I put $150 of gogo juice in the van, cash in a coupon at the mickey dees, and note the full moon—almost. Griz on the radio cuts through the Americana acoustics normally swirling through the RV.

Jasper, annoyed at the bumps in the road, amplified by the long chassis and pounds of gear, pots and pans, circles his tail and lays down between the front seats.

Dolly Parton is dead and I’m looking for somewhere to point my wheels. I slap Dollywood into the GPS and decide eight hours ain’t too much to be there to pay tribute to an icon of icons. In an era where everything is iconic.

I punch an idea in for a sticker, Dali Parton. Maybe I can get that for sale tonight while it might score me a few more gallons of black gold.

These drives through West Virginia or Kentucky or Tennessee are tales of my not so distant past. I tried to outgrow it, the bad financial decisions on vehicles, the endless pavement, hours of outlaw country on Sirius XM with Buddy and Jim and Sunny and Elizabeth. Now I’m streaming from my server, Justin Townes Earle comes on, and then Commander Cody, and I’m lost in the ozone again.

I tried to outgrow the road, the loneliness, the exhaustion (Jasper woke me up four times last night with an upset stomach). But I’m so addicted to my phone that one of the only ways I know how to get away from it is to pay attention to my windshield and mirrors. And even then: CarPlay. Text messages. A friend needs a few bucks for coffee and I’ve learned from experience that if you only have $5 to your name that coffee is a great way to spend your last dollar. If you got $20, a pack of smokes and a coffee is a solid investment.

Eight years since I touched the stuff, tobacco, but I still roll an air spliff and smoke it in my imagination every so often.

If I’m gonna be in Knoxville then I ought to hit up my old friends, deep in the domestic life, a whole crew of kids that I haven’t seen in seven years, when I drove out to DC to start the job I’m now on sabbatical from. A picture her daughter drew is on my wall in my office and I think back to the years of all of us smoking hookah or cigarettes and making out best guesses at what the future held for us. Did it meet our expectations? On paper, you get everything you dreamed of and you start to understand why you have to be careful for what you wish for.

Emmylou singing Green Rolling Hills comes on, while I’m rolling through West Virginia myself.

‘Cause the hard times everywhere
Can’t find a dime to spare
These are the worst times I’ve ever known

It’s true. I really can’t think of a time in my life where it’s been this bad for so many. And yet, you drive around this country, vast and open and mostly sparsely inhabited, you wouldn’t know anything was amiss in the Great American Project.

I was thinking about another trip I did to Tennessee in December 2020. Hiss Golden Messenger was doing a show at City Winery and I hadn’t seen a live act in nine months. I looked up the distance: 666 miles to the venue from the basement I was renting in Fairfax Virginia near Mount Vernon.

I threw a mattress pad in my Xterra and hit the road that night for the show the next day. It was a double header and M.C. Taylor was doing two shows… Double worth it. HGM is maybe the act I’ve seen live more than any other. Hallelujah Anyhow was a spiritual crutch throughout the pandemic, living on a new coast, transitioning from love-and-light music festivals to standing up with hope in the political arena, standing with Quakers as COVID collapsed what was left of our safety nets, Black Lives Matter exposed the rot at the core of our systems, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death revealed the generational failures in store for our intrepid democracy.

The votes were still coming in and the Biden-Trump election was on a razors edge. Proud Boys had spent the last two months terrorizing DC. I was seeing terrorist threats every day on TheDlnald and /pol/ was planning the January insurrection if thy didn’t get their way.

I made it about halfway to Nashville that night and woke up in Bristol VA, birthplace of country music and continued down the road for the show that night. Then, a few miles from Knoxville, folks started honking and screaming out the windows. I was confused at first and then I thought… maybe… I switched the radio to the news. They called Pennsylvania for Biden. There was no path left back for Trump. It was over. The long national nightmare was over. Step back Jack from the Darkness.