There's a dream around these parts, one everyone's heard of and nobody's seen. You hear about it most when it gets close to voting time but supposedly the American Dream is more than just a politician's rhetorical flourish. Last October we packed up a Chevy Trailblazer and hit the highway to see if we couldn't run it down.
'In search of the American Dream!' Where else you gonna go look for that but the old Mother Road herself, Route 66. St. Louis was our nearest gateway to that so we started our search there.
Gateway to the West, Gateway Arch, Gateway to the American Dream? Nothing like a triumphal arch for colonialism to show you where to pick up the scent.
You got to go down to get up. At least in the Gateway Arch. It was in the museum beneath the Arch that things really started the get twisted. We'd set out to find that perpetually just around the corner notion of a better life that's always dangled before us like a carrot on a stick but before we could properly search we had to learn about it's foundation of violence and atrocity.
Wave after wave of conquering oppressors, conquered and oppressed in turn. Wasn't just St. Louis either, every stop along our two week odyssey across the West the same narrative had played out. Somewhere along the way military force started taking a back seat to economic forces in shaping things but it was impossible to shake the feeling that that history was inextricably linked to the dream we were chasing.
Wandering downtown St. Louis, it had that same hollow feeling I know so well from downtown Louisville, like the winds of fortune that shaped and built city have shifted and now blow elsewhere. Impressive old structures, left behind by the times to be neglected and condemned.
Hell, to build their monument to the 'western expansion' they obliterated the waterfront district through which much of that expansion had passed. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all doom and decay, but everywhere we stopped the story was much the same, they may have seen the American Dream but it'd done skipped town.
Something changes and the good times go away. Sometimes it's something like the coming (or lack thereof) of the railroad or interstate highway. Other times it's something more sinister, like the Tulsa race massacre.
Tulsa was our next stop after St. Louis, so we had to check out Greenwood Rising History Center. It told the story of Greenwood, a thriving community once described as 'The Black Wall Street of America' and how it was destroyed by a white mob in 1921 and again later by 'urban renewal' and gentrification. It also told of how little had been done to right the wrongs done, which was all too familiar after our experiences with Breonna Taylor here in Louisville.
That's a dream that'll give you nightmares. Back to Route 66. Or rather I-40, which is also badged as Route 66 and occasionally built atop it. For many of the places along the Mother Road, it's heyday was their heyday as well. Nobody realized it at the time, too worried about communists and such. See, Route 66 ran right through the middle of these towns and all that traffic was good for business. When the interstate came through to replace it, it bypassed all the towns and took much of that money with it.
Things were never the same after, which was how this Art Deco gas station and cafe in Shamrock, Texas eventually fell into disrepair and closed. It's been restored and is now a museum with Tesla chargers though, so I'm not sure what this world Texas is coming to.
The more we saw the more it seemed that there wasn't a single American Dream so much as a multitude. The only thing they seemed to have in common was that they had ended.
Or perhaps we were just looking with the wrong kind of eyes. Perhaps just getting by is the American Dream now. Can't vouch for that, haven't watched television in years so I'm not sure what we're supposed to be dreaming. Time will tell.
It is illegal to deface the American Dream. Tell that to the corporate sponsors. I grew up in southeastern Kentucky, where once coal was king and now is hardly a thing. Nothing really replaced it and most folks were just barely getting by, without much hope of things ever getting much better. Moved to Louisville in 2004 and had always thought that feeling was particular to our neck of the woods and circumstances but the further we got down Route 66 the more commonplace it seemed.
Would go a long way to explaining the level of tension and anger in the country currently. Good think you can still get your kicks on Route 66, if graffiti is your thing, Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, Texas is the place for you. If you're real lucky the rain will come and wash your sins, or at least evidence, away.
In our haste for vandalism we bypassed a place in Amarillo advertising a 72 oz steak dinner for free if you could eat it in an hour. That's a special sort of American Dream but competitive eating really isn't our thing. Couldn't miss it though, there were billboards for it for hundreds of miles in either direction.
Were billboards always a part of the American Dream? Gas stations along the Mother Road were a trip down nostalgia lane, like stumbling into the ghost of American Dreams past. This one'd been open continuously since 1938 and seemed to be in a billboard competition with it's nearest competitor, with dozens of them lining the highway in either direction.
Santa Fe, New Mexico is old enough its seen plenty of dreams, American, Spanish, Puebloan, and otherwise. At one point Route 66 ran though here but a governor got it rerouted to skip Santa Fe as an act of political retaliation.
One day we were learning about the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, when the locals rose up and drove the Spanish from New Mexico. The next day was October 7th, 2023 and the news was giving me deja vu. The past is never dead. It isn't even past.
Couple days later was Indigenous Peoples' Day, which was a nice reminder that their 'American' Dream was probably much different than the one we had in mind when we set out.
Atomic dreams of apocalyptic things. ". . . one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time." and it has been giving us nightmares ever since. Hey, if you set the bar low enough, all your dreams come true. So far 'No nuclear war' is the only winner I've found for American Dream.
Spent the better part of a week taking in Santa Fe before swinging down to Albuquerque.
It was much the same blend of cultures that was evident in Santa Fe. Flamenco dancing, some original locals doing a cover of 'My Way' outside a tourist trap shop, it was hard to tell where one dream ended and another began.
We were running out of road to run down the American Dream so we gave it one last go at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.
Where better to look for it than an event centered on hot air?
There was plenty of that but no dreams. For an event that people started arriving at before 0500, it was surprisingly calm and pleasant, without any of the insanity that always seems to accompany something like the Kentucky Derby, so maybe that's not entirely true.
Thousands of people coming together in the wee hours of the morning to enjoy something without fussing and fighting? That's gotta be a dream.
These things are supposed to wrap up with some sort of nice, tidy conclusion but it's almost three in the morning and it's the American Dream we're talking about here. I've still not found one besides "Needs more investigation" so just consider this an interim report and check back later for more.
Now it's time for me to fly, if y'all want a glimpse of the drive back just watch Smokey and the Bandit.
