White Shell Mountain, CO.

Americans Only Have Two Things in Common

4,400 miles. 15 states. Nine scenes that taught me how little we Americans have in common.

After driving through flyover country for a road trip this summer that was part fun and part research, I had an epiphany.

We Americans have only two things in common: 1) We are humans, and 2) We all live in this land we call the United States of America. That is where our similarities begin and end. I make this observation with fascination and hope rather than malice.

During our journey, my husband and I listened to Colin Woodard’s American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America and our trip confirmed much of what Woodard claims. Allow me to define our subject positions. We are both educated, cis, white settlers who hail from major cities in the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic region. On the political scale, I am avowedly liberal and a registered Democrat. My husband is a moderate conservative Republican. (People often wonder how we get along and my standard answer is that we are all more than our politics, which this trip would also prove.)

Enough preamble. Following are nine brief scenes during our 4,400 mile flyover country road trip that taught me how little we Americans have in common:

“Native Americans Discovered Columbus”
At the hotel breakfast buffet one morning in Tennessee, I was wearing my “Native Americans Discovered Columbus” t-shirt by the Diné/Navajo design company, OXDX. I got a paper cup of coffee and picked up a paper plate, heading toward the eggs. While I was waiting for the person ahead of me to load up their plate, a very large and imposing man came up next to me. He looked at my shirt, and then at my face, and then again at my shirt. He finally looked up at my eyes and said in a quizzical voice, “Columbus? [beat] The town?” I met his eyes and said, chuckling, “No. The dude.” His eyes widened a bit, realization dawned, and he mumbled, “oh…” and walked away. I can honestly say it had NEVER occurred to me that ANYONE would read my t-shirt in any other way than its intention. This moment surprised me almost more than anything else on the trip and continues to resonate as a stark reminder that my world view and the things I care about and know about are not shared and understood consistently across the American landscape.

“Count in Spanish and Indian. No, that’s English.”

Overlooking Albuquerque, NM from the top of Sandia Peak.

Standing at the railing overlooking Albuquerque, NM at the top of the Sandia Peak Tramway on the Sandia Pueblo one evening, I heard a self-identified Apache father say to his two young daughters “Count in Spanish and Indian.” The one little girl started to count, looking up at her dad. “No, that’s English,” he said gently, “Try again.” She did and this time, the Apache language came forth. Being from the east coast, I loved hearing this conversation that was so casual in its insistence on knowledge and diversity. Being in a place where multiple identities are the norm, valued, and in many ways celebrated (given some of the restaurants and museums we visited), was a glimmer of hope.

“Are those…spurs?”
We stopped at a non-chain convenience store/gas station in the northern hill country of Texas and as I got back into the car, my husband said, “Are those. . .spurs?” I looked where he was pointing and indeed, there was a cowboy striding out of the store to his large dusty pickup truck. He was dressed in a long-sleeved blue work shirt, durable tan pants, a dusty brown cowboy hat, and boots jingling with actual spurs. Not the kind you wear for a Halloween costume. Actual spurs. And attached to this man’s truck was a trailer with his horse inside. My husband had never seen a real cowboy/ranch hand before, so we had a lively conversation about how different this man’s life is from ours.

Backroad greetings. Two scenes.
Scene One: On a backroad in Oklahoma, we stopped on the side of the road so that I could get out and take quick panoramic video of the horizon-to-horizon rolling hills. Only two vehicles passed us during the few minutes I was out there. The second one slowed to almost a stop and the two men inside asked if we needed help, if we were broken down. I smiled and said no, waving them on. They waved back and gave a thumbs up.

Boot art found along roadside somewhere between OK and TX.

Scene Two: Over two days, we drove a lot of back roads in the southern part of Oklahoma and the northern hill country of Texas through ranches and open range, massive cattle stockyards, oil and wind turbine fields, tiny dusty towns with populations in the dozens or hundreds and main streets one block long. Most of these towns had one church, one bank, one school, and maybe one restaurant and/or a bar. Maybe. And almost everyone who passed us on the road or at a rare intersection waved at us in greeting, smiling and making eye contact.

Honestly, as a suspicious east-coaster, I didn’t reciprocate immediately because I didn’t understand what was happening. What is this? Why are all these people waving at us? And then it struck me. Neighborliness. Friendliness. Kindness. Openly given without judgment. It was a brief pleasant exchange of acknowledgement without any agenda. I started waving back. And it felt good. I know some people who might read this and say, yeah well, if they knew you were a lib, they’d have run you over instead. Maybe. But I don’t think so. Those of us who live in urban areas and who aren’t surrounded by the vastness of open land like these folks are, have lost our ability to offer and receive a kind gesture without malice or suspicion. And that makes me sad.

15 miles and not one building in sight
Driving through southern Colorado, I noticed at one point that we had gone five miles without seeing a building for as far as we could see on the horizon in any direction. So I started keeping track. Six. Seven. Ten. 12. The miles continued rolling under our 75 mph tires and still not one building in sight. Just after we’d gone 15 miles, I spied what looked like a house/barn setup way off on the left side, closer to the horizon than the road. There is something both comforting and disconcerting about being in so much open space and land. Makes me think we really aren’t meant to be packed on top of each other like we are in the cities. The small towns we stayed in had a laid-back, relaxed vibe. No one was in a rush. Mountains, hills, plains, open land surrounded these pockets of humanity. When we got to the remote Great Sand Dunes National Park, my husband wanted to know how far the nearest Home Depot was, just out of curiosity. He looked it up with GPS. 541 miles away.

