Drove to New York and back over the weekend, with the whole family convoying up so that Natalie could take Granny's old Subaru to New Haven. We overnighted in Easton, PA, where we were less illegal than we would have been in NJ or NY, due to COVID restrictions on travel. We spent 3 hours traveling through NJ and 5 hours in NY, making exactly one commercial transaction in each, which could frankly have been avoided with better planning but oh well. You don't need all the details.
Saturday afternoon was spent at Rob and George's house in North White Plains, 95% in the backyard. Though I have grown tired over the years of the amount of time I spend in Westchester County in August and December, it is also part of the rhythm of my life and not doing it all would just feel wrong. It was particularly nice to see Graham, Natalie and cousin Sadie hanging out on their own over in the shade of the yard. There were years during their younger teendom when each was perhaps a little too caught up in their own particular crap to be on the same wavelength with one another. Now Natalie is 20, Graham almost 17 and Sadie a little younger than that, but in any case they are all a little older and transitioning towards (gasp!) young adulthood. So all the time they have spent together as kids and then teens could translate into shared memories and better bonds when they are older.
As I have written, I was of very mixed emotions about saying goodbye to Natalie, because for the second time (just like freshman year dropoff) we were bidding farewell while wondering if we will ever see as much of her as we just did during extended lockdown. Once more, I know that the correct answer is to hope that we don't, because she's a young adult and it's right for her to be out in the world, and we don't want to go back to a place of global public health-induced fear. But we had a pretty good lockdown, with lots of shared enjoyment.
When we got back to NC, I thought to myself that I had never been up and down the East Coast just like that, in three days. Then I remembered I had done exactly the same thing back in June with Natalie, only we had gone all the way to New Haven that time.
Went up and down on the "Western Passage", through Danville, Lynchburg, across the mountains to 81, etc. So I saw that route for the third time this summer. The "American Carnage" of which Trump spoke is fully in evidence. Just between Hillsborough and Yanceyville, NC, for example, there are two country stores that have fully ceased to be in the last 6 months, I'm pretty sure. One of them looks burnt out (arson?). Other businesses have closed, some of them which would seem to have no business existing in the first place, such as the used golf cart dealer out in the middle of nowhere.
And yet everywhere neatly trimmed yards surround well-kept ranch style homes with Trump/Pence yard signs. There is no shortage of confederate flags. Trump would appear to have the region locked up and will likely seek to a fairly effectively lay the most eggregious economic decline at the feet of excessive Democratic-led lockdowns, which resonates out there in the country. There may not be enough votes out there to help him hold on to office, but the cultural and economic divide will continue to broaden unless Democrats send real emissaries out to sit and listen, and then go home and think.
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