Where Have All The Smokies Gone?

We just returned from a whirlwind weekend tour of the deep South's highway corridors, between home and Louisiana, and I have to say, something has changed drastically in traffic patterns throughout those intervening states. This most recent trip isn't even close to the first time we've driven through to visit family on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain. This time, the ‘other driver’ aspect of the trip felt a little more precarious because of two precipitating absences in the world of interstate travel. First, apparently, no one cares about the posted speed limits any longer, and second, this is probably due in large part to a serious decline in the presence of state troopers anywhere.

Modern travel has improved a lot in recent years. Most vehicles have cruise control and fancy radar limiters that keep you a steady distance from the car in front, backup cameras, sideview sensors, and beeps when you cross a solid line without engaging the turn indicators. My first interstate journey as an adult was a trip from Reading to Fort Wayne, Indiana, back in 1997 or ‘98. I was driving my ‘87 Chrysler LeBaron, which was an extremely analog vehicle. No fuel injection or power steering, no backup cameras or Bluetooth. Just a boy, his car, and the long highways that overlay our nation like a spiderweb. I had a Rand-McNally map under the front bench seat, my portable CD player hooked up to computer speakers powered by the cigarette lighter. I had a box of Mountain Dew, a pack of Snickers Bars, a carton of smokes, and the Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison album, and the long, long road. It was a formative experience. One that I have long wandered back to in thought when the urge to travel long distances and visit faraway families arises again.

That was one of the most important journeys of my life as a driver; one that instilled in me many of the rules of long-distance driving. These rules are essentially unspoken, generally understood, and find their roots in the personality of American travel, dating back to the first dogged pioneers steering oxen-pulled Conestoga wagons across the prairies and over the Rockies. 

There are far too many rules to enumerate here, but the few most pertinent to my observations are: obey the speed limit within reason, be a defensive but courteous driver, and obey the laws of whatever state you happen to be in. I might add ‘remember to use your signals’ just as a gentle reminder to my dear Old North State drivers who seem to be congenitally unable to flip that switch up or down when turning.

Since that first lone trip, I have put a lot of hours behind the steering wheel. Along with the trips to Louisiana, we've driven back and forth to PA and New York many times, we've been to New England and Minnesota by car, and I drove with Evan from home to Portland, Oregon, expanding my experience of the country's byways west through the really big, wide-open states. One thing had always been ubiquitous through it all. Tall, fearless, redoubtable, and unflappable in their campaign hats, like drill instructors on the freeways, the dour, tough-minded state troopers. We Bares always referred to them using the citizen's band (CB) radio jargon, calling them Smokies, because their hats make them look like Smokey Bear.

Their sleek cars could be seen all over the nation's roads, but especially on interstates. We even got a sense of which state's troopers were the most relentless and tough. My home state's Smokies (we sometimes also call them Staties) are absolutely unforgiving. If you drove faster than the posted speed limit, or sped up to pass a truck to not miss an exit, you would get nailed. No warnings, no chit-chat. Just a very expensive ticket and the lasting chill in the spine for having had a run-in with the terrifying state police. The legendary South Carolina Smokies would detain you for speeding, and the price of your ticket was your bail. This was especially true for folks with out-of-state plates.

When I first drove to NC, I counted no less than 45 state troopers between Milford, PA, and Asheboro. They were everywhere. The Smokies from Maryland and West Virginia were unfamiliar to me, but they seemed to be the same creature in differently colored cars and uniforms. The dark blue of PA was replaced by the steely grey of North Carolina, but they were equally lean and intense lawmen. Once, I saw a trooper pull over six cars at the same time. He sped past me (my heart racing, body coated in sweat). As he went, he pointed at several drivers in both lanes. He then proceeded to get ahead of the group and lead them, like baby ducks to the shoulder. I got into the passing lane, heart racing (but not my speedometer), and went around the group and drove on. Had he pointed at me? I didn't really think so, but then what if he had?

