Winds of youth in Middle America

For: Javier Reverte (text and photos)

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Yesterday I remembered a trip I took just over a couple of years ago by the South and Midwest U.S., more or less along the banks of the great Mississippi. I spoke some of it in this space, but these days I am reminded of something minor that happened to me during the trip: I say minor as, but great "significance". I mean.

Small roads that travel the river still stuck fickle path: again and again across the stream and then run on the left or right side seemingly on a whim. But besides that, as it descends along the course, going in and out of coastal states, sometimes for a long way and sometimes just for a few kilometers: Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennesse, Louisiana ... Well, going once, just a couple of miles, in the small town of Columbus, en Kentucky, after crossing a bridge from Missouri, I stopped to get fuel. And the employee who served me asked me fuel: “¿Viene de Missouri?”. Answered in the affirmative and he added: "I've never been to Missouri. How about Kentucky?”. I look around me and just caught sight river, aspen groves and a few humble wooden houses, a landscape very similar to what was left on the other side. "For as Missouri!”, answered. The guy grunted and did not speak to me even when I took the service charge.

America is so surprising and fascinating. It looks like all the issues we have elaborated on it and, however, over and over again just for breaking

This attitude is what we always hope for the peasants of the American heartland: people who, living in one of the largest countries on Earth, never or almost never left her village, while considering their small homeland as the best place on earth. America is so surprising and fascinating. It looks like all the issues we have elaborated on it and, however, over and over again just for breaking. When one has left the small village of Columbus, to continue referring to the case of which I speak-, if one goes toward the northeast, in a couple of days is reached Chicago. And shortly after spending time in the city, you start thinking you have to see what is Europe palette, entrepreneurship and how little that remains stagnant in its outdated criteria. Chicago looks to the sky from the beautiful skyscrapers boldly, retándolo, like there's no barrier to human greed. And returns a faith in man, lost long ago in the Old Continent.

In recent years I have not stopped the U.S. travel. Increasingly fascinated me more and I find it very difficult to decipher the keys to his way of seeing the world, while I have the feeling that my mind gets a youth wind.

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Comments (6)

  • Roberto Mínguez

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    Totally agree with your point of view on the U.S.. In Europe we laugh at his ridiculous way of life and we are a society of slobs who can not put any country on the map. Reality, at least I lived, is that it is a living society, open, where the work is promoted by professional merits and not because somebody's cousin ammigo or company. NY is fascinating, but it is also Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas u Orlando. Cities with life, where one has the feeling that passes more than the eternal theory that the old continent is involved. Who are the rednecks?

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  • Whiteness

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    Show me the Americans I think are a group of rednecks who only look at the navel. Sorry I did not share his point of view.

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  • Eduardo

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    I guess the topics always have their share of reason or reality, though oddly enough we tend to stay with the negative and also traveling a side view of the most attractive places and people. Realizing everything there is to learn. La semana pasada acabé «En mares salvajes», and again I enjoyed it from start to finish. The penalty is to wait and read it so fast, so we will wait for the next. I wish I could be on his travels in the United States, I think it would be really interesting. Is any event, thanks for making us dream master.

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  • Oscar Charneco

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    I think to judge a country like the United States since the topics easy and wrong. Its vastness and variety make it difficult to apply a single prism. Recomiendo el ensayo de Vicente Verdú «El Planeta Americano», besides being very interesting to help focus the country from other points of view. Thank you, Mr. Reverte for contributing their look to expand our.

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