February 7, 2016
This Could Be Me in Thirty Years
I wait out in front of the Winn-Dixie a few blocks from the police station while Kristen goes inside to buy some food. I've only been standing there for a few moments when a thin older guy with a thick salt and pepper beard and a dirty olive green hat with a small Confederate flag insignia on the front walks up to me.
"Where ya headed?" he asks, because that's the question everyone who's not a dog asks.
"San Diego," I say. Most people can barely process the fact that we're traveling on bikes in the first place. If they knew we were just riding west until we got tired of going west or until something calls us home I'm afraid they'd all walk away muttering to themselves and we'd go thousands of miles without saying more than ten words to anyone at all.
"Yeah, San Diego, me too," he says. "Well, I'm tryin' to get to San Diego, but I ain't havin' too good a time gettin' there."
I look over at the nearby wall. He's got an old mountain bike and a big camo-colored backpack leaned against it. It's way different from what we've got, but he's still doing it. Well, kind of.
"What's the trouble?" I ask.
"I'm just kinda stuck here. I been here for a few months, livin' under that bridge over there." He points toward the bridge we're about to ride out of town on. "It's hard in this cold weather. Got lotsa wood down there for a fire, but still."
"What's next for you then?"
"I was workin' for awhile. I'm a plumber, ya see, but it's hard. See, I lost ma home back durin' Katrina and I never really got back on ma feet after that. I had a job here for a few months, but then the guy's son needed a job and I was out the door. And there ain't no jobs here, there's no construction, so I'm stuck."
"Yeah, it doesn't seem like there's much industry. We saw the big paper mill back in Bogalusa but it's like that and logging and I don't know what else."
"Yep, and ya can't get a job at that place unless youse got a family member workin' there. One a those places."
"Yeah, it's hard. The jobs are all in the cities, but then you have to have some place to live when you get there."
"Right. So I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm tryna to get to San Diego to see my daughter who's in the military there. I got a son in the military out in Norfolk, Virginia, too. I'm tryna see both of em eventually."
He has so little. In comparison we have so much. And so I find myself slipping into this mode where I take great care not to talk about the expensive gear we have, or about how I work from the road with the computer and magical phone tucked away in my waterproof bags, or about how we're out here on this grand adventure just because we like it, and because we have the time and money to do it while eating good food and getting a motel room if we want one. We're lucky and I know it. I don't want to hold that out in front of anyone, to seem like I'm bragging, to act like I've got it all figured out and life is perfect. And so I ask a lot of questions, listen to the answers, look him in the eye, and try to give him the attention and respect that most people in his position aren't. I shake his hand and ask him his name, which is also Jeff. This could be me in thirty years, I think. You just never know in this country.
In the end, it's one of the best talks I've had with anyone on this trip. Jeff is more welcoming and interested in what we're doing than most people we've met. I know there's a lot more to his story that I don't hear and never will, yet my sense of the man is that he has a good heart, but that a combination of bad luck and a poor economy have taken so much out of his life. You could say the same for a million other people in the Deep South.
"Watch out for the crazies," he tells me as we get ready to head out. "You in Louisiana after all."
"Yeah, but I can handle it. I've been to Kentucky. You know what I'm talking about. Are these guys around here crazier than in Kentucky?"
He just laughs and shakes his head. Fair or not, Kentucky always wins in these contests.
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Blue skies, rolling hills, chickens in the barnyard, the cold of the night losing its battle with the day's growing heat, an emphatic thumbs-up and broad smile from an old man in a Chevy Trailblazer, a Dollar General store out in the middle of nowhere at the junction of three minor highways; Sunday morning in rural Louisiana.
Highway 10 turns into 440 and then 1057. As the numbers get bigger the traffic gets lighter, and most of the cars are on their way to or from church. Some of the congregations have been around for almost two-hundred years, which makes them ancient by American standards. The trees that aren't pines look down on us naked and skeletal, revealing the complex network of branches and twigs that the spring and summer and fall try hard to hide. It's so relaxed out here that even the Rottweilers aren't interested in giving chase. They just walk over to the edge of the yard, give a bark or two, and then watch us crank up and over the next little rise and out of sight.
We pass a political yard sign at the end of the driveway for some big country farmhouse. It reads Donald Trump for President on the top line and then Mike Huckabee or Ben Carson for Vice President on the next. This isn't a campaign-approved sign; the guy had it made just for him.
"I bet Donald Trump would be the first nominee not to pick a running mate," I say to Kristen. "Because it would take attention away from him. He'd try to pass it off like, 'I don't need a vice-president. I've got this on my own. You won't believe how much I've got this. It's going to turn out great. Trust me, you're gonna love it.'"
