Writer Sarah Kendzior, Ph.D., is both a journalist and an anthropologist and has a doctorate in anthropology. Over the course of her career, she’s reported on authoritarianism, organized crime, technology, the environment and a host of other issues for outlets like Politico, the Atlantic and the New York Times.
But her latest work is a more personal story. It’s called “The Last American Road Trip,” and it’s a collection of reflections from a series of long drives along Route 66, as well as some less well-traveled roads.
Many of Kendzior’s adventures in recent years have included her husband and children, but early in the book, she writes about her very first road trip, back when she was a teenager.
Kendzior joined The Show to talk about how that first experience of the open road in the Southwest, changed her life.
Full conversation
SARAH KENZIOR: I had never seen mountains, I'd never seen desert, I had never seen, you know, really even plains. And I'd never seen the stars. And I felt like I was finally free, and I felt unencumbered in a way that's never left me. There's something so calming and soothing — even if the landscape itself is battered down. And I think it's cause, you know, I was born in a battered-down place and I live in a somewhat battered down place now in St. Louis. And so I've been sort of training myself my whole life to look for beauty in the wreckage.
SAM DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, I know that another very pivotal moment for you was the Dobbs decision at the Supreme Court.
KENZIOR: Yeah, that was the first time that I've ever written about Roe v. Wade in any capacity. And I live in Missouri, and we were the first state, you know, that overturned it. Because we had a trigger law and our attorney general signed away my bodily autonomy that morning. It felt violating in a way that I wasn't expecting. And I live in St. Louis, which is right across the Mississippi River, from Illinois. And so the next day I drove into Illinois just to see, like, “Do I feel different here? Do I feel more free here?”
... Of course, I didn't, because, you know, the reality of my life is still over in Missouri. But it made me think in the past about how many people have fled over that river in pursuit of freedom. Because this has always been a battleground for the American soul. You know, this is where enslaved Africans have always gone over state lines. You know, I bring up the Dred Scott case in particular, and cross that river into freedom. It's where "Huckleberry Finn" is set.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, there's all these wonderful sections in the book where you use a little subset of America as a kind of metaphor for all of America. You do that with the St. Louis Arch at one point. You do it with the Mississippi River. And you also do it with Route 66. Another line that I love from the book is, “Route 66 is America's mental breakdown lane, a postcard from your subconscious marked ‘return to sender.’”
KENZIOR: Yeah, I mean, Route 66 is this road that has been romanticized my entire life, even though I don't think I've ever met anybody who was old enough to, you know, to drive it in its prime. You know it through songs, you know it through, through TV shows. But, even the songs in the TV shows at this point are old.
You know, it has this mythical status. But it was decommissioned, fittingly, by Ronald Reagan. And so, when you drive it, it's a series of, you know, real road, you know, often rural road, frontage road, and then it just will sometimes terminate and become a highway. And what's left on it are often these kind of, you know, old motels and hotels, and kind of souvenir stands and old diners. And they're very interesting, but you're also watching something in decay.
DINGMAN: I get the sense also though that there's something for you about Route 66 that there's like a sort of brutal honesty to it.
KENZIOR: Yeah, I think so. If there is a feeling that I think unites us, tt's a sense of collective abandonment.
DINGMAN: Certainly, and it makes me think again of one of my favorite lines from the book. You're talking about being on Route 66, and things like the world's largest set of prayer hands, that sit by the side of the road. And you say, “What is more American than an oversized object looming lonesome by the road, held together by money and faith?”
KENZIOR: Yeah, you know, that that's why we're such a strange country, because we have these, you know, giant totems of very serious things. You know, things like religion or war, and yet, it's just surrounded by the most mundane or goofy stuff. That's what it's like to drive through this country.
That's why a lot of times when I see, pundits and politicians kind of trying to define what America is in this ..., very narrow and very ultra-serious way, I just think, “My gosh, you know, you really haven't, you haven't spent time out here.” Like, it's the weird back and forth. It's the dichotomy between that very serious subject matter and the way that people actually spend their day to day living ... that makes this a very interesting place and, you know, a place that I will always be fond of. You know, it's dear to my heart, no matter what kind of terrible things the government or other entities are up to.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, you know, something that I feel like comes through so clearly both in the book and in the way that you're talking about this is that you are very clear-eyed about both the potential and the limitations of this country. And, one of the ways that that is very memorably illustrated is in this story about going to a motel called the Crescent, where you have a kind of a supernatural experience with your daughter. Can you tell us what happened?
KENZIOR: Yeah, this is my second book to mention the Crescent. That's how much I love the Crescent. So this is a haunted hotel, in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which is a little village that has no right angles. Like the whole thing is just all these weird twisting paths through the Ozarks. And the hotel is legitimately haunted. It used to be a fake cancer treatment center run by a con artist, which meant that a lot of people who were very sick, died of cancer on its premises. Because he was just taking their money and not curing them. And then he buried them on the grounds. And a lot of them, you know, they were unearthed, his fake potions were unearthed, recently. And so, when you go in there, you know, your sense seeing the weight of that tragedy, if nothing else.
Generally speaking, I haven't had a lot of real supernatural encounters, but my daughter and I did have what really felt like one. And then, when we looked up the spot where it occurred later, that's when I found out the history of a terrible thing that had happened in that very spot in the hotel. And it freaked me out. As I say in the book, I did not tell my daughter about it 'til she was much older.
DINGMAN: Well, I won't give away what happens, but I will say that, in the story where your daughter is kind of willfully engaging with this supernatural presence at the hotel, you try to discourage her from doing it. You say, “No, no, no. Bad idea, bad idea.”
KENZIOR: Well, she wanted it to show its true form. I definitely thought that was a bad idea because I was, you know, kind of spooked by what was happening.
DINGMAN: Well, that's, that's kind of the reason I bring it up here in the conversation though, Sarah, is that, you know, she wants it to reveal its true form. And I just sort of have the sense that that's kind of what you're doing in the book is like revealing America in its true form, even if it's kind of spooky.
KENZIOR: You know, that is deep. I think I may have subconsciously done that in ... that part of the book. So, I think you may be onto something there because yes, that is, that is exactly what I was trying to do with the book, so thank you.
