One Day in Kentucky and What Actually Makes America Great
Reflections on American identity after visiting a gun range and a hipster speakeasy in deep Trump territory — and a cultural guide to the United States, a maddening, dysfunctional, wonderful place.
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You’ll forgive me if I’m not feeling particularly patriotic on this 4th of July. The president, an authoritarian felon, recently boasted that migrants who escape from their purpose-built cages will get eaten by aligators.
Today, he’ll sign a bill that slashes health care coverage for Medicaid—which helps provide life-saving medical care to poor and disabled people. The bill also guts climate change funding and reduces food support for the poorest Americans.
Why? To enact an enormous tax break that disproportionately benefits the richest people in society. It’s quite literally the legislative version of a reverse Robin Hood. Oh, and for good measure, the bill also gives a tax break to people who buy silencers for their guns. ‘Murica!
Paradoxically, living abroad has made me feel simultaneously more and less American. Less American because I’ve been constantly steeped in British values, cultural norms, and the day-to-day lifestyle for nearly 14 years. More American because when I open my mouth, everyone here in the UK knows I’m American—and instantly perceives me through that lens, with all the accompanying cultural baggage you can’t escape.
Nationality becomes more central to your identity when it’s different from everyone around you. (When I lived in Minnesota for the first twenty-five years of my life, plenty may have judged me for what I said, but their perception wasn’t based on how I pronounced my words).
I’ve already written about the absurdist “Life in the UK test” and the wonderful traits I admire about Britain, so I felt it appropriate to do something similar for the national home I’ve abandoned, a maddening, dysfunctional, deeply broken—but also often wonderful—place that I contemplate constantly even if I no longer live there.
To do so, warts and all, I’m going to tell you a bewildering story about one day I spent in Kentucky, part of a road trip I took a few years ago with my two best friends—one Canadian, one German—through what Trump would call “real America.”
Then, I’ll put on my cultural anthropologist hat and make a series of my own observations about the United States and American culture that have whacked me over the head every time I’ve returned home after moving abroad.
One Day in Kentucky
Several years ago, I decided to show my foreign friends what the United States was really like. When people here in the UK tell me they’ve visited the United States, the best question to ask is: “Was it New York, LA, or a beach holiday in Florida?” In my experience, that covers about ninety percent of the responses. I always have to explain that those three destinations are probably the three least representative parts of America imaginable, providing a myopic, skewed image of an enormous country.
So, to get a snapshot that few foreigners see, we decided to drive from Washington, DC to Chicago, taking a longer route covering about 1,000 miles through rural Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Indiana. This was Trump territory, the epicenter of the opioid epidemic, home to demolition derbies (which I highly recommend, by the way, as a great way to spend a Saturday night).1
But this is the story of one Wednesday in Kentucky.
We started the morning by visiting a shop near Mammoth Cave that had a series of TRUMP banners alongside a disturbing array of Confederate flags flapping in the wind. I noted that the sign advertised that the shop sold “unique knifes” [sic]. (In chatting to the owner, I somehow failed to mention my recent appearance on MSNBC).
That afternoon, without having bought any knifes, we drove to Lexington, Kentucky, and decided to do something alien to life in Europe: go to a gun range and shoot some ridiculously large weapons that no civilian should be allowed to own. (I first shot a gun at summer camp when I was 12 years-old, a factoid that rightfully horrifies people in Britain—and, for the record, I’m strongly in favor of much more aggressive gun regulation in the United States).
We walked in, straight past the display with the pink semi-automatic assault weapons marketed for girls. I told the guy behind the counter I had brought him some foreigners who wanted to shoot some guns. I handed him $20 apiece. Without any ID checks or fanfare, he nodded and handed us some guns and a bunch of ammo.
Now, I’d had experience with bolt-action rifles at summer camp, but these guns in Kentucky were serious weapons—the kind of weapons that, in the words of Douglas Adams, had been produced by a designer that had been told: “Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them.” We knew which end was the wrong end, but that was about it. We didn’t have a clue what we were doing.
So, I did what any self-respecting red-blooded American man would do in that situation: I walked over to the guy on the gun range who most looked like he started firing guns as an infant, his trigger finger already itching in the womb, and said the coolest possible thing you could ever say to someone at a gun range:
“Excuse me, Sir, could you please show us how to put the bullets in the gun?”
