Waterville, Maine, May 2024 — It’s a little early to draw many conclusions about the country’s mood, but this is what I have heard in a little more than two weeks on the road in America.
Most people I have met are just tired out. They are weary of the endless national narrative — our dysfunctional do-nothing Congress; the mutual demonization of each party towards the other; Trump’s narcissism and disruptions, Biden’s shuffling and verbal gaffs, two old men running for president that nobody seems excited about; Stormy Daniels and Hunter Biden; the perpetual crisis at the border; the fundamental intractability of things in the Middle East; the campus protests; the ongoing Culture Wars; the seeming futility of the west’s support for Ukraine; the flirtation with autocracy, including here in the U.S.
Etc., etc., etc., etc.
“That’s why the wife and I are out here,” one man told me as he grilled chicken at a KOA Kampground in Maine, “to tune all that stuff out. We’re just seeking our own happiness now. I know that’s probably bad, but that’s exactly how we feel.”
“A plague on both their houses,” another said as we gassed up our rigs at a giant service plaza in New Hampshire. “We just want it to end.”
When I asked people whether America is:
A: circling the drain
B: doing just fine
C: lurching on as always
Most began by saying, “Duh!” but they invariably stepped back and provided a more thoughtful answer: “We’ll get through this. We always do. There is more right with America than wrong with America, but our leadership on both sides is really letting us down right now.”
“I’m worried, but what are we going to do about it?” my server said at a lunch counter the other day.
This morning at breakfast at Karen’s Diner in Calais, Maine, sitting at the counter, I asked Karen what the coffee klatches of men (there were six at a nearby table) talk about when they come in a couple of times per week. “Everything,” she said with an affectionate grunt. “The political situation?” I asked. “No. I’m not ok with that. When I bought this place 18 years ago I told my husband there were two subjects we wouldn’t have people talking about in here: politics and religion.” Pause. “So, you know, sports, lawn care, the fishing season, Canada (just across the St. Croix River), tourists!”
I should immediately acknowledge that I’m not meeting a representative sample of the American people. In campgrounds — state parks, county parks, ma and pa RV parks, and KOA campgrounds — the people I meet are overwhelmingly white senior citizens with enough money and freedom to travel the country in comfortable RVs, some that cost $10,000 and some that cost $350,000, not to mention the splendid pickups that haul them. Most of the people I meet aren’t rich, but they are privileged.
The limitations of my observational lens came home to me yesterday when I went into a local museum in Calais, Maine, not far from the Penobscot Indian Reservation. On the registration desk, I saw a stack of “please take one” documents about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls in America. And food pantries in every town or village I drove through. And plenty of rural shabbiness, which I take to mean rural poverty.
This, too, is America.
As I plugged in my Airstream last evening beside a lovely Maine lake, the man doing the same next to me (wearing an absurd and expensive mosquito net helmet) asked me what I was doing with whatever Listening to America is. “I’m driving around the country retracing John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley journey, trying to listen to the mood of the country as we approach our 250th birthday,” I said. “I’m more concerned about the gnats,” he replied. “Look, we’re out here partly to get away from all that. We love America. But we’re worried. Mostly, we’re just sick of it.”
I’m only just beginning to listen to America. Still, the full picture will not likely emerge around the Kampfire, where a perky KOA employee in a yellow shirt is making s’mores to order.
Over the next few months, Clay is shadowing Steinbeck’s 10,000-mile trek around the USA (and making a few detours of his own). Clay’s expedition is a central part of LTA’s big initiative to explore the country and take the pulse of America as it approaches its 250th birthday. Be sure to follow Clay’s adventures and subscribe to our newsletter.