The first two occurred in/near Toledo, Ohio.  First, I had worked for over seven years making parts for Jeeps.  The Jeep plant is just off I-75, and can be seen clearly from the highway.  It’s an old plant, parts of which are five floors tall.  On the roof of the building, they display three or four different models, one of which is sitting on its ass at a 45 degree slant, looking like it’s climbing an elevator housing.

The I-75 bypass runs down the west side of Toledo, then across the southern edge.  Just as it makes the big turn to the south again, across the highway sits the largest Muslim mosque in the United States.  The huge white building, with its gold-colored dome is very impressive.

We shared the driving.  Rest areas on the highway are about forty miles apart.  One of us would drive, and stop at every third rest area.  Since we drove at 110/120 KmH, which is 65/70 MPH, the hundred and twenty miles took us about two hours.  Then we’d pull in, jump out, stretch and walk to the washrooms, get something to drink, trade drivers and be on the road again in about five minutes.

All the way down I-75, at every rest area we stopped at, the men’s washrooms were on the left, and the women’s were on the right.  I believe it was at the welcome center near the Georgia border.  We pulled in and, since I was passenger, I got to the washrooms first.  I plunged through the left door, and it took me several seconds to wonder why there were no urinals.  I backed out quickly.  Fortunately there were no female customers or a security guard to explain why I was in the women’s washroom, to, at four in the morning.

While in Florida, we went to Kissimmee, where there is a huge flea market under roofs.  I bought a copy of the floating bill trick, at a magic shop for my son.  The flea market was across the road and just down the street from a Medieval Times dinner/show.  Apparently it’s not there anymore, but there is one in Toronto, a little over an hour down the highway.

We also went to a place called Olde Towne, in Orlando.  It’s a tourist cash siphon with period restaurants and cars on display, as well as a plethora of little shops selling trinkets of all types.  This was the first place I had ever seen a shop selling semi-precious stones, so I bought some and some holders, for the wife.  These shops have since made their way into Canada.  There’s one up at the farmer’s market.  The son has thirteen different carved stone skulls, from thumb-tip sized, to golf-ball.

I had won a contest in a knife magazine, and received a hand-made knife from a maker in Orlando.  In my thank-you letter to him, I said that, if I were ever near him, I would stop in to visit.  Here was my first chance.  I borrowed the van and drove into the city.  I missed an exit on a toll-road and had to pay an unnecessary charge, both going, and coming back.  We spent a nice morning.  I saw his neighbor’s mint Corvair.  He had a map, with pins, of all the people he had sold knives to.  Not knowing anything about Ontario, he had my pin in the muskeg, somewhere just off Hudson’s Bay, so I correctly placed it for him.

We left to go home on the next Saturday morning.  Early!  I had provided a Koolatron, an insulated chest with an electrical heat exchange unit for keeping things cold.  It could plug into a cigarette lighter, and had an adapter for in-home use.  We prechilled it Friday and took it out and plugged it into the van Friday evening.  We were up at five AM, finished closing up the trailer, and were ready to hit the road by five-thirty.  And the Koolatron had killed the ten-year-old battery.

Now what do we do?  He complained that “the old folks” in the park slept in, sometimes till seven-thirty or eight o’clock.  While we were still thinking about who to wake up, and when, a young man in his late teens came around delivering newspapers.  At first I thought it was SightnBytes’ rusty Corolla, but it was a beat-up red Datsun.  We waved him down and he had jumper cables and agreed to help start the van.  At last we were on our way home.  An hour *late*, but moving north.

The trip back was just like the drive down, only without a visit to a women’s washroom, and still no mountain scenery.  Three years in a row I made this trip, and six times I missed the Appalachians because they were always in the night portion of our trips.  I had to wait a couple more years till I could afford to take the wife to South Carolina, to see the wonders of the mountains.  He and I had a late supper at a seafood restaurant near Mount Airie, where Andy Griffith lived, 3500 feet up and two hundred miles from the ocean.  I remembered it and took an appreciative, seafood-loving wife there five years later.

