Wednesday, May 17, 2017

America the Beautiful...


The trip to Nashville is mostly a pretty one. Driving through the big cities, Dallas, Little Rock, Memphis, and Nashville are interesting, but the open highways in between always speak to me.

I find all terrains beautiful--mountains, beaches, even deserts, but open prairies and farmed fields are my favorite. I love the grand sweep of land, especially in spring and summer when things are green and actively growing. When the sun shines brightly and the sky is so blue it hurts to look at.



I love to see homes, from single-wide trailers and small bungalows to traditional farmhouses and sprawling ranch houses, set off the highways and nestled in a copse of protective trees. I like to see pickup truck and mini-vans parked in gravel driveways. I like to spot dogs and cats in swing-setted yards. I like to see cows in the fields.

The other thing that really struck me this time as I navigated my way across the south-eastern U.S. is that our highways, biways, spurs, and farm-to-market roads are the arteries of our great nation. (It has a lot of issues, but in the grand scheme of things, I still think it's pretty great.) I shared the road with a ton of big rigs on the way east. For several hours, it was pretty much truck after truck after truck after truck after truck.


I've heard it said that the trucking industry is the backbone of our nation. And while I get the metaphor, I think a better one is that the trucking industry is our nation's blood cells. The roads, from nation-traversing super highways to that small two-lane highway through Small Town America, are the arteries and the trucks are the blood cells delivering the gamut of goods from food to clothing and mail to gasoline to even the most rural small town. Most of them, anyway. My mother-in-law lives in a small Texas town, population approximately 200. I think all it gets is mail. There's another small town, though a bit larger in scope, about ten miles up the road that has gas stations and convenience stores. According to Google Maps, it also sports a bar, a couple of repair shops, and a restaurant.

Yeah, so the open road got me a bit thinky...

Hope you're well on this gorgeous Wednesday.

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