Fifty-Four Road Trips, And How They Changed my Life

I never dreamed of being a traveler.

For many years, for most of my life, the idea of journeying far beyond my comfortable plot of North Georgia land stirred little interest in my heart. Truly, I’d have rather sat on my porch and sipped scotch beneath the evening clouds. I’d have preferred to garden in the sunshine, to build fires and roast marshmallows, to work in my quiet studio well after the rest of the world fell asleep.

No.

It wasn’t the idea of leaving home that troubled me. I’d long ago journeyed to beaches, to deep forests, to faraway Swiss mountains. I’d already been to most of the places I desired.

To be honest…it was getting to these places I didn’t love. It was the long car rides. The planes. The trains. The stretches of sitting, waiting, and sitting again. And always, as is my nature, I did these things alone. Always feeling like a stone slowly sinking into the bottom of some fathomless lake. Until at last I arrived at wherever I was going. Until I could blink away the haze of driving for endless hours and breathe again.

I figured I’d always be likewise. Not exactly a homebody. Not exactly set in my provincial ways. But surely not one of those people you’ve seen. You know the ones. The world travelers. The walkers of every corner of civilization. They’re more exciting than ever I’ll be. They’re probably in Hawaii right now sipping pina coladas from coconuts. And honestly, I’m fine with that.

But…

As all things must do…

Something changed.

It began about twenty months ago. At the brink of summer. Unexpected, but maybe predestined. A chance, a real reason, a need to travel. I won’t tell you what this reason was. You’ll just have to guess. But for me, it was the rarest of opportunities. All I had to do was drive. Fly. Ride a train. Ride a bus. Then drive again. All in one day.

Sounds fun, right?

You’ll have to trust me. It was for the most worthy of causes.

You see, for most of my life, I’ve never been much of an adventurer. The simple things have always defined my existence. A day of wandering around my yard. A wet paintbrush dangling from my fingers. Something simmering on the stove. A hug (and maybe even a sneaky gut punch) from my young son. I’ve never really needed much excitement. Truly, all the adventures I need live inside my imagination. Who needs the great blue beyond when one has a endless ocean of daydreams sloshing in one’s head? I’ve always felt this way. I just close my eyes and I can be anywhere…and anyone…I desire.

But on that summer afternoon, something happened. A journey lay at hand. It was something I had to do. Same as breathing. Same as every other important thing I had to do in my life, only greater.

So I did it.

The first journey was, in hindsight, the hardest. I woke early on a Tuesday morning, hauled my truck (which was perilously low on fuel) down a long stretch of angry Atlanta highway. These were the pre-Covid days, and by the time I reached the airport, it was stuffed with thousands of people. And by thousands of people, I mean thousand of not-nearly-as-enthusiastic-to-be-at-the-airport-as-me human beings. And of course there were lines. And vigorous security checks. And me, the guy who wears more jewels than an Egyptian pharaoh, enjoyed his first (but hardly last) full-body pat-down from the local beefy TSA security dude.

Eerily calm, and still bejeweled, I boarded a plane for a far Midwest city. Chicago, as it happened. To the land of my childhood.

Ninety minutes later, I landed in a world I’d all but forgotten. My first return home in a decade.

It was at that moment, upon landing in Chicago just after sunrise, I felt a sensation unlike anything in my adult life. It was as if my eyes snapped open from a dream of which I hadn’t been fully aware. I stepped off the plane, drove a few miles away from the airport, and then, wandering bleary-eyed out my car, I stood beneath the familiar sky and stared at the clouds, who stared back at me like old friends.

This journey was but the first of many. Twenty-seven, as it happens. Or, as I see it, fifty-four, if we’re counting the return trips home. Little did I realize it at the time, but each of these trips, whether coming or going, became its own existential moment, its own indelible memory weaving things into my heart which I will never forget.

During these journeys, in which I was always alone until reaching my destination, I felt as if I somehow experienced more than in the previous thirty years of life.

