The Pontificators

I keep thinking about those roads diverging in that poem. The poet says one road taken made the difference, and some say he wrote it with a secret wink for the wise. But roads are always taken with the step of the traveler, and the ones who choose the narrow roads do so repeatedly. And so I think perhaps the road chosen made no difference in the man; it’s the differences between men that make diverging roads.

It’s like that shy girl at the school dance. She’s pretty, and you notice most of the boys glance at her a lot, but nobody asks her to dance. She doesn’t wear the world the way most of us do. She is looking for someone who knows her, to take the slow road of conversation and long walks. People secretly feel sorry for her. Then someone comes up and just talks, and smiles a lot. He walks her home.

I heard the President talk about “the American way of life.” He spoke as if it’s something we need to protect, and I found myself nodding. But that night I dreamed of all the places I’d been, and people I’d met. There was that waitress in Atlanta who served me fried catfish and called me “Hon” from under hair like a yellow thunderhead. There was that black man in the Chick-fillet who stared at his food and softly sang the first line of “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” over and over. There was that homeless man with the sign that said “will work for food” who when I gave him an apple, threw it at me in a rage, and that other homeless man who picked up the thrown apple and started eating it. I dreamed of that 19-year-old “elder” ringing my doorbell, that biker who stopped and helped me change a tire when my arm was in a cast, the lounge singer in that little club in Chico who played an old strat-copy accompanied by a drum machine. And now I don’t know what “the American way of life” is, even if the President does.

I want to drive across America. I don’t want to take any main route. Instead, I’ll drive around in every state, stopping at little diners, and asking the local folks where the best swimming holes are. I’ll spend time poring over maps, looking for the smallest roads, the windiest routes. I don’t think taking those little roads will change me much, but I think they were built by people like me, for people, just like me.

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