The bright green of rolling pastures trade places with the thick trees and muddy flats of the Tangipahoa River. On the western side sits the town of the same name. Most of the places we've been in the last few days made it seem like the terrible poverty that we saw so much of in southern Georgia and Alabama was behind us. Tangipahoa reminds us that it's not. The grocery store has long since closed, just like the flea market and the pool hall. It's not clear if any other businesses ever existed here. We look out on rusted sheet metal roofs and cars on blocks and hear desperate dogs barking unseen down cracked and potholed side streets. I look over at one house that's in such a decayed state that I think to myself I wonder how long that place has been empty and then two shoeless kids that are like five years old walk out the side door and watch us pass. We say hello to a few of the dozens of people we see walking the streets to get to the mini-mart or home from church because they don't own a car.
750 people live in Tangipahoa, which half the signs abbreviate to Tangi. Fifty percent of the people who live here – every other person in town – sit below the poverty line. That line is drawn at less than $12,000 per year, and it's a figure that doesn't include the people who live just above it. That has to be a big number in a place where the median household income is less than $14,000 per year. It almost goes without saying at this point that Tangipahoa is more than ninety percent black. In the town of Greensburg, which is about fifteen miles away and the same size, only a quarter of the population lives in poverty. The median household income is almost $26,000 – nearly double. Two-thirds of the residents of Greensburg are white.
The church is packed for the Sunday service, to the point that people have to invent their own parking places. It seems like everyone in town knows each other and says as much when they pass. The houses with a porch have at least two chairs on it, and those that don't have chairs in the yard near the front door. People still sit around and chat here. We spend a couple of minutes talking with two young boys who ask us where we're going as we coast past them. "Hey!" calls out a girl of about eight years old when she spots us a few blocks down the way, so we turn around and wave, and she waves back with a big smile, and then her dad does the same.
The gas station is all that's open and it's everything all at once: the grocery store, the hardware store, the liquor store, the check cashing store, the smoke shop, the fried chicken stand, and the pizza joint. Coupes with huge chrome wheels hang near the gas pumps. Sedans roll up with the windows down and leave smooth R&B spilling out all over the parking lot. The front door is a turnstile of men and women, young and old, poor and poorer. But we talk to more people and see more people talking to each other in the twenty minutes we spend standing in the space between the front door of the mini-mart and the pay phone than we have in the last week. For as troubled as the town appears, it feels alive in so many ways that most places we've seen have not.
Not a mile out of town the clean brick homes and horse pastures and long private driveways flanked by pine trees return. So do the No Trespassing signs. The forests in between are owned by private hunting clubs for use by their members only. It's the haves and the have-nots all over again.
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We don't see another town all afternoon, so it's mostly dairy farms and cows and barking dogs. Yet out in the middle of what seems like nowhere, where the cattle far outnumber people, we can't go five miles without finding another gas station. And everyone goes to these places: good old boys, poor moms and dads with three bratty kids jammed into the back of their Jeep Wrangler, hunters, young men who roll up with their stereo system pumping so hard that their license plates rattle, and seventy-five-year-old women coming back from church dressed in their Sunday best, which includes a fine white hat with a broad floppy brim. In rural America gas stations are these grubby yet integral hubs of rural public life.
The mini-marts are busier than normal because today's not just Sunday. It's the best Sunday, the Sunday to end all Sundays. It's Super Bowl Sunday. That's good for riding bikes, because it means the later the day gets the emptier the roads become. With people tucked away in homes and bars around the warm glow of the TV we climb one little hill after another after another after another in peace.
At a highway junction the map calls Chipola we pull behind a church to cook dinner. We haven't been standing around for more than three minutes before a white pickup rolls up in front of us with the driver-side window down.
"Y'all have a place to stay tonight?" asks the older man behind the wheel.
"We'll see," I say. "There are a lot of woods out here, so we usually find something."
"Well, if y'all wanna stay here, ya can. It's been done it before. It's no problem at all."
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The man gets no argument from us. We've found home for the night and we're happy about that fact. We thank him with big smiles and earnest words. And then, not ninety seconds after it appeared, the truck drives off and into the evening.
It's not as frigid as the last few nights, but still cold enough that we're tucked into the sleeping bag as soon as it's dark. The tent fills with laughter, the words of a Faulkner novel, the big sound and sweet harmonies of The Delfonics, and amazement at the fact that tomorrow we reach the Mississippi River. Almost a third of the continent is already behind us.
Today's ride: 45 miles (72 km)
Total: 872 miles (1,403 km)
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