Reflecting on the road trip so far . . .
1. Random thoughts
I suppose that a road exists to go somewhere. If there is no road, you build one, a new trail.
If there is a river to cross, you build a bridge, or build a boat and navigate on it, a new waterway.
Once you have a trail or waterway, you want to move faster. The desire promotes ideas: horses, wheels, carriages, steamboats, railroads and trains, automobiles, airplanes.
The American West is built on this foundation of desire to go somewhere previously unknown.
2. Driving Route 66
A desire to go somewhere arises from various reasons, but it essentially boils down to two kinds: needs and wants. The difference is subtle yet significant.
You need to go to work, school, hospital, or stores to get food. This is different from, say, wanting to go to a beach on vacation.
The historic Route 66 today prominently boasts the latter: the vacationer's roadtrip images.
As Peter Dedek explains in his book Hip to the Trip, promoting glorified images is economic-driven and thus understandable, but it obscures the experiences of people of the past who had to travel this road.
Dust Bowl migrants
Route 66 is famously nicknamed the Mother Road.
The phrase came from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, a fictional story of Oklahoma farmers migrating to California during the Dust Bowl era.
There is a lesser-known but historically significant book based on true stories, called Whose Names Are Unknown. The author, Sanora Babb, was working for the Farm Security Administration in California, where she kept detailed notes on the migrant families.
The title "whose names are unknown" was an actual phrase in an eviction notice Babb saw pinned to a migrant shack. It symbolizes how corporate entities stripped these displaced families of their humanity and identity.
African American travelers
Route 66 is often seen as the cultural icon of freedom and exploration. In reality, it was a privilege once unavailable to non-White people.
In 1936, Victor Hugo Green, with the assistance of his wife Alma, started publishing the Green Book for African American travelers to find safe places to stay, eat, and refuel. I was able to get a copy of the 1959 edition of the Green Book at a museum gft shop in Pontiac, Illinois.
Alvin Hall, in his book Driving the Green Book, describes his account of driving and meeting people who actually used the Green Book to travel back in the days.
The movie Green Book won three Academy Awards in 2019.
Japanese American Internment
During World War II, Route 66 served as a tragic corridor for Japanese Americans forcibly relocated to internment camps in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.
Native American displacement and marginalization
The construction of highways over ancestral homelands of indigenous communities displaced and marginalized Native Americans, while the roadside motels and tourist attractions along Route 66 commodified their cultures by creating harmful stereotypes for profit.
3. Frontier spirit
Despite the dark side of its history, driving 3,700 miles on secondary roads confirmed and reinforced my view that the American West is an incredibly beautiful country, so unique and special to American people.
It was also humbling and inspiring to meet people trying to make a living somehow despite the resource limitation, yet remain friendly and respectful to others.
There is a sense of discovery in these backroads. I imagined the time when the pioneers explored, trailblazed, and mapped this vast landscape. I also imagined how Native Americans living in the area at that time were forced to change their lifestyles.
The opening of the American West is a legacy we perhaps owe to Thomas Jefferson, who initiated the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The detailed account is well described by Stephen Ambrose in his book Undaunted Courage.
Driving through the American West, built on the foundation of desire to go somewhere previously unknown, allowed me to connect the dots, and gained a sense of understanding why and how this country evolved the way it did, and why it is the way it is today.
l also relate the frontier spirit to my explortory research on machine autonomy, and I appreciate the freedom and opportunities to go where previously unknown.