This was my first long driving trip, and I found I liked it.  I became a bit of a map-nut from studying the road-atlas, to see where we were.  I now have two road-atlases and two hardcover atlases at home and often look up exactly where a newspaper story occurred.

P.S.

www.granmaladybug.wordpress.com is now on the air.  First blogs about cats, to be followed by cooking, candlemaking, etc.  Visit at your own risk.

I was so excited and a bit rushed by my family wanting to keep moving on down the highway that I made the mistake of getting my shadow on the plaque and the frog close-up. And the turtle you see in the background of the sculpture  truly was “the one that got away!” No close-up to show.

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Photo of the Week series: Every Sunday in 2012 I will either share a photo from my archives or something new I just can’t wait to get feedback on for future art shows/exhibits.

Blogger participation: My hope is to receive enough input on each week’s photo to later post a Bloggers’ Choice of the Month and wrap up 2012 with a Bloggers’ Choice of the Year.

Wright City, MO–(KMOX)–An accident involving a Missouri Highway Patrol Trooper has all eastbound lanes of Interstate 70 near Wright City shut down at this hour.  No word on injuries.  A Highway Patrol spokesman says it’s a two-car accident involving a trooper.  All eastbound lanes of 70 are shut down at the rest area near Wright City.  No word on when the highway is expected to reopen.

Reliable Directions

You should always have reliable directions in your car, especially if you’re driving to a new area or traveling at night. Being in a smart phone era, you should have GPS on your phone or access to downloading it onto your phone. If you don’t own a GPS you can purchase a cheap GPS at almost any store. They generally have extra settings to tell you where gas stations and restaurants are, which can come in handy. Even if you don’t want to use a GPS you can get directions off of Mapquest or just plan out your trip the old way just using an ordinary map.

Lots of Music

Bring music with you on your trip to cover the background noises of being on the road. Whether the music is on your iPod or on a handful of CDs, let everyone bring some of their own favorite tunes so there is a variety of music. There’s nothing worse than a silent car ride when everyone runs out of things to talk about, or simply don’t feel like talking. Listen to songs that are upbeat so they don’t put you to sleep because the last thing you need on your trip is an accident.

Snacks

Assign each person in the car to bring a couple snacks. This will allow everyone to have some food in the car that they like. It prevents you from having to make multiple stops to get pricey rest area food, and it will just take more time to get to your destination. The last thing you want to do is spend more time on the road than you need to. Avoid bringing foods that will melt, like chocolate. It can make an unnecessary mess that you’ll have to clean up later on in the trip.

First Aid Kit

Always make sure you have a small first aid kit in your car. You never know what’s going to happen while you are in your car. It can be for as small as a bee sting or paper-cut. You can buy a pre-made kit or make your own. It’s cheap and small, so you can just hide it in your glove compartment in case anyone needs it.

Flashlight or Glowstick

This is essential if you know you will be driving around at night. Keep a flashlight in the car so your passengers can search for scattered items while driving. When the overhead lights are turned on, it can cause a glare on the windows and make it harder for the driver to see. Having a flashlight on hand or glowstick can be important if you break down somewhere. It’ll help you flag down help, and so you don’t have to sit in the dark.

Jamie Stevens is always on the road and is always looking for the best deals. Whether she is checking into a luxury hotel or finding the best deals for her car, she knows is capable of finding great deals for almost anything on sites like carinsurancecalculatoronline.com.

After a couple of years, he got a better paying job with a small company that made commercial window and door awnings.  Sadly, the same eight to nine months of work still applied.  Nobody wants to purchase, or install outdoor awnings, in February.  Ineligible for unemployment insurance, he felt he might as well spend some time in the warm south, and joined the parents.  Recently divorced, he had to sell “their” house and split the money.  He was wondering what to do with his meager half, when the news came that they would have to find new quarters for the next winter.

