Thirty-five years ago, the famous football writer Peter King joined the legendary football coach John Madden in Arimen by bus in America.
Pitch Pitch was simple – a candle to the world with eyes following its main narrator – but the result was moving. For all Madden’s ability to blitz and admire a well-executed seal block, the subject he talks about best might be his country.
It made sense. In his second job as a broadcaster, Madden spent more hours blasting the country in his bus (affectionately the Madden Cruiser) than he did anywhere else. He drove because he was too claustrophobic to fly, but soon realized he enjoyed the experience. Madden read Steinbeck subtly, and the writer’s passion for the open roads of America filled the football coach.
I don’t remember the first time I read the story of the king from Madden Cruiser, which you can do (must read here. I remember the line that ended the story. It hit me right from the beginning and has been ever since.
“You go to a big city, and you feel the world is going to hell, but it’s not true. Small parts of it; “You get out there, and it makes you feel better about America. The thing is working.”
I thought about this line again and again a few weeks ago, when I made a sudden decision to move from New York City to park in the city for the winter. For the first time in my life, I had a good reason to drive (most of the way) across the country. I see that it means that I had only driven or walked on it, a ship passing through the night on its way to another place. But now, there would be no way out. I will have to stay in every small town with a towing cariaring behind the wheel of a Toyota Hig Highlaller, an endless strip of asphalt in front of me.
When people asked me about the drive, I tried my best to steal Madden’s enthusiasm and optimism. “I’m happy to get that right over there” I said.
But deep down, I was worried. Not in the hope of Nebraska or Iowa or Western Illinois, but in my lingering doubt that there was anything worth finding. I was afraid that what had once illuminated Madden in this country was gone – that American beauty had hit the source of nihilism and self-love, behind the lines drawn in Internet comment sections and in all debates.
The night before I left, I decided I needed to fight this very bad idea. As I packed the last of my clothes into my suitcase, I made a plan. I could track down the one ray of light that I knew I could honestly have found in every nation – golf – and I’d see if I learned anything along the way.
The 10-State tour began the next morning, November 3, shortly after 5 AM local time.
10. New York
It was the shortest part of our drive, but also Hianeest. Only 20 miles separates Jersey and New Jersey, but those 20 miles have been cut by greatly expanding New York City Rush Hour Traffic – the Corridor connects the long island, the Bronx and New Jersey.
In the Haze of the Pre-Dawn bhhress, I almost forgot to see the first sign of golf on our trip: Douglaston Golf Course, a track of New York City struck between three highways over the border of three years.
I had replayed Douglaston only once – an unforgettable cycle in a glacial area where I might have been able to pull the head without the old driver – but I could not suppress a smile as we pressed the past. Long ago, Douglaston was one of my golf grandfather’s homes. Poppy, New York Lifer and Golf Diehard, helped instill the spirit of adventure within me that fueled my decision to come out west.
I thought he might have pulled it off this time.
9. New Jersey
As we cleared the George Washington Bridge, I was walking, as I always do, on the public track – the public track looking down 95 on the Jersey side of the bridge.
North Jersey -lolile For golf lessons, the Metropolitan Golf Association regularly visits clubs in the area such as Knickerbocker, Ridgewood and Arcola. Above is different from those places. Located in the vicinity and sections of MetLife Stadium, it is the type of public course that represents most of the sports in the northeast: an oasis from the city and well located from the view of rush hour traffic.
It only took about 20 minutes of driving before we broke one of Madden’s golden rules of the road.
“Don’t wait for anyone, finish whatever bottle of water you start with, drink out of the bottle,” Madden said. “And never take I-80 in or out of New York – It’s always under construction.”
Really, Madden was good. There was also construction on I-80, and full traffic congestion was created before 6 a.m. We were outside the New York Metro area in good time.
8. Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania is rapidly changing from Metropolis to Heartland. 80 will take us completely across the state, about 300 miles from east to west, and most of it will be used to travel through reservations for the killing of rural Americans. The highway winds its way through the yellow, yellow and orange country toward the Allegheny National Forest, and Travel-in-ambertown stabletowns like Clarion and Stoneboro.
From the main road, a group of golden shadows cast down the Clion Oaks Country Club in the morning.
7. Ohio
You don’t need to leave I-90 to see why Ohio’s golf courses are some of America’s favorite. Boulder Creek is an oasis on the side of the blazing fairway, and golfers filling fairways and greens that showed a light shower of rain couldn’t have been happier.
6. Indiana
I must have sounded like I was losing my mind when, 12 hours into our first day of driving, I turned to my road trip partner (and girlfriend), Jamie, and the next line was awake.
“Wait! Is this the Warren course at Notre Dame?”
