Noble 1
James J. Noble
Jennifer Sloggie-Pierce
ENGL327W
23 April 2019
The Road Home
Analytical Introduction
If you asked a thousand people what “home” meant to them, more than likely, they would describe the house they grew up in or the house they presently live in. They might go on to talk about their school and their friends and family. However, for those of us who have moved a lot over the years, home embodies something broader. In my mind, all of America is my home and the adventures I have faced at various periods in my life, at numerous places across the country, give an exclusive point of view to the concept of shaping spaces. For anyone who has traveled and lived in tents and trailers at different parts of the country; for those who plan to travel, and for those who will travel to different places before settling down into their “home,” my essay will be both witty and informative. My essay, The Road Home, will illustrate the events Iexperienced while driving and living at rest stops, travel parks, and on the side of the road,from the east coast to the west coast and back again. I wonder, do you think the initials I carved into every rest stop bathroom will still be there in twenty years?
The Road Home
According to a study done by the National Law center on Homelessness and Poverty, 3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children, are likely to experience homelessness in any given year (National Law center on Homelessness and Poverty, 2007).
After serving a four-year tour of duty with the United States Air Force, the military honorably discharged me and then I had asignificantchoiceto make. Where was I going to live? I could go home and live with my parents, or I could look for my own place, establish roots, and build my own home, find my own sacred place. I chose the latter.
But choosing that place was not an easy task; in order to find my sacred place, I had to go on a road trip, I had to travel from one coastline of America to the other, I had to look for and find the road home. With a camper shell attached to the back of my Chevrolet Sports Utility Vehicle, a pup tent, enough clothing, food, and water to last me a month, a thousand dollars in cash, and an acoustic guitar, I left my parents home in Pennsylvania and headed out to fine my home.
In order to save time, I will skip over most of the time I spent driving. Suffice it to say, I have mixed emotions about the drive. Sometimes driving was stressful and annoying, sometimes traffic jams, inclement weather, crazy drivers, and the fear of dozing and driving off the road kept me from enjoying thecountryside, sometimes I was just so tired and bored from driving that I wasn’t even aware of where I was and didn’t remember how I got there. Other times, I saw some of the most exquisitesights imaginable.
For example, in the Bryce Canyon area of Utah, I saw red rock formations that made me feel like I was driving on another planet. At one point, I was up high in the canyon, and when I looked down, I could see clouds, mysteriousclouds with lightening flying out of them, ominous clouds with raindrops spilling outof them, raindrops that appearedlike teardrops gushing from heaven, from an angel’s eyes.
On the first night of my journey, I stopped for the night at the Outer Banks of North Carolina, at the village of Buxton, and I pitched my pup tent on the beach. Everything started out well, but by 2 o’clock in the morning, a powerful wind pulled the tent’s stakes out of the sand and sent me tumbling toward the water. I struggled for twenty minutes to gather the tent and the rest of my belongings, and I wound up sleeping the rest of the night in the back of my SUV. Although I loved the Outer Banks, I knew I needed to press on.
After a full day of driving, I pulled into a rest stop at St. Augustine, Florida. I was dog-tiredand did not feel like pitching the tent, so I decided to sleep in the back of the SUV. I used the men’s rest room to wash my face and hands, and to brush my teeth, and I carved my initials and the date into the concrete wall. This, Iconcluded, would be the way I leave my mark, the way I would confirmI had made the journey. After that night, I carved my initials and the date into the wall of every rest stop I visited.
Once I slid into the back of my SUV, I slithered into a sleeping bag and went to sleep. Very early in the morning, sometime between two and three o’clock, I awoke to a woman’s scream. I sat up, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and pressedmy face to the camper shell’s glass window, eagerto catch a glimpse of what was going on outside. Instead, I caught a glimpse of something that disturbsme to this day: a man in a trenchcoat stood outside my window, and he flungopen his trench coat and exposed himself to me. I screamed and called him some disparagingname, and when I tried to get up to open the camper shell door, I bumpedmy head hard against the roof. The combination of his shortcoming and my ear-piercing shriek scared him off, but as I pulled out of the rest stop and continued on my journey, the thought of breakfast made me feel queasy. To this day, breakfast sausage links cause me to have flashbacks, and to break out into a cold sweat. St. Augustine was not my sacred place, and it was not my home.
On the third night, I was at Marathon Key, Florida, and I found a park that rented sites for people to pitch their tents. It was a beautiful night, a night free of wind and rain, a perfect night to pitch a tent and sleep outside. I knew that nothing could go wrong. I spread out the pup tent, held the first of four plastic tent stakes in place, lifted my mallet above my head, and started pounding the stake into the ground. The stake splinteredinto many pieces. I tried the second, third, and fourth stakes, but the result was the same: I destroyed the stakes, crushedthem, and smashed them to smithereens, into a dozen pieces.
When I appearedat the campground office, and I told my horrific tale to the owner, he smiled, and said, in afunnydrawl, one I had never heard before, “The ground here is coral, every inch of it. You cannot drive plastic tent stakes into coral. You need railroad spikes to do that.” After asking him where I could find railroad spikes, he pointed to a store across the road, and I looked over to see a hundred people standing in line. “That’s my store. The wife runs it. We only have so many railroad spikes available every day. All them people is in the same boat as you. I suggest you get in line and pray there are enough railroad spikes for everybody,” The man told me. Iknitted my brow, waggled my head, and staggered back to my rented spot. I was not going to stand in line for four hours to buy railroad spikes; besides, with my luck, they would run out just as it was my turn. Therefore, once again, I slept in the back of my SUV, and mumbled to myself about how the Florida Keys were not home to me.
Every day, every state—Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona—every rest stop, and every camp ground, the people, the attitudes, the food and the lifestyles, all of those things did not add up to home to me, not the home where I would establish roots, not the home where I would hang my hat.
When I made the drive out of Arizona, across routes 40, 93, 215 and 15, into Las Vegas, Nevada, I will never forget it. I had been driving through windswept desert, seeing nothing but cactus and tumbleweed, everything was desiccated and brown; then, with the sun going down, I came over the top of a hill and I saw an amazing city of buildings and lights, and hotels and casinos. Las Vegas was the only place on my trip where I slept inside a room on a bed, and I hit a jackpot on a slot machine and won two thousand dollars. Nevertheless, I left there empty, still looking for my home.
I made a home temporarily in California, but, although I lived there, worked there, and made many friends there, I still felt like something was missing. I headed back to the east coast—Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio—stopping at every rest stop, carving my initials and the date on bathroom walls, searching for that place I could call home. I did not find it.
Then, as I traveled through West Virginia, I thought about my time in the military, about living in Virginia, in Hampton Roads. I thought about how much I loved the people, the food, and the lifestyle. I thought about Busch Gardens, Waller Mill, Yorktown, and all the wonderful places. I wondered why I had left Virginia, why I had thought that my home was waiting for me somewhere else, why I wasted all of that time hunting for something that was already there. Why did I think the grass would be greener on the other side of the fence? I may never be able to answer that question.
The road home was I-95 South to I-64 East, and, when I arrived in Hampton Roads, it felt like I had never left. I was in my sacred place, I was at the place where I could hang my hat, and it dawned on me: I was home, and, as Dorothy said, in the Wizard of Oz, “There’s no place like home”.
Works Cited
The National Coalition for the Homeless. “How Many People Experience Homelessness?” Available from