For her service in the US military as an Airman, Lauren Hough was booted out for being an out Lesbian. She returned home to Texas and took a number of gig jobs- barista, cable guy, bouncer in a gay bar- all field work for her writing.
After building a following on social media, Hough authored ‘Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing’ a book of essays that dealt with her difficult childhood growing up in a family that was part of a religious cult and for being relocated to several countries on their culty missions.
Feeling the need to travel after the Covid shutdowns by 2023 Hough decided to go on an extended road trip and journal about the current state of the United State. Even though she was mourning the death of her beloved dog Harper, she also decided that she would need a traveling companion ala John Steinbeck’s ‘Travels with Charley’ on the hunt for the pulse and heart of America, so she recruited a husky mix to be her wingdog and named him after another fellow traveler Woody (Guthrie).
Currently finding herself in a situation where such a trip might be possible, she leaps at the chance. Her itinerary is mapped out but changes her directions at will–part of the fun. She stays at motels, outdoor campsites and some desperate waystations.
As a former pilot Hough is pretty much ready for anything that comes down the road, but she encounters things that she wasn’t expecting. Some having to do with making peace with the past. She plans to use the alone time with Woody to take stock of her life. Maybe have a fling with someone along the way, or getting in touch with former lovers, maybe settling a few scores from her younger dating self. She is between relationships, but has a few unexpected encounters on this journey.
She buys a 20+ year old Dodge van and sets off for in the tire tracks of Steinbeck, but with many unexpected turns, off-ramps and pit-stops. The trip wasn’t always a refuge of the roads escape (cue Joni!) and Woody wasn’t thrilled with the pace. He feels pent up on the van floor over long stretches of road, sometimes dealing with car sickness. And not getting enough time outside sniff out the lay of the land for himself. So he makes do with a bark or a whimper or a shrug. Of course her relationship with Woody is the real thing, and his stoic personality speaks volumes to her on their journey.
The Dodge is also acting out and showing its age, breaking down at the most inopportune times. At one point Hough accidently loses her IDs by accidently tossing them out with Woody’s soiled dogbed –she had hidden the there for safety.
They hit frantic cities and deflated suburbs and commune with folks living hard, in debt, jobless, living in vans, and all suddenly cast along the ravaged path of their vanished American dreams essayed by soulless government run by a don. The only thing that is missing is a nuclear cloud dustbowl to complete the picture.
Hough’s wit, not to mention her polemic snark at the boiling caldron of social, political, money, and collective worry for our country’s future reflects a host of regressive cultural and political strife festering every day being doles out from the powers that be.
She meeets people in campsites, diners, garages, markets, motels, community affairs, bars, and in the vehicles where people are living because they can’t pay rents or mortgages. Hough interacts with everyone she meets and her prose portraiture of these chance encounters is vivid, convivial, and revelatory. And Woody is right by Lauren’s side the whole way.
But throughout Hough articulates and vents at overarching injustices we now face. She calls it like it is on American soil , squeezing out the bitterest juice from the grapes of our current collective wrath echoing Steinbeck 86 years on.