He showed us. And once we had the bullets in the gun, it was scary how easy it was to spray them into a tiny, exact area far downrange. Now, to be a good shot, normally you have to be able to aim with one eye closed. That was a problem for me, because I can’t close one eye at a time. When I try to wink, it looks like a cross between a weird, involuntary twitch and a deranged blink, which meant I always had one tool missing from ye olde flirting toolbox. But it also meant that in this crucial moment, I was also one tool down in my shooting toolbox, too.
I am telling you all this because despite not knowing how to load the gun and not being able to aim properly with my unruly eyes, this was the bullet cluster I produced from 25 yards/23 meters. (Imagine what it would have looked like if I had fired with a blunderbuss, the kind of gun that was around when the 2nd Amendment was written).
After I impressed him, we got to chatting more with the helpful man who showed us how to put the bullets in the gun. He took a keen interest in one of my best friends, eager to hear the unfiltered truth about life in Europe from a bona fide German. He had heard a few things on Fox News, but wanted to learn more, to see if it was as bad as he’d heard.
“How are you coping with the invasion?” he asked my German friend.
“Um, what?”
“You know, the invasion…of all them Muslims!”
My friend looked bewildered, unsure what to do. How are you supposed to handle open bigotry from a man with a gun? Then, mustering all his diplomatic social strength, my friend swallowed hard and said:
“I’m not sure it’s quite like what you’ve been told by Fox News.”
The man was unfazed.
“You mean it’s not as bad as Sweden?”
The Speakeasy and the Corvette
Fresh with the bewildering knowledge that this bigot believed Sweden—one of the most prosperous, most liveable societies on the planet—was hell on Earth, we left the gun range and decided to head to Louisville, the most Democratic part of the state.
What better place to provide a contrast to our morning and afternoon itinerary than to head to a hipster speakeasy, a place where most people were literally dressed up like gangsters and flappers, sipping mint juleps? (We didn’t know the password to get in. The door staff took pity on us because we had an exotic German in tow).
Once inside, we got chatting to a Black woman, who was out with her brother, celebrating a promotion with a few cocktails. I mention that she was Black because we started discussing cultural observations, and my German friend—in typically German bluntness—straight up asked her: “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what’s it like to be Black in America?”
She paused. Then, she said this:
“I guess the best way to answer that question is to tell you a bit about my car. I’ve been fortunate to have been successful. I’ve got a good job. I work hard. I’m paid well. And I like cars. So, after I got one of my raises, I got myself a red Corvette—the kind of car that’s a status symbol, plenty of wow factor.”
She took a sip of her mint julep.
“But here’s the thing. Since I started driving it, I’ve been stopped five times by the police for apparently no reason. Every time, there’s some flimsy pretext, but in four of the five times, they’ve come up to the window, then asked the same question: ‘Ma’am, how can you afford this car?’ The insinuation, of course, is that I’ve stolen it.”
“So, you know what I’ve done? To make sure that I don’t have to reach for anything — in case they think I’m reaching for a weapon — I now drive around with my license and registration taped to my dashboard. But I also have printed out and taped my latest paycheck there, too, so I can just point to it when I get stopped, proving that I can afford a Corvette.”
“That,” she said, “is what it’s like to be Black in America.”
What Truly Makes America Great
The United States makes international headlines these days for all the wrong reasons. Britain, and many other parts of the world, most often encounter American news when it’s about Trump, mass shootings, tariffs, racism, or vapid celebrity gossip.
In many ways, it’s a broken society, a fraying social fabric being torn apart by mass delusions and a seething undercurrent of cultural anger where millions of people—many of whom own big houses, big cars, and even big boats—feel like victims within the richest society to ever exist. It’s a country that is socially dysfunctional, highly unequal, but overflowing with wealth.
But there is also so much to love about the United States, quirky, strange, and lovely as it can be, so here are some of the observations that I’ve come to better understand about my homeland after living outside of it—most good, some neutral, a few bad. These are subjective generalizations, so you may disagree, but here are mine:
The first thing you notice, for better or worse, when coming back to the US is the size of the cars and the size of the food portions. Both are insane. If you’ve ever wanted to drive something the weight of a tank down an enormous highway or consume a cinnamon roll the size of your head, you’ve found the right country.
