Looking for America (part I)

We spent three weeks in June touring the United States so that I could explain to my kids the concept of America. This is what we discovered.

Yankees vs. Reds, Great American Ballpark, June 23, 2025

A bit less than ten years ago, during the fall of 2016, I took a month-long RV trip across America for the purpose of representing the 50-state nonprofit that I helmed in a series of events across the country. But those 25 days on the road also provided a wonderful opportunity to speak with and listen to various people from all walks of life in campgrounds, convention centers, restaurants, truck stops, and hotel meeting rooms. It was quite the eye-opener.

At that time, I was fresh out of a 25-year career in academia. I learned a lot. Among other things, I discovered that even I, a college lecturer, longtime newspaper columnist, feature writer, author and career political/social centrist, had been remarkably cloistered during my time in higher education. Before that trip I would have bet the ranch that Hillary Clinton would be POTUS 45. By the time I returned, I insisted to everyone that it was going to be Trump no matter how much laughter it elicited. All anyone had to do to reach the same conclusion was to go out and listen to enough ordinary people instead of the legacy media.

A lot has changed since then, with both myself and the country. Two years ago I suffered my personal metaphorical version of Pearl Harbor. One day all of this will make quite a novel. Think Lori Vallow, but the kids live.

The legal wrangling has been emotionally draining. So when, on the eve of an important court appearance, the opportunity for a dream vacation—three weeks, 6500 miles, baseball, beaches, zoos, swimming pools, miniature golf, concerts, and roller coasters—with my two biological children and two foster children came up, I carpe diemed it for all it was worth. It was going to be a great swan song or the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but epic either way. It was also an opportunity for my kids to experience America firsthand. The teacher in me just can’t quit.

How we roll.

We set off on June 9th from Idaho, bound first for Summerfield, Florida. It’s 2300 miles from Idaho to the RV park closest to my aunt Margaret. Aunt Margaret was the closest thing I had as a kid in the 1960s to a stable adult figure in my life. She’s in her 80s now, and while she’s still above ground, I wanted her to meet the kids that I’m taking care of the way that she took care of me.

It was a push getting four Groms 2300 miles in three days. Fortunately, the “Disco Inferno” sleeps eight comfortably, which, in practice, means that there’s enough room for five people to have enough space for peace and quiet. The kids actually travel quite well. MJ and Nan, my biological children, are seasoned road warriors. Give them some music and games on their Fire tablets, and they are good to go for hours. The foster kiddos, Vay and Roz, have caught on to the game quickly. It’s actually quite a well-oiled travel machine. And when the wheels do start coming loose, all it takes is a trip to the nearest Dairy Queen to set things right for another few hundred miles.

We are the corniest family in America when it comes to travel. We sing songs in the truck; we see if the home team is playing when we are driving through an MLB city for a quick stop at a new stadium; the kids take turns reading aloud or telling stories. And we talk about things a lot. A big topic of conversation was about whether or not there is a God. My kids are keenly interested in God and spirituality. There’s a pretty good spread among them when it comes to how they see all of this. Two of them don’t believe in any higher power; one believes, but not in the way that most religions teach; and one just plain doesn’t know.

When my kids first became curious about religion a few years ago, I took them to a variety of churches and introduced them to friends from various faiths. My Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant friends were delighted to describe what each faith had to offer them. All I told them was that the best way to make a decision about any of this was to figure out what each faith had to offer and, most importantly, what they wanted in return. If, on balance, you think that what they offer you is worth what they want in return, give it a go. It’s not necessary for you to believe what I believe about matters of faith anymore than it’s necessary for you to like JJ Cale just because I do. Matters of spirituality are intensely personal, and my job is to help you decide what’s best for you, not what’s best for me.

Another memorable discussion that we had was about the difference between things that look good and actually are good. My long-standing belief is that if people looked on the outside like they are on the inside, the world would be a much different and almost certainly better place. Along this line, my colleague Jim Trageser claims that Washington, DC, would be the most hideous place on the planet. I reckon that he’s got that about right. Hollywood too.

My kids, fortunately, understand the concept of appearance vs. reality. In most ways, I wish that this was an experience that they didn’t have. But better too early than too late. They get the difference between movies, TV and the real world. You are not going to fool any of them with lipstick on a pig. Small steps. That’s what I’m all about.

When it comes to raising kids, these are areas in which I give them broad leeway. I consider myself a guide, rather than a benevolent dictator, when it comes to most things. But not in all things. When it comes to what time they are going to bed, if they are going to do chores, if they are going to eat their vegetables, and if they are going to get along with each other, they are—because Dad said so. I’m old school like that. But when it comes to spirituality and other matters of personal taste and comfort, my job, as I see it, is to teach them how to think, not what to think.

