Holbrook, AZ

I crawled into town close to dusk, the August sun meanderning across the sky in the rearview mirror. Despite its inevitable march towards the horizon, it seemed in very little rush to get there, feebly holding onto the dregs of one of those last dog days of summer. I couldn’t really say the same for myself - after nearly 600 miles of driving since leaving Los Angeles earlier that morning, I was ready for everything to be over. I needed dinner, a couple of beers, a shower and a bed, and at that point I didn’t really care what order those came in.

Having lived in and around big cities for the last two decades of my life - first New York, then Boston and now LA - I’ve developed a deep fondness for the small towns of America. I don’t even know if I would call it fondness, as fondness suggests familiarity, and I can’t say I’ve ever spent enough time in one to become all that familiar. But I have an affinity towards them nevertheless. Despite the commercial and cultural significance of the large cities across the US, it is the tiny places - those speed trap towns in the flyover states - that I feel deeply connected to.

Holbrook was merely an overnight waypoint along my journey to New Mexico last year, and in many ways it felt like a caricature of itself. A loudspeaker blared muffled reports from the highschool football game a few blocks away as I strolled the main street to dinner, walking by borded up stores and vacant gravel lots. I think I was the only stranger in the cantina that night, neighbors and family members catching up over their meals together. As I shuffled back to my motel around 8, I was struck by the silence that had descended on everything, save for the rumble of a locomotive passing by.

I imagine most high schoolers at that game wanted nothing more than to make a clean break for something bigger, something better waiting for them in LA or New York or nearly anywhere else. Yet all I wanted to do was to stay there and get to know it. The stark reality is that these tiny dots on the map are fading and falling prey to time itself. Holbrook’s population is around 4,800 today - less than it was a decade ago and only some 2,500 more than what it was in 1950. There is a world where the Holbrooks of America exist on paper and in memories and nowhere else - it just feels like a matter of time. And I don’t know anything more patient than time.

So whenever I set out on a road trip, it’s not the grand sights or the once-in-a-lifetime vistas that I look forward to most. It’s the Holbrooks and its counterparts in Utah and Nevada and Idaho and New Mexico and all the other population-less-than-5,000-towns between the seaboards that pull at my heartstrings. I want to stop for them. I need to stop for them. So that I can bear witness before there’s nothing left to bear witness to.

Down Broken Roads