Which is of course impossible, but not really.

And I’ll try to tell you why…

If you’ve ever sat on a plane at night, the only wakeful soul among a hundred dozing people, and looked out at the full moon shining atop the clouds, you might know my feeling.

If you’ve ever decided on a whim to drive seven-hundred miles through mountains, valleys, and endless Midwestern fields, you might understand.

And if you’ve ever zipped down a city highway which is normally jammed with cars by day, but is lamplit and empty at midnight, maybe you’ll sense where I’m going with this.

During these fifty-four journeys, I felt contentedly alone, vastly alive.

On a lonely night as the moon rose above the Kentucky hills, I once raced along a black highway. The moon chased me, but I was swifter, and won the race to the dark fields of Illinois at midnight.

On a black, stormy afternoon as my plane made a daring landing on a wet runway, I once sat in the rearmost seat, calm as stone even as my fellows pleaded with the gods not to let us crash.

In the deep haze of a predawn sky, I whipped through the fog in my trusty car, carving my way northward through farming villages whose names I’ll never know.

For twelve hours, I drove through a storm which seemed everlasting, whose clouds broke only when I stepped out of my car, weary and red-eyed, and wandered through the humid air into my silent home.

Dozens of times, I rode beneath the lights of the Chicago highways at night, my heart pumping calm, the crisp evening air washing over my face through the window.

Sometimes I took airplanes, sometimes I drove my trusty car, while at other times I piloted unfamiliar, borrowed vehicles, whose different smells and steering wheels I can remember as if I’d driven them only yesterday. At times I zipped down to the airport on Atlanta’s wobbliest trains. And I’ll never forget the Chicago buses, whose fearless drivers plowed down the streets with abandon. Those, I rode many times, and never once with the same driver or passengers.

In my many journeys, I traveled at night. At dawn. Through rain. Under the sun, the stars, and the moon. Through summer, autumn, winter, and summer again. Through tireless storms lashing the black pavement, down roads with numbers instead of names, between endless miles of cornfields, through the rock-hewn highways of Tennessee, beneath the vast wind turbines of central Illinois and northern Indiana, down Hwy 80 toward a little village an hour west of Chicago, down Hwy 75 in North Georgia, on which no one drives slower than the speed of light.

Always for same purpose, I made these journeys. Always for the same promised end. And yet, no two of my travels were remotely alike. The sights may have been familiar at times, but as you surely know, highways are different by day and by night, by season and by mood of the sky. What is at 2AM a dark stretch of desolate road becomes at 2PM a sunlit river of cars. What is at midnight a black field, seamless to the end of sights, becomes at dawn a grey and green marvel of swaying cornstalks. And of course there are the skies, which as anyone who drives long-distance take on colors and moods of their own.

During these fifty-four journeys, I looked as much inward as I did outward. The clouds, storms, fields, and cities I saw, and the ten-thousand cars I must’ve surely passed…they made impressions on me. Most people would say they prefer to meditate on a soft mat, in comfortable clothes, with calm music playing. But my meditations became born of the highway, of the too-small airplane seats, of the streetlamps at night, of the roaring wind, the slashing rain, the first glimmers of sunlight.

In these moments, I felt resurrected.

There are of course many pleasant things about traveling not alone, but with others. Whether it’s having someone to talk to or having a friend to take the wheel when the hour grows late and your eyes grow tired. But for those of us who have done it alone, who have ridden the black roads at night or stayed awake on an airplane and watched the clouds race by, we perhaps know there is something powerful at work.

Or maybe it’s just me.

Today, after so many adventures, the tides have changed again. I don’t know if there will be a fifty-fifth journey. Perhaps my traveling days are done. Or perhaps this is merely a lull before an entirely new era of travels, which I would welcome back into my life like an old friend.

I know only two things:

Every one of my journeys was worthwhile, no matter how difficult, no matter how long, wearying, and lonely. My travels were valuable not only because of where I was going, but because of the going itself, and all the little things composing the effort of crossing hundreds of miles.

