Scenic Route
Scenic Route
On Sundays, Scenic Route is a space to put immersive stories on full view and merge the lanes of narrative fiction and politics.
“The American novel...is a conquest of the frontier; as it describes our experience, it creates it.”
From Ralph Ellison. As interviewed by Alfred Chester and Vilma Howard in “The Art of Fiction”, Issue No.8, Spring 1955, The Paris Review.
Scenic Views
Back in 2022, I attended the 125th Live! at the Library celebration at the Library of Congress. Walking through its halls of history, I found myself immersed in Ralph Ellison’s collection. To Ellison, fiction was an art form indistinct from social protest. His stories amplified the pursuits of the individual and the experiences that defined them. The anthology of stories I share in Scenic Route attempts to drive Ellison’s vision forward. On Sundays, it’s a space to put immersive stories on full view and merge the lanes of narrative fiction and politics.
Express Lane
According to Pew Research Center, 72% of the American public holds a favorable view of the United States Postal Service. Express Lane is a story I built around that fact. This is Part One.
Over the Hill
It was the third car to pass us on the interstate. Though Nan’s Jeep was new to Nan, it didn’t exactly look new to anyone else. White with a distinctive red-and-blue stripe across the middle, paint yellowed around its rims from sand and sun. Nan had been a postal worker. Neither snow nor wind nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stayed that courier from her appointed rounds. She’d embark on the toughest routes, smile at the challenge ahead, and still finish on schedule. When Monty retired last year, he’d passed his Electruck – an electric Jeep from the original 350 built by the American Motor Corporation – onto Nan. At top speed, the Electruck covered 29 miles on an 8-hour charge, designed to make 300 start-and-stop postal routes. And it did. At least until the Postal Service discontinued it in 1983. After that, it became Monty’s to use at will and his Electruck adventures were nothing short of epic.
Under Nan’s ownership, the Electruck put a fresh spin on women taking the wheel. Merits aside, getting Nan to be taken seriously was a bumpy road. Could she be trusted operating the Electruck? She’d mastered her postal routes but was that enough to be in the driver’s seat? What if there was a glitch? What was the point of taking on unnecessary stress at her age? What if she broke down in that thing on the highway? They’d think she was senile. Shouldn’t she be relaxing somewhere in the mountains or by the beach?
We passed a speed limit sign that read 65 MPH. The Electruck coasted along at exactly 33. Sure, the Electruck moved a little slower than the other cars but it was a piece of living history and every time Nan drove it, she taught the other cars on the road that as long as her Electruck EV Jeep could go on, it should, and that deserved our respect and admiration. What mattered most was knowing when to pull over so other cars could drive forward.
A roadside marker read: What we experience in the present is determined by the past. A few passengers rolled down their windows and shouted in frustration. Other cars sped up and passed. Construction disturbed what was left of our peace. We reflected on the noise that followed us along the interstate. Nan checked the rearview mirror. Gridlock. Next exit, she said. And then the highway faded into the background. Yellow. Red. Green. The lights changed and we turned left down a side street. The golden glow of the sun setting along the skyline came into view – the city’s best by a mile. Only we were on the high end of a hill and there was only one rule when Nan took the Electruck for a spin: take the high road to avoid hilly routes. I caught Nan’s eye. Uh-oh. And we went over the hill.
Full Speed Ahead
Harmonia was a child who could see things before they happened. Not in a supernatural or fantastical sense. She was just a keen observer...and that made people uncomfortable. Perhaps it was because her seeing things so clearly forced others to confront truths about themselves most weren’t prepared to. When she was barely three, Harmonia had her first test of this. At day care, while the other kids napped, Harmonia read. The day care supervisor was bothered by this. Why can’t she follow the rules? When asked, Harmonia said she wasn’t tired. What was scary about a kid who liked to read? It was a good question and one that left her day care supervisor speechless.
Harmonia’s awareness of others grew as she did, not from a place of insecurity or detachment, as strangers often insinuated. Rather, it was a certain tunnel vision to prove helpful to others – an unyielding pursuit of altruistic achievement in all things. It was this approach that drove her towards adults more than children her own age.
When Harmonia first met Monty, she was a bright and buoyant five, speeding through questions a mile a minute. I’d always told her asking questions showed interest and she’d taken it to heart. She’d ask him about the Coexist bumper sticker on his Electruck or why he attended services of different faiths and Monty would say he was a student of people and living a life of curiosity was all he’d aspired to. Harmonia was awestruck by Monty’s free spirit. On the other side of that freedom lurked a persistent fear. Life was different for men. I prayed that she would never be forced to forsake her questions to feel safe.
Monty had been an organizer during the postal strike of 1970 where we’d first met on the picket lines. People had stopped listening to one another, he’d said. Everyone was more interested in proving their position right than on what actually made daily life better for those with the most need. What if we invited everyone to the table, even the parties that hated one another, to discuss a two-part solution face-to-face? If the focus centered on a shared commitment to resolve rather than respond, it would be our game to win, I said.
After then-President Nixon declared a national emergency and called for the military to assume postal duties, discord and chaos followed. It was Monty who had convinced his friend and President of the AFL-CIO, George Meany, to serve as the bridge between the White House, the Postal Service, and the smaller unions underrepresented at the nation’s capitol. It worked. With the signing of the Postal Reorganization Act, the creation of a federal service was formed that provided correspondence to the American public independent of the executive branch and afforded its workers the same wages and benefits as the private sector.
America is the only nation in the world that has a unified first class stamp. That means the stamp on an American letter is the same price for everyone and a symbol of economic unity, Monty said. But if the Postal Service were privatized and a special tax was placed on stamps, the price of stamps would increase and daily life would be less affordable. There are times in life where the powers that be try to make us believe that we are better off staying in separate lanes, Monty said. Never forget that our government is people-powered and that means of the people, by the people, and for the people. Then Monty would look to the horizon and say that, no matter the obstacle faced, a better path forward was possible.
Harmonia looked up at me, wide-eyed with anticipation. The Electruck traveled full speed ahead towards a fifty foot drop-off, the bottom of a ravine barely visible in the sunset haze. Our entire future rode on what happened next. Ten, nine, eight...I pulled the Electruck’s emergency brake...seven, six, five...and just before it broke through the barricade, the Electruck came to a full stop.
Enjoying it so far? Stop by Scenic Route next Sunday to find out what happens next in Express Lane, Part Two.
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Stay the course,
Sam