Kids from the landlocked mountains of Idaho at Ft. Myers Beach. As Saint-Exupéry once said, “They are like the prisoner set free who marvels at the immensity of the sea.”

The big excitement on the way to Florida occurred in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where a poorly loaded flatbed work truck weaved in front of us on the Interstate just in time for an unsecured ladder and construction tools to fall off the back. We managed to straddle most of it, but the ladder bounced around enough to damage the landing gear on the RV as we rolled over it. The driver of the truck was oblivious. I’ll bet they are still posting on social media about a dirtbag who stole stuff from their truck at a construction site.

We had a wonderful few days in Florida. We spent some time at the beach in Fort Myers, and I took the kids to the elementary school, St. Francis Xavier, that I attended when I was their age. I showed them the crosswalk where I spent many after-school afternoons as a crossing guard in the mid-1960s—a memory marred by the fact that I never got the hang of folding up that damned badge and belt properly enough to satisfy the brothers who came around to collect them afterwards. This is a completely unstaged, totally impromptu photo of that crosswalk, six decades later.

As I stood there that day, with my family, I could remember, quite clearly, a random afternoon in that same crosswalk a little over 60 years ago. It was as if space had folded itself, and I was looking at a window through a vast gulf of time and distance directly into the past. I could see my 9-year-old self standing in that crosswalk. I could feel the warmth of spring sunshine on my face, the humidity, and the smell of citronella.

But, with a pang of regret, the view was one-way. In that moment, I realized that in my wildest 9-year-old dreams, I could never have imagined on that long-ago day the path that would lead me from then to now—the joys, the griefs, the heartaches, the triumphs, and the sorrows—the things that define life. While my kids were yucking it up for photos, I was, a few feet away, experiencing genuine quantum entanglement. What I can tell you about it, from experience, is that it’s poignant. If we ever find a way to fold space like this for everyone, you might want to think about it before you step up for your turn.

I am lucky enough to have had a friend for over 60 years that I still communicate with regularly. She lives in Fort Myers, and we met for dinner that night. The kids were astonished to meet someone I had ridden the bus with all those years ago. Riding a school bus, as it turns out, bridges generational divides. They all understood why I’d still be tight with her.

Florida is an interesting place. The libertarian in me appreciates the fact that Florida is a place that has, for the most part, eschewed the big brother aspects of government. But it’s not all roses. The Florida government is just as capable of mucking things up as any other. Florida was near the epicenter of the opiate crisis because of lax supervision of “pill mills.” Building codes are whacked. Permitting is a nightmare. Even “paradise,” I suppose, has a few harps out of whack.

But Florida’s problems are not all due to lax regulation. Sometimes they are the result of overregulation. Florida law, for instance, requires that insurers repair or replace automotive windshield glass for insured Florida drivers completely free of cost. This means that someone else ends up paying for this largesse. In this instance, it’s others in the same insurance pool and out-of-state drivers.

A few years ago, on an earlier journey to Florida, we got a cracked windshield courtesy of an uncovered load. By the time we got to Florida, the windshield needed replacing. In most of the country, there are, at minimum, a half-dozen reputable windshield repair shops in most any fair-sized town. In Florida, the situation is quite different. The nearest Safelite was 200 miles away, and the cost of the windshield was over $700. I made the mistake of asking the technician at the local oil change and lube joint for recommendations to sort out the dozens of local businesses that came up in an Internet search.

The two guys who showed up at the RV park from the local mobile windshield service did not inspire confidence. But it was ten in the morning, and we had to be on the road by 2pm. I went into the trailer to pack up while they went to work on my new F-350. While I was working in the trailer, I kept hearing what sounded like a saw somewhere outside. When I went out to check on their progress, I was horrified to discover that they were using a Sawzall to cut the old windshield out of my brand-new truck. There were chewed-up bits of trim, glass and dashboard everywhere.

They had the gall to charge me $200 more than they’d quoted because the windshield was more difficult to remove than they’d anticipated. So, in the end, I spent $700 for a windshield that leaked the rest of the time we had that truck.

Years of bitter experience have taught me to expect this kind of idiocy and poor service in the professional sector, where Dunning–Kruger gets buried under mountains of credentials, but to encounter rank incompetence in a small business, where there is presumably a straight line between performance and profit, is disheartening. Not knowing how to properly remove a windshield when it’s your job, or losing a few thousand dollars worth of your company’s construction equipment that you failed to tie down on the back of a flatbed makes me ponder how anything works as it should anymore. Maybe we are all simply screwed.

