Riding around the country in August

The Column: 08.09.24

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Ten blissful days driving around New England doing a one-man show in small towns and it’s not easy to write about bliss but one should try, especially since I write so kvetchingly about misery and annoyance.

What makes it blissful is that I’m not in charge. My wife took away the car keys long ago and it turns out to be a pleasure. In a few months, Joe Biden will experience this. He’ll go back to Rehoboth Beach and play Scrabble and finally have time to read Dickens. I was a boss for years and I still remember the dimwit things I did, but now, with my road manager Janis Kaiser at the wheel and making all the decisions, I am in the blessed position of passenger, just like when I was ten, looking out the window, watching the world go by. She drives through Connecticut into Massachusetts, four-lane highways lacing through deep forests, and suddenly we’re in torrential rain, the wipers slapping, we’re passing giant semitrailers, blasting through puddles, and it’s all a travelogue movie to me: she keeps us on schedule, I sit and take it all in and my mind wanders. We slow down and motor through a town of brick storefronts right out of the late 19th century, we pass a herd of Holsteins, we come into a traffic jam caused by a flock of geese casually crossing the highway, it’s one lovely moment after another.

We can talk or not, as we like. She grew up Norwegian in Brooklyn, has been in theater, is a sailor, has worked in big corporations, is tech-savvy, so she knows plenty that I don’t. I talk on the phone to my wife, who misses me in New York but she’s okay and I feel cleansed, transformed, in the role of octogenarian stand-up. And after every show, shaking hands out on the street, people congratulate me on Kamala Harris’s choice of Tim Walz as a running mate, as if I had something to do with it.

I hosted a fundraiser for him at my house in St. Paul when he ran for governor and was impressed — the guy taught high school so he knows how to talk to people whose minds are elsewhere and persuade them to wake up and take an interest. He’s the perfect guy for the job. If people think of Democrats as unhappy childless cat ladies, Tim can tell them it’s more about providing free meals to schoolkids and college to people who can’t afford to pay tuition. Nonetheless, he coached football and is a hunter. He makes Minnesota proud. I even wrote a limerick.

When we elect President Harris, I think many men are going to feel a sense of relief, seeing a satirical cartoon character who exemplifies male bragging and bluster and B.S. at its over-the-top worst go back to Mirage-of-Long-Ago or maybe fly off to Saudi Arabia to avoid prosecution.

We don’t talk politics in the car. We soak up the beauty of the landscape, the rainstorms, the little towns of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New York, the Main Streets of brick storefronts, and we appreciate GPS, a gift of Big Government and the friendly voice that steers us through the unfamiliar maze of roadways.

One beauty of GPS is its service to small independent entrepreneurs. Looking for a place to have lunch? You type in “café” on your phone and in addition to McDonald’s and Domino’s, it’ll give you the little Thai café and Joe’s BBQ and Mama Giovanni’s and Mickey’s Diner, saving enterprising businesspeople big bucks on ads and billboards.

Tim Walz is a man of the heartland and when J.D. Vance of Yale described him as a San Francisco liberal, it had the tone of desperation, same as if Walz were to call Vance a “hillbilly.” If a venture capitalist from the Ohio suburbs can be a hillbilly, then I am Taylor Swift.

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Garrison Keillor is spending some time in the Northeast these next few weeks. Catch a show if you’re nearby!

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