Day One

September 1, 2013

Start: Chicago, IL
End: Springfield, MO

Trip odometer: 549

Part 1

Interstate 40 parallels the old Route 66 for much of my trip. I glance at the old road to my right. At times I am tempted to switch over to experience driving on the “original” Route 66, with its winds and turns that aren't present on the newer, sleeker four-lane highway. I realize that, as with much of modern life, although some of us may sometimes yearn for the simplicity of the ways of the past, our modern lives and our more pressing interests and needs-- to be on time, to be safe, to stay on the beaten path--override any desire we may have to truly live as our grandparents did.

And isn't that, in a way, what our grandparents wanted? My mother always told me that the wisdom her mother lived by was simple: her immigrant grandparents came to this country poor, and they had a farm. And she told me that the farmer works his whole life so that his child may be a merchant. The merchant his whole life so that his children may be professionals, academics, professors.

Would our grandparents have wanted us to have to ride the same simple, two-lane highway when there was a newer, smoother road to take? Don’t our parents work hard and do what they can to ensure that our lives run as smoothly as they can? What child of the 1960s wants her children to experience sexism, racial strife, and civil unrest the way she did? Would a child of the depression want her grandchildren to wear only hand-me-down clothes, “mending rather than ending,” (if I may paraphrase Brave New World) when she can buy new clothes?

For example, my grandmother wouldn't want me to experience what her mother did during World War II: not going out in public lest someone hear her speaking in her strong German accent. In Chicago, a city built by immigrants, no less. Nowadays, Chicagoans pride themselves on “Chicago-style hot dogs” drowning in sauerkraut. But 60 years before we had “freedom fries” they had “liberty cabbage.” And I’m lucky that although I am distinctly German-looking, I’ll never talk like anything but a California girl transplanted from the South. Or have to change my name from “Gutwein” to “Goodwin.”

On the other hand, if we completely lose sight and lose touch with those roots, we’ll never appreciate the conveniences we have, and worse, we will never be content. Perhaps past generations, despite having less, were more content. They were content to have a successful crop. They were content to see their children live through infancy. They were content to have neighbors who looked out for them. I am not content to stay in the same city, or the same job, for more than two years. I get restless, always thinking there is somewhere more interesting I could be and something more fulfilling that I could be doing. I am not content to only have ever been to six countries. When I think about my great aunt Marge taking her honeymoon a couple of states over, I laugh. But you know what? At 92, she laughs with me.