It took me several hundred miles before I allowed myself the deep breathing relief of not seeing him in the mirrors, bearing down on me, lights and sirens, cold eyes glinting in my rearview. Uneventful as the situation wound up being for me, it nevertheless cemented in my mind the legend of the imperious state trooper. Forever after, whenever our travels brought us onto their highways, I kept a weather eye out for them. I like to think that I have never had a speeding ticket while driving because of my healthy regard for the Smokies and their work to keep the interstates safe and free from idiots.

They were everywhere back then. Uncle Dan had his own CB radio mounted in his truck, and when on a long trip, he used it to keep ahead of the situation nearby. One of the funniest idioms of CB jargon I ever heard was “Bears with flares”, which meant Smokies at an accident, lit by road flares. You don't see road flares much any longer, but now, sadly, you rarely see the Smokies, either.

In the last few years, we haven't really traveled far. We drive to see the kids in Western NC or make our way to Winston, Greensboro, or Raleigh occasionally, but we generally haven't been out of the state. Each time we venture onto the big roads, I have noticed the apparent lack of Smokies. On a stretch of 74 between home and Winston, there is nothing at all by way of state law enforcement ever. The same goes for much of the stretching lanes between here and the beach or the mountains. Where once I might have counted three or four Smokies tucked into shady laybys or sniping speeders with LIDAR from an overpass, now they are all gone. 

I know that they aren't gone from the earth, of course. I see them in town and around the occasional accident, but there seem to be far fewer on the roads. I'm not the only one who's noticed. The passing lane has suddenly filled with Truck Bros driving ten or fifteen mph faster than the posted speed limit. At first, I was shocked, but I decided that the swift flashing vengeance of such infractions would come racing up from behind, and demonstrate once and for all that the Smokies still reign supreme. It never happened; it never happens.

I used to wonder if maybe it was just an anomaly. Perhaps they were busy elsewhere, helping drug interdiction teams that required extra backup near the state border or chasing down snakehead smugglers. They would be back in force soon, I used to say, as the trucks flew by us on the left well past the posted speed limit. 

They never showed. Day, night, early morning, twilight, schmucks in the midst of a hefty midlife crisis in souped-up, and jacked up pickup trucks (with weirdly tiny or super knobbly tires) fly past at 90, while I dutifully keep the cruise set at 68 in a sixty-five, seventy-two in a seventy. On the few occasions that I have to swing left to pass someone who is even more conservative with the throttle, I always scan the horizon in the mirrors, expecting with obvious paranoia, to see the blue lights behind me for exceeding the speed limit. It never happens.

They're not there. Through six states, between here and Louisiana, including NC, I counted one trooper going down and two coming back. Three in three days of traveling across six states. They're badly needed back and in force. Things are perilous on the road.

During our trip, we noticed that each state has its own interstate personality. NC is pretty straight-laced. People don't know how to use their turn indicating signals or keep off their phones, but they are still pretty courteous. They are the most familiar to me, so the idiosyncrasies are known and largely expected. 

South Carolina, by contrast, is a nest of vipers. Most of Interstate 85 through the upstate is three lanes north and south. Regardless of the speed limit, the traffic, the weather, the time of day, all SC drivers sling between all three lanes, zooming around, cutting people off, passing on the right, crossing several lanes at once. It is chaos at 70. Fortunately, the speed limit is either 60 or 65 most of the way, though no one acknowledges it. South Carolina is the highway equivalent of a spoiled three-year-old hopped up on birthday cake and ice cream. 

Georgia's highways are complicated by the muddy water of Atlanta, so imagine South Carolina multiplied by twelve lanes. I won't mention Alabama, except to say rather than feral kids, it's more like the kids at the alternative school; the ones with switchblades and hand-done Bic pen prison tattoos and Confederate flag shirts and specific red hats and no empathy. Alabama is a highway dystopia, and I kept looking for Mad Max rather than any law enforcement. Mississippi, unlike everywhere else, seems to be the best place to drive. The people are beyond courteous, don't get on your butt, use their signals, don't have their phones out, wave, let you in front of them in traffic, and even obey the speed limit (generally). They may be second-last in terms of education, but they're number one in my book for driver courtesy. Going into Louisiana was a big disappointment because of the immediate decline in road etiquette. 

