1 · Last Days in the Driveway
You’d be surprised how loud a town can get once you decide to leave it. Lawn-mower engines nagging through Saturday mornings, delivery trucks hissing compressed air at intersections, your own phone coughing up one more “urgent” e-mail—all of it conspires to make staying put sound reasonable. But the very noise that pleads I stay is the noise that finally sends me packing.
Preparing her for a tour through small-town America felt less like maintenance and more like a pregame pep talk. I crawled under, twisting the torque wrench until the motor mounts squeaked the language of steel fatigue. She groaned, I groaned back. That’s how we say I love you.
2 · Lists You Can’t Order from Amazon
While the oil drained, I opened the notebook I keep in my back pocket and added more to the ever growing list: spare alternator belt, duct tape, envelopes—each stuffed with $1,000 for whoever needs it more than I do; Brenda's patience (non-returnable, handle with care, "just be home by Christmas").
There were tools and talismans, faith and flange sealant, all thrown in together like gumbo.
My road trips require two kinds of preparation: mechanical and interior. The mechanical is all physical inventory, the latter requires a mindset prepared to handle loneliness. For a whole month prior to leaving I toggled between two shops, my garage for wrenching and my mind upstairs, making lists of what I still feared.
The fears lined up a little too neatly:
- Will story subjects slam doors when I knock?
- Will the air-cooled engine melt on a Utah grade?
- Will the bank statement laugh when I drain savings into the tank?
- Will the silence inside Josie’s cockpit swell toward deafening when my mind starts to catalog people I’ve lost?
I wrote each fear in ink, closed the notebook, and kept turning bolts. You don’t exorcise doubts; you torque them to spec and hope the threads hold.
3 · The Map that Was
For navigation I carry a laminated Rand McNally Road Atlas, and my GPS for route navigation. Digital maps promise efficiency; paper maps seduce with suggestion. That's because they show all the roads that no algorithm will touch. Why would a digital map show a road that took you five miles out of the way to drive past an abandoned two-room schoolhouse or a field where a buffalo might still remember when they ruled the plains.
Weeks before I left I opened the Atlas and lazily sketched out an itinerary of two-lane highways and even smaller back roads, the kind that have only single letters or numbers as designators. It all became overwhelming, and I decided then that I would just drive by compass point and let intuition turn the wheel. Besides, plans are what the road laughs at when handing you orange construction barrels instead.
Brenda stood by the coffee pot watching my cartography. “Do you even know where you’re going?”
"Does, 'wherever the wind blows' sound too cliché?" I said. She half-jokingly asks me to stay. I promise I’ll call every night. You must always promise. Promises are the tether between go and stay home.
4 · The Garage as Temple
The day before launch I performed a ritual older than motor travel: the final once-over. Oil at the line? Check. Valves? Self-adjusting. Spark plugs gapped like soldiers at inspection. I caressed each hose clamp, muttered psalms of prevention. Pilgrimages do not wait for perfection. They start when the heart says go, even if the body of the vehicle isn’t entirely on board.
In the engine compartment I hung a dog-tag stamped “HOPE & GEN TOUR” because vans, like sailors, travel better wearing identity round the neck. If a mechanic finds me unconscious at a Love’s Travel Stop, at least he’ll know the mission.
Turning out the light, I said goodnight to Josie the way a father tucks blankets around a child before her first field trip: half trust, half terror, love threaded through both.
5 · Packing What Won’t Break
I packed two pairs of hiking pants, the kind you can zipper off the legs and have instant shorts, five T-shirts, five pairs of socks, a thrift-store blazer in case some small-town council wanted a fancy interview. I stuffed them all into a brand-new plastic economy storage bin from Home Depot. I packed two cameras—digital for the documentary shots and an ancient Hasselblad as an offering to the film gods—a selection of favorite pens, and a great blank notebook with linen paper, deckle-edge, the kind that makes your scribble feel like scripture.
Food? I loaded up on Ramen noodles. Bought a dozen cans each of beef stew and chili. A jar of peanut butter, tuna in a pouch. I choose my favorite coffee mug and stashed coffee grounds in a plastic container. I bought a one-burner butane stove for all the cooking and a cheap set of backpacking pots and plates for the eating.
What else does a man need? He needs open eyes. He needs that child-sense of maybe.
