YESTERYEAR, USA – In the past month, my cycling group has pedaled from Puget Sound to Lake Michigan, an impressive distance. But it’s nothing compared to our travels through the past.
Bike routes dodge all cities, so ours has taken us through such teeming metropolises as Saco, Montana (pop. 197), Hebron, North Dakota (pop. 747) and Dalton, Minnesota (pop. 253). In each I wanted to ask, “What year is it here?”
I would not have been surprised to hear “1962” in Saco, “1957” in Hebron. Across rural America, nostalgia is the air people breathe. Car rallies bring ’57 Chevies back to the street. Old movie theaters show summer sequels. Black POW-MIA flags fly as if Reagan were still with us. When a train whistle blows, you wouldn’t be surprised to see a steam locomotive pull into town. Some local Historical Societies must be hoping to get one.
Nostalgia is not a term anyone uses out here. The operative word is “classic.” Anything made when “America was great” — old Chevies, old Westerns, French’s mustard — is “classic.” And from Saco, Montana to whatever town we’re in now, the classics keep coming. Kenny Rogers on AM, Led Zeppelin on FM. “Andy of Mayberry” on TV. Pickups roaring down Main Street, just like those muscle cars that ruled the road before the hoax called global warming. The message: Was this a great country or what?
Here in Yesteryear, the present is a nuisance, the future an enemy. Both rear their heads only on TV and both are an outrage. Scandals and lies, another limit on “our freedoms,” another offense to “law-abiding Americans.” Never mind that the news comes in from distant cities that are safer than ever. Each outrage might as well occur right in the living rooms of Saco. So many conflicting facts, so many who don’t see things “our way.” The only thing you can trust anymore is sports, and in Yesteryear, sports are second only to scripture.
Not one of the many decent Americans we have met has uttered a word about the nation at large. We have talked about farms, ancestors, teams we revere in common. The world may spew from a TV above the bar, but congeniality keeps it at bay. Only in living rooms does the America beyond town limits appear, and it demands that change be stopped. Now. Just let us alone to live like our Daddies did.
All this homegrown nostalgia is quaint — for awhile. But when you add it up, town by town, you get a rural America at odds with the rest of the country. You get one America where the past is sweetened by “alternative facts,” and another where the past is fact-checked. One America where, as Reagan said, “We didn’t know we had a race problem,” and another facing that problem daily. One America where we “win so often we get sick of winning,” and another where life is more nuanced than winning and losing and where’s the nearest Dairy Queen.
Quaint? Harmless? Thanks to the Constitution, 60 U.S. senators represent rural states with just one-fourth of the population. Hence we have a rural gun policy, a rural foreign policy, and a government of, by, and for a nostalgic minority. Was this a great country or what?
But here’s the news rural America can’t face: Nostalgia won’t conquer time, and those terrified of change are doomed to be left behind. They may rage. They may rant. They may arm themselves to the teeth. But while rural America lives with its head up its past, the future rolls on. Classic car rallies will continue. Pickups will roar. POW-MIA flags will wave. But when the sizable majority unafraid of change decide to vote again, America will again have a future. In the meantime, we are stuck in Yesteryear, U.S.A. Cool cars, at least.