Sunday Essay: On America’s Roman Forum

The original date of publication for this essay is Sunday, March 21^st. It is the 36^th of what’s intended to be a year’s worth of essays, published on Sundays. That intention, like everything, is subject to change.

Last week’s essay: On The Barking Crow

Six years ago, I found myself in a mild state of awe. I was at the Roman Forum on a college choir trip, and our guide was talking about the layers upon layers of history buried therein—layers of cultural rock, built upon and then buried and then built upon again, generation after generation, society after society.

Two weeks ago, I found myself again in a mild state of awe. We’d exited the interstate in Joplin, Missouri for supper.

I don’t want to undersell Joplin. This is not the point of what I’m about to say. We didn’t stray off of the main offshoots of the highway, and so we didn’t see anything but the highway ecosystem. Joplin may be a fine town. I’ve never seen most of it. Just the exit ecosystem.

But what an ecosystem it is.

If you’ve driven in the Midwest, or the Southeast, or Central California, or any number of other areas traversed by the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, you’ve seen the soaring, spindly towers that cling to exit ramps, each adored with a logo: McDonald’s. Subway. Dairy Queen. Various chains of gas stations. This is the norm, but you’ll find it sparser in some areas (northern parts of Minnesota come to mind) and more abundant in others (I believe I once supped at a flourishing exit outside Bakersfield on my way from Las Vegas to Sequoia). Never, though, have I seen it more abundant that in Joplin.

There are not just two gas stations off the highway in Joplin. There are dozens. There is not just a McDonald’s, and a Subway, and a Dairy Queen. There are perhaps a hundred feeding options, everything from fast food to fast casual to chain sit-down spots (your Chili’s, your Applebee’s, etc., for I draw the fast casual line after Panera and before those). While most exit strips go on for perhaps a quarter mile in either direction, Joplin’s is miles long. The grandest, most sprawling version of one of the few categories of place where America, in so many specific locales, looks exactly the same.

Later that night, in the hotel, I looked up Route 66. I’d seen reference to it near Joplin, and of course across much of Oklahoma, and there in Springfield, where we were staying, and I was struck by how, though I’d often thought of it as something nostalgically glamorous—“standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona”—it seemed to go through some of America’s most remote areas. I realized, quickly, that I misunderstood Route 66. Though I’ve read neither, I’ve always associated it more, mentally, with On the Road than with The Grapes of Wrath. I saw it as a migratory route for those heading west to chase dreams, and while I’m sure it was that to many, I misunderstood the number who took it west chasing mere survival.

I was similarly unaware of the sparseness of Route 66 itself. I’d pictured it as a humming highway, perhaps only two lanes, but moving along the same as any number of state routes do, much the same as the modern interstates I know best. I didn’t know how much of it was one lane, the “sidewalk highway” portions, curbed on either side.

And I was, as my Kerouac/Steinbeck disconnect implies, unaware of its timing. I’d thought of it as an accompanist to the growth of the interstates, or at least a more immediate precursor than one established prior to the onset of the Great Depression.

So as I read about those fragmentary stretches that remain, and those that have been absorbed, and those that have been modernized—in places like Joplin—I thought of that day in Rome.

It’s not just Route 66. It’s all the paths we’ve trod. It’s Route 66, yes, and Highway 20 and all the others. It’s the interstate system. But it precedes even those. It’s the Oregon Trail. It’s the Cumberland Turnpike.

Roads are built in places where it’s possible to build roads, which, combined with the relative ease of building a road atop or in place of one previously constructed, means these generations of paths weave over one another, blur together with one another, and—though perhaps not as literally as in Rome—bury one another’s layer of the history.

It’s not just some future thing, either—some “How will the archaeologists understand us?” It’s present right now. It’s present in the lingering Route 66 attractions in Winslow, and at Clines Corners, and in Joplin, now surrounded by Chipotles and everything else. It’s present in the sections Interstate 80 shares with the Mormon Trail. It’s present in those stretches of Interstate 90 that run along the old Erie Canal. When one drives, one drives the paths so many others have driven, not through ruins, but through remnants—remnants of all that we have been, and all that we now are.

One of the things that excites me about the prospect of self-driving cars is the potential for some rediscovery of these highway exit towns with their highway exit history, a history that is so richly ours. I’m excited about the idea of more people watching, again, the country roll by on their way from one place to another. I’m excited for Route 66, and its predecessors, and all those that have followed it, to again be joined by a new road.

A new road, in an old place.

Another layer piled upon ourselves.

Next week’s essay: On Maundy Thursday and the Oregon Coast