The parents’ house came with a small upstairs apartment.  For years they rented to a local nurse, but eventually she moved on.  Then followed a series of worse and worse tenants, until finally Dad just said no more.  When the brother lost his house, the parents let him move in upstairs at no cost.  He was there to do yard work, run errands and keep an eye on them.  He decided to purchase a mobile home in a nearby Florida park so that they would all have a place to go in the winter.

The parents eventually reached a point where it was physically impossible for them to drive to Florida.  Mom and I used to correspond a letter a week.  One day I got a letter from her that said, “I had a heart attack.”  She hadn’t, but I almost did.  That is not the kind of information to convey in a letter, a middle-of-the-night phone call perhaps, but not a letter.  The next winter Dad thought he was having a heart attack, and my brother drove for three days to get him to a hospital in Windsor, because they could not get health insurance.

Just when they could no longer go south, my brother got a year-round job and had to stay north, both to work, and to take care of them.  He made arrangements with the park management to administer winter rental on the unit, but still had to make sure it was cleaned, the furnace worked and propane, water and electricity were supplied.  These were best done in person. His new employer was busy in the summer and slow at the end of year.  The first year they allowed him a week’s holiday near the first of December, and he called me to ask if I wanted to go on the trip with him.  I didn’t have to work as hard readying the trailer as I did at the plant, and I hadn’t been south of the Canada/US border in twenty years, so I jumped at the chance.  I had enough seniority that I could book the week off easily.

In his early retirement, Dad had driven to both Canadian coasts, but as they both aged, the long drive from Ontario to Florida became three short days of driving, and two nights in motels.  My brother however, loved to drive, and with only nine days to get a lot accomplished, saw no reason to waste valuable time or money.  I was warned that we would be driving straight through, and I was expected to spell him at the wheel.

I’ve said that my brother is an early morning person.  Excitement may have prevented a lot of sleep after finishing work Friday night, but at least he finished at 5 PM.  I had an afternoon shift, and wasn’t home till after eleven.  I don’t know what time he was up, but he told me he left home at five.  From his place, straight to the border was almost four hours.  The run to pick me up was two hours, and we were still almost four hours from Windsor.  I climbed in his van at 7 AM, and the race was on.

The connection from the bridge at Detroit to I-75 is two miles and seven stop lights.  The back-up at customs was relatively light.  Once we were on I-75, it’s a straight run to within fifteen miles of his camp in Florida.  I saw Michigan, Ohio and the beginning of Kentucky before it got dark.  After that, I knew we were in the mountains, because I could look out the window and doowwnn, and see lights, but entirely missed the vistas.

The sun came up again when we were just north of Atlanta, Georgia.  Just in time to catch the morning rush.  Down the hill into town, over a little flat spot, and down again, and traffic came to a complete stop for no apparent reason.  All except the guy in the next lane.  Screeeech, bang!  I didn’t witness anything, keep moving!  Nothing against Georgia but, unlike the beautiful mountain scenery I’d missed up north, in the dark, Georgia is flat, and orange.  People say the soil is red.  It’s prison jumpsuit orange.  I’ve seen roadside billboards, but this was the first trip I’d seen them on top of fifty, or hundred-foot steel poles.  Hotels?  Okay!  Restaurants?  Okay!  Boiled peanuts at every exit?  It was several years before I got a chance to try them.

We drove on into Florida, slid off I-75 onto the Florida Turnpike, slid off again onto a smaller highway, and climbed out of the van in front of the trailer at about nine AM.  We napped (?) until mid-afternoon and went looking for supper.  This, the first year I went down, we went to Daytona Beach and I swam, for the first time in the Atlantic.  My brother does not swim, and begrudged me the time.  Then we went back to Daytona, where he wasted an hour at the museum, while I explored the stands at the Freeway.

This was a strange, rushed way to travel, but it did leave time for me to see and experience some pleasant and interesting things.  Some day, when you’ve all had lots of sleep, I’ll tell you all about them.

