"Mississippi Goddamn"

"If the world's on fire, what's it mean to me when I always knew the system was flawed?" -David Herberg

When you haven't been places in awhile, you notice things you may have dismissed before. As I began my journey driving through the San Joaquin Valley, where I grew up, farm signs dot the highways and serve as battle flags for the ramping up of the water wars: "Is Growing Food Wasting Water?"; "Stop The Politicians Created Water Crisis"; "Vote To Make California Great Again";  "Damns or Trains: Build Water Storage Now." The scientific prognosis for this year is that––even with snowpack at 34% of normal––we're not technically in a drought again because last year was exceptionally wet. But as David Rizzardo, of California Department of Water Resources, says in the New York Times, people should be mindful of the water they use. "'Water conservation is a way of life in . . . California. But with a little precipitation, they get a little rain and think, "We can run our sprinklers again!" he said. 'The day after we have our first good rainstorm, and I see my neighbor watering his lawn, I'm thinking, "Oh, god."'"  

And then there is air. Along my drive through California, Arizona, and New Mexico, as each city dissolves in my rearview mirror or approaches from a long distance in my windshield, the air above and around them––Fresno, Bakersfield, the entire Los Angeles basin, Phoenix, Tucson––looks like a light brown stain swiped across a pair of sky blue Underoos. It's gross. I fill up my tank and keep driving. We all do.

I slept in my van the first night in the parking lot of an IHOP in Casa Grande, AZ. It's impossible to get a restful night sleep when you're worried about security officers or getting a surprise visit from a car thief, but I found my morning visit to a local Starbucks to be much more unnerving. Right by the entrance, about ten middle-aged and older men sat around a table. One wore a police uniform, and the rest looked like they could be cops or firemen or ambulance drivers or retired from one of those jobs. As I put cream in my coffee, I heard the uniformed police officer say, "Take California––typical of California––they want police to exhaust all options before using force. They want them to deescalate situations." The man closest to me petted the bulky shoulder of the older man next to him and said, "Please lay down your weapon." The men chuckled. Another man said, "Put down your weapon and we'll give you more welfare." This was in Arizona, but it could have been anywhere in the U.S. Even Mississippi in the 1960s.

Street sign in Laredo, TX