And…

If the chance should again arise, I will be ready. For though the world may change and people may wander, the highway will always be waiting. I know that now.

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Perhaps one day I’ll see you out there. Riding the lonely night. Gazing out the airplane window. Meditating as you go from there to here and back again.

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If so, I hope it’s the same for you as for me.

 

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Farewell for now.

– J Edward Neill

 

 

 

A Southern Boy Returns to the Midwest

On a blustery Tuesday morning late in November, not moments after the sun peeked over the Atlanta skyline, my seven-year old son and I hopped in the truck…

…and began our long voyage to northern Illinois.

The November chill had already conquered much of the southeast. The still-green leaves in Atlanta belied the fact temperatures had already scraped the bottom of the low-30’s barrel just one night earlier. Ill-prepared citizens hurried in hoodies and cargo shorts into their cars. Everyone had expected the usual late-year heatwave to hit.

And yet…

No such luck.

It didn’t much matter to me and the G Man. With a fistful of snacks and a fully-charged Nintendo Switch, my son climbed in the backseat, buried his knees beneath a winter blanket, and settled in for the long haul without complaint. His was the best spot from which to enjoy a road-trip, and he knew it. As for me, I began our little adventure steeping in the fumes of two hours’ sleep, no dinner the night before, and a headache straight out of Hades.

No matter. I was as ready as I was ever going to be.

And so we began.

Like a stone shot from a cannon, we tore up the highway.

We were flying, making great time towards…

…a huge traffic wreck just ten minutes removed from our starting point.

“Dad, what’s that?” the G Man looked up from his game.

“An upside-down tractor-trailer on fire beneath a bridge.” I stared at the awful accident.

“Oh. Neat.” G Man returned to playing Mega Man 11 (or 11-million, whichever.)

Well. I figured if he could be nonchalant about spending the next hour sitting in a huge traffic jam, so could I.

Traffic cleared. Cars moved. And after a long wait, again we flew.

  • Toward Chattanooga, TN, home of the best aquarium in the south (sorry, Atlanta.)
  • Toward Nashville, in whose Cracker Barrel my son proudly declared his disdain for country music
  • Toward Louisville, whose skyline looked stunning in the crispy cold sunset
  • In the dark toward Indianapolis, where the highways have no apparent traffic during rush hour
  • Up the dark roads to Chicago, whose mighty towers were invisible behind the high walls of Hwy 80
  • And finally to a little country town known as Minooka, only about ten minutes away from the very spot I was born

Twelve hours, we drove. Two pit stops. Two gas refills. One bag of Twizzlers. A giant orange Fanta. Thousands of slow cars passed in the pitch-black of the Indiana expressways.

And there we slept, in a neat, new Hampton Inn tucked away in the modest commercial heart of Minooka, IL.

Side-note: it’s only fair to mention that while I had mighty plans for the G Man and I to collide with family, friends, and entirely too much Thanksgiving food, I actually had a secret side-agenda in mind upon traveling to the north. We’ll get to that later. (This is what we call ‘a tease.’)

Day 1 Begins…

The G Man and I awoke late in the morning, feeling almost jet-lagged by the long drive. Sure, we’d gained an hour by crossing into the Central Time Zone, but who knew how exhausting sitting in the car for seven-hundred fifty miles would make us? A little spacey, a lot hungry, we jetted over to meet our much-beloved Aunt Patty for breakfast at a little diner known as The Crispy Waffle.

Ah, Aunt Patty. My favorite person in the-

But wait. What’s this? As we set off into the morning, it hit me. We weren’t in the south any longer. No, it wasn’t particularly cold. No, the wind wasn’t as vicious as we’d expected. It was something else entirely. It was the sky, slate grey forever in each direction. It was the stillness of everything, the endless fallow cornfields, the trees looking far more brittle than any southern boy could comprehend. It was…home. In the town in which I grew up (Joliet, a few minutes southwest of Chicago) entire autumns and winters passed in this cold, grey atmosphere. I took one skyward glance on our first morning, and I remembered.

