Everyone our age remembers (and maybe even occasionally watches) the 90s classic “The Sandlot.” It had all the elements of a cinematic triumph: the backdrop of 1960s America, James Earl Jones and baseball. Plus, you had to admire Squint’s cajones when he made out with va-va-voom lifeguard Wendy Peffercorn after fake-drowning. The movie brimmed with great moments, but the 4th of July scene is by far the best in the movie, a perfect pictorial encapsulation of summer-time bliss, in which the whole squad gazes in wonderment at fireworks splayed across the sky as Ray Charles’ bluesy rendition of “America the Beautiful” swells in the background. The only thing that could have made the scene more quintessentially “American summer” is if all the boys, inspired by patriotic pyrotechnics, had decided to hop in a Chevy and drive off down the highway to where the setting sun meets the waving sea of wheat.
Memories of the lighthearted midsummer magic evoked by the “The Sandlot” only serve to remind me that when I leave Georgetown’s campus in May, I will be embarking on the last summer of my youth. Melodramatic? Perhaps, but I don’t foresee myself lazing around in bed for extended periods of time and floating in pools of cerulean blue again until I am recovering from my second hip replacement and dressed in a muumuu.
I made the executive decision to enjoy my last hurrah, to stick it to the man, hop in my 1998 beauty of a Buick and high-tail it to California. I spent an entire night thinking of all the great stops I was going to make along the way: The Black Hills, the St. Louis Arch, Dollywood, the Grand Canyon, the Four Corners—no matter that none of these stops are anywhere close to each other on a map. I proposed the idea to two of my close friends who I was sure would be in. To my astonishment, the reception of my plans was nothing if not lukewarm. They, along with various other acquaintances and prudent members of my family, listed all the reasons why my trip was doomed to failure. People have jobs, gas is expensive, so are motels and most importantly, my forest green Buick Century— which floods when it rains, has missing radio dials, no air conditioning and suffers from a dearth of seatbelts— may or may not make it past the entrance to the highway.
Not once did someone utter, “where there’s a will there’s a way” and laud me for my Kerouac ian spunk.
In fact, on this college campus of over 7,000 18-22 year olds, a demographic known for its spontaneity in addition to its binge-drinking, I could not find a single person to agree to go with me on my great American adventure. Forget low voter-turnout and the bizarre reality TV antics of Tila Tequila, the fact that no one will take a road trip anymore is clearly indicative of the creeping sickness that ails America’s youth: we’ve all gone soft.
Ben Shaw (COL ‘08), Indiana resident and self-proclaimed America expert (though just shy of obtaining his bachelors degree), agrees. He also has 803 friends on Facebook. With such evidence of empirical popularity, I though surely the man could lead me to someone at Georgetown who had partaken in an iconic cross-country trek.
No dice. Shaw, who has taken only basketball-motivated road trips, proclaimed that he would be game for a continental criss-cross, but concurred that there is a lack of enthusiasm for wind-in-your-hair road adventure amidst our peer group.
“I think they’re soft, they’re spoiled, they’re effete,” Shaw said. “I think they just want to get on a plane and get there. There’s no appreciation for the journey.”
Indeed, people seem more than willing to travel 3,000 miles, as long as it’s on a climate controlled aircraft with 6-foot blondes mopping their brows with moist towlettes. And of course overseas jaunts are, for the most part, meticulously planned expeditions. One must find the correct hostel, the historic church, the bed where some royal mistress perished. By the time one is through, one is sure to be très, très fatigué.
The beauty of the road trip is that you get to seek out oddities that are (relatively) close to home without the mess of detailed planning and the threat of “emergency water landings.” Seeing the Alamo will be great, but it will probably be the obese fanny-pack-toting tourists who will make the experience for you in the end. We’re all missing out on these delightful people and these slices of life for slices of sangria-soaked citrus ocean-side at Ibiza. Doesn’t anyone else out there want to see the potholes and the potheads, the cowboys and the corn, the motels and the metropolises stateside?
I bet Squints would hit the highway with me. He’d probably throw in a little back seat action too. God bless America.
