Roadtrip Revelations: 1980s Country Now Sounds Positively Revolutionary

Plus a tribute to one of my household gods

Today’s Juneteenth, a holiday I always knew about because I grew up in San Antonio and everybody knew there would be good, slow-smoked BBQ on Juneteenth. Now, it’s a federal holiday because Joe Biden had to throw some tub to the Black voter whale, who mostly saw right through it.

But I’m a county worker so hey! It’s a paid holiday, so I saved up some vacation time and my wife and I are playing tourist in Cincinnati.

We left Cleveland this morning and arrived at our hotel some six hours later, but that included two rest area stops and an hour lunch, not to mention some minor construction delays.

Speaking of construction, Ohio kept two lanes of the interstate open instead of one, excruciatingly slow one. See, Pennsylvania DOT, it can be done.

We thought hardly anyone would be on the road, but noooooo…I-71 South was fairly crowded, and the Staties—the Ohio Highway Patrol—were as thick as fleas on a mangy hound dog. I counted at least ten and I’m sure I missed a couple. This had the effect of slowing down our average speed to a sedate 70 mph.

Ulysses S. Grant once said he hated campaigning in Ohio because it wasn’t one state, but three states, and they all hated each other. It’s still kind of true, and you can see the changes driving across the state on I-71.

At the north end is Cleveland and northeastern Ohio. The highway winds past downtown Cleveland, Progressive Field, and through extensive southern suburbs though you’d never know it for all the trees and rolling hills. This is Spencer Lake, not too far from the highway, and is typical of how beautiful this part of the state can be.

After over three hours or so of that, you start to approach the second of Grant’s three states—central Ohio, Delaware County(highest per capita income in the state), trees of lesser and lesser height, and then Columbus. Columbus is big, has lots of new buildings, and is the most populated city in the state with the most aggressive drivers according to residents of 87 Ohio counties.

We blew straight through instead of getting on Columbus’ I-270 beltway, which has ambitions of becoming as awful as DC’s beltway, straight through massive new highway construction flanked on both sides by leveled, under construction wastelands, and finally emerged on the southern plains gently sloping down towards Cincinnati and the Ohio River.

We stopped for lunch in Wilmington at a place called Ralph’s which not only had wonderful food and a real stock car in the dining room, and played a musical genre I’ve never been that fond of, but which I appreciated today—1980s pop country.

Stuff like I’m Proud to Be an American and Country Folks Will Survive. Music I used to associate with mindless patriotism, Reaganism, and rightwing Republican bullshit in general. Music liberals still flee from in revulsion if they can’t cancel it. Patriotic music. Nationalist music. Proud regional music.

As I listened, I realized that these decades-old country hits are revolutionary anthems in 2024, against global financial capitalism, against dominance of our personal lives by an increasingly arrogant and authoritarian federal government, against absurd gender ideologies that promote private profit and personal cheating as much as they demonize traditional human families, against credentialism and academic elitism.

At their core, they now say that America is this place, and there are these people called Americans living here who love it, and they want their needs addressed first, before the interests of kleptocratic international cartels, entangling foreign military alliances and artificial, divisive identity politics ideologies that demonize half the American population.

Maybe they didn’t mean that when they were written, but that no longer matters. In fact, the line “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free” always struck me as mostly bullshit. Now it strikes many rural Americans the same way, in that they no longer feel nearly as free as they did 40 years ago. How could they?

Whatever, and far more importantly to any ordinary Ohioan, the bacon cheeseburger and salad bar, and especially the loaded potato soup, were pretty damned good. So was the air-conditioning.

Did I mention it’s hot? Real hot, mid-90s F with 60+ % humidity. I learned an A/C trick—start the car, turn on Max A/C(recirculate) on high but blasting out on the floorboards, like you’d normally do with the heater. Open the windows for literally just a couple of minutes, and the hot air blows out and cool air starts coming through on your feet. Then change the vent to the top level or bilevel, roll up the windows and enjoy air-conditioned splendor.

And send a thank you to one of my favorite household gods—Carrier, inventor of air-conditioning. Anyone who grew up in Texas has a healthy respect for and gratitude to the Yankee who liberated our homes and vehicles from the tyranny of stifling heat. His spirit lives on.

So yah, it’s off to museums where Carrier is honored, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll see for ourselves Cincinnati’s riverfront at night.

Thank you for reading and have a great weekend.

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