American diners are awesome. Have you ever wanted someone named Brady or Randy or Mackenzie to flash you a huge, genuine smile and ask how you’re doing before giving you a laminated menu with twenty breakfast options on it? Have you ever wanted to say “I’ll take the 19, please”? You’re in luck! The American diner is here for you. (You can also get just about every food “fully loaded,” and surprisingly that means you’ll get an enormous pile of all the possible toppings imaginable, rather than what you might expect—that it would come served with a free gun).
American kindness is real. Our politics are mean, but there are so many well-intentioned Americans who are willing to help a stranger in need.
Garbage disposals are amazing. Flick that bad boy on, and with a satisfying whir, all your worries about scooping gross food out of the sink disappear. They’re in most American homes, but only six percent of British ones.
There are big gaps in the doors in public toilet stalls as though it might somehow be a useful feature if someone can see inside.
I miss American washers and dryers. The ones I grew up with could comfortably house a small family. In Britain, for years, I struggled with a terrible medieval contraption called a “clothes horse,” in which you take your clothes that have been wrinkled beyond recognition by your tiny kitchen washing machine and place them, sopping wet, for three or four days, on this stupid little rack that takes up half your living room. Eventually, the wrinkled clothes are only a bit damp, at which point you put them away. Not so in the US of A.
Generally, I think America’s drive-thru lifestyle is not great, but the drive-thru banks with those weird little canisters that make that satisfying *thwoomp* sound when they get sucked underground through a tube to the bank teller are one of life’s small pleasures.
American accents are, generally speaking, better equalizers. In Britain, you can instantly tell if someone is posh—or not—by how they speak. When I speak, the only thing an American can reliably infer about me from my accent is that I’m probably from somewhere in the middle, with a plausible 1,500 mile radius.
American TV advertisements often involve a man shouting at you about how YOU can get money (right now!) if you were injured in a car accident OR a drug company telling how you should ask your doctor for a pricey drug that you definitely don’t understand but that may or may not help you before listing a series of extremely serious side effects up to and including death as quickly as possible OR an ad set in a dusty part of the American west narrated by a man with a rugged voice that sounds like gravel telling you that if you don’t buy a pickup truck you’re basically a traitor who might as well take your pathetic hatchback to North Korea (I drive a Volvo V40, a car that’s normal by UK standards, but that you can’t buy in America because it’s deemed too small for the US market).
America’s natural beauty lives up to the hype. It’s extraordinary. And driving through it all on enormous, empty highways with the windows rolled down is one of the great joys of American life. To be fair, America is really big. Here’s my home state (Minnesota) superimposed over the UK:
You can eat something called “Kraft Macaroni & Cheese,” which stretches the latter word to its limit of potential meaning, as the “cheese” is in fact a fine-grained powder that is a radioactive shade of bright orange.
American state fairs, especially the best ones, are incredible. At the Minnesota State Fair, you can quickly consume a billion calories, with everything served to you “on a stick,” including walleye, key lime pie, bacon, Ole and Lena’s hot dish, pickles, pizza, deep fried cookie dough, and the more traditional corn dog. (Kristi Noem, the horrible politician who murdered her own dog and loves doing photo-ops in front of people in cages, isn’t a fan of corn dogs. See for yourself, in this most unintentionally hilarious political ad of all-time).
If you can get past the seething anger from the aggrieved victims in the boat parades, there’s a genuine optimism in American culture that is an outlier globally, and the American individualist “can do” attitude (probably tied to less respect for blind rule following and queuing) is also real.
There is no European equivalent to “Florida Man.”
Sports bars are also awesome. If you want to go to a spacious bar and eat an endless array of deep fried everything turned into “poppers” while watching sixty TVs that are each the size of your flat back in Europe, the American sports bar has got you covered!
There is a “why not?” mentality, which is how you get things like sporting events involving monster trucks destroying cars or lumberjack competitions and “tractor pulls.” This is the same mentality that has given the world the wacky inflatable tube guys who whimsically flap outside most car dealerships.
