See the USA

By Hank Silverberg

I don’t travel as much as I would like. But when I do, I enjoy a good road trip by car because you see more of the countryside. When I have the time, I get off the Interstates and take back roads, though I discovered this weekend I don’t like driving narrow two-lane mountain roads with up and down” S” curves and no guard rails.  A family wedding in New England took me  through nine states. I had traveled most of the route several times before.  The view from the Delaware Memorial Bridge is still spectacular, but I have seen it many times. We were hoping to see a few new things on this trip, and we did. 

For example. In the Garden State (NJ), which is anything but a garden if you see it only from the Turnpike, can surprise you. We took a back route through central Jersey neighborhoods to get away from a major traffic jam near New Brunswick.  I had worked this ground as a reporter for WCTC radio early in my career, so the town names and geography were familiar. But it was intriguing to see solar panels on almost every telephone pole crisscrossing several towns. What the power is used for is not clear, though it was suggested by some guests at the wedding that the juice went to cable TV boxes or telephone service. There were too many of them just to power the nearby street lights.

A few hundred miles north, at the state Welcome Center in Vermont, there was an interesting art display, including the dog carved from wood pictured here, and a wonderful collection of Raggerty Ann dolls which someone

Welcome to Vermont (Photo by Hank Silverberg)

hand crafted. Yes, they had the tourist brochures and vending machines too, but being able to view something else made the stop much more enjoyable. It told me something about the people of Vermont.  Then came the hair-raising part of the trip. I had seen the White Mountains of New Hampshire before, but not up close and personal.  There was no direct route to Sugar Hill, where the wedding took place, or Lincoln, where my wife and I stayed.   The GPS pushed us off I-91 and onto some very scary mountain roads with some stomach wrenching “S” turns.  I probably drove them a bit too fast, according to my wife, though not according to the posted speed limit. We had been hoping for a bit more fall foliage on this part of the trip, but it was too early in the season even in upstate New Hampshire. 

I write all this because I found out during this trip that the folks outside of Washington don’t talk as much as the folks in the D.C. region about who wrote that op-ed piece in the New York Times about the chaos at the White House. They are paying some attention to the hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, but it’s not all encompassing as the folks in Washington would have us all believe.

People outside D.C.  seem more concerned about why a local restaurant is closing, why their financial firm just laid off 300 people in what is supposed to be a good economy, why it’s below 50 degrees on the mountain in early September. They wanted to talk about the possibility of snow soon, or who made the spectacular wedding cake. 

As a reporter, I went a lot of places. But I was always rushing from one stop to the next on a deadline, rarely straying from the highway until I reached my destination. I usually focused on the task at hand and had no time to get away from it all. But I can tell you the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah Valley, which are not to far from where I live, rival the White Mountains as one of the most beautiful places on earth.   

This weekend, as the bride got ready to take her vows, and we were all watching her, she called out “bear, bear!” and pointed. Some yards behind the wedding canopy was a big black bear meandering across a field. It stopped for a moment to stare back at about 100 humans who were staring at him. I didn’t even have my smart phone out to take a picture, but take my word for it, the bear was there and the people at this wedding will be talking about it for weeks. 

 It was good to get away from all those talking heads on TV and all those Congressman and Senators falling all over themselves to say something relevant in a 30 second sound bite.

 Some things are just more important than petty politics, like family weddings, finding ways to produce clean energy and getting a great view of pristine mountains.

 This is something that both the politicians running for office and the reporters covering the mid- term elections need to remember. America is a

Franconia Notch, N.H. (Photo by Jody Silverberg) 

special place where you can get in your car, even when gas is creeping close to three dollars a gallon again, and take the slow road, whether it’s to celebrate a family event or just clear your nostrils with some good mountain air. Those who make the decisions need to hear more from the people outside the Beltway whether it be at a rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike or a camp ground in so called “flyover” country. Our country is a vast open place of great wealth, culture and diversity. We live in a nation where you can drive your car over 1,200 miles in three days without having to use a passport or speak another language.     

We do not live in a place where only the privileged few are supposed to reap the benefits of everyone else’s hard work, and we must keep it that way. 

  So, forgive me if my blog is a bit late this week.  I had to stop this weekend and smell the mountain laurel.

 L’Shana Tova, Happy New Year.

                 (Your suggestions and comments are welcome) 

 (Hank Silverberg is an award winning Journalist and the author of three books. His latest "The Campaign" is available now at Amazon.com, BN.com, hanksilverbergbooks.com or a signed copy directly from the author with an email to this blog for details)