I’d never driven from one side of the United States to the other—until this summer. My son recently graduated from college and needed to move his stuff and his car to the East Coast. I needed a break from… well, everything… so I loaded up my Spotify playlist and offered to help him move. I was looking forward to all the regional food we would eat: fry sauce in Utah, runzas in Nebraska, deep dish in Chicago, Dairy Queen at any opportunity.
When I was not much older than him, I loaded up my hand-me-down car and drove myself to a little potato farming town in Idaho to start my first TV reporting job. And during the course of my childhood, my family made a gradual westward trek from the Midwest stopping in various places for a few years, until we finally settled in the Bay Area. That series of moves and homes, particularly the last one, proved to be one of the most influential aspects of my early life, one that I write about a lot.
For the most part, we took the most direct path. It was a lot of ground to cover, and we gave ourselves exactly one week. We took one side trip, through the Medicine Bow Routt National Forest in Wyoming, which you can see in the photo above.
Our path took us directly past a Chicago suburb where I lived in early elementary school, a place I’ve never been back to since we moved when I was in third grade. As we crossed from Iowa to Illinois, I switched my playlist to 1970s hits (think: Earth Wind and Fire, Dolly Parton, John Denver), hoping the music from when I lived there would help spur some memories. As Take Me Home, Country Road came on, I got strangely emotional. I noted to my son that older Asian people (maybe I am one of them now?) love this twangy song for some reason. “A lot of people like this son,” my son commented. “Maybe because it’s about going home.”
I couldn’t remember our house number (neither could my parents), but I remembered the name of our street, the red brick lower facade of our house and white aluminum siding on the second story, the vast unfenced backyard with the vegetable garden. I can recall walking to the corner to catch the school bus in the morning and walking across some empty lots to my babysitter’s house in the afternoon. In the evenings, I looked outside my bedroom window and could see the Nabisco plant, surrounded by cornfields.
Read more of my memories from when I lived at this house and get a summer recipe
Thanks to Google maps, it was easy to find our street, and as we rounded the corner, I spotted our house: the red brick facade, the white aluminum siding. But there was now a gate to the backyard, and mature trees in the front yard. The street was much shorter than I remembered. The corner where we waited for the bus was only three or four houses away. Another subdivision had sprouted up at the end of the block. The Nabisco factory was nowhere to be found.
Later that evening, we went out for Indo-Chinese food, as a quick Yelp search revealed the town has a great variety of South Asian restaurants. The town has changed so much since I was one of three Asian kids in my entire school. The restaurant was a few miles from our hotel on a major thoroughfare bordering the next town. Clearly this had become a posh bedroom community, as evidenced by the Land Rover dealership. But right next to the lot full of luxury SUVs was an industrial building, with a sign reading Mondelez bakery. The restaurant was across the street, in a strip mall anchored by a Patel Brothers supermarket. As we got out of the car, I could now see the big picture: at the top of the industrial building were big red letters reading NABISCO. The factory was still there, now part of a bigger global world.
I’m still thinking a lot about this experience, seeing my childhood hometown with adult eyes. I think of the Midwest as frozen in time, all Chryslers and bell bottoms and Salisbury steak, when the reality is much more nuanced. I’m glad I’ve already written many of the things I wanted to write about this place. I can no longer think of it solely as the memories from my childhood.
When we finally reached our destination, I took my son out to dinner at a nice looking Chinese restaurant. I wanted to leave him with some flavors that would remind him of home. As I ladled a bowl of clam soup, full of ginger and with a hint of sesame oil, a familiar melody played over the speakers.
“Almost heaven, West Virginia…”
Only this time, the words were sung by a female voice, the tempo re-jigged to a Bossa Nova tempo. Familiar, yet different. And that is where I will leave this story.
Listen to Lisa Ono’s Take Me Home
What I’m Reading
Because one can only listen so much John Denver, I also played to the audiobook of Lilly Dancyger’s First Love during some of my turns at the wheel. I first read an excerpt of this book when Lilly and I were in a Tin House workshop. That gorgeous piece about two cousins ended up being the opener for the collection of essays about female friendship, and part of me was disappointed because how could the rest of the book measure up to such a stunner of story? But this is a collection that spirals back to that narrative, and others, throughout the chapters, each revealing a little more and building upon the earlier stories.
What Else I’m Eating
Finally! I made it to the historic Nom Wah Tea Parlor in New York Chinatown. This historic dim sum house has fascinated me for a while, but I was slightly afraid that it would be a nostalgic, kitschy setting with food that is good (for the 1920s). I was really impressed, though! The cheung fun with scallions and cilantro was so springy and the shrimp and pea shoot dumplings were delicate. Even the oolong with hydrangea iced tea was refreshing and delightfully floral.
I’m on a huge writing deadline for the rest of the summer (exciting things are afoot), but will send more updates soon. Until then, eat well and take care…
Grace