The day we got home, we stopped at the grocery store. As I got back into the driver’s seat after putting the food in the back, my husband said, in a soft, thoughtful tone as he gazed out at the sea of vehicles, “There are more cars in this parking lot than there were in entire towns we passed through.” Before we left on this trip, being surrounded by hundreds of people anxiously rushing around in the grocery store and thousands of vehicles pressing you on the road all felt normal. Sitting in that parking lot, having felt the palpable tension in the grocery store of hundreds of people rushing (for what reason? It was a Sunday afternoon!), and looking out at the built-up parking lot, buildings, vehicles, I felt torn. I enjoy the convenience of having multiple grocery stores within a few miles of my home, multiple gas stations, a 30 minute drive to work, multiple hospitals and doctor’s offices and on and on.

And yet. And yet.

I can’t help but think that what we’ve traded away for convenience is our basic human decency, leading to tangible divides that cannot be bridged by any politician.

“You’re probably the darkest person she’s ever seen face to face”
At Mabel’s Cafe in Larned, KS, my husband was on the receiving end of a very open suspicious stare by an older white lady while we ordered and ate our meal. Now, my hubs is Italian-American and his skin darkens considerably in the sun, so he was looking pretty tan by the time we got to Kansas. This charming and clean little town has about seven restaurants, most of which are fast food, and Mabel’s is well-reviewed on Trip Advisor and Yelp, and is the only game in the actual town and not out on the highway. We drove around before dinner and saw one very large feed distributor, a furniture store, all the usual small town businesses, and lots of red brick homes on shaded, tree-lined streets (four streets, to be exact), and we even saw a group of kids riding their bikes and laughing together.

The moment we walked in to Mabel’s, I had flashbacks to the tiny town where my parents live. Everyone knows everyone in these places and if you’re not from there, it’s obvious. There is no comforting anonymity in a town like Larned for travelers. But the place was friendly, the server was a high school kid who was kind and prompt, and the food was good. Oh, but our friend, the suspicious older woman having dinner with her husband and another older couple. She stared at my husband…stink-eye is what I would call it…for our entire meal. When I looked directly at her and smiled, she looked away like she just got caught doing something wrong. I could see he was becoming quite uncomfortable under her gaze, so I leaned in and whispered in his ear, “You’re probably the darkest person she’s ever seen face to face and not on TV.”

We were the outsiders. Our very presence was disruptive. Our different looks, speech, style, attitudes were intimidating and uncomfortable. And for our staring friend, unwelcome.Whether it was my husband’s tan or his tattoos or something else that made that lady react with fear and suspicion through her eyes, I realized that this moment in this cafe in the middle of the country was the perfect microcosmic metaphor for our current American political landscape. This woman is a typical Trump voter, I promise you. And those fears and suspicions of different-looking outsiders changing her world is likely shared amongst all Trump supporters to some degree. Being on the receiving end of her judgment was surprising, but it made me realize that she and I have nothing in common aside from being human and sharing a nation. This moment in Mabel’s Cafe brought that fact home to me like a feed sack dropped on my head.

Sunset over St. Louis, MO from the top of Gateway Arch.

A community of tourists
From the kind couple who agreed to exchange photo taking duties in quid pro quo fashion in front of the Great Sand Dunes National Park sign in Colorado to the North Carolina couple we shared a tight tram car with at Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO, to all of the other small, friendly conversations and brief exchanges and laughs with fellow travelers in hotels, towns, parks, restaurants, and museums, perhaps our public spaces and national parks have the ability to bring together our common humanity and help us, in the words of Bill and Ted, “be excellent to each other.” We may not have anything in common, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get along.

Roadside Oddities
Nothing says America like a good roadside oddity. Kitschy, quirky, creative, bold, and in Casey, IL, the reinvention of a small town for economic gain. Prior to Casey, we had seen Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, TX, a wind turbine blade at Wind Energy Park in Oklahoma, and the Kaskaskia fire-breathing dragon in Vandalia, IL. But Casey has several Guinness records for “world’s largest” items, and people detour off the highway just to visit this quaint and friendly small town of roadside oddities. We especially enjoyed the World’s Largest Rocking Chair, the World’s Largest Mailbox, the World’s Largest Wind Chime,and the World’s Largest Golf Tee. The nice gentleman behind the golf club counter spent several minutes chatting with us and answering my husband’s probing questions about all these world’s largest structures in his town.

Fire-breathing dragon in Vandalia, IL.

After visiting so many of these sites, it occurred to me that maybe we are all just roadside oddities running around acting like we’re better than each other, being more serious than is healthy, when really, we’re all a little kitschy, quirky, creative, bold, and different fire-breathing dragons who just want a little money, time, and attention and who don’t want things to change too fast.

Perhaps we have more in common than I thought.

In the end, we are all more than our politics. We may not have anything more in common as Americans than being human and sharing space on this land, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to see each other with kindness and generosity instead of suspicion and fear. If you have the means and the time, I recommend taking a good long drive through flyover country, stopping at sites that interest you, and having conversations. You might learn something, too.


Dr. Morris is the co-creator, co-host, and executive producer of Inside 254 Podcast, a #feminist #activist #podcast to help you survive the Trump era. Find “Inside 254 Podcast” on your favorite podcast app, or subscribe for free on our hosting site today. New episodes every two weeks. Follow our social media feeds for updates, reviews, cool memes, and news stories relevant to our focus: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Teachers can find our Inside 254 Teaching Guides here on Teachers Pay Teachers — or download the TpT app and search for “Inside 254.”

Amanda Morris D'Agostino

Written by

Associate Professor. Co-Host & Executive Producer Inside 254 Podcast. Past KU-APSCUF President.

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