Alexandria, VA to Nashville, TN to Oklahoma City to Amarillo to Santa Fe.
The boundaries for Virginia – and for that matter all states so far as I can tell – don’t at all capture the realities of where culture begins and ends.
When you leave Northern Virginia and head south, for example, somewhere before Dale City, it becomes more Richmond than Alexandria. Likewise if you travel west from Washington, DC on Interstate 66, Northern Virginia continues until just before Manassas. Further west and it is more guns and ammo than lattes and yoga. When you depart Northern Virginia you leave behind resuméville and enter farmburbia, this before driving into the Shenandoah along Rt 81, which is basically a sclerotic N-S artery enabling big trucks to haul cheap Chinese stuff up and down the eastern seaboard (more in a bit on how Sam Walton and Henry Ford are the greatest Communists, ever ) from one shipping center to another.
The Shenandoah Valley remains every bit the dreamy and fertile and lovely place it’s pillowy phonetic letters suggest. As you head southwesterly, the Shenandoahs are on your left, to your right (west) great and expansive fields and rolling countryside with cudding black cows in delightful non-industrial rates.
Somewhere in the history of Virginia though there’s a total jackass who thought up the billboard idea as a means to sell cigarettes and adult video and jesus to the overweight single moms in early 1980s pontiacs and cancerous wizened men in their Silverados. So besotting what should be an uninterrupted valley with sightlines of only cows and grain silos and asphalt ribbons is, instead, a kind of green porch carpeting with advertisements for burgers, porn, and smokes. (To be fair, the billboard guy in the Shenandoah no doubt is the first cousin of the same kind of boob and private property rights nutjob that has managed to spoil nearly all of southwest New Mexico between Albuquerque and Las Cruces through nearly constant reminders of god and beef and Dairy Queen-corn syrup products).
Still, the frequency of this sort of Richmond, Virginia good-ole-boy detritus isn’t so dominating that one can’t imagine what it once was like. Not so however after Harrisonburg, the last outpost of any kind of intellectual or social wherewithal along 81 until you get to Knoxville, TN.
Staunton and Roanoake incubate a friendly enough chemistry, but you never quite get rid of the feeling behind you of being glared at for ordering a veggie burger. In an important way then, there’s the Commonwealth of Northern Virginia, the Shenandoah Mountains and Valleys and Rivers, and the State of Poor Health that is basically SW Virginia into Kentucky and far Eastern Tennessee until Knoxville.
This theme continues. Along Interstate 81/40, from Knoxville to Albuquerque, Tennessee starts and ends not in Bristol and Memphis, but Knoxville to roughly 100 miles west of Nashville. That’s where Arkansas begins. Arkansas starts well before Memphis and continues until about half way between Little Rock and Fort Smith. Fort Smith should be in Oklahoma just like Memphis should be the capital of Arkansas.
And probably the stretch between Little Rock and Memphis along I-40 is one of the most visually decrepit corridors in America, what, with wintersplintered tuberculosis water puddling in the Pilot truckstops and wet cotton mud and rice paddies competing against Praise-the-Lord billboards for sunlight.
Speaking of Oklahoma, who knew? Really!
From Fort Smith to a bit west of Oklahoma City, it’s a stunningly beautiful state of red tail hawks and blue lakes, and VERY polite people who wash their cars and paint their homes with some regularity, and seem to love their state and show it by actually caring for it. Seems for marketing purposes this span should be Oklahoma. What’s further west of Oklahoma City should be gifted to Texas so the LSS can become even bigger.
Seeing how the land around Amarillo is nothing to write home about, and man’s additions to the land there less so, Oklahoma would do well to turn the keys over. Maybe Texas can put a new prison or two out there and call it economic development.
How beautiful is eastern Oklahoma? As unappealing as is West Texas. That is until it becomes New Mexico. Which is when it gets really interesting.
In West Texas, what passes for architecture is the “Western Hemisphere’s Biggest Cross”, which is essentially a six story white metal Jesus thing that has all the size of Chartres, but quickly reminds anyone why the French have so much trouble with “them ‘merikens”.
But in New Mexico, well that’s another story. Cool decayed creosote and stucco altars to Spanish Gods, Puebloes that could justifiably host those hideous crosses in West Texas, and, finally, the cessation of them there cows, their CAFOs, their waste lagoons, and their way (at least until you return to real food for real people country in and around las Cruces.
So, in Paris there’s Chateaubriand at Le Brin de Zinc on the Montorgeuil, perhaps with potatoes Daupenoise and roasted artichokes.
In Amarillo there’s a 72 ounce (I am NOT making this up) steak for free to anyone who can put it away inside an hour.
