SWEET HOME CHICAGO

Week 3 - The Mother and Daughter Road Trip ..... A smudge of red in the otherwise green patchwork of the Apalachia Mountain trees heralds the advent of the oncoming autumn months that lie ahead.

Daughter 1 and I set off bright and breezy on Friday morning as Kamala Harris was just coming down from addressing the DNC the night before. We had done the regulation college student stock up at Costco the day before that included a bumper pack of toilet (= loo) roll, a mega bag of ground coffee, supersized bottle of Costco’s own brand (Kirkland) vodka that should keep Daughter 1 and her roommates going for at least a month.

With the sun rising above the skyscrapers of Downton Chicago and now a veritable dab hand at the highway = motorway gyratory systems, we navigated our way on to the i94 and then on to the i65 down south through Indiana with its cornfields as far as the eye could see. The occasional windfarm broke up the otherwise flat horizon. That and the advertising hoardings.

The first one to catch my eye was “HELL IS REAL”! This was followed by a veritable cross section of others – JESUS IS REAL (surely the counter part to the previous?); WORLDS LARGEST KNIFE STORE; A MUST SEE – THE SHRINE OF CHRISTS PASSION – 48 BRONZE SCULPTURES – indeed, a must see; LION’S DEN ADULT SUPERSTORE, mmm; GUNSNAMMO and DISTILLERY AND PRISON TOURS (really?) ….. and almost my favourite CHRISTIANS & POLITICS – WHAT DOES JESUS SAY? CALL (83) FOR-TRUTH. So very different to the very genteel English advertising on the Hammersmith West Way – “Chicago – Voted Best Big City in the USA”.

Daughter 1 had stacked up a play list and a series of brilliant podcasts for the trip – having listened to the DNC roundup on The Journal, Post Reports, The Daily, Radio Atlantic and The Economist, we got stuck into ‘Dissect’ and their gripping episode on Radiohead ‘In Rainbows’.  With the occasional musical interlude, the rest of the journey was back to back episodes of ‘Empire’ with Anita Anand and William Dalrymple. I’m obsessed. Fascinating, funny, historians at the top of their game.

‘Cook Out!’ joyously whooped Daughter 1 beside me.

‘?’ me.

‘We’re definitely in the south. You only get Cook Out in the south.’ We had crossed the Tennessee border/state line a while back so she would be right.

‘Well, I’m going to have to sample the delights of Cook Out.’ Said I excited at the prospect of sampling another essential American road trip must.

It marked about mid way - six hours done with another five to Asheville ahead of us so the perfect mid point stop. I decided to give the ‘Cheerwine’ a miss – D1 had already alerted me to its effusive affects and just went for a ‘Tray’ with Reg. Chicken burger, Fries and the Slaw (= coleslaw). Student Haute Cuisine at its finest. D1 ordered the Hushpuppies. No, not the remedial footwear worn by schoolteachers in the 1970s but fried corn batter that came in a paper bag saying ‘God Bless the USA. Psalm 19:14’. I was a little confused. I didn’t know ‘God Bless the USA’ was in ‘Psalm 19:14’. Discovered Cook Out is Christian owned hence the packaging so all was clarified. Phew.

Back on the road and a very definite change of terrain – the verdant rolling hills of Kentucky were replaced by the looming and breath taking forest covered mountains of Tennessee. At one point a state trooper swooped past to stop the car in front of us who had itself just recently shot past – I don’t think it ended well. I did take note to keep to the speed limit though, not that I had my foot on the gas. Mirroring the Pigeon River beside us, the road began to wind through the Apalachia Mountains and my vertigo was kicking in. Passing exits that read ‘Rarity Mountain Road’, ‘Rocky Top’, ‘Manchester Hazzard’, each progressively more alarming … ‘Stinking Creek Road’, Raccoon Valley Road’ – I think they were going for the ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’ name game.

The black shredded carcasses of tyres from the many 18 wheelers that regularly travelled these roads lay abandoned like the skins of some primeval reptile strewn along the highway as we went.

