‘Who wants to go on a road trip in the US?” I asked my kids on a recent Shabbat afternoon.
As expected, they were all in.
Why not? “Road trip” conjures up a coast-to-coast, all-expenses-paid journey from the redwood forest to the New York island. Who wouldn’t want that?
“Sounds great,” The Youngest said. “What’s the itinerary?”
“Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Mississippi.”
The enthusiasm waned.
“Abba is going in search of his hillbilly roots,” The Wife offered.
“Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Mississippi?” The Lass asked. “Who goes there? Why there?”
The “Why?” was the easy part.
We all carry around a private list of things we tell ourselves we’ll get to one day. Mine, for as long as I can remember, was to visit all 48 contiguous states. I grew up on Woody Guthrie and Jack Kerouac, falling in love with road signs – Wichita, St. Louis, Kansas City – that hinted at something distant and unknowable just over the horizon.
Still, I always wanted to visit all the states.
Now, well into my seventh decade, only four states remained: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Vermont.
I’ve avoided Vermont since Bernie Sanders began ranting against Israel and Ben & Jerry’s turned against us, but I’ll eventually get there since it’s only an afternoon drive from New York and Sanders won’t be around forever. But how was I going to get to Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Mississippi?
A recent speaking tour gave me a narrow window: I was scheduled in California and then New Jersey, with three days in between.
I turned to the Jewish Federation in Oklahoma City to see if there was any interest in a speaker, and – bingo – there was. I had less luck in Arkansas and Mississippi, but no matter. This was a now-or-never moment.
So I flew from LA to Memphis and spent the next three days wandering through Mississippi, Arkansas, and Oklahoma – sleeping in Oxford, speaking in Oklahoma City, and eventually making my way back through the Ozarks to Memphis.
As I told a friend, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen the Ozarks.
I always mistakenly associated Arkansas with the movie Deliverance, which scared the heck out of me as a kid, so I was never particularly eager to go there. For me, Deliverance did for Arkansas what Midnight Express did for Turkey – it made me never want to visit.
Except, of course, I had to, because I had to click that box. And now I have.
America looks different from Israel
One of the secrets to a successful aliyah, I believe, is to avoid romanticizing America. The Wife was always big on this, very careful never to glorify the United States at Israel’s expense within earshot of the kids.
Because if you are always complaining about Israel – the lines, the manners, the drivers, the inefficiency, the bureaucracy, the people – while praising everything in America as better – the food, stores, sports, and education – then the kids internalize it.
Children are not stupid. If all the kids hear at home are complaints about Israel and praise about the little things in America, then, understandably, one day they will wake up and ask, “What are we doing in Israel?”
Which is why we were careful never to go down that route.
Except when it came to road trips. I was never shy about extolling the virtues of an American road trip to the kids. And this one – one I ended up taking alone because The Wife did not share my burning desire to see Mississippi – lived up to the hype.
I don't generally like driving. In Israel, a couple of hours on the road can leave me drained – traffic, tension, constant low-grade alertness.
When I drive two-and-a-half hours up the Jordan Valley to visit my son in the Golan, I get there worn out – a combination of residual concern about the car being pelted by rocks somewhere near Oujha, the tension of passing a slow-moving car on a two-way highway, and the overall bumpiness of the road.
But in the US, something shifts. The roads open up, the pace relaxes, and I can just drive and drive and drive.
I drove the eight hours from Oxford, Mississippi – a town I had long wanted to visit because of the Bob Dylan song “Oxford Town” and because it was home to William Faulkner (not that I ever understood his books) – to Oklahoma City and arrived in time for my speech as fresh as that proverbial daisy.
I actually enjoy driving in the US – not in the cities, of course, but along the highways and byways, stopping at rest stops, filling up at gas stations where the counter lady in the adjacent store calls you “Honey.”
That little slice of Americana still does it for me – even as America and I have both changed dramatically.
One of the things I most enjoyed about this road trip was listening to the music that went with the country I was passing through.
In Mississippi, I listened to the blues; in Arkansas, to the greatest hits of Johnny Cash, who hails from the state; and in Oklahoma, I crossed the border with the theme song from Oklahoma! blasting through my rented car, windows down and sunroof open.
The highlight, however, was passing a turnoff for Muskogee and pumping up Merle Haggard’s classic, “Okie from Muskogee.”
When I related this uplifting experience to The Wife by phone that night, she sighed and said, “Honey,” sounding like the counter lady, “don’t tell that to anyone, that’s a little odd.”
“Not really,” I countered. “It’s like when tourists come to Jerusalem for the first time, and the tour bus plays ‘Jerusalem of Gold.’”
“Trust me on this one, dear,” she insisted. “It’s not the same. Best to keep that little experience to yourself.”
Perhaps. But there are a lot more embarrassing things in life than feeling a surge of happiness listening to Haggard while driving through the backroads of Oklahoma.■