1. Setting off

In the introduction to Puzzled America, Sherwood Anderson ventures out of his comfort zone as a fiction writer in order to better understand the challenges facing his fellow Americans during the great depression. In the piece, Anderson makes the point that it is only by venturing out and interacting with those affected, that one not so immediately affected can himself begin to understand. Anderson states that, “I have always, when broke, been more alive to others, more aware of others” and I have found this to be true in my own life as well.  It is easy not to notice, or to dismiss the struggles of others when you yourself are unaffected by such challenges, financial or otherwise. It is through common experience, in large part, that sympathy is learned and if you do not immediately share the struggle of another, perhaps talking to them about it, seeing it first had, is the next best way to understand.  This then, I think, can be taken as a mandate for the Travel Habit. As an explanation of why wondering is often the best way to find what your looking for.

Anderson goes on to emphasis the rich natural resources present in America, the tremendous need that exists, and the abundance of labor available. From such a perspective it seems very odd that an economy could be in trouble, with there existing both great need for goods and a great desire to supply them. This to me points out the immeasurable importance of financial institutions in driving economic development. In all deflationary financial crises, restricted access to capital, in combination with distorted incentives seem to rest at the center of the problem.

Anderson goes on to make the point that it is a benefit to all for all to be rich, and that it is the spending of the rich, or at least those with some funds left over for leisure, that allow his occupation and the occupation of many others to exist. In this way, Anderson emphasizes the need for consumption, for demand, in spurring growth, reiterating the point that the success of one person does not generally diminish the success of another.              
 
In concluding his introduction, Anderson states that there is a tremendous desire to believe in America. That people don’t want to be pessimistic, don’t want to be skeptical, but simply want things to start moving forward again. This is a desire that I think exists in almost every American, especially today. No one wants to be the skeptic or the cynic, we all simply want something we can believe in.     

The main obsession of all of these Depression-era writers seems to be capturing a true authenticity of human misery. The Depression was rife with this obsession, because what's more emotionally authentic in a capitalist society than financial suffering? Of course, many of these writers were well-off city slickers living a world away from the Americans hit hardest by the crippling economic crisis. They had to think of clever ways to circumvent their socioeconomic differences, lulling the subjects of their writers into a (false, really) sense of camaraderie in order to take a stab at recreating the rural Depression experience. Their results were, well, mixed. 

Sherwood Anderson doesn't do much for me with his "Why isn't every American rich?" bit. In his attempt to show compassion for those with nothing in a land of vast potential wealth, he sounds about as idealistic as a wide-eyed college freshman going on a spring break trip to Tanzania just to go, "tisk, tisk." For his sake, I'm hoping he wasn't really trying that hard to be authentic.

Roland's attempt at an authentic look at America failed completely, but I give him credit for openly admitting his failure in learning anything other than how pampered his life back in England was. His first mistake: bringing his daughter's nanny. Really? A nanny on your roadtrip to discover the real America? That should have been an immediate red flag for all involved: you're not cut out for this. His second mistake: he's not even from the U.S. Nice try, man, but no one 'round here is going to care what a clear outsider thinks of our crappy economy. At least his last sentence ("We did not see much of America, for our eyes were on the ground") makes him sound way less pretentious than every sentence that preceded it.

Nathan Asch tried a more creative (and, to his credit, physically uncomfortable) approach to studying the Depression. His explanation of the bus as the ultimate way to meet real people and have real exchanges was somewhat moving, and I would love to see how long that bus ticket was in person. However, he's still on a tight schedule because he's trying to see the whole country. Even his strong attraction to "figuring out" Richmond can only keep him in that one city for a day or so. As Rorty notes, it takes "at least four months...to obtain an approximate understanding of...one community." Rorty is really onto something when he writes that "the country is too big...to report." Thankfully, Rorty's accounts follow a narrative with very little pretense of trying to capture that ultimate Depression experience.