No matter where we were, though, people disregarded the speed limit, drove like they were on the Autobahn, and, despite their own random errands (even in MS), acted as if there were no law on the books for speed and no one to enforce it if there was. 

The national attitude toward speeding has changed; I’ve been unaware of anything official, but it is now an 80 mph pandemic. Everyone in the passing lane is going faster, but now it is by whole orders of magnitude. The western states have higher speed limits, and I’m familiar with driving 80, 85, or 90 mph, safely and within the law. Out there, you can, because with few exceptions, the roads don’t deviate too much from their direct path. Also, it’s worth pointing out, you’d never get anywhere just crawling around at 65. If you go any faster than the posted limit, though, you're going to get nabbed, plain and simple. The western Smokies don't play. But the point, to me, is that if the speeds are getting higher in the South, then there needs to be even more enforcement of the rules, to keep us all safe, just like in Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Oregon.

A state trooper doesn’t have to pull someone for speeding if they're being relatively safe, if that’s become passe. Things change, priorities shift, funding gets pulled. They could still pull someone for weaving across lanes, being reckless, or just being offensively pushy about moving people out of their lanes, especially if they’re traveling closer to the posted speed. Ominous as they are in the social psyche, troopers provide a needed and potent reminder that there are still rules of the road that must be followed. Just by nailing a Truck Bro, the Smokey reminds all of us that the awful majesty of the law exists to keep us safe. If they can thin the herd of douchebags going 90 in a 65, all the better. If they could keep an eye out for the yokels in their squatted trucks and Confederate flags flapping in the bed, super. It's not my job to tell them how to do their jobs, but it would be nice to know that the eyes of the Smokies are upon all of us, again, for two good reasons. 

Here’s why: those knothead Truck Bros need someone to keep them in check. They seem to have zero accountability, and so someone has to hold them to account. Furthermore, those of us rule followers and speed limit obeyers really need to see the speeders and reckless lane changers held to the higher standard that only Smokies can embody. It does us some good to see dolts and rubes get their comeuppance. It restores in the rest of us a sense that they don’t have free rein to comport themselves on the highways as they do in their lives, and it means that order and the law still have some meaning, despite much evidence to the contrary.

Groundskeeper No Longer

Relenting Grass Control

All the men who raised me were, among much else, good lawn men. They took mowing seriously and did their bits of lawn with pride. It was an art that was handed down to me. I have always liked to mow, even when I haven't been very consistent or bothered by the need to do it. I guess I assumed that, like all of them, I would give over my mowing and yard duties when old age settled on me. Then, last year—far sooner than I anticipated—I finally decided to stop tending our lawn myself. 

It was not an easy decision. When Micki first suggested it, I rebelled at it with more than my usual intensity. In fact, one might say I bucked. She pointed out that I have legitimate health concerns. Serious enough to warrant real caution, especially because of how much hotter it seems to get each summer. Eventually, I relented, feeling like a failure. It was a compromise, because what I agreed to do was hire someone to take care of the grounds only during the hot parts of the year. From late September to April, I would retain full control of our grounds.

The Ticker and the Heat

What kind of health issue do I have that makes cutting the grass dangerous? I have a genetic condition called a bicuspid aortic valve. Where most people have three little flaps on all their valves, on the aortic valve, I have just two. I'm fine. I get checked regularly, and I take good care of myself. I run five kilometers (3.10 miles) three times a week, eat healthy (ish), and stay hydrated. If aware of it and cautious, a bicuspid valve is a mild concern. The key is that one has to take care of it and oneself. Eventually, they will insert a pig or cadaver valve and unfurl it over the old one, and I’ll be good as new, assuming I don’t get endocarditis sometime between now and later. In the meantime, though, one of the biggest areas for caution is becoming overheated. When hot, the heart works harder, which puts greater strain on it. Since I’ve got a wonky valve, this can cause arrhythmia, a rupture of the aorta by the heart, or heart failure. The threat is higher the older one gets, but why take chances?