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Pothole garden (Photo credit: thepotholegardener)

Life’s a journey we can interpreted in many ways. There are hills and valleys, potholes and smooth asphalt. We get stop lights for a while and forks in the road with decisions we have to stop and make on which way to go. It’s those twists and turns that have to be navigated that determine how the journey will go and the possible outcome. Weather we go it alone or allow those we take with us to help us in those decisions. It’s also the outcome of those decisions that influence what happens next.

My life road is full of exactly all those things. Early on there were many valleys and potholes. My lack of self-confidence and feeling like the ugly duck played on the decisions as a nerdy kid. I was primarily raised by my Mom. Had a Dad but he seemed to never be around when I needed that fatherly influence. Mom did the best she could to arm me with the needed knowledge for the world outside the front door. Unfortunately I was forced to learn a lot on my own. It wasn’t Moms fault, she did the best she could. I just found my way by trial and error. I seemed to attract the party animal types. Never got invited out much in High School but College was another story. That seemed to be when my road had forks that started appearing and decisions I had to make. With having no support, I didn’t make great decisions. Found myself in more trouble at times more than I wanted and no way of getting out.

In my late teens and early 20′s I ran many life stop signs. Never stopped to make the decisions and even had a few wrecks. Some of those potholes were massive and I found myself having to stop and heal from the injuries I had received. There were times where I needed a panel beater(crash repairers) to help remove some of the dents. As much as I wanted to go back and take the other road I had missed, I realize now that the outcome could have been the same or possibly worse. The big question was could I learn from the mistakes and move on or was a spinning my wheels in a mud hole?

I knew I had to do something to get off the road I was on. I just couldn’t see that I was headed for another crash. I had the blinders on and never saw the on coming traffic. I had no clue how to be a life defensive driver. Through a series of running stop signs I found myself in a pretty deep valley with no hope (I thought) of making it up the mountain to see the sunrise. It was only when I took the blinders off and allowed those on the side of the road to give me a hand did I find myself able to start climbing up the mountain towards the sun.

My first marriage was a road of stops lights, forks in the road with many decisions to make. The biggest stop light was the day one of my children became critically ill. I found myself on a round-a-bout making that continuous right turn. I finally got off that circle and had to hit the brakes before making a huge driving error.

That stop sign has brought me to here and now. I hit the occasional pothole. Have some smooth road and still have to deal with the forks in the road. I have had people who have veered on to the road who have stopped to give directions. Some were helpful and others pointed me in the opposite direction. Some of them found the off ramp and others are still here on the road trip with me. I have no clue what the road in to the future looks like or how its paved. I have learned to pay attention to the signs and lights along the way. Listen to the guidance that given and if I chose to accept it great,if not I find a rest area til I get my directions better sorted.

Heres the question……Are you a life defensive driver or do you need to find a panel beater?

Sheba and Sunny during our lunch break

We drove straight through today instead of camping overnight along the way as we usually do.

We took a lunch break at a roadside rest area.  And later we stopped at another rest area to walk the dogs.  I noticed that both rest areas had dump stations.

I think that our driving straight through was a mistake.  We arrived at my sister’s house right around dark and ended up setting up by flashlight.  I was tired, hungry and cranky.

Next time we’ll do our usual stopover, which makes the trip fun.

Lunch break

My sister, who is also low carb dieting,  had a FANTASTIC crock pot pizza waiting for us when we arrived.  I was so relieved not to have to cook this evening.

Sheba’s crate fits nicely on a cushion in the trailer, but it makes the space feel cramped.  I’ll be very glad when she is reliably housebroken so she can sleep in the space underneath my bed.

Oh!  We saw our first Casita on the road today.   We have seen them in campgrounds, but had never seen one on the road before.   It was headed south on I-75 toward Macon.  I was so excited to see it that I didn’t even notice the tow vehicle.

