SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
“I’ve been everywhere, man/I’ve been everywhere, man…” – as sung by Hank Snow.
I was overjoyed to hear that one of my high school classmates and his wife recently completed their bucket-list project of visiting all 50 states.
(Alas, one of the less-studious members of our class stopped agonizingly short of that milestone, declaring, “You can’t fool me! There are only 49 states, ever since scientists decided Pluto isn’t really a state.”) As I researched the 50-state accomplishment, I discovered that there is no universal standard for what constitutes a “visit” to a state.
For instance, the Fifty State Club (founded in 2006 to celebrate and encourage travelers on their journey) sets a fairly low bar: put your feet on the ground and breathe the air. (In other words, no points for driving straight across a state without even a bathroom break or simply changing planes at the airport.)
Individuals establish their own parameters for a “real” visit to a state: snap a picture at the state line, eat local cuisine, spend the night, sing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” honor O.J. Simpson by following at least one lead for tracking down “the real killer,” and so on.
An increasingly popular benchmark is “Speak truth to power” in each state. (“Mr. Dog Catcher, you have some @%^&$ ugly mutts in this state.”) People embark on a 50-state trek for myriad reasons: patriotism, meeting new people, the desire for fresh experiences, the chance to file a personal-injury lawsuit after tumbling down the front steps of each state capitol building… Many retirees see their golden years as the perfect opportunity to check those states off their list. My mother has gone the opposite way.
Before she got married, she made memorable excursions from rural Tennessee to New York City and Hershey, Pennsylvania (and she and Dad honeymooned in Florida); but she grew more and more dismissive of travel. More recently, if you tried to tell her about the sights and sounds you experienced, she would be satisfied to see an Excel spreadsheet of what time you got HOME from each trip.
More power to the people who can pull off a 50-state project, just as long as they appreciate how privileged they are to have the necessary health, time, finances and workarounds for obligations. A lot of people would have to cobble together a strategy such as “Okay, if we pull the plug on Mom, list the kennel as one of our creditors on the bankruptcy application, remove your frisbee-size cataracts and convince my boss that I won’t fall asleep in the mop room so often if I get twice as much paid time off, I think we can swing it.”
Me? Travel enthusiasts celebrate themselves for having an “adventurous spirit.” I have an adventurous spirit, but I’d like to keep it inside my body for a few more years instead of plunging into a ravine while snapping a selfie… I enjoyed adding Missouri to the list of states I have visited (my wife had a convention in St. Louis in May), but I don’t have a burning passion for visiting every single state. If it happens, it happens.
(But it’ll happen faster if some enterprising state gets a Gateway Arch that erupts every 60 to 110 minutes or a Gateway Arch perched atop a rock-carved head of Theodore Roosevelt or…) Copyright 2024 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”