Obviously, excessive heat is dangerous for everyone. It can cause heat stroke, which can cause damage to the thermoregulation system that we all have. The damage can be long-lasting or permanent. People who have had the early symptoms are far more sensitive to heat and more susceptible to heat stroke after that. Several times over the years, after stupidly mowing the grass on excessively hot and humid days, I came away from my chores feeling completely wretched. I was dry, not sweaty, my heart hammering in my chest, feeling faint, wobbly, and with ringing in my ears. I eventually cooled down and never lost consciousness, but when I told my doctor, she effectively put the kibosh on heat exposure for me. She said that I had obviously suffered heatstroke and that I would probably be far more susceptible from then on.

When I asked my cardiologist (seeking confirmation, not a second opinion) about yardwork in the summertime, I got the same answer: hire someone. It's safer. That was in 2024. I stubbornly battled through the rest of that summer, and as usual, tried to keep mowing to the cooler parts of the day, or on the rare cooler days. But, because colder days in the deeps of summer are rare, I was also going longer between mowing, breaking up my front and side yard into two separate days when I mowed, and finding that after I was through, I had no energy left at all to do the other necessary things for a day or two. As usual, I rejoiced at the plummeting temps that fall, which made lawn care that much more tolerable. 

It was that fall (of ‘24) that my backpack leaf blower died, and I started using my mower to vac up the leaves. It gave me a sense of stamina to “mow the leaves” in the cooler temps, and gave me the time outside that I love. As late summer burned through to winter, I started to think that maybe I had just been a wuss that summer, that I was really fine. Then, as it always does, winter gives way to summer. As the temps rose, I started feeling awful again by the time I completed my groundskeeping chores.

Surrendering to Win

Last summer was really bad. It was the hottest year on record thus far, and tropically sticky as well. The heat and humidity was such that air quality levels were often plain appalling, which aggravated my asthma, even with controlling meds. The grass in our yard got downright jungly. I swear I saw a jaguar lurking under our ancient magnolia. I kept pushing off going out to do the grass until it was nearly impossible to see the road from our front door. I’m sure my neighbors were preparing to call the City on me. I knew it was bad. I had some trouble swallowing my pride.

Finally, Micki prevailed upon me with her steady, logical, and loving persistence. I acknowledged that I couldn’t take the heat, but that the grass still needed to be mowed. The compromise was to find someone I could trust to do the work during the hottest parts of the year. Sometimes you have to surrender to win, no matter how antithetical it may seem. Luckily, I knew just the right man for the job. So, I went up the street and talked to my neighbor.

The Yard Man Cometh

For years, as I have written before, I walked to work in all seasons and in all weather. I got to know the section of Worth Street between our house and the library exceedingly well, and many of the houses, and people, too. About halfway up lives a lovely couple who regularly sit on their porch in the morning. I used to chat with them often. They are seriously nice folks. Mark has a small yard care business and takes care of several people we know around the neighborhood. Last autumn, I broached the subject with him, and he agreed to take up the idea again, come spring.

Even just talking to him about it, I admit, helped me feel somewhat better. I was suddenly off the hook. The yard would continue to be taken care of now by someone who had the skill and tools to do it right during the summertime. Underneath that wash of relief, however, flowed a deeply carved river of guilt and shame.

The Boy Who Mowed

When I was twelve, I was deemed old enough to be charged with mowing the grass at the Schaefferstown house. There were nearly three acres of rolling lawn, and it was my chore to get it and keep it mowed. Summertime in PA, though hot, is never (or rarely) as humid as here at home. I didn’t mind the heat back then, anyway. I drove our Kubota riding mower all over the property, listening to my Walkman and singing along. I enjoyed the process. No one bothered me: just a boy, his mower, and some good tunes.

