EXCERPT:

I crossed the Mississippi in my Ford 150, hauling a 20-foot trailer loaded with two commercial irons, hundreds of shirts, and a thousand transfers. I was heading for Rush City, a mid-size town in northern Indiana. I’d never heard of the place, but it didn’t seem to matter as I drove past the sandstone bluffs and pine forests of northern Wisconsin. I had always loved the feeling of the open road, especially when starting a new trip. For most of your life, you spent your days in the same buildings in the same city, year after endless year. Despite the wide, unexplored world out there, your view rarely changed – you saw the same houses, gas stations, grocery stores, and office parks. Even the trees and bushes were confined to artificial, tidy plots.

But on the road, the world spread out and showed itself in all its splendor. Lawns became fields, trees became forests, slopes became hills, ridges, or even mountains. The universe stopped being static. Everything changed as it flowed by you. Each new bend in the road revealed something new – a steel-blue lake, a meandering brook, a 200-year-old pine, a field of wildflowers, a pinnacle of rocks. Even a familiar route changed with the weather, looking different under sun or clouds or at a different time of day. In place of a small blue patch overhead, the sky covered the world. Clouds boiled up and swept across a vast blue canvas, painting a new picture with every passing second. It was a masterpiece brought to life, never repeating and never ending.

Add the hum of the engine, the tires drumming on the concrete joints, and the feeling of motion, and you were catapulted from the drudgery of your daily life into a wonderland of beauty and unlimited possibilities.

And it was here for anyone to enjoy. The road was America at its best. It was the great equalizer. It didn’t matter if you were young or old, Black or white, rich or poor. It didn’t matter if you drove a Mercedes-Benz or a banged-up Pinto with a blasting muffler. Everybody followed the same rules and had to respect the same laws of physics, and the Mercedes-Benz had better keep its distance from the beat-up Pinto.

On the road, you were free. You didn’t have to clean, cook, answer the phone, mow the lawn, or worry about the day’s schedule. You could crank up the radio and sing at the top of your lungs, and nobody cared how much you butchered the notes. You could stop and eat whenever you liked, and you didn’t have to feel guilty about skipping your vegetables.

The road put the mystery back into life. You never knew what lay ahead, even if the landscape was familiar or flat. In the gaps between the broken yellow lines, opportunity and danger lived in equal measure. Anything could happen, and nothing was guaranteed – not even your safe arrival at your destination. But no matter what happened, you had the feeling, even if illusory, that you were going somewhere – anywhere but the old and familiar, and on the way there, something new and magical might break through the clouds like a ray of sun and change your life forever.