A Trip to California

I felt it when we crossed the border. That sounds ridiculous, but I did feel something when we crossed the Peace Bridge into New York. It may have been the heat or the thrill of being in a strange vehicle on a road trip to a place I did not know, but I remember a sensation of pressure in my head and on my body, like I was changing atmospheres. I know now that this was also a sensation of fear. What would the trip in this van, with at least four people I did not know, involve? Would we be safe in America (a concern that would be a real problem for me in California, as I will explain eventually)? Did they have the food I liked to eat, the TV shows I liked to watch? I only half understood my own feelings at the time.

You notice the usual things on the road when traveling in a new place: the people and their behaviour, the different types of buildings, the amount of space available to those people and their buildings, the type of weather and the temperature, and so on. It was a warm and dry summer. And America seemed to be full of all of the same things I could find in Canada: the space, the housing, and the people. None of this was different from the point of view of a car seat. The package was the same. And a part of me was disappointed that things were not as strange as I had imagined they would be.

There was a different world outside of that ride. Once we stopped for breaks and explored where we were, I realized just how different things could be. Soda and candy that I knew back home were still available, but the packaging was different (much smaller, bigger, or with features I never considered before – ex. Pull-off tabs for soda cans). I was given a book to read and noticed immediately the difference in price (about a dollar lower than back home). We once stopped at a convenience store, bought some groceries, and saw a father enter and begin to scream and gesture at his son. The boy had run away from home and the father wanted him to come back immediately. No one in the store moved, except my mother, who took me by the hand and led me outside. But I will never forget that moment or the man. He had a rough beard that was very close to his face, a trucker’s hat, shorts and a dirty t-shirt. The anger we felt pulsing from him was palpable, as if it had its own energy and purpose. The only adults I had seen angry with children in public were teachers and the parents of my cousins and relatives, and their anger did not even approach what I saw in that store.That was a lesson.

I would see beautiful wheat fields in the Midwest, but I would also eat the worst Chinese food of my young life in the same setting. I would see Salt Lake City at night from a high mountain pass (easily one of the most beautiful sights in the world; those salt rings in the moonlight are remarkable), and I would pass through Las Vegas in the daytime (the ugliest sight for a dreamer of casino fortunes and stage shows). This was right and fair. Whenever I hear a critic of America preach in Europe, Asia or Africa, I have to wonder and ask out loud: Have these people ever visited and travelled across that land? Do they know what America is really like when they step away from its movies, music and other advertising? It is a country that does not deserve the criticism it receives from total strangers. We slept in that open space when we could have stayed in an inn or a motel and I never lost the feeling that we were like the original pioneers who had to risk our lives to see what that great bulge of land - Jack Kerouac’s wonderful phrase - had to offer. Of course, the internal combustion system and A/C did not hurt either. But we were still out in the rough and raw places of a great and frightening place.