Eye on Texas: On the Road

Growing up in the Swiss Alps, America was a distant concept on the television screen. I remember watching the movie Bonnie and Clyde and enjoyed their highway chases and shootouts with the Texas Rangers. Those artistic, and violent, moments left an impression on me, so I moved to the United States. Thirty years later, I became “American in heart” and earned my green card. I’ve spent more than a decade traveling this complex and challenging country, and I realize now that for me, America is a road movie—a story about mobility where the open horizon and never-ending interstate feels as mesmerizing today as it did when I first arrived three decades ago.

While shooting the feature story for this issue, my wife and travel partner, ThiAnh, drove from Las Vegas along I-10 into West Texas. ThiAnh made a honky-tonk Texas playlist, and Willie Nelson was playing when we passed this truck hauling a pristine vintage car. I grabbed my iPhone, rolled down the window, and snapped a few frames of this most American of moments. All the pictures ended up blurry or out of focus, but this one, somehow, came out. 

A few hours later we arrived in Fort Stockton and had beer and rib-eye steak at a K-Bob’s Steakhouse—about as far as one can get from the Swiss Alps.

Read more from the Observer:

• “Election Integrity” or Voter Intimidation?: Texas Republicans are pushing changes to election laws that would let partisan poll watchers record voters in polling places.

• In San Antonio, Police Reformers Square Off with the Cops’ Union: A proposal to end collective bargaining, on the ballot May 1, aims to spur police accountability in Texas’ second-largest city.

• Texans With Disabilities Were Left to Fend for Themselves During Winter Storm Uri: Emergency planning often overlooks the needs of the most vulnerable during natural disasters.