TRUTH IN TRAVELOGUES                                                       Christmas, 2024

 Number three in a truly discontinuous series that began decades ago.

It had been several years since I logged the 600 mile (one-way) trip to be with my daughters and their families on the Big Day itself. Not yet being into the world of podcasts, I knew that something else would be needed to keep me alert as the miles and hours went by.

The answer, as it has frequently been throughout my long life, was, no surprise, not something bought at the pharmacy, but …writing. Not sentences (I was going 70 mph most of the time) but key words or short phrases scribbled, carefully I assure you, on the paper held by the clipboard resting in the vacant passenger seat.

In the interests of providing some sort of organization, as I fear creative flow will be challenging (more like absent to be honest), I have distributed the words and phrases into four buckets: those integral to the road traveled, those whose subject was brought to my attention visually, information and insights from the various radio stations which found my ear, and items which are purely mental.

The Road:

• Cracker Barrel (no local food options were available wherever the heck I was when overcome by hunger) in its accompanying store (where you have to fight through the crowds to get to the eating area) sells every conceivable product to tell you all is good, just like it was back in the day.
• McDonald’s bathrooms are guaranteed to be quite clean and are readily available to an old guy in need. In one, I found a wrapper for “DUDE flushable wipes, made in Mexico.”
• What is the reaction when Google Maps says, “stay on this road for 340 miles”? Yipes!
• Ah the charm of a Waffle House: no pretense, a smiling server, inexpensive, decent food.
• Interstate 81 is full of 53-foot trucks; you contemplate the terminology of tare and payload.
• Orange cones for highway construction sites, normally ubiquitous these days, were stunningly absent at the Christmas holiday.
• A note about this interstate highway system: historically the most “efficient” route (definition: best way for those with money and distant residences to get to their jobs) quite often equated to the destruction of minority neighborhoods. Misuse of eminent domain was the partner of engineering recommendations. Maybe the country is as racist as its critics have long maintained.
• Watson Trucking: family owned since 1941 is its inscription. Hard to believe and admirable.
• The Pink Cadillac sits outside the restaurant of the same name.
• Climbing lanes to high speed, restricted access roads: please, would the entering car either accelerate or be clearly passive, not in between. Establishes clarity of intention.

Visual:

• Megawarehouses for Amazon, Dollar General, Tractor Supply, Lowe’s: it would be interesting to label their contents as outsourced, nearsourced, or insourced.
• Lindt chocolates has an outlet store: I almost went off the road.
• Warner Art Glass: the source of my Xmas gifts to one and all.
• Roanoke College: where Daniela Velasquez coped with a PWI and came out a winner.
• The billboard in North Carolina urges “better pay for teachers; they deserve it.” Yes!!!
• The gun shop whose existence reminds me of what one liberal said to his friends, “you should get armed so the fight is more even.” (Note: this was said before the inauguration.)

Radio: What I heard (with a few author’s comments added)

• The creation of Kwanza celebrations was 12-26-66.
• Portapotty for a better poop: available at WalMart. (A real commercial!)
• Fundamentalist religious stations have the clearest reception.
• Sanctuaries can be prosecuted.
• Trump is to be inaugurated on MLK day (January 20) and will be president when the country turns 250 on July 4, 2026). Words fail me.
• The year 2024 was the hottest ever; the planet is warming up prior to – its demise?
• China now makes more electric cars than the alternative.
• Kars for Kids must be the most played and memorized jingle ever made.
• The eight million illegals who came in during the Biden administration have cost taxpayers $200 billion. Relatedly, pieces of the dismantled wall are available on E-bay.

• Biden’s pardons are spitting in the face of the victims; even Democrats are annoyed.
• BIN: Black Information News, a clear signal with equally clear facts and opinions.
• On 12-26-04, the tsunami killed 230,000.
• USCCA: US Concealed Carry Association, an advocate for responsible gun ownership, although it has no ability to differentiate.
• 3 ROV (Rock of Virginia); a grumpy old drunk impersonates Santa Claus: hilarious!
• The Israelis have killed four journalists.
• Denzel Washington has been baptized and has become a minister.
• 12-26-91 marked the collapse of the Soviet Union, which Putin wants to reconstitute.

Mental:

• Local sourcing of farm food products means higher cost; the scale economics provided by the interstate highway system are lost. If you had an enhanced sense of community as a result of local sourcing, would you pay the price? (A post-inauguration comment: if tariffs ultimately resulted in both higher prices and more better-paying domestic manufacturing jobs, same question: would you pay the price. Philosophy and pocketbook, which wins? Relatedly, how many can afford to be philosophical?)
• Entrepreneurs who are geographically based and successful create a living but more importantly, a life for themselves, for their families, for their communities — or they start a business specifically for the purpose of selling it eventually.
• When the regulators add another layer of rules, the big companies can spread its cost over a large number of units; the little guy cannot. It is not a stretch to connect this to the homogenization of every interstate highway exit area: brand names galore.
• God bless the Indian owners of the local Qwik Mart. They faithfully set aside — whether for one day or a week—my daily fix: the “New York Times” and the “Wall Street Journal.”
• Unlike the domestic manufacturing based “Hot Companies” of yesteryear, today’s rich businesses (Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft) generate huge piles of cash whether their reported earnings are up, down, or sideways. Legal attacks on their business practices elicit billion dollar fines, which are paid with less angst than the everyday person feels at a grocery store check-out counter.
• Climate change is bringing a renewed examination of our economic metrices: is GDP the right measurement, where does happiness fit in and a steward’s responsibility to the planet.
• Is filling out a form for a desired profile of a prospective college roommate a good thing? What happened to curiosity; is the desire for diversity only performative?

• Can Taylor Swift be so singularly good that Target features her book as a way to get people to its stores and hopefully purchase the excess inventory which plagues the company.
• The brutally wide inequality in wealth is almost impossible to attack without substantive, punitive legislation, aka a series of “remedies” (See “The Color of Law”) By comparison, income differentials could be attacked if educational preparation was significantly better. Current test results are so bad one would think that improvement was impossible to avoid.
• Over time, won’t changing demographics make at least the diversity part of DEI a practical necessity for all organizations. In less than twenty years, there will be no ethnic majority.
• Can one scream about income inequality as they purchase another delivery of stuff from Amazon, whose founder has a $500 million yacht and fights attempts at unionization.
• Is that tweak in my hamstring on its way to a serious situation or will ice, Advil, a wrap, a massage, and stretching keep me on the basketball court.

RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR SURE                                                         THE END … almost …

P.S. CHRISTMAS itself with the family was great fun!