Chasing America and Identity: My Road Trip to Nebraska and South Dakota (Part 2)
Manifesting divides at a motel in middle America
This is part 2 of a six-part series. Read part 1.
Mardi and her husband Russ have been running Westerner Motel in Chadron, Nebraska, for 25 years. They do so with great pride for their mom-and-pop, no-frills, spartan experience and “western hospitality,” as advertised on the motel’s billboard. At $65 a night for a single room, they happily offer strikingly low rates, providing just what guests need: not amenity kits in the bathrooms — people can bring their own blow dryers if they want, Mardi told me (I had indeed) — but basic lodging with heat and A/C, a full-size bed, and a bathroom with clean towels, tiny soap bars, and a spacious accessible shower. Oh, and cable tv, which weighs heavily on the Westerner’s bottomline. Mardi lamented that just a few months ago their local provider, Great Plains Communications, doubled their bill from around $600 to $1,200 for no apparent reason. Now of the $65 nightly room rate, a whopping $40 goes toward cable, she said (however off she might be from the actual math). But older guests come to expect cable, so the motel must keep it. Mardi was told she could instead install “Ruku,” as she called it (the actual name of the streaming device is Roku) — but then it’s a “Ruku” remote in every room that people can take with them, which would require money to replace.
Technology is indeed minimal to nonexistent at the Westerner. Mardi and Russ do not operate a computer, and log guest reservations by hand on old-school booking forms. That also means they’re not listed on any online booking service, nor can guests book via the motel’s website — which is maintained by “some gal in Utah.” You have got to make a phone call to reserve a room.
I didn’t tell Mardi that while researching accommodation options, I had rolled my eyes discovering that virtually none of the independent motels or inns where I wanted to stay would allow me to escape the now obsolete, yet all-human experience of picking up the phone to reserve a room. I didn’t tell her that the inability to book online might, alas, play a role in why — as she has noticed — folks visiting Chadron end up staying at the Super 8 down the street rather than the Westerner, whose core business rests on loyal returning customers. I did tell her, though, that the family-run, non-chain nature of her motel was the reason why I had booked a room. She offered a rare smile.
I had struck up a conversation with Mardi as I was getting started for my second day on the road, while availing myself of another essential item offered by the Westerner: morning coffee, served promptly at 7am in the motel office. I remarked that during dinner the previous night at The Ridge, which her husband had recommended, service had been a bit slow due to short staffing. I had still enjoyed the food, the atmosphere and my overall time there. Mardi sighed, and explained that it’s not that there are no jobs available in the area — many local businesses are hiring; it’s the people who don’t want to work. “They’d rather stay home and live off of whatever big government gives them,” she shrugged.
Evidence abounds of why this claim has no basis in reality. The most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that in the last 10 years, only a fraction of Americans who enrolled in government welfare programs (e.g. Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, rental subsidies, among others) also received unemployment insurance, all but denying a correlation between government assistance and joblessness. As further proof, according to another Census Bureau report, in 79% of the households enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in 2018, at least one person was working.
The belief that welfare programs disincentivize the jobless from looking for work is also misguided. A 2011 report by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee found an increase in the amount of active job search time among the unemployed, especially those receiving unemployment from the government. I, for one, have applied for unemployment benefits in my home state, Colorado. I have paid into it with my taxes over the years, and I’m eligible even if I have received a generous severance package from Google. My weekly government checks come with clear boundaries: They’re capped at 26 weeks, and I am committed to a minimum of five weekly job search activities, which I have to certify online and produce evidence of if asked. Requirements are similar in Nebraska, whose unemployment rate is among the lowest in the country: 2% in April 2023 — second to (what are the odds!) South Dakota — well below the national rate of 3.4%. The rate falls to 1.6% in Dawes County, where Chadron is located.
You can’t even claim the state’s low unemployment rate doesn’t account for folks who have removed themselves from the workforce altogether. Nebraska has the second highest labor participation rate (the percentage of the state population that is either employed or actively looking for work) in the country at 69.9%, bested only by Washington D.C., which is a coastal city and seat of the federal government. Lastly, data from 2019 ranks Nebraska among the bottom 15 states by number of food stamp recipients.
Notwithstanding my dissent with Mardi’s aversion to the government, and the fact-checking of her statements, I felt viscerally that the political divide separating the two of us was completely irrelevant in that moment of connection. Her humanity as a small business owner, wife of Russ, mother of two, grandmother of three, and resident of a small town in northern Nebraska, as it transpired in such a raw, real manner from our candid conversation, completely surpassed and transcended the binary terms of our far-apart identities. From a position of such striking difference, connection wasn’t going to miraculously manifest if I questioned her beliefs — it was going to occur only if I listened to them.
When I drive through the vast and geographically diverse landscapes of America — coming from small and relatively uniform Italy — I think about how the President of the United States has to govern, care, and provide for remote rural folks as equally as New York City dwellers. What a massive feat — which increasingly polarized citizens, more given to questioning than listening, aren’t helping much.