At night in the Midwest, you can gaze across the fields and see lights from houses many miles away.

During late autumn afternoons, the world always feels five minutes from dusk. Whether it’s 1PM or 5PM, twilight is just around the corner.

And sometimes, if you step outside alone at night, you hear nothing. Not the wind. Nor a stray cricket. Nor the everlasting rustles of southern wildlife. You hear nothing. It’s both eerie and invigorating.

Minooka in winter. Actually, everywhere in Illinois in winter.

So…The Crispy Waffle. Five-thousand pancakes. Two-billion strips of bacon. Many hugs with Aunt Patty. It was G Man’s first encounter with this part of our family, and his usual shyness was absent. Our first reunion…a success. Aunts are wonderful creatures to be loved and cherished. And Aunts named Patty? Solid. Friggin’. Gold.

Our first afternoon, with bellies full of food, we drove through the cold. It seemed to get colder as the day aged. The wind picked up and the clouds gathered into great grey masses. Every moment we spent outside, I continued to recall the long days of my youth. I went back in time, so to speak.

But wait…where was I?

Oh…right.

After our pleasant-to-the-bone breakfast, the G Man and I treated ourselves to a movie – Ralph Breaks the Internet. To be fair, it wasn’t as epic as the original. But somehow, watching a movie with a laughing, smiling seven-year old makes ALL movies good. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Despite the near-freezing temps, we next visited a park. We were the only ones outside. Absolutely, the only souls in sight. Another silent moment hit us. Even Garrett felt it, standing there in the soundless dirt, hiding from me atop a four-story high slide…he knew it. I saw him understand the difference between Atlanta and Chicago.

Cool.

We left the park behind. And next came a truly heart-rending experience. See, not far from yon park lay a street – Lilac Lane. And it’s there on Lilac Lane I had once (thirty-five years ago) spent the most glorious days of my youth. I could write whole volumes of my love for that little street. (If you really want to read about it, go here.) I just had to take G Man for a drive-by, however brief, and look upon the house between whose walls I lived for many a perfect season. We drove slowly up Lilac Lane and crawled to a stop not twenty feet from the driveway I’d run up and down a thousand times.

But…

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stop and get out to look at the house. I couldn’t look upon it for longer than one fleeting moment. The G Man must’ve wondered what was wrong when I tapped the gas pedal and announced we were going back to the hotel ‘for a break.’ It was a moment…and then it was gone.

I can’t say more about that part of the trip except to note the house on Lilac Lane was once my grandparents’, both of whom are gone now, and both of whom I loved to pieces. It was a hard thing to do, stopping by for a look, and most unexpectedly it hurt.

So then…

Our first night was quite a bit less somber than the afternoon. We headed to an old, old friend’s house, the best of friends, and we sipped scotch, ate Italian food, and sat before a sizzling fireplace. At one point, my friend’s wife snatched up a glass of unattended (and powerful) 14-year scotch, and simply destroyed it. The world felt right.

And yes…it was good to be among friends again.

Day 2…

The plan was simple: Wake up late. Eat no breakfast. Head to Aunt Patty’s house for about ten hours of football, whiskey, laughter, and food.

And boy did we live it up. Despite the G Man waking up a bit groggy, we headed once more across the grey-shrouded lands and arrived at a house I hadn’t set foot in for decades. The G Man arrived to a box full of gifts (because that’s what family does to kids – spoil them) and I arrived to such hospitality I’d rarely experienced.

Scotch (which I love)

Mounds of turkey, dressing, buttered peas, ham-stuffed biscuits, pies, cakes, cranberry sauce…

Let’s be honest. Day 2 was a blur from which our stomachs will likely never quite recover. We were again reminded what it’s like to be among family. And while some families may war and bicker, on this day ours was at peace.