Case in point: if you're not from a place, don't try and act like you'll understand it in one week, or one bus trip, or any number of months with a German nanny in tow. A modern-day example of a successful place-based compassion tale that I can think of off the top of my head is Sufjan Steven's musical concept album, Greetings From Michigan. He's from there. He's lived there. So when he dedicates a song to unemployed auto workers in Flint, he means it. Plus, he plays the banjo a lot. How authentic is that?!

There is a pervasive myth in America that packing up the car and just hitting the road for a few days, man, is a cleansing experience for the soul. One leaves the banality and inauthenticity of the City behind and rediscovers the “real” America.

 

Discovering the “real” America is, at least, the stated goal of virtually all of these pieces. There is a desire to capture the fundamental nature of life in America, and the unquestioning acceptance that this is not to be found in the cities of greatest acclaim or merit.

 

Wild, the Brit hoping to experience the “real” America as a foreigner, gets encouragement for his trip on the basis of his boast that he will “ignore Hollywood and New York!” Anderson makes a great show of traveling by bus, famously the shoddiest and the poorest of mass transit systems, to get the most authentic traveling experience. Asch winds up in a jail cell and talks with a convict about Life. All of the stories take for granted that the answers to the Big Questions are found only in the grubbiest and dirtiest corners of America.

 

Well, except Wild. Wild uses that assumption as the setup for, frankly, a pretty funny joke and an ascerbic assessment of the value of the road and it’s wisdom. After describing his family’s (himself, his wife, his daughter, and their German Nanny) dreadful experience of being crammed into a trailer for five months he ends his first chapter with: “So much, it seems, depends on personal comfort. We did not see much of America, for our eyes were on the ground.”

 

This could be interpreted as either a self-parody (playing up a sort of aristocratic English character who is too put out by the conditions of life on the road to appreciate its lessons) or a somewhat smug rejection of the concept of therapeutic or educational road trips (“it’s all very well to play at being a traveling Oakie, but in the end you are just putting yourself out for no reason”). 

 

This made Wild’s by far the most intriguing of the stories, whether he intends to gently tease or dryly demolish the Alger myth.

 

It could be argued that Asch’s piece, too, rejected the myth of the redemptive power of slumming it on the road, but I would say rather than outright rejecting it the Asch piece tries to subvert or invert (whichever applies) the myth, essentially trying to say that the “real” America is to be found out there, but it isn’t good or pretty, it is beaten and stupid and it will lead us to war.

 

Which turned out to be pretty much right.

 

So the Asch piece may have some merit as the uncanny event of a writer predicting a social trend with any kind of accuracy.

Double-Crossing America by Ronald Wild provides an interesting perspective on Depression-era America, because it is from an outsider’s perspective. Wild elects to bring his family to the United States on a road trip, securing a job writing about it by, “Being the only English writer to visit America without being dazzled by New York and Hollywood.”, guided by the mission of documenting what it is to be “Unhurried travelers, writing about America from the ground up.”(Wild 12). It is interesting that he feels the need to inform the people of his native England about the real America, and create the distinction between the America portrayed in media and entertainment, the America of the metropolitan cities, and finally the “real America” devoid of its romanticized stereotypes and preconceived imagery from the period.  He seeks to disprove the myth created by English newspapers and magazines that “Most Americans are film-stars, gangsters, or ruined Stock-Exchange gamblers on their way downwards past the thirty-second floor.”(Wild 12) However, despite his attempt to capture the real America from the ground up, his experience is hardly normal in contrast to the Americans who were forced to rebuild their lives from the ground up, and travel the country in search of work. His family vacation, in a Covered Wagon brand trailer, and with a German Fraulein in tow, reads more like a romanticized, gimmicky, English television comedy version of Depression-era America. 
 
He certainly spends a great deal of time writing about the cult popularity of trailers and the diverse uses that they serve in American culture. From serving as sites where children were born on Route 101, to “love-nests”, to murder scenes, to dressing rooms for Hollywood stars. He makes the reader believe that the trailer, an American icon, can serve as a microcosm for American culture. From low-brow to high-brow, and from functional to superfluous, the trailer is a ubiquitous part of American culture. In the 1930’s, the trailer served as homes to American families who needed to have a family home on wheels, to be able to scour the country for work, as well as luxury dressing rooms for movie stars to pass time in. The trailer transcends the glitzy stereotypes of American life that were presented over-seas, and the gritty truth of American life “from the ground up” in the 1930s. 