We got to Asheville at 6.30pm (18.30 to you and me – they don’t do the 24 hour clock in the US). Our aqua blue Tiny House was perfect and also ‘exactly what it said on the tin’ – tiny and perfectly formed.

A little about Asheville. It sits in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina surrounded by National forests. If you like a hike, you could do ten trails a day for the rest of your life and still not have done every trail in these mountains. It is an area of outstanding beauty and with it comes people and more and more people. Like the Spanish this summer, they don’t want all these people. They want you to come and visit for a very short time, spend and go and leave their beautiful town as you found it. I can understand.

Before the settlers arrived, it belonged to the Cherokee nation and with the advent of the railroad in 1880 it became a resort where people with TB would come for its beneficial clean mountain air. George W. Vanderbilt bought himself 120,000 of prime real estate and built his beautiful Biltmore estate which still remains ‘America’s Largest Home’.

The town has creativity at its core – a haven for artists and writers. Thomas Wolfe, the legendary author of “Look Homeward Angel” was born here and Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald would come to stay at the Grove Inn to write. After dinner we chanced upon the weekly Friday Drum Circle. It does sound very hippy dippy ‘crunchy’ (an American term used to describe rich hippies ie. people who can afford to buy designer granola) but honestly, it was a joyous experience standing on the edge of the circle, observing the energy of over a 100 people drumming together as one.

The next morning, we took a quick forest hike to blow away the residue of the endless hours spent sitting in the car the day before. The drive down to Davidson was a doddle. Just 127 miles.

This ‘right of passage’ moment, dropping your child at college, was four years late. When D1 first arrived at Davidson in the Autumn of 2021, America was in Covid lockdown and foreigners weren’t permitted to enter the country without special dispensation ie. student or work visas or you dodged the whole system by flying into the Caribbean for a few days before heading onto the States. We were unable to do this so D1 travelled on her own and had to do all the things that a new student has to do on her own – the massive pre college Target shop for her room including bedding, school supplies etc, register with a doctor, a dentist etc - in a foreign country. Hats off. So, this was a very special moment for me.

On my only other campus visit in the Spring of 2022, D1 pointed out the Seniors accommodation, I couldn’t believe that she was there now and going into her last year. The lugging of suitcases and boxes from the car was accompanied by thumping music emanating from the Frat accommodation below D1’s apartment. Young adults excitedly preparing for their last year ahead. One boy waving a large American flag as he crossed the lawn in stark contrast to the Confederate flag we saw billowing over the motorway in Tennessee. Other boys sat sitting on a couch (= perish the thought, sofa) in front of a large flat screen TV set up in the yard watching the footie - Aston Villa v Arsenal. Big boned boys from the college (American) football team playing Die in the sunshine. All the apartments open onto communal terraces which overlook a quad like space with social life very much going on inside and out. Set in stunning countryside beside Lake Norman.

What’s not to love about being at Davidson College and I’m so glad D1 does.

The drive back up to Chicago was totally uneventful – the miles disappeared thanks to Anita Anand and William Dalrymple with the East India Company and Clive of India firmly despatched somewhere between Tennessee and Kentucky. I stopped in Louisville for the night – home of KFC and the Louisville Cardinals. I hoped to have a wander around and taste my first KFC but my AirBnB, an apartment in a fairly recently developed convent was, I felt, in rather a dodgy area sitting beside a few derelict houses and with rather too much imagination resembled meth dens. I didn’t have the cojones for a solo adventure around the mean streets of Louisville, so I took my Costco bumper bag of nuts and popcorn upstairs and sat watching reruns of Jerry Bruckheimer’s ‘Cold Case’ instead, glad that my car was safe in a locked car park.

A Monday morning breakfast treat for me at the Waffle House felt more like a daily ritual for others, those regulars seen sitting with their supersized derrieres parked up on the bar stools. It was a necessary stop located just over the mighty Ohio River heading north to Chicago – I had to sample yet another student staple and their regulation hangover cure. The Jonas Brothers song began to make sense.

Five hours and over 300 miles done and dusted by midday and I was on the beach in Chicago for a family afternoon by 1.30 pm (13.30) and a refreshing dip in the lake. America, you beauty!

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