Episode 17: A waitress in Winnemucca accidentally showed me a half-naked picture of her husband.

Alternative title: On "home."

Hello from Chicago,

We made it across the U.S. with only one busted tire. And, like the subject line promises, only one accidental nude. I’ll get to that in a second.

A scene from our road trip.

What I thought about this week

The trip started last Monday, when we were frantically packing our car with everything that didn’t make it onto our moving truck. We dumped out junk drawers, threw things in boxes, shoved our car to the brim, and haphazardly swept our now empty rental house. It’s eerie seeing the place that was just your home sitting completely abandoned. Even though when all was said and done, we still had about 20% of our items sitting in the driveway, unable to fit in the car. This caused a full-blown panic.

Quickly deciding to channel Marie Kondo, we donated some items to friends while tossing the rest. It was hard, but we barely had time for sentimentality. We were already late to our first road trip stop, Lake Tahoe. As we drove away from Napa, our mania and the chaos of moving began dissolving with the miles.

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The next morning, we started our drive through the middle of the country on highway 50, which for stretches, is dubbed the “loneliest road in America.” Oscar and I would occasionally comment on the sights. Things like: a single house, sitting alone dozens of miles away from any town or civilization. “I wonder what their address is?” we would ask. “How do they grocery shop?” Another common one was a “LAND FOR SALE” sign, often advertising a rural, roadside plot of several acres for prices like $3,000. “Should we buy it?” we would joke.

All jokes aside, we have been dreaming of buying property for years. We’ve gone through every phase: texting each other condos (hey! look at this one! it’s got exposed brick!), googling mortgage advice, asking friends for real estate contacts. Imagining how our lives might play out is intoxicating. It’s hard not to let your imagination run wild with visions of how each space could shape the future you, the better you.

On the flip side, in Utah we happened upon a billboard: “Finally leaving California?” it asked. “Let me sell your house.” It was advertising a realtor, who promised to simultaneously sell your California property while finding you a new home in Utah. The sign was evidence of a real phenomenon: California’s population, for the first time in recorded state history, is on the decline. Although the decline is slight, people’s reasons for leaving are numerous. According to this article, the motivators include the astronomical housing prices, the desire to flee from the increasing threat of yearly wildfire, and the dramatic rise in homelessness. I’ve been personally confronted with all of this, and I felt uneasy looking at the billboard. It resonated. Especially throughout Covid-19, when our homes suddenly became more precious than ever, and the center of our lives. The idea of having one with a sense of permanence and ownership sounded attractive, but we couldn’t afford it in California. Small family homes can clock in at $1 million easily (which has really warped my expectation for shows like “Million Dollar Beach House” — now I just assume they’re all mildly shitty beach houses). This coupled with the threat of wildfires made purchasing a house feel far from attainable. Meanwhile, over the course of the year, we saw a nearby parking lot fill up with tents and campers. The socio-economic impact of the pandemic was instantly visible, and distressing — the prospect of owning property was now a literal impossibility for many working class people, a disproportionate amount of whom are POC and minorities. The human right to shelter continues to be increasingly strained in the U.S.

Back on our road trip, we were driving through abandoned ghost towns in Wyoming. I couldn’t stop thinking about “liminal spaces” — which are defined as:

Liminal spaces are in-between places that exist as means to an end, to be travelled through but not lingered in: stairwells, roads, corridors, hotels. In forcing a confrontation with these prosaic architectures of passage, liminal-spaces… imbue the familiar with an eerie surreality. They owe much of their appeal to a… lack of human presence, which… invites the viewer to populate the image with her own memories of comparable scenes.

Take this picture of an empty mall, for example.

Or this picture of a lonely gas station in the middle of nowhere.

They’re often backgrounds that show up in our dreamscapes — mixing a transient space we’ve been before with other details from our waking lives. Liminal spaces exist as an opposite to a home in a way; rather, they’re merely meant to move through without a sense of permanence. The longer we drove, the more I felt these spaces reflecting my own reality back to me: I am, technically, in between homes in a state of transition. Simply passing through.

I felt dreamlike, suspended between two existences: on one side was the California housing market, rampant with inequity and impossibility. On the other, the promise of Chicago — which, while also inequitable, still offers a shot at a middle-class existence and attainable housing.

We are admittedly very privileged to have a place to stay, and to be able to consider buying real estate — but it’s hard not be anxious. Growing up as a millennial plagued by news of the 2008 crisis, I’ve recently read reports that a “housing bubble” and “housing crisis” are cropping up in wake of the pandemic. The news is bleak: stagnating wages and properties increasingly bought up by investment firms are culminating in artificially high prices few can afford. Many financial experts are trying to predict when the so-called “bubble” will burst.

For now, Oscar and I will be working and saving — floating through this liminal time in our lives not only with the hope to purchase property, but to make that property a home — a sanctuary to establish roots and settle into a community. Something everyone deserves.

As Leon Bridges, ‘Coming Home,’ played through our car speakers and the Chicago skyline came into view, I set a reminder for myself in my phone: Call a real estate agent!

I may not entirely know what I’m doing, but I have to, at the very least, try.

What I drank this week

1. Scribe Riesling, Sonoma Valley, California 2020 $38

   

   Dry, crisp, zippy and delicious. Drank it on a hot, humid day in Chicago it it quenched everyone’s thirst. Tasted like salty, underripe peaches. In the best way.

   Fun fact: In 1858, Emil Dresel brought the first Riesling cuttings to America and planted them on what is now the SCRIBE Estate in Sonoma, CA. 

2. Julian Pineau ‘Roche Blanc,’ Loire Valley, France 2018 $34

   

   Sauvignon Blanc, grown on clay and limestone soils. Macerated on the skins for 24 hours, fermented and raised in stainless steel.

   When Julien found out that Catherine Roussel of Clos Roche Blanche wanted to sell her land, he quickly jumped on the opportunity to invest in the legendary site with partner Laurent Saillard. The two have split the 12 hectares 50/50: Julien now works with 6 hectares of Sauvignon Blanc, Côt, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and, appropriately, Pineau D'Aunis.

   2015 was Julien's first vintage. In the vines, the inherited greatness of the Clos's terroir remains respected: the land is worked by horse and the soils are permitted to exist in harmony with the hundreds of plants and insects that inhabit them. Julien's wife is an agronomist, so future plans for the land include fruit trees and free-roaming animals to push poly-culture to the next level. In the cellar, no addition of sulfur is used at any point and Julien favors long élevages of his cuvées, often releasing them 12 to 24 months after harvest.

   -Louis/Dressner

What I liked this week

1. So, I promised you a story about this waitress in Winnemucca, Nevada. I didn’t forget, promise. Here it goes: We were so hungry near the border of Nevada, we pulled over for barbecue at some tiny joint in a little cowboy town. It was hot, like 90 degrees. Not wanting to leave our cat in the car, we went to sit on the patio with her in her carrier. A sweet older woman with bangs and thick glasses came out and instructed us there was no service on the patio — to which we explained the cat situation. At the mention of a cat, she got super excited, ushered us inside, and proceeded to tell us all about the cat she and her husband adopted. She went and got her phone, and brought it back to show us pictures of the cat. When she turned her phone around, she unknowingly swiped to a half-naked picture of her husband laying on the couch. The kicker: she turned her phone back around AND SAW THE PICTURE AND DIDN’T EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE IT AND CONTINUED LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED. It was all very awkward.

2. I started reading the book Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell — and so far, it’s awesome.

3. Taking a relaxing bath in our hotel room!!!!

4. Camille had some MOMENTS this week:

   

   

Thank you for everyone who read to the end. I love you all. Mean it.

xoxo,

Kate