are running the world and it is really not going well.”
Like everyone else, we’re looking for calm. We have the photos of forests, mountains, and ranchland we captured as we puttered along interstates. A few capture the richness of the rugged forestland and wide grazing land of Midwestern and Southeastern America, some of it tinged the pale green of grass struggling in dry soil, some of it dark and lush.
Meanwhile many Americans are lost to their addiction to the headlines and believe the whole country is, like them, in a perpetual rage over politics, or should be. It all disappears when you put down the phone and close the laptop. You can shut your eyes to it. You’ll feel better.
We stopped at the Hitching Post in Abilene, Kansas. The tables were filled with people having breakfast and coffee, most of whom looked to be regulars, in dungarees and overalls. They may have noticed us walk in and take a table, but they kept talking about the weather, town business, hunting, farm equipment problems, and so forth. Weather was big since it was raining buckets outside. No one preached about Trump or the Democrats.
The January 6 hearings weighed down the holiday weekend. Once-diehard Republicans reported on the mendacity of the former President and his gang of hangers-on and witness tamperers. I guessed it’s unlikely the Hitching Post diners would talk about that, but you can’t assume.
We fought all that off and looked for good around us. From Abilene we drove relentlessly. We passed Kansas City, staying on I-70, and finished the day at a hotel in Columbia, Mo. In the morning Sandy navigated through St. Louis then across Illinois into Indiana. We made a bad turn that led us into industrial Evansville, but we did see the stately old homes of downtown. We recrossed the broad, brown Ohio again, Sandy looking nervously away.
We dropped the plan of the straight-line shot to Lexington on I-64 and instead turned south toward Henderson, Ky., across the state line into Clarksville, Tenn., and took a local outer highway around downtown Nashville.
It was familiar turf. We set a course east on I-40 and called a campground near Crossville, 75 miles west of Knoxville and reserved the last site available. Past Lebanon the Tennessee forest grows thick and richly green, the craggy hills rise and fall. Just west of Cookeville we crossed the gorgeous, swift-flowing Caney Fork River, which rushes clear from the Cumberland, winding under the interstate four times. It’s one of those wilderness (maybe near-wilderness) rivers I wish I had explored years ago. Things kept getting in the way.
Finally, the slapstick: we locked ourselves out of the van at a Stop ‘N Go in Smith County, near Gordonsville. My keys lay on the driver’s seat, where I tossed them while I pumped gas. Sandy stepped out, leaving her purse inside. We stared at each other.
The young woman at the register inside smiled and called the county sheriff. Within 20 minutes a young officer showed up with his unlocking tool and snapped the door open. We thanked him, embarrassed, and got back on the road.
We set up camp next to two families from Texas. They offered us beer and burgers, but we wanted some air-conditioning. The Crossville chain restaurant we picked reminded me of the Hitching Post, fewer farmers, more folks in shorts, more kids. The sky suddenly looked like rain, we rushed back to camp. With the gray of dawn we lurched into our morning drill: light the grill, make coffee and oatmeal, break down camp and go. The final leg was a blur. After Knoxville the highway meanders through the breathtaking Smokies. Then Asheville and the sign, the plain blue “Welcome to South Carolina.”
It’s the Fourth. We have photos of ourselves standing next to the Liberty Bell near Independence Hall in Philly with our son Michael and daughter-in-law Caroline some years ago. It actually was in January or February. But the crowd was there, celebrating those solemn places of 1776, the shrines of American liberty, that over the next century inspired others to throw over tyrants, first in France, then decades later, throughout Western Europe.
It’s not the fireworks and the parades that teach us that liberty simply is an aspiration of the heart, all hearts across all cultures, languages, continents. We know somehow, perhaps through the mysterious working of God’s grace, that liberty lifts and defines the human spirit. The sense of what it means remained with us while we crossed prairies, forests, and mountain ranges, then hunkered down in a humble tent next to a lake.
Meanwhile, we, all of us, are learning the dark lesson that liberty is fragile, and can be destroyed by seditionists among us. The memories of those carefree moments at the Liberty Bell cheer us. We’ll skip today’s downtown parade, the neighbors will help us celebrate. It should be a clear night. We’ll crane our necks with new friends and watch the homemade stuff fire off. Good enough, again.
On the Road 