Ron walking Sheba and Sunny

I was angry because they appeared oblivious to their appearance — not just stylistically, but also that of life togetherness. I wouldn’t have left my dorm like that in 2001. Yet here they were, souring my rest stop with the stench of their mediocrity. I vowed to never be like them. Maybe a vindictive blog post will set me apart.

While I watched the red-necked phalaropes in the pond ..... -- Photo by Pat Bean

Adventures with Pepper

Pepper played around in the buttercups -- Photo by Pat Bean

The roadsides between Wichita Falls and Amarillo were strewn with wildflowers in abundance this past week. While Texas’ glorious spring bluebonnets have already disappeared, purple penstemons, golden coreopsis, scarlet Indian paintbrush, and white prickly poppy blossoms stood in nicely.

And then when Pepper and I pulled into a fancy rest stop, complete with a sign near the entrance to the information center that warned visitors to be aware of rattlesnakes, there was a large field of buttercups. I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t thrill at such a sight.

Beyond the flowers, there was a small pond with a dozen or so phalaropes doing their thing.

And the Texas nasties got her. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Phalaropes swim in circles to stir up the water and bring up their dinner. I’ve seen thousands of them do this on the Great Salt Lake in Utah, where they fill up on brine shrimp eggs before continuing their migration.

There were only about a dozen, however, on this small pond.

While I watched these small birds, Pepper decided to explore the buttercups. When I looked around, she was having a blast bounding among them. Watching her made me laugh out loud – well until she tired and came back to stand beside me.

It took me half an hour of picking and brushing and cutting of hair before Pepper wasn’t as prickly as a cactus. That sign that warned about snakes should have also mentioned Texas’ nasty burs.

Bean’s Pat: Peter Pan
http://tinyurl.com/84j3cf9
How many of you have actually read J.M. Barrie’s book? I love the quotes.

Saturday night we enjoyed Cubs versus the Phillies in the front row of the Hall of Fame Club!  The Hall of Fame Club was awesome.  They had great mixed drinks and beer, excellent food and some really cool Cooperstownesque memorabilia.  There was also indoor seating, televisions and heat!  Due to the cold and rainy conditions, it was pretty packed inside, but with our great seats, we toughed it out.  To my delight, we sat next to another couple where the gal was a Cubs fan and the dude was a Phillies fan.  The craziest part was that she was also from Illinois and they now lived in Ithaca.  Wacky.

Fast forward to yesterday, we loaded up the dogs and hit the road.  It only took about a half an hour for Coop to start drooling excessively and about another half an hour after that before he threw up all over the place again.  This time, Wrigley had enough of the back seat, tracked through the vomit and straight onto my lap in the front passenger seat.  Have you ever had a 90 pound German Shepherd on your lap?  It’s not pleasant.  It’s even less pleasant when she’s tracked vomit all over your shirt and jeans.  This time we were prepared.  On Saturday morning we had spent a fair amount of cash at Target getting leather cleaners, car deodorizers and upholstery spray.  We pulled off 280 and into an empty office parking lot.  The dogs chilled in the grass while we cleaned the car.  We gave Coop a Benadryl and some water while Wrigley got a wet wipe bath and a lot of treats.  We hit the road and left behind our LL Bean silicone travel bowl in the grass (oops) which I remembered about an hour and a half later.  After the morning we had, we weren’t going back.  Today I found out they don’t sell that bowl anymore.  Damn.

Now I’m really excited to take the dogs on a road trip to Savannah.  At the top of my packing list? Towels.

As we pulled back onto the highway from our latest rest stop, we passed a long line of semi-trucks parked at the far end of the lot, their drivers nowhere to be seen, most likely holed up in their cabs for a much-needed rest. These titans of transport rumble up and down the Interstates, enthroned like kings in their cabs, their kingdoms moving with them from one roadside diner to the next. “The truckers cruise over the surface of the nation without being a part of it.” (72) Steinbeck had an appreciation for truckers as professionals, keepers of a specialized knowledge and bearers of a secret language. He was lucky enough to be accepted among them, as a fellow wanderer with his own wisdom, his own secrets. In our sports car, which marked us out as amateurs, we were never so lucky. We had to make do with the occasional longing look or appreciative nod.