I was a bit older when I moved in with Pop Bare, but I mowed his grass, too, for a while. It was a push mower rather than a riding one, but it was no less enjoyable. I also did work for my grandmothers, occasionally, for friends and neighbors, and eventually, got a job mowing at an old folks home near my childhood church.

Today, we have a big front lawn; bigger than the whole yard at the previous house. The side yard, which we immediately took to calling The North Yard (or, Nawth Yahhd, no offense to real New Englandahs), is itself just shy of an acre, and there was more grass to mow in our back and side yards, too.

I took it seriously. I worked hard cutting the grass and getting the yard how I wanted it. The example of those men I mentioned before was that the grass always needs to be mowed, and a neat yard is an important symbol of my responsibility to my family and to the other people in our community. 

I got to know our yard intimately, the way I know the contours of my own mind. I planted flowers and trees, trimmed and pruned, mowed the grass, did the edging, pulled up invasive volunteers, made wood piles for our fire table, planted cactus, and raked out the flower beds dozens of times. I took real pride in crossing the grass on the way to work. I listened to huge numbers of audiobooks while mowing. I loved being outside. It was glorious, if sweaty and dusty work. For my forty-fifth birthday, Micki and the kids even bought me a brand new mower, one of my prized possessions.

I express my ownership and accountability to my family through the tangible works of maintenance on our property. It is hard, dirty, hot work to get the place looking decent, and as I've written before, it's a losing battle because the green and growing things never stop their slow, plodding war of attrition. To stand against that verdant tide is part of what has given me a sense of purpose as a homeowner.

No Mow

It’s hard to hand all that over to someone. How to convey sixteen years of careful, dedicated lawncare to someone in just a few minutes? How can they possibly know that, as I made each pass, refilled the tank, sharpened the blades, changed trimmer line, hand cut and pruned, every part of our property is as much a part of me as the hair on my head? I’ve walked over every single centimeter of the ground countless times. I’ve dripped my precious perspiration into that soil. I’ve watched the landscape shift and change. I’ve seen trees grow and fall, and others sprout and rise from skinny saplings. It’s not perfect. Not even close to it, but it is mine, and I have to give over the control, now, far too young and far too soon.

It makes me sad. Despite the relief and the intense realization that I have legitimate reasons to hand things over, I still feel like I’m a failure. It’s a silly and very outmoded way of thinking, but groundskeeping is what the men in my family have done since before gas mowers were invented. Unlike those hale and hearty fellows, in their grass-stained dungarees and grimy shirts, sweating in the late-afternoon rays of the sun each weekend, I’m handing the reins of the job to someone else.

A+ Mark

Mark, my neighbor with the lawn business, is a tough guy. He's brown as a nut and tough as old roots, and the heat doesn't bug him at all. When I tried to explain to him how bad I felt handing over the responsibility, he said, “It’s all good, man.” After a brief walk through of the yard, to explain where roots were and holes and other idiosyncrasies of our property, I passed the gas can to him. To my enduring gratitude, his first pass was neat, fast, and careful. The yard, when he is finished, looks far better than when the corporate guys finish my other neighbor's yard. They rush to get done, trying to make up time, heedless of what plants they kill or noise they create, or the mess of grass and dust they make.

Mark actually cares, and he understands that I do too. Just because I have given over the harder, hotter work, I will still oversee the grounds and do a lot of the more intricate stuff in the background, either early, before it gets too hot, or late, when the sun is down. More than anything, he's so reasonable that I almost feel as though I'm getting the deal of a lifetime. If he ever retires, I'll have been so spoiled that whoever we get to take over will have big, grass-stained shoes to fill.

An Administration Position

In the meantime, we have big plans for the backyard, and for more raised beds and a new location for a permanent fire pit and other exciting things we want to accomplish over the next year. I can do small projects, here and there, and stay out of the hot sun and work slowly. I will oversee the summer work and take care of the leaves in the fall and winter, when I’m not in any thermal danger. Anyway, I still have creative control over the entire property.