The depression of the 1930’s and the recession of the last two years have many common characteristics. Many authentic accounts of the 1930’s describe the struggle of the American population as they try to survive through an economic downturn. Today, portrayals of many families in 2010 would parallel that same struggle. Depictions of Americans in the novel Puzzled America by Sherwood Anderson, and in the film, Up in the Air by Jason Reitman parallel a similar story of people struggling through economic hardship.
 
On a simplistic level, both Puzzled America and Up in the Air are travel stories. The narrator of Puzzled America uses his travel to examine the economic dichotomy that exists in American families between the financially stable and unemployed during the Great Depression. Up in the Air documents Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, who travels across America for the purpose of firing personnel from different companies. The outcome of his travels is a greater understanding of the human condition. 
 
In the beginning of each story, both the narrator in Puzzled America and Ryan Bingham share a similar premise in their interactions with people during their travels. They both feel in order to be most effective at their respective jobs, they cannot have too much empathy in their relationships. The narrator of Puzzled America announces early in the report that “I have tried to be as impersonal as I could.” Similarly, Ryan Bingham tries to be as impersonal as possible to everyone he meets on his journey. When firing someone, Ryan follows a script, where each firing is a dialogue that he repeats with little discrepancy.
 
Puzzled America and Up in the Air successfully record the effect of unemployment on the populace. The narrator in Puzzled America describes the pervasiveness of unemployment, “There are, everywhere in America, these people now out of work.” There are women and children hungry and others without clothes.” Unemployment and poverty in the 1930’s was not restricted to geographical location. In Up in the Air, Ryan travels throughout America including St. Louis, Missouri and Detroit, Michigan to fire people, thereby fostering more unemployment. Furthermore, the movie poignantly displays the effects of unemployment through an image of many empty chairs piled up in the middle of a deserted office.
 
At their conclusions, both works document that Americans are still in good spirits despite a bad economy but need to voice their frustrations. Puzzled America notes that “People [who] want to tell their stories, are glad to tell.” By allowing Americans to tell their stories, Puzzled America functions as an emotional outlet and release for the Americans of the 1930’s. Up in the Air also shares this same sentiment by providing a visual representation of their stories and attempts a mild remedy by hiring unemployed workers to tell their stories on camera. 

What is it that propels us still around our own country, from coast to coast?  What is the point, and why do we still do it?  It is to collect a stack of postcards and picturesque photographs?  To experience the real America?
 
Erskine Caldwell, in his introduction to “Some American People,” proposed the latter.  He struck out on the road to avoid the pantheon of American monuments and sights to see; he wanted to find real people and have actual connections with them.  “During such a trip the contact with people is the one and all-important matter.”  Caldwell saw his cross-country adventure as a means of getting “close to humanity,” and, to him, awe-inspiring, expansive views of the American wilderness mean nothing if not placed in relation to their human counterparts.  Nearly thirty years later photographer Robert Frank will set himself on a similar task, and his 1958 book The Americans strives to document America from the bottom up.  Photos of the quotidian become an account of both the particular and the general; each person, interaction, connection part of an endless web.
 
In searching for a real America, I wonder equally about the creation of the touristic American Dream-land that Caldwell, Frank, etc. are trying to counter through their own experiences and documentation.  How does the idealized version of America sit in relation to the country in fact, and how do these two opposing—and continually evolving—images perpetuate the existence of each other?
 
Mental images of place are affected by memory, desire, fantasy—whether we’ve visited these places hardly matters.  Name and place can never be the same, and we situate ourselves in the disjoint between the two.  However, it is not as if we create these false visions unknowingly, and it is these American Dream-scapes that equally propel the mindless tourist and the documentarian.  Debunking our fantasies is an endless and unfruitful project, despite our relentless curiosity and thirst for knowledge; there will always be the romanticization of the mind, if only now in hindsight.  Finding the real America is a sort of dream itself.
 