For better or worse, there are American flags everywhere. For the Americans reading this, try driving down a highway in your local area and see how long you can go without spotting one. When I tried it on the highway in Minneapolis, it was always a maximum of about two minutes.
American thunderstorms are the real deal. They’re getting worse due to climate change, which is obviously bad news, but there’s something incredibly awe-inspiring about a Midwestern display of the hours of cracks and booms of lightning that just doesn’t exist on anywhere near that scale in the UK.
The abundance of extracurricular activities at American schools is phenomenal, as is the idea that people who are not relatives of student athletes will pay to attend their competitions. (I have many fond memories playing the drums in our high school marching band while the stands were full for the high school football games). The idea that 100,000 people would pack a stadium to watch university students play sports—or that millions would bet on them in March Madness—is completely alien to the rest of the world. It’s objectively weird!
American supermarkets are a unique spectacle. You can get lost in the cereal aisle. The fruit is the same size as your head. The ridiculous array of frozen food, like microwavable Totino’s Pizza Rolls, can only be described as filthy and disgusting, but grotesquely delicious.
Everything is sweet. Even the bread is sweet.
American homes are enormous by international standards. The average new home in the US is 2,164 square feet. In Britain, it’s 818 square feet.
The tipping culture is out of control. (This has changed considerably since I lived there). When I recently went to a shop in the US and bought one literal pack of gum, I was presented with a screen asking me if I wanted to offer a tip, or if I wanted to click the “no tip” button that was clearly meant as the digital equivalent of me saying “yes, I am a monster, thank you for asking.” The “normal” amount in the middle was 20 percent. As someone who once worked as a bartender in a country without a tipping culture, I am one hundred percent in favor of service employees getting paid well! But these stupid iPad tipping screens are everywhere and it’s awful and awkward for customers. Just pay people properly!
Americans, on average, use a very specific mental algorithm for deciding whether to walk or drive somewhere. The algorithm can be expressed like this:
Is the distance greater than, or less than, 200 feet? If greater, then drive.
Similarly, Americans are obsessed with finding the ideal parking spot. There will be dozens of available parking spots that are an extra 50 feet away from the entrance. But we will drive around for as long as it takes to find a closer one. It makes no sense.
The geographical diversity is awe-inspiring. I once woke up in a tent amongst the snow-capped mountains of Yosemite National Park, then drove past coyotes in Death Valley, which was 114°F (46°C), then ended the day on the Las Vegas strip.
The rest of the world thinks baseball is stupid and boring. They are wrong.
The delicious bubbly substance that is spinach and artichoke dip has not yet been discovered by the rest of the world. It remains America’s best kept secret.
Admittedly, spinach and artichoke dip doesn’t really offset the tragically serious social problems and the rapidly metastasizing authoritarianism. Nonetheless, if, rather improbably, the bigot from the gun range—Chad? Jimbo?—ever reads this, thank you for helping us to put the bullet in the guns. I hope you someday get to visit Sweden.
Happy 4th of July!
Thank you for reading The Garden of Forking Paths. If you’d like to support my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription, or purchase a copy of my book—FLUKE: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters.
I have frequented the “Eve of Destruction” at Elko Speedway in Elko, Minnesota, which is sometimes capped off, after an evening of carnage, with a school bus race, in which decommissioned yellow school buses drive around a figure 8 track and smash into each other for the enjoyment of the crowd. It is a uniquely American spectacle. If you ever find yourself in Elko, Minnesota: go. Here is a video of what the school bus races are like:
Nice tribute. Sounds like you can take the American out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the American.
And you’re right about Americans being kind when you get them one on one, they are very friendly. It’s when they are in a bunch things get tricky!
Your list was spot on, and funny. Some other distinctly American things I appreciate:
Music: jazz, the blues, R&B, hip-hop, rap.
Regional foods: Tex-Mex, Southwestern cuisine, Cajun.
Public observatories and park systems: Starting with Teddy Roosevelt, the country once committed to open its awe-inspiring landscapes and big skies to everyone.
Not coincidentally, the peoples who gave the world these gifts are now targeted. Today is bittersweet. Emphasis on the first two syllables.
Thanks for the essay.