Commentary

Roam if you want to

April 24, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Anthony Carnovale

The word ‘roam’ has its origins from around 1300; the word ‘romen’ meant ‘to walk about; to lift up.’

On a recent road trip to Ohio for my son’s soccer tournament, it meant ‘dropped signal, crappy service’. The Rogers ‘Roam Like Home’ plan is supposed to allow travellers to use their phones the same way they would at home.

The plan didn’t work on a couple of trips to New York City, last year, so I was sceptical. Before leaving, I called Rogers; they assured me that everything was fine. So, Rogers being Rogers, as soon as we crossed the border, my signal dropped. No Roam. No data. I was cheesed. I suck at directions. I can’t make my way around Orangeville without getting lost. How was I going to get to Cincinnati without my Maps app?

Because I was worked up and couldn’t make out the difference between north and south, I ended up taking the wrong highway. I jumped off at the first exit and ended up on the outskirts of Detroit. In my twenties and thirties, getting lost was the point of travelling.

To top it off, there was major construction; we had to follow a detour to get back on the I-75. We were going in circles.

I pulled into a gas station and left my son in the car. Doors locked. Inside the station, every customer appeared to be broken. The attendant, from behind a plastic barrier, laughed at me when I asked for directions. I’m pretty sure one of the marks in the barrier was from a bullet. On the way out, a young man tried to hustle for me five bucks.

Heading south, in the right direction, we listened to the “A Way with Words”podcast.

In one episode, a young woman said she got annoyed when older people (like me) used ellipsis points in text messages. She said it freaked her out, made her anxious. She asked the hosts what ellipsis points symbolized, what might be inferred when they’re used.

It helped me forget about the news coming out of the U.S.: Canadians being fingerprinted; people being detained, deported, laid off, fired. We listened to a review of a documentary about the World Palindrome Championships; we laughed at a segment on funny names for birds: Satanic Nightjar; European Shag; Smew.

The first part of our trip was nothing but highways, churches, trailer parks and refineries. We stopped. We ate. Fast food signs stood like sunflowers in a field.

Every employee at every place we stopped at was covered in tattoos and piercings. They looked as if they had less choices in life than the number of side dishes on the menu board. At a hat store, the manager told me about his father’s back surgery; I told him about my father’s hip surgery. My son bought a Cincinnati Reds hat. At a McDonald’s, the man beside me ordered a double filet-o-fish, no cheese, no tartar sauce, onions sliced —not chopped. His insistence on sliced onions was strangely endearing. Just outside Cincinnati, my son pointed out a flag: ‘Daddy, I didn’t know they could make flags that big!”

After checking into our hotel, I went out for a coffee. As I drove, I couldn’t help but notice the abandoned storefronts, empty parking lots. Most of the strip malls had been stripped of life and occupancy. It made me think about Barack Obama and the 2008 government bailout.

The bookstore I wanted to visit was shut down; the gunsmith was open. There were shops that looked more like theme parks. Hospitals and medical buildings took up entire blocks. I wanted to visit the Mexican bakery. It’s how I always pictured the U.S., beyond the spit and polish —so much wealth, even more poverty. In my mind, the U.S. was, and still is, the greatest marketing campaign in world history.

Before a team dinner, we visited a Barnes and Noble Bookstore. My son pointed out ‘all the weird looking kids just hanging around’. He wanted to leave. I wanted to leave with a book. I asked a sales rep where the philosophy section was. As she walked me over, she pointed out that “…there’s been plenty of interest in Stoicism, these days.”

And then: soccer. The fields were terrible. Our boys played well. Canadian parents cheered for every goal with a little more pop and pep than usual. I can’t recall hearing a single peep from the other teams’ parents. We won the tournament in two games (the other games were rained out) by a combined score of 17-0.

After the second game, I thanked the referee and apologized if the Canadian parents had given him too much stick. He said not to worry: “Everybody’s a little worked up, these days.” The next day, we received our medals and left for home. For Canada.

For the first part of the return trip, my son slept with his Reds hat pulled down over his eyes, his championship medal in his hand. At the border, the agent asked if we had anything to declare. I wanted to tell him that we had just kicked some American butt. I didn’t. Once we crossed back into Canada, I didn’t need an app to find my way home — we were home.

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