Roland Wild oscillates between the desire of seeing and understanding America and the fear of actually carrying out his quest.  Is it a fear of spontaneity, tainting the pristine image of American life?  Can it ever truly be demolished?  It seems more of a slow modification.  Wouldn’t we rather hold on to at least some of these dream-images regardless?  And how do these visions of the world affect our own experience—and memories of experience—of the places in question when we finally do get there, seeing perhaps a decrepit ruin of a train station not the gleaming gold of Aunt Jenny’s postcard?

In Some American People, Erskine Caldwell writes, “Travel should not be confused with sightseeing and touring… In its true meaning, a traveler is a stranger who gains sympathetic understanding with the people he encounters. It is not necessary for the traveler to have wealth; the most satisfactory travel is sometimes done by means of foot and freight car” (Caldwell, 9). Asch reiterates this sentiment, dismissing cars as too insular and trains as too luxurious, preferring instead to share a rough bus ride with his fellow voyagers. While some of the authors disagree with the assertion that the mode of transit plays an important role in their journeys, there is a common thread woven throughout the stories—an interest in the people encountered along the way. As James Rorty phrased it, they sought to discover, “the ‘feel’ of the country as a whole; to exhibit not so much the statistics as the people whose current dilemmas the statistics fail to adequately express” (Rorty, 9).
 
Travel stories are amongst the oldest told, from Gilgamesh to the Odyssey, but while the ancient epics recount fantastical quests and chronicle heroic challenges, many more modern narratives show the influence of uncertain times. In times of desperation like the 1930s, real life acquires a tenor of distress and may seem lacking in discernible focus. Undertaking a quest gives one purpose. Of course an enterprising spirit may seek adventure, but real life does not have a particular destination. In the case of these authors, they set out on a quest to find the voice of the American people.
 
This pilgrimage to find the holy grail of the American Voice is, of course, beset by a number of very real trials. The authors all seem to struggle in defining what the emergent character of America is. They all describe the country as a tremendously varied and vast landscape populated by many different sorts of people. Many of these people are severely downtrodden, while others live in notable luxury, but regardless of their disposition there appeared to be, as Sherwood Anderson noted, a yearning for belief. Anderson wrote of two girls who yearned to believe in the divine so they might comfort themselves during a time of loss. Asch wrote of a coal baron who so strongly believed in himself that he decried the news reports of poor working conditions as false and sensationalistic. Rorty decried this yearning for belief itself, insisting that less than five percent of Americans were even remotely conscious citizens and that he, “encountered nothing in 15,000 miles of travel that disgusted and appalled [him] so much as this American addition to makebelieve” (Rorty, 13).
 
While the epic heroes sought mythic artifacts, these travel writers sought to find the ethereal core of America; and just as in the epic poems, the journey proved more important than the destination.

