Kentucky. Downtown Bowling Green. Norman Rockwell eat your heart out. This is what America used to look like before we started building Olive Gardens.
I’m visiting town. Taking in the views. Main Street is perfect. There’s a pub on East Main. Pabst Blue Ribbon signs in the windows. The joint is doing pretty good business on a weeknight.
The Capitol Theater sits next door. The marquee bears a neon sign advertising a performer nobody’s ever heard of before.
A water tower stands guard over the city, painted like an American flag. Stars emblazoned on top. Stripes on the side.
The downtown park is magnificent. Big trees. Flowers. The park’s masterstroke is a circular fountain with sculptures depicting naked people spitting water.
As a young man, I hadn’t seen much of America. I was a hick. I had been nowhere. Done nothing. Experienced little. Never traveled.
I was the guy in the bar who sat beside you as you told the bartender about your recent church mission trip to Honolulu.
You would have seen me staring silently into my Pabst as
you described the greatest tourist attractions on earth. Meantime, I’d be feeling like the world’s biggest loser. Because I hadn’t traveled anywhere of note, unless you counted Texarkana.
I didn’t come from world travelers. I came from blue collars. Ironworkers. Dropouts. I grew up in hand-me-down clothes. My mother reused her teabags. I inherited my older cousin’s underpants.
All my college-age friends, however, were hellbent on traveling. They were obsessed with seeing Europe. It was all they talked about. Spain this. France that. Italy, Italy, Italy.
Not me. My family was so broke that, for dinner, we went to KFC just to lick other people’s fingers.
Moreover, I didn’t really care about seeing Europe. Oh, I’m sure it’s great. But there was way too much of America I wanted to visit first.
As clichéd as it sounds, I have always…