Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 31, 1993 TAG: 9308020373
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARSHALL FISHWICK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Times change; the epic remains. Last week, there were new lines of updated covered wagons, depending not on horses but horsepower. They were not headed west on the Oregon Trail, but up Christiansburg Mountain on Interstate 81, going to Blacksburg.
There was no John Wayne to lead them but FMCA was on a roll.
FMCA - the Family Motor Coach Association - is an international association of families who own motor homes. Using the theme Roads to the Blue Ridge, they selected the Virginia Tech campus for their 30th summer convention in early August. The resulting numbers are staggering. About 15,000 people in 5,000 motor coaches turned up. Many of them are retired, and spend much of their time going where Willie Nelson takes his miilions of fans: On the Road Again. Their coaches are large - up to 45 feet long - and 80 percent of them tow an automobile. All in all, they form a procession that would astound the Pharaohs of Egypt and the kings of Babylon - to say nothing of the earlier 19th century pilgrims whose wagons were aptly nicknamed Shakeguts.
The connection between the two centuries astounded me until I began to make connections. They are part of one of the central American traditions: mobility. These motor-home travelers are the spiritual heirs of those hearty and hardy pioneers who packed up, spit on the fire and headed on down the road. Dodging speeding cars and roaring 16-wheelers, they are living out (sometimes under difficult circumstances) the updated American Dream.
The same restlessness that drives them ever onward caused their ancestors to cross the stormy Atlantic, then to brave the fearsome forests, the endless plains, the rugged Rockies. Not only the old folk songs (still heard in the hollows and valleys of Southwest Virginia) but the modern ballads catch the mood:
I've been wanderin' early, I've been wanderin' late,
All the way from New York to the Golden Gate
Cause I just can't help a'wanderin' . . .
The FMCA people are a kind of solid-rock layer of American society that seldom makes the headlines or the nightly news, full of rape, riot and rebellion. They obey the law and love the land. Their chief emblem is the American flag, and they wave to their motor-home neighbors. They are optimistic and buoyant. These are the sons and daughters of Old Walt.
Walt Whitman, a carpenter's son, was the first truly American poet. He talked, traveled, and mixed Beowulf, Broadway, and ordinary people to compose his masterpiece, "Leaves of Grass." He sang his "Song of the Open Road," and strove to become "a man standing in the open air." His first "Inscription" began:
One's self I sing, a simple separate person
Yet utter the word Democratic, the world Enmasse.
In Whitman's day, democracy pointed toward the endless opportunities in the Wide Open Spaces. Go West, young man, Horace Greely advised. America's archetypal Eden was the frontier. The chief theme of American history, that of Frederick Jackson Turner, is the Frontier Thesis. By 1890, the frontier was officially closed. After some hesitation and confusion it reversed itself and headed back East. America's frontier is no longer along the Colorado and the Columbia, but the Potomac and the James, and the Hudson.
The thousands of FMCA members who have come to Virginia this month are part of the new breed, whose frontier lies along the interstates. Their main concern is no longer to fight Indians but to find a place to park.
Officials in Blacksburg used as holding areas for the motor coaches the Route 460 bypass and a fenced-off portion of the Virginia Tech Airport. Parking areas included empty fields at the Corporate Research Center and an unused airport runway. More than 200 workers were hired just to direct parking.
Those of us who think of Blacksburg as a sleepy Southern town during summer months, when the university is all but deserted, were surprised, even overwhelmed, by the goings-on. There were 400 indoor exhibits, and a thousand vendors and exhibitors. So what is the greatest difference between 19th and 20th century America? The automobile, and the resulting car culture. It represents a uniquely American union of space, romance and technology. The car (starting with Henry Ford's Model T) gave form to the dreams and desires embedded in the American psyche - for speed, independence, comfort, status, glamour and power.
Not only the thousands of motor homes that invaded and took over Blacksburg, but that mighty army of cars that come in every size, shape and color are status symbols, coming-of-age symbols, ways-of-surviving tools. They are also works of art, thin-steel sculpture. They permeate our popular culture. Bob Dylan heralded a Buick 6, Bruce Springsteen was born to run, and Steppenwolf urged us to start our motors and hit the highway. William Faulkner said his generation was conceived in the back seats of cars and in rumble seats.
The threat of a miniscule gas tax sends the country into a tizzie. We fight wars to insure a steady supply of Mid-Eastern oil. Marshall McLuhan suggests that the car has become an extension of our feet.
Ready or not, the Age of the Automobile is upon us. All the world's a car - men and women are merely drivers. What we in Blacksburg saw coming up the mountain this week was not just 5,000 motor homes. It was the future. What we make of it is up to us.
Marshall Fishwick is a professor of humanities and communication studies at Virginia Tech.
by CNB