And while not a U.S. citizen, I too ride the waves of polarization. As part of my intention to engage with writing during this trip, I had started posting on Instagram as a form of itinerant storytelling. I shared a photo of the digital billboard at the Ace Hardware opposite the Westerner Motel: “Need some ammo? Stop now!” it trumpeted, advertising the gun shop within. “Boy did I get America,” I sneered. In the next story, I added a photo of the menu at The Ridge listing sodas and draft beers at prices that coastal cities probably haven’t seen in decades. “Would you live in ammo country in exchange for $1.95 soda and $2.50 drafts?” I polled my friends on top of this photo. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority said no.
“For the people on the coasts, or in the liberal states — Colorado too,” Mardi told me the next morning, shrugging, and including me in the tally by referencing my home state, “we are just Nebraska hicks. But you know what, we are proud of that.”
My humor from the night before, which had generated hilarity among my friends on the coasts and in the liberal states, suddenly felt out of touch. I had been complicit in painting a condescending picture of rural America that dismisses, diminishes, and derides its identity in such a way that the only natural and, frankly, valid response from the people who carry this identity is to unapologetically assert and embrace it. And they’re damn right to do so — imagine being mocked for who you are. Isn’t compassionately embracing everyone’s identity the high road we recommend as liberals? Doesn’t the argument that “if only conservatives in middle America were more exposed to LGBTQ+ folks, immigrants, people of color, etc., they’d be more open to them,” stand true the other way around as well? What are liberals doing to get closer to middle America?
I experienced a strange feeling of resentment thinking about the many times I’ve heard from American friends that they would never set foot in certain parts of the United States. You can’t say that and mourn the existential divide that keeps deepening in the country. You can’t say that and dreadfully anticipate a new election season without bearing some responsibility, as a citizen, for the ever-increasing stakes marking every other American November. You can’t say that and place the blame solely on politicians for the state of bipartisan paralysis plaguing Congress. I acknowledge that there is racial privilege in the relative safety afforded to me while visiting these “verboten” parts of the United States; some of my friends of color might not feel as emboldened as I was, even being a woman, traveling to states where the color of their skin stands out instead of blending in (which doesn’t mean I don’t feel out of place — more on this in part 3). But there are many other ways to lean in and reach out your hand, your head, and your heart. Social justice won’t occur in a vacuum — you can disagree with someone’s politics, but it’s a lot harder to disagree with their humanity. (This is notably what sociologist Arlie Russel Hochschild argues in her brilliant book “Strangers in Their Own Land,” where she chronicles illuminating conversations with Tea Party supporters in Louisiana.) And make no mistake: If it reeks of cliché to argue that Americans on opposite sides of the aisle should stop questioning each other’s humanity and start listening to it, you cannot say that it reflects reality. So it bears repeating.
My half-hour of conversation with Mardi was compelling proof of the divide-bridging power of personal connection. It wasn’t the first time I had talked to her; she had taken my reservation on the phone a few days earlier. During the brief exchange, she had asked me where I was from in a way that had felt off-putting. It was not a question I had expected to be asked. I was convinced I had caught an inkling of suspicion in the tone of her inquiry, which I had chalked up to my speaking with an accent, albeit by now faint, and spelling out a name that doesn’t sound nor read American. “Boulder,” I had chirped back, my gut assumptions about her intentions bolstering me to prove her wrong — my accent doesn’t mean I’m not supposed to be here; you may not see the likes of me very much around you, but we’re a thing, and we may pop in from time to time. “Well, not originally,” I had added to break the ensuing silence, which to me had felt rife with a “but” and a “really” — but where are you really from. “Yeah,” Mardi had replied.
I was wrong. When I checked in at the Westerner, I discovered that her question had been not a sign of local unfamiliarity with or, worse, wariness of foreigners — one that I was possibly, if unconsciously, on the lookout for — but a simple business practice. Mardi and Russ ask prospective guests where they’re from because they write it down in their reservation log, and thus verify your identity upon check-in. I had to show up in person to find out.
Doing away with presumptions and prejudices requires vulnerability and willingness to undergo a process that may result in relinquishing parts of yourself. Mardi acknowledges so herself. Asked if she felt listened to by the rest of America, she said no. She added that on the one hand, they would indeed like for people to come to Chadron and see where and how they live; but on the other, they want to keep their little corner of the world untouched, for themselves. “It’s odd,” she said of this sentiment.
And yet… one thing that always leaves me in awe about America is the sheer availability of literal geographical space. It’s immense. The closest way to put your fingers on it, if ever, is by flying coast to coast. It could be enough to host all the immigrants from all the countries, I like to think, if only climate conditions always allowed. And it’s enough to make figurative space for all the facets in which American identity manifests — if only the people let it.
Continue to part 3: Enriched and estranged
