America: You've Got to Check This Place Out Before You Die

About six months ago, I was stuck for several hours making a delivery in some town in northern New Jersey. Moonachie, I think it was, or alike. From the front of the building, one could easily see the Empire State Building looming in the none-to-far-off distance. The sun was setting. Lights all over New York City were turning on. The ESB itself was lit up in layers of red, white and blue.

There's something about the Empire State Building; an awe inspiring quality that no other building in America posesses. It's no longer the tallest building in the world (I believe right now it ranks in at number nine), but it has a majestic presence which many of it's vertical superiors lack. The Twin Towers didn't have it (I got to see them a couple of times before they were destroyed), even the Sears Tower comes up short (ba-dum-ching!). I don't know what it is. Maybe someone else does. It's just one of those things everyone should see at least once before they die.

Then it occurred to me: most people never will. Infact, the vast majority of Americans will never see the vast majority of America. There are so many things worth seeing between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Three thousand miles of mountains, plains, cities, rivers, deserts, and God knows what else. But the majority of Americans will live out their entire lives and die having seen very little, if any, of it.

In this regard, I suppose I've been blessed. I've been able to travel, by road, to and through most of the country, both as a truck driver and in personal recreational travels. There are a great many people who are much more globally traveled than I (I've still yet to leave the states), but I've gotten to see America in an up close and personal fashion which most do not. The view from an airplane window does not come close to doing it justice.

Neither does TV. For instance, most people have never seen Washington DC, save for on TV and in movies. These usually consist of images of the National Mall, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol and the White house, usually shot from a helicopter. Maybe they feature some shots of the gleaming glass cages on K Street NW that house the power brokers and influence peddlers. If all you ever see of our nation's capitol are these images, you might thing that DC is some panacea made of shining stone and marble, a modern day Olympus.

But I grew up near DC. I know it like the back of my hand. What you see on TV is just a tiny sliver of the city. The rest of it is quite different. The ghettos which make up the majority of the town don't make it on the air. You don't get off the freeway in Anacostia. K Street SE might as well be a whole other country (in the third world). Many people I've talked to around the country have asked me what DC is like, and most are amazed when I describe all this to them.

But that's just DC. Truth is, when you travel this great land of ours most of what you see will astound and delight you. Los Angeles has some pretty well publicized shortcomings, but I don't care who you are: you will feel a certain giddiness at seeing that big HOLLYWOOD sign on the side of the mountain. Most folks don't know this, but that is actually not unique to Hollywood. Many of the outlying towns nestled in the hills that surround LA have the same sorts of signs mounted on those hills.

Get drunk in Chicago. Everyone should. Personally, I'm fond of the Nocturna New Years Eve party at Metro, across the street from Wrigley Field. But there's enough different shit for all types of people to do. Once your hangover has subsided, and sunlight no longer hurts your eyes, check out the skydeck on the Sears Tower. From the ground, it may not appear to have the majesty of the ESB, but the view from the top more than makes up for it.

But truthfully, the most astounding things you'll see are not cities, or buildings, or anything else forged by the hands of men. It's the naturally occurring, the things mande by nature and God Himself that make the journey worth the pain in the ass that travel is. Take Arizona for instance. Driving across the northern part of the state on I-40 (what used to be US-66) you'll be driving through miles and miles of arid desert and huge rock formations. In the distance you'll see mountains, big ones, slowly getting closer. At times there will be snow on their peaks, even though it's sweltering where you are. Eventually you'll climb up into them, approaching Flagstaff. As you do, the temperature changes. The overall climate changes, and the landscape changes drastically. Where a moment ago you were surrounded by sand and tumbleweeds, now you're seeing lush green grass, forestry, even small ponds and streams. You could mistake it for Kentucky. If it's winter, you'r probably getting snowed on (people look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them I got stuck in a blizzard in Arizona, which has happened to me). Then you'll head back down the hill, getting a view of how high up you are that leaves nothing to the imagination, and be back in the desert heat like it had never changed.

I can't do things like this justice on a word processor.

Modern day to day life in these united states is techno-centric, to say the least. It's very easy for human beings to perceive ourselves as being a larger than life entity, crushing and dominating the world around us. But watching forty ton trucks that look like toys next to the Tennesee mountain they're driving around; or crossing the river between Wisconsin and Minnesota, knowing it's the very same river you crossed a thousand miles away down in Baton Rouge; or being surrounded on all sides by a north Texas sunset that fills an endless sky with more colors than the eye knows what to do with; or looking up afterward at the stars that fill all that blackness like sand on the beach; serves as a reminder that we're actually only one part of creation, and far from the biggest. Indeed, even the most strident humanist would not find it difficult to think there might just be something out there far more powerful than us.

So anyway, at your earliest possible convenience, gett off your fat ass and go check out America for yourself. Don't just take my word for it. After all, I've been drinking since noon.