In the introductory chapter of Puzzled America, Anderson expresses the struggle he is experiencing in the role of the writer. Throughout the selection he juxtaposes the concrete and the metaphysical, the harsh habit of finding bliss through ignorance, versus the inescapable need to feel what our fellow man feels with all of our being. His own incapability to “take the impersonal tone” drives him to set forth on his own travels, to witness with his own two eyes the toils of the Americans set back by economic crisis. Yet the same journey enabling him to “see and talk with such people” simultaneously presents him with greater and more puzzling contradictions.
I am particularly drawn to his discussion of the cyclical paradox existing between the class of writers and artists who, by common assumption, would perhaps be sickened by those who maintain their “extravagance” even during such dire times. Meanwhile one may assume the “well-to-do man” cannot level with the lower classes; Anderson writes, “I have always, when broke, been more alive to others, more aware of others.” Yet there exists a strange and generally unspoken symbiotic relationship between these two groups. Anderson’s rhetoric – “Where would we writers, painters, sculptors, etc., be if there were no people ready to throw money away?” – remains pertinent in the midst of our own current economic misfortune. It is particularly visible in New York City, where the omnipresent, stereotypical image of the struggling artist, writer, or other form of independent creator is just as alive and breathing as the actual members of the “class.”
The assumptions are strikingly similar as well. The self-sufficient New York City artist, writer, musician, etc., by and large is “expected” to view the higher-ups – those without struggle to pay their rent or keep a job – with some sort of contempt. However in reality those “yuppies” are quite often the only ones with the financial ability and personal need (which I will discuss in a moment) to properly support and perpetuate the creative career. Of course there are exceptions (the artists in Union Square, for example, many of whom sell their work for relatively cheap prices), but for the most part I would argue there are few members of this “creative class” (if you will) who would not prefer to sell their paintings or novels at prices mainly conceivable only by the very people who they shake their fists at – whom Anderson so aptly describes as those “this long depression has not very much touched.”
Referring back to Anderson’s realization he is more “alive” and “aware” when on the lower end of the financial scale, there exists a reciprocal attitude among this “untouched” class. Perhaps in order to emulate the tangibility one experiences as an actual member of the suffering class, the well-to-do want their extravagant habits to consist of the art of the artists and the writings of the writers. In other words, they want to envelop themselves in the emotions, creativity and longings of these artistic classes in order to experience a liveliness and awareness, which is otherwise unfamiliar and unattainable. To put it in layman’s terms, the “touched” need the “untouched” to buy their work at higher costs and without regard for literal need or practical use, while the “untouched” need the work of the “touched” in order to experience a deeper connection with the rest of humanity.

“My line was that Hollywood and Chicago’s gangsters, had obscured the real America, and I am now more than ever convinced that that is the case.” - Ronald Wild
 
While trying to find the heart of America, it seems as if many of the authors realized something about themselves, they were looking for what was already known. They were looking for what was their preconceived notion of America so that they could document it. What they seemed to learn was that it wasn’t all Hollywood glamour or monuments in Washington, D.C. Many of them realized “there are no memorials, vistas, or landmarks anywhere between the Atlantic and Pacific worthy of going fifty miles to see” (Caldwell, 4). The best way to see the country and the people who made it at the onset of the depression when these writers “hit the road,” was by bus travel. According to Nathan Asch, “riding in a car is as if your own home were moving” (8). One never really got to meet the people and hear their stories, which Asch says they were always eager to tell. These stories presented in the forwards, and beginning chapters of the authors presented this week were those of old towns, with deep-rooted histories. Stories that could not be created for a movie, even stories that would not bring the optimistic attitude that the United States Government wished for it’s citizens at the time. There were stories of poverty, stories of cruelty, but they were all stories that were told by strangers to other strangers. They were not stories of the hardships suffered by strangers, but about their hopes and dreams, both for themselves and their families, but ultimately for America at the time: “there is no tradition of suffering…if the American can slogan, everyone is born equal…” there was at least the hope that there was an equal possibility that everyone would have the equal chance to strive (Asch, 10).
 
Asch, like many writers of the time, wanted not just to see the lavish homes that had not been effected by the stock market crash, but the true America. They wanted to “see [and document] much want and hear of many troubles, and still feel there is hope, there is a chance, there is a future. It’s what makes it possible to be happy while traveling in America.” (Asch, 11). The stories, the scenery, the brief but generous friendships, were worth more to these writers and travelers than any of the fancy mansions their society friends invited them to. They finally saw the real, bare bones of America.

For my first entry I wanted to begin to explore the word “America”.  To me America was the song “America the Beautiful” or the Constitution guaranteeing freedom to all.  But, in the readings I found that the writers had a different definition.  From our readings, I selected the following introductions to discuss:  “Some American People” by Erskine Caldwell, “Puzzled America” by Anderson, “The Road” by Nathan Asch, and “Where Life is Better” by Rorty.  Caldwell grumbles about those annoying rich tourists who travel to sight see, whizzing along, and then asking for their home papers when they stop at night.  To him “contact with people is the one all-important matter” when traveling.  Most tourists in disregarding the people in their surroundings do not achieve the ultimate goal of seeing America.  In his chapters on places he defines the places by the people there as in his discussion of Detroit through the autoworkers there.  It follows that America is defined by the people who live there; it is the people that give the place meaning.  While Anderson writes questioningly of the sad divide between the rich and poor of the time, he concludes by saying “I think that these sketches of people…show that there is belief here that we can.”  By “we can” the author is speaking of recovery and a future for the country.   Here Anderson also shows that discussion of America means discussion of its people; the term America has an implied substitution.  Asch expands even more saying “The facts that as you travel you find people kind and not suspicious….begin to form a pattern in your mind, explain something, and answer certain questions [moving you to] write a book about America”.  Here again it is the people living in America that define and illustrate the word America.   Lastly Rorty’s introduction begins with his intent: “to evoke and make understandable…the “feel” of the country as a whole.”   He accomplished this by talking with people across America and examining their lives.  The conclusions he draws of America are based on the people he meets.  Collectively, all of the authors agree that it is only by traveling and meeting people that one can learn what constitutes America.

