Opinion
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Down But Not Out
Photo by Paul O'Connor
People in Portland, Ore., enjoy a free day at a municipal water park, where the price is right for family entertainment.
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Published: July 5, 2009
RALEIGH - The interpretive center at Sequoia National Forest explains how occasional fires are essential to the world's largest trees.
Flames clear the forest of the sequoias' competition for light, water and nutrients. Ash feeds the land and the fire's heat opens sequoia seed cones, and seedlings sprout. The enormous sequoias generally suffer only superficial damage.
Two months ago, when I left on what would be a 10,429-mile, 46-day road trip across America, I had one question: In this giant recession, which was burning up much of the lifestyle my generation has enjoyed, was America regenerating itself as a forest does after a fire?
On the morning of May 4, I pulled out of my driveway as -- no lie -- Judy Garland's "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" was playing on the radio. I had no better idea of what I'd encounter than did Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. But here's what I saw. My observations are anecdotal, not scientific. They're not supported with government statistics, public-opinion polls or in-depth interviews. This is just what I saw and heard.
Parents and teachers are still taking their children on road trips to places such as the space museum in Huntsville, Ala., the national parks and the state capitols. Families are heading to the water park and to the lakes for recreation. But the cars in the parking lots tended to be from the home state, or its neighbors. I saw one North Carolina license plate at Garden of the Gods in Colorado, another at Yellowstone and not another until I got to southern Ohio.
Some places are surprisingly empty -- Hot Springs, Ark., and the nearby Lake Ouachita State Park should have been much busier on the May Saturday I visited.
Open for business
Merchants told me they were making it, but struggling. Nicely refurbished downtown Tupelo, Miss., was dead when I went out for dinner. Several renovated storefronts were empty. Only one other patron was in a nice restaurant that served a great crayfish salad. During the trip, the only places I saw dining-room lines were near the national parks, where European groups were everywhere.
A liquor store owner in Abilene, Kans., told me he was selling as much beer as ever, but mostly the cheaper brands. A Portland, Ore., bar owner said he's having a great year because he charges less.
A stockbroker in Nebraska said that things are very tough for some of his clients, but that the local economy was sound because of last year's high food prices. A real-estate broker in Boulder, Nev., said that although prices melted in nearby Las Vegas, local values fell much less and that enough places were selling for him to survive.
The federal stimulus package of "shovel-ready" projects may not have kicked in yet, but there is still a lot of public work going on. In the North, highways must be repaired in the summer. That's being done, especially in Minnesota, where the I-35W bridge collapsed several years ago. Even bankrupt California is fixing roads and building new rest stops. University construction is feverish. Every campus I visited had at least one project under way. At my alma maters, Notre Dame and the University of Minnesota, the building is feverish. Notre Dame must have more money than the Vatican.
Nonetheless, there is despair, and it tended to be generational. A number of my contemporaries -- late 50s -- discussed the wrong choices in their careers. A motel manager said he'd left an electronics job in the defense industry. An engineer who moved to a small town and now patches together a living said he wonders if he'd have been better off staying in the big city.
Looking ahead
But when it came to younger workers, there was optimism. Kim, a cosmetology student, said the university life wasn't for her so she's learning to cut hair. She practiced on me for $6. Morgan, a waitress in Ennis, Mont., returned to cosmetology school to strengthen her resume. After graduating in June, she is certified for all the tasks in a salon and has some job leads.
Joe, an Ennis-area real-estate broker, said he'd done more business in the last six months than in the previous two years. "We're expecting a baby in the fall. It was time to work a little harder," he said on the day he was also selling his boat, maybe moving up to a bigger one.
On a number of university campuses, it appeared that both summer-school classes and the tours for prospective students were full. But students aren't getting much help from their career-directed internships. One May graduate of the University of Minnesota was working a motel front desk. She is interning without pay at a local public-relations firm and stringing together low-paying jobs to meet expenses. My niece is in the same position in New York City after graduating in May. An undergraduate at Notre Dame was happy to be a barista at the campus coffee shop this summer.
Plans and ideas
Despite the poor economy, people said they were pushing forward with new business ideas. A young husband-and-very-pregnant-wife team from Washington state has a clothing line. They were hustling individual sales at a street fair in Oregon.
