In Cartesian geometry, the vanishing point is often represented by a pine tree air freshener.

ELKINS, West. Va. -- After a cross-country drive, there is a lazy tendency to believe that one is now well qualified to make pronouncements about “America.” On further reflection, however, I have to admit that the 2,400 miles I drove in three and a half days last week didn’t teach me about much more than the highways I was on and the places I stopped for gasoline and refreshments.

The best of these places was a tavern on a windswept gravel road about two miles from the interstate in Wisconsin. The proprietor was absent but the lone noontime regular walked around behind the bar to ring up my purchase of about ten gallons of gas from the solitary old-fashioned pump out front, all under the sleepy one-eyed gaze of a hound dog curled on a folded plaid blanket in the corner.

While I waited for the credit-card machine to finish printing my receipt, a Hank Williams, Sr. song came on the jukebox—really! The dark barroom felt so comfortable and welcoming and real after five deadening hours of interstate driving that I considered calling it a day right then and asking the customer if anyone in the surrounding hamlet had a room to rent for the night.

The worst place I stopped was a “travel plaza” somewhere near Chicago, tucked into a bend in the highway like a flea in an armpit. A tour bus had just disgorged what seemed like a hundred middle schoolers, all of whom ended up ahead of me in line at the Burger King where I wanted to order breakfast. By the time I had reached the counter, the eyes of the pale, heavyset woman behind the counter had turned dead and hopeless from multiple custom orders and requests for “just a cup with ice.”

Fifteen minutes later, as I was mopping up the last of my ketchup with a hash brown shaped like a laundry token, one of the middle schoolers sitting three tables away from me suddenly stood, bent at the waist, and let a bright red stream of vomit splash onto the floor. Fifteen seconds later, I was dumping the remains of my meal into a trash can and pushing out the door to the parking lot.

In Dickinson, North Dakota, I stayed at the hotel hosting the Southwest North Dakota Crime Conference. There was a parking lot full of pickup trucks outfitted as patrol vehicles, which I’ve always imagined is a dream come true for a certain kind of person who becomes a cop—kind of the opposite of a police bicycle, in other words.

As I checked in, I could hear the stand-up comedian in the lounge. “Anyone here ever arrested anyone for DUI?” He continued into a story about his own experience on the receiving end of a horizontal gaze nystagmus test. The crowd roared and applauded, and it was strange to consider the precise nature of the common ground he had found with his audience.

In the morning, the water in my shower turned out to be so hard that, after about twenty minutes, I gave up trying to rinse off the soap, got out, and scraped it off with a towel. Downstairs, heavyset men with buzz cuts and guns in low-profile holsters milled aimlessly around the buffet table like bumblebees.

There are no toll roads in Montana, so I was out of practice and ran out of money at the final toll plaza in Ohio. I asked the attendant if I’d be able to get off the highway before the next toll, in Pennsylvania.

He said I would, but this was wrong.

I expected that there would just be a form to fill out, and that I’d be able to mail payment in later. Instead, the next attendant told me that—if I couldn’t at least come up with a check for the required $3.90—the state police would write me a $300 ticket.

This was untrue, I learned just now by calling the Pennsylvania Turnpike Authority, so I can only imagine that this toll-taker just wanted the break I gave her by occupying her lane for ten or so minutes of frenzied searching for the checkbook. If there is a worse place to work than a travel plaza Burger King, after all, it’s probably a toll booth.

I stopped for the night in a Super 8 tucked between a strip club and an adult bookstore, in the town of Beaver Falls.

Solid days of non-stop driving sounds like hell to most people, but I’m a new parent, so it was really a glorious vacation. I listened to books on tape and was alone with my thoughts for hours at a time, as opposed to the mere seconds that are possible when I am blessed by the presence of my loving family.

I had my digital recorder dangling from the sun visor, ready to capture any deep thoughts that occurred to me, but none did. I have no pronouncements to make about the national character based on my experiences, and I wouldn’t share them if I did. I wouldn’t trust myself.

Driving is one of the everyday activities we all engage in that is most likely to inspire feelings of resentment, suspicion, and persecution. Once, it would have been true that driving was the everyday activity most likely to inspire these feelings, but that was before the rise of arguing about politics on the internet.

So even if I were moved to try to generalize from my observations about oblivious tailgaters, slow left-lane hoggers, and the cattle-like way the people wait in line for their fat pills at the travel plazas, I wouldn’t. I’d assume that my conclusions would necessarily be colored by the frustrations and the physical and mental cramping that results from sitting in the same position for hours at a time, simultaneously only seconds from death and yet kind of bored and sleepy.

I am glad I don’t have to drive anywhere for a while.

I’m sorry for you if you do.

Photo by Flickr user PhotoDu.de.

Now based in Missoula, MontanaElkins, West Virginia after three decades on the coasts, Sutton is a freelance business writer and journalist. He writes the Missoula Notebook for the nationally-award-winning online news source New West, keeps a blog, and can be found on Twitter and Facebook. Click here for an overview of what Went West is all about.

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