There is a little restaurant here called Henny’s, but I call it the thermometer. In all my travels, this is the best place for me to find out what Americans really care about, which of the machine-gun outrages of the daily news cycle actually saturates.
As I said to Tom, who is retired, lives locally and has a beautiful view of the Appalachians from his deck, which I saw on his phone, “Anything that makes it through the mountain passes to this place is real.”
One issue that has made its way is the Save America Act. Republicans see it as a means of stopping voter fraud, but Democrats like Tom disagree.
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“It’s not just voter ID, it’s a voter suppression act,” Tom said in frustration over President Trump refusing to pass a bipartisan housing bill unless the SAVE act is included.
Josh, the 25-year-old bartender on his way to George Washington Law School in the fall, added, “You have to admit, the housing bill was bipartisan.”
It was at this moment that something happened I have now seen hundreds of times. Tom began saying something about Trump, the tension in his body increasing until he just said, “You know what, I don’t want to talk about him.”
I respected that, glanced up at the Japan vs. Sweden soccer match on the TV and said, “How are you liking the World Cup?”
“I love it,” he smiled.
Not long after Tom left, Sweeney came in. Her real name is Jennifer but everyone, including me now, calls her Sweeney. She grew up here and lives in Indiana now.
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“I just love seeing these people here for the World Cup enjoying our country, it’s great,” she said.
Soon, Paul came in, sturdy in his 60s or early 70s. I slipped in a remark to him about the communist sweep of the elections in New York. His expression was enough to let me know he was a Republican, but his reaction was less anger and more plaintive sigh.
Finally, Brian came over to my table. He remembered me from a previous stop at Henny’s, which is always nice. Like Tom and Sweeney, Brian is a Democrat.
We spoke of politics, but without anger, because politics felt far away, somewhere across the mountains and the ancient rolling rivers. Brian said that it’s really “all about treating people with respect.”
The lynchpin of the evening, without question, was the soccer game playing out on the TV above us. Josh and I laughed at how odd it was to think of Japan and Sweden in the same category of anything, and all of us had a fun conversation about the relative heights of World Cup nations. Turns out the Dutch are the tallest people on Earth.
What became clear, not just on Thursday night in Cumberland, but throughout the past two weeks in my travels through West Virginia, is that the biggest story in the country right now isn’t communism or the filibuster. It’s the rest of the world discovering how awesome America is.
“We sometimes forget,” Sweeney wisely noted, about the magic of the American road and its pull-off attractions.
It struck me that the media has made it very hard for all Americans to come together and celebrate America’s 250th birthday this year. Even the Freedom 250 group organizing the national celebration has been too partisan, allowing a UFC fighter to defame former first lady Michelle Obama at an official event.
But, the World Cup has come just in time to save the patriotic day. Unlike almost everything else in our lives, cheering on team USA and reveling in the joy that travelers find in our homeland has nothing to do with politics or Trump, and frankly, it’s just beautiful.
On Saturday, Cumberland, which boasts having once been a headquarters for George Washington’s army of rebels, will hold its celebration of the 250th birthday of America, and I’ll be here. Maybe I’ll run into some of the gang from Henny’s. I’ll certainly make some new friends.
But already, here in the mountains in the land of golf shirts and pickup trucks, I can feel the urgency of politics receding, as if finally the last decade of everyone hating each other because of Trump has just become too much.
In 1994, when the World Cup landed in the United States, it was a curiosity and a party. Thirty-two years later, it is much more. Today, it serves as a reminder, from foreign shores, that at the end of the day, we really do like each other.
