Ramblings from a Roadside Cracker Barrel
Ben Ashby
When I travel alone I love to stop at Cracker Barrels on the side of interstates. I love watching the world go by in these places. I love watching the conversations and the people. It reminds me of home and so many of the things I love in life. Often times I will sit and write while I wait for my food. In this world that is constantly filled with noise it seems to be easier to write than it is to speak.
Somewhere along the way we forgot about the American citizens. In our quest for profits, for monopolies, for share holders, and for billionaires we forgot about the folks that built this country, the folks that spread across the mountains and the plaines, the folks that rose up from poverty and oppression to create lives across the countryside, the folks that were forced out of their own homes so this empire could be built. We’ve been forgotten. We’ve been neglected. We’ve been replaced with profit margins and global media domination and foreign wars to line the pockets of a select few.
I sit in a Cracker Barrel somewhere deep in the Maryland Appalachia lands. Here I am surrounded by a cross section of America. Statistically the folks here have long been forgotten. They’ve been forgotten regardless of their race or age or gender or orientation or origin story. They’ve been forgotten because they live in a place that lost it’s purpose decades ago. Jobs and factories shipped overseas so share holders could profit from big corporate business. The mountains stripped of its minerals and the workers left with a lifetime of health issues and the constant fear of a loss of pension. The past few decades have often felt like hard years, yes nothing like the depression, or the years long before, but this time fueled by a new type of hardship. The rust belt and the coal belt and the Bible Belt all merge here in a place that sees traffic from I 81 but benefits from little else.
I have this dream of a new America. An America that isn’t divided by parties and politics. An America that isn’t divided by religion and hot topic issues and the constant warring media outlets. I dream of an America that puts people first, that celebrates the differences and the commonalities among us, and a government that is there to help all of us, and recognize all of us as equal. I dream of an America that spends more time supporting science, culture, infrastructure, the humanities, health, and of course communities rather than such a focus on foreign wars and economic gains. I dream of an America where we aren’t scared of insurance companies, scared of our neighbors, and scared of the lies we’re conditioned to believe. It seems to me that if we all spent more time just being neighbors, just being listeners, just treating others like we want to be treated we’d all be better off. I dream of an America that preserves its natural wonders, that champions it’s citizens to be better, to be caring, to believe in the American dream. I dream of an America where our jealousies dissolve as we all move together forward. I dream of an America that sees hate fueled by fear and ignorance dissipate as love grows. I dream of an America I fear we may never have.