Just down the street, a fellow the same age had started a street-cart sausage business with his dad. "I'm feeling that," he said of the recession. But one of his customers bolted across the street to get his attention late the next afternoon, raving about the Polish dogs and pleading with him not to close before she made her order.
An Oregon motel manager put his high-tech skills to work building a Web site. It's paid off with heavy bookings. He finds groups likely to attend local events and seeks out their business. He's also providing new, inexpensive services to customers, like cleaning rags for motorcycle riders who travel to nearby Hell's Canyon.
On the Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, not far from where Mary Tyler Moore threw her hat in the air to start every episode of her show, the Pedal Pub is a big success. A dozen or so customers rent the wagon and pedal it around downtown. One employee steers while another serves beer to the pedalers.
Yes, I mention beer often because my son is a free-lance beer writer. We took a five-day pub tour for an article on which we hope to collaborate. Microbreweries are flourishing around the country, especially in North Carolina, as entrepreneurs produce a local, high-quality product. Every brewer we talked to plans to expand.
Business expansion depends on consumer demand, and this might be the problem. Most people with whom I chatted said they were making do on less: Buying less stuff, eating out less often, being frugal. Jim from Davenport, Iowa, retired early after a career as a manufacturing executive. We agreed that we both spent money needlessly when times were better and that we can live well on much less. He's putting his spending priorities into visiting the lake and attending college football games.
At one bus stop in Oregon, a fellow said he was living on the $5 to $10 a day he can make rummaging through trash cans for returnable, 5-cent-deposit bottles. "I'd rather do that than have someone telling me what to do," he said. He's also sleeping on the streets or in the homeless shelter. And I'd love to know the real story of the guy I saw pulling a wheeled suitcase along desolate I-90 in South Dakota, with no break-down anywhere nearby.
Almost all of the retired people I met said they have kept working. Jim, the retired manufacturing executive from Iowa, is now a janitor. "It's a job you don't take home with you." And a retired teacher in Luverne, Minn., is running a card shop at 92. "I've gone to retirement dinners for my former students, and I'm still working."
Across the country, new economic elements are emerging. "Going green" is the rage. There are propane-powered buses in major cities and, at any number of state and city parks, solar units power the parking lot and sidewalk lights. Grocery stores are emphasizing local produce.
But the most obvious green advancement is the windmill. We may not have many here, but they are ubiquitous out West. One ridge line in central California has hundreds of them. They are everywhere in eastern Oregon, southern Washington, western Montana, parts of the Dakotas and on both sides of the Minnesota-Iowa border.
One day, I passed several semis hauling blades, one per truck. The blades are immense, but aligned on a ridge or across an Iowa farm field they are beautiful. I'm open to concerns that the blades can harm birds, but I wonder how. The blades turn so slowly.
One hole in the green movement is represented by the bottle-and-can scavenger at the bus stop. He could make a few bucks on the deposit-fee returns. But for the rest of us, there aren't enough convenient recycling bins. Only in Wisconsin did I see rest-stop bins like those we have in North Carolina.
On this Fourth of July weekend, my overall personal observation is that Americans aren't doing well. Not yet. Too many stores and businesses are closed on our Main Streets, too many homeless people populate our city streets, too many tables are empty in the diners and there should be more traffic on workday mornings.
But the folks I talked to weren't giving up. To quote a song from my college days, we "keep on keeping on." We are reinventing ourselves, one by one, and, as always, changing for a new world.
As for my personal goals, I got to my eight new states and now have been to 48 total. I spent four hours in North Dakota and brought some smelly black soil back for my friend, Connie. Her husband will add it to their garden. Two North Dakotans I questioned begrudgingly ruled that her layover in a Fargo airport means that she's been to the state, and thus to all 50. Ugh.
My thanks to you readers for following along on the trip. With the Journal, you made it possible. Various free-lance fees will pay for it as I reinvent my career.
Coming down my street and heading into my driveway, I was again listening to the American standards radio station. Could it match the coincidence of my departure song?
Fred Astaire was singing the Gershwin brothers' "Nice Work If You Can Get It."
For 46 days, it sure was.
■ Paul O'Connor can be reached at ocolumn@mindspring.com.
Editor's note: Paul O'Connor, a free-lance editorial writer for the Journal who works from Raleigh, traveled across the country this spring by car. He filed dispatches from the road, which we published each week, and brought back this view of America at the end of the first decade of the new century -- struggling, but resilient. And hopeful.
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