6 · The Mind as Hitchhiker
Even pared down to axle grease and underwear, the hardest cargo to stow is the mind itself. It flits, flaps, and refuses the harness. In the weeks leading to departure, I practiced sitting still in the driver’s seat while Josie slept on jacks. Ten minutes. Eyes shut, just acquainting nerves with stillness.
Sometimes I replayed dialogue with ghosts: my father, who taught me life skills in a cantankerous, begrudging way; my son, who died by his own hand, whose laugh still echoes when I break a bolt loose; and the estranged friend who called generosity naïve. They rode shotgun for those ten minutes, argued or forgave, then evaporated. Call it mental packing. You decide which spirits to bring along.
7 · Road Etiquette for Strangers
I drafted a manifesto on hospitality and taped it to the dashboard:
- Accept coffee when offered—no matter the brew strength.
- Listen twice before answering once.
- Pay for the pie if the widow insists it’s free.
- Don’t photograph tears without permission.
- Always replace a borrowed tool cleaner than you received it.
- Leave handwritten thanks where your tire tracks remain.
The rules aren’t cosmic. They’re small kindnesses that grease conversation more than any credit card swipe.
8 · Saying Goodbye to the Internet
Two nights before rollout, I ran backups of backups, scheduled out-of-office replies that read like confessionals, and slid my phone into “Do Not Disturb except Brenda” mode. Connectivity is the great devourer. It eats present moments first, the future next. Out there on two-lane blacktop I need to hear wind, not notification pings.
I kept the phone, of course; it was my GPS engine. But I exiled it to that purpose alone. Pings and vibration rattles would go unheeded. At least as much as my willpower would allow.
9 · First Miles—Learning to Breathe in Fourth Gear
Launch morning, the neighborhood hushed as though the world loaned me a quiet minute. I say the same silent prayer every time I first turn the key to wake Josie. A quick turn of the key and Josie rumbles to life. Prayers answered.
Backup camera? Ha. I craned my neck, watched Brenda grow smaller in the in the rearview mirror; she raised a coffee mug in salute, clutching her bathrobe against the dawn. A wink, a wave, and a small ache slides in behind my ribs. I open the throttle. We crawl out of the neighborhood, wide tires kissing pavement.
By the time we hit the city limit sign, my breathing had returned to normal. Fourth gear engaged, we're humming along. Every familiar mile peeled away a layer of doubt I hadn't realized was strangling me.
10 · The First Unscheduled Turn
Forty-seven miles in, the Atlas seduced me into turning east toward a place called Pine Ridge, population: not much of anything. The uneven pavement invited mischief. I turned left and no one followed me. The road lead us into sycamore shade.
Minutes passed and a ragged cemetary appeared. A faded wooden sign noted it was from the Civil War era. I pulled over because curiosity was tugging at my sleeve. I shut Josie down to wander among the headstones. I found headstone of a child 1904-1910. There was a handful of marbles piled nearby. I knelt and said nothing, but wiped away some leaf litter. I rose and left, walking past a dozen headstones dating back to the Civil War. Each adorned with a name, rank and date of death. Simple, clean, forever.
I know the heartbreak of losing a child and I wondered about the family of that lost child. I'll never know them, but we are part of an unwitting fraternity. I breathed in heavily, not realizing I'd been holding my breath. My eyes welled up as they often do when an unbidden moment throws me back into memories I keep locked far, far away. I sat with those memories there in the absolute silence of that small cemetery and let me wash over and beyond me, as I always do, as I must do. Then I turned the key and fired Josie up and headed back to two-lane asphalt.
11 · The Point of All This Wrenching and Worry
Why chase small towns with a creaky van? Because the heartbeat of a country hides in places unpinned by GPS heat maps. Because generosity sounds louder where populations whisper. Because I need reminding that worth resides in stories traded over counters sticky with pie syrup, not in metrics tracked by investors.
Josie creaked as the night cooled. My muscles ached in the fine print of joints. But it was a clean ache, like the kind you get from a barn swept clean. Tomorrow would bring road, and road would bring whatever mischief kindness required. I drifted asleep to the idea that all preparation, at its root, is hope made tangible—threads you tie before the storm so the tent won’t blow away.
Morning always keeps its promise when you’ve done the work in darkness.