Rest areas in some states have started offering free coffee, presumably to help keep these legions of truckers awake and alert. Since we were trying to awaken our inner Americans, we decided to stop and try this free coffee, because Americans don’t turn down free anything. After tasting it, we decided that in the future we would pay for our coffee. It just proves the old adage that you don’t get something for nothing. But after spending so many thousands of miles sharing the roads with those giants of transport and more than once wondering what our little Mazda would look like after an altercation with one of them, we submit that we as a nation owe our truckers better coffee.

In addition to these ubiquitous semis, giant RVs seem to be proliferating across the country. They are starting to rival the trucks for numbers and size, though certainly not road dominance. These are 40-foot behemoths towing luxury four-wheel drive vehicles. You’d never know gas was hovering around $4 per gallon. New and shiny, these giants of the road are driven by white-haired retirees in convoys collectively worth millions of dollars.

These glistening wheeled residences parade through the tiny towns where their dusty, road-weary cousins are parked permanently next to rusting water tanks, surrounded by waist-high grass, with boards propped against the peeling sides to cover the wheels and give the whole thing the illusion of permanence. But there is nothing more precarious. For some people mobility is freedom. For others it’s a threat.

Yet the attraction of mobility seems undimmed since Steinbeck’s day. There are thousands of residents of RV Parks along incredibly straight stretches of highway. Collectively, they sponsor a section of the road, paying for its maintenance and cleaning up the trash people jettison from the windows of moving cars, just like the boys in Colorado. This lends a sense of ownership, of control over a symbolic stretch of freedom. Where else but America would so many people live in their RVs and spend time and money beautifying a stretch of highway? You can even adopt a highway through the American Highway Maintenance Corporation, which provides recognition for your efforts by means of huge signs along the side of “your” stretch of highway, advertising your commitment to beautifying your environment. Some of these signs display names of individuals and families, others advertise “Capital Bail Bonds,” or “Conservative Evangelical Christians.” For the young boys we met, it was a sense of social responsibility that compelled them to clean up after their less responsible compatriots. For the older generations it seems to be an unquenchable desire for a sense of place. They’ve rejected the obligations associated with a traditional home and replaced them with others.

At another of the infamous rest areas, we met a former pastor who had supplemented an allegiance to Jesus with an allegiance to the road. He and his wife have been living in their fifth wheel trailer for about a year now. They travel around between RV parks and people’s driveways. They subscribe to newsletters and magazines all about the RV culture (though we were unsure how all that mail gets delivered). The Reverend said that an estimated one million people in the US live exclusively in an RV. It’s a completely nomadic, mobile culture. The most recent US census calls these “people on the move” and counts them as an entirely separate subset of the American population, like students or military personnel. This is the road warrior culture, where a vehicle is a status symbol, an indicator of independence and imagined individuality. It will take more than high gas prices to change that.

We also found RVs inhabiting the various campgrounds where we spent our nights. These existed in various states of permanence, from those just parked overnight to those leveled with wheel blocks for a longer stay, and even some who planned to stay for entire seasons, with potted plants growing outside and above-ground pools set up in the next campsite. Either way, nearly every RV we saw had a satellite dish, some affixed to the top and some set up on tripods outside, so the occupants never had to be out-of-touch with the all-important TV culture. As Steinbeck drove through the country he noted, “It is a rare house or building that is not rigged with spiky combers of the air. Radio and television speech becomes standardized, perhaps better English than we have ever used.” (82) The loss of the regional particularities which he observed continues apace in America’s campgrounds, all thanks to the ubiquity of TV.