…except for that one time my uncle sucker punched me in the back of the head.

But whatever.

Day 3…

We knew as we awoke this would be our final day in the north.

And so we knew we had to enjoy it.

And yet…as I awoke, something felt off. See, long before hatching the plan to come north, I’d been thinking of a way to encounter…a girl.

Yes. A girl. My secret reason for driving so far in the cold.

A girl from the north.

A girl who happened to live in Minooka…not five minutes from our hotel.

I hadn’t told the G Man. In fact, I hadn’t told anyone. It was a long-shot from the beginning, a heart-achy plan half-baked over the course of what felt like centuries.

So…

Even as I dressed for our third night of trouble-making, I must’ve looked distracted. Torn. Absent from thought. And yet, it so happened my plans to collide with the heartache-inducing lady completely collapsed. Died on the vine. She either didn’t want to see me…or couldn’t. This is how it went, how it always goes, and how I knew all along it would go.

But as I stood there in the hotel room, padding myself in clothes to ward off the increasing feel of Midwestern cold, I made a choice:

Have fun tonight. It’s your last night here. Be present. 

And for the most part, I was.

Another Midwestern field. Wintered trees. Dry, brittle grass. Grey clouds in every direction.

And so, in a rare mood, we drove out to another friends’ house. It was a short journey, only minutes from our hotel.

A log cabin surrounded by fields.

A warm living room filled with laughter, bottles of wine (and juice boxes for the kids.)

Several friends I hadn’t seen in eons.

What a night it was. The finest fried chicken chef in the north stood not ten feet away, preparing buckets of chicken, mashed potatoes, sweet corn, rolls…and more. Someone kept topping off my wine. Someone else brought me a shot of bourbon…and delivered unto the G Man a fistful of sweets.

I ate more food than I’d ever eaten in one sitting. Afterward, with a beard tainted by pumpkin pie, I visited my friend’s father’s workshop. I discussed heartbreak with the ladies. I topped off one final glass of wine. And I distributed a few small gifts to the warmest crowd the world has ever known.

Sometimes, home isn’t home because of the place. It’s the people. And for one night, I thought nothing of grey skies, fallow fields, and daydreams of romance. I sat among my life’s best companions and remembered for one small moment what it felt like to be loved.

Day 4…the trip home…

We woke early. Too early. We wanted to drive fast and make it home in time for relaxation.

And so we did, blazing back down to the south using the exact same roads we’d used just a few days earlier.

We saw giant wind farms. Empty stretches of nothing. Old barns. Older churches. And cows…lots of cows.

Notes of our return trip:

In the Deep South, especially southern Georgia, there exist billboards by the hundred. Billboards for Jesus. Billboards for the Lion’s Den (a creepy truck stop with naked girls…we think.) Billboards for peanuts, pecans, and the end of the world.

Well…

In the Midwest, the billboards are much, much fewer. And so I think the journey though the north, while not exactly stuffed with exciting views, is better for it. Because really…who needs to see one-hundred consecutive billboards regarding humanity’s descent into Hell?

A few Southern billboard examples:

Thankfully the Midwest has fewer of these.

…though I’m not exactly sure why.

And so our Midwestern adventure came to a quiet end. At 8PM Saturday night, we rolled into our familiar driveway. The leaves had browned and fallen in great number during our brief absence, and the cold had moved in.

Our cats were happy to see us.

Our house was clean and warm.

The G Man, having never once asked ‘Are we there yet’ during twenty-two hours of driving, was rewarded with a movie.

As for me, I suppose I must’ve sat quietly for nearly an hour after arriving. The Midwest was gone again, and the skies were back to their familiar southern haze. I missed the girl, but I’ll always remember the family and friends.

Perhaps we’ll go back again soon.

And maybe it won’t be as huge a culture shock to return to the land I once knew and loved.


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I write plenty of stories that aren’t about cornfields, clouds, and overeating.

Find them here.