How does one know this? From billboards next to Jesus, and above the cows, of course.
Mind you, the French aren’t sending their gallant gents to Kabul while sons and daughters from West Texas, Central Tennessee, and Southwestern Virginia are doing their part and cope with the mulluhs and their ilk. (Let’s file this away for later use in pointing out how few of the supposed communitarian under 30s with education have volunteered to for duty between stints at Stanford and Northwestern and the Kennedy School).
So there we have the delicate steak frites in the shadow of Chartes on one hand. The raw windswept West Texas and rain-soaked central Tennessee riflemen with their Silverados and smokes on the other.
Of course it’s not so simple.
The real gripe is with the pink and soft and not Salmon, either.
Rather the Newt Gingrich types from squishy suburbia, atop their John Deeres and inside their Escalades, rooting for their Braves, voting to send Leroy to Bagdad, voting to be sure Jesus’ property rights are upheld, voting for Anita and Orange Juice, but never really spilling any blood of their own.
This is the sham for which the grime of West Texas cannot be blamed, however starved one may be while in Little Rock for a good meal.
And what is with this “real food for real people” jingle permeating the roadside advertisements in the Southwest? In plain view are 2,000 cows at the CAFO, semi-retardedly vacuuming some kind of industrial feed laced with UpJohn molecules and Monsanto equity and Cargill hucksterism. Behind them is a 60,000 gallon container of godknowswhat (so that’s where god is?). For 20 miles is a stench that will scare every cell in your body. And out front a sign: REAL FOOD FOR REAL PEOPLE. And for many hours after that on long stretches of Highway 25 south from Albuquerque one is left to ponder that. Real Food for Real People.
And yet, I am thinking Does Eat Place Little Rock. Dr. Pepper. Steaks. Tamales. I am thinking Uncle Henry’s on Moon Lake. Vodka Tonics. Eudora Welty. Son Thomas.
And the lovely surprises through Oklahoma. Who knew?
What a fabulous piece of writing. Refreshingly so. Submit it to someplace. I adore your mind and energy.
What a fabulous piece of writing. Refreshingly so. I adore your mind and energy.
I agree, west Texas/eastern NM… ouch. A random cow or tarantula here or there, and very little else. Been to Roswell? That was an extreme shocker to me… It was the first time, from Santa Fe to Albuquergue, to Riudoso, to Almagordo that I noticed poverty. Exactly why I freak out when there’s all this hype about Lucille Ball in Jamestown…. Look at what happened to Roswell… Run down, rusted freakshow of a town that was built around one, single, screwball idea. The town made me sad… I felt ashamed that I was there. I felt like I was exploiting the little bit of self-respect they had left. My friend’s friends we warm and welcoming and happy for the company, but it was depressing…. When I get frustrated living where I do, I should look back at that part of the trip and thank the powers that be that at least I don’t live there.
The west does kind of intrigue me still, though. Its big. I’ve never seen so much of flat nothing at one time- its almost like there’s still a frontier… or like it’s the blank living room wall of the US. What do you do with it? Do you do anything with it? Its seems so wild still….
And, what a surprise it was for me…. they have TREES in NM! I felt like an idiot- I thought it was all desert. :/
I agree, west Texas/eastern NM… ouch. A random cow or tarantula here or there, and very little else. Been to Roswell? That was an extreme shocker to me… It was the first time, from Santa Fe to Albuquerue, to Riudoso, to Almagordo that I noticed poverty. Exactly why I freak out when there’s all this hype about “one of a kind” attractions in small, out of the way rustbelt towns & cities…. Look at what happened to Roswell…. Run down, rusted freakshow of a town that was built around one, single, screwball idea. The town made me sad… I felt ashamed that I was there. I felt like I was exploiting the little bit of self-respect they had left. My friend’s friends we warm and welcoming and happy for the company, but it was depressing…. When I get frustrated living where I do, I should look back at that part of the trip and thank the powers that be that at least I don’t live there.
The west does kind of intrigue me still, though. Its big. I’ve never seen so much of flat nothing at one time- its almost like there’s still a frontier… or like it’s the blank living room wall of the US. What do you do with it? Do you do anything with it? Its seems so wild still….
And, what a surprise it was for me…. they have TREES in NM! I felt like an idiot- I thought it was all desert. :/
Thanks for the journey czb — we need to map this. That’s the beginning of the way to unravel it all, make sense of it and understand WHY — so it can change.
You write like Faulkner with that stream of consciousness. I hope you get the bear. Your comments on regional differences are interesting and accurate for Va/Tn.
I used to live in Fort Smith. It is a lovely area and the people are first rate!
There is a restruant in Portland, Oregon that has had the free 72 oz steak since the early 1950’s.