 

Personally, I agree with the authors.  I think that to understand a country at any point in time, you have to understand the zeitgeist, and the best way to do that is to see how people live.  In the 1930’s the zeitgeist consisted of such words as struggle, hunger, unemployment, all things people were experiencing.  It will be interesting to see how other authors define America and the zeitgeist of the depression period.

In “Puzzled America”, Sherwood Anderson introduces himself and his objective, which is to understand America and Americans “now” in the 1930s. He acknowledges his understanding of the poverty that plagues many Americans, yet he quickly changes his tone to talk about his ‘well-to-do friend’.  Anderson admits right then and there that he is a product of wealthy individuals. Without their prosperity, he could not be the artist and writer that he is.  He and his ‘well-to-do friend’ are struck by the vast wealth that can be found in America, and yet the ‘well-to-do friend’ implies that there is a “good deal of nonsense about all of this poverty”. This gap remains today, not only in the sense of wealth, but also the obliviousness that still exists.  

This past year, my aunt (who lives in a wealthy suburb of D.C.) was chatting with her neighbor about health care in the U.S.  As they discussed the notion of a national health care plan, he commented, “Do you honestly know anyone without health care?”  Certainly there are people living without healthcare, but he does not associate with them. It is this astounding blindness that Anderson brings to light.  Just as Anderson wants to take this man out of his house to wander with him and meet different people in America, I want to pull this man from his cushy Montgomery County home into inner-city D.C. and pull his blinders off.  How is it that even today, over 70 years later, as we are bombarded by the media and provided with seemingly endless information, there is still such a gap of understanding between those who are ‘with’ and those ‘without’?

Additionally, Anderson claims that “We do not want cynicism, we want belief.”  A visceral demonstration of this determination to believe in democracy and the leaders of democracy can be seen through America’s involvement in World War II, which aided in pulling the U.S. out of its depression. But what about this time around? Have we put aside cynicism and decided to strengthen our belief in democracy in an effort to pull the U.S. out of its depression? Is it even conceivable that Americans could put aside cynicism and choose optimism? What would happen to the media conglomerates fueled by fear mongering, or Dilbert? Anderson states, “We have got this rich land and this people rich with this new hunger for belief.” But, what once was a country rich with natural resources is now a country dependent on the oil and resources of other nations.  Thus, as our natural resources are increasingly depleted and we become increasingly disillusioned by the U.S. government and the idea of America as the leading super-power, I wonder where this 'belief' that Anderson describes will come from that can pull our nation out of the recession. 

IN travel, those of us who are able to escape our homes, backyards, and city streets; go on the road, in the air, and across the sea to find out more about ourselves and the rest of humanity – at least, according to Caldwell, that’s what we ought to be doing.

Author Erskine Caldwell writes of his travels in one year from 1934 to ’35; all along the way, documenting his casual interactions with locals from gas stations in Kansas, to hamburger flippers in Illinois and what he absorbed along the way. On his cross-country journey spanning such time and place, Caldwell does well in exemplifying the everyman that every man could and should be during his travels across the America – one that is social, inquisitive, caring and above all, not on a particular path. Traveling.

