July 14, 2015
46 – A Pontiac Sedan That Is, of Course, Idling
We both wake with a groan when the alarm goes off at 4:15. We get up, eat the granola bars we laid out last night and load the bags we pre-packed long before we went to bed. Then we set off in the dark, first through the streets of Pontiac and then out into the countryside.
We go about a mile on Historic Route 66, all by ourselves. The Dairy Queen and the pizza place and the Caterpillar factory are all still asleep. Beyond the edge of town it's farmland anywhere we look. The humid air turns the hairs on my arms wet and so many insects bounce off my face and body after flying toward the brightness of the bike's headlight. The sum of all these things — the dark, the air, the calm — makes us feel good, happy, lucky to be alive and traveling across America in the way we are.
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I ride in the right lane and Kristen in the left. No car passes us for almost two hours. It's so still and quiet that when we stop and let Walter out we can hear the muffled sound of a television filtering out across the prairie from a farmhouse that's almost a mile away.
When a handful of traffic shows up later, without fail the farmers driving trucks — the ones who own the houses with the John Deere-themed mailboxes out in front of them — wave to us when they go past. Also without fail the men and women headed to work in sedans and SUVs don't do anything except stare. They seem lost in thought, like they're trying to figure out the exact number of minutes it will take them to reach the gas station, clog its toilet, grab a coffee, and return to their car as it idles in the parking space closest to the door. When the engine noise fades it's replaced by the sound that comes from each one of the herd of wind turbines that flank the road — a sound that has the same kind of muffled roar as a jet passing overhead at 35,000 feet.
We know we've reached the heart of the Midwest when we roll into Minonk and find the red and yellow signage of a Casey's General Store sitting at the edge of its downtown. It gives us a chance to stuff our faces with donuts and coffee and croissant breakfast sandwiches while diesel trucks idle in the parking lot because their owners aren't willing to go without the cool of air conditioning for even twelve seconds.
The most direct way to cross the Illinois River is through Peoria. We haven't been able to figure out for sure if it's the armpit or the asshole of Illinois, but what's certain is that it's full of highways, traffic, suburbs, casinos, and the kind of general ennui that makes you walk into a mini-mart, head to the coolers along the back wall, look at a forty-ouncer, and then think to yourself, Yeah, that sounds good. That's why instead of heading west and south we head west and north to cross the river somewhere less depressing and better-smelling.
The only time we get a broad view of the countryside around us is at the top of an overpass above Interstate 39. Half the time I can't even see the barns just off the road because they're hidden by all the corn. It's like we're out in our little world, riding on smooth and empty back roads surrounded by so many vibrant shades of green that sometimes it's hard to believe they're real. But no matter how far from the highways we get it's still beer can bingo all day long: Budweiser, Bud Light, Miller Lite, Busch, and the elusive Coors Light.
In front of the grocery store in Toluca we find a Pontiac sedan that is, of course, idling. There's no one sitting inside it. All of the windows are down, so the cool generated by the air conditioner just drifts out into the growing morning heat. It's like the act of turning the key two clicks to the left and pulling it out of the ignition and the thought of having to reverse those steps five minutes later is just too much for about half the people of rural Illinois to bear.
A few miles out of town I wave and say good morning to a farmer mowing the lawn in front of his house. He waves back with a big smile and a hello of his own. And in that instant some strong feeling hits me. I start to think about what it means for the people who call this part of the country home as farms become bigger and more consolidated, as the number of farmers required to work them goes down, and as more and more people who used to be farmers or would have become farmers leave the countryside for suburbs or the cities. I don't think about it in the economic sense, but more in terms of psychology. I think about what it means to work hard every day, to see the results of that effort grow right in front of you in the months that follow, and to make a profit that's more often than not related to the amount of work you put in. You don't get that flipping burgers in the kitchen of a restaurant or doing water line maintenance for the county or drilling the same sets of bolt holes day after day on an assembly line.
I've talked to a lot of farmers both old and young in the many years and thousands of miles I've spent cycling among the back roads and small towns of rural America, and one of the strongest feelings I get from them is a sense of place. Farming families tend to stay in one community for most if not all of their lives. These communities become a living collection of deep roots, of strong bonds, of shared histories. Although they all have flaws in the same way that any group of more than about eight people will have flaws, there exists within them a sense of identity and pride that I haven't felt in any place I've ever lived. Yet the more time I spend out here, the more I become convinced that our relentless pursuit of efficiency and yields and profits have taken away an important part of this country's soul. In exchange for top-line revenue, critical elements of human capital like community, self esteem, and a sense of purpose become more and more diminished. The family farmer is one of the shining examples of the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps ideal that's held up by so many Americans as the embodiment of our collective effort and ingenuity, and now even a lot of them can't make it or just scrape by from one year to the next. I can't help but wonder what that means for the rest of us — what it means for the connection between how we work and what we create and how that makes us think about ourselves.
One of the few things that feels certain in all of the thoughts that wander through my head among the endless rows of corn and soybeans is that I don't see any plausible chain of events that will bring back small, thriving family farms in my lifetime. I worry what that means for the vast rural middle of my country.
We pass over the Illinois River at Lacon on a narrow two-lane bridge that causes only a few brief moments of terror. On the other side we hang a left and crank down busy Highway 29. It's not a road we'd ever take on our own, but we want Walter to have all afternoon and evening to rest in a quiet and cool motel room, and motels around here are scarce. Thoughts of trickle-down economics, Contras, and the War on Drugs run through my head as we ride alongside what road signs call the Ronald Reagan Trail. What has all morning been a headwind turns into a tailwind. It carries us into Chillicothe in no time at all, where our tour of the cheap motels of Mid-Illinois continues.
There's so much I could say about the mass of grocery stores, liquor stores, gas stations, car dealerships, and dozens of other retail stores that line the noisy highway beyond our motel. But instead my mind is on Walter. Although he's taking his antibiotics and drinking water, he continues to eat almost nothing. He's not sleeping much. He's shivering. And his eyes and gums have picked up infections as his body works as hard as it can to kick out whatever demon it picked up somewhere back in Ohio. The eating is the key. With it he'll regain the strength he needs to get back to normal health. Without it he'll get weaker and weaker and head down a road filled with so many bad things that I start to break down when I think about them. I know that one way or another something serious has to change tomorrow. He can't keep going on like this. We can't keep going on like this.
Today's ride: 63 miles (101 km)
Total: 1,874 miles (3,016 km)
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