Come to think of it, maybe I've not retired as groundskeeper, but rather promoted myself to an administrative position. I like the sound of that, almost as much as I like the sound of someone else mowing our yard on really hot days.

May Potpourri

More Essays?

Every April and October for the last few years, I’ve been taking advantage of a self-built break to write several short fiction stories. When it is time to switch to fiction, I struggle to get the brain thinking in those terms, but by the end of the month, I'm generating story drafts for the next break. Then, I have a difficult time switching back to essays.

You’re not off the hook. I do intend to write more essays. However, this summer I want to try a few “multiple-part” pieces. Slightly longer form essays broken up over a few weeks. It will give me a chance to be more granular and detailed, and help me think in broader terms. I’ve been reading a lot of longer-form essays, and I’ve yet to get to a point where I feel like I need it to be done. I’m hoping to do the same, but over a few weeks, to keep things from getting too intense.

Speaking of which:

Moral Formation

I recently listened to a podcast featuring David Brooks, late of the New York Times, now writing for The Atlantic and still doing political analysis for PBS News Hour every Friday. Brooks takes the Christian conservative position in much of what he writes and says, but on this particular pod, he said some things that I think are worthy of discussing.

He asked whether a decline in religious participation in our nation has led to a lack of moral formation, such that citizens have lost any sense of character, moral values, or a shared code with future generations. This may be a longer-form essay in several parts, because there is much to say and many points worth considering. I would suggest (if you haven’t) taking a stroll through some of Brooks’ work, just to get acquainted. I seldom agreed with him until he became a voice of reason in an otherwise mad, mad, mad, mad world.

Memoir Therapy

Hacking into the deep memories of my youth, pulling them out, untangling, and then trying to give them context and linearity has been very therapeutic for me. 

In the previous batch of essays, the one entitled “The House, Crooked to the Eye,” turned out to be one of the most important things I have ever written, if not for your edification or entertainment as readers, then for facing a part of my life and having a gunslinger duel (of sorts) with the thoughts, anxieties, memories, emotions, both excavated and not, that I retain from those days. I’d like very much to do some more. The problem is, I’m not thrilled about displaying all the dirty laundry, so I’m hoping to do something like a character study for some family members who have already passed. It might help me to more fully remember them, and I hope that it is entertaining or at least engaging to read about people who are deeply important to me.

That story, by the way, caught the roots of some deeper wounds that came up from the excavation that needed to be remembered and dealt with. Oddly, but perhaps not surprisingly, I feel way better about that part of my life now. Hopefully, I’ll have a similar experience with further such work.

What We Are Watching/Reading/Listening to

When I was a kid, my brother, Rich, influenced my own music tastes, and what he listened to, I did too. There was a song by a contemporary Christian band (called Petra) that we liked called “Garbage In/Garbage Out.” This was one of those very popular (at the time) warnings about what you put into your head being what you become. A warning on par with “you are what you eat”. 

I’ve always been a big media consumer. I love shows, movies, music, (certain) podcasts, and books, and I enjoy the feeling of benefitting from expanding my mind from most of it. Lately, I’ve had the benefit of being able to access some really good content (and some not so great) that I really want to write about. Briefly, I would like to explore my feelings about the HBO Max show, The Pitt; A Great Courses audio experience about the New Testament by Bart Ehrman; Raymond Chandler’s novel, “The Long Goodbye”; and a series of podcasts that I have found to be edifying and thoughtful for learning about the world in a very carefully curated way.

I never bought into the Garbage In/Garbage Out ideology, always being somewhat of an omnivore in media consumption, but I can certainly see how it might be true about social media, which may make me a hypocrite.

As Usual

So, I will be writing about other aspects of my/our lives, with odd book reviews, longer form stuff, stories about people and experiences and much else in the coming months, until October, but as always, I’m grateful for all of you in my small (but awesome) list of readers, who continue to give me and my work the eye and hopefully the mind. I appreciate every bit of time you spend reading and sharing your thoughts. 

See you, as my friend Rich Powell says, in the Funny Papers.