After a few days in the Sunshine State, we headed back north, recrossing Georgia and Tennessee, two of the worst states for RV travel. RV travel east of the Missouri River is quite a different experience from the west. Our rig is about the same size as small 18-wheelers, so we must use truck stops to refuel. In the west, getting fuel quickly and easily isn’t much of a problem as long as you don’t mind truck stops, but in the east, it’s not uncommon to have to wait in line up to half an hour to refuel.

These days, to know truck drivers is generally not to love them. Spending a significant amount of time around commercial trucks has led me to the realization that the industry has changed significantly. My father and most of my uncles and their friends drove trucks when I was young. They were professionals who took a lot of pride in their work. There are still some of those folks out there, but they are becoming fewer and farther between.

The average truck driver we encountered acted as if they’d snuck into the country before Trump 2.0, wandered into a one-day truck driving school on the docks somewhere, and were handed the keys to a semi and their first load that same afternoon. The amount of dangerous, unprofessional driving on clear display is just incredible. The competent drivers we encountered, identifiable because they rolled their eyes at the same antics as we did, told us that companies just can’t hire enough professional drivers to satisfy demand anymore.

Driving a commercial rig is by no means easy, but it’s also not exactly rocket science. It should not be that difficult to find people to do the job for the wages that most companies offer. This, to me, is a harbinger of things to come, an indicator of exactly how incompetent our workforce has become. When autonomous trucks become the norm, there may not be a lot of tears shed by the rest of the driving public.

Me neither.

Georgia is the worst for long lines at truck stops and rest areas full of 18-wheelers at all hours of the day and night. But getting off the freeway at an exit that doesn’t have a truck stop is an invitation to low overhead clearances and narrow streets that rarely ends well.

At one point, one of the girls desperately needed a restroom break. You can’t park on a freeway ramp in Georgia, so we pulled off at the next exit looking for a place to park just long enough for all of the kids to use the restroom in the RV. I knew it was a mistake as soon as we got to the top of the ramp. In retrospect, it may have been better to back down the ramp and return to the freeway. As crazy as that sounds, it might have been safer than what came next.

The kids ended up guiding me under low-hanging tree limbs and power lines by walking around outside the truck. They are very proficient at this and actually think that it’s kind of fun. To get back on the freeway, we had to navigate a turn at the end of an incredibly narrow street, which had about four inches of clearance on the outside and slightly less on the inside due to a dilapidated road sign that MJ pulled on with all his might to give us just enough room to get by.

After this adventure, the kids were all about having a sit-down meal. Not only was it about dinner time, but nothing, it turns out, stokes appetite in a posse of groms like watching veins pop out of Dad’s forehead while they have carte blanche to yell at him all they want without getting in trouble.

My kids are travel-savvy enough to avoid truck stop restaurants. They are also savvy enough to recognize that when a restaurant sign at an exit is large and way high off the ground, it likely indicates two things: the restaurant is close to the freeway and surrounded by a large parking lot. That’s exactly what they were thinking when they spotted a Popeyes a few miles up the road.

Sure enough, both things were true. The kids were stoked. They don’t really know the first thing about fried chicken or Cajun food, but anyplace called Popeyes has to be groovy. There was a line at the counter, but it was short. I don’t make a habit of listening to what other people are ordering in restaurants, but I’m reasonably sure that it was chicken. When it was our turn, MJ and I stepped up and ordered a family meal.

“We can’t make a family meal right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because we don’t have any chicken.”

“Wait, what did all of the rest of these people get?”

“We got wings and strips, but no breasts, thighs or legs.”

The kids were perplexed. “Hey Dad, how does a chicken restaurant not have any chicken for dinner?” MJ still mentions this occasionally. “Dad, they have one job.”

It’s a pretty insightful observation. We laughed about it a lot while we had a Father’s Day dinner at a Mexican joint just up the road. But later that evening, while everyone else was asleep, MJ, as I was tucking him in, asked with all of the innocence of a 9-year-old kid from the mountains of Idaho, “Dad, do you think that the reason that they didn’t want to give us chicken was because they didn’t have any or because we are white and everyone else in there was Black?”

This broke my heart more than a lot of things have recently. My fellow boomers and I have a lot to atone for. All of the discrimination that was supposed to cure discrimination evidently came up short. If a kid growing up in the 21st century who has no reason whatsoever to imagine that skin color is significant in whether or not you get served in a restaurant gets this idea from cues in the environment, we are barely better off than we were 40 years ago.

It sucks, but I’m starting to think that it’s true.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com