That the United States is a vast and diverse country is an understatement, and that itself is an understatement. You get the point. As someone once said, “it’s a whole continent by itself”. And it sure turned out to be in very personal terms for me.
Many years ago, I made a promise to my younger self to see it all, at least in the sense of all its constituent fifty states, from Maine to California, from Florida to Washington, from Minnesota to Texas. Of course, by the accepted rules of the game, airport layovers and similar unintentional stops didn’t count; in fact, a principle I stuck to was one of these three had to have happened for a state to “count”: a meal at a sit-down restaurant on the soil of the state outside of a transport hub; an overnight stay, again outside of an airport or similar transport node; a drive of 25 miles within the state’s borders with at least a stop for something to eat or drink.
Finally, last month, I hit my 50th state which, coincidentally turned out to be the home state of the current President of the United States. It had taken a couple of decades for this promise to be kept and setting foot in Delaware’s Wilmington railway station underlined another subtle reason that America is a bit different from so many other places: despite being the home of arguably the most powerful person on the plant, it has no commercial airport; in fact, it is the only state without a commercial airport at this time. Dictators in Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa often build entire new cities, let alone airports, to be close to their hometowns. Oh well….
Whether they have been here for generations or are new immigrants or tourists, most people in the United States do not venture out too far from their home bases. Indeed, for many, seeing much outside of their immediate few hundred miles or the big metropolises of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco, Seattle etc, is something that is rarely intended, let alone done. They are missing out on an opportunity that is not available to most of the world.
The natural vistas have been a kaleidoscope of the wonder that the planet has to offer, from the snowy peaks of the Rockies in Colorado through the utter flatlands in neighbouring Nebraska and Kansas to the swampy marshes in Louisiana and Florida. Those vistas have been abundantly matched by the fauna across the vast land, from the humble pigeons over skies in central Boston to the massive grizzly bears in Alaska to the gigantic elk and massive bison in the Yellowstone Park.
Similarly varied have been the expressions of generosity that I encountered across the different states.
At Oakland, California’s airport, a firefighter from Hawaii insisted I swap his first-class seat for my coach class digs on my trip to his native state because “you are a guest to our state”. In Kansas City, Missouri, a cab driver (this was before the advent of Uber) refused to accept the fare after realizing that I had lost some belongings during a layover for a connecting flight earlier. Up in the mountains of Colorado, during a business trip, I realized I had forgotten the cufflinks for my French-cuff shirt; the only haberdashery in the little town gladly provided me a “loaner” pair but then insisted that those are “loaned for life” and refused payment. In famously taciturn New England, my then girlfriend and I were pleasantly surprised to find local patrons at a busy Manchester, New Hampshire restaurant waving us ahead of them in the queue for the maître d’s desk. During a weekend in Iowa, where some friends and I had gone to campaign during a presidential general election, a park ranger vacated his cottage so we didn’t have to scurry for pricey hotel rooms at the last minute, telling us that he can crash with his family for a few days and that we were free to help ourselves to his beer in the fridge. Even in the (in)famously cutthroat world of New York City’s yellow cabs, a driver once indignantly refused to accept a fare nearing a three-digit amount because he surmised that his parents and my grandparents shared the same hometown once.
That, ladies and gentlemen is the United States of America. Far richer in its variety outside of busy metro downtowns and staid suburbs and beyond the Disneylands and gleaming skyscrapers.
As someone once said, “it’s a whole continent by itself”.
Esam Sohail is a college administrator and writes from the USA. He can be reached at sigalph235@hotmail.com.