America

Poplar Bluff, MO
101 degrees Fahrenheit (38C)

I got off a Delta jet in Memphis this afternoon, picked up a Ford Focus at the rental lot and pointed it north along I-55 , crossing the Mississippi river and into the flat cotton fields of Arkansas. The road was the highest ground for miles in all directions. With Jimi Hendrix live at the Filmore blasting on the stereo, I held the car straight and steady at 75 on into the Missouri Bootheel. The air conditioning could just barely keep up.

At Hayti I took a left west through Kennett, past fields and copses, gravel roads going perpendicular away from the tarmac to somewhere unknown, dusty towns, shuttered gas stations and high, dry corn. The land went from board-flat to a gentle rolling stretch of crops, weeds, low-slung houses and trailers, punctuated by the occasional creek. Speed limits dropped outside of towns: White Oak, Holcomb, Campbell, Qulin, and picked up again at the last intersection, speeding the traffic into the foothills of the Ozarks.

Poplar Bluff feels huge. It's a town of a little under 20,000 with all the modern conveniences. Like everywhere else these days it has its share of empty strip malls. Like everywhere this hot summer, it feels wilted, distorted in some mirage. Like everywhere, people seem run through the ringer, but resilient. People churn their way along the main road, through a McDonalds drive-thru, past an accountant's office, down to Walmart, off into their subdivision, and home after a day of who-knows-what.

When I checked into the Holiday Inn there were guys in Forest Service uniforms unloading duffel bags from dented old government pickups. There was a lineup of Union Pacific railway trucks with Texas tags. In the pull-through at the front entrance were two massive tricycle motorcycles, waxed to the gills, pulling low trailers with coolers on top. Off to the side there were 5th wheel campers attached to Chevy Avalanches and Ford Excursions.

With all the nervous energy of travel, I had to get some exercise. Crazy as it sounds, I put on my running shoes and headed out the door into a wall of heat. Taking it slow, I jogged down the main drag, moving from parking lot to parking lot. There were no sidewalks, just a gravelly shoulder and high grass. I jogged through a Burger King drive-through, past a Taco Bell, a KFC, and a Dairy Queen, along car washes with 40-year-old designs, and office parks. I turned right into a neighborhood and headed down a gentle slope, past ranch houses, along driveways, each with American cars and trucks. One house had cute road signs and gas station logos on it. There was a car parked there that had a bumper sticker that reads: God, Guns and Guts Made America Free. Everybody who drove by nodded or raised a hand from their steering wheel.

I kept going, pounding the concrete, winding up a hill next to some boarded-up pre-fab buildings, transformer stations, and tall pine trees. Down at the bottom of a hill there was a dry creek bed running through a tunnel under the street. Smoke billowed out from below me, fresh scorch marks were on the grass off to the right. I hit a dead end with campers and boats lined up neatly in driveways, and I turned around back up the hill.

Everyone seems ready to work. Everyone wants to do something respectable, put food on the table, and keep the cable TV coming and the bills paid out of the fruits of their own labor. Everyone is ready, sitting here, idle, churning their way down the wide boulevards from store to store, making the exchange of money for goods and services like bees stopping to pick up nectar in exchange for carrying some pollen.

It feels hot, angry and abuzz with discontent. People want something better. They want to be part of something great even as they want to be self-made independent individuals. They want schools and roads, but they're tapped out or freaked out about paying for them. Charity and good are abundant even as they battle against hardscrabble self-interest. Everyone is waiting for a message that straightens the contradictions out, makes sense of it all, puts their lives in the right direction. Friends aren't enough. Family is dysfunctional as usual. The church helps, but it won't put you to work. Low-paying jobs provide a meager subsistence and a modicum of dignity. People beg for benefits and a week's vacation down at the lake.

So much idle restlessness is a force in itself. It can be tapped for something great, or it can lead us to ruin. As I jogged through Poplar Bluff I felt the presence of some crucial moment in our history. Some fundamental change is happening in America, but I have no clue how things will turn out.

But I'm optimistic. After all, what choice do I have?