I am definitely not a techie. However, after clicking a few times, I found that I could instruct Andrea, the calm voice of Google Maps, to take me on a route in a rural area of upstate New York that would avoid highways and toll roads.

Magic: a whole new world unfolded!

In no particular order, below is a list of what I saw driving through towns you have not heard of (nor probably have most of the residents of the nearest city, many miles away):

*mobile homes. Whether as singular residences or clustered in a mobile home park, most will never be moved, making the descriptor inaccurate, as it mostly always has been.

*only a minor presence of those ubiquitious 53-foot trailer trucks that make their presence felt on the big roads, where it is hard to imagine them being auto-piloted as some foresee.

*numerous Dollar Generals, a necessity when going to a distant WalMart has to be a destination trip given the many miles and gas involved.

*small businesses, some alive, some boarded up, the “creative destruction” of capitalism as the economist George Schumpeter labeled this phenomenon.

*surprisingly, given the wide open spaces in the farm country which characterized this little trip, the existence of more than one mini-storage facility.

*a virtual absence of those orange cones and barrels which mark infrastructure improvements elsewhere and slow traffic to the same pace drivers could achieve on lesser roads.

*rusted vehicles of every description — an absence of money, not mechanical talent, being the reason for not bringing them back to life.

*collapsed barns, the physical sign that the owner’s next generation had no interest in being farmers, or perhaps financial ruin had been brought on by bad decisions, maybe the use of a pesticide newly placed on the banned list by a far-off bureaucrat who had never grown anything in his life.

*a few unoccupied, spooky-looking houses that could be candidates for use as sets on a remake of the classic horror movie, “Psycho.”

*at least one church, and a small roadside cemetery, for every village, regardless of its population.

*only a lone McDonald’s, if that, breaking the no-brand name retail line-up on these secondary roads.

*occasionally, one of those newly-built warehouses which seem to stretch forever, presumably loaded with made-in-somewhere-else merchandise awaiting the Amazon truck to make a delivery and satisfy the American consumer fix.

Comment: the above trip was taken over the July 4^th holiday weekend. Flags, always more evident in rural than in urban America, were on patriotic display. When you look at where those in the military come from, there is a skew to a small number of states, and to the smaller locales therein. The cynics would say that flags are being waved to an America which no longer exists; think of the changes in the past half-century. Those who regard this country as a continuous work in progress are more charitable. What does seem certain is that if each Congressman had to put a family member in harm’s way, there would be a more thoughtful approach to becoming involved in armed conflict.