Sandusky, Ohio – July 5

A happy bobolink sang the sun up this morning just after 5:00. The sunlight was streaming in through the bathroom window by the time I got up.  We are two weeks past the longest day, and sunrise has started appearing a little bit further south on the horizon. By the time we are back on Sunnyhill, we’ll see sunrise through the bedroom windows. We’ll miss seven weeks of summer on the hill.

We got off to a smooth start, clearing the driveway at 7:08. The first fifty miles or so are two-lane country roads.  Our beautiful country. Not far from home, Jay settled on a name for the Casita. He has named each of our vehicles, but the Casita was just the Casita until today. The little green BMW came to us with the name of Gissela, which we kept. The green Honda Del Sol was The Frog. The white Honda Odyssey was The Ghost. My red Prius, which we picked up on a Thursday, is Ruby Thursday. The white Chevy S10 pickup, our tow vehicle, is Blanche.  And today, the Casita became Clyde. So it’s Blanche and Clyde, heading west.

We spent almost the whole driving day on Interstate 90, and much of it along the southern shore of Lake Erie, all the way from just past Buffalo to Sandusky. It’s mostly easy and familiar freeway driving, but so different from the Otsego County roads. We had one scary moment. Accelerating down an incline with a bit of a cross-wind, Jay moved back into the right lane after passing a truck, and suddenly Clyde started to rock back and forth. It probably wasn’t 30 seconds before Jay got it under control, but it was a long 30 seconds. Clyde’s brake wasn’t properly adjusted, so it was hard to correct the swerving.  We’re fine, and the brake is set correctly now, but it was about half an hour before the adrenaline subsided. As always, I’m so thankful for Jay’s excellent driving.

The road as far as Cleveland is familiar, but past Cleveland we stay to the north, heading for Wisconsin tomorrow and Fargo on Saturday. There’s a lot of nice paving work being done on 90.  After nearly 10 years of driving with Jay, I know the difference between a mediocre paving job, of which there are many, and a good one. It’s nice to see the work done well by Hanson, a company Jay respects. But there is so much work undone, so much deferred maintenance on overpasses. Paint peels and the girders rust.  Cracks develop in the concrete supports and the ice expands them until chunks of concrete fall off exposing rebar. The repairs will be slow and costly, where timely painting and patching would have been quick and far less expensive.  But no one votes for the politician who prioritizes the un-glamorous, nearly invisible maintenance. It’s so much more appealing to voters when you tell them they’re going to get something new. So the overpasses decay, until someone realizes that they’re in danger of collapse, and then the costly repairs are done, because no one wants to answer to those same voters if an overpass collapses and kills folks.

The deferred maintenance on the roads is a large public mirror of the deferred maintenance on some of the farms we pass.  There will be a beautiful, tidy farm, with the barn painted, the fence in good repair, a neat garden around the house. But the next farm down the road is in decay, paint peeling, porch sagging, rusting equipment abandoned where it stopped working. Perhaps one farm has better water supply, better soil, more sun.  This happens, but I don’t think it accounts for the disrepair. Perhaps there is alcoholism, or mental illness, or physical illness, or an accident or a shocking death.  Perhaps there is divorce, or a sick child. Perhaps there is ignorance, or someone who just doesn’t want to farm but is stuck there.

Tolstoy wrote that every happy family is the same, but that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I’m not so sure.  I think happiness comes in as many shades and shapes as unhappiness – they’re just harder to see.  But there is a similarity to each of the tidy, well maintained farms, and a sad individuality to each one in decline.

Recently, the Newshour reported that the prosperity of a nation seems to rise in direct proportion to the education of girls.  It makes sense in so many ways.  The men do most of the big, visible work on the farms, but they need educated and empowered partners for so many of the decisions that will make the difference between prosperity and decay.  What should we plant, and when? Should we buy that other field? A new tractor? On credit? Does the farmer return to an orderly house where he can talk and think, or is there chaos?

We cross, briefly into the north western corner of Pennsylvania.  A cheerful sign welcomes us at the border and instructs us to pursue our own happiness. Yes, but also the happiness of others. The people who decided on the wording for the welcome sign probably took life and liberty for granted.  But I think of the kids I met in crumbling Philadelphia high schools, kids at West and Germantown in poor, mostly black neighborhoods. They were on a first name basis with shootings and incarcerations. Pursue your own happiness?  Sure, but what about our crumbling infrastructure, our failing schools, our neighbors who live much further down on Maslow’s hierarchy?

Still, we were happy driving through a little of Pennsylvania, and on into Ohio. There were a few times late in the afternoon when the heavens opened and the rain was nearly blinding. Charlie had been sleeping peacefully, but the sound of the rain had him shaking – not quite as dramatically as the fireworks did last night, but still shaking and anxious.

The rain stopped before we pulled in to Camp Sandusky, and by the time I had taken Charlie for a little walk Jay had us all set up with water and electric and everything squared away for our stay. It’s a pleasant campground, but close enough to a road to hear constant car noise.  Still, there are robins and poplars, the sounds of children, and the smell of cooking fires even on a hot night.