To Caldwell, traveling is something more than taking a trip, more than seeing monuments, more than even the destination itself – to him as long as the frame is there, the masterpiece will paint itself. The man who travels, according to Caldwell, “is a stranger who gains a sympathetic understanding with the people he encounters.” It’s those encounters that he shares with his readers that define what it means to be a traveler, and to see how the rest of our fellow Americans live. 

Though we live in a world three quarters of a century removed from Caldwell’s Some American People, and even further from it’s rural, country life, his words speak to new generations of economically depressed Americans; the 99ers. These men and women aren’t from a pro football team, and no, their age is not about to cross into triple digits. Not too dissimilar to those roaming for work and means to feed their families, these unemployed men and women whom have been so for 99 weeks and can no longer receive their federally capped unemployment benefits. They are the hardest hit by our current economic downturn.
           
Their struggle lies not in heuristically finding themselves like Erskine Caldwell and the lucky few of us that still have a job, but in penny pinching, tightening their belts, and every other tired saying about being strapped for cash. These are our fellow Americans. They want to work. They want to provide for their families. Their unemployment rate doesn’t hover at a nationwide 9.6%; instead, their rate is at 100, every day, for the last two years. They are our brothers and sisters, and their immediate economic pain is our future agony. How will we help?

While in 1934 Marysville, Kansas, Caldwell sets that future out ahead of us while conversing at a gas station. The attendant, Bill, struggles to stay afloat amidst crippling depression. Though he is the man that owns the pump, and still has his job, selling a half-gallon of petrol every few hours means near zero profit for him. The same is true for our beloved unemployed. The less money they have to spend on the basics, the less each and every one of us is able to take home to our families and ourselves. The current unemployed are the life-blood to our own standards of living. The ditch is deep for the 99ers and the rest of the benefit-receiving unemployed; so deep, in fact, that we seldom see their calls for help and distress that could soon come knocking on our very own door. The journey, no matter how enriching, is not a luxury for many of us – it is the only way they and their families find work and have a roof over their heads.

Like Caldwell, those of us who can, must see how the other half really lives by traveling and meeting the great distressed in this country. Only then can we understand ourselves and the great project that is America – in Caldwell’s words, only then will we “come close to humanity”

Among the young urban bohemians (and regular ole poor folks) there is a movement of “freeganism;” essentially living off dumpster bounty. An anti-consumerist movement, freeganism promotes an environmentally healthy life style by reducing waste. This article in the New York Times depicts a freegan fest at NYU’s very own Third Avenue North after move out day. Flat screen TVs, paintings, organic laundry soap, and iPods were all salvaged. I personally have seen everything from poetry books to a treadmill left out on the curb in a wealthy neighborhood. Whereas Anderson was worried about the relative uselessness of his book, “you... cannot eat it, you cannot convert it into clothing. You may burn it but it will not much warm your house...” (xi), we’re tossing our books and electronics onto the street in favor of a newer version of an iPad or Kindle. 

In the same spirit, there is also an organization that has been around since the 80‘s called Food Not Bombs. They spend their time recovering food that would have otherwise been wasted to make vegan and vegetarian meals for anyone who might be hungry. 

Aren’t these people the selfsame anti-capitalist earth lovers that have been around since the 30’s? And well before, too? (Thoreau, anyone?)

Anderson states that “If the American writer chances to be a good deal of a wanderer, as I am, he is constantly struck by something. He becomes more and more convinced of the vast richness of America. Of the waste of wealth here, the waste of land, of potential power in coal and oil, in vast unneeded buildings. How our forests have been wasted, the power in our streams wasted, the land itself wasted” (xi). If only he got a peek into a New York City trash bin, or the haze of smog rising up from LA. 

A main difference between our freegans and the Woody Guthries is time and in their political titles. Freegans are partly a product of the environmental crisis and are most commonly associated with anarchism. Guthrie was a die hard Communist. But it must be noted that the Communists of the 30‘s existed long before the Cold War, back “when Communism was not the oppressor of the people, but the voice of the people” (Sanders).
Aside from obvious differences due to time period, the groups are strikingly similar.  Both believe in a reduction of painful class devisions. Both believe that no one should go hungry, and the rich should quit wasting. And both hate Fascists.