We’ve never been to prison, but rest area restrooms are what we imagine prison toilets to be like. With the exception of the baby change station, at least. Everything is stainless steel: the toilets, sinks, mirrors, everything. The toilet paper holders are pad-locked, presumably to prevent the theft of a valuable resource. When you close the stall door, it makes the sound of a cell door slamming. A final, echoing, bone-chilling, despair-inducing Ka-Wham.

Steinbeck knew these places in their former guise, when they were apparently idyllic little oases scattered across a desert of black asphalt. It is true that America has an endless string of rest areas stretching from Seattle to Miami, Maine to California, but in our experience they are universally horrible. Derelict picnic tables on a patch of scrub grass eight feet square, provided for your convenience so you can sit and have your lunch while traffic whizzes by on the Interstate six feet away. The barbeque pits have been replaced with vending machines.

But a rest area is a lifesaver when you’re out on the highway 40 miles from the nearest town and you’ve just finished an American-sized 64-oz Coke. You live for the signs. You count the miles. Rest area ten miles. Five miles. Two miles. There it is! The big blue signs are like water in the desert. Until you see the traffic cones. Closed for repairs. This in a country where public urination is a crime, and the next nearest toilet is 35 miles in the direction you’ve just come from. Then what you wouldn’t give for a squalid toilet stall with two inches of standing water on the floor.

At one of these rest areas, under a bright noonday sun, we met a crew of teenage boys lounging on the peeling picnic tables, wearing their own version of a uniform: oversized T-shirts, baggy jeans, and baseball caps. Perhaps understandably, we assumed they were out for a joyride on a Saturday afternoon. Then again, you know what they say about assumptions and asses. Their van, parked nearby with all the doors open, was emblazoned with a logo: Environmental Youth League. Turns out they were spending their Saturday afternoon picking up trash by the side of the highway. They had stopped at the rest area to take advantage of both the facilities and the chance to sit and relax. They all turned their heads to follow the progress of the car as we pulled in. Inevitably, this is where we started.

“Nice car!”

We tried to grin modestly. Matt wandered over within conversational distance. “Yeah, I wish it was mine! Belongs to my father-in-law.”

“Wish we had something like it. We’re stuck driving around in this stinking box all weekend.”

Matt turned to look over his shoulder at the dust-caked van. It was hard to tell what color it was supposed to be, but the logo on the side was clear.

“So what’s the Environmental Youth League? Some sort of work-release program?”

Beautify this

The oldest of the boys laughed and shook his head once, from right to left. “Actually it’s a volunteer organization. We’re out here by choice. Just picking up the garbage people chuck out of their car windows, trying to keep the place looking nice.”

The “place” was a stretch of highway ten miles long, surrounded by flat, high prairie, with scrub grass stretching away to Kansas in the east and the Rockies in the west. The spring fields were high with wheat and alfalfa, the road tracing a black scar through green and golden grassland. These boys were like contemporary cowboys, riding the range in their loyal steed, righting wrongs as they went.

The trash by the side of the highway is nothing new. Steinbeck saw it long before we did. “American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash—all of them—surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles and almost smothered with rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much.” (22) For a while those rings seemed to expand with the growth of the cities, and gradually began to tail out along the highways, so that even the open stretches between cities were strewn with the detritus of American civilization. But these young men were personified evidence of a new social awareness. Having grown up with the garbage, they nevertheless saw it as Steinbeck did, as a blight on the open land.

Steinbeck wondered whether there would come a time when we could no longer afford our wastefulness and would be forced to adapt our lifestyles and methods of production to a necessary austerity. These boys weren’t yet able to influence the causes, but they were sacrificing their spare time to mediate the effects. They were even sorting the trash they collected for recycling.

We left them to their work with a sense of chastisement as well as renewed hope for the future of our open spaces. The appreciation for the natural world which Steinbeck wrote of fifty years ago is still out there among the young, even if its opposite is clearly written along the sides of the highway in discarded Coke cans.