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Driving Across America with My Mother
Thirty-one hours behind the wheel — twice, endless cornfields, and plenty of goat kefir
I’ve done it twice actually, drive across America with ‘Mumm’ — as she’s been named in my phone for over a decade, double ‘m’ and the British ‘u’ despite our Upper Michigan upbringing. Being Yoopers, driving all day is in our blood. A roadie for a Yooper is necessary for anything from buying a decent pair of jeans, to going to Costco, to getting your hands on some quality caulk in bulk.
It is one of the more secluded places in the lower forty-eight. We have to drive for hours just to hit a proper freeway and the closest ‘city’ is Green freaking Bay, which most wouldn’t consider a city or know existed if it wasn’t for the Packers. And at least half of the Yoop — my mother’s family included — is inhabited by die-hard Packer fans or cheeseheads as they’re called, even though the team is in Wisconsin.
The moral of the story is that we know how to drive. A four-hour jaunt to Duluth is not a big deal. From my hometown, we have to drive five hours just to get to the more populated Lower Peninsula aka the Mitten, and nobody bats an eye.
My mother has driven across the country at least a dozen times and visited nearly every state. We took our bright red suburban down…
