Falling in Love with America

Travel Blog  •  Sophia Dembling  •  01.12.09 | 1:58 PM ET


Growing up in New York City, I was deeply indoctrinated with the view of the world that Saul Steinberg summed up in his famous 1976 New Yorker magazine cover. As far as I was concerned, if you headed west, there was 10th Ave. and there was New Jersey (which you avoided as much as possible) and then there was a whole bunch of nothing worth mentioning until you hit the Pacific Ocean.

When I was 19 years old, I tagged along with a friend on a cross-country drive to deliver a baby-blue Plymouth Duster to her brother in Los Angeles. On that trip, I saw my first cornfields. My first hay rolls. I saw Chicago. The Great Salt Lake. (Yuck.) Cows. The Rockies. For real? I thought this stuff was just rumor and legend. We drove from New York to San Francisco and then down the jagged coastline to Los Angeles, where I dipped my toes in the Pacific Ocean and fell madly in love with America.

Over the next few years, I romanced the nation in a series of aimless month-long Greyhound bus trips using what was called an Ameripass—like a Eurail Pass but less comfortable. (And seeing America by bus might be the exact opposite of flying over it.) I zig-zagged around the country with a sketchy itinerary, stopping as the mood struck me, staying in cheap motels and rundown small-town hotels, surfing the couches of friends of friends and on one occasion, resorting to a night on the floor of a Billings, Mont. bus depot, for lack of an alternative. Those were grand trips. The scent of bus-restroom disinfectant still makes me nostalgic.

During one of those trips, I first visited Texas, staying with friends of a friend in Fort Worth. I returned a couple of times in subsequent years before deciding, on little more than a whim, to move to Dallas in the 1980s. That’s been a long, interesting ride in itself—I wrote about it in my first book, The Yankee Chick’s Survival Guide to Texas. I didn’t intend to stay, but here I am and there you go. At this point, I’m as much Texan as New Yorker. (Sort of. When I say I’m from Dallas, people usually say, “No, where are you really from?”)

Since that first cross-country trip, I’ve traveled the world. But I’m not done with America and never will be. I haven’t seen all 50 states yet. Much of the north-central part of the country remains virgin territory for me, aside from glimpses through bus windows. I begin this blog with a mission in mind: North Dakota, here I come. (When the temperature warms up, that is.)


Sophia Dembling

Dallas-based writer Sophia Dembling is co-author of the Flyover America blog and author of "The Yankee Chick's Survival Guide to Texas." She would love to hear your tales of America, so drop her an email.


4 Comments for Falling in Love with America

Jenna Schnuer 01.13.09 | 1:51 PM ET

Sophie—I’d love to hear more about the bus trips (and the night at the bus depot). Any interesting characters pop to mind from your Greyhound days?

Roger 01.13.09 | 3:29 PM ET

As someone who grew up living in Kansas, Alabama, Ohio, Illinois, and Tennessee, I really appreciate your point of view. I also believe it is important for people who have lived in middle America all their lives to get away and see the bookends of our continent, so to speak, and beyond.

Valerie 01.13.09 | 4:09 PM ET

Great post, Sophia! As someone who grew up in California and has spent time on the East Coast and abroad, I’ve never given much love to Middle America, except for Ohio where I have relatives. You’ve made me nostalgic for those roadtrips I took with my family to Arizona and Utah while I was growing up. One of these days I’ll have to start my own cross-country travels.

Sophie 01.13.09 | 9:25 PM ET

Jenna, I remember meeting an elderly lady somewhere in the Midwest who was heading home to South Dakota from a visit to her daughter—I can’t remember where she lived but it was also in the Midwest. It was the first time this lady had ever been out of South Dakota. She showed me a souvenir she had bought—a little wishing well made of popsicle sticks. Kinda chokes me up to think about it.

And then there was this soldier…no, I’ll leave that one alone.

Middle America needs love, too!

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.