Indeed, it was. I saw my first golf world: Crenshaw University’s lovely university course with graveled bunkers and quirky greens. Better than golf, however, we were approaching our first stop, and evening was upon us.
Photo: America’s heart (left) and soul (right).
Golf
5. Illinois
It wasn’t long after nightfall when we finally pulled into the parking garage of the Chicago apartment of my former golf partner, Sean Zak. After almost 13 hours of sitting, it was time to stretch our legs.
We only walked a few minutes on Lake Michigan before a golf sign blocked us. It was driving distance, less than 200 yards from Mr. Zak’s apartment. Shono was so difficult to reach in the middle of summer afternoons.
4. Iowa
After a year of living in the buzzy Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, the name “Williamsburg, Iowa” was too much to pass up.
The town, complete with its “Central Park,” could be on a postcard of America-Town America, complete with a cozy downtown area full of bustling cafes and restaurants. MI CaCa Mexican, in the main city square, treated two distracted travelers to warm phone calls and a delicious meal of fajitas and enchiladas.
Just up the road, Stene Creek Golf Club, one of the most pristine managers anywhere in America offers a similar welcome. For $26, you can go once around the Nine-Hole Loop made by one-time PGA Champion PGA Weibring.
In other words, in Williamsburg, Iowa, you can get a hot meal and an awesome round of golf for under $50. In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, $50 might not get you coffee.
3. Nebraska
Long before the road trip began, Jamie and I chose to stop our second day of driving at a hotel in Kearney, Nebraska, a small town right in the heart of the state. I didn’t tell Jamie at the time that that part of my interest in Kearney was more than a coincidence: Madden and King stopped in the same town. – those Traveling across the country, enjoying a meal at a family-run steakhouse named Mkhulu, Madden said he was tied to his feelings about America.
We arrived in Kearney to find that life had passed after Madden Cruiser’s visit to Mkhulu. The steakhouse is no longer in business, but the heart of the place Madden loved lived on. Kearney may not have a grandpa, but it does have a daily grind, a deliciously sweet coffee shop with a line neatly wrapped around the parking lot.
As it turns out, not all of the changes in Nebraska over the past 35 years have been bad. Not very comfortable I-80, Jamie and I stopped in Gothenburg, where the storm is important to the Pony Express (poms horse-and-ride mail exchange connected with the American west in the 1860s). Gothenburg has since become something of a golf hotspot, welcoming the development of one of America’s most advanced new public courses, the Wild Horse.
True to its name, a wild horse cannot be contained except for a 1.5-mile trek along a dirt road. And, true to its name, the golf course feels like it exists in a land untouched by humans. I haven’t had time to play, but from what I’ve seen I’m sure. At $65 a week for days and $80 for weekends, I’m not sure there’s a better value for golf anywhere in America. I’ve already been visited around my return trip.
Wild horse in Nebraska.
Patrick koenig
2. Colorado
If you were hoping to prove John Madden’s words about America right away, you’d go to Buccee’s. The popular (and large) chain of trucks is like the dream of the Four good American Face: at the same time a gas station, a shopping center, a restaurant, a restaurant, and a meeting of the prize, and the award-winning PIT STOMERROOM.
Maybe you stop by on your way to or from Rodeo Dunes, a new resort opening about an hour outside of Denver. But if that sounds a bit overwhelming, it’s not a far drive to find some of the best Mountain Mountain golf elsewhere in the state.
The most surprising thing about the drive through Colorado is where the golf course is included. For about three hours straight, the I-70 Corridor that rips through the Rockies was replaced by some beautiful mountain tracks. As the mountains move from land to land, the colors are changed from dark brown to red, the general view of golfers taking beautiful fairways and their local greens served as a kind of North star.
We were nearing the end.
1. Utah
We finally arrived in Park City to find that ski season hadn’t started yet. Warm-still-November temperatures have put the nearby mountains’ opening day in question, but the string of sunny, 60-degree days has been welcomed by at least one segment of the local community: the golfers.
When I walked through my new town for the first time, I looked around and saw four golf courses. Everywhere I looked, golfers seemed happy. They walked and rode, carried and threw – shot, drank in a beautiful place and in the sun.
I thought about the words he was first accused of speaking 35 years earlier.
“What I’ve learned from traveling is this: People are beautiful,” she said. “Hey, all we have to do is spread out a little bit, because we have a lot of space.”
I thought about every restaurant and fast food restaurant. Every gas station and truck stop. All interstate and hiking trails. Every old friend and loyal stranger. After a week on the road across the United States, can anyone sort me out on that idea?
The answer was simple: No.
America, it turned out, was still good. You just have to try to see it.
;)
